Hi xdividr,
I’m afraid I will have to disagree with you on most of your points here.
Plugin auto-updates on live, production site should not be a thing and in my mind is the opposite of good practice. It is incredibly bad practice to have something like this in place on a production site.
You should 100% of the time have a development or local environment for testing plugin updates and making sure all is well before pushing to a live site. It sends shivers down my spine to see people carelessly update plugins or WordPress itself on live sites.
Anything can go wrong with a plugin update and people do make changes over time. If I never released a major update again then people would be even less happy as you would have a product that is left stuck in the past.
This plugin has been around for 3 years now, I think that one major update that only has a few differences is not actually as bad as you are making out to be. I understand the fact that it is no longer compatible with PHP 5.4 and below can be annoying to some people, but honestly that is an un-supported and un-secure version of PHP that PHP themselves don’t even support anymore, how can I possibly support it?
Even PHP have just released version 7.0, which has broken alot of backwards compatibility and will cause alot of plugins on WordPress to stop working. I am much happier that PHP have moved the codebase forward than get stuck in the past.
I understand there is work on the developers side to make plugins as compatible as possible but as I said the only way this plugin will break is if you are using PHP 5.2 which stopped being supported over 5 1/2 years ago.
All the best
P.S – I don’t want it to sound like I am not willing to help out WordPress site owners.
In fact the opposite, you can probably see the amount of free support I offer people and I get about 4 times as much on email as I do here and respond to every one.
I always want to make developers lives easier as I am one myself. I took every possible precaution possible with the 3.0 release as I know major releases can be painful at first.
I made sure that all compatible settings were copied over when upgrading and placed banners for months about not upgrading to the 3.0 unless you have the right version of PHP installed.
Also, the error messages you originally posted have been patched since so you will no longer see these and it wont take sites down anymore so hopefully that will allievate much of the concerns moving forward.
All the best
the only way this plugin will break is if you are using PHP 5.2 which stopped being supported over 5 1/2 years ago.
My site was running PHP 5.6 and generated fatal errors on update.
It sends shivers down my spine to see people carelessly update plugins or WordPress itself on live sites.
Core updates: disagree, old news. Since 3.7, by default, every site has automatic updates enabled for minor core releases and translation files.
Plugin updates: agree, point taken. Plugin users clearly have the final responsibility to test updates before deploying to production. It’s not the plugin author’s responsibility to test on all possible configurations.
However, you have some responsibility too. You took the time to make landing page for people with broken sites. If you know stuff will break, be cool and notify users via an admin notice in a minor version.
OK, just seeing your latest post.
I made sure that all compatible settings were copied over when upgrading and placed banners for months about not upgrading to the 3.0 unless you have the right version of PHP installed.
OK, I appreciate you pointing this out. By ‘banner’ do you mean an admin notice, or somewhere else? Never saw this myself.
Hey xdividr,
My site was running PHP 5.6 and generated fatal errors on update.
As I said those initial errors have now been fixed and it was patched within a few hours of release. Unfortunately although I tried testing it as rigorously as possible some issues remained but were patched almost instantly. I hope no-one else will suffer what you have done and I can only apologise for that.
Core updates: disagree, old news. Since 3.7, by default, every site has automatic updates enabled for minor core releases and translation files.
I have all auto-updates disabled on my production sites, including translations and minor core updates. It may not be necessary for all but like I said, I dont allow any code changes to live sites that havent been tested on dev sites – even WordPress core minor updates have the potential to break things, even the best developers in the world can introduce unintended bugs that may not show up in testing.
However, you have some responsibility too. You took the time to make landing page for people with broken sites. If you know stuff will break, be cool and notify users via an admin notice in a minor version.
I 100% agree with you on this, I try to take as much responsibility as possible and have added Upgrade Notes before updating now for old 2.8.9 versions – I admit it was an oversight on my part and have tried to make it clearer for those who still havent upgraded along with the patches to stop the fatal errors I hope it will be a more pleasent experience now.
If you have any more tips or advice I am always open and willing to know more.
All the best
OK, I appreciate you pointing this out. By ‘banner’ do you mean an admin notice, or somewhere else? Never saw this myself.
There is an upgrade notice now that shows before upgrading from the 2.8 versions and also there is a banner showing in the plugin admin area for 2.8 versions.
It can be closed however so it wouldnt suprise me if people didn’t read it.
All the best
