WordPress.org

WordPress 5.2 Beta 1

Posted March 27, 2019 by Josepha. Filed under Development, Releases.

WordPress 5.2 Beta 1 is now available!

This software is still in development, so we don’t recommend you run it on a production site. Consider setting up a test site to play with the new version.

You can test the WordPress 5.2 Beta two ways:

WordPress 5.2 is slated for release on April 30, and we need your help to get there. Here are some of the big items to test so we can find as many bugs as possible in the coming weeks.

Block Editor

The block editor has received significant performance improvements since WordPress 5.1, shaving 35% off the load time for massive posts, and cutting the keypress time (how responsive it feels when you’re typing) in half!

Accessibility continues to improve, too. The block editor now supports your browser’s reduced motion settings. The post URL slug has better labelling and help text. The focus styling for keyboard navigating through landmarks is clearer and more consistent. There are a variety of new speak messages, and existing messages have been tweaked for more useful screen-reader behaviour.

We’ve added several new blocks:

  • An RSS block
  • An Amazon Kindle embed block
  • A Search block
  • A Calendar block
  • A Tag Cloud block

To help you keep track of these blocks, and only show the ones you need, there’s a new block management tool to switch blocks on and off.

Block Management Modal

We’re constantly working on existing blocks, too. There are hundreds of bug fixes and improvements in the block editor, you can read more about them in the Gutenberg plugin releases: 4.9, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3.

The WordPress Mobile Apps

The block editor isn’t just for websites, either. The WordPress mobile apps now include an experimental version of a built-in block editor. This is still under development, but you can try it out now!

Site Health Check

Site Health Check is an ongoing project aimed at improving the stability and performance of the entire WordPress ecosystem.

The first phase of this project (originally scoped for WordPress 5.1) is now included in WordPress 5.2. For the first time, WordPress will catch and pause the problem code, so you can log in to your Dashboard and see what the problem is (#44458). Before, you’d have to FTP in to your files or get in touch with your host.

In addition, we’re adding a new Health Check tool to your Dashboard. Visit the Tools menu and click on Health Check to get information that can help improve the speed and security of your site.

PHP Version Bump

With this release, WordPress will increase its minimum supported PHP version to 5.6. To help you check if you’re prepared for this change, WordPress 5.2 will show you a warning and help you upgrade your version of PHP, if necessary.

For Developers

  • Plugins can now specify the minimum version of PHP that they support, so you can safely modernise your development practices without risking breaking your users’ sites. (#40934)
  • We’ve added the sodium_compat library, which provides backwards compatibility for the Sodium-based cryptography library added in PHP 7.2. (#45806)
  • There’s a new release of Dashicons, the WordPress Dashboard icon font. There are 25 new icons for you to use! (#41074)
  • You can now pass a label to get_search_form(), improving accessibility. (#42057)

There have been 130 tickets closed in WordPress 5.2 so far, with numerous small bug fixes and improvements to help smooth your WordPress experience.

Keep your eyes on the Make WordPress Core blog for developer notes (which are assigned the dev-notes tag) in the coming weeks detailing other changes in 5.2 that you should be aware of.

How to Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages!

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.


With each new release,
bearing multiple betas;
We fix, then we fly.

One-third of the web!

Posted March 15, 2019 by Joost de Valk. Filed under General.

WordPress now powers over 1/3rd of the top 10 million sites on the web according to W3Techs. Our market share has been growing steadily over the last few years, going from 29.9% just one year ago to 33.4% now. We are, of course, quite proud of these numbers!

The path here has been very exciting. In 2005, we were celebrating 50,000 downloads. Six years later, in January 2011, WordPress was powering 13.1% of websites. And now, early in 2019, we are powering 33.4% of sites. Our latest release has already been downloaded close to 14 million times, and it was only released on the 21st of February.

Graph showing the growth of WordPress market share relative to other CMS's like Joomla, Drupal and others. Starting at just over 10% in January 2011 to 33.4% now.
WordPress market share on the rise over the last 8 years. Image source: W3Techs.

Over the years WordPress has become the CMS of choice for more and more people and companies. As various businesses use WordPress, the variety of WordPress sites grows. Large enterprise businesses all the way down to small local businesses: all of them use WordPress to power their site. We love seeing that and we strive to continuously make WordPress better for all of you.

We’d like to thank everyone who works on WordPress, which is built and maintained by a huge community of volunteers that has grown alongside the CMS. This incredible community makes it possible for WordPress to keep growing while still also remaining free. And of course, we’d like to thank all of you using WordPress for using it and trusting in it. To all of you: let’s celebrate!

WordPress 5.1.1 Security and Maintenance Release

Posted March 12, 2019 by Luke Carbis. Filed under Releases, Security.

WordPress 5.1.1 is now available! This security and maintenance release introduces 14 fixes and enhancements, including changes designed to help hosts prepare users for the minimum PHP version bump coming in 5.2.

This release also includes a pair of security fixes that handle how comments are filtered and then stored in the database. With a maliciously crafted comment, a WordPress post was vulnerable to cross-site scripting.

WordPress versions 5.1 and earlier are affected by these bugs, which are fixed in version 5.1.1. Updated versions of WordPress 5.0 and earlier are also available for any users who have not yet updated to 5.1.

Props to Simon Scannell of RIPS Technologies who discovered this flaw independent of some work that was being done by members of the core security team. Thank you to all of the reporters for privately disclosing the vulnerabilities, which gave us time to fix them before WordPress sites could be attacked.

Other highlights of this release include:

  • Hosts can now offer a button for their users to update PHP.
  • The recommended PHP version used by the “Update PHP” notice can now be filtered.
  • Several minor bug fixes.

You can browse the full list of changes on Trac.

WordPress 5.1.1 was a short-cycle maintenance release. Version 5.1.2 is expected to follow a similar two week release cadence.

You can download WordPress 5.1.1 or visit Dashboard → Updates and click Update Now. Sites that support automatic background updates have already started to update automatically.

In addition to the security researcher mentioned above, thank you to everyone who contributed to WordPress 5.1.1:

Aaron Jorbin, Alex Concha, Andrea Fercia, Andy Fragen, Anton Vanyukov, Ben Bidner, bulletdigital, David Binovec, Dion Hulse, Felix Arntz, Garrett Hyder, Gary Pendergast, Ian Dunn, Jake Spurlock, Jb Audras, Jeremy Felt, Johan Falk, Jonathan Desrosiers, Luke Carbis, Mike Schroder, Milan Dinić, Mukesh Panchal, Paul Biron, Peter Wilson, Sergey Biryukov, and Weston Ruter.

The Month in WordPress: February 2019

Posted March 1, 2019 by Hugh Lashbrooke. Filed under Month in WordPress.

A new version of WordPress, significant security enhancements, important discussions, and much more – read on to find out what has been going on in the WordPress community for the month of February.


Release of WordPress 5.1

Near the end of the month, WordPress 5.1 was released, featuring significant stability and performance enhancements as well as the first of the Site Health mechanisms that are in active development. Most prominent is the new warning for sites running long-outdated versions of PHP.

You can check out the Field Guide for this release for a detailed look at all the new features and improvements. The next release is already in development with plans to improve the Site Health features, PHP compatibility, and a number of other things.

Want to get involved in testing or building WordPress Core? You can install the WordPress Beta Tester plugin, follow the Core team blog, and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

Gutenberg Development Continues

The block editor that is now a part of WordPress core started out as a project named Gutenberg with the lofty goal of creating a whole new site-building experience for all WordPress users. The first phase of Gutenberg resulted in the block editor that was included in WordPress 5.0, but development didn’t stop there – phase 2 of the project is well underway.

This month, one of the initial goals for this phase was reached with all of the core WordPress widgets being converted to blocks – this will go a long way to allowing full sites to be built using blocks, rather than simply post or page content.

Want to get involved in developing Gutenberg? Check out the GitHub repository and join the #core-editor channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

Block Editor Comes to the Mobile Apps

As Gutenberg development continues, the Mobile team has been working hard to integrate the new block editor into the WordPress mobile apps. Near the end of February, the team shipped a complete integration in the beta versions of the apps – this a significant milestone and a big step towards unifying the mobile and desktop editing experiences.

Both the iOS and Android apps are open for beta testers, so if you would like to experience the block editor on mobile today, then join the beta program.

Want to get involved in developing the WordPress mobile apps? Follow the Mobile team blog, and join the #mobile channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

WordPress Triage Team Announced

One of the goals for 2019 that Matt Mullenweg (@matt) announced in his State of the Word address last year was to form a team who would work to manage the ever-increasing number of tickets in Trac, the bug tracker that WordPress Core employs.

This team, known as the Triage Team, has been announced. Their work will involve coordinating with component maintainers, release leads, project leadership, contributors, and other WordPress related projects with issue trackers outside of Trac to ensure that everyone is empowered to focus on contributing.

The team was formed based on nominations of volunteers to take part and will be led by Jonathan Desrosiers (@desrosj). The other members of the team are Chris Christoff (@chriscct7), Tammie Lister (@karmatosed), Sergey Biryukov (@sergey), and Sheri Bigelow (@designsimply) – all of whom have a strong track record of contributing to WordPress, have exhibited good triaging practices, and are overall good community members.


Further Reading:

Have a story that we should include in the next “Month in WordPress” post? Please submit it here.

WordPress 5.1 “Betty”

Posted February 21, 2019 by Matt Mullenweg. Filed under Releases.

A Little Better Every Day

Version 5.1 of WordPress, named “Betty” in honour of acclaimed jazz vocalist Betty Carter, is available for download or update in your WordPress dashboard.

Following WordPress 5.0 — a major release which introduced the new block editor — 5.1 focuses on polish, in particular by improving the overall performance of the editor. In addition, this release paves the way for a better, faster, and more secure WordPress with some essential tools for site administrators and developers.

Site Health

With security and speed in mind, this release introduces WordPress’s first Site Health features. WordPress will start showing notices to administrators of sites that run long-outdated versions of PHP, which is the programming language that powers WordPress.

When you install new plugins, WordPress’s Site Health features will check them against the version of PHP you’re running. If the plugin requires a version that won’t work with your site, WordPress will keep you from installing that plugin.

Editor Performance

Introduced in WordPress 5.0, the new block editor continues to improve. Most significantly, WordPress 5.1 includes solid performance improvements within the editor. The editor should feel a little quicker to start, and typing should feel smoother.

Expect more performance improvements in the next couple of releases.


Developer Happiness

Multisite Metadata

5.1 introduces a new database table to store metadata associated with sites and allows for the storage of arbitrary site data relevant in a multisite / network context.

Cron API

The Cron API has been updated with new functions to assist with returning data and includes new filters for modifying cron storage. Other changes in behavior affect cron spawning on servers running FastCGI and PHP-FPM versions 7.0.16 and above.

New JS Build Processes

WordPress 5.1 features a new JavaScript build option, following the large reorganisation of code that started in the 5.0 release.

Other Developer Goodness

Miscellaneous improvements include:

  • Updates to values for the WP_DEBUG_LOG constant
  • New test config file constant in the test suite, new plugin action hooks
  • Short-circuit filters for wp_unique_post_slug(), WP_User_Query, and count_users()
  • A new human_readable_duration function
  • Improved taxonomy metabox sanitization
  • Limited LIKE support for meta keys when using WP_Meta_Query
  • A new “doing it wrong” notice when registering REST API endpoints

…and more!


The Squad

This release was led by Matt Mullenweg, along with Gary Pendergast as Senior Code Reshuffler and Poet. They received wonderful assistance from the following 561 contributors for this release, 231 of whom were making their first ever contribution! Pull up some Betty Carter on your music service of choice, and check out some of their profiles:

0x6f0, 1265578519, 1naveengiri, 360zen, aardrian, Aaron Jorbin, Abdullah Ramzan, Abhay Vishwakarma, Abhijit Rakas, Achal Jain, achbed, Adam Silverstein, Ajit Bohra, Alain Schlesser, aldavigdis, alejandroxlopez, Alex, Alex Concha, Alex Shiels, Alexander Botteram, Alexandru Vornicescu, alexgso, allancole, Allen Snook, Alvaro Gois dos Santos, Ana Cirujano, Anantajit JG, Andrea Fercia, Andrea Gandino, Andrea Middleton, andrei0x309, andreiglingeanu, Andrew Duthie, Andrew Lima, Andrew Nacin, Andrew Nevins, Andrew Ozz, Andrey Savchenko, Andrés Maneiro, Andy Fragen, Andy Meerwaldt, Angelika Reisiger, Antal Tettinger, antipole, Anton Timmermans, Anton Vanyukov, Antonio Villegas, antonioeatgoat, Anwer AR, Arun, Ashar Irfan, ashokrd2013, Ayesh Karunaratne, Ayub Adiputra, Barry Ceelen, Behzod Saidov, Ben Byrne, benhuberman, Benoit Chantre, benvaassen, Bhargav Mehta, bikecrazyy, Birgir Erlendsson, BjornW, Blair jersyer, Blobfolio, bobbingwide, boblinthorst, Boone Gorges, Boro Sitnikovski, Brad Parbs, Bradley Taylor, bramheijmink, Brandon Kraft, Brandon Payton, Brent Swisher, Brian Richards, bridgetwillard, Brooke., bruceallen, bulletdigital, Burhan Nasir, Bytes.co, Caleb Burks, Calin Don, campusboy, carolinegeven, ccismaru, chasewg, Chetan Prajapati, Chouby, ChriCo, chriscct7, Christopher Spires, claudiu, Clifford Paulick, Code Clinic, codegrau, coleh, conner_bw, Corey McKrill, croce, Csaba (LittleBigThings), Cyrus Collier, Daniel Bachhuber, Daniel James, Daniel Koskinen, Daniel Richards, Daniele Scasciafratte, danimalbrown, Danny Cooper, Danny de Haan, Darko A7, Darren Ethier, Dave Pullig, David A. Kennedy, David Anderson, David Binovec, David Cramer, David Herrera, David Lingren, David Shanske, David Stone, dekervit, Denis Yanchevskiy, Dennis Snell, designsimply, dfangstrom, Dhanendran, Dharmesh Patel, Dhaval kasavala, Dhruvin, DiedeExterkate, Dilip Bheda, dingo-d, Dion Hulse, dipeshkakadiya, Dominik Schilling, Donncha O Caoimh, dontstealmyfish, Drew Jaynes, Drivingralle, dschalk, dsifford, eamax, eArtboard, edo888, ElectricFeet, Ella Van Durpe, Emil Dotsev, Eric Andrew Lewis, Eric Daams, Erich Munz, Erick Hitter, ericmeyer, etoledom, Evan Solomon, Evangelos Athanasiadis, Faisal Alvi, Felipe Elia, Felix Arntz, Fernando Claussen, flipkeijzer, Florian TIAR, FPCSJames, Frank Klein, fuchsws, fullyint, Gabriel Maldonado, Gareth, Garrett Hyder, Gary Jones, Gennady Kovshenin, Gerhard Potgieter, Girish Panchal, GM_Alex, gnif, graymouser, greg, Grzegorz Ziółkowski, Guido, GutenDev ✍㊙, Hafiz Rahman, Hai@LiteSpeed⚡, Hans-Christiaan Braun, Hardeep Asrani, Hardik Amipara, Harsh Patel, haruharuharuby, Heather Burns, Helen Hou-Sandi, Henry Wright, Herre Groen, Hitendra Chopda, Ian Belanger, Ian Dunn, ibantxillo, Ignacio Cruz Moreno, Igor, Igor Benic, imath, ionvv, Irene Strikkers, isabel104, ishitaka, Ivan Mudrik, J.D. Grimes, Jack Reichert, Jacob Peattie, Jake Spurlock, James Nylen, janak Kaneriya, janalwin, Janki Moradiya, janthiel, Jason Caldwell, javorszky, Jaydip Rami, Jayman Pandya, Jb Audras, Jeff Farthing, Jeffrey de Wit, Jeffrey Paul, Jennifer M. Dodd, Jenny, Jeremey, Jeremy Felt, Jeremy Herve, Jeremy Pry, Jeremy Scott, Jesper V Nielsen, Jesse Friedman, Jimmy Comack, Jip Moors, Jiri Hon, JJJ, joanrho, Job, Joe Bailey-Roberts, Joe Dolson, Joe Hoyle, Joe McGill, Joel James ❤️, Joen Asmussen, Johan Falk, John Blackbourn, John Godley, johnalarcon, johnpgreen, johnschulz, Jonathan Champ, Jonathan Desrosiers, joneiseman, Jonny Harris, Joost de Valk, Jorge Costa, Joseph Scott, JoshuaWold, Joy, jpurdy647, jrdelarosa, jryancard, Juhi Patel, Julia Amosova, juliemoynat, Juliette Reinders Folmer, Junaid Ahmed, Justin Sainton, Justin Sternberg, Justin Tadlock, K.Adam White, kapteinbluf, keesiemeijer, Kelly Dwan, kelvink, khaihong, Kiran Potphode, Kite, Kjell Reigstad, kkarpieszuk, kmeze, Knut Sparhell, konainm, Konstantin Obenland, Konstantinos Xenos, kristastevens, krutidugade, laghee, Laken Hafner, Lance Willett, laurelfulford, lbenicio, Leander Iversen, leemon, lenasterg, lisannekluitmans, lizkarkoski, Luca Grandicelli, LucasRolff, luciano-croce, Luke Carbis, Luminus, Mário Valney, maartenleenders, macbookandrew, Maja Benke, Mako, mallorydxw-old, Manuel Augustin, manuel_84, Marc Nilius, marcelo2605, Marco Martins, marco.marsala, Marcus Kazmierczak, marcwieland95, Marius L. J., mariusvw, Mariyan Belchev, Mark Jaquith, Mathieu Sarrasin, mathieuhays, Matt Cromwell, Matt Gibbs, Matt Martz, Matthew Boynes, Matthew Riley MacPherson, mattyrob, mcmwebsol, Mel Choyce, mensmaximus, mermel, metalandcoffee, Micah Wood, Michael Nelson, Michiel Heijmans, Migrated to @sebastienserre, Miguel Fonseca, Miguel Torres, mihaiiceyro, mihdan, Mike Gillihan, Mike Jolley, Mike Schroder, Milan Dinić, Milan Ivanovic, Milana Cap, Milind More, mirkoschubert, Monika Rao, Monique Dubbelman, moto hachi ( mt8.biz ), mrmadhat, Muhammad Kashif, Mukesh Panchal, MultiformeIngegno, Muntasir Mahmud, munyagu, MyThemeShop, mzorz, nadim0988, nandorsky, Naoki Ohashi, Naoko Takano, nataliashitova, Nate Allen, Nathan Johnson, ndavison, Ned Zimmerman, Nextendweb, Nick Diego, Nick Halsey, Nick Momrik, Nick the Geek, Nicolas Figueira, Nicolas GUILLAUME, Nicolle Helgers, Nidhi Jain, Niels Lange, Nikhil Chavan, Nilambar Sharma, Noam Eppel, notnownikki, odyssey, Omar Reiss, Omkar Bhagat, Ov3rfly, Paal Joachim Romdahl, palmiak, panchen, parbaugh, Parham Ghaffarian, Pascal Birchler, Pascal Casier, Paul Bearne, Paul Biron, Paul Paradise, Paul Schreiber, Perdaan, Peter Putzer, Peter Wilson, Petter Walbø Johnsgård, Pierre Saïkali, Pieter Daalder, Piyush Patel, poena, Pramod Jodhani, Prashant Baldha, Pratik, Pratik K. Yadav, precies, Presskopp, Presslabs, PressTigers, programmin, Punit Patel, Purnendu Dash, Qucheng, Rachel Baker, Rachel Cherry, Rachel Peter, Rafsun Chowdhury, Rahul Prajapati, Raja Mohammed, Ramanan, Rami Yushuvaev, Ramiz Manked, ramonopoly, RavanH, redcastor, remyvv, rensw90, rhetorical, Riad Benguella, Rian Rietveld, Richard Tape, Ricky Lee Whittemore, Rinku Y, Rishi Shah, Robbie, robdxw, Robert Anderson, Robin Cornett, Robin van der Vliet, Ryan McCue, Ryan Paul, Ryan Welcher, ryotsun, Sébastien SERRE, Saša, sagarnasit, Sami Ahmed Siddiqui, Sami Keijonen, Samuel Wood (Otto), sarah semark, Sayed Taqui, Scott Lee, Scott Reilly, Sean Hayes, Sebastian Kurzynoswki, Sebastian Pisula, Sergey Biryukov, Shamim Hasan, Shane Eckert, Sharaz Shahid, Shashwat Mittal, Shawn Hooper, sherwood, Shital Marakana, Shiva Poudel, Simon Prosser, sjardo, skoldin, slilley, slushman, Sonja Leix, sonjanyc, Soren Wrede, spartank, spyderbytes, Stanimir Stoyanov, Stanko Metodiev, stazdotio, Stephen Edgar, Stephen Harris, stevenlinx, Storm Rockwell, Stoyan Kostadinov, strategio, Subrata Sarkar, Sultan Nasir Uddin, swift, Takahashi Fumiki, Takayuki Miyauchi, Tammie Lister, Taylor Lovett, teddytime, Terri Ann, terwdan, tharsheblows, ThemeZee, Thomas Patrick Levy, Thomas Vitale, thomaswm, Thorsten Frommen, Thrijith Thankachan, Tiago Hillebrandt, tigertech, Tim Havinga, Tim Hengeveld, Timmy Crawford, Timothy Jacobs, titodevera, Tkama, Tobias Zimpel, Tom J Nowell, TomHarrigan, Tommy Ferry, tonybogdanov, Tor-Bjorn Fjellner, TorontoDigits, Toshihiro Kanai, Towhidul Islam, transl8or, Ulrich, upadalavipul, Usman Khalid, Utsav tilava, uttam007, Vaishali Panchal, Valérie Galassi, valchovski, vishaldodiya, vnsavage, voneff, vortfu, warmlaundry, wbrubaker, Weston Ruter, Will Kwon, William Earnhardt, williampatton, wpzinc, xhezairi, Yahil Madakiya, Yoav Farhi, Yui, YuriV, Zane Matthew, and zebulan.

Finally, thanks to all the community translators who worked on WordPress 5.1. Their efforts bring WordPress 5.1 fully translated to 34 languages at release time, with more on the way.

If you want to follow along or help out, check out Make WordPress and our core development blog.

Thanks for choosing WordPress!

WordPress 5.1 RC2

Posted February 19, 2019 by Gary Pendergast. Filed under Development, Releases.

The second release candidate for WordPress 5.1 is now available!

WordPress 5.1 will be released on Thursday, February 21, but we need your help to get there—if you haven’t tried 5.1 yet, now is the time!

There are two ways to test the WordPress 5.1 release candidate: try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want to select the “bleeding edge nightlies” option), or you can download the release candidate here (zip).

For details about what to expect in WordPress 5.1, please see the first release candidate post.

This release includes the final About page design. It also contains fixes for:

  • New WordPress installs not setting the database table prefix correctly (#46220).
  • A HTTP error occurring when opening browser developer tools (#46218).
  • The legacy media dialog having incorrect pagination link styling (#41858).
  • The comment form not appearing when clicking “Reply” on comments loaded via Ajax (#46260).

Plugin and Theme Developers

Please test your plugins and themes against WordPress 5.1 and update the Tested up to version in the readme to 5.1. If you find compatibility problems, please be sure to post to the support forums so we can figure those out before the final release.

The WordPress 5.1 Field Guide has also been published, which goes into the details of the major changes.

How to Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages!

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.


WordPress Five Point One:
It’s so slick, shiny, and new.
Lands in a few days!

WordPress 5.1 Release Candidate

Posted February 8, 2019 by Gary Pendergast. Filed under Development, Releases.

The first release candidate for WordPress 5.1 is now available!

This is an important milestone, as the release date for WordPress 5.1 draws near. “Release Candidate” means that the new version is ready for release, but with millions of users and thousands of plugins and themes, it’s possible something was missed. WordPress 5.1 is scheduled to be released on Thursday, February 21, but we need your help to get there—if you haven’t tried 5.1 yet, now is the time!

There are two ways to test the WordPress 5.1 release candidate: try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want to select the “bleeding edge nightlies” option), or you can download the release candidate here (zip).

What’s in WordPress 5.1?

Inspired by Archie Bell & The Drells, WordPress’s theme for 2019 is to “tighten up”, and WordPress 5.1 focussed on exactly that.

With security and speed in mind, this release introduces WordPress’s first Site Health features. WordPress will start showing notices to administrators of sites that run long-outdated versions of PHP, which is the programming language that powers WordPress.

Furthermore, when installing new plugins, WordPress’s Site Health features will check whether a plugin requires a version of PHP incompatible with your site. If so, WordPress will prevent you from installing that plugin.

The new block editor has kept improving since its introduction in WordPress 5.0. Most significantly, WordPress 5.1 includes solid performance improvements within the editor. The editor should feel a little quicker to start, and typing should feel smoother. There are more features and performance improvements planned in upcoming WordPress releases, you can check them out in the Gutenberg plugin.

Plugin and Theme Developers

Please test your plugins and themes against WordPress 5.1 and update the Tested up to version in the readme to 5.1. If you find compatibility problems, please be sure to post to the support forums so we can figure those out before the final release.

The WordPress 5.1 Field Guide has also been published, which goes into the details of the major changes.

How to Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! This release also marks the hard string freeze point of the 5.1 release schedule.

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.


This is my release
candidate. There are many
like it. This is mine.

The Month in WordPress: January 2019

Posted February 4, 2019 by Hugh Lashbrooke. Filed under Month in WordPress.

The momentum from December’s WordPress 5.0 release was maintained through January with some big announcements and significant updates. Read on to find out what happened in the WordPress project last month.


WordPress Leadership Grows

In a milestone announcement this month, WordPress project lead, Matt Mullenweg (@matt), named two individuals who are coming on board to expand the leadership team of the project.

As Executive Director, Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) will oversee all the contribution teams across the project. As Marketing & Communications Lead, Joost de Valk (@joostdevalk) will lead the Marketing team and generally oversee improvements to WordPress.org.

Both Josepha and Joost have contributed to the WordPress project for many years and will certainly have a much larger impact going forward in their new roles.

WordPress 5.1 Development Continues

Immediately after the 5.0 release of WordPress, work started on version 5.1 with some highly anticipated new features coming out in the first beta release. Since then, the second and third betas have been made available.

One of the core updates in this release — a feature to improve the way in which WordPress handles PHP errors — has been pushed back to version 5.2 due to unforeseen issues that would have caused significant delays to the 5.1 release.

Want to get involved in testing or building WordPress Core? You can install the WordPress Beta Tester plugin, follow the Core team blog, and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.


Further Reading:

Have a story that we should include in the next “Month in WordPress” post? Please submit it here.

WordPress 5.1 Beta 3

Posted January 31, 2019 by Gary Pendergast. Filed under Development, Releases.

WordPress 5.1 Beta 3 is now available!

This software is still in development, so we don’t recommend you run it on a production site. Consider setting up a test site to play with the new version.

There are two ways to test the WordPress 5.1 beta: try the WordPress Beta Testerplugin (you’ll want to select the “bleeding edge nightlies” option), or you can download the beta here (zip).

WordPress 5.1 is slated for release on February 21, and we need your help to get there!

Site Health Check

One of the features originally slated for WordPress 5.1—the PHP error protection handler—will target WordPress 5.2 instead. Some potential security issues were discovered in the implementation: rather than risk releasing insecure code, the team decided to pull it out of WordPress 5.1. The work in #46130 is showing good progress towards addressing the security concerns, if you’d like to follow development progress on this feature.

Additional Changes

A handful of smaller bugs have also been fixed in this release, including:

  • TinyMCE has been upgraded to version 4.9.2 (#46094).
  • The block editor has had a couple of bugs fixed (#46137).
  • A few differences in behaviour between the classic block and the classic editor have been fixed (#46062, #46071, #46085).
  • When adding rel attributes to links, ensure the value isn’t empty (#45352), and that it works as expected with customizer changesets (#45292).

Developer Notes

WordPress 5.1 has many changes aimed at polishing the developer experience. To keep you informed, we publish developers’ notes on the Make WordPress Core blog throughout the release cycle. Subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog for updates over the coming weeks, detailing other changes in 5.1 that you should be aware of.

How to Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! The beta 2 release also marks the soft string freeze point of the 5.1 release schedule.

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.


In just a few weeks
WordPress Five-One will be here.
Your testing helps us!

WordPress 5.1 Beta 2

Posted January 22, 2019 by Gary Pendergast. Filed under Development, Releases.

WordPress 5.1 Beta 2 is now available!

This software is still in development, so we don’t recommend you run it on a production site. Consider setting up a test site to play with the new version.

There are two ways to test the WordPress 5.1 beta: try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want to select the “bleeding edge nightlies” option), or you can download the beta here (zip).

WordPress 5.1 is slated for release on February 21, and we need your help to get there!

Over 110 tickets have been closed since beta 1, many of which are documentation and testing suite improvements. Here are the major changes and bug fixes:

  • Several refinements and bug fixes related to the Site Health project have been made.
  • The pre_render_block and render_block_data filters have been introduced allowing plugins to override block attribute values (#45451, dev note coming soon).
  • get_template_part() will now return a value indicating whether a template file was found and loaded (#40969).
  • A notice will now be triggered when developers incorrectly register REST API endpoints (related dev note).
  • Bulk editing posts will no longer unintentionally change a post’s post format (#44914)
  • Twemoji has been updated to the latest version, 11.2.0 (#45133).
  • A bug preventing the Custom Fields meta box from being enabled has been fixed (#46028).
  • The treatment of orderby values for post__in, post_parent__in, and post_name__in has been standardized (#38034).
  • When updating language packs, old language packs are now correctly deleted to avoid filling up disk space (#45468).

Developer Notes

WordPress 5.1 has many changes aimed at polishing the developer experience. To keep you informed, we publish developers notes on the Make WordPress Core blog throughout the release cycle. Subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog for updates over the coming weeks, detailing other changes in 5.1 that you should be aware of.

How to Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! The beta 2 release als marks the soft string freeze point of the 5.1 release schedule.

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.


Do you enjoy bugs?
I don’t. So, we fixed them all.
Well, not all. But close.

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See Also:

For more WordPress news, check out the WordPress Planet.
There’s also a development P2 blog.
To see how active the project is check out our Trac timeline, it often has 20–30 updates per day.

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