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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.

WordPress 5.1 Beta 1

Posted January 11, 2019 by Gary Pendergast. Filed under Development, Releases.

WordPress 5.1 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.

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. Here are some of the big items to test so we can find as many bugs as possible in the coming weeks.

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 is included in WordPress 5.1. 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.

Additionally, in April 2019, WordPress’ will increase its minimum supported PHP version to 5.6. To help you check if you’re prepared for this change, WordPress 5.1 will show you a warning and help you upgrade your version of PHP, if necessary.

For Developers

  • The Cron system can now be more easily replaced with a custom cron handler (#32656).
  • When starting cron under PHP-FPM, the connection will return a response immediately, even for long running cron jobs (dev note).
  • WP_DEBUG_LOG can be set to a custom log location (#18391).
  • Introduced the wp_blogmeta table (#37923).
  • Added LIKE support to meta_key comparisons in WP_Meta_Query (#42409).

There have been over 360 tickets closed in WordPress 5.1, with numerous small bug fixes and improvements to help smooth your WordPress experience.

Keep your eyes on the Make WordPress Core blog for more developer notes (which are assigned the dev-notes tag) in 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!

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.


Miss my haiku?
I will have plenty for you
in the coming weeks.

WordPress 5.0.3 Maintenance Release

Posted January 9, 2019 by Jonathan Desrosiers. Filed under Releases.

WordPress 5.0.3 is now available!

5.0.3 is a maintenance release that includes 37 bug fixes and 7 performance updates. The focus of this release was fine-tuning the new block editor, and fixing any major bugs or regressions.

Here are a few of the highlights:

For a full list of changes, please consult the list of tickets on Trac, changelog, or read a more technical summary on the Make WordPress Core blog.

You can download WordPress 5.0.3 or visit Dashboard → Updates on your site and click Update Now. Sites that support automatic background updates have already started to update automatically.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to WordPress 5.0.3:

Aaron Jorbin, Alex Shiels, allancole, Andrea Fercia, Andrew Nevins, Andrew Ozz, Birgir Erlendsson (birgire), bobbingwide, Csaba (LittleBigThings), David Binovec, David Herrera, Dominik Schilling (ocean90), Felix Arntz, Gary Pendergast, Gerhard Potgieter, Grzegorz (Greg) Ziółkowski, Jb Audras, Job, Joe McGill, Joen Asmussen, John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, kjellr, laurelfulford, Marcus Kazmierczak, Milan Dinić, Muntasir Mahmud, Nick Halsey, panchen, Pascal Birchler, Ramanan, Riad Benguella, Ricky Lee Whittemore, Sergey Biryukov, Weston Ruter, and William Earnhardt.

The Month in WordPress: December 2018

Posted January 8, 2019 by Aditya Kane. Filed under Month in WordPress.

New features, a big event, and important announcements marked December as a milestone month for the WordPress community.


Release of WordPress 5.0

On December 6 WordPress 5.0 was released. This release includes the much anticipated new block editor as the default editing experience. While some users have chosen to continue using the Classic Editor on their sites, many site owners have quickly upgraded to this latest version.

Two security and maintenance releases came out over the course of the month, with the latest update providing a huge boost to performance and stability.

The new version of WordPress comes a new default theme: Twenty Nineteen. This theme is designed to highlight how the block editor can be used.

Want to get involved in developing WordPress Core? Follow the Core team blog and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

Gutenberg Phase 2

The next phase of Gutenberg is being decided, starting with widgets, which will make it easier for users to customize their sites. This will be done with features being added to the Gutenberg plugin.

Want to get involved in develop the future of the WordPress dashboard? Follow the Core team blog and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

9 Projects for 2019

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg outlined 9 projects for the year 2019. These projects range from creating a block for navigations menus, porting all existing widgets into blocks, forming a triage team to tackle open issues on Trac and more.

A status update for porting existing widgets to blocks has been posted by Mel Choyce.

WordCamp US 2019 Dates announced

WordCamp US 2019 will be held during Nov. 1-3, 2019, in St Louis, Missouri. It will be one of our largest events of the year and will feature Matt Mullenweg’s annual State of the Word address.


Further Reading:

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

See Also:

Want to follow the code? There’s a development P2 blog and you can track active development in the Trac timeline that often has 20–30 updates per day.

Want to find an event near you? Check out the WordCamp schedule and find your local Meetup group!

For more WordPress news, check out the WordPress Planet or subscribe to the WP Briefing podcast.

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