Are you ready for WordPress 3.2?
WordPress 3.2 is due for release at the end of this month, and as with most WordPress “second digit” releases, it includes a large number of changes. Some of these changes are in the requirements it places on your web hosting, potentially affecting all WordPress site owners, so now is the time to check whether your WordPress site is going to continue working if you upgrade your WordPress installation to version 3.2 when it is released.
PHP
Since version 2.5, WordPress has insisted that the version of PHP running on the server is at least 4.3. WordPress 3.2 will require you to have PHP 5.2.4 (or newer) installed on the server.
In theory this should not be a major problem, since PHP 5.2.4 was released in August 2007, and is no longer even a supported version, having been superceded by so many newer versions since its release.
So, if your web host is running a version of PHP older than 5.2.4, you should probably insist they upgrade in order to keep your custom!
MySQL
The MySQL database that is at the heart of every WordPress installation must also be running on a newer version of the MySQL server software. Since WordPress 2.9, the minimum required version of MySQL has been 4.1.2. From WordPress 3.2, your server must be running MySQL 5.0.15 or newer.
As with PHP, MySQL version 5.0.15 is actually pretty old (it was released at the end of 2006), and has now been superceded by many newer versions.
So again, if your web host is running a version of MySQL older than 5.0.15, it’s time to get a new web host.
There’s a nice easy way to check if your web host meets these requirements – simply download the WordPress Requirements Check plugin and install it on your live site.
Browser Support
With version 3.2, support for Internet Explorer 6 has finally been dropped from WordPress. This means that the bundled theme (a new one called Twenty Eleven) may break for users of IE6, and also that IE6 can no longer be used when managing your WordPress 3.2 site via the admin pages.
If you are still using IE6, please give yourself an early birthday present by upgrading to a different browser – my personal recommendation would be Firefox but of course there are others.
jQuery
This requirement will only be of interest to theme and plugin developers; but if you are such a person, it is a crucial change in requirements, and you should check all your plugins and themes with the Beta release of WordPress 3.2 to see if they break. There are two aspects to this change:
- The jQuery library bundled with WordPress 3.2 is 1.6.1 (was previously 1.4.4)
- The partial jQuery UI library bundled with WordPress 3.2 is 1.8.12 (up from 1.8.9)
If you need to check out exactly how the jQuery API has changed in 1.6.1, this article on the jQuery site should prove useful.
Looking for a reliable host for your WordPress site? Get a quote from ZigPress.
08 Jun 2011
jQuery, PHP & MySQL, Plugins, Software, WordPress
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I just got notices that I have less then a month to update all my sites based on this release and the fact that it needs php 5.2.4 to run right.
Lots of people are going to be scrambling to keep their sites working smoothly for this round of updates.
Just tried WordPress 3.2 RC1. Runs quite stable. The Twenty Eleven Theme not quite stable yet.
As far as i know, my wordpress is at its latest version. However don’t know it is 3.2 yet. Is that big change on software or just minor updates as usual?
I have recently started to look into wordpress 3.2 and already are having problems with hosts not being able to support it. I think that this needs to be sorted as of course we want to be able to use the most up to date wordpress as possible and now be restricted by our hosts. The fact that IE6 is no longer supported is great news too as that is something that I always have issues with. Thanks for the information, always good to know about the new updates