WooCommerce 4.3 is now publicly released! It has been under development since April 2020, and its core has been updated with 272 commits from 24 contributors .
This is a minor release , which means that everything is backward compatible with the previous version.
As always, it is recommended that you create a backup of your website and make sure the themes and plugins are compatible before updating. You can check this update guide for more information.
What are the new features in WooCommerce 4.3?
Like all minor releases, we bring you several new features that we want to emphasize:
New home experience
We have provided you with a brand new homepage to provide a more centralized experience and make store management easier. It only contains the 3 most important items for merchants to browse:
- Inbox messages,
- A quick overview of common store metrics, and
- Shortcuts to the most frequently used settings
We are happy to hear your feedback and thoughts on the new homepage, and hope we can put it at the center of the WooCommerce experience.
By default, the new home page is available for all new customers. If you want to upgrade from an earlier version, you can open it through WooCommerce>Settings>Advanced>Features>Home screen.
You can also view the section of the new document covering the home screen features .
Block update
In this version, many improvements in the Blocks world are included. Among other things:
- New status of the order: "Draft"
- Now, all "Product Grid" type blocks default to 3 rows instead of the initial setting of 3 rows
- HTML editing function is no longer supported to prevent accidental damage
- More options for filtering products by attribute block
- Improved tax treatment of filter products by price block
- Style consistency and CSS improvements
If any product grid block is in use on your site (except "All Products") and you never changed any of the default settings for that block , the block will be updated to 3 rows instead of 1 row for rendering products . However, if you save the block to your content by changing the settings, the rendered content will not be affected. Therefore, you will need to check your block again after the update.
Please note that currently, the shopping cart and checkout blocks are not enabled in the bundled block. If you want to use these plugins , please install a separate Blocks plugin .
Miscellaneous improvements
In addition to adding new features, we are constantly working to improve the experience of the core plug-in. We have:
- Improved concurrent processing for inventory level management
- Added a new validation database tool to rebuild the database schema
- Fix CSV import and export tool errors
- Improved template caching in container environment
- Fix wrong behavior of shopping cart link
If you want more information, please check our complete change log .
PHP version support
As the WordPress world is preparing to upgrade the PHP version recommendation to PHP 7.2+ , we are following closely behind. With WooCommerce 4.3, to provide sufficient delivery time for merchants and store owners, we will start to display recommendations to update to PHP 7.2+.
Versions prior to PHP 7.1 no longer accept security updates , so we definitely recommend not to postpone this decision.
Extended compatibility warning
After discussing with our team and with the external team developing the extension, we decided to remove the warning about minor WooCommerce version compatibility and only show the major version.
Since we are working hard to produce a backward compatible distribution, and we decided to increase the frequency of the distribution to once a month, it has become a burden for developers to release extensions to declare compatibility with the new WooCommerce. We believe that our commitment to ensuring compatibility and improved testing procedures will enable us to discover potential problems as early as possible. Therefore, we believe that this step can reduce the burden on the development team without negatively affecting our customers and merchants. We will continue to evaluate this decision through our support channels to identify potential issues in this approach.
New hooks and functions
We have added some new hooks in this version:
| Filter | description |
|---|---|
| woocommerce_before_get_rates_for_package | Triggered before getting the shipping cost of the package. |
| woocommerce_after_get_rates_for_package | Triggered after getting the shipping cost of the package. |
| woocommerce_add_payment_method_form_is_valid | When adding a new payment method, please verify the received form data. |
| woocommerce_add_payment_method_form_bottom | Add another tag at the bottom of the form to add a new payment method. |
| woocommerce_status_widget_low_in_stock_count_pre_query | Customize the low inventory threshold for the low inventory status widget. |
| woocommerce_status_widget_out_of_stock_count_pre_query | Customize the out-of-stock threshold for the out-of-stock status widget. |
| woocommerce_hide_base_tables_missing_nag | Customize the notification that appears when a database table is missing. |
| woocommerce_checkout_order_created | Triggered after the order is created. |
| woocommerce_checkout_order_exception | Triggered when an order is abandoned due to an exception. |
| woocommerce_before_get_rates_for_package | Triggered before getting the shipping cost of the package. |
| woocommerce_after_get_rates_for_package | Triggered after getting the shipping cost of the package. |
| woocommerce_get_path_define_tokens | Customize the list of constants to be used in path tokenization. |
| woocommerce_hold_stock_for_checkout | Allows to enable/disable the function of holding stocks at checkout. |
| woocommerce_rest_performance_indicators_data_value | Customize the administrator report. |
| admin_body_class | Add the subject class to the management subject. |
| woocommerce_blocks_register_script_dependencies | Add the payment method script handle as a script dependency. |
| enqueue_block_editor_assets | Queue assets for rendering chunks in the editor context. |
| wc_order_statuses | Register a custom order status for orders created through the API during checkout. |
| woocommerce_register_shop_order_post_statuses | Register custom order release status for orders created through API during checkout. |
| woocommerce_valid_order_statuses_for_payment | Append draft status to status list. |
| woocommerce_cleanup_draft_orders | Delete draft orders that are too old. |
Minimum WordPress requirements
This version retains the minimum WordPress version 5.2 introduced in 4.2. Remember, you can read all the information about the new WordPress support policy in detail in the developer blog post .
How is WooCommerce 4.3 tested?
In the past few releases, we have been working hard to iterate our testing procedures, and we are very satisfied with the level of stability achieved by such meticulous testing.
- We have decided to continue using external agents. They manually tested our products on various browsers and operating systems, and it turned out to be effective in finding bugs before release.
- In order to reduce the feedback loop during WooCommerce Core's launch, we have begun to transfer some extensive tests internally.
- Changes in monthly circulation will greatly reduce the scope of testing, thereby making the circulation smaller and more stable.
Thank you all contributors
Finally, thank you very much to everyone in the community who has supported other users or just contributed to spreading words through problem reports, repairs , translations , and tests.
WP webmaster is a free resource website for WordPress beginners. The main purpose of this website is to provide high-quality WordPress themes and plugin reviews, tips, tricks and other WordPress resources for beginners to improve their website. Search for "WP Webmaster" to get more website construction and e-commerce, membership website construction resources.