WoodMart 8.6 update

The WoodMart team has released a major theme update, version 8.6. This release focuses on expanding customization flexibility, adding support for cutting-edge AI technologies (MCP), optimizing performance, and deepening integration with WooCommerce’s native cart and checkout blocks. Below is a detailed look at the main additions, improvements, and key features of the update.

Let’s start with the demo additions. Update 8.6 introduces a new Books 2 prebuilt website, designed for online bookstores, publishing houses, and digital literary stores. It features a structured, bordered product grid, refined typography, and specialized catalog and product page layouts.

Deep Integration with Cart & Checkout Blocks

The theme now offers full adaptation and styling for WooCommerce’s modern cart and checkout blocks:

• Marketing features now work in blocks: Free Shipping Bar, Estimate Delivery, Free Gifts, Abandoned Cart notices, and Marketing Consent.
• Styling aligned with theme settings: The appearance of the cart and checkout blocks now matches WoodMart’s theme options (colors, typography, border radius, and other global settings).
• “Saved for Later” block: Full support and branded styling for the saved-items block.

You can learn how to switch between checkout types and configure WooCommerce blocks from this documentation page.

Partial Demo Content Import

One of the major additions in WoodMart 8.6 is the Partial Import system, which changes the approach to working with prebuilt demo sites. Instead of a full theme installation that risks overwriting current settings and cluttering the database with hundreds of unnecessary products and media files, users can now selectively import only the components they need. A dedicated interface lets you import global style settings (Theme Settings), specific pages (“About Us,” Contact, Home), custom builder layouts (product cards, checkout, cart), or functional blocks individually, with a live preview of each element beforehand.

Pages can be installed together with an optional Theme Settings Preset. In addition, a safe-removal function has been added for deleting only the imported fragments of a specific demo. This makes it possible to combine design solutions from different WoodMart layouts without risking the stability of an already-running store. For detailed instructions on configuring and using layouts, check out the documentation.

AI Agent Support via WoodMart MCP

Support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) has been added, an open protocol for AI interaction that lets you connect modern AI agents directly to your site. Thanks to the WoodMart MCP Abilities module, connected AI assistants receive structured context about the store and can automate development and administration tasks: managing theme settings (Theme Settings), changing header logos, creating and editing content in Gutenberg, reading and modifying WoodMart Layouts, and applying prebuilt templates.

The theme works with any MCP-compatible agent, such as Claude (Desktop), Claude Code (CLI), Cursor, and Codex (Desktop or CLI).  Find more details about the WoodMart MCP in our documentation here.

Animated Rotating Text

Highlighted text fragments within Title and Text elements can now have a cyclical text-change animation effect applied to them. Available styles include: a typewriter effect, a clip transition, a slide-up, a drop-in, and others.

Other Theme Improvements

• WooCommerce Variation Gallery: Support for the native WooCommerce plugin feature for individual image galleries per product variation.
• Preview Item: Ability to select a specific product, blog post, or portfolio item while editing Single Layout templates in Elementor and Gutenberg.
• Cart price display with dynamic discounts: When the Dynamic Discounts option is enabled, the cart now shows the discount received based on the combined quantity of all matching products.
• Full-width “Buy Now” button: An option to stretch the one-click purchase button to the full width of its container.
• New “Style 2” pagination for the product card’s hover image gallery.
• Border Radius in Header Builder: Flexible corner-rounding controls for search, account, cart, wishlist, compare, and the mobile menu.
• Styling for active menu states: Separate typography settings for Hover and Active states in navigation and the account menu.
• Open Tabs on Hover: A new way to switch tabs within the tabs element.
• New templates: Ready-made content for popups and floating blocks.

Speed, SEO, and Accessibility

• Local Google Fonts by default: The “Load Google Fonts locally” option is now enabled right after theme installation for better speed and GDPR compliance.
• Carousel optimization: Carousels now initialize automatically only after the first page scroll, reducing main-thread blocking (Total Blocking Time, TBT).
• <img> option for background images: In Gutenberg blocks (Container, Section, Row, Column), backgrounds can now be rendered via an <img> tag instead of CSS background-image, benefiting Core Web Vitals (LCP) and image indexing by search engines.
• Native lazy loading: Below-the-fold images now correctly receive the native loading="lazy" attribute.
• Accessibility improvements: Clear accessibility labels added for compare, wishlist, price tracker, and quick-action buttons.
• Video posters: Improved handling of video posters in Gutenberg blocks by switching to the native HTML poster attribute, with added support in the LCP optimization and image preloading system.
• Partial removal of the imagesLoaded JS library, which was shifting image loading priority.

Bug Fixes and Compatibility

A number of minor bugs were fixed in the 8.6 release, along with stability improvements:

• Updated compatibility with WPBakery 9, WordPress 7.1, and the latest WooCommerce templates.
• Fixed free-shipping calculation with currency conversion in WPML and WOOCS.
• Improved mobile header cache interaction with the WP Rocket plugin.
• Fixed field validation behavior in the dynamic discounts system and coupon handling.

View the complete WoodMart changelog →