Colour swatches
Colour attributes read faster as swatches than as words. Super Speedy Filters has four swatch display types — circular swatches, two-column swatches with labels, a swatch list, and swatches beside names — and Auto Configure picks one automatically for any taxonomy where most terms carry a colour.
This article covers where those colours live and how to set them.
Colours live on the term
Each term’s colour is stored on the term itself, and edited on the term’s own screen: go to Products → Attributes, open the attribute’s terms, and each Add/Edit Term screen has a Swatch colour field beside the Thumbnail field. Pick with the colour picker or paste a hex such as #e23b3b.
Because the colour belongs to the term:
- renaming the term keeps its colour
- every filter showing that taxonomy shares one palette — set it once, not once per filter
- an importer or an AI assistant can set colours programmatically
Super Speedy Imports sets these colours during a catalogue import. Map a hex column in your feed to the term colour and the swatches work the moment the import finishes — no manual pass over the terms.
Your existing colours move over automatically
Filters configured before colours moved to the term stored their palette inside each filter, keyed by the term’s name. Those keep working exactly as before — the term’s colour is used first, and the filter’s own palette fills in for any term without one. Both places remain usable: you can still set colours on an individual filter, and a colour on the term always wins.
After updating, the plugin copies your widget colours onto the terms once, automatically. It only copies a colour when every filter agrees on it, so nothing you can see changes. Two kinds of leftover are listed in a one-time notice instead of being guessed at:
- a term whose filters disagree about its colour — set the one you want on the term screen and it applies everywhere
- a colour saved against a term name that no longer exists, usually a renamed term
The migration never overwrites a colour already on a term and never deletes the old widget values. To re-run it after tidying up — or to preview it first — use:
wp ssf migrate-colours --dry-run
wp ssf migrate-coloursSolid colours belong in the Swatch colour field; anything with a texture or a pattern belongs in the Thumbnail field with an image display type. A hex is sharper at every screen density and costs nothing to load, so only reach for an image when the swatch genuinely needs one.
Order of precedence
When a term could get its colour from more than one place:
- the term’s Swatch colour field
- the filter’s own legacy palette, for that term’s name
- the
ssf_change_color_hexPHP filter, which overrides both — so any custom code you have keeps winning
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