What’s New in WordPress Version 5.7 – Non Block Editor
Video Transcript
This and the next class are going to cover the updates you’re going to find in the new version 5.7 of WordPress.
Now, in addition to the speed and security tweaks, here and there, WordPress version 5.7 brings several updates to the block editor, as well as a few non editor updates. Now, as always, you should not update major releases right away, like you do with the minor releases. Give it a few days before any updates of major releases. Plus, you should always do a full site backup of files and databases before any updates, especially the major updates. And even then, it’s best to do those updates on a staging or development site and not your money making site. This class is going to cover the non block editor stuff that version 5.7 brings to WordPress. Now two of these changes deal with the continuation of the jQuery changes. And with the introduction of lazy loading of iframes. Both of these can easily break some themes. So testing on a staging or development site to find out things break is less frustrating than finding out that they break on your main sites.
Now, if your theme or some plugins are still not working properly, because of the jQuery updates that began a couple of versions ago, be sure to have that jQuery help tool handy. And you can get it for free at WordPress plugin repository. And that’s at wordpress.org slash plugins slash enable dash jQuery dash migrate dasch helper Sophie tests version 5.7 on your staging site first, and things break. Try it with the jQuery helper plugin. And then things work. Be sure to install this helper plugin and activate it on your main site before you update your main site to 5.7.
Now another plugin that is brand new, may help in fixing any issues you encounter with the new lazy loading of iframes feature. And that plugin is also@wordpress.org plugin repository. And that’s wordpress.org slash plugins slash disable dash lazy dash loading dash four dash iframes. Now this would really only come into play if your site is pretty heavy into advertising.
In other words, if you have ads running on your site, and they are not displaying properly, again, hopefully you’re going to do your testing on a staging or development site first. And if on that staging or development site, your ads are not displaying properly, this could be a result of that iframes lazy loading feature being added into the 5.7 update. If that is the case, try this new plugin and see if it fixes it. And if it does fix it again, be sure to add this to your money making our main sites before updating those to 5.7. Now remember, these fixture plugins should be temporary. And as soon as your theme or the advertising system that you use update there and you will be able to remove these plugins. So keep an eye out for those updates from your vendors. Okay, moving on.
One of my favorite updates with version 5.7 deals with a resetting of passwords. If you have a membership or some type of e commerce site that requires site visitors to log into your site in order to get their stuff, chances are pretty good. You’ve had a support email at some point or another from one of those people asking for help and resetting their password life just got a lot easier for us.
Because one of these updates involves just that if we go to the Users page, and this being a demo site only have me and one other user on here. But you can see this added link here sin password reset, that’s all you have to do. Just click on this link, boom done sends it to their email address, just to give you an idea as to what looks like this is it right here. And if we open this up, they click on the link. And even this is a little bit different from the prior version. Because now it’s got this button here that says generate password. And it just eliminates some of the guesswork.
If somebody is brand new to WordPress and they see this for the first time, they’re wondering, what do I do?
Do I change this?
Can I change this because all it was there was just a button that says save password or reset password.
I forget now what it was. But now you can just click away here to generate until you get a new password you like or you can just remove this altogether, insert one of your own making, and then click on Save password. It’s really that easy. Oh, and also, if you’ve got a bunch of people that need their passwords reset at the same time. It’s also an option in the bulk actions. Just click on all those people that need their password reset, click on Send password reset, click on Apply. Done that simple. Now hopefully this next update feature will not be necessary for you. But it is a biggie if your site is not yet using HTTPS. That’s the SSL certificate. Now when you go to the site health in the tool section, right here, there’s a new feature called one click site migration from HTTP to HTTPS.
This feature detects if the server your site is on supports HTTPS. In other words, if you have an SSL certificate assigned to your site, but your site’s URLs are still pointing to the HTTP version, then the blue button will make those changes for you whenever you click on a button. And by the way, that blue button I’m talking about looks like this right here. That’s that will be listed on one critical issue. Let me show you first what it may look like. If you do not have an SSL certificate assigned, it would look like this, even if you have the blue button there.
But if we open this up, he would say this without the blue button. This means that you do not have an SSL certificate from your host assigned to your site, in which case, you should get a hold of your host and tell them to activate one. Any good host nowadays has at the very least the free version of an SSL certificate they can use mostly it’s Let’s Encrypt. But there’s a couple other ones out there too. They’re just as good.
So if you have an SSL activated on your server for your site, but things are not fully configured on your site, you’ll get the blue button, click on the blue button, and it goes through and updates all those URLs in your site, including those in your settings for your WordPress address and site address, and does all that stuff for you, which basically eliminates the need for a pretty popular plugin that tricks your site into using SSL. Thank you WordPress. Now let’s go and move on to other updates. Let’s begin with a different look in the admin area. Let’s come back here to our about page. And if we hover over these links in the admin sidebar, you might see a more clear contrast between the colors in the background.
And also that vertical bar just to the left of each one of these items, that’s brand new as well. And what we’re talking about there is a simpler default color palette, and this is what we’re talking about. For many of us, it’s going to be very minimal. But for those that have accessibility needs, it could be a big difference. And as it says in here, these are all part of the cleanup process WordPress is going through in preparation to the next phase, where they bring on full site editing. And if you want to learn more about full site editing, because it is kind of right around the corner, a couple of places you could check out is @wordpress.org I’m sorry, it’s make.wordpress.org slash design slash Handbook, slash focuses slash full dash site dash editing, that’s a URL for you.
But it gives you a bit of a rundown of what they have in mind, or the plans if you will, for full site editing. Another place to check out more details on full site editing is full site editing. com. This is primarily for developers. But for us normal folks, it might give us a better idea as to what’s coming around the bend later on. Basically, it means that your entire WordPress site can be edited with blocks, the header, the editor, widgets, everything. Now these are just some of the bigger changes right now. But for an in depth look of all the features added to version 5.7. And I’ve just covered some of the bigger ones, you want to know about all of them, be sure to check out the field guide.
Then come on back to the about page here and scroll down to the very bottom, just click on this link here for WordPress 5.7 Field Guide. It brings you to this page here. And it tells you well there’s 127 bug fixes 66 enhancements, I want to go over a few of them. But this covers all the goodies. Again, maybe more for developers but this does give you the full picture of what’s going on with version 5.7.
Well, that’s going to bring us to the end of this first class on an introduction to WordPress 5.7. The non block editor updates. Thanks for checking it out and you have a great day.