Support Team Update for April 10th

In today’s #wordpress-sfd support meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. the following items were discussed (not necessarily in this order).

WordPress 3.9 RC1 is live and security releases

3.9 RC1 was released for testing. Please continue to abuse and try to break. Security related updates for 3.8.2 and 3.7.2 were released as well.

There was some discussion about QuickPress (or Quick Draft) possibly being broken for 3.x.2 but that was unconfirmed as that’s not a feature many of us in the IRC chat use. Part of that concern is that other thing may have broken and that QuickPress (or QuickDraft) might just be a symptom.

Next Wednesday April 16th is the targeted release date of WordPress 3.9. For now there are daily coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. IRC meetups at 20:00 UTC on #wordpress-dev for this effort.

Forum topics regarding auto updates

With the auto updates of 3.8 (and 3.7) there have been some topics regarding the patches and the notification emails from the WordPress installations.

The auto updates are only for minor releaseMinor Release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality. number updates. So 3.8.1 will update to 3.8.2 but it will not update to 3.9. The major version number release upgrades have to be initiated manually in the WordPress dashboard.

The auto updates can be tuned and that includes disabling update emails. In the majority of cases a minor point releaseMinor Release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality. should not break anything. It’s really encouraged that users leave the auto updates in place.

That said, please understand that users who post to the forums about the auto updates have a problem and are looking for support. If you can help them out please do so but keep it positive and productive. Don’t reply if you are angry or reacting to someone else being upset.

Make/support has a Blue Welcome box now

Thanks to Kim Parsell the make/support has a blue welcome box with really helpful verbiage. It matches the other make blogs and I hope will encourage more people to participate in support.

PluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party authors getting notification emails

A lot of miscellaneous code changes will impact plugin developers, who for one reason or another, were doing things incorrectly. Some of those may have had a legitimate reason for doing that but those plugins will break with 3.9.

To attempt to head that off the plugins team will be sending an email and a post will be published on make/core. The email and the replies will probably back up the plugin review queue. If there are any complaints about the queue then please ask them to be patient.

Today’s IRC meetup transcript can be read via this link.

#support