A publishing screen bug introduced in WordPress 7.0 affects more sites than first assumed, and the core team has settled on a fix delivered through two channels while a point release is prepared. The issue — tracked as Trac ticket #65286 — makes the non-block-editor publishing interface appear broken, and the problem isn’t limited to sites using the Classic Editor plugin. It also affects custom post types (CPTs) that have the block editor disabled via code or plugin settings.
At the May 27 dev chat, contributor @davidbaumwald confirmed the CPT scope, expanding the fix beyond a Classic Editor-only solution. The team agreed to push the patch through both the Classic Editor plugin (active on over 9 million sites) and the Hotfix plugin (around 4,000 active installs), which is designed for this kind of short-term patch. @jorbin and @desrosj will coordinate to ship the fix. The Hotfix plugin was also nominated for Featured status in the plugin directory — a designation WordPress.org applies to officially endorsed plugins — along with a redesign.
On the 7.0.1 release itself, no issues currently warrant an emergency update. @jorbin proposed publishing a call for volunteers within days, targeting a mid-to-late June release window.
“Sites that are choosing to remain using the classic editor likely have this plugin installed already. So it fixes a wide number of sites just by pushing the update — provided they have auto-updates enabled, of course.”
@desrosj
Sites without auto-updates enabled will need to update the Classic Editor or Hotfix plugin manually to receive the fix.
WordPress 7.1 development is already underway. Alpha work is active, and a call for volunteers is open through the end of next week, with team finalization expected roughly a week after nominations close. The 7.0 release has also received several new developer notes, including a Field Guide covering accessibility improvements and changes to author link title attributes.
Two other items from the meeting are worth tracking: Unicode support in email addresses, usernames, and slugs is being extended, and a post on the React 19 upgrade path for WordPress is now available for developers tracking that dependency shift.
