The WordPress coreCoreCore 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 bugbugA 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.
After a couple of questions from hosting companies about how to detect how well uploads are working at the server/request level, I thought further documentation would help.
Here is a walkthrough of the request flow for media uploads, both before and after WordPress 5.3. Hopefully this will help with troubleshooting and debugging uploads on your infrastructure or sites!
Before WordPress 5.3
Before WordPress 5.3, uploads had to complete during a single HTTPHTTPHTTP is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web and this protocol defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. POST request to .../wp-admin/async-upload.php or to the REST APIREST APIThe 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/. with the media endpoint (.../wp-json/wp/v2/media/).
The blockBlockBlock 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 uses the REST API to upload, while any uploads outside the block editor (or using the popup Media Modal) use async-upload.php.
When uploads failed, they would return whatever HTTP error the server is set up to give (usually in the 5xx range). This is usually due to timeout or resource exhaustion (like running out of memory) reasons.
WordPress 5.3+
In WordPress 5.3+, uploads have been decoupled from a single request to allow for resuming. Now, when an upload returns a 5xx error, there can be up to 5 followup requests.
This is accomplished differently depending on whether async-upload.php or the REST API are used.
Legacy Uploads
Outside of the REST API, the upload happens first with a request to async-upload.php, just like before 5.3.
If it fails, a request is made to admin-ajax.php with form-data containing action: media-create-image-subsizes and attachment_id: #### to attempt to complete the action.
If all retry attempts fail, the last request to admin-ajax.php has _wp_upload_failed_cleanup: true in form-data and attempts a cleanup. This deletes the the attachment post, the uploaded file, and any intermediate sizes that were created. Then, an error message is shown to users advising them to scale down the image and try uploading again.
REST API Uploads
When using the REST API, the initial request is to .../wp-json/wp/v2/media?_locale=user, and retry requests are to .../wp-json/wp/v2/media/####/post-process?_locale=user (where #### is the attachment post ID).
If all attempts to resume post-processing fail with HTTP 5xx errors, the last is a standard “delete attachment” request, sent to .../wp-json/wp/v2/media/####?force=true&_locale=user with X-HTTP-Method-Override: DELETEheaderHeaderThe 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.. It performs the same cleanup as described for the admin-ajax.php upload method.
Hopefully this helps in understanding how uploads work! If you have any questions, please ask in the comments for clarification.
WordPress 5.3 will introduce a number of CSSCSSCascading Style Sheets. changes in WordPress adminadmin(and super admin). While the necessity to improve wp-admin accessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (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) was previously raised in several TracTracAn open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. tickets, GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/’s recent interface improvements made it necessary to improve the whole interface as well.
Background: in April 2019, WP-Campus conducted an accessibility audit of the new editor interface, made by an independent contractor, Tenon LLC. This audit raised issues in the editor but also in the media modal, which uses wp-admin styles. Fixing these issues on Gutenberg and on the media modal but not in the whole wp-admin interface would have been very inconsistent.
Some tickets were milestoned to the 5.3 release cycle to start backporting Gutenberg accessibility improvements to the whole admin interface. These first tickets aim to improve:
Color contrasts on form fields and buttons
Focus styles on form fields and buttons
Content behavior on text zoom
Backporting some of Gutenberg’s styles to fix these issues introduced some visual issues with the interface elements hierarchy. Therefore, Design and Accessibility teams worked on the overall visual hierarchy:
darker tables and metaboxes borders were introduced for a better hierarchy between interface elements
Note for pluginPluginA 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 authors and WordPress developers
These changes are only CSS changes, and not structural changes, so the HTMLHTMLHyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. markup is exactly the same as before, with the same class attributes on each element.
In short, your styles should align with these changes if interface elements are not overridden by custom CSS. If you are overriding WordPress Admin CSS on form elements, you should test your plugins or your custom developments against WordPress 5.3 RCrelease candidateOne of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta). 1.
If you are a plugin author, there are different use cases:
Plugins that are using default Admin CSS styles should work just like before.
Plugins that are using custom Admin CSS styles by overriding default Admin CSS should be checked against 5.3.
Plugins that are using fully customized Admin CSS styles should not be concerned by those changes.
In general, plugin authors and WordPress developers are encouraged to:
remove any fixed heights: flexible heights are the WordPress recommended standard (and one of the main goals of the Admin CSS changes).
remove any custom top and bottom padding values.
remove any custom line-height values.
update their CSS code to override new focus/hover buttons colors if they use custom colors on this type of element.
In the next section of this dev notedev noteEach important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include a description of the change, the decision that led to this change, and a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase., you’ll find some noteworthy CSS changes coming in WordPress 5.3.
Main things that are changing in 5.3:
Forms fields:
text inputs
textareas
selects
checkboxes
radiobuttons
both primary and secondary buttons
colorpickers
Tables, notifications and metaboxes
Known issues
Available for testing in WordPress 5.3 RC 1, these changes have been tested in various use cases and no breakage situation was identified during the tests. Please check the report for full information about the testing panel.
This is a work in progress, just like anything in WordPress CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. These usability improvements were implemented during summer 2019 then tested and iterated on September and October. After 5.3 is released, the idea is to iterate on wp-admin design to make it fully consistent with the editor interface, and to provide a great and accessible editorial experience for websites administrators. The next minor releases will fix small issues with 5.3 changes and the next majors will improve the consistency of user experiences between Gutenberg and WordPress administration.
New style for primary buttonNew style for focused primary buttonNew style for secondary buttonLegacy style for focused secondary button
Darker borders on tables, notices, metaboxes and other similar elements
These changes introduce better contrast for borders for the following user interface elements:
Tables
Screen Options and Help
Admin notices
Welcome panel
MetaMetaMeta 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 (post boxes on classic editor or in edit attachment screens)
Cards
Health Check accordions and headings
Theme and Plugin upload forms
Legacy CSS code:
Depending on the related element, several CSS declarations were used.
In WordPress 5.3, a new screen has been introduced to help ensure the site’s administration email remains accurate and up to date. The site’s adminadmin(and super admin) email (as defined when installing WordPress, and found on the Settings > General page) is a critical part of every WordPress site. This new screen will help site owners remain in full control of their site, even as years go by.
How does this work?
By default, administrators will see a screen after logging in that lists the site’s admin email address once every 6 months.
They are presented with 4 actions:
The site’s email is verified as correct: After clicking “The email is correct” button, the user is taken to the Dashboard with an admin notice saying “Thank you for verifying”. The screen will be hidden for 6 months from all administrators.
The site’s email needs to be changed: After clicking the “Update” button, the user is taken to the Settings > General page where they can update the site’s email address. Administrators will be presented with the verification screen the next time they log in.
The user clicks “Remind me later”: the user is taken to the Dashboard. Administators will see the screen again after 3 days have passed.
Back to “Site Name”: When this link is clicked, the user will be taken to the site’s home page. Administrators will be presented with the verification screen the next time they log in.
Available Actions and Filters
Actions
There are a few action hooksHooksIn WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same. on the verification page that developers can use to customize the screen.
admin_email_confirm – Fires before the admin email confirm form.
admin_email_confirm_form – Fires inside the admin-email-confirm-form form tagtagA directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.), but before any other output.
A new action hook after the form was not introduced. Instead, use the login_footer action, which is called just after the closing </form> tag. The if ( 'confirm_admin_email' === $_GET['action'] ) conditional can be used to check that the email verification screen is being shown.
Filters
One new filterFilterFilters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output., admin_email_check_interval, has also been introduced. This filter can be used to change the frequency that administrators should see the verification screen.
The following example changes the interval from the default of 6 months to 2 months:
For more information about these changes, check out #46349 in TracTracAn open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress..
WordPress 5.3 contains a number of REST APIREST APIThe 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/. improvements designed to make it easier and faster to work with APIAPIAn API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. data from the blockBlockBlock 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 or other client applications.
Register Array & Object Metadata
As covered previously in this developer note on array & object metadata, it is now possible to use register_post_meta & register_term_meta (as well as the underlying method register_meta) to interact with complex metaMetaMeta 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. values as schema-validated JSONJSONJSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. arrays or objects using the REST API. See the linked post for more details.
Nested response filtering with _fields query parameter
This developer note on the changes to the REST API’s _fields= query parameter shows how you may now filterFilterFilters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. your REST API response objects to include only specific nested properties within the response body.
TicketticketCreated for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker.#42094
Set drafts back to “floating date” status
Once a date has been set for a draft, it was previously impossible to set the post back to showing “publish immediately” (also referred to as a “floating date,” where the post will be dated whenever it is published). As of 5.3, passing null for a date value will unset the draft date and restore this floating state.
We have introduced a caching wrapper around the generation of REST resource schema objects, which initial testing has shown to yield up to a 30-40% performance increase in large API responses. If you work with expensive or large REST API queries, things should be quite a bit faster now. (Ticket #47871)
The REST API has also been improved to avoid unnecessary controller object instantiation (#45677) and to skip generation of sample permalinks when that data is not requested (#45605).
Please Note: if your team has existing performance benchmarking tooling for the REST API, please contact the component maintainers in the #core-restapiSlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel; we very much desire to expand our metrics in this area.
Additional Changes of Note
In addition to these key enhancements, there are a number of smaller improvements to the REST API which may be of interest to developers.
It is no longer possible to DELETE a Revision resource using the REST API, as this behavior could break a post’s audit trail. Ticket #43709
The /search endpoint will now correctly embed the full original body of each matched resource when passing the _embed query parameter. Ticket #47684
rest_do_request and rest_ensure_request now accept a string API path, so it is possible to instantiate a request in PHPPHPThe web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher using nothing more than the desired endpoint string, e.g. rest_do_request( '/wp/v2/posts' ); Ticket #40614
Creating or updating a Terms resource via the REST API now returns the updated object using the “edit” context. Ticket #41411
It is now possible to edit a posted comment through the REST API when authenticating the request as a user with the moderate_comments capability. Previously a full editor- or adminadmin(and super admin)-level role was needed. Ticket #47024
rest_get_avatar_urls now receives the entire User or Comment object, not just the object’s email address. Ticket #40030
Welcoming Timothy Jacobs as a REST API component maintainer
Last but not least, many of you have no doubt seen @timothyblynjacobs active in tracTracAn open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress., slack, and community events. Timothy has driven much of the momentum that resulted in the above improvements, and I’m excited to (belatedly) announce that he has joined the REST API team as an official component maintainer. Thank you very much for your energy and dedication!
Thank you also to every other person who contributed to API changes this cycle; it’s the best version of the REST API yet, and we couldn’t have done it without the dozens of contributors who helped create, review and land these patches.
We’ve got some ambitious ideas about how we can make the REST API even better in 5.4. Interested in helping out, with code, docs, or triagetriageThe act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors.? Join us for weekly office hours, every week on Thursdays at 1800 UTC!
The PHPPHPThe web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher native JSONJSONJSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. extension has been bundled and compiled with PHP by default since 5.2.0 (2006). However, a significant number of PHP installs did not include it. In order to ensure a consistent experience for JSON related functionality in all supported versions of PHP, WordPress CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. has historically included a large number of workarounds, functions, and polyfills.
In WordPress 5.2, the minimum version of PHP supported was raised from 5.2.6 to 5.6.20. In the 8 year period since the last attempt was made to encourage use of the PHP native JSON extension, the number of distributions with this extension disabled has significantly decreased.
Because of this, the PHP native JSON extension is now required to run WordPress 5.3 and higher.
To prevent compatibility issues, a site that does not have the PHP native JSON extension enabled will see an error message when attempting to upgrade to WordPress 5.3. The update will be cancelled and the site will remain on the current version (see [46455]). This is to prevent potential compatibility issues on servers running custom PHP configurations.
Here’s a summary of what has changed.
Deprecated
The following functions and classes will remain in the code base, but will trigger a deprecated warning when used (see [46205]):
The Services_JSON and Services_JSON_Error classes and all methods
The wp-includes/class-json.php file
The (private) _wp_json_prepare_data() function
Removed
The following functions, and classes have been removed entirely from the code base (see the [46208] changeset):
json_encode() function polyfill
json_decode() function polyfill
_json_decode_object_helper() function polyfill
json_last_error_msg() polyfill
JsonSerializable interface polyfill
$wp_json global variable
JSON_PRETTY_PRINT constant polyfill
JSON_ERROR_NONE constant polyfill
Unchanged
The wp_json_encode() function will remain with no intention to deprecate it at this time. This function includes an extra sanity check for JSON encoding data and should still be used as the preferred way to encode data into JSON.
For more information about these changes, check out #47699 on TracTracAn open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. and the relevant changesets ([46205], [46206], [46208], [46377], and [46455]).
The introduction of Site metadata in WordPress 5.1 has opened up a lot of new possibilities for multisitemultisiteUsed 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.
Save database version and date updated in multisite site metaMetaMeta 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.
In [46193], the database version and the updated dates are now stored in the blogmeta table.
If your setup of multisite requires the database version to be accessed from a global context, instead of looping around every site with an expensive switch_to_blog call to get_option( 'db_version' ), you maybe want to try a function like the following.
function get_site_versions() {
global $wpdb;
$query = $wpdb->prepare( "SELECT blog_id, meta_value FROM $wpdb->blogmeta WHERE meta_key = 'db_version' ORDER BY blog_id DESC");
return $wpdb->get_results( $query );
}
Remove blog_versions table
Currently, there is a table in multisite called blog_versions. This table stores the database version as a number and the updated date. It was introduced in #11644 and has never been used in CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. since then.
With the database version and updated date now stored in theblogmeta table, blog_versionstable becomes redundant. In [46194], this table is removed from Core.
Changes to WP_MS_Sites_List_Table
WordPress 5.3 adds several enhancements to the WP_MS_Sites_List_Table class that allows pluginPluginA 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 authors to take advantage of Site metadata to provide a richer experience for multisite administrators on the Networknetwork(versus site, blog)Adminadmin(and super admin) Sites screen.
These enhancements will be very familiar to those who have used and/or customized the All Posts screen.
Site Status Views
The Network Sites screen now displays a list of links with the counts of Sites by status (e.g., Public, Spam, etc.), similar to the post status links on the All Posts screen.
The status links can also be filtered with the new views_sites-networkfilterFilterFilters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output., introduced in TracTracAn open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress.ticketticketCreated for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker.#37392.
For example, imagine there is a multisite where the main site acts as a directory of local restaurants and each separate site is for an individual restaurant, and restaurant owners can purchase a “subscription” that would allow them to display more information about their restaurant listing: a basic subscription would allow them to add photographs of their restaurant and an advanced subscription would additionally allow them to include their menu.
The subscription level could then be stored in the blogmeta table and “status” links can be added for the different subscription levels as follows:
When a user clicks on one of the custom status links, the rows in the list table can be limited to those sites with that specific custom Status using the existing ms_sites_list_table_query_args as follows:
The posts displayed on the All Posts screen can be filtered by date and categoryCategoryThe 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging.. Plugins can also add custom filter criteria with the restrict_manage_posts filter.
To continue with the above restaurant guide example, imagine the food served by each restaurant is also stored in the blogmeta table. We could then allow Network administrators to filter the Sites by the type of food by adding a dropdown of the various cuisines:
Dropdowns like this can now be added on the Network Sites screen with the new restrict_manage_sites action ( introduced in Trac ticket #45954), as follows:
When a user selects a food type and clicks the Filter button, the rows in the list table can be limited to just those Sites that serve that cuisine using the existing ms_sites_list_table_query_args filter, as follows:
As with other list tables, each row in the Sites list table can now have display states. By default, all Site statuses (other than Public) of each Site are included as display states. Additionally, the main Site for the Network also has the “Main” display state.
When a specific Site status view has been selected by the user, that status will not be among the display states (this is just like the All Posts screen).
Plugins can also modify the display states with the new display_site_states filter, introduced in Trac ticket #37684.
To further continue our restaurant guide example, we can add our custom statuses and the cuisine served at each restaurant as display states. This can be achieved as follows:
Fixing a bugbugA 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. created in the [44983] original patchpatchA 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., introduced pre query filters in multisite classes. This bug made short circuit act differently from other short circuits and as it still continues to execute. Now after the filter networks_pre_query and sites_pre_query run, the code will exit straight away. This allows developers to completely hot-wire the network and site query, to load from another source, such as a different cache or Elastic search.
Improved performance for site and network lookups by ID
In earlier versions of WordPress when running the code get_site( 12345 ) was run and no ID with that site exists, the result is not being cached. That means every subsequent lookup will still cause a DB query to be fired, which is unnecessary. In [45910] non-existent sites data is stored as -1 instead of false to save further database lookups.
WordPress 5.1 introduced the compare_key parameter for WP_Meta_Query, allowing developers to perform LIKE queries against postmeta keys. (See #42409 and the related dev note.) WordPress 5.3 expands the options available to compare_key, so that developers have access to metaMetaMeta 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.-key comparison operators similar to those available for meta values. See #43446 and [46188].
After this change, compare_key accepts the following operators: =, LIKE, !=, IN,NOT IN,NOT LIKE,RLIKE,REGEXP,NOT REGEXP,EXISTS, andNOT EXISTS. Usage notes:
For parity with value operators, we’ve added support for EXISTS and NOT EXISTS. In the case of compare_key, these map to = and !=, respectively.
MySQLMySQLMySQL is a relational database management system. A database is a structured collection of data where content, configuration and other options are stored. https://www.mysql.com/. regular expression comparison operators (RLIKE, REGEXP, NOT REGEXP) are case-insensitive by default. To perform case-sensitive regular expression matches, it’s necessary to cast to BINARY. To support this, WP_Meta_Query now accepts a type_key parameter; pass 'BINARY' to force case-sensitive comparisons. (This directly parallels the use of type when using regular expressions to match meta value.)
As is the case with other WP_Meta_Query-related parameters, the parameters discussed here are available to WP_Query using the meta_ prefix: meta_compare_key and meta_type_key.
Many themes (including bundled themes) use previous/next navigation in single post and pagination links in the posts/comments archives.
The markup output is under the responsibility of coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. private function _navigation_markup, which prints out an unlabelled <nav> element:
This <nav> element defines an ARIA landmark by default: landmarks help assistive technologyAssistive technologyAssistive technology is an umbrella term that includes assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities and also includes the process used in selecting, locating, and using them. Assistive technology promotes greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks that they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, by providing enhancements to, or changing methods of interacting with, the technology needed to accomplish such tasks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistive_technology users to perceive the page main sections and jump through them. However, when a landmark is used more than once in a page, it needs to be distinguished from the other ones to let users understand what the landmark is about.
To distinguish each context WordPress 5.3 will programmatically add specific aria-label parameter for each navigation menuNavigation MenuA theme feature introduced with Version 3.0. WordPress includes an easy to use mechanism for giving various control options to get users to click from one place to another on a site.. That parameter is being added to navigation menus generated by the following functions:
_navigation_markup()
get_the_post_navigation()
get_the_posts_navigation()
get_the_posts_pagination()
get_the_comments_navigation()
get_the_comments_pagination()
The following functions are also impacted as they are used to echo the result of the functions listed above:
the_post_navigation()
the_posts_navigation()
the_posts_pagination()
the_comments_navigation()
the_comments_pagination()
All these functions now implement aria_label parameter which can be used to pass custom value for the related HTMLHTMLHyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. attribute.
For reference, see the related TracTracAn open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress.ticketticketCreated for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker.: #47123
By default and before WordPress 5.3, the handler for wp_die() wraps error messages with a paragraph tagtagA directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.).
For a number of wp_die() calls in WordPress, a plain text string is passed and the HTMLHTMLHyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. displayed is valid:
wp_die( 'This is an error message.' );
Currently returns:
<p>This is an error message.</p>.
However, for a number of other wp_die() calls, the HTML displayed is invalidinvalidA resolution on the bug tracker (and generally common in software development, sometimes also notabug) that indicates the ticket is not a bug, is a support request, or is generally invalid. because paragraphs doesn’t allow every nesting possibility.
For example:
wp_die( '<h1>You need a higher level of permission.</h1><p>Sorry, you are not allowed to manage terms in this taxonomy.</p>' );
Currently returns:
<p><h1>You need a higher level of permission.</h1><p>Sorry, you are not allowed to manage terms in this taxonomy.</p></p>
With WordPress 5.3, error messages are wrapped in a <div> rather than a <p>, to better support string calls in wp_die(), without outputting invalid HTML.
These changes also add .wp-die-messageCSSCSSCascading Style Sheets. class for styling.
For example:
wp_die( '<h1>You need a higher level of permission.</h1><p>Sorry, you are not allowed to manage terms in this taxonomy.</p>' );
Will now return:
<div class="wp-die-message">
<h1>You need a higher level of permission.</h1>
<p>Sorry, you are not allowed to manage terms in this taxonomy.</p>
</div>
PluginPluginA 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 authors are encouraged to check their use of wp_die() and update their PHPPHPThe web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher calls to the function or their CSS styles if needed.
For reference, see TracTracAn open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress.ticketticketCreated for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker.#47580.
Oct. 14: Edited to include relevant ticketticketCreated for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. numbers for each External Library update. Oct. 15: Corrected the jQueryColor updated from version and added a bullet point about the changes to the random_passwordfilterFilterFilters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output.. Oct. 29: Added Lodash, ReactReactReact is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/., and ReactDOM to the list of updated external libraries.
In WordPress 5.3, a large handful of small developer-focused changes were made that deserve to be called out. Let’s take a look!
Passing Arrays to Supports Argument When Registering Post Types
When registering post type support for a feature using add_post_type_support(), it’s possible to pass “extra” arguments to provide more details for how that post type should support the feature.
However, passing multidimensional arrays with advanced configuration details to the supports argument in register_post_type() results in the extra arguments getting stripped before being added to the post type.
This has been fixed in WordPress 5.3 and multidimensional arrays can now be passed to supports in register_post_type().
For more information on this change, see #40413 on TracTracAn open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress..
HTML5 Supports Argument for Script and Style Tags
In HTML5, the type attribute is not required for the <script> and <style> tags. Including the attribute on these tags (type="text/javascript", for example) will trigger a validation warning in HTMLHTMLHyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. validation tools.
In WordPress 5.3, two new arguments are now supported for the html5 theme feature, script and style. When these arguments are passed, the type attribute will not be output for those tags.
For more information on this change, see #42804 on Trac.
Recording Additional Information For Saved Queries.
When the SAVEQUERIES constant is set to true, an array of data for every query to the database is logged for debugging purposes. This data includes:
The query itself
The total time spent on the query
A comma separated list of the calling functions
The Unix timestamp of the time at the start of the query.
A new filter, log_query_custom_data, has been added to allow custom debugging information to be added to this array of data. A good example where this would be useful is a pluginPluginA 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 that runs a custom search implementation (such as Elasticsearch). “This query was served by Elasticsearch” could be added to the debug data to help trace where queries are being served.
Line height should also be unit-less, unless necessary to be defined as a specific pixel value.
The WordPress CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.CSS Coding Standards
This standard was not followed consistently in the WordPress Core CSS files. All 346 line-height style definitions in Core have been individually examined and adjusted to now adhere to this coding standard.
This change will not cause any issues with Core adminadmin(and super admin) CSS or custom styling, but sites with custom admin styling should be double checked just to be sure.
add_settings_error() now supports the warning and info message types in addition to the error and updated/success styles. error and updated types will also now output the .notice-error and .notice-success instead of the legacy .error and .updated classes (see #44941).
A typo in the Walker_Nav_Menu_Checklist class has been fixed for the hidden title attribute input field’s class. Previously, the class was .menu-item-attr_title. However, the other fields use a hyphen, which the admin JavaScriptJavaScriptJavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/. also expects. For that reason, the class has been changed to .menu-item-attr-title. This field is used to auto-populate the Title Attribute input field for menu items when adding a menu item. Plugins and themes that extend or that have copied the Walker_Nav_Menu_Checklist class into their code base should also fix this typo (see #47838).
An index has been added to wp_options.autoload. While most sites will be completely unaffected by this, sites with a large number of rows in wp_options and a small number of autoload set will see a significant performance improvement (see #24044).
The Media Library type filter has been expanded to include document, spreadsheet, and archive filters (see #38195).
Autocomplete support has been added for PHPPHPThe web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher mode in the CodeMirror code editor used when using the plugin and theme editors (see #47769).
Support for flex, grid, and column layout techniques have been added to the list of CSS attributes that KSES considers safe for inline CSS (see #37248).
The charset used when wp_die() is called is no longer hard coded as utf-8. Instead, utf-8 will be used as a default and a different charset argument can be passed in the third $args parameter for wp_die() (see #46666).
The sms protocol has been added to wp_allowed_protocols() (see #39415).
Support for a custom WP_PLUGIN_URL has been added to load_script_textdomain(). Plugins may not be on the same host/path as the rest of the content. This ensures translations are loaded correctly in this scenario (see #46336).
Three additional parameters ($length, $special_chars, and $extra_special_chars) are now passed to the random_password filter in wp_generate_password(). Previously, code using this filter had no knowledge of the requirements a generated password needed to meet. Now, custom password generators can better utilize the filter instead of overriding the entire pluggable function. (see #47092).
Build/Test Tools
A new job on TravisCI test builds has been added to scan for potential PHP compatibility issues (see #46152).
Composer scripts will now use the version of PHPCSPHP Code SnifferPHP Code Sniffer, a popular tool for analyzing code quality. The WordPress Coding Standards rely on PHPCS./PHPCBF installed through Composer, removing the requirement to have them installed globally. The @php prefix has also been added to ensure each script runs on the PHP version that Composer used to install dependencies (see #47853).
Installing Grunt globally is no longer required to run build related scripts because Core now uses the local Grunt binary installed by NPM. For example, npm run build can now be used instead. (see #47380).
External Libraries
A number of external libraries and dependencies have been updated. Including Twemoji, which now includes the Transgender symbol and flag!
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The following external libraries have been updated:
Backbone.js from 1.3.3 to 1.4.0 (changes, see #47478)
