Paul Biron and Joshua Wold are leading the upcoming WordPress 4.9.8 release, which was originally announced as 4.9.7. WordPress core contributors met yesterday to decide the general focus and set the release schedule. In the meantime, the 4.9.7 security and maintenance release was rolled out to fix an authenticated arbitrary file deletion vulnerability, along with a few other minor updates.

WordPress 4.9.8 is targeted for July 31, 2018, with a beta as early as July 17. The release will focus on introducing the “Try Gutenberg” callout and adding privacy fixes and enhancements. The ticket proposing the callout was opened a year ago and was planned to be included in WordPress 4.9.5 but was eventually pulled before the release in favor of allowing Gutenberg contributors to iron out a few important issues.

WordPress Core Committer Mel Choyce added the most recent round of designs to the ticket four weeks ago and contributors are still iterating on the design and text for the callout. Another iteration is expected to be added to the ticket early next week.

WordPress 4.9.8 is another step in Matt Mullenweg’s roadmap for getting Gutenberg into 5.0. The goal is to make more users aware of Gutenberg and to gather more testing and feedback before the new editor lands in core. The prompt will include a prominent button that users can click to install the Gutenberg plugin, along with links for where to learn more and how to report issues.