Exercise 1: Why the Copied Template Never Got the Fix — Possible Solution ==================================================================== WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE FILE WAS COPIED ------------------------------ Per this chapter, once content-product.php was copied into the theme's own woocommerce/ folder, WooCommerce stopped using its own bundled copy of that file for rendering product cards on this store and started using the theme's copy instead - permanently, until that override is removed. WHY THE UPDATE'S FIX NEVER REACHED THE STORE ------------------------------ Per this chapter, a template override is a fork: the theme's copy is now a frozen, independent version of that file. When WooCommerce itself later updates its own original content-product.php - including this bug fix - that update only changes the plugin's own bundled file. It has no way to reach into the theme's folder and update the developer's separate copy, since WordPress has no mechanism that tracks or syncs the two versions against each other. WHY THIS IS THE EXPECTED, DOCUMENTED BEHAVIOR ------------------------------ Per this chapter, this is exactly the trade-off named directly: overriding a template means the theme's copy no longer receives WooCommerce's own future updates to that file automatically. The developer would need to manually compare the plugin's updated file against their own override and reapply the fix by hand. WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER ------------------------------ It correctly identifies that copying the file breaks the connection to WooCommerce's own future updates for that specific file, and explains precisely why the update process has no way to reach a manually forked copy.