On 25 January 2022, WordPress 5.9 was released to the public, which is named Josephine after the famous international jazz singer Joséphine Baker. Let’s take a look at the new WordPress 5.9 version features.
Full Site Editing is here
It puts you in control of your whole site, right in the WordPress Admin.
Say hello to Twenty Twenty‑Two
And say hello to the first default block theme in the history of WordPress. This is more than just a new default theme. It’s a brand-new way to work with WordPress themes.
Block themes put a wide array of visual choices in your hands, from color schemes and typeface combinations to page templates and image filters — all together, in the site editing interface. By making changes in one place, you can give Twenty Twenty‑Two the same look and feel as your brand or other websites — or take your site’s look in another direction.
The Twenty Twenty‑Two theme is already available to you. It came installed with WordPress 5.9, and you will find it with your other installed themes.
Your personal paintbox awaits
More block themes built for full site editing features are in the Theme Directory alongside the Twenty Twenty‑Two theme, just waiting to be explored. Expect more to come!
When you use any of those new themes, you no longer need the Customizer. Instead, you have all the power of the Styles interface inside the Site Editor. Just as in Twenty Twenty‑Two, you build your site’s look and feel there, with the tools you need for the job in a fluid interface that practically comes alive in your hands.
The Navigation block
Blocks come to site navigation, the heart of user experience.
The new Navigation block gives you the power to choose: an always-on responsive menu or one that adapts to your user’s screen size. Whatever you create, know it’s there to reuse wherever you like, whether in a brand new template or after switching themes.
More improvements and updates
Do you love to blog or produce content? New tweaks to the publishing flow help you say more, faster.
Better block controls
WordPress 5.9 features new typography tools, flexible layout controls, and finer control over details like spacing, borders, and more — to help you get not just the look, but the polish that says you care about details.
The power of patterns
The WordPress Pattern Directory is the home of a wide range of block patterns built to save you time and add core site functionality. And you can edit them as you see fit. Need something different in the header or footer for your theme? Swap it out with a new one in a few clicks.
With a near full-screen view that draws you in to see fine details, the Pattern Explorer makes it easy to compare patterns and choose the one your users will expect.
A revamped List View
In 5.9, the List View lets you drag and drop your content exactly where you want it. Managing complex documents is easier, too: simple controls let you expand and collapse sections as you build your site — and add HTML anchors to your blocks to help users get around the page.
A better Gallery block
Treat every image in a Gallery block the same way you would treat it in the Image block.
Style every image in your gallery differently from the next (with different crops, or duotones, for instance) or make them all the same. And change the layout with drag-and-drop.
WordPress 5.9 for developers
Introducing block themes
A new way to build themes: Block themes use blocks to define the templates that structure your entire site. The new templates and template parts are defined in HTML and use the custom styling offered in theme.json. More information is available in the block themes dev note.
Multiple stylesheets for a block
Now you can register more than one stylesheet per block. You can use this to share styles across blocks you write, or to load styles for individual blocks, so your styles are only loaded when the block is used. Find out more about using multiple stylesheets in a block.
Block‑level locking
Now you can lock any block (or a few of them) in a pattern, just by adding a lock attribute to its settings in block.json — leaving the rest of the pattern free for site editors to adapt to their content.
A refactored Gallery block
The changes to the Gallery block listed above are the result of a near-complete refactoring. Have you built a plugin or theme on the Gallery block functionality? Be sure to read the Gallery block compatibility dev note.
Learn more about the new features in 5.9
Want to dive into 5.9 but don’t know where to start? Visit learn.wordpress.org for expanding resources on new features in WordPress 5.9.
Check the Field Guide for more!
Check out the latest version of the WordPress Field Guide. It highlights developer notes for each change you may want to be aware of. WordPress 5.9 Field Guide.
