We said hello to the latest major WordPress release – version 5.7 “Esperanza,” on March 9, 2021. Meetup organizers can help promote the latest release by organizing local meetups focused on the release. This post highlights some features of WordPress 5.7 that local meetup organizers might want to highlight to their local communities, in an online meetup discussion, or via an email message to the group.
Updates for Publishers and Users
WordPress 5.7 came with several updates that will be of interest to publishers and users of WordPress. You can now find a brief overview of notable new features included in version 5.7 on the release post.
Drag and drop blocks directly from the inserter
Blocks and block patterns can now be dragged and dropped directly from the block inserter. To see this in action, click on the Inserter icon (⊕) at the top left of the editor. (Top Toolbar) – it shows up a list of blocks on the left-hand side. You can now choose any block or block pattern from the inserter and drag + drop it directly into the editor.
Reusable blocks
The release has several enhancements which make reusable blocks more stable and easier to use. Reusable blocks now save automatically with the post when you click the Update button. Read about WordPress 5.7 reusable blocks in detail on this post in the WordPress blog!
Text labels for the block toolbar
If you would prefer to see text labels rather than icons in the block toolbar, now you can turn on the Display button labels setting to see text labels. You can find this new setting in Preferences > Appearance.
After enabling this setting, you will see text for menu options instead of icons while using the block toolbar.
Custom font size options for the list block and the code block
You can now change font sizes for the list block and the code block directly from the editor.
Updates for Site Builders and Developers
The WordPress 5.7 Field Guide and other Dev Notes are a great place to start learning more about the technical details related to this release, including API-related enhancements. A summary of these notes include:
Standardization of WP-Admin colors
This project is the first part of a larger project in cleaning up WordPress admin CSS. This 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.
A PostCSS tool has been published, which can be used on any CSS file to either replace or create a second CSS file with the 5.7 colors – this is essentially the same process that ran over core, so it should make the exact matches in plugin CSS.
Lazy-loading iframes
In WordPress 5.7, iframes will be lazy-loaded by default, using the browser-level `loading` attribute. This will bring to iframes the same performance benefits which WordPress 5.5 introduced by lazy-loading images.
Send reset password links from Admin
WordPress 5.7 introduces a new feature that allows website administrators to send a reset password link to existing users manually. This can help when users lose their password and cannot use the lost password link for any reason.
Improved HTTPS detection and migration
WordPress will be able to detect whether the current environment already supports HTTPS. If this is the case, it provides a call-to-action button in the HTTPS status section in Site Health, which switches the site from HTTP to HTTPS with a single click.
Request for feedback
Are you organizing a local meetup to promote WordPress 5.7? What are your favorite features of WordPress 5.7? What features have your local community buzzing? Let us know in the comments!
#wordpress-5.7 #meetup-organizer-resources #resources
The following people contributed to this post: @andreamiddleton @annezazu and @harishanker