Created by: Nathan Pennington
“Out of stock” implies a product that will again be in stock at some point. What if you have a product that will never be stocked again?
You could delete the product, and you could even do a 301 redirect for SEO purposes, but up till now, there was no good way to keep the product while marking it permanently out of stock.
With this plugin, this is now an option. The concept is from WooCommerce Ideas Forum
The discontinued option is available in the stock status drop-down, and it works for either simple products and variable products.