What’s in WordPress 5.0?

WordPress 5.0 is kicking “incremental” to the curb with some pretty major changes. The biggest is the aforementioned block-based editor, which we’ll talk more about in a moment.

But WordPress 5.0 also marks a change to how the platform handles releases. It used to be the case that you could count on getting two major WordPress releases per year, with plenty of mini-updates in the meantime.

Now, the WordPress core team is planning on moving away from that scheduled release model. The idea is that by removing the pressure of predetermined deadlines, the platform will be able to take more significant leaps, and we won’t get updates that feel as though they lack in meaningful content.

Aside from that, here are a few of the other significant changes that make WordPress 5.0 a very interesting upgrade:

• The platform’s focus is moving towards a more intuitive site-building experience. WordPress already leads the pack in terms of market share. And by improving WordPress’ site-building functionality, the core team aims to hold that market share against the rise of hosted website builders.
• Some improvements to the WordPress Rest API. The WordPress Rest API helps developers create more feature-rich products by making it easier to send and pull data from your website. This update means developers will be able to more easily create applications using the platform as a framework.
• Building custom themes becomes easier. In the past, you needed at least a simple development background to put together a WordPress theme. With Gutenberg, theme creation will become much more accessible thanks to blocks.
• Page builder plugins might lose some relevance. There are a lot of fantastic page-builder tools that you can use with WordPress, some of which rival professional platforms. Gutenberg won’t be a match for them at first, but it might dissuade people from using them in the long run.

The launch of Gutenberg means that you’ll need to get acquainted with a whole new editing experience.

⚠️ Don’t panic – if you don’t want to use the Gutenberg Editor, you’ll still be able to keep the classic editor by installing the official Classic Editor plugin.

One more important thing is that you don’t have to settle for whatever set of features Gutenberg comes with right out the gate. We already have a range of add-on plugins that work with Gutenberg to deliver some cool goodies. Chief of them being additional content blocks.