WordPress 5.2.1 is now available! This maintenance release fixes 33 bugs, including improvements to the block editor, accessibility, internationalization, and the Site Health feature introduced in 5.2.
WordPress 5.2.1 is a short-cycle maintenance release. Version 5.2.2 is expected to follow in approximately two weeks.
You can download WordPress 5.2.1 or visit Dashboard → Updates and click Update Now. Sites that support automatic background updates have already started to update automatically.
Jonathan Desrosiers and William Earnhardt co-led this release, with contributions from 52 other contributors. Thank you to everyone that made this release possible!
The fourth edition of WordPress translation day is coming up on Saturday 11 May 2019: tomorrow! Get ready for a 24-hour, global marathon dedicated to localizing the WordPress platform and ecosystem.This event takes place both online and in physical locations across the world, so you can join no matter where you are!
The WordPress Polyglots Team has a mission to translate and make available the software’s features into as many languages as possible. As WordPress powers more than 33% of websites, people from across the world use it in their daily life. That means there is a lot that needs translating, and into many different languages.
On 11 May 2019, from 00:00 UTC until 23:59 UTC, WordPress Translation Day aims to celebrate the thousands of volunteers who contribute to translation and internalization. The event is also an opportunity for encouraging more people to get involved and help increase the availability of themes and plugins in different languages.
“At the time of the last event in 2017, WordPress was being translated into 178 languages, we have now reached the 200 mark!”
WPtranslationday.org
What happens on WordPress Translation Day?
There are a number of local meetings all over the world, as well as online talks by people from the WordPress community. More than 700 people from around the world took part in past WordPress Translation Days, and everyone welcome to join in this time around!
Everyone is welcome to join the event to help translate and localize WordPress, no matter their level of experience. A lot is happening on the day, so join in and you will learn how to through online sessions!
What can you expect?
Live online training: Tutorials in different languages focused on translation and localization, or l10n, of WordPress. These are streamed in multiple languages
Localization sessions: General instruction and specifics for particular areas and languages. These sessions are streamed in multiple languages.
Internalization sessions: Tutorials about optimizing the code to ease localization processes, also called internationalization or i18n. These sessions are streamed in English.
Local events: Polyglot contributors will gather around the world for socializing, discussing, and translating together.
Remote events: Translation teams that cannot gather physically, will connect remotely. They will be available for training, mentoring, and supporting new contributors. They will also engage in “translating marathons”, in which existing teams translate as many strings as they can!
A number of experienced WordPress translators and internationalization experts are part of the line-up for the livestream, joined by some first time contributors.
Whether you have or haven’t contributed to the Polyglots before, you can join in for WordPress Translation Day. Learn more about both local and online events and stay updated through the website and social media.
Version 5.2 of WordPress, named “Jaco” in honor of renowned and revolutionary jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius, is available for download or update in your WordPress dashboard. New features in this update make it easier than ever to fix your site if something goes wrong.
There are even more robust tools for identifying and fixing configuration issues and fatal errors. Whether you are a developer helping clients or you manage your site solo, these tools can help get you the right information when you need it.
Site Health Check
Building on the Site Health features introduced in 5.1, this release adds two new pages to help debug common configuration issues. It also adds space where developers can include debugging information for site maintainers.
PHP Error Protection
This administrator-focused update will let you safely fix or manage fatal errors without requiring developer time. It features better handling of the so-called “white screen of death,” and a way to enter recovery mode, which pauses error-causing plugins or themes.
Improvements for Everyone
Accessibility Updates
A number of changes work together to improve contextual awareness and keyboard navigation flow for those using screen readers and other assistive technologies.
New Dashboard Icons
Thirteen new icons including Instagram, a suite of icons for BuddyPress, and rotated Earth icons for global inclusion. Find them in the Dashboard and have some fun!
Plugin Compatibility Checks
WordPress will now automatically determine if your site’s version of PHP is compatible with installed plugins. If the plugin requires a higher version of PHP than your site currently uses, WordPress will not allow you to activate it, preventing potential compatibility errors.
The minimum supported PHP version is now 5.6.20. As of WordPress 5.2*, themes and plugins can safely take advantage of namespaces, anonymous functions, and more!
With the addition of webpack and Babel configurations in the wordpress/scripts package, developers won’t have to worry about setting up complex build tools to write modern JavaScript.
*If you are running an old version of PHP (less than 5.6.20), update your PHP before installing 5.2.
The Squad
This release was led by Matt Mullenweg, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and Gary Pendergast. They were graciously supported by 327 generous volunteer contributors. Load a Jaco Pastorius playlist on your favorite music service and check out some of their profiles:
Also, many thanks to all of the community volunteers who contribute in the support forums. They answer questions from people across the world, whether they are using WordPress for the first time or since the first release. These releases are more successful for their efforts!
This release includes the final About page design. It also contains fixes for:
Proper translation of the recovery mode notification emails (#47093).
Improvements to the way Site Health works with multisite installs (#47084).
Plugin and Theme Developers
Please test your plugins and themes against WordPress 5.2 and update the Tested up to version in the readme to 5.2. If you find compatibility problems, please be sure to post to the support forums so we can figure those out before the final release.
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.
It’s the start of May and the release is coming. We all give a cheer!
This past month has been filled with anticipation as the community builds up towards a big new release, plans some important events, and builds new tools to grow the future of the project.
WordPress 5.2 Almost Due for Release
WordPress 5.2 is due for release on May 7 with many new features included for developers and end-users alike. The Field Guide for the release provides a lot of information about what is in it and what you can expect, including a few key elements:
Site Health Check
One of the most highly anticipated features for v5.2 is the Site Health Check. This feature adds two new pages in the admin interface to help end users maintain a healthy site through common configuration issues and other elements that go along with having a robust online presence. It also provides a standardized location for developers to add debugging information.
Fatal Error Recovery Mode
The Fatal Error Recovery Mode feature was originally planned for the 5.1 release but was delayed to patch up some last-minute issues that arose. This feature will help site-owners recover more quickly from fatal errors that break the display or functionality of their site that would ordinarily require code or database edits to fix.
Privacy and Accessibility Updates
Along with the headlining features mentioned above, there are some important enhancements to the privacy and accessibility features included in Core. These include some important developer-focused changes to how privacy policy pages are displayed and user data is exported, as well as moving to more semantic markup for admin tabs and other improvements such as switching post format icons to drop-down menus on post list tables, improved admin toolbar markup, and contextual improvements to archive widget drop-down menu.
On 11 May 2019, the fourth WordPress Translation Day will take place. This is a 24-hour global event dedicated to the translation of all things WordPress, from Core to themes, plugins to marketing.
Over the course of 24 hours, WordPress communities will meet to translate WordPress into their local languages and watch talks and sessions broadcast on wptranslationday.org. During the previous WordPress Translation Day, 71 local events took place in 29 countries, and even more communities are expected to take part this time.
Since the initial proposal for a Block Library that would be made available from inside the block editor, work has been done to put together some designs for how this would look. Since then the project has received a more direct focus with a planned out scope and timeline.
The project is being managed on GitHub and people interested in contributing are encouraged to get involved there. You can also keep up to date by following the Design team blog and joining the #design channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.
Further Reading:
The results from the 5.0 release retrospective survey have been published – this is the first time this kind of open retrospective has been done for a WordPress release and the results provide valuable insight into the project and its contributors.
The team behind the WordPress Coding Standards has released version 2.1, including some very useful new sniffs.
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