The WordPress development team has now released the first release candidate for WordPress 5.5! This is an important milestone in the WordPress community’s progress toward the final release of WordPress 5.5 to website owners.
If you’re not familiar with software development terminology, “Release Candidate” means that the new version is ready for release, but with millions of users and thousands of plugins and themes, it’s possible something was missed during the development process so it’s “released” to 3rd party developers, and agencies like O’Brien Media to test our plugins and themes – and perform tests on custom features we’ve added to client sites (where a website support agreement is in place we will be this automatically). WordPress 5.5 is slated for release on August 11, 2020.
You can test the WordPress 5.5 release candidate in two ways:
- Try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (choose the “bleeding edge nightlies” option)
- Or download the release candidate here (zip)
Using the release candidate is really only an option if you’re up for a challenge, and are happy with the risks associated with trying out software before it’s been through mass testing.
If you want to make sure that your website won’t have any problems when WordPress 5.5 is released it’s best to get an agency, such as us, to test your website in a controlled environment that won’t interfere with your live website (and risk visitors seeing error messages or the site completely crashing!)
Get in touch today to find out more about WordPress website support services from O’Brien Media.