GTM4WP 2.1 release candidate 1 is ready for testing

The first release candidate of GTM4WP 2.1 is available for testing. Its feature set is final: until the 2.1.0 release, only fixes go in. Like the betas, it is published only on GitHub; wordpress.org keeps offering 2.0.6 as the stable version until the final release. The beta 1 and beta 2 announcements describe what is new in 2.1 as a whole. This post covers what changed since beta 2.

Changes since beta 2

• Google Data Manager with several destinations: a refund is now sent in a separate request to each destination. When two GA4 destinations used the same service account, the betas sent one request that Google refused, so the refund reached neither of them.
• Attribution capture no longer has its own setting. Orders store the attribution data whenever refund sending is on, because refund sending is the only feature that uses it.
• Recent sends: a refund that you send again shows as queued right away, before the background job runs. A destination that has already accepted a refund never receives it a second time.
• WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads on one site: a new admin notice warns when both track e-commerce. This setup is not supported, because the two share settings that the browser trackers read, such as the currency.
• The descriptions of the settings that are new in 2.1 are shorter. The details are on the documentation pages behind the “?” links.
• The fixes released in 2.0.6 are included, among them the WooCommerce data layer in the in-app browsers of Android apps and thank-you pages kept out of page caches.

The release notes list every change.

Release plan

• October 19: a second release candidate, only if testing finds something that needs a fix
• October 26: final release on wordpress.org

These dates can still move if something unforeseen comes up during testing.

How to test

Please test the release candidate on a staging site, not on a live store. Download duracelltomi-google-tag-manager-2.1.0-rc1.zip from the release page and upload it under Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin. WordPress offers to replace the installed version. The source code archives that GitHub generates are not installable.

Please report anything you find on GitHub with “2.1 RC” in the title. A problem reported now can still be fixed before 2.1 is released on wordpress.org.