WordPress 3.9 Beta 3


The third (and maybe last) beta of WordPress 3.9 is now available for download.

Beta 3 includes more than 200 changes, including:

  • New features like live widget previews and the new theme installer are now more ready for prime time, so check ’em out.
  • UI refinements when editing images and when working with media in the editor. We’ve also brought back some of the advanced display settings for images.
  • If you want to test out audio and video playlists, the links will appear in the media manager once you’ve uploaded an audio or video file.
  • For theme developers, we’ve added HTML5 caption support (#26642) to match the new gallery support (#26697).
  • The formatting function that turns straight quotes into smart quotes (among other things) underwent some changes to drastically speed it up, so let us know if you see anything weird.

We need your help. We’re still aiming for an April release, which means the next week will be critical for identifying and squashing bugs. If you’re just joining us, please see the Beta 1 announcement post for what to look out for.

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums, where friendly moderators are standing by. Plugin developers, if you haven’t tested WordPress 3.9 yet, now is the time — and be sure to update the “tested up to” version for your plugins so they’re listed as compatible with 3.9.

This software is still in development, so we don’t recommend you run it on a production site. Consider setting up a test site just to play with the new version. To test WordPress 3.9, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”). Or you can download the beta here (zip).

WordPress 3.9
Let’s make the date official
It’s April 16


Get the Latest Updates

WP Briefing — The WordPress Podcast

Join Josepha Haden and Matt Mullenweg to learn about where WordPress is going and how you can get involved.