HikaShop 6.5.1

Searching and browsing a large catalog is now much faster. The product search, on the storefront, in the backend products list and in the search plugin, now uses a MySQL full-text index instead of scanning the whole product table, which makes it orders of magnitude faster on big catalogs, and storefront results are sorted by relevance when a search is active. Searches the index cannot answer (very short words, or languages written without spaces) fall back to the previous mechanism automatically, so no result is lost. Text filters get their own full-text index too, so filtering by text is just as quick.

The database itself gets faster: HikaShop's tables are converted from MyISAM to InnoDB during the update. InnoDB locks rows instead of whole tables when writing, which removes most of the checkout slowdowns on busy stores, and it repairs its tables automatically after a server crash.

Characteristics, the axes that define your product variants, can now use a new Calendar type (Business edition), so each value on a variant axis is a date picked from a calendar instead of typed by hand. A value can be a single date or a date range, using the same advanced date picker as the date custom fields, and the readable date is shown on the product page and in the order.

You can then put a filter on that characteristic, and your visitors get a date-range picker that keeps only the products that have a variant whose date falls in the chosen range, something a normal list-of-values filter could never do. It is ideal for tours, events, rentals, and any catalog where each variant is a date.

Products now carry their own settings for how they behave when offered as an option of another product, right on the product edit page. A product without variants gains a "Selected by default as an option" toggle, so it can start pre-ticked on the product page while the customer can still remove it. A product with variants gains an "Add a 'No' choice as an option" toggle and, when that is on, a "Default to 'No'" toggle, so the option can be made truly optional and start unselected rather than on its default variant.

Each product is controlled individually, so some options can be pre-selected and others not. Existing products are unchanged.

Customizing a product page layout is now a click away. A new "Edit the view file" button sits next to the product page layout setting, in the configuration (Display tab) and on the product edit page, and opens the matching layout's view file directly in the Display > Views editor in a new tab, for your default front-end template, so you no longer have to hunt for the right file by hand. It follows whichever layout is selected in the dropdown and works on both Joomla and WordPress.

The Views editor itself now also shows the path of the override file it edits: where the override is stored under your template, or, when none exists yet, where it will be created when you save, so you can always locate the file on the server.

Product and category images are now served the modern way. HikaShop can generate AVIF thumbnails, typically 30 to 50% smaller than WebP for the same visual quality, in addition to WebP, and high resolution variants so thumbnails stay sharp on retina and mobile screens. Listing images are rendered with lazy loading and explicit dimensions, so images below the fold no longer delay the page and the layout no longer shifts while they load, while the first image and the product's main image keep loading immediately with a high priority. AVIF files can also be uploaded directly as product, category and custom field images. The whole image markup now comes from a single view file you can override to restyle every image of the shop in one place.

The product listing filters gain two visitor-facing upgrades. Each choice can now show its product count, for example "Red (12)", taking the other active filters into account so the number always reflects what a click will bring up; it can be turned on per filter for the category, characteristic, manufacturer, custom field, price and product information filters. And text filters can show autocomplete suggestions as the visitor types, backed by the same full-text index as the search, in three styles: product names, product cards (a thumbnail, name and price that link straight to the product), or the matching column values.

This release closes a long list of WordPress-specific rough edges. The rich-text editor inside AJAX-loaded forms (such as the variant edition form) can be switched to the Visual tab again, the module "Configure display options" popup and the cart's edit-options popup now load with their proper styling and the active theme's design instead of appearing as bare unstyled fields, and the "Terms and conditions" popup shows the configured page instead of a PHP warning.

Product characteristic options (colour swatches, size choices) now render with the correct markup, the product and category filters actually narrow the results rather than only being displayed, the add-to-cart confirmation no longer appears twice, and opening the checkout no longer stops with a "Class JLoader not found" fatal error. WordPress 6 and 7 storefronts are now noticeably more consistent with their Joomla counterparts.

The PayPal Checkout plugin can now show an express button on the cart and on the checkout cart block, before the checkout. The customer pays in the PayPal window, and HikaShop then creates the order and takes the payment straight from the cart, using the address from their PayPal account, so there is no address form to fill and no checkout steps to click through: they land directly on the order confirmation page. Shipping and tax are worked out from the PayPal address, and if that makes the total higher than the amount first approved, the customer is sent back to PayPal for a quick re-approval before the charge, so the amount taken always matches the order. The button is enabled per method, for the cart page and the checkout cart, in the PayPal Checkout settings.