WordPress 4.9.6 Privacy and Maintenance Release

WordPress 4.9.6 Privacy and Maintenance Release

Following the Release Candidate 2, WordPress 4.9.6 is now available to all WordPress users. It can be downloaded directly or updated from within your dashboard.

WordPress 4.9.6 comes as a Privacy and Maintenance Release for all the previous versions of WordPress and it is considered as a crucial update. Therefore, it is mandatory that you update your WordPress websites right away.

WordPress 4.9.6 includes a number of privacy-related features—such as privacy policy page template/creation, cookie opt-in for comments, user data request handling, user data export and erasure tools, and other features related to GFPR compliance.

The new update lets site owners designate a privacy policy page, which would be shown on the login and registration pages. You need to manually add a link to your policy to every page on your website. A footer menu is considered to be a great area to include your privacy policy. Moreover, the development team has created a guide that includes insights from WordPress and participating plugins on how they would handle personal data. These can be pasted into your site’s privacy policy to help you get started.

With WordPress 4.9.6 installed, logged-out commenters will be given a choice on whether their name, email address and the website would be saved in a cookie on their browser.

Site owners are able to export a ZIP file containing a user’s personal data, using data gathered by WordPress and participating plugins. More on the data handling, site owners can also erase a user’s personal data, including data collected by participating plugins. Site owners have a new email-based method that they can use to confirm personal data requests. This request confirmation tool works for both export and erasure requests, and for both registered users and commenters.

On the maintenance side, WordPress 4.9.6 contains 95 updates in total including more than 50 bugs have been fixed. ‘Mine’ has been added as a filter in the WordPress Media Library and when viewing a plugin in the backend, it will display the minimum PHP version that’s required.

The WordPress Development team has published an Update Guide that provides links to technical information related to features in 4.9.6. In addition, there’s a guide available for Theme Authors as styling adjustments may be necessary.

You can check out the full list of enhancements in WordPress 4.9.6 here.

Make sure you update immediately if your website doesn’t have automatic updates enabled. Download WordPress 4.9.6 or venture over to Dashboard → Updates and simply click “Update Now.”

Websites with automatic background updates are already beginning to update to WordPress 4.9.6. And, if you’re currently on WordPress 4.9.3, you need to manually update your site immediately.

Update right away to stay safe from the vulnerabilities!

 

Reference: WordPress.org, WP Tavern

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