WordPress 7.0 Release just hit a massive speed bump. It was announced this week that the final release is being pushed back to address critical feedback regarding real-time collaboration. For those of us who have been shipping code for a decade, seeing a project “return to beta” after entering the Release Candidate (RC) phase is practically unheard of. It is a messy situation, but it is the right call for stability.
The WordPress 7.0 Release and the RC Trap
You might be wondering why the core team doesn’t just rename the next version “Beta 7.” Specifically, it comes down to a technical bottleneck in how PHP handles version comparisons. In WordPress development, we rely heavily on the version_compare() function to determine which update is “newer.” If the team released a version string labeled 7.0-beta7, sites already running 7.0-RC2 would see it as an older version and refuse to update. Furthermore, this would break automated deployment pipelines across the globe.
If you’ve ever dealt with previous performance delays, you know that versioning logic is non-negotiable. Here is the reality of the logic check that forced this “unorthodox” RC3/RC4 numbering:
<?php
// Why we can't just go back to "Beta"
$rc_version = '7.0-RC2';
$beta_version = '7.0-beta7';
if ( version_compare( $beta_version, $rc_version ) === -1 ) {
echo "The update system thinks Beta 7 is OLDER than RC 2. Update failed.";
}
?>What This Delay Means for Your Workflow
During this pause, which lasts until April 17th, the trunk is officially closed for the 7.1 release. Consequently, all focus is being funneled into the 7.0 branch. If you are a contributor, you need to understand that backporting now requires a double sign-off from two core committers. This isn’t just bureaucracy; it is a defensive measure to prevent regressions while we fix the stability of real-time collaboration.
Specifically, the primary exceptions to the “no new features” rule during this RC phase are the Connectors admin screen and the collaboration stability fixes. If you are building custom blocks or integrations, you should be testing against the latest nightly builds. Using the WordPress Beta Tester plugin is the fastest way to stay aligned with these changes without manually pulling from GitHub every morning.
Look, if this WordPress 7.0 Release stuff is eating up your dev hours, let me handle it. I’ve been wrestling with WordPress since the 4.x days.
Refining the Experience
In my experience, the “Release Candidate” label usually means the code is locked. However, in this cycle, RC3 and RC4 will effectively be beta releases in practice. Furthermore, a “string freeze” is in place to protect the Polyglots team from unnecessary work. Therefore, unless it is a critical fix for the About page or the Connectors screen, do not expect new UI strings to be added.
For those of us managing complex client sites, this delay is a blessing. It is much better to have a delayed WordPress 7.0 Release than a broken one that kills database transients or causes race conditions in the new real-time editor. If you haven’t yet, refactor your local development workflow now so you can test these RCs in a staged environment.
The new schedule will be published by April 22nd. Until then, keep your test sites on the “Bleeding edge” channel and keep an eye on Trac tickets related to real-time collaboration.
“},excerpt:{raw:
