The minor-update phase for WordPress 6.8 has begun, starting with a first release addressing several bugs.
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Program transcript
Hello, I’m Alicia Ireland, and you’re listening to WPpodcast, bringing the weekly news from the WordPress Community.
In this episode, you’ll find the information from April 28th to May 4th, 2025.
And, as planned, it happened. Last Monday, April 28th, the Release Candidate for WordPress 6.8.1 was launched, followed 48 hours later by the final version of this branch, which ultimately fixes 15 bugs, five of them related to the editor.
Given that the branch for WordPress 6.8.2 is already open, it seems the usual pattern for these minor releases will involve frequent updates addressing between 10 and 20 tickets. In the near future, we may even see minor releases introducing new features, which will then be carried forward to WordPress 6.9.
What does seem clear is that, with the release of WordPress 6.9, the minimum supported PHP version will be raised to 7.4, leaving behind versions 7.2 and 7.3.
The Systems team has modified the plugins’ Subversion repository to prevent potential issues with “tags,” blocking nested tagging when uploading new versions of plugins. This change avoids unnecessary file system growth, preventing possible errors both in plugins and on the sites that download them.
And, as has been announced over the last two weeks, WordPress project leadership has begun an extensive review of community members blocked between August 2024 and now who had not previously received notification.
The primary objective is to identify accounts whose blocks may have been unjustified or erroneous, restoring their access and enabling them to rejoin conversations and platform development both on WordPress.org and related Slack channels.
The decision to unblock will be based on various criteria, such as the severity of the original infraction, the time elapsed since the block, the subsequent behavior of the user, explicit commitment to the code of conduct and forum rules, and the potential impact on the overall health of the community.
It appears that most of these accounts have already been reinstated.
And finally, this podcast is distributed under a Creative Commons license as a derivative version of the podcast in Spanish; you can find all the links for more information, and the podcast in other languages, at WPpodcast .org.
Thanks for listening, and until the next episode!
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