The WordPress coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. development team builds WordPress! Follow this site for general updates, status reports, and the occasional code debate. There’s lots of ways to contribute:
Found a bugbugA 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.?Create a ticket in the bug tracker.
GutenbergGutenbergThe Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ 21.7 has been released
Gutenberg 21.7 is now available. The release includes several improvements and bugbugA 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. fixes, with a detailed release post to follow soon.
CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.CommittercommitterA developer with commit access. WordPress has five lead developers and four permanent core developers with commit access. Additionally, the project usually has a few guest or component committers - a developer receiving commit access, generally for a single release cycle (sometimes renewed) and/or for a specific component. Meeting notes from WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US 2025
Notes from the Core Committer meeting at WCUS 2025 are now available.
Forthcoming releases 🚀
WordPress 6.9 Timeline
WordPress 6.9 is planned for December 2, 2025, with BetaBetaA 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 beginning October 21.
Work on standardizing UTF-8 handling continues (#63863). Functions are now conditionally defined based on the presence of the mbstring extension, reducing repeated runtime checks. The group agreed this is a positive direction. Further discussion will continue in the ticketticketCreated for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker..
Core Importer Feedback / Maintainer
The Importer component currently has no dedicated maintainer, leading to gaps in feedback on issues and PRs. While not ideal, the plugins (e.g. WordPress Importer) are still maintained and considered canonical. Discussion centered on how to:
Increase visibility for #core-importers and GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ issues.
Clarify the relationship between Core and the Importer plugins.
Encourage more contributors to collaborate on this component.
pre_site_optionFilterFilterFilters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output.
Ticket #56870 proposes adding a general pre_site_option filter in get_network_option(). The existing patchpatchA special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing. is several years old but aligns with the existing pre_option pattern. Consensus: refresh the patch, prepare a PR, and target it for 6.9.
Docs-related TracTracAn open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. keywords audit
@desrosj went through Trac and the Core Handbook to audit all of the documentation related elements (keywords, focuses, etc.). He created a Google Doc, and the documentation team is adding some details about how they currently utilize these things. If you notice anything related that’s missing and should be included, please feel free to comment in the doc or let him know. See this Slack message for more info.
