Upgrade to 4.8.1 – New WordPress version released
Whenever new WordPress version released I strongly suggest upgrading your WordPress installation. Ignoring update means missing out on improvements, new features and probably risking website security.
Why WordPress upgrade is necessary
WordPress is freely available, and developed by a community of developers. With each new release, they add new features, enhance existing features, fix bugs and improve performance to keep it up to date with industry standards. Most noteworthy reasons are:
- It keeps WordPress secure if upgrade contains security fix.
- To maintain compatibility with new plugins.
- To get newest features.
- Improved performance (WordPress developers always trying to make things faster).
WordPress 4.8.1 contains 29 enhancements and maintenance fixes
Points mentioned below are tickets created in WordPress trac for problems/issues. All of them are resolved with this new WordPress version.
REST API
1. Add filter to allow modifying response *after* embedded data is added.
2. PUT requests fail on Nginx servers when fancy permalinks aren’t enabled.
TinyMCE
3. Images with link and caption look “broken” when selected.
Administration
4. Permalink Settings: custom structure field keyboard trap.
Taxonomy
5. wp_get_object_terms() returns duplicate terms if more than one taxonomy is given in args.
Customize
6. Customizer Panel Footer border missing.
7. Menus: it is far too easy to mistakenly delete a menu because the “Delete Menu” link and the “Add Items” button are too close together.
8. Increase tinymce panel z-index.
9. Set `’filter’ => ‘content’` on starter content “business info” widget.
Build/Test Tools
10. Bump Akismet External – 4.9 Edition.
Comments
11. ‘Empty Spam’ and ‘Empty Trash’ comment buttons not displayed on mobile.
Widgets
12. Facebook video works on preview but not on theme.
13. Introduce widget dedicated for HTML code.
14. The Text widget should respect the “Disable the visual editor when writing” setting.
15. TinyMCE editor in Text widget does not have RTL contents.
16. Query param for `loop` added for non-hosted external videos.
17. Theme styles for Text widget do not apply to Custom HTML widget.
18. Switching between visual/text editor strips out code with new text widget.
19. Media widgets and text widgets cannot be edited in accessibility mode.
20. Text widget does not show Title field or TinyMCE editor.
21. If customize-base is enqueued on widgets admin screen then text widget can raise JS error.
22. Text Widget – Wording – Legacy Mode 4.8.1 beta.
23. Rename legacy mode to visual mode and improve back-compat for widget_text filters in text widget.
24. Updated text widget do not save text (when using paste).
Embeds
25. oEmbed: Update VideoPress oEmbed URL.
26. `WP_oEmbed_Controller::get_proxy_item()` should remove `_wpnonce` from cached `$args`.
27. oEmbed proxy fails to forward maxwidth and maxheight params.
General
28. WP-API JS Client: Settings is incorrectly registered as a collection.
Media
29. media-views.js: Cannot read .length of undefined (this.controller.$uploaderToggler.length).
More details are here on tickets and reasons why above points are there in updrage.
Important things to consider before upgrade
- The upgrade process will affect all folders and files included in the main WordPress installation. This includes all the core files used to run WordPress. If you have made any changes to those files, you may lost your changes.
- Check change-logs to see a summary of points in upgrade.
- Most importantly, backup source and database.
Find detailed information here on how to update when new WordPress version released. In case if you find any difficulty in upgrading WordPress version or after upgrading WordPress version, then you can share details with me. I’ll try my best to make your WordPress upgrade working for you.
