For users on our Business and eCommerce Plans, plugins are a critical part of the WordPress.com experience. We’re always looking for ways to simplify the process of discovering and installing powerful WordPress plugins.
As a result, we’re now making it possible to purchase certain plugins directly on the WordPress.com plugin page. Not only that, but WordPress.com will offer monthly and annual plugin pricing which provides site owners more flexibility.
Initially, you can purchase six of our most popular WooCommerce plugins on the WordPress.com plugins page.
WooCommerce Subscriptions — Allow customers to subscribe to your products or services and pay on a weekly, monthly or annual basis.
WooCommerce Bookings — Allow customers to book appointments, make reservations or rent equipment without leaving your site.
WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping — Advanced, flexible shipping. Define multiple shipping rates based on location, price, weight, shipping class or item count.
WooCommerce AutomateWoo — Powerful marketing automation for WooCommerce. AutomateWoo has the tools you need to grow your store and make more money.
WooCommerce Xero — Save time with automated sync between WooCommerce and your Xero account.
Purchasing a plugin via the new WordPress.com interface is simple. On the plugins page, click on one of the paid plugin cards to be redirected to a detailed product listing page. When you’re ready, click the purchase button in the top right of the product listing page. Your purchase won’t be final until you confirm your payment method and details on the following page. The plugin will be installed automatically.
This announcement is just the start — look for more paid plugins and other exciting updates over the coming months. Let us know in the comments below what plugins you would like to see available for purchase directly on WordPress.com.
As a reminder, all plugins (free or paid) are currently only available to customers with a WordPress.com Business or eCommerce Plan. If you’re interested in purchasing or upgrading to an annual Business Plan, click here for a 25% discount off your first year.
Introducing 5.9, Joséphine. Named in honor of acclaimed international jazz singer Joséphine Baker, this latest, most versatile WordPress release is here: download it or update it directly from your dashboard.
As a lifelong civil rights campaigner, Joséphine Baker believed that all people could live in harmony together, just as different instruments in a jazz band blend together to make a whole piece. Turn on a playlist from your favorite music service and enjoy her famous renditions of “You are the greatest love”, “Sans Amour”, and “Love is a Dreamer” as you discover all the features of this brand-new WordPress release.
Full site editing is here.
It puts you in control of your whole site, right in the WordPress Admin.
Say hello to Twenty Twenty-Two.
And say hello to the first default block theme in the history of WordPress. This is more than just a new default theme. It’s a brand-new way to work with WordPress themes.
Block themes put a wide array of visual choices directly in your hands, from color schemes and font combinations to page templates and image filters, all from the Site Editor. So in one place, you can give Twenty Twenty-Two the same look and feel as your organization’s other materials—or take your site’s look in another direction.
You already have the Twenty Twenty-Two theme—it came installed with WordPress 5.9. You will find it with your other installed themes.
Your personal paintbox awaits
Twenty Twenty-Two is not the only theme built for full site editing. More block themes are in the Themes directory, and the number will grow.
When you use any of those new themes, you no longer need the Customizer. Instead, you have all the power of the Styles interface inside the Site Editor. Just as in Twenty Twenty-Two, you build your site’s look and feel there, with the tools you need for the job in a fluid interface that practically comes alive in your hands.
The Navigation block
Blocks come to site navigation, the heart of user experience.
The new Navigation block gives you the power to choose: an always-on responsive menu or one that adapts to your user’s screen size. And your choices are remembered! In 5.9, the block saves menus as custom post types, which get saved to the database.
More improvements and updates
Do you love to blog? New tweaks to the publishing flow help you say more, faster.
Better block controls
WordPress 5.9 features new typography tools, flexible layout controls, and finer control of details like spacing, borders, and more—to help you get not just the look, but the polish that says you care about details.
The power of patterns
The WordPress Pattern Directory is the home of a wide range of block patterns built to save you time and add to your site’s functionality. And you can edit them as you see fit. Need something different in the header or footer for your theme? Swap it out with a new one in a few clicks.
With a nearly full-screen view that draws you in to see fine details, the Pattern Explorer makes it easy to compare patterns and choose the one your users need.
A revamped List View
In 5.9, the List View lets you drag and drop your content exactly where you want it. Managing complex documents is easier, too: simple controls let you expand and collapse sections as you build your site—and add HTML anchors to your blocks to help users get around the page.
A better Gallery block
Treat every image in a Gallery Block the same way you would treat it in the Image Block.
Style every image in your gallery differently, or make them all the same, except for one or two. Or change the layout with drag-and-drop.
WordPress 5.9 for developers
Theme.json for child themes
In 5.9, theme.json supports child themes. That means your users can build a child theme right in the WordPress Admin, without writing a single line of code.
Now you can register more than one stylesheet per block, which lets a given block load only the styles its markup requests, and not a whole sheet. Read the details in this dev note.
A refactored Gallery Block
The changes to the Gallery Block listed above are the result of near-complete refactor. Have you built a plugin or theme on the Gallery Block functionality? Be sure you read this dev note. It tells you what you need to do for compatibility.
Learn more about the new features in 5.9
Want to dive into 5.9 but don’t know where to start? Check out this free course about Simple Site Design from Learn WordPress. There are a variety of learning materials including short how-to video tutorials and resources on new features in WordPress 5.9, with much more planned.
Check the Field Guide for more!
Check out the latest version of the WordPress Field Guide. It has lots of useful information with links to detailed developer notes to support you building in WordPress for everyone you serve. WordPress 5.9 Field Guide.
The Squad
The WordPress 5.9 release was led by Matt Mullenweg, and supported by this highly enthusiastic release squad:
By release day, 71 locales had translated 90 percent or more of WordPress 5.9 in their language. Community translators are hard at work ensuring more translations are on their way. Thank you to everyone who helps to make WordPress available in 205 languages.
Many thanks to all of the community volunteers who contribute in the support forums. They help to answer questions from people across the world. The success of releases from the first one in 2003 owes much to the efforts of the support contributors.
If contributing to WordPress appeals to you, it’s easy to learn more and get involved. Discover the different teams that come together to Make WordPress website and find out the latest plans on the core development blog.
Integrating your social media presence with your WordPress.com website has never been easier. We offer many options and tools that are available on all plans, at no additional cost. Whether you want to auto-share your website posts to a social media platform, display your social media posts on your website, provide links to your various accounts, or encourage your website visitors to share your content, we’ve got what you need to connect with your audience.
Posting to Social Media
All WordPress.com plans include Publicize, a feature that lets you automate posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. When you set up and configure these social media accounts to your site, every new post you publish will automatically post to the platforms you’ve selected. This is a great way to repurpose your website content on your social channels, reach your audience where they already are, and drive traffic to your site.
It’s important to note that Publicize cannot push posts to Instagram since Instagram doesn’t allow auto-posting from third-party services. However, if you’re on the Business plan or ecommerce plan, then you could consider using a third-party automation tool such as Buffer or Hootsuite, both of which can be connected to your WordPress.com site using plugins. There may be other tools that offer this feature as well, though you’ll want to research their limitations and plans to learn more.*
*Please note that third-party tools and plugins are outside the scope of WordPress.com support.
Social Media Feeds on Your Site
Another option that WordPress.com offers is displaying your social media platforms on your website. You can add widgets, blocks, or feeds to your WordPress.com site to display posts from your social media accounts in real-time. This can help you stay connected with your audience when they’re taking a break from social media, but still checking your site.
WordPress.com offers built-in features for displaying your social media feeds from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and TikTok, to name a few. We also provide a number of support documents to help walk you through the options for these embedding features.
Social Media Menus
You can also strengthen the cross-connection between your website and your social media platforms with the addition of social media menus. Many WordPress.com themes offer a dedicated Social Menu that allows you to connect your site to various social media platforms and display their respective icons on your site.
If your theme doesn’t offer this menu option, you can still create social media-style menus using our Social Icons Block. This ensures that your audience knows how to easily find you on your preferred social media platforms.
Social Sharing
Last but not least, don’t forget to enlist your visitors to share the love from your website to their social accounts by setting up WordPress.com’s Social Sharing option.
This feature allows you to choose which social platforms you want to encourage your visitors to spread the word by providing a Share button on every piece of content you publish. Nothing connects your audience more than the ability to share.
WordPress.com provides you with multiple built-in tools to make your website the centralized hub for connecting and integrating with your social media platforms—at no additional cost—so you can connect to your audience smoothly and seamlessly, all while driving traffic to your WordPress.com website.
WordPress.com will be hosting a live special topic webinar on Tuesday, February 22, 2022 at 19:00 UTC. Join our WordPress experts to learn all of the essential tips to integrate social media with your website and how to add Link in Bio pages to your website. Register for free today!
Thank you to everyone who has contributed thus far toward testing and filing bugs to help make WordPress 5.9 a great release. WordPress 5.9 is slated to land in justone week—on January 25, 2022. You still have time to help! Since RC2 arrived last week, testers have found and fixed two bugs, 14 fixes from Gutenberg. There has been one additional Gutenberg fix today.
Testing the release
You can test the WordPress 5.9 release candidate in three ways:
Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Option 3: When using WP-CLI to upgrade from Beta 1, 2, 3, 4, RC1, or RC2 on a case-insensitive filesystem, please use the following command sequence:
Command One:
wp core update --version=5.9-RC3
Command Two:
wp core update --version=5.9-RC3 --force
Your help to test the third Release Candidate is vital: the more testing that happens, the more stable the release, and the better the experience for users, developers, and the WordPress community.
Thank you to all contributors who tested the RC2 release and gave feedback. Testing for bugs is a critical part of polishing every release and is a great way to contribute to WordPress.
How to help
Help test WordPress 5.9 features – this post provides a guide to set up your testing environment, a list of testable features, and information about how to submit feedback you find as you go.
Developers and those interested in more background to the features can find more in the Field Guide. You can also follow the 5.9 development cycle and timeline.
If you have found a bug, you can post the details to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums.
A big change is coming to WordPress to make it easier than ever to create websites called Full-Site Editing. You can be one of the first to try it exclusively on WordPress.com, before it gets merged into core open source WordPress with the upcoming release of WordPress version 5.9.
What is Full Site Editing?
If you caught the State of the Word or follow along with news on WordPress.org, you may have heard about “Full Site Editing”, a set of new features that will allow you to edit all parts of your site. This collection of powerful new features empowers WordPress users to easily create and customize their entire websites without needing to know how to code.
Some highlights of Full Site Editing include:
Point and click edits in all parts of your site, including headers, footers, and sidebars!
Drag and drop blocks to design beautiful and complex navigation menu bars.
Edit items like your header, page content, and footer all in one place. You’ll no longer need to jump out of your page editor to make changes in the Customizer! Everything is available to edit right where you already are.
Use all the power of blocks, reusable blocks, and pre-designed block patterns to design every part of your site.
If you’ve struggled to make your entire WordPress website look just the way you wanted in the past, we encourage you to give it another try. Full Site Editing may be exactly what you’ve needed.
What’s Available Right Now?
The WordPress.com team is excited to announce that we’re now offering early access to Full Site Editing (Beta) for all new sites created by our existing English-speaking users! If this describes you, then you don’t have to wait.
If FSE is not yet available to you, don’t worry. Stay tuned for more updates as the rollout continues for both existing sites and new users.
Want to know more about Full Site Editing Beta? Check out this free Full Site Editing course created by the WordPress.org team to help you get started!
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing. The podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:40
Yesterday marked three years since the WordPress project welcomed me as their executive director. As I start my fourth year, I’ve spent a bit of time considering what the next five years will bring us. WordPress will turn 19 this year, which means that we will soon be a whopping 20 years old; for some of the people who have been with the project since the beginning, that can represent two-thirds of their whole life. And even if you were not that young when you got here, two decades as an open source project is really a cause for celebration.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:10
I am not in that group that has been here forever. I showed up for the first time in 2009, as a community organizer, self-sponsored, and I learned so much about myself as a person and as a leader while I was doing that. So when I arrived as a sponsored contributor in 2015, I already knew exactly what made this work so fulfilling for me was these three things:
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:34
First, the ability to lend a hand in those moments where I wish someone had lent a hand.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:40
Second is the delight of seeing people’s first successes and the joy of watching them grow over time.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:48
And the third was a chance to be part of something great, which turned out to be something greater; greater than me or you or a CMS.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:58
This list is still at the heart of what I feel I get out of the WordPress project. But it has also grown substantially in my seven years as a sponsored contributor. I now also love how we as a community of contributors get to foster a better way to lead and a better way to collaborate. And through those things help people find a way to have a better life. Not just through WordPress, the CMS, but through WordPress, the people, and WordPress, the project.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 02:25
And so when I think of what I want for WordPress in its 19th year, so that we can head with confidence and dignity into our 20th year, it is this:
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 02:35
I want you to remember that you are not alone here. People come together in the world often because of a shared location. But WordPress fosters this beautiful experience of bringing us together because of what we care about. Whether you care about PHP standards, diversity in technology, helping people with their first big wins, making WordPress more secure. I mean, if what you care about is being able to write the most arcane and complex apps on top of WordPress that the world has ever seen. Then there are others out there who want to do that with you, too. We have so many things to connect about. And fortunately, we support a great piece of software for getting our thoughts out in the world. Take some time to see who else shares your thoughts and potentially learn a bit about the view from the other side.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 03:26
And speaking of the other side, I also want us to approach our discussions as the US versus the Problem TM. WordPress may be 20 years old, and we may stand on the shoulders of giants, but right now, the people who are here you, you are explorers and creators and guides toward the best possible future for WordPress. The tension that we witness between teams is always about the best possible answers for the people who use our software. It is about securing the freedoms of the open web for everyone who comes after us whether they know they need those freedoms or not.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 04:04
And finally, I want us to expand our reasons for doing this at all. If you are a member of the community of contributors, We frequently talk about how we give back because WordPress gave to us. Or if you are part of a Five for the Future group. You have heard that companies who have experienced success because of WordPress should commit 5% of their resources back to the project to ensure WordPress’ long-term success. But the reason that I keep doing this, and hopefully a new reason for you to keep doing this is that we can take part in securing opportunities for future users of WordPress.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 04:42
Yes, I want WordPress to be the best CMS. Yes, I want this community to be vibrant and engaged. Yes, I want WordPress to be a shining beacon of how to work remotely. And I want all of that because I know it is our careful and tireless stewardship of this project that lets us continue to lend a hand in those moments where people wish for someone to lend a hand.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:11
Those are my hopes for WordPress in 2022 to move us forward into WordPress of the future. I hope you all will come with me and we can continue our journey together.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:23
Thanks again for listening. I’m Josepha Haden and this is the WP Briefing. See you again in a couple of weeks.
The second Release Candidate (RC2) for WordPress 5.9 is now available!
“Release Candidate” means the new version of the software is ready for release. It helps the community check that nothing is missed, given the thousands of plugins and themes and differences in how millions of people use the software.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed thus far towards testing and filing bugs to help make WordPress 5.9 a great release. WordPress 5.9 is slated for release in just two weeks on January 25, 2022. There’s still time to help! Since RC1 was released, six bugs have been found and fixed. There were 13 bug fixes backported from Gutenberg.
Testing the release
You can test the WordPress 5.9 release candidate in three ways:
Option 1: Install and activate theWordPress Beta Testerplugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Option 2: Direct download the beta version here (zip).
Option 3: When using WP-CLI to upgrade from Beta 1, 2, 3, 4, or RC1, on a case-insensitive filesystem, please use the following command sequence:
Command One:
wp core update --version=5.9-RC2
Command Two:
wp core update --version=5.9-RC2 --force
Your help to test the second Release Candidate is vital: the more testing that happens, the more stable the release, and the better the experience for users and developers—and the entire WordPress community.
Thank you to all of the contributors who tested the RC1 release and gave feedback. Testing for bugs is not just a critical part of polishing every release, it is also a great way to contribute to WordPress.
Developers and those interested in more of the background to the features can find more in the Field Notes. More developer notes will be added as the release progresses to its final stage. You can also follow the 5.9 development cycle and timeline.
If you think you have found a bug, you can post the details to theAlpha/Beta area in the support forums.
Launching a website or learning how to monetize your online store can be overwhelming. But we are here to help you along the way. We are hosting free webinars to help get you on track and answer any questions you have. We cover different topics and will soon have new ones. Make sure to bookmark the Webinars page for upcoming webinars. In the meantime, check out our January webinars.
The timezones are in UTC but you can click the time to see it in your own timezone.
Who’s Invited: New WordPress.com users and anyone interested in learning more about WordPress.com’s website capabilities.
Our WordPress.com customer service team, we call them Happiness Engineers, are experts in helping new users get up and running on their new websites. Across each week of webinars, we’ll cover questions about the basics of setting up your website, handling simple and recurring payments, blogging best practices, and adding in eCommerce capabilities. Come with questions as you’ll be able to make them during the live webinar.
Everyone is welcome, even if you already have a site set up. We know you’re busy, so if you can’t make the live event, you’ll be able to watch a recording of the webinar on our YouTube channel.
Live attendance is limited, so be sure to register early. We look forward to seeing you on the webinar!
This security release features four 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 5.8.3 is a short-cycle security release. The next major release will be version 5.9, which is already in the Release Candidate stage.
You can update to WordPress 5.8.3 by downloading from WordPress.org or visiting your Dashboard → Updates and clicking Update Now.
If you have sites that support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.
Security Updates
Four security issues affect WordPress versions between 3.7 and 5.8. If you haven’t yet updated to 5.8, all WordPress versions since 3.7 have also been updated to fix the following security issue (except where noted otherwise):
Props to Karim El Ouerghemmi and Simon Scannell of SonarSource for disclosing an issue with stored XSS through post slugs.
Props to Simon Scannell of SonarSource for reporting an issue with Object injection in some multisite installations.
Props to Ben Bidner from the WordPress security team for reporting a SQL injection vulnerability in WP_Meta_Query (only relevant to versions 4.1-5.8).
Thank you to all of the reporters above for privately disclosing the vulnerabilities. This gave the security team time to fix the vulnerabilities before WordPress sites could be attacked. Thank you to the members of the WordPress security team for implementing these fixes in WordPress.
December was a busy month for the WordPress community. In the latest episode of the WP Briefing podcast, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy shares a carol of thanks and shows her gratitude to all the people who make the WordPress project a success.
(…) I know that we have gotten so much done together in the last few years. And I am equally sure that we’re going to get so much done in the years to come. And so thank you all so much for your continued work with WordPress and the way that you just bring your best at all times.
Josepha Haden, Executive Director of the WordPress project
We said goodbye to 2021 with the annual State of the Word, along with the release of WordPress 5.9 Beta 4, among many other exciting updates. Read on to learn more about the latest community achievements.
WordPress 5.9: The first release candidate just landed
With less than three weeks to go until the final release, this version continues the work from last year and marks the hard string freeze point of the 5.9 release schedule.
Are you interested in contributing to WordPress core? Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Also, don’t miss the Core Team’s weekly developer chat on Wednesdays at 8 PM UTC.
Gutenberg releases: Versions 12.1 and 12.2 are here
The Core Team launched two new versions of Gutenberg last month. Both come with new features, code quality improvements, and bug fixes.
Gutenberg 12.1 marks the return of the template List View and includes several Navigation block enhancements, new global styles features, an improved developer experience for block themes, and more.
The Gutenberg 12.2 release focuses on user experience improvements and brings the block styles preview to the Widgets Editor, among other new features.
State of the Word 2021, the annual keynote address delivered by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, was livestreamed from New York City on December 14, 2021. The event gathered WordPress enthusiasts at 29 watch parties around the world.
Matt shared his thoughts on the progress of the WordPress project and made announcements regarding its future in 2022. The presentation was followed by a Question and Answer session.
In 2021, 2572 people contributed to WordPress source code using Trac, including 305 first-timers. Check out A Year in Core – 2021 for more interesting stats on WordPress Core contributions.
The Diverse Speaker Training Group (#WPDiversity) shared its accomplishments from last year in this 2021 year-end report.
The Training Team planned a sprint to audit and revisit the Learn WordPress content for the WordPress 5.9 release.
The Design Team summarized some of the key changes behind the Openverse redesign.
Feedback/Testing requests: Contribute by testing or translating WordPress 5.9
Your feedback on WordPress 5.9 release candidates is still needed and appreciated! If you haven’t tried this version yet, you can find instructions on testing 5.9 features in this post.
Apply to speak or host a workshop at WordCamp Europe 2022
WordCamp US 2022 is currently looking for organizers.
The WordPress community celebrated its first in-person WordCamp after 21 months in Sevilla (Spain) on December 11-12, 2021. WordCamp Taiwan was held online the same weekend.
The Training Team hosted several WordPress Social Learning Meetups last month, and there will be many more in January 2022.
Last year the WordPress Foundation made significant progress in its mission to educate the public about open source software. Learn more about it in this 2021 recap.
The Call For Sponsors and Call For Speakers for WordCamp Europe 2022 are open! Read this post to learn more about the Organizing Team’s plans for the first in-person WordCamp Europe in three years.
Have a story that we could include in the next ‘Month in WordPress’ post? Let us know by filling out this form.
