New Features in WordPress 5.9: A Complete List
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Every year, a new theme is introduced to WordPress and this year is no exception. The minimalist design and lightweight theme, known as Twenty Twenty-Two, instantly caught the attention of the audience. It is designed as the most flexible default WordPress theme yet. Therefore, it provides users with immense control over every aspect of the design.
The theme has different customization options for colors, fonts, and other design elements. Additionally, one can use the theme's ready-made patterns while writing content. Full site editing capability makes the theme even easier to use. We will explore this in the next pointer.
This is how to activate the Twenty Twenty Two theme:
- Click Appearance
- Click Activate
That's it, the last theme is now enabled.
Complete site edition
The full site editing feature is not something new. It was introduced in WordPress 5.8. However, this version is based on this feature. Several elements are introduced to improve the site editing experience. Now it's easier to edit any WordPress theme and create a website with a unique and personalized design. Here are some features exclusive to the full site edition.
- Blocks throughout the site
WordPress 5.9 will introduce 10 new blocks created especially for full site editing. You can find it in the Theme menu. Some of the theme blocks you can find in 5.9 are navigation, template part, footer, header, post author, next post, comments, term description, and file title.
All this makes editing easier. You can add or remove any block to make changes to the website design.
- Block style change
With this site editor, you can make changes to the individual block styles used on a website. Click the Style button and choose Blocks. You can see a list of blocks that can be edited and customized. Here you can set styles for individual blocks throughout the website. For example, you can change button colors to match your brand colors, modify header font sizes, etc.
As you can understand, the latest version of WordPress seeks to give users an additional level of control and ability to customize a website. You can hire WordPress developers to create a website with easy-to-use features and functionality.
- Add site-wide styles
Here, you can create a new style for your theme. Remember that it will be applied throughout the website. All you need is to click on the Style icon located at the top right corner of the screen while editing any page or post. You can also change website colors and typography from this menu.
Once you choose, you can save these changes for an individual template, parts of the template, or as a global style for the entire website.
- Edit navigation menu
In WordPress 5.9, the Menu feature is changed to 'Navigation Menus'. Here, you can use the Navigation Menu block in the site editor to add elements to it.
This block allows you to easily create navigation menus, adjust colors, add new links, modify alignment and spacing, etc.
Block Editor Improvements
A significant portion of WordPress users are content creators. Furthermore, companies these days invest in WordPress development services as they focus on content creation. Therefore, the recent release of WordPress introduces new features in its block editor. Here are some of the useful features:
- Move section
You can move sections directly from the ListView in the toolbar. All you need is to click on any element and simply move it up, down or sideways. Therefore, you can easily readjust the layout by aligning different parts of the content.
- Improved heading control
The header block allows users to select a header level from the vertical dropdown menu. Here you can access typography, margin, spacing, and header layout options.
- Improved social buttons and icons
Previously, it was a bit difficult to access the controls in the parent and child blocks while working with icons and social buttons. In WordPress 5.9, child blocks can use the parent block's toolbar. Plus, you can now officially embed Pinterest.
- Rich URL previews in the Block Editor
Previously, when one moused over a link in a post editor, they could only see the URL. But WordPress 5.9 gets and displays rich URL previews for links within a post editor.
This provides a preview of the content of the URL and improves the user experience. Plus, it breaks the monotony of reading long text content.
- Navigation block
WordPress 5.9 allows you to use the navigation block within any WordPress page. Therefore, you can manually create navigation menus on your landing pages and articles.
For example, you can use this feature to create a table of contents with links to different parts of an article.
Other changes to the block
Various options are introduced into the block to control it however you want. For example, design control helps you determine justification and direction. Dimension control allows padding and block spacing.
You can also align the columns with the help of a column block. The lid blocks have a two-tone filter and dimension control with a minimum lid and padding height. The gallery block and post featured image blocks make editing even easier. Now a new block called Row Block appears on the line.
Select language when logging in
If multiple languages are installed on the website WordPress, users can select their preferred language on the login screen. This significantly improves the user experience.
Changes for developers
- Better support for PHP 8.1
PHP 8.1 was released in November 2021. WordPress supports improved compatibility with PHP 8.1. However, you should check if the theme or plugin supports the latest version of PHP.
- Theme.json
Theme.json is a configuration file created in WordPress 5.8 to control block theme styles. WordPress 5.9 supports two-tone filters and child themes in theme.json.
- New filter hooks
WordPress offers filter hooks to allow plugins to modify different types of internal data during runtime. A plugin can make changes to the provided data by binding a callback to any specific filter hook. Once the filter is applied, each bound callback is executed based on priority. Here are some of the newly added filter hooks
- display_login_language_dropdown
- is_post_type_vieweable
- is_post_status visible
- default_template_types
- default_wp_template_part_areas
- wp_login_language_switcher_args
- rss_widget_feed_link
- wp_omit_loading_attr_threshold
And here are some of the newly added features that developers can use:
- wp_is_block_theme
- wp_get_post_revisions_url
- wp_enqueue_block_style
- wp_list_users
- wp_json_file_decode
As you can see, while some of the features introduced in WordPress are easy for everyday people to use, some features require professional skills. Therefore, it is better to hire a reputed website development company to equip your website with high-end features and functionalities.
