WordPress 5.0 – The VERY Basics
WordPress announced their plans for version 5.0 quite some time ago. If you haven’t heard much about the new release, you most likely will start to notice more and more buzz over the coming weeks and months.
This article is primarily to raise awareness since WordPress 5.0 has not actually been finalized or released yet. The main thing that everyone will want to be aware of, is the fact that the next full release of WordPress will introduce major changes. It will have an impact on anyone and everyone who uses WordPress.
From a very basic standpoint, WordPress 5.0 will be replacing the back end content editor. The old TinyMCE editor that everyone has grown used to over the years will be replaced. This will completely change the way that users create blog posts, update existing content, or create new web pages.
In general, this is great. It will introduce a simpler interface for creating and editing content. The difficult part will be getting used to the new way that things are going to work.
Out with the old
In with the new
If you haven’t already, you will begin to hear about Gutenberg, which will be the new editor. If you look at the comparisons, things may not look “completely” different, but the functionality will be changing quite a lot.
On the surface, Gutenberg is block oriented, and moves toward drag and drop editing of page content. It is more of a visual page editor, along the lines of WPBakery/Visual Composer which in the long run should make editing much easier. But again, it is completely different from what people are used to.
WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg are still in development and are changing constantly, so it isn’t worth going into the details of all of the new features. The main goal here is to get the word out there that some pretty major changes are coming in the near future.
As with any set of updates, items will become obsolete. The overhaul of the overall structure of the page builders will break a LOT of older plugins. The changes will break a LOT of older custom code on sites.
WordPress 5.0 is going to introduce core changes that could not have been foreseen by any developer two or three years ago, so there is a good chance that problems will be encountered on many sites.
Nobody knows exactly how much backwards compatibility there will be, but we can assume that any plugins that have not been maintained by their developers, will have issues. Most well supported, or paid plugins will have updates released to keep them compatible.
The key is to make sure that you are using well supported plugins, and that you have valid licenses for any paid plugins. You need the people who built your plugins and themes to release new updates AND you need to be able to download those updates to keep your site running.
At this point we are recommending that everyone take a look at their existing plugins, themes, and their sites in general to make sure that everything running is actively supported by their development team.
We don’t mean supported by the person who built or maintains your website, we mean make sure your plugins are ACTIVELY supported by the developers who built the actual plugins.
make sure your plugins are ACTIVELY supported by the developers who built the actual plugins
Everyone should also check their licenses and support contracts to make sure they are valid. In the event that a new version is released you need access to download those products. Everything is going to require an update when WordPress 5.0 is released.
We are reviewing all of our existing client’s sites, and identifying any items that concern us. This really is a major overhaul of WordPress, and it is going to take work to make sure the transition goes smoothly.
major overhaul of WordPress, and it is going to take work to make sure the transition goes smoothly.
We will be providing more technical information as it comes to light. We are anxiously awaiting an actual release date to be posted so we can have a better idea of timelines.
Right now it appears we are a little ways off from the actual release. When the details on WordPress 5.0 were first announced last year, it was slated for release in April or May of 2018.
Obviously that is not going to happen at this point.
As of right now, there is nothing posted related to beta versions, or any kind of official release date. So we are guessing that there is at least a couple months before the new version drops, but it is very difficult to know for certain.
In the meantime we will digging deeper on 5.0 and making sure we are prepared to handle the upcoming changes.
The official info from WordPress can be found on WordPress.org , and we expect some dates to show up here any day now: Progress Tracker
