WordPress 5.6 “Simone” new features and upgrade FAQs

WordPress version 5.6 is still named after an outstanding musician: Simone as usual. Nina Simone (February 21, 1933 - April 21, 2003) was a famous American singer, composer, and pianist. WordPress 5.6 allows you to create various content more freely, using the new default theme (Twenty Twenty-One) as the canvas, which supports an ever-increasing collection of tiles as brushes, paintings, pictures, sounds, or rich embedded media.

WordPress 5.6 main features:

New default theme: Twenty Twenty-One

Twenty Twenty-One is equivalent to a blank piece of paper, which makes the block editor the best partner. You can freely express your creativity on this blank piece of paper. Create beautiful layouts in seconds with new tile patterns, and the theme's pastel colors and eye-catching designs will make your creations shine.

The theme also complies with AAA-level WCAG 2.1 standards and has excellent front-end performance.

REST API password authorization function

With REST API application password authorization, third-party applications can connect to your website seamlessly and securely. This new REST API feature allows you to see which applications are connecting to your site and control their work.

Supports PHP 8

5.6 marks the first step in WordPress’s support for PHP 8, but it will take some time for all popular WordPress plugins to support PHP 8. Significant efforts have been made to make WordPress 5.6 itself compatible with PHP 8, but it is very likely that there will still be issues that have not yet been discovered,It is highly recommended to thoroughly test the website before upgrading to PHP 8.

jQuery updated to version 3.5.1

The default version of jQuery in WordPress 5.6 has been upgraded to version 3.5.1. If you find problems with the front-end page of the website, you can run the Test jQuery Updates plug-in to check whether there are errors in the website in advance.

Bundled with the new Gutenberg block editor

Gutenberg 9.2 is perfectly integrated with WordPress 5.6, and its new features are as follows:

• Add video track function.
• Convert multiple selected blocks into "column" blocks.
• Cover: Add a repeating background option.
• Add dropdown button to view templates in sidebar.
• Library Block: Use the image title as a fallback for alt text.
• Table block: Use hooks + API v2.
• Refactor document operations to handle template part titles.
• Information panel layout improvements.
• Remove non-core blocks from default editor content.
• Add a very basic template information dropdown list.
• Renamed "Options" mode to "Preferences".
• Add single column functionality to the Columns block.
• Added more writing flow options: reduced UI, theme styles and spotlights.
• Add option to make "Post Featured Image" a link.
• Add old widget inspector card component.
• Show old widget names in list view.
• Add unsaved changes warning to widget screen.
• Show the name and description of the widget area in the sidebar.
• Widget Editor: Adds basic options for extensibility.
• Referencing multiple instances of a widget is prohibited.
• Embedded widget type.
• Add widget type endpoint.
• Expose the edit-widgets package.
• Uncollapse the widget area when dragging the block.
• Add meaningful labels to ARIA landmarks on the Widgets screen.
• Load custom block assets.
• Test for storing raw html in widget.

WordPress 5.6 upgrade FAQ

1. Background upgrade error

Because WordPress 5.6 was just released during the peak download period, and the WordPress server is overseas, it is inevitable that the background download will fail. You can manually download the latest version for upgrade. The manual upgrade steps are as follows:

• First back up all files and databases of the website.
• Delete the wp-admin and wp-includes directories in the WordPress installation directory. Note Do not delete the wp-content directory.
• Upload all the files in the wordpress directory in the downloaded WordPress 5.6 compressed package to the WordPress installation directory. If there are duplicate files, overwrite them all.
• Run /wp-admin/upgrade.php to perform database upgrade.

2. Plug-in or theme compatibility check

If there are errors or disordered layout on the front end of the website after the upgrade, first disable all plug-ins in the background, and then open one plug-in in order to check whether the website is normal. If a front-end error occurs when opening a certain plug-in, it means that the plug-in is compatible with WordPress 5.6 Sexual issues. If the troubleshooting plug-in does not find the problem, you can switch to the default theme to check the compatibility of the theme.

3. The new version of jQuery may cause some front-end problems

jQuery 3.5.1 is the latest version. Some old plug-ins or themes are developed based on old versions and may cause compatibility issues, such as:

$(document).ready(function(){
.......
});

Such a syntax may cause an error, prompting that $ is undefined. You can change it to:

jQuery().ready(function(){
.......
});

If you are unable to complete the code modification, you can lower the jQuery version, for example, use jQuery 3.3.1

wp_deregister_script( 'jquery-core' );
wp_register_script( 'jquery-core', "https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js", array(), '3.3.1' );//replacement jquery version

You can also install the jQuery Migrate plug-in to solve compatibility issues.

4. If the website uses CDN, the relevant cache needs to be refreshed

Many webmasters use CDN caches that separate dynamic and static content. After upgrading WordPress 5.6, you need to refresh plug-in caches such as WP Rocket, WP Super Cache, and W3 Total Cache first, and then refresh the CDN cache that caches CSS and JS files. The following takes Tencent Cloud CDN as an example:

Replace the domain name with your own.

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