WordPress 5.5 Retrospective: We want to hear from you!

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The WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. development team builds WordPress! Follow this site for general updates, status reports, and the occasional code debate. There’s lots of ways to contribute:

Found a bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority.? Create a ticket in the bug tracker.

Want to contribute? Get started quickly with tickets marked as good first bugs for new contributors or join a bug scrub. There’s more on the reports page, like patches needing testing, and on feature projects page.

Other questions? Here is a detailed handbook for contributors, complete with tutorials.

While the release team is wrapping up the 5.5 processes, we wanted to reach out to the wider community for perspectives on the process and what could be done in the future to make releases smoother for everyone.

If you are a WordPress user, developer, writer, content manager, agency, etc., please share comments here on what went well with the release, what went poorly, and what could be improved for future releases of WordPress. We’ll keep the comments on this post open indefinitely, but only capture the comments in the form through Friday, September 11th.

“Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.”

–Norm Kerth, Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Review

Comments can be publicly shared directly on this post, or as part of this form. All responses will be cataloged and then once this process has been completed, the results will be shared in a new post here on make/coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress..

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John James Jacoby 8:25 pm on September 4, 2020

I know for sure that jQuery changes definitely severely impacted users. That’s truly a shame. However, the 5.5.1 release being so quick really did make up for it IMO.

For my plugins, and the plugins at Sandhills Development, nothing of ours broke. Also, my own multi-networknetwork (versus site, blog) distribution/installation upgraded cleanly and without any issues.

bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. did suffer from what I believe was an edge-case misuse of _deprecated_function(), as wp_filter_content_tags replaced wp_make_content_images_responsive. Because of the nature of this notice, it may fire dozens of times per page load when viewing a Forum or a Topic. With these functions, there is actually a functional internal change – the old function only made images responsive, but the new function filters all content tags. One really isn’t an exact replacement for the other, but that’s how they’re structured currently. I think there are times where the _deprecated functions should not be relied upon to educate developers about new functions that are expected to act as silent functional upgrades, like what happened here. The new function adds new functionality, so why make something that is supposed to be positive a negative developer experience? (Not trying to start a fight or look for answers; just sharing my perspective because you asked for it.)

General and gracious thank you to everyone that contributed to the 5.5 release 💫
Daniele Scasciafratte 12:08 pm on September 7, 2020

I liked that this release got a more long time span and addressed a lot of bugfixes
leemon 2:20 pm on September 7, 2020

Positive: Attention to long-standing bugs
Negative: The jQuery Migrate update thing. Sorry, a post in the Make blogblog (versus network, site) is not enough. Next time you should post a change like this on WPTavern or the official WordPress blog. Or even add a box in the WordPress dashboard.
- thomascloer 10:16 am on September 8, 2020
  
  There was something on WP tavern on August 11 > https://wptavern.com/major-jquery-changes-on-the-way-for-wordpress-5-5-and-beyond
  - leemon 1:04 pm on September 8, 2020
    
    Well, WP 5.5 was released that day, so there was not much space left for reaction.
ma_wordpressorg 2:30 pm on September 9, 2020

I hope, one day the “welcome to the blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. editor”-pop-up will vanish to some other galaxy. If even I can’t disable it, how are my customers are suposed to like it? That’s so 90s…
But overall, I liked this release – nothing broke with my sites.
Andrea Fercia 8:13 pm on September 9, 2020

From an accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) perspective:
What went well:
A few important accessibility features were introduced in the blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. editor, for example: a good ARIA toolbar implementation and the ability for users to disable “WritingFlow” to keep the caret within a block when editing.

Can be improved:
Some important changes the accessibility team worked on didn’t make it for the release. For example: removing Infinite scrolling from the media grid and other tickets we asked for help from other teams.
Thinking that cross-collaboration between teams and timely feedback have room for improvements. This seems to be a recurrent issue in WordPress that needs to be better considered.
Anh Tran 2:13 am on September 11, 2020
There are 2 things I wish they were improved before releasing:
- Missing global JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors. localization objects. This causes some JS libraries/plugins to fail. This is partly fixed in 5.5.1 by bringing back an empty objects. But still not a good fix.
- Adding up/down arrow for metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. boxes. They look badly for side meta boxes. I opened a ticket on TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress..
The problem is that there are no warnings about these changes, they’re also not covered in the Field GuideField guide The field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle. The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page. announcement post.

Other things in the release are great! I really appreciate the effort that developers put in this release.

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