WordPress 5.0 release is just around the corner! Here’s what you need to know

If you own or run a website, you’d already know what WordPress is! It literally needs no introduction when it comes to the wide world of web.

More than 32% of the internet is powered by WordPress, and any update to it is a big deal for a LOT of people.

Reportedly, the team behind WordPress is on their way to release it’s biggest update since their inception and it is going to radically change how people publish content on the web.

Don’t worry though, we are going to tell you everything there is that you should absolutely know about this new update before it comes out (which is still TBD). So, take note –

So, what exactly is WordPress 5.0?

With WordPress 5.0, the team behind WordPress is completely revamping how users and developers use their CMS and publish content on the web with the introduction of ‘Gutenberg Editor’ and a new minimal ‘Twenty Nineteen’ theme to support it.

Now, that wasn’t much helpful, was it? Let’s go into some more details that’ll give you a much better idea.

Gutenberg Editor

Source
The 10 year old ‘Classic WordPress Editor’ is gone and replaced by the Gutenberg Editor, which is heavily inspired by the way you publish content on the famous content sharing platform – Medium.  

And the sole reason for them to make such drastic changes to their trusted text editor is because of the ever-increasing acceptability shown by the people to other website building options present in the market such as Wix, Squarespace and Weebly.

They all require minimum coding and are basically DIY page builders with built-in widgets and shortcodes to add the required functionality to your website and design it in a way you want. And apparently, there are a lot of people out there who are looking for such solutions, WordPress lacked big-time in that with all their HTML & CSS coding huff-puff.

Built on the React framework, Gutenberg is being introduced to change all that and a lot more! With the new editor, team Automattic (the makers of WordPress) is trying to push WordPress further in the market and strengthen their market position. They have been the leaders in this industry since their inception and they’d like to keep it that way.

But how exactly are they doing it?

With the help of ‘Blocks’ and other easy drag-n-drop options that makes manipulating and showcasing content in the way you want on your website a breeze. Forget making changes to your content and clicking the preview button to make sure it’s all good, Gutenberg is bringing a true WYSIWYG experience to the table for WordPress.

Source
In Gutenberg, every shortcode, widget, embed or any other custom post type that were previously used to add that oomph factor to your content in now a block, which follows a standardized and straightforward set of instructions to perform like you want them to.

And this goes for all types of blocks. Currently, Gutenberg supports blocks for paragraphs, quotes, lists, headings, images, galleries, buttons, columns, shortcodes, widgets and a ton of other embeds, and this is just the beginning for now.

Gutenberg is a full-fledged project which is will be rolled out in 3 phases. The first phase is the one we’ve been talking about all this while and is expected to launch really soon – The Gutenberg Editor. In the second phase, the project will focus on page templates and after the roll-out of the third phase, WordPress is expected to transform into a powerful full-site customizer which will retain their #1 position in the market for a long time to come.

Today, people are actively looking for website development solutions that require minimum coding and are easy to use. WordPress is doing what is meant to be done if they want to survive and Gutenberg Editor is their first step towards it.

Here’s how ‘Gutenberg Editor’ is trying to make the whole publishing experience a lot easier in WordPress –

1. Everything is a block

Like I mentioned before, with the Gutenberg Editor, everything you write is a block. Whether it is a paragraph, video or any other type of content such as a testimonial or a gallery, every single element will be added to the website using a block which greatly unifies the whole publishing experience. The best part, you can even create custom blocks to cater to your specific website needs with a little coding help or using a block builder.

2. Blocks are dynamic

A block, once built can be saved and used again anywhere on your website. And even if you decide to make changes to an already built block, Gutenberg will automatically update the changes made to the block on every other copy of it.

3. Streamlined copy-pasting

Called the best feature of Gutenberg by WordPress’ co-founder Matt Mullenweg, copy-pasting content from docs and other websites was a pain in the classic editor as it shamelessly picked up their formatting as well, this is not going to happen in Gutenberg.

Twenty Nineteen Theme

Like every major update, the new wordpress 5.0 will be shipped with a new default theme – Twenty Nineteen. This minimal theme fully supports Gutenberg and is amazing to look at. While this one-page theme is best suited for bloggers, it can hold full-fledged small business websites as well.

This theme doubles down on the level of functionality and scope of creativity it provides to publishers using the Gutenberg theme and looks great nevertheless. It also features custom styles for blocks already present in the Gutenberg editor, is flexible and designed to work for a variety of use-cases and business niches. Take a look at a real life example of this new theme in play.

The Release

This is the hard part! Gutenberg was supposed to be fully released by the start of this year in January. Then it got pushed to the first half of the year. Then the developers of WordPress announced that it will be launched on 16 November, before it got shifted again to 27 November. Currently, the situation is out of control with still a lot of pending bugs on Github and the date is yet to be announced. Since, it’s the holiday season and so many people depend on WordPress on a daily basis to perform their business activities, Automattic wants to be completely sure that their release is not laden with bugs and supports a majority of plugins present in the WordPress plugin store. If things aren’t at their top on 27th, the next fallback day is January 22, 2019 (maybe, that’s why they named their new theme 2019 and not 2018?).

A lot depends on them for the time being. More than hundred million websites are waiting for this update, it has to be picture-perfect at all costs once it’s released and Matt Mullenweg is making sure of just that before going forward their final release.  

For the time being, you can download a free Gutenberg Editor plugin and start playing with it as soon as you can to get ready for the big launch!

Gave it a try but didn’t like it much? Once WordPress 5.0 is out, the gutenberg editor will be shipped as default, so, i’d suggest you download the classic editor plugin as well, just in case things go haywire with the new editor of WordPress.

The world is getting ready for this new massive update, us included, and it’s about time you geared up for it as well!