Upgrade Wordpress at your own risk

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Michael Martinez: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-5-5.../379486/
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  E Dieter Martin: Was about to say: wait for 5.5.1. I was a bit late in updating my sites to 5.5 and was pretty happy about it.
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  Adam John Humphreys: No issues seen on Astra despite their comments. I`m interested to know what the actual Astra issue was.
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  Michael Martinez: I don`t think I manage a site that uses Astra, although I`ve looked at it before.
  
  I had to wait on upgrading all the sites I manage. That is how I handle these big changes. I wait and see who crashes and burns. I can`t afford to upgrade 200 sites and …See More
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  Adam John Humphreys: The only thing I seem to have issues with is a popular forms plugin and WP Rocket updates occasionally on major updates. I think they`ll be doing more testing going ahead because it`s for sure cost them.
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  Neil Cheesman: Is the 5.5.1 okay?
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  Michael Martinez: According to Roger`s article it is but it will be next week before I start upgrading sites.
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  Neil Cheesman: I usually wait and let the first wave of updates to take place.
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  Roger Montti: 5.5.1 should be an automatic update. The purpose of it is to patch bugs and also patch up some JavaScript Objects that were removed.
  
  The removal of those objects broke millions of sites. That`s an astonishing amount of sites, but it was confirmed by a spreadsheet published by WordPress (linked from my article).
  
  When a plugin or theme made a reference to those missing objects, WP would then go into "unexpected behaviors" such as hanging, timing out or crashing entirely.
  
  WP 5.5.1 patches that and gives plugin and theme owners until March 2021 to fix their code so that they conform with the updated coding standards.
  
  My article links to a spreadsheet that lists plugins and themes that were affected. I was astonished by the fact that MILLIONS of sites were affected by WP 5.5. I couldn`t believe the scope of it.
  
  The 5.5.1 maintenance release and the scope of the 5.5 issues have NOT been covered in mainstream WordPress news sites. I suspect they are afraid of getting kicked off of the WP Dashboard news section and losing that traffic.
  
  As a result, this kind of important news has gone unreported until I made it part of what I write about. ;)
  
  https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-5-5.../379486/