WooCommerce 3.0.0 RC1

This was quite the week. A few days ago we announced the decision to reversion and release 2.7 as 3.0.0. This was due to finding a critical bug in the way the system handles timestamps, which wasn’t caught sooner, and requests from third-party extension developers for more testing time. At the same time we chose to adopt semantic versioning going forward to make releases clearer.

Today, the release candidate for WooCommerce 3.0.0 “Bionic Butterfly” is available!

Shipping a release candidate (RC) means we think we’re done but, with hundreds of thousands of stores and so many plugins and themes, it’s possible we’ve missed something. We hope to ship WooCommerce 3.0.0 on Tuesday, April 4th but we need your help to get there!

To test WooCommerce 3.0.0 RC1, you can use our WooCommerce Beta Tester plugin or you can download the release candidate here (zip).

Since 3.0.0 is now in release candidate stage, only bug fixes will be made. No other changes should take place.

Think you’ve found a bug? Please post in detail to Github.

Since the previous RC we’ve fixed a bunch of minor issues and one critical issue which may require a code change in your 2.7 compatible extensions.

1. The versioning and @since properties have been updated to 3.0.0.  Themes with 2.7.0 versioned template files may need to update those to 3.0.0 versions to prevent reports of outdated template files, and extensions may need to tweak version_compare statements.
2. This critical timezone/timestamp issue has been fixed.  The return type of all get_date_x type methods is now a DateTime object instead of an integer timestamp.

Aside from those changes, this RC is very much similar to the 2.7 RC from a few weeks back!

For more information about what’s new in 3.0.0, check out the Beta 1, beta 2, beta 3 blog posts. We also have some compatibility example posts and posts about our new features:

• Bookings extension compatibility example
• Deposits extension compatibility example
• More extension compatibility examples
• Improved logging system
• The new CLI
• The new gallery
• The new CRUD classes
• Adding support for WooCommerce new gallery feature to your theme

Developers, please test your plugins and themes against WooCommerce 3.0.0 as soon as possible. If you find compatibility problems, we never want to break things, so please be sure to post to Github so we can figure those out before the final release. You may also be interested in our known-issues wiki article here.

You’ll also find some new docs on things such as the CRUD in the WIKI here.

And if you’re a theme developer and want to enable the new gallery, see here.

Store owners, read this helpful guide on preparing for the update and if you see any deprecation notices after updating don’t be alarmed; read here.

Again, we’re hoping to launch the final version of 3.0.0 on April 4th 2017. Huge props to everyone who has sent feedback about this release so far. Much appreciated!