WordPress 5.7 “Esperanza” is the first WordPress release of 2021. It is named in honor of Esperanza Spalding, a modern musical prodigy. The new version brings improvements to the WordPress block editor functionality, user interface, and more.
Easily migrate from HTTP to HTTPS
Until now, converting a WordPress site from HTTP to HTTPS hasn’t been an easy task. Now WordPress can detect whether a site runs on a hosting package that uses HTTPS but hasn’t made the move from HTTP yet. With this release migration to HTTPS can be accomplished in one click. WordPress automatically will updates database URLs where possible.
Easier to use editor
One of the highlights is the new drag-and-drop capabilities in the block inserter. Now you can drag and drop blocks directly from the inserter panel to the spot where you want them in your post or page editor. Before, you had to click on the block you wanted to add it to the editor. This makes a great upgrade for placing blocks exactly where you want them in your content.
Now, font-size controls are right where you need them in the List and Code blocks. No more trekking to another screen to make that single change.
In addition, several enhancements make reusable blocks more stable and easier to use. And now they save automatically with the post when you click the Update button.
Regarding buttons, you can now also align the content in them vertically.
A simpler default color palette for admin panel
In an effort to clean up the WordPress admin CSS, a simplified and standardized WP-Admin color palette has been introduced in WordPress 5.7. It standardizes the palette to seven core colors and a range of 56 shades. All of the seven core colors start at white and get darker with the same amount of ‘darkness’ on each shade towards dark. Last but not least, the new colors look great.
New robots API
WordPress 5.7 introduces a filter-based Robots API, providing central control over the robots meta tag. Now site owners can include filter directives in the robots meta tags.
The API now includes the max-image-preview: large directive by default. That means search engines like Google can show bigger image previews, which can boost your traffic.
Lazy loading iFrames
With the WordPress 5.5 release in August 2020, default lazy loading for images was introduced. Now, by default, WordPress will add a loading=”lazy” attribute to iframe tags when both width and height are specified.
Before you update to WordPress 5.7
Before running any major update of WordPress core, make sure to backup your website. We recommend making a complete backup that includes your WordPress database, WordPress files, themes, plugins, media library, etc. before proceeding with the update.
