Everything your customers see and use: the auction page, the shop loop, their account area, and the shortcodes you can place anywhere.
The auction page
An auction’s product page replaces the usual add-to-cart area with:
- Current bid and bid count — or the start price before the first bid.
- Live countdown timer — counts down to the end (or to the start of a scheduled auction).
- Start and end dates, shown in your site’s date format and timezone.
- Reserve notice — "Reserve not met" / "Reserve met", when the auction has a reserve.
- Bid form — with the minimum next bid pre-filled and clearly labelled. Guests are asked to log in.
- Buy It Now button, when available.
- Watchlist button, when the watchlist is enabled.
- Bid history tab — every bid with the highest highlighted, paginated, and optionally with masked bidder names (e.g.
B*******e).
Bidding states
A logged-in bidder always knows where they stand: "You are the highest bidder", "You have been outbid", or "You won this auction" with a pay button. Finished auctions show their outcome to everyone else.
Live bid updates
With Live bid updates on (the default), the current bid, bid count, minimum bid, and remaining time refresh in the background at your chosen Update interval (minimum 5 seconds). Updates pause while the browser tab is in the background, keeping server load down. Busy stores can lengthen the interval or turn updates off under Settings → Display.
The shop and category pages
Auctions appear in your catalog like any product, with an Auction badge and their current bid as the price. Enable Countdown in product lists to show the timer in the loop too. Settings control whether finished and scheduled auctions appear, and whether auctions are kept off the main shop page — see Settings → Catalog.
The watchlist
When enabled, customers can add or remove any auction from their watchlist — from the auction page or straight from the shop loop — without a page reload. They find it again under My Account → Auctions → Watchlist or wherever you place the [bafw_watchlist] shortcode. With Pro, watchers also receive the closing soon email.
My Account → Auctions
The plugin adds an Auctions item to the WooCommerce My Account menu with four views:
| View | Shows |
|---|---|
| My bids | Every auction the customer has bid on. |
| Winning | Running auctions where they are currently the highest bidder. |
| Won | Auctions they have won, with a Pay now button for anything unpaid. |
| Watchlist | Auctions they’re watching (when the watchlist is enabled). |
If the Auctions page in My Account returns a 404 right after activation, visit Settings → Permalinks and click Save Changes to refresh your rewrite rules.
Shortcodes
Drop these into any page, post, or Shortcode block. Every listing shortcode renders a standard WooCommerce product grid, so it matches your theme.
[bafw_auctions] — auction grid
| Attribute | Default | Values |
|---|---|---|
limit | 12 | Number of auctions. |
columns | 4 | Grid columns. |
orderby | date | date, title, price, start_date, end_date, rand |
order | DESC | ASC or DESC |
status | running | running, scheduled, finished, or empty for all |
category | — | Product category slug(s), comma-separated |
[bafw_auctions limit="8" columns="4" orderby="end_date" order="ASC" category="watches"]Ready-made listings
These accept limit (default 4), columns (default 4), and category:
[bafw_ending_soon_auctions]— running auctions closing soonest.[bafw_future_auctions]— scheduled auctions, opening soonest first.[bafw_finished_auctions]— closed auctions, most recent first.
Customer shortcodes
These show content for the logged-in customer and accept limit (default 12) and columns (default 4):
[bafw_my_auctions]— auctions the customer has bid on.[bafw_watchlist]— the customer’s watchlist.
[bafw_recent_bids]
A table of the most recent bids across the store — great social proof on a homepage. Accepts limit (default 10). Bidder names respect the masking setting.
Customising the look
Every piece of auction markup is a template you can override from your theme — see Developer Reference → Templates. The plugin ships a full RTL stylesheet for right-to-left languages.