It’s not every day an open source project releases an update which is indicated by a major version jump. Usually when this happens, it indicates that there are breaking changes on the horizon, and users should be aware, make a backup, and update with caution.
Often however, a major version number change is simply the reaction of the developer(s) in switching to a more robust versioning system. If you look at the software versioning history of both WordPress and Laravel, you’ll see that at some point in time, the version number scheme changed, based on their needs and how the release cycle changes.
With that in mind, I’m pleased to announced that we will be releasing version 2.0 of the Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin soon. For the most part, this release will have very little overall affect on your Seriously Simple Podcasting powered WordPress podcast, as this update includes mostly bug fixes of some common issues we’ve seen in the past month or so.
If you also have a Castos account linked to your WordPress podcast site, there is a larger update coming in under the hood. We released our official Castos API some time ago, and it was high time that we updated the plugin to make use of this new API functionality. This update includes changes to the plugin in how it interacts with your Castos account for uploading files and episode data to your account.
Again, most of you should not see any huge changes or encounter any problems.
The main thing you will see, after upgrading, is a small admin notice asking you to re-validate your Castos API credentials. Once you’ve done this, everything else will be exactly the same, the magic all happens behind the scenes.
It is important however, that you perform this step, either through the link in the admin notice, or manually via the Hosting tab of your Podcast settings. If you don’t re-validate your API credentials, the plugin will not be able to communicate with our API properly, and your podcast episode files and data may not sync to Castos. To be sure to re-validate your API credentials before adding any new episodes or files.
The other reason we’re updating the version to 2.0 is to reflect both the changes that have been added to the plugin since we took over active development in 2016, as well as help us to plan new features and bug fixes for the future. We’re adopting a SemVar like versioning scheme, so going forward updates to the plugin that are bug fixes only will increase the PATCH number, features added to the plugin will increase the MINOR number, and any future breaking changes will increase the MAJOR version number. This will be made clearer in the changelog as new versions of the plugin are released.
We do ask that you back up your WordPress site before upgrading to version 2.0. We don’t expect you to encounter any problems, but it’s always a good idea to make a backup before updating any plugins, themes or WordPress core version.
