WordPress 5.9 Development Cycle

Dev Chat Agendas | Dev Chat Summaries | Bug Scrubs Schedule | Dev Notes | Field GuideField guide The field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle. The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page. | All Posts Tagged 5.9 | Revised Release Schedule Announcement

Updated: 22 November 2021

WordPress 5.9 will be the third major release of 2021 and will focus on blocks and intrinsic web design, navigation menus, interface for theme.json, refining editing flows for blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. themes, additional design tools, and a new default theme. Additionally it’s possible that the release will also include pattern insertion and creation, unzip/rollback failsafes, PHPUnit tests, and improved compatibility with PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher 8.0 and 8.1.

Release team

All release decisions will ultimately be this release teams’ to make and communicate while gathering input from the community.

Release Schedule

A revised release schedule was announced on 22 November 2021. The following schedule has been updated.

30 June 2021Alpha Begins. Trunk is open for business
3 September 20215.9 Pre-planning post.
12 October 2021
14 October 2021		5.9 Scope / FSE features GO / NO GO.
9 November 2021Feature freeze/Bug Fixes period. During the following two weeks, there will be no commits for new enhancements or feature requests. Core contributorsCore Contributors Core contributors are those who have worked on a release of WordPress, by creating the functions or finding and patching bugs. These contributions are done through Trac. https://core.trac.wordpress.org. will focus on defect work (aka outstanding bugs).
16 November 2021
30 November 2021		BetaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 1. From this point on, core contributors will focus on testing and fixing bugs discovered during beta testing. Begin writing Dev Notesdev note Each important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include: a description of the change; the decision that led to this change a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase. and the About page (SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. archive, ZIP download).
23 November 2021
7 December 2021		Beta 2. Test the beta release, fix bugs discovered during beta testing, continue writing Dev Notes and the About page, soft string freeze (Slack archive, ZIP download).
14 December 2021Beta 3. Test the beta release, fix bugs discovered during beta testing, continue writing Dev Notes and the About page, soft string freeze (Slack archive, ZIP download).
21 December 2021Beta 4 (Optional). (Slack archive, ZIP download).
30 November 2021
4 January 2022		Release candidaterelease candidate One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta). 1. Publish the Field Guide with Dev Notes, commit the About page, begin drafting the release post, hard string freeze, and branchbranch A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses branches to store the latest development code for each major release (3.9, 4.0, etc.). Branches are then updated with code for any minor releases of that branch. Sometimes, a major version of WordPress and its minor versions are collectively referred to as a "branch", such as "the 4.0 branch". for the release. (Slack archive, ZIP download).
7 December 2021
11 January 2022		Release candidate 2. Update the About page images and continue drafting the release post (Slack archive, ZIP download).
18 January 2022Release candidate 3. Update the About page images and continue drafting the release post (Slack archive, ZIP download).
13 December 2021
24 January 2022		Dry run for release of WordPress 5.9 and 24-hour code freeze (Slack archive).
14 December 2021
25 January 2022		WordPress 5.9 is released (Slack archive, ZIP download)!

How to contribute

To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress., and pick a 5.9 ticket. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook.

Get your patches done and submitted as soon as possible, then help find people to test the patches and leave feedback on the ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker.. Patches for enhancements will not be committed after the dates posted above so that we can all focus on squashing bugs and deliver the most bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority.-free WordPress ever 😉

If you want to dive deeper into 5.9, join the weekly meetings in the #core Slack channel, which occur next at Wednesday at 20:00 UTC.