WordPress 4.8 Arrives With New Widgets

Released yesterday

WordPress 4.8 came out yesterday. It is a major version, so unlike the small security releases that most sites now install by themselves, it waits for someone with an administrator account to click update.

Most of what is new is in the widgets: the boxes of content that sit in sidebars and footers, managed under Appearance in the dashboard.

For a small business site the changes are useful and modest. The risk sits with older themes and with widgets that already hold pasted code.

Which is why the update deserves an hour of testing rather than a click between other jobs.

What is new

• An image widget that places a picture from the media library in a sidebar.
• A video widget for a clip from the media library.
• An audio widget for a recording uploaded to the site.
• A visual editor in the text widget, with bold, lists and links.
• Nearby WordPress events listed on the dashboard.
• Easier link editing in the post and page editor.

The fourth changes the most on an ordinary business site. Text widgets hold opening hours, addresses and short notices on a great many sites, and until now formatting them meant typing HTML.

What changes day to day

A sidebar photograph, a welcome clip or a recorded message no longer needs a plugin or code. Pick the file from the media library, add a title and save.

Hours and notices can be made bold, set out as a list or linked to a page, in the same way as a blog post.

The events box on the dashboard lists WordCamps and meetups near you, based on an approximate location. It is harmless and can be collapsed.

Widgets are still managed under Appearance, which only administrators can open unless someone has changed the default roles.

Text widgets that already hold code

Many sites use text widgets for things that are not text at all: a booking button, a newsletter sign-up form, a map, a script from a reviews service.

From this version, a text widget opens in a visual editor with Visual and Text tabs. A visual editor tidies what it opens, and code it does not recognise can be changed on saving.

Before anyone edits those widgets, find them, copy their contents somewhere safe, and make changes on the Text tab. Better still, try them on a copy of the site first.

Plugins that already did this

Plenty of sites added image widgets or visual widget editors through plugins years ago. After the update, the widget list may show two options with nearly the same name.

The plugin may no longer be needed, but removing it takes its widgets out of the sidebars. Rebuild each one with the new built-in widget first, then remove the plugin.

Older themes

A theme last updated in 2013 was never designed for a video or audio player in its sidebar. The new widgets will work, but they may look cramped, oversized or unstyled.

One quieter change matters for older content. Windows Media video and audio files in posts are no longer embedded as players; they now show as download links.

Neither will break a site, but both are worth seeing on a copy before customers see them on the real one.

A worked example

A clinic that makes custom foot orthotics, with two clinicians and a front desk, runs a WordPress site built in 2013 on a theme that has not been updated since.

Its sidebar holds four widgets: the hours, a note about extended health coverage, the code for its online booking button, and an association logo added through an image widget plugin.

Before anyone clicked update, the developer who maintains the site made a copy on a test address and updated the copy instead.

Two things turned up. The widget list showed the plugin's image widget beside the new one with almost the same name, and the next person to edit the logo would have had to guess.

And when the booking widget was opened in the visual editor and saved, part of its code came back changed, and the button no longer appeared on the copy.

Both were fixed on the copy first. The booking button moved into the theme itself, out of reach of the widget editor, and the logo was rebuilt with the new image widget before the plugin was removed.

Updating the live site afterwards took ten minutes, because every surprise had already been found.

Testing before updating

Back up the files and the database together, and confirm the backup can be restored, not just that it exists.

Make a copy of the site on a test address, or ask your developer for one. Update the copy, then check the home page, the service pages, every sidebar and footer, the forms and the checkout.

Look at each on a phone as well as a computer, since a sidebar on a computer usually becomes a block near the bottom of the page on a phone.

Waiting a short while is reasonable

Not updating on the first day is fine. Security fixes continue to be released for the 4.7 branch, and sites on it receive them automatically.

That gives a week or two for plugin and theme authors to release their own updates, and for early problems to be reported and fixed.

Waiting months is different. Major versions stack up, and a site three versions behind is a harder and riskier update than a site one version behind.

The counter-case

Not every site needs this much care.

A site built in the last year on a theme that is still maintained, with a short list of plugins and no code in its widgets, can usually be updated the same day after a backup.

A site with no widgets at all gains little from this release beyond the editor improvements, though it should still be kept current.

For anything older or busier, test the update on a copy, and look hardest at the text widgets that hold code.

Before the update

1. Back up the site's files and database.
2. Make a copy on a test address.
3. Update the copy, not the live site.
4. Open every text widget that holds code.
5. Check plugins that add similar widgets.
6. Review the pages on a phone and a computer.
7. Update the live site once the copy is clean.

Step four is the one specific to this release. Booking buttons, forms and maps pasted into text widgets are often what makes a business site work, and they are exactly what a visual editor can rearrange.

Who should be able to change widgets at all is covered in WordPress users who should not be administrators.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.