WordPress 6.1 Release Candidate 3 (RC3) Now Available
Release Candidate 3 (RC3) is now available for testing! The general release is just one week away with WordPress 6.1 scheduled for release on Tuesday, November 1, 2022.
This RC3 release is the final opportunity for you to test and help to ensure the resilience of the 6.1 release by performing a final round of reviews and checks. Since the WordPress ecosystem is vast and composed of thousands of plugins and themes the entire project benefits from the time you take to assist.
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 is recommended that you test RC3 on a test server and site.
You can test WordPress 6.1 RC3 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 RC3 version (zip).
Option 3: Use the WP-CLI command:
wp core update --version=6.1-RC3
Additional information on the 6.1 release cycle is available here.
Check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.1-related developer notes in the coming weeks detailing all upcoming changes.
What’s in WordPress 6.1 RC3?
Since Release Candidate 2, approximately 60 items have been addressed.
WordPress 6.1 is the third major release for 2022, following 5.9 and 6.0, released in January and May of this year, respectively.
To learn more about the highlights for both end-users and developers, you’re invited to read more about them in the RC1 announcement post and review the WordPress 6.1 Field Guide.
Plugin and theme developers
All plugin and theme developers should test their respective extensions against WordPress 6.1 RC3 and update the “Tested up to” version in their readme file to 6.1. If you find compatibility problems, please post detailed information to the support forums, so these items can be investigated further prior to the final release date of November 1st.
Translate WordPress
Do you speak a language other than English? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages.
Keep WordPress bug-free – help with testing
Testing for issues is critical for stabilizing a release throughout its development. Testing is also a great way to contribute. This detailed guide is an excellent start if you have never tested a beta release.
Testing helps ensure that this and future releases of WordPress are as stable and issue-free as possible. Anyone can take part in testing – regardless of prior experience.
Want to know more about testing releases like this one? Read about the testing initiatives that happen in Make Core. You can also join a core-test channel on the Making WordPress Slack workspace.
If you have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. This is also where you can find a list of known bugs.
To review features in the Gutenberg releases since WordPress 6.0 (the most recent major release of WordPress), access the What’s New In Gutenberg posts for 14.1, 14.0, 13.9, 13.8, 13.7, 13.6, 13.5, 13.4, 13.3, 13.2, and 13.1.
RC3, A Penultimate Haiku
The time ticks forward
Release nears ever closer
Download and review
Props to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: Dan Soschin, Jonny Harris