WordPress recently explained the reason for negatively affecting millions of websites by WordPress 5.5. WordPress has planned for maintenance release for version 5.5.1. It is designed in such a way that theme and plugin developers will have time to update their software.

In the announcement, WordPress told that the spreadsheet naming hundreds of plugins and themes was affected. It notes that specific issues for each plugin and theme, which will make it easy for developers to solve the issue.

Maintenance Release

It is released to prevent sites from breaking down, however, the issues still need to be fixed.

According to WordPress:

“In WordPress 5.5 the global JavaScript objects listed below were removed without being deprecated. WordPress 5.5.1 adds a backfill for these globals so they no longer cause JavaScript errors.”

Recommendation – WordPress Found Astra Theme Violating Prohibitions

Developers have ample time to patch the code that is up to March 2021, however, if they fail to do so there will be another round of failure.

As Said By WordPress:

“The plan is to remove this fallback code in two major versions, so this will be deleted in WordPress 5.7. This gives plugin and theme developers ample time to remove the conflicting code and switch to using wp.i18n”

A Large Number of Website Affected

The spreadsheet revealed the previously unknown amount of sites that were broken.

There initially was casual speculation that the impact was relatively small and limited to thousands of websites. But that wasn’t the case.

WordPress 5.5 negatively impacted millions of websites.

It is for that reason that a patch was urgently released today, September 1, 2020.

According to the spreadsheet previously there was a small number of websites that were broken and were limited to thousands. This is was an estimated amount.

Best Known Plugins Affected

• WordPress Gallery Plugin – NextGEN Gallery
• Polylang
• Child Theme Configurator
• Simple Custom CSS and JS
• Toolset Types – Custom Post Types, Custom Fields and Taxonomies
• Max Mega Menu
• WP AutoTerms: Privacy Policy Generator, Cookie Notice Banner, Terms & Conditions Generator
• YITH WooCommerce Wishlist
• Ocean Extra
• WordPress SEO Plugin – Rank Math
• Meta Box – WordPress Custom Fields Framework
• Hummingbird – Speed Optimize, Cache, Minify & Defer Critical CSS & JavaScript
• Content Views – Post Grid & List for WordPress

Best Known Themes Affected

• WordPress Gallery Plugin – NextGEN Gallery
• Polylang
• Child Theme Configurator
• Simple Custom CSS and JS
• Toolset Types – Custom Post Types, Custom Fields and Taxonomies
• Max Mega Menu
• WP AutoTerms: Privacy Policy Generator, Cookie Notice Banner, Terms & Conditions Generator
• YITH WooCommerce Wishlist
• Ocean Extra
• WordPress SEO Plugin – Rank Math
• Meta Box – WordPress Custom Fields Framework
• Hummingbird – Speed Optimize, Cache, Minify & Defer Critical CSS & JavaScript
• Content Views – Post Grid & List for WordPress

WordPress Update

The update is designed in such a way to cover all the issues that came after the release of 5.5. Some rolled their sites to the previous version after  the issue of site breakdown, however, the new update is for all of them and it should be downloaded to avoid such bugs.