While the entire world was busy with to fight with COVID-19, WordPress was busy thinking of how they can help the WordPress development company and developers. And they did. WordPress release the new update WordPress 5.5 on August 11, 2020. You will find many additional features, mainly the editor. The major focus is being able to make some basic edits to the image block or the new block patterns (the most necessary feature of this version) that can be the path to take for many WordPress themes. Of course, this version also remains on the same path of enhancing the accessibility of the editor, and there are also many various trivial amendments to the editor and WordPress. To leverage the update, you need to manually start the updating procedure for a Managed WordPress hosting service.
Editor Improvements In WordPress 5.5
The most amazing thing about this update is the Gutenberg editor, it includes 10 versions of the plugin (from 7.6 to 8.5) accompanied by bug patches and performance of versions 8.6 and 8.7. Some of the important updates have improved the editor experience significantly.
Control features
It is now easier to work and edit images with the newly introduced control features. You will find basic controls as it requires them for daily operations with images like zoom in-out, crop aspect ratio, rotate, the apply and cancel feature in the toolbar. This basic feature will leverage you to edit the images as per your requirements. The aspect ratio has options like original, square, landscape formats (16:10, 16: 9, 4: 3 and 3: 2), and formats of portrait (10:16, 9:16, 3: 4 and 2: 3). Practising the type of clipping that WordPress implements will make it simpler to use.
New Insert Panel
In WordPress 5.5, there is a new Insert panel with 3 large groups (in tabs at the top), which are Blocks, Patterns, and Reusable. The blocks are better organized and visually compared to the previous version.
New Block patterns
Insert block will provide you with access to the Block patterns, which are nothing more than collections of pre-designed blocks in commonly used structures; You will find them in the Insert button. It is a great tool, easy to create, easy to use, and easy to distribute for theme creator to give added value to their work. This features of WordPress 5.5 facilitate the customized WordPress web development company to posts with design, with the minimum usage of plugins, shortcodes, CSS, and so on.
Block directory Integration
You will get the suggestions for blocks that are in the block directory when you will use the quick block search from the inserter. It will provide you with access to add the one you require. As of now, there are few results but we can expect the changes in the near future.
Device friendly Preview
You can preview the changes from any device like Desktop, Tablet, or Mobile along with the drag-and-drop accessibility. This update allows you to the first button on the bar and drags it wherever you want, while a visual indicator tells you where it goes. It works like magic, and I think we will see no more implementation further.
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Automatic Theme and plugin Update
With this update, you can control your automatic updates right from the interface. You will see an option to enable or disable the automatic update (by the plugin), and you can also filter the view based on these criteria. It is not so obvious in the themes, so you have to check for details for a particular theme to be able to access its automatic updates. They set the update to disable by default so you can enable for the themes you want to update. There is no change in language packs; they will continue to be updated as usual. By default, all users with the permission of update_plugins and update_themes can toggle the automatic updates for plugins and themes sequentially. In multisite installations, only network administrators have this permission, and only when they are in the network’s context dashboard.
Plugin and theme updates via ZIP file
This feature was the most desired update of a decade for WordPress web development Companies India. As the name suggests now you can update your themes and plugins directly from a ZIP. The method is the same as the usual you have to upload a ZIP as you have always done, but if you have an older version, you will see the old screen. It also provides the facility to replace the plugin or cancel. This feature is a great help if you require putting the site in maintenance, deactivate, upload, update, activate, test and return the site to how it was; that was finished with this update.
Native XML Sitemaps
You can now include XML sitemaps with WordPress natively. If you have an SEO plugin to manage, then you won’t use them. By default, it will attempt to publish the index of sitemaps to /wp-sitemap.xml, which can hold up to 5,000 sitemaps, and individually up to 2,000 entries. This additional feature will still be reflected in the robots.txt, that will mention this new sitemap.
Whether You Should Upgrade or Not?
It depends on you as per my opinion, you should proceed with caution. This update has many amazing features to leverage on the website, but it is very likely to have some issues with some component of the site. The established website with very decent traffic the update is worth testing with backup before update. Try separately before you jump right into putting it on your live site.
Conclusion
It is a very good round of WordPress improvements; at least, he is the best Gutenberg of all that there have been, so far. But it looks good for now; Perhaps the only fallback of the WordPress 5.5 is the integrated functionality of XML sitemaps as it doesn’t justify the dedicate time and effort of developers involved. However, the other features like block patterns, native lazy loading, welcome improvements in the editor, and automatic updates make WordPress 5.5 a very good update, perhaps one of the best in recent times. Remember to do your tests in a dedicated environment, like any major version there is a risk when updating and if you are not sure taking risks by your own hire Top WordPress Development Services India to take the risk for you and guide you whenever needed.