How to Contribute to WP 6.8 Release Party

Welcome! Here’s a guide to help you join and participate in the Release Parties scheduled for WordPress 6.8. If you are new to attending a release party, this will help you get started.

Schedule:

Set a reminder for the upcoming release party:

How to Join:

  1. Download 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/..
  2. Sign in to the WordPress Slack Workspace:
    • Visit WordPress Slack to log in or create an account if you don’t already have one.
    • Join the #core Channel.
    • This is where the release party happens! Use this link to join: #core channel
  3. Arrive Early and Be Prepared:
    • Join the channel about 10 minutes before the scheduled time and make sure your test environment is ready to go.

Skip above steps if you already have WordPress Slack account and joined #core already.

Setting Up Your Test Environment:

Make sure you have a local development environment or testing site ready to run the latest WordPress 6.8 version. 

(Please don’t test/update on any client site or any Production/Live Site)

Here are two methods to update to an RCRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge./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. version:

  1. Using 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/: Ensure WP-CLI is installed on your environment.
    Run the following command to update:
    • wp core update --version=6.8-beta1
  • To verify the update with: 
    • wp core version
  1. Using the WordPress Beta Tester PluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party:
  • Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin:
    • Go to Plugins > Add New, search for “WordPress Beta Tester,” install, and activate.
  • Configure the settings:
    • After activation, go to Tools > Beta Testing in your WordPress dashboard.
    • You’ll see options to select the type of updates you want:
      1. Bleeding Edge – Updates to the latest development version.
      2. Beta/RC Only – Updates only to Beta and RC versions.
    • For testing an upcoming 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., choose Beta/RC Only.
  • Go to Dashboard > Updates and update to the RC version.

What to Test During a Release Party:

When testing a WordPress release candidate (RC), the goal is to catch any issues or inconsistencies that could impact the final release. Here’s a checklist of key areas to focus on during testing:  General Testing Checklist

You can also test anything you would like to ensure and provide your feedback. 

Where to Provide the Status of Your Testing:

Main Channel: Provide updates directly in the #core channel on the WordPress Slack.

Format for Updates: Use a brief format to keep your updates clear and easy to follow:

  • What You Tested: Mention the specific feature you tested like creating a page with a coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. 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.
  • Results: Share whether the test passed or failed, along with any notable observations. Please look at the below scrshot for reference.
    • If test Passed: add :white_check_mark:
    • If any issues happen,  add :red_circle:
  • Issue Details (if applicable): If you found a bug, provide a short description and any error messages, screenshots, or reproduction steps.

How to Update RC/Beta Via WP CLICLI Command Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress. – Demo Video 

For a step-by-step video guide on updating the RC version through WP CLI, watch this demo:

How to Update RC/Beta Via Beta Tester Plugin – Demo Video 

If you prefer using the Beta Tester plugin, here’s a video guide to walk you through the process:

Previous Release Parties 

If you looking to see what happens in Release Party, please checkout recent RC-2 Release Party here

Screenshot of Previous Release Party

Props @krupajnanda and @5um17 for proofreading and peer review.

#core-test

Help Test WordPress 6.8

Mark your calendars! WordPress 6.8 is set to launch on April 15, 2025. WordPress 6.8 will be the first major release of 2025 and will focus primarily on being a polished and bug-fix release. Get ready for a more refined and seamless WordPress experience than ever before! 

Testing early means fewer surprises for users down the line! Whether you have a few minutes or a few hours, your help in catching bugs early during the release cycle ensures a smoother upgrade experience for millions of users after the stable release. Every contribution counts and is deeply appreciated. 

Let’s work together to refine WordPress 6.8! 💪

Stay up to date with the latest pre-release builds by checking the WordPress 6.8 Release Schedule. 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 Tips

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

Not sure about the expected behaviour? 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 the 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 that 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 make use of software like Local or wp-env to create a local WordPress site. Once the site is ready, you can install the Beta Tester plugin 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, you can use 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 to switch it to the development or beta version of WordPress. 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. with Nightlies option, depending on what you want to test.
    4. Click on Save Changes
    5. After the changes are saved, you should receive the update notification. Kindly 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, use WP-CLI to install a WordPress beta version quickly. 

Steps:

  1. Create a local WordPress site using your preferred method.
  2. Once the site is set up, open your terminal and navigate to the root directory of your WordPress installation.
  3. Run the following command to update to the latest beta/RC version:
wp core update --version=6.8-beta1

OR

wp core update --version=6.8-RC1

(Keep updating the version number as needed. E.g. –version=6.8-beta2)

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

Using a Staging Site

Create a staging site for your live production siteProduction Site A production site is a live site online meant to be viewed by your visitors, as opposed to a site that is staged for development or testing. and update it to the WordPress beta/RC version. This lets you safely test the new version without impacting your live site. Make sure everything functions as expected before applying updates to your production environment.

Testing Patches

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

Using Playground, you can also easily test individual Core tickets without installing any software in your system, and this is the fastest way to test any PRs.

If there is a specific PR in the wordpress-develop or gutenberg repo that you’d like to test in the browser, you can do so using the following links. Enter the PR number, and the rest will be taken care of.

General Testing Checklist

If you want to quickly test the updated WordPress version’s compatibility with your site, please verify the following important checks. Enable debugging in wp-config.php to capture the warnings, errors or notices.

  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 any new errors or warnings.
  4. Confirm there are no layout breaks or misaligned elements.
  5. Test links and permalinks to ensure there are no 404 errors.
  6. Verify that posts, images, and media are displayed correctly.
  7. Ensure the sitemap and robots.txt files are functioning properly.
  8. Ensure full access to the admin dashboard without errors.
  9. 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.
  10. Create a new post: 
    1. Add content
    2. Copy-paste text
    3. Manually add media files. 
    4. Save the post
    5. Observe the console for any issues.
  11. Create a new page:
    1. Add content
    2. Verify its display in different browsers.
    3. Verify its display in responsive mode.
    4. Verify that the functional part is working as expected regardless of browser or device type.
  12. Keep the browser’s developer console open and check for any errors, warnings, or notices.
  13. Open the error log file and check for notices, warnings, and fatal errors.
  14. Review user roles and permissions to ensure they remain intact.
  15. Verify that any scheduled posts or automated tasks (like backups) still function as intended.
  16. Ensure all integrated services (like payment gateways or analytics) are operational.
  17. Open your site in different browsers and verify that all functionalities work as expected.

Key Features to test

Editor

New default rendering mode for editor via post type supports

The 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/ PR #69286 introduces a new approach to setting the default rendering mode in the WordPress block editor based on post-type support. This enhancement allows developers to define how content is rendered in the editor by specifying parameters within the support property of a post type.

Test Steps:

  1. Install and activate any block theme. E.g 2025
  2. Open a new page
  3. Verify that it renders in a template-locked state.
  4. Now, disable the “Show Template” 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. and reload the page.
  5. Verify that it uses “post-only” as the default rendering mode.
  6. Re-enable “Show Template” from the sidebar bar.
  7. Open a post and confirm that it still renders in “post-only”.
  8. Now, switch to a classic theme. E.g. 2011
  9. Confirm that posts and pages both are loading correctly without showing the template.

Design Improvements

The design focus is refinement and fixing issues requiring design feedback. Let’s check them one by one.

Stylebook improvement for classic theme

The Style Book now provides a more structured layout, making it easier to preview and understand site colours, typography, and block styles.

Support is available for classic themes that either support editor styles via add_theme_support( 'editor-styles' )  or have a theme.json file. 
Each block example and style group is labelled for better clarity. For classic themes, the Style Book now supports site patterns, which have been relocated to Appearance > Design > Patterns for a more intuitive experience. Previously, patterns were listed under Appearance > Patterns.

Testing Instruction:

Please help identify potential issues and suggest areas for improvement by logging your feedback on #68036. Follow PR 66851 for more details about this fix.

Reset Button for Color Control

A new Reset button has been added to the colour control, allowing users to quickly revert the color changes.

Testing Instruction:

Test Steps:

  1. Create a page and a paragraph block. 
  2. Add text/background/link colors to the paragraph.
  3. Observe the change in the color.
  4. Now, hover/focus on the element and observe the presence of the reset(-) button.
  5. Clicking on the reset button resets the applied color.

If you encounter any issues or have suggestions, feel free to drop your feedback in this ticket #41866.

Zoom-Out Mode Enhancements

Users can now apply different section styles and designs directly from the toolbar.

Testing Instruction:

Test Steps:

  1. Navigate to Appearance > Editor
  2. Edit the page and choose the pattern.
  3. Enter into zoom-out mode.
  4. Observe the toolbar with a newly added icon.
  5. Verify that there should be no shuffle button present and that the change design option should be visible.
  6. Click on the icon, and it will change color based on the different styles.

Follow PR #67140 for a detailed understanding of the implementation path.

Improved Font Picker Previews

The font family list in Global Styles now previews each font directly in the dropdown. This provides a better visual indication of how the font will look before applying it.
Testing Instruction:

Check #67118 for more information.

Success notices for image editing with Undo link

The outcome of the Image manipulation method is now better communicated in the block editor. The success notices are now displayed at the bottom of the editor. The notices also come with a handy Undo link to revert to the original if necessary.

Testing Instruction:

Test Steps:

  1. Create a post or page, insert the Image block and select an image.
  2. Try different editing options for Image – edit, zoom, crop, rotate.
  3. A correct message should be displayed after processing the media.
  4. Also, confirm you can easily undo changes using the snack bar action.

Both these changes are part of different PRs #67314 and #67312 

Additional changes as part of design:

Post Comments Link: Add Border Support. (#68450)

Post Template: Add Border and Spacing Support. (#64425)

Query Total: Add Border Support. (#68323)

Background supports: Add default controls supports. (#68085)

Block supports: Show selected item in font family select control. (#68254)

Fix: Ensure consistency in editor tools for navigation buttons and delete options. (#67253)

Global Styles: Fix handling of booleans when stabilizing block supports. (#67552)

Support for Speculative Loading

We are excited to announce that WordPress 6.8 includes native support for speculative loading, a feature designed to enhance site performance by enabling near-instant page load times. 

What is Speculative Loading?

Speculative loading leverages the Speculation Rules API to automatically prefetch or prerender certain URLs on a page based on user interactions, such as hovering over a link. This proactive approach allows subsequent pages to load more quickly when users navigate to them. 

Default Configuration

WordPress 6.8 configures the speculative loading feature by default to prefetch URLs with a conservative eagerness setting. This means the browser will prefetch resources only when there is a strong indication that the user intends to navigate to a particular link, balancing performance benefits with resource usage. 

Testing Instruction: Customisation via Filters

While there are no options or user interface controls to modify the behaviour of speculative loading as we have in the Speculative loading plugin, developers do this by customising its functionality using the newly added filters with different combinations of values. 

Please check this comment for a more detailed explanation of how to test.

Use a browser that supports the Speculation Rules 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. (e.g., Chrome 108+, Edge 108+) because not every browser supports it. Please refer to caniuse.com for a comprehensive support overview of speculation rules.

Impact on Existing Plugins

With the integration of speculative loading into the WordPress core, the existing Speculative Loading plugin that provides similar functionality will be updated to use the core implementation. The plugin will continue to use its approach to prerender URLs with moderate eagerness, now by adjusting the default configuration set by Core. 

We encourage developers and site administrators to test this new feature in their environments and provide feedback. Your insights are invaluable in ensuring that speculative loading enhances performance effectively across the diverse WordPress ecosystem. 

Please check this ticket #62503 for more information about this enhancement. Feel free to comment and share your feedback/queries/issues regarding performance and speculative loading integration.

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.

Fix: Sticky Posts Not Working with Default Query Type

Previously, sticky posts did not appear at the top when using the default query type in the editor. This issue has now been fixed.

Testing Instruction:

Test Step:

  1. Have at least one sticky post on the blog
  2. Open the template using the editor’s query loop block (index, archive, etc.).
  3. Notice that the sticky post is at the top.
  4. Open the front of the site and see the sticky post at the top.

Please refer to this #68570 ticket for more details about this fix.

 “Ignore” Option for Sticky Posts

A new “Ignore” option for Sticky Posts has been added to the Query Loop block, giving users more control over including or excluding sticky posts in the query. It adds a new option for the Query block’s sticky post setting: “Ignore,” which doesn’t prepend sticky posts at the top but displays them in the natural order of the query.

Testing Instruction:

Test Steps:

  1. Have at least one sticky post on the blog.
  2. Create a page and add a simple Query block.
  3. Confirm that the sticky post is displayed at the top by default.
  4. Change the sticky post setting to “Ignore”.
  5. Confirm that it’s now displayed in natural order.

If you find any issues while testing this enhancement, please feel free to share your findings here in issue #66221

Set Depth Limit for Query Loop

The Query Loop block retrieves posts from all levels, and there is no built-in option to 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. only top-level posts as they do not have a parent field that can be set to 0. 

The current solution partially addresses the issue by allowing “parents”: [0] to be set programmatically but not providing a 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. option. This PR includes an example Query markup for testing. As for the UI, the Parent filter will be updated once a suitable design proposal is available.
Please share your feedback by commenting here on the issue #68620

Removal of Redundant Sticky State

The redundant sticky state in the Query Loop block has been removed for a more streamlined user experience.

Testing Instruction

Test Steps:

  1. Insert a Query Loop and select a pattern with some posts.
  2. Open the inspector controls of the block.
  3. Verify that the Post Type field is working as expected:
    1. The “Sticky Posts” field is visible when “Post Type” is “Post
    2. The “Sticky Posts” field is hidden when “Post Type” is “Page

Query Total: Add interactivity.clientNavigation block support

With RC1 we have introduces the support for interactivity.clientNavigation within the Query Total block. This enhancement enables the Query Total block to interact seamlessly with client-side navigation, ensuring that the displayed total number of query results updates dynamically as users navigate through content without requiring the full page reloads.​

Testing Instruction:

Test Steps:

  1. Create a page
  2. Add Query Loop block
  3. Within the Query Loop, insert a Query Total block.
  4. In the Query Loop block, toggle off “Reload full page” from right sidebar.
  5. In the Query Total block, change display type to “Range display”.
  6. Save the change and open the page in the front end
  7. Observe that client navigation is now working as expected.

Please refer to the PR #69661 for more details.

Refining Data Views

“Refining Data Views” allows the customisation and improvement of how data is displayed and managed within the WordPress editor, particularly by utilising the “Data Views” feature which allows users to filter, sort, and organise content more effectively through various options and settings, ultimately leading to a cleaner and more efficient workflow when working with large amounts of data on a website.

WordPress 6.8 release comes with additional improvements and fixes, as mentioned below.

Unify layout behaviour

This update aims to improve the user experience by providing a more intuitive interface. The implementation includes adjustments to the existing components to integrate the new media field seamlessly. This enhancement is part of the ongoing efforts, and to keep up with the progress, please check this issue #67391

Testing Instruction:

Test Steps:

  1. Open the different data views for Pages, Templates, and Patterns
  2. Check the design of the different layouts for List, Grid and Table
  3. Check how the “properties” menu works with the different layout

Add confirm dialogue before delete

The existing ‘Permanently Delete’ action lacked clarity and did not include essential safeguards, such as a confirmation modal. This absence increased the risk of accidental deletions. To improve the user experience and minimize errors, this PR introduces a confirmation modal, ensuring users confirm their intent before deleting selected posts.

Testing Instruction:

Test Steps:

  1. Go to the WordPress admin dashboard area.
  2. Go to Appearance > Editors > Pages
  3. Click on the page that you want to delete
  4. The page will move to the TrashTrash Trash in WordPress is like the Recycle Bin on your PC or Trash in your Macintosh computer. Users with the proper permission level (administrators and editors) have the ability to delete a post, page, and/or comments. When you delete the item, it is moved to the trash folder where it will remain for 30 days.
  5. Now, select the trashed page and use the “Permanently Delete” option.
  6. Confirm the deletion in the modal dialogue.
  7. Observe the success or error notices appearing for both individual and bulk deletion options.

Please check PR #67824 for more details.

Density option in table layout

This PR #67170 introduces a density option to the table layout while allowing layouts to define specific controls. Instead of a generalized density abstraction, this approach ensures better clarity and avoids confusion for table layouts.

Testing Instruction

Test Steps

  1. Go to the WordPress admin dashboard area.
  2. Go to Appearance > Editors > Pages
  3. Go to Pages/Templates/Patterns 
  4. Change the layout to Table View
  5. Now, click on the settings icon
  6. Observe the newly added Density option
  7. Please play around with all three options, “Comfortable, Balanced, and Compact,” and share your feedback if you have it.

Use badge component in data view grids

This update improves consistency in the Site Editor by using a standardised badge for synced patterns. It ensures a uniform look while keeping the existing functionality unchanged. The new Badge component is integrated into the DataView grids to enhance consistency and maintainability.

Testing Instruction:

Testing Steps:

  1. Navigate to the WordPress dashboard
  2. Go to Appearance > Editors > Patterns
  3. In the Patterns list, identify any patterns labelled as “synced”.
  4. Confirm that these “synced” patterns display a badge utilizing the new Badge component, ensuring consistency in design and functionality.

For more details, follow this PR #68062

WP Core now has a new toggle set under the settings for the post. If a feature image is not set for the post, enabling the toggle control will set the selected image as the feature image for that post. Follow the steps mentioned below.

Testing Instruction

Test Steps:

  1. Create a new post.
  2. Add an image block. 
  3. Enable the “Set this image as featured image” toggle from the settings.
  4. Verify that the selected image is set as the post’s featured image.

For more details, visit PR #65896

API launches and iterations

New withSyncEvent() function in Interactivity API

As the first step of running Interactivity API event listener callbacks asynchronously by default (see #64944), a utility function called withSyncEvent is introduced. Developers should use this function to wrap event handlers that require synchronous access to event data or methods, such as event.preventDefault(). For other event handlers that don’t need synchronous event data, the system can defer their execution, enhancing overall performance by reducing the load on the main thread.

Follow the testing instructions mentioned here in the description of PR #68097

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. API

The Block Hooks API is an extensibility mechanism that allows you to dynamically insert blocks into block themes. In WordPress 6.8, work will continue on improvements to Block Hooks.

  • Filtered post content is truncated in post-content block
    • This release also includes a fix for the 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. block to display an extra “>” character at the beginning of the excerpt when no custom excerpt is set and the Query Loop block is added to a page. Additionally, for sticky posts without a custom excerpt, the beginning characters of the excerpt are missing.
    • Please follow the testing instructions mentioned here in issue #68903
  • We have also updated the document of the block hooks section of the block registration reference guide. Please check issue #65454 for more details on what has been updated.

Security enhancements

The underlying algorithm used to hash and store user passwords in the database has been changed in WordPress 6.8 from phpass portable hashing to bcrypt. Application passwords, user password reset keys, personal data request keys, and the recovery mode key will switch from using phpass to the cryptographically secure but fast BLAKE2b hashing algorithm via Sodium. The full details of this change can be found in the announcement post.

These changes should work and should be invisible to users. Passwords and security keys that were saved in prior versions of WordPress should continue to work after updating to 6.8. Users don’t need to change or reset their passwords; logged-in users should remain logged in, and their sessions should remain valid.

Here are some testing steps that can be taken:

Remaining logged in after the update

  • Ensure you have remained logged in to your account after updating to 6.8
  • Confirm that logging out and back in again works as expected
  • Confirm that the user_pass field for your user account in the wp_users table in the database has been updated — after logging out and back in again it should be prefixed with $wp$2y$ instead of $P$

Password resets

  • Start with the “Lost your password?” link on the login screen and initiate a password reset
  • Click the confirmation link sent to your email inbox
  • Follow the process of resetting your user password
  • Confirm you can log in with your new password

Personal data requests

  • Log in as an Administrator
  • Initiate a data export from Tools -> Export Personal Data
  • Click the confirmation link sent to the email address and confirm that the export gets triggered as expected

Remaining logged in after the update

  • Ensure you have remained logged in to your account after updating to 6.8
  • Confirm that logging out and back in again works as expected
  • Confirm that the user_pass field for your user account in the wp_users table in the database has been updated — after logging out and back in again, it should be prefixed with $wp$2y$ instead of $P$

Password resets

  • Start with the “Lost your password?” link on the login screen and initiate a password reset.
  • Click the confirmation link sent to your email inbox
  • Follow the process of resetting your user password
  • Confirm you can log in with your new password

Personal data requests

  • Log in as an Administrator
  • Initiate a data export from Tools -> Export Personal Data
  • Click the confirmation link sent to the email address and confirm that the export gets triggered as expected

Additional performance improvements

The additional performance improvements are also part of the WordPress 6.8 release, and details are provided in their respective issues/PRs, as explained below.

What to Notice

  • Was everything intuitive and easy to use?
  • Did you notice any performance issues, such as slow loading or lag?
  • Were there any visual inconsistencies or layout issues across different browsers or devices?
  • Did the drag-and-drop functionality work as expected, especially in patterns?
  • Did the preview mode accurately reflect how the content appeared once published?
  • Did what you created in the editor match what you saw on your site?
  • Did you observe any other 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) issues like –
    • Colour contrast or focus management?
    • Did it work properly using only a keyboard?
    • Did it work with a screen reader?
  • Did it function smoothly on a mobile device?
  • What aspects of the experience did you find confusing or frustrating?
  • What did you especially enjoy or appreciate?
  • What would have made site building and content creation easier?

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 alpha/beta forums of WordPress. 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

1.1.0 – Update the post for “Query Total: Add interactivity.clientNavigation block support” (as part of RC1)

Props to @joemcgill @flixos90 @jeffpaul @ankit-k-gupta @desrosj for peer review and a big thanks to @pavanpatil1 for preparing the visuals for testing instructions! 🙌

#core-test

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-beta3

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. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.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

1.0.1 – Updates for Beta-2

1.0.2 – Updates for Beta-3

1.0.3 – Updates for RC-1

1.0.4 – Updates for RC-3

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. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.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. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.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. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.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. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.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. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.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