The Month in WordPress: June 2020

June was an exciting month for WordPress! Major changes are coming to the Gutenberg plugin, and WordCamp Europe brought the WordPress community closer together. Read on to learn more and to get all the latest updates. 

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WordPress 5.4.2 released

We said hello to WordPress 5.4.2 on June 10. This security and maintenance release features 17 fixes and 4 enhancements, so we recommend that you update your sites immediately. To download WordPress 5.4.2, visit your Dashboard, click on Updates, then Update Now, or download the latest version directly from WordPress.org. For more information, visit this post, review the full list of changes on Trac, or check out the HelpHub documentation page for version 5.4.2. WordPress 5.4.2 is a short-cycle maintenance release. The next major release will be version 5.5, planned for August 2020. 

Want to get involved in building WordPress Core? Follow the Core team blog, and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

Gutenberg 8.3 and 8.4

The core team launched Gutenberg 8.3 and 8.4 this month, paving the way for some exciting block editor features. Version 8.3 introduced enhancements like a reorganized, more intuitive set of block categories, a parent block selector, an experimental spacing control, and user-controlled link color options. Version 8.4 comes with new image-editing tools and the ability to edit options for multiple blocks.  The block directory search feature that was previously available as an experimental feature, is now enabled for all Gutenberg installations. For full details on the latest versions on these Gutenberg releases, visit these posts about 8.3 and 8.4.

Want to get involved in building Gutenberg? Follow the Core team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

WordPress Bumps Minimum Recommended PHP Version to 7.2

In a major update, WordPress has bumped the minimum PHP recommendation to 7.2. The ServeHappy API has been updated to set the minimum acceptable PHP version to 7.2, while the WordPress downloads page recommends 7.3 or newer. Previously, the ServeHappy dashboard widget was showing the upgrade notice to users of PHP 5.6 or lower. This decision comes after discussions with the core Site Health team and the Hosting team, both of which recommended that the upgrade notice be shown to users of PHP <=7.1.

WordCamp Europe 2020 Moved Online

Following the success of a remote WordCamp Spain, WordCamp Europe was held fully online from June 4 to 6. The event drew a record 8,600 signups from people based in 138 countries, along with 2,500 signups for contributor day. WCEU Online also showcased 33 speakers and 40 sponsors, in addition to a Q&A with Matt Mullenweg. You can find the videos of the event in WordPress.tv by following this link, or you can catch the live stream recording of the entire event from the WP Europe YouTube Channel.

Want to get involved with the Community team? Follow the Community blog here, or join them in the #community-events channel in the Making WordPress Slack group. To organize a Meetup or WordCamp, visit the handbook page. 

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Further Reading:

• Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune), the executive director of the WordPress project, published a post that highlights resources on how the global WordPress community can focus on equity to help dismantle racial, societal, and systemic injustice. 
• PHP, the primary programming language in which WordPress is written, celebrated its 25th anniversary this month!
• The Community team is updating the WordCamp code of conduct to address discrimination based on age, caste, social class, and other identifying characteristics.
• The WordPress Core team is promoting more inclusive language by updating all git repositories to use `trunk` instead of `master`. Additionally, the team proposes to rename  “invalid,” “worksforme,” and “wontfix” ticket resolutions to “not-applicable,” “not-reproducible” or “cannot-reproduce,” and “not-implemented,” respectively. 
• The Documentation team is working on an external linking policy and has started a discussion on how to allow linking to trusted sources to benefit users. 
• The Core team has put up a proposal to merge extensible core sitemaps to WordPress core in the 5.5 release. The feature is currently available as a feature plugin.
• WordCamp Denver was held online May 26–27. The event sold over 2,400 tickets and featured 27 speakers and 20 sponsors. You can catch the recorded live stream on the event site.
• The Core team is working on updating the version of jQuery used in WordPress core.

Have a story that we should include in the next “Month in WordPress” post? Please submit it here.