Frequently Asked Questions
Finding your way around the admin
Section titled “Finding your way around the admin”Where do I find Dino Discounts in WordPress?
Section titled “Where do I find Dino Discounts in WordPress?”Once the plugin is active, go to WooCommerce → Dino Discounts in the WordPress sidebar. That opens the plugin’s own admin, which has its own top-bar tab strip with Discounts, Coupons, Settings, Countries & Zones, Analytics, History, and Dev Tools.
What do the controls in the admin header do?
Section titled “What do the controls in the admin header do?”The top of every Dino Discounts screen is a banner with the friendly stegosaur, the Dino Discounts title, and a small version pill (e.g. v4.52.2) next to the title. Quote that version number if you ever need to file a bug — it tells the team exactly which build you’re running.
To the right of the tab strip, two helper controls sit on the chrome:
- A Help link (a circled question-mark icon labelled “Help”) that opens the documentation site in a new tab — handy for pulling up any page in the docs without leaving the admin.
- A 🐛 Report a bug button — appears when your install has the bug-reporter configured. It pre-fills a bug-report form with your environment details so the team can triage quickly.
Where do I see a discount before I publish?
Section titled “Where do I see a discount before I publish?”The Cart Preview right rail sits next to the wizard and simulates a customer cart against the real discount engine. Add items, tweak quantities, set roles — Cart Preview re-evaluates against your draft on every change, so you can verify a rule fires before it ships. See Testing with Cart Preview for the full walk-through.
Why do I sometimes see a green “Plain English” box at the top of the wizard?
Section titled “Why do I sometimes see a green “Plain English” box at the top of the wizard?”That’s the Plain English summary — it re-reads your draft as a single sentence (“When the cart subtotal reaches £50, apply 10% off the cart.”) and updates live as you edit. It’s a sanity check that you don’t need to scroll to see.
Compatibility
Section titled “Compatibility”Does Dino Discounts work with HPOS?
Section titled “Does Dino Discounts work with HPOS?”Yes. The plugin declares full compatibility with WooCommerce High-Performance Order Storage (custom order tables). No configuration needed.
What WordPress and WooCommerce versions are supported?
Section titled “What WordPress and WooCommerce versions are supported?”- WordPress: 6.2 or higher
- WooCommerce: 7.0 or higher
- PHP: 7.4 or higher
Does it work with our theme?
Section titled “Does it work with our theme?”Dino Discounts hooks into WooCommerce’s standard display hooks, so it works with any WooCommerce-compatible theme. Storefront display (product page pricing, cart labels) respects your theme’s price formatting.
Can we use it alongside other discount plugins?
Section titled “Can we use it alongside other discount plugins?”We recommend using Dino Discounts as your sole discount engine to avoid conflicts. Running two discount plugins simultaneously can cause unexpected interactions — both may try to modify the same cart totals. For native WooCommerce coupons specifically, the Settings tab exposes a WooCommerce coupon interaction control (wc_coupon_kill_switch) that decides whether Dino discounts stack with or yield to WC coupons.
Performance
Section titled “Performance”Will this slow down our store?
Section titled “Will this slow down our store?”No. The plugin uses fingerprint-based memoization, transient caching, and lazy evaluation. On a typical store (~25 active discount rules on a 10-item cart) we measured about 2ms added to cart evaluation, staying in the low double-digit milliseconds (around 12ms) even on a large 50-item cart. Engine cost grows with cart size and how many rules you run rather than staying flat, so very large rule-sets cost more. See Performance Monitoring for details.
Do we need to configure our caching plugin?
Section titled “Do we need to configure our caching plugin?”Yes — you must exclude /cart/ and /checkout/ from full-page caching. See Caching & Performance for instructions for specific caching plugins.
Discounts
Section titled “Discounts”Can we stack multiple discounts?
Section titled “Can we stack multiple discounts?”Yes. The stacking mode (on the Settings tab) controls how multiple matching discounts combine. See Discount Priority & Stacking.
What’s the difference between automatic discounts and coupon codes?
Section titled “What’s the difference between automatic discounts and coupon codes?”Automatic discounts apply without customer action — the engine evaluates the cart and applies matching discounts. Coupon codes require the customer to enter (or click) a code. You can run both simultaneously. See Coupons.
Can we schedule discounts to start and end automatically?
Section titled “Can we schedule discounts to start and end automatically?”Yes. Each discount can have a start date, end date, or both, configured in the wizard’s When does it apply? section. See Scheduling.
Can we target discounts to specific products, categories, or customers?
Section titled “Can we target discounts to specific products, categories, or customers?”Yes. The wizard exposes targeting through four sections — Who is this for? (customer attributes), Where does it apply? (zones / currency), When does it apply? (date / weekday / time), and What triggers it? (auto vs coupon vs spend threshold, plus an Eligible Items sub-block for products / categories / tags / SKUs / attributes). See Targeting.
How do I target first-time customers?
Section titled “How do I target first-time customers?”Pick any starting recipe and, in the wizard’s Who is this for? section, enable the First-time customers condition row. Behind the scenes that writes a past_order_count == 0 targeting leaf. (The standalone “First Order” recipe template was retired in favour of this more flexible path.)
What happens if we make a mistake?
Section titled “What happens if we make a mistake?”The draft/publish workflow means your changes don’t affect customers until you explicitly publish. If you publish something wrong, every publish creates an automatic snapshot — restore the previous state from the History tab.
Troubleshooting
Section titled “Troubleshooting”Discounts aren’t showing in the cart
Section titled “Discounts aren’t showing in the cart”Check these in order:
- Is the discount published? Draft discounts don’t apply. Look for the “Draft” chip in the Discounts tab.
- Is the discount active? The toggle next to the discount in the list must be on.
- Does the cart qualify? Check the targeting and minimum thresholds.
- Is caching configured? Exclude cart/checkout from full-page caching.
- Is the stacking mode blocking it? Open the Settings tab and check When discounts overlap — if it’s set to “Best Discount Only,” other rules may be winning.
A discount is applying when it shouldn’t
Section titled “A discount is applying when it shouldn’t”- Check the discount’s targeting — it may be broader than intended.
- Check the schedule — the discount may have no end date.
- Check stacking mode on the Settings tab — other discounts may be combining unexpectedly.
- Open the rule in the wizard and use the Cart Preview right rail to test with specific cart contents.
We can’t see the Analytics tab
Section titled “We can’t see the Analytics tab”The Analytics tab may require the Pro version. Check which features are available in your current plan.
Where can I report a bug?
Section titled “Where can I report a bug?”Visit Report a bug on this site, or — if your install has the bug-reporter configured — use the 🐛 Report a bug button in the admin top bar for a shortcut that pre-fills your environment details. Either way, include your plugin version (visible as the version pill in the admin header) and a description of what you expected versus what happened.