WordPress 5.7 important upcoming changes you should know about

As the WordPress 5.7 release date approaches we are bringing you the most important changes that will be available in the upcoming WordPress update.

The 5.7 should be released on 9th March 2021. and it’s still a month away, however, you should check and prepare your website for major changes that are coming your way.

What are the major changes in WordPress 5.7?

WordPress 5.7 will bring some much needed changes and it also address some other issues that are waited for long time.

New and updated jQuery version

One of the most important things when it comes to the latest update is that the WordPress core team is in the process of updating the jQuery.

For years, WordPress has used a legacy version of jQuery and now it’s time for update.

WordPress 5.7 will include a jQuery upgrade that brings a lot of benefits. The update will make WordPress more secure and efficient and it also means some functions on your site might stop working.

You should follow up on the latest updates for your theme and plugins and make sure that they stay up to date once the update is released.

JQuery has published the guide on updating your code to jQuery 3.0 and higher. You can still use the jQuery migration helper plugin to test and resolve the problems with the obsolete code.

If you are using some custom jQuery code, make sure that you check it out for compatibility with the latest jQuery version.

Easier transition from HTTP to HTTPS

The new 5.7 update bring options for easier migration from HTTP to HTTPS. It comes with the capabilities to detect if the user’s hosting environment supports HTTPS and provides a one-click update process.

It will be handling mixed content rewrites where possible and should fix the known issues with the CORS rules.

Once you update to WordPress 5.7, you’ll no longer need additional SSL plugins to handle the HTTP to HTTPS transition.

So, in WordPress 5.7, the Site Health Status screen will notify users about the state of SSL and HTTP, and guide them with a new button that updates the site with a single click. It also migrates the site content on the fly and set up the usage of HTTPS URLs. This change also comes with new environment variables and filters that allow hosting providers to change the URLs linked in the HTTPS status check-in.

It’s important to note that the streamlined HTTP to HTTPS migration in 5.7 does not handle updating content in the database.

Also, if your website is using the constant values for your URLs, hard coded inside wp-config file, you will need to apply changes manually to config file again in order to see changes.

New plugin and theme automatic roll-back

The WordPress will now be able to roll back the changes, once it faces any issues while performing theme or plugin updates.

The core update has this feature for a long time. This protection feature will usually roll back to the previous version, once it stuck with the core update. This, however, didn’t fix the server side issues like “disk full” or similar.

Now, the plugin and theme update will be able to roll back to the previous version to prevent the well-known WordPress critical error message.

Gutenberg update

Gutenberg will get updated to the latest version and it will ship additional blocks. It comes with refined UI, it will add tools for themes and design.

The Gutenberg update will continue with the planned changes for the widget screen.

Admin color scheme gets an update

One of the nice things is that the color scheme for the admin panel will get an update. The available color schemes haven’t been changed since their introduction. This change should bring the separate SCSS file for handling the admin color schemes. They are currently located in the _admin.scss file and thus it can complicate the needed changes in some cases.

New Robot API and search engine visibility settings

The release could include the upcoming changes regarding the robots meta tags handling. It should roll out with the option to control whether search engines are allowed to display large media from the site.

Minor tweaks and fixes

The core team will also provide the overall improvements to performance and minor fixes reported with the latest two updates, 5.5 and 5.6.

Conclusion

The new update will be much anticipated as it brings some cool new features, jQuery update that will offer some new benefits for all theme and plugins that are utilizing the latest code changes.

If your website is not yet ready for some major jQuery changes you should consider preparing it and performing the 5.7 updates manually, once your website is capable to fully support it.