Age Verification for WooCommerce – Gatemi

Ask a visitor to confirm their age, for the whole site, for every shop page,
or only for the products that are actually restricted — and then do something
about the answer.

The purchase is refused, not just covered. An overlay is one
browser-devtools panel away, and ?add-to-cart=123 never sees it at all, so
the order arrives anyway for exactly the product a shop is not allowed to sell
to whoever placed it. Here a restricted product is not purchasable as far
as WooCommerce is concerned, adding it is refused with a message the shopper
reads, and a basket already holding one cannot be paid for. That one filter
covers the block cart and checkout and the Store API too.

Nobody’s basket is emptied. Somebody who confirms their age finds their
shopping exactly where they left it.

It works with a page cache, and without JavaScript. The gate is
server-rendered as an ordinary form, so it is there before a script has run.
Because a confirmation is a fact about one visitor and a cache cannot know it,
the markup is identical for everybody and a five-line snippet in the head
reads the cookie and hides a gate that is already cleared — rather than
removing it after the page has painted, which is why so many age gates flash
on every page for somebody who confirmed weeks ago.

Search engines are never gated. A shop that age-gates its crawler
disappears from search results within a fortnight, and finds out from its
traffic rather than from its plugin.

What you get

• A gate for the whole site, every shop page, or only restricted products
• Any product set to always ask, or never ask, on the product itself —
  because one restricted item among a hundred ordinary ones is the common case
• One minimum age for the store
• Refused add-to-cart, blocked checkout, and a basket that is never emptied
• Search engines exempt, in every scope
• No JavaScript beyond the five-line no-flash snippet

The full edition

Gatemi Age Verification for WooCommerce
is a separate plugin, sold on gatemi.com, that adds a date-of-birth
gate checked on the server, restricted categories with sub-categories
included and an age of their own, a minimum age per product, a
confirmation tick box at the checkout in your own words, how long a
confirmation is remembered, and your own wording throughout.

Both editions store everything the same way, so upgrading keeps your
configuration and a confirmation a visitor has already given.

External services

None. This plugin makes no request anywhere.

1. 

   The settings screen: whether the gate is on, where it appears, and the store-wide minimum age.

2. 

   The gate on a restricted product, before a visitor has confirmed their age.

3. 

   The per-product switch in WooCommerce's own Product data box — always ask, never ask, or follow the store.

1.0.1

• Fix: a date-of-birth gate set by the full edition can no longer be passed without a date.
• Fix: orders placed through the Checkout block now carry the age confirmation record.
• Fix: the record now holds the gate’s own wording and the answer given, and is only written for somebody who answered it.

1.0.0

• First release: the age gate for the whole site, every shop page or only restricted products, with the one-tap confirmation enforced on the server — the product not purchasable, the add-to-cart refused with the age named, and a basket holding one not payable — the no-flash head snippet so a cached page never shows a cleared gate, the crawler exemption, a per-product always-ask or never-ask switch, and the age, wording and moment recorded on the order.