WordPress 6.4 Release Candidate 3 – WordPress News

The third release candidate (RC3) for WordPress 6.4 is ready to download!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC3 on a test server and site.

WordPress 6.4 is slated for release on November 7, 2023—less than a week away. If you haven’t tried it, now is the time.

You can test WordPress 6.4 RC3 in three ways:

1. Plugin: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
2. Direct download: Download the RC3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress site.
3. Command line: Use the following WP-CLI command:
   wp core update --version=6.4-RC3

Read the RC1 announcement for featured highlights, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.4-related posts. If you are looking for detailed technical notes on new features and improvements, the WordPress 6.4 Field Guide is for you.

The WordPress 6.4 release is brought to you by an underrepresented gender release squad to welcome the participation and partnership of those who identify as gender-underrepresented in the WordPress open source project.

What’s in WordPress 6.4 RC3?

Thanks to everyone who has tested the beta and RC releases. Since RC2 was released on October 24, there have been more than 25 issues resolved. You can browse the technical details for all recent updates using these links:

PHP compatibility update

It’s recommended to use PHP 8.1 or 8.2 with the upcoming 6.4 release. Refer to WordPress 6.4’s PHP compatibility post for more details.

Contributing to 6.4

WordPress is open source software made possible by a community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help, regardless of your technical expertise.

Get involved in testing

Your feedback and help in testing are vital to developing the WordPress software and ensuring its quality. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. Check out this guide for instructions on testing WordPress 6.4 features.

The core Query block requires more testing and feedback to ensure the latest changes to prevent full page reloads work smoothly. Please note that this setting was called “Enhanced pagination,” but has recently been renamed and is now referred to as “Force page reload” instead.

If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Search for vulnerabilities

During the release candidate phase of WordPress 6.4, the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper.

Update your theme or plugin

Do you build themes and plugins? Your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for users worldwide.

Hopefully, you have already tested your themes and plugins with WordPress 6.4 betas. With RC3, you will want to continue your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.4.

Please post detailed information to the support forums if you find compatibility issues.

Documentation

Help the Docs team put the finishing touches on end-user documentation in time for the 6.4 release. Find out what’s needed and how you can help in this post.

Help translate WordPress

Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Português? Русский? 日本? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages.

A RC3 haiku

One more week of prep
One more week to test the code
One more week til launch

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @meher, @rmartinezduque, @sereedmedia.