Don’t wait for the January WordPress maintenance release
A WooCommerce client hit editor errors after updating to 6.9, with the official fix scheduled for January 2026. Why rolling back was the wrong call and what we filtered instead.
Category: Bug Fixing
WordPress 6.9 broke classic theme CSS and site email
A 6.9 update stripped the styling off a client’s product grids and stopped their order emails. Notes on ticket #64354, the PHPMailer bug and the adjacent post infinite loop, plus the plugins that bridge the gap until 6.9.1.
The WordPress 6.9 change that broke adjacent post navigation
A WooCommerce store’s next-product links kept reloading the same page after an update. The cause was the WordPress 6.9 tiebreaker in get_adjacent_post(), plus a filter that only swapped the date out of the SQL.
Why the admin menu search query stops finding pages
A marketing team could not find a campaign page in Appearance > Menus. WordPress 6.9 narrowed the menu search to post titles, and one filter on wp_ajax_menu_quick_search_args brings the old behavior back.
WordPress 6.9 core updates and the bugs RC4 fixed
A pre-release WordPress install killed a client’s publish button. The cause was a core bug in hidden async-upload fields, one of several things the 6.9 release candidates cleaned up alongside alternate cron and REST API errors.
WordPress namespacing: how one get_data() broke a site
A client’s booking plugin started throwing fatal errors after a theme update, because both files defined get_data(). Prefixing the function bought five minutes. Here is what proper PHP namespacing does instead.
A safer way to do API key authentication in WordPress
A client’s whole API auth was a hardcoded key checked against a query parameter. Here is how I rebuild API key authentication in WordPress as a real security layer, using the REST authentication filter.
Clear changelogs and why vague ones cost you
A vague “Bug fixes” changelog leaves your team guessing after an update. Clear changelogs with dated, categorized entries cut support headaches and protect your reputation.
How WordPress 6.9 changed CSS specificity for headings
A real case from a client site: how the WordPress 6.9 heading block CSS specificity fix changed padding on custom feature boxes, and why a proper fix beats a quick override.
When to use a custom database table instead of post meta
A client’s membership site was buried under millions of postmeta rows from a badge plugin. Moving that data to a custom table fixed the slowdown, and here’s when it’s worth doing.