This month saw the 16th anniversary since the launch of the first release of WordPress. A significant milestone to be sure and one that speaks to the strength and stability of the project as a whole. In this anniversary month, we saw a new major release of WordPress, some exciting new development work, and a significant global event.
Release of WordPress 5.2
WordPress 5.2 “Jaco” was released on May 7 shipping some useful site management tools, such as the Site Health Check and PHP Error Protection, as well as a number of accessibility, privacy, and developer updates. You can read the field guide for this release for more detailed information about what was included and how it all works.
327 individual volunteers contributed to the release. If you would like to be a part of that number for future releases, follow the Core team blog and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.
A Successful WordPress Translation Day 4
WordPress Translation Day is a 24-hour event organised by the Polyglots team where community members from all over the world come together to translate WordPress into their local languages. For the fourth edition held on 11 May, 183 brand new contributors joined the Polyglots team from 77 communities across 35 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and Oceania.
While the WP Translation Day is a great time for focussed contributions to localizing WordPress, but these contributions can happen at any time of the year, so if you would like to help make WordPress available in your local language, follow the Polyglots team blog and join the #polyglots channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.
Updated Plugin Guidelines Proposal
The Plugins team has proposed some updates to the guidelines for developers on the Plugin Directory. The majority of the proposed changes are intended to address significant issues faced by developers who do not speak English as a first language, making the Plugin DIrectory a more accessible and beneficial place for everyone.
The proposal will be open for comments until late June, so the community is encouraged to get involved with commenting on them and the direction they will take the Plugin Directory. If you would like to be involved in this discussion, comment on the proposal and join the #plugin review team in the Making WordPress Slack group.
Continued Gutenberg Development
Since the block editor was first released as part of WordPress Core in v5.0, development has continued in leaps and bounds with a new release every two weeks. The latest update includes some great incremental improvements that will be merged into the 5.2.2 release of WordPress along with the other recent enhancements.
In addition to the editor enhancements, work has been ongoing in the Gutenberg project to bring the block editing experience to the rest of the WordPress dashboard. This second phase of the project has been going well and the latest update shows how much work has been done so far.
In addition to that, the Block Library project that aims to bring a searchable library of available blocks right into the editor is deep in the planning phase with a recent update showing what direction the team is taking things.
If you would like to get involved in planning and development of Gutenberg and the block editor, follow the Core and Design team blogs and join the #core, #design, and #core-editor channels in the Making WordPress Slack group.
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.
The first release candidate for WordPress 5.2 is now available!
This is an important milestone as we progress toward the WordPress 5.2 release date. “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 5.2 is scheduled to be released on Tuesday, May 7, but we need your help to get there—if you haven’t tried 5.2 yet, now is the time!
Continuing with the theme from the last release, WordPress 5.2 gives you 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.
The Site Health Check and PHP Error Protection tools have brand new features, giving you peace of mind if you discover any issues with plugins or themes on your site. There are also updates to the icons available in your dashboard, fresh accessibility considerations for anyone using assistive technologies and more.
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.
The WordPress 5.2 Field Guide has also been published, which goes into the details of the major changes.
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.
Howdy, RC 1! With tools this interesting, I can hardly wait.
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 latest WordPress 5.2 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 5.2 is slated for release on April 30, and we need your help to get there! Thanks to the testing and feedback from everyone who tried beta 2, nearly 40 tickets have been closed since then. Here are the major changes and bug fixes:
The new Site Health feature has continued to be refined.
Plugins no longer update if a site is running an unsupported version of PHP (see #46613).
It’s now more apparent when a site is running in Recovery Mode (see #46608).
The distraction free button no longer breaks keyboard navigation in the Classic Editor (see #46640).
Assistive technologies do a better job of announcing admin bar sub menus (see #37513).
Subject lines in WordPress emails are now more consistent (see #37940).
Personal data exports now only show as completed when a user downloads their data (see #44644).
Plus more improvements to accessibility (see #35497 and #42853).
Minimum PHP Version Update
Important reminder: as of WordPress 5.2 beta 2, the minimum PHP version that WordPress will require is 5.6.20. If you’re running an older version of PHP, we highly recommend updating it now, before WordPress 5.2 is officially released.
WordPress 5.2 has lots of refinements to polish the developer experience. To keep up, subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog and pay special attention to the developers notes for updates on those and other changes that could affect your products.
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.
Would you look at that each day brings release closer test to be ready.
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 5.2 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 5.2 is slated for release on April 30, and we need your help to get there! Thanks to the testing and feedback from everyone who tried beta 1, nearly 100 tickets have been closed since then. Here are the major changes and bug fixes:
We’ve added support for Emoji 12! 🪂
A brand-new wp_body_open() template tag (and corresponding wp_body_open action) will let themes (and plugins!) add content right after the <body> is opened (#12563).
Superfluous paragraph tags will no longer incorrectly appear in dynamic block content (#45495).
The Site Health screens have received several bug fixes, tweaks, and performance improvements.
Crash Protection no longer interrupts plugin editing (#46045).
Custom error handlers now load correctly (#46069).
Minimum PHP Version Update
As of WordPress 5.2 beta 2, the minimum PHP version that WordPress will require is 5.6.20. If you’re running an older version of PHP, we highly recommend updating it now, before WordPress 5.2 is officially released.
WordPress 5.2 has lots of refinements to polish the developer experience. To keep up, subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog and pay special attention to the developers notes for updates on those and other changes that could affect your products.
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.
The wonderful thing about betas, is betas are wonderful things. 🐯
WordPress 5.2 is targeted for release at the end of this month, and with it comes an update to the minimum required version of PHP. WordPress will now require a minimum of PHP 5.6.20.
Beginning in WordPress 5.1, users running PHP versions below 5.6 have had a notification in their dashboard that includes information to help them update PHP. Since then, the WordPress stats have shown an increase in users on more recent versions of PHP.
The dashboard widget users see if running an outdated version of PHP
Why You Should Update PHP
If your site is running on an unsupported version of PHP, the WordPress updater will not offer WordPress 5.2 to your site. If you attempt to update WordPress manually, that update will fail. To continue using the latest features of WordPress you must update to a newer version of PHP.
When updating to a new version of PHP, WordPress encourages updating to its recommended version, PHP 7.3. The PHP internals team has done a great job making its most recent version the fastest version of PHP yet. This means that updating will improve the speed of your site, both for you and your visitors.
This performance increase also means fewer servers are needed to host websites. Updating PHP isn’t just good for your site, it also means less energy is needed for the 1-in-3 sites that use WordPress, so it’s good for the planet.
How to Update PHP
If you need help updating to a new version of PHP, detailed documentation is available. This includes sample communication to send to your host for them to assist you. Many hosting companies have published information on how to update PHP that is specific for them.
5.6 now, but soon 7+
This is the first increase in PHP required version for WordPress since 2010, but may not be the only increase in 2019. The WordPress core team will monitor the adoption of the most recent versions of PHP with an eye towards making PHP 7+ the minimum version towards the end of the year.
