Why you should delay updating to WordPress 6.2 

WordPress version 6.2 will be released on March 28, 2023. This is a major release which means that newly introduced features may break plugins, themes, languages, libraries, and packages that are not compatible with it. (Release date was moved from March 28 to 29).

Why you should not update to WordPress 6.2

WordPress 6.2 comes with performance improvement, security tightening, bug fixing, and a number of new features. However, you might need to delay updating because of the reasons provided below.

Backward-compatibility

Although most features introduced in WordPress 6.2 are designed to work in old versions, there are some that are not backward compatible. Therefore, you may want to delay updating to version 6.2 to give plugin and theme developers time to make updates.

Some of the libraries that have been updated which you should check compatibility include jQuery to 3.6.3 (bug fix), PHPMailer to 6.7.0 (bug fix and PHP 8.1 improvement), and polyfill-library to 4.7.0. However, most of the libraries’ updates are minor which means there are not likely to break your website.

Full site editor

In WordPress 6.2, the full site editor which was in beta will now be ready. If your theme is not full site editor supported, then it might break some functions like navigation menus, custom css, and widgets if updated. Other sections like the editor may still function as expected.

React 18

WordPress 6.2 comes with React 18 which is used to build blocks. If you have installed a WordPress plugin that uses react later than version 18, then you should consider waiting for updates from the plugin developer before upgrading to 6.2.

Google Fonts

If you are using WordPress default themes from Twenty Twelve going forward, then the next version will not fetch fonts from the Google Font website due to privacy concerns. All fonts will be served from your theme directory on your website. Therefore, if you have edited the font stylesheet confirm that your website will work before updating. Other themes are not affected by these changes.

Security Issues

New features introduced in 6.2, more particularly those that perform database updates or query actions, do sometimes come with vulnerabilities. It can take hours or a day before WordPress fixes such vulnerabilities.  A delay in updating will ensure that you are covered with security fixes.  

Deprecated functions and classes

WordPress 6.2 has deprecated some functions like get_page_by_title() in favor of WP_Query. Thus, if you are using WordPress themes or plugins that use get_page_by_title() to output search results, you might encounter errors if you update to 6.2. WP-includes/Requests/library/Requests.php and wp-includes/class-requests.php have also been deprecated.

If you arrived on this page after updating to WordPress 6.2 and your website is experiencing critical errors, then here are the suggested solutions.

Read more about WordPress 6.2 changes.