Call for Testing: WordPress 5.2 (Beta)

WordPress 5.2 is on schedule for release on Tuesday, April 30th. Beta 3 has been released and is available for testing on VIP Go non-production environments, with WordPress.com VIP development environments to follow in the upcoming days.

What Is Being Added or Changed?

  • The Block Editor (Gutenberg) will include both a block management modal and the ability to nest different kind of blocks in a Cover Block container.
Block management modal
Title, paragraph and buttons nested in a Cover Block.
  • This release also adds improved error detection, which will give administrators more information and options in the event of an otherwise fatal error; and a new Health Check tool, available to administrators. Visit the Tools menu and click on Health Check to get more information about your site’s health.
  • The minimum required PHP version is being bumped from 5.2 to 5.6.20. VIP Go is currently running 7.2 and will be upgraded to 7.3 by April 23.

When Will WordPress 5.2 Be Deployed?

VIP Go: WordPress 5.2 will be rolled out to all WordPress.com VIP and VIP Go sites on Tuesday, April 30th.

WordPress.com VIP: As with all Core upgrades, we’ll be pushing incremental updates leading up to the public release with the bulk of the enhancements pushed out during the week of April 22nd.

Please note that the deployment dates are subject to change if critical issues are discovered during testing or the public release is delayed. We’ll post updates to the Lobby if the dates do change.

What Should I Do?

We highly recommend updating your local development environments to the beta release using the Beta Tester plugin or updating it to track 5.2 (i.e. bleeding edge) via either the Subversion or GitHub repos. (If you’re using VVV, one of the default sites will already be tracking 5.2. For Chassis users, you can switch your install to switch over to a separate checkout.)

For sites on VIP Go, you can have your Go-hosted development sites switched to 5.2 now. If this is something you’re interested in, please open a ticket, and we can set it up for you.

For sites on WordPress.com VIP, we’ll soon be able to switch development environments to 5.2 as well for testing purposes. We’ll post another update when that is available.

If you have any questions related to this release, please open a support ticket, and we will be happy to assist.