WordPress 5.9 “Joséphine” is here
The latest version of WordPress, dubbed “Joséphine” in honour of jazz singer Joséphine Baker, was released this week. WordPress 5.9 marks a major shift towards a more visual site building experience.
Full site editing is here
Full site editing makes it easy to edit WordPress themes without coding. Users can place and edit blocks from within the built-in site editor, and arrange them as they like. Blocks can contain a number of desired content elements, such as images, text, video, and so on. Block elements can also be used to replace widgets in block-enabled themes.
This new version includes the the new Twenty Twenty-Two default theme, a fully block-enabled theme for those that want to jump right in and try out block building.
Other additions and improvements
New Blocks
WordPress 5.9 includes ten new blocks for site editing, which are listed under the themes section. It also includes better block controls, and you don’t need to use the Customizer for full site editable themes.
Theme.json for child themes
The theme.json file now supports child themes, meaning you can build a child theme in the WP admin panel without writing a line of code. Check out the official dev post for more information.
Multiple stylesheets in one block
You can now register more than one stylesheet per block, which lets a given block load only the styles its markup requests, and not the whole sheet. Read the dev note here.
Gallery Block
The gallery block has been almost completely refactored. The official dev post goes into detail about this, including compatibility notes.
Upgrading to 5.9
By default, WordFleet automatically installs security patches, so you’ll need to install this update manually. This can be done easily from the WordPress admin panel.
You can optionally disable “safe mode” in the WordFleet dashboard on a per-site basis, which installs the latest updates instead of just security patches. Any sites with “safe mode” disabled will have already updated to WordPress 5.9 by the time you’re reading this.
More Information
Check out the official WordPress 5.9 announcement for more details.
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