Make sure WordPress 5 doesn’t break your site!

Hi! I rarely do this, but I’m sending a message to all my clients (and a few colleagues and friends) who have websites built in WordPress.

WordPress is always being updated to add bug fixes and security updates, but last week there was a major update that introduced a whole new way that content is added to web pages. It’s called the “Gutenberg” editor, and instead of just typing text into a box and formatting it, like a word processor, it gives you “components’ that you can drag-and-drop into the page.

It’s at the same time more advanced, simpler, and more powerful. But the main issue with it is, not all existing sites will work properly with it.

You may be notified that your site is ready to update to WordPress 5.0. But there’s some things you need to know before you hit that “Update now” link.

I’ve already encountered one client who went ahead with the update and regretted it, as now they can’t edit their site. Luckily, the outward-facing part is fine, the site still displays perfectly, but for the moment they can’t make any edits on the back end. I’m going to fix this for them, but I thought I should tell you about this whole situation so you can avoid this problem.

I’m happy to check your site for compatibility with WP5, and take what steps are needed – if any – to ensure it keeps working fine on both the front and back end.

The WP5 update offers options to preserve the current editing system, avoiding Gutenberg altogether, and this will continue to be supported by future updates until 2020. It’s possible to just do the update yourself, follow the steps, and choose this safest option.

But if you’d rather not mess around with it yourself, I’m happy to do it for you.

For most sites, it should be straightforward, and I’m happy to just bill for my minimum charge of $50.

If there are complexities that need to be addressed, I can either recommend you just hold off for now on updating, or fix them now for hopefully not much greater cost.

Let me know if you’d like to take me up on that offer, or if you have any questions at all.

Thanks and talk soon!

Adam