Introduction: Why was a new version developed?
1-An open model with many collaborators
The Woocommerce model itself ensures that updates are constantly being developed. Indeed, Woocommerce, just like WordPress, is a so-called Open Source platform. That is, the company makes its code available to the community so that the community can help it improve its product or design derivative products that complement its offer.
The company has hundreds of developers around the world who take user feedback into account or who, on their own initiative, develop improvements for the platform.
Due to the large number of people working on Woocommerce and the company's open business model, the updates available are numerous. On their page Corporate we can see that there were over 950 uploads in just one week!
The advantage of this model is that issues and bugs are resolved fairly quickly. The downside is that you often have to update and that it's sometimes difficult to find your way around. Indeed, it is legitimate to ask the question “Is the update necessary or beneficial for me?” before installing it.
2-How to find your way around
Faced with the large number of updates available, it is necessary to fully understand the nomenclature of versions to find your way around.
Updates are often called this: 3.2.6 or some other series of three or four numbers.
If you wanted to summarize everything in its simplest form, you could see it all this way: The more the changed number is on your left, the more major the update is. The first number, in our example 3, is the very heart of the system, it is very rarely modified. This is the architecture of the platform itself. So if we went from Woocommerce 3 to 4, for example, we would do another complete article!
If we go from 3.2 to 3.3 for example, it means that one or more important functionalities of the website have been modified or improved. We are then talking about an important update, which is the case for the update we are talking about in this article.
Finally, if we go from 3.3.6 to 3.3.7, for example, these are generally bug fixes or minor improvements. The update is minor, but can be very useful if we have a specific problem that can be solved by this one.
3-The origin of the most recent version (version 3.6)
Woocommerce being mainly loved for the ease offered to users to manage their content, the company wanted to push this aspect even further, which is one of the reasons behind this version. The other major reason is to improve the speed of both online sites and the content management interface. Since performance issues are often reported by users, Woocommerce wanted to make major improvements in this area.
What does the new version contain?
The new version mainly contains an improvement in terms of content management by making available new blocks to display elements that required dedicated plugins before installing and a series of improvements improving the speed of websites and their content management interface.
1-New types of content blocks
Sites using WordPress 5.0 or more already have access to content management in the form of blocks, which is called Gutenberg. That is to say, we create our page by adding dedicated blocks for the various elements. So we can add a block with a carousel and insert our photos into it and put a text block underneath, then a block with a form, etc.
Many blocks were already available such as: Paragraph, title, subtitle, subtitle, quote, image, carousel, video, button. On the other hand, for transactional sites it was not possible to integrate products directly into the pages using the blocks. For example, to display the most popular products on a page, you had to install and configure a plugin dedicated to this.
With the update, blocks for integrating products into pages have been made available, these eight new blocks allow you to:
- Insert products from a category
It is also possible to choose whether or not to show the price and description and to add a call to action element.
- Insert products from top sellers
It is also possible to add a filter by category to the products displayed.
- Insert manually selected products
- Insert the most recent products
- Insert products on sale
- Insert top-rated products
- Insert products with a specific attribute
It is also possible to choose more than one attribute.
- Insert featured products
Image source: https://woocommerce.com/posts/integrate-content-and-commerce-with-woocommerce-product-blocks/
This therefore makes it easier, among other things, to create pages for promotions or sales or to integrate products into various pages of a website.
2-Other improvements for content integration
The preview of the pages has also been improved in order to have a realistic preview before putting a page online.
Managing columns and rows has also been simplified and the way to order items within a block is now simplified.
Image source: https://woocommerce.com/posts/integrate-content-and-commerce-with-woocommerce-product-blocks/
3-Improving speed
In recent years, speed problems were common on Woocommerce stores. Indeed, as soon as the site contained a large quantity of products with images or was connected to an inventory, our programming team had to be ingenious in order to maintain adequate performance.
New hosting provider, hosting combinations, improvements in scripts, optimization of images, numerous maneuvers were necessary. However, CMSs were sometimes slow, which made their use less pleasant.
What is a good thing about the improvements made by the Woocommerce team is that they contribute as much to the speed of displaying sites as to the management in the CMS.
4-Display ordered and filtered products
By improving the product consultation table, it is now faster to display products when using filters or sorting options. This both in the management interface and on the site viewed by the user. Woocommerce claims that the charging time can be reduced by up to 62%.
This of course depends on the origin of the products (connection or not to the inventory) and the weight of the images or videos that are part of their description, but people who have tried the update say that the effect is noticeable although there is still room for improvement.
5-Consideration of webhooks and active APIs only
APIs are requests that the site sends or receives to allow the exchange of information between applications or systems. For example, if your online store is connected to inventory, it certainly uses an API or Webhooks. Based on the concept of APIs, webhooks allow the exchange of information in real time between applications. These connections can slow down the site, which has to send or receive information all the time. That's why inactive webhooks are now ignored throughout the site.
6-Caching product attributes
Cache memory is within browsers and allows them to “remember” the contents of websites in order to display them more quickly if a user visits a given website several times. By keeping product attribute information in cache (attributes can be, color, size, specifications, etc.) these can be displayed more quickly.
7-Changes to the content manager
Finally, some changes were made to the content manager (CMS), mainly with regard to products.
It is now possible to modify or create more than one product at a time and improvements have been made to make it easier to find products and product variations.
What are the requirements that my site should have before upgrading to the new version?
To upgrade to the new version, your site must be on Woocommerce 3.0 or newer, note that to take advantage of the new product blocks, you must have a Wordpess version of 5.0 or higher. If you are not sure whether or not you can update, feel free to contact us and we will be happy to check for you.
To proceed with the update, a copy of your site will first be made to ensure that we can return to the previous version if there is a problem. Once the copy is made, we will make the updates to your site in a test environment and we will test the entire site to make sure that everything is working normally.
Testing is very important because some plugins or extensions may behave differently after an update. Sometimes it may be necessary to update or replace some extensions after a major update.
Once the tests are completed we will put the new site online and you will be able to take advantage of the new features and improvements!
The amount of work required varies from site to site depending on the number of pages, products, and extensions the site contains.
Request an evaluation to update your site
What bugs are found on Woocommerce 3.6?
A few bugs were reported as a result of the update and have been fixed.
What generated the biggest discontent was that Woocommerce added suggested extensions from their marketplace directly into the content management interface. So, a user could be creating or modifying a product and seeing an “ad” for an extension. Faced with the large number of user complaints, Woocommerce has deployed an update to hide everything.
The other issues reported mainly relate to the new block editor and product editing and have been resolved.
It is normal for an important update to come with a few bugs, but so far the reported errors have been fixed and it seems that the new version is soon reaching a stage of maturity advanced enough to be installed without fear.
Conclusion: Our verdict on the update
If we consider the advantages of creating sales pages, landing pages, including products without installing plugins and the gains in site speed as well as the fact that several sites have already been migrated and that major bugs have been resolved, we recommend that you upgrade to the new version.
Also to watch out for: WordPress 5.2 is just around the corner
On May 7 (May 7, 2019) WordPress followed suit and made available version 5.2 named Jaco in honor of the Jazz musician Jaco Pastorius.
The main aim of the update is to make it easier to detect and correct fatal errors. Among other things, there is an addition in the “Site Health” section to give developers more details on the errors and also to allow them to leave notes on the changes they have made in order to facilitate future maintenance.
WordPress will also be able to detect if your plugins are compatible with your version of PHP, which will help reduce the number of compatibility errors.
As the version has recently been online, we are watching for comments on it and will share our recommendations on the subject shortly!
For more information on the changes, we recommend that you read This WP Beginner article.
