What’s New In WPCloudDeploy 5.4.0

Version 5.4.0 of WPCloudDeploy is an update that ships with a small number of new but very useful features. It also includes the removal of a couple of outdated features and the usual suite of minor fixes that normally accompany software updates.

Potential Breaking Updates

If you have sites that are using older versions of PHP (i.e.: versions older than PHP 7.4), you should pay attention to the details of this update – we are removing several PHP versions from our default server stack for NGINX.

This version also includes support for Site Packages in core and Product Packages in WooCommerce. If you’re using our WooCommerce integration you’ll need to update both WPCD Core and WPCD WooCommerce.

New: Site Packages

Site packages are a way to create re-usable configurations that can be applied to a new website.  These configurations can include any combination of:

• Plugins to add, remove and/or activate
• Themes to add, remove and/or activate
• PHP Workers configuration (NGINX)
• PHP Version (NGINX)
• Select PHP variables such as max_execution_time, max_memory_limit etc.
• WPConfig.php entries
• Custom Bash Scripts to execute just after a site is created and after all other configuration(s) have been applied.

(Other SaaS solution providers might call these blue-prints except for the fact that these are not full WordPress sites – they’re a set of rules that are dynamically applied to sites just after they have been provisioned.)

You (optionally) choose a site package when you create a new site:

Site Packages & WooCommerce

Site packages are extended as “product packages” with additional rules available when using our WooCommerce integration. Product packages can be applied to products and the associated rules executed during or after checkout.

With ‘product packages’ you can more easily create site products that restrict memory usage. “Small” packages can be assigned a smaller number of PHP Workers and/or lower memory limit per work for example.

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New: One-click Logins

This has been a long-awaited feature – finally, you can access the wp-admin area of any site from WPCD without entering a user name of password.

The option is also present when you are looking at the details for a site:

The option to use this type of passwordless login will only be shown to admins. And, of course, there is an option to disable this feature completely in the settings area.

Documentation on how to setup and use this feature includes a discussion of limitations as well as a brief description of how it all works.

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New: Nightly WordPress Versions

You can now enable an option to install the nightly WordPress versions.

Once enabled, you’ll see it in the versions list when you install a new site:

You’ll find the option to enable this under WPCLOUDDEPLOY → SETTINGS → APP:WORDPRESS SETTINGS → GENERAL. Scroll down to the OVERRIDES section to access the checkbox that will turn it on.

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Removed: Support for Old PHP Versions

WPCD will no longer install PHP versions older than 7.4 on new NGINX servers. In other words, PHP 5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 will not be installed by default.

You will still have the option to install an older version but WPCD extended features such as MONIT integration will no longer support them without additional manual configuration from the command line.

You can read more about the limitations for these older PHP versions on new servers in the WPCD documentation.

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Removed: NGINX Support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1.

New NGINX servers will no longer activate TLS 1.0 and 1.1. These versions have long since been deprecated and only really old devices require them to connect to a site.

If you really need these for some reason you can easily add them back in by editing the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file.

Tweak: Ubuntu Default Version

Ubuntu 22.04 will be the new default version for new servers.

However, this new default only takes effect on new installations of WPCloudDeploy. Existing WPCloudDeploy instances will likely have 20.04 as the default (unless you changed it). We will not automatically change that since there is no way for us to know if you really want to stick with that default or use the new one.

However, you can change the default at any time to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and is something we recommend you do now. This will allow you to use any new servers for four years before Canonical withdraws free support. New and existing Ubuntu 20.04 servers have less than two years of free support remaining.

You can make the change by navigating to WPCLOUDDEPLOY → SETTINGS → APP:WORDPRESS SETTINGS → GENERAL.

Tweak: ‘Caution’ Color Used For PHP 7.4 Sites

We have updated how we display the PHP version in the site list. Prior WPCD versions showed PHP 7.4 with a green border. Going forward we will show this value with an orange border (caution).

Only sites with PHP 8.0 and later will show a green border.

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Other Tweaks

• Users with the wpcd_manage_all capability should now be able to run the setup wizard the first time even if they’re not WordPress admins.
• Add settings option to still show the INSTALL WORDPRESS button when the background updates running warning appears.
• Login links for front-end and wp-admin will not show if site is disabled.

Fixes

• Setup wizard needed to clear cache after auto-creating ssh keys.
• Update the setup wizard to point to the correct url for Linode api tokens.
• Server owners could not see the DELETE option when not an admin.
• Blank out a password in logs if admin adds or changes from inside wpcd.
• Add an action hook and associated helper function for the ‘wp_site_update_wpconfig_option‘ bash action.
• Add an action hook and associated helper function for the ‘add_php_param‘ bash action.
• Add an action hook and associated helper function for the ‘change_php_workers‘ bash action.
• Restore some action hooks that were inadvertently removed in 5.3.0.

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Note: This article was revised on October 13th 2023 with final release notes.

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