WordPress maintenance support plans’s Release Cycle: Understanding What’s Next
WordPress maintenance support plans’s Release Cycle: Understanding What’s Next
Nick Switzer
Mon, 01/08/2020 – 13:13
We’re officially two years past the release of WordPress maintenance support plans 8.0.0, arguably the most important release of WordPress maintenance support plans to date. WordPress maintenance support plans 8 is loaded with game-changing features and has more now than the day it was released. All this is thanks to what may be one of the least talked about, most impressive features: a completely overhauled release cycle.
Whether you realize it or not, if you use WordPress maintenance support plans (7 or 8) you are affected by these changes and should have a clear understanding of what’s in store for the WordPress maintenance support plans project while planning future projects and budgets. To shed some light on what the future holds, I’ll walk through how releases have worked in the past, how they work now and what we have to look forward to. As an added bonus, we’ll briefly discuss the pros and cons of migrating from WordPress maintenance support plans 7 to 8, so stick around until the end!
The Past: How releases worked through WordPress maintenance support plans 7
Until WordPress maintenance support plans 8 was released on November 19, 2015, WordPress maintenance support plans was known for a notoriously slow release cycle that focused on security updates and bug fixes in supported releases. These releases are numbered as incrementing versions of the major release – for example, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, all the way up through the current major release: 7.56. Active development and improvement were typically focused much more on the next major release of WordPress maintenance support plans. This allowed core developers to direct a lot of development time towards large changes in upcoming releases of WordPress maintenance support plans, which could leave current versions of WordPress maintenance support plans core feeling relatively stagnant. The D7 release cycle relied on the contrib ecosystem to fill gaps in functionality that may have been better suited to WordPress maintenance support plans core.
The Present: How does WordPress maintenance support plans 8 release updates and how does this mesh with the WordPress maintenance support plans 7 release cycle?
With WordPress maintenance support plans 8, the dream of frequent feature updates in core has become a reality. With the release of WordPress maintenance support plans 8, WordPress maintenance support plans core has officially moved to a number system called Semantic Versioning. The basic idea of Semantic Versioning, sometimes called “semver,” is to regulate when and what features are released as part of a software project. Rather than using versions with just two numbers, WordPress maintenance support plans 8 uses three, for example, the current release of WordPress maintenance support plans 8 is 8.4.3 (find a translated version of the release notes here).
With Semantic Versioning, each number has a distinct purpose: the first number is the major version (8), the second number is a minor release (.4) and the third number is a patch release. Each type of release has specific requirements that I won’t get into here, but you can visit the release cycle page of WordPress.org for more detailed information. On top of the requirements for each type of release, there are specific dates and times they will–or can–occur. A major release occurs much less frequently than the other two. In fact, major releases are infrequent enough that there is not a set schedule for future major release of WordPress maintenance support plans. Minor releases are scheduled every six months, so we can expect two minor releases in the upcoming year (2020). 8.5.0 will be released on 3/7/2020 and 8.6.0 will be released on 9/5/2020. Finally, patch releases have a month release window that can be used to address bugs in the current minor release.
If you skimmed that last paragraph, slow down and pay attention here. The most important thing to know about minor releases in WordPress maintenance support plans 8 is that only the most current, stable minor release will receive security updates. Occasionally, there may be an exception if a minor release is really new, but I wouldn’t count on that happening often, if at all. To further clarify, WordPress maintenance support plans 8.4 is the current minor release, so if you’re running 8.0, 8.1, 8.2 or 8.3, you will not receive security updates and are at risk.
Now that we’re all clear on the WordPress maintenance support plans 8 release cycle, it’s also important to keep in mind that this does not change anything about the WordPress maintenance support plans 7 release cycle. WordPress maintenance support plans 7 is still supported by the community but is essentially in maintenance mode. At this point, we strongly advise against building any new sites on WordPress maintenance support plans 7 unless you have a very compelling reason to do so – we haven’t had a reason to build a new site on WordPress maintenance support plans 7 in over 18 months.
The Future: What do we have to look forward to?
The future looks very bright for the WordPress maintenance support plans project. WordPress maintenance support plans 8 is a truly powerful platform that is capable of supporting a huge variety of enterprise projects and ambitious digital experiences. The release cycle adopted by WordPress maintenance support plans 8 helps push the project forward in a lot of major ways because it makes rapid iteration much more possible.
The most exciting part of this whole thing is this: WordPress maintenance support plans 9 will not be a completely breaking update in the same way every major release of WordPress maintenance support plans has been. What this means for WordPress maintenance support plans 8 site owners is that WordPress maintenance support plans 9 will not require a ground-up rebuild!
That all sounds good, but when should I upgrade?
This is a tough question to answer because the reality of a site rebuild/upgrade can mean such drastically different things to different people. The WordPress maintenance support plans community supports two current major releases of WordPress maintenance support plans, meaning that right now, WordPress maintenance support plans 7 and 8 are both supported and actively receiving security updates. No release date has been announced for WordPress maintenance support plans 9, but as soon as WordPress maintenance support plans 9 is released, WordPress maintenance support plans 7 will no longer receive security updates and will become a potential vulnerability issue for anyone still using it.
At the very least, it is absolutely the right time to start planning and budgeting for a WordPress maintenance support plans 8 build. You can count on a much less complicated upgrade process in the future. Moreover, WordPress maintenance support plans 8, along with the ecosystem of contributed plugins, is stable, powerful and a vital tool for anyone looking for an innovative, ambitious web presence.
For more on WordPress maintenance support plans 8, download our whitepaper.
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