DEES Driving School

Before upgrading the version of WordPress and plugins, it was discovered that the PHP version was also outdated, and WordPress required an upgrade to at least version 7.4, but it was also no longer supported, so we needed to install even newer versions, and thus jump over several major updates, which additionally increased the risks of unpleasant consequences. Moving any website to a top version of WordPress, PHP, and plugins can lead to unexpected problems and therefore may require an unpredicted scale of the extra effort and time to resolve them. It’s impossible to assess all the risks associated with upgrading PHP to multiple versions, as many factors can affect it: some specific features, server settings, WordPress plugins and themes used, database settings, hosting peculiarities, etc. Potentially, major version upgrades may cause some features to stop working properly or to fully malfunction, some plugins may need to be replaced.

We implemented Instagram functionality through Instagram API, which allowed us to cover the client’s requirements, namely to pull up posts and their description. But this solution had an unpleasant caveat that the API keys expire every two months and require manual updates. The client had no desire to create a token every time or to make its expiration period longer, so he gave up the requirement to display the description of an Instagram post. As a result, we looked for and found a more suitable solution and replaced API integration with another Instagram plugin “Social Gallery and Widget”. Additionally, the client requested design and development for additional marketing pages. We created and deployed the WP templates to 3 separate domains that customer employees can configure on their own to set up marketing campaigns. Implementing the pages on the client’s domains, required moving their domains to more reliable and efficient hosting. It was an important organizational step in the process of deploying the finished work.