With another month of 2020 behind us, it’s time to see what’s been cooking in WordPress! May 2020 has been an active month for the team – with the current COVID-19 situation, more and more WordCamps are being moved online. This, however, doesn’t stop the contributors from making awesome changes to the platform! Read on to see what May 2020 has brought to WordPress.
Steps To Full Site Editing With Gutenberg
Not one, but two new versions of Gutenberg have been introduced – 8.1 on May 13th with a quick follow-up to 8.2 on May 27th. Both releases are significant steps to the full site editing and a serious improvement to the navigation screen.
Gutenberg 8.1
Gutenberg 8.1 added new block patterns features that simplify inserting your desired patterns. What’s more, it launched a new copying button in collapsed block actions – this enhanced the experience for touchscreen users and those who don’t use keyboard shortcuts. Now they can quickly copy a selected block.
Another big novelty is the testimonial block and the ability to search through block patterns along with the “keywords” support.
Gutenberg 8.2
Version 8.2 brought block pattern categories to follow up on the 8.1 search engine. It also released the ‘viewportWidth’ property. This allowed for tweaking the block patterns preview’s width – a handy feature for larger blocks!
The contributors also worked on new content alignment for Cover Block, allowing the users to choose from nine options.
The writing and editing experience is now enhanced thanks to a number of enrichments. The team streamlined the copying, cutting, and pasting actions for single blocks; also, writers can now split out of captions and button blocks and continue their writing using “Enter”.
Finally, Gutenberg 8.2 brought in two new block patterns: Features or Services with an option of adding an image to each section and a Hero & Two Columns with fully customizable content.
Both 8.1 and 8.2 were complete with plenty of new APIs and bug fixes, as well as the new documentation and better code quality. They also introduced a selection of experimental features for site editing and navigation screen.
Gutenberg Phase 2
The WordPress team strives to create a new way of managing web content and broadening access to web presence. The continual development of Gutenberg lies at the heart of this idea. This process has been divided into four phases spread to a couple of years.
The release of WordPress 5.0 marked the end of Gutenberg Phase 1 with the introduction of the new block editor. 2020 was proclaimed as the year of further focus on full site editing and progressing through Phase 2, tentatively set to be completed next year.
Both Gutenberg 8.1 and 8.2 were stepping stones towards completing Phase 2. May 2020 was the month of WordPress 5.5 planning and kickoff, as well as the major discussion on the future of the Customizer tool and further development of the Full Site Editing project.
BuddyPress Updates to 6.0.0
BuddyPress, one of WordPress’s biggest and most powerful plugins that makes it possible to build an online community around a blog, went through a major upgrade as well. The newest version was codenamed “iovine’s” and included two new blocks for the WordPress Editor: Members and Groups. With the new Members block, the local avatar management was moved to this component as well.
In the process, BuddyPress’s BP REST API was completed as the six remaining endpoints were added. This release featured over 80 changes.
Most Popular WordPress Plugins In May 2020
CodeCanyon’s best-selling WordPress plugins in May 2020 included a selection of various categories, mostly targeted towards end-user experience. See the Top 10 list below:
- Slider Revolution
- Ultimate Membership Pro
- Bookly PRO
- WPBakery Page Builder
- FileBird
- WordPress Automatic Plugin
- YellowPencil
- Ultimate Addons For WPBakery
- Essential Grid Gallery
- EventON
WordPress In May 2020
After the release of WordPress 5.4.1 in April, the May events may not seem equally exciting. Still, the journey to Full Site Editing is a long one, and each enhancement is a major step towards finishing Phase 2. With the WordCamp online meetups coming soon, we’re in for a great summer in terms of WordPress updates!
