WordPress 5.0.1 was released yesterday as a security release with fixes for seven vulnerabilities that were privately disclosed. It includes a few breaks in backwards compatibility that plugin developers will want to review. WordPress 5.0.2 will be the first planned followup release to 5.0 and is now scheduled to be released December 19, 2018. Gary…
WordCamp US kicked off in Nashville over the weekend, following the release of WordPress 5.0. In the first 48 hours, 5.0 had been downloaded more than 2.8 million times. It passed 3 million Saturday night. “There’s been a lot that’s been going on, so I’d like to allow WordPress the chance to re-introduce itself,” Matt…
In 2016 at WordCamp US in Philadelphia, PA, Matt Mullenweg announced to the world that a new post and page editor would be coming to WordPress. “The editor does not represent the core of WordPress publishing,” Mullenweg said. His vision of the editor was geared towards a more block-based approach that unifies widgets, shortcodes, and…
During last week’s core dev chat, Matt Mullenweg urged developers to consider WordPress 5.0 as “coming as soon as possible.” Nevertheless, his decision to set Thursday, December 6, for the new release date has taken many by surprise. Official feedback channels and social media erupted with largely negative feedback on the decision, as the new…
WordPress 5.0 RC2 was released today with 15 notable updates, including improvements to block preview styling, browser-specific bug fixes, and other changes. RC2 was released simultaneously with Gutenberg version 4.6. The official release date for WordPress 5.0 has not yet been announced, because it depends on feedback from RC2 testing. Contributors’ uneasiness with not having…
WordPress 5.0 RC 1 was released over the weekend after a string of five betas that began in late October. According to the Gutenberg stats page, more than 1.1 million sites have the Gutenberg plugin installed and users have written more than 980,000 posts using the new editor. These numbers are conservative estimates, as the…
WordPress core committers, core contributors, and former release leads made strong, last-minute appeals on Monday for the 5.0 release to be deferred to January. RC was expected Monday but those urging its delay cited the large number of open issues on the milestone and the fact that many confirmed bugs are being aggressively punted to…
Figma, an online collaborative interface design tool, has donated an organizational membership to the WordPress project. The browser-based application helps designers and developers collaborate more efficiently and is used by organizations like Microsoft, Slack, and Uber. It provides design tools, prototyping, previews, and real-time feedback, all in the same place, and is often described as…
Matt Mullenweg joined attendees at WordCamp Portland, OR, for a Q&A session last weekend and the recording is now available on WordPress.tv. The first question came from a user who tried Gutenberg and turned it off because of a plugin conflict. She asked if users will have to use Gutenberg when 5.0 is released. Mullenweg…
The WordPress 5.0 release date has been pushed back to November 27. The previous schedule outlined the possibility of a slip date where the first target date could slip by up to eight days if necessary. “As discussed during the Core devchat this week, the initial November 19th target date is looking a bit too…
Developers and business owners are waiting anxiously in the wings, as Gutenberg is 11 days away from its debut in WordPress 5.0. There is still a chance that the release could be delayed to the secondary date (January 22, 2019), but the decision has not yet been announced. “I am lukewarm on the 19th, but…
Gary Pendergast announced this morning that the Classic Editor plugin will be officially supported until December 31, 2021. The plugin eases the transition for sites where plugins or themes are not yet compatible with Gutenberg and gives users the opportunity to preserve their existing workflows. “Since the Classic Editor plugin is central in this transition,…
WordPress 5.0 Beta 3 was released this morning. This beta incorporates all the changes from Gutenberg 4.2 RC1, which was released last week. It fixes a bug with the display of the custom fields meta box and also improves REST API requests. Gutenberg has undergone a few UI tweaks and introduces a Formatting API for…
WordPress’ accessibility team has published a statement on the level of overall accessibility of Gutenberg. The team, largely a group of unpaid volunteers, collaborated on a detailed assessment that publicly challenges Gutenberg’s readiness for core in a way that no other WordPress team has done through official channels to date. After a week of testing…
WPCampus is looking to hire a company to perform an accessibility audit of the Gutenberg editor. The organization is a community of more than 800 web professionals, educators, and others who work with WordPress in higher education. WPCampus director Rachel Cherry published a request for proposals detailing the organization’s specific concerns: Our organization is sensitive…