WordPress 5.0: What the new Block Editor means for WooCommerce

UPDATE: WordPress 5.0 has been released. Remember: it is important that you update to the latest version of WooCommerce before updating to WordPress 5.0
We recommend viewing our documentation on how to updatemaking a backup, updating extensions, and finally updating WooCommerce via WP Admin.

WordPress 5.0 introduces the new block editor to WordPress. Through a complete revamping and modernization of the WordPress content-editing experience, content will be created as a series of blocks in a brand new interface.

For WooCommerce store owners and developers, it’s the start of an exciting process that will make large parts of the admin interface easier-to-use, and more dynamic – including customization and management of posts and products.

The transition to block-based editing will take place incrementally, but here is what you can look out for:

New Block Editor

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The Gutenberg Editor in action

One of the strongest reasons to use WooCommerce over other eCommerce platforms is because you also get access to WordPress’ content capabilities. You’re able to write and publish all sorts of promotional content and blog posts for your shop in the same place you manage your products and orders. This is a powerful integration, and it will only be improved by the block editor.

With it, you can create highly-customized landing pages, blog posts, and articles with full control over each individual section, with many different types of sections available.

With thousands of developers in the WordPress plugin ecosystem, it is only a matter of time before all sorts of useful new blocks are available for your content: from blocks for newsletter signups and calls-to-action, to blocks for image galleries and testimonials, to the WooCommerce-specific blocks we’re developing.

WooCommerce Blocks

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WooCommerce’s initial block for the WordPress 5.0 launch is the Products Block. Using this block, you can feature your products in posts and pages. Products can be filtered and sorted by all sorts of criteria, and you can also adjust display features like the number of rows or columns.

It’s a much more powerful, visual, and intuitive way of featuring products in content compared to previous solutions such as shortcodes or toolbar buttons in the classic TinyMCE editor.

The Products Block is currently a feature plugin while we refine and polish the user experience to make it as natural and intuitive to use as possible. Once the experience is dialled-in, we will be merging it into the WooCommerce core plugin, where it will be available to all WooCommerce stores.

Read more about the Products Block here – or if you’d like to start using it now: get it here.

Storefront

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Storefront 2.4 and higher supports all of the new blocks introduced in WordPress 5.0

We’ve been hard at work getting our Storefront theme ready for WordPress 5.0. The block editor introduces a lot of new blocks and features of which themes can take advantage. Some of these include full-width cover images, parallax images with text overlay, all sorts of different embedded content blocks, and column support for up to six columns.

Storefront 2.4 and higher supports all of the new blocks introduced in WP 5.0, and is available for download now.

Twenty Nineteen Theme

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WordPress 5.0 introduces a new default theme: Twenty Nineteen

In addition to the new editor, WordPress 5.0 introduces a new default theme: Twenty Nineteen. This theme is designed from the ground up to be super-flexible, taking full advantage of the block editor.

WooCommerce 3.5.2 and higher supports Twenty Nineteen, and you can use this new theme as the base for all sorts of different shops.

Block Editor Phase Two and WooCommerce

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Design prototype showing how editing a product might look in the future.

The block editor’s next phase will introduce the concept of templates. The specific implementation of how templates will function is still in the works, but this will enable WooCommerce to modernize and improve the product editing experience even further.

Instead of a bunch of meta boxes scattered about the product admin interface, you could soon be editing products using a visual editor, where you can see and customize in great detail how the product will appear in the shop.

We Look Forward To WordPress 5.0 and Beyond

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We’re looking forward to all that WordPress 5.0 will bring to eCommerce on WordPress in the immediate and longer term.

Stay tuned throughout 2019 for more info about phase two, and what it means for WooCommerce.

Refresh your store with Storefront - a theme built by WooCommerce for WooCommerce
Claudiu Lodromanean Avatar

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80 comments

  1. This is Really a Great Combination. I love this New Block Editor. I’m happy to work with Woocommerce. It helped me to decrease a lot of work for E-commerce people. That is why am loving woocommerce more and more, they are not just a business but a family which helps there customers or rather family grow with this useful tips.

    Run 3
    December 1, 2018
    • Thanks for sharing this. GLad to hear you’re excited about the new editor 🙂

      Marina Pape
      December 3, 2018
  2. That’s really great and hope that that everything will be rolled out soon.

    Jyoti Raghuvanshi
    December 1, 2018
  3. Great Combination. will be waiting for this update 🙂

    Aayush
    December 2, 2018
  4. Waiting for this update and I hope you can do it well.

    Kili
    December 2, 2018
  5. The cover image thing looks great. It will be really helpful to quickly add images and then overlay the text but any news on the release date?

    Kevin Steve
    December 2, 2018
  6. Thanks for the nice write-up. I translated it into German on our blog in case anyone prefers to read that in German 😬 https://www.openstream.ch/blog/woo-tenberg/

    Nick Weisser
    December 2, 2018
  7. I am really excited to see this.

    Prosperi Architecture
    December 4, 2018
  8. I am just getting ready to begin loading products and getting my online store up and running. Am concerned about the impact of the changes in WordPress on my current theme (Divi) and Woo Commerce set up, which does not use Storefront.

    Barbara Escher
    December 6, 2018
  9. Ya falta muy poco, espero que supere mis espectativas..!
    No he vista nada ni los Beta para que todo sea sorpresa paa mi

    lpestudiocreativo1
    December 6, 2018
  10. Am I the only one in here who thinks it’s a bad idea and the new editor sucks?! I already started smelling Wix. Damn!

    Iftekhar
    December 6, 2018
    • No you are not alone. Boy does the new editor suck! I enabled Classic Editor plugin so that I can work normal.

      tswidler
      December 13, 2018
    • No. You are not alone…

      Kelly
      December 18, 2018
    • This is THE FUCKING WORST INTERFACE EVER! FUCK YOU WORDPRESS, YOU JUST RUINED MY 30 WEBSITES!

      Yogi Akal
      December 20, 2018
  11. Seems all my sites have a woocommerce bug on the edit order screen
    white screen,
    every site that I have installed WP 5.0 and classic editor plugin

    Erik Dattwyler
    December 6, 2018
    • same here

      mlangis9
      December 7, 2018
    • same here

      And I I can’t integrate my store as the plugin warns

      atoalizando
      December 9, 2018
  12. I wish WooCommerce could be a standalone ecommerce solution. I hate feeling like at some point in 2021 that I will be forced to use Gutenberg, whether I like it or not.

    Brian G
    December 7, 2018
  13. I had the same white screen. Install the Classic Editor plugin to fix the issue. The problem is that the blocks will be gone and the point of having this work well with Woocommerce is negated.

    I had to go with the classic editor so that I can post. 🙂

    Ken Chiarella
    December 7, 2018
  14. I am recently update into 5.0 but it is not to good.

    Factoring
    December 7, 2018
  15. This is disaster.. specially when you use some plugins or extensions.. good luck! I’m staying on WP v4.9.8 never update until they remove GB from the core.. or just switch to another perhaps.. huehue

    prsetiadi
    December 7, 2018
    • Agree! Terrible GB!

      I hate Gutenberg, not the one who invented the print, but this editor who is worse than WIX

      atoalizando
      December 9, 2018
  16. Hi Claudia,

    It is very bad feature of wordpress 5.0 and I hate it.

    تالار عروسی
    December 7, 2018
  17. so the whole store just retruns 500 server error. hope this update fixes it. noone told me about this

    Granjacia
    December 7, 2018
  18. Really cool for my website. <3

    Matteo
    December 7, 2018
  19. Great Update, I hope It could be revolutionary as I think! I’m going to update my website!

    Marco
    December 7, 2018
  20. A programmer set up my Websites in WordPress and Woo Commerce and I am unfamiliar with either. He has moved and I can not work either program in the time frame I need, immediately for my new Website for the Christmas market. Can anyone help me?

    Anna Magdelena Harding
    December 8, 2018
    • In which way can we help you?

      MegaChrono
      December 19, 2018
    • Check out https://rm1.net we have a lot of developers who can help you.

      chris swainhart
      December 19, 2018
    • what’s your problem ?

      Pablo
      December 21, 2018
  21. I am totally disappointed with this.

    Forex Broker
    December 8, 2018
  22. Looks awesome! 🙂

    fredsjo
    December 9, 2018
  23. I just updated WordPress to 5.0 as I didn’t see that I had to update the Woocommerce first. Now Woocommerce won’t update. Any suggestions

    Anthea Forsdike
    December 9, 2018
  24. What if you already have word press 5.0 installed

    leonardbianconi
    December 10, 2018
    • Same question. I have a shop that’s WP5.0, but WC not yet updated. What now?

      Ral
      December 19, 2018
    • Hi leonardbianconi, thanks for commenting here.

      I answered this question a little further down in this thread – hope this helps.

      Gareth Allison
      December 19, 2018
  25. I updated to WordPress 5.0 now my Woocommerce backend is text instead of the regular dashboard. I ran the Woocommerce updater afterwards since I didn’t notice it needed update. Now what? How do I get the regular dashboard back?

    Mary Rae
    December 10, 2018
    • i had to downgrade my wordpress back to 4.8
      5.0 is a disaster

      cyprian
      December 13, 2018
  26. What happends if you don’t update WooCommerce before you update WordPress to 5.0

    Bec
    December 12, 2018
  27. If I am installing a new WordPress site and don’t have WooCommerce at all yet, is it possible to upgrade to WordPress 5.0 first and then install WooCommerce? Would that work fine?

    Piyush
    December 12, 2018
    • Yes, no problem.

      Jos
      December 12, 2018
  28. The wordpress 5.0 has been released and so far, even up until now, I still find the block editor very confusing. The best I could come up with was this https://electrictoothbrushes.org (dont mean to spam) and now I am considering going back to the classic editor

    Pansy D Huffman
    December 13, 2018
  29. wordpress 5.0 is very complicating
    I had to downgrade back to 4.8

    cyprian
    December 13, 2018
  30. Interesting, Do not use yet but today i try..

    vina
    December 14, 2018
  31. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Who thought it would be a good idea to issue a major release just before Christmas this release has caused our WooCommerce site problems with products that have variable choices. The symptoms are you try and add an optional item and find you are then unable to select it when clicking on Add to basket. We have found that if you make the choice and then refresh the page before clicking the Add to basket button it works?

    majordoit
    December 14, 2018
  32. If can I upload the description in bulk like in the demo theme?

    nunah
    December 17, 2018
  33. It’s like a completely new system. Very hard to learn. I installed the Classic Editor plugin.

    Kinetichen Klyuch
    December 18, 2018
  34. Visual editors are being used everywhere before this launch, its not new…visual composer, elementor, all of them very developed and working fine .. lot of mess to include this functionality now… and compatibility issues ..

    julio
    December 18, 2018
  35. Has been asked a few times already, no answer yet:

    “it is important that you update to the latest version of WooCommerce before updating to WordPress 5.0”

    Why? What happens when you do it the wrong way round? How to fix it?

    wdburgdorf
    December 19, 2018
    • Hi there, wdburgdorf – thanks for your comment.

      What happens when you do it the wrong way round? How to fix it?

      That’s a good question.

      When our team was testing WordPress 5.0 with previous versions of WooCommerce (in this case, 3.4.7), they found that the product tags and product categories metaboxes were missing.

      The content in the product data metabox would also disappear when changing product type, proving tricky to bring back.

      Additionally, they noticed product short description and the reviews metaboxes went missing as well.

      Their recommendation here was to:

      • Update to WooCommerce 3.5.1
      • Manually add the snippet found at this link to the functions.php page in your child theme to disable the block editor for products only.

      If absolutely necessary, you could also then install the Classic Editor plugin which disables the block editor for all post types.

      Hope this helps. 🙂

      If you do have any more questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our friendly support team by submitting a ticket.

      Thanks!

      Gareth Allison
      December 19, 2018
  36. I am looking forward to working with GB, but am waiting for all the plugins used and the theme to be compatibel.

    Ewald van der Hoop
    December 19, 2018
  37. I really like articles and stories in WordPress

    Jadwal Liga Champions
    December 19, 2018
  38. hi

    i just want to add woocommerce to my website and use shopping cart, how do i do it, i want to sell items on line

    sellomasehela
    December 19, 2018
  39. Can you guys please start dating your blog posts? When you talk about new features and features that are in progress, it’s really helpful to know when the post was actually written so we know what stage everything was at at the time of writing and how far past that stage we might be. Yes the “updates” are somewhat helpful but not that helpful without specific dates.

    Rose
    December 19, 2018
  40. Um…yeah. What a crock of ****.

    Your cute little plugin completely ignores all of the built-in WP Block functionality and styling—rendering it essentially useless unless we want to bloat up our CSS with redundant styling that specifically addresses your stupid class names. You guys know better! All you had to do was match the standard block classes, add a token ‘woo’ class so it can be targeted specifically where necessary, and it would have automatically inherited all of the Gutenberg Goodness (for which you’re clearly unworthy). You do know how CASCADING style sheets work, right?

    If that wasn’t enough, come to find that your answer to Gutenberg compatibility—arguably the best thing to happen to WordPress since…WordPress—is to ripoff the Classic Editor plugin and completely disable ALL Gutenberg functionality on products? Are you ******* kidding me?

    Just when I was starting to think Woo would get their act together, what a disappointment.

    P.S. I echo Rose’s request that you put the dates back in your templates. I know you can’t comprehend why anyone would possibly want to know when an article was published, but the rest of us will find it very helpful.

    Chazz Layne
    December 20, 2018
  41. Hi

    The website update to 5.02

    And in woocomnerce orders

    All orders is blank and tab called mine is blank some if the others still appears to be there , I think a technical problem needing updating fast

    I have 2 others with same issue all ready

    Daniel Ellis
    December 20, 2018
    • Got the same Problem! Update 5.02 broke the Orders All Tab. All other tabs work and show orders, but the all tab is completly blank.

      Andi
      December 20, 2018
    • Same issue. Someone please tell me this is being fixed!

      Meagan
      December 20, 2018
    • Same issue, I found it also affects searching for orders 🙁

      bighippo9990
      December 20, 2018
  42. thanking for your informative blogs..one thing i need for my woo-commerce website that is ,, i want to generate reference link after user registration on my website.. like when he share his reference link with his circle then he will get some credit from my website when his friends register using his referral link of my website….

    sardar aly
    December 20, 2018
  43. It’s very long I don’t understand

    Jadwal Liga Champions
    December 20, 2018
  44. Same Issue, Someone please sort out this issue.

    jackmejohn
    December 20, 2018
  45. Not sure which version update brought about this change, but I notice after payment is complete (paypal) and it redirects you to confirmation page – the confirmation page no longer displays Purchase Note or contains the download link for virtual product. Customer has to wait until email is received to see this information.

    Is this a known issue and are there plans to fix it back? Not sure how to fix so Purchase Note and virtual product link displays on Confirmation page after payment… any suggestions??? Thanks

    Running latest WooCommerce 3.5.3 with WP 5.0.2.

    Krista
    December 21, 2018
  46. I didn’t like WordPress’s new editor the old one was simple and easy to use but anyways I’ve disabled it using a plugin.

    John DHax
    December 22, 2018
  47. great read, thanks a lot for posting

    mark
    December 22, 2018
  48. I am new there please help me

    Ajab khan
    December 22, 2018
  49. Hi there
    Nice update regarding WP latest version. I have a question in my mind that if i upgrade to new version and i am using some other editing plugin will it give any issue to my site?

    Jennifer K.

    Jennifer K.
    December 25, 2018
  50. The new block editor is good, but why the front end editors like wp-bakery not work with it? i had to switch back to classic editor because of this problem..

    Eduxpert
    December 26, 2018
  51. Hello, Claudiu;

    Well done. Something you said caught my attention: “We’ve been hard at work getting our Storefront theme ready for WordPress 5.0.”

    That shows commitment and, more importantly, that WooCommerce is fully alive. Well done, once again.

    Compliment of the season,
    Emmanuel Obarhua

    Emmanuel Obarhua
    December 26, 2018
  52. Nice update regarding WP latest version. I really like articles and stories in WordPress
    Thank You .

    Sourov
    December 26, 2018
  53. Updating to WordPress 5.0 completely took down our PayPal Checkout Gateway. We restored the site before update and now functioning normally again. Anyone else experience this?

    Robb Fahrion
    December 27, 2018
  54. I’ve used WordPress for many years now and it works great overall. Personally, I dont like the new editor. I find Gutenberg incredibly confusing and extremely difficult.

    Jack Gillman
    December 27, 2018
  55. Hi I saw an Add on Facebook for wireless headphones. I purchased a set and paid for it. I received an email of confirmation of payment from Borocchi, at the bottom of the email it has your company name, it says power by WooCommerce. It’s has been almost 2 weeks and have not received anything. I’ve tried to contact them by email and messenger to not avail.
    Not sure if you can help me find out if Borocchi is a legit place or the advertising was a scam.
    I appreciate any help

    Sandra Smith
    December 27, 2018
  56. I am new to WordPress, so I am learning, however article was very good.

    Below blog shows list of Free Backlink Websites I need to convert it into Word Press :

    Free Backlink Website

    freebacklinkwebsite
    December 27, 2018
  57. After wordpress is upgraded to 5.02, woocomnerce is version 3.5.3, and the batch import function cannot be used. “Sorry, this file type is not supported for security reasons.” How can I solve this problem?

    john
    December 28, 2018

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