WordPress News Roundup February 2019: WordPress 5.1 “Betty” Adds PHP Warnings and Faster Editing

February 2019 delivered the first major release of the block editor era. WordPress 5.1 “Betty” arrived on February 21 with a faster editor and the first Site Health features, most visibly a dashboard warning for sites running long-outdated versions of PHP. The same day, Gutenberg 5.1 completed the job of turning every core widget into a block.

The month also brought the block editor to the WordPress mobile apps in beta, the launch of a management console from Wordfence, and new research into WordPress core security. It was a sombre month too, as the community said goodbye to a much-loved longtime contributor.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

• PublishPress acquires Press Permit (February 18): PublishPress bought Kevin Behrens’ Press Permit permissions plugins, and Behrens joined the PublishPress team.

WordPress Core Updates

• Release candidates: RC1 arrived on February 8 and RC2 on February 19, alongside the 5.1 Field Guide.
• WordPress 5.1 “Betty” (February 21): Named after jazz singer Betty Carter, 5.1 improved block editor performance and introduced a notice for sites on outdated PHP, along with checks that prevent installing plugins requiring a newer PHP version than the site runs.
• Developer changes: 5.1 also brought a reworked cron system with a new API for developers and a new site metadata table for multisite.
• 5.2 planning: The 5.2 schedule and scope was published on February 19, promising further Site Health work, the fatal error protection held back from 5.1, and a minimum PHP version bump.
• All widgets now blocks: Gutenberg 5.1 completed the porting of core widgets to blocks, an early goal of phase 2. Gutenberg 5.0 earlier in the month had added an RSS block and an Amazon Kindle embed.
• Shorter release cycles: Contributors proposed moving to shorter, time-based release cycles.

Other WordPress News

• Block editor on mobile: On February 26, the mobile team shipped a complete block editor integration in the beta versions of the iOS and Android apps.
• Remembering Alex Mills: Alex Mills, known in the community as Viper007Bond and the author of plugins such as SyntaxHighlighter Evolved, died on February 19 after a long battle with leukemia. Tributes poured in from across the project.
• Navigation block design: The design team sought feedback on a navigation menu block prototype.
• Community Summit future: A discussion opened on how to improve the WordPress Community Summit.
• Theme Sniffer: The Theme Review team released a release candidate of Theme Sniffer, a tool to check themes against coding standards.
• Translation Day date: The fourth Global WordPress Translation Day was set for May 11, 2019.
• Mullenweg on distributed work: Matt Mullenweg published a TED talk on the future of work and prepared to launch Distributed.blog.
• Alexa reads WordPress: Amazon introduced a Blog Blueprint that delivers WordPress posts as audio through Alexa.
• Gatsby themes: The Gatsby WordPress Themes project partnered with theme shops to port popular themes to Gatsby, an early sign of headless interest.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

• Core RCE research: On February 19, Simon Scannell of RIPS Technologies published details of a remote code execution chain in WordPress 5.0.0 and earlier, combining a path traversal and a local file inclusion in image handling. It required an author-level account and had already been addressed through fixes in 4.9.9 and 5.0.1. It was tracked as CVE-2019-8942 and CVE-2019-8943.
• Simple Social Buttons: WPBrigade patched a critical vulnerability in its Simple Social Buttons plugin in mid-February that could let logged-in users change site options.
• WP Cost Estimation: Wordfence detailed vulnerabilities in the WP Cost Estimation plugin on February 13, including a file upload issue that had been exploited before the fix.
• Bootstrap XSS: Bootstrap patched an XSS vulnerability in versions 4.3.1 and 3.4.1, relevant to the many WordPress themes that bundle the framework.
• Wordfence Central: Wordfence launched Wordfence Central on February 6, a free dashboard for managing security across many WordPress sites.

Industry Trends and Insights

• WordPress nudges PHP upgrades: The 5.1 PHP warning put the case for upgrading in front of millions of administrators, putting new pressure on hosts that still ran old versions.
• Blocks beyond posts: With all widgets ported, the next frontier was clear: menus, sidebars and eventually whole themes.
• Mobile parity: Bringing the same block editor to the apps hinted at a single editing experience across devices.
• Agency tooling: Products like Wordfence Central reflected the growing number of businesses managing dozens or hundreds of WordPress sites.

Theme of the Month: Hestia

ThemeIsle’s Hestia, a one-page multipurpose theme with WooCommerce and page builder support, had become one of the most installed themes on WordPress.org. ThemeIsle had sold Pirate Forms in late 2018 partly to concentrate on Hestia, and the theme remained a popular starting point for small business sites.

Plugin of the Month: Health Check & Troubleshooting

The Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin was the testing ground for many of the ideas arriving in core through Site Health. Its troubleshooting mode, which disables plugins and switches themes for a single session, was invaluable as people diagnosed conflicts after updating to 5.1.

Host of the Month: Pantheon

Pantheon’s developer-focused platform for WordPress and Drupal emphasised Git-based workflows and separate development, test and live environments. Those workflows suited teams adopting a more structured release process as WordPress itself moved to faster, more predictable cycles.

Founder of the Month: Mark Maunder

Mark Maunder founded Wordfence, whose security plugin and threat research had become a key early warning system for WordPress. February’s launch of Wordfence Central extended that work to agencies and professionals responsible for large portfolios of sites.

Looking Ahead to March 2019

March should see the first WordPress 5.2 beta and a likely 5.1.1 maintenance release. WordCamp Nordic takes place in Helsinki on March 7–8, and the newly announced Triage Team will begin work on the backlog in Trac. Watch for a decision on raising WordPress’s minimum PHP version.