WordPress.org

May 27, 2018 is the 15th anniversary of the first WordPress release — and we can’t wait to celebrate!

Party time!

Join WordPress fans all over the world in celebrating the 15th Anniversary of WordPress by throwing your own party! Here’s how you can join in the fun:

1. Check the WordPress 15th Anniversary website to see if there’s a party already planned for your town. If there is, RSVP for the party and invite your friends!
   
2. If there isn’t, then pick a place to go where a bunch of people can be merry — a park, a pub, a backyard; any family-friendly venue will do!
3. List your party with your local WordPress meetup group (Don’t have a group? Start one!)  and then spread the word to other local meetups, tech groups, press, etc and get people to say they’ll come to your party.
4. Request some special 15th anniversary WordPress swag (no later than April 27, please, so we have time to ship it to you).
   
5. Have party attendees post photos, videos, and the like with the #WP15 hashtag, and check out the social media stream to see how the rest of the world is sharing and celebrating.

Don’t miss this chance to participate in a global celebration of WordPress!

Special Swag

In honor of the 15th anniversary, we’ve added some special 15th anniversary items in the swag store — you can use the offer code CELEBRATEWP15 to take 15% off this (and any other WordPress swag you buy), all the way through the end of 2018!

Keep checking the swag store, because we’ll be adding more swag over the next few weeks!

Share the fun

However you celebrate the WordPress 15th anniversary — with a party, with commemorative swag, by telling the world what WordPress means to you — remember to use the #WP15 hashtag to share it! And don’t forget to check the stream of WordPress 15th anniversary posts.

When 30% of the internet has a reason to celebrate, you know it’s going to be great!

GDPR compliance is an important consideration for all WordPress websites. The GDPR Compliance team is looking for help to test the privacy tools that are currently being developed in core.

What is GDPR?

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation and is intended to strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within the European Union. Its primary aim is to give control back to the EU residents over their personal data.

Why the urgency? Although the GDPR was introduced two years ago, it becomes  enforceable starting May 25, 2018.

Make WordPress GDPR Compliance Team

Currently, the GDPR Compliance Team understands that helping WordPress-based sites become compliant is a large and ongoing task. The team is focusing on creating a comprehensive core policy, plugin guidelines, privacy tools and documentation. All of this requires your help.

The GDPR Compliance Team is focusing on four main areas:

• Add functionality to assist site owners in creating comprehensive privacy policies for their websites.
• Create guidelines for plugins to become GDPR ready.
• Add administration tools to facilitate compliance and encourage user privacy in general.
• Add documentation to educate site owners on privacy, the main GDPR compliance requirements, and on how to use the new privacy tools.

Don’t we already have a privacy policy?

Yes and no. That said, The GDPR puts tighter guidelines and restrictions. Though we have many plugins that create privacy pages, we need means to generate a unified, comprehensive privacy policy. We will need tools for users to easily come into compliance.

Site owners will be able to create GDPR compliant privacy policy in three steps:

1. Adding a dedicated page for the policy.
   
2. Adding privacy information from plugins.
3. Reviewing and publishing the policy.

A new “postbox” will be added to the Edit Page screen when editing the policy. All plugins that collect or store user data will be able to add privacy information there. In addition it will alert the site owners when any privacy information changes after a plugin is activated, deactivated, or updated.

There is a new functionality to confirm user requests by email address. It is intended for site owners to be able to verify requests from users for displaying, downloading, or anonymizing of personal data.

A new “Privacy” page is added under the “Tools” menu. It will display new, confirmed requests from users, as well as already fulfilled requests. It will also contain the tools for exporting and anonymizing of personal data and for requesting email confirmation to avoid abuse attempts.

New section on privacy will be added to the Plugin Handbook. It will contain some general information on user privacy, what a plugin should do to be compliant, and also tips and examples on how to use the new privacy related functionality in WordPress.

The new privacy tools are scheduled for release at the end of April or beginning of May 2018.

How can you get involved?

We would love to have your help. The first step is awareness and education. For more information about the upcoming privacy tools see the roadmap.

If you would like to get involved in building WordPress Core and testing the new privacy tools, please join the #gdpr-compliance channel in the Make WordPress Slack group.

WordPress 4.9.5 is now available. This is a security and maintenance release for all versions since WordPress 3.7. We strongly encourage you to update your sites immediately.

WordPress versions 4.9.4 and earlier are affected by three security issues. As part of the core team's ongoing commitment to security hardening, the following fixes have been implemented in 4.9.5:

1. Don't treat localhost as same host by default.
2. Use safe redirects when redirecting the login page if SSL is forced.
3. Make sure the version string is correctly escaped for use in generator tags.

Thank you to the reporters of these issues for practicing coordinated security disclosure: xknown of the WordPress Security Team, Nitin Venkatesh (nitstorm), and Garth Mortensen of the WordPress Security Team.

Twenty-five other bugs were fixed in WordPress 4.9.5. Particularly of note were:

• The previous styles on caption shortcodes have been restored.
• Cropping on touch screen devices is now supported.
• A variety of strings such as error messages have been updated for better clarity.
• The position of an attachment placeholder during uploads has been fixed.
• Custom nonce functionality in the REST API JavaScript client has been made consistent throughout the code base.
• Improved compatibility with PHP 7.2.

This post has more information about all of the issues fixed in 4.9.5 if you'd like to learn more.

Download WordPress 4.9.5 or venture over to Dashboard → Updates and click "Update Now." Sites that support automatic background updates are already beginning to update automatically.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to WordPress 4.9.5:

1265578519, Aaron Jorbin, Adam Silverstein, Alain Schlesser, alexgso, Andrea Fercia, andrei0x309, antipole, Anwer AR, Birgir Erlendsson (birgire), Blair jersyer, Brooke., Chetan Prajapati, codegrau, conner_bw, David A. Kennedy, designsimply, Dion Hulse, Dominik Schilling (ocean90), ElectricFeet, ericmeyer, FPCSJames, Garrett Hyder, Gary Pendergast, Gennady Kovshenin, Henry Wright, Jb Audras, Jeffrey Paul, Jip Moors, Joe McGill, Joen Asmussen, John Blackbourn, johnpgreen, Junaid Ahmed, kristastevens, Konstantin Obenland, Laken Hafner, Lance Willett, leemon, Mel Choyce, Mike Schroder, mrmadhat, nandorsky, Nidhi Jain, Pascal Birchler, qcmiao, Rachel Baker, Rachel Peter, RavanH, Samuel Wood (Otto), Sebastien SERRE, Sergey Biryukov, Shital Marakana, Stephen Edgar, Tammie Lister, Thomas Vitale, Will Kwon, and Yahil Madakiya.

With a significant new milestone and some great improvements to WordPress as a platform, this month has been an important one for the project. Read on to find out more about what happened during the month of March.

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WordPress Now Powers 30% of the Internet

Over the last 15 years, the popularity and usage of WordPress has been steadily growing. That growth hit a significant milestone this month when W3Techs reported that WordPress now powers over 30% of sites on the web.

The percentage is determined based on W3Techs’ review of the top 10 million sites on the web, and it’s a strong indicator of the popularity and flexibility of WordPress as a platform.

If you would like to have hand in helping to grow WordPress even further, you can get involved today.

WordPress Jargon Glossary Goes Live

The WordPress Marketing Team has been hard at work lately putting together a comprehensive glossary of WordPress jargon to help newcomers to the project become more easily acquainted with things.

The glossary is available here along with a downloadable PDF to make it simpler to reference offline.

Publishing this resource is part of an overall effort to make WordPress more easily accessible for people who are not so familiar with the project. If you would like to assist the Marketing Team with this, you can follow the team blog and join the #marketing channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

Focusing on Privacy in WordPress

Online privacy has been in the news this month for all the wrong reasons. It has reinforced the commitment of the GDPR Compliance Team to continue working on enhancements to WordPress core that allow site owners to improve privacy standards.

The team's work, and the wider privacy project, spans four areas: Adding tools which will allow site administrators to collect the information they need about their sites, examining the plugin guidelines with privacy in mind, enhancing privacy standards in WordPress core, and creating documentation focused on best practices in online privacy.

To get involved with the project, you can view the roadmap, follow the updates, submit patches, and join the #gdpr-compliance channel in the Making WordPress Slack group. Office hours are 15:00 UTC on Wednesdays.

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Further Reading:

• The WordPress Foundation has published their annual report for 2017 showing just how much the community has grown over the last year.
• The dates for WordCamp US have been announced — this flagship WordCamp event will be held on 7-9 December this year in Nashville, Tennessee.
• WordPress 4.9.5 is due for release on April 3 — find out more here.
• Version 2.5 of Gutenberg, the new editor for WordPress core, was released this month with a host of great improvements.
• WordSesh, a virtual WordPress conference, is returning in July this year.

If you have a story we should consider including in the next “Month in WordPress” post, please submit it here.