WordPress News Roundup September 2018: WordPress 4.9.9 Gives Way to a Gutenberg-Powered 5.0

September 2018 was the month the road to WordPress 5.0 became official. After weeks of planning a 4.9.9 maintenance release, the core team decided at the end of the month to put that work aside and concentrate on the next major version, with Gutenberg as its centrepiece. The block editor plugin kept gaining features at a brisk pace and passed 450,000 active installs.

Around core, the ecosystem was busy declaring itself “Gutenberg ready”: Advanced Custom Fields shipped a compatible release, Yoast added structured data blocks, and theme shops started marketing their products on block support. Here are the stories that mattered.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

One plugin changed hands this month. On September 19, WPForms acquired Pirate Forms from ThemeIsle. Rather than keep the plugin alive, WPForms planned to retire it and migrate its users, while ThemeIsle said selling would free resources for its Hestia theme. No other significant deals were announced.

WordPress Core Updates

There was no core release in September, but there was a major change of direction.

• 4.9.9 shelved for 5.0: Early in the month, the 4.9.9 focus list included the Site Health project and preparations for Gutenberg. By September 26–28, the core team had shifted its attention to 5.0, since Gutenberg was close to being ready for a merge proposal. Work already done for 4.9.9 could move into 5.0.
• PHP 7.3 compatibility: With PHP 7.3 due before the end of the year, making core compatible was named a high priority.
• Gutenberg 3.8 and 3.9: Version 3.8 on September 14 introduced a full-screen editing mode, and 3.9 on September 24 brought reusable, exportable templates of multiple blocks. The team also published a detailed guide to the features in the editor and said a 4.0 release candidate was days away.
• Coding Standards 1.1.0: The WordPress Coding Standards project shipped version 1.1.0 on September 10.

Other WordPress News

• Gutenberg comes to WordPress.com: Automattic began slowly rolling out the block editor to WordPress.com users, giving Gutenberg its first large audience of everyday writers.
• Gutenberg in numbers: A new Gutenstats site started tracking beta testing data, reporting more than 450,000 active installs for the plugin.
• Drupal Gutenberg: The project to bring Gutenberg to Drupal received an enthusiastic reception at Drupal Europe.
• Theme Directory rules: The Theme Review Team updated its requirements on sponsored and affiliate links inside themes.
• Meetup organizer badges: Meetup organizers became eligible for a WordPress.org profile badge recognising their work.
• WordCamp ticket prices: Organizers discussed a proposal to raise the maximum WordCamp ticket price for the first time in years.
• WooCommerce on Android: The official WooCommerce Android app entered beta.
• Hurricane Florence: WordCamp Wilmington was cancelled as the storm approached the Carolinas.
• Walking to WordCamp Europe: Marcel Bootsman announced he would walk roughly 700km to WordCamp Europe 2019 in Berlin to raise funds for DonateWC, which helps people attend WordCamps.
• WordCamp Biratnagar: Nepal announced its first WordCamp for December 22.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

• Duplicator remote code execution: On September 6, Wordfence reported that an update to the popular Duplicator migration plugin patched a remote code execution flaw. The issue affected installer files left on servers after a migration, and site owners were reminded to delete leftover installer and archive files.
• Symantec certificate distrust: Wordfence reminded site owners that major browsers would distrust older Symantec-issued SSL/TLS certificates from October, which could leave affected WordPress sites showing security warnings.
• HTTPS as standard: With Chrome now labelling plain HTTP pages “Not Secure,” the case for a TLS certificate on every WordPress site had become hard to argue with.

Industry Trends and Insights

• “Gutenberg compatible” becomes a selling point: Theme developers began marketing their products on block editor support, and plugin makers like ACF, Yoast and MetaSlider shipped integrations. Compatibility was turning into a competitive feature.
• Structured data via blocks: Yoast SEO 8.2 added How-To and FAQ blocks that output schema markup, showing how blocks could carry semantic meaning rather than just layout.
• Cross-platform editor: Projects such as Gutenberg Cloud and Drupal Gutenberg pointed to a future where the editor, and blocks built for it, could be shared across content management systems.
• Accessibility questions: As the 5.0 merge came into view, accessibility advocates were pressing for answers on keyboard navigation and screen reader support, setting up a difficult conversation for October.

Theme of the Month: Hemingway

Anders Norén’s Hemingway, a long-time favourite among bloggers on WordPress.org, added Gutenberg support in September. It was a good example of a mature, well-loved theme being updated thoughtfully for the block editor rather than rebuilt from scratch.

Plugin of the Month: Advanced Custom Fields

Advanced Custom Fields released version 5.0 of its free plugin in September, bringing an updated interface and Gutenberg compatibility. Because so many agency-built sites relied on ACF for custom data, its readiness for the new editor mattered as much as any core change, and a dedicated blocks feature was already in development.

Host of the Month: Pagely

Pagely, one of the earliest managed WordPress hosts, continued to serve enterprise and high-traffic publishers on dedicated cloud infrastructure. As large organisations began staging environments to test Gutenberg, hosts that offered robust staging and hands-on support had a clear advantage.

Founder of the Month: Elliot Condon

Elliot Condon created Advanced Custom Fields and maintained it largely on his own as it grew into one of the most widely used developer tools in WordPress. Getting ACF ready for Gutenberg, and planning a way for developers to build blocks with PHP and field groups, made his work central to how agencies would handle the transition.

Looking Ahead to October 2018

October should bring a formal scope and schedule for WordPress 5.0, along with the Gutenberg 4.0 release candidate and the first 5.0 beta. Plugin and theme authors will be watching closely for a target date so they can plan their own compatibility releases. Hacktoberfest also begins on October 1, bringing its annual wave of open source contributions.