WooCommerce 3.6 and 3.6.1 Updates

The latest WooCommerce version 3.6 brings some new features with it, the highlight are the new Product Blocks for the Gutenberg editor which have been available only as a feature plugin so far.

This update was released on April 17. WooCommerce 3.6 is a minor release and therefore compatible with sites running WooCommerce 3.0 or higher.

The New Features

Product Blocks

For store operators and developers, one of the biggest additions in WooCommerce 3.6 is the introduction of our new Product Blocks for the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg). If your site is running on WordPress 5.0 or higher you have following blocks available:

• Products by Category
• Best Selling Products
  
• Hand-picked Products
  
• Newest Products
  
• On Sale Products
  
• Top-Rated Products
  
• Products by Attribute
  
• Featured Product

Performance Improvements

The admin and the frontend page load times have been significantly improved. Here are some facts about this improvement:

• A 62% improvement in the load time when ordering and filtering products
• Reduced overall load time by bypassing inactive webhooks
• Reduced the load time for pages with category or product attribute lists
• Reduced load time of product pages with attributes

Additional Updates

Besides the Product Blocks and the performance improvements, WooCommerce improves the user experience for store operators by adding new features and fixing issues with existing functions of WooCommerce.

• The ability to increase/decrease stock options via the bulk edit form.
• Accessibility improvements on the shop order-by selector.
• When adding/editing/deleting items manually from orders, the corresponding product stock will be updated to reflect the event, and an order note will also log the action.
• Added suggestions for official WooCommerce extensions.
• Store attribute values as post_excerpt for variations to support easier searching for variations.
• Customer notes containing URLs now automatically converts to clickable links.
• Allow states in zones to be searched by country name.
• Added registration success notices to account pages.

Fixes

WooCommerce 3.6 contains also a lot of fixes and small enhancements.

• Use correct address for taxes when applying/removing coupons.
• Hide ratings on the shop page when reviews are disabled.
• Fix W3C validation of single product page quantity input.
• Give product variations a unique guid after creation.
• Deduct correct refunded amounts in calculated net daily sales export CSV.
• Country sorting for stores which use a language that uses a lot of accented characters, e.g. Spanish.
• Customer VAT exempt status now carries through to order when placed via checkout.
• Handle full refunds for taxes by code report.
• Option «Used for variations» should show only for variable products when saving attributes.
• Allow pa_ in product attribute slugs.
• Fix customer creation dates in API.
• Get widget instance setting defaults so it shows in customiser before save.
• PR state codes.
• Allow selecting states from the Country / State drop-down for your store address when you have the option enabled to sell to specific countries.
• Restrict the price filter widget to filtering the main product query.
• Default placeholder image resizing.
• HTML tags should be stripped from description in Structured Data of Product.
• For logged in customers, pull default address fields from customer object, not session object, to avoid incorrect mixes of data.
• Misc tax rounding improvements.
• Respect shop page subcategories setting when page/N/ is added to the URL.
• Check for decoded taxonomy name when unsetting product terms.
• If date paid is not set but payment complete status has passed, set it.
• Prevent webhooks for drafts, and correct create vs updated for manual orders.
• Ignore invalid default customer locations.
• The state select field was missing a placeholder.
• Fix state field rendering when customer address is not in a valid selling country.
• Correctly handle negative fees when using the REST API.
• Make sure local_pickup taxes do not hang around when local_pickup is not available for the selected location during checkout.
• Remove Plugin and Theme background installer hooks, cannot run as there are no events scheduled for it.
• Trigger zoom if moving cursor over image quickly in product gallery.
• PayPal: Add meta data, before changing order status.
• Make price filter widget tax aware when you have excl prices entered but show prices incl of tax.
• Loop attribute panels to disable options rather than look at values to prevent notices.
• When deleting zone methods, also remove setting options.
• Correctly show state fields after posting the edit address form.
• Validate coupon usage limit for manual orders correctly before order is saved.
• Make coupon code sanitization match post_title sanitization.
• Ensure WC_Helper sees plugin activation events via CLI.
• Setup wizard redirection improvements.
• Correctly show stock status for products when manually creating an order in the admin.
• After logging in update customer session ID.
• Narrow viewport css in setup wizard.
• Allow entering of date only ( no time ) when placing a singular product on sale.
• Download link URL in helper.
• Completed email wording update.
• REST API: Allow filtering by future status
• Update refund reason to make it clear process is manual.
• Hide stock status for variations when the parent is managing stock.
• Force variation product type in WC_Ajax::add_variation.
• WooCommerce writes current_theme_supports_woocommerce option on every regular page view.
• Update the rating request text in the footer to be friendlier for screen reader users.
• Null check variable before accessing its properties on checkout page.
• Recognize all input fields with ID for checkout fields.
• Avoid regenerating thumbnails on every page load.
• Changed ‹private› methods on WC_Breadcrumb class to ‹protected›.
• Jumping to top of page when dismissing store notice.

A complete list of all the changes can be found in the readme file.

WooCommerce 3.6.1

One day after the release of WooCommerce 3.6 a fix update was released because some users had issues on WPEngine hosting on logging in to wp-admin and add-to-cart URLs in 3.6.

• Remove calls to ‹header_register_callback› to prevent conflicts with some hosting providers and PHP versions.

Remember to create a backup in case of any issues with this update.