WordPress 5.1 has been released! This release introduces performance enhancements for the new block editor (formerly referred to as Gutenberg), along with a handy new feature that makes sure you aren’t running under an outdated version of PHP and that you won’t install any plugins which require a higher version of PHP than you currently have. This is a big deal, because while PHP is the programming language that powers WordPress, even finding out what version of PHP you’re running is often a mystery for many. Surfacing this in the Dashboard will go a long way to making more folks aware of their options.
561 volunteers contributed to this release, lead by Matt Mullenweg and Gary Pendergast. At the time of writing this, WordPress 5.1 has been out for about 2 hours, and has already been downloaded 301,045 times!
All users can safely update from Dashboard -> Updates or download and update manually, though you should probably backup first just in case, unless you’re already using VaultPress, which you really should be.
If you run into any problems, stop by the known issues first, and please let us know if it’s not covered there!
4 responses
I’ve upgraded all my website this night, as soon as I was notified of this post.
I did a security backup for each one before, just in case, at the end all run perfectly!
I appreciate the health / security part of this release, was someting I was waiting for for years. I lost time searching for issues caused by a wrong version of PHP, especially since I upgraded to PHP7.
That’s great to hear, and I’m that glad my post helped notify you too! I wasn’t entirely sure anyone was following these anymore. 🙂
hmm… something like British humor? Oh, no, I bet most of your followers are just doing it to please you 😉 not for your interesting content. Am I wrong?
Haha, no I mean I didn’t think anyone was reading my WordPress update posts here.
I’m glad you proved me wrong. 🙂