WordPress 5.5 "Eckstine" was released on 11.08.2020, named “Eckstine” in honor of Billy Eckstine. It's time to reveal what is new!
In the latest Wordpres releases, we seeing many block editor improvements. WordPress 5.5 is no exception!
Welcome to WordPress 5.5.
In WordPress 5.5, your site gets new power in three major areas:
speed, search, and security.
What’s New With The Block Editor
New UI Design
Each version of the Gutenberg plugin brings small and not-so-small improvements that are silently changing the overall editing experience. A lot of these changes are now going to be merged into WordPress core. So, when you first launch the block editor in WordPress 5.5, a slightly different interface should grab your attention. You’ll find:
- A simplified Block Toolbar
- Stronger color contrast
- New icons
- Block movers
- Surrounding elements
- Device Previews
- Improved drag and drop
- Improved and unified block focus styles across the whole UI
- Ability to format multiple blocks at once
- Better performance
Inline Image Editing
A new editing feature has been added to the block editor with Gutenberg 8.4 allowing users to edit images directly from the Image block.
Now it’s been merged to core and, as of WordPress 5.5, you can crop, rotate, zoom and adjust image positions without the need to launch the Media Library resulting in a faster editing experience.
WordPress will save a new image as attachment in the Media Library and copy details from the original image (title, description, caption, alt text, and EXIF data). This gives you complete control over new image versions.
Native Image Lazy-Loading in WordPress
Images give your story a lot of impact, but they can sometimes make your site seem slow.
In WordPress 5.5, images wait to load until they’re just about to scroll into view. The technical term is ‘lazy loading.’
On mobile, lazy loading can also keep browsers from loading files meant for other devices. That can save your readers money on data — and help preserve battery life.
Auto-Updates for Plugins and Themes
Now you can set plugins and themes to update automatically — or not! — in the WordPress admin. So you always know your site is running the latest code available.
You can also turn auto-updates on or off for each plugin or theme you have installed — all on the same screens you’ve always used.
Plugin and theme automatic updates are disabled by default.
Extensible Core Sitemaps
Before WordPress 5.5, sitemaps could be only added to WordPress websites using a plugin or other tools.
WordPress 5.5 brings a new XML sitemaps feature to WordPress Core.
The new feature adds basic functionality, but it comes with a good number of hooks and filters allowing plugin developers to further extend built-in functionalities.
XML sitemaps are enabled by default and provide the following object types:
- Homepage
- Posts page
- Core post types (Pages and Posts)
- Custom post types
- Core taxonomies (Tags and Categories)
- Custom taxonomies
- Author archives
The sitemap index is available at /wp-sitemap.xml, which contains a maximum of 2,000 URLs. When the maximum limit is reached, then a new sitemap file is added.
For Developers
Server-side registered blocks in the REST API
The addition of block types endpoints means that JavaScript apps (like the block editor) can retrieve definitions for any blocks registered on the server.
Defining environments
WordPress now has a standardized way to define a site’s environment type (staging, production, etc). Retrieve that type with wp_get_environment_type() and execute only the appropriate code.
Dashicons
The Dashicons library has received its final update in 5.5. It adds 39 block editor icons along with 26 others.
Passing data to template files
The template loading functions (get_header(), get_template_part(), etc.) have a new $args argument. So now you can pass an entire array’s worth of data to those templates.
New Wordpress 5.5 was already added to our 1-Click Installer so you can easily install it by just 1 click from your Hosting Control Panel.