WordPress 4.3 Beta 1

WordPress 4.3 Beta 1 is now available!

This software is still in development, so we don’t recommend you run it on a production site. Consider setting up a test site just to play with the new version. To test WordPress 4.3, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”). Or you can download the beta here (zip).

4.3 is due out next month, but to get there, we need your help testing what we’ve been working on:

• Menus can now be managed with the Customizer, which allows you to live preview changes you’re making without changing your site for visitors until you’re ready. We’re especially interested to know if this helps streamline the process of setting up your site (#32576).
• Take control of another piece of your site with the Site Icon feature. You can now manage your site’s favicon and app icon from the admin area (#16434).
• We put a lot of work into Better Passwords throughout WordPress. Now, WordPress will limit the life time of password resets, no longer send passwords via email, and generate and suggest secure passwords for you. Try it out and let us know what you think! (#32589)
• We’ve also added Editor Improvements. Certain text patterns are automatically transformed as you type, including * and - transforming into unordered lists, 1. and 1) for ordered lists, > for blockquotes and two to six number signs (#) for headings (#31441).
• We’ve improved the list view across the admin dashboard. Now, when you view your posts and pages on small screen devices, columns are not truncated and can be toggled into view (#32395).

Developers: There have been a few of changes for you to test as well, including:

• Taxonomy Roadmap: Terms shared across multiple taxonomies will now be split into separate terms on update to 4.3. Please let us know if you hit any snags (#30261).
• Added singular.php to the template hierarchy as a fallback for single.php and page.php. (#22314).
• The old Distraction Free Writing code was removed (#30949).
• List tables now can (and often should) have a primary column defined. We’re working on a fallback for existing custom list tables but right now they likely have some breakage in the aforementioned responsive view (#25408).

If you want a more in-depth view of what changes have made it into 4.3, check out all 4.3-tagged posts on the main development blog.

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on the WordPress Trac. There, you can also find a list of known bugs and everything we’ve fixed so far.

Happy testing!

Site icons for all
Live preview menu changes
Four three beta now