Help Test WordPress 6.7

Get Ready to Test the Future! WordPress 6.7 is just around the corner, and we need your help to make this release the best yet! With the official launch set for November 12, 2024, now is the perfect time to start testing.
By catching bugs early, you’ll be saving countless users from potential headaches when they upgrade. Whether you have a few minutes or a few hours to contribute, every bit of testing counts and is deeply appreciated. Your efforts directly contribute to ensuring a smooth and reliable release for millions of WordPress users.
Let’s make WordPress 6.7 flawless together!

One of the highlights in this release is the new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Five, offering flexibility with a variety of patterns for categories like services, landing pages, and more. Focused on simplicity and adaptability, it includes stunning typography and global-ready color palettes.

Stay up to date with the latest pre-release builds by checking the WordPress 6.7 Release Schedule. For real-time updates and discussions, join the #core-test 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 and participate in the release party and test scrubs.

Table of Contents:

Testing Tips

WordPress doesn’t require you to be a certified software tester or professional QA to contribute to testing. Simply use WordPress as you normally would for your own needs. If you encounter any issues or feel that something isn’t working as expected, you can report. 

Not sure what the expected behavior should be? No worries! Join the conversation on WordPress Slack, or create a ticket on Trac, where a helpful global WordPress community is always ready to assist.

Recommendations for Testing WordPress 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./RCRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. Versions:

  • Test CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Features that Matter to You:  Use your site for the purpose it was created. For instance, if you’re a blogger, running a social platform, or managing an e-commerce store, set up a staging site (ask your hosting provider if you’re unfamiliar with staging site). Update WordPress in the staging environmentStaging Environment A staging environment is a non-production copy of your site. This is a private place to build the site -- design, copy, and code -- until your client approves it for production or live. Sometimes used in addition to, or as a Development Environment., and continue using your site as you would daily. This will help you identify any issues that may affect your regular workflow. Take note of any issues or troubles you experience after the update. Do not test or update your live site with a beta version for testing purposes.
  • Use the ‘General Checklist’ provided in the post below to verify everything functions as expected after the update.

Ways to Test WordPress Beta Versions

There are multiple ways to test WordPress development or beta versions:

Playground

Playground is an easy and fast way to test beta or release candidateRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. versions of WordPress without setting up a full environment. You can quickly spin up a test environment using WordPress Playground.

Local Hosted Site

You can use software like Local or wp-env to create a local WordPress site. Once the site is ready, you can install the 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 to switch to the beta version of WordPress.

Setup Steps:

  1. Download and install Local.
  2. Create a new WordPress site.
  3. Once your site is up and running, switch it to the development or beta version of WordPress using the WordPress Beta Tester plugin. This plugin makes it easy to install pre-release versions of WordPress.
    To use the plugin:
    1. Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin.
    2. Navigate to Tools > Beta Testing.
    3. Choose the “Bleeding edge” or “Point releaseMinor Release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality. nightlies” option, depending on what you want to test.
    4. Click Save Changes and update your WordPress version.

For more detailed instructions, follow this guide.

Via WP-CLIWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/

If you prefer working with command-line tools, you can use WP-CLI to quickly install a WordPress beta version. 

Steps:

  • Create a local WordPress site with your preferred method.
  • Once the site is set up, open your terminal and navigate to the root directory of your WordPress installation.

Run the following command to update to the latest beta version:

wp core update --version=6.7-beta1

Or

wp core update --version=6.7-RC1

(Replace the version number as needed, such as –version=6.7-beta2.)

This method allows you to switch between different versions quickly, making it easier to test specific builds.

Using a Staging Site

You can create a staging site for your production/live site and update it to the WordPress beta/RC version. This allows you to safely test the new version without affecting your live site. Ensure that everything works as expected before applying updates to your production/live environment.

Testing Patches

If you are planning to test patches, you can follow these instructions to set up a WordPress development version locally.

Using Playground – with Playground, you can also easily test individual Core tickets without installing any software in your system. If you have a particular PR in the `wordpress-develop` or `gutenberg` repo that you’d like to test in the browser? you can do so through the following links:

General Testing Checklist

If you want to quickly test the updated WordPress version’s compatibility with your site, please verify the following checks:

First, update your WordPress to the Beta/RC version, enable debugging in wp-config.php, and update your theme and plugins.

  • Ensure plugins and themes didn’t deactivate automatically after the update.
  • Check the WordPress Site Health tool for any new warnings or issues.
  • Confirm there are no layout breaks or misaligned elements.
  • Test links and permalinks to ensure there are no 404 errors.
  • Verify that posts, images, and media are displayed correctly.
  • Ensure the sitemap and robots.txt files are functioning properly.
  • Ensure full access to the admin dashboard without errors.
  • If your site has custom blocks, create content in a new 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. and edit existing content.
  • Create a new post: add content, copy-paste text, and manually add media files. Save the post and observe the console for any issues.
  • Create a new page, add content, and check its display in different browsers.
  • Open the browser’s developer console and check for any errors, warnings, or notices.
  • Open the error log file and check for notices, warnings, and fatal errors.
  • Review user roles and permissions to ensure they remain intact.
  • Verify that any scheduled posts or automated tasks (like backups) still function as intended.
  • Ensure all integrated services (like payment gateways or analytics) are operational.
  • Open your site in different browsers and verify that all functionalities work as expected.

Key Features to Test

New default theme – Twenty Twenty-Five

With WordPress 6.7, the Twenty Twenty-Five theme brings a perfect balance of simplicity and flexibility. Designed with inspiration from nature and history, the theme offers a wide array of patterns and templates to suit various use cases, from personal blogs to complex portfolios. It includes rich colour palettes, and a diverse range of blog templates, making it adaptable for global audiences, for more details about this new theme read the introduction post

Patterns

The Twenty Twenty-Five theme introduces a wide range of pre-built patterns that help users create pages efficiently. These patterns cover various categories such as services, about pages, and calls to action and others. They are designed to offer flexibility and interoperability, allowing users to quickly build out intentional and cohesive page layouts.


Testing Steps:

  1. Navigate to Appearance > Editor to open the Site Editor.
  2. Open any template or create a new page.
  3. Click the “+” icon to add a new block.
  4. Go to the Patterns tab in the block inserter.
  5. Select patterns from different categories such as Services, About, Calls to Action, or Gallery.
  6. Insert the patterns and check if they are displayed correctly.
  7. Test the interoperability of these patterns by combining multiple patterns on a single page.
  8. Adjust and customize the patterns as needed and ensure that they are responsive across different devices.
  9. Ensure that the layout in the Site Editor matches the layout on the Frontend. 

Color Palettes & Styles

The theme offers a diverse range of colour palettes and style variations, allowing users to customize their site’s appearance with ease. The theme includes multiple color palettes and typography pairings designed for global use, ensuring high-quality support across various languages and regions. These options give users the flexibility to match their site’s aesthetic to their unique style while maintaining a cohesive and visually appealing look.


Testing Steps:

  1. Navigate to Appearance > Editor to open the Site Editor.
  2. Click on the Styles button (the half-moon icon) in the top-right corner.
  3. Choose different color palettes and typography pairings to apply to your site.
  4. Observe how the colors and fonts change across the site when a new palette or style is selected.
  5. Save the changes and preview the site on the frontend to confirm that the new styles are applied correctly across all pages.

Templates

Twenty Twenty-Five offers a range of adaptable blog templates, including text-focused blogs with sidebars and visually-driven photo blogs. It fully integrates with the Site Editor and utilizes new design features like the Grid block and Pattern/Section Styles.

Alternative Template Designs


The theme includes four sets of alternative designs: a text-only blog, a photo blog, a news blog, and a blog with a vertical 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.. These designs are built as patterns that replace the content of the template.

To test the photo blog design, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Appearance > Editor.
  2. Select the menu option Templates.
  3. Choose the template you want to test, such as Single Post, Page, Archive, or Blog Home.
  4. In the editor, open the Settings 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..
  5. Select the Template tab.
  6. In the Template tab, locate and expand the Design panel.
  7. The Design panel displays previews of the available designs:
    • Hover over a preview to see the design name.
    • Click on the preview to replace the content of the template with the chosen design.
  8. Ensure that the layout in the Site Editor matches the layout on the front end

Section Styles

The Twenty Twenty-Five theme introduces four unique section styles, designed to change the colors of Group and Columns blocks. These styles offer flexibility in creating visually appealing layouts. Testing involves ensuring that the new styles are applied correctly in both the editor and the frontend, with a focus on usability and readability.


Testing Steps:

  1. Create a new post or page in the dashboard.
  2. Insert a Group block or Columns block.
  3. Inside the Group or Columns block, add some blocks like heading, paragraph, etc.
  4. Open the Settings Sidebar, and select the Block tab.
  5. Open the Styles tab and find the Styles panel at the top.
  6. Select one of the alternative styles. Repeat for each style to test them all.
  7. Ensure the design looks the same in both the editor and on the frontend.
  8. Verify the color combinations are readable, including the background, text, links, and buttons.

If you encounter any issues or have suggestions, feel free to create an issue here

Refining Data Views 

Ability to Set the Density of Information in the Grid Layout

In WordPress 6.7, users gain the ability to adjust the density of grid layouts, offering a more customizable and responsive viewing experience. This update brings a new UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. control in the grid view, enabling users to select their preferred density. For more details about changes related to this, please follow the discussion.




Testing Instructions:

  1. Open the Site Editor from the dashboard.
  2. Navigate to the Pattern section.
  3. Click on the settings icon to open the appearance and settings panel.
  4. Adjust the grid density option from ‘Preview Size’.
  5. Observe how patterns display.

Option to Hide/Show the Filters in the User Interface



Looking for more details about this change, refer this ticket #63203

Ability to Customize the Column Order in Table Views

WordPress 6.7 introduces the ability to customize the column order in table views, offering more flexibility in how data is displayed. This feature allows users to move table columns left or right to create a more personalized layout when managing templates, patterns, or pages.


Testing Instructions:

  1. Open any table data view (Templates, Patterns, or Pages) in WordPress.
  2. Click the headers of the columns to see available actions.
  3. Select “Move left” or “Move right” to reorder the columns.
  4. Verify that the columns adjust accordingly and maintain the new order across page refreshes.

Please refer to ticket #63416 for more details about this change.

Graduate Data View Options Out of a Menu to Allow More Design Expression

The data view options have been improved for better design flexibility. A new “View Option” setting has been added with a gear icon. This opens an “Appearance” popover, allowing users to manage view preferences such as items per page and sorting options like “Sort by”, “Order by.”, Preview size, items per pages, etc. More details: #64175


Testing Instructions:

  1. Open any data view (Templates, Patterns, or Pages) in the site editor.
  2. Click on the gear icon to reveal the “View Option” setting.
  3. Open the “Appearance” popover to explore the available options.
  4. Adjust the items per page and sort options (e.g., “Sort by” and “Order by”).
  5. Verify that the settings are applied and reflected in the data view.

Polishing the Query 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. 

The Query Loop block, a key component for site building in WordPress, is undergoing refinements to enhance its usability and intuitiveness. While it remains a powerful and versatile block, the focus of these improvements is on making customization more straightforward. Key changes include better context detection and clearer settings copy to ensure users can easily create and manage complex queries. 

Testing Instructions:

  1. Open the WordPress dashboard and create a new page or post.
  2. Insert a Query Loop block into page or post.
  3. Review the settings in the sidebar, paying attention to the descriptions.
  4. Customize the Query Loop and ensure that the changes are intuitive and easy to apply.
  5. Save your changes and check the front-end output for accuracy.

Follow this iteration issue for more information about changes.  

Zoom Out to Compose with Patterns

WordPress 6.7 is introducing a new “Zoom Out” feature to enhance how users interact with patterns while building and editing their sites. This feature offers a high-level editing view, allowing users to focus on patterns rather than granular block-by-block adjustments. Key aspects include a zoomed-out interface for inserting patterns, creating new pages with an emphasis on patterns, and managing them (moving, deleting, etc.) via a vertical toolbar. Users can toggle between zoomed-out and detailed block editing, enhancing the overall user experience with improved pattern manipulation and advanced content-only editing.

Build with Patterns



Testing Instructions:

  1. Navigate to the Site Editor and Insert patterns into a page or post.
  2. Use the Zoom Out button to switch to a zoomed-out view.
  3. Verify that the overall structure of the page is visible, allowing for easier manipulation of patterns.
  4. In the zoomed-out view, try moving, deleting, and rearranging patterns using the new vertical toolbar.
  5. Ensure the patterns respond accurately to drag-and-drop actions and are placed correctly without shifting unexpectedly.
  6. Check that the zoom option functions as expected, allowing you to zoom in for detailed block edits and zoom out for a broader view of the page.
  7. Observe whether there are any UXUX UX is an acronym for User Experience - the way the user uses the UI. Think ‘what they are doing’ and less about how they do it. issues or inconsistencies when interacting with patterns in the zoomed-out mode.
  8. Exit the zoomed-out mode and ensure that all changes remain intact and display correctly in the standard block editor.

Explore Zoomed-out with Style Variations


Testing Instructions:

  1. Open Appearance > Editor to access the Site Editor.
  2. Select the canvas to begin editing the blog home template.
  3. Open Styles and select Browse styles to view the various style variation options. This will automatically trigger the zoomed-out view.
  4. Scroll through the different style options and explore how the zoomed-out view functions.
  5. Toggle between entering and leaving the zoomed-out view by turning the Style block on and off, switching style blocks, and returning to the style variations for comparison.

Please refer to ticket #64197 for more details about this change.

Media Improvements

WordPress 6.7 introduces significant media improvements, enhancing how media is handled and displayed. Key updates include support for HEIC image uploads with automatic conversion, automatic sizing for lazy-loaded images, and expanded background image functionality. Users can now set background images at the block and global levels, with new options like fixed backgrounds. Additionally, a more streamlined modal interface has been introduced for managing background images. These improvements optimize media handling and elevate site design flexibility.

Support HEIC Image Uploads

HEIC image uploads are automatically converted to JPEG on the server, ensuring compatibility with all browsers. The original HEIC image can still be downloaded from the attachment page. If the server doesn’t support HEIC conversion via Imagick, WordPress will prompt users to manually convert the image.


Testing Instructions:

  1. Upload a HEIC image in the Media Library.
  2. Confirm the image is converted to JPEG.
  3. Check if the original HEIC is available for download on the attachment page.
  4. Verify Imagick HEIC support in Tools → Site Health → Info → Media Handling.
  5. Ensure a warning appears if the server lacks HEIC support.
  6. Confirm the image displays correctly in posts and pages across different browsers.

Please refer to this detailed post about this feature.

Auto Sizes for Lazy-loaded Images. 

This feature automatically adds the auto value to the beginning of the sizes attribute for any image that is lazy-loaded. This enhancement improves image responsiveness by helping browsers to determine the appropriate image size automatically. 


Testing Instructions:

  1. Enable lazy loading for images on your WordPress site (this may be enabled by default).
  2. Upload or insert an image into a post or page.
  3. Open the browser’s developer tools and inspect the image tag.
  4. Check that the sizes attribute begins with auto for any lazy-loaded image.
  5. Save and preview the post or page to ensure proper image loading behavior on the front end.

Please refer to ticket #61847 for more details about this change.

Block-Level Background Images in Global Styles

WordPress 6.7 introduces the ability to set background images for blocks at a global style level, giving users greater control over the appearance of their site. This new feature allows users to apply background images across all instances of a specific block type, such as the Quote block, while also maintaining the flexibility to override the default background at the individual block level. This adds another layer of customization to WordPress themes, allowing for more cohesive and visually appealing designs.


Testing Instructions:

  1. Open the Site Editor from the Appearance > Editor 
  2. Select a template and navigate to Styles > Blocks.
  3. Search a block and set a background image for a block at the global style level, for example, for the Quote block.
  4. Check that all Quote blocks now have the default background image applied.
  5. Verify that the global and individual block-level settings are working correctly without any issues.

Please refer to ticket #60100 for more details about this change.

Add Support for Background Attachments (fixed backgrounds)

WordPress 6.7 introduces a new feature that allows you to toggle the background attachment behavior for blocks and site backgrounds. Users can now choose whether the background image scrolls with the page or remains fixed. This enhances design flexibility for block and site backgrounds. Please refer to ticket #61382 for more details.


Testing Instructions:

  1. Add a background image to the block.
  2. Confirm that the background image scrolls with the page by default.
  3. Toggle the “Fixed background” option on.
  4. Verify that the background image is now fixed.
  5. Save the changes and check the frontend to confirm the behavior.
  6. In the Site Editor, under Styles > Layout, add a site background image.
  7. Test the same scroll and fixed behavior for the site background.

Update Background Image Support to Use a Modal 

This update introduces a flyout sidebar panel that allows users to add, upload, or reset background images. The popover provides easier access to background image controls, ensuring seamless adjustments to background image properties like position, size and more. Please refer to ticket #60151 for more details.


Testing Instructions:

  1. Navigate to the block settings in the sidebar and add a background image.
  2. Verify that  clicking on the background image in the sidebar triggers the modal popover.
  3. Use the controls within the popover to adjust the background image properties (e.g., position, size).

Design tools 

The design tools have been significantly enhanced with expanded block support, offering more flexibility and creative control for designers and themers. Key updates include the long-awaited shadow support for Group blocks, as well as added support for borders, colors, padding, and backgrounds across various blocks like Buttons, Galleries, and Paragraphs. These improvements aim to streamline customization, allowing for more sophisticated designs directly within the block editor.

Click here to see details about each change

  • Buttons: Add border, color, and padding block supports. (63538)
  • Categories: Add border support (63950)
  • Column: Enable border-radius support. (63924)
  • Comment Template: Add Border Block Support. (64238)
  • Gallery: Add border block support. (63428)
  • Group: Add block support for shadow. (63295)
  • Heading: Add border support. (63539)
  • Image: Adopt margin block support (63546)
  • Latest comments: Add color block support (63419)
  • List Item: Add color support (59892)
  • Media Text: Add border support (63542)
  • Paragraph: Add border support (63543)
  • Post Comments Form: Add Border Block Support. (64233)
  • Post Content: Add background image and padding support (62499)
  • Post Date: Add border support (64023)
  • Post 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.: Add border support (64022)
  • Post Terms: Add border support (64246)
  • Post Title: Add border support (64024)
  • Quote: Add border support (63544), add spacing supports (63545), add background image and minimum height support (62497)
  • Search: Add margin support. (63547)
  • Site Tagline: Add border support (63778)
  • Site Title: Add border support (63631)
  • Social Links: Add border block support (63629)
  • Term Description: Add border block support (63630)

Continuing to Improve PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. 8.x Support

WordPress 6.7 continues to enhance compatibility with PHP 8.x by removing code that was specific to older, unsupported PHP versions. This ensures better performance, security, and stability for sites running on the latest versions of PHP.

Testing Instructions:

  1. Update your WordPress site to PHP 8.x.
  2. Performs tests as described in the “General Testing” section above.
  3. Monitor for any warnings, notices, or errors in the site’s functionality.
  4. Check the error log to ensure no deprecated or removed functions are in use.
  5. Verify that the admin dashboard and frontend load without issues.

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. Launches and Iterations

This release includes two new APIs designed to simplify developers’ workflows:

Template Registration API  

This feature simplifies template registration for plugins by introducing a new API. Previously, plugins had to hook into multiple filters, but now they can register templates more easily and efficiently.

Testing Instruction:
Please refer to the testing steps outlined in ticket #61577 to verify this feature.

Preview Options API  

This API allows for greater flexibility in preview functionality, enabling plugin developers to seamlessly integrate custom preview options into the WordPress editor. It addresses the need for varied publishing flows and tools.

Testing Instruction:
Please refer to the testing steps outlined in ticket #64644 to verify this feature.

Interactivity API

WordPress 6.7 introduces enhancements to the Block API, including new features aimed at improving interactivity. Currently, the focus is on testing the UI and functionality of the Lightbox Support feature. 

Testing Instructions:

  1. Add a Gallery block to a post or page.
  2. Upload and insert a few images.
  3. For each image, select the “Link” option and choose “Click to expand” to enable the lightbox. (See reference: Image)
  4. Save the page and view it on the front end.
  5. Test that clicking on the images opens the lightbox and ensure it supports keyboard 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).

Block Bindings API

The Block Binding API allows developers to bind custom 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. and dynamic data from plugins to blocks. This API simplifies the integration of post meta fields and custom data into block attributes, enabling dynamic content rendering of blocks without changing the existing codebase. This test focuses on verifying that post meta can be successfully registered, updated, and displayed in the front end using various blocks.

Testing Steps:

  1. Add the below code to your theme or plugin file to register the post meta and simulate dynamic plugin data.
add_action('init', function () {
	// Register custom post meta.
	register_meta(
		'post',
		'block_binding_meta_test',
		[
			'label'   		=> __( 'My Custom Post Meta', 'text-domain' ),
			'show_in_rest'  => true,
			'single'        => true,
			'type'          => 'string',
			'default'       => '',
		]
	);
	// END Register custom post meta.

	// Register dynamic data binding.
	$blockBindingCallback = function () {
		return sprintf( __( 'Current Time: %s', 'your-text-domain' ), date_i18n( 'r' ) );
	};

	if (function_exists('register_block_bindings_source')) {
		register_block_bindings_source( 'my-plugin/current-time', [
			'label'					=> __( 'Current Time', 'text-domain' ),
			'get_value_callback' 	=> $blockBindingCallback
		] );
	}
	// END Register dynamic data binding.
});

2. Create a new post and add a Paragraph block.

3. In the block settings, select Attributes and click Content. You should see the option to select My Custom Post Meta.

4. Enter a value for the post meta and save the post.

5. On the front end, check if the custom post meta value is displayed.

6. Add another Paragraph block and ensure the previously entered custom meta value is automatically populated.

7. Repeat the steps with other blocks like Image, Heading, and Button.

8. Now manually add another Paragraph block using the below code.

<!-- wp:paragraph {
    "metadata": {
        "bindings": {
            "content": {
                "source": "my-plugin/current-time"
            }
        }
    }
} -->
<p></p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

9. Verify that you can see the current time output on the front end.

HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. API

The HTML API, introduced in WordPress 6.2, is designed for block developers to provide better control and flexibility when working with HTML within blocks. This API enables support for custom HTML tags and attributes within the block editor. You can learn more about the HTML API in this WordPress Core post.

Testing Steps:

  1. If you’re a block developer, explore the support for new HTML tags and functions.
  2. Refer to this 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 for further details on how to test the new functionality.

If you’re a developer eager to dive in, check out the details in the API section of this post to give these exciting features a try!

What to Notice

  • Were all the features easily accessible and intuitive to use?
  • Did you notice any performance issues, such as slow loading or lag during editing?
  • Were there any visual inconsistencies or layout issues across different browsers or devices?
  • Did the drag-and-drop functionality work as expected in patterns?
  • Did you encounter any accessibility issues beyond screen readers and keyboard navigation, like color contrast or focus management?
  • Did the preview mode accurately reflect how the content appeared once published?
  • Did the experience handle large or complex pages smoothly without freezing or crashing?

Where to Report Feedback

If you find any issues but aren’t sure if it’s a bug or where best to report the problem, share them on the WordPress.org alpha/beta forums. If you are confident that you found a bug in WordPress Alpha/Beta/RC, report it on Core Trac for rollback auto-updates and the Gutenberg GitHub repo for every other feature. 

For helpful reporting guidelines, refer to the Test Reports section of the Test Handbook and review the Core Team guidelines for Reporting Bugs.

Changelog

1.0.0 – Initial Post

A big thank you to @poena, @5um17 for contributing and @oglekler for reviewing this post.

#core-test

Team Chat Agenda: September 24, 2024

Here is the agenda for the upcoming Test Team Chat scheduled for 24 September 2024 at 11:00 UTC, which is held in the #core-test Slack channel. Lurkers welcome!

Agenda

  • Attendance
  • Note-taker and facilitator selection for the next meeting
    • This week’s facilitator is – @webtechpooja
    • This week’s note-taker is – Need Volunteer
  • The call for Nomination for the Test team RepTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. is open for one more week. We will announce new Team reps soon!
  • Announcements
  • Test Team Announcements
  • Focal Group Updates
    • No Update
  • Questions/Blockers
  • Call for testers/visibility:
  • Open Floor
  • Got a topic? Add in comments below, or bring it up live during the chat.

Leave a Comment

  • Do you have something to propose for the agenda?
  • Can’t make the meeting, but have a question for the Test Team?

If any of the above apply, please leave a comment below.

#core-test

Help test WordPress 6.6

Roll up your sleeves, it’s time to help test WordPress 6.6 ahead of the July 16th, 2024 release date. Finding a bug now will help the millions of folks who upgrade later and this testing period is a critical part of what helps ensure smooth releases for all. Please know that any help you can provide to test this next release, whether it’s 10 minutes or 10 hours, is very much appreciated.

Changelog

June 6th: Updated the section on “Mix and match typography and color palettes from all styles variations” in light of changes to the feature to make it more 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. theme author focused.

Testing setup

You can test the latest development version, or a specific 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./RCRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. with the WordPress Beta Tester Plugin on any development siteDevelopment Site You can keep a copy of your live site in a separate environment. Maintaining a development site is a good practice that can let you make any changes and test them without affecting the live/production environment. you’d like (don’t use in production). You can also set up a local WordPress environment or create another site on your hosting environment to test. 

If you are planning to test patches, you can follow these instructions to set up a WordPress development version locally; or if you want to test just what is already in the release, use WordPress Playground or install WordPress in your local environment and use the WordPress Beta Tester Plugin

For more detailed steps about the 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, follow this link for complete instructions. With Playground, you can also easily test individual Core tickets.

General testing

These are general steps to take after updating. For more specific features, please read on:

  1. Update your theme and plugins to the latest versions.
  2. Switch to the Beta/RC/Night build you want to test.
  3. Check Site Health to see if there are already some issues that will be unrelated to the update.
  4. Check for Errors, Warnings and Notices
    • Turn on the debug log by adding settings to your wp-config.php. (Note that SCRIPT_DEBUG can change the behaviour of scripts, so it is recommended to test this constant both on and off.)
    • Run a spider against your site to process all the available pages.
    • Open the developer console in the browser.
    • Try to create a new post, add some content and save it, especially try to copy and paste content from another source, add comments, add media files of different types and do other usual actions in the admin. While doing it, pay attention to the information in the console to see if there are any issues.
      Note: Sometimes some issues are not visibly affecting any of the site functionality and sometimes it can be tricky to decipher where they are coming from. 
    • Check special functionality, go through the most important logic of your site: if you have an e-commerce store, place an order; perform a search; etc.
    • Open your site in different browsers and try the same things.
  5. Check the debug log to see if something is reported there.
    Note: Things that occur in the theme or a plugin need to be addressed to its developer. Additional information about your environment and site setting is in the Site Health information. Check information for any sensitive data before publishing it in any forum or other public space.
  6. Check Site Health to see if some issues were not present before.
    Note: depending on the message, the steps you should take can be quite different. For example, if you have a low PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. version (this issue should be present before testing the upcoming version) this can and should be changed on the hosting. So, for most of these issues, your hosting provider or a site developer will be the first person to go to.
  7. If errors appear in the log, check the paths to where these issues occurred, and contact the theme/plugin developer, or ask in the Forums (or your local native language Forum). But firstly check if this is already reported by someone else. In our case, multiple reports are not making things more important but only creating additional work for contributors who are triaging tickets. And read the sticky post first to find out how to work and communicate in the Forums.

Data Views

Data Views is the new and improved experience of navigating and viewing information in the Site Editor as part of the groundwork for phase 3. This release focuses on bringing a new side by side layout, consolidating patterns and template part management, surfacing general management views sooner across the experience for easier access, and a wide range of refinements. 

Testing instructions

  1. Open Appearance > Editor and select Pages.
  2. In this view, you’ll see the new layout called “list” that shows a side by side view. 
  3. Underneath “Add New Page” select the View Options icon. 
  4. Change the layout of the view by selecting “Layout” and explore changing other options, like sort by or what fields are displayed. 
  5. Click the back arrow to return to the overall Design section and select “Templates”.
  6. Underneath the “Add New Template” select the View Options icon. 
  7. Change the layout of the view by selecting “Layout” and explore changing other options, like sort by or what fields are displayed. 
  8. Click the chevron back arrow to return to the overall Design section and select “Patterns”.
  9. Explore creating new patterns and template parts before exploring how the two are presented in the same section. For example, view the “All template parts” and “All patterns”, try using different sorting options, and different layouts. 

You can continue testing as you see fit by creating different types of content (patterns, template parts, templates, and pages in various states) and changing how that content is then displayed in each management section (Patterns, Templates, Pages). 

Overrides in synced patterns

Building upon the power of synced patterns, overrides allow you to ensure a synced layout and style across patterns while enabling each instance of the pattern to have customized content. This provides consistency in design across different pieces of content. For instance, consider a user creating a ‘Recipe’ pattern. With the enhanced feature, the user can insert this pattern into multiple posts, ensuring that the layout and styling components, such as the overall design of the recipe card, remain consistent across instances. Meanwhile, the content, such as Ingredients and Steps, would be local to each post, allowing for individual customization. Additionally, folks would then be able to revisit and modify the design of the recipe pattern without affecting the content in existing instances.

Testing instructions

Create a synced pattern with overrides

  1. Create a new post.
  2. Insert a mixture of blocks that include paragraphs, headings, buttons, images, and optionally other blocks too.
  3. Select the blocks, and ‘Create a pattern’ from the block options menu.
  4. Give the pattern a name and make it ‘synced’.
  5. Once the pattern has been created, note that the content is locked and uneditable.
  6. Click the ‘Edit original’ button on the toolbar, this will take you into an isolated view for editing the pattern.
  7. Select a paragraph block in the pattern, and in the block settings 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. expand the Advanced section. Check the ‘Enable overrides’ option and give the override a name.
  8. Set overrides for a few blocks within the pattern, ideally including a heading, paragraph, button, and image block.  
  9. Click “Save” and then use the ‘Back’ button in the 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. area of the editor to go back to the post.

Editing the instances

  1. Select the pattern and duplicate it from the block options menu. 
  2. Now click the paragraphs for which you checked ‘Enable overrides’ and notice you can edit them. The updates don’t sync across instances of the pattern; the changes are local to the pattern.
  3. Click “Save” and confirm both Posts and Patterns are checked in the saving flowFlow Flow is the path of screens and interactions taken to accomplish a task. It’s an experience vector. Flow is also a feeling. It’s being unselfconscious and in the zone. Flow is what happens when difficulties are removed and you are freed to pursue an activity without forming intentions. You just do it.
    Flow is the actual user experience, in many ways. If you like, you can think of flow as a really comprehensive set of user stories. When you think about user flow, you’re thinking about exactly how a user will perform the tasks allowed by your product.Flow and Context
    , and confirm Save.
  4. View the post, the frontend should match the editor.

Add the pattern with overrides to another page

  1. Create a new page and add the newly created pattern with overrides to it.
  2. Make local changes to the pattern based on what blocks are able to be overridden. 
  3. Hit save when done.
  4. Click the ‘Edit original’ button on the toolbar, this will take you into an isolated view for editing the pattern.

Remove override option

  1. Select one of the blocks with overrides turned on and in the block settings sidebar expand the Advanced section.
  2. Select “Disable overrides” and confirm your choice in the warning modal (read the modal and give feedback!). 
  3. Select save and use the ‘Back’ button in the header area of the editor to go back to the page.
  4. Confirm you can no longer edit the previous override that was just disabled and that the content matches the original pattern once more.

Inserter shows all blocks

Previously, when selecting a block with the Inserter open, only the blocks that were allowed to be added to the selected block were shown often resulting in a confusing experience with an emptier than expected Inserter. With 6.6 when a block is selected, there’s now a list of blocks that can be inserted at the selected block, and a list with remaining blocks. This helps show both what’s allowed to be inserted within the selected block alongside the remaining blocks someone can still add. When you select a block outside of the allowed blocks, it’s inserted below the current block selection. 

Testing instructions

  1. Open Appearance > Editor to open the Site Editor. 
  2. Select Pages and “Add new page” to create a new page.
  3. Open the Inserter and add a List block. Notice that all blocks should still appear below the List Item block that’s allowed.
  4. Select the List Item block to add a list item.
  5. Select a different block, like a heading, and ensure it is inserted below the list. 
  6. Try this process a few times adding different blocks, like a Buttons block or Quote block. 

Unified and refreshed publish flow

The publish flows for both the post and site editor have been unified, bringing with it a new design and experience. Because publishing is such a critical part of the WordPress experience, it’s a key part to explore and find the edges of. 

Testing instructions

Create a page in the Site Editor

  1. Open Appearance > Editor to open the Site Editor. 
  2. Select Pages and “Add new page” to create a new page.
  3. Add some content and publish the page by changing the options in Block Settings under Page. 
  4. Please test further by adding a featured imageFeatured image A featured image is the main image used on your blog archive page and is pulled when the post or page is shared on social media. The image can be used to display in widget areas on your site or in a summary list of posts., changing the author, changing the date, etc. 

Create a post with the Post Editor

  1. Open the command palette with either Cmd+k on Mac or Ctrl+k on Windows and type “Add new post” before selecting the option that matches. 
  2. This will take you to a new post in the Post Editor.
  3. Repeat the process of adding some content and publishing.  
  4. Please test further by adding a featured image, changing the author, changing the date, adding categories, adding tags, setting an 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., etc. 

You can continue testing as you see fit by going through the publish flow in each experience again, testing against different plugins, editing the template used, and exploring different post/page states (draft, pending, private, etc). 

Create color OR typography only style variations [technical] 

To build on the design possibilities of a block theme with style variations, 6.6 adds the ability to target color or typography only variations and offers them as presets, alongside style variations. These new color only and typography only presets offer narrower changes, making it easier to offer broader color and typography options out of the box without larger changes to the design. To use this new option, theme authors will need to create color or typography only variations, meaning variations that only contain changes to one or the other option. For any style variations that only contain color and typography only changes, these will now automatically appear in this separate preset flow.

Testing instructions

These testing instructions can only be followed if you are testing after the release of beta 2 as there are changes in place after the initial release in beta 1 in light of this discussion.

  1. Create a new style variation that only contains changes to color OR typography settings and add this to your block theme under the same styles folder.
  2. Head to Appearance > Editor and open Styles.
  3. If you create a typography only variation, open Typography and you should see the variation under the heading “Presets” towards the bottom. If you create a color only variation, open Colors > Palette and you should see the preset available under “Palettes”.
  4. Select your variation and ensure it updates as expected.
  5. Save changes.

Section styles and changes to CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. specificity [technical] 

6.6 introduces the ability for theme authors to define style options for sections of multiple blocks, including inner blocks, that then appear in the Inspector in the same format as a block style variation. With just a few clicks, folks using block themes that add this functionality can quickly change just a section of a page or template to predefined styles that a theme author provides, like a light or dark version of a section. 

Important note:

As part of this work, changes were made to limit the specificity of global styles CSS output to make overriding coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. styles easier and enable the extension of block style variations. This was accomplished by wrapping all the specificity leveled rules in :root. These changes keep specificity mostly the same across the board except for some of the more complex selectors for layout styles and block style variations. You can read the full breadth of the discussion here

Testing instructions

Please try registering a few different section styles using one of the following methods. For examples of each, please review the PR that implemented this feature. 

  • Programmatically via `wp_register_block_style()`
  • By standalone theme.jsonJSON JSON, 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. partials within a theme’s /styles directory alongside a theme’s style variations.
  • Via theme style variations defining block style variations under styles.blocks.variations.

Grid layout

Grid is a new layout variation for the Group block that allows you to display the blocks within the group as a grid, offering new flexibility. There are two options for the Grid layout:

  • “Auto” generates the grid rows and columns automatically using a minimum width for each item. 
  • “Manual” allows specifying the exact number of columns.

Within the experience, there’s also a visual resizer that matches the text color set for the blocks to ensure it’s easy to see and use.

Testing instructions

  1. Open Appearance > Editor to open the Site Editor. 
  2. Select Pages and “Add new page” to create a new page.
  3. Add a grid block. 
  4. Explore adding 3-5 blocks within the grid. For example, a set of headers or images or some combination.
  5. Use the drag handles on an individual block to change the row and column span. Try this a few times! 
  6. Select the overall grid block and open block settings.
  7. Under “Layout”, explore changing the various options between manual and auto, along with minimum column width.
  8. Return the settings to auto and change the column span of a few of the items either by using the drag handles or through the block settings under Dimensions for each individual item. 
  9. Once done, use the preview option to preview the grid layout in different screen sizes to check whether the layout remains responsive. 
  10. Continue making changes: add new blocks, change the column and row span, transform into/out of grid, etc. 

Note: The only responsive styles in place for Grid are when there are multi-column spans in auto mode which is why there are intentional steps to test this in steps 8 & 9. 

New patterns experience for Classic themes

After adding easy access to patterns with a new Patterns tab under Appearance, Classic themes are slated to have access to the pattern experience baked into the Site Editor in this release. This will provide an upgraded, modern experience of managing and creating patterns, including all of the work that’s gone into data views.

Testing instructions

Create some patterns

  1. Open Appearance > Editor to open the Site Editor. 
  2. Select Patterns and create a few patterns. As a tip to move quickly, you can always create a pattern and add in a current pattern from Inserter with a few customizations to make it your own. 
  3. Return to the admin dashboard by clicking the back chevron twice. 

Switch to a Classic theme

  1. Open Appearance > Themes.
  2. Install and activate a Classic theme. For example, Twenty Twenty-One or Twenty Twenty. 
  3. After activating, open Appearance > Patterns. You should see a more confined Patterns experience matching what you’d find in the Site Editor.
  4. Create a new pattern in this new experience and publish it. Ensure it shows up correctly. 

Access new patterns page

  1. Return to the admin dashboard by clicking the back chevron twice and create a new post under Posts > Add New. 
  2. Within this post, open the command palette with either Cmd+k on Mac or Ctrl+k on Windows and search for “Patterns”. Ensure it takes you to this new patterns experience. 
  3. Return to the post, open options and select “Manage patterns”. Ensure it takes you to this new patterns experience.
  4. Return to the post, create or insert a synced pattern and, select the three dot menu in the block toolbar and choose “Manage patterns”. Ensure it takes you to this new patterns experience.

Negative margins

A long-requested feature has finally arrived: you can now set negative margin values. As a guardrail, this option can only be added manually to prevent people from accidentally adding negative values they didn’t intend using the slider control. 

Testing instructions

Margin support is included on the following commonly used blocks: Group, Paragraph, Columns, Code, Cover, Separator, Spacer, Gallery. For a full list, please refer to this chart

  1. Open Page > Add New. 
  2. Open the Inserter > Patterns and add a few patterns. 
  3. Select or add blocks with margin support within those patterns. 
  4. Open block settings > open the styling section > head to Dimension settings.
  5. In the margin controls, manually enter a negative number and try making a few changes. 
  6. Publish and view on the front end to ensure it matches the editor. 
  7. Repeat this process with more blocks!

Rollback Auto-Updates

To further protect websites and increase confidence in automatic plugin updates, 6.6 includes the ability to perform rollbacks when fatal errors occur during attempted plugin auto-updates by default. This allows you to enjoy the ease of auto-updates with the safety of rollbacks if anything goes wrong. 

Testing instructions

Please follow the testing instructions outlined in this merge proposal post:

  1. Ensure you’re using trunk or WordPress nightly.
  2. Install version 0.1 of the test plugin.
  3. Activate the test plugin and enable auto-updates.

The 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/ 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. will serve the version 0.2 version of the plugin, which will cause a PHP fatal error. To confirm a rollback is successful, data is written to the error.log at every point in the auto-update process, creating an audit trail the user can use to discern the flow and results of rolling back an auto-update. This logging is only intended for testing purposes.

Of note, any plugins or themes, other than the test plugin, should also update properly and only the active plugins will undergo the loopback testing. 

What to notice:

  • Did the experience crash at any point?
  • Did the saving experience work properly? 
  • What did you find particularly confusing or frustrating about the experience?
  • What did you especially enjoy or appreciate about the experience? 
  • What would have made this experience easier for site building and for writing new content?
  • Did you find that what you created matched what you saw on your site?
  • Did it work using Keyboard only?
  • Did it work using a screen reader?
  • Did it work while using just a mobile device?

Where to report feedback

If you find any issues but aren’t sure if it’s a bug or where best to report the problem, share them on the WordPress.org alpha/beta forums. If you are confident that you found a bug in WordPress Alpha/Beta/RC, report it on Core Trac for rollback auto-updates and the Gutenberg GitHub repo for every other feature. 

For helpful reporting guidelines, refer to the Test Reports section of the Test Handbook and review the Core Team guidelines for Reporting Bugs.

Please share feedback as soon as you can before the final release on July 16th, 2024.

Early opportunities to Test WordPress 6.6

Ahead of 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, let’s get testing for 6.6! What follows below are items pulled from the 6.6 roadmap that are ready for feedback and to be explored. The steps below are meant to kick off exploring and testing rather than to be overly prescriptive so please test further. Expect a more comprehensive post to come when we reach the beta period and more features are ready. To learn more about each feature, please refer to the 6.6 roadmap as this post is dedicated to testing items rather than explaining them in full. 

Testing setup

For testing each of these items, you can either use this Playground link to get started quickly or  set up your own test site with the latest version of 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/ and the noted experiments below enabled.

Data Views

Data Views is the new and improved experience of navigating and viewing information in the Site Editor as part of the groundwork for phase 3. This release focuses on bringing a new side by side layout, consolidating patterns and template part management, surfacing general management views sooner across the experience for easier access, and a wide range of refinements. 

Testing instructions

  1. Open Appearance > Editor and select Pages.
  2. In this view, you’ll see the new layout called “list” that shows a side by side view. 
  3. Underneath “Add New Page” select the View Options icon. 
  4. Change the layout of the view by selecting “Layout” and explore changing other options, like sort by or what fields are displayed. 
  5. Click the back arrow to return to the overall Design section and select “Templates”.
  6. Underneath the “Add New Template” select the View Options icon. 
  7. Change the layout of the view by selecting “Layout” and explore changing other options, like sort by or what fields are displayed. 
  8. Click the chevron back arrow to return to the overall Design section and select “Patterns”.
  9. Explore creating new patterns and template parts before exploring how the two are presented in the same section. For example, view the “All template parts” and “All patterns”, try using different sorting options, and different layouts. 

You can continue testing as you see fit by creating different types of content (patterns, template parts, templates, and pages in various states) and changing how that content is then displayed in each management section (Patterns, Templates, Pages). 

Overrides in synced patterns

Building upon the power of synced patterns, overrides allow you to ensure a synced layout and style across patterns while enabling each instance of the pattern to have customized content. This provides consistency in design across different pieces of content. For instance, consider a user creating a ‘Recipe’ pattern. With the enhanced feature, the user can insert this pattern into multiple posts, ensuring that the layout and styling components, such as the overall design of the recipe card, remain consistent across instances. Meanwhile, the content, such as Ingredients and Steps, would be local to each post, allowing for individual customization. Additionally, folks would then be able to revisit and modify the design of the recipe pattern without affecting the content in existing instances.

Testing instructions

Create a synced pattern with overrides

  1. Create a new post.
  2. Insert a mixture of blocks that include paragraphs, headings, buttons, images, and optionally other blocks too.
  3. Select the blocks, and ‘Create a pattern’ 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. options menu.
  4. Give the pattern a name and make it ‘synced’.
  5. Once the pattern has been created, note that the content is locked and uneditable.
  6. Click the ‘Edit original’ button on the toolbar, this will take you into an isolated view for editing the pattern.
  7. Select a paragraph block in the pattern, and in the block settings 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. expand the Advanced section. Check the ‘Enable overrides’ option and give the override a name.
  8. Set overrides for a few blocks within the pattern, ideally including a heading, paragraph, button, and image block.  
  9. Use the ‘Back’ button in the 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. area of the editor to go back to the post.

Editing the instances

  1. Select the pattern and duplicate it.
  2. Now click the paragraphs for which you checked ‘Enable overrides’ and notice you can edit them. The updates don’t sync across instances of the pattern; the changes are local to the pattern.
  3. View the post, the frontend should match the editor.

Add the pattern with overrides to another page

  1. Create a new page and add the newly created pattern with overrides to it.
  2. Make local changes to the pattern based on what blocks are able to be overridden. 
  3. Hit save when done.
  4. Click the ‘Edit original’ button on the toolbar, this will take you into an isolated view for editing the pattern.

Remove override option

  1. Select one of the blocks with overrides turned on and in the block settings sidebar expand the Advanced section.
  2. Select “Disable overrides” and confirm your choice in the warning modal (read the modal and give feedback!). 
  3. Select save and use the ‘Back’ button in the header area of the editor to go back to the page.
  4. Confirm you can no longer edit the previous override that was just disabled and that the content matches the original pattern once more.

Zoom out view

A few different initiatives are coming together to allow one to focus on building with patterns rather than granular block editing, including advancing contentOnly editing and zoomed out view. Taken together, this work aims to offer a first step towards a new way to interact with and build with patterns. What follows below are ways to test and invoke this new zoomed out view. 

Testing instructions

Explore zoomed out with Style variations

  1. Open Appearance > Editor to open the Site Editor.
  2. Select the canvas to begin editing the blog home template.
  3. Open Styles and select “Browse styles” to open up the various style variation options. This will cause the zoom out view to automatically appear. 
  4. Scroll through different style options and explore what it’s like to enter and leave the zoomed out view (turn on/off the Style book, style blocks and return to the variations, etc). 

Build with patterns

  1. Click the chevron back arrow to return to the overall Design section. 
  2. Select Pages and “Add new page” to create a new page.
  3. Give the page a title and select “Create draft”.
  4. Close out of the pattern selection modal.
  5. Open the Inserter and navigate to the Patterns tab. 
  6. Go through different categories of Patterns and notice that upon viewing a specific categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging., the canvas is zoomed out for a broader view.
  7. Add a few patterns to the page. Remember that you can drag and drop a pattern or click to add. 
  8. Click the chevron back arrow to return to the Manage pages section and edit a current page with content (you may need to create this). 
  9. Open the Inserter and navigate to the Patterns tab to explore adding a pattern to current content (are you able to place it where you want?). 

Unified and refreshed publish flowFlow Flow is the path of screens and interactions taken to accomplish a task. It’s an experience vector. Flow is also a feeling. It’s being unselfconscious and in the zone. Flow is what happens when difficulties are removed and you are freed to pursue an activity without forming intentions. You just do it.
Flow is the actual user experience, in many ways. If you like, you can think of flow as a really comprehensive set of user stories. When you think about user flow, you’re thinking about exactly how a user will perform the tasks allowed by your product.Flow and Context

The publish flows for both the post and site editor have been unified, bringing with it a new design and experience. Because publishing is such a critical part of the WordPress experience, it’s a key part to explore and find the edges of. 

Testing instructions

Create a page in the Site Editor

  1. Open Appearance > Editor to open the Site Editor. 
  2. Select Pages and “Add new page” to create a new page.
  3. Add some content and publish the page by changing the options in Block Settings under Page. 
  4. Please test further by adding a featured imageFeatured image A featured image is the main image used on your blog archive page and is pulled when the post or page is shared on social media. The image can be used to display in widget areas on your site or in a summary list of posts., changing the author, changing the date, etc. 

Create a post with the Post Editor

  1. Open the command palette with either Cmd+k on Mac or Ctrl+k on Windows and type “Add new post” before selecting the option that matches. 
  2. This will take you to a new post in the Post Editor.
  3. Repeat the process of adding some content and publishing.  
  4. Please test further by adding a featured image, changing the author, changing the date, adding categories, adding tags, setting an 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., etc. 

You can continue testing as you see fit by going through the publish flow in each experience again, testing against different plugins, editing the template used, and exploring different post/page states (draft, pending, private, etc). 

Mix and match typography and color palettes from all styles variations 

Style variations allow you to change the look and feel of your site, all while using the same theme. To build on the design possibilities of a block theme with style variations, 6.6 aims to add the ability to mix and match the color and typography styles of each individual style variation. 

Testing instructions

  1. Open Appearance > Editor to open the Site Editor. 
  2. Select Styles and, upon scrolling down, notice there are now Color and Typography sections split out separately from the overall style variations.
  3. Mix and match different style options. For example, pick a style variation and then below change the typography used or select your own color and typography combination.
  4. Select “Save” below to save changes.
  5. From there, click on the canvas to edit the template directly.
  6. Open the Style icon in the top right corner (if it’s not open). 
  7. Select “Blocks” and make a few changes to individual blocks globally, like Buttons or Image blocks.
  8. From there, use the chevron back arrow to return to the main styling view and select Typography. 
  9. Notice how there’s now a section called “Presets” where you can select between different typography options. Make a new selection.
  10. From there, use the chevron back arrow to return to the main styling view and select Colors. 
  11. Notice how there’s now a section called “Presets” where you can select between different color options. Make a new selection.

You can continue testing as you see fit by making additional style changes, like changing the color palette of a color preset, or trying to roll back between different revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision.

Grid layout

If you are using your own testing setup, you will need to enable the Grid Interactivity experiment by going to Gutenberg > Experiments. 

Grid is a new layout variation for the Group block that allows you to display the blocks within the group as a grid, offering new flexibility. There are two options for the Grid layout:

  • “Auto” generates the grid rows and columns automatically using a minimum width for each item. 
  • “Manual” allows specifying the exact number of columns.

This unlocks new layout possibilities that are prime for testing. 

Testing instructions

  1. Open Appearance > Editor to open the Site Editor. 
  2. Select Pages and “Add new page” to create a new page.
  3. Add a grid block. 
  4. Explore adding 3-5 blocks within the grid. For example, a set of headers or images or some combination.
  5. Use the drag handles on an individual block to change the row and column span. Try this a few times! If you are using your own test site and don’t see this option, please make sure you have enabled the Grid Interactivity experiment by going to Gutenberg > Experiments. 
  6. Select the overall grid block and open block settings.
  7. Under “Layout”, explore changing the various options between manual and auto, along with minimum column width.
  8. Return the settings to auto and change the column span of a few of the items either by using the drag handles or through the block settings under Dimensions for each individual item. 
  9. Once done, use the preview option to preview the grid layout in different screen sizes to check whether the layout remains responsive. 
  10. Continue making changes: add new blocks, change the column and row span, transform into/out of grid, etc. 

Note: The only responsive styles in place for Grid are when there are multi-column spans in auto mode which is why there are intentional steps to test this in steps 8 & 9. 

New patterns experience for Classic themes

After adding easy access to patterns with a new Patterns tab under Appearance, Classic themes are slated to have access to the pattern experience baked into the Site Editor in this release. This will provide an upgraded, modern experience of managing and creating patterns, including all of the work that’s gone into data views.

Testing instructions

Create some patterns

  1. Open Appearance > Editor to open the Site Editor. 
  2. Select Patterns and create a few patterns. As a tip to move quickly, you can always create a pattern and add in a current pattern from Inserter with a few customizations to make it your own. 
  3. Return to the admin dashboard by clicking the back chevron twice. 

Switch to a Classic theme

  1. Open Appearance > Themes.
  2. Install and activate a Classic theme. For example, Twenty Twenty-One or Twenty Twenty. 
  3. After activating, open Appearance > Patterns. You should see a more confined Patterns experience matching what you’d find in the Site Editor.
  4. Create a new pattern in this new experience and publish it. Ensure it shows up correctly. 

Access new patterns page

  1. Return to the admin dashboard by clicking the back chevron twice and create a new post under Posts > Add New. 
  2. Within this post, open the command palette with either Cmd+k on Mac or Ctrl+k on Windows and search for “Patterns”. Ensure it takes you to this new patterns experience. 
  3. Return to the post, open options and select “Manage patterns”. Ensure it takes you to this new patterns experience.
  4. Return to the post, create or insert a synced pattern and, select the three dot menu in the block toolbar and choose “Manage patterns”. Ensure it takes you to this new patterns experience.

Negative margins

A long-requested feature has finally arrived: you can now set negative margin values. As a guardrail, this option can only be added manually to prevent people from accidentally adding negative values they didn’t intend using the slider control. 

Testing instructions

Margin support is included on the following commonly used blocks: Group, Paragraph, Columns, Code, Cover, Separator, Spacer, Gallery. For a full list, please refer to this chart

  1. Open Page > Add New. 
  2. Open the Inserter > Patterns and add a few patterns. 
  3. Select or add blocks with margin support within those patterns. 
  4. Open block settings > open the styling section > head to Dimension settings.
  5. In the margin controls, manually enter a negative number and try making a few changes. 
  6. Publish and view on the front end to ensure it matches the editor. 
  7. Repeat this process with more blocks!

Rollback autoupdates

Please follow the testing instructions outlined in this merge proposal post:

There are no known issues directly related to Rollback Auto-Update that don’t currently exist in CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. I (@afragen) have been testing using the test plugin. 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 is on a test site, active, and set to auto-update. I have been running like this since the beginning of the year using the PR and on other sites for several years using the feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins..

  1. Install the PR into WP 6.5.x or trunk.
  2. Install version 0.1 of the test plugin.
  3. Activate the test plugin and enable auto-updates.

The 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/ 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. will serve the version 0.2 version of the plugin, which will cause a PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. fatal error. To confirm a rollback is successful, data is written to the error.log at every point in the auto-update process, creating an audit trail the user can use to discern the flow and results of rolling back an auto-update. This logging is only intended for testing purposes.

What to notice:

  • Did the experience crash at any point?
  • Did the saving experience work properly? 
  • What did you find particularly confusing or frustrating about the experience?
  • What did you especially enjoy or appreciate about the experience? 
  • What would have made this experience easier for site building and for writing new content?
  • Did you find that what you created matched what you saw on your site?
  • Did it work using Keyboard only?
  • Did it work using a screen reader?
  • Did it work while using just a mobile device?

Where to report feedback

As much as possible, please report issues directly in the Gutenberg GitHub repository for every feature except the rollback autoupdates which needs issues opened in Trac. In both cases, please check first to see if an issue is already open. If you are unsure of whether to report or are blocked for any reason, just leave a comment on this post and I’ll follow up to help ensure feedback gets to the right place. 

Leave feedback by June 4th, 2024

This lines up with the launch of beta 1, when a new testing post will be available with more features to explore.

#6-6, #gutenberg

Test with Playground

Are you excited about the next big release in the WordPress world? The current target for the WordPress 6.5 release is March 26, 2024, which is less than a month away! Your help in testing 6.5 ensures everything in this release is the best it can be.

In addition to 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. and RCRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. testing with a handy tool like 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, which requires a hosted or local development environment, did you know that you can test WordPress’s newest features using only your browser? Let’s see how WordPress Playground makes this possible.

“Instant” Test Environment

It’s true! Launching a site with WordPress Playground makes getting set up for testing much easier. Here’s a shortcut to launch Playground running the latest WordPress pre-release, with Test Reports pre-installed to help with bug reports.

  • Use the menus in the top-right corner of a Playground instance to change the PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. version, load additional PHP extensions, and more.
  • After applying changes, the Playground will reload with your new configuration.

Let’s Test!

Now open up the Help Test WordPress 6.5 post and put 6.5 through its paces! You can easily test and experiment with the latest development version of WordPress.

In addition to testing the latest pre-release build, here are the things what to Test with Playground:

  • Check Site Health to see if there are already some issues that will be unrelated to the update.
  • Check for Errors, Warnings, and Notices.
  • Open the developer console in the browser.
  • Try to create a new post, add some content, and save it, especially try to copy and paste content from another source, add comments, add media files of different types, and do other usual actions in the admin. While doing it, pay attention to the information in the console to see if there are any issues.
  • Test in different languages.
  • Use just your keyboard to navigate, or use a screen reader.
  • Test with both 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. and classic themes.
  • If you want to create your own setup in Playground and save it for later use, export your configuration with the download/export button in the top-right corner of Playground. Use the upload/import link to restore a saved configuration in the future.

If you’d like to learn more about WordPress Playground, check out the official Playground start page, and to go even further, the Playground developer portal.

Share Your Experience

Have you tried Playground for testing yourself? Were there any WordPress features that you couldn’t test? Got any tips or tricks you learned on the way? Please share your feedback in the comments below.

A big thank you to @oglekler, @ankit-k-gupta, and @ironprogrammer for contributing to this post.

#6-5#fse-outreach-program#full-site-editing

Help Test WordPress 6.5 Beta 3

This post is not covering all important features for testing in WordPress 6.5 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. 3, more will come. The previous call with general instructions for testing can be found here.

If you want to help in testing but are not sure how to start, join the #core-test channel in 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/. and ask for guidance. Seasoned testers will gladly point you in the right direction and share interesting stuff to play with. 


WordPress 6.5 RC1 is coming on 5 March 2024 which means String freeze – no new strings should be added or changed in the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. to give Polyglots the ability to translate strings into different languages before the release. This is the time to pay careful attention to new strings. If you know English by heart, please test new features and check out the language.

Table of contents

Key features to test

I18n – Translations performance

WordPress Core contributorsCore Contributors Core contributors are those who have worked on a release of WordPress, by creating the functions or finding and patching bugs. These contributions are done through Trac. https://core.trac.wordpress.org. put great efforts into localization performance, and we can see significant improvement in translation loading.

TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. ticket: #59656

Detailed information about the project:

Not all 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’s features went into the Core and the plugin is still useful with translations from PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php.-files that can benefit with OPcache.

Testing instructions

Special request to developers who maintain multilingual sites to test WordPress 6.5 with real data on staging versions of the real sites. Do it now and be confident when the time will come to update sites on production and benefit from this improvement.

General checks

  • Front end theme translations
  • Back end translations
  • Memory usage
  • Site speed
  • Compatibility with different plugins, including plugins for multilingual sites and plugins with huge amounts of strings
  • MultisiteMultisite Multisite is a WordPress feature which allows users to create a network of sites on a single WordPress installation. Available since WordPress version 3.0, Multisite is a continuation of WPMU or WordPress Multiuser project. WordPress MultiUser project was discontinued and its features were included into WordPress core.https://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network. translations
  • Absence of errors with different PHP versions (more: supported versions, recommendations)

Notes:

  • WordPress 6.5 has new or changed strings that are not available for translation until RC1. WordPress, themes and plugins can also have untranslated strings in languages you choose to test with. If you want to translate WordPress, follow the guidance in the Translator Handbook.
  • If you find an issue file a new ticket on Trac under the I18N component.
  • If you find an issue with a plugin or theme, please, report it to its developer.
  • The Query Monitor plugin is an active observer and can make an impact on the result as well.
  • Some strings can lack translation, and, in this case, they will be absent in 6.4 as well as 6.5 (with some exceptions as ‘Activate’ after plugin installation that looks the same but actually is a different string).
  • At this stage, the solution is working fine at first glance, and you have to be creative, notice details and take bold actions to get into every possible corner and dig deep to be sure that there are no hidden holes.

Fresh installations

  • Install 6.4 and 6.5 latest Beta/RCRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. with English default language keeping everything else the same.
  • Install Query Monitor plugin on both sites to check memory usage and execution time.
  • Debug settings
  • Change the default site language to another language
    • Check that translations are working in the Admin
    • Check that translation work on the front end (you will have by default Twenty Twenty-Four theme and it has strings for the front end)
    • Check that in general each 6.5 admin page uses less memory than 6.4 pages
    • Check that JS translations work, for example by clicking on the Apply button on the plugin page without selecting any plugins, install plugin, install theme, use Quick/Bulk Edit and change post/page attributes
  • Change the user language to another one adding a third language. If you know the RTL language, please check it and mix with LTR.
  • Install a lot of languages to check that the system will still be quick with this number of languages.
  • Install plugins that have translations in chosen languages (one of the most popular will most likely be one of them) and check that translations are identical.
  • Install a classic theme and check its translations.

If we missed some aspects that should be checked, please leave a comment below this post.

Plugin dependencies

Logic of installing, activation, deactivation and removal of plugins was reworked. This is a significant enhancement in addition to already existing safeguards during plugins installation for compatibility and errors checks. 

To get detailed information and find previous test calls, please, read Merge announcement

Testing instructions

Environment

  • Install WordPress 6.5 latest Beta/RC version
  • Debug settings
    • Enable Debug and Debug log
    • Keep Console open to notice JS and ajax/REST request errors
  • Remove all plugins
  • Install Query Monitor plugin and keep it active (it will show PHP errors if they will accrue)
  • Pay attention to details during the process

General checks

Plugins without dependencies should be installed, activated, deactivated, uninstalled, enabled/disabled to auto-updates as before (single or bulk). 

  • Install several plugins
  • Activate plugin
  • Activate several plugins using Bulk action
  • Install old versions of plugins via file upload
  • Update one plugin
  • Update several plugins using Bulk action
  • Try to install plugin that will cause fatal error (invent nonexistent function, for example)
  • Deactivate one plugin
  • Deactivate several plugins using Bulk action
  • Delete a plugin
  • Delete several plugins using Bulk action
  • Did the same with Enable/Disable auto-updates

Test dependencies

  • Installation: Dependents can only be installed via Plugins > Add New if their dependencies are installed.
  • Activation: Dependents anywhere (Plugins > Installed plugins / Plugins > Add New / modals / WP-CLIWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/ / after installing via ZIP) can only be activated if their dependencies are activated first.
  • Deactivation: Dependencies can only be deactivated on Plugins > Installed plugins (single or bulk), if their dependents are deactivated first.
  • Deletion: Dependencies can only be deleted on Plugins > Installed plugins (single or bulk), if their dependents are deleted first.

Steps to follow

Prepare several plugins and zip them into own archives to install via admin

  1. my-hello-dolly/my-hello-dolly.php
<?php

/**
* Plugin Name: My Hello Dolly
* Requires Plugins: hello-dolly
*/
  1. my-car/my-car.php
<?php

/**
* Plugin Name: My Car
*/
  1. my-car-trailer/my-car-trailer.php
<?php

/**
* Plugin Name: My Car Trailer
* Requires Plugins: my-car
*/
  1. game-stone/game-stone.php
<?php

/**
* Plugin Name: Game Stone
* Requires Plugins: game-scissors
*/
  1. game-paper/game-paper.php
<?php

/**
* Plugin Name: Game Paper
* Requires Plugins: game-stone
*/
  1. game-scissors/game-scissors.php
<?php

/**
* Plugin Name: Game Scissors
* Requires Plugins: game-paper
*/
ActionExpected behaviour
1. Install ‘My Hello Dolly’ plugin via Plugins > Add New
– Activate plugin
Plugin is installed
Error message
Dependency is not installed automatically
2. Install ‘My Car Trailer’ plugin via Plugins > Add NewPlugin is installed
3. Activate ‘My Car Trailer’ pluginPlugin is not activated
Error message
4. Install and activate ‘My Car’ plugin
– Activate ‘My Car Trailer’ plugin
Plugins are activated
‘My Car’ plugin has no link to deactivate
5. Deactivate ‘My Car Trailer’ plugin
– Deactivate ‘My Car’ plugin
Plugins are deactivated
‘My Car’ plugin has no link to delete
6. Delete ‘My Car Trailer’ plugin
– Delete ‘My Car’ plugin
Plugins are deleted
7. Install and activate ‘My Car’ plugin
– Install and activate ‘My Car Trailer’ plugin
– Manually delete ‘My Car’ plugin in the wp-content folder
– Open Plugins page in admin
‘My Car’ plugin will be deactivated due to its absence
‘My Car Trailer’ will still be active
Notice message
8. Add plugins ‘Game Paper’, ‘Game Scissors’, ‘Game Stone’ into wp-content folderWarning on the plugin page about invalid requirements 

These are only expected behaviour.

Now it is time to be creative and think about other possible scenarios. Write them down before actually testing and check if your expectations are matching what is happening.

Remember to check the Test Dependencies section above so that your expectations meet the current status of the feature.

Other improvements

Focus styles updated for full WCAGWCAG WCAG is an acronym for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines are helping make sure the internet is accessible to all people no matter how they would need to access the internet (screen-reader, keyboard only, etc) https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/. compliance

Trac ticket #51870

The focus style for form inputs, buttons, and links styled as buttons, which was first introduced in WordPress 5.3 (#34904), has been fully updated in WordPress 6.5. In WordPress versions prior to 6.5, the focus styles were inconsistent across different elements like inputs, buttons, and links.

This update modifies the focus styles for all interactive elements to be consistent with the styles introduced in WordPress 5.3, in order to meet WCAG 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) standards for minimum colour contrast ratios.

Please help test consistency of focus styles for form inputs, buttons and links styled as buttons with this video to guide you.

Fixing inappropriate pointer cursor on disabled form controls in WordPress

Trac ticket #59733

WordPress 6.5 introduces a fix for an issue where disabled form controls in WordPress were still showing a pointer cursor instead of the default cursor.

Previously, WordPress set all form controls and their label elements to use cursor:pointer to highlight that they are interactive. However, when a control is disabled or has `aria-disabled=”true”`, using a pointer cursor is inappropriate and doesn’t follow web standards.

The issue affected disabled checkboxes, radio buttons, and other form controls throughout WordPress, including in 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/ editor. While WordPress traditionally hides disabled controls rather than disabling them, there were still instances of improper cursor styling.

To address this, the change makes sure labels and disabled form controls, including those with aria-disabled, use the default platform-dependent cursor. This follows web accessibility standards and fixes the confusing pointer cursor on disabled controls. Interactive controls will still use a pointer for consistency with WordPress’ prior styling.

Testing instructions

  • Go to Settings > Reading
  • Make sure ‘Your homepage displays’ is set to ‘Your latest posts’.
  • Hover the mouse on the ‘Homepage:’ and ‘Posts page:’ disabled select elements.
  • Observe the mouse cursor is the default one.
  • Hover the mouse on the disabled select elements labels.
  • Observe the mouse cursor is the default one.
  • Install and activate the Link Manager plugin.
  • Add a new link.
  • In the form to create a new link, check the checkbox at another web address of mine.
  • Observe all the following checkboxes and radio buttons get disabled.
  • Hover the mouse on all radio boxes, checkboxes, and their labels.
  • Observe the mouse cursor is always the default one.

Media: AVIF support enabled

Trac ticket #51228

WordPress 6.5 introduces native support for uploading, editing, and saving images in the AVIF (AV1 Image File) format, provided the server has the required AVIF libraries installed.

The AVIF image format utilises the intra-frame encoding techniques of the AV1 video codec to offer drastically improved compression ratios compared to older image formats like JPEG, PNG, and even newer ones like WebP.

By incorporating AVIF encoding and decoding into the media functions, WordPress 6.5 allows users to upload AVIF files and take advantage of the file size savings, typically around 30-50% over JPEG/PNG for equivalent visual quality. Edited AVIF images can also be resaved while preserving alpha transparency and colour profiles.

Testing instructions

  • Verify your WordPress install supports AVIF — check Tools-> Site Health -> Info tab -> (expand) Media Handling section. Either GD or Imagick must have “AVIF” listed.
  • Upload an AVIF image to a post or the media library. Some test images are available in the libavif repository.
  • Test features like cropping and rotating in the media library and the editor
  • Test viewing post in all supported browsers (Browserstack would be great for that)
  • Test using the image_editor_output_format filterFilter Filters 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. to output AVIF’s for uploaded JPEGs, noting JPEG/AVIF file sizes with/without the filter.

The order of loading the import map and script modules has been changed. Now, the import map is loaded first, followed by the script modules. This fixes an issue where incremental import maps would fail if loaded after the script modules.

In classic themes, the import map and script modules are now loaded in the footer rather than the head. This is because the proper order (import map first) can’t be guaranteed when printing in the head in classic themes.

Testing instructions

Create a plugin with a dependency between two script modules and an import map. You can either follow the instructions below to create a test plugin, or simply download this test plugin.

Create a new plugin with three files:

test-plugin/test.php

<?php
/*
* Plugin Name: Test Script Modules
* Version: 1.0.0
*/

wp_register_script_module( 'bar', plugins_url( '/bar.js', __FILE__ ) );
wp_enqueue_script_module( 'foo', plugins_url( '/foo.js', __FILE__ ), array( 'bar' ) );

test-plugin/foo.js

import bar from 'bar';
bar();

test-plugin/bar.js

export default function bar() {
 console.log( 'bar' );
}
  • Upload the plugin on your test website.
  • Activate the plugin.
  • Open your site (frontend).
  • Check that “bar” was printed in the console.

To check that this fixes the positioning of the scripts/link in the classic themes:

  • Load a 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. theme (Twenty Twenty-Four or another)
  • Check that the scripts with type=”importmap” and type=”module”, and the link with rel=”modulepreload” are printed in the head.
  • Load a classic theme (Twenty Fourteen)
  • Check that the scripts with type=”importmap” and type=”module”, and the link with rel=”modulepreload” are printed in the footer.

Please share feedback as soon as you can before the final release on March 26, 2024.

What else you can do

  • Share this post to advise other WordPress developers, DevOps, QA specialists, and site owners to join efforts in testing.
  • Ask your local meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. organizers to make a meetup about testing, QA, and release cycles. 
  • Subscribe to the Test Team blog to get further information and updates. You may also subscribe to the Core Team blog to stay 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. with Core updates, including the latest “Week in Core” posts.
  • Join our regular Test Team meetings in the #core-test Slack channel, where you can get real-time updates, get help with testing, or discuss tricky cases. Participate in team meetings and test scrubs every week to engage in the testing community.
  • Do you have suggestions for how this post can be improved? Please leave a comment below.

A big thank you to @oglekler, @lumiblog, @vipuljnext@swissspidy@costdev@ankit-k-gupta and @webtechpooja  for contributing to this post.

#6-5, #test

Help Test WordPress 6.5 Beta 1

It’s time for the next big release in the WordPress world! WordPress 6.5 is planned for March 26, 2024, and we need your help to make it the best it can be. New features and improvements make this release a game-changer as always. 

This is the second Call for Testing post for the 6.5 release after the early call that highlighted new Editor features. 

Table of Contents:

Why should you test the upcoming WordPress version

Are you a professional QA specialist, developer, business owner or blogger? You can easily test WordPress Betas, Release Candidates and the development version at any given moment to be sure that your site, theme and plugins are fully compatible with the upcoming version and there are no complications with server settings, certain data in the database or other things that can be almost unique for your site. This way you can be sure that when a new version is launched, you can easily update your site, or your theme/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 users will be happy when they update their sites. 

Do you find something that does not match up but you are not sure? Report it in the Forums (details below).

This is also a great way for you to contribute to WordPress and become a part of the worldwide open-source community improving the CMS you are using in your day-to-day business that benefits your business as well. 

Get ready

This is quite simple. You can test the latest development version, or a specific 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./RCRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. with the WordPress Beta Tester Plugin on any site you want, but please only test on a development siteDevelopment Site You can keep a copy of your live site in a separate environment. Maintaining a development site is a good practice that can let you make any changes and test them without affecting the live/production environment. and not on a production/live site. You can use any local environment and run WordPress locally or launch another site on your hosting. Some hosting companies provide a simple way to launch a staging site alongside your main site, so check what options you have. And please consider the security of your staging site by avoiding the use of simple passwords or leaving the installation process halfway through.

Test Environment installation

If you are a developer or a QA specialist and are planning to test patches, you can follow these instructions to set up a WordPress development version locally; or if you want to test just what is already in the release, use a Playground or install WordPress in your local environment and use the WordPress Beta Tester Plugin

For more detailed steps about the Beta Tester Plugin, follow this link for complete instructions.

With Playground, you can also easily test individual Core tickets.

What to test

Each release introduces a lot of new features, improvements and bug fixes. Most of them do not require any additional actions from you, but in some cases, something might need to be changed. This is why testing is a good practice as well as following along with the release to see if something can require actions from your side or provide you new opportunities.

If you missed the previous call for testing, you can start with Early Opportunities to Test WordPress 6.5.

To make your testing experience as smooth as possible and save your time, follow the instructions: 

General testing

  1. Update your theme and plugins to the latest versions.
  2. Switch to the Beta/RC/Night build you want to test.
  3. Check Site Health to see if there are already some issues that will be unrelated to the update.
  4. Check for Errors, Warnings and Notices
    • Turn on the debug log by adding settings to your wp-config.php. (Note that SCRIPT_DEBUG can change the behaviour of scripts, so it is recommended to test this constant both on and off.)
    • Run a spider against your site to process all the available pages.
    • Open the developer console in the browser.
    • Try to create a new post, add some content and save it, especially try to copy and paste content from another source, add comments, add media files of different types and do other usual actions in the admin. While doing it, pay attention to the information in the console to see if there are any issues.
      Note: Sometimes some issues are not visibly affecting any of the site functionality and sometimes it can be tricky to decipher where they are coming from. 
    • Check special functionality, go through the most important logic of your site: if you have an e-commerce store, place an order; perform a search; etc.
    • Open your site in different browsers and try the same things.
  5. Check the debug log to see if something is reported there.
    Note: Things that occur in the theme or a plugin need to be addressed to its developer. Additional information about your environment and site setting is in the Site Health information. Check information for any sensitive data before publishing it in any forum or other public space.
  6. Check Site Health to see if some issues were not present before.
    Note: depending on the message, the steps you should take can be quite different. For example, if you have a low PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. version (this issue should be present before testing the upcoming version) this can and should be changed on the hosting. So, for most of these issues, your hosting provider or a site developer will be the first person to go to.
  7. If errors appear in the log, check the paths to where these issues occurred, and contact the theme/plugin developer, or ask in the Forums (or your local native language Forum). But firstly check if this is already reported by someone else. In our case, multiple reports are not making things more important but only creating additional work for contributors who are triaging tickets. And read the sticky post first to find out how to work and communicate in the Forums.

If this looks complicated, just do what you can and take it easy. If you didn’t find anything, most likely everything is working for you just like it should.

Check the WordPress 6.5 Release Schedule to see which pre-release build can be tested now.

Advanced testing

Ready to get started to dive deeply into testing? Be creative and think out of the box. 

Tips:

  • Test across different browsers.
  • Test in different languages.
  • Compare features on different screen sizes, including tablets and mobile.
  • Use just your keyboard to navigate, or use a screen reader.
  • Test with both 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. and classic themes.
  • Try to make everything the wrong way.

Key Features to Test

There are a lot of new features mentioned in the 6.5 Beta 1 release post. Each feature needs to be properly tested in all possible ways, noticing nuances and details. Start with the Font library, it will be a lot of fun to explore and will be useful for you shortly. If you are a plugin developer or a plugin user who has issues with plugin dependencies from time to time, try Plugin dependencies to see how it is working and if this meets your expectations. And there are even more new options and enhancements in the Editor. Forget about testing and spend some time admiring the great work… Not really, test them while having fun.

New translation system

WordPress 6.5 changes how translations are being loaded, replacing the existing localization system with a more lightweight and much faster mechanism. This is mostly an invisible change which has been extensively tested before via the Performant Translations plugin. If you are using WordPress in a language other than English (US), you should verify whether translations are still loaded everywhere as expected. Especially if you are using any kind of multilingual/translation plugin. Make sure that all your translations are up-to-date on Dashboard -> Updates as well. More information about this new translation system will be published in a dedicated developer note soon.

Where to report feedback

If you find any issues but are not sure that is actually a bug or where should be reported, share them on the WordPress.org alpha/beta forums. If you are certain that you found a bug in WordPress Alpha/Beta/RC and don’t have an issue with something else, report it on Core Trac. And the Test Reports plugin will help you in creating detailed reports. Please search for an existing report first. 

For helpful reporting guidelines, refer to the Test Reports section of the Test Handbook. Also, see the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Team guidelines for Reporting Bugs.

Please share feedback as soon as you can before the final release on March 26, 2024.

What else you can do

  • Share this post to advise other WordPress developers, DevOps, QA specialists and site owners to join efforts in testing.
  • Ask your local meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. organizers to make a meetup about testing, QA and release cycles. 
  • Subscribe to the Test Team blog to get further information and updates. You may also subscribe to the Core Team blog to stay 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. with Core updates, including the latest “Week in Core” posts.
  • Join our regular Test Team meetings in the #core-test Slack channel, where you can get real-time updates, get help with testing or discuss tricky cases. Participate in team meetings and test scrubs every week to engage in the testing community.
  • Do you have suggestions for how this post can be improved? Please leave a comment below.

A big thank you to @vipuljnext, @lumiblog, @swissspidy, @ironprogrammer, @ankit-k-gupta, @webtechpooja and @annezazu for contributing to this post.

Changelog

2024-02-15

  • Initial Post

#6-5

Early Opportunities to Test WordPress 6.5

Ahead of 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 for WordPress 6.5 on February 13th, this is an early opportunity to provide feedback as features are rapidly underway. Of note, this is intentionally just a selection of what’s ready to test and doesn’t include everything mentioned in the roadmap. Expect a broader testing post, like this for 6.4, for the release once beta 1 is out in the world. 

Note: this post currently mentions setting up a test site with Gutenberg 17.5 RC1. This post will be updated once 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/ 17.5 is released on Jan 17th, 2024. 

New data views in the Site Editor

About the feature

This work kicks off aspects of the WP Admin Redesign efforts in an iterative and contained way by bringing a new experience to the template, template part, and pattern lists in the Site Editor. Right now, the following features are slated for inclusion:

  • Ability to display a table with specific fields, pagination and quick actions.
  • UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. for toggling fields and for sorting and filtering data by field.
  • UI for selecting entries and performing bulk actions.
  • Support for different layouts, like classic table, grid view (including gallery), with the option to display a side-by-side preview.
  • Support for saving and toggling between “views”, which are specific configurations of layouts, field visibility, etc.

For this early testing opportunity, not everything is yet in place. 

Prerequisites

There are a few different environments that can be used for testing. Pick one to use:

The experiment for ‘new admin views’ will also need to be switched on from the 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 experiments page (wp-admin/admin.php?page=gutenberg-experiments).

Testing instructions

Here are some suggestions for functionality to test, but you are encouraged to experiment beyond these. 

Templates

  1. Open Appearance > Editor and select Templates.
  2. From the list, select “Manage all templates”.
  3. In this view, you’ll see the new experience. 
  4. In the upper right corner under “Add New Template” select the View Options icon.
  5. Change the layout of the view by selecting “Layout” and try selecting different items.
  6. Change the “Sort By” option. 
  7. Change what fields are shown by selecting different options under “Fields”.
  8. Change how many items are displayed with the “Rows per page” option to 10 and try using the pagination.
  9. Add a filterFilter Filters 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. and reset it. Here’s a screenshot for guidance.
  10. Use the search box to search for “full width” (this is only available if you use InstaWP, otherwise create your own custom template), use the three dot menu to rename it before deleting it outright. 

Patterns

  1. Open Appearance > Editor and select Patterns.
  2. In this view, you’ll see the new experience. 
  3. In the upper right corner select the View Options icon.
  4. Change the “Sort By” option. 
  5. Change what fields are shown by selecting different options under “Fields” and enabling sync status. 
  6. Change how many items are displayed with the “Rows per page” option to 10 and try using the pagination.
  7. Add a filter to sort by synced or not synced and reset it. Here’s a screenshot for guidance.
  8. Use the search box to search for a pattern and use the three dot menu to duplicate it. 

Pages

  1. Open Appearance > Editor and select Pages.
  2. In this view, you’ll see the new experience. 
  3. Underneath “Add New Page” select the View Options icon. 
  4. Change the layout of the view by selecting “Layout”.
  5. Change the “Sort By” option. Note that there are pages in different stages of publication (draft, private, published) and two users on the site if you are using the InstaWP instance.
  6. Change what fields are shown by selecting different options under “Fields”.
  7. Change how many items are displayed with the “Rows per page” option to 10 and try using the pagination.
  8. Add a filter to sort by author and status. Here’s a screenshot for guidance. Note that there are pages in different stages of publication (draft, private, published) and two users on the site if you are using the InstaWP instance.
  9. Use the search box to search for the “About Me” page and use the three dot menu to view it. 
  10. On the left hand side under “Custom Views”, select the “+ New view” option to add a custom view.
  11. Name the view and select “Create”. From there, customize it to your liking.
  12. Select “Review 1 change” and save to ensure this view saves.
  13. Leave the Site Editor and return to ensure the view remains.

Pattern Overrides

About the feature

Building upon the power of synced patterns, pattern overrides allows you to ensure a synced layout and style across patterns while enabling each instance of the pattern to have customized content. This provides consistency in design across different pieces of content. For instance, consider a user creating a ‘Recipe’ pattern. With the enhanced feature, the user can insert this pattern into multiple posts, ensuring that the layout and styling components, such as the overall design of the recipe card, remain consistent across instances. Meanwhile, the content, such as Ingredients and Steps, would be local to each post, allowing for individual customization. Additionally, folks would then be able to revisit and modify the design of the recipe pattern without affecting the content in existing instances.

Prerequisites

There are a few different environments that can be used for testing. Pick one to use:

The experiment for ‘pattern overrides’ will also need to be switched on from the Gutenberg plugin experiments page (wp-admin/admin.php?page=gutenberg-experiments).

Testing instructions

Create a synced pattern with overrides

  1. Create a new post
  2. Insert a mixture of blocks that include paragraphs and optionally other blocks too
  3. Select the blocks, and ‘Create a pattern’ 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. options menu
  4. Give the pattern a name and make it ‘synced’
  5. Once the pattern has been created, note that the content is locked and uneditable
  6. Click the ‘Edit original’ button on the toolbar, this will take you into an isolated view for editing the pattern
  7. Select a paragraph block in the pattern, and in the block settings 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. expand the advanced section. Check the ‘Allow instance overrides’ option
  8. Use the ‘Back’ button in the 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. area of the editor to go back to the post

Editing the instances

  1. Select the pattern and duplicate it
  2. Now click the paragraphs that you checked ‘Allow instance overrides’ for and notice you can edit them, and the updates don’t sync across instances of the pattern, the changes are local to the pattern
  3. View the post, the frontend should match the editor

Robust RevisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. 

About the feature

Templates and template parts will now show revisions, alongside broader upgrades to style revisions with more detailed descriptions, pagination, and the ability to view revisions with the Style Book enabled. 

Prerequisites

There are a few different environments that can be used for testing. Pick one to use:

Testing instructions

To better test this feature, two different prebuilt options are offered, with one containing a large number of revisions already and one completely fresh. See Prerequisites above for more information and please consider testing both scenarios!

For styles:

  1. Open Appearance > Editor and select Styles.
  2. Make a few changes to Styles and save your changes in between each change. For example, add some custom colors, change block specific styling, and switch to a new style variation. 
  3. After a few changes have been saved, open up the Styles panel and select the revisions icon. 
  4. Select a prior version and notice the description of the revision. 
  5. While selecting the prior version, toggle on the Style Book and explore that view. 
  6. Roll back to a prior version. 
  7. Make more changes to Styles, saving each time, and repeat the process until you see pagination in the style revisions if you’re using the fresh install.
  8. Try going to different pages of revisions and ensure you can roll back. 

For templates and template parts:

  1. Open Appearance > Editor and select a template. 
  2. Make a few changes to the template and save changes in between each change. For example, remove blocks, change block alignments, add blocks, change the order, etc. 
  3. Open block settings and 

Font Library

About the feature

The Font Library makes it easy for anyone to install, remove, and activate fonts across your site. It’s available globally, independent of the theme activated, similar to the Media Library. Any installed font, whether installed by a user or a theme, can then be selected across the editing experience.

Prerequisites

There are a few different environments that can be used for testing. Pick one to use:

Testing actions

Pulling from this prior dedicated post on this same feature, here are some suggestions for functionality to test, but you are encouraged to experiment beyond these:

  • Upload fonts using the upload dialog and drag-and-drop.
  • Install fonts from Google Fonts using the Install Fonts tab.
  • Verify that uploaded/installed font assets are stored in your site’s /wp-content/fonts/ directory.
  • Activate/deactivate individual font variants.
  • Compare active fonts with the list on the Styles > Typography sidebar.
  • Assign custom fonts to elements (like text or headings) on the Styles > Typography sidebar.
  • Assign custom fonts to specific block types (like buttons) in Styles > Blocks.
  • Check how the fonts appear on your site’s frontend.
  • Delete an uploaded font family, and verify that the font assets are removed from /wp-content/fonts/.

Additional technical feedback opportunities

Reporting bugs and enhancements 

Please report all bugs and enhancements in the Gutenberg GitHub repository. Thanks so much for helping test what’s to come in 6.5 early and often. Please note that both bugs and enhancements to improve current functionality are greatly appreciated and welcomed. 

If anything is amiss with this post or you’re having trouble contributing, please comment below or pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” me, @annezazu, in 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/ 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/..

#6-5, #gutenberg, #site-editor

Help Test WordPress 6.4

Get ready for the next big release in the WordPress world! WordPress 6.4 is set to launch on November 7, 2023, and we need your help to make sure it’s the best it can be. With exciting new features and improvements, this release promises to be a game-changer for WordPress users everywhere.

Stay up to date with the latest pre-release builds by checking the WordPress 6.4 Release Schedule for availability. For real-time updates and discussions, join the #core-test Slack channel. Engage in the testing community by participating in weekly scheduled team meetings and test scrubs.

Table of Contents:

Testing Environment 💻

Please only test on a development siteDevelopment Site You can keep a copy of your live site in a separate environment. Maintaining a development site is a good practice that can let you make any changes and test them without affecting the live/production environment. and not on a production/live site. You can follow these instructions to set up a local installLocal Install A local install of WordPress is a way to create a staging environment by installing a LAMP or LEMP stack on your local computer. or use a tool like this to set up a development site.

Once your development site is set up, please install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester Plugin. After activation:

  • Navigate to Tools > 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. Testing.
  • Set the update channel to “Bleeding Edge” and click Save Changes.
  • Set the stream option to “Beta/RCRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. only” and click Save Changes again.
  • Navigate to Dashboard > Updates and click the Update to latest… button.

For more detailed steps, click this link for complete instructions.

Testing Tips 💡

At a high level, here are a few tips to keep in mind to get the most out of helping to test:

  • Test across different browsers.
  • Test in different languages.
  • Compare features on different screen sizes, including tablets and mobile.
  • Use just your keyboard to navigate, or use a screen reader.
  • Test with both 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. and classic themes.

Key Features to Test 🔑

Style

Global Styles RevisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision.

This release introduced a handy feature that allows you to reset global styles back to their default settings with ease (52965). With this enhancement, you can effortlessly reset any changes made to global styles back to their original state. To try out this feature, simply make a few revisions to the global style and then open the revision panel. You’ll see a list of all the revisions, and at the bottom, there’s an option called “Reset to Default.” Click on it to return to the original settings.  Now, you only need to go through one revision check instead of two (53281). Previously, the revision panel was only available after two styles of revisions were saved in the database.

Please help test global style revisions with this video to guide you:

Twenty Twenty-Four Default Block Theme

Twenty Twenty-Four default theme is set to launch in 6.4. The theme for the year 2024 will use new design tools to make websites look better and be easier to edit. It will have special designs for three groups of people: entrepreneurs and small businesses, photographers and artists, and writers and bloggers. Here, you can find Related Gutenberg Issues and PRs.

Please help test the default Twenty Twenty-Four theme, this is the demo video:

Interface

Write with Ease

In this release, ongoing efforts are being made to ensure a smooth and enjoyable writing experience in WordPress(#53305). These enhancements include the addition of new keyboard shortcuts and improvements in copying and pasting text from other sources. The Link preview feature (53566) now includes a convenient “Open in new tab” control, making it simpler to enable or disable this option. Additionally, toolbars for List, Quote, and Navigation blocks have been enhanced to make your writing and editing process more efficient.(#53699, #53697). Please help test using keyboard shortcuts and copying and testing text from other sources.

Please help test the improved writing experience for list items with this video to guide you:

Please help test the capture toolbar in the quote block with this video to guide you:

Please help test the ‘Open in New Tab’ feature with this video to guide you:

Improvements to List View

The List View in WordPress has undergone some great enhancements. Now, managing your content is even more straightforward and user-friendly. You can easily rename Group blocks using a handy options menu that pops up. When dealing with gallery and image blocks, you can now see previews of your media to make sure everything looks just right. Additionally, resizing and duplicating blocks have become much more efficient, with keyboard shortcuts available for quick actions. The List View now allows the escape key to deselect blocks if blocks are selected(48708). These improvements in the List View make organizing and editing your content in WordPress a breeze.

This video is showcasing the use Escape to deselect blocks feature:

Please help test by renaming group blocks in the list view with this video guide:

This image showcases a media preview for the gallery and image blocks:

An image showcasing media preview for gallery and image blocks


Please help test by using keyboard shortcuts for duplicating blocks with this video to guide you:

 Improvements to the Command Palette 

The Command Palette has undergone several changes and improvements since its first introduction in WordPress 6.3. For example, you can now do more with blocks using new commands, including block transforms and the options to duplicate, copy, remove, and insert after/before. The Command Palette also looks different with a fresh design. Plus, it now supports adding commands without icons. If you’re using WordPress on a small screen, like a mobile phone, the Command Palette will work better for you. It also uses more consistent language and actions, making it easier to use. Lastly, there are improvements in snackbar motion, making your experience smoother. These changes make managing your WordPress site even easier and more user-friendly.

Please help test adding blocks by commands and registering commands without icons with this video to guide you:

This image shows you registering commands without icons.

This video is showing some improvement for the command palette on smaller screens:

Test with tweak and add more consistent commands:

This video displays snackbar motion, and you can test this feature by similarly giving commands.

Please check out more improvements to the recent updates made to the Command Palette.

Blocks

Block HooksHooks In 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. (Previously Auto-inserting Blocks)

Introducing the Block Hooks feature, a reimagined approach to the earlier concept of Auto-inserting Blocks. Basically, Block Hooks is an 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. that developers can use to make websites more flexible. It allows one block to attach itself to another block and show its content before or after that block. You can also attach a block to a parent block and make it appear at the beginning or end of the list of child blocks inside it. (53987

Even though Block Hooks is mainly for developers, it also gives a nice experience to the end users by automatically inserting a block into a specific location. It lets developers place blocks where they want them to be and gives room for customization. The goal is to make block themes more adaptable with the help of plugins.

One thing to keep in mind is that the block using this API will only be auto-inserted if the original template or part hasn’t been changed by the user. This is done to respect the user’s choice. This API can only be applied with block patterns, template parts, and templates that come from the block theme files. It doesn’t alter anything the user has already created or changed on a website. 

Note: This feature is a more technical item to test. Check out this for a more detailed guide.

Query 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. Block Pagination Enhancements 

Now, you no longer need a full page reload when you navigate between pages in a Query Loop block. There’s a new setting that prevents full page reloads. This improved way of moving between pages is made possible by a special version of the Interactivity API, and it makes browsing smoother. Plus, you can also decide how many pages you want to show using the Query Page Numbers block for even more control. Query block: Client-side pagination (53812), make mid-size parameter settable for Query Pagination block. (#51216).

Please help test adding pagination in your query block. This video guides you through the pagination in the query block.

Client Side Pagination

List Block Enhancement 

In the List Block, a new feature has been introduced that allows you to merge consecutive lists instead of keeping them as individual blocks. This enhancement streamlines your editing experience by combining lists that appear one after another, making it easier to manage and format your content seamlessly. (52995)

Group Block Enhancements

Now, you can easily rename Group blocks to organize your content better (53735). This feature makes it simpler to identify and manage different sections of your page, streamlining your editing experience. Additionally, the introduction of background images for Group blocks brings more creativity and customization to your layouts. These enhancements empower you to create more organized and visually appealing content in WordPress. (53934)

Background image support to the Group block

Please help test by renaming the group blocks using this video guide.

Add Aspect Ratio to the Image Block’s placeholder

Aspect ratio controls to the Featured ImageFeatured image A featured image is the main image used on your blog archive page and is pulled when the post or page is shared on social media. The image can be used to display in widget areas on your site or in a summary list of posts. block were introduced in the 6.3 version, and now, these helpful controls have been extended to the placeholder of the Image block. This enhancement offers greater flexibility, particularly when designing wireframe-style patterns that establish a layout for users to fill in with their content.

You can select the default coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress./navigation-link variant within the core/navigation block, offering more flexibility and customization options for your navigation menus (50982)

Please test by adding navigation block and start customizing it with this video to guide you.

Add Lightbox Functionality for your Images

WordPress 6.4 introduces an improvement to the image experience with the new Image Lightbox feature. Recognizing the need for clarity in the user interface (UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing.), a dedicated Settings panel has been instituted for the image block. Within this panel, users can easily locate the Lightbox toggle, available both in Global Styles and Block settings.Display your pictures in an engaging way using the brand-new lightbox functionality. This cool feature will work with image blocks, so you can click on an image and see it in a bigger size right on top of your existing content. (51132)

General Block Improvements

  • Preformatted: Add margin and padding support. (45196)
  • Social Links: Add Threads Icon. (52685)
  • Verse: Enable line breaks. (52928)
  • Details: Add block gap support. (53282)
  • File: Add margin and padding support. (45107)
  • Column: Add stretch alignment (53325).
  • Image: Keep image size upon replacing an image (49982).
  • Buttons: Allow using a button element for button blocks (54206).
  • Post Content: Add block gap support (54282).
  • Post Content: Add color control support (51326).
  • Footnotes: Add link, background, and text color support (52897).
  • Footnotes: Add typography, dimensions, and border block supports (53044).

Patterns

Create your own Pattern Categories

Now, you can neatly group your patterns by categories when you create them. These categories are handy because you can use them to organize and find your patterns easily. You can also edit these categories in the 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. when you’re editing a pattern.

To ensure this feature functions smoothly, here are the steps to follow: Begin by adding various user patterns, both synced and unsynced, assigning categories to each (remember to hit ‘enter’ or add a ‘,’ after each categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging.). Then, navigate to the site editor patterns page and verify that the categories appear in the left navigation panel. Confirm that selecting a category displays the corresponding patterns accurately and that theme patterns continue to appear as expected. Check that all patterns are accessible under ‘All Patterns’ and that the search function operates seamlessly. Lastly, duplicate a theme pattern and ensure that the new pattern inherits the same category. Additionally, when adding a user pattern with the ‘Footer’ category, make sure it displays alongside the theme Footer patterns, taking into account the category slug distinction (theme patterns use ‘footer’ while the user category name should match this).
To make things even simpler, all patterns, whether they’re synced or not, are listed together in one place. There’s no need to look in different tabs for synced patterns; they’re all in the same section. (53837)

Please help test creating categories, adding synced and unsynced patterns, and assign them categories with this video to guide you:

Import/Export Patterns as JSONJSON JSON, 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. files.

To maintain compatibility with Reusable blocks, you can now import and export patterns as JSON files, providing a straightforward way to transfer custom patterns between websites. (54337

Please help test import and export patterns with this video to guide you:

Where to Report Feedback 🗣

If you find any issues, it’s best to share them on the WordPress.org alpha/beta forums, or, if you are more technically savvy and comfortable, on Core Trac. For helpful reporting guidelines, refer to the Test Reports section of the Test Handbook.

Please share feedback as soon as you can before the release on November 7, 2023.

A big thank you to @annezazu,@annebovelett @coachbirgit, @ironprogrammer, and @rashiguptaa for reviewing and contributing to this post.

Changelog 🪵

2023-11-01

  • Changed Query loop enhanced pagination name to Force Page Load.

2023-10-06

  • Removed Font Library feature as it is punted(moved) to the WP 6.5 release.

2023-10-03

  • Update on Font library and link added to individual Help Test font library post.

2023-09-26

  • Initial post.

#6-4, #call-for-testing, #fse-outreach-program, #full-site-editing