***Update 27/11***
Over the US Thanksgiving weekend the WordPress 5.0 release candidate 1 was released and it was announced at the same time that the release of 5.0 would be delayed for an undetermined amount of time. The second delay has been brought in to give users time to fully test the release candidate and for the contributors to have adequate time to process and implement feedback.
The delay comes in the wake of a number of WordPress contributors calling for the release of 5.0 to be pushed back to January to allow for a fully tested, robust release.
A new date has yet to be announced and the latest update post from WordPress confirmed the new date will be determined based on feedback on the release candidate.
If you haven’t yet tested the release candidate on a staging site then we would urge you to give it a try and submit any feedback you have – as the contribution team for 5.0 stated in their latest post:
This is a big release and needs your help—if you haven’t tried 5.0 yet, now is the time!
To test the release candidate you can use the WordPress Beta Tester plugin or visit WordPress.org to download the release candidate directly.
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Those waiting to get to grips with WordPress 5.0 are going to have to wait a little bit longer, as it was announced yesterday that the release of the upcoming WordPress version has been delayed.
Originally planned for a November 19th release, the team were clear that the date could be delayed by up to eight days if bug fixes and final tweaks required more time. This has clearly been the case as the revised date is now listed as November 27th. The beta 5 is due for release on November 15th and the release candidate 1 is now planned for release on November 19th.
Meanwhile, last weekend Matt Mullenweg attended WordCamp Portland to take part in a Q&A session, where a few interesting queries about Gutenberg were addressed. The full session is available to watch on WordPress.tv but there are some interesting points to highlight, including Mullenweg referring to the release of 5.0 as the starting point for Gutenberg rather than the finish line. He promised we will see just as much time being invested in the new editor post-5.0 as we saw pre-5.0.
Even with the delay it’s still only a matter of days until we see the release of WordPress 5.0, so stay tuned for all the latest news in the lead up to release day.
