A couple days ago, the guys from WooThemes announced the release of an important new version of its wonderful plugin WooCommerce. This new version has the code name Handsome Hippo. They named this release Handsome Hippo because they wanted to dedicate it to making it easier to use.
This new version represents one of the major updates for WooCommerce in the latest months.
What’s New With WooCommerce?
If you are a store owner with WooCommerce installed, you will notice the following features:
- A more simplistic ‘flat’ design and updated email design
- The ability to remove products from the cart via the cart widget
- Classes / markup for responsive tables
- Moved the ‘Proceed to checkout’ button to a more appropriate location
- An ‘undo’ option when removing products from the cart
If you’re a developer working with WooCommerce, you should be aware of the following changes:
- Template debug mode will now remove all template overrides for template loading functions.
- If your theme or extension imports any of the WooCommerce .less files, now would be a good time to make the switch to sass.
- The order summary and payment section of the checkout have been decoupled making it possible for moving each component independently via theme/plugin modification.
- Migration from Chosen to Select2. Select2 is the more actively developed script and has been adopted by WordPress core which helps make WooCommerce that little bit more efficient.
- A new Geolocation class has been included and changed the way taxes are displayed to customers on the frontend.
- 2.3 includes a Webhooks UI which will allow users to create them via the settings page.
It’s inevitable that some sites/themes will be affected by these changes. If you’re a store owner running a custom theme, be sure to read the section on how to upgrade WooCommerce from the online documentation to make sure you’re prepared. You may even consider reaching out to your Wordpress theme developer directly to request an update or take advantage of your private Wordpress maintenance plan to have this update included without extra cost.
