WordPress 5.8 was released, and it is the second major release of 2021.
Important
There are many changes in WordPress 5.8. To avoid any risk of unexpected conflicts with your themes and plugins, we strongly recommend that you backup your website and test the new version in a staging environment before updating your site live or contact us, and we can do it for you!
Characteristics of Full Site Editing in WordPress 5.8
Let’s start describing what Full Site Editing is (FSE)
Full site editing is a collective term for a set of new WordPress features:
Block themes, template editing, and global styles.
The vision behind Full Site Editing is to provide a collection of tools and features that allow WordPress users to build a complete website using blocks. This does not mean that we will have out of the box the option to add new Blocks. We still have to opt for FSE by installing a blocks theme and activating the Gutenberg plugin.
Some of the cool features that were added to FSE
- Template edit mode
- Blocks Enhancement
- The Query Loop
- Persistent list view in post editor
Template edit mode
Template edit mode provides a way to create post / page templates using blocks. It’s a great way to reduce the complexity of site creation, allowing users to take advantage of various site-editing features from outside the site editor interface while getting used to working with blocks. This is also great for users who don’t use block-based themes, but are still looking for an easy way to create and edit templates from within the block editor UI.
Blocks Enhancements
WordPress 5.8 has many enhancements for existing blocks. There are more options to choose text, background, and link colors. Background-gradients and block padding.
The Query Loop Block
In previous versions, you had to use plugins to display a bunch of posts inside a page but now you can use the Query Loop block to easily display a list of posts, pages, or products anywhere.
The Query Loop block performs a query based on the user settings on the WordPress database, loops through each retrieved entry, and displays the data on the page. And everything within the code editor, isn’t it great?
Persistent List View
With WordPress 5.8, the list view is now displayed in a sidebar in the post editor, allowing users to navigate the block tree more quickly and accurately.
WebP support
At AdoptTheWeb we are obsessed with site speed and WordPress performance. This is why is such important news for us.
What is WebP?
According to Google WebP is” a modern image format that provides superior lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. Using WebP, webmasters and web developers can create smaller, richer images that make the web faster.“
Now, you are able to use the WebP image format in the same way as JPEG, PNG, and GIF formats. You just have to upload your WebP images to your multimedia library.
Are you a developer?
We are! so we are excited of these new changes.
A new file called theme.json can now be used by theme developers to configure block settings in one place.
Theme developers can use the new configuration file with both classic themes and block themes. With the theme.json file, you can define default block settings, content width, fonts and colors, and drastically reduce the CSS needed to create themes.
There has been changes in recovery mode emails, and in the way blocks are registered.
This and many more changes are available on this new major update!
If you would like help with wordpress update, or other services, then please get in touch – I’d love to hear from you!