This Month in WordPress: October Roundup

October has been a busy month leading as much as the highly anticipated release of WordPress 6.4, scheduled for early November. But before that, we’ve some news in October to recap.

We saw vital updates just like the WordPress 6.3.2 security patch and the State of the Word 2023 announcement. At Hostinger, we also rolled out some key product updates for WordPress users.

Let’s get into the WordPress news and updates for October.

Hostinger AI Troubleshooter

We’ve launched the AI Troubleshooter, a brand new feature in hPanel designed to discover and enable you resolve common website errors like 403, 404, 500, and 503. Currently, it’s optimized for WordPress installations. Here’s the right way to use it:

1. Log in to the Hostinger Members Area and access your site’s hPanel.
2. Go to WordPress → AI Troubleshooter within the left panel.
3. The tool will scan your website in seconds. If it detects an error, it would specify the kind and offer immediate solutions.
4. If the AI Troubleshooter can fix the problem routinely, simply click the Fix my website button to finalize it.

This tool is currently in beta, nevertheless it’s fully functional for error resolution. Keep an eye fixed out for extra features in the approaching months.

Hostinger in Local WordCamps

This 12 months, we’ve proudly sponsored three major WordCamps – Asia, Europe, and the US. Our commitment to the WordPress community continues with sponsorships of three local WordCamps this month:

• WordCamp Biarritz, France. Held on October sixth, 2023, this was the primary edition of WordCamp Biarritz with 270 attendees.
• WordCamp Sevilla, Spain. It’s one in every of Spain’s local WordCamps we sponsored this 12 months. Taken place on October 20-22, 2023, and attended by 182 participants, that is the second time we’ve participated in WordCamp Sevilla.
• WordCamp Tegal, Indonesia. Attended by 78 people and arranged otherwise than most local WordCamps, this event adopted a scale-up workshop format specializing in WordPress for enterprise topics. It is usually one in every of the next-gen WordCamp pilot events.

Though these events are smaller than the flagship WordCamps, our mission is consistent – to have interaction with the WordPress community, understand user needs, and gather priceless feedback to reinforce our hosting services.

State of the Word 2023 Announcement

Mark your calendars – the annual State of the Word address is about for December 11, 2023, at 15:00 UTC.

Should you’re unfamiliar with State of the Word, it’s the annual keynote address delivered by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. The session will reflect on the WordPress project’s progress and achievements all year long and description its direction for the approaching 12 months.

This 12 months’s State of the Word can even be the primary one held outside of North America, as it would happen in Madrid, Spain. You may attend the keynote in person or catch the live stream, with more details to be released in November.

WordPress 6.3.2 Security Update

The WordPress 6.3.2 update rolled out on October 12, 2023, addressing 19 core and 22 block editor bugs. Most significantly, this update fixed eight security vulnerabilities, with some significant ones as follows:

• Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities within the post link navigation block, footnotes block, and application password requests.
• Sensitive information exposure within the User Rest Endpoint allowed malicious actors to reveal users’ addresses by performing brute-force searches.
• If an attacker used the X-HTTP-Method-Override header to send a request to a public REST API and got a 4xx error, they might trigger a Denial of Service through cache poisoning. This implies future visitors to that very same endpoint would also encounter the error if it’s stored within the cache.

Should you’re still using WordPress 6.3.1 or lower, we highly recommend updating to version 6.3.2 to maintain your WordPress site secure. A few of these vulnerabilities also affected older WordPress versions from 4.1. Subsequently, the fixes are backported to older versions.

LiteSpeed Cache Plugin Security Update

The LiteSpeed Cache plugin has released version 5.7 to deal with an XSS vulnerability in version 5.6 and older. The difficulty stemmed from inadequate input sanitization and output escaping within the ESI shortcode.

Utilized by 4 million WordPress sites, including those hosted by Hostinger, it’s crucial to update to version 5.7 straight away to mitigate any XSS risks.

What’s Coming in November

The much-anticipated WordPress 6.4 is about to launch on November 7, 2023. This update will enhance the block editor workflow and introduce the brand new Twenty Twenty-4 default theme that comes with an array of patterns for various web sites.

We’ve already taken a fast take a look at the WordPress 6.4 beta version. Keep watch over our blog for comprehensive coverage of WordPress 6.4 and recommendations on leveraging its recent features.