As the WordPress team moves towards modernizing the popular CMS platform, some WordPress users are facing a range of issues. The largest of which, is the removal of jQuery Migrate 1.x when upgrading to WordPress 5.5.
What is jQuery Migrate?
jQuery Migrate is a javascript library that allows you to preserve the compatibility of your jQuery code developed for versions of jQuery older than 1.9. It basically restores deprecated features and behaviours so that older code will still run properly on the current jQuery version and later. – DotLayer
Issues relating to the removal of jQuery Migrate 1.x include:
- Classic Editor stops working
- “Add Media” and “Set featured image” buttons don’t work
- Unable add or remove widgets from the admin panel (Theme specific)
- Text view is not working in 5.5
- Block Editor showing blank
- Missing database update
- Image Slider doesn’t work
- Mobile Menu disappears
- Search bar stops working
While most plugin authors are releasing patches to address these issues, users who rely on plugins bundled with their theme updates may be left behind. This leaves you with one of a couple options, manually upgrade the problematic plugins or install The WordPress Team’s “Enable jQuery Migrate Helper.” Keep in mind this plugin is simply a band aid solution until developers catch up with the recent changes implemented by Automatic.
According to WordPress page for the jQuery Migrate Helper:
With the update to WordPress 5.5, a migration tool known as jquery-migrate will no longer be enabled by default. This may lead to unexpected behaviors in some themes or plugins who run older code.
This plugin serves as a temporary solution, enabling the migration script for your site to give your plugin and theme authors some more time to update, and test, their code.
Installation is simple. Download and install the plugin from the WordPress repository and activate. There are no settings as the plugin “handles the rest automatically for you.”
While we don’t recommend this as a long term solution, Enable JQuery Migrate Helper will at least get you up and running again. Over the next few weeks we suggest keeping an eye out for plugin updates. If none arrive, the plugin may have been abandoned, in which case we highly recommend seeking an alternate solution.