WooCommerce Product Designer Plugin Settings Guide

Applies to Cmsmart Product Designer (NBDesigner) 2.17.0 · Updated October 2026. Steps, labels and screenshots below are checked against the 2.17.0 release notes and the current Cmsmart admin screens for Settings, Printing Options and the per-product Online Designer panel.

In short

  • Outcome: a product designer that only runs where you want it, with upload, output and pricing rules set once instead of guessed per order.
  • How it works: a handful of settings screens inside WooCommerce control licensing, layout, uploads, output and per-product pricing; one checkbox on each product turns the canvas on or off.
  • What it takes: about half an hour the first time through, an active license, and a short checklist if you ever need to switch the designer off cleanly.

Why does a badly tuned product designer cost you orders?

Cmsmart Product Designer only pays off when its settings match your catalog: the wrong upload limit, a forgotten watermark rule, or a designer left switched on for the wrong product all create real, avoidable cost for a WooCommerce store, not just an inconvenience.

Most of the pain we see in print and personalization shops traces back to settings nobody revisited after the first install:

  • Upload limits set once and forgotten. A customer's large poster file is rejected because Max upload size still reads the default, and the order stalls at checkout.
  • No output rules. PDFs go out without a watermark or a DPI check, so a rough preview becomes a final file by accident and a job has to be reprinted.
  • Designer left on everywhere. A wholesale-only SKU still shows "Start design," confusing B2B buyers who just want to reorder the same artwork.
  • Pricing drift. A Printing Options set is built once, never updated, and quietly disagrees with the catalog price a few months later.
  • Manual deactivation. Without knowing the Plugins screen and the per-product switch, "turning off the designer" turns into a support ticket for a developer.

None of this shows up as one dramatic failure; it shows up as abandoned carts, one-off refunds and support tickets that a short settings review would have prevented. The scale is worth keeping in mind: the shopping-cart plugin these settings sit inside has 7+ million active installations, and WordPress itself now runs roughly 43.5% of all websites (Kinsta, August 2024) - a settings mistake on a plugin this widely used is rarely a one-off problem.

What does a well-run product designer look like?

With Cmsmart Product Designer configured correctly, only the right products show "Start design," uploads arrive in formats your prepress team can actually use, and every PDF leaves the store watermarked or print-ready depending on order status, without anyone checking it by hand.

Example scenario. A print shop sells business cards, posters and a wholesale bundle. Business cards and posters open the designer; the wholesale bundle - reordered by the same buyers every month - doesn't, because Designer Canvas is unchecked on that one product. Uploads on the poster product require a minimum DPI and reject anything under a sensible file size. When an order reaches "Processing," the automatic PDF export queues a print-ready file with the house watermark removed, and if a render fails, the store manager sees an admin notice instead of finding out from an angry customer.

How does Cmsmart structure product designer settings?

Cmsmart Product Designer splits its configuration into plugin-wide settings (layout, upload defaults, output and pricing) and a per-product switch, so a store owner sets the rules once and then turns the canvas on or off for each SKU without touching code.

Inside WooCommerce, the plugin adds its own settings area with tabs including General, Appearance, Design Tool, Colors, Upload design, Output, Libraries and Printing Options, plus a Designers panel and Live chat & Design monitor. Four of these carry most of the weight on a setup project:

Cmsmart Manager Products screen listing WooCommerce products with Designer enabled/disabled and Status columns
The Manager Products screen shows, at a glance, which products have the designer enabled and which templates are attached to each.
  • General - default editor layout (Modern, Visual, or the deprecated Classic), output DPI, units, and whether the designer hides on smartphones.
  • Upload design - the file-type, count, size and DPI defaults every product inherits unless you override them.
  • Output - watermark rules, PDF password protection, and whether a print-ready PDF auto-exports once an order reaches a chosen status.
  • Printing Options - the price-matrix rule sets a store applies to specific products or categories; this is the admin side of Cmsmart's price calculator module, not the designer canvas itself.

Per product, a single Designer Canvas checkbox - "Enable the Online Designer for this product" - turns the editor on or off, with a Sides preset (1-sided/2-sided) next to it. That switch is what the 2.17.0 release notes refer to when they mention the "designer disabled" state a shopper sees on a product with the canvas turned off.

Cmsmart insight: treat the per-product Designer Canvas checkbox as your everyday "deactivate" control, and save the Plugins screen's Deactivate link for a full, site-wide shutdown. Switching off one wholesale SKU should never mean uninstalling the plugin for every other product.

If you'd rather not map all of this yourself, Cmsmart also offers done-for-you installation that configures these screens against your actual catalog.

What's the ROI of getting your WooCommerce product designer plugin settings right?

Correct Cmsmart Product Designer settings turn into fewer rejected uploads, fewer reprints from unwatermarked or low-DPI files, and fewer support tickets from buyers who see a designer on products that shouldn't have one - all trackable with the store's ordinary KPIs.

Setting left on its defaultsConfigured the Cmsmart wayKPI to track
Generic upload cap, no DPI minimumType, size and DPI limits matched to your print products% of orders needing a file follow-up
Watermark rule left on "Always," even on paid ordersWatermark rule matched to order statusReprints per 100 orders
Designer Canvas on for every productCanvas on only where a design step makes senseCart abandonment on designer-enabled products
Printing Options sets left from the initial buildPrice-matrix sets reviewed on the same schedule as your price listPrice-mismatch support tickets
Only one person knows where every setting livesOne settings checklist any team member can followTime to configure a new product

Example worksheet. If reprints currently run R per 100 orders at a cost of C per reprint, and tighter upload and output rules cut that in half, monthly savings are roughly (orders per month ÷ 100) × R × C ÷ 2. Add the manager-hours spent triaging bad files today, at their hourly rate, for the full picture - checkout friction is already expensive everywhere: the average documented shopping-cart abandonment rate is 70.22%, averaged across 50 studies (Baymard Institute, updated 2025), so removing designer-related friction at checkout is worth tracking on its own line.

How to set up and configure the Cmsmart Product Designer plugin

Setting up Cmsmart Product Designer means working through License, General, Upload design, Output and Printing Options once, then checking the Designer Canvas switch on each product - a first pass usually takes under an hour for a catalog of a few dozen SKUs.

Follow these steps in order the first time you configure the plugin, or whenever you're auditing an existing store:

  1. Go to the plugin's settings area in wp-admin and confirm your license is active before changing anything else.
  2. On the License & activation screen, check the plan and expiry date, and use Refresh if a renewal isn't reflecting yet.
  3. On General, pick Modern as the default editor layout (Cmsmart has stopped adding features to the deprecated Classic layout), and set your default output DPI and units.
  4. Decide whether to hide the design editor on smartphones; if your products need a large canvas, hiding it on phones and showing an information panel instead avoids a cramped mobile experience.
  5. Open Upload design and set the defaults every product will inherit: allowed/disallowed file types, min/max file count, min/max upload size and, for JPGs, a minimum DPI.
  6. Open Output and choose your watermark rule (Always, Before complete order, or No), watermark type and text, and leave auto-export on if you want a print-ready PDF that matches the order queued automatically once it reaches your chosen status.
  7. Open Printing Options and review or build the price-matrix sets applied to your products and categories; disable any leftover test sets you don't use.
  8. On each product, open the Online Designer box and tick or clear Designer Canvas > Enable the Online Designer for this product, and set the Sides preset.
  9. Check the Manager Products list to confirm the Designer and Status columns match what you intended across the whole catalog, not just the product you just edited.
  10. Only if you need the editor gone everywhere - not just on one product - go to Plugins and use Deactivate on the Cmsmart row; this stops the canvas on every product at once, so confirm your per-product switches first if that's not what you want.
Cmsmart License & activation screen showing an active Premium plan and expiry date
Start with License & activation: confirm the plan and expiry before touching any other setting.
WooCommerce product designer plugin settings: General screen with editor layout, DPI, units and hide-on-smartphones options
General Settings: layout, output DPI, units and the smartphone visibility switch.
Cmsmart Upload design settings showing allowed file types, file count and upload size limits
Upload design: the defaults every product inherits unless you override them.
Cmsmart Output general settings showing watermark rules and watermark type
Output settings: watermark rules keep a preview from leaving the store as a finished file.
Cmsmart Printing Options list showing price-matrix rule sets applied to products and categories
Printing Options: review which price-matrix sets are still applied to live products.
Online Designer box on a WooCommerce product with the Designer Canvas checkbox and Sides preset
The per-product switch: clear Designer Canvas to turn the editor off for one SKU without touching the plugin.
WordPress Plugins screen showing the Cmsmart row with Settings, Deactivate and Translate links
The site-wide switch: Deactivate on the Plugins screen turns the designer off everywhere, not just on one product.
Video thumbnail: how to enable the design launcher on the Cmsmart WordPress online design plugin
Video: how to enable the design launcher on the Cmsmart WordPress product designer (Cmsmart on YouTube).

What can Cmsmart build on top of the standard settings?

Beyond the settings screens, Cmsmart builds custom development on top of Product Designer: role-based designer visibility, bulk settings audits across large catalogs, and migration of settings and templates from another designer plugin - practical work the standard install doesn't do by itself, delivered by the same team that wrote this guide.

The screens above cover what ships in the plugin today. Stores that outgrow a single global ruleset usually ask for one of these, each delivered as custom development rather than a built-in checkbox:

  • Role- or tier-based designer visibility. The core plugin's switch is per product, not per customer group; showing the designer only to retail buyers and hiding it for a wholesale role on the same SKU is something Cmsmart builds for your store.
  • Bulk settings audits. For a catalog of hundreds of SKUs, checking the Designer and Status columns product by product doesn't scale; Cmsmart can build a one-off or scheduled audit that flags products where settings have drifted from your standard.
  • Migration from another designer plugin. Moving settings, templates and historical orders from a competing tool into Cmsmart's structure (General, Upload design, Output, Printing Options) is project work, not a toggle.
  • Approval workflows tied to settings. Routing a design for manager sign-off before the per-product switch even applies - useful for agencies managing designer access across many client stores.

Cmsmart's delivery approach for this kind of work follows the same path on every engagement: discovery, solution design, build in sprints, QA, launch and ongoing support - the same model behind our published project work.

Get a custom settings & rollout quote

Why work with Cmsmart on your product designer setup?

Cmsmart has built and supported WooCommerce product design tools since 2012 as a Netbase JSC division, with the Product Designer plugin behind thousands of client projects and a published Trustpilot rating - the same team that writes these settings guides also configures them for client stores.

Frequently asked questions

Can I turn off the product designer for just one product?

Yes. Open the product, find the Online Designer box, and clear the Designer Canvas checkbox - "Enable the Online Designer for this product." The product keeps selling normally; it just loses the "Start design" entry point.

What's the difference between deactivating a product's designer and deactivating the plugin?

The per-product checkbox turns the canvas off for one SKU. Deactivate on the WordPress Plugins screen turns Cmsmart Product Designer off everywhere - every product loses its designer, upload rules and output rules at once, so use it only for a full, site-wide pause.

Do I need to set upload and output rules for every product individually?

No. Settings > Upload design and Settings > Output hold the defaults every product inherits; you only need a per-product override for an exception, such as a poster product that needs a higher minimum DPI than the rest of the catalog.

Will changing the default editor layout affect products already live?

The General setting sets the default for new and unconfigured products; you can still specify a layout per product, and Cmsmart has stopped adding features to the Classic layout, so Modern is the recommended choice for anything you configure from here on.

Can Cmsmart set all of this up for us instead?

Yes - Cmsmart offers done-for-you installation that configures licensing, upload, output and pricing against your real catalog, plus custom development for anything the standard settings screens don't cover.

Where can I read more about setting the designer up per product?

See our related tutorials on installing the plugin for the first time and configuring the online designer for each product.