Internet and telecommunication are two of the most important aspects of this era of technology. The internet helps to connect with people all over the world with just a click of a button. Therefore, having a presence on the internet is necessary. This is very true for content creators. The WordPress development company has created an effective content management system where they help content creators to have their own website.
How WordPress developer helps
It is quite difficult to manage content online. It is yet more difficult to create a website. A decent amount of programming knowledge is required to develop any website, which cannot be expected naturally from any content creator. This is where WordPress comes in. Content creators hire WordPress developer who creates a website for them and make it easy for them to manage content on their website.
The new WordPress 5.4
Released quite recently, the new WordPress 5.4 is one of the major releases from the company. As a developer you should be aware of the WordPress 5.4 features, which were introduced with this release. The new launch has revamped the WordPress site security, making it difficult for hackers to steal data from the website. Here are the WordPress 5.4 new features that you as a developer should be aware of.
- More power to developers- The new release has brought several new changes and added features for the developers. While some are for WordPress 5.4 security, many other features add to the productivity. Many theme and plugin developers have got their long-awaited features in this release.
- All new social icons block– This feature allows the insertion of social media links in the form of icons. Up to forty different icons can be added to the block. The new WordPress security measures ensure that users have no risk of losing personal data while linking social media icons.
- Enhanced button block- Previously one could use one button block at a time. With the new update, one can group multiple button blocks together. The theme developers are required to take account of the new blocks while creating custom block editors.
- Mobile toolbar improvement- Earlier on mobile phones the block toolbar would hover around all over the place. This was really inconvenient for many. Now the toolbar has been fixed on the top of the page making it easier to use. Additionally, few WordPress security issues that were detected on mobile phones are now taken care of.
- Privacy tools overhaul- As mentioned by a WordPress security expert, there has been a significant update for the privacy toolbar. To safeguard personal data, all exports include session tokens. Additionally, location for community events and custom user metadata are also included. Personal data can be exported in HTML as well as JSON format. However, it is easier to navigate in the HTML format.
- More customizability for blocks- New features include more colour options to choose from. All texts of one paragraph can have individual colour as opposed to full paragraph only option in the previous version. Additionally, newer custom colour gradients can be created by theme developers of WordPress, thanks to the introduction of new Gradients API.
- New changes to block editor- Content creators would definitely want to hire WordPress theme developers to cope with this update. There have been some changes with regard to accessing editor classes. On the other hand, many wrapper elements were completely or partially removed. There also has been changes with regard to the built-in padding and negative margin on the blocks. All these changes may not be compatible with older themes and are needed to be taken care of by the developers. Moreover, newer themes using the added features will be in demand.
- Changes surrounding the calendar widget- WordPress 5.4 has modified the ‘get calendar’ function which also has an impact on the calendar widget. The links to the previous and next months were moved to a ‘nav’ or navigation element situated below the ‘table’ element.
- Easier block plugin creation and sorting- Various new tools and APIs have been introduced in the plugin section. Various WordPress website security plugins have also been added. The plugin developers have to work and absorb in the changes in order to work with the new version. A new NPM package has been added which will help developers create block plugins faster. This is a part of the block scaffolding package which will help developers create a block plugin that will later be added to the official block directory. This will also help developers to add new WordPress security services. On top of it all, block plugins can now be sorted effectively with the help of the block collections API. This will enable developers to create different plugin libraries under a specific namespace which will automatically sort out and group newly created plugins.
- Add variation to blocks with ease- Developers, with the help of block variations API can create multiple copies of the same block and add different variations to it. All variations of the block will appear as separate entities to the user from which they can choose any one of them. This will really save time and energy of developers.
- More control over images- The drag and drop ability for images is game changer for WordPress. It is far superior and convenient compared to selecting an image and then manually uploading it. Now one can also select different sizes for their images in the gallery block itself. Additionally, there are no WordPress security risks now with regard to insertion of images.
Conclusion
Content creators rely a lot on WordPress for managing their content on their own website. WordPress 5.4 has been newly released for 2020. Security features are listed on the top in WordPress 5.4 requirements. You as a developer should be aware of all the changes that took place because soon content creators will hire dedicated WordPress developers to explain how the new version will benefit them. They would also want to know more about WordPress security tips from you, should you get hired.
