so i created a temporary fix for this. to start off, i tested a clean install of wordpress with only woocommerce and aftership enabled as plugins. aftership.com was getting updates of tracking #’s i entered from my wordpress install too. i think the notes for aftership indicate it hasn’t been tested w/the most current version of wordpress or woocommerce so i’m hoping that’s all it is and they’ll update things soon.
to fix things i did a huge ‘no no’ by editing the aftership plugin itself. why is doing this a bad idea? for starters anytime the aftership plugin updates it’ll wipe out the modification i created. this was a last resort and temporary solution.
step 1, open up /wp-content/plugins/aftership-woocommerce-tracking/aftership.php
step 2, go to line 456 where you should see echo $track_message_1 . $values['aftership_tracking_provider_name'] . '<br/>' . $track_message_2 . $values['aftership_tracking_number'] . $required_fields_msg;
step 3, change that to: echo $track_message_1 . $values['aftership_tracking_provider_name'] . '<br/>' . $track_message_2 . '<a href="//track.aftership.com/' . strtolower($values['aftership_tracking_provider_name']) . '/' . $values['aftership_tracking_number'] . '" title="Track Order" target="_blank">' . $values['aftership_tracking_number'] . '</a>' . $required_fields_msg;
This was tested on an order without a tracking # and no errors were thrown.