A Little Better Every Day
Version 5.1 of WordPress, named “Betty” in honour of acclaimed jazz vocalist Betty Carter, is available for download or update in your WordPress dashboard.
Following WordPress 5.0โโโa major release which introduced the new block editorโโโ5.1 focuses on polish, in particular by improving the overall performance of the editor. In addition, this release paves the way for a better, faster, and more secure WordPress with some essential tools for site administrators and developers.
Site Health
With security and speed in mind, this release introduces WordPressโs first Site Health features. WordPress will start showing notices to administrators of sites that run long-outdated versions of PHP, which is the programming language that powers WordPress.
When you install new plugins, WordPress’s Site Health features will check them against the version of PHP you’re running. If the plugin requires a version that wonโt work with your site, WordPress will keep you from installing that plugin.
Editor Performance
Introduced in WordPress 5.0, the new block editor continues to improve. Most significantly, WordPress 5.1 includes solid performance improvements within the editor. The editor should feel a little quicker to start, and typing should feel smoother.
Expect more performance improvements in the next couple of releases.
Developer Happiness
Multisite Metadata
5.1 introduces a new database table to store metadata associated with sites and allows for the storage of arbitrary site data relevant in a multisite / network context.
Cron API
The Cron API has been updated with new functions to assist with returning data and includes new filters for modifying cron storage. Other changes in behavior affect cron spawning on servers running FastCGI and PHP-FPM versions 7.0.16 and above.
New JS Build Processes
WordPress 5.1 features a new JavaScript build option, following the large reorganisation of code that started in the 5.0 release.
Other Developer Goodness
Miscellaneous improvements include:
- Updates to values for the
WP_DEBUG_LOG
constant - New test config file constant in the test suite, new plugin action hooks
- Short-circuit filters for
wp_unique_post_slug()
,WP_User_Query
, andcount_users()
- A new
human_readable_duration
function - Improved taxonomy metabox sanitization
- Limited
LIKE
support for meta keys when usingWP_Meta_Query
- A new โdoing it wrongโ notice when registering REST API endpoints
…and more!
The Squad
This release was led by Matt Mullenweg, along with Gary Pendergast as Senior Code Reshuffler and Poet. They received wonderful assistance from the following 561 contributors for this release, 231 of whom were making their first ever contribution! Pull up some Betty Carter on your music service of choice, and check out some of their profiles:
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Finally, thanks to all the community translators who worked on WordPress 5.1. Their efforts bring WordPress 5.1 fully translated to 34 languages at release time, with more on the way.
If you want to follow along or help out, check out Make WordPress and our core development blog.
Thanks for choosing WordPress!