WordPress 5.8 is here
July 22, 2021 2 mins
Change is good…
As of the 20th of July 2021, WordPress has released its latest instalment of changes. The update, named “Tatum”, after Art Tatum, the legendary Jazz pianist, contains a range of handy new features! Here’s some we’d like to highlight:
Displaying Posts with New Blocks and Patterns
The new Query Loop Block makes it possible to display posts based on specified parameters; like a PHP loop without the code! In short, this allows users to quickly display posts from a specific category with only a few clicks, this will pave the way to easily create dynamic pages for things such as portfolios. Think of it as a far more powerful Latest Posts Block!
New Suggested Block Patterns
There are two types of people in this world; those who can design, and those who cannot. So if you find that you’re a member of the latter group, fear no more as the Pattern Transformations tool will now suggest block patterns based on the block you are using! Over time, as more patterns are added, you will be able to get inspiration for how to style your site without ever leaving the editor! Handy!
Added support for WebP
At last native support for WebP is available as standard. WebP is an image format that provides superior lossless and lossy compression for images on the web, in short, images are compressed far better than before with JPGs and PNGs. In theory, this means page speed will increase and images are a lot smaller, making your site smaller and quicker.
“40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load“
Duotone? How cool is that?!
Add stylish colours to your images and cover blocks with new duotone filters. Think of the new duotone effect as adding an old-timey or arty black and white filter to a picture, but rather than the shadows being black and the highlights white, you get to select your own colours to mix and match. We cannot wait to have a go with this and see what funky combinations we can discover!
There are plenty more features we haven’t shared, the whole list can be found in the official release notes here.