WordPress 5.0
Tomorrow (December 6th, 2018) will see the launch of WordPress 5.0. This is with relatively short notice from the team at Automattic and we’d like to advise all of our customers on what to do as this overhaul rolls out.
WordPress 5.0 RC3 https://t.co/OtlaRdXfk7
— WordPress (@WordPress) 4 December 2018
Things to consider
- Should you update now or later?
- Is your site compatible with Gutenberg?
- Will it improve your site?
Should you update now or later?
If you’re busy, receiving a lot of traffic, or are relying heavily on your website in its current state, we would advise waiting until at least January so that the WordPress team can release a few versions and improve stability / compatibility
Should you update now or later?
WordPress 5.0 contains an overhauled text editor that you will be familiar with using for posts, pages and products. This live Gutenberg preview will let you test out the new interface and features.
Since this is the first launch, many plugins that you may be using will be incompatible – if you don’t have a lot of plugins installed then your site may integrate well with Gutenberg. If you have particular plugins that you rely on, we recommend installing the Classic editor plugin before updating to WordPress 5.0.
Will it improve your site?
Currently, we do not believe that there is a universal argument for updating to WordPress 5.0 in this release, other than curiosity or interest in early adoption. The next release that will come in the early months of 2019 will likely be far more stable.
We love where WordPress are heading with Gutenberg and you will likely see it installed on new sites that we produce next year.
Final word: if you do upgrade, always create a backup first. This is good practice for all major software releases and we will always recommend backing up your site so that critical data is protected.