- The first release candidate of WordPress 6.2 includes 900 enhancements and fixes and is the first major release of 2023.
- The team asked everyone across the WordPress ecosystem, including theme and plugin developers, educators, agencies, and creators to test before the final release.
- The official release of WordPress 6.2 is just three short weeks away on March 28 and there will probably be more release candidates.
WordPress 6.2’s first release candidate is released shortly after the launch of the beta version and is ready to download. The team is waiting for additional testing and use by the community to make it ready for the final release. WordPress 6.2 is expected to be released on March 28. To learn more about the new version, you can take a look at our article.
First release candidate
The WordPress team asked everyone across the WordPress ecosystem, including theme and plugin developers, educators, agencies, and creators, to test the release to find bugs before the final release. The team also warned users not to install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites.
The release comes with more than 900 enhancements and fixes and is the first major release of 2023. The enhancements focus on making everything smoother, faster, and a little more inspired:
- A refreshed Site Editor for easier template browsing
- A new sidebar experience in the Navigation block for simpler menu management
- Reorganized block settings with separate tabs for Settings and Styles
- New inserter design that lets you add Media, including Openverse and its more than 600-million-item catalog, plus your entire Media Library, and better categories
- More header and footer patterns for block themes
- A new Style Book that shows your entire site’s look and feel all in one place
- New controls to let you copy and paste block styles for faster, simpler design across your whole site
- Custom CSS you can add for those finishing touches, per block and globally
- Sticky positioning to keep important blocks fixed when scrolling
- Distraction Free mode for moments you want to focus on writing
- New options that let you import certain widgets from classic to block themes
- The removal of the Site Editor’s beta label, welcome to the next generation of WordPress
Users can test WordPress 6.2 RC1 in three ways:
Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Option 2: Direct download the RC1 version (zip).
Option 3: Use the following WP-CLI command:
wp core update --version=6.2-RC1