WordPress 5.1 Beta 2 is now available!

This software is still in development, so we don’t recommend you run it on a production site. Consider setting up a test site to play with the new version.

There are two ways to test the WordPress 5.1 beta: try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want to select the “bleeding edge nightlies” option), or you can download the beta here (zip).

WordPress 5.1 is slated for release on February 21, and we need your help to get there!

Over 110 tickets have been closed since beta 1, many of which are documentation and testing suite improvements. Here are the major changes and bug fixes:

  • Several refinements and bug fixes related to the Site Health project have been made.
  • The pre_render_block and render_block_data filters have been introduced allowing plugins to override block attribute values (#45451, dev note coming soon).
  • get_template_part() will now return a value indicating whether a template file was found and loaded (#40969).
  • A notice will now be triggered when developers incorrectly register REST API endpoints (related dev note).
  • Bulk editing posts will no longer unintentionally change a post’s post format (#44914)
  • Twemoji has been updated to the latest version, 11.2.0 (#45133).
  • A bug preventing the Custom Fields meta box from being enabled has been fixed (#46028).
  • The treatment of orderby values for post__in, post_parent__in, and post_name__in has been standardized (#38034).
  • When updating language packs, old language packs are now correctly deleted to avoid filling up disk space (#45468).

Developer Notes

WordPress 5.1 has many changes aimed at polishing the developer experience. To keep you informed, we publish developers notes on the Make WordPress Core blog throughout the release cycle. Subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog for updates over the coming weeks, detailing other changes in 5.1 that you should be aware of.

How to Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! The beta 2 release als marks the soft string freeze point of the 5.1 release schedule.

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.

Do you enjoy bugs?
I don’t. So, we fixed them all.
Well, not all. But close.