Published on 11 February 2022 (Updated 11 February 2022)
The 5.9 version of WordPress “Josephine” is now available! Named after the international jazz singer Josephine Baker, this major version brings us the second part of full site editing that allows users to have a complete edition of their sites. We will describe this update and let you know our opinions.
New theme: Twenty Twenty-Two
Every year, WordPress releases a new theme.
This year, the theme is called Twenty Twenty-Two. Quite an original name, isn’t it?
Inspired by a bird that looks free and light as air, the theme is both minimalist and playful.
(Illustration of the new theme Twenty Twenty-Two)
The theme has many customization options for fonts, colors and other design elements.
Perhaps the most important thing is that Twenty Twenty-Two is compatible with the new full-site editing feature first introduced in WordPress 5.8.
Full Site Editing
Full Site Editing is one of the major updates in WordPress 5.9.
WordPress 5.9 adds more possibilities to edit your site fully, as was introduced in WordPress 5.8. It offers a whole new way to edit your whole site from within the editor itself.
This adds a new section to your client interface in your “Appearance” menu, where most users edit their site.
As you can imagine, it is a pretty big change!
However, an important note is that the full site editor (FSE) only works if you use a block-based theme, such as Twenty Twenty-Two.
Peexeo designs custom themes, and since we create everything with our hands and brains, these changes would not be of much use to our team.
But for users of block-based themes, WordPress 5.9 would indeed be very beneficial.
Language selection at login
A new minor feature in WordPress 5.9 will be helpful for all multilingual WordPress sites.
(Illustration of the Peexeo login page)
If your site has more than one language installed, users can select their preferred language on the user login page.
This is especially useful for international websites! Note that only the languages that have been installed on your site will be displayed (and not the others).
General Performance Updates
Finally, WordPress 5.9 has introduced some performance improvements that everyone will appreciate!
These include improved image loading, faster reusable blocks, faster front office improvements, and tons of other minor tweaks.
Even though most of them are running in the background, you can still probably notice that your site is now working faster than before!
(Illustration of the WordPress article on the performance improvements in version 5.9)
In the WordPress article here, you can find directly a complete list of the technical improvements with explanatory graphics.
Conclusion for WordPress 5.9
The WordPress CMS now dominates the market by a wide margin with a 44% market share and is aiming to move up a gear by launching Full Site Editing (FSE) on a broader scale.
“The main goal for 2021 is to get full site editing for all users”
Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of WordPress
This new version of WordPress 5.9 will allow you to fully customize your site directly within the WordPress editor.
It takes a step forward into new techniques, which will take years to produce their effects, provided the existing ecosystem is switched on. The block approach may discourage some professionals but will undoubtedly provide a lot of flexibility for first-time users.
As you might have understood, WordPress now mixes content and form within the same editor, which diverges from its primary mission: publishing content.
