WordPress 5.5 Release Candidate

Posted by download in Software on 28-07-2020

The first release candidate for WordPress 5.5 is now available!

This is an important milestone in the community’s progress toward the final release of WordPress 5.5.

“Release Candidate” means that the new version is ready for release, but with millions of users and thousands of plugins and themes, it’s possible something was missed. WordPress 5.5 is slated for release on August 11, 2020, but we need your help to get there—if you haven’t tried 5.5 yet, now is the time!

You can test the WordPress 5.5 release candidate in two ways:

Thank you to all of the contributors who tested the Beta releases and gave feedback. Testing for bugs is a critical part of polishing every release and a great way to contribute to WordPress.

What’s in WordPress 5.5?

WordPress 5.5 has lots of refinements to polish the developer experience. To keep up, subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog and pay special attention to the developer notes tag for updates on those and other changes that could affect your products.

Plugin and Theme Developers

Please test your plugins and themes against WordPress 5.5 and update the Tested up to version in the readme file to 5.5. If you find compatibility problems, please be sure to post to the support forums, so those can be figured out before the final release.

The WordPress 5.5 Field Guide, due very shortly, will give you a more detailed dive into the major changes.

How to Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! This release also marks the hard string freeze point of the 5.5 release schedule.

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.

Industry Experts and Pro Bloggers Come Together to Inspire, Teach, and Help You (and Your Site) Succeed

Posted by download in Software on 28-07-2020

At the Official WordPress.com Growth Summit, the two-day virtual conference running twice from August 11-13, you’ll have access to about 50 speakers and presenters across 90+ breakout sessions and keynote conversations. The varied lineup will appeal to new and established bloggers; professionals in tech, media, and marketing; and anyone ready to build or expand their presence on the web.

Event highlights include a talk from Smitten Kitchen creator and cookbook author Deb Perelman; panels with Newspack founder Kinsey Wilson on the state of independent and local journalism amid a struggling media landscape and in the age of COVID-19; and sessions with founders and representatives from companies and organizations like Xbox, Google, Sandwich, African Queer Youth Initiative, Out in Tech, Looka, and more.

Wondering what to expect? Here are 10 entrepreneurs, founders, bloggers, and developers scheduled to speak at the summit.


Jason Snell

Jason is the founder and editor-in-chief of Six Colors, a site that covers Apple, technology, and the intersection of tech and culture. Previously, as the lead editor for Macworld, he covered every major Apple product release for more than a decade.

In a breakout session on content and community with web designer and A List Apart founder Jeffrey Zeldman, they’ll share blogging and podcasting tips, advice on growing your audience, and making money with paywalls, stores, advertising, and more. “Membership programs can build loyalty and provide the most enthusiastic portions of your audience with more of what they love,” says Jason. “I switched to WordPress in order to build a richer — and more marketable — membership program, and the results have been excellent.”

Tina Wells

“The 4Ps of marketing — product, place, promotion, and price — have changed dramatically,” says Tina Wells, the founder of Elevation Tribe, a community and lifestyle publication focused on helping women of color launch, grow, and lead their businesses. In her breakout session, Tina will talk about creating a marketing plan for beginners and small businesses. “We’ll go back to basics and discover how we can make the right changes to help your business not only survive, but thrive.”

A business strategist and passionate entrepreneur, Tina believes in the power of an effective online presence. “Your website is your first storefront, and it tells the story of your brand,” she says, noting that a strong visual identity and fresh design are critical. You can see both in action at Elevation Tribe and on Tina’s website.

Kristin Smith

“My authenticity is what allows me to share my brand with others. Being yourself — and transparent — is what people see and keeps them coming back. There’s only one of you, and that alone is enough,” says Kristin Smith, food blogger at Krisp X Kristin and podcast co-host of At the Bar.

In Kristin’s breakout session, you’ll find out how she turned her passion for cooking into a popular blog and podcast. She’ll share what she’s learned, giving you a set of actionable steps to inspire you to overcome your fears and get started on your website.

“Sometimes in the beginning it’s hard to see a finish line. But, keep your head down and keep working. Throw yourself into it, network with other likeminded people, and continue to learn,” says Kristin. “It all will pay off in the end.”

Paul Bakaus

“The web used to be the best platform for content creation, distribution, and consumption,” says Paul Bakaus, a senior staff development advocate at Google. “But today the walled garden — closed social apps and platforms — are drinking our milkshake. I say it’s time we stop letting them! We need to, as a community, work on making the web more visual, frictionless, and bite-sized. Web Stories are our approach to help with that, and we can’t wait for you to join us.”

In his breakout session, Telling Web Stories with WordPress, Paul will introduce you to Web Stories — a mobile-first tool that allows storytellers to create visual narratives with engaging animations and tappable interactions — and show how you can use them on your website with the Web Stories for WordPress plugin.

Anton Diaz

“We want to contribute to an awesome post-COVID-19 world,” says Anton Diaz, traveler, founder, and creator of Our Awesome Planet. “We’re helping food businesses to connect with foodies and travel destinations to engage with travelers.”

In his breakout session, Anton will share the principles that have guided his food and travel blog for 15 years. “There are core beliefs that have helped Our Awesome Planet stand out,” says Paul. “We make sure that all the food and travel experiences we feature are based on first-hand experience, grounded on our original vision: documenting the food and travel adventures of our family as our four sons — Aidan, Joshua, Raphael, and Yugi — have grown.”

Deb Perelman

Deb Perelman, the longtime food blogger at Smitten Kitchen, is a WordPress.com community favorite. What started as a food blog and side project in her tiny New York City kitchen has grown into one of the most popular food blogs on the internet, as well as a series of best-selling cookbooks.

“I just really, really enjoy blogging,” Deb said in an interview with WordPress.com several years ago. “I love having a place where I can share what I’m working on in an immediate way and have a conversation with people who are equally excited about it, and who encourage me to try more stuff that scares me in the kitchen.” At the conference, Deb will share her story and the journey of Smitten Kitchen, from start to present.

Kim Newton

Kim Newton, a global marketing executive with over 20 years of experience working with corporations and brands, is the creator of The Intentional Pause, a project that empowers women to follow their dreams using the power of pause. “I give every woman permission — yes permission — to just stop and think,” she writes on her website. “I want to help women to embrace pausing as a powerful way forward, with intention, to achieve their dreams.”

Kim has had many successes in consumer marketing, corporate strategy, and business development, and will share her insights on marketing and PR at the summit.

Chris Coyier

Chris Coyier, the co-founder of CodePen, is a front-end developer and designer. He’s also the creator of CSS-Tricks, a resource that’s all about building websites, mostly from a front-end perspective, and was built on WordPress since day one. “I’m a solo developer for the most part on CSS-Tricks. Just me over here. I don’t have the budget for a fancy development team. But I still want to feel powerful and productive. That’s one of the things that WordPress has given to me. I feel like I can build just about anything on WordPress, and do it in a way that doesn’t feel like a mountain of technical debt that I would struggle to maintain.”

In his breakout session — Putting WordPress to Work — Chris will take us behind the scenes at CSS-Tricks, sharing “just how powerful WordPress can be as a platform to run a publishing business on.”

Amy Chan

For Amy Chan, blogging provided the path to a publishing career. Amy is the founder of Renew Breakup Bootcamp, the world’s first breakup bootcamp, and the author of Breakup Bootcamp: The Science of Rewiring Your Heart. “Heartbreak is something that affects everyone, so people were able to connect quickly with the company’s offering,” says Amy.

In Amy’s breakout session — How I Accidentally Became a Thought Leader By Blogging — she shares her own story, and how you can transform your side gig into something bigger. To start, Amy says to just do it: “Stop hiding. Stop waiting. Stop perfecting. Perfection is procrastination in disguise,” she says. “Start the blog, launch the event, put your creation out in the world. Whatever it is, just get in a mindset of taking action. Create as a way of being. Launch it now and develop it later.”

Danica Kombol

Danica Kombol founded Everywhere Agency to help brands tell better stories through social media and influencer marketing. As CEO, she leads a team that works with brands to launch content-driven campaigns and to create meaningful conversations with followers in powerful, measurable ways.

Danica also launched Everywhere Society, a network of about 5,000 established influencers and bloggers, which powers the agency’s influencer campaigns and brand ambassadorships. Her session will cover blogging for purpose and profit.


Browse the agenda for all sessions, demos, and talks. Buy your ticket now for early bird pricing of $79, which expires after July 31!

WordPress 5.5 Beta 4

Posted by download in Software on 27-07-2020

WordPress 5.5 Beta 4 is now available!

This software is still in development, so it’s not recommended to run this version on a production site. Consider setting up a test site to play with the new version.

You can test WordPress 5.5 Beta 4 in two ways:

WordPress 5.5 is slated for release on August 11th, 2020, and we need your help to get there!

Thank you to all of the contributors who tested the beta 3 development release and gave feedback. Testing for bugs is a critical part of polishing every release and a great way to contribute to WordPress.

Some highlights

Since beta 3, 43 bugs have been fixed. Here are a few changes in beta 4:

  • Add "loading" as an allowed kses image attribute (see #50731).
  • Add filter for the plugin/theme auto-update message in the Info tab of Site health (see #50663).
  • $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] not a reliable when generating email host names (see #25239)
  • Several backported fixes from Gutenberg are included in WordPress 5.5 Beta 4 (See PR #24218)

Developer notes

WordPress 5.5 has lots of refinements to polish the developer experience. To keep up, subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog and pay special attention to the developers’ notes for updates on those and other changes that could affect your products.

How to Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages!

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you!

If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.

Does Your Project Need a Great Name? Try Our New Business Name Generator

Posted by download in Software on 22-07-2020

Are you starting a new online store? A brick-and-mortar salon? A freelance consultation service? The new business name generator by WordPress.com is a one-stop tool to get you started with your next big idea.

Choosing a compelling, catchy name is a crucial step in any new project. That’s why we’ve launched a powerful tool that generates dozens of creative options for your business, store, or any other venture.

The business name generator is free and easy to use. Just enter one or more keywords, and it will generate dozens of potential names for you. 

When you find a name you like, you can instantly take the next step and buy a custom domain — a web address — that uses it. Ready to start a shiny new website for your business? You can do that with a few clicks, all without leaving WordPress.com.

Ready to take the business name generator for a spin?

WordPress 5.5 Beta 3

Posted by download in Software on 21-07-2020

WordPress 5.5 Beta 3 is now available!

This software is still in development,so it’s not recommended to run this version on a production site. Consider setting up a test site to play with the new version.

You can test WordPress 5.5 Beta 3 in two ways:

WordPress 5.5 is slated for release on August 11th, 2020, and we need your help to get there!

Thank you to all of the contributors who tested the beta 2 development release and gave feedback. Testing for bugs is a critical part of polishing every release and a great way to contribute to WordPress.

Some highlights

Since beta 2, 43 bugs have been fixed. Here are a few changes in beta 2:

  • Plugin and theme versions are now shared in the emails when automatically updated (see #50350).
  • REST API routes without a permission_callback now trigger a _doing_it_wrong() warning (see #50075).
  • Over 23 Gutenberg changes and updates (see #24068 and #50712).
  • A bug with the new import and export database Dashicons has been fixed (see #49913).

Developer notes

WordPress 5.5 has lots of refinements to polish the developer experience. To keep up, subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog and pay special attention to the developers’ notes for updates on those and other changes that could affect your products.

How to Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages!

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you!

If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.

The First-Ever WordPress.com Growth Summit Is Coming, and You Won’t Want to Miss It

Posted by download in Software on 21-07-2020

Join us for The Official WordPress.com Growth Summit on August 11-13! At our first-ever virtual conference you will learn how to build and grow your site, from start to scale. Are you a blogger looking for ways to drive traffic and get more visitors? Are you a small business that would like to start selling more products and services on your site? Are you an artist or creator who would like to learn how to share your work? The WordPress.com Growth Summit will cover these topics (and many more) and provide indispensable advice to help you succeed.

The goal of this event is to inspire, connect you with the tools you need, and help you build your community. Sessions will take place across three tracks: blogging, business, and creative. You can take sessions on any or all tracks, and they’ll focus on four main topic areas: 

  • Site Structure & Design: Make your website look its best.
  • Content: Create great content to help your website grow.
  • Marketing: Grow your audience and reach.
  • Making Money: Monetize and scale your website.

Each day includes sessions with industry and business leaders, successful bloggers, and creatives, who will join WordPress.com experts for engaging talks and hands-on demonstrations to help your site grow. Hear from speakers like…

You’ll also have the opportunity to connect directly with our Happiness Engineers to ask your most pressing support questions. 

To stay accessible to a global audience, we’ll hold the event twice, with live sessions in all regions:

Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Africa — August 11-12, 2020

Asia Pacific — August 12-13, 2020

Want to learn more about the event and to take advantage of the early-bird pricing (available through July 31)?

Unroll Your Twitter Threads Into WordPress

Posted by download in Software on 15-07-2020

Have you ever written a Twitter thread, and then wished you could turn it into a blog post? You can now do it in seconds.

Writing Twitter threads, also known as tweetstorms, can be a great way to clarify your thoughts: keeping each paragraph under 280 characters forces you to focus on your message.

Threads are great for engagement and sudden bursts of inspiration. But when the thread is done, wouldn’t it be nice to have a quick way to capture the full conversation in one place — one page to read, one link to share, all your thoughts captured on a website you own?

Now, when you embed a tweet that’s part of a larger thread, you’ll see a new “Unroll” button on the block toolbar. Click or tap it to import the entire thread into your post.

Publish the whole thread as one easy-to-read post — and since WordPress has no character limit, add any extra thoughts that have popped up in the meantime!

Originally tweeted by WordPress.com (@wordpressdotcom) on July 17, 2020.

We hope you enjoy this new way to make your WordPress site the canonical place for everything you publish — leave a comment if you have any questions, suggestions for how we can make it easier for you to share content between your site and other platforms, or if you’d like to share a link to a post that started as a Twitter thread!

Expert Advice: Learn How to Podcast on WordPress.com

Posted by download in Software on 15-07-2020

Podcasting isn’t just for professional broadcasters or celebrities. If you have a passion for a topic — no matter how niche — and want to explore your options beyond blogging and tweeting, consider launching a podcast! All you need to get started is a decent microphone and headset, an internet connection — and our next free webinar to learn the basics.

Date: Thursday, July 23, 2020
Cost: FREE
Time: 8:00 am PDT | 9:00 am MDT | 10:00 am CDT | 11:00 am EDT | 15:00 UTC
Registration linkhttps://zoom.us/webinar/register/5115944218471/WN_DEIBungPRlSs4hIKhN6ezA
Who’s invited: Bloggers, business owners, and anyone else interested in starting a podcast.

Your hosts, expert podcasters and Happiness Engineers Richard and Damianne, have years of experience in podcasting, radio journalism, and of course, helping our users get the most out of their WordPress.com sites. They’ll walk you through the basics of hosting your podcast on WordPress.com and adding it to the most popular podcast directories. They’ll also share some tips and best practices on crafting a successful podcast.

Please note that to host audio files on a WordPress.com site, your site must be on the Premium, Business, or eCommerce plan.

The one-hour webinar will include a 45-minute presentation and 15 minutes of live Q&A. Dustin, one of our veteran Happiness Engineers and another longtime podcaster, will also be on hand to answer questions over Zoom chat during the webinar.

Seats are limited, so register now to save your seat. We look forward to seeing you then!

WordPress 5.5 Beta 2

Posted by download in Software on 14-07-2020


WordPress 5.5 Beta 2 is now available!

This software is still in development, so it’s not recommended to run this version on a production site. Consider setting up a test site to play with the new version.

You can test WordPress 5.5 beta 2 in two ways:

WordPress 5.5 is slated for release on August 11th, 2020, and we need your help to get there!

Thank you to all of the contributors that tested the beta 1 development release and provided feedback. Testing for bugs is an important part of polishing each release and a great way to contribute to WordPress. Here are some of the changes since beta 1 to pay close attention to while testing.

Some highlights

Since beta 1, 48 bugs have been fixed. Here is a summary of a few changes included in beta 2:

  • 19 additional bugs have been fixed in the block editor (see #23903 and #23905).
  • The Dashicons icon font has been updated (see #49913).
  • Broken widgets stemming from changes in Beta 1 have been fixed (see #50609).
  • Query handling when counting revisions has been improved (see #34560).
  • An alternate, expanded view was added for wp_list_table (see #49715).
  • Some adjustments were made to the handling of default terms for custom taxonomies (see #43517)

Several updates have been made to the block editor. For details, see #23903 and #23905.

Developer notes

WordPress 5.5 has lots of refinements to polish the developer experience. To keep up, subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog and pay special attention to the developers’ notes for updates on those and other changes that could affect your products.

How to Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages!

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you!

If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.

WordPress 5.5 Beta 1

Posted by download in Software on 07-07-2020

WordPress 5.5 Beta 1 is now available for testing!

This software is still in development, so it’s not recommended to run this version on a production site. Consider setting up a test site to play with the new version.

You can test the WordPress 5.5 beta in two ways:

The current target for final release is August 11, 2020. This is only five weeks away. Your help is needed to ensure this release is tested properly.

Testing for bugs is an important part of polishing the release during the beta stage and a great way to contribute. Here are some of the big changes and features to pay close attention to while testing.

Block editor: features and improvements

WordPress 5.5 will include ten releases of the Gutenberg plugin, bringing with it a long list of exciting new features. Here are just a few:

  • Inline image editing – Crop, rotate, and zoom photos inline right from image blocks.
  • Block patterns – Building elaborate pages can be a breeze with new block patterns. Several are included by default.
  • Device previews – See how your content will look to users on many different screen sizes.
  • End block overwhelm. The new block inserter panel displays streamlined categories and collections. As a bonus, it supports patterns and integrates with the new block directory right out of the box.
  • Discover, install, and insert third-party blocks from your editor using the new block directory.
  • A better, smoother editing experience with: 
    • Refined drag-and-drop
    • Block movers that you can see and grab
    • Parent block selection
    • Contextual focus highlights
    • Multi-select formatting lets you change a bunch of blocks at once 
    • Ability to copy and relocate blocks easily
    • And, better performance
  • An expanded design toolset for themes.
  • Now add backgrounds and gradients to more kinds of blocks, like groups, columns, media & text
  • And support for more types of measurements — not just pixels. Choose ems, rems, percentages, vh, vw, and more! Plus, adjust line heights while typing, turning writing and typesetting into the seamless act.

In all, WordPress 5.5 brings more than 1,500 useful improvements to the block editor experience. 

To see all of the features for each release in detail check out the release posts: 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, and 8.4.

Wait! There’s more!

XML sitemaps

XML Sitemaps are now included in WordPress and enabled by default. Sitemaps are essential to search engines discovering the content on your website. Your site’s home page, posts, pages, custom post types, and more will be included to improve your site’s visibility.

Auto-updates for plugins and themes

WordPress 5.5 also brings auto-updates for plugins and themes. Easily control which plugins and themes keep themselves up to date on their own. It’s always recommended that you run the latest versions of all plugins and themes. The addition of this feature makes that easier than ever!

Lazy-loading images

WordPress 5.5 will include native support for lazy-loaded images utilizing new browser standards. With lazy-loading, images will not be sent to users until they approach the viewport. This saves bandwidth for everyone (users, hosts, ISPs), makes it easier for those with slower internet speeds to browse the web, saves electricity, and more.

Better accessibility

With every release, WordPress works hard to improve accessibility. Version 5.5 is no different and packs a parcel of accessibility fixes and enhancements. Take a look:

  • List tables now come with extensive, alternate view modes.
  • Link-list widgets can now be converted to HTML5 navigation blocks.
  • Copying links in media screens and modal dialogs can now be done with a simple click of a button.
  • Disabled buttons now actually look disabled.
  • Meta boxes can now be moved with the keyboard.
  • A custom logo on the front page no longer links to the front page.
  • Assistive devices can now see status messages in the Image Editor.
  • The shake animation indicating a login failure now respects the user’s choices in the `prefers-reduced-motion` media query.
  • Redundant `Error:` prefixes have been removed from error notices.

Miscellaneous Changes

Keep your eyes on the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.5-related developer notes in the coming weeks, breaking down these and other changes in greater detail.

So far, contributors have fixed more than 350 tickets in WordPress 5.5, including 155 new features and enhancements, and more bug fixes are on the way.

How You Can Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages!

If you think you’ve found a bug, please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We would love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. That’s also where you can find a list of known bugs.

Props to @webcommsat, @yvettesonneveld, @estelaris, and @marybaum for compiling/writing this post, @davidbaumwald for editing/proof reading, and @cbringmann, @desrosj, and @andreamiddleton for final review.