After the release of a series of Betas and Rcs, finally, WordPress has released its version 5.0, on Thursday, last week. WordPress 5.0 is considered the biggest upgrade to WordPress in the past years. It is also named as ‘Bebo’ in honour of Cuban jazz musician, Bebo Valdés. The new updated version of WordPress is available in 37 languages and can be downloaded from its official website.
The main highlight of the upgrade is the addition of Gutenberg to it, first released as a plugin for the purpose of testing. Although the Gutenberg plugin version, currently, has an average rating of 2.5/5 with 158 people rating it as one star, the big WordPress community was still waiting for its integration with WordPress 5.0 eagerly. Along with Gutenberg, WordPress 5.0 is comprised of the following new features:
Gutenberg: The new WordPress editor is an easy-to-use website building platform for media-rich pages and posts, that provides an interface very similar to page builders. Gutenberg is a block-based editor, providing the developers with content blocks, to create beautiful layouts. It has replaced the older text editor that had a text window to write the post, and add different media files, and shortcodes according to the need. Now, the users with even minimal knowledge or who are new to WordPress can easily insert, rearrange, and style multimedia content on WordPress, with the help of those blocks. Gutenberg also provides the developers with live HTML preview.
New Default Theme: Following the ritual, WordPress has again named its new based on the upcoming year, i.e., Twenty Nineteen. It is the new default theme for WordPress 5.0, which is highly responsive, created especially to work on different screens of different sizes. The theme is fully compatible with the new editor, and with the help of editor styles, the developers see the changes live, without going to a preview page. The theme is faster and provides better performance. In contrary, the previous themes have also been upgraded with improved responsive features.
Security Updates: For WordPress developers, security has always been a major concern. Hence, with the development of WordPress 5.0, they have also worked towards enhancing the security, to solidify the core of WordPress such that to avoid all type of hack attacks. The platform has also provided the hosting services which offer SSL certificates, two-factor-authentication, and application-level password protection.
Crop Background Image: WordPress 5.0 has also introduced a feature to crop the images before it goes live on the site. It will save a lot of time for the developers, as they do not have to use other software to crop the same image.
Reusable Blocks: WordPress, along with Gutenberg, has brought a range of default blocks and allows the developers to create custom blocks during the development. Those blocks once created, can be re-used, again and again, inside other posts and pages. The reusability of those blocks reduces the complexity and development efforts. WordPress also renders the modification of those block, at any time, according to the requirements, without actually going to every block, throughout the website. The changes may or may not reflect throughout the website, depending upon the customization options selected by the developer.
Along with the above features, WordPress 5.0, now is supporting the latest PHP 7.3 version. The usage of blocks in WordPress makes its older editor replaced by the totally gorgeous WYSIWYG editor. Gutenberg in WordPress 5.0 has brought the biggest change for the WordPress developers. But the developers must keep a backup before updating to WordPress 5.0, as there is no going back. After the upgrade the developers will have to use the Gutenberg editor, that may not be preferred by everyone, so WordPress has provided the developers with a plugin that enables them to use the older text editor. But the plugin will also be discontinued by 2021.