WordPress 5.5.2 Forces Enrollment into Beta Program

WordPress 5.5.2 was released on October 29, 200. The release included several bug and security fixes. The 5.5.2 release also included a bug that is being fixed.

WP 5.5.2 Beta Enrollment Bug

Unfortunately, it seems that websites were enrolled in the WordPress beta program after updating to WordPress 5.5.2. If you had previously enabled WordPress automatic-updates, your site would have updated to the development version 5.5.3-alpha-49449.

You can view the issue on the WordPress.org bug ticker #51679. A WordPress Core Committer commented on the ticket, saying that they have issued a fix. He also mentions that there’s no functional difference between 5.5.2 and 5.5.3-alpha, so there’s no need to worry in that regard.

How to Check if Your Website is Running on WP Beta

You can easily find out what WordPress version on the bottom-right of your WordPress admin dashboard.

WordPress is Rolling Out a Fix

The great news is that WordPress is rolling out a fix that will automatically remove you from the WordPress beta. The bug fix will also automatically reinstall WordPress 5.5.2 on any website that was upgraded to development version 5.5.3-alpha-49449.

How to Manually Unenroll from the WordPress Beta

If for some reason, your website isn’t automatically restored to WordPress version 5.5.2, you can do it manually. You can reinstall WordPress 5.5.2 from the WordPress updates page. Navigate to the Updates page by clicking the Updates link in the Admin Menu.

Now that you are on the Updates page click the Reinstall Now button below the If you need to re-install version 5.5.2, you can do so here text.

After reinstalling WordPress 5.5.2, you will be removed from the beta. The WordPress Core team pushed a fix to prevent your website from re-updating to development version 5.5.3-alpha-49449.

Wrapping Up: WordPress 5.5.2 Update

Don’t Panic! As far as bugs go, this one is pretty trivial. Unfortunately, you will have to spend time uninstalling the themes that are bundled in the development version of WordPress core. But, on the bright side, the bug won’t do any real harm to your websites.