WordPress 5.8.1 is now available!

This security and maintenance release features 60 bug fixes in addition to 3 security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 5.4 have also been updated.

WordPress 5.8.1 is a short-cycle security and maintenance release. The next major release will be version 5.9.

You can download WordPress 5.8.1 by downloading from WordPress.org, or visit your Dashboard ? Updates and click Update Now.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.

Security Updates

3 security issues affect WordPress versions between 5.4 and 5.8. If you haven’t yet updated to 5.8, all WordPress versions since 5.4 have also been updated to fix the following security issues:

• Props @mdawaffe, member of the WordPress Security Team for their work fixing a data exposure vulnerability within the REST API.
• Props to Micha? Bentkowski of Securitum for reporting a XSS vulnerability in the block editor.
• The Lodash library has been updated to version 4.17.21 in each branch to incorporate upstream security fixes.

In addition to these issues, the security team would like to thank the following people for reporting vulnerabilities during the WordPress 5.8 beta testing period, allowing them to be fixed prior to release:

• Props Evan Ricafort for reporting a XSS vulnerability in the block editor discovered during the 5.8 release’s beta period.
• Props Steve Henty for reporting a privilege escalation issue in the block editor.

Thank you to all of the reporters for privately disclosing the vulnerabilities. This gave the WordPress security team time to fix the vulnerabilities before WordPress sites could be attacked.

For more information, browse the full list of changes on Trac, or check out the version 5.8.1 HelpHub documentation page.

Thanks and props!

The 5.8.1 release was led by Jonathan Desrosiers and Evan Mullins.

In addition to the security researchers and release squad members mentioned above, thank you to everyone who helped make WordPress 5.8.1 happen:

2linctools, Adam Zielinski, Alain Schlesser, Alex Lende, alexstine, AlGala, André, Andrei Draganescu, Andrew Ozz, Ankit Panchal, Anthony Burchell, Anton Vlasenko, Ari Stathopoulos, Bruno Ribaric, Carolina Nymark, Daisy Olsen, Daniel Richards, Daria, David Anderson, David Bi?ovec, David Herrera, Dominik Schilling, Ella van Durpe, Enchiridion, Evan Mullins, Gary Jones, George Mamadashvili, Greg Zió?kowski, Héctor Prieto, ianmjones, Jb Audras, Jeff Bowen, Joe Dolson, Joen A., John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, JuanMa Garrido, Juliette Reinders Folmer, Kai Hao, Kapil Paul, Kerry Liu, Kevin Fodness, Marcus Kazmierczak, Mark-k, Matt, Michael Adams (mdawaffe), Mike Schroder, moch11, Mukesh Panchal, Nik Tsekouras, Paal Joachim Romdahl, Pascal Birchler, Paul Bearne, Paul Biron, Peter Wilson, Petter Walbø Johnsgård, Radixweb, Rahul Mehta, ramonopoly, ravipatel, Riad Benguella, Robert Anderson, Rodrigo Arias, Sanket Chodavadiya, Sergey Biryukov, Stephen Bernhardt, Stephen Edgar, Steve Henty, terraling, Timothy Jacobs, tmatsuur, TobiasBg, Tonya Mork, Toro_Unit (Hiroshi Urabe), Vlad T, wb1234, and WFMattR.

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I really believe in WordPress’ mission to democratize publishing. And I, for one, will never stop learning about what gives people more access to the software, and what makes the software more usable, and especially how we can combine usability with accessibility in a way that puts form and function on a level playing field.

That was Josepha Haden on the “The Art and Science of Accessibility” episode of the WP Briefing Podcast, talking about accessibility and exploring how it applies to the WordPress open source software. You will find that many of our updates from August 2021 tie in closely with the core principles of access, accessibility, and usability. Read on to find out more!

Join the 2021 WordPress Translation Day Celebrations in September

Join WordPress contributors around the world on WordPress Translation Day celebrations for the entire month of September! The sixth edition of #WPTranslationDay – which is a cross-team effort led by the Polyglots and Marketing Teams, has a host of fun programs aimed at helping WordPress speak all languages of the world. Want to join the fun? Here’s how.

 For more information, check out the translation day website and the Polyglots blog.

WordPress Release Updates

The Core Team commenced work on the next major release – WordPress 5.9. The team aims to ship some cool features such as intrinsic web design to blocks, improved block patterns, navigation menus, better design tools, edit flows for block themes, and a new interface for theme.json. Check out the WordPress 5.9 development cycle to know more. This release is set to go out in December 2021. The team is also working on shipping a minor release WordPress 5.8.1 –– its release candidate is already out and the final release will launch on September 8.

Want to contribute to WordPress core? Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Don’t miss the Core Team chats on Wednesdays at 5 AM and 8 PM UTC. You can also help translate WordPress to your local language – and what better time to do it, than in September, during the translation month celebrations? Another fun way to contribute would be to share about WordPress 5.8 on social media!

Say Hello to Gutenberg Versions 11.2 and 11.3

We launched Gutenberg version 11.2 and version 11.3 this month. Version 11.2 adds customizing/color options to the search block, a flex layout for the group block, and a new button for creating posts as part of the publishing flow. Version 11.3 offers a new dimensions panel (replacing the spacing panel) with more styling options, dimensions control for the feature image block, and significant performance improvements for block inserters.

Want to get involved in building Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. The “What’s next in Gutenberg” post offers more details on the latest updates. 

Get Excited about WordCamp US 2021

The biggest WordCamp in North America – WordCamp US 2021- is barely a month away. Get your (free) tickets, if you haven’t already! The organizing team has opened up calls for musicians, contributor stories, and media partners. Check out the event website and follow the event on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to stay updated on all that #WCUS news.

Important Announcements/Updates

Feedback/Testing Requests from Contributor Teams

WordPress Event Updates

• WordCamp Florianopolis 2021 was held on August 11-12, 2021. The event, which sold 390 tickets, had 11 speakers and 4 sponsors. Catch the event recap on YouTube!
• WordCamp Galicia 2021 is being held from September 30 – October 2, 2021! 
• do_action Karnataka 2021 was held from August 7-15, 2021. Check out the recap!
• The Core Team organized a hallway hangout to compare the ‘experimental’ Gutenberg navigation feature with the built-in core feature. The team decided to wait until feature parity with core nav menus, to move the feature from experiments to the main plugin.
• The Diverse Speakers Training group (#WPDiversity) of the Community Team held their first “Allyship for WordPress Event Organizers” workshop on August 19, 2021. The event had 13 attendees from six countries who reported a 52% increase in preparedness to help create inclusive WordPress events. Stay tuned for their next workshop in November!

Further Reading

Have a story that we should include in the next “Month in WordPress” post? Please submit it using this form. 

The following folks contributed to August’s Month in WordPress:  @evarlese @meher @nao @jillbinder @webcommsat

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Just in a few short weeks, we will be kicking off our next VMworld event in digital form. In this post, I’d like to discuss why it’s important to attend this year’s event, especially for our VMware partner and cloud provider community.

This Year’s Event

You’ll see that our tracks have evolved a bit –

Specifically, the Multi-Cloud session is a focus point for myself. Why? Our team is focusing on providing a common – yet familiar – operating model wherever your cloud platform resides. This is inclusive of our VMware partner clouds, which could operate within their premises or within a hyperscaler cloud.

Importance of Multi-Cloud

From my point of view, the term “multi-cloud” is up to interpretation. We are framing this new operating model that encapsulates traditional and cloud-native workloads while utilizing native hyperscaler or managed services. There’s a cascading impact to all of these changes: from architecture, sales, and operations.

I highly suggest starting first with the VMware Multi-Cloud Architecture landing page. This is a great way to get yourself aware of this transition.

As a VMware Cloud Provider or MSP, it’s important to start thinking and acting on the following themes:

1. How am I providing new and agile services between my current premises and hyperscaler partnerships?
2. What is our current managed security offering? How are we evolving this practice to conform with cloud-native workloads?
3. How are we enabling our development customers with the agility they demand for cloud-native workloads?
4. Is there an opportunity to provide a differentiated offering in highly regulated verticals?

I am limited on discussing our Cloud Provider specific announcements, but I am definitely looking forward to showcasing our advancements within our Cloud Provider landscape. More to come!

Sessions for Cloud Providers

Next, the below is a list of all of our VMware Cloud Provider specific sessions.

Some of the themes you might spot:

1. Regulated (Sovereign) Clouds are of importance. Patrick’s session will go into the common framework of what it takes to be a sovereign cloud provider.
2. Asset-Light Strategy – Cloud Partner Navigator and Cloud Director Service unlocks new possibilities for MSPs.
3. Security, Application Modernization, and Digital Workspace strategies – these are all new offering opportunities. Take advantage of the knowledge the team will be providing.

Please register and attend where you can!

Call to Action

In conclusion, VMworld is a great opportunity for a global audience to learn more from your industry peers, but the general pass is open at no cost. If you haven’t registered yet, please register here.

I look forward to seeing you all virtually at VMworld.

-Daniel

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Before the release of WordPress 5.0 in 2018, the Classic Editor plugin was published to help ease the transition to the new block editor. At the time, we promised to support the plugin through 2021 and adjust if needed as the deadline got closer. After discussing this with Matt, it’s clear that continuing to support the plugin through 2022 is the right call for the project as well as the community.

Still, if you’ve been putting off using the block editor, this is an excellent time to give it another shot. Since it first appeared in 2018, hundreds of WordPress contributors have made a lot of updates based on user feedback. You will be pleasantly surprised at how far it’s come!

Big thanks to everyone who has been working on WordPress, Gutenberg, and the Classic Editor plugin. And thank you to every WordPress user and tester who has provided the feedback we need to make the software even better.

~ Josepha

Returning to the block editor for the first time in a long time? You can give feedback early in the process by joining the outreach program! Looking at it for the first time ever? Get your bearings with some workshops or check out this demo!

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Ever wonder what it’s like behind the scenes of WP Briefing? Listen in on this episode for a little levity and Josepha’s bloopers.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

Credits

Transcript

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  00:10

Hello, everyone, and welcome to a bonus briefing. Normally I talk to you about WordPress and stuff, but I figured that we all need a little levity in our lives right now. So today’s episode is actually just a series of bloopers and mistakes that I’ve made while recording. When I was preparing for this podcast, no one mentioned the deep weirdness of standing alone in your closet talking to yourself, nor did they realize just how lost I can get in the surpassingly, lovely lyricism of a lilting line, and then just have no idea what I’m supposed to be reading in the script that I wrote for myself. So, my dear friends, I hope these bring you a little laugh. And if we’ve got any luck at all, you may also hear me singing to myself, my computer, or about how terrible my talking just was. Here we go!

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  01:12

Hello, everyone, and welcome to a bonus briefing. I know I wasn’t going to sit boop, boop. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  01:21

I messed up the thing where I’m talking about how I mess up, of course. I’m going to do it one more time, and you can choose whatever is a reasonable thing there. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  01:33

Because we had such a lengthy WP Briefing, WordPress, I’m going to just start that over again. Sorry, everyone.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  01:42

My friends. Oh, no. I don’t know how I end my own show. How do I end my own show? There we go. Sorry. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  01:52

That was a weird way to say that. I’m going to start over again from the transition. And then we’re just going to go straight through to the end. Maybe.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  02:03

The names that… I sound weird. I sound like I don’t know what my words are. And I said I wrote the words. I said I was all going to go in one go, and I’m a liar today. Okay, here we go. For realsies!

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  02:16

Final first last take. Here we go. Sorry, I made myself laugh. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  02:22

Matt Mullenweg. And, and I, I’m also in that group. I don’t know why I said that like it was a surprise. I have me too. I’m also in there. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  02:33

Ugh, I ran out of air. For reasons, it was a short sentence. I don’t know why I ran out of air. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  02:43

Coming out on April 14. That’s not true. It’s April 13. Right?

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  02:50

On the form below to share the. Pfft – what are the things! 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  02:58

This is WP Briefing episode seven, no title because I don’t know what to call it because I gave it a title already. I gave it two titles, and then couldn’t remember why I gave it those titles. So I’ll come up with a title before we publish it. But I also have no idea what it is. I’m going to ask for help. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  03:17

Testing project since I have too many commas, and I really believed in my comma when I said it. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  03:24

Prior to Gutenberg… pfft. Open source software like WordPress. I was going to smash that sentence into half a sentence. I was going to say when you know what you’re workussing on you have a solution which is not my friends of thing. So, I am just going to say the sentence again. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  03:47

I was sitting over here wringing my hands for some reason during that entire list. And so if you can hear me wringing my hands, which would be a whole new height of anxiety for anyone, you let me know, and I will rerecord that also.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  04:00

Get a concept of. Nope, this is a lie. Get a concept of where to get your tickets is the silliest thing. I’m starting over from the small list of big things. Also, because I got too excited about how big my list is. I am going to get that excited again. But I will try not to shout about it. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  04:17

“Humming intro song” Dun dun dun dun dun. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  04:23

Sorry, I had to scroll up, and I try not to scroll up when I’m talking in case maybe my whole computer turns into a microphone. Sorry, I’m just going to keep going because this has been a fine take so far. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  04:34

Mercy! I have words that I can say with my mouth. They aren’t these words today. It seems.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  04:45

Build up to… Oh my goodness. My stomach grumbled, and this microphone, I know,  picked it up. And so I’m going to redo bullet two so that we don’t just have a small monster under the bed in the middle of the podcast. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  05:03

Also, like DEI, I feel s—Eh – maybe I should say, DEI, somewhere in there, so it’s clear for people cause I’m talking to people and not actually a screen. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  05:17

Before I joined the WordPress project, the majority of my work with accessibility was in the context of the digital divide. Now, when talking about the digital divide, there are three concepts around quote-unquote, getting things to people. And those concepts are… I guess I could say the thing, hold on one second, I can do it. I feel like I’m chopping up my words like I’m not really breathing very well. So I apologize. But here we go again.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  05:58

Don’t include that one. Sorry, I’m so nervous about this episode that, like, my mouth is getting dry, and I worry that you can hear it, and it drives me nuts every time I hear podcasters with a dry mouth, and you can just like hear it clicking and always stresses me out. I’m like, someone should give that poor thing a drink of water. And I just know I’m going to feel that way about myself later. And so I’m trying to stay hydrated, but it also means that I have to stop every two paragraphs and take a drink of water. I apologize for that interlude. I am about to start again, at my next section, which is like, halfway through.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  06:39

Also, I learned that you can hear me swallowing my water with this microphone because it is a spectacular microphone. And so, I apologize for that as well. All right. Here I go. I’m going to do it all in one take. Watch me. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  06:56

But I also have questions, especially about how to move everything forward. Mm-hmm. Whoops. I put especially in the wrong spot. But I also thought…

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  07:10

 Ta da, we did it. Gosh, that’s a short one. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  07:16

I did it. Where’s my where’s my turning offing button. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  07:22

Tada! And scene and done.

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