Hello everyone! WooCommerce 2.2 brought about some exciting changes to the core plugin, such as the ability to process refunds, and a method for payment gateways to automatically process refunds via your merchant account directly from WooCommerce. We’re already working on adding refund support to our major gateways, so keep your eyes on the changelogs ;) .

If you want to read a review of all of the changes, you can check out this detailed WooCommerce 2.2 Review. However, there are a few things that have changed that we’d like to give you some helpful tips on.

Error Logs & Troubleshooting

Q: How do I access error logs with WooCommerce?
A: In previous versions of WooCommerce, error logs were a bit of a pain to access. You had to have FTP access to your server and retrieve the file this way instead of via your WordPress admin. Since you’re usually encountering issues while you’re using WooCommerce, it makes sense to have this information…well, in WooCommerce.

You can now access error logs by going to WooCommerce > System Status > Logs.

Error Logs

You can then select the error log file you need and click “View”. This will give you any debugging information that you can copy and share, which is super helpful for the support team.

Q: Can I still fetch error logs via FTP?
A: Yep! They’ve moved though. Error logs are now located in the /wc-logs folder within your site install rather than within WooCommerce. You don’t have to go to wp-content or anywhere else to find them.

The New “Edit Order” Screen

Q: I used to be able to edit all of my orders. How can I make all orders editable again?
A: You can still edit orders, but only before the order has been marked as paid (“processing” or “complete” status). You can either change the order status temporarily to on-hold or pending, or enable order editing for all statuses using this snippet:

add_filter( 'wc_order_is_editable', '__return_true' );

The wc_order_is_editable filter lets you choose to customize the statuses for which you can edit orders if you want to target specific statuses or take this further.

Q: How do I use the new refunds?
A: Fortunately there’s already a great resource available for this! Patrick Rauland has a walkthrough and video tutorial for processing WooCommerce refunds that walks you through the process.

Q: How can I add items to orders?
A: The flow for adding new orders and adding items to orders has changed a bit in WooCommerce 2.2 to support refunds.

If your order is pending or on-hold, you can edit it (or you can do so if you use our trick above). When you do so, you can add items, taxes, or fees to the order. Each product, fee, or shipping cost is added as a line item.

First, click to add line items to your order. Line items are products, fees, and shipping costs.

Select what to add to your order. I’m going to add all products, add any item meta, then add any shipping costs.

Now that our products are here, let’s edit them or add shipping. For example, if your product is personalized, you can add item meta and title the field “Name”, then enter the value for the name. Just click the pencil icon to edit the item, then click “Add Meta” to add item meta.

You can also keep adding line items. I’m going to add one for shipping, but you can add fees as well. Add your shipping line item by clicking “Add Shipping Cost” and selecting the appropriate shipping method.

Once you have all products, fees, and shipping costs added to the order, you may need to add taxes. Click the handy “Add Tax” button to do so, and select the appropriate tax rate.

Now you’re ready to calculate totals! You can calculate the total tax for each item, then calculate the order total. You can also apply any discounts or changes as needed.

Finally, you can enter all order information and save the order with the appropriate status.

Shortcodes

Q: Are there any shortcode changes?
A: Did you know that you can create an “Add to Cart” button for a product even if you’re not on the product page? There’s a shortcode to create this button for you: [add_to_cart id="" style="" sku=""]. You simply use the id or sku for the product to tell WooCommerce which product should be added to the cart with the button, and you can add styling as needed.

This shortcode is great for landing pages or blog posts, as you can insert the button for the product of your choice, then the appropriate product is added to the cart.

This shortcode now lets you add a custom quantity of the product as well by adding a “quantity” attribute to the shortcode: [add_to_cart id="" style="" sku="" quantity=""].

Q: Where has that shortcode thing gone when I edit posts or pages? I really like being able to add shortcodes easily.
A: The TinyMCE Shortcode generator was removed and turned into a stand-alone plugin, as not everyone was using it. You can simply install the free plugin to get it back :) .

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