WordPress 5 released

If you are in the web business in any of its branches, and have never heard of WordPress, it is time to get out of that mayonnaise jar where you have been living. WordPress is the most widely used website building platform on the planet. CMS, Content Management System, or whatever you want to call it, WordPress, free downloadable software, has been updated to version 5. In this note, everything you should know about the new version "Bebo".

Baby touches the printing press

According to tradition, the names of generational WordPress updates were always tributes to famous jazz players. In this case, it was the turn of Dionisio Valdés Amaro, Cuban pianist better known as "Bebo" Valdés. Under this name, WordPress launches its perhaps most ambitious update: from now on, incorporates its own page builder, or site builder. If the bidding was going strong between Visual Composer and Elementor, the two most used plugins to build content with blocks, a third party arrived. His name is Gutenberg, in honor of the German who created the printing machine. It is not bad thought, since WordPress, in Spanish, means "the printing press of the word".

This big step comes loaded with excitement, but also nervousness. How will the audience take this addition? Will it bring incompatibilities with certain themes or even with other plugins? The answer is: probably. But, as the WordPress guys themselves say, certain bugs can be expected given the size of the update. Anyway, an update of this version will appear in the near future, where, without a doubt, and after taking note of the different scenarios where problems occur, most of the anomalies will have been resolved.

various changes

It is likely that the first editing screenshot, after having made the update, will seem, at least, "strange". It is that many things have changed, or are presented in another way.

The editing features that stand out are the “focus” mode, where we can directly hide the right bar, and the “full screen” mode, where we remove both menus, both the left and the right.

Another important change is that there is no longer a fixed toolbar above the text editing field, but rather an intuitive floating bar that will appear when needed following the location of the pointer. Each block of each paragraph or visual element will have its own bar. Let's see:

Following the example, to tell WordPress that a certain sentence or word is a Heading, we must go through these steps:

It is also possible to change the order of the new blocks with a mouse click, as illustrated in the following screenshot:

The previous case is about a text block, called a “paragraph”, but among the block classes we find several common ones, and those who are familiar with Elementor or Visual Composer will assume them beforehand: title, preformatted, quote, image, image gallery, video, audio, columns, files, HTML code, item list, buttons and more. Of course, the community behind WordPress hasn't been left behind, and Gutenberg compatible themes and plugins with more block classes have already been released, among them Otter Blocks.

Another improvement is that, having a tab in our browser with a "preview" of our design open, every time we update the setting, said Preview tab will also be updated. This, common in builders like Elementor, was something alien to WordPress… Until today.

Final Thoughts on Interface Changes

Like all updates that promote changes to its interface, It is advisable to try it for a while before giving it a thumbs down for not finding the tasks in the "usual" way. On this point, we mentioned that WordPress was nervous about the new redesign of its interface; its developers were always aware and sensitive to the user, and this will not be the exception. If someone is not comfortable with this way of editing, they can "go back" to the old fashioned way with this plugin.

new topic

It is common for WordPress to accompany its generational updates with a new theme; in this case, it is Twenty Nineteen, the new default theme. As you will imagine, is optimized for Gutenberg to show off all its charms. The accent is placed on what one sees in the backend is the same as what is seen in the frontend, speeding up the design of the posts a lot.

Together with the new Bebo version, arise new shortcuts. At Duplika we wanted to make it easy for you, and that's why we created this list of keyboard shortcuts so you can edit quickly, performing common actions with your fingers.

Finally, if you want to listen to good music and, at the same time, see the trailer of the new WordPress Bebo version, we leave you with the following link of the trailer official: