WordPress 6.1 Beta 2 was released on September 27, 2022. Alpha, beta and RC versions should not be installed on online sites, only in test environments.
The final version of WordPress is still 5 weeks away (probably November 1, 2022), so there is plenty of time for extensive testing to identify and fix as many bugs and incompatibilities as possible before release.
There are three ways to test WordPress 6.1 Beta 2:
- Using the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (here select the “Bleeding Edge” channel and the “Beta/RC only” stream)
- By directly downloading and installing the Beta 2 file as a ZIP,
- Using WP-CLI with the following command
wp core update --version=6.1-beta2. This option should only be used on case-sensitive file systems.
Additional information is available for the 6.1 release cycle. Stay tuned to the Make-WordPress-Core blog in the coming weeks for 6.1 related development notes detailing all the upcoming changes.
Testing
Issue testing is critical to the stability of a release throughout its development. Testing is also a great way to contribute. If you’ve never beta tested, this guide is a good place to start.
Testing helps ensure that this and future versions of WordPress are as stable and bug-free as possible. Want to learn more about testing these releases? Then read more about the testing initiatives happening at Make Core. Those interested in learning more about such trials can read posts on the Make WordPress Test site and join a public channel in the Making WordPress Slack workspace.
For a review of Gutenberg’s features since WordPress 6.0 (the current major version of WordPress), see What’s New in Gutenberg 14.1, 14.0, 13.9, 13.8, 13.7, 13.6, 13.5, 13.4, 13.3, and read 13.12. WordPress 6.1 Beta 1 Release News.
If you like it more visual, you can watch the WordPress 6.1 summary as a video.
WordPress 6.1 Beta 2 contains more than 350 improvements and 350 bug fixes for the editor compared to WordPress 6.0.2, including more than 300 tickets to the WordPress 6.1 core.
Twenty Thirty Three (TT3)
WordPress 6.1 will also include a new default theme, the Twenty Thirty Three (TT3) theme, which includes 10 individual style variations.
In addition to activating and testing the TT3 theme itself, see the official styles documentation for more information on accessing and modifying theme styles.
More innovation
Here are some updates since the Beta 1 release:
Report a bug
If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post it in the alpha/beta sections of the support forums. If you know how to write a reproducible error report, you can create one in WordPress Trac, which also has a list of known errors.