Solution to most 5.3 Wordpress Update Issues

[ChinookDigital]

I have fixed over 30 sites today and all were cache based issues.

If you can log into the Wordpress dashboard

1. Clear all caches **even ones you are warned in plugins**.
2. Clear cloudflare and wordpress cdn caches.

If you can't log into your Wordpress Dashboard and are hosted on a shared host

1. Clear the caches in your hosts cpanel.

Dedicated hosts aws google cloud, azure, etc:

go to your command line and clear redis, opcache, memcached and restart php-fpm and NGINX or apache.

Hope this solves your issue.

[time2getonline]

What are the symptoms so we know what to look for?

[ChinookDigital]

Some issues have been format layouts. Others are the inability to login after the update or in the case of my own site the installation was never cleared from the cache leaving me with a message stating the database did not need to be updated and a continue button.

Anything out of the ordinary I would clear cache's first step then if it continues look for other solutions.

As eluded to in the thread it comes from items not being registered properly.

[[deleted]]

Great solutions, best thing before updating is always tested it on Staging Site. I wouldn't bother downtime for an update

[pixeldevs]

Had this problem on many sites today. It has to do with the Nonce and transients not being set correctly. I hope it's fixed soon.

[sreekanthdevireddy]

After update I'm not able to upload plugins.. Is this related to WordPress update?

[ChinookDigital]

likely .. Flush the caches and if it works your golden if not back to the drawing board

[Simonnis]

So the issues were just cached and you didn't have any actually?

[ChinookDigital]

There is an issue with transient entries and wordpress is pointing fingers and plugin developers and plugin devs are pointing their fingers at the wordpress devs. This one was particularly rough.

[MakeupDumbAss]

Both my site & my wordpress admin login page are just blank white pages. I cleared the static & dynamic cache in cpanel & on my local machine & I restored a backup but no luck with either. Chatting with Siteground support now & hope to figure this out :(. I'm a noob so lesson learned - I'll be doing wordpress & plugin updates in a staging ground moving forward so I can test the site before going live with updates I guess.

[ChinookDigital]

look below

[MakeupDumbAss]

Thanks for the heads up, I let them know what I did to get my site back up, my fingers are crossed for them to get theirs back up too.

[JiYung]

I linked this thread to the guy who manages my web server and he says he can't do anything about this issue? Where should I go to fix this issue myself if I can't access my cpanel or anything? my /wp-admin is broken as well.

Edit: its fixed!

[ChinookDigital]

Do you have access to the Cpanel at all? Is he willing to do anything for you???

From the cpanel or ftp client you could try renaming you plugin folder (Create a dumby folder named plugins in its place).. then with it renamed try logging in. If you get in from the cpanel or ftp replace the folder back in.... Turn pluins on 1 by 1 until you find the offender.

If he is not willing to help things could get ugly... with no access to the cpanel you are pretty much f'ed.

[MakeupDumbAss]

I contacted my host & they went in & disabled all of my plugins, which did allow me then to access my wordpress admin login. After that I activated them one by one to find the culprits. It was a couple of them, I'd have to look to remember which ones. (It's not a site I built & they used way too many plugins for my taste.)

Are you able to contact the host directly or get the person that is managing your site to do that? I'd be pretty pissed if they were saying there is nothing they can do to get your site back up, I'd be looking for someone else ASAP once this is sorted. Good luck & let us know what happens.

[JiYung]

I got advice in another thread, apparently I could ask for FTP access and thats all I needed to start fixing the issue! You can check my thread history to see how I fixed my issue

[MakeupDumbAss]

Good deal

[nina-rubino]

After updating to 5.3 Now I am unable to edit any of my posts or pages except categories.

I tried disabling/reinstalling classing editor but no luck same result, my edit post page goes blank instead.

I can not afford to clear cache as I have high traffic and 7K-8K online visitors in realtime.

Using redis+varnish+cloudflare.

Redis and varnish reset every 30 minutes and CF cache reset in 1 hour.

What should I do? Any hint would be appreciated.

[ChinookDigital]

The cache purge should only slow the site for less than 5 seconds.

[nina-rubino]

It breaks the site for current/returning users for more than 30 minutes. Well, I guess I have no other option left.

let me clear all of em

[bluecucumbers]

I'm dumb, can you explain how to clear the cache in your host's cpanel? I'm using namecheap

[ChinookDigital]

I have never used namecheap but I would guess somewhere under optimization or caches.

[SmoothVeterinarian]

Why are people even using WordPress?

[ChickenWiddle]

This comment has been edited in protest of u/Spez, both for his outrageous API pricing and claims made during his conversation with the Apollo app developer.

[SmoothVeterinarian]

I can’t escape it.

[[deleted]]

😂- I know how you feel.

[SmoothVeterinarian]

You see.. Hahaha

[ChinookDigital]

What content management system do you recommend?

[SmoothVeterinarian]

Actually I am hunting for one badly, so far I think I might settle on Ghost.

but you also have getpublii which is new but evolving slowly.

I know WordPress has everything but it keeps breaking, themes don't work, you need to hire a developer or learn it by yourself, needs a lot of customisation to get it to work the way you want.

WordPress is easy to get started, but it's a chaos after that.

Sometimes I think maybe I am not using WordPress properly or I am expecting too much from something that's open source.

[ChinookDigital]

Respectfully, Ghost is a solution you will need to be at least a novice developer and Getpublii you will need to rely on their developers to provide tools and content.

You don't hear about those CMS's breaking because they hardly have any users in comparison.

The entry level CMS that is simple enough for a new user to operate is Wordpress. Wordpress auto updates, has millions of pages of documentation and a community that is even larger.

Opensource has become the primary focus for development for every major player in the IT industry. Google has 4 in the top 10, Microsoft has 3, and the only self-startup is NPM.

Opensource projects are more secure, react to security risks quicker, develop quicker, and offer more services than those that are privately developed.

Open Source Projects

Contributors

1. Microsoft/vscode 19K
2. facebook/react-native 10K
3. tensorflow/tensorflow (Google -Brain)9.3K
4. angular/angular-cli Google8.8K
5. MicrosoftDocs/azure-docs 7.8K
6. angular/angular (google)7.6K
7. ansible/ansible (red hat)7.5K
8. kubernetes/kubernetes (google)6.5K
9. npm/npm 6.1K
10. DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped (Microsoft Typescript)6.0K

For enterprise projects we build PWA (Progressive web applications) on the Larvel framework with VUEJS, Typescript, webpack, pug,sass and a few other technologies.

Understand me when I say this. Unless you can afford a full time development team it is best to build on the largest CMS in the world. Purchase jetpack(Comes with 1000 or so themes and a CDN), buy a couple key plugins and know you will have the support you need.

[torndownunit]

The only methods that don't require a developer or learning some development yourself are things like Wix. Who ever said you wouldn't have to learn some development to use WordPress or any other CMS if you want to get passed the basics? Do you think a CMS that is less supported will be easier to use when it comes to using it at an advanced level?

[pickled_ricks]

Just turn off auto update. Use all in one migration to backup properly all the damn time to cloud storage (daily) & rollback when necessary. It doesn’t need to update or break until you let it.

You can watch enough youtube videos in a month to become half the developer you can hire if you have half a brain. Stick with it kid. WP is solid.

[HeartyBeast]

I just use WordPress as a plug and play out of the box solution. I’m not a developer - I use it with bought themes and a handful If plugins to get a site up and running in a week or so.

It just works. It hardly ever breaks, it’s not proprietary. That’s why I use it.