Wainscoting America: WooCommerce Maintenance and Releases

boltA notable problem

This store lets customers design custom wainscoting panels online, then buy them with live shipping prices. That makes every update risky, because a change to one plugin can break the panel designer, the cart or the shipping quote. The store needs regular updates to stay supported, without surprises for customers.

buildWhat I did

• I run the store’s update rounds. One round covered a WordPress update, a theme update and 26 plugins.
• Before any change went live, I tested the store against a clean clone of the production site: I designed a custom panel, put it and a sample in the basket, downloaded the PDF summaries of both the cart and the order, checked live UPS shipping prices, picked a profile and placed a test order by bank transfer.
• After the update, I went through the public pages and products, along with the main admin screens.
• Some updates had been applied automatically by the site, and I recorded them in the code, so the saved version matches the live store.
• I merged and shipped a release, added the Redirection plugin, and updated the WooCommerce and PayPal plugins and a basic theme.
• I saved every update as its own entry in the code history, which means each can be rolled back alone and the rest stay untouched.
• I installed the paid plugins, such as the custom-fields plugin ACF PRO, from their licensed downloads, so each stays properly licensed and supported.
• I tested the panel design tool, which others built, to make sure each update left it working.

check_circleThe result

A store that stays up to date and works end to end for custom panel orders, with updates that were tried first on a copy and checked before going live.

widgetsTools I used, in plain words