Does updating to WordPress 5.5 broke your website? Or are you facing errors and bugs after installing WordPress latest 5.5 update? If this is the case with you then don’t get panic. In this post, we will see why updating to WordPress recent version is causing websites to break. Also, how to fix WordPress 5.5 breaking sites issues after updating to WordPress latest version 5.5 and how to identify which theme or plugin is causing the issues.
Article key points
- Why Websites are Breaking After WordPress 5.5 Update?
- What is jQuery Migrate?
- Why Did WordPress 5.5 Removed jQuery Migrate?
- How to Identify and Fix WordPress Websites Breaking Issue
Before we start, here is a short video explaining what causes WordPress 5.5 to break websites and how to fix it.
Why Websites are Breaking After WordPress 5.5 Update?
WordPress 5.5 is shipped with many new changes like addition of native lazy load functionality, default sitemap integration, auto-update feature for theme and plugin and changes to its default Gutenberg editor.
One other change that is import is the removal of jQuery Migrate library. For many years WordPress has been including this useful JavaScript library to help themes and plugins with outdated JavaScript codes to run properly.
But in its recent 5.5 release, WordPress has removed jQuery Migrate and that has caused conflicts on many sites. As plugins and themes with outdated codes can’t work properly anymore, resulting in breaking many sites. Especially on the front end.
After updating to WordPress 5.5, many WordPress users are now complaining about issues like Classic Editor not working, pagination not working properly, mobile menu disappeared. Moreover, image sliders not working, featured image functionality causing issue and page builders not working etc.
So, what this jQuery Migrate library is and why it was important? Let’s find out.
What is jQuery Migrate?
jQuery Migrate is a JavaScript library that provides support to WordPress themes and plugins that use outdated JavaScript codes to run properly on the current jQuery version. We can say that jQuery Migrate acts like a bridge for older code to run properly on the current version of jQuery.
This library is there to help developers during the transitional period so they can replace their outdated codes with the latest JavaScript codes.
Why Did WordPress 5.5 Removed jQuery Migrate?
WordPress keeps updating its coding standards. Now to cope with its new standards it has removed the jQuery Migrate from its core. Removing jQuery Migrate library will ensure that now all WordPress themes and plugins are using standard and latest code instead of outdated codes.
How to Identify and Fix WordPress Websites Breaking Issue
You might be thinking about how you can identify the bugs and errors after this new WordPress release and how to fix them. Well, there are two easy ways to solve the issues.
1. Updating Themes and Plugins.
One way to tackle website 5.5 breaking sites issue is to make sure that you are using the latest version of themes and plugins that are running on your website in the hope that developers have updated the codes of both plugins and themes to make it compatible with recent WordPress update.
2. Install Enable jQuery Migrate Helper plugin.
If the first method didn’t work for you and your website is still facing issues, you may go for another fix, i.e., installing Enable jQuery Migrate Helper plugin on your website. WordPress team maintains Enable jQuery Migrate Helper plugin itself and as the time of writing it had 100,000+ installations.
Want to learn how to install a plugin, read our complete guide about How to install a plugin in WordPress.
Installing and activating this plugin will help you in two ways:
- This plugin will re-enable JavaScript jQuery Migrate library that was removed in WordPress 5.5 update. Re-enabling jQuery Migrate library might fix the issues that you are facing on your website. However, this plugin is just a temporary solution. It is there just to give developers more time to update and test their themes and plugins codes.
- This plugin also provide ways to identify which theme’s or plugin’s files might be causing the issue. Here are the ways with which you can identify these files.
Once you enable this plugin and if there are any files that are still using outdated JavaScript code, you will see a list of these files along with the mention of the function that is depreciated but is still being used.
Other way to identify the issue is to open the browser console on your web browser. On Windows you can open it by pressing F12 button from your keyboard. Once the browser console is opened, select the console tab.Here you can see the JavaScript that are using outdated code.
After you identify the theme or plugin whose file is causing the issue, update the theme or plugin to its latest version and doing this did not solve your issue then contact the theme’s or plugin’s developer to provide a fix for it.
Conclusion
Did the WordPress 5.5 update has crashed your site? Did the Enable jQuery Migrate Helper plugin help fix your broken WordPress dashboard? If you’re facing any difficulty in plugin installation or if this method doesn’t work for you, hit the comments section below.
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