It’s your favorite time of year! Yes, the holidays are great, but today we’re excited about WordPress update day! WordPress 3.8 has been released. WP Engine will begin rolling out updates soon. Here’s everything you need to know.
This season is an important time of year for our customers. Our customers often tell us many of their sites drive large sales numbers, traffic, and communications during the holiday rush. They ask us for stability during the holiday season, and we place a high value on delivering this for them.
Customers who would like to upgrade right now are able to, but by default we will roll out 3.8 as soon as our clients critical holiday business rush is over. This means right after Christmas the first batch of WP Engine customers will receive email notifications that their sites will be automatically updated to 3.8.
However, a lot of folks are excited about the new design and awesome features that roll out in 3.8 and will want to update as soon as possible. If that’s you, just start a live chat requesting that we update your site(s). A Support Team Member will hand-upgrade your site using our Automated Upgrade Protection right away.
Our systems will create an automated backup of the current state of your site. Then we’ll perform the upgrade to 3.8. As soon as the upgrade is complete, we’ll test the site to make sure everything is running perfectly (as mentioned above). If everything is up and running, you’ll be notified that you’ve been upgraded to 3.8. Should something appear to be amiss, we’ll roll your site back using the backup, and investigate what may have gone wrong. All this will happen instantly.
What’s New with 3.8?
Well, first of all, WordPress 3.8 has undergone some beautiful design changes to the admin dashboard. It’s a facelift that will surely bring smiles to the faces of all the great WordPress designers out there. For the complete writeup about what’s new with 3.8, check out the article at Torque.
Ok, to wrap up, we’ll be sending out the first upgrade emails after Christmas, but if you’d like your site upgraded in the meantime with our Upgrade Protection process, let us know in a Live Chat, and we’ll make it happen.
Thanks, as always, for choosing WP Engine.
Take us away, Charlie Parker!
Awesome! Thank you guys for all of your hard work and dedication to your clients! This is truly some of the best hosting available.
Hey Brian, thanks so much for the compliment! We’re really glad to be able to serve you and keep your sites running smoothly 🙂
-Austin
Next time it would be better to wait until after the holidays for a major upgrade. My site has not worked correctly since 3.8 was installed and I am afraid I lost holiday business — and credibility — at this critical time of year for sales.
Hi Gail, that’s exactly why we chose to not update client sites until after the holidays. Please open a ticket and we’ll make sure you get your site all sorted out so you can serve your customers over the holidays. If I can do anything personally, please email [email protected]
-Austin
All sites now updated to WP 3.8 and I love the new look.
Looks modern and no major changes to learn, that’s the way I like updates.
I personally think they have done a really good job of cleaning the backend up, now looks clean and modern, much better. The new widgets section is also a massive improvement on previous versions.