WooCommerce Product Designer Settings: Setup Guide

Applies to Cmsmart Product Designer (NBDesigner) 2.18.0 · Updated October 2026. Screens below are from the live Cmsmart admin and the WooCommerce product designer front end, captured on this version; the settings, print-ready PDF and artwork-lock behavior described here shipped in 2.17.0 and are unchanged in 2.18.0.

In short

  • The outcome: WooCommerce product designer settings tuned to your business, so buyers only see the tools, colors and uploads you can actually produce, and every order lands with a usable file.
  • How it works: the Cmsmart › Settings tabs (General, Appearance, Design Tool, Colors, Upload design, Output, Printing Options), the per-product configuration screen, and the order screens your team opens to approve artwork.
  • What it takes: about an hour to work through the tabs once, a few minutes per new product after that — or hand the setup to Cmsmart.

What does an out-of-the-box WooCommerce product designer cost your print shop?

Cmsmart Product Designer ships with sensible defaults, but defaults are generic. Left on its defaults, a WooCommerce product designer accepts uploads your press struggles to run, colors outside your palette, and orders without a usable print file — a cost your staff absorb as rework, not your customers.

  • Unusable uploads. With no file-type or resolution rule, low-resolution JPGs and the wrong formats land in orders your production line can't use.
  • Off-palette colors. A fully open color picker lets buyers choose shades your printer or supplier can't reproduce.
  • Manual exports. Without automatic print PDF export, someone opens every order and builds the print file by hand before it can go to production.
  • Disputed orders. If the cart, checkout and order screen don't carry the customer's actual design through, "that's not what I ordered" becomes a support ticket.
  • One-size-fits-all products. The same tools and output resolution apply to a business card and a banner unless you set per-product options.

What does it look like when your WooCommerce product designer settings are dialed in?

Set up well, the Cmsmart WooCommerce product designer feels invisible to buyers: they pick a template or upload their own file, work inside the tools and colors you allow, and the design follows them into the cart, checkout and order. Your team opens a print-ready file, not a cleanup job.

Example scenario. A buyer opens an invitation product and picks "Design here online" instead of uploading a file. They customize a template, add it to the cart, and check out — the cart and checkout both show their actual design, not a placeholder. Because Auto export design to PDF is switched on, a print-ready file is already queued by the time your team opens the order.

WooCommerce product designer chooser on an Invitation product page: upload a full design or design here online
What a buyer sees first: a clear choice between uploading a file and designing online, captured on nbdesigner.cmsmart.net.

How does Cmsmart's WooCommerce product designer configuration work?

Cmsmart configures the WooCommerce product designer in three layers: store-wide settings in Cmsmart › Settings, per-product options on each product's edit screen, and the order and approval screens your team uses in production. The plugin covers all three today; Cmsmart also builds custom tools, pricing and integrations on top where the settings run out.

Diagram: customer design, server-side render, color conversion, preflight checks, print-ready PDF, printer
What the Output tab's settings produce: a customer design turned into a print-ready PDF that matches the order.
  • Store-wide settings (in the plugin). General, Appearance, Design Tool, Colors, Upload design, Output and Printing Options — the defaults every designer-enabled product inherits.
  • Per-product configuration (in the plugin). Production specs on each product: material, bleed area, print resolution, color profile and the design canvas itself.
  • Order and approval screens (in the plugin). Cmsmart › Orders, the order detail timeline, and the Customer Design box for approving or declining artwork.
  • Print-ready output (in the plugin). Cmsmart Cloud rendering turns the design into a print-ready PDF that matches the order — the automatic render and Create PDF now read the same page geometry, including custom sizes, since 2.17.0.
  • Rules the settings can't express (custom development). Printer-specific preflight thresholds, custom pricing logic, product-specific editor tools and ERP/MIS integration — built by Cmsmart on top of the plugin.

What's the business value of getting WooCommerce product designer settings right?

Every settings tab maps to a business outcome: fewer unusable files, colors you can actually print, a faster handoff to production and fewer disputed orders. Cmsmart's WooCommerce product designer turns those outcomes into specific toggles instead of leaving them to chance.

BenefitWhere it's setKPI to track
Print-quality filesGeneral › Default output resolution - DPIOrders returned for low-resolution artwork
Files ready without manual exportOutput › Auto export design to PDFStaff minutes per order on file preparation
Fewer unusable uploadsUpload design › Allowed / Disallowed file types, Min. resolution DPIUploads that need re-supply
Predictable per-option pricingPrinting Options › quantity breaks and option fieldsManual quotes per week
Fewer "not what I ordered" disputesThe cart and checkout, which carry the customer's actual designDisputes and refund requests
WooCommerce cart line item showing the customer's actual design next to Edit design and Upload design
The design the buyer made follows the order into the cart — what the "fewer disputes" row above looks like in practice.

Rough out the time saved. (orders per month) × (minutes your team now spends manually exporting and checking each design) × (your loaded hourly rate) = the monthly staff time that Auto export design to PDF and the file-type/DPI rules give back. Add (reprints avoided per month) × (cost per reprint) for what the resolution and color settings are worth.

How do you configure the WooCommerce product designer settings tabs?

You configure the Cmsmart WooCommerce product designer in two admin screens: the Cmsmart › Settings tabs below, and the production specs on each product's edit screen. Work through the tabs once, then check them against every new product before you launch it.

  1. Set your output DPI and layout. In Cmsmart › Settings → General, choose the Modern design editor layout (Classic is deprecated and gets no new features) and set Default output resolution - DPI to 300, the figure most printers ask for — 150 ships as the plugin default. These apply to every designer-enabled product unless you override them per product.
  2. Decide what buyers can download and keep. Still in General, Design file type download controls which formats (PNG, SVG, PDF, JPG) a customer can pull from their own account, separately from what they can grab from inside the editor — useful if you sell templates as well as printed goods.
  3. Shape the storefront and the toolset. Appearance controls what buyers see around the editor itself, Design Tool switches individual tools — text, clipart and elements, image upload, free draw, QR codes — on or off per your catalogue, and Colors controls the palette buyers can choose from. Fewer tools and a tighter palette keep designs inside what you can actually produce.
  4. Control what customers upload. In Upload design, set Allowed file types (and Disallowed file types), Max/Min upload size and Min. resolution DPI for JPG/JPEG images, so only files your production can use get through. Background on resolution rules is in the DPI and print quality guide.
  5. Set your bleed line and turn on automatic PDFs. In Output, set Show bleed (above or below the content design) if your printer needs trim marks, and switch on Auto export design to PDF under Synchronize so Cmsmart renders a print-ready PDF when the buyer clicks Process — the Order status for auto export design field re-checks it as a fallback. AI preflight itself is enabled and tuned separately, in Cmsmart Cloud › AI Tools.
  6. Build your per-option pricing. In Printing Options, add the fields a product needs — size, color/material, custom dimensions, number of pages — and set quantity-break discounts where you offer bulk pricing. See the price matrix tutorial for a full walkthrough.
  7. Set the per-product production specs. On each product's edit screen, set the material, bleed area, print resolution and color profile, and turn the Online Designer canvas on for that product. This is where a business card and a banner stop sharing the same rules — see the installation guide for setting up your first product.
  8. Review and approve orders as they arrive. Cmsmart › Orders lists every order with its production status; opening one shows the line item's design file, a production timeline and quick actions including Download print PDF. On the WooCommerce order screen, the Customer Design box lets you accept or decline the artwork and send the customer a notification from the same place.
Cmsmart WooCommerce product designer settings: General tab with design editor layout, default output resolution DPI, dimensions unit and file type download
General: the layout, output DPI and download-format defaults every product inherits.
Cmsmart Settings Upload design tab: allowed and disallowed file types, upload size limits and minimum resolution DPI
Upload design: the file-type, size and DPI rules that decide what a customer can hand you.
Cmsmart Settings Output tab: watermark, show bleed, and the Synchronize section with Auto export design to PDF
Output: show bleed and the Auto export design to PDF toggle that turns an order into a print-ready file automatically.
Cmsmart Printing option editor: printing fields, quantity-break discount table and product assignment
Printing Options: the field builder and quantity-break discount table behind your price matrix.
Cmsmart Orders screen listing WooCommerce product designer orders with their production status
Cmsmart › Orders: every order with its production status, filterable and searchable.
Customer Design box on the WooCommerce order screen with accept, decline and notify-customer controls
The Customer Design box on the order screen: accept or decline the artwork and notify the customer.
Video walkthrough of configuring a product for online design in the Cmsmart WordPress back end
Video: configuring a product for online design in the Cmsmart back end (Cmsmart on YouTube).

Cmsmart insight: turn on Auto export design to PDF and set Show bleed together, with the output DPI your printer asks for, before you take real orders. Turning them on later means your first batch of orders still needs manual exports. If you also sync output files to a print server, run one test order end to end first so folder names and permissions are right.

What can Cmsmart build beyond the settings screens?

When a business rule doesn't fit a toggle, Cmsmart builds it as custom development on top of the WooCommerce product designer: product-specific tools, pricing engines, printer-tuned preflight and integrations that send orders and files to your MIS or ERP. Delivery runs discovery, design, sprints, QA, launch and support.

  • Custom editor tools and templates. Complex products need guided design — we build tools, layouts and templates for your catalogue as custom development.
  • Pricing engine. Price by size, material and quantity without manual quotes — we build your formulas and B2B price lists on top of Printing Options.
  • Preflight tuned to your printer. AI preflight already checks resolution, color mode, bleed, fonts and transparency on saved designs from Cmsmart Cloud › AI Tools; Cmsmart builds the extra thresholds and auto-fixes a specific press needs as custom development.
  • Production integration. No re-keying between store and print floor — we connect orders and files to your MIS or ERP.
Cmsmart Cloud AI Tools tab: AI preflight quality checker with required DPI, plus AI background remover and image upscale
Cmsmart Cloud › AI Tools: the preflight checker, background remover and upscaler that AI preflight and custom development build on.

See the project delivery model and the product designer customization service.

Get a product designer customization quote

Why work with Cmsmart on your product designer setup?

Cmsmart has configured and built on the WooCommerce product designer for stores since 2012, as part of Netbase JSC. The same team that sets up these settings tabs also builds the custom development most stores eventually need — pricing engines, preflight and production integrations.

Cmsmart has built ecommerce and web-to-print stores since 2012 as a division of Netbase JSC: 6,300+ client projects and 500+ custom development projects (WorkSuite project records, Sep 2026), rated 4.2 on Trustpilot (404 reviews). WooCommerce itself now powers 4M+ online stores, including 31% of the top 1 million ecommerce sites (WooCommerce, 2026) — getting your product designer configured well is what lets your store compete inside that crowd. See our related projects, part of a wider web-to-print practice.

Frequently asked questions

Where are the NBDesigner settings?

In WordPress admin under Cmsmart › Settings, across the General, Appearance, Design Tool, Colors, Upload design, Output and Printing Options tabs. Per-product production specs are on the product's own edit screen.

Which editor layout should I use?

Modern. Classic is deprecated and gets no new features, per the General tab's own note.

How do I get print-ready PDFs automatically?

Switch on Auto export design to PDF in Output, under Synchronize. It's queued when the buyer clicks Process, and the order artwork screen shows its status — Ready, Rendering, Failed or Not rendered — with a Regenerate option.

How do I limit which file types customers upload?

Fill in Allowed file types (and/or Disallowed file types) and Min. resolution DPI in the Upload design tab.

Can Cmsmart configure the settings for my products?

Yes. Setup and product designer customization are Cmsmart services; request a quote with your products and printer specs.

Can Cmsmart connect the designer to my MIS or ERP?

Yes, as custom development — we build the integration that sends orders and print files to your production system.