April 12–23, 2026

Welcome back to the WordPress.com changelog! 

Over the past two weeks, we opened up the WordPress 7.0 beta for Business and Commerce sites, made it easier for you to fix plugin errors, and made our Support Center more easy to navigate.

Releases

Try WordPress 7.0 before it ships

WordPress 7.0 is on its way, and if you’re on a Business or Commerce plan, you can now test the beta on your live and/or staging site.

Visit Sites → Your Site → Settings → Server → WordPress, and pick the beta version from the dropdown.

WordPress.com takes an automatic backup of your site before switching the version, keeps your site on the latest beta as new betas are released, and lets you switch back to a stable version at any time from the same settings area.

Security

When a plugin breaks your site, you can fix it in one click

When a plugin causes a fatal error on your WordPress.com site, you no longer face a blank screen with no way out.

Site owners will now see an error page that identifies which plugin triggered the problem and offers a one-click Deactivate button, which works even if the site won’t load normally, to disable the offending plugin before it has a chance to run again.

Meanwhile, your site visitors see a clean apology — no technical details, no alarm.

For further peace of mind, our Happiness Engineers are constantly working to detect potential issues with plugins that may cause fatal errors on your site and proactively seek solutions before they become an issue for you or your readers/users. 

We also have a dedicated team of Security Specialists who work on detecting and resolving malware and other threats to your sites and will keep you updated with anything they find via email.

Support

Navigate our Support Center with the Support Assistant

Using the search bar in our Support Center now launches the Support Assistant by default for logged in and logged out users. The chat can surface answers to your specific questions, highlight helpful support resources, and connect you with one of our incredible Happiness Engineers if you need more assistance.

Fixes and improvements

We shipped additional reliability and polish updates across WordPress.com too, including:

• Adding an explicit confirmation screen when connecting your WordPress.com account to Telegram.
• Preventing survey pop-ups from appearing while the Help Center is open, so the two don’t compete for your attention.
• Enabling customers to start a free trial using UPI.