DocsWP — WordPress Help

Get Set Up for Testing

Getting involved with WordPress testing is a great way to contribute and also a chance to learn.

Trying to reproduce bugs and testing patches exposes you to real bugs, edge cases, and development decisions that sharpen your skills and deepen your understanding of how WordPress is built.

And regardless of your experience level or how much time you have, there is always a ticket to pick up.

What Would You Like to Test?

Testing in the WordPress project covers several areas. Choose the section that matches your interests:

Test WordPress Core

WordPress core development happens in the wordpress-develop repository. Core tickets live on Trac. The guides below will walk you through setting up and contributing to core testing.

Step 1 – Set Up a Testing Environment

Before testing core tickets, you need an environment where you can apply patches. There are two approaches:

Option Best For
WordPress Playground (browser-based) Quick visual verification of a PR; no local install needed
Local development environment (Docker-based) Running automated tests, applying .patch and .diff files, complex testing

👉 Set Up a Testing Environment

Step 2 – Apply and Test a Patch

Once your environment is ready, pick a ticket to test:

  • Test Core Tickets with Playground – Use this for tickets linked to a GitHub Pull Request (PR). No local setup required. (Note: .patch and .diff files from Trac are not supported in Playground.)
  • Test Core Tickets with Grunt – Use this to apply .patch and .diff files from Trac, or patches from GitHub Pull Requests, to your local environment.

Step 3 – Run Automated Tests

After applying a patch, running the automated test suites helps catch regressions before code is merged. Ensure you have completed Steps 1 and 2 above — automated tests require a local environment with a patch already applied.

👉 Run Automated Tests

Finding Tickets to Test

A great place to start is the Needs Patch Testing queue on Core Trac. These are tickets with patches that need a fresh set of eyes.

Test Gutenberg

The Gutenberg plugin ships block editor features before they land in WordPress core. You can test pre-release versions of Gutenberg in a few ways:

Install Gutenberg as a Plugin

Use this option to test the latest beta or release candidate of Gutenberg on an existing site:

  1. Go to https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/releases.
  2. Download the latest gutenberg.zip file.
  3. Go to WP Admin → Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
  4. Select the file and follow the prompts to install and activate.

Run Gutenberg Locally

Use this option if you want to test pull requests or work with the bleeding-edge development version:

  1. Make sure you have git, Node.js (v20+), and npm (v10+) installed.
  2. Install Docker Desktop.
  3. Fork and clone the gutenberg repository locally.
  4. Run npm install to install dependencies.
  5. Run npm run dev to build Gutenberg in development mode (continuous rebuild on file changes).
  6. Make sure Docker is running, then start the local WordPress environment: npm run wp-env start.
  7. Open http://localhost:8888 in your browser (username: admin, password: password).

The Gutenberg plugin will be installed and activated automatically in the local environment.

Finding Tickets to Test

A great place to start is the Needs Testing queue on GitHub. These are Gutenberg PRs that need a fresh set of eyes.

Resources:

Calls for Testing

The WordPress Test Team regularly publishes Calls for Testing — focused tasks that guide testers through specific features or bug fixes. These posts include step-by-step instructions and are a great starting point for new contributors.

👉 View all Calls for Testing

Recent examples include:

Get Involved

Thank you for helping test WordPress! 🎉