The WordPress 5.9 Release Candidate 1 is now available on VIP for sites running 5.9 branch. Open a ticket if you’d like to have your non-production sites switched to WordPress 5.9 for testing.
WordPress 5.9 is slated for release on January 25, 2022, but your help is needed to get there—if you haven’t tried 5.9 yet, now is the time!
“Release Candidate” means that the new version is ready for release, but with millions of users and thousands of plugins and themes, it is possible something was missed. So far, contributors have fixed 346 tickets in WordPress 5.9 including 109 new features and enhancements, and more bug fixes are on the way.
What is being added or changed?
The WordPress 5.9 RC 1 Release Article provides a full list of changes; below you’ll find some of the changes that are most likely to impact the Enterprise WordPress space. As with any release, testing your application prior to release will ensure compatibility with the latest features and security.
WordPress 5.9 will mark the first version where all major Full Site Editing features are available for use. WordPress 5.9 also introduces the next generation of themes in the form of block themes that allow for greater customization and simpler site and content building. Some features in 5.9 (such as Full Site Editing) are only available with a block theme.
In addition, all themes will see exciting changes in the form of design tools, UX improvements, pattern improvements, performance enhancements, and more.
Watch a video demo: 4-minute walkthrough and 11-minute walkthrough
Featured Highlights in 5.9
- Block themes – Block themes allow you to use blocks to edit your entire site. After enabling a block theme, expect to see a new menu item under Appearance called “Editor (beta)” with some unique flows in place to help you navigate between template, template parts, and your homepage.
- Theme.json Improvements – theme.json provides a consolidated and canonical way to manage features and styles, reducing the need for many theme support flags or alternative methods. With this release, it’s even easier to enable/disable features and set default styles for both your entire site and individual blocks.
- Styles interface – 5.9 introduces a beautiful interface to interact directly with various style properties. This system works hand in hand with theme.json to provide a sense of “global styles”, allowing you to easily switch up the entire look and feel of your site without switching themes.
- Navigation block – The Navigation Block enables you to edit your site’s navigation menu, both in terms of structure and design. With full control of your site’s navigation in terms of look, feel, and placement, you have the ability to build out more complex menus with elements like search blocks, social icons, site icon, and more.
- Block Pattern enhancements – These include a more cohesive experience for exploring patterns and Featured Patterns now appearing first in the Inserter… making it easier to find rich, robust patterns. You can even submit your very own patterns to the pattern directory with open submissions.
- Design Tools – New options, a revamped interface, and more allow you create vastly different layouts from a few simple slight changes to more radical and complex options… whether it’s a featured image you want to size correctly, or being able to adjust your social icons for an automatic best-fit, or a paragraph you want in a different size.
- Focused Template Part Mode – This new view creates a space to focus specifically on editing a single template part, like a header or footer.
- Locking at the block level – This new feature allows you to do things like lock a pattern so folks on your site can customize the pattern with their content but keep the integrity of the pattern itself in place. Alongside template level locking, now you can lock individual blocks to prevent moving or removing them.
- Post Comments Block – The Post Comments block displays all comments for a post or page along with a form for folks to submit comments. Future iterations will provide greater levels of customizations and a separate Post Comments Form block.
- JQuery UI and Rest API changes – The JQuery UI is updated to 1.13.0; we recommend reviewing the changes in the update.
${appUrl}/wp-json/wp/v2/menusis now supported via Rest API, which may be useful to customers developing headless or decoupled solutions.
How to test
- We recommend updating your local development environment to the release candidate using the Beta Tester plugin or updating it to track 5.9 (i.e.
trunk) via either the Subversion or GitHub repos. - You can have your non-production sites switched to WordPress 5.9 now. If this is something you’re interested in, please open a ticket and we can set it up for you.
Testing is a vital part of polishing the release and a great way to contribute. ✨
Questions?
If you have testing feedback or questions, related to this release, please open a support ticket and we will be happy to assist.
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