WordPress is still the most popular website platform in the world, powering 34% of all websites and almost 15% of the world’s most popular websites. That’s not hard to believe, because WordPress is a great platform — flexible, easy to use, pretty efficient.
On top of all that, the team behind WordPress releases 1-2 updates a year, and they usually feature substantive improvements to the platform. The newest version, WordPress 5.7, was released on March 9th.
Here are some of the new features users can expect:
Updates to the Editor
- Font-size adjustment in more places
- Reusable blocks that same automatically
- Inserter drag-and-drop
More Design Options with Less Coding
- Full-height alignment for blocks
- Horizontal or vertical button blocks, with adjustable width
- Social Icons block with adjustable icon size
Simplified and More Accessible Color Palette
The new, streamlined color palette collapses all the colors that used to be in the WordPress source code down to seven core colors and a range of 56 shades that meet the WCAG 2.0 AA recommended contrast ratio against white or black.
One-click switching from HTTP to HTTPS
It’s never been easier to make your website more secure. WordPress will now automatically update database URLs when you press the button.
New Robots API
The new Robots API lets you better control how your site is crawled and indexed. You can use filter directives in the robots meta tag, and the API includes the max-image-preview: large directive by default—allowing search engines to show bigger image previews, which can help increase traffic
Lazy-loading iFrames
Lazy loading can significantly improve the speed and performance of your site, and it’s never been easier. By default, WordPress will add a loading=”lazy” attribute to iframe tags when both width and height are specified.
Enhancements to the Import/Export feature in WordPress 5.7
In WordPress 5.7, two main changes affected the WordPress built-in import/export feature. WP 5.7 creates an export-specific filter for post titles and the date on which east post was last modified, improving the post import process.
For more information on WordPress 5.7, see the WordPress 5.7 Field Guide.
