We are happy to announce the availability of a new build of the WooCommerce Admin feature plugin! If this is the first time you have heard about WooCommerce Admin, it is a new JavaScript-driven interface for managing your WooCommerce stores that is focusing on creating new and improved reports, and a dashboard to monitor all the important key metrics of your site.
WooCommerce 3.9 is now officially available for beta testing!
We’re working toward smaller and more frequent releases, and WooCommerce 3.9 will be the first minor release of 2020. Since it’s a minor release, everything is backward compatible. The official version will be available on January 7, 2020.
To try it out download it from the WordPress.org plugin repository, or install the WooCommerce Beta Tester plugin to test out this and all future beta and release candidates.
What’s new in 3.9?
WooCommerce 3.9 is the first minor release of 2020. Being a minor release, everything is backward compatible. As we work towards smaller and more frequent releases, it will be released on January 7th.
WooCommerce blocks
This version of WooCommerce includes WooCommerce Blocks 2.5. WooCommerce Blocks is our eCommerce-focused block collection for the block editor that has been part of WordPress since WordPress 5.0.
WooCommerce 3.9 adds a new “All Products” block (requires WordPress 5.3) that mimics the WooCommerce core shop page but allows easy customization — and it’s powered by JavaScript and the REST API, so customers stay on the same page while browsing your catalogue.
You can still customize the elements of this page using inner blocks, and use it in conjunction with other new blocks to filter products.
Check out the WooCommerce Blocks 2.5 release notes for a detailed look! And if you want to follow the latest developments, you can install the feature plugin as well.
New PHP and WordPress minimum requirements
As of WooCommerce 3.9, we are bumping the minimum required PHP version up to PHP 7.0. This sets set us up for using newer and more performant functionality, benefiting all WooCommerce stores. The minimum required WordPress version will also increase to WordPress 5.0.
We have added upgrade nudges in WooCommerce 3.8 pointing users to our new document you can follow to make sure you have the latest and greatest versions. Stores running anything older than PHP 7.0 and WordPress 5.0 will not be able to update to WooCommerce 3.9.
Additional enhancements
And there’s more in WooCommerce 3.9:
- There’s “Show” button for password fields, like WordPress core introduced in version 5.3.
- A new WooCommerce onboarding experience will be available to, 10% of new users (we’re testing this new experience and starting small.
- It introduces a Payment Gateway API to support “pay button” allowing proper setup of those buttons and making it easier to customize their appearance.
The release also contains tweaks, new hooks and fixes, all of which you can find in the readme.txt.
Template file changes
The following template files have been updated/changed in this release.
| File | Changes |
| emails/email-addresses.php | Phone numbers will become clickable, to easy call your customers. |
| myaccount/lost-password-confirmation.php | Added new woocommerce_before_lost_password_confirmation_message, and woocommerce_after_lost_password_confirmation_message actions. |
| notices/error.php, notices/notice.php, notices/success.php | Templates update to support our new notices format. |
Deprecated functions and methods
- Deprecated the
WC_Cart_Totals::round_merged_taxes()method and replaced it with a new methodWC_Cart_Totals::calculate_item_subtotals(). - Deprecated the argument
$messagesin notices templates, and as a replaced it’s possible to use$notices.
Release schedule
| Beta | 10 December 2019 |
| RC | 21 December 2019 |
| Release 3.9 | 7 January 2020 |
Testing instructions
We published a Wiki in GitHub to help anyone interested in testing this new release. Check out our release testing instructions.
When WooCommerce 3.9 is released in January, it will have new required versions of WordPress and PHP. Running WooCommerce 3.9 will require a site running WordPress 5.0 and PHP 7.0 or newer.
We plan to keep developing blocks and other integrations that rely on current versions of WordPress, and this release prepares WooCommerce for these new features so we can deliver the best experience for our users. A very small percentage of WooCommerce stores run versions of WordPress and PHP older than these requirements, so impact will be minimal.
Note that WooCommerce 3.9 includes new “All Products” block (part of WooCommerce Blocks 2.5 release) which requires WordPress 5.3 in order to use it.
What does it mean for your store if your site is affected? Simply put, you will not be able to update to WooCommerce 3.9 when it gets released, so WordPress will not offer you the update. If you’re among these sites, we’ve created document explaining the the benefits of updating to newer versions of WordPress and PHP that includes instructions on how to safely update.
If you have any questions or feedback around the decision and work related to this update, please feel free to leave them in the comments.
WooCommerce 3.8.1 is now available. This is a small fix release that includes a fix for Google product schema and improves the compatibility with WordPress 5.3 and Twenty-twenty theme.
Please find the full list of updates below:
* Tweak - Include 5 latest reviews to Product's schema.
* Fix - Improve select2 style and admin screen button alignments in WP 5.3
* Fix - Fix order action button centering for WP 5.3.
* Fix - Improved WooCommerce and Twenty twenty styling.Download the latest release of WooCommerce here or venture over to Dashboard → Updates to update your plugins from your WordPress admin panel.
As usual, if you spot any other issues in WooCommerce core please log them in detail on Github, and to disclose a security issue to our team, please submit a report via HackerOne here.
Hi to all WooCommerce enthusiasts! The last Community Chat of 2019 is going to take place in the APAC friendly timeslot: on Thursday, November 28th at 08:00 UTC in the #core channel of the WooCommerce Community Slack. If you don’t already have access to the group, you can request an invite here.
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