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What's new in InstantFilter

Key milestones from active development — keeping you informed on latest enhancements. Patch updates roll out automatically to active license holders. Questions? Email tom@instantstack.co.

Release highlights only — minor patches omitted. Current release line: v1.5.7.

v1.5.7 October 2026 Improvement Performance
  • Universal sidebar accordions — color, range, select, radio, rating, number, and toggle filters now share the same collapsible accordion pattern as checkboxes. The number of open facets respects the Max expanded filters setting.
  • Color swatch grid alignment — expanded color swatch groups stay neatly arranged in a clean, consistent grid layout.
  • New sidebar developer hooks — three new action hooks for flexible customizations: instantfilter_sidebar_before_facets below the sidebar title, instantfilter_between_facets between individual facets, and instantfilter_sidebar_before_apply above the "Show products" button in the mobile drawer. See hooks documentation.
v1.5.5 October 2026 Major feature Improvement
  • Hierarchical tree display — categories and all hierarchical taxonomies can now show nested terms with configurable depth and clean visual indentation. See filters documentation.
  • Contextual term archives — on category and term archive pages, facet options automatically isolate child and grandchild terms. Current, parent, and sibling terms remain hidden to keep filters relevant.
  • Group protection with limits — the 'Max Values Per Filter' setting counts only top-level items in nested structures, preventing sub-categories from being awkwardly truncated when limits apply.
v1.5.4 October 2026 Improvement
  • Smart variation pricing — when all variations share the same base and sale price, cards display both original strikethrough and discounted pricing. Only variations with varying prices fall back to "From $...".
  • Automatic sale badge — sale badges appear automatically on product cards whenever at least one visible variation is on sale.
  • Polished filter bar behavior — the "Clear filters" button stays hidden until at least one filter option is actively selected.
v1.5.1 October 2026 Performance Improvement
  • Server-rendered search results (?s=) — WooCommerce search result pages render matching cards directly in the initial HTML with relevance ranking (title matches prioritized) and fuzzy typo matching.
  • Incremental archive builds — archive export files are built in manageable chunks to prevent timeouts across extensive taxonomy trees; search payloads are intelligently cached and reused.
v1.5.0 October 2026 Performance
  • Leaner export payloads — optimized storage structure for export files. Card payloads hydrate more efficiently, resulting in significantly faster page downloads and lower memory consumption.
  • Zero-downtime upgrades — following plugin updates, background export generation triggers automatically while pages stay reliably server-rendered.
v1.4.9 October 2026 Performance Improvement
  • Per-archive exports — category, tag, and attribute archive pages download compact, archive-specific files instead of the entire catalog export.
  • Instant card transitions without layout flicker — filter interactions update cards immediately (title, price, badges all at once). Images fade in smoothly (max 400ms) with zero opacity dips or layout shifts.
  • Consistent term archives for variations — exploded variations are correctly associated with their specific attribute values, ensuring e.g. a red shoe variant automatically appears on the red color archive.
v1.4.7 October 2026 Major feature
  • Card loops ([instant_cards]) — showcase featured products, sales grids, bestsellers, or related items anywhere on your site using the [instant_cards id="N"] shortcode. Reuses card designs from your layouts, renders as pure server-side HTML, and requires zero client-side filter engine overhead. See Card loops documentation.
  • Flexible query builder & column controls — curate products manually or via dynamic queries (meta queries, taxonomies, context-aware selections) with responsive column configurations across desktop, tablet, and mobile.
v1.4.6 October 2026 Major feature Performance
  • JSON-LD ItemList schema — shop and category archives automatically include structured data (item positions and URLs) for search engines. Fully customizable via filter hooks.
  • Fixed card DOM skeleton & instantfilter_between_cards — solid architecture where the server renders the grid skeleton and JavaScript purely injects data. Developers can inject custom banners, ads, or CTAs between cards using instantfilter_between_cards. See hooks documentation.
  • Dynamic filter chips — when the top toolbar is hidden (show_filter_bar="false"), active filter chips relocate automatically under the sidebar title.
v1.4.5 October 2026 Improvement
  • Native wishlist integration — preset library cards feature a built-in wishlist heart icon with out-of-the-box compatibility for YITH, TI WooCommerce Wishlist, WPC Smart Wishlist, and WCBoost.
  • Custom slot persistence — custom card slots (e.g. third-party shortcodes or badges) remain intact across client-side filtering and pagination.
v1.4.0 September 2026 Major feature Performance
  • Onboarding Wizard — 5-step guided interactive walkthrough immediately upon license activation: loading products, adding filters, indexing, choosing card template, and placing the archive.
  • Template Library & Universal Archive — choose from 4 ready-to-use presets (Classic, Catalog, Showcase, and Lifestyle). Assign a single template to the Universal Archive to style all shop and category pages automatically. Customizable from Pro upwards via StyleBuilder. See card templates docs.
  • Faster Invalidation & Admin Performance — card layout changes invalidate immediately via epoch-bumping rather than heavy database table updates. Preview products load faster and product index states are streamlined.
v1.3.17 September 2026 Improvement
  • Facet accordions — collapse chevron indicators in facet headings are now positioned on the right side following modern e-commerce standards.
  • Subtle add-to-cart animation — during AJAX add-to-cart requests, the button gently pulses in opacity without intrusive spinners; animations automatically respect prefers-reduced-motion.
v1.3.16 September 2026 Improvement
  • Optimized mobile offcanvas — refined filter drawer for tablets and smartphones with improved breakpoint detection, smooth overlay transitions, and clean rendering across custom themes.
v1.3.15 September 2026 Major feature
  • Color Swatches & Hex Mapping — assign hex colors per filter term. Renders crisp circular swatches with subtle hover/selected states and a compact 'Show more…' layout.
v1.3.12 August 2026 Improvement
  • Responsive Design Cascade — StyleBuilder styles cascade top-down from Wide (1920px) to Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile unless specifically overridden on a smaller breakpoint.
  • Cleaned-up sub-element accordions — builder controls display only relevant styling options for the active element.
v1.3.11 August 2026 Improvement
  • Redesigned Design tab in StyleBuilder — all styling options organized into named category accordions (Spacing & size, Background & colour, Border & shadow, Typography, Layout, Position, Interactive states).
v1.3.10 August 2026 Major feature
  • Safe Drafts & Publishing — edit live product cards without risking breaking the storefront for active shoppers. Edits save automatically to drafts with Publish and Discard controls.
v1.2.0 July 2026 Major feature
  • Native Bricks Builder integration — 4 dedicated widgets in the Bricks panel: IF — Sidebar + Grid, IF — Grid, IF — Filter sidebar, and IF — Single filter.
  • Full live canvas preview inside the Bricks editor and native support for Bricks WooCommerce Product Archive templates. See Bricks Builder documentation.
v1.1.5 June 2026 Major feature
  • Popularity sorting — sort products by WooCommerce sales counts (Most popular in the sort dropdown). Opt-in via Settings; default sort per listing or via ?orderby=popularity on pages with [instant_archive].
  • Sales data is captured at export build so server-render and frontend show the same order. After enabling: rebuild the export. See sorting docs.
v1.1.2 May 2026 Improvement
  • Polish and stability for large-catalog shops — filter counters, indexing and admin UX refinements on top of the 1.1 line.
v1.1.0 February 2026 Performance
  • Pre-aggregated filter counts — category and shop pages render with accurate counts in milliseconds instead of multi-second SSR queries on large catalogs.
  • Counts rebuild automatically in the background after indexing. No extra admin button to remember.
v1.0.5 April 2026 Major feature
  • StyleBuilder — visual designer in WP Admin (Pro & Agency). Lay out titles, prices, badges and attribute swatches without editing theme templates.
  • Bind a card to a listing or shortcode so different archives can use different layouts. Basic tier keeps the built-in PHP card. See the StyleBuilder docs.
v1.0.0 February 2026 Launch
  • Public Founders launch — 14-day trial and tiered licensing (Basic, Pro, Agency) via Lemon Squeezy.
  • License key activation in WP Admin with automatic plugin updates for paying customers.
v0.9.3 Early 2026 Variations
  • Per-property variation explode — show color (or any attribute) as separate filterable cards while other attributes stay on the card.
  • Item-based indexer batching and accurate filter counts when variations are exploded.
v0.9.15 February 2026 B2B
  • Hide-price mode for quote-on-request and B2B products — custom placeholder text, excluded from price filters, “View product” instead of add-to-cart.
v0.8.6 2025–2026 Stability
  • Indexing hardened for shops with thousands of products and variations — memory leaks removed, batch processing tuned for 6,000+ SKUs without crashes.
  • Export and filter-bar foundations that the current frontend still builds on.

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