What’s New in the Upcoming WordPress 5.9: Things to Expect

WordPress 5.9 is just around the corner. Every year, everyone is waiting to see what the next version of the popular CMS on the planet is going to bring. You might know that WordPress is now the number one CMS on the market and still growing at an exponential rate.

So it’s common that everyone has their eyes fixed on what the people behind the core team of WordPress are planning to bring to the new release, that will be used by millions if not billions of people. But you don’t have to worry. In today’s post, we will share with you some noteworthy options that might change how you design websites using WordPress with the new updates.

Before Getting Started with WordPress 5.9

You can try the latest nightly build of Tutor LMS with the beta tester plugin. All you need to do is install the plugin and allow it to install the latest nightly build that has been released by the core team of WordPress.

Disclaimer: WordPress 5.9 is still in development, so it’s not recommended to run this version on a production site. You can set up a test environment to play with this version.

You can test WordPress 5.9 Beta in a couple of ways:

• Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the bleeding edge channel and the Beta/RC Only stream from settings).
• Direct download the beta version here (zip) and install it directly to your testing environment.

The current date for the final release of WordPress 5.9 is January 25, 2022. So, let’s find out what you can expect to see.

Note: The Twenty Twenty Two theme will be the default theme for WordPress 5.9 release.

Introducing The New Default Theme “Twenty Twenty-Two”

Since WordPress 5.9 will be the first major release of 2022, it will ship with a brand new default theme called Twenty Twenty-Two. The brand new default theme of WordPress 5.9 takes advantage of all the cool features available in the new site editor.

It is designed to be the most flexible default WordPress theme ever. Twenty Twenty-Two features a bold yet minimalistic design using Source Serif Pro font for headings.

The theme also comes with a bunch of ready-made patterns that you can use in the site editor or the block editor when writing content.

Full Site Editing – Huge Expectations

WordPress 5.9 will continue to build upon the site editing features first introduced in WordPress 5.8 earlier this year. This upcoming release is adding a lot more features to the site editing experience.

These new features make it easier to edit your WordPress theme without any code so you can create a website with a unique custom design. If you navigate to the Appearance section of the dashboard and click on the Editor you will be redirected to full site editor mode.

In the full site editor mode you will find the following editor mode which will allow you to customize the look and feel of your site like a drag and drop page builder.

Here is a list of theme blocks introduced in 5.9:

• Navigation
• Template Part
• Header
• Footer
• Post-Author
• Next Post
• Previous Post
• Post Comments
• Term Description
• Archive Title

Another important feature of the site editor is the ability to create new styles for your theme that will be applied across your entire site. Simply click on the Style icon on the top right corner of the screen when editing any post or page.

Note: The theme authors need to update their themes to support full-site editing to allow you to create a new style for your theme.

From here you can change the typography and colors of your website. Once you are done, you can choose to save those changes for individual templates, template parts, or as a global style for your whole website.

You Can Now Change Block Styles

With the new full site editor, you can make changes to the styles of individual blocks that you will use on your website. Simply click on the Style button and then choose Blocks. You’ll see a list of blocks that you can edit and customize.

This allows you to set styles for individual blocks across your website. For instance, you can change button colors to match your brand colors, change heading font sizes, and more.

Noteworthy Block Editor Improvements

Most WordPress users spend the majority of their time writing content. That’s why each WordPress release comes with improvements and new features added to the block editor.

• Effortlessly Move Sections: Users will now be able to move sections from the ListView on the toolbar. Simply click on an item and move it up and down.
• Navigation Block: The navigation block in the site editor can also be used inside your WordPress posts and pages as well.
• Better Social Icons and Buttons: With previous versions of WordPress, it was a bit difficult to access controls of the parent and child blocks when working with social icons and buttons.
• Better Heading Controls: The headings block now allows you to select a heading level from a vertical dropdown menu. You also have more typography, design, margin, and spacing options for your headings.=

Rich URL Previews in Block Editor

Previously, when you hovered your mouse over a link in the post editor, you only saw the URL. WordPress 5.9 will now fetch and display rich URL previews for links inside the post editor.

Language Switcher During Login

If you have multiple languages installed on your WordPress website, then users will now be able to choose their preferred language on the login screen.

Under the Hood Changes

WordPress 5.9 will also bring many changes for developers to explore and use in their own themes, plugins, and projects.

Some of them are listed below

• WordPress core PHP Test Suite will now support PHPUnit 8.x via PHPUnit Polyfills library (See details)
• New function wp_get_post_revisions_url() to get URL for a post revision. (#39062)
• New wp_list_users() template tag will be introduced. (#15145)

What It Means for Themeum Users

We are hard at making sure our customers will make a smooth transition to WordPress 5.9 update with our products. You will be able to experience WordPress 5.9 compatibility for our plugins as soon as possible.

Excited for WordPress 5.9, So Are We

As you can see from the above descriptions, WordPress 5.9 will bring a lot of transformation to how people will use the CMS to build their site. Fingers crossed that will only be for the better. If you have any questions do comment below.

We are as excited as you are for the WordPress 5.9 release. Let’s see if the wait will be worth it. Till then, take care.