Releases – WordPress News https://wordpress.org/news The latest news about WordPress and the WordPress community Fri, 12 Jul 2024 12:33:44 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7-alpha-58709 https://s.w.org/favicon.ico?2 Releases – WordPress News https://wordpress.org/news 32 32 14607090 WordPress 6.6 Release Candidate 3 https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/wordpress-6-6-release-candidate-3/ Tue, 09 Jul 2024 17:39:24 +0000 https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17497 WordPress 6.6 RC3 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, please evaluate RC3 on a test server or a local environment.

Reaching this phase of the release cycle is a worthy achievement. While release candidates are considered ready for release, your testing is still vital to make sure everything in WordPress 6.6 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 6.6 RC3 in four ways:

PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Direct DownloadDownload the RC3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
Command LineUse the this WP-CLI command:
wp core update --version=6.6-RC3
WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.6 RC3 WordPress Playground instance (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup.
Please test WordPress 6.6 RC3 in one or more of these four ways.

The target for the WordPress 6.6 release is next Tuesday, July 16, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.6 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.6-related posts in the next few weeks for further details.

What’s in WordPress 6.6 RC3?

Thanks to your testing (and many other contributors‘ up to now) this release includes eight bug fixes for the Editor and 18 tickets for WordPress Core.

Get a recap of WordPress 6.6’s highlighted features in the Beta 1 announcement. For more technical information related to issues addressed since RC 2, you can browse the following links:

Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? You might want to make your first stop The WordPress 6.6 Field Guide. Then, check out this list:

You can contribute. Here’s how

WordPress is the world’s most popular open source web platform, thanks to a passionate community of people who collaborate on its development in a wide variety of ways. You can help—whether or not you have any technical expertise.

Get involved in testing

Testing for issues is critical to keeping WordPress speedy, stable, and secure. It’s also a vital way for anyone to contribute. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.6. If you’re new to testing, follow this general testing guide for more details on getting set up.

If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can also report it on WordPress Trac. Before you do either, you may want to check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Please update your WordPress product

If you build themes, plugins, blocks, or patterns, your efforts play an integral role in adding new functionality to WordPress and helping bring new people and ideas to the most vibrant (and massive!) open source community in the world. 

Thanks for continuing to test your products with the WordPress 6.6 betas and release candidates. With RC3, you’ll want to make sure everything is working smoothly, and if it’s a plugin, update the “Tested up to” version in its readme file to 6.6.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Help translate WordPress

Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本語? हिन्दी? বাংলা? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages.

The RC3 haiku

One week to go. Then:
Open the paintbox! Try the tools!
Play a new jazz tune.

Props to @meher and @audrasjb. for peer review.

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17497
WordPress 6.6 Release Candidate 2 https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/wordpress-6-6-release-candidate-2/ Tue, 02 Jul 2024 17:09:27 +0000 https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17469 WordPress 6.6 RC2 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, please evaluate RC2 on a test server or a local environment.

Reaching this phase of the release cycle is a worthy achievement. While release candidates are considered ready for release, your testing is still vital to make sure everything in WordPress 6.6 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 6.6 RC2 in four ways:

PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Direct DownloadDownload the RC2 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
Command LineUse the this WP-CLI command:
wp core update --version=6.6-RC2
WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.6 RC2 WordPress Playground instance (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup.
Please test WordPress 6.6 RC2 in one or more of these four ways.

The target for the WordPress 6.6 release is July 16, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.6 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.6-related posts in the next few weeks for further details.

What’s in WordPress 6.6 RC2?

Thanks to your testing and many other contributors‘ up to now, this release includes more than 19 bug fixes for the Editor and more than 20 tickets for WordPress Core.

Get a recap of WordPress 6.6’s highlighted features in the Beta 1 announcement. For more technical information related to issues addressed since Beta 3, you can browse the following links:

Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? You might want to make your first stop The WordPress 6.6 Field Guide. Then, check out this list:

You can contribute. Here’s how

WordPress is the world’s most popular open source web platform, thanks to a passionate community of people who collaborate on its development in a wide variety of ways. You can help—whether or not you have any technical expertise.

Get involved in testing

Testing for issues is critical to keeping WordPress speedy, stable, and secure. It’s also a vital way for anyone to contribute. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.6. If you’re new to testing, follow this general testing guide for more details on getting set up.

If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can also report it on WordPress Trac. Before you do either, you may want to check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Search for vulnerabilities

From now until the final release candidate of WordPress 6.6 (scheduled for July 9), the financial reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities doubles. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper.

Update your theme or plugin

If you build themes, plugins, blocks, or patterns, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users. 

Thanks for continuing to test your products with the WordPress 6.6 beta releases. With RC2, you’ll want to finish your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.6.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Help translate WordPress

Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本語? हिन्दी? বাংলা? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages.

Release the haiku

6.6 draws near.
In two weeks the final’s here.
Test. Test. Then test more.

Props to @juanmaguitar, @meher, @desrosj and @atachibana for peer review.

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17469
WordPress 6.6 Release Candidate 1 https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-release-candidate-1/ Tue, 25 Jun 2024 16:23:50 +0000 https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17429 The first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 6.6 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, please evaluate RC1 on a test server or a local environment.

Reaching this phase of the release cycle is a worthy achievement. While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing is still vital to make sure everything in WordPress 6.6 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 6.6 RC1 in four ways:

PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Direct DownloadDownload the RC1 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
Command LineUse the this WP-CLI command:
wp core update --version=6.6-RC1
WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.6 RC1 WordPress Playground instance (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup.
Please test WordPress 6.6 RC1 in one or more of these four ways.

The current target for the WordPress 6.6 release is July 16, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.6 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.6-related posts in the next few weeks for further details.

Two notes about changes in the RC period

Hard string freeze: From now until July 16, there is a hard string freeze in place—no strings may change, and no new strings may be committed. That’s to give the Polyglots team time to translate WordPress 6.6 into as many languages as possible before final release.

Two-committer signoff: Commits in the RC period also require two Core committers to sign off on every merge. Since release candidates are supposed to be ready to go, only major fixes and blessed tasks should merge at this late date.

What’s in WordPress 6.6 RC1?

Thanks to your testing and many other contributors‘ up to now, this release includes more than 40 bug fixes for the Editor and more than 40 tickets for WordPress Core.

Get a recap of WordPress 6.6’s highlighted features in the Beta 1 announcement. For more technical information related to issues addressed since Beta 3, you can browse the following links:

Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? These recent posts cover some of the latest updates:

How you can contribute

WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people who collaborate on and contribute to to its development. The resources below outline a wide variety of ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, whether or not you have any technical expertise.

Get involved in testing

Testing for issues is critical to making sure WordPress is speedy and stable. It’s also a vital way for anyone to contribute. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.6. If you’re new to testing, follow this general testing guide for more details on getting set up.

If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can also report it on WordPress Trac. Before you do either, you may want to check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Search for vulnerabilities

From now until the final release candidate of WordPress 6.6 (scheduled for July 16), the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities doubles. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper.

Update your theme or plugin

If you build themes, plugins, blocks or patterns, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users. 

Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.6 beta releases. With RC1, you’ll want to finish your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.6.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Help translate WordPress

Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本語? हिन्दी? বাংলা? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages.

Release the haiku

We’re here already?
RC1 means three weeks left.
Have some fun—come test!

Props to @meher, @audrasjb for collaborating on this post.

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17429
WordPress 6.5.5 https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-5-5/ Mon, 24 Jun 2024 19:10:30 +0000 https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17426 WordPress 6.5.5 is now available!

This release features three security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. This minor release also includes 3 bug fixes in Core.

You can download WordPress 6.5.5 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

WordPress 6.5.5 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.6 which is scheduled for July 16, 2024.

For more information on WordPress 6.5.5, please visit the HelpHub site.

Security updates included in this release

The security team would like to thank the following people for responsibly reporting vulnerabilities, and allowing them to be fixed in this release:

  • A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability affecting the HTML API reported by Dennis Snell of the WordPress Core Team, along with Alex Concha and Grzegorz (Greg) Ziółkowski of the WordPress security team.
  • A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability affecting the Template Part block reported independently by Rafie Muhammad of Patchstack and during a third party security audit.
  • A path traversal issue affecting sites hosted on Windows reported independently by Rafie M & Edouard L of Patchstack, David Fifield, x89, apple502j, and mishre.

Thank you to these WordPress contributors

This release was led by Aaron Jorbin.

WordPress 6.5.5 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance and security fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Aaron Jorbin, Alex Concha, Andrew Ozz, bernhard-reiter, Colin Stewart, David Baumwald, Dennis Snell, Grant M. Kinney, Greg Ziółkowski, Jb Audras, Jonathan Desrosiers, Matias Ventura, Miguel Fonseca, Peter Wilson, Rajin Sharwar, Scott Reilly, Tonya Mork

How to contribute

To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core Slack channel. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook.

Already testing WordPress 6.6? The fourth beta is now available (zip) and it contains these security fixes. For more on 6.6, see the beta 3 announcement post. Learn more about testing WordPress 6.6 here.

Props to Paul Kevan, Ehtisham Siddiqui, Alex Concha, Tonya Mork, and Angela Jin for reviewing.

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17426
WordPress 6.6 Beta 3 https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-beta-3/ Tue, 18 Jun 2024 16:37:33 +0000 https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17392
WordPress 6.6 Beta 3 is here! Please download and test it.

This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites—you risk unexpected results if you do.

Instead, test Beta 3 on a local site or a testing environment in any of these four ways:

PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Direct DownloadDownload the Beta 3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
Command LineUse this WP-CLI command:
wp core update --version=6.6-beta3
WordPress PlaygroundUse a 6.6 Beta 3 WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. This might be the easiest way ever—no separate sites, no setup. Just click and go! 
Four ways to test WordPress Beta 3.

The target release date for WordPress 6.6 is July 16, 2024. Your help testing Beta and RC versions over the next four weeks is vital to making sure the final release is everything it should be: stable, powerful, and intuitive.

If you find an issue

If you run into an issue, please share it in the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums. If you are comfortable submitting a reproducible bug report, you can do so via WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

The bug bounty doubles in the beta period

The WordPress community sponsors a financial reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities. That reward doubles between Beta 1, which landed June 4, and the final Release Candidate (RC), which will happen July 9. Please follow the project’s responsible-disclosure practices detailed on this HackerOne page and in this security white paper.

The work continues

Catch up with what’s new in 6.6: check out the Beta 1 announcement for the highlights.

Beta 3 packs in more than 50 updates to the Editor since the Beta 2 release, including 39 tickets for WordPress core:

The beta cycle is all about fixing the bugs you find in testing.

Do you build themes? Feedback from testing has already prompted a change in the way you offer style variations to your users.

In Beta 1, if you made preset style variations for your theme, it automatically generated a full set of color-only and type-only options your users could mix and match across the different variations.

In Beta 3, your theme no longer generates those options automatically—you do. So you can present a simpler set of choices, curated to guide users’ efforts to more pleasing results. For more insight into the rationale, see this discussion.

Thanks again for this all-important contribution to WordPress!

Props to @meher, @rmartinezduque, @atachibana, and @mobarak for collaboration and review.

A Beta 3 haiku

Beta ends at 3
One more week, then comes RC
When we freeze the strings!

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17392
WordPress 6.6 Beta 2 https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-beta-2/ Tue, 11 Jun 2024 16:26:15 +0000 https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17355
WordPress 6.6 Beta 2 is here! Please download and test it.

This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites—you risk unexpected results if you do.

Instead, test Beta 2 on a local site or a testing environment in any of these four ways:

PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Direct DownloadDownload the Beta 2 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
Command LineUse this WP-CLI command:
wp core update --version=6.6-beta2
WordPress PlaygroundUse a 6.6 Beta 2 WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. This might be the easiest way ever—no separate sites, no setup. Just click and go! 
Three ways to test WordPress Beta 2.

The target release date for WordPress 6.6 is July 16, 2024. Your help testing Beta and RC versions over the next five weeks is vital to making sure the final release is everything it should be: stable, powerful, and intuitive.

If you find an issue

If you run into an issue, please share it in the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums. If you are comfortable submitting a reproducible bug report, you can do so via WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

The bug bounty doubles in the beta period

The WordPress community sponsors a financial reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities. That reward doubles between Beta 1, which landed June 4, and the final Release Candidate (RC) that will happen July 9. Please follow the project’s responsible-disclosure practices detailed on this HackerOne page and in this security white paper.

The work continues

Catch up with what’s new in 6.6: check out the Beta 1 announcement for the highlights.

Beta 2 packs in more than 50 updates to the Editor since the Beta 1 release, including 40+ tickets for WordPress core:

The beta cycle is all about fixing the bugs you find in testing. Thanks again for this vitally important contribution to WordPress!

Props to @priethor, @dansoschin, @davidb, @atachibana, @meher, @webcommsat, and @juanmaguitar for collaboration and review.

A Beta 2 haiku

Testing is vital:
It makes everything better.
Let’s find all the bugs!

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17355
WordPress 6.5.4 Maintenance Release https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-5-4-maintenance-release/ Wed, 05 Jun 2024 15:57:15 +0000 https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17340 WordPress 6.5.4 is now available!
This minor release features 5 bug fixes in Core. You can review a summary of the maintenance updates in this release by reading the Release Candidate announcement.

WordPress 6.5.4 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.6 planned for July 2024.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

You can download WordPress 6.5.4 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”.

For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site.

Thank you to these WordPress contributors

This release was led by Tonya Mork, Colin Stewart, and Aaron Jorbin.

WordPress 6.5.4 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Aaron Jorbin, adrianduffell, Andrew Ozz, Andy Fragen, Beau Lebens, Bernhard Reiter, Brian Alexander, Colin Stewart, Darren Ethier (nerrad), David Baumwald, Enrico Battocchi, Estela Rueda, John James Jacoby, John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, Kevin Hoffman, Louis Wolmarans, Md Abul Bashar, Miriam Schwab, Mukesh Panchal, Narendra Sishodiya, Pascal Birchler, Peter Wilson, Pooja N Muchandikar, Sarah Norris, Scott Reilly, Syed Balkhi, Tonya Mork

How to contribute

To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core and #6-6-release-leads channels. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook.

Props to @afragen, @hellofromtonya , and @angelasjin for proofreading.

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17340
WordPress 6.6 Beta 1 https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-beta-1/ Tue, 04 Jun 2024 17:44:29 +0000 https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17289 WordPress 6.6 Beta 1 is here! Please download and test it.

This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites—you risk unexpected results if you do.

Instead, install Beta 1 on local sites and testing environments in any of these four ways:

PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Direct DownloadDownload the Beta 1 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
Command LineUse this WP-CLI command:
wp core update --version=6.6-beta1
WordPress PlaygroundUse a 6.6 Beta 1 WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. This might be the easiest way ever—no separate sites, no setup. Just click and go! 

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 6.6 is July 16, 2024. Your help testing Beta and RC versions over the next six weeks is vital to making sure the final release is everything it should be: stable, powerful, and intuitive.

How important is your testing?

Features in this Beta release may be changed or removed between now and the final release. Early attention from testers like you is critical to finding and reporting potential bugs, usability issues, or compatibility problems to make sure developers can address them before the final release. You don’t need any contribution experience, and this is a fantastic way to begin your WordPress contributor story!

If you find an issue

If you run into an issue, please share it in the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums. If you are comfortable submitting a reproducible bug report, you can do so via WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Want to know more about testing in general, and how to get started? Follow the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Like every version since 5.0 in 2018, WordPress 6.6 will integrate a host of new features from the last several releases of the Gutenberg plugin. Learn more about Gutenberg updates since WordPress 6.5 in the What’s New in Gutenberg posts for versions 17.8, 17.9, 18.0, 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, and 18.4. The final version will also include Gutenberg 18.5; the Beta 2 post will link to that.

WordPress 6.6 Beta 1 contains 97 enhancements and 101 fixes for the editor, in a total of about 206 tickets for WordPress 6.6 Core.

The vulnerability bounty doubles in the beta period

The WordPress community sponsors a monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities. That reward doubles during the period between Beta 1 on June 4 and the final Release Candidate (RC) that will happen June 25. Please follow the project’s responsible-disclosure practices detailed on this HackerOne page and in this security white paper.

What’s coming to WordPress 6.6?

This year’s second major release is about polish and finesse. Features that landed in the last few releases have new flexibility and smoother flows—and a few new tricks. And of course there are a few brand-new features.

Data Views updates

Part of the groundwork for phase 3, Data Views get new and improved experience of working with information in the Site Editor. A new layout consolidates patterns and template parts, gets you to general management views in fewer clicks, and packs in a wide range of refinements.

Overrides in synced patterns

What if you could keep a synced pattern‘s look and feel everywhere it appears—keeping it on brand—but have different content everywhere it appears?

For instance, maybe you‘re building a pattern for recipes. Ideally, you want to keep the overall design of the recipe card consistent on every post that will have a recipe. But the recipe itself—the ingredients, the steps, special notes on technique—will be different every time.

And perhaps, in the future, other people might need to change the design of the recipe pattern. It would be nice to know they can do that, and that the content in existing recipes will stay right where it is.

In version 6.6, you can make all that happen, and overrides in synced patterns are the way you do it.

See all the blocks

Up to now, when you had a block selected and then opened the block Inserter, you only saw the blocks you were allowed to add to your selected block. Where were all the others?

In 6.6, when you have a block selected, you get two lists. First, there’s the list of blocks you can insert at your selected block. Then you get a list with all the other blocks. So you can get an idea of what you can use in your selected block, and what other blocks you could use in another area. In fact, if you select a block from that second list, WordPress 6.6 will add it below your block, to use in whatever you build next.

A new publish flow

Version 6.6 brings the post and site editors closer together than ever. So whether you’re writing for a post in the post editor or a page in the Site Editor, your experience will be about the same.

Style variations

If a block theme comes with style variations, 6.6 vastly expands your design options right out of the box, without installing or configuring a single thing. Because in 6.6, your theme pulls the color palettes and typography style sets out of its installed variations to let you mix and match for a whole world of expanded creative expression.

Section styles

Do you build themes? Now you can define style options for separate sections of multiple blocks, including inner blocks.

Then your users can apply those block style variations to entire groups of blocks, effectively creating branded sections they can curate across a site.

A note about CSS specificity

To make it easier for your variations to override the global styles CSS, those styles now come wrapped in `:root`. That limits their specificity. For details, read the full discussion on GitHub.

A native Grid layout

Grid is a new variation for the Group block that lets you arrange the blocks inside it as a grid. If you’ve been using a plugin for this, now you can make your grids natively.

Better pattern management in Classic themes

You heard right: You can do everything with patterns in Classic themes that you can in a block theme. You can see all the patterns available to you in a single view and insert a pattern on the fly.

Negative. Margins.

They’re here: negative margin values, so you can make objects overlap in your design. As a guardrail, you can only set a negative margin by typing an actual negative number, not by using the slider. That’s to keep people from adding negative values they didn’t intend.

Rollback auto-updates

Now you can have the convenience of setting all your plugins to auto-update and the inner peace you get from knowing that if anything goes wrong, 6.6 will do a rollback. Automatically.

This post reflects the latest changes as of June 4, 2024.

Again, the features in this first beta may change, based on what testers like you find.

Get an overview of the 6.6 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.6-related posts in the next few weeks for further details.

Just for you: a Beta 1 haiku

Negative margins
Embellish all the new ways
To design and build

Thanks very much to @meher, @audrasjb, @fabiankaegy, @colorful-tones, @davidbaumwald, @dansoschin, @desrosj, @atachibana, @ehtis, @adamsilverstein, @joedolson, and @webcommsat for reviewing and collaborating on this post!

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WordPress 6.5.3 Maintenance Release https://wordpress.org/news/2024/05/wordpress-6-5-3-maintenance-release/ Tue, 07 May 2024 16:42:58 +0000 https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17246 WordPress 6.5.3 is now available!

This minor release features 12 bug fixes in Core and 9 bug fixes for the block editor. You can review a summary of the maintenance updates in this release by reading the Release Candidate announcement.

WordPress 6.5.3 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.6 planned for July 2024.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

You can download WordPress 6.5.3 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”.

For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site.

Thank you to these WordPress contributors

This release was led by Aaron Jorbin and Grant M. Kinney.

WordPress 6.5.3 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Aaron Jorbin, Adam Silverstein, adrianduffell, Aki Hamano, Alan Fuller, Anders Norén, André, Andrea Fercia, Andrew Ozz, Andrew Serong, Andy Fragen, annezazu, Arun Sharma, Aslam Doctor, Ben Keith, Ben Ritner – Kadence WP, bernhard-reiter, Brian Alexander, Carolina Nymark, Colin Stewart, CookiesForDevo, Damon Cook, Daniel Richards, darerodz, Dave Page, David Baumwald, David Levine, Drew Jaynes, Ella, Erik, evanltd, Felix Arntz, George Mamadashvili, Grant M. Kinney, Greg Ziółkowski, Isabel Brison, James Huff, Jason Adams, Jb Audras, Jeffrey Paul, Jeremy Herve, Jessica Lyschik, Joe Dolson, Joe McGill, jordesign, Jorge Costa, Joshua Goode, Kai Hao, Kevin Hoffman, Khokan Sardar, luisherranz, Matias Benedetto, Matt Cromwell, Md Sahadat Husain, Mukesh Panchal, Narendra Sishodiya, Nik Tsekouras, Pascal Birchler, Peter Wilson, ramonopoly, Roy Tanck, Sal Ferrarello, Sarah Norris, Sergey Biryukov, Stephen Bernhardt, Steve Jones, Tom Cafferkey, WilliamG, Yannis Guyon

How to contribute

To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core and #6-6-release-leads channels. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook.

Thanks to @grantmkin, @angelasjin, and @jeffpaul for proofreading.

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WordPress 6.5.2 Maintenance and Security Release https://wordpress.org/news/2024/04/wordpress-6-5-2-maintenance-and-security-release/ Tue, 09 Apr 2024 22:00:18 +0000 https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17195 Note: Due to an issue with the initial package, WordPress 6.5.1 was not released. 6.5.2 is the first minor release for WordPress 6.5.

This security and maintenance release features 2 bug fixes on Core, 12 bug fixes for the Block Editor, and 1 security fix.

Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. Backports are also available for other major WordPress releases, 6.0 and later.

You can download WordPress 6.5.2 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

WordPress 6.5.2 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.6 and is currently planned for 16 July 2024.

Security updates included in this release

The security team would like to thank the following people for responsibly reporting vulnerabilities, and allowing them to be fixed in this release:

  • A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability affecting the Avatar block type; reported by John Blackbourn of the WordPress security team. Many thanks to Mat Rollings for assisting with the research.

Thank you to these WordPress contributors

This release was led by John Blackbourn, Isabel Brison, and Aaron Jorbin.

WordPress 6.5.2 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance and security fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Aaron Jorbin, Aki Hamano, Andrei Draganescu, Artemio Morales, Caleb Burks, colind, Daniel Richards, Dominik Schilling, Fabian Kägy, George Mamadashvili, Greg Ziółkowski, Isabel Brison, Jb Audras, Joe McGill, John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, Lovekesh Kumar, Matias Benedetto, Mukesh Panchal, Pascal Birchler, Peter Wilson, Sean Fisher, Sergey Biryukov, Scott Reilly

How to contribute

To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core channel. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook.

Thanks to John Blackbourn, Ehtisham S., Jb Audras, and Angela Jin for proofreading.

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