Meetup group resources: Talking points for WordPress 5.8

WordPress 5.8 is shipping soon! Beta 1 and Beta 2 are available for testing. 5.8 is a major release with some exciting new features coming with it! As we approach the release, we ask that all our community members and meetup organizers contribute:

  • Meetup Organizers can plan release-focused meetups to share the latest features in 5.8 with their community.
  • Meetups can organize 5.8 testing sprints to test the release features.
  • Organizers can email their local groups to inform members about the upcoming release.
  • Contributors can individually test 5.8 release features, share their feedback, blog about release features, and amplify them on social media. 

This post highlights some of the most exciting features of WordPress 5.8 that local meetup organizers might want to highlight to their local communities. 

Updates for Publishers and Users

New Theme Blocks and The Query Block

With WordPress 5.8, you’ll now have the ability to edit even more aspects of your site with the following new blocks: Site Logo/tagline/title, Query Loop, Next/Previous post, Post title, content, author, date, excerpt, featured image, categories, and tags – along with login/out blocks and the page list block. When combined with creating custom templates, these blocks will unlock several possibilities for content creation that was not possible before! You can read more about theme blocks here.

Image showing list of new WordPress 5.8 blocks

The most powerful amongst this set of new blocks is the Query Loop block. It unlocks the ability to easily display posts from a specific category, allowing you to quickly create a portfolio or a favorite recipe page. Think of it as a more complex and powerful Latest Posts Block! You can read more about the Query block in GitHub.

Block Pattern Directory

Block Patterns are a streamlined way of setting up layouts of blocks through themes and plugins. With WordPress 5.8, everyone will now access a Block Pattern Directory, similar to the Plugin and Theme directories. This will let anyone create and share a Block Pattern with any WordPress user and for any WordPress user to use these patterns to make beautiful content. You can find new patterns in the Block Inserter or by browsing the patterns here: http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20210910145204/https://wordpress.org/patterns/. For now, patterns previously bundled with Core are the only patterns available in the Inserter; in the future, all patterns in the directory will be searchable from the Inserter too!

Dropping Support for IE 11

With WordPress 5.8, Internet Explorer 11 will no longer be supported. For anyone currently using IE11, it is strongly recommended that you switch to a modern browser, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, or Microsoft Edge. IE11 users have been shown a warning that IE11 is considered outdated in the WordPress dashboard for the last 17+ months.

Template Editing Mode

Template Editing Mode is a feature of Full Site Editing that unlocks the ability to switch between editing the content of a post/page and the template elements that the post/page uses. Essentially, this allows you to switch between the Post Editor and the Template Editor. 

  • For block themes, users will be able to create a new block-based template and edit existing ones. 
  • For classic themes, users will be able to only create new block-based templates. 
  • Any custom block template created is theme-dependent and won’t transfer across themes.

You can read more about Template Editing mode in this dev note.

Block Widgets Editor & Widgets in Customizer

WordPress 5.8 brings blocks to both the Block Widgets Editor and the Customizer. Users will now be able to directly edit widgets just like how they would edit blocks in a post/page. Widgets in the customizer have additional features such as live preview, schedule, and sharing – all using blocks and widgets. This feature opens up several possibilities, from no-code mini layouts to tapping into the vast block library to create content. Developers are encouraged to phase out their widgets in favor of blocks, which are more intuitive and can be used in more places. Developers can allow users to easily migrate a Legacy Widget block containing a specific widget to a block or multiple blocks. 

Widgets screen within the customizer
Widget customizer
Widgets screen in WP-Admin
Widgets screen in WP-Admin

Other features and UI enhancements

Updates for Site Builders and Developers

Dev Notes in the Make/Core blog are a great place to start learning more about the technical details related to WordPress 5.8. Here’s a summary of the advanced features shipping with the release:

Theme.json

WordPress 5.8 introduces theme.json, a configuration file used to enable or disable features and set default styles for both websites and blocks. It can be used to control the editor settings, available customization tools, and style blocks. The release comes with Global Styles and Global Settings APIs, which facilitate these changes. Theme.json provides a consolidated and canonical way to manage default styles as opposed to theme support flags. Theme.json support will be more robust in the future. WordPress 5.8 includes the following options: 

  • Set Color and Typography block presets.
  • Add custom colors to the color palette, gradient options, and Duotone presets.
  • Register font families and font sizes for blocks.
  • Add or remove support for specific block settings that were previously set via the add_theme_support function via PHP.
  • Set specific block properties supported by that block, including typography, color, width, borders, etc.

Developers can enable theme.json by including it in the active theme’s root directory. You can learn more about theme.json from the developer handbook.

Next Iteration of Block Supports

The block support mechanism allows block authors to make their blocks customizable via adding support for style properties: font size, color, etc. Under the hood, this mechanism bounds UI controls to the block sidebar & toolbar, creates an implicit attribute for the block, and casts the implicit attribute to some DOM characteristic of the root element of the block (a style attribute or a new class). Developers working on WordPress 5.8 are encouraged to use block.json file metadata as the canonical way to register block types and define block supports.

This next iteration allows block authors to have a finer-grained control of how block supports work. As part of this, block authors don’t need to fiddle with controls and attribute flow. 

Block Design Tools

WordPress 5.8 introduces new block design tools that can be enabled through the block.json metadata file and are supported in the new theme.json configuration file:

  • color.__experimentalDuotone UI controls that allow adding duotone filters to blocks.
  • color.link. Adds block controls that allow the user to set link color in a block.
  • typography.fontSize. Signals that a block supports font-size CSS style property. When it does, the block editor will show a UI control for the user to set its value.
  • typography.lineHeight. Signals that a block supports the line-height CSS style property. When it does, the block editor will show a UI control for the user to set its value.
  • spacing.margin, and spacing.padding. Shows that a block supports some spacing CSS properties. When it does, the editor will show UI controls for the user to set values. 
  • layout. Simplifies the way themes define and style alignments. Theme devs can add layout config in theme.json and specify which containers inherit the config.

Duotone effect for images in blocks

WordPress 5.8 allows you to colorize your image and cover blocks with duotone filters! Duotone can add a pop of color to your designs and style your pictures (or videos in the cover block) to integrate well with your themes. The duotone effect is similar to a black and white filter, but instead of the shadows being black and the highlights being white, you get to pick your own colors for the shadows and highlights. This feature is accomplished with the help of a new customized color filter using an SVG filter. This is available as a “block supports” feature by default in the core Image and Cover blocks for both images and videos. You’ll be able to find it in the block toolbar settings. This can be supported in blocks from third parties and the color presets can be customized by themes within theme.json! More details in the WordPress blog.

WebP Support

WebP is a modern image format that provides improved lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. WebP images are usually 30% smaller than JPEG or PNG images and are supported in all modern browsers. From WordPress version 5.8 forward, you can upload and use WebP images in WordPress like you would a JPEG or PNG image today (as long as your hosting service supports WebP). Switching to the WebP format for your images will improve your site’s performance and your site visitor’s experience. Developers or plugins can use the wp_editor_set_quality filter to set the quality setting. You can read more about WebP support in this Make/Core blog post and Trac.

Request for feedback

What have you planned for sharing WordPress 5.8 with your local meetup group? Are you organizing an outreach meetup, or would you be interested in scheduling a testing sprint? What can we do together to help people learn all about the release? Let us know in the comments! 

The following people contributed to this post: @angelasjin @annezazu @cbringmann @daisyo @evarlese and @priethor

#meetup-organizer-resources #resources

#meetups, #outreach, #wordpress-5-8

Well. @harishanker what a fantastic job curating the post about the upcoming WordPress 5.8 changes. It’s THE ONE article many WordPress users need to read. Congratulations!

Thank you so much, @bph! Your comment made my day! <3 I’m glad that you enjoyed reading through this document. Thank you so much for amplifying it through that Gutenberg Times post, I appreciate it a lot! 🙏

Whoa! This is an exciting update. Can’t wait to use it!

Excited to hear that, @smithtimmytim! The feeling is very mutual – I can’t wait to try it out myself!

Thank you @harishanker for writing this post. It was very helpful in preparing the presentation.

Where did you get the image for the new theme blocks? The reason that I ask is that the post author block on it that were not shipped with WP 5.8.
http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20210910145204/https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/31983

I also could not find the next and previous link blocks and also found no information in the linked GitHub issue.