What's New in Wordpress 5.7?

What’s New In WordPress 5.7?

Each new version of WordPress gifts us new features and modifications that make it much more enjoyable. The latest release, WordPress 5.7., is no exception to this. WordPress 5.7 released on March 10th, 2021 is the first major release of the year. Called “Esperanza”, this version introduces a ton of updates that promise more customization options and a smoother editing experience. So, what’s new in WordPress 5.7? Let’s find out.

The Block Editor gets better and better

Drag and Drop Blocks – Now you can just drag and drop a block of your choice from the inserter into your post. It’s as simple as that!

Reusable Blocks – The reusable blocks are now more stable and easier use with several enhancements. They get saved automatically when you update the post.

Font-size Adjustments in Blocks – Changing font size is available in more blocks, like the List and Code block itself. You don’t need to keep changing between screens to make font adjustments.

Social Icons Block – Now you can change the size of the social icons allowing you the freedom to how much highlights you want to give to these buttons.

Buttons Block – The Button block lets you add buttons to your webpages. With 5.7, you get more options for the buttons. You can set the buttons with a preset percentage. You can also align the text vertically or horizontally in your buttons.

Full-height Alignment for Blocks – WordPress 5.7 brings full-height blocks to the block editor. These blocks allow you to fill the entire viewport making the website visually more pleasing.

Simpler Color Palette

WordPress 5.7 has streamlined the color palette into a much easier one. The palette now consists of 7 core colors and a range of 56 shades. These colors meet the recommended contrast ratio of WCAG 2.0 AA. You can find the new palette in the default WordPress dashboard color scheme. You can use the new palette on plugins, themes and all other components.

Security- HTTP to HTTPS on a Click

If your site is not HTTPS yet, WordPress 5.7 makes it easy for you. It just takes a single click. No more tedious database replacements for HTTPS migration to fix hard-coded URLs. WordPress 5.7 will detect if your hosting supports HTTPS. This new mechanism will help to migrate on the frontend as well as backend. Update with a single click and WordPress will automatically update database URLs.

Lazy-load iFrames

While lazy-loading for images was introduced in v5.5, with 5.7, all embeds using iFrames can now lazy load. If height and width are specified, WordPress will automatically add the loading= “lazy” attribute to iframe tags. You can also manually add the attribute.

jQuery 3.5.1

jQuery makes it easy to use JavaScript on your website. WordPress 5.7 has introduced improvements, making jQuery more focused and with fewer messages in the console. You must ensure that theme and plugin codes are compatible with jQuery latest version.

New Robots API

Developers can now add their own filters to the robot meta tag. WP5.7 also adds a max-image-preview: large directive by default. This allows search engines to display bigger image previews in the search results.

Send Reset Password Links

What is new in WordPress 5.7? - Features - The CAG

A new feature allows web admin to send reset passwords links to existing users. The user can then change the password themselves, which is much safer than changing passwords for users. The admin can also send bulk reset password links to users.

Some more changes in WordPress 5.7

Add sticky footer in Menu to avoid duplicate save buttons
Support filtering argument in block type registration
Changes to the login and registration screens
Check if a post is publicly viewable with additional new features
Inner block API changes to keep the focus on parent block

WP 5.7 has fixed over 127 bugs, made 66 enhancements and feature requests. There is a lot more new in WordPress 5.7. So test on staging environment and get started. But before that – it is advisable to take a backup before you start updating the new version. If you are not on a managed WordPress hosting, you will need to initiate the update manually. To know more about what’s new in WordPress 5.7, look at the WordPress 5.7 field guide or speak to our WordPress experts. Contact us or email us at sales@computingaustralia.group.

Jargon Buster

Lazy-loading – An image or component on your website loads only when it is in the viewport.
HTTPS – Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure where data is encrypted and transferred over a secure connection on the internet.
jQuery – It is a JavaScript library that makes HTML document traversal and manipulation simple. It also simplifies event-handling, CSS animation and Ajax with an easy to use API.
API – Application Programming Interface is a computing interface that allows two applications to interact with each other.

David Brown

David is the Development Services Manager for The Computing Australia Group and he manages all programming projects. DB is a keen Ruby on Rails developer who is a triple threat – he can code, listen to heavy metal and consume enormous volumes of caffeine simultaneously! Hit David up if you want to discuss your next app concept or to take a deep dive in The Computing Australia Group coding approach.

David Brown