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Sarah Gooding

WordPress 3.7.1: A Historical Maintenance Release

Zero Clicks Given tshirt - courtesy of @dimensionmedia
“Zero Clicks Given” tshirt – courtesy of @dimensionmedia
Most WordPress maintenance releases are nothing to write home about, but WordPress 3.7.1 is one for the history books. This is the first maintenance release where users don’t have to lift a finger to get their sites upgraded.

Sites already running WordPress 3.7 will soon be automatically upgraded to the latest and greatest.

The release haiku, created by Mark Jaquith, sums it up nicely:

Just a few fixes
Your new update attitude:
Zero clicks given

WordPress 3.7 is rapidly approaching two million downloads. That’s a huge number of site admins who don’t have to worry about logging in to perform updates. WordPress core developer Andrew Nacin said that maintenance and security releases are likely to be a more frequent occurrence now that they don’t have to worry about update fatigue. If you’re wondering how long your site will take to update to WordPress 3.7.1, Nacin estimated 24 seconds. He’s probably done this a thousand times while testing:

Installs take about 24 seconds to update on average, but that includes downloading and unzipping the package. A core update should put your site into maintenance mode for only a few seconds.

This release includes 10 fixes for small bugs in 3.7. Check out the full changelog to get the details.

You can update your site immediately or wait until the core team starts rolling out the automatic background updates. I suggest you go crack yourself a cold one and let WordPress do the work for you.

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27 responses to “WordPress 3.7.1: A Historical Maintenance Release”

  1. Hmm Just got an update notice, looks just like the ones I was getting before 3.7 – not an automatic update. Not sure how well this will copy paste;
    ……………………………….
    An updated version of WordPress is available.

    You can update to WordPress 3.7.1 automatically or download the package and install it manually:

    Download 3.7.1

    While your site is being updated, it will be in maintenance mode. As soon as your updates are complete, your site will return to normal.
    ………………………………………..

    The update now button didn’t copy..but it’s there..

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  14. For an automatic update “feature” that has been spoken of so long time already, I think they should have gotten their PR/Marketing straight. “A few hours” usually means no more than 4, give them the benefit of the doubt and stretch that to 6 hours.

    I received the message that 3.7.1 was available Wednesday morning, Oct. 30, 8am (GMT+8). Currently it is Thursday, October 31, almost 1am and none of my sites have miraculously auto-updated.

    I’m sorry, but that is just poor PR

    Then just don’t give the update notice and when every site has been automagically updated after 3 weeks or however long they need, celebrate after the fact!

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  16. @Chip, well that is basically what I was saying: disable the lot and let people tweet (or whatever) about the fact that their sites automatically updated to 3.7.1 instead of telling people that it will come in “a few hours” and still give them the possibility to update themselves. Hence the reference to PR

    I mean there is not much “auto” in this update for me after waiting for it for more than 18 hours now…

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  17. According to this post in the support forums they are rolling the auto-updates out very slowly.

    I agree they could be communicating this better. But I’d much rather they err on the side of caution in this case. I’m holding off manually updating clicking the update link on my sites to see how the auto-update process goes.

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  20. Well, 3.7.1 did it’s auto update for me…

    FAIL.

    A site that was working perfectly prior to the update now issues the “Error: Cookies are disabled or blocked…” message whenever *anyone* tries to log on. nothing on the site was changed other than the WP 3.7.1 update; There are already a few threads on the WordPress support site relating to this problem, but the standard answers are all that are being given: Disable your plugins, clear your cache, delete your cookies…

    Well, I’ve disabled all plugins and switched to a stock twenty twelve theme to no avail. This issue is cross-browser. I’ve cleared cache & cookies on each browser I’ve tried (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari…)

    Apparently as part of the new update login.php is now issuing a test cookie that is not being properly read on the first pass. If you re-enter the username and pw on the error screen, you will be successfully logged in, but far to many users are not giving it a second try…

    So, basically, this nifty new update has tanked my – and a great many other users – ability to have people log on to their WordPress sites.

    Any ideas how to fix this?

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  24. Andrew wrote:

    “So our primary worry — an update going wrong — will never have to do with a plugin. It’ll have to do with our failure to verify that files were fully copied over and properly in place. Incremental updates we introduced a few years ago (if you update from 3.7 to 3.7.1, WordPress only downloads changed files) already greatly improved the safety of updating to a minor release. ”

    Does WP save old versions of those files (eg. page.php.v3.7.backup or something like this)? Simple Machines Forum does it and I find it a good idea, it gives you opportunity to quickly see what was changed and quick way to revert. Can anyone confirm?

    What is your opinion about this?

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