FAQ

Does Ticker require WooCommerce?

Yes. Ticker hooks into WooCommerce product pages and sale dates and needs WooCommerce 8.0 or later. If WooCommerce is not active, Ticker does not boot and shows an admin notice instead.

Where does the countdown end time come from?

From one of two sources, set under WooCommerce → Ticker → Countdown source:

• WooCommerce sale end date (default), each product’s Sale price dates → To value. The product must be on sale and have a To date.
• Fixed campaign end date, one store-wide date that applies to every product.

With the source left on the sale date, the campaign date you enter also acts as a fallback: products with their own sale end use that; products without one fall back to the campaign date.

Is there a low-stock or “Only N left” message?

No. Ticker is a countdown timer only, it has no stock-scarcity feature, threshold setting or “Only N left in stock” message. It renders nothing but the sale clock.

Does the timer cause layout shift?

No. The markup is rendered on the server with the digit boxes already sized, so the browser drops the numbers into reserved space instead of reflowing the page. The only script loads defer in the footer.

Is the timer accurate if the visitor’s clock is wrong?

Yes. The end moment is sent from the server as a fixed UTC timestamp. The browser only counts down to it, so a visitor’s misconfigured device clock changes nothing about when the sale ends.

What time format options are there?

Three, set per store: Days : Hours : Minutes : Seconds, Hours : Minutes : Seconds, and a compact Hours : Minutes that drops the ticking seconds on longer campaigns. The settings screen previews the chosen format.

Where can I place the timer?

On the single product page: the product summary (below the price, the default), before the add-to-cart form, after it, or in the product meta area.

Is there a shortcode?

No. Ticker has no shortcode. The timer is inserted automatically at your chosen placement hook on the single product page.

What happens when the sale ends?

The clock is hidden and replaced by a short expired line, This sale has ended. by default, or your own wording. If the end time is already past on page load the server renders that message directly; if the page is open when the clock hits zero, the script swaps it in without a reload. It never freezes at 00:00:00.

Is the countdown accessible?

The timer sits in a role="group" labelled Sale countdown. The visible ticking digits are hidden from screen readers (announcing every second would be noise); a separate polite live region announces only on minute boundaries and at expiry, for example Sale ends in 2 hrs 5 min. The seconds-dial animation respects prefers-reduced-motion, and dark-mode colours apply under prefers-color-scheme: dark.

Can I change the timer’s appearance?

Yes, with CSS. The timer is themed through --ticker-* custom properties on the .ticker element (ember accent, colours, radius, gap). Override them in your theme stylesheet. To change the markup itself, copy the template to yourtheme/ticker/single-product/countdown.php.

Is there a developer hook for custom campaign windows?

Yes. The ticker/end_timestamp filter overrides the resolved end time, return a Unix UTC timestamp to set an end moment or null to suppress the countdown. Two further filters, ticker/template/args and ticker/template/path, adjust the template’s variables and resolved path.

What happens when I delete the plugin?

The uninstall routine removes Ticker’s two options, ticker_settings and ticker_db_version. Ticker never creates custom tables or per-product meta, so the database is left clean.