Call for Testing: WordPress 5.7 Release Candidate

WordPress 5.7 is scheduled for public release on Tuesday, March 9, 2021, and the 5.7 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is now available for testing.

We recommend clients review the changelog and Field Guide as part of their testing. You’ll see 66 enhancements and feature requests, 127 bug fixes, and more!

What is being added or changed?

We outlined some of the upcoming changes when the beta version was released. You may want to review the following changes:

General Changes

• Robots API and Media Search Engine Visibility
• Detect HTTPS support
• Lazy-load iframes
• Admin color palette standardization
• Enhancements to the core Import/Export feature
• Login & registration screens changes

Developer Changes

• New Post Parent related functions
• Additional functions to check if a post is publicly viewable
• Changes in @wordpress/data API
• New i18n filters & createI18n() changes
• REST API Changes
• Post statuses when counting term posts
• A new filter to override wp_mail()
• Better handling in the Cron API
• A variety of new filters and properties related to categories and taxonomies
• PHPMailer has been updated to the latest version 6.3.0
• Various other modifications and improvements

Block Editor Changes

• The newest version of the Gutenberg plugin
• New block variation APIs
• A new dynamic hook to filter the content of a single block
• New Preferences experience in the block editor

jQuery Changes

• jQuery migrate-related Deprecation notice clean-up

Please note that last planned changes to jQuery in WordPress core have been moved to the WordPress 5.8 release, expected in June 2021.

What do I need to do?

We recommend:

1. Updating your local development environments to the beta release using the Beta Tester plugin or updating it to track 5.7 (i.e. trunk) via either the Subversion or GitHub repos.
2. For sites on VIP Go, you can have your non-production sites switched to WordPress 5.7 RC 1 now. If this is something you’re interested in, please open a ticket and we can set it up for you.

When Will WordPress 5.7 Be Deployed?

WordPress 5.7 will be rolled out to all VIP sites on Tuesday, March 9, 2021.

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.

Questions?

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