These days you can’t be in the website development and maintenance business without encountering WooCommerce on a regular basis. That’s why we decided to start pushing a set of WooCommerce specific features. In September we launched the Client Report integration, now we’re focusing on WooCommerce updates.
What’s so special about WooCommerce updates?
Unlike a regular plugin update where the files in the plugin directory are updated to the latest version, WooCommerce plugin sometimes has an additional step: you need to update the database as well. The reason behind this is that WooCommerce developers occasionally change the database structure, i.e. add new fields, etc.
Now, that’s not a problem if you have 1-2 sites; it’s just an occasional extra click. But what if you manage 25 websites remotely with ManageWP, like all the other cool kids? You will definitely miss an update, or even worse: your client will call you to ask why you aren’t taking care of it.
It’s a good thing we have your back.
ManageWP integration
The next time you run a WooCommerce update, you will use the Updates widget like you always do. Once the plugin update is done, you’ll get a notification at the top right that you need to do a database update. You can jump to that site’s wp-admin dashboard and take care of it.
For now it’s just a notification, but real soon you will be able to run database updates straight from ManageWP.
As WooCommerce becomes an increasingly more important ecommerce solution, we will make sure you get a set of tools to manage it efficiently. This is where your feedback comes in: if you have a specific need that ManageWP can solve, let us know either in the comments, or through the Send Feedback option on your ManageWP dashboard.
Gary Wong
There are other plugins that require database updates after the plugin is updated. Will this be a feature you’ll support for all plugins, or is it going to stay specifically to WooComerce? Thank you.
André Giæver
Hi!
[Feature request]
I run a small agency that specializes in WooCommerce, and I’m currently maintaining about 20 client stores through ManageWP. So, not surprisingly, I love that you’re strengthening your focus on WooCommerce!
The feature that’s most definitely on the top of my list for what would be great to do with ManageWP is this – STAGING.
the clone and restore features are great but lacks one crucial component. Let’s say a store has some issue to be resolved. You clone the store to a test environment with ManageWP and fix the issue. Since the store has been open while you’ve fixed the issue, new orders have been added, others have changed status, new customers have been registered and so on.
Now, if you clone your test back to live your issue would be fixed, but all those new additions to the database would be lost. To get around this I usually manually replicate the fix done in test to the live store. This is time-consuming and nerve-racking.
How I see it, there’s two ways ManageWP could alleviate this. 1, by creating a feature that allows me to only push back to live the actual changed files and database changes, leaving the rest behind or 2, by denying me to push back files or database tables that have been changed since the last clone.
I’ll be sitting here praying for this, but until then cheers!
Kind regards
André G
Which is the better choice is way above my comprehension of code or database-fiddlery, but the feature in itself would be invaluable! I know that the guys behind VersionPress is working on something similar, but for me, ManageWP would be the place where this would definitely be most useful.
Nemanja Aleksic
Thanks for your feedback, André!
Your request makes total sense, and it’s something people have been asking for a lot. The main problem is that we don’t control the server environment, making it hard to build a reliable database sync that would work on at least 90% of major hosts.
It doesn’t mean that we’re not trying, so stay tuned 🙂
Nemanja
Stephan Brown
Hey there! I know that it’s been some time, but I just wanted to find out if this was ever actioned upon and completed?
scarchedi
Awesome! Keep up the great work, guys.