What’s in WordPress 5.7
An Easier to Use Editor
It’s no secret that some people find the Gutenberg Editor to be a bit frustrating. After all, we’ve been using the TinyMCE (Classic) Editor forever and Gutenberg was a FAR departure from that experience. That said, Gutenberg is an incredibly powerful tool and has introduced a new way of creating websites that is not not possible on other platforms. It really is amazing.
WordPress 5.7 comes with an upgraded experience. Font-sizes are easier to manage (much to the chagrin of Website Designers). Reusable Blocks are now less buggy and easier to use. Gutenberg Blocks can now be inserted via drag and drop, which is probably my favorite feature.
More Functionality, Less Code
WordPress has been providing more and more tools to the end user with each feature release. I have to say, as a developer, this can be a little scary. Mindshare Labs has made a name for ourselves as custom website developers who can manage every part of the website. But, giving more power to our clients has felt pretty good.
WordPress 5.7 comes with Full-height alignment. Now, blocks can be made to cover the entire height of the screen.
An Upgraded Buttons block should be a welcome change. Now users can choose between vertical or horizontal layouts AND adjust the width of buttons.
Social Icons Block still leaves a lot to be desired but you can now change the size of the icons.
Better Color Palette
Much like our own color adjustment, WordPress has upgraded the colors used throughout the Admin Interface to have stronger contrast ratios. This clean up should set a pretty amazing standard in terms of website accessibility. Check out WordPress development note here: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/02/23/standardization-of-wp-admin-colors-in-wordpress-5-7/
Some Developer Updates That We Love
A New Hook to Filter the Content of a Single Block
We’ve been waiting for this since the release of Gutenberg. Mindshare builds WordPress themes bespoke and specific to a company or organization, so it’s always been a bit frustrating to launch sites that include options that look nothing like the branding or design of the site. These new filters allow us to not only style the core Gutenberg blocks, but to introduce some custom code as well.
A New ‘Send Password Reset Link’ option for Site Admins
This one should tickle the site admin’s out there. How many times have we had to copy/paste a user’s password and send it via email? Too many times, amiright? Now user profile pages have a “Send Reset Link” button which sends an email to the user and allows them to reset it themselves.
And the best part!? This can be done in bulk! You can bet we’ll be using this feature after a site get’s hacked or compromised. Of course it also comes with some good hooks to adjust the email message and subject, which is nice.
A Bunch of Other Awesome Developer Focused Goodies
WordPress always sneaks in some developer treats into their updates and they are usually pretty benign aside from some specific use cases. But, this one does come with some goodies. Check out the rest of the upgrades in the WordPress 5.7 Field Guide.