Jonathan Desrosiers 11:40 pm on March 25, 2024
Tags: 6-5 ( 76 ), core ( 590 ), release-process ( 25 )

WordPress 6.5 release delayed 1 week

Based on community feedback on the Unblocking WP6.5 – Font Library and Synced Pattern Overrides and Font Library follow up posts, there has been a change to the WordPress 6.5 release schedule and a final change to the Font Library.

The release of WordPress 6.5 will be delayed one week and is now scheduled for release on Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024.

The delay is to accommodate the following:

The directory for font storage will be changed to wp-content/uploads/fonts.
The Editor team will work on including fixes for a select few high impact bugs that have been identified with the Font Library feature in the upcoming GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ 18.0.0 release. This ensures they will receive some testing before being considered for merge into trunk prior to WordPress 6.5 RC4.
An unplanned WordPress 6.5 RC4 is now scheduled for release on 28 March 2024 at 16:00 UTC with the updated font storage location and any other related bugs deemed critical to the release. This will be a normal release candidaterelease candidate One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta)., with the announcement being published on the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ News blogblog (versus network, site) for extra reach.
The 1 week delay allows for ample time for testing, acknowledging that Thursday-Monday is a major holiday for parts of the globe.

Why the change?

This approach ensures that the greatest number of sites possible can benefit from the new Font Library feature without the need to install or configure anything.

While attempting to implement the originally suggested compromise, the sentiment from the trusted contributors involved was that a solution could not be shipped with a level of confidence that meets the standards that core contributorsCore Contributors Core contributors are those who have worked on a release of WordPress, by creating the functions or finding and patching bugs. These contributions are done through Trac. https://core.trac.wordpress.org. hold themselves to in the remaining time before the originally scheduled release.

After evaluating the potential options and discussing the proposed solution, the most risk averse option was determined to be storing fonts in the wp-content/uploads/fonts directory.

Shipping a feature that requires additional configuration or technical knowledge isn’t in line with the guiding philosophies that have helped the project mature into the successful project that exists today. Part of the original post was a call to return back to those project philosophies, and something this change attempts to adhere to.

The Dry run post will be updated to reflect the schedule for the new release date of 2 April.

Post release

Following the 6.5 release, these items detailed in the original post should still be explored:

A roadmap will be published outlining where the project components are headed in relation to establishing new first-class concepts outside of previously established paradigms within the software (like breaking down themes into fonts, patterns, templates, etc.). Why was this such an important and impactful decision? What is the goal we are trying to accomplish? And how might it present itself again in the future?
A means to move the canonical location of the fonts directory. Should the wp-content directory become writable for a site, a safe path forward should be offered for its owners.
Explore whether additional checks should be added to Site Health.

Props to @desrosj, @davidbaumwald,@hellofromtonya, @chanthaboune, @peterwilsoncc, @priethor, @jorbin, @annezazu, @akshayar, & @courane01 for pre-publish review.

#6-5, #core, #release-process

Marc 7:19 am on March 26, 2024

thx for the warning / confirmation we were several to wait for.
how about those of us who are running fonts through the GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party (ex: 17.9.0) ? no impact ?
- Matias Benedetto 6:26 pm on March 26, 2024
  
  how about those of us who are running fonts through the GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party (ex: 17.9.0) ? no impact ?
  
  The font folder location change has not been ported to Gutenberg (yet), but maybe it will. In both cases, if the change is ported from coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. to the plugin and if it’s not ported, no functional impact is anticipated.
  
  All the installed fonts, regardless of their folder, will continue loading as expected because the full URLs of the fonts are stored in the database at install time.
  
  When the font folder path is updated, the fonts are uploaded to the new folder but both the fonts from the old and the new locations load fine.
  
  The only outcome that can be unwanted but which won’t impact WordPress functionality happens in this case: If there are fonts installed in the old path (/wp-content/fonts) and the path is updated (wp-content/uploads/fonts/), and after that the fonts installed in the old path are uninstalled. In this case, the fonts installed using the old path will be successfully removed from the database, so the user won’t be able to use them on the site. However, the font assets will remain in the wp-content/fonts folder. This happens because, as with media files, we do not store the complete path of the font files. To remove them, we look for each file in the font folder returned by wp_get_font_dir().
  - Marc 10:33 pm on March 26, 2024
    
    ok, thanks
KRISÚ 7:45 am on March 26, 2024

Safety first. Thank you for your efforts. 👍
Jeroen Rotty 10:17 am on March 26, 2024

Thank you for the update. Sounds all good!
Andrew Ozz 10:55 pm on March 26, 2024

Based on community feedback

Don’t think the somewhat small amount of comments on these posts are a good excuse to change a WP architectural decision that was done months ago just few days before release.

Furthermore, reading through that “feedback” seems a lot of it is misunderstood, misguided, or plain wrong.

Most importantly the fonts are not uploads, they are “downloads” that are downloaded and installed by WP similarly to plugins and themes. However it seems very few contributors that have commented there are aware of this. I’m not sure why most people keep repeating that “fonts are uploads” when this is not true?

Seems the other reasons for storing fonts in the uploads directory are also based on somewhat misguided/untrue assumptions:

1. Setting DISALLOW_FILE_MODS means that all files and directories except wp-content/uploads cannot be modified by WordPress. This was never intended and is a coincidence. It is a wrong assumption. See https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/13000. So it seems that this revert is done just to benefit a few hosts that have made the above assumption, and not about benefiting most of the WordPress users.

2. Storing of fonts in the /uploads directory would introduce less bugs. There is no data to support this, i.e. it is another unproven assumption. As far as I see there are few “Media Library” plugins that are likely to break the fonts directory if it is stored in /uploads. By number of users it is unknown how many users will be affected, but it is possible that more users will not be able to use the new feature if fonts are stored in wp-content/uploads/fonts (because of these existing plugins).

The really sad thing about reverting this WordPress architectural decision is that it is likely to negatively affect (constrain) how WP works in the future.

The other really sad thing is that the reason for this revert is “community feedback” by about 20 or so people, many of whom don’t seem to be WordPress contributors (i.e. are probably not aware of how WordPress works in detail, and about the main philosophical principles that apply when creating code for WP). I think in general this is a pretty bad reason to revert any WP decision, and especially more fundamental “code architecture” decisions.
- Aaron Jorbin 3:48 am on March 28, 2024
  
  This isn’t a rash decision, it’s about making the best decision for the users of WordPress with the information that is available at this point in time.
  
  The creation and use of wp-content/fonts being problematic is something that was first raised in June 2023 and several times since by a number of coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. SVNSVN Subversion, the popular version control system (VCS) by the Apache project, used by WordPress to manage changes to its codebase. committers (both active and emeritus), hosting providers and WordPress site implementers.
  
  The eventual resolution was discussed by several long term and active project contributors including 6.5 release squad members after the compromise approach was determined to be unworkable in time for the current release. This resolution has been tested with multiple backup and media library plugins and it has shown to work without bugs.
  
  Finally, as noted in the post this is a discussion that can and should continue after the release.
  
  This comment was co-authored with @desrosj and @peterwilsoncc
  - Andrew Ozz 3:58 am on April 1, 2024
    @jorbin, @desrosj, @peterwilsoncc Thank you for your replay. I’m sorry to say this but having such important discussion at 6:30am is quite unhelpful and excludes a large number of WP contributors.
    
    As far as I see a known, tested code that needed few hosting companies to fix their server settings was replaced with somewhat/mostly untested code. The only benefit of that change was that it would save some money/efforts for these hosting companies. aAt the same time that change may introduce problems in an unknown number of plugins for an unknown number of WordPress users.
    
    I see mentioned several times that “this change is for the benefit of the WP users”. Unfortunately this is incorrect. Actually seems it is the opposite: this change has the potential to make it impossible for some WP users to use the new feature (as it seems largely untested while the old code was thoroughly tested).
    
    Furthermore without this change the few affected hosting companies could have fixed the issues caused by their server settings without even involving the WP users whose sites are hosted there.
    
    After the change the burden of fixing any incompatibilities was moved to plugins authors and site owners (who would have to find and report the bugs, await the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party authors to fix them, and update their plugin).
    
    So at the end of the day the choices were:
    
    1. Require that several hosting companies update/fix their server settings. They had one month notice to do that, and several options. WP users are not involved in this process.
    
    2. Change the location so the hosting companies do not have to fix their server settings, while possibly introducing an unknown number of bugs for an unknown number of WP users and plugin authors.
    
    Furthermore this change was made only couple of days before the scheduled release date, giving little response time to the plugins authors, and long after the “have you tested your plugins” email was sent. So in all likelihood a plugin author may have tested their plugin and confirmed it works properly in WP 6.5, however this change may have “broken” it later.
    
    This resolution has been tested with multiple backup and media library plugins
    
    That sounds great! Could you point me to where the list of these plugins is mentioned and who actually tested with them? I looked around SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/., TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress., and GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ for quite a while but found nothing.
    
    after the compromise approach was determined to be unworkable
    
    Sorry but this doesn’t sound right. As far as I see there were somewhat limited efforts to implement that compromise, with only 2-3 people ever attempting to work on it. Yes, it was pretty “weird” to see so little involvement there.
    
    The creation and use of wp-content/fonts being problematic is something that was first raised in June 2023
    
    This is perhaps the most worrisome part of it. The timeline tells it all:
    
    An issue that has been known for nine months was not considered “important enough” for eight months. There seem to be very little information about it, no tickets and PRs to fix it, etc.
    
    Then it was “elevated” about a month before the 6.5 release. At that time at least two methods to fix it were discussed. The affected hosting companies were able to implement the fixes without any involvement from their clients, the WP users. At this time the issue looked like resolved. The hosting companies had one month to either fix their server configurations or implement another fix.
    
    However it seems 2-3 days before the WP 6.5 release suddenly it was discovered/decided that the affected hosting companies are incapable to fix this, and their users may not be able to use the new functionality. It is still unknown why these hosting companies were/are not able to fix this. The only explanation given was that it may require some efforts on their part.
    
    The sad part here is that when looking purely from user perspective WordPress 6.5 was delayed by one week for 50-60 million users just because few hosting companies were unwilling or unable to implement a simple fix 🙁
- Jan Thiel 7:57 am on March 28, 2024
  
  Hey @azaozz,
  
  I couldn’t disagree more with the result of your reasoning of your reply although I do get some of your arguments.
  
  “Naming stuff” and semantics are horrible things in the world as they always create expectations and are based on personal experiences.
  And I believe this is one of the major issues here based on your strong opinion about “fonts are not uploads”.
  
  Let’s take another approach categorizing “Fonts”:
  
  1. What is the “nature” of font files?
  Font files are “static” files. They are equally static like images, documents and other media files. There is no real versioning nor regular expected updates.
  To confine: They are NOT code like “Plugins” and “Themes” which are versioned and regularly updated.
  
  2. Add Ownership and management into consideration:
  Fonts belong to one particular site. Fonts are stored based on the site id. As such they are “installed” and “managed” on a “per site” level by “Site Adminadmin (and super admin)” users (“manage_options”?) when they activate a certain theme, pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party or simply really upload them. Uploading / Selecting fonts is common for creating a website. I do not see a change in this just because a BlockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. Theme suggests certain fonts in a default style.
  Plugins and Themes on the other hand are globally installed and managed by “Networknetwork (versus site, blog) Admin” users. No file system change happens when they are activated on a single site.
  
  3. Folder structure
  The new fonts folder would mimic the structure of the uploads folders and has to handle all the multisitemultisite Used to describe a WordPress installation with a network of multiple blogs, grouped by sites. This installation type has shared users tables, and creates separate database tables for each blog (wp_posts becomes wp_0_posts). See also network, blog, site specific stuff – again. This point alone should raise alert flags questioning if this is the right way to go as it moves logic which is currently only relevant for one folder path to one and later more paths.
  
  4. Ignore the misleading semantics of the name of the “uploads” folder.
  Many Plugins and Themes use the upload folder for generated stuff as well. So it does not just contain “uploaded” data.
  Ultimately the “uploads” folder is the “persistent site content” folder for one particular site – or contains all the sites folders in multisite. There is just one additional comparable folder present I am aware of, which is the “cache” folder in wp-content. Yet the cache contains “temporary” data whereas the “uploads” folder has persisted data.
  
  This is clearly not about “Hosters” VS “regular Users” but about Naming stuff.
  Yes, Hosters and other folks who run WordPress more professional than the majority do care about folder paths and URLs as they have an impact on many levels like Caching, Security Rules and other stuff which rely on certain points. Like that “uploads” and “cache” are the only two folders which change frequently without an update / deployment of WordPress, Plugins or Themes.
  
  Based on the nature of font files I neither can see any real impact of using a “fonts” folder in uploads when it already exists. If an equally named font file exists and the folder structure is identical then the resulting file will most probably be the same. As such it will not break on any site.
  
  Creating a “font” folder in wp-content just to proclaime that “fonts are now a first party entity” still seems kind of rude to me. And unnecessary as you speak about the majority of users. The majority of users will most probably not care about where the font files are located as the majority of WordPress users just use WordPress. But the minority who have an impact an no benefits by this change are those who raise their voices now. A “first party entity” will most probably be defined by its appearance in the WP-Admin UIUI User interface for most people. Just like “Posts”, “Pages”, etc.
  
  As fonts clearly have more in common with everything else in uploads than everything else in wp-content they are – from a technical perspective – much better placed in the uploads folder to not break anything outside the code expecting static files and dynamic generated files in uploads exclusively at the moment.
  
  That being said: I totally agree that the semantics of the “uploads” folder are problematic. Still its current meaning as single source of site specific dynamic “content” is quite clearly defined by how it is used and not by how it is named.
  If something is changed – and the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team really see a real need and benefit from it – I would heavily vote for adding one additional folder next to uploads for something like “data” or “content” (<– no good candidates for a final pick) which will then hold these new future folders and files.
  Again: For the minority operating professional WordPress installations this little fact does make a real difference in terms of efforts when securing or optimizing the infrastructure around WordPress as "just the Software".
  - Andrew Ozz 4:12 am on April 1, 2024
    Thanks for your comment. Seems pretty much all of what you are saying was already discussed at greater lengths on TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress., GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/, and in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.:
    
    https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/60652
    
    https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/6211
    
    https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBWTW/p1711373986985429
    
    and several other.
    - Jan Thiel 8:48 am on April 1, 2024
      
      @azaozz Thank you very much for sharing the links.
      
      After reading through them I cannot find anything in there which refers to any of the mentioned arguments. Are you sure these are the correct links you wanted to share?
      
      I still do not understand most of the reasoning why a new folder in wp-content seems to be the best way to go. Up until now you only argued against other oppinions and arguments.
      I am sure there was a reasoning for this decission still I am unable to understand (or find) it as it doesn’t seem to be documented in a way which allows others to understand the reasoning behind it and the arguments which were discussed before.
      
      I am still highly irritated as well by the emotional discussion around this topic. Based on the WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. philosophy as an open and inclusive project it shouldn’t matter who you are to raise concerns and issues to be heard.
      It feels highly offensive to me to take any arbitrary group like “hosters making money” to argue that “their” concerns are not worth taking into account because “they can handle it”. Completely ignoring that there most probably will be other people who will face the same consequences like the “ignored” group but without having the (financial) ease to simply “change some configuration” in their systems. It is quite easy to bash on big Corps… But just take Non-Profits or other semi-professionels into account not having big budgets. Or any budget at all.
      Changing the Semantics of the WordPress folder structure is a breaking change. It should not be done lightly.
      
      In any way I do not want to go deeper into this rabbithole.
      
      From an IT professional AND WordPress Users perspective I can see some severe and definite problems for some WP Users when going with wp-content/fonts.
      They were all raised in the discussions within the two posts.
      On the other hand I haven’t seen reasonable and proven arguments which invalidates the raised concerns and which would support the previous decision of wp-content/fonts as being the “right” one for everyone. In additional to that I do not see any reasonable issues with wp-content/uploads/fonts.
      As such this is “certain problems for some” VS “most probaly no issues for noone”. The WordPress way would be to follow the latter. And this reflects the move to /wp-content/uploads/fonts.
      
      Could you please share the reasoning why enforcing wp-content/fonts was chosen to be the preferred way for all WordPress Users? That might allow us to get a mutual understanding for the current situation.
      
      Thanks,
      Jan
- Earle Davies 10:22 pm on March 28, 2024
  
  @azaozz –
  As one of those ’20 or so people’ who voiced their disagreement and still disagree – almost everything about your comment is wrong. “Most importantly the fonts are not uploads, they are “downloads” that are downloaded and installed by WP similarly to plugins and themes. However it seems very few contributors that have commented there are aware of this. I’m not sure why most people keep repeating that “fonts are uploads” when this is not true?” — Fonts are objectively uploads, it’s not an opinion it’s a fact. Fonts can be downloaded too, but they can be uploaded ergo, they’re uploads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnx_nkB-O2E This video might help you understand this feature because you clearly do not fully grasp what this feature does. There’s literally a tab called ‘uploads’ and Anne mentions how it’s like the media library.
  
  You seem to be conveniently bending the definitions of many things about this feature to make your points seem valid. For example “Similarly to plugins and themes” — You cannot add fonts to a site by directly adding them to the filesystem like a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party and theme they must be uploaded via the adminadmin (and super admin) (or downloaded in certain cases). Again bending the definition of things to try to make your points more valid or stronger. The architectural decision made early on was a poor one. Just because it was made long ago doesn’t make it a correct or good choice. You made tons of change requests to the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. upgrade/install feature where decisions had been made for months (years?) as well – should those not have been made based on your logic?
  
  “probably not aware of how WordPress works in detail” — not sure this is useful or helpful since you yourself are giving opinions on this feature that are contradictory at best and completely wrong at worst.
  
  Finally for #2 you complain about unproven assumptions then make unproven assumptions yourself? More contradictory information from you on this feature. Hosting companies and people on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ issues came out flagging problems with this approach and saying they would need to move the path already. So many so that a proposal was to release a plugin to make it even easier for people. So not sure how you can say “there is no data to support this”. There is data, you just have to look.
  - Andrew Ozz 4:16 am on April 1, 2024
    
    Thanks for your comment. As mentioned above seems most of what you’re saying was already discussed at greater lengths. Please see the links above.
    
    As one of those ’20 or so people’ who voiced their disagreement and still disagree – almost everything about your comment is wrong.
    
    Do you also disagree with the fact that the 4-5 affected hosting companies could have implemented a fix without involving their users, and that they had one month time to do that?
    - Earle Davies 11:11 am on April 1, 2024
      
      Respectfully you are spreading mis-information about this feature which is not helpful to the larger conversation. You are also stating your *opinion* as *fact* which is also not helpful. There’s been several things you’ve stated that are easily verifiable as incorrect and multiple people have now corrected you but you seem to just gloss that over and continue repeating similar unproven claims.
      
      fonts are not uploads, they are “downloads”
      
      – Proven multiple times to be incorrect, they’re in fact both
      
      The only benefit of that change was that it would save some money/efforts for these hosting companies.
      
      – Absolutely incorrect, I have deployment pipelines that would break 200 websites with this change, not an “easy” fix for this
      
      I see mentioned several times that “this change is for the benefit of the WP users”. Unfortunately this is incorrect.
      
      – This is your opinion, you have no verifiable data to back up the claim is objectively better for WP users.
      
      After the change the burden of fixing any incompatibilities was moved to plugins authors and site owners (who would have to find and report the bugs, await the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party authors to fix them, and update their plugin).
      
      – You have no verifiable data to back this up and keep saying we can ignore the verifiable problems this change created but want us to consider your unproven claims it “might” break something. Show us all the plugins and sites from using the uploads directory.
      
      I could go on and on and on but this is a small snippet of the incorrect information and opinions that just aren’t rooted in verified evidence. In fact quite the opposite, there is verified evidence all over if you choose to look for it. And yes, I absolutely disagree with the “4-5 affected hosts” of which there is likely infinitely more could have implemented a fix with the one month they had to do that. For enterprise hosting it’s not simply making a switch. They need to time to test an infinite number of site configurations, backups, restore, server offerings (dedicated, VPS, shared), all in a sandbox environment. Then they need to roll that out to production. All for something that was consistently pushed back on and debated without any real legitimate conversation on the concerns until the last minute. Also as you must have read and ignored I have pipelines using rsync that would wipe my fonts and delete them without me changing 200+ sites. So it’s not just the big hosts this poorly designed feature would have affected.
    - John Blackbourn 3:43 pm on April 1, 2024
      
      Andrew, I appreciate that you hold the best interests of WordPress users at heart, as you always have done, but this conversation is getting ridiculous. You are now labouring points that have been discussed multiple times in recent weeks across GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ issues, TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. tickets, SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. discussions, and make/coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. comment threads.
      
      I agree with everything that Earle took the time to write in his replies to you. You are presenting speculation and opinion as fact and you are inventing scenarios that don’t exist.
      
      The discussion on the location of fonts that started at the end of February is the first time that this topic has actually been discussed at any considerable length since the feature was proposed. The discussions in recent weeks is the architectural discussion that you claim happened but actually did not. The change from `wp-content/uploads/fonts` to `wp-content/fonts` happened in a PR with zero discussion. The reasoning given was a one-liner:
      
      mtias suggested we should change it back to /wp-content/fonts
      
      And yet you state:
      
      Don’t think the somewhat small amount of comments on these posts are a good excuse to change a WP architectural decision that was done months ago just few days before release.
      
      I ask that you stop being disrespectful of the considerable time and effort that many contributors have constructively put into this discussion in recent weeks in order to help ship a feature that works as reliably as possible for the largest number of users as possible.
      - Andrew Ozz 7:26 pm on April 1, 2024
        
        Sorry about that, it was never my intention. I’m just really really sorry that I wasn’t able to participate in the SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. discussion last Monday, unfortunately.
        
        Perhaps lets look at this again after the release, maybe in the 6.5 post-mortem.
        
        John Blackbourn 9:39 pm on April 1, 2024
        
        I know it’s not your intention but you’ve really been nagging at this for several days now.
        
        Perhaps lets look at this again after the release, maybe in the 6.5 post-mortem.
        
        Agreed, I’m always in favour of post-release reviews (not keen in the phrase post-mortem, hopefully nobody or nothing died). The root cause of the issues we’ve seen with the font files location is a failure of the processes that should prevent this from being a problem at the last hour, especially as this is I believe the third attempt at merging this feature.
phanduynam 3:17 am on March 27, 2024

I read that GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ 17.7 has been integrated into the WordPress 6.5 release. But I still hope the development team can integrate Gutenberg 18.0 into WordPress 6.5. It would be a shame that version 18.0 was released at the same time but was not integrated with WordPress 6.5.
- Aaron Jorbin 6:23 pm on March 27, 2024
  
  The version of Guteneberg is locked based on the release schedule. It is chosen to allow for sufficient testing and polish of the features. The good news is that you can choose to run GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ version 18.0 on your site if you want to test the latest and greatest changes.
seoservicesbristollimited 11:52 am on March 27, 2024

Good idea to plan for April 2nd, and not for April 1st 🙂
Best,
Andrea Fercia 2:08 pm on March 28, 2024
> Most importantly the fonts are not uploads, they are “downloads” that are downloaded and installed by WP similarly to plugins and themes. However it seems very few contributors that have commented there are aware of this. I’m not sure why most people keep repeating that “fonts are uploads” when this is not true?

I’m not sure whether fonts are ‘downloaded’ or ‘uploaded’ really matters but, to be accurate, it’s both.
- Users can pick-up fonts from an external collection source e.g. Google. In this case fonts are ‘downloaded’ and stored in the fonts folder.
- However, users can also ‘upload’ font files from their machine to WordPress. In this case, fonts are ‘uploaded’.
Jon Brown 1:23 pm on March 30, 2024

Bizzare. I don’t care where fonts reside, or the semantics of “uploads”, but do care immensely in how they function. Reading @jorbin, @azaozz, Jan and Earle’s takes I’m concerned it sounds like I can’t simply FTPFTP FTP is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol which is a way of moving computer files from one computer to another via the Internet. You can use software, known as a FTP client, to upload files to a server for a WordPress website. https://codex.wordpress.org/FTP_Clients. a font into the directory (where ever that lands), and have WP find it. If that’s true, then that to me is the critical flaw we all ought to be discussing.

The media library is, long has been, a confusing mess to users. Confusing because one upload generates 15 thumbnails, confusing becuase deleting a file on disk doesn’t get detected in the adminadmin (and super admin) UIUI User interface. Confusing becuase uploading a file (attachment) to a post kinda means something but ultimately doesn’t mean anything…

Let’s not make that mistake with Fonts. Fonts ought to be able to be FTPd into the fonts folder and found the same as themes and plugins. Fonts also ought to be uploadable through the admin UI, just like themes and plugins. Fonts also ought to side loaded (downloaded if you like) from 3rd party sites like Google fonts, just like themes and plugins coming from repos/directories.

Stop for a minute and consider users interacting with this long term… and expectations. Purely being in the DB and not file system aware is extremely fragile and confusing to users.

Ps, props to @peterwilsoncc for mentioning MS. Fonts are absolutely site specific. Just because site A uses “open sans” doesn’t mean it uses the same version of “open sans” that site B uses. Site B might need extended ligatures, Unicode, font wieghts, whatever, that site A does not.

I said elsewhere, wp-content/fonts sure makes sense to me, and we seem to spend way to much time and energy bending over backwards such that large profit making hosts don’t have to make small changes to their proprietary hosting platforms. But the location of these folder isn’t a hill I’d walk up, let alone a hill I’d die on. The usability of it is a different story.
- Earle Davies 2:30 pm on March 30, 2024
  
  That’s correct, you can’t FTPFTP FTP is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol which is a way of moving computer files from one computer to another via the Internet. You can use software, known as a FTP client, to upload files to a server for a WordPress website. https://codex.wordpress.org/FTP_Clients. the fonts and have the file system recognize they’re in there. They must exist as a line item in the database to function. This is why people who keep repeating that fonts are ‘like themes and plugins’ are flat out wrong. I do agree with you that the fonts would be much more powerful if they lived on the file system, and I would be more open to the opinion they could live at the root of wp-content as themes/plugins do. However as the feature is programmed right now I don’t think they should.
  
  If the fonts were put in wp-content/fonts it would not only harm large profit making hosts making changes to proprietary platforms. I have deployment pipelines setup in GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ that deployDeploy Launching code from a local development environment to the production web server, so that it's available to visitors. everything via rsync in my wp-content folder to a cloud host. If something on that host doesn’t exist in my wp-content folder it’s removed from the server unless it’s in my ignore file. My ignore file includes the uploads directory since those should not be versioned. If this feature was pushed out with wp-content/fonts all my sites would remove any fonts UPLOADED (since people keep repeating incorrect information that fonts are downloads) through the wp-adminadmin (and super admin) on the file system during the next deploy completely breaking them. Could I modify my pipelines or the location of the fonts directory? Sure. But this goes against so many WP CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. principals of making features just work and be easy to use out of the box.
- Andrew Ozz 4:18 am on April 1, 2024
  
  we seem to spend way to much time and energy bending over backwards such that large profit making hosts don’t have to make small changes
  
  Yeaaa, looking at this through a WP user’s eyes, it looks that way, unfortunately. Very sad 🙁
  
  At the end of the day code is just code. Anything can be coded/implemented given enough time and effort. By far the most important part are the users. Not the code, developers, hosting companies, etc. etc.
- Ryan McCue 3:16 pm on April 2, 2024
  
  I said elsewhere, wp-content/fonts sure makes sense to me, and we seem to spend way to much time and energy bending over backwards such that large profit making hosts don’t have to make small changes to their proprietary hosting platforms.
  
  Just to be clear, given that I commented on the original post (and run an enterprise host), I do not think this is a concern. I have zero concerns about patching things on Altis (and we need to apply other changes for each release anyway), nor WPVIP or Pantheon.
  
  However, there seems to be a sense of “only a few hosts are doing this”, which is emphatically not true.
  
  There are many, many users of WordPress who are running locked down systems like this where codebase changes are required to run through approval, and/or where uploads are offloaded on to separate storage. We see this (and I hear this from people at events) as we maintain a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party specifically to move uploads to S3 instead of the local filesystem (and we’re not even the most popular solution!).
  
  While my initial objection was to the way that the process was run (changing what we had committed to at the last moment), it is also the case that the actual behaviour would have broken the functionality for many WordPress users – universities who operate large networks of multisites, businesses who run their infrastructure in a secure fashion, government organisations who must have strict compliance controls in place, and users who need cloud storage for large files.
  
  At no point have I seen concerns from any of the “big” hosts who follow coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. development about having to add a 5 line workaround. The concerns raised are either for and on behalf of users that we see and work with, or conceptually with the location.
  
  (Conceptually: For all purposes that I’ve seen, fonts are data files; they’re attached to database entries and are specific to sites. We have a place for data files that fits this specification, which is well-established historically, and which has clear APIs for interacting with. There haven’t been clear arguments that I’ve seen which articulate why we need a second place for data files. Also, I think everyone’s clear that while the directory is called “uploads”, it represents a larger concept of data storage for blobs.)

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WordPress 6.5 release delayed 1 week

Why the change?

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Welcome!

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Why the change?

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