Update | WordPress 5.6 Release Progress

The planned date for 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 is just about two weeks away on October 20, 2020. The release squad has been keeping me up to date on our collective progress, and I want to update our list of expected features!

Note: This update doesn’t include a number of cross-team initiatives, that could happen around the time of release, but may ship outside of CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. itself. Progress on those will be shared in our quarterly updates on make.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org//updates.

Planned for Beta 1

  • Automatic updates for major WordPress Core releases (opt-in)
  • New features from 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 upgrades
  • Widgets editing support in Core
  • Twenty Twenty-One theme
  • PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher 8 support
  • oEmbed updates

Not Planned for Beta 1

  • Twenty Twenty-One block-based/FSE-first – this will be available in the theme repo once completed.
  • Navigation menus block and screen – work will continue on the feature after 5.6. Find out more here.
  • CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. support – work will continue on this feature, but it won’t be ready for Beta 1. Find out more here.
  • Full Site Editing – Full site editing (FSE) will be added to the 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/ 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 once available.
  • Drop support for PHP 5.6 – On hold until a decision is made on when to stop support for older versions. Find out more here.

Uncertain for Beta 1

There are a few proposals that are still settling, and it’s not clear whether they will resolve in time for beta. I’ve listed them below for better tracking and transparency.

I also enlisted the generous help of some Triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors./TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress./Core folks to get a priority list of tickets that could be ready with a little more help. If you’ve got some spare time left in your contribution budget, head on over and see if any of those tickets call to you. 🙂

Thank you to the release squad for their help compiling and reviewing this post. Thank you to everyone who has contributed their time thus far!

#5-6, #planning, #update

oEmbed Update: September 28th

As of today, the current version of the oEmbed feature plugin is 0.9.0. These are the biggest changes since last week:

  • There is now an is_embed conditional tagtag A 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.) to more easily target embedded posts.
  • New: Support for embedding video and audio attachments.
  • You can now copy the whole embed code and not only the post’s URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org in the sharing dialog.
  • There were major JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript 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/. improvements. It is more robust and also a bit faster too.
  • We now show a read more link instead of the word count in the excerptExcerpt An excerpt is the description of the blog post or page that will by default show on the blog archive page, in search results (SERPs), and on social media. With an SEO plugin, the excerpt may also be in that plugin’s metabox..
  • Improved input sanitization.

These were all areas discussed in last week’s chat and I’m happy with what we achieved. The 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 has been installed on WordPress.com, although it has been temporarily deactivated 🙁. Nonetheless I’m looking forward to publishing another post regarding the plugin tomorrow…

There are only some smaller issues left, so now is a great time to test and review the plugin! Our weekly chat is today (September 28 2015 9pm UTC) in the #feature-oembed SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel

Note: We received some feedback regarding weird link previews in Slack for WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ links. This is a Slack 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. and not our fault. We already reached out to them and hope it gets fixed soon.

As always, the latest version of the plugin is available on the plugin repository. Errors and suggestions can be either reported on GitHub or our #feature-oembed Slack channel.

Next chat: October 5 2015 9pm UTC

#embeds, #feature-plugins, #feature-oembed, #update

oEmbed Update: September 22nd

Today I just tagged version 0.8.0 of the oEmbed feature plugin. Despite the small version number the 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 saw some major improvements compared to last week. The changelog:

  • Added translations for Spanish, French, Italian, Finnish, Hebrew. There are now 13 translations in total!
  • Majorly improved embed handling: There’s now a 404 view for non-existent posts and we redirect to the right URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org when post slugs change. The latter needs to be fixed in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. though, see #33920.
  • Improved 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/. support thanks to a review from the team
  • Better support for 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 and WordPress installs in a subdirectory
  • Now the plugin properly supports emojis too! 😀

This was only possible because of great feedback from plenty of users. The plugin is running smoothly on lots of sites now, including WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ itself! It will also ship to WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/ this week if everything goes as planned.

We’re very happy with the plugin’s current form. Our priority tasks are now reviewing inline documentation and making sure the plugin is as secure as possible. If these are areas you’d like to work on, your help would be highly appreciated!

As always,the latest version of the plugin is available on the plugin repository. Errors and suggestions can be either reported on GitHub or our #feature-oembed SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel.

Next chat: September 28 2015 9pm UTC

#embeds, #feature-plugins, #feature-oembed, #update

oEmbed Update: September 16th

We’re constantly refining the oEmbed feature plugin and have been receiving some very good feedback over past seven days.

The following things changed in the 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 compared to last week:

  • There are now 8 translations: Danish (Denmark), German (Germany), German (Switzerland), Japanese, Greek, English (Australia), Arabic and Arabic (Morocco).
  • Full Right-to-Left language support.
  • Various performance improvements.
  • Dashicons are now included as inline SVGs in the CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. for better IE compatibility.
  • Added new filters to the embed template, allowing for better customization

Besides that I wrote a post on make/flow about the oEmbed plugin and also pinged several teams asking for feedback. Following best practices is very important to us.

In our weekly chat on Monday we discussed several things:

  • The plugin is active on the Make blogs, but some server settings need to be changed for it to work properly.
  • We learned that the plugin runs great on several sites, even with +100k daily users!
  • To make sure the plugin works under any conditions, go give it a try and report any bugs to us.
  • There was even some “homework” for next week:

    To help test the plugin, take a couple of minutes to sit down with someone and watch them use the plugin. Take some notes, then post details and findings in a GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ issue.

We opened a couple of issues according to the feature plugin checklist to help us get ready for the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. merge window.

As always,the latest version of the plugin is available on the plugin repository. Errors and suggestions can be either reported on GitHub or our #feature-oembed SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel.

Next chat: September 21 2015 9pm UTC

#embeds, #feature-plugins, #feature-oembed, #update

oEmbed Update: September 9th

Another week, another status update for the oEmbed feature plugin!

The following things changed in the 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 compared to last week:

  • Further 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) improvements (props @afercia, @joedolson) by removing headings from the iframeiframe iFrame is an acronym for an inline frame. An iFrame is used inside a webpage to load another HTML document and render it. This HTML document may also contain JavaScript and/or CSS which is loaded at the time when iframe tag is parsed by the user’s browser. content.
  • Better embeds for image attachments
  • thumbnail_url, thumbnail_width and thumbnail_height are now sent in the oEmbed endpoint response if available.
  • Major refactoring to make an possible coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. merge easier (props @pfefferle)
  • Many 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. fixes thanks to improved test coverage. About 90% of the codebase is covered now!

On Monday there was also our weekly chat. The following things were discussed:

  • @pento will be working on implementing the plugin WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/, giving us a larger userbase with hopefully great feedback.
  • In general, we need more testers. So if you have a website, no matter if large or small, go give it a try!
  • The core merge window is getting closer. We opened a couple of issues according to the feature plugin checklist to help us get there.
  • We’ll reach out to various core teams to get feedback on different aspects of the plugin, like inline docsinline docs (phpdoc, docblock, xref), accessibility, user flow, etc.

As always,the latest version of the plugin is available on the plugin repository. Errors and suggestions can be either reported on GitHub or our #feature-oembed SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel.

Next chat: September 14 2015 9pm UTC

#embeds, #feature-plugins, #feature-oembed, #update

Joseph landed the first part of the them …

Joseph landed the first part of the themes update APIAPI An 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..

#themes, #update

An SSH2 backend for the plugin, theme, a …

An SSH2 backend for the 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, theme, and coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. update/install has landed. Handy if your host only allows sftpSFTP SFTP is an acronym for Secure File Transfer Protocol: A standard protocol to move computer files from one host to another over the Internet with enhanced security.. Thanks ShaneF.

#install, #ssh2, #update, #wp_filesystem