WordPress 5.1 Beta 2 has been released for the general public to test. The Beta 2 version was released only a few hours ago.
Since the software is still in development mode, it’s best that you don’t run it on a production site. Instead, simply set up a test site just to try out the new version. To test WordPress 5.1 Beta 2, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”). Or you can download the beta here (zip).
There have been more than 110 tickets closed since the first beta release. And most of them include improvements regarding documentation and testing suite. Have a quick look at the WordPress 5.1 Beta 2 highlights.
Highlights in WordPress 5.1 Beta 2 Release
- Several refinements and bug fixes related to the Site Health project
- Introduced the pre_render_block and render_block_data filters 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)
- Updated Twemoji to the latest version, 11.2.0 (#45133)
- Fixed a bug preventing the Custom Fields meta box from being enabled (#46028)
- Standardized the treatment of orderby values for post__in, post_parent__in, and post_name__in (#38034)
- When updating language packs, old language packs are now correctly deleted to avoid filling up disk space (#45468)
Not only the documentation and testing suite improvements, but the Beta 2 version also has a handful of changes for the developers to try out. Check out the developer notes on the WordPress Core.
The big release, 5.1 is targeted to be released on February 21, according to the schedule updates.
If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.