In this course, we are using U.S. dollars $ and kilograms kg, as these are widely understood and region-neutral options. However, you’re not restricted to these choices — feel free to select whatever currency and weight unit work best for your store in the WooCommerce settings.
Shipping classes should not be confused with shipping methods or shipping options.
Shipping options are what your customers see at checkout, such as "Overnight: $9.99" or "Economy shipping: $1.50".
Shipping methods are configured
in the dashboard to determine which shipping options appear based on order properties.
Examples include Flat Rate, Local Pickup, or Tree Table Rate Shipping.
Shipping classes are product attributes similar to tags or categories.
Adding a shipping class to products, on its own, does not directly affect shipping options.
However, it's useful for referencing specific products in shipping methods.
In the following video, we are setting up free shipping for products marked with the shipping class Accessories.
The added rule picks up items of the Accessories shipping class before they reach the weight-based rule. Because of this, the weight-based rule never "sees" Accessories, so their weight isn't included in the calculations. As a result, Accessories are shipped for free, while other items are charged based on their total weight.
The option Show [sum] of applicable charges makes this shipping configuration to offer free shipping for orders with only free-shipping items, while charging for non-free-shipping items otherwise. You can switch this to [first] to provide free shipping for all items if the customer purchases at least one free-shipping item.
The default value for the Package option is all items at once which accepts or rejects the entire order as a whole. However, we need the free shipping rule to pick only free-shipping items, leaving the rest to the weight-based rule. So we set Package: by item to check the specified conditions for each cart item individually.
The Capture option is enabled to prevent the matched items from being processed further by the weight-based rule. It takes the items out of the flow, as if they were never part of the order in the first place. The actual contents of the customer's cart remain unaffected.