I recently inherited a project for a high-volume apparel shop that was losing money on every European order. The issue? Tax wasn’t being calculated for specific VAT-exempt zones. The previous developer—bless his heart—had hardcoded a massive switch statement directly into a modified core file to handle it. When WooCommerce updated, the “fix” evaporated, and the client was stuck manually refunding tax for three days. Total nightmare.
The root cause wasn’t just bad coding; it was a lack of clarity in the WooCommerce developer documentation at the time. When you can’t find a clear path in the docs, you start guessing. And guessing in a production environment is how sites break and clients lose trust.
The Danger of Guesswork in WooCommerce
In my early days, I made a similar mistake. I needed to add a custom delivery date picker to the checkout. Instead of finding the right hook, I thought I’d be clever and just override the checkout/form-checkout.php template in my theme. It worked for about a month. Then WooCommerce pushed a major update to the checkout blocks and the fragments API, and my “clever” solution broke the entire payment gateway. I spent a whole weekend reverting changes and doing it the right way.
That’s why I’m a stickler for official documentation. It’s the difference between building a house on sand or solid rock. If the docs are thin, we as a community need to fix them. That is exactly what the upcoming December Office Hours are about. We’re talking about the roadmap for 2026 and how to make the technical guides actually useful for the people in the trenches.
This builds on the solid foundation of open-source collaboration that keeps the WordPress ecosystem alive. Trust me on this: the better the docs, the fewer 3:00 AM emergency calls you get.
Doing it the Right Way: Custom Hooks
Instead of hacking core or overriding templates, you should be looking for the specific filter or action that solves your problem. For example, if you’re trying to add data to the checkout, use the proper hooks provided in the WooCommerce developer documentation. Here is how I’d handle adding a simple custom fee properly:
/**
* Add a custom processing fee to the WooCommerce cart.
* Always use hooks, never hack core.
*/
add_action( 'woocommerce_cart_calculate_fees', 'bbioon_add_custom_processing_fee', 10, 1 );
function bbioon_add_custom_processing_fee( $cart ) {
if ( is_admin() && ! defined( 'DOING_AJAX' ) ) {
return;
}
$fee_amount = 5.00; // This should ideally be a setting
$cart->add_fee( __( 'Processing Fee', 'bbioon-textdomain' ), $fee_amount, true );
}This approach is upgrade-safe. It doesn’t care if you change your theme or if WooCommerce updates its template structure. It just works because it follows the established API. Period.
Why You Should Care About the 2026 Roadmap
The WooCommerce team is hosting a session on December 17 to discuss how to prioritize documentation needs. This is our chance to tell them where the gaps are. Are the REST API docs confusing? Is the High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) documentation lacking edge cases? Now is the time to speak up.
- Contribute: Learn how to fix those typos or add your own code snippets.
- Feedback: Tell the team what’s confusing in the current documentation.
- Prioritize: Help decide what the 2026 roadmap looks like.
Look, this stuff gets complicated fast. If you’re tired of debugging someone else’s mess and just want your site to work, drop my team a line. We’ve probably seen it before.
The Bottom Line
Don’t be the dev who hardcodes logic into core. Be the one who understands the API and contributes back to the documentation that helps everyone else. See you on Slack on the 17th.
Leave a Reply