If you already have a WordPress site and you haven’t noticed a change with things yet, you will soon. The WordPress update 4.9.8 official release is out and brings with it a new prompt, a few fixes, and a few other enhancements and blessed tasks, including updating the Twenty Seventeen bundled theme. This is by far the most anticipated WordPress release of the year, simply because of that new prompt, but it’s going to be up to you to determine if it lives up to the hype.
The Elephant in the Room – Gutenberg
The addition of the “Try Gutenberg” callout on your dashboard will likely catch your attention first and foremost. This callout is an attempt to get more WordPress users to read more about the new Gutenberg block editor and help with testing.
We really suggest that you attempt to learn more about it at the very least. Gutenberg will soon be merged with WordPress core with the upcoming WordPress 5.0 update and if you aren’t prepared, it could throw you for a loop initially. Take the time to check your themes and plugins for compatibility and prepare yourself for this eventuality. Gutenberg is coming and it’s generating quite a bit of excitement.
If you don’t see the callout yet, don’t worry. The following users will be shown the callout in WordPress 4.9.8:
- If the Classic Editor plugin is installed and activated, the callout is hidden from all users.
- If Gutenberg is installed and activated, the callout is shown to Contributor users and above only.
- If Gutenberg is not installed or activated, the callout is shown to Admin users on single sites, and Super Admin users on multi-sites.
Atomic Blocks WordPress Theme & Plugin
Array is a developer that has eagerly jumped into the Gutenberg fray by releasing Atomic Books – a new free theme developed by them specifically to work with Gutenberg and is one of the first of its kind. A minimalist blogging theme that features full-screen photos, videos, and galleries with an overall modern design along with fancy blocks that are available in a choice of styles: testimonial, accordion, list, grid, notice/message, author profile, sharing icons, customizable button, and drop cap. What you’ll see in your admin page is exactly what you’ll see when you hit publish.
Other Changes So Far With WordPress 4.9.8
While the “Try Gutenberg” callout is the feature the mass majority of us have been waiting for, there are a few other changes designed to improve our WordPress lives in one fashion or another.
- 46 Bug Fixes
- 18 Privacy Fixes
- Gutenberg header wrapping over text below on narrow screens
- Minor tweaks to the Gutenberg callout formatting
- Bumped version number of Bundled Themes and update changelog in Twenty Seventeen
- Fixed the level 2 bulleted lists nested under numbered lists to show bullets instead of numbers
- Commenter cookie consent message is no longer displayed if the cookie action isn’t hooked
- And much more.
Even Gutenberg Got a Recent Update
On July 20th, Version 3.3 of Gutenberg was released. Most of the changes were geared toward refining the experience and empowering the API surface, but new server-rendered blocks were added to the library as well. A few of the there changes were:
- Transformation of the file block to image block (and vice-versa).
- Video block attributes for Autoplay, Loop, Controls, Muted.
- ‘Convert to blocks’ option in HTML block.
- ‘Archives’ block for displaying site archives.
- New ‘Latest Comments’ block to widgets category.
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