Hello everyone,
With WooCommerce 4.0 now comfortably behind us, it’s time to begin our next release cycle.
As of today, WooCommerce 4.1 is available for beta testing. You can either download it directly from WordPress.org or install our WooCommerce Beta Tester Plugin.
What’s new in 4.1?
The primary focus of this minor release is stability and performance. If you’d like to dig into the details, take a moment to review the changelog for a more granular breakdown of everything included. In addition, keep an eye out for another blog post soon containing developers notes for this release.
Here’s a broad overview of what’s new.
New Setup Wizard
With this release we’ve finished our roll-out of the new setup wizard. All new shops will be directed through this new setup flow, so if you haven’t checked it out yet, you should!
Database Update
This release requires a database update, as we’ve added a new table to the WooCommerce database structure. This table is critical to processing orders and checkout and is installed automatically after updating.
NOTE: This change has been removed from the 4.1 release, in the interest of adding resiliency around these kinds of changes.
Nudge for WordPress Version
Note that there is no change in the minimum requirements for this version.
However, sites not currently running on WordPress 5.2 will see a notification to upgrade to the latest and greatest. Why?
In WooCommerce 4.2, the next release, we are scheduled to update the minimum version of WordPress to 5.2 (now 5.0) to keep up with changes in the WordPress ecosystem.
New Hooks and Functions
We’ve added several new hooks and functions in this release:
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
get_woocommerce_currency_symbols() | Returns an array of all registered currency symbols |
| Action | Triggered |
|---|---|
woocommerce_emogrifier | Before an email is run through emogrifier |
| Filter | Description |
|---|---|
woocommerce_can_restock_refunded_items | Prevents stock from being increased by refunds |
woocommerce_order_get_tax_location | Enables filtering of the location that an order should be taxed for |
woocommerce_product_upsells_products_heading | Allows for filtering of the heading text for product upsells |
Template File Changes
The following template file has been updated:
| File | Changes |
|---|---|
emails/admin-cancelled-order.php | Wording of this notice |
Release Schedule
Here are our targets for the 4.1 release cycle:
| Version | Release |
|---|---|
| Beta | April 7th |
| Release Candidate | April 21st |
| 4.1 Release | May 5th |
Testing
If you’d like to dive in and help test this new release, our handy WooCommerce Beta Tester plugin allows you to switch between beta versions and release candidates.
A set of testing instructions has been published on our Wiki page in GitHub. We’ve also posted a helpful writeup on beta testing to help get you started.
If you discover any bugs during the testing process, please let us know by logging a report in GitHub.
Thanks to all of our testers and contributors!
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