The store admin now has a help button. Open it from any page to search the guides or contact support, without leaving your store or opening a new tab. Answers are always one click away while you build and edit your store.
Each store page in your account now has a Clear Cache button. One click fully clears that store's cache, so your recent changes show up straight away. It is a quick fix to try when an edit is not showing on your live store.
Each store in your account now shows how many products and categories it has, next to its status. You can see at a glance how far each store has grown, and spot a store that needs more products, without logging in to each store admin.
Hosted WordPress websites can now be upgraded to the latest WordPress release by the platform. Your site gets the newest features and fixes without you having to run the update yourself, and older sites hosted with us stay compatible with current themes and plugins.
You can now reset a store to clear its content and rebuild it from scratch. It is useful when you want to change direction in a niche or start over with a fresh set of products and articles, without deleting the store and setting up a new one.
You can now hand pick the products, articles and categories on your store homepage. Show your best sellers and strongest content first, and add a new featured articles section to draw readers in. If you do not pick, the automatic featured products are now better at choosing items worth showing.
The Instant Store library has new niches, including parrots, journals and wearable tech. Each one is a researched, ready made store with products, categories and articles in place, so you can launch in a new niche without starting from a blank page.
Your store contact form now asks visitors a simple question before it sends a message. People answer it in a second, but spam bots cannot, so you get far fewer junk messages and the real ones are easier to find.
The testimonials on your store homepage now use different names and text for each store, instead of the same set everywhere. Every store looks more individual, and visitors who see more than one store do not find the same quotes repeated.
Fixed: some members could not log in to the store admin.
Improved: the store contact form blocks more spam.
Fixed: bulk actions in the store admin did not work.
Fixed: moving a store to another domain did not work.
Fixed: the login link in contact message emails did not work.
Fixed: the hero button on mobile and the footer layout looked wrong.
Improved: emails from your store show your store name as the sender.
Improved: our uptime checks no longer count as visits in your traffic reports.
Fixed: buying AI Chips without a saved card, or with a failing card, gave no clear message. It now asks you to update your payment method in the billing portal.
You can now get an email whenever a visitor sends a message through your store's contact form, so you never miss a question from a potential customer. If you would rather check messages in the store admin, you can choose not to receive these alerts.
Your RSS feeds now include descriptions, summaries, images and categories, so they look better in feed readers and on any site or tool that shares them. Browsers and readers can also find your feeds automatically from your store pages, so visitors can subscribe in one click.
You can now link your social media pages from your store. Icons for your profiles appear in the store header and footer, so visitors can follow you and come back later. Add the profile links you use and the icons show automatically.
You can now choose the colour of the text in your homepage hero. Match it to your hero image and colour scheme so your headline stays easy to read, whether the image behind it is light or dark. It is a small change that makes the first thing visitors see look sharper.
You can now add your own content at the top and bottom of every page in your store, including brand and product pages. Use it for an introduction, a short buying guide or links to related articles. It is a simple way to make each page unique and more useful to visitors and search engines.
You can now manage your XML sitemap from its own page. It shows how many items your sitemap holds, lets you rebuild it by hand after big changes, and lets you choose how products are listed. The sitemap now refreshes every 12 hours, so new pages reach search engines sooner.
You can now find your store's feeds in a new Traffic section. Each store has RSS feeds plus a product feed that lists your products. Use the feeds to share new content on social media and other sites automatically, or to connect your store with tools that read RSS.
Your store now has a product search. Visitors type what they want and get a results page with matching products, so they can find an item quickly without browsing through categories. It works on every store automatically, with nothing to set up.
You can now add your own HTML to your store layout. Use it to add tracking codes, verification tags, widgets or signup forms from other services, without waiting for a built-in feature. Paste the code into your store settings and it is added to your store pages for you.
You can now show your affiliate disclosure in more places. A disclosure now appears on the product info page, and you can also turn on a disclosure in the store header. The header disclosure is off by default. Clear disclosures help you meet the rules of affiliate programmes and keep your visitors' trust.
You can now write and format store content in a new editor. It has a floating toolbar, an HTML view for direct editing, and image uploads in every content area. It also adds text sizes, underline and highlight. Use it anywhere you edit larger blocks of content, such as articles, pages and product descriptions.
You can now add a custom ads.txt file to your store. Ad networks such as Google AdSense need this file before they serve ads, so you can earn from display ads alongside your affiliate links. Paste the ads.txt lines your ad network gives you, and your store serves the file at the right address.
Visitors who land on a page that does not exist now see products that match what they were looking for, instead of a dead end. It keeps visitors in your store and gives them a way to buy, even when they follow an old or mistyped link.
You can now view your store while it is disabled, as long as you are logged in to the store admin. Visitors still cannot see it, so you can build, check and polish your store in private before you switch it on for everyone.
Every page in your store now carries a canonical link. It tells search engines which address is the main version of a page, so they do not treat similar pages as duplicates. This is handled automatically on all stores and helps your pages rank. There is nothing to set up.
