Description

This plugin provides an easy way to get involved with Beta testing WordPress.

Once installed it will enable you to upgrade your website to the latest Beta or Release candidate at the click of a button using the built in upgrader.

By default once enabled it switches your website onto the point release development track.

For the more adventurous there is the option to switch to the bleeding edge (trunk) of development.

Don’t forget to backup before you start!

Extra Settings

There is a setting to Skip successful autoupdate emails. It functions to disable sending emails to the admin user for successful autoupdates. Only emails indicating failures of the autoupdate process are sent.

The Extra Settings tab may contain choices for testing new features in trunk that require constants to be set. A checked feature will add a constant to the user’s wp-config.php file in the format as follows:

define( 'WP_BETA_TESTER_{$feature}', true );

Unchecking the feature will remove the constant.

This plugin resets the constants in wp-config.php on plugin activation and removes them on plugin deactivation. Use the filter wp_beta_tester_config_path to return a non-standard wp-config.php file path.

If no settings are present there is no testing to be done that requires this feature.

PRs are welcome on GitHub.

Screenshots

This shows the main administration page for the plugin
This shows the Extra Settings page for the plugin
This shows the Dashboard callout

Installation

Upload to your plugins folder, usually wp-content/plugins/
Activate the plugin on the plugin screen.
Navigate to Tools … Beta Testing to configure the plugin.
Under Mulitsite, navigate to Settings … Beta Testing to configure the plugin.
Visit Dashboard … Upgrade (Or Tools … Upgrade in versions before 3.0) and update to the latest Beta Release.

Reviews

Steve Stern February 19, 2020

Being able to choose bleeding edge nightlies vs. beta/rc is a very nice change.

kevIN kovaDIA November 14, 2019

I used this plugin to try/test beta version of wp before releasing in WordPress website. After using this plugin, I found so many positive changes on my websites. in my opinion, it is a must for every WordPress website. Thank you very much team for putting your time and effort for developing this useful plugin for free. God bless you.

retokuhn February 17, 2019

Great plugin to install beta releases for testing plugins and themes. It would be helpful to see information about version numbers which will be installed.

Egor Milyukov February 14, 2019

Works fine to test custom Gutenberg blocks with upcoming 5.1

moinuddin8888 November 22, 2018

I am a very new user of WordPress Beta Tester but I never show as a supporter as WordPress Beta Tester there has all item available and plugins also amazing. The installation system is very easy as a new member/user I am feeling exiting any hesitation wasn't working in my mind. I was thinking for a short time I am playing an interesting game.

universaldesignz May 18, 2018

So far looks good. Thank you for all your continuous effort to make WP better. It but would have been even nicer, to have a full set a built-in cookie disclaimer for GDPR compliance. Can you please add a cookie (may be filtered by cookies name) preference filter disclaimer with different level for visitors to choose from. Which disables all cookies deploy until the visitor accept one of the cookie level option. There could be a section where the WP developer/designer can have fields to add all the required cookie info and a option to categorise their importance for the filtering for the front end. Thanks. Kindest Regards Jay Vijay

Read all 39 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“WordPress Beta Tester” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

“WordPress Beta Tester” has been translated into 23 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “WordPress Beta Tester” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

2.2.7 / 2020-03-02

update trac link in callout for closed or reopened tickets on the milestone
only show Beta Tester Settings page link in callout with appropriate privileges, using manage_network_options and manage_options
menu to Settings page also checks privileges as above

2.2.6 / 2020-02-25

removed extra </li> in dashboard callout, 4th time’s the charm 😭

2.2.5 / 2020-02-25

less greedy regex for matching release posts in RSS for dashboard callout

2.2.4 / 2020-02-25 🤦‍♂️

added dashboard widget for network dashboard

2.2.3 / 2020-02-25

add dashboard widget callout for testing

2.2.2 / 2020-02-22

fix for strange Core API response where preferred version response contained the word ‘version’. We now grab the last word of that response

2.2.1 / 2020-02-20

fix some i18n strings, thanks @pedro-mendonca

2.2.0 / 2020-02-19

added support for updating to the beta/RC offer. Based on and with tons of help from @pbrion, thanks Paul 👏🏻
fixed so a downgrade from ‘unstable’ to ‘point’ serves the correct download
test and exit from Extra Settings if wp-config.php is not writeable

2.1.0 / 2019-09-17

add extra setting to skip successful autoupdate emails
add description to checkbox settings
composer update

2.0.4

add update version information to settings page text

2.0.3

a11y fixes for settings tabs
update wp-cli/wp-config-transformer

2.0.2

a11y fixes for checkbox, thanks @audrasjb

2.0.1

fix for incorrect last updated message

2.0.0

near complete re-write to use more OOPy practices
put distinct process into separate classes
allows for multiple settings tabs for addtional settings

1.2.6

remove extraneous code
add GitHub Plugin URI header

1.2.5

fixed error message for downgrading version, thanks @andreas-andersson

1.2.4

don’t use $GLOBALS

1.2.3

updated a few strings and correct typos
run through WPCS linter
fixed translation strings to include HTML in context and properly escape with wp_kses_post()
fixed link to settings page under Multisite

1.2.2

change wording from blog to website

1.2.0

Escape output
Indicate that Bleeding edge nightlies are trunk
new screenshot
code improvements from linter

1.1.2

Remove anonymous function for PHP 5.2 compatibility.

1.1.1

fixed PHP notice for PHP 7.1
made URL scheme agnostic

1.1.0

Fixed to work properly under Multisite.

1.0.2

Update tested up to version to 4.7.
Fix the location of the settings screen in Multisite (moved under Settings in Network Admin).
Minor text fixes.

1.0.1

Update tested up to version to 4.5.
Fix PHP7 deprecated constructor notice.
Change text domain to match the plugin slug.
Update WordPress.org links to use HTTPS.
Remove outdated bundled translations in favor of language packs.

1.0

Update tested up to version to 4.2.
Update screenshot.
Fix a couple typos.

WordPress.org