WordPress 5.3 now released – what you need to know

If you’re using WordPress to power your site (and more than 50% of our users are!) you should note that WordPress 5.3 was released on November 12th. Changes in version 5.3 primarily comprise tweaks and bug fixes for the Gutenberg editor, but you’ll also find the new twenty-twenty theme bundled as standard – and we think it’s looking pretty great.

One particular item to note is a new admin email verification feature. You might want to familiarize yourself with this as soon as possible as it has the potential to cause at least a moment’s confusion.

The WordPress admin interface will now periodically ask administrator users if their email address is still valid. This happens within the WordPress dashboard at login. If you’re not expecting this, the verification screen might trigger a scam warning in your brain – it did for me! – but to confirm, this is a genuine part of the product starting with version 5.3. Here’s what the screen looks like:

If you’re hosted on our WordPress Hosting platform, you should be automatically upgraded to 5.3 within 24 hours of the release. If you’re managing your own WordPress site then as ever we urge you to update sooner than later; remember an updated WordPress website is a more secure WordPress website!

For a full list of features and updates in WordPress 5.3, the formal release notes can be found here:

https://wordpress.org/news/2019/11/kirk/