WordPress 5.0 – The Big Upgrade

\"\"WordPress is due for a major upgrade shortly.

(Currently in Beta form, here is the link to the latest info https://wordpress.org/news/2018/11/wordpress-5-0-beta-4/)

Whenever you see a piece of software tick over to the next major version (in this case 4.9.8 to 5.0) it can be nervous times for website owners and website developers like us.

In this upgrade WordPress\’ editor is up for a rejig. This time though it is not a small change, but a significant change with the way most WordPress users generate and edit their content.

Gone is the old \”classic\” editor and in comes Gutenberg, the new block driven editor.

To be fair WordPress is playing catchup with other Content Management Systems in the market like Squarespace and Wix in the way their users interact with the websites in a more visual and intuitive way.

To bridge the gap a range of Page Builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, Composer and SiteOrigin have forged a large section of this space. It will be interesting to see how each of these builder integrate themselves into the Gutenberg editor. So far many of them are releasing their own blocks as Gutenberg blocks so users can continue with the system they are used to using.

The day of release is currently set to November 27 and time will tell how bug free the initial release will be.

Our recommendation is to NOT upgrade to version 5 as soon as it is release. Generally there will be two or three patches (5.0.1, 5.0.2 etc) fixing bugs and sorting out teething problems.

Only after this will we contemplate moving our clients onto version 5.

We are testing the migration at the moment to see what issues will be thrown up and this is something that will need to be done with all clients before they make the leap.

Change is necessary, but in some cases it might be a bit messy. We\’ll have to test and find out