WordPress 5.1 «Betty»

WordPress 5.1 was named «Betty» to honor the jazz vocalist Betty Carter. This new major update was released on February 21 and brings some new features with it.

Site Health

To protect and maintain WordPress sites better, this new feature lets administrators see useful information about the installation and PHP version. Outdated plugins which only support old versions of PHP will be checked for incompatibilities, therefore PHP incompatibilities are easier to see and WordPress will keep you from installing this plugin.

The button links to wordpress.org/support/update-php/ which explains that your WordPress site can be faster and more secure, why this matters and how to fix it.

Faster block editor

WordPress 5.1 makes the new block editor significantly faster to improve the user experience.

Multisite Metadata

WordPress 5.1 introduces a new database table to store metadata associated with sites and allows for the storage of arbitrary site data relevant in a multisite context.

Cron API

The Cron API gets new functions to assist with returning data and includes new filters for modifying cron storage.

JS Build Processes

WordPress 5.1 features a new JavaScript build option, following the large reorganization of code that started in the 5.0 release.

Miscellaneous Improvements

For example: Updates to values for the WP_DEBUG_LOG constant, new test config file constant in the test suite, new plugin action hooks, short-circuit filters for wp_unique_post_slug(), WP_User_Query, and count_users() and new human_readable_duration function…

Remember to always create backups of the database and the web space before installing updates.