WordPress 3.4 Has Arrived… Now What?

WordPress 3.4 Has Arrived… Now What?

on Jun 15th 2012 with 28 comments

We posted last week about the upcoming features to look out for in WordPress 3.4, and yesterday it was released. That’s right, WordPress 3.4 “Green” is out right now! So what happens next?

Getting Up to Date

No doubt you all know how to update a WordPress installation. You just click the “Update” link and away you go, right? Well, you could do that but let’s think for a second about our theme and plugins, do we know for sure that everything will go smoothly?

I recommend you take the following steps as a minimum:

  1. Backup your current site’s files and database – you can do this manually or with a plugin, as long as it’s something you can restore from without too much trouble.
  2. Create a new installation using your backup – do this either on a sub-domain or on your local development environment.
  3. Once you’re up and running, perform the update – if you come across any errors, get them fixed up.
  4. Assuming everything went well and you’ve fixed any issues, update your site, and apply any fixes there too.
  5. You’re done! Enjoy WordPress 3.4

The Future

Now that WordPress 3.4 is out, hopefully you’ve all read the WordPress 3.4 Field Guide for Developers. If you haven’t, you should. If you’re a theme or plugin developer especially, hopefully you’re busy making updates to your themes and plugins too.

Now we can turn our attentions to WordPress 3.5, which will start being discussed at the WordPress Developer chat next week (for times, see the sidebar from the field guide link).

What are you hoping to see in WordPress 3.5? Let us know in the comments below.

 
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Japh is a WordPress Evangelist for Envato, the Editor of Wptuts+, and a freelance web developer. He has been doing website development and training for over 13 years, and specialises in PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript. He also enjoys working with WordPress and APIs. Follow Japh on Twitter  

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  • http://wpressclub.com Bob R

    As WordPress moves to griw as a CMS I would lite to see a better integration with Facebook and Twitter, perhaps default sharing buttons and core integration. Other thing I’d like to see is better title tag control without a plugin.

    • http://wp.envato.com/ Japh Thomson
      Author

      Hi Bob, good suggestions! Have you seen the new official Facebook plugin for WordPress? Looks pretty good, and was built with collaboration between Facebook and Automattic developers.

  • http://www.customicondesign.com custom icon design

    I will update my website to new 3.4 version even though I think it is not needed. I think wordpress 3.0 is enough.

    • http://www.jvsoftware.com Javier Villanueva

      Yes, who cares about security updates and bug fixes

      • http://wp.envato.com/ Japh Thomson
        Author

        I’m going to assume Javier is being tongue-in-cheek here.

        WordPress 3.0 might be enough for you in terms of features, but it’s always best to keep up to date for security reasons at least.

      • Ruturaaj

        I’m with Japh on this… you really need to care the Security. There are some good security fixes since WordPress 3.0 and needless to say, WordPress team has a claim of faster WP_Query in this latest version. I don’t have time for bench-marking, so I will take their word for count. Faster WP_Query means faster WordPress… as simple as that! :-)

    • http://thomasgbennett.com Thomas Bennett

      I think anyone putting “custom icon design” in their name doesn’t understand how “No Follow” works. lol. Either that or is naive about WP being hacked.

  • komiska

    Sound so simple and 1,2,3,…
    Is there a chance that you would write a tut on all these steps?
    Especially on the item 2?

    That would be so great!

    • Andrew

      You don’t really need to create a new installation, there are three options. First you can use the WP update tool which can be found in your dashboard. Second if you used cpanel to install wordpress you can update there. Lastly if you want to manually install copy, download 3.4 from WP and then overwrite all of the files EXCEPT your wp-content folder and your wp-config folder. Hope this helps.

      • http://disneybookbeat.com Bob McLain

        By “create a new installation”, I believe he means to test whether your plug-ins play nicely with 3.4 in a sandbox before updating your “real” site.

      • komiska

        Thank you! That sounds easy , I can click the update tool, of course.
        If it’s that easy to manually update as you say, than I’ll be fine *biting nails goes to try*

        ;)

        Thanks a lot!

        • http://wp.envato.com/ Japh Thomson
          Author

          Hi Komiska, Bob is quite right, what I meant was to create a separate installation from your backup to do a trial update on. That way you can deal with any problems that might come up without having your “real” site unavailable / broken while you work them out.

          As long as you’ve done a backup though, hopefully things will go smoothly :)

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  • http://www.wpfix.org Wpfix

    We have upgraded wordpress to the 3.4 version

    • http://whysodumb.com Abhimanyu

      Oh, thank you for the news, WPfix! :P

      • http://www.wpfix.org Wpfix

        Your Welcome Abhimanyu!

  • Johan Dahl

    Better media management in 3.5 please :)

  • http://www.codeguard.com Zach

    Great instruction – couldn’t agree more. If I may suggest using CodeGuard (www.codeguard.com) to backup your site before upgrading. CodeGuard will, in the event, something goes wrong, let you restore the previous version with just a click, and it will notify you of any changes made to your site.

    I hope this is of help.

  • Nathan Sego

    A little heads up the got me when upgrading to 3.4.

    If you are using custom templates, you no longer can have your template name comment block on one line.

    You will loose your Template dropdown when editing pages.

    Bad

    Good

    It was a head scratcher. Hopefully it helps.

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  • al

    did 2 upgrades, 1 worked, the other didn’t, and I see from the forums a few others are having some problems with it.

    now I can access the web site directly but not through wp-admin, get an error doing that. still working on it, what a pain!

    Al

    • http://wp.envato.com/ Japh Thomson
      Author

      Ouch! Sorry to hear that, Al. I’ve had problems with one site, as the theme I was using used some deprecated function calls. Fortunately for me, I could just jump in and fix the code up myself.

      Good luck!

      • al

        mine is weird, I can get to the site ok, but NOT wp-admin

        the web site is http://ve3gam.webqth.com

        this is the error I get trying to go to http://ve3gam.webqth.com/wp-admin:

        Warning: require_once(/home/ve3gam7/public_html/wp-admin/wp-includes/load.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/ve3gam7/public_html/wp-admin/wp-load.php on line 48

        Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required ‘/home/ve3gam7/public_html/wp-admin/wp-includes/load.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /home/ve3gam7/public_html/wp-admin/wp-load.php on line 48

        any suggestions Japh? I already reloaded all files in wp-admin and wp-includes from a d/l version of 3.4 and then tried upgrading the DB and that seems to have worked OK but now have problems with wp-admin. I was previously on the latest level of wordpress 3.3.2

        still seeking answers

        Al

        • http://wp.envato.com/ Japh Thomson
          Author

          Hi Al, this looks like some kind of pathing issue, as /wp-includes/load.php isn’t under /wp-admin. I’d recommend posting in the WordPress.org Support forums about this one and see how you go there.

        • Ruturaaj

          I would have gone at it in this way… I have two options here… either try fixing the existing installation or start afresh. I’ve faced similar situations before where I almost concluded the upgrade was the cause. But as Japh also experienced, it was related to some plugin. The first approach helped me in my case. The second approach may take more time, but one may consider it if you’re running short of temper (than time!) or feel like you’re pushed to the wall and not in mood to investigate the case for causes. :-)

          ## Fixing current installation:
          Here we need to first find out the problem before we fix it. Don’t go by WordPress Error string; sometimes wrong or missing error traps in Plugin opens the doors to pass the error through until it hits the last wall… that’s always the WordPress core file. So, the error may appear due to WordPress core, but actually it just might have passed through.

          1. FTP Download your Plugins and Themes folders to your Computer.

          2. FTP Delete all the folders under Plugins and Themes (except one default theme).

          3. See if you can access Admin. Don’t worry about your Website frond-end look, you know it’s disturbed as required theme and plugins are missing.

          4. Now upload the theme in use, activate it and see if you still can access Admin.

          5. Start uploading your Plugins one by one, go on activating them and see if you can access your Admin. Anytime when you hit the road-block, just FTP-rename the plugin and you should fall back to your previous working state of WordPress. Continue with all Plugins. The renamed ones (if any) are the culprits… find alternatives for those and you’re sorted.

          ## Start afresh.
          If you prefer start afresh, best chance for you is,

          1. FTP download your Plugins, Themes and Uploads and other plugin specific folders (actually all folders of wp-content) to your computer.

          2. Next, login to your Web Hosting Provider and take backup of your WordPress Database to a SQL file which you can restore later (remember the table prefix, if different than “wp_”).

          3. Now, you’ve your complete website with you… delete the files from Server, upload fresh WordPress 3.4 and complete installation (don’t forget to use same table prefix as before or your backup SQL won’t be of any use without some text patching). See if you can access Admin.

          4. Now, go to phpMyAdmin and delete all tables under the database of your fresh Installation and import the SQL file of your old WordPress… see if you can still access Admin (don’t worry about your website look at this moment).

          5. Start FTP uploading your old wp-content folders (except Plugins folder). See if you can still access Admin.

          6. Start uploading your Plugins one by one and go on checking if you can still access your Admin. Anytime when you find your Admin is not working, you know the culprit.

          • al

            got it fixed up.

            I compared the online wp-admin with the downloaded version and they were different so they needed to be matched.

            must have been a corrupt update, as when I deleted all the folders and files in the wp-admin folder, and then reloaded them from a new copy of wordpress 3.4, I could again login using the wp-admin panel again and everything seems to be working OK. at the same time, I cleaned up the extra root files as well.

            thanks for everyones’ suggestions, appreciated, live and learn.

            next time, I will backup just before doing any upgrade for sure, just in case.

            al

    • http://www.xpertdeveloper.com Avinash

      Looks like your Upgrade was broken somewhere and some files are missing in the newer version and “load.php” is one of the file.

      After placing the “load.php”, You might get error for other file too…. :(

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  • http://www.gustavoguichard.com/ Gustavo Guichard

    I’m looking forward to see a good search engine on wordpress… everything else are nice features but this is so basic. That’s my biggest complain about WP.

    • http://www.henryhoffman.com Henry Hoffman

      +1. Search listing by date posted is irrelevant, and the number one problem I have. Third-party search plugins are rarely updated and nearly always conflict with other code.

  • Al

    It would be nice to have some more visual abstraction of some of the existing core features. Having come from Drupal, I really like the control WordPress allows you over much of the generated page code, however there are aspects of core that are back end only, which could use an interface, such as permissions.

    Someone who knows a lot more about WordPress than I do will no doubt explain why it’s not a good idea to have a page listing all the permissions by role, allowing you to select them with checkboxes and save them. Perhaps it’s impractical for some reason. I’m aware there are plugins which provide something like this (or exactly this) but it’s a shame this isn’t in the admin interface already.