WordPress announced a new security initiative called Protect The Shire that aims to secure plugins and themes. The announcement also said a temporary 24-hour delay will be imposed before plugin and theme updates are distributed through auto-updates. Temporary 24 Hour Update Delay In the past, plugin and theme updates were pushed out to WordPress users autonomously: A theme or plugin author would update their software and push it live to their users immediately. That’s no longer the case for the time being. WordPress is temporarily delaying updates for 24 hours in order to have time to check the updated plugins to ensure that they are secure before allowing them to be sent to WordPress users. WordPress anticipates that this delay will, in time, become dramatically shorter so that it’s only a matter of minutes.…