Warning New Wordpress updates may break your websites

[universal4]

Ok a bit of a controversial title, but in my opinion, I honestly think that the change about to be released by Wordpress in an upcoming update in the coming weeks, can and WILL break a LOT of websites immediately upon release.

Just 1 or 2 days ago, they released the update to 5.6, and I have not personally seen much backlash from it, but at only 2 days old, many of us know some updates have broken functions or plugins etc over the years, but so far looks ok.

The article linked states what will be in Wordpress 5.7

We Will Retire Custom Sidebars After WordPress 5.6
https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/ret...stom-sidebars/

At the beginning, they will have a workaround, and a small piece of code that will need to be placed in the functions file of the theme. but Wordpress themselves are very clear about the direction they are going, and in fact have stated that in the future those workarounds may cease to work in future updates.

Keep in mind, however, that there is a very big chance that WordPress will remove the Widget screen entirely in favor of the full site editing experience.

We all can easily remember the whole Guttenberg release and how many issues surrounding that learning curve.

I am personally on my sites as well as recommending to my clients to turn off all automatic updates of wordpress itself at least temporarily.

There are a number of methods to stopping the updates, but one way I do this is to remove write access to the root web folder (or wp folder if you are so inclined to put wp in a sub folder) Using this method I do need to make sure write access is provided to the wp-content folder, so that themes, plugins etc can be updated and that those who use the wordpress upload methods still work. This insures that even an accidental click of, "yea go ahead and break my site with your wp update" would still fail.

Now I understand this may be a bit controversial, and some may suggest, to just go ahead and take any and all updates from WP and deal with consequences later, but I just feel a warning in place in advance may be prudent.

I actually hope I am wrong, but in one recent email I sent out, I actually predicted over 100,000 sites could easily be affected the day the release starts rolling out. Just think of the many thousands and thousands of websites out there running on older themes, sites that perform just fine as they are, in some cases keeping up with security updates as needed, but using an older navigation or sidebar method that Wordpress now says, do it our way or we break your site.

Rick
Universal4

[Michael Martinez]

It will be a royal PITA but we're committed to getting our portfolio off WordPress, probably by the end of 2021. It's too unstable and dragging its user base toward a tedious emulation of the worst Website building features available.

The reason why we switched to WordPress years ago was that it wasn't a block-oriented development system. It allowed us to create content quickly and seamlessly without a lot of tedious extra steps.

[newcustomeroffer]

Ok a bit of a controversial title, but in my opinion, I honestly think that the change about to be released by Wordpress in an upcoming update in the coming weeks, can and WILL break a LOT of websites immediately upon release.

Just 1 or 2 days ago, they released the update to 5.6, and I have not personally seen much backlash from it, but at only 2 days old, many of us know some updates have broken functions or plugins etc over the years, but so far looks ok.

Thanks, that's a useful forewarning.

Actually 5.6 seems a bit buggy to me, particularly on google chrome. Some elements have disappeared when editing on chrome and others disabled like switching between visual and text editing. On firefox no issues so may well just be a browser compatibility issue.

[wonderpunter]

i have a custom theme on my main site and i know it will just go boom, i always wait anyhow. but when i update will get the developers to do it, back to pre 2018 where every update broke something

[universal4]

Thanks newustomeroffer, I had not dug deep into possible issues with 5.6 yet and only have 1 managed site that updated to it. Maybe I will not move to that version for a bit either.

Thanks Michael, you made some great points and I tend to agree with you, the direction wordpress is going now is more of a culture change in addition to the underlying code base.

Rick
Universal4

[worthy]

Switching between visual and text editing is troublesome for me on Firefox since the update. The visual view is blank. I have to click back to text editing, refresh the page and switch back to visual. In many cases, the fonts in the visual are so small. Then I have to repeat the process to see the visual mode in normal-sized fonts.

[newcustomeroffer]

Switching between visual and text editing is troublesome for me on Firefox since the update. The visual view is blank. I have to click back to text editing, refresh the page and switch back to visual. In many cases, the fonts in the visual are so small. Then I have to repeat the process to see the visual mode in normal-sized fonts.

I reinstalled the 5.6 update when I noticed the issue on Chrome so maybe try that - the visual/text editing works as before on Firefox for me now, but I can't tell for sure if that's because I reinstalled it or not as I didn't try Firefox before the reinstall.

Also noticed a few issues when setting tables and meta-tags. In all a pretty messy update it would seem.

[worthy]

I reinstalled the 5.6 update when I noticed the issue on Chrome so maybe try that - the visual/text editing works as before on Firefox for me now, but I can't tell for sure if that's because I reinstalled it or not as I didn't try Firefox before the reinstall.

Also noticed a few issues when setting tables and meta-tags. In all a pretty messy update it would seem.

Thanks for the idea. I've tried but unfortunately, it didn't help.

[Sattakingguruji]

Thanks for update, my website created by wordpress, i'll we update today. Thank's again

[ARZ]

I found 5.6 version uncompatible with plugin which is nesessary for my website content (MyArcade). Also some other plugins are affected a bit. So I turned off the automatic updates and will be looking forward for the bug fixes. Hope everything will get back to normal, we cannot lose WP

[rmeeuwsen]

I actually do a complete site backup using “WP All Import” before I update wordpress - as suggested!

But since I have a lot of sites, I love the new “auto update” plugins option and use it! I rationalize plugins updates as follows.

• updates may include fixes to bugs and security vulnerabilities
• I would rather have my site “go down” because of plug-in errors or incompatibilities rather than have it go down because of hacks.

I also personally hate the Gutenberg editing and would not like being forced into systemic changes of my site appearance.

But many thanks for the insightful pitfalls and potential upcoming changes.

[buyonaut]

I did a test update before going live and most of the plugins worked normally, no issues detected. With 5.6 you might face issues with old plugins but installing jQuery migrate file might fix your issues.

The only bug I had i 5.6 is that once I deleted all posts from certain category, the category disappeared too - and won't come back regardless what you do. The issue was fixed by switching from Gutenberg to Classic editor, creating new cath with same name and save. Moved back to Gutenberg and all working fine.

There must be issues with this update as some of the plugins are not 5.6 ready.

I wouldn't recommend to anybody that is not running clean install to update. Just wait and see what happens, as bugs will be fixed sooner or later. Perfectly normal situation, 5.6 has just been released and bugs are coming in... I guess it is a long list of TO DO things there.

[Former Member 14]

back to pre 2018 where every update broke something

Most of my WP theme's were bespoke, but none of them ever broke when WP undated their core. Then again, I've always run the barest minimum of plugins. Maybe the "broke" issues, stem not from the WP updates, but instead, from the people your hiring. If your not code savvy yourself, hiring a developer(s) is a bit like a lucky-dip, hey!