Version 8 is ready and available for you to download or update through the WordPress Admin. This is a major version update which is not fully backward-compatible with previous filters or extensions. If you have extended the functionality of this plugin via actions or filters, you may want to consider staying on version 7 or follow the migration guide to update your extensions. If you have not extended the plugin, you may update it without fear of breaking anything or losing data.
Brand new code base
For many years we had been supporting PHP 5.2 which limited us to what we could do with the plugin code base. About a year ago we officially dropped support for PHP 5.2 to follow WordPress core. Finally, we are now actually using the benefits of PHP 5.6.
The entire code base for both the basic and PRO versions have been rewritten to use namespaces and more modern practices. The code is more:
- Intuitive
- Clean
- Documented
- Extendable
- Ready for future features
This also means none of the old classes exist. Many of the filter and action names have changed. Many existing extensions will need to be updated to use the new structure.
We did not take this decision lightly as we understand about 5% of the plugin users will need to rework their customization. The decision was made to open up future enhancements.
Why version 8 instead of 4?
For the first time, the basic version of the plugin now has a minimum required version of PRO for PRO to function. To keep compatibility straightforward in the future, the major versions of the PRO and basic plugins will now match to signify compatibility.
Updating to version 8
All previous functionality and data remains intact and requires no special process to continue using everything as is. If you have not extended the plugin via code, there is nothing you need to worry about.
There have been some code changes which require special considerations if you are extending the plugin via filters/actions or using classes directly.
Full migration guide may be found here.
Miscellaneous
- Removed redundant filters.
- Removed redundant methods.
- Added missing PHP docs.
- Made all code 100% WordPress code standards compliant.
- Updated all translations.
- Added new system for notification of incompatible versions.