Update: As of May 8 2019, WordPress 5.2 is now out and ready to download.
Isn’t it great to hear the new release of WordPress? WordPress 5.2, the first release candidate is available now. Release Candidate term means the new version is ready to release but with millions of users and thousands of plugins and themes, it needs a test just so to know if anything is missing, simply a checking process.
Releasing of WordPress 5.2 is scheduled for Tuesday, May 7 and the process is going on with the problems arising and resolving it.
More about WordPress 5.2
This new release of WordPress 5.2 will give you more robust tools for identifying and fixing configuration issues and fatal errors. With the help of these tools, you can get the right information wherever you need. Either you are a developer helping your clients to manage their site or managing your own site solo those tools can be effective for both purposes.
Brand new features are available in the Site Health Check and PHP Error Protection tools for solving issues with plugins or themes on your site. We can say this release brings a lot of improvement in the block editor, site health check, several bug fixes, and minor enhancements. Moreover, you will find updates in the icons available in your dashboard. From this point on, they will be looking after bug fixes and inline documentation rather than committing more enhancements or features requests.
WordPress 5.2 will rhymes with wp_nav menu( )!. New core blocks will be available and with those users can see an added ability to enable or disable blocks within the block inserter, along with a multitude of other block editor updates. There’s a new area for users to view, copy, share information debug information, improvements to Accessibility and theming Privacy Policy Pages with new features to protect sites from dreaded ” White Screen of Death”. I’m sure developers will love the various new filters and functions. They will also be able to take advantage of 62 enhancements and feature requests, 288 bug fixes and more as many improvements are coming in 5.2.
5.2 with Site Health Check and WSOD Protections
This new version is very concerned about the Site Health Check and the WSOD protections. So few portions of Site Health and Servehappy projects are included and modified in WordPress 5.2 for a better solution. First of all, a new Site Health page is nested under the “Tools” menu. This will run a series of tests on a site allowing the site owners to be aware of the potential issues. Moreover, here the themes/plugins either can add new tests or modify/remove the existing tests using filters. In the “info” tab more debugging and support, information is displayed at the same area of the admin. This will help developers to troubleshoot user issues. About Serve happy projects is for administrators to fix fatal errors. Before, fixing it by administrators was almost impossible without a developer.
How can a user solve the fatal errors occurring in WordPress 5.2? As before, it was a difficult task to resolve the fatal errors by beginners or administrator. But now if you get a fatal error then a message will be displayed on your screen saying ” The site is experiencing technical difficulties”. After that WordPress will send an email to the admin email with a special login link. Clicking on it will make you able to make any changes on your Dashboard. Adding Site Health in Dashboard lets your site be safe and secure which you will be able to see in the WordPress 5.2. You can find it in the “Tools” menu.
Block Editor Updates in WordPress 5.2
The WordPress editor, Gutenberg was introduced in 5.0 and on the way of improvements, it is getting new features. One of the significant change in the core is adding a reusable block-editor module. This module expands the usage of Block Editor. The following are the other improvements:
Performance Improvements
The new classic editor has faster performance than the old classic editor. But while editing lengthier posts it might get slow with tons of other blocks. The new version will cut off the load time by 35% for massive posts. It will also shorten the keypress time. This will make it more responsive while typing post contents.
Accessibility Improvements
Here, WordPress 5.2 will start to support the browser’s reduced motion settings. Similarly, the posts slugs will have better labeling and label text making easier to locate. Also, the editor will provide a clearer and consistent focus styling for keyboard navigating through landmarks. Further improvements will be improving the screen-reader experience with several new speak messages.
Introducing New Blocks
As we can see several new blocks in Gutenberg editor for better performances. Some of them are as follows:
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- RSS Block – RSS block will help you to fetch and display RSS feed in your posts and pages.
- An Amazon Kindle Embed block – This block allows you to embed content from Amazon Kindle.
- Search Block – Search Block enables you to add the default WordPress feature in your content.
- A Calendar Block – There will be a calendar in this block allowing users to click on dates to view posts published on any day.
- Tag Cloud Block – Here on this block users will see tag cloud in their content.
New block manager tool
For better management of blocks, WordPress 5.2 has a new block management tool. The block manager tool will list all the blocks available on your site. This new tools will help you to hide the blocks that you don’t want to use. Here, all you need to do is uncheck it.
The minimum PHP version
The WordPress 5.2 requires PHP version 5.6 which is still old. But the goal is to gradually increase the minimum PHP version requirement with future releases. User with the older version of PHP will receive a notification saying you are running the older version and need to upgrade the older version.
Since WordPress 5.2 will have a lot of improvements, users will find it smooth and easy to use with its new features.
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