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Word Press 5.0.1 is out.  What next?

Few Word Press releases have generated as much buzz in the developer community as 5.0, a.k.a. the “Gutenberg” edition.  The most significant change is in the text editor, but there are many other changes in this release.

Do you remember when Microsoft introduced the Ribbon Bar in Office applications?  Content editors and composers are going to have a similar experience performing every day tasks in Gutenberg.

You can disable the Gutenberg editor by installing the Classic Editor Plugin, which may or may not be compatible with existing plugins or page builders.  We don’t recommend this, as Gutenberg is the future of Word Press.

Before upgrading, make a full backup of the site and the database.  A “Backup Buddy” or similar backup is not sufficient here.  You need to be absolutely certain you can revert to the previous version if the update doesn’t go as expected.

Wait to upgrade if:

Your site uses a page builder, such as Divi, Visual Composer, WP Bakery, Avia Page Builder, Good Layers, etc..  If your site’s theme uses a page builder, we advise waiting a couple of minor version releases from both Word Press and the Page builder developers — unless you like being on the bleeding edge.

You have a large number of plugins.  You need to check with each plug ins developer to ensure that they have a 5.0 compatible version, and more importantly that it has been tested. There are many plugins that interact with the Word Press Editor that may cause problems.

How we can help:

We are advising all of our customers to wait for 5.1 – Let the somebody else find the major bugs and security flaws first during the Holiday Rush.

If you run into trouble with 5.0, give us a call, we have been experimenting with the Beta versions and can assist.  After the peak of the holiday rush, we’ll be updating over one hundred websites to 5.0.  So we’re not experts yet but we will be soon!

All the Best!
FosDog

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