Welcome to Joséphine!
WordPress 5.9, “Joséphine” is named after international jazz singer Joséphine Baker. You can download or update it directly from your dashboard.
You can enjoy her famous renditions of “You are the greatest love”, “Sans Amour”, and “Love is a Dreamer” as you discover all the features of this brand-new WordPress release.
Full site editing is here.
You are in control of your whole site, right in the WordPress Admin.
The new Twenty Twenty-Two.
In the history of WordPress, this is the first default block theme. This is not a new default theme anymore, now work with WordPress themes in a new way.
These Block themes will put a wide range of visual choices for you. Now within the Site Editor, you can set color schemes and font combinations to page templates and image filters.
All WordPress 5.9 will have this theme installed. You can find it in installed themes section.
Your personal paintbox
Now there are much more block themes available in the Themes directory and this number will grow. Twenty Twenty-Two is not the only theme built for full site editing
If you are using any of these new themes. You don’t need the Customizer anymore. Now you can customize the Styles interface within the Site Editor.
The Navigation block
Blocks play a crucial role in site navigation.
Now you can choose an always-on responsive menu or one that adapts to your user’s screen size with this new Navigation block. Also, all your menus will be saved as customs post types in the database.
More improvements and updates
Are you a blogger? New tweaks to the publishing flow will help you write faster.
Better block controls
WordPress 5.9 has new typography tools, flexible layout controls, and finer control of details like spacing, borders, and more.
The power of patterns
Improve the functionality of your site and save your time by using the block patterns available in the WordPress Pattern Directory. You can easily edit them as per your need. Easily swap blocks as per your need.
Now with a nearly full-screen view, the Pattern Explorer makes it easy to compare patterns and choose the one your users need.
A revamped List View
With the List View in 5.9, you can easily drag and drop your content where you want it. Now managing complex documents is easier too. Now the simple controls let you expand and collapse sections as you build your site. Also, add HTML anchors to your blocks with ease to help guide the user around the page.
A better Gallery block
Now treat every image in a Gallery Block the same way you would treat it in the Image Block.
You can now style every image in your gallery differently. You can customize them as per your need. Keep style the same or different, customize with ease.
WordPress 5.9 for developers
WordPress Pattern Directory
In 5.9, theme.json supports child themes. Now users can build a child theme right in the WordPress Admin, without writing a single line of code.
This dev note has all the details. Take a look!
Block-level locking
Just by adding a lock attribute to its settings in block.json, you can now lock any block or a few of them in a pattern. Leaving the rest of the pattern free for users to adapt to their content.
Multiple stylesheets in a block
Now with 5.9, you can register more than one stylesheet per block, which will enable the given block to load only the styles its markup requests, and not a whole sheet. Read more details in this dev note.
A refactored Gallery Block
The changes to the Gallery Block listed above are the result of near-complete refactor. Have you built a plugin or theme on the Gallery Block functionality? Be sure you read this dev note. It tells you what you need to do for compatibility.
Check the Field Guide for more!
Check out the latest version of the WordPress Field Guide. It has lots of useful information with links to detailed developer notes to support you building in WordPress for everyone you serve. WordPress 5.9 Field Guide.