The first release candidate for WordPress 4.0 is now available!

In RC 1, we’ve made refinements to what we’ve been working on for this release. Check out the Beta 1 announcement post for more details on those features. We hope to ship WordPress 4.0 next week, but we need your help to get there. If you haven’t tested 4.0 yet, there’s no time like the present. (Please, not on a production site, unless you’re adventurous.)

Think you’ve found a bug? Please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If any known issues come up, you’ll be able to find them here.

To test WordPress 4.0 RC1, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”). Or you can download the release candidate here (zip). If you’d like to learn more about what’s new in WordPress 4.0, visit the awesome About screen in your dashboard ( → About in the toolbar).

Developers, please test your plugins and themes against WordPress 4.0 and update your plugin’s Tested up to version in the readme to 4.0 before next week. If you find compatibility problems, please be sure to post any issues to the support forums so we can figure those out before the final release. You also may want to give your plugin an icon, which we launched last week and will appear in the dashboard along with banners.

It is almost time
For the 4.0 release
And its awesomeness

The fourth and likely final beta for WordPress 4.0 is now available. We’ve made more than 250 changes in the past month, including:

• Further improvements to the editor scrolling experience, especially when it comes to the second column of boxes.
• Better handling of small screens in the media library modals.
• A separate bulk selection mode for the media library grid view.
• Improvements to the installation language selector.
• Visual tweaks to plugin details and customizer panels.

We need your help. We’re still aiming for a release this month, which means the next week will be critical for identifying and squashing bugs. If you’re just joining us, please see the Beta 1 announcement post for what to look out for.

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums, where friendly moderators are standing by. Plugin developers, if you haven’t tested WordPress 4.0 yet, now is the time — and be sure to update the “tested up to” version for your plugins so they’re listed as compatible with 4.0.

This software is still in development, so we don’t recommend you run it on a production site. Consider setting up a test site just to play with the new version. To test WordPress 4.0, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”). Or you can download the beta here (zip).

We are working hard
To finish up 4.0
Will you help us too?

WordPress 3.9.2 is now available as a security release for all previous versions. We strongly encourage you to update your sites immediately.

This release fixes a possible denial of service issue in PHP’s XML processing, reported by Nir Goldshlager of the Salesforce.com Product Security Team. It  was fixed by Michael Adams and Andrew Nacin of the WordPress security team and David Rothstein of the Drupal security team. This is the first time our two projects have coordinated joint security releases.

WordPress 3.9.2 also contains other security changes:

• Fixes a possible but unlikely code execution when processing widgets (WordPress is not affected by default), discovered by Alex Concha of the WordPress security team.
• Prevents information disclosure via XML entity attacks in the external GetID3 library, reported by Ivan Novikov of ONSec.
• Adds protections against brute attacks against CSRF tokens, reported by David Tomaschik of the Google Security Team.
• Contains some additional security hardening, like preventing cross-site scripting that could be triggered only by administrators.

We appreciated responsible disclosure of these issues directly to our security team. For more information, see the release notes or consult the list of changes.

Download WordPress 3.9.2 or venture over to Dashboard → Updates and simply click “Update Now”.

Sites that support automatic background updates will be updated to WordPress 3.9.2 within 12 hours. (If you are still on WordPress 3.8.3 or 3.7.3, you will also be updated to 3.8.4 or 3.7.4. We don’t support older versions, so please update to 3.9.2 for the latest and greatest.)

Already testing WordPress 4.0? The third beta is now available (zip) and it contains these security fixes.