The VIP platform experienced a brief service interruption that started at 20:30 UTC which impacted network connectivity for some VIP sites. Network connectivity was restored at 20:43 UTC. Our team is actively investigating and we will provide an update once full details are available.
Notice: Upgrade of Upstream Switches at DCA & DFW Datacenters
This notice relates to the following platforms: VIP Go
To maintain the security and stability of our network we are planning to perform a series of updates to the core switches in our DFW and DCA datacenters. The switches are deployed in pairs, so that when one is being upgraded, the other will continue to forward all of the traffic. However, because the switches use proprietary technology we are conservatively forecasting non-zero downtime when individual switches are rebooted.
During the maintenance window we will reboot each switch several times. On the VIP Go platform, these servers host our web server containers. Therefore, during the switch reboots, all uncached content served from those servers in the DCA and DFW datacenters may be unavailable for up to two minutes.
It should be noted that most requests are cached, however wp-admin requests are always uncached and may be impacted. We expect the impact to be minimal.
We are scheduling the maintenance windows for each datacenter on a single day, one week apart. Our maintenance window dates and times are as follows:
- DCA: Wednesday, September 2, 2020 from 0200UTC to 0500UTC (10pm to 1am EDT)
- DFW: Wednesday, September 9, 2020 from 0300UTC to 0600UTC (11pm to 2am EDT)
No action is required on your part. We have opened Zendesk tickets with customers who have launched production applications residing in the DCA and DFW datacenters.
If you have any questions about this upstream switch upgrade, please open a support ticket, and we’ll be happy to assist.
Notice: New VIP Dashboard Design
This notice relates to the following platforms: VIP Go
Update: the new VIP Dashboard design is live at https://dashboard.wpvip.com/.
What’s New
Today we launched a beta version of a new VIP Dashboard, with a crisp new design and improved functionality. The new navigation makes it easier to access features, we’ve added an enhanced screen for your organization, and we’ve improved performance as you change between the screens.
You can visit the new Dashboard via the banner at the top of your screen or by going directly to https://beta.dashboard.wpvip.com/.
If you need help, or you’d like to provide feedback or a feature request for the VIP team, you can find links for these in the Help Center, on the bottom left.
…and finally, if you prefer a dark mode vibe to your Dashboard, you’ll find it under your avatar on the top right.
What is the Dashboard?
The Dashboard is a hub for self-service tools to take platform-wide actions on your sites, as well as view recent activity, such as code deploys. You can access many helpful tools from the Dashboard, such as the VIP CLI tool, Data Sync, and HTTP Request Log Shipping.
If you have any questions about the Dashboard, please open a support ticket, and we’ll be happy to assist.
New Release: WordPress 5.5
This notice relates to the following platforms: VIP Go
WordPress 5.5 has been released to the VIP Platform. Named “Eckstine” in honor of Billy Eckstine, this latest release includes many new features for Gutenberg alongside accessibility improvements and various developer-focused changes.
NOTE: if you are noticing JavaScript errors after the 5.5 upgrade, they could be related to the removal of jQuery Migrate. To easily add jQuery Migrate back, please install the helper plugin.
What is being added or changed?
Block Editor
WordPress 5.5 merges ten releases of the Gutenberg plugin, including the most recent, Gutenberg 8.5.
jQuery
As part of the phased approach to updating the jQuery version shipped with WordPress, jQuery Migrate has been removed from WordPress 5.5.
For more details about this release (including specific changes), please see the announcement post and Field Guide.
Media
There are 26 updates to the Media component, including the core merge of the Lazy Loading featured plugin that now sees images lazy-loaded by default.
REST API
There are 36 updates to the REST API with particular interest pointed to new and modified endpoints, parameter and JSON schema changes, discoverable REST resource links, new API functions, CORS changes, the new register_theme_feature() function and its arguments, and other miscellaneous updates.
XML Sitemaps
The new sitemaps component in WordPress 5.5 comes from the XML Sitemaps feature project merge. On VIP, we have disabled core sitemaps for the time being to prevent any unexpected changes.
To re-enable them, add the following code to your theme:
add_filter( 'wp_sitemaps_enabled', '__return_true' );
Questions?
If you have any questions related to this release, please open a support ticket and we will be happy to assist.
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