WordPress Security Update Released

This past weekend a WordPress security update was released. Version 3.5.2 fixes 12 bugs and adds a number of security fixes. Some of the more important fixes were in response to the brute force attacks against WordPress sites that took place a couple of months ago. Those attacks are still going on, by the way. Many web hosts have found better ways to block them, but I’m still seeing alerts from client sites that are being tested multiple times a day.

So, Where is WP 3.6?

You may recall that I announced the impending release of WordPress 3.6 some time ago. The WordPress development team seemed pretty sure they were going to release 3.6 by the end of April or thereabouts. Needless to say, that hasn’t happened and the release of 3.5.2 indicates that it will likely be a while longer before 3.6 sees the light of day.

WordPress 3.6 has been in beta for several months. One of the most anticipated features has been dropped from the release, so apparently, there were some issues found that the team felt would delay the release even further. The good news is that the developers won’t release anything that’s half-baked.

Update Now

Those of you in my Website Management Program will see your sites updated to WP 3.5.2 shortly. This is a pretty straightforward update, but of course, as with all updates of WordPress, needs to be handled carefully to make sure the site doesn’t break because of the upgrade. As I mentioned, the primary purpose of this update is to tighten up security, so the odds of it conflicting with existing plugins, etc. are small. That said, software is what it is and upgrades are always a bit of a nail biter until things have been verified to still work the way they did before the upgrade.

What About Plugins and Themes?

Again, those of you in the Website Management Program have seen your plugins and themes updated regularly. Those of you doing your own maintenance will want to make sure that any plugins or themes indicating that they have updates available are updated ASAP. There have been quite a number of updates lately, many of which are security updates. Security awareness is considerably heightened these days because of the brute force attacks so developers are quickly closing any loopholes found in their products.

So, What Else Is New?

Backup Buddy, the plugin I use for all my client sites to keep them backed up, has released version 4.0.1. This is yet another major upgrade for Backup Buddy and has several new features that keep Backup Buddy on the leading edge of this software category.

One of the primary features is individual file restores. This is a wonderful feature that will make life a lot easier when restoring the entire site would be overkill. Now, if a file gets corrupted somehow, instead of having to restore everything, that one file can be restored from a backup. Quick, simple, and a lot less dangerous than restoring the entire site.

There are lots of free alternatives out there for making backups of WordPress sites, but Backup Buddy continues to lead the pack with features not found in the others, free or premium.

John Sawyer