Guide

Changelog

All notable changes shipping in 1.12 relative to the release/1.11 line (production baseline v1.11.8).

Format based on Keep a Changelog.

[1.12.0] – 2026-07-21

Codename: Snow Leopard — a performance- and reliability-focused release (async publish, ElasticPress-backed discovery, guest render caching, and hot-path optimizations), plus Spoken Article ElevenLabs quality controls and Social Builder editorial passes.

Baseline: origin/release/1.11 / v1.11.8. ElasticPress facets soft-cutover (#4161) landed on trunk immediately after the 1.12 cut and is part of this release’s end-user story; confirm it is on release/1.12 before ship if not already backported.

Added

  • Add Action Scheduler async tier to the post-publish pipeline (prc_platform_async_on_*) and migrate Slack, IndexNow, Search Console, publish-workflows notifications, and synced-chart auto-publish onto it (#4153)
  • Add ElasticPress facet soft-cutover for publication listings/archives (ep_filter_*), with _post_visibility enforcement, time-since/years filters, degraded facet shells on ES failure, and legacy FacetWP param redirects (#4161)
  • Add guest-only object cache for expensive block render lookups (story items, breadcrumbs, spoken-article audio, collections, lookbook, report-package, religious projections) with targeted invalidation (#4143)
  • Add Spoken Article ElevenLabs settings, draft vs production audio generation, voice summary on interstitial ad cards, and server-side TTS/voice proxy (#4127, #4128)
  • Add Social Builder ability-based editorial passes (humanizer → neutrality/tone → number check) (#4057)
  • Add dataset/quiz analytics WP abilities and day-level analytics / new-data month splits (#4060, #4076)
  • Add Power Table column resize/reorder and cell color persistence (#4016)
  • Add iframe embeds via template-canvas and theme parts (#4040)
  • Add prc-ai/custom-posts-create and Forms ability category / Jetpack-equivalent form abilities (#4044, #4043, #4004)
  • Add Cortext via Composer GitHub release zip (#4124)
  • Add site_id targeting for MCP-public abilities and leaner Sentry PHP tracing defaults (#4072, #4038)

Changed

  • Route REST search and search RSS feeds through ElasticPress; sanitize/cap search inputs to stop MySQL LIKE scans (#3951)
  • Move synced-chart usage tracking off the public render path onto the publish pipeline; memoize duplicate embeds per request (#4142)
  • Optimize schema-seo cache invalidation and batch singular cache reads (PRC-575) (#4026)
  • Speed up responsive-container-view render by dropping redundant wp_kses and expensive ID hashing (PRC-615) (#4084)
  • Migrate analytics, block-bits, markdown-for-agents, and agents-trending-news settings pages to DataForm patterns (#4082, #4080, #4083, #4078)
  • Remove Newsletter Glue Pro and integrations from Email Builder (#4132)
  • Remove Alexa flash briefings from External Channels (#4126)
  • Remove Apple News deprecation notice now that the channel path is clearer (#4140)
  • Generate Firebase service account from 1Password at deploy and local (#3976)
  • Use Claude Fable 5 as the default PDF OCR model (#4023)

Fixed

  • Fix report-package chapter post_parent assignment client-side after save; skip no-op child sync and pipeline fan-out (#4148, #4149)
  • Fix iframe editor canvas readiness (Q1–Q4) for tables, bits, and related editor surfaces (#4147)
  • Fix email-builder button href preservation and right-justify on horizontal button cells (#4157)
  • Fix schema organization description from homepage (#4070)
  • Fix related-posts primary-term lookup by term_id (PRC-568) (#4020)
  • Fix chart mobile crop / floated synced-chart width on small screens (#4085)
  • Fix Turnstile client errors in form captcha; stop trusting client forwardTo on send-to-email (#4098, #3969)
  • Fix privacy-consent scripts skipped on embeds (#4034)
  • Fix public-post-preview block bindings read access on public drafts (#4039)
  • Fix quiz-builder Firebase unavailability degradation and create-group owner from token (#3988, #3962)
  • Fix dark-mode logo swap on Safari/WebKit (#3995)
  • Fix Power Table bulk append of rows (#4079)
  • Guard block-library view modules, accordion/tabs/dialog/audio-player edge cases, and missing blocks-manifest includes (#4088, #4089, #4113, #4115, #4117, #4107, #4109, #4100)
  • Restore early vip-config redirects via plugin-owned server redirects (#4111)
  • Remove unauthenticated taxonomies translate endpoint; remove legacy _bkp leaked credentials (PRC-523); remove RLS unused embargo passkey (PRC-524) (#3965, #3968, #3963)
  • Remove plugin activation/deactivation email notices (FedRAMP) (#4077)

Security

  • Stop exposing ElevenLabs API key to the browser; proxy TTS/voices through Spoken Article (#4128)
  • Harden form email forwarding against client-supplied forwardTo (#3969)
  • Remove unauthenticated translate endpoint (#3965)
  • Remove unused legacy backup directory that contained leaked credentials (PRC-523) (#3968)

Post-release WP-CLI migrations

Run after production deploy (see also 1-12-announce.md and PRC-597):

  1. Delete leftover Yoast wp_options (Schema SEO) — after Yoast → prc-schema-seo migration is complete:
    wp prc seo migration-status
wp prc seo clean-yoast-options
wp prc seo clean-yoast-options --dry-run=false --known-only
# optional: remaining wpseo% options (skips redirect options)
wp prc seo clean-yoast-options --dry-run=false
    Does not touch _yoast_wpseo_* postmeta/termmeta. Blocks if migration is incomplete unless --force is passed.

Suggested version bump

Minor (1.12.0) — substantial performance architecture (async publish, ElasticPress discovery, guest caches) plus Spoken Article and Social Builder enhancements, without intentional breaking removals for day-to-day editorial workflows. Facet filter URL shape changes include redirects from legacy params.

Range

origin/release/1.11...origin/release/1.12

Also track feat(facets): Migrate to ElasticPress facets (#4161) on trunk for inclusion on this line before production ship.

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