Next Version Of WordPress To Fix Quick Draft Dashboard Widget

If you’ve noticed after upgrading to WordPress 3.8.2 that the Quick Draft dashboard widget no longer functions correctly, you’re not the only one. Unfortunately, one of the security fixes in 3.8.2 caused the widget to break. Auto-drafts created through the widget are not being promoted to draft status. When a title and content is added to the widget, clicking the save draft button gives the appearance that its discarded. It doesn’t show up within the drafts list even though it exist within the database.

The patch attempts to do two things.

Find all lost Quick Draft auto-drafts and promote them to proper drafts.

Bring them back in place, with no date changes or other processing.

Andrew Nacin, lead developer for WordPress, explains why every auto-draft created won’t be able to be retrieved.

Unfortunately, each save of Quick Draft by the same user would update the existing auto-draft they previously lost. If they used Quick Draft in succession, or tried again when they couldn’t find their post — both of which are not unlikely — we can only rescue their last edit.

Quick drafts only hold onto a single auto-draft post ID per user and will re-use it as long as it remains an auto-draft. This is due to performance reasons so new auto-drafts are not created each time the dashboard is visited. Once upgraded, you should see the latest draft created through Quick Draft with the date and time of creation kept in tact.

If WordPress 3.8.3 is released, it may be available as soon as this weekend but nothing has been set in stone.