WooCommerce Release Monitoring
After the release, the release lead should continue to monitor the following for any bugs directly related to the latest version. Monitoring should continue for 3 days after a major release and 1 day for a point release.
If there are questions whether a specific issue is critical enough to warrant a new point release, please start a discussion in the #woo-core-releases Slack channel.
WordPress.org Forums
Check newly created threads on the WordPress.org Forums for any issues that appear to be caused by the latest update.
WooCommerce GitHub Repository Issues
Watch the Newest Created Issues and verify that none are critical.
Extension Fatal-Error Alerts
Every Woo-owned extension has a Grafana fatal-error alert on WP Cloud, backed by the internal Woo* Fatals on WP Cloud dashboard. Alerts post to the owning team's channel and to #woo-core-releases-notifications. Watch that channel during the monitoring window.
When an alert fires, open the linked dashboard panel to see how many sites are affected, then reply on the alert to ping the owning team - triage is theirs. If the fatal traces back to the release, treat it as a candidate critical issue (see below).
An old extension version can point to a compatibility issue, but it does not prove the release caused the fatal. Compare the affected WooCommerce and extension versions before calling it a non-regression.
Handling Critical Issues
If monitoring uncovers a bug that cannot wait for the next scheduled release, plan a point release. Before doing so, confirm that the issue:
- Impacts core store functionality (e.g., checkout, orders, taxes).
- Affects a significant number of sites or stems from a widely-used extension or theme.
- Lacks a reasonable workaround that merchants can apply themselves.
If these conditions are met, follow the Point Releases guide to create a tracking issue, prepare the fix, and ship the patch.