Migrate From Attribute?

[outrank-james]

Is there a tool built in to migrate from an Attribute we've already got set up for Brands?

Or do we need to do a bulk Export / Import to utilise the new brand taxonomy?

[jimjasson]

Hey @outrank-james,

Thanks for the question!

In another thread in this board, we discussed the concept of migrating from a custom attribute to the new Brands taxonomy. In short:

All the brands logic that is now part of core was previously offered by the WooCommerce Brands plugin. Users of this plugin will automatically see all their brands migrated to core without any further action, as that the same taxonomy is used. If a store created brands using a custom taxonomy, attribute or any other way, then this would require custom work, as we cannot account for all the custom brands implementations that have been created and craft a universal migration tool.

If you decide to do the migration programmatically, instead of manually, and have any questions about the structure of core's Brands taxonomy, let us know!

[WiredWonder]

@jimjasson what is the name of the taxonomy slug used by this new addition to core? It would be nice of any of the announcement doco actually mentioned this.

Does the team consider how are site admins will migrate from custom plugins to core functionality when there are no tools, pathways or sample code given? Both this and GTIN have been handled terribly for existing users of your product.

[jimjasson]

Hey @WiredWonder,

Thank you for your question!

The new taxonomy that was added to represent brands is product_brand -- here's the function that registers this taxonomy: https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/blob/trunk/plugins/woocommerce/includes/class-wc-brands.php#L237.

As for migration, there are a couple of ways forward depending on what kind of solution you were previously using.

If you were using the WooCommerce Brands plugin, then all your brands will be migrated automatically.

If you were using a custom taxonomy or a different Brands plugin that used a custom taxonomy, then some users have found this migration tool useful: #54720 (reply in thread).

If you were using a custom attribute to represent brands, then you could either migrate brands manually or create a custom script specific to your custom attribute implementation.

Finally, if you would like to keep using your own solution for organizing products by brands in your store, then you can disable WooCommerce core's Brands functionality by running the following WP CLI command: wp option update wc_feature_woocommerce_brands_enabled 'no', as described in this developer blog post.

Let me know if you have any specific questions about the above! :)

[WiredWonder]

@jimjasson Thanks for the very practical reply

Adding features is all goodness, but I do hope the core team take more note of these types of rollouts to map out expected (both desired & undesired) user behaviour for existing users of WooCommerce when adding a feature. We users have had to resort to plugins for things like Brand and GTIN due to core limitations, and if core is now adding the feature, your goal should be to get the majority of users onto core functionality to make the ecosystem more streamlined. This process requires planning, compatibility testing and suggesting migration tools or processes to allow merchants to take advantage of your work, and this should be publicised or linked from the release notes to avoid user community confusion.

I think many users will have used an Attribute to store Brand as we did, and there is no path to migrate ~7000 products to the new feature.