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Cmsmart Ecommerce provides custom ecommerce and WooCommerce development services for web-to-print, product personalization, plugin support and API integration.
Cmsmart Product Designer Plugin Engineer
Builds and supports the Cmsmart Product Designer (NBDesigner) for WooCommerce.
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In short
The Manage Products screen is where you manage design products WooCommerce shoppers can personalize, review the price matrix tied to each one, and decide which print specs reach the production floor — without opening three different admin screens to do it.
Add ten new SKUs in a season and the gaps show fast: one product has the wrong bleed, another has no price matrix attached, a third still points at a template nobody uses any more — none of it visible from the plain WooCommerce product list.
WooCommerce now powers 7+ million active stores (WordPress.org, 2026), and a growing share sell something a buyer customizes before paying. Cmsmart Product Designer (formerly NBDesigner) turns a plain WooCommerce product into a design-enabled one, and Manage Products is its control room.
What does manual product configuration cost a growing print shop?
Cmsmart Product Designer keeps every design-enabled product's price, print specs and template in one Manage Products screen, so a growing print shop or POD brand stops tracking that information in spreadsheets or memory — and stops shipping jobs built on the wrong bleed, resolution or price matrix.
Count the minutes spent re-answering these per product, multiply by products configured monthly, then by what an hour costs. That is the real cost of skipping one screen for design-enabled products.
What would a well-organized design catalog look like?
In Cmsmart Product Designer, a well-organized catalog means every design-enabled product shows its price, templates, order history and print settings in the same four tabs, so a manager reviews or copies a product's setup in minutes instead of rediscovering it from scratch.
Example scenario: A print shop's production lead opens Manage Products on a Monday, filters to enabled products, and sees which items have no template yet. She opens one, confirms Production specs reads 300 DPI with a 3 mm bleed, flips to Designer config to add a size to the price matrix, and moves on — no spreadsheet, no message to a developer.
Getting there is less about new features than about where today's settings live. If your team needs help mapping that onto your own catalog, talk to an ecommerce expert first.
How does Cmsmart organize every design-enabled product?
Cmsmart Product Designer adds a dedicated Manage Products screen and an Edit product view with four tabs — General, Templates, Order history and Designer config — so a WooCommerce store keeps design settings next to the product instead of scattered across plugin menus.
Part of Cmsmart's wider web-to-print platform, Manage Products is the first screen a store manager sees after installing the designer:
On the capture above, 34 products have the designer enabled, 29 carry at least one template, and the list shows 20 per page with category, status and search filters. Clicking the pencil icon on any row opens that product's Edit product screen:
The tabs split cleanly: General holds the name, SKU, base price, category, descriptions, a Production specs panel (Material, Bleed, Print resolution, Color profile, Production time) and an Online Designer panel (Designer Canvas, Sides preset). Templates shows a count badge and attached designs. Order history pulls the product's own orders into this screen instead of cross-referencing WooCommerce orders by hand. Designer config opens separately (external-link mark), where side, pricing and print-option detail actually gets configured.
Cmsmart insight: Don't assume one DPI number is the whole story. On this demo product, the classic metabox's DPI field reads 150 while the newer Production specs Print resolution field reads 72 DPI (web) — two admin paths, two numbers, for the same SKU. Check both before telling a press which resolution a file actually rendered at.
That classic path still exists. The same Sticker product's standard WooCommerce post editor carries the plugin's original metaboxes:
The NBD options box sidebars to Design Editor Setting, Printing Option, Product Builder, Request Quote, Design Guideline, Printing FAQ and Printing Info Tab. The Setting Cmsmart box below has Enable Design/Upload checkboxes, a Design editor layout choice, and template controls — Use templates, Create/Manage Templates, Template type, plus its own DPI and Dimensions unit fields. Two admin doors, one product.
Two blocks sit beside Manage Products, not inside it: AI preflight (Cmsmart Cloud > AI Tools) checks a design before printing, and the render pipeline behind each print-ready PDF that matches the order — a 2.17.0 fix for custom-size products — runs from the order screen.
What each field actually controls
Every label below is one we captured on this plugin version, not a guess — see WooCommerce's product-management documentation for the fields this screen shares with any WooCommerce product.
What's the ROI of organizing Manage Products well?
A clean Manage Products setup turns Cmsmart Product Designer into a faster, safer way to launch customizable SKUs: less staff time per product, fewer reprints from wrong bleed or resolution, and a price matrix a manager can audit in one screen instead of guessing at checkout.
Rough-cut worksheet: (minutes spent per product checking price, bleed, resolution and template by hand) × (design products added or edited monthly) × (your fully loaded hourly rate) = what Manage Products saves in admin time alone, before counting avoided reprints.
How to manage design products WooCommerce: configure a product step by step
To manage design products WooCommerce teams keep organized, open Cmsmart > Manage Products, edit one item's General, Production specs and Online Designer fields, attach its template and price matrix in Designer config, then confirm it in Order history once the first order lands.
Steps 4 and 6 lean on store-wide defaults set once, on Settings > General:
Default design editor layout (Modern, recommended), Default output resolution DPI (150 here) and Dimensions Unit (in) apply to any product that doesn't set its own values. Step 8's price matrix lives on its own screen:
Each row carries a Title, Status, Priority, Applied for scope, target Products/Categories and a date. Priority breaks ties when two sets could apply to one product. Opening or adding one drops into the field catalog and price logic:
Below it, a Quantity section adds Break / Discount / Default rows so unit price drops at chosen quantities, and Appearance sets the Display type. Import/Export buttons move a whole option set between stores.
Cmsmart insight: Build the price matrix on Printing Options before opening Designer config on the product. Attaching a product to an option set that doesn't exist yet is the most common reason a "configured" product still shows the wrong price at checkout.
Common mistakes and troubleshooting
What can Cmsmart build on top of Manage Products?
Beyond the fields in this screen, Cmsmart builds custom development for stores that need more: catalog sync with an ERP or MIS, bulk price-matrix tooling across hundreds of SKUs, approval rules tied to a B2B account, or a Manage Products view scoped to specific staff roles.
Each follows the same path: discovery, solution design, build sprints, QA, launch and support — the approach behind our ecommerce projects and our product designer customization service.
Get a custom Manage Products build
Why work with Cmsmart on your product catalog?
Cmsmart has built and supported Cmsmart Product Designer since 2012 as a Netbase JSC division, with 6,300+ client projects and 1,800+ live stores running today, including the Manage Products workflow this chapter walks through.
"We have had the NB Designer plugin installed for three years and have experienced absolutely no problems during that time. It is wonderful to see their commitment to continuous development, with new features being added frequently." — Web Developer, Trustpilot review, 2026
See real builds on our project case studies, or check review scores on our platform page.
Related chapters
Frequently asked questions about managing design products
How long does it take to configure one product in Manage Products?
About 10-15 minutes: General, Production specs and Online Designer sit on one tab, and Designer config or Printing Options usually reuse an existing price matrix.
Do we need the Online Designer enabled on every product?
No — enable Designer Canvas only for SKUs a shopper should personalize. The 2.10.0 release added an Overview alert for published products where it's off, with a bulk Enable shortcut.
Can Cmsmart sync Manage Products with our ERP or MIS?
Not out of the box. Cmsmart builds that sync as custom development, matched to the system you already run.
What happens to an order if we change a product's print settings afterward?
The order keeps the file and settings it was placed with. The 2.17.0 release fixed reordering so a reorder starts a fresh print file; an updated spec applies on the next order, not retroactively.
Can we restrict pricing or options by customer account for B2B?
Not in the core price matrix, which applies by product or category rather than by account. Cmsmart builds account-specific pricing or an approval step as custom development.
What if a product needs something completely outside these tabs?
That's what custom development is for — bespoke configuration screens, extra fields and workflow rules on top of Manage Products.