Side Cart Lite for WooCommerce

A lightweight AJAX cart drawer for WooCommerce stores that want fewer cart page interruptions.

Side Cart Lite for WooCommerce adds a clean slide-out cart drawer to your WooCommerce store. Customers can review cart items, update quantities, remove products, apply coupons, view totals, and continue to checkout without being forced to visit the cart page after every action.

It is built for stores that want a simple, stable, and lightweight cart drawer instead of a heavy upsell or checkout replacement plugin.

Why this plugin

Many cart drawer plugins try to include too many features, which can increase the risk of theme conflicts, cache issues, and broken cart behavior. Side Cart Lite focuses on the core cart experience only:

- A fast cart drawer
- AJAX quantity updates
- Coupon support
- Cart totals
- Checkout and cart page links
- Mobile-friendly layout
- Manual free shipping progress
- A compatibility-first approach

Core features

- Slide cart drawer on desktop
- Bottom drawer layout on mobile
- Floating cart button with item count badge
- Opens after standard WooCommerce AJAX add-to-cart events
- Refreshes cart contents through AJAX
- Quantity increase, decrease, and direct input updates
- Remove cart items without page reload
- Subtotal and total display using WooCommerce formatting
- Apply and remove coupons inside the drawer
- Checkout, View Cart, and Continue Shopping actions
- Optional free shipping progress bar with a manual target amount
- Accessibility support including dialog roles, keyboard operation, ESC close, overlay close, and focus handling
- Lightweight frontend assets
- No external tracking or telemetry
- No external CDN dependencies
- No WooCommerce template overrides
- No cart fragments dependency

Built for stability

Side Cart Lite is intentionally focused. It does not replace your WooCommerce cart or checkout pages. It does not add upsells, cross-sells, product recommendations, one-page checkout, payment buttons, analytics, countdown timers, or heavy design builders.

The plugin uses a cache-friendly approach by loading cart contents through AJAX instead of embedding cart line items into the initial page HTML. This helps reduce stale cart display issues on cached storefront pages.

Compatibility notes

Side Cart Lite is designed to work with standard WooCommerce add-to-cart flows. Some custom themes, custom product forms, or block-based add-to-cart implementations may not trigger the automatic drawer opening event. In those cases, the floating cart button still allows customers to open the drawer manually.

The free shipping progress bar uses a manual target amount in version 1. It does not attempt to automatically read complex shipping zone rules, because that can be unreliable across stores.

Requirements

- WordPress 7.0
- WooCommerce 10.0 or higher
- PHP 7.4 or higher
- JavaScript enabled in the browser
- WooCommerce cart and checkout pages configured

Tested with

- WordPress 7.0
- WooCommerce 10.0.4 and 10.8.1
- PHP 7.4 and 8.3
- Classic theme: Storefront
- Block theme: Twenty Twenty-Five
- Chromium-based browser testing

Static analysis

Static analysis checked with PHPCS and PHPStan.
PHPCS and PHPStan passed on the configured project rules.
PHPStan level 6.

What is included

- Installable WordPress plugin ZIP
- HTML documentation
- README-FIRST.txt
- CHANGELOG.md
- GPL license information
- Translation template file
- Frontend CSS and JavaScript assets
- Admin settings page

Installation

1. Download the package from Codester.
2. Unzip the main package on your computer.
3. In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin.
4. Upload side-cart-lite-for-woocommerce.zip.
5. Activate the plugin.
6. Make sure WooCommerce is active.
7. Go to WooCommerce > Side Cart Lite to configure the plugin.

Configuration

The plugin includes a minimal settings page under WooCommerce > Side Cart Lite.

Available settings:

- Enable side cart
- Open drawer after AJAX add to cart
- Show floating cart button
- Mobile bottom drawer
- Free shipping progress target amount
- Accent color

Support

Created by SG Group.

Support:
https://sggroup.jp/contact/

Codester profile:
https://www.codester.com/SGGro...

Changelog

Version 1.0.0
- Initial release
- AJAX side cart drawer
- AJAX quantity update
- Remove item support
- Coupon apply/remove support
- WooCommerce totals display
- Checkout and view cart buttons
- Optional manual free shipping progress
- Mobile bottom drawer
- Accessibility and keyboard support

Features

- Lightweight AJAX side cart drawer for WooCommerce
- Desktop slide-out cart drawer
- Mobile bottom drawer layout
- Floating cart button with item count badge
- Auto-open after standard WooCommerce AJAX add-to-cart events
- AJAX cart refresh
- AJAX quantity increase and decrease
- Direct quantity input update
- Remove items from the cart drawer
- WooCommerce subtotal and total display
- Apply coupons inside the drawer
- Remove applied coupons
- Checkout button
- View Cart button
- Continue Shopping button
- Optional manual free shipping progress bar
- Minimal settings page
- Accessibility-friendly dialog behavior
- ESC key close
- Overlay click close
- Keyboard-friendly interaction
- Reduced motion support
- No WooCommerce template overrides
- No mini-cart fragments dependency
- No external services
- No telemetry
- No frontend credit link

Requirements

- WordPress 7.0
- WooCommerce 10.0 or higher
- PHP 7.4 or higher
- JavaScript enabled in the browser
- WooCommerce cart and checkout pages configured
- A WooCommerce-compatible WordPress theme

Tested Environment

- WordPress 7.0
- WooCommerce 10.0.4
- WooCommerce 10.8.1
- PHP 7.4
- PHP 8.3
- Storefront classic theme
- Twenty Twenty-Five block theme
- Chromium-based browser testing

Notes

Side Cart Lite is not a replacement for the WooCommerce cart or checkout pages. It provides a lightweight side cart drawer and links customers to the native WooCommerce cart and checkout pages.

Installation Instructions

1. Download the main ZIP package from Codester.
2. Extract the downloaded package on your computer.
3. Inside the extracted package, locate side-cart-lite-for-woocommerce.zip.
4. Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard.
5. Go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin.
6. Upload side-cart-lite-for-woocommerce.zip.
7. Click Install Now.
8. Activate the plugin.
9. Make sure WooCommerce is installed and active.
10. Go to WooCommerce > Side Cart Lite.
11. Enable the side cart and adjust the available settings.
12. Visit your shop page and add a product to the cart to test the drawer.

Basic Usage

After activation, the plugin can show a floating cart button on the frontend. When a customer adds a product using a standard WooCommerce AJAX add-to-cart button, the cart drawer can open automatically. Customers can update quantities, remove items, apply coupons, view totals, and continue to checkout.

Troubleshooting

If the drawer does not open automatically after adding a product, check whether the theme or product layout uses a custom add-to-cart flow. The floating cart button can still open the drawer manually.

If cart quantities do not update, clear your cache and test again with only WooCommerce and Side Cart Lite active.

If coupons do not apply, confirm that WooCommerce coupons are enabled and that the coupon is valid.

If the free shipping progress bar is not visible, set a free shipping target amount greater than 0 in WooCommerce > Side Cart Lite.

For theme conflicts, test with a default theme and disable other cart drawer or mini-cart plugins.