My Kansas Library

WordPress put out a maintenance update today (just minor bug fixes, no real changes). I will warn you that it takes a bit of time to do the database upgrade, even on smaller sites, so you may want to do it when the site isn’t normally busy, otherwise, there are no known reasons not to upgrade at this time. The changes are minor, but might help your site run a bit better!

If you do, there is a major vulnerability in older versions that is causing a BUNCH of problems with the WordPress sites that use it. One issue is that the older, insecure version is shipped with some themes (but I’m not sure which ones – I’ve not seen a list of them, I’ll post when/if I do) and so you might not even realize you have it. It does seem to be a premium offering – so if you’ve never purchased a theme or a plugin, you are safe. If you have, check your plugins (Dashboard –> Plugins –> Installed Plugins) and see if Slider Revolution is there. If it is – update it immediately (if it’s not already at the 4.1.4 version). I think, for the most part, KLOW isn’t going to be affected by this because we tend to use free themes, but this plugin is cheap ($18) and so it might have been purchased and used by some of our libraries! Better safe than sorry!!

More information can be found at http://gizmodo.com/mysterious-russian-malware-is-infecting-over-100-000-wo-1671419522.

There is a major security update in the new version of WordPress! I missed it the first time I looked through the release notes. My bad!! Please update to the latest version of WordPress as soon as possible. Still no reports of any problems with this upgrade, but let us know if that’s not your experience!

Thank you!

So far, in the few days that we’ve been using the newest version of WP (4.0.1) over at the NEKLS website, we’ve seen no real problems. The database update seemed to take a few minutes, so you might not want to do it in the middle of the day, but it wasn’t more than 3 minutes, tops, for our rather large site, so it likely won’t be a big deal for most of you. There aren’t a lot of cool updates – just some refinements of media handling and such – so there is no major rush to upgrade. As of right now, there are no security issues with 4.0, but that can change any time, so while you don’t have to rush to update, we are recommending that you do it before too long.
As always – ask Robin (rhastings@nekls.org) or Ryan (rsipes@nekls.org) if you have any questions about the updates!