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WordPress Users – Update Now

February 8, 2018

There are a ton of websites that use WordPress to deliver content. On Monday, WordPress published version 4.9.3 maintenance release. The released fixed 34 bugs and introduced a new one. One of the great services of modern software is the ability for automatic updates. Typically, the user can allow updates to automatically be installed or be notified when updates are available. When WordPress 4.9.3 was released, automatic updates broke for a lot of installations. WordPress described the bug as follows:

Four years ago with WordPress 3.7 "Basie", we added the ability for WordPress to self-update, keeping your website secure and bug-free, even when you weren't available to do it yourself. For four years it's helped keep millions of installs updated with very few issues over that time. Unfortunately yesterdays 4.9.3 release contained a severe bug which was only discovered after release. The bug will cause WordPress to encounter an error when it attempts to update itself to WordPress 4.9.4, and will require an update to be performed through the WordPress dashboard or hosts update tools.

What's a user to do? If you are not running a managed instance of WordPress, you'll have to manually check what version of WordPress is installed. The very next day WordPress released 4.9.4 to fix the automatic update bug. If your managed provider didn't update the site to 4.9.4, you'll have to manually apply it to get automatic updates working again.

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