WooCommerce is a problem

Hi @seanvdmn

I understand your concerns about the frequency of updates and the impact they might be having on your operations.

WooCommerce is committed to providing the best possible experience for our users, and regular updates are a part of this commitment. These updates often include important security enhancements, bug fixes, and new features designed to improve the functionality of your online store.

However, these changes can sometimes cause issues with existing installations. If you’re encountering specific issues after an update, please provide us with more details so we can assist you more effectively. Please feel free to attach a screenshot to your reply so we can understand the context better.

For screenshots, I recommend https://snipboard.io/ for easily sharing screenshots – please follow the instructions on the page, then paste the URL(s) in your reply.

Remember, we also have extensive documentation and a large community of developers who may have faced similar issues and found solutions.

In the meantime, you can run a conflict test to help you identify the cause of the issue. More info: https://woocommerce.com/document/how-to-test-for-conflicts/

Looking forward to resolving this issue for you.

The problem is with the ecosystem. WP Org and Woo need to raise the bar and expectation with 3rd party developers. So many features, especially around security but even basic functionality is left to the ecosystem. With the latest 9.x releases a plugin purchased through woo.com had been abandoned by the dev, but is still somehow available for sale on the site and it literally stopped working w 9.x… Who at Woo is paying attention to these things? Then the UPS live rate plugin wasn’t updated to support UPS oath, even though they said it would still work, so I had to find a replacement with that.

These resent updates I had to throw out 2 plugins and replace them with 5 replacements to get the same functionality incurring all new costs. Then everyone is turning the admin page into their own personal billboard and upsell tool, taking up menu space for even the smallest of solutions just to get attention and an advert in your face. I feel like the use case for WP and Woo is completely lost.

If I look at the pain around the slow painful switch to Gutenberg and blocks and developers trying to keep up and failing, Plus it’s still a clunky builder! The issues / lack of modern authentication and security being left out of core (I mean there isn’t even a thread dedicated to security on WP dev) and the breakneck speed of feature update, bug fixes the entire solution is losing its value.

I’m at the point of suggesting new clients use Shopify, because it’s less of a headache that dealing w/ WP/Woo

There really needs to be a version lock on Woo so that I can say my entire solution is valid for Woo 8.x and to avoid any auto updates beyond that until I can validate other plugins… Having to update, yet avoid updates to avoid issues and conflicts, but need security updates is an absolute mess.

Need to follow in MS footsteps and separate security, maintenance and patches from feature updates and support legacy versions to give plugin developers and devs the time to test new major versions before deploying.

Hi @seanvdmn,

Thank you for sharing your feedback. We appreciate the time you took to detail your concerns.

WP Org and Woo need to raise the bar and expectation with 3rd party developers. So many features, especially around security but even basic functionality is left to the ecosystem.

We understand your concern about the expectations for third-party developers. As an open-source platform, we encourage third-party developers to keep their plugins updated with the latest releases. Security within WooCommerce is a priority for us, and we regularly release fixes to address vulnerabilities. For example, we issued several important security updates in June, which you can read about in our Advisory post.

With the latest 9.x releases a plugin purchased through woo.com had been abandoned by the dev, but is still somehow available for sale on the site and it literally stopped working w 9.x… Who at Woo is paying attention to these things??

Can you please share which extension you’re referring to? Can you please share the same with us via WooCommerce.com support so they can we can help you further with this? You can contact us at WooCommerce.com > My Account > Support. Please include a link to this forum thread, so that we can keep track.

 Then the UPS live rate plugin wasn’t updated to support UPS oath, even though they said it would still work, so I had to find a replacement with that.

These resent updates I had to throw out 2 plugins and replace them with 5 replacements to get the same functionality incurring all new costs.

UPS retired their legacy XML?API?and all users need to use the REST API (OAuth 2.0 security model) connection in order to have live shipping rates calculated on their site. We have been preparing for this change?since Sept 2022?and we released this change at the start of this year as well as updated the documentation as well to clarify the situation.

We also?sending emails to all users?on May 22nd, 2024, to make sure users are aware of the change and what steps need to be taken to prevent interruptions. It looks like the update was not done on the site,

Then everyone is turning the admin page into their own personal billboard and upsell tool,

You can disable the suggestions that show up on the admin screen from WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > WooCommerce.com.

If I look at the pain around the slow painful switch to Gutenberg and blocks and developers trying to keep up and failing, Plus it’s still a clunky builder!?

I understand your situation. I’d highly recommend you share this feedback on the right forum here: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/gutenberg/#reviews

There really needs to be a version lock on Woo so that I can say my entire solution is valid for Woo 8.x and to avoid any auto updates beyond that until I can validate other plugins… Having to update, yet avoid updates to avoid issues and conflicts, but need security updates is an absolute mess.

I’d recommend you to disable auto updates on production/live sites and test the updates on a staging or dev environment first and then push the changes to the live site. If your host doesn’t offer that option, we recommend WP Staging for quickly spinning up a new test site: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wp-staging

Thank you again for your detailed feedback. Let me know if you have any further questions!