PizzaTier

PizzaTier turns any WordPress page into an interactive build-your-own pizza experience. Customers pick a crust, sauce, cheese, toppings, drizzle and cut style while a layered pizza image updates in front of them in real time. When they are done, the finished pizza goes straight into a WooCommerce cart with a server-verified price, or into PizzaTier’s own built-in order queue for shops that do not sell online.

Everything is included in this one plugin: the visual builder, eight ready-made templates, per-ingredient price grids, the WooCommerce “Pizza” product type and a live Pizza Orders dashboard built for running a kitchen during service. There is no separate paid add-on.

Plugin site, docs and support: pizzatier.com
Built and maintained by Island Sun Design in Hilo, Hawaiʻi.

Who it is for

PizzaTier is built for independent and small-chain pizzerias, food trucks and pop-ups, and the agencies and freelancers who build their websites. Site owners get a guided setup wizard and a plain-English admin; developers get hooks, a public PHP and JavaScript API and a Scaffold template to build from.

The builder

• Live layered preview — each ingredient is a transparent PNG layer, stacked and updated as the customer makes selections, with no page reloads
• Six ingredient categories — crusts, sauces, cheeses, toppings, drizzles and cut styles, plus pizza sizes, each managed as a WordPress custom post type
• Coverage control — whole, half-and-half and quarter placement for toppings
• Rules — maximum toppings, required crust or sauce, hidden tabs, restricted ingredient sets and default selections, all set per shortcode
• Presets — save complete pizzas that customers can pick in one click, and show them anywhere with [pizzatier_preset]
• Embed anywhere — the [pizzatier_builder] shortcode or the Pizza Builder block; multiple builders can share a page
• Static pizza images — render a non-interactive layered pizza with [pizzatier_static], or a single ingredient image with [pizzatier_layer]

Eight templates

Switch templates with one setting. Every template is themeable through CSS custom properties, so colours, spacing and typography can be matched to your theme without touching the template files.

• Colorbox — bright, playful builder with colourful category tiles and pill tabs. Great for family-friendly and fast-casual brands.
• Metro — clean, modern single-scroll layout with the pizza floating in a centred hero. Built for fast-casual and artisan brands.
• NightPie — dark UI with a sticky split-screen preview, tabbed sections, fly-to animation and a “Your Pizza” summary panel.
• Fornaia — warm, homestyle template with earthy tones, aged-paper texture, serif typography and vintage badge accents. Ideal for Neapolitan and wood-fired pizzerias.
• PocketPie — compact mobile-first builder with Corner Quad, Layer Deck, Slide Drawer and Stack Panel layout modes. Ideal for embedded storefronts and small spaces.
• Plainlist — text-first checklist with no visual canvas. Accessible, print-friendly, and available in single-scroll or step-by-step wizard modes.
• Command Center — dark navy UI with a numbered step wizard, persistent order-summary sidebar and a bold red accent. Built for chains that want a premium digital-ordering feel.
• Scaffold — a bare-bones developer starter with fully modular HTML partials and clean hooks. Duplicate any partial and build from there.

Selling with WooCommerce

• A dedicated Pizza WooCommerce product type with its own configurator tab
• The builder embedded automatically on Pizza product pages, with a size selector and a live price bar
• Price grids by size and coverage, set per product, per ingredient or site-wide, with a bulk editor and CSV import/export
• Six pricing models — add-on per layer, flat per size, highest layer wins, tiered by topping count, free first N, and bundle
• Prices are recalculated and verified on the server when the pizza is added to the cart
• The full build is stored as order line-item meta and shown in the cart, on the order screen and in order emails
• Works with both classic post-based orders and High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) orders

Selling without WooCommerce

PizzaTier ships its own lightweight ordering system, so a builder can take orders on a site with no cart and no payment step. It suits pay-on-collection, phone-order and delivery-on-account shops.

• Orders are recorded in WordPress with kitchen-oriented statuses — new, confirmed, preparing, ready, out for delivery and completed, plus cancelled, refunded and failed
• Order routing — send each order to the WooCommerce cart, the pizza order list, both, or straight out by email and webhook
• Customer notes visible to staff only

Pizza Orders dashboard

A top-level Pizza Orders menu with a live dashboard designed for service hours. Everything updates in place over AJAX; the page never reloads.

• Status count cards, with tap-to-filter
• An incoming-orders board with one-tap next-step buttons (Confirm → Start preparing → Mark ready → Complete). Orders waiting over 15 minutes turn amber; over 30, red.
• Today at a glance — orders, pizzas, revenue, average order and the pickup/delivery split
• Live polling with a pause toggle, an optional new-order chime and the open-order count mirrored into the browser tab title
• Search, filter, sort and bulk-update the full order list; a quick-view drawer with a printable kitchen ticket sized for receipt printers

Admin suite

• Settings Wizard — guided first-run setup
• Layer Builder Wizard — step-by-step workflow for adding a new ingredient
• Layer Image Maker — generate and upload transparent layer images from inside the admin
• Content Hub — manage every ingredient post type from one screen
• Site Migration — export and import all PizzaTier settings and content between sites
• Admin dark mode for the PizzaTier screens
• GDPR tools — personal-data export and erasure integrated with the WordPress privacy tools; erasure anonymises orders while keeping the records a shop is legally required to retain

Shortcodes

[pizzatier_builder] — renders the full interactive builder.
Attributes: id, template, max_toppings, show_tabs, hide_tabs, default_crust, default_sauce, default_cheese, pizza_shape, pizza_aspect, pizza_radius, layer_anim, layer_anim_speed, restrict

[pizzatier_static] — renders a non-interactive layered pizza image.
Attributes: crust, sauce, cheese, toppings, drizzle, cut, preset
Example: [pizzatier_static crust="thin-crust" sauce="classic-tomato" cheese="mozzarella" toppings="pepperoni,mushrooms"]

[pizzatier_layer] — renders a single ingredient layer image.
Attributes: type, slug, size

[pizzatier_layer_info] — renders text metadata about a layer (name, description, price).

[pizzatier_preset] — renders a saved preset pizza.
Attributes: id, template, title, size, align

REST API

The public REST API is disabled by default. Enable it under PizzaTier → Settings → Advanced.

• POST /wp-json/pizzatier/v1/render — render a pizza layer stack and return HTML
• GET /wp-json/pizzatier/v1/layer-url — retrieve the image URL for a given layer type and slug

Both endpoints are read-only and rate-limited (pizzatier_rest_rate_limit and pizzatier_rest_rate_window filters).

For developers

PizzaTier exposes a public PHP API for use in themes and other plugins:

// Render a full pizza stack as HTML
$html = PizzaTier\Builder\PizzaBuilder::render_pizza_stack([
    'crust'    => 'thin-crust',
    'sauce'    => 'classic-tomato',
    'cheese'   => 'mozzarella',
    'toppings' => ['pepperoni', 'mushrooms'],
    'drizzle'  => 'hot-honey',
    'cut'      => '8-slices',
]);

// Get a layer image URL
$url = PizzaTier\Builder\PizzaBuilder::get_layer_url( 'topping', 'pepperoni' );

A selection of the filters and actions available:

• pizzatier_template_dirs — register additional template directory paths
• pizzatier_query_args_{type} — modify the WP_Query args used to fetch a layer type, e.g. pizzatier_query_args_toppings
• pizzatier_builder_atts / pizzatier_static_atts — filter parsed shortcode attributes before render
• pizzatier_layer_html — filter the markup of a single layer image
• pizzatier_order_statuses, pizzatier_order_route, pizzatier_order_webhook_payload — customise the built-in ordering system
• pizzatier_orders_next_step_map — customise the one-tap workflow buttons on the orders dashboard
• pizzatier_before_builder / pizzatier_after_builder — fire around the builder canvas
• pizzatier_builder_action_bar — fires inside the builder action bar, where the Add to Cart and Order Now bars render
• pizzatier_order_created, pizzatier_order_status_changed — fire as orders move through the kitchen

The full hook reference is at pizzatier.com.

Custom templates

Duplicate the Scaffold template folder, give it a unique function_prefix in pztp-template-info.php, and register it via the pizzatier_template_dirs filter. Scaffold includes detailed comments and modular HTML partials designed for exactly this.

Privacy and external services

PizzaTier does not contact any external service on its own. The only outbound requests it makes are the ones you configure: order-notification emails through your site’s mail setup, and an optional order webhook to a URL you supply under PizzaTier → Settings. The public REST API is off until you turn it on. Order records can be exported and erased through the standard WordPress privacy tools.

Translations

Translation-ready with a bundled .pot file. Spanish (es_ES) and German (de_DE) translations are included, and further languages can be contributed through translate.wordpress.org.

1. In your WordPress admin go to Plugins → Add New, search for PizzaTier and click Install Now, then Activate. (Or upload the pizzatier folder to /wp-content/plugins/ and activate it from the Plugins screen.)
2. Open PizzaTier → Setup Guide and follow the Settings Wizard. It walks you through choosing a template, adding your first crust, sauce, cheese and toppings, and uploading layer images.
3. Add the builder to any page with the [pizzatier_builder] shortcode or the Pizza Builder block.
4. Selling with WooCommerce? Create a product, set its type to Pizza, and configure sizes and price grids on the Configurator tab. The builder appears on the product page automatically.
5. Selling without WooCommerce? Under PizzaTier → Settings → Ordering, turn on built-in ordering and choose where orders go. Orders appear under Pizza Orders.

Layer images should be transparent PNGs at a 1:1 aspect ratio (800×800 px or 1200×1200 px recommended). The Layer Image Maker under the PizzaTier menu can produce these from ordinary photos.

1. 

   Live visual builder — customers watch the layered pizza update as they pick crust, sauce, cheese, toppings, drizzle and cut, with the price bar tracking every change.

2. 

   Eight built-in templates — Colorbox, Metro, NightPie, Fornaia, PocketPie, Plainlist, Command Center and the Scaffold developer starter.

3. 

   WooCommerce pricing — size × coverage price grids per ingredient, and the full build stored on the order line item.

4. 

   Pizza Orders dashboard — status cards, a live kitchen queue with one-tap next-step buttons, and late-order highlighting.

5. 

   Admin suite — the Layer Builder Wizard and Layer Image Maker, with every layer type managed as a WordPress post type.

2.3.0

WordPress.org plugin review compliance release.

• Changed: shortcodes renamed to satisfy the WordPress.org unique-prefix guideline — [pizza_builder], [pizza_static], [pizza_layer], [pizza_layer_info] and [pizza_preset] are now [pizzatier_builder], [pizzatier_static], [pizzatier_layer], [pizzatier_layer_info] and [pizzatier_preset]. Existing content using the old tags will render the tag as plain text until updated. To re-enable the old tags while you migrate, add add_filter( 'pizzatier_register_legacy_shortcodes', '__return_true' ); to your theme’s functions.php or a small must-use plugin. The [pizzatier-menu] and [pizzatier-static] aliases are unaffected.
• Changed: all remaining inline <style> and <script> blocks (19, across the Cart & Pricing screens, meta boxes and the order screen) moved into enqueued asset files via wp_enqueue_style / wp_enqueue_script, with data passed through wp_localize_script / wp_add_inline_script.
• Changed: the [pizzatier_layer] shortcode / PizzaTier Image block output is now passed through wp_kses() with an explicit allowlist at return time, so markup supplied via the pizzatier_layer_html filter is escaped late.
• Changed: product JSON-LD is now encoded without JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES, so a </script> sequence in filtered schema values can no longer terminate the script tag early.
• Changed: the WooCommerce product-data tab key pizza_configurator renamed to pizzatier_configurator.
• Added: WooCommerce High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) compatibility declaration, so PizzaTier no longer shows as incompatible on the HPOS settings screen.
• Removed: the unused pre-merge Commerce dashboard class (dead code since the 2.0.0 menu consolidation).

2.2.1

• Changed: removed the manual load_plugin_textdomain() call flagged by Plugin Check — WordPress.org language packs are loaded automatically since WP 4.6. The /languages catalogues remain in the repo as the translation source.
• Changed: shortened the 2.2.0 upgrade notice to fit the 300-character readme limit.

2.2.0

Pizza Orders dashboard — Pizza Orders is now its own top-level admin menu with a live dashboard built for running a shop during service. Everything updates in place over AJAX; the page never reloads.

• Added: status count cards for every order status, plus All and Needs-attention totals. Tapping a card filters the list.
• Added: an incoming-orders board — open orders oldest first, each with a single one-tap next-step button (Confirm → Start preparing → Mark ready → Complete, with Out for Delivery inserted automatically for delivery orders). Orders waiting over 15 minutes turn amber; over 30, red.
• Added: today at a glance — orders, pizzas, revenue, average order and the pickup/delivery split for the current day.
• Added: live polling with a pause toggle, an optional new-order chime, and the open-order count mirrored into the browser tab title.
• Added: a fully filterable, sortable order list — search by order number, name, phone or email; filter by status, fulfilment method and date range; sort by date, number, customer, total or status; bulk status changes, trash, restore and delete — all without a page refresh.
• Added: a quick-view drawer with the full ticket, one-tap advance, status change, internal notes and history — plus a printable kitchen ticket sized for receipt printers.
• Changed: the classic server-rendered list remains available at Pizza Orders → Classic List, and is the automatic fallback when JavaScript is off.
• Changed: the Pizza Orders entry under the PizzaTier menu is now a link to the new top-level menu. The page slug is unchanged, so bookmarked URLs and links in order-notification emails keep working.
• Added: pizzatier_orders_next_step_map filter to customise the one-tap workflow buttons.

2.1.1

• Fixed: the three block.asset.php script-dependency files did not guard against direct URL access. Each now exits when ABSPATH is undefined, satisfying the Plugin Check missing_direct_file_access_protection rule. No functional change — WordPress always defines ABSPATH before reading these files.
• Fixed: the bundled Spanish and German translations never loaded. The plugin ships .mo files in /languages but never called load_plugin_textdomain(), and WordPress’s just-in-time loader only reads language packs from wp-content/languages/plugins/, not from inside the plugin. Now loaded on init.

Older releases are documented in CHANGELOG.md inside the plugin.