WordPress Portsmouth Online Meetup - 16th September 2020 - What's new in WordPress 5.5 and how to use it

Join the WordPress Portsmouth Meetup on 16th September 2020 to discover what’s new in WordPress 5.5 and how to use it.

By mid September 2020, WordPress 5.5 should have been live for about 5 weeks. WordPress 5.5 “Eckstine” was released on 11th August. And 5.5.1 was released on 1st September.

What’s new in WordPress 5.5

There are quite a few changes that affect the end user, including:

Automatic plugin and theme updates
Block editor changes – updated to match Gutenberg v8.5/6/7.
- New UI design
- Block inserter
  - Block directory and search
  - Block patterns and search
- Image editor
jQuery
Lazy loading
XML sitemaps

Published Video

Slide deck, social media promotion pack and questions and answers on 5.5 are available for Meetups and other WordPress events to use and adapt. These are based on suggestions from contributors and Meetups. You can find them on GitHub at https://github.com/wpmarketingteam/WP5.5

How to use it

Our intention is to help explain some of the changes and how to use them.

If you’ve already installed WordPress 5.5. you may have already seen the About WordPress 5.5. page, which featured a few silent videos. If you want to see it again, visit the About WordPress page under the WordPress logo in the Admin bar.

https://example.com/wp-admin/about.php

where you replace example.com with your own website address. e.g.

https://wp-pompey.org.uk/wp-admin/about.php

SPEAKERS

We will be joined by a number of contributors involved in or supporting the WordPress 5.5 release. Abha Thakor has led on the user-focused question and answers, which have been developed as a pilot for future releases. She is on the Release Squad for 5.5 and 5.6 and is one of the Marketing Team reps.

She will be joined by colleagues on the Q&As working group and developer Christopher Churchill and Nemanja Cimbaljevic, who will walk attendees through many of the new features in 5.5.

We also expect to be joined by a member of the Release Squad and Core Committers who will give an insight on how you can get involved, help with tickets and testing with future releases.

Christopher Churchill

Christopher Churchill is the Head of Support & Expert Community at Codeable. He has been developing websites professionally since 2011, mostly on WordPress. Today, he oversees the support and expert community teams at Codeable and is responsible for enabling both clients and experts to thrive and succeed on the platform.

Nemanja Cimbaljevic

Nemanja Cimbaljevic, is a backend developer since PHP4, and a WordPress and open-source advocate.

What bugs you?

You may have already started using WordPress 5.5 / 5.5.1 and have found things that bug you. Are these real bugs or just niggles? If they are real bugs, how do we report them?

Example: An image cropped in the editor is not attached to the parent page, but the original image that was seleted is attached.

Example: Problem with Media &Text Block. See https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/21399

If we have time we may also discuss what’s planned for WordPress 5.6.

⏱ AGENDA

Time	Item
7.00pm	Connect to Zoom. Bring your own drink and chat
7.10pm	Organisers’ introduction to the online meeting
7:15pm	Talks start – including Q & A
8:45pm	Wrap-up

To find the times in your location, websites like WorldTimeBuddy.com can help. Put in the timezone you want to convert (7pm BST in this case), and enter your location timezone to view your local time.