WordPress, which was launched in 2003, is the world’s most popular content management system. It has grown a lot over the last 19 years, thus on January 25, 2022, it released a new updated version, 5.9 Josephine. If you’re a WordPress developer, you should know that the most recent version provides what new features, changes, and enhancements that makes creating website content much more familiar and easier.
However, before you update, make a backup of your entire site, including Plugins, Files, Media Library, and WordPress Files and Database.
Let’s have some insight on the few updates of WordPress 5.9
- Full Site Editing (FSE)
This is the most significant update of WordPress for which everyone was waiting for a long time. WordPress brought in the capabilities to completely create everything you want right inside the block editor. For e.g., headers, footers, page structures, templates, etc. It’s like having many dishes on a single table. But there’s a catch: if you update, you’ll lose access to the customizer because the new editor only works with block-based themes.
- Theme Blocks
The new default theme named as Twenty Twenty-Two, ships with WordPress 5.9 and is a very first default block theme. With this feature, now you have a lot of customization power in your hands, which makes the FSE experience more powerful. 404 error pages, single post, and archive pages are just a few of the page layouts available, with some header and footer styles in Twenty Twenty-Two. Though classic themes continue to exist and work as always but as also mentioned above, to use the feature of full site editing, you will need to use the new features of block themes, like theme.json or the template editor.
- UI and UX Enhancement
Many WordPress users spend the majority of their time creating and managing content in the block editor. Hence, the updated version brings in many improvements in the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) feature. Such as, collapsible list view, focus mode, drag-and-drop feature, blocks, padding, and many more.
- The change in the list view and its collapsibility makes a decent improvement to the page builder experience. For example, snippets placed right next to an element can help you navigate a particular element change quickly and easily. The collapsibility in the list view makes it easy to manage complex block structures and have a visual experience, to understand how your page is built.
- The list view has a drag-and-drop feature that allows you to easily reposition content by dragging and dropping items, giving you the freedom to move items around.
There are many more updates and features which are made to make your WordPress journey much easier such as, style, typography and a lot more.
- Pattern Library Integration
It is a library similar to the team or plugin library that WordPress actually started. It’s simply a collection of pre-built blocks known as patterns that you may utilize in your websites. The explore option provided in WordPress opens up the pattern library in a modal interface, making it much easier to navigate the patterns with a single click. It’s just an innovative approach to build websites natively through WordPress without going on to the third-party plugins.
- Performance Improvement/ Enhancement
In WordPress 5.9, there are some performance improvements done. Like, it modified the image lazy loading feature to optimize the page speed. Apart from this, the new version now also includes support for PHP 8.1, as well as a compatibility upgrade to the PHP testing framework, making the performance of the site really cherishable.
Conclusion
The new version of WordPress takes it a step forward by adding a block editor, UX enhancements, and many new designing tools and elements. These were just a few major upgraded features provided to us, though there are many updates and features to make it facile and easy for developers to make it user-friendly, like bug fixing, new compatibility tools and a lot more. For a beginner, the new default theme is also a great starting point as it has many templates and pattern options. To grow further in this field, this updated version can help to explore and inculcate your creative mind in developing many websites.
Happy Developing!
