WooCommerce 2.5: Dashing Dolphin means speed

Written by Patrick on January 18, 2016 Blog, News, Product News.

TL;DR: WooCommerce version 2.5 is here – update via your WordPress Dashboard. To make the process as smooth as possible, make a backup, update your extensions, view our update guide, and then update WooCommerce.

If you’re a developer looking for technical details, read the release post on the Develop WooCommerce blog here.

It’s a new year and we have a new version of WooCommerce for you. The last version of WooCommerce focused on the onboarding experience to help store owners get up and running quickly.

This latest version focuses on getting the store itself to run quickly, and is aptly named Dashing Dolphin.

Let’s take a closer look at WooCommerce 2.5.

Putting the “dash” in Dashing Dolphin

We made several changes under the hood that improve the speed of your store.

First, we improved how WooCommerce knows who is on the site and what they have in the cart, known as a session handler. In the past, this was done with the wp_options table. This is fine for smaller stores, but it can be a bit slow for stores with thousands of concurrent users and so we overhauled the way we store temporary data. We’re now storing less temporary data in the database, which speeds up every page load.

Several pages in the backend were improved, such as the tax settings screen. For store owners that collect taxes in a lot of regions, this screen will both save and load much faster.

Several pages, including this one, were sped up.
Several pages, including this one, were sped up.

We improved the layout of the email settings page as well. It’s now easier to navigate and edit your emails to customers (for example, transactional emails).

Version 2.5
Version 2.5 makes it easier to access, configure, and edit your emails to customers, like the new order and password reset emails.

With so many changes since the last update, we wanted to make sure they’re at 100%. So we’ve been running 2.5 ourselves on WooThemes.com, and it’s much faster. We’re confident it will help everyone else as well. 🙂

It’s good to REST after all that dashing!

With this release, we’ve improved our REST API yet again.

The REST API allows your WooCommerce store to talk with other services and share more information than before. You can now modify or read data around product tags, product categories, shipping classes and taxes.

To learn more about the REST API for WooCommerce, check out the full documentation here.

Good dolphins get presents

We couldn’t put out a release without at least one new feature in it, so we added a tool for developers. We added support for WP-CLI, which lets you control your site via the command line.

WP-CLI
WP-CLI allows you to update your site via command line. Here’s a little preview.

So if you want to update your WooCommerce site and jam out like Hugh Jackman in Swordfish… now you can.

More details on WP CLI, and all of these features, are on the dev blog.

Found a bug? Need some help?

If you encounter any unusual behavior while upgrading to Dashing Dolphin, our Ninjas are standing by as always to lend a hand. We’ve brought on quite a few new support team members over the last few weeks, as promised, and we’re keeping an eye out today for any 2.5-related tickets.

Here’s how to get in touch with us about 2.5, depending on what you need:

Please note that we are not able to diagnose or solve potential issues via blog comments. The fastest way to get in touch with us is via one of the methods listed above. But we are always happy to read your feedback on WooCommerce in the comments!

Upgrade to 2.5

That’s it for what’s new in WooCommerce 2.5. When you’re ready to update, do so from your WordPress Dashboard.

Remember: Always make a backup of your store and update your WooCommerce extensions prior to updating WooCommerce itself. You can also read our update guide to ensure a smooth transition from previous versions.

What do you think of Dashing Dolphin? Let us know in the comments!

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21 Responses

  1. Chris Andrew
    January 19, 2016 at 5:46 pm #

    Awesome Update!
    i really like woocommercer and also managing my client website
    Keep rocking

    • Nicole Kohler
      January 19, 2016 at 5:48 pm #

      Thanks Chris!

  2. andrei
    January 21, 2016 at 5:59 pm #

    Hello, after i upgraded to the new woocommerce 2.5, when a new user tries to sign up, ‘very weak’ appears and which ever password i put, doesn’t come trough.

    any ideeas?

    Thanks

    • andrei
      January 21, 2016 at 6:28 pm #

      ps. i’ve changed /myaccount/form-login.php to a older version, not it works.

      • andrei
        January 21, 2016 at 6:29 pm #

        now*

      • Nicole Kohler
        January 22, 2016 at 3:53 pm #

        Hi Andrei, 2.5 added password security indication so if your users truly are picking weak passwords then that’s why the notification is showing up. 🙂 That said, if this is coming up consistently even when stronger, unique, many character passwords are generated, or the password isn’t being stored (I’m uncertain if that’s what you were saying in your comment or not, apologies!) then please do open a ticket with us via the link in the post above ASAP. We are monitoring for 2.5-related tickets and will look into this right away.

        • Cecily Wiggins
          February 3, 2016 at 11:23 pm #

          We use an external password that changes frequently which allows us to use shorter passwords for our subscribers but now they are forced to make a complex password. Is there a way to disable this security, it will literally cause us to change the way we approach busines.

          • Nicole Kohler
            February 4, 2016 at 5:04 pm #

            Hi Cecily, please open a ticket with us if you haven’t already and our Ninjas can have a look and let you know if that’s possible. We might have a workaround for you or can advise you as to where to start if you choose to customize the code.

  3. Gloopy
    January 21, 2016 at 6:32 pm #

    Amazing update guys, keep up the good work 😉

  4. Scott
    January 21, 2016 at 7:10 pm #

    Ran the update, now any time I try to add a product to the cart it refuses, saying “Please choose product options” . Help?

    • Scott
      January 21, 2016 at 7:32 pm #

      Also isn’t updating to the correct variation image when options are changed.

      • Scott
        January 21, 2016 at 7:38 pm #

        Reverted to yesterday’s backup and all works correctly (feels a lot faster too). I’ll check here for updates, but something is not working right for me on this version.

    • Nicole Kohler
      January 22, 2016 at 3:55 pm #

      Hi Scott, sorry to hear you are running into trouble! Best way to sort this out would be to open a ticket with us as mentioned in the post above (if you haven’t already). Our Ninjas can absolutely look into this and sort out whether or not it is a bug or conflict with a theme, etc.

  5. EagleRose
    January 21, 2016 at 7:33 pm #

    I like what I am seeing in the new version 2.5, but the search function in the Orders seems to be broke now.

    • Nicole Kohler
      January 22, 2016 at 3:57 pm #

      Hi there EagleRose, are searches not completing for you at all? Does this happen at all times or just occasionally?

      Have you by chance opened a ticket with us about this issue? If not, that is absolutely the way to go so we can investigate for potential bugs or conflicts and figure out just what is going on. A bit difficult to diagnose from comments here unfortunately 🙂

  6. Helen Burbage
    January 21, 2016 at 8:33 pm #

    This is really good news as far as the speed aspect is concerned. Will be interesting to run some before and after tests on the stores we manage. The speed of WooCommerce for larger sites is something which often comes up in reviews, so with some good configuration and hosting hopefully this update will go some way in putting that criticism to bed.
    Thanks

  7. shlomy cohen
    January 21, 2016 at 10:58 pm #

    Hebrew translation files of date ????

  8. lori Newby
    January 22, 2016 at 12:53 am #

    when adding a product there is no longer a place for me to put the price or the shipping??

  9. Seamus
    January 23, 2016 at 6:56 am #

    Loading new products and file pictures is a nightmare. The whole structure has changed and the site crashes when you upload a picture. What have you done?

    • Nicole Kohler
      January 25, 2016 at 6:58 pm #

      Hey Seamus, have you already opened a ticket with us by chance? We’d absolutely like to look into this and see what’s happening.

  10. mrkeroppi
    January 25, 2016 at 11:04 pm #

    Anyone else having issues with products embedded via shortcode after the update? Seems like all my products are missing the gravity form add-on section of the product when using shortcode, but they’re fine on the actual individual product page. I know not everyone is using this plugin, however because info is in short supply and support seems pretty backed-up, I figured I’d give this thread a shot. additional Info: turned off all other plugins and ran default theme. Still didn’t work. firebug isn’t throwing any js errors.