How to update Woocommerce Shipping Zones

If you have a WordPress site with a Woocommerce online store, then you will have come across this Woocommerce Shipping Zones notification when updating to version 2.6 (or you will very soon if you haven’t updated for a while!):

Woocommerce Shipping Zones notification

Woocommerce Shipping Zones is a huge upgrade to the Shipping options offered as part of the core plugin, which is awesome!

What do the updates mean?

We were previously limited to the following shipping options (unless we added shipping plugins):

  • Flat rate
  • Local Pick Up
  • International rate

Now, we are able to add a range of shipping rates based on self-defined zones, giving FAR more flexibility.

Some examples:

  • Give Australia (or other countries) a different shipping rate to the “rest of the world”
  • Set a shipping rate for your local region (e.g. Auckland), one for the rest of the North Island, and one for the South Island
  • Set multiple flat rates for each zone: e.g. Rural and Urban, Post or Courier, etc

And within each zone, we can also set different shipping methods for customers to choose from (Flat rate, Free Shipping, Local Pick up).

This type of flexibility will allow customers to choose their preferred method at checkout!
Woocommerce multiple flat rate methods per zone
 

What do I need to do?

  1. Please make sure you have an up-to-date backup before running the updates.
  2.  

  3. If you are using the Table Rate Shipping plugin (or other Woocommerce shipping extensions) PLEASE make sure that you update these plugins first, BEFORE you update Woocommerce. Otherwise your site will crash. I have already helped restore a couple of websites who fell victim to this.
  4.  

  5. The existing/legacy Shipping Rates will be phased out in coming updates, so please migrate your shipping methods over now so that you are not impacted when they are removed.

How do I set up the new Woocommerce Shipping Zones?

There are some very detailed instructions with screenshots available on the WooThemes website. If you are stuck on anything specific to your situation though, please drop me an email: [slash_mailto address=””].

Where can I find more information?

Check out the official information here

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