Summary, Dev Chat, Feb 26, 2025

Announcements 📢

GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ version 20.3 was released!

Gutenberg Version 20.3 was officially released last week! This new update brings a variety of enhancements and improvements 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.

A detailed changelog article will follow shortly, providing an in-depth look at the features and changes in this version.

Forthcoming releases 🚀

Next major releasemajor release A release, identified by the first two numbers (3.6), which is the focus of a full release cycle and feature development. WordPress uses decimaling count for major release versions, so 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, and 3.1 are sequential and comparable in scope.: 6.8 – BetaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 1

The Beta 1 release of WordPress 6.8 will be available on Tuesday, March 4th.
Join the Release Party to test new features and provide feedback!

Next Gutenberg version: 20.4

Gutenberg 20.4 is scheduled for release on Wednesday, March 5th.
This will be the final release to be merged into WordPress 6.8.

Next major release: 6.8

We are currently in the WordPress 6.8 release cycle. Read more about the release squad, timeline and focus for this release.

Editor Updates 🔄

Stay tuned for weekly updates to keep you informed about the latest in WordPress editor development. Whether you’re a developer, designer, or content creator, these updates will keep you in the loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. on all the key changes.

Don’t miss out — check out the first weekly update and get ready for more!

Discussion 🤔

Clarifying our PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher support for 6.8

The discussion focused on PHP compatibility for WordPress 6.8. @joemcgill mentioned that @johnbillion was exploring moving ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. #58320 to the 6.8 milestone, as the PHP compatibility page needs an update. It was suggested to review and potentially update the criteria for removing labels.

Over 40% of WordPress sites run PHP 8.0 or newer, so labeling PHP 8.0 as “beta” is unclear. It was clarified that “beta” support now applies to PHP 8.3 and 8.4, while 8.0, 8.1, and 8.2 are “compatible with exceptions.”

REST APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/. | Template Parts

For ticket #62574, the goal is to align on where to expose data in the REST API, coming from the GB pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. The current plan is to add it to the index for logged-in users, likely merging this for Beta 1 unless a better alternative arises. Feedback is encouraged as a decision will need to be made soon. Mamaduka is open to following up on the PR/patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing. based on feedback before or after Beta 1. @jorbin supported the idea of adding it only for logged-in users.

Style Book for Classic themes

The discussion focused on ticket #62509, which proposes making the Style Book available to classic themes in WordPress. This feature is being carried over from Gutenberg. The current plan is to commit the feature by Beta 1, though it may need refinement before RC1. There was a PR under review that modifies how the Style Book is shown based on theme support, which would be a change to the adminadmin (and super admin) menu. It was noted that while the Style Book would be available for all classic themes, adjustments to the UIUI User interface and an opt-out strategy still need to be worked on.

The team discussed whether the feature should be committed for Beta 1 and whether testers were available to test both the Gutenberg and coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. PRs before the deadline. The consensus was that tickets close to landing could be included before Beta 1, but anything not ready should be punted to a later stage.

Open Floor 💬

WordPress 6.8 | Triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. update

@audrasjb shared updated stats for the upcoming WordPress Release 6.8 release with detailed information.

Ticket Status 

On the 354 tickets in the milestone:

• about 30 tickets have been moved to Future Release or 6.9 since last week
• 194 tickets are closed as fixed (+19 compared to previous week)
• 160 tickets are still open (-17 compared to previous week)

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Ticket Types

On the 160 still open tickets in the milestone:

• 99 are bugfixes
• 43 are enhancements
• 18 are blessed tasks
• 2 are feature requests

Misc infos:

• We have 0 ‘high’ (or higher) priority ticket (-1): 
• On the 160 open tickets, 7 have the ‘commit’ keyword (+1)
• On the 160 open tickets, 3 have the ‘early’ keyword (-3)