I started upgrading to WordPress 5.5 and soon began to experience a load of problems with core functionality. Things that should work no longer worked. I first noticed it on a client’s site when Media Library didn’t display anything.
Media Library not working in WordPress 5.5.
WordPress TRAC Issue #50993
This post summarises my investigations, some of the problems I encountered, the workaround and some notes about what I need to do in the future, which is a work in progress.
TL;DR – 25th August 2020
As far as team Yoast are concerned the problem should go away if I upgrade to WordPress SEO v14.8.1.
Fixes a bug in WordPress itself where script concatenation was causing JavaScript errors, which in turn led to Yoast SEO malfunctioning. This bug was introduced in WordPress 5.5. We’re fixing it by disabling script concatenation entirely.
from the WordPres SEO v14.8.1 readme.txt file
With their fix being a workaround. Roll on WordPress 5.5.1
TL;DR – previous update
The problems that I documented last week were either due to a bug in WordPress or a bug in the Gutenberg plugin. There were two TRAC issues, and the problem had already been reported in Yoast’s GitHub repo.
The problem originally occurred with Gutenberg 8.7.1, WordPress SEO 14.7 and WordPress 5.5.
It appears that Gutenberg 8.8.0 has fixed the problem. There’s no longer a need to apply the patch developed for TRAC ticket #50999, nor, it seems, do I need the Enable jQuery Migrate Helper plugin.
The “what I need to do in the future” part is still a work in progress”. I’ve created a GitHub Project for it.