BEWARE – CRASHES YOUR SITE!

  • Quite why the developer released something that causes Fatal Errors and renders WordPress sites useless is beyond reckoning, and completely disgusting.

    Not even the Rollback Update Failure plugin can cope with the utter FUBAR mess left behind by the 1.13.x updates.

    The 1.14 release “fixed” the problem by reverting the changes in 1.13, but if your site already automatically updated to 1.13 then you are stuck with a hosed site, unless you have FTP or ssh access to your site.

    This actually highlights a flaw within WordPress itself: there needs to be an external Cron process that checks for update failures and removes the offending plugin when it detects such an event.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author John Blackbourn

    (@johnbillion)

    WordPress Core Developer

    Please don’t use hyperbolic language like “beyond reckoning, and completely disgusting”. Reckon this: I am a human being just like you (hello), and for the first time in over a decade of maintaining this plugin for free for hundreds of thousands of users, I released a new feature which was unfortunately let down by a configuration problem at the final hurdle, the point where the plugin gets deployed to the www.ads-software.com plugin directory.

    I don’t know why anybody takes the risk of using the automatic update feature in WordPress on a production website. It’s almost inevitable that at some point a plugin or theme update will break your site to one degree or another, whether that’s a full-on fatal error or some other breakage that’s not immediately visible. It’s unfortunate that this time around it was WP Crontrol.

    You’re absolutely right that the automatic update feature in WordPress is flawed. It’s great for using on development sites but should never be activated on a production website.

    @thejasonator wrote: “This actually highlights a flaw within WordPress itself: there needs to be an external Cron process that checks for update failures and removes the offending plugin when it detects such an event.”

    I was thinking the exact same thing. There needs to be a fail-safe rollback/undo mechanism built into WordPress core. Or the Automatic Update feature in WordPress should have an integrity check before it updates a plugin.

    I also think that Wordfence Security (which I use on all my sites) should have an “intercept” function that detects and prevents a bad plugin update.

    @rschletty,

    Good points. Did you submit your suggestions to WordPress Requests and Feedback Forum and Wordfence?

    Thank you!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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