WordPress 4.5 released – updated jQuery

WordPress has released version 4.5 of their WordPress product. Release notes for this update can be found on the WordPress website.

Among the changes in this release include formatting shortcuts, image resizing optimizations, and an update to jQuery.

The update to jQuery is showing to cause some problems with users who use outdated or abandoned themes or plugins. The update to jQuery version 1.12.3 disrupts the way some themes and plugins were performing tasks. These tasks were being performed incorrectly, it’s just that older versions of jQuery were still allowing these tasks to be performed incorrectly. jQuery version 1.12.3 puts a stop to this. The long and short of this is to make sure you are always using up-to-date and reputable (as in not abandoned) themes and plugins for your WordPress script. Reputable theme and plugin developers have kept their code up to date and stay in-tune with WordPress changes.

The upgrade to WordPress 4.5 is not mandatory – at least I don’t think so. As we have found out, WordPress tends to have a weird release system. If you ask them, they’ll tell you that WordPress 4.5 is THE version of WordPress. Yet, they will also continue to release security updates for WordPress 4.4, WordPress 4.3, WordPress 4.2… I’m really not sure how far back they go. Eventually they will stop releasing updates to these older versions of WordPress (or do they intend to support 100 versions of WordPress for years?) but they won’t say when that will happen. Again, as far as they are concerned WordPress 4.5 is THE version of WordPress … except for when they release updates to WordPress 4.4, 4.3, 4.2, etc. Bottom Line: If you are not upgrading to WordPress 4.5 now, I would encourage you to at least be making plans to upgrade to WordPress 4.5 sometime in the near future.

Kyle
AMS Support