WordPress Contributors Work Towards Removing Site Editor Beta Label for 6.2 Release

Will WordPress be ready to remove the Beta label from the Site Editor in the upcoming 6.2 release? The project’s Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy addressed this question in her latest WP Briefing podcast episode titled “What Does Concluding a Gutenberg Phase Really Mean?“

“All of the projects, with the exception of two, I believe, in the Phase 2 scoping ticket, will be shipped in the Gutenberg plugin before [the] WordPress 6.2 release comes out,” Haden Chomphosy said. “Barring any major breaking issues, those will then land in that major release in WordPress 6.2. So 99% of the features we considered in scope for Phase 2 will be in core by April.”

Haden Chomphosy also mentioned the possibility of removing the Beta label from the Site Editor, if a specific set of conditions are met. She referenced the tracking issue created in March 2022, that outlines the most critical remaining items in Phase 2 that must be completed before removing the label, as well as a few other follow-up items that are related but less critical to resolve before taking it out of Beta.

“We’ve been discussing that possibility with the input of the community over the course of the last few major releases, and we’ll do the same as we get ready for the 6.2 release as well,” she said.

“Fingers crossed that we get to remove that label this time around, but also, the acceptance criteria on it are pretty clear. So it’s really a matter of yes or no on all of the columns all the way down.”

Contributors have been aiming to get the Beta label removed since 6.1 but the criteria had not yet been met. The current blockers include a ticket to improve the Site Editor loading state so that everything is fully loaded before users start interacting, removing the jumpiness of half-rendered states. This item was added to the Todo column of the remaining WordPress 6.2 Editor Tasks project board.

Haden Chomphosy assured podcast listeners that the conclusion of Phase 2 does not mean that WordPress will stop accepting user feedback or bug reports on customization features.

“It definitely does not mean that we will stop shipping refinements to the user experience,” she said. “As much as I’d like to say this isn’t true, I think all open source contributors know that no matter how much you test a solution, you can’t actually account for all possible use cases when you work on a project this size.

“So as we find things that we didn’t realize were a little rough to use, we will, of course, make the effort to smooth those workflows as quickly as possible.”