WordPress 5.5.1 Maintenance Released to Fix Millions of Broken Sites
WordPress 5.5.1 Maintenance Released to Fix Millions of Broken Sites
WordPress published new data that explains why WordPress 5.5 negatively affected millions of sites, a huge number. WordPress is publishing a maintenance release, version 5.5.1. It is designed to fill in as a fix to give time for plugin and theme developers to update their product.
The announcement about what turned out badly linked to a spreadsheet naming hundreds of plugin and themes that were affected.
The spreadsheet additionally notes what the particular issue is for each plugin and theme, which will help developers fix their plugins and themes.
WordPress 5.5.1 Maintenance Release September 1, 2020
The WordPress 5.5.1 maintenance release is designed to prevent websites from breaking. Yet, the errors will still need to be fixed.
WordPress portrayed the issue this way:
“In WordPress 5.5 the global JavaScript objects listed below were removed without being deprecated. WordPress 5.5.1 adds a backfill for these globals so they no longer cause JavaScript errors.”
Plugin and theme developers have time until March 2021 to fix the code. Failure to fix the code will bring about another round of site failures.
As explained by WordPress:
“The plan is to remove this fallback code in two major versions, so this will be deleted in WordPress 5.7. This gives plugin and theme developer’s ample time to remove the conflicting code and switch to using wp.i18n”
Millions of Websites Affected
The spreadsheet uncovered the previously unknown amount of sites that were broken.
There at first was easygoing hypothesis that the effect was moderately little and restricted to thousands of sites. However, that wasn’t the situation.
WordPress 5.5 negatively affected a millions of websites.
That’s why a fix was urgently released yesterday, September 1, 2020.
Some Plugins Already Fixed
Not all the plugins on list continue to be broken. Some have been fixed.
Among the affected plugins with a huge number of users:
- SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle +1 million users
- Advanced Custom Fields +1 million users
- Ninja Forms Contact Form – The Drag and Drop Form Builder for WordPress +1 million users
Partial List of Plugins Affected by WordPress 5.5
- WordPress Gallery Plugin – NextGEN Gallery
- Polylang
- Child Theme Configurator
- Simple Custom CSS and JS
- Toolset Types – Custom Post Types, Custom Fields and Taxonomies
- Max Mega Menu
- WP AutoTerms: Privacy Policy Generator, Cookie Notice Banner, Terms & Conditions Generator
- YITH WooCommerce Wishlist
- Ocean Extra
- WordPress SEO Plugin – Rank Math
- Meta Box – WordPress Custom Fields Framework
- Hummingbird – Speed Optimize, Cache, Minify & Defer Critical CSS & JavaScript
- Content Views – Post Grid & List for WordPress
Popular Themes Affected by WordPress 5.5:
- Astra +1 million users
- Storefront +200,000 users
- Hestia +100,000 users
- Neve +100,000 users
- ColorMag +100,000 users
- Customizr
- Hueman
- Zakra
There were many more themes that were affected. See link below for lists of all affected themes.
Update to WordPress to 5.5.1
This maintenance update is intended to fix a wide range of errors that were found after 5.5 was released. For those that moved back their sites to previous version of WordPress because 5.5 was breaking their websites, this is the version that should be downloaded. Issues that were found have been fixed.
We at CodeLedge, offer Sweden’s best WordPress development and maintenance services. If you are having any trouble with your WordPress website, feel free to approach us at hi@codeledge.net or get a quote from here.
Citations
Official WordPress Announcement of What Went Wrong
Deprecated JavaScript Globals
https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/09/01/deprecated-javascript-globals/
Spreadsheet with Full List of Affected Plugins and Themes
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Vho7hJR4DMRyns38xcUMvVUj8SBov_J8_X4a7zwpmzo/edit#gid=0
