If you’re running a WordPress site, you’re familiar with the idea of WordPress regularly pushing out updates that improve security, overall health and new features. Within the next few months (specific date still undetermined), WordPress is releasing a major update that will change the way you add and edit content from a single text area with buttons for formatting to blocks of different content. This will give you much more flexibility in the type of content you can add, allowing to create rich page layouts for your blog posts and pages. But it’s not without a few potential problems.

Testing for WordPress 5.0 Compatibility

First, you should know that WordPress will not automatically update to this version. We will have to hit the upgrade button as part of our standard maintenance, so you don’t have to worry about your website completely changing overnight.

There are a few areas that will be affected by the change, though: content, plugins, and themes all have the potential to break. I wanted to let you know as soon as possible so that we can come up with a plan for getting your website ready for WordPress 5.0. There’s no set date for when it’s coming out yet, but our goal is always to be proactive in preparing your site. Because this is such a significant change to the underlying software of the site, we will need to do more-robust testing than what we usually do for upgrades under our WordPress Maintenance program.

Recommended Steps

This is where we step in to help. We are offering a special package to our maintenance clients that will cover both a basic WordPress 5.0 compatibility assessment and implementation of a SSL certificate on the site.

  • Run Basic WP 5.0 compatibility assessment
    We’ll set up a staging environment and conduct a big-picture compatibility assessment with the upcoming WP 5.0 changes. If we run these tests and don’t encounter any serious (i.e. site-breaking) issues, then we’ll simply be good to go for when the WP 5.0 rolls out. On the other hand, if we do observe serious issues then we’ll provide a detailed assessment on what’s wrong and options for how best to proceed (e.g. more in-depth troubleshooting, etc.).
  • Facilitate configuration of SSL certificate

While the specific date of the WordPress 5.0 rollout is yet to be determined, we can start taking the steps recommended above immediately to ensure that your site continues to run smoothly. We encourage you to let us know if you’re interested in this package, so that we may prioritize your project and avoid a backlog when WP5.0 rolls out.