Explore WooCommerce 8.6 and 8.6.1: New Product Details and Collection Blocks Enhance the Shopping Experience

The latest WooCommerce 8.6 version is finally released! This update was slightly delayed due to some issues with order tracking that WooCommerce officials discovered, but don't worry, WooCommerce officials have fixed them in this release. New features include a brand new way of displaying product details and six unique product collection layouts, as well as a brand new sales column specifically designed to help you do better marketing analytics.

For our developer friends, this update also brings some good news: WooCommerce has officially improved its logging system to notify you in advance of some old API changes, simplified the handling of customer history, and fixed four minor issues in the 8.6.1 update.

Despite minor delays due to fixing order attribution issues, WooCommerce 8.6 was finally released with new features and fixes, with 365 updates completed by 73 enthusiastic contributors. This is a feature-rich update for merchants and developers to take your online store operations to the next level!

Key Features

New block styles for product detail blocks

WooCommerce version 8.6 brings new changes to the 'Product Details' block with a new feature called 'Styles', which has two optional design styles: 'Classic ' and 'Minimalist'. If you're a new installer, the 'Minimalist' style will be set for you by default, which will make your pages look fresher. However, if you're used to the old design or your website style has been specifically customized, don't worry, the 'Classic' style is still available to make sure that your website can seamlessly match the past style.

Product line block gets six new layouts

WooCommerce version 8.6 is a great news for merchants and marketers: there are now six new layouts for the Product Collection section! You can easily choose to display the latest products, customer reviews, hot products, special offers, selected favorites, or the entire product catalog. This makes your online store more flexible and helps customers find what they are looking for, thus increasing sales and customer satisfaction.

Now, WooCommerce 8.6 allows you to flexibly mix and match these new layouts on the same page to make your online store more in line with your own style and needs. For example, you can place an area showcasing your new spring products on top of your winter sale items, immediately followed by your entire product catalog. This setup allows customers to browse in a one-stop shop, transitioning from sale items to new products and back again, making for a more coherent and interesting shopping experience.

Add a sales bar to the marketing page

For merchants who utilize WooCommerce to monitor and manage their campaigns, such as Google AdWords, there's good news: a new section has been added to the Sales Report to help you quickly see the results of different campaigns. This means you can see at a glance which ads are generating sales and which ones need improvement, making your marketing decisions more precise and efficient.

Updates for Developers

Changes to the logging system

WooCommerce version 8.6 comes with a major update: the internal logging system is now much more robust! For merchants and developers, this means that you can now view and manage log files directly in your WordPress dashboard through a clean interface. This new log file browser lets you easily filter, sort, and work with log files.

Looking for specific information? No problem, the updated search feature allows you to quickly find the log entries you need. It's also possible to filter and sort these logs by line, and even link directly to specific content. Need to save a log? Download individual files with a single click, or package multiple logs into a single zip file for download. These improvements will greatly simplify the debugging and auditing process and make your work more efficient.

Older REST API Deletion Notifications

WooCommerce is being updated with plans to remove the old REST API in version 9.0 If you're still using an older version of the API, you'll now start receiving notifications about the upcoming changes. You have about four months from now to make adjustments and ensure your store has a smooth transition to the latest version. This is an important reminder to give you plenty of time to update and test your systems to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Simplified customer history calculation

The release of WooCommerce version 8.6 has been slightly delayed, mainly because of trying to solve some issues with order attribution tracking. In order to avoid server errors (those pesky 500 errors) encountered by large online stores due to complex customer history calculations, WooCommerce officials have simplified the process. This means that online stores can run smoother and are less likely to crash due to system overload.

8.6.1 Patch released to fix 4 issues

Earlier this week, we rolled out a major update to fix four issues in the WooCommerce 8.6 release. Because these issues were critical, we reacted quickly and released this patch. For more details, check out the WooCommerce developer blog.

New Development Documentation

Just recently, the WooCommerce team rolled out a set ofNew DocumentationWebsite. This set of documents takes a unique approach to putting all of the guides and instructions in a Markdown file on GitHub. of a large program so that everyone can find and participate in it.

This has two benefits: first, it encourages everyone to work together to improve the documentation so that everyone can contribute; and second, when developers make changes to the WooCommerce code, they can update the documentation so that the information stays up-to-date.

This is WooCommerce improvingdevelopersPart of the Usage Experience Program, this new documentation platform is a great place to start, showing how things can be made better.

Progress on the new product editor

Recently, WooCommerce made a small upgrade to the new product editor: now you can easily mark items as 'Featured Items' by simply clicking a little star icon next to the title. This new product editor is being improved over time to make merchants' interactions with WooCommerce even smoother when creating products.

If you haven't tried the new editor yet, now is a good time. Experience the new features coming soon and see what changes will be made to the WooCommerce interface to make managing your store easier and more intuitive.