WordPress 5.7 Field Guide

WordPress 5.7 brings you the best features and enhancements to help start 2021 on a positive note! A small and experienced release squad lead the development of new features and resolved defects that benefit users and developers alike.

As a user, you’ll see a refined blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. editor UIUI User interface, lazy-loading iframes, streamlined migrationMigration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. from HTTPHTTP HTTP is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web and this protocol defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. to HTTPSHTTPS HTTPS is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to. The 'S' at the end of HTTPS stands for 'Secure'. It means all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted. This is especially helpful for protecting sensitive data like banking information., standardized colors in WP Adminadmin (and super admin) to a single palette, and a new Robots APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. and media search engine visibility setting. As a developer, you’ll see 66 enhancements and feature requests, 127 bug fixes, and more! Of particular interest for developers will be the ongoing cleanup after the update to jQuery 3.5.1 as step 3 on our upgrade process of eventually removing jQuery Migrate.

In this Field GuideField guide The field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle. The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page., you’ll notice what’s relevant to you and your users among the many improvements coming in 5.7.

Administration

Block Editor

The block editor continues its rapid iteration. GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ version 9.9 is bundled with WordPress 5.7; that’s seven Gutenberg releases (versions 9.3, 9.4, 9.5, 9.6, 9.7, 9.8, and 9.9) all bundled into this release (and as noted in the related Gutenberg handbook page)! Bug fixes and performance improvements from Gutenberg versions 10.0 and 10.1 are also part of 5.7.

The WordPress 5.7 Beta 1 post highlights many new features and improvements to the block editor. There is drag and drop from the inserter into the post canvas, full height alignment for blocks to fill the entire viewport, block variations shown in the block inspector, enhancements to the usability and stability of reusable blocks, vertical alignments and width percentages for buttons block, ability to change size of icons in the Social Icons block, and ability to change the font size in the List and Code blocks.

Included below are details on the new dynamic hook (render_block_{$this->name}) to filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. the content of a single block,

Import/Export

Media

Users

REST APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/.

Robots API

Security

Other Developer Updates

There are even more goodies in 5.7! Read through the dev notesdev note Each important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include a description of the change, the decision that led to this change, and a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase. below to see details on additional changes coming in 5.7 within Login and Registration, and Post Types.

But Wait, There is More!

5.7 offers so much more! Over 127 bugs, 66 enhancements and feature requests, and 29 blessed tasks have been marked as fixed in WordPress 5.7. Here are a few that haven’t been highlighted in the dev notes above:

  • Editor: Support filtering arguments in block type registration from metadata (#52138).
  • Menus: Add sticky footer to avoid duplicate save buttons (#51631).
  • Upgrade/Install: Display version number in update-core.php Re-install Now button (#51774).
  • Upgrade/Install: Add development as accepted value for WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE (#51978).

Please, test your code. Fixing issues that your code has with WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. helps you and millions of WordPress sites.

Props to @audrasjb, @jeffpaul for contributing to this guide.

#5-7, #dev-notes, #field-guide