In this episode, Malcolm Peralty and I describe what’s new in WordPress 5.8 such as improvements to Media, block-based widget management screen, and WebP image support. I also share what solutions I’ve discovered to problems people have been having with the new block-based widget management screen and the forty image limit for gallery pages.

Later in this episode, we talk about WordCamps and when we can expect to be going back to them or whether we’ll attend them at all. Last but not least, we discuss some of the proposed requirements for the theme directory.

STORIES DISCUSSED:

WordPress 5.8 Released – TatumImage Gallery Infinite Scrolling removedWordFest LiveTheme Requirement Changes FeedbackNew Theme for Chris Wiegman A Defunct Video Hosting Site Is Flooding Normal Websites With Hardcore Porn

Click to View Transcript:

Speaker 1 00:00:20 Welcome everybody to episode four of WP mainline for Friday, July 23rd, 2021. I’m your host, Jeff Chandler and joined, uh, by Malcolm Peralta. And it’s a big week this week because we’re pressed 5.8. Tatum has dropped Tatum.Speaker 2 00:00:34 I don’t know that the name of that is always going to get meSpeaker 1 00:00:37 Tatum, Tatum, Tatum. So this, uh, this release was named in honor of art Tatum, the legendary jazz pianist, uh, according to the, uh, release bod post his formidable technique and willingness to push boundaries, inspired musicians and changed what people thought could be done. Uh, so this was a big release depending on how you look at it. I mean, uh, you’ve got new, uh, you can now manage widgets with blocks. In fact, uh, I guess we’ll stop right there at that first one, because that’s, that’s probably going to be the feature that users maybe recognize at first or it’s one of the most user-facing features in a WordPress 5.8 and it turns out it’s also causing, uh, some issues for, for quite a few users. Um, I’ve been watching the wordpress.org support forums since the release of 5.8 and there are users reporting that their widgets are now, uh, generating, uh, plugin warnings.Speaker 1 00:01:37 Uh, the widgets have disappeared. The widget screen has disappeared. Things have gone very wonky. And then when you start getting into themes and plugins that mess with widgets of widget interface, uh, then things really start to get crazy. Uh, thankfully there is a plugin. You can go look for it on the plugin directory, it’s called classic widgets. And when you install it, it, uh, pretty much puts back the widget management interface, uh, prior to WordPress 5.8. And in most cases that I have seen this has fixed the problem or problems that people have been experiencing. And, uh, and I was actually writing a post about this last night, uh, because there are some things I wanted to cover and, um, you know, uh, I accidentally, I don’t even know the shortcut, the keyboard shortcut to close a browser window. And last night I figured it out at the worst time.Speaker 1 00:02:31 Uh, so those of you who have been listening to the show, remember how I talke