This week WordPress 4.9.6 was released, which comes with several privacy tools.
Core
WordPress 4.9.6
On May 17, the core team released WordPress 4.9.6. Among other things, the new release contains privacy tools to help to make a site GDPR conform. For that, it comes with:
- A comment cookie consent checkbox for the comment form.
- A privacy policy page feature.
- Features for exporting or erasing personal data.
More about the release can be found in the official announcement post »WordPress 4.9.6 Privacy and Maintenance Release« by Allen Snook.
JS build step and reorganization of folders
Omar Reiss worked on a patch to make WordPress ready for modern modular JS programming practices. It is the »first big step towards an improved JavaScript development workflow« as he writes in his post »Preparing WordPress for a JavaScript Future Part #1: Build Step and Folder Reorganization«, and the following changes are introduced with the patch:
- A required build step. That means it is no longer possible to run WordPress from the
srcdirectory. - Reorganization of the JavaScript files in
src.
More on that can be found in his post.
Theme related changes in 4.9.6
WordPress 4.9.6 brought a few changes that affect themes. So if you are a theme author and have not done it yet, you should test your theme for the following features:
- You can link to the new privacy policy page via newly added functions.
- There was a new checkbox added to the comment form to let the user check if he wants his data to be saved in the cookie for following comments. This can cause style issues or, if you are overwriting the
comment_form()call, lead to the case that the checkbox is not visible.
More info on that and how to modify the comment_form() call for the new checkbox in the post »Changes that Affect Theme Authors in WordPress 4.9.6« by Jonathan Desrosiers.
Misc
- »JavaScript I18N Meeting Summary: May 8th«. The team took a look at the issues with string extraction and loading of translations.
- »WordPress 4.9.6 Release Candidate 2«.
- »REST API Meeting Summary: May 10«.
- »New PHP Polyfills in 4.9.6«. There were polyfill functions added for
is_countable()andis_iterable(). Those two functions were added to PHP in 7.3 respectively 7.1. - »4.9.6 Update Guide«. The bigger dev-related changes in 4.9.6.
- »Dev Chat Summary: May 16th (4.9.6 week 7)«.
- Gutenberg 2.9.
Design
Misc
Polyglots
Misc
- »Resources to help translate GDPR terms and new strings for WordPress 4.9.6«.
- »Please prepare your locales for the release of WordPress 4.9.6«.
Support
Misc
Docs
Misc
Plugins
Misc
- »Closing Unused Plugins«. There are many cases where a plugin was approved but the plugin author never committed code. The team decided to close those plugins if there was no code uploaded after six months after approval.
- »WP 4.9.6, Privacy, Hooks, and You«.
Community
Misc
- »Report on the March Meetup Organizers Roundtable Experiment«.
- »WordCamp Incubator Program 2018: Update«.
- »Meetup Organiser Newsletter: 16 May 2018«.
- »Feedback requested: Additional changes to WordCamp tickets and registration«.
- »Diversity Speaker Outreach Training Group Onboarding / Summary«.
- »WordPress logos on cakes«.
- »Meetup Organizers Roundtables Part II: Conclusions And The Next steps«.
- »Recap of the Diversity Outreach Speaker Training meeting on May 16th, 2018«.