Change in UpdraftPlus’s version numbering scheme, for paid versions

This post is an addendum to yesterday’s announcement of the release of UpdraftPlus 1.9.60.

With this release, we are in fact changing to a new version numbering schemes for paid versions of UpdraftPlus – the first digit will increase by 1.

That is to say, that for versions of UpdraftPlus obtained from updraftplus.com, this version will appear as version 2.9.60 (not 1.9.60). (Actually, it will appear as 2.9.60.x, where x could range from 1 to 19, depending on what you have bought).

You can stop reading now unless you are curious about knowing why… you could well have better things to do with your day!

So, why are we doing that?

The main reason is because of a defect in WordPress’s updates checking mechanism, mentioned previously in this blog post. By default, WordPress checks for the availability of updates to a plugin at wordpress.org – which is where most plugins come from. But, no paid plugins come from there (since wordpress.org do not host any paid plugins). A paid plugin can provide its own override, and get WordPress to check elsewhere.

However… when a plugin is inactive, this override cannot occur. When inactive, the plugin has no chance to inform WordPress of the right place to look. And so, WordPress checks at wordpress.org – which is a problem for plugins that have both paid and free versions. (Technically, for paid plugins where there’s a plugin of the same name in the free wordpress.org directory, even if it’s not the same plugin).

We’ve written a patch for WordPress to correct this defect, but not yet succeeded in getting it accepted into new WordPress releases. It’s just been waiting for attention in the WordPress issue-tracker since being written. We hope it’ll be accepted one day. But until that day, we’re just going to raise the version number of the paid version of UpdraftPlus, so that it will always be higher than that of free versions available at wordpress.org – so that WordPress will never offer to replace your paid version with a free one.

David Anderson (founder, lead developer, UpdraftPlus)