WooCommerce “Brand” category/taxonomy disappeared from WP Admin
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Hi everyone,
I’m troubleshooting a WooCommerce site where a “Brand” category/taxonomy used to exist (client confirms it was visible in WP Admin and used for products), but it has recently disappeared. We did not intentionally remove anything and I’m trying to figure out what changed and how to restore it safely.What we’re seeing
- No Brand menu / taxonomy visible under Products (or anywhere in admin) anymore
- We can’t find an active/inactive plugin that clearly provides “Brands” (nothing named Brands, Perfect Brands, YITH Brands, etc.)
- Health Check “Troubleshooting Mode” doesn’t bring it back
- The site is WooCommerce and was migrated hosts in 2024, but the owner says the Brand feature disappeared recently, not at the time of migration
What I’ve checked so far
- Plugins: reviewed active/inactive/mu-plugins (nothing obvious)
- Theme: checked if theme functions register a custom taxonomy (didn’t find it yet)
- WP Admin: checked Products → Categories/Tags (no Brands option)
- Planning next: ask host to run
SHOW TABLES;to confirm taxonomy tables exist / weren’t altered
Questions
- What’s the best way to confirm where “Brand” came from originally (plugin vs theme vs custom code)?
- What should I check to see if the taxonomy was unregistered or removed (specific files/hooks like
register_taxonomy,init,woocommerce_*hooks)? - If it was removed accidentally, what’s the safest way to restore the Brand taxonomy without breaking existing product relationships?
WooCommerce version:9.5.3
WordPress version: 6.8.3
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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The disappearance of the “Brand” taxonomy on site is almost certainly a side effect of the WooCommerce 9.6 core update (released January 2025), which integrated a native “Brands” feature into the core software for all users. This update was designed to streamline brand management, but it often “hijacks” or conflicts with existing third-party brand taxonomies—such as those from Perfect Brands, YITH, or custom theme modules—effectively masking your old data and removing the expected menu items from the admin panel. To safely restore your visibility, your developer should check the database for the original taxonomy slug (likely product_brand or pwb-brand) to confirm the data still exists; if it does, you can either use a dedicated tool like the “Transfer Brands for WooCommerce” plugin to migrate your data into the new core system or apply a code snippet to disable the new core feature, allowing your original “Brand” interface to reappear.
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Thank you for your reply, this is very helpful! Would you happen to be able to do a Google Meet just to go over this issue and possibly implement the solution you suggested?
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