All About the New WordPress 5.6 Version

WordPress released its newest version, 5.6, at the end of 2020. It has brought new baggage of features with itself. These new features are going to help and design better websites with more improvements and functionality. WordPress has the reputation of adding new elements that can reside on the basic framework of website development. So, any new version empowers the websites with more advanced and specialized functions that can attract website visitors and, in turn, result in network traffic growth. Let’s explore more about WordPress 5.6 version and the features that it carries to provide a decorous and sophisticated outlook to a website or blog.

Twenty Twenty-One

WordPress has the trend to release a new theme every year. This theme gets the name from the year. So, is the case with WordPress 5.6 that has released a default WordPress theme with the name Twenty Twenty-One. It has a simple but aesthetically pleasing outlook that provides a positive vibe. Twenty Twenty-One comes with a WordPress block editor that gives website editing features, along with a canvas. It has a beautiful background with a pastel green color and can ship with the dark mode that a user can enable by customizing the theme. This theme can also adjust the text color according to the theme. There is an option available to test the theme with a new WordPress website. In that case, the user can check the typography and fonts with a unique homepage layout.

Improvements in Block Editors

There are several block elements that a user uses in a WordPress website. The new variant of WordPress, i.e., WordPress 5.6, has made various changes to the block editors. So, if a WordPress user tries to check out the latest version, they can find the following changes in the block editor:

There is a cover block available to make changes and set the video position inside this block.

The block editor has an additional database where they can store the keyword variations. Thus, it helps to enhance the block search feature.

The information panel of the block editor has the capability to show more characters in the words, paragraphs, etc., of content.

There are two changes in the social icons blocks – a new gray style for social icons and the choice to open all the links within the block through a new window.

PHP 8 Support

When PHP 8 got released in November 2020, PHP improvised some of the features and added a few new ones to fix some bugs. Accordingly, the WordPress development team worked to ensure that its latest version (WordPress 5.6) has no compatibility issue with PHP 8. Thus, any upgradation to the latest PHP version will not lead to any problem that a user can face. But, WordPress has not come out with any conclusive inference on testing the code for themes and plugins to match the same compatibility.

REST API Application Passwords

With the help of the REST API framework and plugins, WordPress gives access to the website developers to interact and communicate with the other websites. However, the communication between websites can compromise the security of the WordPress website. But, it’s not the case with WordPress as it offers cookies and nonce keys to allow legitimate users to access the API. With WordPress 5.6, the web developers have to use the application login credentials (precisely the passwords) to get a safe passage to interact with the API plugins.

Automatic Updates

WordPress has already provided the feature of automatic updates for some particular plugins with their WordPress 5.5 version. WordPress 5.6 has continued this trend by giving an option to turn on the automatic updates. All that a user needs to perform is go to the Dashboard of the WordPress accounts and navigate to the Updates option. In that tab, they need to select the “Enable automatic updates for all new versions of WordPress” options. However, if a user has a managed WordPress hosting, there is no need to worry about such actions as one can automatically update the same from the WordPress admin panel.

Other Changes

There are some necessary changes and updates that have come up with WordPress 5.6:

Continuing with the second phase of the three-step plan to update and upgrade the jQuery bundled with WordPress.

Including the REST API Batch Framework to make a series of REST API calls in just one server’s request.

Actions like wp_after_insert_post are now available with the new variant of WordPress. This action helps to run the customized source code after there is an updation with the post, its terms, and metadata.

Conclusion

WordPress has delivered a new gift to its followers and users with its latest version, i.e., WordPress 5.6. This new version of WordPress has embedded vital new features and upgraded some of the other features. Hence, they have opened the window for improvisation to give a better outlook to any website. WordPress 5.6 has shown new promises and hopes to the WordPress users who are thinking of generating revenue from their websites and blogs.

Source: All About the New WordPress 5.6 Version