WooCommerce 9.4 was released on November 11, 2024. What’s new this time? How to update WooCommerce, and how does Seravo handle updates? In this article, we answer these questions and go through the most interesting picks straight from the WooCommerce changelog.
Updates to WooCommerce Blocks
In WordPress, blocks are pieces of content that are used to build the layout and content on your website. When you install WooCommerce in WordPress, you’ll have access to new types of blocks to showcase your products, which makes it easy to turn your site into a full-fledged online store.
Currently, the Product Collection block can be used to showcase sections of products according to your needs. For example, you can modify it to present products with the best reviews, discounted, newest or the most sold products.
From WooCommerce 9.4 onwards, if there are no products to display in the Product Collection block, its contents will be hidden from visitors until products matching the criteria are added.
In addition, the customizability of the Express Checkout buttons has also been improved in the Cart and Checkout blocks. While only some types of buttons can be customized for now, the developers of WooCommerce have promised to extend these options to other payment methods in the future.
Upcoming Updates to WooCommerce
WooCommerce 9.4 includes new JavaScript events, as in the future many traditional blocks will be replaced with the newer Product Collection block type. If you have a WooCommerce store, we recommend taking a look at the planned changes to these blocks on WooCommerce’s blog listing the blocks.
In addition, a there’s a new feature coming up that’ll make it easier to manage different brands within a WooCommerce store. The feature is not yet available for production use in WooCommerce 9.4, but can be tested in a staging environment, for example. If you end up trying it out, WooCommerce developers are collecting feedback about the feature on GitHub!
More Information on WooCommerce 9.4
If you wish to learn more about the updates in this post, we recommend checking out the original post on the official WooCommerce blog.
Why Choose WooCommerce?
What is WooCommerce? It’s a plugin for WordPress sites, currently competing with Shopify about the status of the world’s most popular ecommerce platform. Whereas Shopify is a paid service, WooCommerce is based on open source and is free to use, as long as you have a WordPress site and hosting ready.
There are other opportunities for creating and managing an online store in WordPress, even if WooCommerce is the most popular ecommerce plugin for it. If you’re running a webshop in Shopify, Magento or BigCommerce, for example, you can integrate these platforms with WordPress to extend the capabilities of your chosen platform.
Why should you choose WooCommerce, though? With paid services, you’re always bound to one platform with its features. With WordPress and WooCommerce, you can choose the hosting service according to your needs and preferences more freely, as well as extend the features of your site with countless open source plugins and their extensions.
Release Dates for New WooCommerce Versions
WooCommerce versions are released approximately each month, and so the next version (WooCommerce 9.5) is scheduled for release on December 16, 2024. In this way, the releases won’t coincide with the most important sales dates for online shops at the end of the year.
Seravo Updates Your WooCommerce
If your site is hosted at Seravo’s premium hosting for WordPress, we’ll keep your WooCommerce updated in a tested manner. Prior to running the updates on your site, we’ll test them in a separate test environment to ensure the update won’t break your site. We always prioritize your site’s uptime, so that there’s no interruption on your site.
You can also update WooCommerce manually. We recommend always testing them first and in a controlled manner. Before updating the live version of your site, you can test the update manually in a staging environment. If you’re Seravo’s customer, you can open a staging environment by getting in touch with us.
Before any updates – be they automatic or manual – make sure that your site has been backed up! At Seravo, each site is backed up automatically once per day, including the site’s files and the database. With this full snapshot, each site can be restored from the backup quickly and reliably, should a critical error occur while running an update. You can restore your site with the help of our instructions, or ask our customer service do it for you – restoring your site from a backup at Seravo always happens at free of charge.