14 DAY TRIAL // The second release candidate for the upcoming WordPress 3.1 is now available. As expected this late in the development stage, WordPress 3.1 RC2 comes with several bug fixes and small updates, but no big new feature or changes.
"The second release candidate for WordPress 3.1 is now available," WordPress developer Andrew Nacin announced.
"Beta 1 came on Thanksgiving, RC1 on Christmas, and RC2 on New Year’s Day. We won’t be waiting for another holiday for the final release, though, so if you haven’t tested WordPress 3.1 yet, now is the time!," he recounted.
The second release candidate includes the security fixes introduced with WordPress 3.0.4. A more detailed explanation of the vulnerabilities can be found here, with the WordPress 3.0.4 release announcement.
Some notable fixes are to issues dealing with a static front page and searching for partial user names. The pagination buttons have also received several fixes and improvements.
Plugins are now reactivated as intended after editing them. Some fixes for attachment taxonomies have been included. The current author is now always displayed in the author dropdown list when editing a post.
Node removal has been fixed in the admin bar, one of the big new features in WordPress 3.1. You can check out the full list of fixes here.
"Release candidates are the last stop before the final release. It means we think we’re done, and we again have no bugs to squash. But with tens of millions of users, many server configurations and setups, and thousands of plugins and themes, it’s still possible we’ve missed something," Nacin explained.
While WordPress 3.1 RC2 should be very close to the final build now, there may be lingering bugs so it's still only intended for testing purposes. If you decide to check out what's new, you can report any bugs you may find via several channels WordPress provides.
WordPress 3.1 RC2 is available for download here.