Store Vacation Lite Documentation

Going on a break shouldn’t mean taking your entire store offline. Store Vacation lets you pause new orders on your WooCommerce shop while keeping everything else running. Your products stay visible, your SEO stays intact, and your customers know exactly when you’ll be back.

Whether you’re heading off for a well-earned holiday, waiting on a fulfilment delay, or just need to close checkout for a few days, this plugin gives you a clean way to do it without touching a line of code.

Here’s what you can do with it:

• Schedule a vacation period in advance, with automatic start and stop.
• Disable purchases (cart, checkout, add-to-cart) while keeping your shop browsable.
• Show a custom vacation notice, styled to match your brand.
• Keep select products, categories, tags, or shipping classes purchasable even while vacation mode is active.
• Display your notice anywhere on your site. Not just the shop pages.

This doc walks through every setting, plus a few developer hooks if you want to go further.

Setting Up Your Vacation Schedule

You don’t have to scramble on the day you leave. Set your dates in advance and let Store Vacation handle the rest. It turns on and off automatically, right on schedule.

1. Head to the settings. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Store Vacation.
2. Turn on Vacation Mode. Tick “Enable Vacation Mode” to activate everything below.
3. Decide whether to pause purchases. Check “Disable Purchase” if you want to remove the cart, checkout, and add-to-cart buttons while you’re away. Leave it unchecked if you just want to show a notice while staying fully open for business.
4. Set your start date. Vacation mode kicks in automatically from this date (defaults to 00:00:00).
5. Set your end date. Your store reopens on its own once this date hits. No need to remember to flip anything back on.
6. Write your vacation notice. This is the message customers see while you’re away.
7. Save changes. That’s it, you’re on vacation.

Adding Vacation Dates to Your Notice

Nobody likes a vague “we’ll be back soon.” Give customers real dates by dropping smart tags straight into your notice text. They’ll automatically fill in with your actual start and end dates.

Smart Tag	What it does
{{start_date}}	Replaced with your scheduled vacation start date
{{end_date}}	Replaced with your scheduled vacation end date (your “back on” date)

Something like “We’re away until {{end_date}}. thanks for your patience!” reads a lot better than a generic placeholder, and it updates itself every time you reschedule.

Adding a Call-to-Action Button

A vacation notice doesn’t have to be a dead end. Point customers somewhere useful; a contact page, an FAQ, or a way to get in touch with a built-in button.

1. On the General settings page, find the button fields.
2. Add your button text. Keep it short and clear (“Contact Us”, “Learn More”).
3. Add the button URL. Where you want people to land when they click it.
4. Save changes.

Matching Your Notice to Your Brand

A vacation notice that clashes with your storefront looks like an error message, not a planned break. Set your own text and background colors so it feels intentional.

1. Go to the General settings page and find the color pickers.
2. Set your text color. Pick from the swatch or enter a hex code.
3. Set your background color the same way.
4. Save changes.

Keeping Select Products Available

“Disable Purchase” doesn’t have to mean everything shuts down. Maybe you’re happy to keep shipping digital products, or a specific category doesn’t need to pause at all. The Conditions page lets you carve out exceptions, product by product, category by category. However granular you want to get.

Excluding Specific Products

Want a handful of items to stay purchasable no matter what? Go to Conditions, select the products you want to keep open, and save. Everything else follows your vacation rules; those stay live.

Excluding Categories

Same idea, at the category level. Pick the categories you want unaffected by vacation mode, and every product inside them stays purchasable.

Excluding Tags

If you tag products by season, promotion, or collection, you can exclude by tag too. Handy if “available during vacation” cuts across several categories at once.

Excluding Product Types

Selling a mix of physical and digital products? Exclude an entire product type like downloadable items so that type keeps working regardless of your vacation schedule.

Excluding Shipping Classes

You can also exclude by shipping class. Useful if certain fulfilment methods (say, a local courier that’s still running) aren’t affected by your time away.

Across all five, the pattern is the same: pick what should stay purchasable, save, and Store Vacation handles the rest.

Showing Your Notice Beyond the Shop Page

By default, your notice shows up on WooCommerce shop and product pages. But maybe you want it on your homepage, a landing page, or somewhere in a custom layout. You’ve got three ways to do that. Pick whichever fits how you build pages.

Option 1: The Store Vacation Notice Block

1. Open the page you want the notice on.
2. Click the (+) inserter and search for “Store Vacation Notice.”
3. Drop it in, then Update or Publish the page.

The block acts as a live placeholder. It always reflects your current settings, so you never have to edit the page again when your dates or message change.

Option 2: The Elementor Widget

1. Open your page in Elementor.
2. Search the widget panel for “Store Vacation Notice.”
3. Drag it into place, then Update.

Option 3: The Shortcode

Using the Classic Editor or a builder without dedicated support? The shortcode covers you everywhere else.

[woo_store_vacation]

Place it anywhere in your content, update the page, and it renders the same dynamic notice as the block and widget versions.

Troubleshooting

My vacation notice isn’t showing up

• Double-check “Enable Vacation Mode” is actually ticked in General settings.
• Make sure there’s text in the Vacation Notice field. An empty field shows nothing, by design.
• Confirm your start and end dates are set the way you expect.
• Clear any caching plugin or server-side cache. A stale cache is the most common culprit.

Products aren’t behaving the way I expected

• Recheck your Conditions settings. Did you exclude the right products, categories, tags, or shipping classes?
• Confirm your overall vacation settings are configured the way you think.
• Temporarily disable other plugins to rule out a conflict affecting product availability.

The notice won’t show on a custom page

• Confirm you’ve actually added the block, widget, or shortcode to that page.
• Check for page-builder-specific settings or conflicts blocking display.
• Make sure the page is published, not sitting in draft.

Still stuck? Reach out on the community support forum. The team monitors it regularly.

---

Developer Guide

Styling and scripting a closed store

Whenever the store is closed, the plugin adds a woo-store-vacation-shop-closed class to the <body> tag. This is your hook for custom CSS or JS.

• CSS: use .woo-store-vacation-shop-closed as a selector to target and restyle elements while the store’s closed.
• JS: check for the class on document.body before running any closed-store-specific logic.

Action Hooks

woo_store_vacation_disable_purchase

Fires when purchases are disabled due to an active vacation. Hook your own logic in with add_action:

// Define your custom function
function my_custom_disable_purchase_function() {
    // Add your custom logic here
    echo "Purchases are currently disabled.";
}

// Hook it to the disable purchase action
add_action( 'woo_store_vacation_disable_purchase', 'my_custom_disable_purchase_function' );

woo_store_vacation_vacation_mode

Fires whenever vacation mode is active. Use it to trigger your own custom behavior:

// Define your custom function
function my_custom_vacation_mode_function() {
    // Runs while vacation mode is active
    echo "Vacation mode is active!";
}

// Hook it to the vacation mode action
add_action( 'woo_store_vacation_vacation_mode', 'my_custom_vacation_mode_function' );