Kadence WooCommerce Layout Broken: Shop Kit, Woo Templates and Version Drift

A gallery under the title and buttons at three heights

Store layouts break in specific, describable ways, and the description is half the diagnosis. Check a product page, the shop page, a category, the cart and checkout, on desktop and on a phone, and note which of these appear.

• The product page ignores the layout chosen in the Customizer, or uses a sidebar you switched off.
• The image gallery stacks full width, loses its thumbnails or shows two galleries at once.
• Quantity fields show two sets of plus and minus buttons, or none.
• The shop grid has the wrong number of columns, or Add to cart buttons sit at different heights.
• Swatches, quickview or the wishlist button appear on some products and not others.
• Checkout loses its steps, or shows WooCommerce's default form instead of the one you built.

If what you see is checkout failing to take payment rather than looking wrong, start with WooCommerce checkout not working instead. Missing variation options have their own page too: WooCommerce variations not showing.

Who decides how a Kadence product page looks

On a Kadence store, layout authority is layered. The free theme sets the defaults. Paid add-ons can replace parts of them. Knowing the order tells you where to look first.

Shop Kit is where most of the surprises come from, because it is the newest layer. In May 2026 Liquid Web merged the former Iconic plugins into it, so a store that bought WooThumbs or Flux checkout years ago may now be running renamed code under a different license. The Kadence WooCommerce guide explains which module does what.

Six causes, ranked for a Kadence store

1. Four Kadence products on four different versions

Open Plugins and Appearance > Themes and write down the versions of the Kadence theme, Kadence Blocks, Theme Kit Pro, Shop Kit and WooCommerce. If some show updates waiting and others do not, that is your first suspect. Paid products update through a license, and a lapsed or legacy license is the usual reason one piece is stuck. When Patchstack flagged an SQL-injection issue in Shop Kit 3.0.6 and earlier, legacy-license holders on the wordpress.org forum asked how to update and were sent to Liquid Web software support. Kadence Pro license problems covers activation.

2. A Woo Template that matches more than you meant

Shop Kit's Woo Templates are assigned by conditions: product group or taxonomy, author or individual product, visible to all users, logged-out users, logged-in users or a role, and an optional expiry date. One template with a broad condition overrides the Customizer layout across the store. One that expired drops products back to the theme layout overnight. Review every entry under Products > Woo Templates.

3. Two tools doing one job

Kadence offers its own quantity buttons (Use Custom Quantity Plus and Minus). Shop Kit brings galleries and swatches. If an older Iconic plugin, another swatch plugin or a second gallery plugin is still active, you get doubled buttons or fighting galleries. Search the Plugins list for anything that duplicates a Shop Kit module.

4. A script optimizer touching jQuery on store pages

In Kadence 1.5.2 the only theme front-end scripts that need jQuery are the WooCommerce ones. An optimizer that delays or defers jQuery may leave a brochure page untouched and quietly break product galleries, variation switching and quantity buttons. Exclude store pages from script delay as a test.

5. Customizer settings that do something other than expected

Shop page display set to show categories instead of products, a Custom Shop Page chosen and forgotten, Products Per Row raised for desktop while Mobile Columns Layout squeezes two cards onto a small phone, or Align Button at Bottom switched off so buttons follow the length of each title. Each looks like breakage and is a setting. Check them at a phone width and at a tablet width before blaming code.

6. Outdated template overrides in a child theme

If your child theme carries a woocommerce folder, WooCommerce > Status lists any overridden templates that are out of date. An old copy of a product template can drop new markup the theme's CSS expects.

Putting the store back together on staging

1. 1

   Copy the store to staging

   Never test layout fixes on a store taking orders. Disable outgoing emails and payments on the copy.

2. 2

   Bring the family into step

   Update WooCommerce, then the Kadence theme, Kadence Blocks, Theme Kit Pro and Shop Kit, so no piece expects features another lacks. Fix any license that blocks an update first.

3. 3

   Audit Woo Templates

   Under Products > Woo Templates, check each template's Show On, Visible To and Expires settings. Disable all but one, then reenable one at a time.

4. 4

   Remove duplicate tools

   Deactivate any legacy Iconic plugin or third-party gallery, swatch or quantity plugin that a Shop Kit module or Kadence setting now replaces.

5. 5

   Recheck Customizer > WooCommerce

   Product Layout, Product Elements, Products Per Row, Mobile Columns Layout and the shop page display. Test at a phone width and at 1,024 pixels.

6. 6

   Clear template overrides and optimizers

   Update or remove outdated overrides listed in WooCommerce > Status, exclude store pages from script delay, then purge all caches.

7. 7

   Walk the buying path

   Add a product to the cart from the shop, a variation and a bundle, run a test checkout, then push the same changes to the live store.

Keeping a Kadence store in one piece

• Update the Kadence products and WooCommerce as one batch on staging, not one plugin whenever its notice appears.
• Keep a written list of which Shop Kit modules and Woo Templates are active and why.
• Switch off any Shop Kit module no customer uses. Fewer moving parts, fewer collisions.
• Renew or move legacy licenses before they lapse; a stuck plugin is how version drift starts.
• After every update, check a product page, the shop page and checkout logged out.

Five products, one brand, five update buttons. The layout breaks in the gap between them.

This is routine work under our hosting and maintenance plans. If the store is already broken, WooCommerce website repair and the Kadence repair hub are where we start. The general version of this problem, across themes, is at WooCommerce layout broken, and the troubleshooting section lists other Kadence issues such as styles that will not update.

When the store outgrows the plugin stack

For a simple shop of a few dozen products, Kadence with free WooCommerce settings is a sensible choice, and the fix above should hold. The calculation changes when the store depends on Shop Kit modules, membership pricing and custom checkout steps, each updated separately and each able to rearrange the product page.

A Next.js storefront builds product pages, cart and checkout as one tested codebase, and Athena CMS includes built-in e-commerce, so there is no module to fall out of step. It costs more up front. WooCommerce vs Next.js and Kadence vs Next.js weigh it fairly, moving a Kadence site to Next.js covers the migration, and the Kadence review and Kadence speed guide cover staying.