WordPress 5.3 Update New Features Everyone Needs to Know About

Wondering why should you press the WordPress 5.3 update button?

Well the short answer is:

This update has something for everybody – creators, designers, and clients.

The upgrades in the block editor are a strong advance towards turning into a full-fledged page manufacturer. 

It comes with a ton of improvements – specifically to the blocks editor (aka Gutenberg).
For developers too, there’re some significant improvements under the hood.

In this article, let me show you what’s in the latest WordPress 5.3 update, and what to expect from it.

Reusable Blocks in WordPress 5.3 Update

Sometimes you need to use a piece of content multiple times on a page, Sometimes even across other pages.

For example, a call to action to signup for your blog’s updates.

Before reusable blocks, you had to either copy-paste the content, or use those ugly short-codes.

Reusable blocks are here to change all that.

With WordPress 5.3 update, you can save any block as a reusable block.

Then you can use this block, like any other block, Even on other pages.

Just as easily, you can make a block non-reusable, or manage all reusable blocks in one page.

Introducing The Group Block

The block editor, introduced in WordPress 5.0 update is a big improvement over the classic editor.

But it falls short when it comes to designing landing pages.

Try designing a banner area with a background image or a video and you’ll know what I mean.

Yes, I know, there’s a cover block, but it has its limitations.

That’s where the new group block introduced in the latest WordPress 5.3 update can help.

As the name suggests this block groups other blocks.

And you can do more with it. Such as:

• Add a background image or video with a transparent overlay.
• Set it to align wide or full width.
• Save it as a reusable block and use it on other pages.

Column Block Improvements in WP 5.3 Update

Column blocks help design modern, grid-based landing pages.

But, the columns in WordPress 5.2 aren’t very flexible. Every column in a row has the same width. With no option to make any changes.

WordPress 5.3 comes with flexible width columns. Designers can now change the column widths to create interesting designs.

Along with the group block, this creates a powerful tool for creating complex designs.

Miscellaneous Block Improvements

There are also quite a few improvements in the image, button, table and latest posts blocks.

The image and the table blocks will come with multiple styles.

The button block will have a customizable border-radius.

The latest posts blocks will allow you to add excerpts as well as control the excerpt length.

You’ll also see a new social-links block in the editor after the latest WordPress 5.3 update.

Improved Image Optimization in WP 5.3

WordPress is notorious at handling large images.

Larger images mean more load time, and also more processing and hosting resources, which leads to a bad user experience and lower SEO results.

Yes, you have an option to use third-party image optimization plugins to speed up your WP website.

But with more people using mobile devices to capture photos and posting them online, it had to change.

WordPress 5.3 update changes all that.

It comes with built-in improvements to handle and process large images.

It is also able to:

• Resume uploads, if something goes wrong during the process.
• Fix image rotation using EXIF data.

New Default Theme in WordPress 5.3

WordPress 5.3 will ship with a new default theme.

As a long-time WordPress user, it should be easy to guess its name.

Yes, it’s Twenty Twenty.

The theme has a central content column, this makes it great for a blog.

But you can use group, column, and other content blocks to design a website for businesses too.

The theme comes with a variable font, all the font weights will come in two files, and it saves you a lot of server requests, making your website faster.

Variable fonts only work with modern browsers though, older browsers fall back to the default.

New Admin Dashboard Interface

The admin dashboard in WordPress 5.3 update also comes with some improvements.

The focus will be on accessibility.

Which means you should see more contrasting colors and better text legibility.

The dashboard login screen will come with a toggle option to show or hide the password.

Admin Email Verification in WP 5.3

Before WordPress 5.3, you could change the admin email address without a restriction.

This caused a lot of pain if the entered email was incorrect.

But also, it posed a major security risk.

WordPress 5.3 makes it mandatory to verify the admin email address before changing it.

Improvements in Site Health Report

Introduced in 5.1, the site health report helps you keep your website secure and fast.

While previous versions showed the site health as a percentage, 5.3 will come with a few changes.

Site health will no longer be a percentage.

Instead, it will be a remark like Good or Needs improvement.

Improvements for developers

Previous WordPress versions used robots.txt to discourage search engines from indexing a website.

WordPress 5.3 will use a page-level meta tag instead.

WordPress 5.3 will improve compatibility with the upcoming PHP 7.4.

It will also come with improved data and timezone functions.

This will help developers use them better.

Final Words

Either you are a website owner or a WordPress developer, you will massively benefit from the new WordPress 5.3 update.

Check it out, and try it yourself, and feel free to ask me any questions in the comments below.

Resources:
https://make.wordpress.org/core/5-3/
https://wordpress.org/news/2019/10/wordpress-5-3-beta-3/