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If you’re like us, you’re eager to send 2020 off to the dustbin of history. So grab your running/walking/yoga shoes and join us as we resurrect the historic #wwwp5K and celebrate reaching the 2020 finish line! As an added incentive and in the spirit of the season, we’ve also created a special wwwp5K Givz page, where participants can make a donation to three of our favorite charities: Black Girls Code, Internet Archive, and the WordPress Foundation. Automattic will match every dollar donated to any organization through the Givz page, up to $50,000.

What’s a 5K?

A 5K is the equivalent of about 3.1 miles. The virtual run will work on the honor system, but if you want to be accurate, apps like Strava, Garmin Connect, Runkeeper, Fitbit, and many others can help you measure the right distance.

Sounds awesome! How do I participate?

The virtual wwwp5K officially kicks off tomorrow, December 1, and will be open through December 31st. You can run, skip, walk, hop, walk backwards, or even swim the equivalent distance in an indoor pool — as long as you’re practicing appropriate safety precautions given local conditions and staying healthy, your activity counts.

Everyone is welcome! WordPress fans, friends, and family, as well as Automatticians around the world.

When you’re done, don’t forget to post a selfie on your WordPress site and tag it with “wwwp5k” so that we can share the love and others can read about your experience. Of course, you can also blog about your journey preparing for the wwwp5K, but most of all, we’d love to see your smiling face and happy shoes as you complete the 5K.

Is there swag?

What would a virtual run be without swag with a custom logo? To commemorate the 2020 run, we’ve created a limited edition technical shirt featuring the official wwwp5K Wapuu!

They’ll be available for purchase in the WordPress Swag Store starting tomorrow until supplies last, so don’t forget to place your order.

Will you be joining us? Let us know in the comments!

Today, November 20th, people around the world pause to bear witness to Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day dedicated to honoring the memory of those murdered because of anti-transgender prejudice. Transgender Day of Remembrance reminds us to fight against forces that devalue transgender lives every day. To bring awareness to this important day, we want to pause to share a few stories of transgender people who have found their voice on WordPress.com. We posed a question: “What does Transgender Day of Remembrance mean to you?” Below, we’ve shared a few responses from creators on our platform.

We welcome you to share your own response on your site. In the meantime, read slowly and soak in the hard-fought words of the brave voices who are willing to share their experiences. 

Dr. SA Smythe (They/Them) of essaysmythe.com:

Some of us have been counted, but most of us are counted out—unthought and unthinkable. And so we do it ourselves. We account for Tony McDade. We are accountable to Muhlaysia Booker. We recall Riah Milton. We recollect the fierce life of one of our greatest contemporary remembrancers, the trans griot Monica Roberts. We name the nonbinary people who continue to be treated as unnameable as we slip through the matrix of binary gender. The competing racialized pandemics of our time continues to be intensified for trans people, especially Black trans women, in this year as with any other. We live with that reality and demand non-trans people do the same because our resilience is nothing without their reckoning for the violence they allow to continue against us. Trans Day of Remembrance is not only about how trans people have been stolen from us too soon, but how we continue to survive and thrive and persist against all odds. Has there ever been anything as beautiful as that?

Read more

Laura Kate Dale (She/Her) of laurakbuzz.com:

Going and spending some time in the company of other trans people was wonderful. I got to see trans people from a variety of backgrounds, some who had grown old and found love, and see proof that I could live a long and happy life as a trans woman. But the tone of the evening was contrasted by sitting with the knowledge of why we were all gathered, the knowledge of far too many lives cut far too short. I was surrounded by the trans people who had survived and thrived, as well as the memories of those who had not.

Read more

Nicole Eldridge (She/Her) of transgendersupport.org:

My name is Nicole Eldridge. I’ve been transgender since third grade. As I started to transition, I would read stories online about transgender people dying. This is absolutely terrifying if you want to do what they did. I never gave up and transitioned. Transgender Day of Remembrance means to me that we remember the transgender people that have died and carry out their goal of an equal future for all transgender people. Every time I listen to a Transgender Day of Remembrance speech, it brings me back to Martin Luther King’s speech, “I Have a Dream.” What King said about everyone being equal and having equal opportunities is so true when I hear the transgender people’s names who have died. It breaks my heart to hear all of the transgender people that died for the year. In spite of the hatred toward transgender people, I rise above it all and help transgender people all over the world with my website transgendersupport.org. This is what Transgender Day of Remembrance means to me.

Tallulah Ker-Oldfield (She/Her) of transrites.wordpress.com

Trans people are nothing new. Gender and its expressions have been changing throughout cultures, and trans people have existed throughout history with notable examples in the many ancient pantheons, including deities. There’s nothing new to consider, no trans question – we’ve been here all along, and the only terrible things that happened because of it happened to us…

***

And so I’m remembering trans lives lost this year, and trans lives filled with trauma, and everything that trans people have to do to simply… be. If you ever thought this year was scary, oppressive, isolating, challenging to get through and potentially fatal to be around people… you’ve been living a lot of the worst parts of the trans experience. Yet I’m remembering the powerful joy of my community, how our bonds through the pandemic have been strong, how well accustomed we immediately became to 2020, having lived our own version of it for most of our lives, creating found families, love, laughter, understanding and sometimes rainbows out of the unforgiving raw material of compromise.

Read more

To read more writing by transgender people, explore these sites on WordPress.com:

• letsqueerthingsup.com
• autistichoya.net
• transprov.wordpress.com
• gendermom.wordpress.com

We pride ourselves on being a platform where anyone can share their perspective, and we’re honored to be able to create a space for the personal stories of transgender-identifying individuals. Take the time to read their words and remember that it’s not enough to honor transgender people just one day each year. What we do matters every day. Follow these sites and others you come upon and, as a result, show your support in the days to come. 

The first release candidate for WordPress 5.6 is now available!

This is an important milestone in the community’s progress toward the final release of WordPress 5.6.

“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 5.6 is slated for release on December 8, 2020, but we need your help to get there—if you haven’t tried 5.6 yet, now is the time!

You can test the WordPress 5.6 release candidate in two ways:

• Try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (choose the “bleeding edge nightlies” option)
• Or download the release candidate here (zip).

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 5.6?

The final release of 2020 continues the annual tradition of a new default theme that is custom built to showcase the new features and functionality of the software. Continued progress on the block editor is especially clear in this release, which brings more blocks to more places, and fewer clicks to implement your layouts.

WordPress 5.6 also has lots of refinements to polish the developer experience. To learn more, 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 5.6 and update the Tested up to version in the readme file to 5.6. 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 5.6 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 5.6 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.

WordPress 5.6 Beta 4 is now available for testing!

This software is still in development, so we recommend that you run this version on a test site.

You can test the WordPress 5.6 beta in two ways:

• Try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (choose the “bleeding edge nightlies” option).
• Or download the beta here (zip).

The current target for the final release is December 8, 2020. This is just over three weeks away, so your help is needed to ensure this release is tested properly.

Thank you to all of the contributors that tested the beta 3 development release and provided feedback. Testing for bugs is an important part of polishing each release and a great way to contribute to WordPress.

Some Highlights

Since beta 3, 42 bugs have been fixed. Here is a summary of a few changes included in beta 4:

• There was a change to the auto-updates implementation for new installations of the software (#50907). Next steps, and rationale are both available.
• Added better handling of unexpected values in Site Health (#50145).
• Added a way for developers to filter the available authors list in Quick Edit (#47685).
• More accessible handling of the tag cloud widget (#51455).
• Multiple improvements in the Media component.
• Multiple improvements in the Build/Test Tools component.

To see all of the features for each Gutenberg release in detail, check out the release posts: 8.6, 8.7, 8.8, 8.9, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3.

Developer notes

WordPress 5.6 has lots of refinements to 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

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.

Props to @tonyamork, @audrasjb for technical notes and @angelasjin, @yvettesonneveld, @cguntur, @cbringmann for final review.

WordPress 5.6 Beta 3 is now available for testing!

This software is still in development, so we recommend that you run this version on a test site.

You can test the WordPress 5.6 beta in two ways:

• Try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (choose the “bleeding edge nightlies” option).
• Or download the beta here (zip).

The current target for the final release is December 8, 2020. This is just five weeks away, so your help is needed to ensure this release is tested properly.

Thank you to all of the contributors that tested the beta 2 development release and provided feedback. Testing for bugs is an important part of polishing each release and a great way to contribute to WordPress.

Some Highlights

Since beta 2, 20 bugs have been fixed. Here is a summary of a few changes included in beta 3:

• Added block patterns for Twenty Twenty (see #51098) and Twenty Nineteen (see #51099) themes.
• Added theme support for navigation-widgets (see #51445).
• Fixed incorrect slashes in the URL if the parent is empty for REST API (see #44745).
• Added a test to Site Health to verify that the Authorization header is working as expected for Application Passwords (see #51638).
• 10 additional bugs fixed in the block editor (see #26588).

To see all of the features for each Gutenberg release in detail, check out the release posts: 8.6, 8.7, 8.8, 8.9, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3.

Developer notes

WordPress 5.6 has lots of refinements to the developer experience as well. 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

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.

Props to @hellofromtonya, @davidbaumwald for help and @chanthaboune  for final review.

October 2020 was a notable month for WordPress lovers, thanks to the release of several products and updates. Read on to keep up with all the latest news!

The 2020 WordPress Annual Survey is out

The team published the 2020 WordPress Annual survey —  to help those who build WordPress to understand more about our software usage and our contributors’ experience. The Annual Survey will be open for at least 6 weeks and is available in French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. The survey results (once complete) will be posted on WordPress.org/news. The 2019 survey results have also been released and can now be viewed as slides or downloaded in PDF format. 

WordPress Translation celebrations spanned four weeks

The last week of September and most of October were focused on recruiting and encouraging polyglot contributors to the WordPress translation project. What was originally envisioned as a single-day event lasted 24 days! The Polyglots and Marketing Teams are exploring how future mini-events can be supported to continue building the momentum. Recordings of the live talks and interviews with contributors are available on YouTube. Write-ups from the different events are on the WPTranslationDay website.  The Polyglots team is also working on its 2020 survey and is requesting feedback on the questions.

Want to help WordPress speak your own language? Follow the Polyglots team blog and join the #polyglots channel in the Making WordPress Slack group. 

WordPress maintenance and beta releases

The Core team released WordPress 5.5.3 on Oct. 31, following the release of Version 5.5.2 on Oct. 29. Both releases fix several bugs and security issues with WordPress. You can update to the latest version directly from your WordPress dashboard or download it now from WordPress.org.  The team also released WordPress 5.6 Beta 1 on Oct. 20, followed by Beta 2 on Oct. 27. When ready, the final release will include improvements to the editor, auto-updates for major releases, PHP 8 support, and the Twenty Twenty One theme. You can test the Beta versions by downloading them from WordPress.org or using the WordPress Beta Tester plugin.

Want to be involved in the next release? Follow WordPress 5.6 updates on the development cycle and sign-up for the code review/commit office hours. You can help build WordPress Core by following the Core team blog and joining the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group. If you would like to help out with WordPress 5.6 outreach, contact the WordPress Marketing team on the #marketing channel.

Gutenberg 9.2 is released

Version 9.2 of the Gutenberg plugin came out on Oct. 21. This release offers support for video subtitles, the ability to transform selected blocks into the columns block, background patterns in cover blocks, along with several exciting features such as improvements to the widget screen, as well as bug fixes. You can find out more about the Gutenberg roadmap in the What’s next in Gutenberg blog post.

Want to get involved in building Gutenberg? Follow the Core team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

Learn WordPress is gearing up for launch

The Learn WordPress initiative, which offers WordPress video workshops followed by interactive discussions, is aiming to put out two courses by the end of the year as part of its full launch. The team is working on creating courses and is requesting feedback from community members on the planned list of courses.

Want to contribute to Learn WordPress? You can now submit a workshop application (submissions in non-English languages are welcome), apply to become a discussion group leader, organize discussions for your local WordPress meetup group, or update screenshots on existing lesson plans.

Further Reading:

• The Q3 2020 update from the WordPress project is now out!
• The WordPress Marketing team has put together a list of WordPress 5.5 marketing resources consisting of video presentations, slides, questions & answers, social media posts, and more – aimed at both developers and non-developers. The team has also prepared a list of captioned screen-recordings in several languages to aid new contributors. Contact the team on the #marketing channel if you would like to contribute to these and upcoming projects. 
• The WordPress Core team has announced a proposal to introduce application passwords for REST API integrations.
• Five online WordCamps took place in October: WordCamp Rochester, NY, WordCamp Austin, TX, WordCamp Italia Online, WordCamp Los Angeles, CA, and WordCamp Bulgaria Online. You can find livestream recaps of these camps on their websites. The camps are also in the process of uploading their videos to WordPress.tv. Check out the WordCamp Schedule to catch up with upcoming online WordCamps.
• Contributor teams have started work on adding dark mode support for the Twenty Twenty One theme. Additionally, the development of the Full Site Editing version of Twenty Twenty One has also kicked-off in the Theme Experiments GitHub repository.
• BuddyPress 7.0 beta, which comes with new administration screens, blocks, and improved CLI support – is now available! 
• The Core team is revisiting starter content for WordPress themes as part of the 5.6 release. The team also decided not to ship the widgets screen in WordPress 5.6 and have started discussions on aligning the WordPress release cycle with industry standards.
• WordPress Accessibility enthusiasts all over the world joined hands for the first ever 24 hour WP Accessibility day event on Oct. 2. You can find the recorded livestream of the event on its YouTube channel.
• The Meta team has kicked off a discussion on setting up a Block pattern directory (similar to the existing block directory). 
• The Themes team has published a post clarifying how Block based themes will work with WordPress 5.6. Check out the block-based theme tutorial and its documentation to learn how to build block-based themes. 

Have a story that we should include in the next “Month in WordPress” post? Please submit it here.

WordPress 5.5.3 is now available. 

This maintenance release fixes an issue introduced in WordPress 5.5.2 which makes it impossible to install WordPress on a brand new website that does not have a database connection configured. This release does not affect sites where a database connection is already configured, for example, via one-click installers or an existing wp-config.php file.

5.5.3-alpha Issue

Earlier today — between approximately 15:30 and 16:00 UTC — the auto-update system for WordPress updated some sites from version 5.5.2 to version 5.5.3-alpha. This auto-update was due to an error in the Updates API caused by the 5.5.3 release preparations (see more here). The 5.5.3-alpha version at this point was functionally identical to 5.5.2 as no development work had been started on 5.5.3; however, the following changes may have been made to your site:

• The default “Twenty” themes installed as part of the pre-release package.
• The “Akismet” plugin installed as part of the pre-release package.

These themes and plugins were not activated and therefore remain non-functional unless you installed them previously. It is safe to delete these features should you prefer not to use them. 

If you are not on 5.5.2, or have auto-updates for minor releases disabled, please manually update to the 5.5.3 version by downloading WordPress 5.5.3 or visiting Dashboard → Updates and click “Update Now.”

For more technical details of the issue, we’ve posted on our Core Development blog.

Thanks and props!

Thanks to those who contributed to the 5.5.3 release @audrasjb, @barry, @chanthaboune, @cbringmann, @clorith, @davidbaumwald, @desrosj, @hellofromtonya, @jeffpaul, @johnbillion, @garubi, @metalandcoffee, @mukesh27, @otto, @punitsoftac, @sergeybiryukov, @whyisjake, and @xknown.

WordPress.com is excited to announce our newest offering: a course just for beginning bloggers where you’ll learn everything you need to know about blogging from the most trusted experts in the industry. We have helped millions of blogs get up and running, we know what works, and we want you to to know everything we know. This course provides all the fundamental skills and inspiration you need to get your blog started, an interactive community forum, and content updated annually. 

How it works: Upon registering, you will receive access to review the lessons at your own pace. Our curriculum includes:

• Foundations of blogging
• Getting started with block basics
• Building your blog
• Understanding audiences 
• Designing your blog
• Writing for the internet
• Branding and growing your blog
• Earning money with your blog 

You’ll also be able to connect with WordPress.com experts and other aspiring bloggers, who will create content alongside you. Beyond the modules, this course provides: 

• Monthly office hours with WordPress experts to answer your questions 
• A certificate of completion
• Access to a private blogging community online
• Virtual meetups scheduled quarterly

Cost: A $49 annual subscription gives you access to all of these on-demand blogging resources, community events, and course updates. That way, you won’t have to waste time looking for answers all over the web—you’ll be able to get started right away.

Join by Thursday, December 10th and enjoy 50% off with code WPCOURSES50.

We are looking forward to reading your new blogs soon!

WordPress 5.5.2 is now available!

This security and maintenance release features 14 bug fixes in addition to 10 security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 3.7 have also been updated.

WordPress 5.5.2 is a short-cycle security and maintenance release. The next major release will be version 5.6.

You can download WordPress 5.5.2 by downloading from WordPress.org, or visit your Dashboard → Updates and click Update Now.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.

Security Updates

Seven security issues affect WordPress versions 5.5 and earlier. If you haven’t yet updated to 5.5, all WordPress versions since 3.7 have also been updated to fix the following security issues:

• Props to Alex Concha of the WordPress Security Team for their work in hardening deserialization requests.
• Props to David Binovec on a fix to disable spam embeds from disabled sites on a multisite network.
• Thanks to Marc Montas from Sucuri for reporting an issue that could lead to XSS from global variables.
• Thanks to Justin Tran who reported an issue surrounding privilege escalation in XML-RPC. He also found and disclosed an issue around privilege escalation around post commenting via XML-RPC.
• Props to Omar Ganiev who reported a method where a DoS attack could lead to RCE.
• Thanks to Karim El Ouerghemmi from RIPS who disclosed a method to store XSS in post slugs.
• Thanks to Slavco for reporting, and confirmation from Karim El Ouerghemmi, a method to bypass protected meta that could lead to arbitrary file deletion.
• And a special thanks to @zieladam who was integral in many of the releases and patches during this release.

Thank you to all of the reporters for privately disclosing the vulnerabilities. This gave the security team time to fix the vulnerabilities before WordPress sites could be attacked.

For more information, browse the full list of changes on Trac, or check out the version 5.5.2 HelpHub documentation page.

Thanks and props!

The 5.5.2 release was led by @whyisjake and the following release squad:  @audrasjb, @davidbaumwald, @desrosj, @johnbillion, @metalandcoffee, @noisysocks @planningwrite, @sarahricker and @sergeybiryukov.

In addition to the security researchers and release squad members mentioned above, thank you to everyone who helped make WordPress 5.5.2 happen:

Aaron Jorbin, Alex Concha, Amit Dudhat, Andrey “Rarst” Savchenko, Andy Fragen, Ayesh Karunaratne, bridgetwillard, Daniel Richards, David Baumwald, Davis Shaver, dd32, Florian TIAR, Hareesh, Hugh Lashbrooke, Ian Dunn, Igor Radovanov, Jake Spurlock, Jb Audras, John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, Jon Brown, Joy, Juliette Reinders Folmer, kellybleck, mailnew2ster, Marcus Kazmierczak, Marius L. J., Milan Dinić, Mohammad Jangda, Mukesh Panchal, Paal Joachim Romdahl, Peter Wilson, Regan Khadgi, Robert Anderson, Sergey Biryukov, Sergey Yakimov, Syed Balkhi, szaqal21, Tellyworth, Timi Wahalahti, Timothy Jacobs, Towhidul I. Chowdhury, Vinayak Anivase, and zieladam.

When AngelList and Venture Hacks co-founder Babak Nivi came to us and wanted to donate a theme, our team was excited to work on the design to make it available to everyone on WordPress.com for free. Designed by Cece Yu and originally developed for the Spearhead podcast, the new Spearhead theme is fully block-powered and the first among our themes to support dark mode.

Spearhead works seamlessly with the block editor, supporting a wide range of blocks — Audio, Video, Image, TikTok, Loom, and many more — so you can customize posts and pages as you like and showcase various types of content, from podcast episodes to video tutorials and more. And while Spearhead shines as a theme for media, its sparse design also displays long-form writing and text and images beautifully.

Spearhead comes with some block patterns, or collections of predefined blocks, to give you a boost as you start building your site. There are a couple of patterns you can use to show a list of places where people can listen to your podcast, as well as a custom archive page.

Being the first theme on WordPress.com to support dark mode, Spearhead’s default color scheme has a white background, but if your operating system shifts into dark mode, the theme will change and display a dark background with light text.

Our team especially loves the theme’s clean design, which lets the content you create shine through. Your listeners and readers can sit back with their cup of coffee — headphones on — and enjoy your latest episode and read along with the transcript!

Explore the Spearhead demo site to see the design in action, and then visit the Spearhead page to activate the theme.