Update Your Site To WordPress 4.4, like a Pro.
Last week I watched live as the WordPress core developers rushed down to the wire to release version 4.4. It was the first release that I’ve been around to watch be pushed live, and it was really fun.
I make my money on keeping people’s WordPress installs up to date and backed up, but I didn’t rush out to upgrade all client sites immediately. There’s a difference, in my mind, between a security release where a specific bug has been patched that makes sites more secure, and a feature release. Features are nice, not urgent.
Don’t get me wrong, https://benandjacq.com was updated to 4.4 within 20 minutes of the release:
WordPress 4.4 (featuring the Twenty Sixteen Theme) released 20 minutes ago. https://t.co/BpbpYdzAK7 is on a Twenty Sixteen child theme NOW.
— Ben Meredith @[email protected] (@benUNC) December 9, 2015
I trust that the code is secure (and I’ve been running the alphas and betas on a development site to design this new twenty sixteen child theme.)
But that’s the thing: I’m getting paid to keep sites up and secure, not to be the first to get updated. My workflow for clients will be to set up a staging site for them, then to update to 4.4, make sure nothing breaks, and then to import those changes to the live site. There’s no rush, except to get things right.
Once the smoke clears (and 6 days later I’ve seen almost no smoke: kudos to the core team!) I’ll get all of my client sites updated, and running the latest version of WordPress. There are some amazing new features. My favorite is that WordPress is now an oEmbed provider. What that means is that now posts can be embedded! Here’s what I mean:
So nice! Now any oEmbed consumer (which WordPress has been since version 2.9 in 2009) will show that great little embed when you put a post URL on its own line.
Are you interested in keeping your site up to date, but don’t have the time to stay on top of updates? I’m taking new clients on for maintenance. Let a pro handle it for you.
