Introducing WordPress 5.5 (Features, Blocks and Improvements)

The wait is over!! WordPress 5.5 – the second major release (2020) is out now and comes with power-packed features and improvements.

WordPress 5.5 introduces the new block patterns, block editor UI, inline image editing, and automatic updates on themes and plugins. Besides that, it brings the default XML sitemaps in WordPress, speed improvements, and other major changes.

WordPress 5.5 is a major update, hence you’ll have to manually update your WordPress site. Otherwise, you can ask your hosting provider to run the update for you.

So, let’s know deeply what’s new features in WordPress 5.5?

Table of Content

Improvement and Features added to the Block Editor with WordPress 5.5
           New Block Patterns
           The New Block Directory
           Improves on Block Editor UI
           Inline Image Editing
Auto Update Your WordPress Theme and Plugins
Lazy Loading for Images
Default XML Sitemaps

Improvement and Features added to the Block Editor with WordPress 5.5

You can see the major changes on the block editor (gutenberg) which was introduced on WordPress 5.0. Now, it comes with updates on the improvements to the block editor UI as well as the new block directory features are added to make the block editor effective.

New Block Patterns

WordPress 5.5 brings the block pattern in the major updates.You can make a beautiful layout of a page in a second. It allows you to add ready-to-use blocks quickly in the layout and improve the editing experience to the admin and content creators.

The New Block Directory

The new block directory allows you to add a new block to your editor. Simply, it integrates with WordPress plugins where you can search a block as you want to add and it will provide the suggestion that might match your search.

Improves on Block Editor UI

You can notice the borders and highlights appear on the block editor with more contrast. It makes changes in the user interface.

Inline Image Editing

The inline image editor helps you to edit your images inside the block editor. All the options to like cropping, adjusting, aspect ratio, rotating can be done instantly without exiting the post editor.

Auto Update Your WordPress Theme and Plugins

Another major update of WordPress 5.5 is the automatic updates system on your WordPress themes and plugins. WordPress already has this functionality using the third party automatic plugins but this time WordPress itself brings the options to enable automatic updates.

Auto-update your WordPress theme – Navigate to Appearance » Themes pages and click on a theme you have installed. You can see the enable auto-updates option then Click on it. Every time your installed theme brings updates, it will automatically update.

Auto-update your WordPress plugin – Similarly, Navigate to Appearance » plugins pages and you can find the enable auto-updates option on each plugin. Click on it.

Lazy Loading for Images

WordPress 5.5 comes out with lazy load images as default in WordPress core. The images will be loaded only on the screen that are visible to the users and aims to improve the website speed performance.

You can optimize the image using the third party plugins but now WordPress will add the loading attribute on “img” tags for all sites. This will help you to load your website faster and improvements on your website performances.

Default XML Sitemaps

Next, the major updates are on the default WordPress XML sitemaps. Yes, WordPress will provide the XML Sitemaps for your website. The list of files in XML format will be generated that helps to index your website content and easily generate your content in the search engine.

However, WordPress generates their own XML sitemaps but it is quite limited in features and functionality. Most of the WordPress users are using any SEO plugins to provide XML sitemaps until now. Don’t worry the default WordPress XML sitemaps will automatically disabled it.

Some other changes on WordPress 5.5:

Allow you to update themes and plugins with a zip file.
Able to identify the PHP compatibility issues.
Dashicons will come with 65 new icons in WordPress Core.
By default, the theme and plugin auto-updates are disabled.
It will bring the various updated external libraries such as phpMailer, SimplePie, Twemoji, and many more.

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