What’s New in WordPress Version 5.5 – Non Block Editor

Video Transcript

In this, the third of three classes on what’s new and WordPress 5.5.
We’re going to pick up where we left off at, in the previous class. So here on the about page after you have WordPress 5.5 installed and activated their main topics are speed search and security.

So let’s tackle these individually speed. What they’re referring to is the newly added into the core lazy loaded images feature. And it tells you a little bit more about the lazy loaded images feature right here. Basically it does not load all the images at one time. Only those images that are on that poster page that can be seen in the browser window, which definitely speeds up the load time of that particular post or page.

The drawback to this though, is that if you already have a plugin installed like a caching plugin, like WP rocket or fastest cache, that has a lazy loading image feature, the two may conflict, not to worry though, with those two particular plugins.

Anyway, they’ve already built in a disabling feature, which will disable this particular lazy loading image feature that’s built into the core so that there’s will work instead. But if you do not have a speed enhancing plugin like those two, then this is a great feature. Now in that same train of thought for search where press has now installed an XML site map into the core, which works great. If you don’t already have an SEO plugin that does that same feature only better.

Now, if you have a single plugin like Google XML site maps, then you don’t have to have that plugin anymore because this XML site map does pretty much the exact same thing as that one plugin. So you can just get rid of that plugin, but if you’ve got a more powerful plugin like rank math or Yoast, that also has a much better XML site map feature, then to avoid these conflicts, those two particular plugins anyway, have also built into their services, a disabling feature so that their XML site map feature will work in place of this one.
So if you do not have a plugin that handles XML site maps, this is a great feature. Now on a security, the other S we’ve got auto updates for both plugins and themes, pros and cons here, but we’ll just stick with the pros for now. It’s a good thing that you no longer have to worry about having to manually log into your WordPress site to update a plugin or a theme.

You can toggle that feature on or off. Let’s go into plugins right here it is. And the automatic updates column, or if it’s enabled already, you can disable it. Or if it’s not, then you can enable it. Likewise with the themes only with the themes, you have to actually go into the themes details, right? Here’s the link for the auto updates right there. So again, that’s a good thing, but it may also come with some possible problems.

And one of the cool things that I like about this is that they’ve also added an update for uploading zip files. So you’ve got a plugin or theme that is not within the wordpress.org plugin or theme directory before version 5.5. He had to deactivate that plugin or theme delete that plugin or theme, and then re upload the new version, reactivating it, and so on. You don’t have to do that anymore. All you have to do is upload the new version of that plugin or theme.
You’ll get a screen displaying, both the existing and the new version of that plugin or theme and gives you the option to choose which one do you want instead of the old error message that you would get saying, Nope, this is already activated, or this is already installed or whatever. It was major improvement here. And we’ve already gone over some of the block editor enhancements in the previous classes.

The other item I want to mention is for accessibility, a lot of good improvements here. So if you’re a user of screen readers, you’re very much going to love some of these major improvements.

So these are the big changes that I wanted to cover in these three classes, but also here on the about dot PHP page for the version 5.5 as always at the very bottom, there’s some good stuff for developers and then a direct link to the field guide here. Well, that’s going to bring us to the end of this class on our introduction to WordPress version 5.5. Thanks for checking it out. And you have a great day.