WordPress, from a blogging platform, has made a magnificent transformation into a platform for website editing with a large number of users. You can literally create, launch and edit your WordPress website without the need for a developer or a page builder. With the release of WordPress 5.9 on January 25, 2022, it has done its job of turning its users on their heads.

Let’s take a closer look at how these new features in WordPress 5.9 can help you expand your website.

Full Site Editing (FSE)

In WordPress 5.9, you get full site editing and plenty of other features. This is the biggest release for the WordPress community since the introduction of block editor Gutenberg in December 2018. Full Site Editing is not just a hyperbolic term, but a literal term covering a multitude of editing features. WordPress 5.9 offers improved typographic control for text blocks, in addition to many new features, big improvements, and enhancements. 

In this new version, you can change the font size, line-height, letter case, letter spacing and colour. Header blocks now allow you to select a header level from a vertical drop-down menu. Included are blocks and built-in web design, navigation menus, the theme’s interface, refinements to the blog theme’s editing process, a new default theme, additional design tools and much more.

With the FSE editor you can:

1. Website template addition and editing
2. Apply changes to the site-design and style
3. Make any adjustments you need in the design of your website
4. Add sections to pages/templates if necessary

Navigation blocks

When you post articles that are literally too long, have you even thought about adding a navigation menu to those articles? The Navigation Blocks and Navigation screens project has been underway for a long time as one of the main goals of WordPress 5.9.

Its commitment is to improve the user experience, reduce complexity and test it on the themes where possible. You can do this with the help of FSE’s navigation blocks. This will create a mini navigation bar for your articles, and you can edit the links to menu items and article titles if necessary.

Block Themes for full site editing

In order to help users create full site layouts, a bunch of new blocks have been introduced in WordPress 5.9. You can find these blocks in the Add New Blocks panel under the Themes category.

Here is a list of the new blocks available in WordPress 5.9.

1. Travel navigation
2. Template section
3. Footer
4. Author
5. Next post
6. Previous posts
7. Leave a comment
8. Term Description
9. File name

You can use these blocks to create custom layouts through the theme editor. However, you can also use these blocks in a typical WordPress post or page if desired.

Creating and saving site styles

It used to be that you had to write custom CSS code if you wanted to change something in your WordPress theme.

Many of these changes can now be made using site-wide styles. When editing any template, simply click on the style icon in the top right hand corner of the screen.

Here you can change many styling options such as colours, typography, padding etc.

You can also edit the style of an individual block and apply the same style to your template.

Block editor changes in WordPress 5.9

Most WordPress users spend a lot of time in the block editor writing content and creating new posts and pages.

That’s why every WordPress release comes with new features and improvements for the post editor, and WordPress 5.9 is no exception.

Here are some of the main improvements to the block editor in WordPress 5.9.

Improved typography control

WordPress 5.9 has provided improvements in the typographic control of text blocks. For paragraph blocks you can change the font size, line height, letter case, letter spacing and colour.

The title block now allows you to select the title level from the vertical drop-down menu. You can also provide more typography, design, margin and spacing options for headings.

Extensive URL preview in the block editor

Previously, when you hovered over a link in the post editor, you could only see the URL. WordPress 5.9 now shows a rich URL preview for links in the post editor.

Improved gallery blocks

Previously, it was difficult to add links and styles to individual images Gallery blocks. WordPress 5.9 comes with an improved gallery block that now allows you to choose different styles for individual images in the gallery block. You can also easily link each image or the entire gallery block.

More options in social icons and buttons

With previous versions of WordPress, it was a little difficult to access the controls for parent and child blocks when using Social Icons and Buttons, WordPress 5.9 now makes it easier.

Improved performance in WordPress 5.9

Nearly 43.2% of websites on the Internet use WordPress. A better performance WordPress means a faster online experience for millions of users every day.

Every WordPress release spends a lot of development time improving performance. Here are some of the major performance improvements in WordPress 5.9.

Improved delayed loading of images

WordPress comes with a delayed loading feature for images since WordPress 5.5. However, it adds a delayed loading for all images, which increases the maximum content drawing metric (LCP). 

With WordPress 5.9, images that are visible on initial load will skip the delayed load, improving the life of your core network.

Better handling of block styles and CSS

WordPress used to load all style sheets for all blocks in one file. With WordPress 5.9, only the required styles will be loaded.

Block editor improvements

Probably the most commonly used part of the block editor is the inserter itself. WordPress 5.9 makes the blocks to be added faster, allowing you to quickly get the block you need to add.

May this article help you to explore the new features in WordPress 5.9. We also look forward to talking to you in further depth about web design and building.