On WP 5.3 getting the Upgrade WordPress to the most recent version notice

[garretthyder]

• I've read and understood the contribution guidelines.
• I've searched for any related issues and avoided creating a duplicate issue.

Please give us a description of what happened.

On our website bci.ca it's updated to 5.3 which I can confirm from the admin footer, the about screen, Site Health and version.php. However Yoast presents a notice about upgrading;

And the link provided contains 5.2.4 which indicates to me that Yoast things it's 5.2.4 and not 5.3.
https://yoa.st/old-wp-support?php_version=7.2&platform=wordpress&platform_version=5.2.4&software=free&software_version=12.4&days_active=30plus&user_language=en_CA

Please describe what you expected to happen and why.

I didn't expect to see this notice as I'm on the latest WP.

Note: we have a mimic site on icb.eclipseserve.tk which is locked down but doesn't have the issue. So it seems to be a hosting thing potentially.

How is the version information determined?

Thanks

How can we reproduce this behavior?

1. Upgrade from 5.2.4 to 5.3
2. Navigate to Yoast Dashboard
3. Observe Notice

Technical info

• If relevant, which editor is affected (or editors):

• Classic Editor
• Gutenberg
• Classic Editor plugin

• Which browser is affected (or browsers):

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari
• Other

Used versions

• WordPress version: 5.3
• Yoast SEO version: 12.5
• Classic Editor plugin version: 1.5

[Djennez]

Hi @garretthyder and thanks for the report! I was able to reproduce the issue and I think I found the cause. It seems to be in the upgrade order of our plugin and WordPress.

Up until Yoast 12.4 we have had a notification being output in the notification center if you were running older versions of WordPress. The function that decided if this notification should be shown was removed in Yoast 12.5. It looks like that if you upgrade Yoast from 12.4 to 12.5 while this notification is shown, it will not clear the notification from the database. So the notification stays persistent as a database entry (in <prefix>_usermeta->wp_yoast_notifications). As the function is removed, it is unable to remove the notification even if you update to WordPress 5.3.

Possible workarounds:

• Deactivate and activate the plugin (unverified, some people claimed this fixed the issue)
• Downgrade to Yoast 12.4 and visit the notification center (while on WP 5.3). This should remove the notification. Then upgrade to Yoast 12.5 again.
• Remove the notification from the database (if you know what you're doing).

For the product team:
Though it doesn't break any functionality, it isn't really a nice message to see, especially if you finally decided to upgrade and the message is still shown (it might also confuse users).

• Support has received at least 2 enquiries about this particular issue.
• There are public forum threads about this:
  = https://wordpress.org/support/topic/yoast-error-message-after-update/
  = https://wordpress.org/support/topic/updated-wordpress-version-but-yoast-still-showing-warning/

[rmarcano]

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[garretthyder]

Thanks @Djennez I appreciate you taking the time to reproduce and confirm the issue. I was able to find and remove the wp_yoast_notifications user meta and remove the notification due to your insight, thanks.

[mmikhan]

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[wintermu7e]

Hi I noticed the same issue. However I was not running behind on updates (unless a few days is considered finally deciding to upgrade). The timing of the 5.3 update and the 12.5 update of yoast was pretty close together 5.3 came out on 12th Nov and yoast 12.5 came out on 14th Nov (as far as I can tell). I upgraded both on 17th Nov (I was running the prior latest version of wordpress (which according to the definition should have also still been supported, as in current + previous).

I upgraded the yoast plugin first (as I always do before updating to a new version of wordpress). The fact that It is now telling me that my wordpress version is out of date indicates a problem with Yoast, as neither the version I am on, or the version I was on prior to the updgrade is unsuported by Yoast).

As the timing of these updates would mean that MANY people could have the same problem that I did, All of them being people who are keeping their sites up to date, and not a case of them having ignored warnings to update before upgrading their plugin. I would suggest that it should be on Yoast to fix this issue (and remove the false warning) rather than expecting their users to jump through some hoops to try and fix it themselves.

I just came to see if this was an acknowledged problem and whether a fix would be coming, I wasn't planning to say anything, but after reading the above, thought I should set the record straight :)

BTW it is an excellent plugin! I just don't like seeing a bug being passed off as not really being a bug ;)

Tony.

[Djennez]

Hi @wintermu7e , thanks for the feedback. It is most definitely a bug on our end, which is why I've asked our product team to prioritize it even though it doesn't break anything. The workarounds listed in my earlier post are merely for the users who want to have it fixed immediately, rather than waiting for one of our updates 😄

[Pcosta88]

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[wintermu7e]

Thanks Djennez, I was reading it more like a "feature" ;) It seems to be a strange one. I had another site which the 12.5 update had been applied on the weekend and I hadn't updated the wordpress yet. I was expecting to get the same issue but no.... I was not getting the warning about updating, and after I updated to 5.3 I didn't get it either. So there may be something more to it. This particular site was a test site and had a different yoast warning (robots,txt blocking) as I don't want it being indexed... Whether that warning being present stops the problem I'm not sure.

edit: BTW deactivating and reactivating worked for the two sites that I had that were showing the issue.

Tony.

[Pcosta88]

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[devnihil]

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[mmikhan]

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[devnihil]

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[devnihil]

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[mayada-ibrahim]

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