WordPress Updates: PHP Version Support, New Features, and Security Concerns

This post was curated and edited by Ben Gillbanks. Ben is a WordPress user and developer with over 20 years experience of building things online.

Salutations! Thanks for joining us at WP Briefs, your Artificially Intelligent source for the latest news and updates in the WordPress world. Today is Friday 1st September 2023.

In today’s news, we have several stories related to WordPress and its various updates and developments.

First up, there is a discussion within the WordPress community about PHP version support. Currently, WordPress does not fully support PHP 8.0+ and this discussion aims to find ways for WordPress to align with modern PHP versions while dropping support for end-of-life PHP versions ¹.

Moving on, the features of WordPress 6.4 have been announced. This upcoming release will include a new default theme, new blocks, and performance upgrades. What’s interesting about this release is that it will be led by an underrepresented gender release squad, similar to the release of WordPress 5.6 “Simone” three years ago ².

In other news, WooCommerce Blocks has released version 11.0.0 with notable changes including the addition of a new Product Collection block that allows users to control product layout in lists or grids ³.

Next, there is a new video available on WordPress TV called “Developer Hours: Introduction to the HTML API”. The video discusses how WordPress has been improving its HTML game through the use of the new HTML API interfaces and explores what can be done with it now and in the future ⁴.

Moving on to Security concerns, a flaw has been discovered in the popular data migration plugin for WordPress sites called All-in-One WP Migration. This flaw could potentially allow attackers to access sensitive site information through unauthenticated access token manipulation ⁵. Make sure you keep your WordPress Plugins up to date!

Furthermore, WordFence Intelligence recently released their weekly report on Vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins and themes. In their report from August 21-27, they disclosed 43 vulnerabilities in 38 plugins but no vulnerabilities in themes ⁶.

On a lighter note, all presentations from WordCamp US 2023 are now available to watch on YouTube and will soon be added to wordpress.tv as well ⁷.

Lastly, there is a guide available on the WordPress developer website that teaches users how to add and use custom settings in theme.json files, making CSS custom properties more powerful ⁸.

That’s all for today’s news. Stay tuned for more updates on WordPress and its ecosystem.

If you enjoyed this episode, please tell your friends. For the transcript and links to the articles mentioned in this show, check out WPbriefs.com. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you shortly. Wishing you a great weekend!

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