What are we likely to see when the WordPress 5.3 release becomes a reality?
On the 7th May 2019, the much anticipated WordPress 5.2 update ‘jaco’ was released (in honour of the American jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius). The WordPress community had been waiting excitedly for the update which included several security updates, health check features, PHP error protection, new dashboard icons and more.
The great thing about WordPress is that it’s always evolving, so, typically, the WordPress community are already weighing in on what the WordPress 5.3 release has in store.
With new and improved features in the Gutenberg page editor, here are three things you are very likely to see when version 5.3 becomes a reality.
The Group Block
One of the most exciting updates is the Group Block, which allows you to create and customise large sections of content. It supports the ability to nest other blocks inside it and the ability to align the block and any of its child blocks that include alignment settings. It will allow you to have more freedom with your site, without complicated coding. For example, you can easily create a multi-column layout with a background colour or image.
At the moment, the group block is only available in the Gutenberg plugin, but we are certain it will be rolled out to replace traditional page builder plugins for less complex sites.
Improvements in The Column Block
Currently, the column block is a bit restrictive because you can’t change a column’s width. The ability to have different sized columns is imperative for providing more flexible layouts so being able to change their width will be a huge step forward for WordPress.
Hopefully, with WordPress 5.3 release, you’ll be able to change column widths and make the cells in a row easier to see. So, while it is still somewhat basic at the moment, there is great potential to build more complex page layouts.
Changing or adding images
Changing or adding images to a page is currently quite labour intensive due to having to click ‘add media’ and then scroll through your image library. However, we feel certain that the WordPress 5.3 release will see a dragging and dropping tool to add an image into a page or replace an existing image.
This will save a huge amount of time and encourage users to swap out images more regularly.
While we can’t state with certainty what the WordPress 5.3 release has in store, it’s fun to make predictions. The new release probably won’t be here until mid-July so we have a little while to wait before we can make the most of new features. No doubt subtle improvements are coming overall to the block editor experience and specific enhancements to the blocks themselves.
Now is a good time to get your WordPress website running to the best of its ability so that you can free up your time at a later date to experiment with the new features. Some of the things you can look at in the meantime include a speed test of your site to see how it’s currently performing, backing up your website as a contingency to manage any human or technical errors, plus layering your security to protect yourself and your customers.
If you nee any WordPress assistance you can call on WP Tech Support to provide proactive and preventable WordPress support.