WooCommerce is one of the best and top-rated free plugins for WordPress. If you are running an online store and looking for exceptional support, this plugin has got you covered with a wide range of ecommerce features. With this plugin, you always have an opportunity to display products for sale and can enjoy bespoke customization features with ease.
Further, to ensure smooth functionality and compatibility of your Woocommerce store, it is best to keep it updated to avoid security challenges. Of course, every user isn’t an IT pro and there are different stages when users feel stuck while operating the plugins. This is why users find it challenging when it comes to temporarily disabling the WooCommerce store updates. It further leads to devastating customer experience.
If you are looking for a better customer experience for driving terrific results. Let’s take a look at the steps to disable WooCommerce updates temporarily keeping in view the best customer engagement. It’s an ideal approach to inform and engage your customers about the WooCommerce updates using this guide. Furthermore, you can reduce the bounce rate and build trust with your customers with the help of this guide.
Why You Need to Temporarily Disable WooCommerce for Updates
A store user must know the nitty gritty of regular WooCommerce updates that ultimately boost performance and strengthen security. On the contrary, here are some risks mentioned below that may keep you worried during the regular updates:
- Broken functionality: Plugins, themes, or customizations may not function properly after you’ve done the update.
- Customer inconvenience: Visitors may come across so many errors during the updates that lead to frustration and disappointment.
- Data loss: If you’ve not done the updates carefully, you may lose important data, and this adds more challenges.
Looking forward to these challenges at the time of disabling your WooCommer store, one thing is clear: a customer never comes across broken or incomplete site results during the updating process.
Step-by-Step Guide to Temporarily Disabling WooCommerce
Step 1: Plan Your Update
Proper planning is a must-do step to organize WooCommerce updates that not only ensure a smooth process but also reduce downtime. Let’s follow these steps for better planning!
Choose Google Supportive Tools
The use of Google Analytics is the best approach to streamline website traffic and it is one of the most recommended tools to analyze the traffic.
Stay In Touch With Customers About Notifications
For all sorts of activities and updates, don’t forget to notify your customers by using the techniques of sending email notifications and displaying banners.
Take Website Backups
Always go for a reliable website backup including database files, images and source code.
Step 2: Set Up a Maintenance Mode Plugin
A maintenance mode plugin is an efficient way to inform your visitors about the ongoing website updates. If your website is under maintenance, you have to install and set up a website maintenance mode plugin to inform your visitors. You can do this by following options:
- WP Maintenance Mode
- Coming Soon
- SeedProd
- Maintenance Redirect
How to Activate Maintenance Mode:
- Install the Maintenance Mode plugin
- Activate it once you’ve done installation.
- Customize the maintenance mode page with a message like:
The website is under maintenance and we’re working on it to improve your user experience. We’ll be back soon!
- Enable the maintenance mode after you’ve followed all the steps.
Step 3: Disable Specific WooCommerce Features Temporarily
In this step, you may disable specific WooCommerce features temporarily that include cart features and checkout process. Despite disabling the limited features, you may keep rest of your website accessible and fully operational. You may tty the steps given below:
Disable WooCommerce Pages:
Open WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced.
Add or remove the assigned pages for Cart, Checkout, and My Account.
Use Custom Code: Most importantly, you may also add the option of temporary snippet to your theme’s functions.php file to disable specific features:
php
add_action(‘template_redirect’, ‘disable_woocommerce_features’);
function disable_woocommerce_features() {
if (is_checkout() || is_cart()) {
wp_redirect(home_url(‘/maintenance’));
exit;
}
}
Step 4: Test Updates in a Staging Environment
If you’re a beginner and want to learn more about the updating process, make sure you test your website in a staging environment before doing live experiments. There are many reliable hosting providers that offer this facility to save your time. Further, the option of using WP Staging plugin is also one of the best choices to drive accurate results.
Steps to Test Updates:
- Make a copy of your existing site by utilizing cloning features.
- Perform all the updates and undergo thorough testing on your website.
- Before making your site live, don’t forget to resolve all the fix.
Perform the Updates
This step comes right after you have done testing everything. Now, the time has come to update your WooCommerce on your live site.
- Go to Dashboard > Updates.
- Update plugins, themes, and the WooCommerce core.
- Clear your website cache to reflect the changes.
Step 6: Re-enable WooCommerce and Notify Customers
After you complete the updates, follow the steps given below.
- Disable the maintenance mode plugin.
- Complete all the testing and make sure the site is functioning properly.
- Let your customers know that your site is live again by doing emails and using reliable social media channels.
Best Practices to Minimize Downtime and Customer Impact
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A CDN is a network of servers that deliver exceptional content services to end users. It works great no matter if you are looking to improve the speed, performance, security and availability of web applications for a hassle-free experience.
Optimize Website Performance
Before updates, optimize your site to reduce potential issues. Use tools like GTmetrix or PageSpeed Insights to identify performance bottlenecks.
Keep Plugins and Themes Updated Regularly
By doing frequent updates, you may reduce the risk of compatibility issues. Therefore, you must always update the plugins and themes to their latest versions to avoid such conflicts.
Communicate Transparently
Communication is the key to streamline operations no matter if you are working on WooCommerce updates or performing website maintenance tasks. Always communicate with your customers and keep them informed about all the necessary updates via using emails and social media platforms.
Tools and Resources for Managing WooCommerce Updates
To manage WooCommerce updates efficiently, you need to know the tools and resources.
- UpdraftPlus: For backups
- WP Staging: For creating a staging environment
- Sucuri: For security monitoring
- Jetpack: For uptime monitoring
Conclusion
Conclusively, we’ve gone through some amazing steps of disabling WooCommerce updates without affecting the performance of the website. It is possible when you stay in touch with customers and let them know about all the ongoing issues and updates being performed on your site.
Moreover, to make this process easier, you must be aware of creating and managing maintenance mode plugins along with the art of testing on staging site mode. By doing this, you will more likely improve customer experience and get an exciting opportunity to win the trust of your customers for the long term.
