WordPress 5.0 will probably be released Thursday, December 6th 2018

WordPress 5.0 will most probably be released this Thursday, December 6 2018. This comes as a surprise to a lot of people, including us. WordPress 5.0 includes the Gutenberg editor, giving users a brand new editing experience. While we initially see this as an improvement, we doubt if everyone is ready for it at this point.

WordPress 5.0 is a huge release as it sees the introduction of a new editing experience. Most people currently know it by its development name, Gutenberg, but once it’s part of core WordPress, you’ll most likely just hear it referred to as the Block Editor.

Gutenberg is replacing the existing edit screen with an entirely new interface, which is not backward compatible. Meaning, Gutenberg doesn’t work with themes and plugins that were not specifically designed for it. If you’re keen to see what this looks like, you can install the Gutenberg plugin on your site before WP 5.0 arrives and give it a test run. In fact, it’s highly recommend that you do, to make sure that this new editor doesn’t break any of your existing functionality.

If you’d like to keep using the existing editor, thankfully there’s a way, at least for now. Download and activate the Classic Editor plugin on your site before updating to WordPress 5.0. If your site is using one of the many page builder plugins (or themes) out there, like Elementor, Beaver Builder or Divi (just to name a few), then it’s also a very good idea to install the Classic Editor plugin.

WordPress 5.0 due for release on Nov 19th (what to do to prepare)