We simply kicked off a big effort, and I wish to put up about it right here since you’re going to see it occur within the open. For the subsequent 3 months, most of our product and engineering groups will focus completely on the WooCommerce core plugin, the software program on the middle of each Woo retailer.
After we began this push, the WooCommerce repository on GitHub had over 2,300 open points and 500 open pull requests. Some are bugs, some are enhancement concepts. Most got here immediately from retailers, builders, and businesses who took the time to write down up what they have been seeing.
That backlog is, in an actual sense, a to-do listing this group wrote for us. And we haven’t moved it ahead quick sufficient. We’re now re-reviewing each merchandise on it. Every problem will get a glance from a product particular person and will get a response, and is both:
- Added to a prioritized listing {that a} small cross-functional group owns and drives to closure, or
- Closed with a transparent cause and an open invitation to reopen it if we acquired the decision mistaken.
Why spend a complete quarter this manner? WooCommerce sits in the midst of every thing. Your retailer runs on it, your extensions hook into it, your theme renders content material from it. Time invested right here pays off throughout your entire platform, setting us as much as ship what comes subsequent sooner and with extra confidence. So we’re intentionally holding off on most main new initiatives till this work is completed. That being stated, work on the crucial areas of WooPayments and Woo AI will proceed in parallel. We’ll share the work on these releases individually.
There’s another thought guiding all of it: WooCommerce integrates deeply with WordPress; that’s our superpower. Each Woo retailer can be a full web site, with every thing that comes with it. We’re leaning into that so the 2 really feel like one coherent product relatively than neighbors, and we’re working intently with WordPress groups to drive enhancements throughout your entire mixed system.
Primarily based on what we’ve heard from clients and builders, the work is grouped into 4 areas
- Making Woo sooner and extra dependable. The inspiration has to really feel stable, and that features efficiency and launch high quality. Updating your retailer ought to be a non-event: you put in the WooCommerce replace, and you retain promoting. That’s the bar we’re holding ourselves to.
- Modernizing the builder/developer expertise. Woo ought to be simpler and extra predictable to construct on. We’re specializing in APIs, documentation, dev instruments, extensibility, backwards compatibility, and clear steerage as issues change.
- Enhancing the store-owner/admin expertise. We’re working by way of product administration, order administration, settings, and setup in WP Admin so these interactions really feel fast and coherent.
- Strengthening the checkout engine. The core commerce jobs have to be reliable: cart, checkout, funds, subscriptions, tax, transport, product knowledge, stock, orders, and accounts. These are the techniques your income flows by way of. That features making them work nicely wherever you promote, with higher assist for regional tax, transport, and fee constructions world wide.
In case you’ve filed a problem on WooCommerce: thanks, and also you’ll be listening to from us if it’s nonetheless open. If we shut one thing you assume we shouldn’t have, remark to assist us contemplate reopening it. Your suggestions is immediately shaping what we construct, and we wish to show that in public, problem by problem.
You possibly can watch the entire effort unfold on the WooCommerce GitHub repository, and people from the group shall be sharing progress alongside the way in which. If one thing in WooCommerce has been irking you for years — a bug, a workflow, a lacking hook — now is a superb time to file it or bump it.
WooCommerce was constructed by this group. Over the subsequent few months, your suggestions will speed up it much more.
Beau has been constructing web-scale techniques for over 25 years and has labored at Automattic for over 10 of these. He is helped construct WooCommerce, WordPress.com, Jetpack, and others, and is at the moment the Inventive Director and total Lead for WooCommerce.
