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WordPress 5.7 ‘Esperanza’: An Easy Introductory Guide

wordpress 5.7 esperanza spalding b&w on blue background

WordPress 5.7 ‘Esperanza’: An Introductory Guide – In this article I am introducing WordPress 5.7, the latest WordPress core release.

You will learn what’s new in WordPress 5.7 and how to use or implement it.

What is WordPress 5.7 ‘Esperanza’ ?

It is the first major release of WordPress core in 2021.

Why is it Called ‘Esperanza’ ?

The name ‘Esperanza’ is in honour of Esperanza Spalding, a modern musical prodigy.

Who Are the Team Behind the Release?

These are the main people involved in this new release (source: WordPress.org):

What is the Version Before WP 5.7?

It’s WordPress 5.6.2, which is a maintenance version released on February 22, 2021.

Is WordPress 5.7 Stable?

At the time of writing there are no known issues reported by users who updated to the latest version.

How Can I Go Back to a Previous WordPress Release?

If you want to go back to an earlier release, you can check my other article on How to Downgrade WordPress.

What’s New in WordPress 5.7?

The following is a list of new features from WordPress 5.7:

New Editor Easier to Use

Font-size adjustment in more places 
font size wordpress 5.7
Font-size controls are in the List and Code blocks. This means you won’t have to open another screen to make a change
Reusable blocks

Reusable blocks are now more stable and easier to use. And now they save automatically with the post when you click the Update button

Inserter drag-and-drop

Less Custom Code

Full-height alignment
full height wordpress 5.7
You can now make a block fill the whole window
Buttons block
buttons block wordpress 5.7
You can choose a vertical or a horizontal layout and you can set the width of a button to a preset percentage
Social Icons block
social icons size wordpress 5.7
You can change the size of the icons

Simpler Default Colour Palette

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 (source: WordPress.org).

From HTTP to HTTPS in a Click

Arguably, this is probably one of the most prominent features of the new release, along with the new Robots API.

While before you needed a plugin to force the HTTPS protocol on your WordPress website, now you can do it directly from Tools > Site Health.

force https wordpress 5.7

New Robots API

Another major feature, after the one on the HTTPS protocol mentioned above, ‘lets you include the filter directives in the robots meta tag, and the API includes the max-image-preview: large directive by default’.

Lazy Load for iFrames

Now it’s simple to let iframes lazy-load. By default, WordPress will add a loading="lazy" attribute to iframe tags when both width and height are specified (source: WordPress.org).

Ongoing Cleanup after jQuery 3.5.1

In 5.7, jQuery gets more focused and less intrusive, with fewer messages in the console (source: WordPress.org).

Interesting Links

 

Author

Pasquale Mellone

Pasquale is Founder at Increasily.com, a H2H marketing agency based in Dublin, Ireland, and owner at print-on-demand ecommerce Mintycase.com. Pasquale has worked in Digital Marketing and Account Management since 2004. He currently lives in Dublin with his wife, stepdaughter and cat.