Your first product

This page walks through creating two products end to end: a simple physical product that ships, and a digital product that delivers a file. It covers only the fields you must fill in to publish. Every other field in the editor is documented in Products.

Both walkthroughs start the same way, because the choice between physical and digital is made before the editor opens — and it is not switchable afterwards.

Before you start

You need	Why
Setup finished	The wizard sets your currency; prices are meaningless without it
Store pages published	You need somewhere to see the product
ambikly_manage_store or Administrator	Creating products is a manage-store action
For the digital product: a file	Uploaded to the WordPress media library, or ready to upload

Physical vs digital: pick once

Careful: The physical/digital choice is made in the "Add New Product" dialog and cannot be changed in the editor afterwards. If you pick wrong, delete the draft and start again. Also note the dialog defaults to Digital product — if you are adding a physical item, you must actively select it.

The difference is not cosmetic. It changes which editor you get:

	Physical	Digital
Pricing	One Selling price field, plus an optional sale price	One or more pricing plans, each with its own price
Sub-types	Single product, or Product with variants	None
Shipping	Weight, dimensions, shipping class	Not applicable
Stock	Track stock levels, quantity, backorders	Not applicable
Delivery	You ship it	Files attached to the product and/or per plan
Recurring billing	Not available	Per plan

Create a simple physical product

1. Start the product

1. Go to Ambikly → Products and click Add New Product.
2. A dialog opens titled What are you selling?.
3. Fill in Product name. This is required and there is a 200-character limit. Use the real customer-facing name — "Blue Ceramic Mug", not "mug-v2".
4. Under What kind of product is it?, click the Physical product card. It is described as "Something you ship to customers". Confirm it shows Selected.
5. Click Continue →.

Tip: Continue → saves the product as a draft immediately and then opens the editor. The product row already exists at this point — if you close the tab now, you will find a draft waiting under Ambikly → Products with the status filter set to Draft.

2. Fill in the three required fields

The editor opens with a main column of cards and a right-hand sidebar. Cards that must be completed before publishing carry a Required badge.

1. Product name — already filled from the dialog. The Name field is the only field required for any save, draft included. The Web address (URL slug) below it is generated from the name; leave it alone unless you want a specific URL.
2. Pricing — enter a Selling price. Numbers only, e.g. 29.99. Leave Sale price blank; it is only for showing a strikethrough discount, and it must be lower than the selling price.
3. Description — write the Full description. Anything non-empty passes validation, but this is the text on the product page, so write something real. The Short tagline below it is optional and appears on listing cards.

That is genuinely all three. Photos, inventory, shipping and SEO are all optional to publish.

3. Set the sidebar fields worth setting

None of these block publishing, but two of them change what customers see.

Sidebar field	What to do now
Status	Two radio cards: Live ("Visible to customers") and Draft ("Hidden from customers"). Leave it on Draft until you have previewed it.
Category	Only appears once at least one category exists. Set it if you have one; see Categories, tags & brands.
Product code (SKU)	Leave blank to auto-generate. Fill it if you have a real inventory code — the CSV importer matches on SKU.
Visibility	Leave Where customers can find it on "Everywhere (recommended)". Featured product pins it to featured sections.

4. Add a photo and a weight

Optional, but a store with neither looks unfinished and ships wrong.

1. In the Photos card, click the upload area or the Add action and choose images from the media library. Up to 10; the first one is tagged Main and becomes the listing image.
2. Open the Shipping section and enter a packed weight and Length × Width × Height. These feed weight-based shipping rates.

Careful: The Shipping fields are labeled Weight (lbs) and Dimensions (inches), and those labels are hard-coded. They do not change when your store is set to kg and cm. Enter numbers in the units you chose during setup and ignore the labels — the values are stored as plain numbers and interpreted using your store setting.

5. Track stock, if you want to

Open the Inventory & stock section and tick Track stock levels. Ambikly then counts down as orders arrive and flips the product to out of stock automatically.

Field	What it does
Quantity in stock	Units available right now
Low stock alert	Triggers a low-stock notification below this number
Stock status	In stock / Out of stock / On backorder
When sold out	Block purchase / Allow, warn customer / Allow silently

Tip: The quantity field shows a required asterisk, but publishing is never actually blocked on it. If you tick "Track stock levels" and leave the quantity empty, the product publishes with no stock and is unbuyable. Always enter a number.

Full detail in Inventory & stock.

6. Publish

1. Set Status to Live in the sidebar.
2. Click Publish in the page header, or Publish product in the sticky bar that appears at the bottom whenever there are unsaved changes.
3. If validation fails you get a specific message naming the card — "Set a selling price before publishing — check the Pricing card." Fix it and publish again.

7. Check it on the storefront

Open your Shop page. The product should appear in the listing. Click it and confirm the URL looks like:

https://example.com/shop/?ambikly_product=blue-ceramic-mug

That query-string form is expected — see Store pages.

Careful: The sticky save bar's Discard button asks "Discard all unsaved changes?" and then navigates away from the editor. It does not revert the form in place, so anything unsaved is gone.

Create a digital product

Digital products use a different pricing model. Instead of one price field, a digital product has pricing plans — one or more purchasable options, each with its own price, its own optional recurring billing, and either the product's shared files or its own.

A product that sells one thing at one price simply has one plan. That is normal, not a workaround.

1. Start the product

1. Go to Ambikly → Products and click Add New Product.
2. Enter the Product name.
3. Select the Digital product card — "A file or access key delivered by email". This is the default, but confirm it shows Selected.
4. Click Continue →.

2. Name and describe it

1. Product name — already filled. Required for every save.
2. Description — write the Full description. Required to publish. Say what the customer receives, since there is nothing to hold.

3. Attach the file

The Downloadable files card holds the files every plan shares by default.

1. Click Upload in the card header, or the upload area if the card is empty.
2. The WordPress media library opens. Select one or more files and confirm. Any file type works.
3. Each file gets a version number, prefilled as 1.0.0. Edit it inline in the small v field if you version your releases.

Files come from the media library only — there is no field for pasting a plain URL.

Careful: A digital product with no files publishes without complaint, and customers can buy it. They will simply never receive a download. Ambikly creates a download grant only when the product has files attached, and it fails silently when it does not. Attach the file before you go live.

4. Add at least one pricing plan

This card carries the Required badge. Without a plan priced above 0, the product will not publish.

1. Click Add first plan (or Add plan once you have one). A drawer opens.
2. Plan name — what the customer sees when choosing. For a single-plan product, "Standard" is fine.
3. Regular price — the price. This must be above 0 or publishing is blocked. Leave Sale price blank for now.
4. Leave Recurring billing unchecked. Recurring plans need the Pro subscriptions add-on to actually bill.
5. Under Downloadable files, leave the plan on Use shared files so it inherits the file you attached in step 3. Only click Override for this plan if this plan ships different files.
6. Click Add plan.

The plan now appears in the list showing its name, price, and how many files it uses.

5. Publish

1. Set Status to Live in the sidebar.
2. Click Publish.
3. If it refuses, the message names the problem — "Add at least one pricing plan with a price before publishing — check the Pricing plans card."

What publishing actually requires

The complete validation, for both product types:

Product type	Required to save a draft	Additionally required to publish
Physical, single product	Name	Selling price above 0, Full description
Physical, with variants	Name	At least one option with values, at least one variant, Full description
Digital	Name	At least one pricing plan priced above 0, Full description

Everything else — photos, SKU, category, stock, weight, dimensions, SEO fields, tagline, sale price — is optional in every case.

What you will not find in the editor

Worth knowing now so you do not go hunting:

• No download limit or expiry fields. The product model stores download_limit and download_expiry_days, and the download system enforces both, but no input renders for them. Downloads are unlimited and never expire unless you set those columns another way. See Digital downloads.
• No tags or brand fields. The sidebar has Status, Category, SKU and Visibility only. See Categories, tags & brands.
• No grouped or external product types. The tab components exist in the codebase but nothing renders them. Those types can only be created by CSV import or through the REST API. See Import & export (CSV).
• Meta keywords go nowhere. The SEO section accepts them and stores them, but nothing outputs them on the front end.

Next steps

To do this	Go to
See every field in the editor	Products
Sell the same item in sizes or colors	Variations
Control download limits, expiry and delivery	Digital downloads
Organize the catalog	Categories, tags & brands
Manage stock properly	Inventory & stock
Load a whole catalog at once	Import & export (CSV)

PROMore ways to build a product

Pro adds product bundles, advanced variation controls, product badges, size charts, and AI-written descriptions generated from the product name and attributes.

See pricing →

You have something to sell. Your first order walks through buying it — without any real money changing hands.