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WordPress 5.6 Update: Awesome new features in WordPress

Hello friends, Welcome to Ushanand Infotech Solutions: India’s Best Web Development Company. In this article we will discuss about WordPress 5.6 Update: Awesome new features in WordPress 5.6. There is a new WordPress 5.6 Update, which is currently running. I know you may not know or care, but you probably need to know about this WordPress 5.6 Update.

Why? Because WordPress 5.6 version is called the biggest and major update by WordPress. And most importantly, you need to know the vulnerability faced with this new WordPress 5.6 Update.

So, let me explain WordPress 5.6 Update to you in a very clear and concise manner.

WordPress 5.6 “Simone”

Instead of just calling it the WordPress 5.6 update, it is better to call it “Simone” – which is the official name.

Wonder why Simone?

Simone is a famous and famous artist and singer. She knocks into the hearts of the audience with her enthusiastic singing abilities. Some of his best hits are “Feeling Good”, “Young, Gifted and Black” and “Four Women”.

In short, his poem looks thrilling and creates a tag line for this WordPress 5.6 Update ie “Code is poetry” So here, what is WordPress ‘coding’, and “us and you” is “sharing our story”.it is so easy.

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What’s New to WordPress 5.6 Simone Update?

WordPress 5.6 Update: Starting your blog has never been easier with WordPress updates. But with this major update, you’re not only gaining flexibility for layout, but also nurturing a creative style to illustrate your ideas.

They introduced a new bunch of blocks to beautify your creativity without hasty coding or installing plugins. This is only a glimpse of the future of WordPress updates. it looks interesting? But, you have to wait for this.

You do not need to wait to hear about this version of WordPress 5.6 Update. So, let’s discuss all its features in detail.

  1. New Default WordPress Theme 2021

WordPress 5.6 Update: When you set up a fresh WordPress blog, you all have a blank Canva with a “Hello World” post. And frankly, I am fed up with it. Surprisingly, this is a very light subject and is best for personal blogs.

In addition, in the WordPress 5.6 Update, the layout and design are again simplified with a new important and classic feature called “Dark Mode Support”.

Yes, you heard it right. A user can rate your website in dark mode. All they have to do is click the dark mode button at the bottom of the screen.

Dark Mode Support in WordPress default theme 2021 So, if you have an AMOLED screen, this mode is going to work for you. This saves the battery as well as your eyes.

By default, dark mode is ‘on’. To make the option ‘off’, you must do the following:

  1. Log in and go to the home page.
  2. Click on the Customize button on the top bar.
  3. Click on “Color and Dark Mode”
  4. Now, check or uncheck it depending on your preference.
  5. Is it too basic? Yes it does.

Did you know that almost 99% of functional WordPress websites do not use the default WordPress theme. Is this sad for wordpress makers? This is not all I say. Because there are other means where they are taking advantage of tons of money.

2. Automatic Updates For WordPress

Automatic updates are one of the major features that were highlighted with previous major updates i.e. WordPress 5.5.

With WordPress 5.5, the automatic update feature for plugins and themes was introduced. Now, WordPress 5.6 comes closer to “all-in-one”.

what does this mean?

WordPress 5.6 Update: If you have a niche WordPress website and you don’t work on it every day, you can take a full year off. Because now, you update not only your plugins and themes, but also WordPress.

  • Automatic Updates For WordPress 5.6 onward
  • Technically, you can still manually update your plugins, themes, and WordPress.
  • Therefore, do not update until your domain name or hosting service expires. that’s awesome? But here’s the catch.
  • Most developers are disabled and recommend disabling auto-updates for their WordPress.

Why Should Disable Auto-update WordPress Update Feature?

Because of the following reasons:

A. New Update Might Break your Website

This is seen with the core update of WordPress 5.5. More than a million websites get a break as WordPress removes the jQuery feature.

If you are from them, I have an easy solution for you- install “Enabled jQuery Migrate Helper” by the WordPress team. And if your website doesn’t break, that’s good.

But this type of scenario can happen on any website. If you are not good at coding then you should disable auto-update for your website.

B. Losing Data or Failing to Back up Your Website

WordPress 5.6 Update: This happens to me. I only rely on “daily backup” by my hosting company. I am not complaining about them. This is completely my fault.

I have a habit of uploading 2-3 posts simultaneously, then edit and update in the WordPress block editor.

After uploading, and publishing content to the web, I received an update notification for WordPress (probably 5.0 or 5.1 version, about 2 years ago). Having no other idea, I update it. And the sidebar and footer of my website behaves unusual.

After that the silly thing I did, I went to Cpanel and changed the files from the previous day’s backup. Guess what happens? Bingo All new posts lost. And I had to re-post all 3. I hate that day

This is why every time you update WordPress, make sure that you have recently backed up your entire site, such as plugins like Updraft Plus.

And it is also recommended by WordPress. Here is the screenshot, what WordPress itself says. If you agree with me, let me know in the comments.

How to Disable Auto- Update of WordPress?

To disable the auto-update feature of WordPress, just follow the same:

  1. Login to your admin area.
  2. Go to the dashboard and click on update option.
  3. In the section of “Current version: 5.6”, there is a blue line link, which either “switches to automatic updates only for maintenance and security releases.” Or “Enable automatic updates for all new versions of WordPress.”
  4. If it says “Enables automatic updates for all new versions of WordPress” then you don’t need to do anything. You’re good.
  5. But if it says “Switch to automatic updates only for maintenance and security releases.” Then you have to click on the link once to disable WordPress automatic updates.

So, let’s move on to the next major feature update of WordPress, that is, in the block editor.

3. Numerous Changes to WordPress Block Editor

People like to work on the classic editor. Although personally, I am a big fan of the WordPress block editor.

It works like a charm. And the hard truth – the classic editor has gone too far. And if you are also a fan of block editor, then you will like these new additional features.

A. More Customization Options

A set of new segments is added to the “Options Menu” (three-dot menu on the left).

a. New choice tab

WordPress is the Preferences tab which changes the tab option from WordPress 5.5.

In addition, in the ‘preference’ option, there is a list of new tabs with a simple check option to enable and disable some functionality of your WordPress blog.

b. Informative description of preference tab

WordPress 5.6 Update: you not only get new features, but also explanations.

Here, all titles have their own informative descriptions. It seems to work for beginners.

c. In the preference box. Face-lift section

A new section – the preferences tab – is added to the preferences window.

With this, you can do a bunch of things, which are listed as follows:

  • Reduce interface: To create compact options and outlines in the toolbar.
  • Spotlight Mode: In the previous version, Spotlight Mode was there, but here, the developers screwed it into the Appearance tab. With Spotlight mode, your block gets highlighted on which you are currently working on.
  • Display button label: This is the new option. As stated, it can replace your toolbar icon with text for better readability and comprehension.
  • Use theme styles: This is a required update. I work on a 1200px width page, which makes it a bit tricky when using side menus and bullet pointers (the block editor covers the entire screen).

But now, I uncheck it and work with the default block style of WordPress.

In addition, it is easy and interval free.

d. New Information With Character Count

Like Microsoft Word or wordcounter.com, here you can also see the character count. I know, most of us don’t need character count, but when you write a meta description, for character matters. There is not much to explain here, so let’s move on to the next part.

B. New Pattern Design

WordPress 5.6 Update: The “new pattern design” is called the WordPress Creator. For creative people I like what is called a “masterpiece”.

In the Pattern section, there is a new pattern menu format listing: buttons, columns, gallery, headers, and text. These patterns go hand-in-hand to make your posts more attractive to users.

In addition, there is another additional section with beautiful patterned design, especially for the WordPress 2021 theme.

At first, it looks cool compared to other patterns. But in practice, most users do not need it on their blog.

However, if you are an artist, building a portfolio, or designing a website to showcase your creative photography, then this is designed just for you.

Otherwise, I do not recommend it. since. There are other contenders like Element or Thrive Architect who are far better than this.

There is one more thing here, I forgot to mention. You can only use a new pattern Twenty-Twenty in the 2021 theme.

C. Column Image Collage

With this new ability of WordPress 5.6 update, you can make a column image collage of selected images in your blog post.

This is how you can do this.

  • Upload the image in your blog post, one by one.
  • While holding the shift key, select the image that you want to have in collage.
  • Now, click on the Image button.
  • In the drop-down menu, select the column option.
  • You have an active collage with live editing capabilities.
  • Keynote: It looks good when you have uploaded the same dimension images. Otherwise, it doesn’t align properly and looks like junk.

4. Rest API Authentication (Application Password)

WordPress 5.6 Update: With the updated WordPress 5.6 version, you get the developer feature of Rest API Authentication in the Author tab.

With its help, you can authorize third-party applications such as plugins and themes directly from your website without manually signing in with your email credentials.

Here, you can also analyze which plugins or themes of user data are associated with your web. But here comes the sad part.

Wonderfence: The WordPress Security blog highlighted the risk of using Rest API authentication in its post. You can check the post from here.

So, if you ask me, “Should I use Rest API Authentication to authorize third party apps?” I would say, you should wait for the next update. Over time, me and you get a clear image of whether we should use this API feature.

5. WordPress 5.6 Updates Support PHP 8

WordPress 5.6 Update: With each update of the PHP version, you are getting high performance improvements. It seems the same with PHP 8. In short, PHP 8 can be a favorable deal for app developers and online app websites.

So, if your website has an online tool – you are going to perform optimally with PHP 8 and PHP 8 JIT versions. I know, it sounds a bit technical. And honestly, it does.

So, in short, you are going to have better page loading speed and less computing time to process data by your server.

Why? Although your WordPress 8 supports PHP, it has a number of themes and plugins that support it, especially for those whose developers do not regularly update.

So, now is not the best time to go with PHP 8.

6. jQuery Addition

Sorry, I’m going to be a bit technical again. As I said before, WordPress removed the jQuery migrate script from its WordPress 5.5 update. Millions of websites were scrapped that contained some elements of the jQuery script.

If you are one of them, please solve the problem before updating your WordPress to version 5.6.

This is because this version has inbuilt jQuery Migrate v3.3.2 which will conflict with the “Enabled jQuery Migrate Helper Plugin” version v1.4.1. Furthermore, according to the WordPress developer, this is the second phase of a 3-step plan to remove jQuery from WordPress.

  • Step 1: WordPress 5.5 (August 2020) Remove jQuery script.
  • Step 2: WordPress 5.6 (December 2020) added the latest jQuery script for WordPress.
  • Step 3: WordPress 5.7 (March 2021) is going to remove jQuery script completely.

So, if you have a website that uses jQuery script, then this is the right time to solve your co-dependency on jQuery script. Otherwise, the next update may be a nightmare for you.

Final Thoughts on WordPress 5.6 Update

WordPress 5.6 Update: Awesome new features in WordPress 5.6: With each incremental decimal number in the WordPress version, this CMS is constantly evolving and improving. It makes it smart by balancing performance and optimization.

Apart from this, it is one of the biggest updates of WordPress which comes with a new default theme, auto-WordPress update, dark mode and building blocks (in block editor).

WordPress 5.6 Update: you are achieving optimum performance with a nicer and cleaner web design. All this, along with this post on “WordPress 5.6 Update“. But, following are some of the questions asked by the user.

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Satendra Kumar Rawat

I’m Satendra Kumar Rawat Founder of Ushanand Infotech Solutions, a multi-talented human with over 6+ years of experience in Web Development and Search Engine Optimization. I’m a Certified Best Seo Expert in Agra. I have a specialization in high-quality Web Development & Seo Services. I have a prior goal of providing the best website ranking & Development solution to my clients.

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