WordPress 5.8 What’s New? New Features and Changes

Last updated: May 8, 2022

WordPress 5.8 Tatum was released on July 20, 2021. You can update to WordPress 5.8 now; here's a look at what's new and what's changed in WordPress 5.8.

WordPress 5.8 Release Date

WordPress 5.8 was released on July 20, 2021.

The development cycle for WordPress 5.8 had the following schedule.

Please see the following article for release dates of other versions.

WordPress 5.8 Codename

The WordPress code name is named after a jazz musician.

The code name for WordPress 5.8 is Tatum, after the jazz pianist Art Tatum.

Art Tatum – YouTube

Server Requirements for WordPress 5.8

The following requirements are recommended for running WordPress 5.8.

• PHP 7.4 or higher
• MySQL 5.6 or higher, or MariaDB 10.1 or higher
• Nginx or Apache

Please see the following article for the recommended PHP and MySQL versions for each version of WordPress.

How to get WordPress 5.8

WordPress 5.8 available on the download page.

Please refer to the article below on how to download WordPress.

How to try WordPress 5.8 beta?

There are two ways to try out the beta version of WordPress.

• Install the WordPress Beta Tester plugin
• Download the Zip file directly.

The beta version may be subject to updates to the database structure during development. It is not always possible to downgrade.

Do not use it on your operational website. Please prepare a local environment.

How to install the WordPress Beta Tester and update to the beta version is described in the following article.

How to update WordPress 5.8

To update to WordPress 5.8, click the Update Now button on the Update page of your dashboard.

Be sure to back up your files and database before a major update.

You will be in maintenance mode during the update.

New features and changes in WordPress 5.8

WordPress 5.8 has the following new features and changes.

WebP Support

WebP is supported from WordPress 5.8. You can upload and use it in your media library.

However, other image formats such as PNG cannot be converted to WebP, and you need to prepare WebP by yourself.

The following article explains what WebP is, browsers that support WebP, its benefits, and how to convert images to WebP.

End of IE 11 support

WordPress 5.8 will no longer support Internet Explorer 11 (IE 11).

If you open the dashboard in IE 11, a warning will appear, so use the latest browser.

For more information about IE 11’s share and the impact of the end of support, please check the following article.

Block Widget

The block editor has been adopted for widgets as well as for posts. You can now add any block to the widget area.

If you want to revert to the traditional widgets, install and activate the Classic Widgets plugin.

Return to the classic (legacy) widget.

The following code can also be used to disable the block widget.

remove_theme_support( 'widgets-block-editor' );

Template Editor

The template editor is a feature that allows you to create and edit block templates for specific posts and pages.

The template editor is disabled by default. You can enable it by adding the following code to your theme’s functions.php.

add_theme_support( 'block-templates' );

Let’s click New.

Create a custom template.

1. Enter a name for the template
2. Click on the Create button

The template editor will appear. You can edit the block template with blocks and patterns.

Pattern Directory

Just copy and paste your favorite pattern from the Pattern Directory and use it in your post.

Move the mouse over the pattern you want to copy, and click the Copy button.

Use Ctrl+V to paste in a post to see the pattern you copied.

Block Editor

New block added

14 new blocks have been added to the Design category.

Among the newly added blocks, we will introduce the query loop block. It displays a list of posts as a result of a query.

There is an option to customize the query arguments. You can filter by post type, sort order, category, or contributor.

List view

A list view has been added instead of an outline. All blocks are displayed in a list. You can click on a block from the list view to move it.

If the block has an HTML anchor set, it will be displayed in the list view.

Block Toolbar

The block toolbar has been made more intuitive. Related tools are now grouped together.

Below is a comparison of WordPress 5.7 and WordPress 5.8 in the image block.

Duotone Filter

Duotone filter has been added for images and videos in image blocks or cover blocks.

Duotone can be applied to images uploaded to WordPress.

What is Duotone and how to use the Duotone filter is introduced in the following article.

Group Block

The following three options have been added to the group block

1. Styles
2. Spacing
3. HTML element

The HTML element can be selected from div/header/main/section/article/aside/footer.

Social Icon Block

It is now possible to change the alignment position of social links.

• Justify items left
• justify items center
• justify items right
• Space between items

Button Block

Space can now be evenly allocated and placed in button blocks.

Column Block

Color and spacing can now be specified for column blocks.

Table Block

It is now possible to change the color of the text in the table block. You can also specify the background color as desired.

Support PDF Embed

PDF embed is now supported in file blocks. The PDF will be previewed in the post.

Height of embedding, etc. can also be specified.

Infinite Scrolling in Media Library removed

In WordPress 5.8, infinite scrolling in the media library has been removed for accessibility reasons.

When you open the media library, 40 media will be displayed. Clicking the Load more button will display additional media.

If you want to turn back infinite scrolling in the media library, please refer to the following article.

Can I use Full Site Editing?

In WordPress 5.8, not all areas of the site can be edited in the block editor.

Features have been added for full site editing, such as the block widget and the newly added query loop block.

Full site editing is planned for some time in 2021. If you want to try full site editing now, please check the following article.

Other versions of WordPress 5.8

Updates for other versions of WordPress 5.8 are available here.

Next update

The following article describes the upcoming updates.

Past Updates

The previous updates are described in the following article.