WordPress 5.7 has officially released as of March 9, 2021. It is the first of three releases planned for this year.
WordPress 5.7 Features
The main goal for WordPress in 2021 is Full Site Editing via Gutenberg, first introduced in WordPress 5.6. WordPress 5.7 contributors anticipate working on the following features in the next release:
- Update WordPress Core to include current releases of the Gutenberg plugin
- Gutenberg: ship additional blocks, refine the UI, add tools for themes and design, and continue working on the widget screen
- Continue work on auto-updates and jQuery
Core Improvements
Lazy-load iframes – Enabled by adding the loading=”lazy” attribute to iframe tags on the front-end.
Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS – This process now happens in one click! URLs in the database are automatically replaced when the Site and WordPress Address are both using HTTPS. Also, Site Health now includes an HTTPS status check.
Standardize colors used in WP-Admin CSS to a single palette – The palette makes it easy to build components your users can read, because half the range gives you great contrast with white type and a half with black, according to current accessibility guidelines.
Ongoing cleanup after update to jQuery 3.5.1 – jQuery deprecations in WordPress Core and bundled themes show up a lot less often, and the notifications make more sense to the user.
New Robots API – Allows the filter directives to be included in the ‘robots’ meta tag. Also, the directive max-image-preview:large is now included by default to allow large image previews to be displayed in search engines (unless the blog is marked as not being public).
Editor Improvements
Drag and drop – Blocks and block patterns can now be dragged directly into the post or page.
Full height alignment – Blocks like the Cover block now have an option to fill the entire screen size.
Block variations – The icon and description of a block variation is now shown in the block inspector, and a dropdown allows you to switch between the variations.
Reusable blocks – Increased usability and stability of the feature, and reusable blocks are now saved at the same time that the post is saved.
Other Block Enhancements – The Buttons block now includes vertical alignment options, and you can set the width of a button to a preset percentage. You can now change the icon size in the Social Icons block, and the font size in the List and Code blocks.
WordPress 5.7 FAQs
Will there be a new default Theme?
No, there will not be a new bundled theme – Twenty Twenty-One will remain the newest Core theme.
Please continue to check back – we will update this article as more information on WordPress 5.7 is released!
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linda says:
By any chance does 5.7 by default include the tag on search result pages? Prior to 5.7, this tag appeared on a site’s search result page if the settings > reading > Discourage search engines from indexing this site option was checked. If this was not checked, then the site would not have the tag on the site’s search result page? The only other way this would appear is if an SEO plugin were used. There was some talk of including this by default (#52457 (WordPress vulnerable to search-reflected webspam) – WordPress Trac) in core 5.7. Has this been done?
Joseph says:
Thank you for contacting us Linda!
I read through the WordPress 5.7 Field Guide and did not see any mention of including Tags by default on search results pages, but it is possible that I might have missed it. If you need to include Tags on your website’s search results pages then you could try using WP Extended Search to see if that helps you get the functionality you are looking for.
Please let us know if you have any other questions for us!
Jesse says:
Hi Linda-
Sorry about that, when you said “tag on search page” we thought you meant the tag taxonomy . Yes, the noindex tag is now included by default on search pages. You can see it was merged in the original core trac ticket you mentioned.
Yash says:
I have upgraded to 5.7 , but it enforces https and fails to open dashboard with ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR . I dont have ssl certificate and still want to go with http instead of https.
Jesse says:
Hi Yash-
WordPress 5.7 did add a tool to make it easier to update your site to use an SSL certificate, but it shouldn’t have made any changes to force an SSL connection. If your host offers a tool like phpMyAdmin or another database administration tool, double-check the `site_url` and `home` fields in your `wp_options` table to make sure that neither have `https://` in their URL’s. If you’re still having trouble, let us know in a new support forum thread so we can take a closer look for you.
Silas says:
The automated migration from HTTP to HTTPS is a great addition, although one would think that such a mandatory feature should have been available much earlier. A lot of users have started their WordPress website over plan HTTP and the conversion to HTTPS is rarely a straightforward process as they are a lot of moving parts and unexpected obstacles along the way.
Also, people should now that switching to HTTPS requires that they have a personal SSL certificate installed on their hosting server covering the URL of their WordPress website.
More details on migrating to HTTPS in WordPress 5.7 and even in older versions is available at the following video – https://youtu.be/N3DZgRYhlYA
Jesse says:
Great video, Silas! Thanks for the comment