After 10 months of development, 2 months of beta testing, 100’s of sites upgraded, it’s time to release SureCart 3 to the world.
This is a MAJOR update, and we are asking all merchants to proceed thoughtfully. Depending on how you use SureCart, some elements on the front end of your store may visually look a little different. Everything will function as expected, but there may be slight changes in spacing and font sizes.
We have created an upgrade guide as well as a video guide where we upgrade a store from version 2 to version 3.
Please view the guide and video here: https://surecart.com/docs/upgrading-to-surecart-v3/
Here is a breakdown of all the new features and capabilities in SureCart 3.
The main focus was to give merchants more speed and more customization options. And to lay the groundwork for page builder integrations and pro workflows.
We rebuilt the shop page, product pages, collection pages, and the cart, from the ground up.
Custom Post Type & Custom Fields
SureCart products now have their own custom post type that 3rd party plugins can see.
You can also now add custom fields to your products to vastly expand what you can build with SureCart.
- ACF and Metabox support
- Use your custom loop builders
- Compatibility with SEO plugins
Local Media Library
SureCart now works with the native WordPress media library to store and display your product images.
- All images now load from your media library
- Variation specific images
Customization, Interactivity API, Shadow DOM
We rebuilt many of our blocks from the ground up, to enable merchants to design a truly unique store, without code.
In doing this we have also implemented the Interactivity API, a JavaScript library that allows developers to add interactive elements to the front end of their WordPress blocks.
This basically means everything has been made faster.
In rebuilding these blocks, we have also removed the Shadow DOM which was causing some challenges for merchants that wanted to add custom CSS to our blocks. This is going to make it vastly easier to write custom CSS.
- Our blocks are more customizable
- You can use 3rd party blocks now
- New product list block
- New product list templates
- Huge speed improvements
Bricks Builder Integration
Introducing our first native page builder integration for Bricks Builder.
We chose Bricks Builder because it was highly requested by our users. Bricks Builder also has a very enthusiastic agency/developer user base which is the group we want to cater to.
- Native Bricks Builder Elements
- Dynamic content
- Product loop
- Template Collections
- Template Product page
- Automatic CSS support
What’s Next For SureCart
With this major release finally out, our focus will shift to the following.
Elementor Pro Integration
Elementor Pro is next up for a native integration. We are excited to announce that most of the work there is already done.
Due to Elementor only offering the display dynamic content and their theme builder for templates, this page builder integration will be dependent on their Pro version.
New Checkout And Customer Area
We are planning on how we will rebuild our checkout forms and customer area. They currently rely on the Shadow DOM, which we are getting away with.
Also, we have been listening to customer feedback on how to improve the options that we offer, so we are taking that into consideration as well.
Right now we are in the planning stage to make decisions on how to approach this.
Multi-currency
Merchants that sell globally have been wanting us to make it so they can show prices in local currencies.
With SureCart 3 now released, we can work on tackling multi-currency.
SureCart Everywhere
We love WordPress and SureCart on WordPress will always offer the most customizable experience; our merchants have made it clear that they want to use SureCart everywhere.
There is also a new generation of ecommerce sellers that just have social media and no website at all.
We want SureCart to work on any website building platform, this would include Webflow, Framer, SquareSpace, Wix, Laravel, etc.
We also want SureCart to work if you don’t have a website at all. Where the checkout and customer area are hosted by us.
We are going to tackle this in phases.
Phase 1 would enable all merchants to manage their store on the platform. This is going to be a game changer for agencies because it will deliver a better store management experience where their clients don’t have to log into WordPress to manage products, orders, etc.
Phase 2 will make the customer dashboard hosted or embeddable into any website.
Phase 3 will offer hosted or embeddable checkout.
Full Changlog
New:
- New: Completely rebuilt Shop, Product, and Cart systems using the Interactivity API for better performance and customization.
- New: Variant images – automatically show/hide images based on the selected variation.
- New: Bricks Builder integration.
- New: Advanced Custom Fields integration.
- New: Meta Box integration.
- New: Product now sync with custom post types for better compatibility with other plugins.
- New: Products now use the WP Media Library for images.
- New: 1-click shop page patterns/templates for easy styles.
Improvement:
- Improvement: More customizable product, shop and cart templates.
- Improvement: Preload pagination and filter links on shop page.
- Improvement: More performant loading of shop and product pages due to server side rendering of state. – Improvement: Realtime search of products on shop page.
- Improvement: Slide out cart traps focus for better accessibility.
- Improvement: Quick view icon to view product from edit product page.
- Improvement: Upsells are not out of beta.
- Improvement: Move SureCart admin menu to further up to help with navigation, due to the number of submenu items.