What Can You Expect From WordPress 5.7 Update

WordPress 5.7 is scheduled to release on March 9th, 2021. The beta version of 5.7 is out for testing. And you can test the beta version on your testing / staging site using the WordPress Beta Tester plugin.

The WordPress 5.7 will be the first major release of 2021 and it comes with new features and improvements. In this post, you will find out the upcoming features and improvements details of the WordPress 5.7.

WordPress 5.7 is still under development and if delayed then some features won’t be included in the final release. However, those features which are missed will come with the next update.

Standardized WP-Admin Color Palette

Standardized WP-Admin Color Palette

In the WordPress 5.7 release, All the CSS colours used in WordPress will collapse into one of the available shades of blue, green, red, yellow, grey, black and white. This will have a palette with a larger variety of light and dark colour schemes for developers.

Earlier it had limited color schemes and implementing new color schemes was hard as developers had to deal with Saas variable based system.

WordPress 5.7 Brings Improvements to the WordPress Editor

There are certain improvements and added features in the WordPress 5.7, that will improve the user experience with the new editor. It will enhance your experience while creating or editing posts and page contents.

Drag and Drop Blocks from Inserter

Drag and Drop Blocks from Inserter

WordPress 5.7 will allow you to simply drag and drop a block into your content area from the ‘Add new block’ (+) inserter. This way you can choose where to place a block before you drop it on the post canvas.

Blocks with Full-Height Coming in WordPress 5.7

Blocks with Full-Height Coming in WordPress 5.7

If you like to create full-width blocks then WordPress 5.7 will allow you to do just that. With this you can create full-height blocks. With the full height blocks, it will give you an option to create engaging layouts filing the screen of users.

Block Variations Can Now Have Their Own Descriptions

Block Variations Can Now Have Their Own Descriptions, WordPress 5.7

With the new WordPress 5.7, it allows you to show descriptions of block variations. For example, as you can see the social icons block has its own preview.

Adjusting Social Icon Sizes

Adjusting Social Icon Sizes, WordPress 5.7

WordPress 5.7 will allow you to adjust the sizes of the social media icons block.

Buttons Improvements

Buttons Improvements, WordPress 5.7

In the block editor of WordPress 5.7, you will be able to apply vertical alignment for buttons. Users can choose from a preset percentage width for their buttons.

Font Size Adjustment in More Blocks

Font Size Adjustment in More Blocks, WordPress 5.7

WordPress 5.7 will bring another improvements for the block editor, now you will be able to adjust the font size in more blocks including the list and code blocks.

Easier Migration from HTTP to HTTPS

Previously, you had to manually update URLs embedded in your content when moving WordPress from HTTP to HTTPS. If not done so has resulted in the problem of mixed content.

Migrating your website to HTTPs will be easier with WordPress 5.7. As a critical issue, it will show the availability of HTTPS in the site health menu.

Users will be able to click a button to update the WordPress URLs from here. This will change the settings for your WordPress and Site URLs, and update your content URLs to use HTTPs.

New Robots API

The New Robots API will be introduced to WordPress 5.7. With this update developers will now be able to control and update the robots meta tag on a website programmatically.

Robot tags allows search engine bots to crawl and index a website. This can be done by adding a robots.txt file to your site’s folder or by using the robots meta tag.

A new function wp_robots, added in the WordPress 5.7 will allow developers to modify the robots meta tag by adding their own filter to the the function.

Here’s an example of it:

function wporg_wp_robots_add_follow( $robots ) {
    $robots['follow'] = true;
    return $robots;
}
add_filter( 'wp_robots', 'wporg_wp_robots_add_follow' );

WordPress 5.7 will also add max-image-preview:large directive to the meta tag for robots. This will allow search engines to use a large image in search results for preview purposes.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <meta name="robots" content="max-image-preview:large" />
    </head>

WordPress will automatically hide this tag in the settings for websites that have the visibility of the search engine turned off.

Lazy Loading iFrames in WordPress 5.7

Lazy loading will be added automatically to iframe embeds in the WordPress 5.7.  If lazy loading implemented on your site then it will increase the site speed by loading the content partially. It loads the content when it is viewed, So other contents don’t add extra load to the browser.

Lazy loading was already added in WordPress 5.5. With this latest update, iframes such as YouTube videos, use lazy loading to load the website quicker.

Changes for Developers

WordPress 5.7 will bring many changes for the developers that will help with their themes, plugins and other projects.

  • It will introduce new functions is_post_status_viewable() and is_post_publicly_viewable() to check if a post is publicly viewable. (See details)
  • Render block function will now allow developers to filter the content of a single block. (#46187)
  • The latest WordPress version will add a filter hook to manipulate $user_data variable during retrieve_password() function. This will enable developers to perform custom validation checks during password resets. (#51924)
  • Developers will be able to change the ‘Go to site’ link displayed in the login page footer by using a new login_site_html_link hook. (#35449)
  • Two new functions get_post_parent() and has_post_parent() will be available in WordPress 5.7 to determine if a post has a parent and to get the related parent post as an object. (#33045)

We have come to the end of this post, I hope it gave you an understanding of what features and improvements coming with the upcoming WordPress version.

I hope you find this post useful. If you have any questions or suggestions please feel free to leave a comment below and we will try respond as soon as possible.

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2021-02-24T13:13:22+00:00

About the Author:

He is an enthusiastic writer and WordPress user. He writes on WordPress, WooCommerce, E-Commerce, and open-source projects.

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