WordPress News Roundup June 2020: WordCamp Europe Online Draws 8,600 as WordPress 5.4.2 Ships

June 2020 opened with the largest WordCamp Europe yet, held entirely online. More than 8,600 people from 138 countries registered for the June 4–6 event, which included a record-breaking online contributor day and a Q&A with Matt Mullenweg. A week later, WordPress 5.4.2 patched several security issues.

Beyond events, June was about the road to WordPress 5.5. XML sitemaps were confirmed for the release, image editing tools arrived in Gutenberg, and WordPress raised its recommended PHP version. The ecosystem was busy too, with two notable deals and a conversation about equity and inclusive language across the project.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

• Yoast acquires Duplicate Post (June 16): Yoast bought the popular Duplicate Post plugin and hired its creator, Enrico Battocchi, as a senior developer.
• Smash Balloon joins Awesome Motive (June 23): The maker of social media feed plugins became part of Awesome Motive’s growing portfolio.

WordPress Core Updates

• WordPress 5.4.2 (June 10): A security and maintenance release with 23 fixes and enhancements. Security fixes covered XSS by low-privileged users in the block editor, XSS through media files and theme uploads, an open redirect in wp_validate_redirect(), a set-screen-option issue that plugins could misuse for privilege escalation, and comments from password-protected posts being displayed in some cases.
• Sitemaps for 5.5: The core team announced the merge of extensible XML sitemaps into WordPress 5.5.
• Gutenberg 8.3 (June 11): Reorganised block categories, added a parent block selector, link colour options and an experimental spacing control.
• Gutenberg 8.4 (June 24): Introduced image editing tools such as cropping and rotation, controls for editing multiple blocks at once, and block directory search inside the inserter.
• PHP 7.2 recommended: WordPress.org raised its minimum recommended PHP version to 7.2, so dashboard upgrade notices would now appear for sites on PHP 7.1 and below.
• Release leads: WordPress 5.5 leads were named on June 1, along with plans for an all-women release squad for 5.6.
• jQuery updates: The core team set out plans for updating the version of jQuery shipped with WordPress.

Other WordPress News

• WordCamp Europe 2020 Online: Alongside the 8,600 registrations, around 2,500 people signed up for contributor day. The event featured 33 speakers and 40 sponsors, and recordings were published on WordPress.tv.
• Equity and community: Executive Director Josepha Haden published a post on equity and resources for the community to help address racial and systemic injustice.
• Inclusive language: Contributors proposed renaming the default branch of WordPress Git repositories away from “master,” and friendlier Trac ticket resolutions.
• Code of conduct update: The Community Team moved to expand the WordCamp code of conduct to cover discrimination based on age, caste, social class and other characteristics.
• Jetpack Scan: Automattic launched a malware and vulnerability scanning service for Jetpack.
• Image editing demo: Matt Mullenweg and Matías Ventura demonstrated the new image editing tools coming to Gutenberg.
• Online WordCamps continue: WordCamp Denver ran online in late June with more than 2,400 tickets sold, while WordCamp Tulsa was cancelled.
• Local Pro relaunch: Flywheel relaunched Local Pro with revamped Live Links and host-agnostic pre-launch tools.
• Collaborative editing experiment: The AsBlocks project showed Gutenberg being used as a real-time collaborative writing environment, hinting at a feature many hoped core would one day support.
• WooCommerce 4.3: A beta of WooCommerce 4.3 arrived with a new home screen for store owners.
• Documentation linking: The docs team opened a discussion on an external linking policy.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

• Credential-stealing campaign: On June 3, Wordfence reported a large-scale attack campaign attempting to download wp-config.php files, and with them database credentials, by exploiting old file download vulnerabilities in plugins and themes.
• WordPress 5.4.2: Wordfence summarised the XSS fixes in core on June 11, urging site owners to update.
• Fake ransom emails: Site owners received scam messages claiming their sites had been hacked and demanding Bitcoin, a reminder not to panic at unverified threats.

Industry Trends and Insights

• PHP at 25: PHP, the language WordPress is written in, marked its 25th anniversary on June 8. WordPress’s move to recommend PHP 7.2 aligned it more closely with supported versions of the language.
• Inclusion in technology: The move away from “master” as a default branch name spread across the industry, with tools like Packagist and GitLab working to support alternatives.
• Hosting performance: Review Signal’s 2020 hosting benchmarks added WooCommerce testing, reflecting how central ecommerce had become.

Theme of the Month: GeneratePress

GeneratePress has long been a favourite for its lightweight code and modular premium add-on. In June its developer extended the approach into blocks, which made the theme an even more natural base for fast, block-built sites.

Plugin of the Month: GenerateBlocks

GenerateBlocks launched in June with a small set of flexible building blocks, including containers, grids, headlines and buttons, designed to create varied layouts without bloat. It was an appealing alternative for people who wanted the block editor to do more without a full page builder.

Host of the Month: SiteGround

SiteGround, a WordPress.org recommended host, offered staging, caching and PHP version controls on its plans. In a month when WordPress raised its recommended PHP version, straightforward PHP upgrades were a practical benefit.

Founder of the Month: Tom Usborne

Tom Usborne created GeneratePress and, in June, launched GenerateBlocks. His focus on performance and minimal code had earned GeneratePress a loyal following, and his move into blocks was a thoughtful bet on where WordPress site building was heading.

Looking Ahead to July 2020

July is scheduled to bring the WordPress 5.5 betas and first release candidate, ahead of a target release date of August 11. Decisions are due on which block patterns ship with 5.5 and whether the new navigation and widget screens are ready. More online WordCamps are planned, and plugin authors will be preparing for the jQuery changes coming to core.