Release Candidate for 3.9.1

I’ve packaged up WordPress 3.9 RC1 and intend to ship it Wednesday morning. For a complete list of the 33 issues, please see this report. Some highlights:

  • Widgets: Theme preview empties sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. on active theme. #27897.
  • Multisitemultisite Used to describe a WordPress installation with a network of multiple blogs, grouped by sites. This installation type has shared users tables, and creates separate database tables for each blog (wp_posts becomes wp_0_posts). See also network, blog, site: Fixes regressions with uppercase characters in networknetwork (versus site, blog) paths; and with www as a subdomain. #27866, #27927.
  • HeaderHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. images: Fix weird behavior (or hiding) of various buttons: #28046, #27848, #27936.
  • Performance: Fix potentially slow query on the new/edit post page. #27985.
  • Various playlist, media, and editor fixes, including drag-and-drop text (#27880) and positioning of images when adding a caption (#27922).
  • Some minor internationalization and RTL issues, like #27924 #27893 #27845.

Note this does not address a number of other issues, which are slated for a 3.9.2 release. Notably, many of these will require updates to TinyMCE, or require additional study or testing.

Download it here (zip) or grab the latest nightly (here or using the WordPress Beta Tester 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). Testing strongly encouraged; feedback welcome.

#3-9, #3-9-1

Let’s have a meeting in #wordpress dev on…

Let’s have a meeting in #wordpress-dev on April 21, 2014 18:00 UTC, to discuss WordPress 3.9.1 and triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. those tickets. As preparation for the meeting:

Reception has been overwhelmingly positive and, anecdotally at least, we’ve seen more issues as they relate to deliberately changed aspects (TinyMCE/editing) versus generic 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 breakage. I think we’re in pretty good shape based on the bug reports that have come in, but with automatic updates at our disposal, there’s no reason to wait three or four weeks before shipping 3.9.1.

I think we should try to fix the big, obvious stuff by Tuesday and release 3.9.1 as early as Wednesday. Some of the reported issues are pretty coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. to TinyMCE 4.0 and the various rewrites it triggered (like image editing), which means many of them won’t be handled by 3.9.1. That’s quite OK, especially since some of these may require some upstream fixes in TinyMCE, and since there can always be a 3.9.2 in the weeks ahead.

What I do want to do is have no “unknowns” — we should know exactly what regressed or otherwise is broken, under what circumstances, how major or minor it is, how high or low of a priority it should be, etc. That includes unit tests (if applicable) or at least clear test cases.

cc @azaozz @helen @wonderboymusic @gcorne @avryl @mcsf @ehg @jeremyfelt @ocean90 @westonruter

#3-9, #3-9-1, #agenda