2.6 zone compatibility

Hi Josh,

I have read somewhere that they will stop supporting non-zone shipping methods at some point, but I don’t think that would be in WC 2.7.. Do you have any source having the exact version?

I am still looking for a good way to integrate the plugin with the WC Zones, but as you may imagine this isn’t a easy transition that should be taken lightly.

I do keep my eyes open for any deprecations ??

(feel free to share your thoughts if you have any regarding the transition of conditions -> zones)

Thanks and Have a great day!
Jeroen Sormani

Hey Jeroen,

I just checked again and it looks like its just left open at the moment as “upcoming version” … lol thanks Woo ??

I’d say sooner would be better than later, the way things have been going I wouldn’t be surprised if its 2.7. Probably after they fix up the API endpoints I’m guessing.

Now that everything is zones focused I guess they’d want everyone on that as soon as possible.

Zones aren’t too bad actually from a dev point of view. It’s just a shift in mindset. I am kind of thinking of it like a fancy way to enable/disable the method (in the zone and the method is automatically enabled, out of the zone its disabled). So you no longer need an option to enable/disable the method.

There’s a few hooks for the UI, but not nearly enough IMHO. Hoping that improves soon.

In the meantime I think there’s no problem using a settings screen like you already have.

Just a thought but you could probably just register a single shipping method and let people select that for their zone. Then you might be able to remove the country and zip options from your plugin.

In a lot of our code we ended up using version_compare and leaving existing functionality in place while writing new code for 2.6. Bit bigger job but it makes it a little more backwards compatible.

I do feel for shipping plugin devs at the moment! They didn’t produce any kind of migration code samples or anything which I think is a bit slack. Would make life much easier for shipping extension devs to sort the mess out that we’ve been landed with. You’re definitely not the only one in the same boat!

Hope this might help a bit! I’d be happy to take a look at any beta versions if you like, just reach out josh at wholesalesuiteplugin dot com.

Cheers,
Josh

Hi Josh,

Thank you for your thoughts here.

Currently my two of my most concerns are:
1) about the UI within the new zones with the conditions and all.
2) the migration of existing rates with country conditions etc to the zones (a lot of considerations need to be taken here)

I don’t expect Woo deprecating this in 2.7, overall they’re quite considerate about backwards compat and don’t deprecate things in the next version (if I’m right somewhat in the 3~5 version range)

I’ll keep you in mind when I have a beta ??

Thanks and have a great day!
Jeroen

Hi Jeroen,

Yeah generally backwards compat is pretty good, but this is kind of a different change than usual, it’s a model change.

For the migration, I’d actually say don’t bother. WooCommerce themselves didn’t provide a way to migrate existing methods to zones, so it’s probably not worth doing an upgrade script (if it’s even possible!)

Main reason I’m so keen is we have a lot of our customers using your plugin and ours together, but now we’ve shifted our wholesale mapping features over to using zones they can’t anymore due to not being able to map outside of the new zones ?? Kind of an all or nothing type of deal on our end as supporting both zones and non-zoned shipping makes the calculations on the front end a bit crazy.

Cheers,
Josh

Hi Josh,

Hmm, good point.
Though not 100% ideal as I’ll be the one getting all the questions when Woo does deprecate the non-zone methods and people haven’t switched over manually ??

Cheers,
Jeroen

Is this future Non-Zone compatability still an issue with the latest version?

Hi Andy,

The plugin hasn’t changed over to the WC Zones feature yet, but its still planned.
You can of course continue to use the plugin ??

Cheers,
Jeroen