New Release: WordPress 5.5

This notice relates to the following platforms: VIP Go

WordPress 5.5 has been released to the VIP Platform. Named “Eckstine” in honor of Billy Eckstine, this latest release includes many new features for Gutenberg alongside accessibility improvements and various developer-focused changes.

NOTE: if you are noticing JavaScript errors after the 5.5 upgrade, they could be related to the removal of jQuery Migrate. To easily add jQuery Migrate back, please install the helper plugin.

What is being added or changed?

Block Editor

WordPress 5.5 merges ten releases of the Gutenberg plugin, including the most recent, Gutenberg 8.5.

jQuery

As part of the phased approach to updating the jQuery version shipped with WordPress, jQuery Migrate has been removed from WordPress 5.5.

For more details about this release (including specific changes), please see the announcement post and Field Guide.

Media

There are 26 updates to the Media component, including the core merge of the Lazy Loading featured plugin that now sees images lazy-loaded by default.

REST API

There are 36 updates to the REST API with particular interest pointed to new and modified endpoints, parameter and JSON schema changes, discoverable REST resource links, new API functions, CORS changes, the new register_theme_feature() function and its arguments, and other miscellaneous updates.

XML Sitemaps

The new sitemaps component in WordPress 5.5 comes from the XML Sitemaps feature project merge. On VIP, we have disabled core sitemaps for the time being to prevent any unexpected changes.

To re-enable them, add the following code to your theme:

add_filter( 'wp_sitemaps_enabled', '__return_true' );

Questions?

If you have any questions related to this release, please open a support ticket and we will be happy to assist.