WordPress 3.8 Developers Prepare Code For Hard Freeze

photo credit: sant.o – cc

WordPress 3.8 RC1 was released today ahead of the hard freeze scheduled for Dec. 5th. Strangely, this coincides with an arctic cold front that will be sweeping across the US the very same day. In sending out 3.8 RC1, Matt Mullenweg said, “The focus is on identifying any major issues and resolving them as soon as possible.” The development meeting this week centered around prioritizing outstanding tickets and finding ways to get more structured testing in place.

How to Find Tickets That Need Attention

Want to get in on contributing to WordPress 3.8 at the last minute? There’s still quite a bit of testing to be done and you can help. Locate the tickets that need love and jump in. You can find them by sorting by modified or, alternatively, sorting by severity.

If you’re not comfortable creating patches, Matt suggested, “Even confirming things is helpful, testing patches to see if they fix the issue, which is ‘easier’ than making the patch.”

If you have a few minutes to spare, now is a critical time to jump in and get involved to help 3.8 get out the door. The easiest way is to install the WordPress Beta Tester plugin and select “bleeding edge nightlies”.

Looking Forward to WordPress 3.9

During the WordPress development meeting, all agreed that an earlier, and perhaps longer, merge window for plugins would be beneficial in the next major release. Matt opened up the floor by asking for anyone to speak up regarding current projects that are going to go for another iteration. A few teams chimed in to recruit more help:

Featured Content – Robert Dall said he wants to take a crack at this again, whether it’s in plugin format or not

Widget Customizer – Shaun Aundrews reported that the team is making great progress and would loe to have more help with the plugin.

THX (Theme Experience) – The team is continuing work on themes and will tackle the “Add New” flow next.

The Search Initiative – George Stephanis posted that The Search Initiative is in need of interested people to collaborate on the project.

There are several more feature plugins that were not mentioned during the meeting yet are already underway for WordPress 3.9 and beyond. Finding a team that needs your skills is a great way to start contributing to WordPress in a focused, collaborative environment.