How to add WooCommerce image uploads on your store’s product pages

In some cases, you may run an e-commerce store where WooCommerce needs image uploads (or other files) on product pages. It could be a print shop, personalised gift store, stationery shop, or some other kind of WordPress store. However, you need the ability to add the functionality to your product page in the first place.

The answer is to use the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin. This provides lots of extra enhancements, but it shines for WooCommerce image uploads. As such, this article will take a look at how to upload images to WooCommerce, and manage the process within WordPress.

WooCommerce image uploads – the features we’ll cover

Adding an image or file uploader to your WooCommerce product page is much easier than you might think. In fact, the first method we’ll show you is simple and fast to execute.

Through the rest of the article, we’ll offer a step-by-step guide using an example of a print shop with a live working demo. Later on, we’ll also show you a video for the entire process.

Throughout the post, we’ll look at the following:

• Uploading a single file on the product page
  • Adding WooCommerce image uploads on the front end
  • Setting parameters, like maximum file size and permitted file types
  • Displaying uploaded image thumbnails on the product page
  • Displaying thumbnails in the cart page and checkout pages
  • Setting a price for image uploads
  • How to work with uploads as part of a received order
  • Attaching uploads to email notifications
• Allowing bulk uploads on the product page
  • Enabling bulk uploads
  • Using an AJAX uploader with upload progress bar and the ability to add or remove images
  • Setting a maximum number of uploads
  • Charging customers per upload
• Creating other custom fields, such as a way to choose print sizes and finishes
• Calculating the product price based on the number of uploads
• Organising uploads by order number
• Downloading all WooCommerce uploads by order in a single ZIP file
• Renaming image uploads
• Editing image uploads
• Uploading multiple files and specifying a quantity for each file
• Using a pricing table to set a price per print depending on the total quantity of prints required

While we use the example of a WooCommerce store offering a printing service for user uploaded images, you don’t have to. Instead, you can adapt the information here to your own needs. You’ll see how flexible the process can be for different types of store.

Using a plugin to add WooCommerce image uploads

The simplest, fastest, and most powerful way to add WooCommerce image uploads is to use the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin.

This is a plugin that lets you add WooCommerce image uploads, among other features. The ‘Upload’ field lets your customers upload files and images from the product page.

While the Basic version has most of the features you’ll need for uploading images, the Pro version offers more functionality.

As such, you can carry out WooCommerce image uploads using the Basic version, but you may also want to consider using features such as calculations for pricing within your own setups.

How to add an upload field to WooCommerce (in under a minute)

Once you install and activate the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin, you can add custom fields to your products. While we’ll concentrate on WooCommerce image uploads here, you might want to investigate the custom fields in more detail within our documentation.

To start, click the ‘Product Add-Ons’ tab in the ‘Product data’ meta box on any product within your store:

Next, click the ‘Add Group’ and ‘Add Field’ options, then choose ‘Upload’ as the ‘Field Type’. From here, enter a value in ‘Field Label’:

If you save your product and take a look on the front end, you’ll see that the product page contains an image upload field:

This is all you need to do to add WooCommerce image uploads to product pages. As a further example, we have a working demo of the product. We encourage you to have it open while you go through this article. Also, there’s a specific section within the plugin’s documentation on how to add fields with the plugin that you’ll want to reference too.

How to set the maximum file size within WordPress

Using the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin, you can set a maximum file size. This will prevent your customers from uploading files that are too big.

To achieve this, head to the ‘WooCommerce’ > ‘Settings’ > ‘Product Add-Ons’ screen, and set the maximum file size in Megabytes (MB):

Once you save your changes, this will apply to your site on a global level.

How to define which file types you can upload

By default, the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin lets your customers upload image files only. There are a few reasons for this, but security is primary concern. The default file types you can upload are JPEGs, PNGs, and GIFs.

In some cases, you might want to change the upload file types. If this applies to you, you can add a filter in your snippets or child theme’s functions.php file.

How to display image thumbnails on product pages

When the user uploads an image to the product page, it will display the thumbnail and file name:

However, you don’t have a restriction on where you see this. You can also add these to other WooCommerce elements and WordPress pages.

How to display thumbnails in the cart and on WooCommerce checkout pages

When the customer uploads an image to a product page and clicks ‘Add to Cart’, WordPress will validate the image size and other parameters to ensure it’s okay to upload.

If it passes the checks, the image becomes part of the product as custom data. When the user clicks through to the cart or checkout page, they will see the image as a thumbnail.

This is something you won’t need to touch as part of the WooCommerce image uploads process. The plugin will add this on your behalf.

How you charge a price for WooCommerce uploads

It could be that the image upload is an optional product field on your site. If so, you might want to charge the customer an additional fee on top of the basic product price.

This is simple with the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin. To start, enter the price for image uploads using the ‘Field Price’ box:

You’ll see that the price will display on the front end when the user uploads a file:

As with the functionality to add a thumbnail to the cart, this aspect is something the plugin handles without the need for your input.

How to add WooCommerce uploads to orders

There are no extra steps you’ll need to take to add WooCommerce image uploads to your order. WordPress will add the uploads on your behalf:

What’s more, you’ll also get a thumbnail of the image in the new order email you receive:

Because a lot of this functionality is hands-off, this gives you more opportunity to get the overall functionality working as you’d like.

How to attach image uploads to order emails

You can also choose to attach image uploads to the emails you receive when a customer places a new order. To do this, head to the ‘WooCommerce’ > ‘Settings’ > ‘Product Add-Ons’ screen and select the ‘Attach uploads to emails’ option:

How to upload files to product pages – video

At this point, you have all of the basics you need. In fact, we have a video to help sum up and explain everything we cover up to this point:

From here, we’ll get into more advanced functionality.

How to carry out WooCommerce image uploads in bulk

Everything so far applies to single image uploads. Next, let’s look at bulk image uploads to a WooCommerce product page. While the previous steps still apply, we will need to change one or two settings to get things working.

Enabling bulk WooCommerce image uploads for specific products

To enable bulk uploads, you can check the ‘Allow Multiple Uploads’ option in the upload field settings:

If you take a look at the product page, you’ll notice a minor difference:

The button here will now show ‘Choose Files’ instead of ‘Choose File’. The user can now carry out bulk image uploads. To clarify, everything else – including thumbnails in the cart and order – will be the same as with the single field.

How to use an AJAX uploader with an upload progress bar (and the ability to add or remove images)

Next, we can look at some more advanced features. Up to this point, we use standard HTML file input fields to upload files.

Now, let’s look at enabling an AJAX uploader. There are a few benefits to consider:

• You’ll note a progress bar, to display the upload status for each file. This helps the user to see that the upload is taking place and how long it’s likely to take
• There’s the ability to add further images
• There is also the ability to remove uploaded images
• You’ll also have drag-and-drop functionality. This helps the user to drag images into the field if they want

As with the previous example, we have a working demo for you to help follow along.

To enable the AJAX uploader, go to ‘WooCommerce’ > ‘Settings’ > ‘Product Add-Ons’ within WordPress. Next, select the ‘Enable AJAX uploader’ checkbox:

This is all you need to do here, although we can improve the functionality on the front end. We can also control the experience the user has with the image uploader.

How to set a maximum number of image uploads

One of the more advanced facets of the AJAX uploader is how it’s possible to set a maximum number of uploads for each upload field.

To do this, enter a value in the ‘Max Files’ field in your field settings:

Once you save your changes, the AJAX uploader won’t accept more files than you’ve specified.

How to charge per image upload

Even better, you can charge the user for each upload that they make. Here, check the ‘Price per upload’ option.

The price you enter in the ‘Field Price’ section will multiply by the number of file uploads.

In fact, you don’t have to stop here. There’s more we can do with the AJX uploader involving other custom fields.

How to use WooCommerce image uploads with other custom fields

Depending on your WooCommerce store, you might want to include other custom fields with your file upload field.

In the example, customers can upload their images and have them printed. We offering a choice of finish, either matt or gloss, and print size.

To achieve this, we’re going to add a couple of radio button groups, with print sizes at a different cost per upload. As such, we’re going to include a calculation field to calculate the total price.

Adding radio button groups for print sizes and finishes

To add some radio buttons, click ‘Add Field’ and select ‘Radio’ as the field type:

We’ve entered ‘Gloss’ and ‘Matt’ as the options, with the former as the default value. When the user opens the page, this will be the option that shows.

Now, you can see that there are some extra choices for the user, as well as the upload field:

It looks slick and is straightforward to use, but there’s more we can achieve.

Calculating a custom price per image upload

Finally, we’re going to calculate the product price by multiplying the number of uploads by the cost of the selected print size. For example, if the user uploads five images and selects the largest print size, the total cost will be £6.25 per set of prints.

To do this, we add a ‘Calculation’ field and enter a formula to calculate the price:

The calculation here is:

( {field_1070_option_price} * {field_1054_number_uploads} ) - {field_1070_option_price}

This means we’ll multiply the selected option price from field #1070, by the number of files uploaded to field #1054, then minus one of the options prices.

We’ve enabled the ‘Hide Calculation’ option here so we don’t display this on the front end. Instead, it works behind the scenes to set the product price. If you want to read more about how this works, we have a dedicated piece on using calculating WooCommerce product prices.

WooCommerce image uploads – the finished product

If you take a look at the product page and look to upload some images, you’ll understadn how tht functionality works:

As with all of our examples, we have a viewable product to look at.

How to organise WooCommerce image uploads by order number

By default, the plugin places uploaded images in a unique directory for each user. If you prefer, you can organise uploads by order number.

To ensure all order image uploads live in the same directory, go to ‘WooCommerce’ > ‘Settings’ > ‘Product Add-Ons’ and enable ‘Organise uploads by order’.

Once you save your changes, the functionality will apply to your site.

How to download all image uploads by order in a single ZIP file

If you’ve enabled ‘Organise uploads by order’, you’ll be able to download all the uploads from an order in a single ZIP file.

You’ll see a new button in the order screen to ‘Download files’:

At this point, WordPress takes over and serves the files to the user.

How to rename image uploads

If you wish, you can rename uploaded files. To do this, go to ‘WooCommerce’ > ‘Settings’ > ‘Product Add-Ons’ and enter the format for your file names in the ‘Rename uploads’ field:

You can use the following tags, and WooCommerce replace these when a user places an order:

• {original_file_name}
• {order_number}
• {group_id}
• {field_id}
• {date}
• {product_id}
• {product_sku}

Think of them like mail merge tags, where they refer to database elements that turn into readable text on the front end.

How to edit image uploads

You might want to let users edit the images they upload. You can do this with WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate and with the Advanced Uploads extension (note though, that you need to have both active).

With the Advanced Uploads extension, users can crop, rotate and resize their uploaded images. You can also specify a minimum and maximum width and height, plus define the aspect ratio for cropping images.

How to upload multiple images and specify a quantity for each file

Next, let’s look at another scenario. For example, you could let users upload multiple images to then print. We want to let the user specify how many of each print they require.

You can see in the screenshot above that the user can upload multiple files and enter a quantity against each one. If you can’t visualise it, there’s a working demo product for you to view.

What’s more, there’s a pricing table which shows the price per print based on the total quantity of prints ordered. This table can change based on the size of print selected. For example, if the user wants prints at 10 x 10 they’ll be cheaper than prints at 20 x 20.

Let’s take a look at how to set this up.

Adding quantity fields per upload

For this feature, you’ll need the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin and the Advanced Uploads extension.

The first task is to create a ‘Number’ field that will store the combined quantity of prints.

You don’t need to give the field a label, just set the ‘Field Type’ to ‘Number’ and make a note of the ID number. Note that the plugin will automatically hide this field on the front end, so you may not see it on the product page.

Next, create a new upload field. With the Advanced Uploads extension installed, you’ll see some extra parameters in your upload field:

You’ll need to set the following parameters:

• ‘Allow multiple uploads?’
• ‘Price per upload?’
• ‘Quantity per upload’ (this will enable the quantity field for each uploaded file)
• ‘Combined quantity field ID’, which will be the same ID of the number field from a previous step. The plugin will use this field to store the total quantity of prints required

Now, when you preview this product, you’ll see a quantity field input for each uploaded file. The total quantity for all inputs will fill the number field, and you won’t see it display.

You can use the number field in calculations as in the examples earlier in this article. However, you might also want to create some pricing tables for your prints.

Using a pricing table to set a price per print (depending on the total quantity of prints required)

Pricing tables let you get a price based on a user input. While there are different types of pricing table, in this case we’re using a ‘lookup table’.

To use this feature, you’ll need another extension for Add-Ons Ultimate: Advanced Calculations:

With the Advanced Calculations extension, you can upload a CSV file with multiple price tables. Then, you’ll have some extra parameters in your calculation fields. This means you can use the table to get a price for the prints based on the total quantity selected.

A simple pricing table could show an initial column displaying ranges of quantities, with another column showing a corresponding price.

So if the combined quantity is between 10 and 49, the plugin will return 0.25 as the print price. If the combined quantity is between 50 and 399, the plugin will return 0.20 as the price. For more information on lookup tables, we have a dedicated tutorial that explains everything you need to know.

Upload your CSV file and add a calculation field for the ‘price per print’

First, upload your CSV file containing your price tables to the ‘Product Add-Ons’ > ‘Calculations’ page. You’ll want to make sure that your tables are in the correct format.

Next, add a new group for the calculation fields you’re going to add. You can click ‘Add Group’, then insert a ‘calculation’ field in your new group. We’ll use this field to calculate the price of each print.

You can see that we set the field type to ‘Calculation’ and in the ‘Formula’ field we enter {look_up_table}. This tells the plugin that it’s going to get a result from one of the table uploads.

Next we enter the ID of the number field we created above in the ‘Field ID for Y’ field. You need to use the ‘Combined quantity field ID’ here that you entered when you created the upload field above.

Finally, choose the price table from the ‘Look Up Table’ field. This field will now fetch the total combined quantities entered by the user for each upload. It will use this value in the specified lookup table. Then it will return the price per print.

Setting the overall product price

Last of all, we’re going to use the price from the lookup table to set the overall product price. Let’s say the user has specified a total quantity of 10 prints and our cost per print for 10 prints is 0.25. We need to multiply 10 * 0.25 for our overall product price.

To do this, add one more calculation field as follows:

We set the field type as ‘Calculation’ then in the ‘Formula’ field we multiply the combined quantity field by the price per print field. Next, set the ‘Action’ to ‘Set Product Price’ in order to use the result of this calculation field as the product price.

As always, you can take a look at the demo product to get a feel for what we’re achieving.

Getting different print prices based on size or format

Just in case you want to return different prices based on another user selection, such as the print size or format, you can add conditions to groups.

Here, we add our calculation fields into a group. Then, we set a condition on this group to show only if the user selects ’10 x 10′ in the ‘Size’ option field.

You can then duplicate this group and choose to display the duplicated version if the user chooses a different option. You can also change the look up table used in each group.

How to revise and approve WooCoomerce image uploads

You might want to enable your customers to upload files that you then rework or revise. This way, you can present the order details page to the customer for their review and approval.

You can do this using the WooCommerce Review and Approve plugin. There’s a full tutorial on creating a WooCommerce file approval process elsewhere on the blog. It’s essential reading if you want to implement this functionality.

Adding WooCommerce image uploads to product pages – final thoughts

Using the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons Ultimate plugin, it’s simple to implement image uploads on a product page. You will set parameters such as file size and file types, and display thumbnails. For more advanced functionality, you can enable an AJAX drag-and-drop file uploader. This lets users upload their images in bulk.

For some of the more advanced features, you might need the Advanced Uploads and/or the Advanced Calculations extensions:

Do you think that WooCommerce image uploads can be something you can implement with our plugin? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!