The WordPress development team launched an update that was creating a problem in installing new WordPress sites. An update was paused to fix the previous update but ended up with more problems, which made them launch an emergency update for fixing all problems.

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Security Update WordPress 5.5.2

It all started on October 29, 2020, with an update that was made for the security issues. Cross-Site Request Forgeries, XSS(Cross-site Scripting)attacks, and many more issues were to solve with this update. Unfortunately, there was a bug in this update due to which WordPress installation was failing.

WordPress explained it:

WordPress 5.5.2 …makes it impossible to install WordPress on a brand new website that does not have a database connection configured. This release does not affect sites where a database connection is already configured, for example, via one-click installers or an existing wp-config.php file.

Alpha Update Pushed Out

WordPress stopped new updates, as the team was busy with WordPress 5.5.3, to remove the previous bug but the WordPress auto-update feature started an update again and again. As of version, 5.5.2 was not available, so the Alpha update was automatically downloaded and installed. This Alpha Update was not there to be downloaded.

Technical Details Post Reported:

…that won’t be done again. Now seems like a good time to document a correct and proper way of “stopping” a release in progress, which honestly had not been attempted before. Stopping a release is actually pretty simple if they had made the correct change, so while their attempt was a reasonable assumption to make, it turned out to be wrong.

The release system is complicated, and trying to do things with it that haven’t been anticipated and documented led to unexpected results. This will be improved through documentation and better code and management of the release system itself.

Version 5.5.3 Alpha Bugs

The issue of Alpha installation comes with the complimentary issue of Installing Akismet and introduced additional WordPress themes. There is nothing wrong with these additional themes, but if there will be any update failure in the future, it may cause a security risk.

WordPress Said:

Earlier today the auto-update system for WordPress updated some sites from version 5.5.2 to version 5.5.3-alpha. This was due to an error caused by preparations being made for the 5.5.3 release.

The 5.5.3-alpha version at this point was functionally identical to 5.5.2 as no development work had been started on 5.5.3, however, the following changes may have been made:

The default “Twenty” themes installed as part of the pre-release package. The “Akismet” plugin installed as part of the pre-release package.

WordPress Version 5.5.3

This version is all same as version 5.5.2 but fixes all the problems that were caused in version 5.5.2.

WordPress Explained:

This maintenance release fixes an issue introduced in WordPress 5.5.2 which makes it impossible to install WordPress on a brand new website that does not have a database connection configured. This release does not affect sites where a database connection is already configured, for example, via one-click installers or an existing wp-config.php file.

If you are not on 5.5.2, or have auto-updates for minor releases disabled, please manually update to the 5.5.3 version by downloading WordPress 5.5.3 or visiting Dashboard → Updates and click “Update Now.”