READ THIS FIRST – WordPress 4.4 Master List

  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)


    8 years, 11 months ago

    Hooray! Clifford is here! But OMGWTFBBQ!? WordPress 4.4 broke everything?

    Don’t Panic!

    Before you go any further, make sure you’ve updated your plugins and themes to the latest versions, clear your browser’s cache and cookies and re-log into your WordPress dashboard.

    Still having problems? Okay, read on!

    This thread contains the known issues with plugins and themes found in 4.4. Please read this WHOLE topic and come back and check again later, as it will be updated.

    Remember to be calm, be patient and be respectful. Volunteers are out here to try and help you, but we need your help too. All of the normal forum rules still apply. Remember, you are just as important as everyone else.

    If your post doesn’t show up right away, please be patient. With the higher than normal post volume, more posts get flagged as spam by our auto-spam tool. We’re working hard to keep the queue clear, but making multiple posts slows us down, as we have to go back and check if you already posted. Post once.

    • Do use proper capitalization in post titles and body. Punctuate your sentence properly and humanely, it helps us read.
    • Do use descriptive subject lines. “All permalinks broken since 4.4” is much better than “Augh! Help ASAP! This version is terrible!”
    • Do describe the problem clearly. Explain what you’re seeing, include error messages and link to screenshots if needed. Linking to your site, if the problem is on the front-end, also helps.
    • Do be patient. We know it sucks to be down, but posting multiple times doesn’t get you help any faster.
    • Do make your own topic unless you are using the exact same version of WordPress on the same physical server hosted by the same hosts with the same plugins, theme and configurations as the original poster. You may find it weird, but it will be easier for us to help you specifically if you have your own topic.
    • Do mark your topic as resolved when it’s fixed so we know not to come looking there anymore.
    • Do remember you’re not alone.

    Also keep in mind that not liking the direction of WordPress’s design does not a bug make. If you don’t like a feature, please don’t make a series of posts complaining about it. Look and see if someone already did, and post there, or consider joining the process earlier on (like in Beta or even test via SVN). What you’re seeing today is the result of thousands of hours of work and testing, and unless something is outright broken, it’s highly unlikely to be changed.

    Again, before you post:

    Make sure you’ve read the entire Master List post – and the New Features in 4.4 Codex Article – https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Version_4.4

    Go to your own install’s about page – https://example.com/wp-admin/about.php – to see what’s new.

    And then make sure you’ve tried…

    • Flushing any caching plugins you might be running, as well as server and/or browser caches. Not just your browser, but any op cache or content network cache as well such as Cloudflare. That will solve many weird Javascript issues.
    • If your host provider has a “Purge Varnish” option or if you can ask your provider to flush memcache on your server.
    • Deactivating all plugins (yes, all) to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s). If you can’t get into your admin dashboard, try resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin (read “How to deactivate all plugins when you can’t log in to wp-admin” if you need help). Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems. Also remember to deactivate any plugins in the mu-plugins folder. The easiest way is to rename that folder to mu-plugins-old
    • Switching to the Twenty Fifteen theme to rule out any theme-specific problems. If you can’t log in to change themes, you can remove the theme folders via FTP so the only one is twentyfifteen. That will force your site to use it.
    • Manually upgrading. When all else fails, download a fresh copy of the latest.zip file of 4.4 (top right on this page) to your computer, and use that to copy up. You may need to delete the wp-admin and wp-includes folders on your server (NOTE: do not delete the wp-content directory or your wp-config.php file) Read the Manual Update directions first.
Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    What’s New:

    • Twenty Sixteen is the new default theme.
    • Externally embeddable. WordPress 4.4 will now act as an oEmbed provider for posts. This can be disabled with a plugin.
    • Responsive images support?This will display alternate size images for different view sizes in the browser via the srcset attribute. You don’t need to worry about anything. While your existing images won’t be ‘converted’ they also don’t need to be as the code is really smart and uses the image sizes you already have rather than make new ones. If you want to regenerate your images to use the new medium-large size, you can use one of the existing plugins (e.g. the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin).
    • Changes to the comment form layout.
    • REST API support?– You really want to use the REST API Plugin if you want to use the API. If you were already using it, please upgrade to either 1.2.4 for the v1 branch or beta8 for v2 so things continue to work.
    • Term Meta – It’s awesome! the term meta functions will return a WP_Error object if the term has not been split.

    What’s Changed:

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    NOT A BUG

    My layout is all weird on the Dashboard

    Flush your cache. If you’re using server caches, or a plugin, flush them too, especially Memcached/APC stuff. They can be sticky. This includes Cloudflare and Pagespeed and Varnish. Anything that caches.

    I’ve upgraded and the posts are not styled correctly

    Check if you are running mod_pagespeed and if you are try disabling it to see if your posts render correctly.

    I’m on 4.4 but I have no JSON Endpoints!

    You have to install the Rest API plugin to actually activate the endpoints.

    Warning: An unexpected error occurred. Something may be wrong with www.ads-software.com or this server’s configuration.

    Despite how it sounds, this typically means that openssl on your server is out of date, unless of course www.ads-software.com is actually offline. You’ll need to ask your hosting provider upgrade openssl on the server to the latest release (currently 1.0.2e).

    Why didn’t I get Twenty Sixteen?

    Despite WordPress 4.4 containing a new default theme, no themes are installed by WordPress updates, this is intentional. If you were already using WordPress, you’ll need to install Twenty Sixteen from Appearance -> Themes -> Add New in your Dashboard just like any other theme. Twenty Sixteen is included with fresh installations of WordPress 4.4.

    The Comment Field is now above the other fields!

    This is an intentional design decision. By encouraging readers to fill out their comment before their details, the developers hope to increase engagement. The Reverse Comment Textarea plugin will put it back to where it used to be.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Known Issues

    • CloudFlare Plugin breaks embeding posts. Deactivating the plugin will fix the problem. Another workaround is to disable the “Protocol rewriting” option for your site. Note that sites with the CloudFlare plugin protocol rewriting option won’t be able *to be embedded into* other sites, but they can embed *from* other sites (without the CloudFlare plugin) just fine. The company has been informed of this issue.
    • The Amazon S3 for WordPress with CloudFront plugin breaks thumbnails and other responsive images under WordPress 4.4. As this plugin has not been updated for 4 years, switch to an alternative, like WP Offload S3.
    • Plesk Updates: There is a problem with Plesk’s provided WordPress 4.4 updater. If you use Plesk’s application updates, you’ll have to update via Dashboard -> Updates in your site’s Dashboard or manually.
    • WP CLI – Needs to be upgraded to the latest release, otherwise it won’t work.
    • JSON/REST API – Needs to be upgraded to the latest version of whatever branch you run to work.
    • Avada theme – There is an issue with the theme version 3.8.8 and WordPress 4.4. Update to the latest version of Avada to fix the issue.
    • Canvas Theme (for WooCommerce) – It seems to be throwing error in category-template.php on line 1158. Update to the latest version of Canvas to fix the issue.
    • [youtube=xxx] Shortcodes no longer work – Known issue with the Jetpack plugin. Update to the latest version of Jetpack to fix the issue.
    • The Sliding Door theme suffers from a fatal error under WordPress 4.4. Update to the latest version of Sliding Door to fix the issue.
    • Ultimate Member plugin is causing some multisite network users to be unable to add new users from within subsite dashboards. Update to the latest version of Ultimate Member to fix the issue.
    • WPML can experience an infinite redirect loop, likely caused by #35031. Update to the latest version of WPML to fix the issue.
    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    www.ads-software.com Admin

    My Virus Scanner tells me WordPress has a Trojan!

    We have confirmed this issue as a FALSE POSITIVE.

    There is no trojan in WordPress.

    Several different virus scanning engines are reporting this false positive:

    https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/fda251d8108aa422845c828e5ecc45ad964a45428d6d6d115dfa817131bf2ba7/analysis/

    Once again, to confirm, there is no malware in this file, despite what the scanners are saying.

    The utils.min.js file is a core WordPress file. It is a minified version of the utils.js file in the WordPress core. All that the file does is to do some of the cookie work for the WordPress admin interface.

    Minification is an automated process we use to build “smaller” versions of the Javascript files, of which the WordPress core has a lot. These minified files let your site load faster than if we used the originals. However, minification can also make files obscure and hard to read.

    Virus scanners don’t actually look for viruses, they look for “signatures”. Sometimes, they put in signatures into the scanning engines that accidentally detect things that are not really there.

    Here is the original file:
    https://core.svn.www.ads-software.com/tags/4.4/wp-includes/js/utils.js

    Here is the minified version of that file:
    https://core.svn.www.ads-software.com/tags/4.4/wp-includes/js/utils.min.js

    Again, this is a FALSE POSITIVE. There is no virus or trojan in the WordPress code.

    Update: Different anti-virus software may react to this in different ways. So far, we have seen everything from the warning above to whole sections of the Dashboard failing to work, all resolved by simply deactivating the anti-virus software or whitelisting the site.

    Update 2: Bitdefender and F-Secure have both released updates to fix this.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    REPORTED OOPSIES

    Warning: array_map(): Argument #2 should be an array
    A very small number of plugins and themes have displayed this error after upgrading to WordPress 4.4. A fix is already in place for 4.4.1: https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/34723

    This has been fixed in WordPress 4.4.1

    Plugins and Themes Won’t Update

    An exceptionally small subset of users have reporting that after upgrading they cannot update plugins and themes. As of yet we have found no rhyme or reason for that to happen, but we are looking. If you’re having this issue, please provide as MUCH detail about your server as possible (OS, PHP version and flavor, etc). For now, you can “update” plugins and themes by deleting and installing the latest version. An official fix is in progress: https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/34976

    This has been fixed in WordPress 4.4.1

    Some posts are redirecting to old posts

    Some users are experiencing their posts redirecting to other renamed posts, this is caused by an older redirect code triggering when it shouldn’t. A bug report has been filed: https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/35031

    This has been fixed in WordPress 4.4.1

    Shortcodes Broken

    Some plugins/themes using the [shortcode=var] structure may be broken. As it turns out, [shortcode=var] only worked due to a “happy accident” and was never officially documented. Unfortunately, some plugins/theme adopted this shortcode structure when they should have used [shortcode var] instead. The developers are discussing a fix: https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/34939

    This has been fixed in WordPress 4.4.1

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    ?????? Advisor and Activist

    Issues Since 4.4.1

    Remember! Any plugin or theme updates that happen right after 4.4.1 usually are related, so please update them asap.

    • Pagination breaks if a static front page is set with a query to display posts on it, rather than setting a standard posts page. A trac ticket for this exists at https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/35689
    • cPanel users may find wp-admin blocked due to a recent update to their server’s mod_security rules. Please contact your hosting provider if you encounter this.
      Technical Details: Hosting providers who subscribe to Comodo WAF for their mod_security rules recently received an updated set of rules containing specifically rules #214620 and #214940, which are causing this problem.
      You may also find that the official rules, in particular #981004 now also triggers on the WordPress admin panel.
      Comodo is aware of the issue and working on a fix for their rules. The official mod_sec rules have also been reported for false positives, but it will be up to the hosting providers to apply these fixes.
      A fix for this has also been included in WordPress 4.4.2
    • Static Front Pages and Maintenance Mode Plugins – In some cases, these cause an endless redirect loop. Basically if you use any kind of pretty permalinks AND have a static front page configured, the home page results in an infinite redirect loop. This appears to be caused by mixed case domain names in your settings.
      Solution: Go to Settings > General and make sure your siteurl ad home url are all lowercase (A Trac ticket for this exists at https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/35364 to look into the behavior and resolutions)
      This has been fixed in WordPress 4.4.2
    • If posts belonging to a custom post type are set to display on the posts page, and the posts page is set as the front page, with pretty permalinks, pagination no longer works (i.e. /page/2, /page/3) — instead those links redirect back to the front page. There is a working patch in https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/35344
      This has been fixed in WordPress 4.4.2

    Issues with HTTPS loops

    Some plugins force HTTPS/SSL for security and by design. When there’s a miss-match with settings, the new cannonical URL rules can cause a site to get ‘stuck’ looping between http and https. If you’re using any of the following plugins, you will need to change a setting:

    • WooCommerce – WordPress falls into a redirect loop when the home/site URLs are set to https, and Woo is set to serve https on checkout but redirect to http after. DO NOT CHECK THAT BOX!!! Here’s an image to explain: https://cloudup.com/cm2EtBJvOzn Update to the latest version of WooCommerce to officially fix the issue.
    • WordPress HTTPS – You may fall into a https loop if you have https set to ‘Force SSL Exclusively’. Uncheck that box if so.
    • SSL Insecure Content Fixer – Deactivate and reactivate should clear out the cache for this one. If that doesn’t work, delete the plugin and reinstall.
Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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