WordPress is the first word that strikes our mind while initiating designing a website. There have been major releases of versions with spectacular features over the past 4 years. WordPress is ahead in the market with its extravagant features and ease of access. Introduction of WordPress 5.0 has got attention of community of developers.

Finally, the most anticipated WordPress 5.0 is out after the release of its Beta and RC series. It is the one and only release of 2018 with some major improvements and changes. There is an introduction of Block Editors, Themes, Plug-ins, Security Updates, Front-End Editor and other trivial modifications and additions.

WordPress 5.0 Features

Gutenberg- The New Block Editor

Gutenberg gives you a whole new editing experience.  First of all, this was introduced in 2017 and since then it had created a buzz.  You can easily test out this new Block Editor and even carry out Classic Editing features. Gutenberg has offered an easy to edit platform for all the WordPress Developers.

Blocks are a tool or a pre-defined template to aid in editing contents in an easier format. The multimedia contents can be inserted, rearranged and styled with these blocks. You don’t need to be some high end- developer or some advanced level coder to use this.

This New Block Editor is built exclusively with modern Technology and for better Compatibility. This is not only and editor, but it will reform the customization and building of site in WordPress. This has been redeveloped for media rich contents in your website.

The contents’ editing and posting has become now easier with this block editor. Coupled with Static and Dynamic Blocks, you get a consistent experience in editing and site building. These blocks are reusable and so it saves your time in creating several same blocks all over again.

If in any case, you are not satisfied with these Block editors, you can always switch to the classic mode. You can install and operate the Classic Editor Plug-in to keep things same as before. This new WordPress comes with not only this Block Editor but also with diverse upgrades to themes, plug-ins and accessibility.

The Gutenberg Editor has 2 tabs namely- Document and Block.

Document– This is for editing the contents, uploading, images or choosing categories etc.

Block– This is one of the new features for WordPress developers. However, if you have used other WordPress Page Builders, Gutenberg can be relational.

Some Prominent Features of Gutenberg editor:-

Test Style-

Test styling is now easier. You can change colors, size, fonts and background colors.

Live Preview of HTML –

Custom HTML can be added via editor itself by the users. Hence making modification on the posts easy and convenient. This will allow you to view your page from your editing platform and simplifies your work.

Enough about Gutenberg, let’s explore the next one.

Front End Editor-

Front End Editor allows editing posts and contents of the web-page without actually going to the Dashboard. Page builders or front end editors are extensively used by the developers. WordPress 5.0 comes with such feature to enable easy editing and also with built in fast and light weight editor.

Security Updates-

Since WordPress is used widely among all the developers, the security is also a desired and compulsory factor. WordPress Security has always been the centralized topic. The WordPress Core Team is working diligently on improving the Core Security. They, therefore, recommend the usage of hosting services with SSL certificates, an Application level password protection and a Two factor authentication.

Background Image Cropping –

Before uploading images, you can crop the background image while uploading. Consequently, this saves time and efforts to first manually cropping and then uploading.

Mobile Optimization Improved-

Mobile is the most used device to access websites. So WordPress Core Team has introduced version 5.0 with improved features for mobile experience. The new Twenty Nine Theme is also built to make it compatible for mobile. This includes full responsive designs and user-friendly. This ensures reducing web page loading speed and higher SERP rankings.

Other important features of WordPress 5.0 includes-

• Video and Image blocks can be altered into Embed Blocks.
• Options of choosing diverse default editor for different areas.
• Preview button saves all meta boxes and the draft of the posts.
• Also a feature of DateTimePicker
• Usage of image srcset and size attributes enabled by wp-image-### CSS class.
• Only the updated meta is saved through a recursive approach of tracking post meta in Block API to avoid saving the default value for each registered meta.