012 – Musings about the WordPress 6.4 Update

00:00.00
peteeveritt
Hello and welcome to this episode of the wp seo show I am your co-host p and I’m joined by Mr. J P Jeffrey patch all the way from California a how are you doing right.

00:10.62
Jeff
Good man. How are you? How are you.

00:14.49
peteeveritt
Yeah, it’s it’s all good. It’s all good. it’ ah we seem to have like a weekly weather check-in on this show and it’s becoming a kind of thing and it’s been cold today and what’s more it’s getting really dark where we’re obviously in the northern hemisphere and we’re like four weeks away

00:19.62
Jeff
Um, I know right? yeah.

00:31.59
peteeveritt
Yeah, almost exactly four weeks away from the shortest day and like sunset is now just before 4 pm so it’s it’s getting a bit. Yeah could do with do with a bit more daylight.

00:40.34
Jeff
Before four zero P M that’s so early and I know it you know it varies depending on where you live in the globe but like 5 is is our you know winter fall when we have daylight savings time and I think I know probably every other like show and podcast and but everything this time a year talks about it. But. I just want to say for the record I hate daylight savings time and I used to hate it more when I when I commuted and stuff now I say home I still hate it. It’s like I hate it. I.

01:03.33
peteeveritt
Now. Ok.

01:09.43
peteeveritt
So so here’s the thing are you classing This is daylight saving time or your summertime zone as daylight saving time.

01:16.70
Jeff
I am 42 years old I have never gotten that straight I don’t know but but this is the time I hate from fall to winter. It doesn’t need to get dark so early and when I commuted all the time it was terrible because you know it’s getting dark when you’re driving home and the sun setting in your eyes. It’s just it made everything more dangerous and.

01:23.44
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah.

01:35.86
Jeff
We thought I always thought I was so smart by realizing hey you know we would probably spend more if we if it was lighter. We could go to the mall or whatever and you know I thought it’d be good for the economy but I have no idea I Just don’t like it. It doesn’t need to get dark so wary. That’s what it comes down to ah.

01:48.93
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah, absolutely absolutely I agree the the only positive side for me is that we’re now in the right time zone for the Ski season which which is my happy place. So um, yeah.

01:59.10
Jeff
There there is that there is there is that man do I miskeing but it’s it’s gotten cold here at night still be really nice during the day but we got some rain yesterday which was nice and but no, it’s ah you know this last week I was like venting about how dry and wind it was now I’m like. Now this is what I love about California.

02:18.40
peteeveritt
You see I’d know you never hear a british person say yes there we got some rain and it was nice. We just have it every note anyway, that’s the weekly weather check in. Ah so um, today this week’s podcast. We could have recorded this time last week because it’s really about what we were all going through this time last week with the release of wordpress 6.4 which if we’re being perfectly honest for as a rollout to a lot of client sites wasn’t the smoothest release that that’s ever.

02:54.42
Jeff
No, and that says a lot seeing as it wasn’t that long ago that 6.0 came out and that was like the I almost wanted to liken it to the y two k scare that if you know if you’re if you’re of that age like when we approached y two k we thought everything was going to break when we approached wordpress six was it.

02:55.27
peteeveritt
That’s ever happened.

03:13.54
Jeff
Ah, year two and a half year whatever it was everybody was convinced. Everything was going to break and a lot of things did but it wasn’t nearly as bad as this last one for me or for us at least.

03:22.23
peteeveritt
Absolutely well speaking about y two k so when I was a kid. Ah I was in secondary school ah in the late 90 s and my parents got our first pc that ran windows 95 and it was like it was the family computer it was in the corner of the dining room. We could only but you know we could basically if you were using it the whole family could see using it. We had it? Well it probably took us another year or two before we got dial up internet. Um, ah my mom hated that because that meant whenever I was online. She couldn’t use the landline phone and she didn’t have a cell phone at the time so it was like we were cutting off the house and but we bought the reason I’m saying all this the make of the computer was called a gateway 2000 and it was like. It was like it was as tall as the table I mean this thing was huge and it had this crt monitor in front of it. But it was called gateway 2000 because they were apparently immune they’d been. They’d been tinkered with in some way so they were immune to the millennium bug so you would be safe if you bought a gateway 2000 and my parents fell for that.

04:10.47
Jeff
Patience.

04:28.43
peteeveritt
Book line and sinker.

04:31.35
Jeff
That’s quite the marketing scheme scam I don’t know because I’ve kind of I’ve been a longtime computer guy. So what you’re saying right? there brings back so many memories like I was I think I was 13 or 14 when I got my first computer and then quickly took it apart and broke everything and it learned how to fix it and it’s been. You know my life ever since. But even way back then I started building computers and whenever I would see the you know the gateways or the dells or whatever at at the stores for exorbit amounts of money I just rolled my eyes because I’m like it’s gateways literally just some people that put the computer together. It doesn’t It’s the same computer that del set I mean for the most part know’s different to few different parts here and there whatever but like I did understand why you’re paying a premium for some company and then and then I started supporting my parents my aunt and uncle and my grandparents and stuff and I realized that’s why you buy a computer so you get that 800 number to tell grandma to call.

05:21.97
peteeveritt
Ah, yeah, absolutely absolutely you know so that was our family computer that my my first computer the one that was like truly mine was a compact laptop and all of my friends got desktops and then we’d. Ah, but I got a laptop I don’t really know why I’m sure there was a reason back then as to why? but I ah can’t as remember now but I got a laptop and we used to go to network parties where we used to play computer games against each other and they’d all they’d all have like.

05:51.68
Jeff
Sister.

05:55.25
peteeveritt
Parents turn up in their station wagon with like the you know the boot full of computer gear from and they’ve had to like rip it all out the house and I’d rock up on my bike with a laptop in my back and just plug in and be ready to go? Um, but yeah, that was it was quite a good laptop. It didn’t you know we we used to play things like. Medal of honor and which is now that f into what’s now the Caller duty series um Halo stuff like that and doom. There was even a network version of doom that we used to play and ah.

06:25.43
Jeff
I’ve got a doom story but I feel like I probably don’t need to spend more time talking about right now. Ah I’ll tell my doom story if anybody wants the doom story leave a comment. Let me know because.

06:30.94
peteeveritt
Ah, ok, well I can be a show. Ok go for it.

06:38.54
Jeff
I’m probably referring to on Youtube right now. But that’s because I can reply and send you a link to another Youtube video. That’s all I’ll say I’ll leave it at that. We’ll see if anybody actually listens and cares enough to to be prompted to do that.

06:51.86
peteeveritt
That’s amazing and if if you do want that link and you’re listening to this in the audio version. Go and check out the Youtube version at seohive.co/youtube it’ll send you straight and over to the channel.

06:56.70
Jeff
There you go? yeah.

07:00.91
peteeveritt
And yeah, make sure while you’re there, you subscribe and tick that little so Bell notification icon things you know that when videos come live from us over on our channel.

07:06.84
Jeff
And I really don’t want to exaggerate but I swear if it wasn’t for doom I would not be sitting here right now on this podcast writing this kind running a company I swear and so we’ll we’ll get to that. Well, there’ll be a story for another day but I’m excited.

07:21.45
peteeveritt
Maybe maybe we need to have like a ah we need to set up like a side project of like a doom a doom forum where we could like play games against each other and and that kind of that would be so cool. Haven’t played doom in years.

07:33.74
Jeff
I’m in I’m in that’s gone they released it on the Xbox I played it a couple weeks ago and it was just as good as it was thirty years ago or whatever and I feel so bad for anybody aged like maybe 25 or 30 and younger right now and they’re just going what are these old dudes talking about it’s what.

07:45.89
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah, doom So Rubbish man.

07:52.64
Jeff
Ah, anyway, look you want to talk about wordpress I mean I might I know I actually don’t to be honest I tone.

07:55.98
peteeveritt
Ah, if we must and so so so yeah, so this show is very much going to pick on the wordpress side of the W P Seo show as opposed to the Seo side of the wp seo show and some shows neatly mash the 2 together and and they’re like seamless seamless nirvana but this is very much going to be a wordpress about the release of 6.4 which happened at the time of recording it happened eight days ago and it’s taken us this long to get over the release and get some level of confidence in it and then sort of go should we just record a show about this stuff. Ah, that’s that’s cut in all honesty. How this timeframe has has worked um, so The first thing I want to say is this show is not the definitive guide to everything that is included in wordpress 6.4 but there are some broad brush stroke things that are quite cool that are included in the update. There are good reasons to um, ah to update. Um, and of course we always recommend that you are running wordpress as up to date as it can be for security reasons. There are performance reasons behind it as well and of course make sure all your plugins etc are up to date. However, Jeff I know we we do have some notes about this show but we’re jumping around a little bit but.

09:20.80
peteeveritt
This is one of the problems isn’t it because when you get a big update like this you know when you went from like 6 point three point 5 to 6 point three point 6 and it’s just a few minor tweaks here. Are there. You can fairly confidently know that most things are going to work. But when you get to a. Bigger release like this or even a bigger release like 5 to 6 it’s really difficult to know how to time your up up. Update schedule because if you update too early and the plugins haven’t caught up. It can cause just as much avoc as if you wait too late. And then you’ve got vulnerabilities or other things that appear because you didn’t upgrade in time.

10:01.65
Jeff
Yeah there’s several moving pieces and you know it’s it’s so hard to tell like to say exactly what’s going to happen so you just kind of have to have the experience and know what can go wrong and what order and then how you’re going to go back. Um. The the the the biggest one for this I think well actually I’m me rewind a little bit the point updates so it’s like you know six point zero. That’s a major major one six point three whatever to six point four I guess you would call that a semi-majo one but that one is going to introduce. New features. They are going to change some of the core wordpress core code the point beyond that so six point four point one would be a bug fix or a security release or things like that. Yeah, that third I don’t know the right terminology but that third and that 1 passed that second decimal point.

10:46.70
peteeveritt
Yeah, a patch of some description.

10:54.86
Jeff
Those are usually safe like almost always. And in fact I recommend doing those pretty much instantly because there’s always usually fixing the problems that were just uncovered in the last update or you know I mean the things have kind of rolled out over the last few weeks and sometimes it might just be. You know a compatibility issue with another theme plugin. But those. You know, point point ones are usually totally safe and highly highly recommended these middle ones like 6.4 it is a big release it super important and and I’m actually like from a wordpress nerd standpoint. Super excited about it. There’s a lot of cool little features that are continuing to evolve. But that’s when the the codebase starts to change. And like you said if you update a plugin first that could have a problem with 6 point three point. Whatever if you update the wordpress first first that could have a problem with the plugin. You did an update so you’re kind of and sometimes the end if you do damned if you don’t um, yeah, yeah.

11:48.51
peteeveritt
And I think I think in all honesty, this was the this was part of the problem that we had on release day of six point four so hang on. Let’s let’s get back to plan right? What are the broad brush stroke stuff that is in six point four as I said this isn’t a definitive episode. This isn’t. You know, but please don’t send us comments about oh well, you missed this That’s not yeah yeah, that’s not what this is about but basically the broad brush strokes were they brought out with the update they brought out next or the the next iteration of the theme. Ah 2024 which.

12:09.50
Jeff
Forgot about that one. Yeah.

12:24.27
peteeveritt
Ah, carries a whole load of new functionality in it. They’ve tried to make it a little more I mean in all honesty I don’t really know anybody that uses the base wordpress theme as their theme of choice if I’m being perfectly frank.

12:37.98
Jeff
Um, very rarely. But I’m kind of not against them anymore. They’re not terrible. They’re pretty good. Actually they’re not going to give you the same flexibility. You’ll get with the types that like of themes that we’re always using, you’ll give you that you know that are made for like a developer or.

12:41.68
peteeveritt
No.

12:52.59
Jeff
Um, ah you know an agency that needs to add various features but like honestly if I was a Diy blogger I’d be totally fine with the new new theme.

12:59.10
peteeveritt
But that some so so that’s that that was part of it. They’ve then done certain things with the workflow in order to make navigating a little bit easier and let’s be honest since the release of gutenberg navigating the block editor. Certain things haven’t been as easy as they were in classic wordpress and I still run certain websites where they have classic the classic editor plugin installed so it looks like old wordpress because certain things were just easier to do things like for example, opening the permalink that. It’s buried in a menu in but you know you’ve got to go a page then you’ve got to go to something else then it’s within there within permalink you know and then you got to click on it. So All of a sudden the thing that was just one click away because it was underneath the title bar in classic wordpress is now 3 clicks away and.

13:41.79
Jeff
Yeah.

13:54.60
peteeveritt
They haven’t moved that I’m using that as an example of the the bad ui they haven’t moved that in 6 point four but they have done certain things to improve the improve the workflow which I haven’t really dove into too much yet. But that’s one of the things I’m I’m really looking for things that are going to make gutenberg. Nicer to use because in my opinion it. It’s a bit awful um personal opinion personal opinion I take it but I don’t really like it.

14:18.44
Jeff
Ah, definitely personal opinion because I have to been I Love it I didn’t I didn’t I couldn’t say that a couple years ago but like it’s okay, that’s all right and I know it’s going to lose me internet cred points that I don’t use classic editor on things. But.

14:27.40
peteeveritt
Um, oh are we going to have our first falling out live on the show.

14:35.18
Jeff
I Actually love the gutenberg editor and I’m not disagreeing with you I can see why people wouldn’t and that is a good point I Never really thought about it. But that is one thing I have multiple times been like I need to change the slug where is it again And yeah, there’s panels. So you know panels or tabs or however, you kind of want to refer to them. Things can get kind of buried in there.

14:47.19
peteeveritt
Um, yeah.

14:54.53
Jeff
Um, you know once you know where it is. It’s easy to find but the other thing that I’ve noticed recently is it’s not dead smack in my face anymore whereas before it was right there and if you say you cloned a page Well that would always use your original slug and then if you cloned it it would be like you know dash copy or dash 2 or something. And now sometimes in the block editor because it’s in another Panel. You don’t see it and you save it and you know you just never even thought about the Perma link and now it’s funky and you know so I have I have definitely run across that and I just did that last week like literally just last week I remember exactly doing that.

15:19.28
peteeveritt
That yeah.

15:29.66
peteeveritt
So you know so that they’re the kind of things that I’m I’m looking forward to they’ve they’ve improved the way that you can use patterns. Oh that you can import patterns. Um, there’s there’s a whole load of stuff that they’ve done in the back end that I think that I think it’s going to be really cool. Go for it.

15:40.20
Jeff
If if I could highlight something sorry to talk over there but part of that was the the list view that I find really helpful, especially on a longer page because you know, especially if you’re dragging like a row or a module off your screen.

15:55.40
peteeveritt
Yeah.

15:56.90
Jeff
That’s never easy like as long as we’ve been using computers. It still has never. It’s it’s not become easier and you know you move it down there and you have to let it scroll and all that. Well if you if you load up the list view. It’s kind of or an outline. It’s on the left hand side of your screen and it just looks like. You know like a Google doc outline or something and you can drag things there a lot easier I find that really useful the improvement they just added is you can see like thumbnails of things now so you can see if there’s an image in that row or that block and and various things because before you’d still have to kind of look at it and go. What what is what is that one you hover over it and you watch what highlights over here and you go oh okay, that’s the one. Well now they’ve made it a lot easier to identify quickly and it’s just it’s small things but it just makes using it so much easier.

16:37.23
peteeveritt
And I do have to say actually the that list view that is in the gutenberg block editor that is by far one of the nicest list view things that I’ve views that I’ve come across the the oxygen one. Oxygen 1 was probably the first time I really started using that we we’ve instinctively used beaver builder in our agency since it started in 2016 so like I know Beaver Builder inside out and that doesn’t have a list view and oh does it now. Okay, cool and she shows you last time I built a website in and ah.

16:58.56
Jeff
No.

17:06.25
Jeff
No yeah, it does now it does no yeah yeah I know it’s I was gonna say the same thing I Love I Love Beaver Builder too. It’s my page builder of choice but I just not using page builders as much anymore.

17:13.87
peteeveritt
I Know have people I know have people for that.

17:19.79
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely um, but anyway, but the the oxygen one was kind of the first time I really had to start using that and whilst it was it was great. It did it sort of did what it needed to do. It was really fiddly. Everything was really small and if you.

17:34.32
Jeff
Um, how.

17:36.59
peteeveritt
You your page didn’t have to be too long for that list to kind of become unmanageable and every time you added something it just called it hashtag Div and so you had to go through and rename it all and this that and other so actually the gutenberg one in my opinion. It has been like it’s it’s been a massive leap forward in that. So. Where I say I don’t like it I’m not being completely downer I can see pros to it I I just haven’t jelled with it yet. But then as I say I don’t I don’t build too many websites anymore you know I’m fortunate enough to have a team that do that and you know my work is.

17:56.39
Jeff
Cc. . um yeah

18:12.53
peteeveritt
By far more strategy and Seo implementation and then doing like um, digital strategy for for ah custom integrations and stuff like that. So I don’t have to do it anymore? Um, but that’s yeah, that’s where I’m that that was that was a really good feature.

18:26.95
Jeff
And I’m and I’m right there too except I also have the experience of watching clients break things day in and day out and I’ve just so that’s what the gutenberg is not perfect, but it it breaks they break it less. That’s what I’ve That’s what I’ve learned.

18:39.87
peteeveritt
Yeah I wish I wish gutenberg integrated with things like Acf a bit better I think that’s they haven’t ah dressed that particularly in in here. It’s not even Acf particularly it’s just custom fields in general. Um. They seem always seem to be a bit like a kind of um forgotten thoughts or late addition. They’re just stuck at the bottom and meh.

19:06.13
Jeff
So it’s it’s interesting. You say that because now I’m realizing I don’t know if um because I would disagree with that statement and I so I don’t mean to argue like out our like I’m arguing with you but I don’t but now I’m thinking.

19:18.38
peteeveritt
We’ve worked together for three and a half years and you choose now you choose now.

19:21.32
Jeff
Well I’m just saying I know exactly how to connect them to the custom fields and I think it’s kind of easy but I don’t know if that’s added from the cadence blocks that we always use or if it’s default gutenberg I don’t know is it? Okay, so that’s why.

19:32.26
peteeveritt
Yes, that is from cadence no that is from Cadence because on on our website some of the some of the website building I have done has been on our website. Ah but in preparation for this very podcast. Well not this particular episode but the launch of the podcast.

19:46.20
Jeff
Ah.

19:47.37
peteeveritt
And yes, that has ah that’s come from the cadence you’re right? Gutenberg itself kind of sticks him at the bottom. Um.

19:49.40
Jeff
Okay, yeah, there’s a dynamic content connector that you can use and it works. It works very similar if you’ve done it in Beaver Builder or elementor or anything like that. But yeah I’ve I’ve created some custom layouts like that and used that for custom fields for clients and it’s it’s been pretty cool. But yeah. Honestly peeling back to Kurtain I don’t know if that’s a default feature or if that because something that you know we’re paying for with Ka and Kaden’s blocks blow pro caens blocks bro play. Yeah prolo.

20:18.15
peteeveritt
Bropro bro pro. Nice ah, not not not at all, not at all because I’m the first one to admit that this this side of stuff isn’t necessarily my.

20:21.60
Jeff
All right I’ll stop interrupting you. Pete’s gonna pete’s going to kill me for interrupting him so many times this episode.

20:33.80
peteeveritt
Immediate field of Expertise I Really enjoy it I Really like knowing about it I like learning about it I like researching it but I don’t always get the time to do it and I don’t It’s not the type of stuff that I naturally come to like I said earlier within my day-to-day Work. So I I have to make the time for it and. That’s why shows like this I I enjoy because it actually makes me stop and do some research and reengage with the conversation which is um, you know, but this is very much your side of the table in terms of the expertise that we bring to this show.

21:00.71
Jeff
Well, it’s it’s fun I mean I wish I could just sit and play with these tools all day every day just for fun and never have to answer to anybody because that would just be like nerd heaven right? there but it doesn’t pay the bills.

21:09.65
peteeveritt
Yeah, but that don’t pay the bills so we wordpress 6.4 was released last week at what went wrong.

21:21.50
Jeff
What went wrong.

21:27.70
peteeveritt
Ah, that was exactly you you took the words right on my mouth. Well according to so what? what then happened 24 hours later wordpress then released six point four point one it took him a whole 24 hours to to patch this up. Um, and essentially that release. Kind of unpacked what had gone wrong with the initial one because we could see what the fixes were and there was 3 of them. The first one was kind of nondescript. There was a typo in the code that does the notifications inside the admin panel. And if you’d seen one. You’d noticed. There was no padding or anything around it. It didn’t break anything particular. It just didn’t look right? Ah so they fixed that then I mean obviously that was that was a crucial one that was you know how did we get through those 24 hours with that issue.

22:10.19
Jeff
Um, yeah, with with so many plugins that add banners and advertisements that didn’t even phaseze me I didn’t even notice that that looked weird because there’s always so much junk up there.

22:24.49
peteeveritt
Ah, tell me about it tell me about it. There’s got to be a better way sort. Not anyway. Ah.

22:25.79
Jeff
Dismiss this notification for twelve months it’s back tomorrow.

22:32.10
peteeveritt
Ah, um, then there was the 2 issues that really did cause issues and they were a backwards compatibility issue which essentially knocked some plugins out particularly plugins that hadn’t updated from. Kind of in the same timeframe now. It’s important to note that when these you know six point four had been in beta for months and all of the plugin developers had known about this for months and they all had months in order to make their plugin compatible. And they knew what the release date was so they could also release plugin updates on the same day and they didn’t um, some of them didn’t some of them did. But yeah, there was there was a backwards compatibility but essentially they’d removed a chunk of the code from the core like you were talking about earlier. Um. Which meant that certain plugins couldn’t do lookups ah properly from what I understand from reading the release notes and that was causing the plugins to fail that was the second issue and the third issue which is the one that we had the most fun with was. Was that there was ah an issue that created a curl error or a c url error had to and I always call it cur curl I don’t know you present ah see you are absolutely and and this is the one that knocked off things like oxygen.

23:48.95
Jeff
Yeah I do too I but but now that you mentioned it it probably is CUrl

24:02.15
peteeveritt
Ah, elementor had issues the stripe um I thought it was the stripe api key api but it might actually have been the stripe plugin that had issues. Um and actually made sites tank and we had I think I had 35 emails that day. Websites that had issues that we had to circumnavigate. Um, let me put it this way. It was still going up I live in England Jeff lives in California he’s 8 hours behind me. He’s a full working day behind me and when he came to work and checked in on slack to see how we were doing I was still having issues with it.

24:21.86
Jeff
Toll boy.

24:40.48
Jeff
Um, yeah, ah.

24:41.76
peteeveritt
Ah, so so um, so yeah, so they they were essentially the 3 the 3 bugs the 3 issues that were caused but they had big effects for lots and lots of clients.

24:58.60
Jeff
They did well for for some people they sure did especially the curl one and the performance issuess they came with that. Um because I was that evening I was in I was in the admin bar. What’s up Kyle Van Dusen got to give you a shout out for our show right.

25:08.37
peteeveritt
Hey yeah I forgot I forgot Kyle Kyle was exceptionally disappointed that he didn’t get one last week yes so we need it we we definitely wanted to make sure that Kyle Van dozen from the admin bar there you go. We’ve both said it now.

25:13.46
Jeff
You didn’t get one last week

25:23.20
Jeff
I I think people probably think were joy but he literally did go he guys and give me a shout out this week he was joking I’m sure I hope I’m I don’t know maybe never mind. We’re not going that we’re not going to psychoanalyze Kyle right now but we’ll do that another time.

25:31.33
peteeveritt
Ah.

25:35.55
peteeveritt
We we’re gonna get hate mail. We’re gonna get hate mail with like episode 11 stuck together from bits of pape newspapers because that’s the show that didn’t feature his name.

25:48.59
Jeff
Um, do you see the ah one of his groups. Everybody showed up in their meeting and all dressed as him for halloween.

25:52.34
peteeveritt
I Did they no I didn’t know that I didn’t know that I didn’t know that at all that would be hilarious.

25:57.38
Jeff
Ah, it was so funny I I was dying laughing when I saw that 1 anyway, the curier. So anyway, that evening I was I was in the Evan bar and there were like a few people I’m sorry I don’t remember who exactly but there were a few people in there that were like hey I’m having all these performance issues and I’m sitting there going. And everything has been going perfectly for us like we’re like 10 servers down like everything’s been going great and we just weren’t having those problems so it turned out that the curl issue was kind of more hosting related I not about more because obviously the change was introduced by the wordpress update but some hosts were using. Kind of an older version of the curl function on their servers and if you don’t know what that is I’m going to leave it at that because I don’t know how to explain it much better than that either. But it helps run things basically automatically and all that stuff in the back and but they were using a very old version and it just was like crawling and just looping and the the sites were just coming to a.

26:45.00
peteeveritt
Well well yeah.

26:53.13
Jeff
You know a crawl which is the opposite. They’s supposed to be performance improvements not degradation. So thankfully the point one fixed that 1 pretty quick there though. But yeah it was I you know I felt so bad because there are people going. Oh I’ve got this problem got that problem and I’m going nah you guys are crazy. Not you wrong and then that totally came back and bit us in the butt.

27:12.84
peteeveritt
So a curl which is pronounced Curl C Url pronounced curl I’m not going to take credit for this. This is off the Hubspot blog. The Hub Hubspot blog. We’ve now given them a shout out to I mean that’s going to change their life. Ah, but.

27:12.87
Jeff
Well.

27:20.27
Jeff
Um, says who and what are their credentials.

27:30.44
peteeveritt
It’s it’s ah it’s essentially a command line process for transferring data between server and ah device. That’s what it is.

27:40.38
Jeff
It’s one of those things Ninety Nine Point Nine nine percent people don’t pay attention to it just happened to be the issue this time and hosting people understand but fun times. So so that that happened.

27:48.12
peteeveritt
So That happened we had. We had a number of issues with backwards now I don’t know whether this was backwards compatibility or whether this was the curl issue but we did have some issues where some sites if they had old versions of the 20 Whatever themes installed they were having issues there if you removed the old versions of the 20? Whatever so you only had 2024 and maybe even your you know your custom theme or whatever that was in there and even though they weren’t in use. It killed the site so just had to delete them all apart from 2024.

28:17.28
Jeff
Um, even though they weren’t in use or anything weird weird.

28:25.67
peteeveritt
And as I say we don’t we don’t use that anyway. So it was not a problem to hit delete on but could have deleted 2024 if I wanted to um, but yeah, it wasn’t it wasn’t an issue but that brought the site back to life and as I say I know that I’m not 100 % sure whether it was it whether which which. Pots either the backwards compatibility or the curl issue that that fell in but that issue was having was killing oxygen element at some elementor modules had issues with it as well. Which may be a lot of our you know they’re 2 of the page builders that a lot of our audience may use.

28:59.99
Jeff
Um, yeah.

29:00.79
peteeveritt
Um, so you you may know what? Ah what I’m talking about and if you do I Hope you got it sorted and if you are just an Oxygen user. You don’t use elementor at least you know that the elementor people were in the same boat with us and vice versa If you’re the other way around. Um, so yeah.

29:14.44
Jeff
Yeah, funny thing. It’s you know, kind of one of those like long-runing I don’t want to say jokes but we always talk about how often there’s issues around Elementor updates. I started to notice that after elementor updates they have a thing in the background says are you experiencing problems.

29:36.18
peteeveritt
I don’t know what I don’t know what’s happened to elementor elementor not that long ago. Elementor was a good page builder. Um I’m going to be controversial here and say that it it slipped down the pecking order somewhat. Um, in my opinion. Not that anybody at elementor or wordpress cares about my opinion I’m fully aware of that so please don’t write in and tell me, um, we can talk about it anyway. But yeah, it’s it’s not the best. It’s very bloated it I was talking to a client today.

29:57.81
Jeff
Yeah, they probably do not they probably don’t care. But you know we can talk about it anyway.

30:13.44
peteeveritt
Actually what what was happening today was I was introduced to the new marketing manager at a healthcare client that that we have and they have a designer that had built their site. We’ve been working on it for probably six or eight months but the work we’ve been doing we were brought in to do was to build custom modules to fit into their elementor site. And this guy literally he started on Monday it’s now Thursday by Thursday afternoon. He’d got budget approved to have the site rebuilt out of elementor because it was taking him hours to do anything. He hates it. Um now I’m not quite that passionate about it I you know. We will work with it. But it’s never been our tool of choice and it’s just seems to be here. Um, it’s a bit entry level for a page builder I think that’s my problem.

30:59.97
Jeff
Yeah, it’s not my favorite I mean it’s funny so I kind of I um I we’ve used it a lot a lot. We’ve built a lot less sites with elementtor than we have say beaver builder um, and I’d actually say elementor has run really. Stable for us for the last couple years but back in the day. Every update would just destroy the design. You’d have to clear the cash regenerate the css every time and I mean you know it’ not the end of the world but like every update and you know gosh forbid that a client would go go near an update or auto updates were turned on. You wouldn’t even know that there was a problem.

31:24.60
peteeveritt
Yeah.

31:35.87
Jeff
When you run it we at least check so we know but if it happens behind the scenes you know or somebody else does it? Um I see these posts and this goes for actually this can to be specific about a Beaver builder post I saw recently and I’ve seen it multiple times but I think this could be applied to any of these page builders.

31:37.61
peteeveritt
A.

31:52.59
Jeff
And I saw somebody post in a beaver builder group and they said um, hey when is beaver builder going to start adding some of these cool modules and features like are in elementor and other thing it sounds like Beaver builders really behind with the times and myself and several other people were like I mean I don’t think I chimed in but I remember reading and going. No, no, no, no, no, that’s what makes Beaver Biller better than these other ones is that is not packed with all of those things and that’s that’s a problem with my complaint about elementor is they have put so many custom fancy modules and sliders and forms I mean they’ve got their own form thing in there. Which admittedly I guess cadence just did in blocks too. But I just think that’s a bad idea if you’re not a form builder. Don’t try to make forms. Let the people that make forms day in and day out. Do the forms. Um, you know there all kinds of stuff and it.

32:35.40
peteeveritt
Yeah, what this Yeah, this is where you you know when you get you know when you see a theme forest theme installed on a website and it has a million and one things in in there and you only need 7 of them. Elementors kind of that for the page builder world and you know it’s got all of these things in there. A lot of them don’t work very well. You know they they work for the user they work. But I mean from from an Seo point of view from a page load point of view from a speed point of view. They they don’t work as well as they could do. And yeah. Yeah, you’d be better off not having some any option. Oh having fewer options that work better than more options that work worse if you see what I mean. Um.

33:19.95
Jeff
Yeah, and then but then you know if you have if you’re somebody who is kind of just in that low- tech Diy side and you’re doing that what I’ve seen happen so many times too and I’ve actually seen a lot of developers. Do this too is they’ll they’ll use say elementor and they’ll build something out, but. The module options don’t do exactly what they want to do maybe it doesn’t animate in in a certain way or it doesn’t flip over whatever I don’t know so then they go and they add like a third -party premium tool sometimes free sometimes paid that add additional modules to eltor. You’ve just added a whole other layer of complexity to the site. All another layer of code that can and will break when updates happen and so half the time when when we’re running into problems with elementor sites. It’s because you know these course ones we inherited people have just stacked all these essential add-ons these bonus add-ons jetpag add-ons and they got 10 different add-ons for elementor. And I’m sure the same I know the same thing could be happened or said for a lot of the other page builders too. It’s just seems excessive with elementor for some reason I know there’s one for beaver builder and I have had problems with them in related updates a lot less frequently though and at a much larger scale which speaks to how less frequently those happen.

34:22.40
peteeveritt
Yeah.

34:32.29
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah, and you know this is this isn’t then touching on one of the issues I have with look I’ve I’ve bought bricks and I’ve downloaded bricks and I’ve tried to play with bricks and. It’s when you then see? Yeah, but you don’t you don’t just need that you then need this add on to give you the functionality which comes from a different developer and then then there’s this whole? Oh but you you need to add in Acss Well right? So now all the rendering now has to pass through a plugin in order to get it to work. And I that’s not True. You don’t need Acss but a lot of people do and I’m not criticizing Acss but I come from the school where we actually learn S Css and the command line to compile it into Files so that it was all done in.

35:15.15
Jeff
Um, no.

35:27.74
peteeveritt
In code you know in the code side of things and then the the actual output files. The stuff that the server had to load were fixed. They were pre-written. You know they they were compiled locally and deployed so you were actually these processes were actually designed to make the. Deployment of the website or the the load of the website easier for the for the browsers to do so that you can improve speed and now what we’ve done is lifted that process that would happen on someone’s machine and then get deployed over into the web server which isn’t really designed to do that which is just going to slow it all down again. Ah, just doesn’t make any sense anyway.

36:06.46
Jeff
I I just got to take a step back and go do the pros outweigh the cons and usually I understand the pros but no, usually they the pros are not worth spending 10 hours 20 hours putting these systems in the place. To use something that works and is easy to use and then also a client can hop in and use and they don’t you know I mean the the truth of it is the vast majority of our client don’t ever log in they you know, request support from us and they pay us for that and that’s what the arrangement is, but. They should still be able to go in there and do it if they can and you know that’s the ideal situation.

36:42.41
peteeveritt
Right? So before we lose any more listeners because now anybody that uses element is going to have stop listening anybody that’s used bricks is going to stop listening anybody that’s using Acs as a stop listening a couple of fundamental things and these aren’t going to take quite so long to talk through. Firstly, everything we’ve said that had gone wrong in the release of 6.4 which does have to go down in recent history as 1 of the more challenging wordpress releases that’s ever come out. Um has it all been fixed.

37:18.60
Jeff
Well I know my answer might be a little different because do you want me to go into that or do you do you want to start.

37:29.78
peteeveritt
Well I was going to say essentially essentially it has as long as you’ve updated six point four point one things are now running far more stably and ah as as fixed as wordpress can ever be being an open source platform.

37:48.30
peteeveritt
You’re you’re in a far more stable place than you were just in installing six point four point zero that’s that was gonna be my answer. Okay.

37:52.74
Jeff
Yes, that’s that’s a good way to put it I’m still not I’m I’m afraid it still may not be safe for everybody to go click update and I’m going to kind of go in a little bit nerdy. But I’ll try to make this as quick as I can the php issues were another topic that came up and.

38:04.58
peteeveritt
Go for it.

38:11.80
Jeff
With this release it is now I believe officially recommended by wordpress to use ph b eight or newer. But it’s still 7 point. Four is is still the requirement so we were taking it upon ourselves to use this as the. Okay, it’s finally time to upgrade those legacies sites and servers that we’ve got that they’re up to date. Don’t get me wrong, but they’ve been built long ago. They’ve got older themes and plugins and some of them. There’s no updates available because they’re just not being updated and there’s no security problems. So that’s fine. But. You know they’re not being maintained necessarily those have been a nightmare There are so many plugins on the wordpress repository ah, ah, would you Google while I’m saying this I’m going to just guess there’s 500000 plugins on the wordpress repository. Let let me know when you find it. Um, and I don’t don I don’t know what the stats are but there’s so many of them there that’ve been used on this side and that side and this side and then like I said they’re not being updated a lot of them are relying on that code that’s been removed from wordpress 6.4 or code changes to php. Um, which generally are because of security if php code changes. It’s usually because there’s been some sort of exploit related to it so it’s an evolution that has to happen. What is it what you find.

39:27.80
peteeveritt
Well I’m I’m so I’m sorry to burst your bubble but according to the wordpress repository. There are 59726 plugins available. Yeah.

39:36.82
Jeff
It’s going to be way more isn’t it. Okay, well I exaggerated a bit there but.

39:45.89
peteeveritt
So so so sorry to bring you back down to to earth. But yeah, you’re you’re 90% inflated

39:51.91
Jeff
Okay, well maybe it’s not as big as I was making it sound but I’m still going to say that’s ah, that’s a large selection of plugins that are used on a variety of websites out there.

40:00.91
peteeveritt
Now the other thing to bear in mind is they’re the ones that are in the repository so that won’t include Sas products or um, you know premium plugins where you actually download from their website and that kind of thing I know lots of lots now have it on the Repo and you put in an api key but some don’t so.

40:15.48
Jeff
Yeah, and a lot of them get abandoned and removed from there too and and they still can work perfectly fine and be secure but they’re just they’ve just removed there’s and there’s never going to be an update to that one So anyway, bringing yeah.

40:18.20
peteeveritt
But yeah, yeah.

40:25.54
peteeveritt
The most successful plugins while while we’re on with it the most successful plugins have over five million actives installs. They.

40:33.70
Jeff
So a plugin could be used on 5000000 websites that’s wild. That’s wild. Nope, you sure don’t.

40:38.74
peteeveritt
Yeah, you don’t want to be getting a typo in your code did.

40:45.28
Jeff
So anyway to make a long story short if you are still updating things you know take a look at your your server environment if you’re already on ph b eight or newer. You’ve got to be safe because everything’s working fine if you’re on 7.4. You know you’re going have to go through those phb update procedures with your hosting provider or your servers and. Um, you can you can test plugins the the wp engine php compatibility checker tends to not work anymore. So I don’t know if there’s any I don’t know of a great solution. But the nice thing is it’s relatively easy enough to switch to php check and see how things work and if it’s not working. Go back to seven point four so you can always do that. But.

41:18.67
peteeveritt
Um, yeah.

41:20.64
Jeff
Um, but that’s been a thing and so like I said the first like 60% of our servers just went fine. No problems whatsoever because they’ve all been built in the last like two or three years so everything is relatively new code still being updated but then some of those older brochure sites. We’ve got for clients that you know we’re maintaining them and keeping them safe and everything like that. But. You know their their their plugin that does the little flashing text in the banner was from seven years ago and it’s not compatible with you know, Php anymore. So some of those things you got to go through and change them out make all those updates. It’s going to be some work.

41:50.42
peteeveritt
So I mean we were going to talk a little bit around about how to safely update wordpress and really the the thing you can’t get away from is having some kind of staging environment but depending on your host that is going to depend on what your options are. Really available to that you know having to set up a manual staging environment which is essentially duplicating the site and changing the domain. So It’s on a different you know, different. Yeah url. Um, and then applying all your updates That’s going to be hard work particularly if you’ve got hundreds of sites like some of us do and we’re we’re looking After. Um.

42:10.53
Jeff
Um.

42:27.79
peteeveritt
Ah, we have you know we use cloudways for our host. We’re it’s great that cloudwas has the option to create staging environments very easily just within a couple of clicks and then you let it run its thing um and in order to test ph b eight because cloudways will allow you to have staging environments on different servers. So. That does mean we can spool up a ph p eight server create staging environments for the sites. We want to test on the phhpeight server and then run the updates and and see what we see if it’s going to work so we can we can do that and then of course we can push anything back that we want to all we know that if we. Test all the sites on a ph p seven point four server. There’s no issues we can just upgrade that server in in one go so depending on how you you know what your setup is like you might want to consider that I know a lot of I know a lot of people who use grid pain I’ve never used that so I don’t know what the options are within there. Maybe you’ve got a bit more experience with that Jeff but um. Certainly try and do some kind of testing if you can um or get the expertise of a maintenance company involved so that they can do it for you? Absolutely absolutely. Um.

43:32.83
Jeff
So they can bear your headaches for you.

43:41.42
peteeveritt
And then the final question we were going to ask with this is does any of this actually affect seo because this is the W P Seo show um and in all honesty doesn’t really the the only thing that really has an effect on Seo is that um. For new installs of 6 point 4 attachment pages are going to be disabled so where yeah, absolutely so where in the past you would upload something to the media library and that would actually generate a wordpress url for it which could be indexed. You didn’t get a lot of you know you.

44:04.42
Jeff
Um, yay.

44:17.67
peteeveritt
It was quite rare that you did see them. Um, being being um, indexed but is it. It was possible that net will no longer happen. Um, which of course means that now as the seo you have full control of everything that’s being that you’re sending over to be indexed rather than having these attachments kind of floating around in the background. But other than that. Ah, really their security their usability it’s we haven’t yet fully tested 2024 if you were going to use that as your base theme to know how that would ah sort of output is within the search engines how that how clean that code’s going to be although if they’ve spent this much time building it I’m guessing. It’s gonna be pretty good. Um. And the options are going to be It has more options than it did have but it the options are still gonna be fairly limited what you can do so really then down to what what’s the other stuff you’re going to shoeh onn in there from third parties that that’s the stuff that’s going to slow you down. Um, so yeah so that’s that’s kind of that’s kind of it. Um.

45:00.58
Jeff
Yeah, most likely.

45:15.38
peteeveritt
It’s not massively going to affect. Don’t think you can upgrade to 6.4 and your seo problems are going to be solved. Let me put it that way.

45:20.71
Jeff
No I got to imagine the only people excited about the updates and are still listening to this or even listening in the first place are the other kind of semi-developer nerdy people like us that are just like. Ooh what kind of fun are we going to get today. No, it’s just a lot of headaches. But that’s okay I like solving headaches.

45:40.42
peteeveritt
Well look if you’ve had a terrible experience of dating to wordpress 6.4 please jump over to seohive.com and let us know in the comments or youtube.com/seohive. Whatever the Url is and and let us know in the comments because you know. This isn’t that this is where one of the issues sits with with what we do the the way that people who listen to this show. The reason that this show comes about is one of the issues we face which is that we don’t only rely on the internet to deliver. What we deliver to actually make our money and put food on the table for our family and children. We also depend on wordpress for it and therefore whether you like you know it’s a bit like it’s a bit like a sailor. Not knowing how a boat works and then trying to sail across the atlantic and having an issue halfway across he need before the sailor leaves the dock he needs to know every inch of how that boat works or a pilot in a plane you name the net metaphor and this is kind of one of those things. It’s not necessarily. You know I don’t. You don’t need to know exactly how the call works but you do need to know what steps to take in order to safely update wordpress because that is protecting you. It’s protecting your clients and it’s protecting your workflow for the future so that you can so continue to make more money on the internet.

47:05.80
peteeveritt
Support your family for longer into the future and put more food on the table I’ll stop preaching.

47:08.47
Jeff
There you go WordPress is an amazing platform gives us so many options which can be detrimental at times. But it’s a great platform.

47:18.45
peteeveritt
It it is is absolutely and you know the world would certainly be a different place without it. Um, but yeah, this is this is just one of those necessary evils. So I don’t know if you’ve got value from this show I hope you have um. I don’t know whether this has just been 2 blokes waffling about a nightmare of a week they’ve had that was enforced on them on a on a Wednesday morning one week because a software company decided to release an update and but 2 blokes waffling.

47:43.50
Jeff
Um, I think we should do a spinoff podcast 2 blokes waffling.

47:48.34
peteeveritt
And we could do a spin off to the spinoff which is 2 blokes making waffles which would be very different. Yeah oh my son had waffles for breakfast today. No you, you’re very not my son.

47:51.34
Jeff
I had waffles for breakfast today I am not your son just clear just clarifying.

48:05.60
peteeveritt
I I wonder how many people have listened to 48 minutes in to hear that joke and ah so yeah, we will. We will call it a day for this week um and we hope to see you next week and next week’s show.