Will your WordPress site continue to work after 9th March jQuery update?

WordPress core is making the jump from jQuery 1.12.4 to jQuery 3.5.1! This is a huge offer for great deals of factors– like modern-day functions, much better DX, and security enhancements among others.

Now, the strategy is to launch the upgrade in WordPress 5.7, which is due to launch on March 9, leaving very little time to get sites ready, especially if automatic updates are installed or if site owners, unaware of the issue, update and accidentally break their websites (you do take backups before you update anything don’t you?)

WordPress is notorious for its backward compatibility and you could say this change is a relic of that philosophy. A line has been drawn in the sand when it comes to jQuery, and 1.x isn’t a part of future plans. It also represents a breaking change, and that’s rare in the WordPress world. Because WordPress ships with jQuery installed, many developers call that version of it rather than re-installing it in another location. That includes lots of theme and plugin developers, all of whom now need to make sure their code is compatible with jQuery 3.x.

Refraining from doing so might lead to lots of broken websites, leaving web design and development agencies such as ourselves with just weeks to get customer sites ready for the changeover.

The modification has really remained in the works for a long time. The work started in WordPress 5.5, and 5.7 is technically the 3rd of 3 stages. WordPress 5.6 is where the Core Group bumped jQuery approximately variation 3.5.1 and upgraded jQuery Migrate to assist designers to revert back to traditional jQuery if required. To put it simply, this has actually been a very systematic method. The Core Group is worthy of a lot of congratulations for that, consisting of all of the interactions that have actually headed out about the modification.

The key takeaway here is to begin evaluating now in WordPress 5.6. The strategy is to disable jQuery Move in WordPress 5.7, so waiting on that release is far too late. If you do wait that long and discover problems, your best move is most likely to roll back to 5.6 and make use of jQuery Migrate and the assistant plugin.