WordPress 6.5 Beta is now available. This is the first beta released as part of the 6.5 development cycle and can be deployed to non-production environments in your WordPress VIP dashboard. WordPress 6.5 Beta 1 contains approximately 681 enhancements and 488 bug fixes for the editor, including about 229 tickets for WordPress 6.5 Core. The current target for the final release is March 26, 2024.
What is being added or changed?
This year’s first major release will add finesse and fine-tuning to how you control your site-building experience, with lots to explore specifically for developers. You’ll find more ways to manage your fonts and styles, notable upgrades to synced patterns, a collection of Site Editor and performance updates to help you get things done, and new ways to leverage design tools in Classic themes.
WordPress 6.5 will include breakthrough foundational APIs that will start to transform how you use blocks to build memorable experiences. This release invites you to dig into these early-stage frameworks, discover how you’d like to see them evolve, and have an impact on their future improvements and capabilities.
Some of the changes include:
Font Library: A new tool for managing typography across your site, allowing the installation and management of local and Google Fonts without coding.
Synced Patterns Upgrade: Enhanced synced patterns let you make specific content changes within a design template, perfect for recurring elements like testimonials or case studies.
Block and Custom Fields Connection: The new Block Bindings API enables connecting core block attributes to custom fields or other dynamic content, simplifying the use of custom fields.
Interactivity API: Integrated into Core, this API offers a standardized method for adding interactive front-end experiences to blocks, enhancing user engagement.
Enhanced Revisions: More detailed style revision history in the Site Editor, including time stamps and summaries of changes.
Classic Themes and Appearance Tools: Classic themes can now opt into appearance tools, providing access to design options like spacing, borders, typography, and color.
Design and Editing Improvements: New design tools and Site Editor updates streamline workflows and enhance creativity, including background images for Group blocks, aspect ratio for Cover blocks, and shadow support.
Data Views in Site Editor: New data views for organizing and managing site components, leading into the Admin Redesign project.
Plugin Dependencies: Improved management for plugins requiring other plugins, with a new header for required plugin slugs.
Performance Gains: Over 110 performance updates, significantly speeding up the editing experience.
Accessibility Improvements: More than 65 updates to enhance accessibility, focusing on contrast, focus, and element positioning.
Please refer to WordPress.org announcement for more details.
We are excited to announce the availability of PHP 8.3 on WordPress VIP. This version introduces a host of new features, improvements, and deprecations. Here are some of the key highlights:
Typed class constants, dynamic class constant fetch.
#[\Override] attribute for clearer method overriding. By adding the #[\Override] attribute to a method, PHP will ensure that a method with the same name exists in a parent class or in an implemented interface.
Deep-cloning of readonly properties.
json_validate() function allows to check if a string is syntactically valid JSON, while being more efficient than json_decode().
The Random Extension that was added in PHP 8.2 was extended by a new method to generate random strings consisting of specific bytes only. This method allows the developer to easily generate random identifiers, such as domain names, and numeric strings of arbitrary length. Randomizer::getFloat() and Randomizer::nextFloat() methods were also added to generate random floats in an unbiased fashion.
There are new classes, interfaces, and functions, along with deprecations and backward compatibility breaks. This release emphasizes improved type safety and syntax clarity. For more details, visit the PHP 8.3 Release Announcement.
Testing your application with PHP 8.3
It’s always a good idea to test your application code with every new release of PHP.
WordPress VIP recommends that you use several methods to prepare for a PHP upgrade.
Please Note: Currently, our minimum supported version is 8.1. Security support for 8.1 ends on November 25, 2024. WordPress VIP will be looking to begin updating environments that are not on 8.2 or higher, up to 30 days prior to this date. A formal timeline will be shared in January 2024.
WordPress 6.4.2, a security and maintenance release, has been pushed out to all VIP sites running WordPress 6.4.
This minor release features 7 bug fixes and 1 security fix in Core. One of the issues fixed includes stylesheet and theme directories returning incorrect results sometimes.
Have questions?
If you have any questions related to this release, please open a support ticket and we will be happy to assist.
v2.32.1 contains a hotfix for an issue that may prevent VIP Local Development instances from starting up after updating to Docker Desktop v 4.21.0 / Docker Compose v2.19.0.
v2.32.0 contains the following features/improvements:
We are excited to announce the availability of PHP 8.2 on WordPress VIP. This version introduces a host of new features, improvements, and deprecations. Here are some of the key highlights.
New features
Readonly Classes: PHP 8.2 introduces the concept of readonly classes. This allows you to define classes where certain properties are read-only and cannot be changed after they are set in the constructor.
Disjunctive Normal Form (DNF) Types: DNF types allow us to combine union and intersection types, following a strict rule: when combining union and intersection types, intersection types must be grouped with brackets.
Allow null, false, and true as stand-alone types: In PHP 8.2, null, false, and true can be used as stand-alone types. This allows for more precise type declarations in your code.
New “Random” extension: The “random” extension provides a new object-oriented API to random number generation. Instead of relying on a globally seeded random number generator (RNG) using the Mersenne Twister algorithm, the object-oriented API provides several classes (“Engine”s) providing access to modern algorithms that store their state within objects to allow for multiple independent seedable sequences.
Constants in traits: PHP 8.2 allows you to define constants in traits. However, you cannot access the constant through the name of the trait, but, you can access the constant through the class that uses the trait.
Deprecations and backward incompatible changes
Deprecated dynamic properties: The creation of dynamic properties is deprecated, unless the class opts in by using the #[\AllowDynamicProperties] attribute. stdClass allows dynamic properties. Usage of the __get()/__set() magic methods is not affected by this change.
WordPress 6.3 Beta is now available. This is the first beta released as part of the 6.3 development cycle and can be deployed to non-production environments in your WordPress VIP dashboard. The release contains more than 500 new features and enhancements and 400+ bug fixes. The current target for the final release is August 8, 2023.
What is being added or changed?
Performance
More than 170 performance-related updates, including adding defer and async support to the WP Scripts API and fetchpriority support for images.
Optimizations were made to block template resolution, image lazy-loading, and the emoji loader, all of which benefit LCP performance.
Improved support for PHP versions 8.0, 8.1, and 8.2.
Site Editor
Expansion to include navigating and editing pages, styles, templates, and content.
The unified site editing experience will include a distraction-free mode, enhanced navigation, and an improved loading experience.
Ability to preview a block theme and adjust your site before activating the new theme.
Style revisions so you can toggle between and preview different saved styles.
A new Command Palette, enabling users to context switch and perform actions quickly across different sections of the site editing experience.
Blocks
New blocks for details and footnotes.
Updates for better handling of image aspect ratios and improved fallback states.
Spacer blocks now include presets, and the cover block gets updates for managing text colors and layout support.
Patterns and Design
Reusable blocks have been renamed to synced patterns.
A new option allows you to assign patterns to templates, adding the ability to have starter patterns to speed up the creation process.
Site creators can now easily create, save, and manage custom synced and unsynced patterns, as well as browse a directory of curated patterns.
The duotone filter and captions can now be edited in the Styles interface.
Usability
Toolbar updates, updated template descriptions, enhanced list view drag-and-drop, improved padding and margin controls, and a new area for managing patterns (including reusable blocks, now called synced patterns.)
Link control receives some updates.
Accessibility
Over 50 accessibility improvements across the platform.
Improved labeling, optimized tab and arrow-key navigation, revised heading hierarchy, and new controls in the admin image editor.
The login form, installation steps, and list tables (for sorting and selection) have all been updated.
WordPress 6.2.1, a maintenance and security release, has been pushed out to all VIP sites running WordPress 6.2. The security patches have also been back-ported to sites running older WordPress versions.
WordPress VIP Lobby 
You must be logged in to post a comment.