I'm a first time poster so please redirect me if this is not the best place for this post.
I bought an Arduino WiFi shield a couple of years ago and now I'm finally getting around to working with it. I see from the wifi page on arduino.cc that it is now retired. What does this mean exactly? I see that there is a firmware upgrade, not so recent, which I will apply. Does this mean that I must migrate to another board for continued development? Are there other resources around that will be more helpful for using the shield today?
Given the popularity, availability and super-low cost of the ESP8266 (and variants) - I'm not sure it's worth even pursuing use of the WiFi shield, unless it has some functionality you can't get from the ESP8266 or integrate otherwise. I understand, though, that you do have it in hand, and haven't used it until now - just don't fall into the "sunk-cost fallacy" trap.
This has the earmarks of a good management decision.
The original WiFi Shield is "long in the tooth" and too costly and sluggish compared to the newer solutions. It was a nice first effort though. It's still good in the AVR world, but it isn't a good match for more powerful boards such as the Arduino.cc ZERO.
I think you will find the WiFi Shield 101, based on the Atmel WINC1500 radio chip, is altogether better. The antenna should give greater range, it will support higher data rates and bigger packets.
Additionally, the 1500 hardware supports more modes of communication, Access Point and Peer-to-Peer, and also should support HTTPS communication, and the Atmel CryptoAuthentication chip is going to be important in the "Internet of Things". These advances aren't in the first Arduino library support for the 1500, but you are free to either port these library items from Atmel Studio or move up to Atmel Studio.
Of course you could just say that the Atmel salesman influenced Arduino to use his newest product.