Folks, WordPress 5.5 is here - the second
major release of 2020 with a ton of performance, security and design improvements. Whilst we are all excited about this new update,
we do not recommend updating to this new version immediately on your production (live) site. We know you have Administrative access to your WordPress websites(s) and with the click of a button, you can easily upgrade to the latest version.
However, we strongly suggest that you wait up to 5 days so we can check the changelogs for you and thoroughly test the functionality of this new update on a staging server. Once we are happy and have seen that there is no major risk to your site, we will update it for you. Because we handle so many sites, we might not be able to notify you individually though after updating. Be sure to check your site after 5 days and if it's not updated to WordPress 5.5, do let us know.
If you can not wait and are very eager to jump onto the new version immediately, at the very least, you'll need a full backup (that you know how to restore) and time/a plan for testing the site after update.
Just so you know, there have been a few complaints so far from other users who have upgraded to 5.5 and lost their website content - pages are showing the white screen of death or they just won`t load. We will not be held responsible for any technical breakages that may result as a result of this upgrade.
Curious to Learn What`s in The New Update?
This update adds XML Sitemap functionality to the core of WordPress. But it's VERY limited functionality at this point. Vastly better to have a fully-optimized and integrated XML sitemap from a quality SEO plugin. If you're running the most current version of Yoast SEO, Rankmath, or AllinOneSEO, it will automatically disable the new WP sitemaps. If using another SEO/Sitemap plugin, you're going to want to double-check this.
Lazy-loading of images is also now included in the core - again, need to cross-check if you're already handling this better in a speed-optimization plugin or theme.
The ability to enable full automatic updates of plugins and themes becomes available in this update. At the very least, opting to do this requires a proven-reliable backup/restore capability for the site. Even with that in place, our recommendation is not to enable auto-update for the theme and for conversion-critical plugins like forms, eCommerce/payments, SEO, speed optimization, etc. These should only be updated when you have time to check the changelogs first and to thoroughly test the functionality on the site immediately after the update.
This version of WP also begins the process of changing how WordPress handles JQuery. (It removes the current JQuery Migrate) So you'll want to do a check of the functionality of your site that depends on JQuery, especially if you have some older/legacy plugins or themes.
