WordPress

WordPress 5.3 Beta 1 WordPress 5.3 Beta 1 is now available! This software is still in development, so we don’t recommend running it on a production site. Consider setting up a test site to play with the new version. You can test the WordPress 5.3 beta in two ways: Try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (choose the “bleeding edge nightlies” option) Or download the beta here (zip). WordPress 5.3 is slated for release on November 12, 2019, and we need your help to get there. Here are some of the big items to test, so we can find and resolve as many bugs as possible in the coming weeks. Block Editor: features and improvements Twelve releases of the Gutenberg plugin are going to be merged into 5.3 which means there’s a long list of exciting new features.  Here are just [ more… ]

People of WordPress: Abdullah Ramzan You’ve probably heard that WordPress is open-source software, and may know that it’s created and run by volunteers. WordPress enthusiasts share many examples of how WordPress changed people’s lives for the better. This monthly series shares some of those lesser-known, amazing stories. Meet Abdullah Ramzan, from Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. Abdullah Ramzan was born and brought up in the under-developed city of ​Layyah​, which is situated in Southern Punjab, Pakistan and surrounded by desert and the river ​Sindh​. He graduated from college in his home town and started using a computer in ​2010​ when he joined ​Government College University Faisalabad​. Abdullah’s introduction to WordPress happened while he was finishing the last semester of his degree. His final project was based in WordPress. Ramzan’s late mother was the real hero in his life, helping him with his [ more… ]

WordPress 5.2.3 Security and Maintenance Release WordPress 5.2.3 is now available! This security and maintenance release features 29 fixes and enhancements. Plus, it adds a number of security fixes—see the list below. These bugs affect WordPress versions 5.2.2 and earlier; version 5.2.3 fixes them, so you’ll want to upgrade. If you haven’t yet updated to 5.2, there are also updated versions of 5.0 and earlier that fix the bugs for you. Security Updates Props to Simon Scannell of RIPS Technologies for finding and disclosing two issues. The first, a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability found in post previews by contributors. The second was a cross-site scripting vulnerability in stored comments.  Props to Tim Coen for disclosing an issue where validation and sanitization of a URL could lead to an open redirect.  Props to Anshul Jain for disclosing reflected cross-site scripting during media uploads. Props to Zhouyuan [ more… ]

The Month in WordPress: August 2019 This has been a particularly busy month, with a number of interesting and ambitious proposals for the WordPress project along with active progress across the entire community. Core Development and Schedule The upcoming minor release of WordPress, v5.2.3, is currently in the release candidate phase and available for testing. Following that, the next major release is v5.3 and the Core team has laid out a schedule and scope for development. In addition, a bug scrub schedule and an accessibility-focused schedule have been set out to provide dedicated times for contributors to work on ironing out the bugs in the release. Want to get involved in building WordPress Core? Follow the Core team blog, and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group. Proposal for User Privacy Improvements The Core Privacy Team has [ more… ]

People of WordPress: Amanda Rush You’ve probably heard that WordPress is open source software, and may know that it’s created and run by volunteers. WordPress enthusiasts share many examples of how WordPress changed people’s lives for the better. This monthly series shares some of those lesser-known, amazing stories. Meet Amanda Rush from Augusta, Georgia, USA. Amanda Rush is a WordPress advocate with a visual disability. She first started using computers in 1985, which enabled her to turn in homework to her sighted teachers. Screen reader technology for Windows was in its infancy then, so she worked in DOS almost exclusively. After graduating high school, Amanda went to college to study computer science, programming with DOS-based tools since compilers for Windows were still inaccessible. As part of her computer science course of study, she learned HTML which began her career in [ more… ]