As I type this news has filtered through that the release of WordPress v5.9 has been pushed back to late January 2022 (January 25 I believe).
But what is WordPress v5.9 and why is it so important (or is it important at all)?
WordPress v5.9 is the latest release of the WordPress CMS. It will finally deliver native full site editing for non-technical WordPress admins and editors without the use of page builders.
Gutenberg and Blocks
Gutenberg is the name for the current editor used in the WordPress content management system.
It was released in December 2018 and replaced the ‘classic editor’ which had been around since the inception of the WordPress CMS and was sorely in need of an update.
Gutenberg is based upon ‘blocks’.
Blocks are the components for adding content in the WordPress block editor. There are many different block types available for you to use.
WordPress.com
Your WordPress CMS comes pre-loaded with many standard blocks including;-
- Paragraph
- Heading
- List
- Image
- Gallery
- Audio
- Video
- Buttons
- Columns
and many more…
The purpose of blocks is to make your WordPress editing experience much simpler and to make it possible for ‘newbs’ or those with little WordPress experience able to create visually appealing content on WordPress with very little investment in learning complex instructions.
Not only are default blocks available in your ‘vanilla’ WordPress install, additionally, any number of custom blocks provided by third parties are also available and the number of these is growing month by month as more and more developers in the WordPress community realise the opportunities.
These third party blocks commonly are available as free or paid plugins whilst theme developers have also got into the act now providing custom blocks with their WordPress themes.
If you are interested some block plugins you might like to investigate are;-
- Kadence Blocks
- Genesis Blocks
- Stackable Blocks
- GeneratePress Blocks
And, of course, as per usual with WordPress, there are many more block libraries available if you are prepared to put in a bit of ‘search effort’ in Google.
WordPress v5.8 – The Current WordPress Version and Its Importance
The current version of WordPress is v5.8.
It was released in July 2021 and issued in some major changes to the WordPress CMS.
In included;-
- Template Editor
- Block Widgets
- WebP Images
- Pattern Directory
- Additional Blocks (mostly associated with the template editor)
- Duotone Filter
- Group Block
- Query Block
Unfortunately for those of us that are keen to get our hands on new things and investigate the changes, some of the above also required the availability of newly developed specific WordPress themes (called block themes) to support these enhancements.
This was particularly true of the template editor functionality. This also required the installation and activation of the Gutenberg plugin.
Probably the one feature that caused the most pain in older WordPress sites in the above list was the ‘block widgets’ feature. Your widgets were no longer edited in the way we had all become used to and now utilised the Gutenberg block editor.
Whilst it promised Full Site Editing (FSE) and, I guess, in a way it delivered FSE, this was really only available to those of us who were prepared to dig deeper and put the hard yards in to chase down block themes and further instructions.
It certainly wasn’t too useful for the general WordPress admin.
WordPress v5.8 was important though because it released all of this functionality into the real world and allowed people to work with it to find out all the issues and the things that could be refined moving forwards towards v5.9.
Which brings us rather nicely to…
WordPress v5.9 – The Dawn of a New Era?
WordPress v5.9 takes all the ground breaking enhancements added in v5.8 and adds to it the following;
- Full Site Editing Improvements
- Global Styles Interface
- Big Improvements in Lazy Loading of Images
- Improvement to the Gutenberg Editor
At first it does not look like a lot, however, v5.9 takes what was released in v5.8 and consolidates it all making it simpler for the less experienced WordPress admin to make use of the new features.
Previously it required a decent WordPress developer to make structural changes to your header or footer and this was never easy apart from the most simple things.
Likewise page or post templates.
Sitewide styles (colours, fonts, font sizes etc) were programmed in the stylesheet and once set were difficult to change for non-programmers.
All of the above is now available in WordPress admin and changes can be completed by a non-tech admin.
NOTE; You will still require a specific block theme to access much of the above. Whilst these are pretty thin on the ground at present, they are starting to be released as theme developers now have better predictability of how all this will work.
What Has Been Left Out of WordPress v5.9?
Not everything made the cut and one important item will have to wait for the next major WordPress release.
The main item that has been delayed in The Navigation Block Editor.
This brings the flexibility of block editing to WordPress’ navigation menus.
This is a quite large update and it is better the release is done correctly as opposed to being rushed through without the requisite testing.
Summary
WordPress v5.9 will be a very important step forward for WordPress and the WordPress community.
It delivers on the promise to make WordPress a much better (and faster loading) platform for both technical WordPress folks and non-tech admins and editors.
Will it spell the death of page builders such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, WP Bakery, Divi et al. No, I don’t believe it will.
Their user base is too large and set in their ways and WordPress v5.9 is still not quite there in my personal opinion, however, it certainly is another very large nail in the coffin of such products.