SKIP TO CONTENT

new features from wordpress update 5.9

February 18, 2022

written by
Stephanie Patton

The update we all have been waiting for is finally here!  WordPress 5.9 was officially released on January 25, 2022.  While not a cure for cancer, this is a pretty big deal for 3ooFeetOut. What features did they introduce? Can this update improve your website performance? How will we at 300FeetOut use these features on future projects? Let’s take a look…

what’s new?

Since the release of Gutenberg in December 2018, having more control to customize your website has become a lot easier than before. While most prefer the ‘classic’ view of WordPress, Gutenberg is definitely helping users have more control over the look and feel of their website.

The 5.9 update has introduced yet another new way to edit your website through Full Site Editing. Now creating and editing blocks has become a lot more user-friendly when making changes to a page or post. With new features like:

  • new block types
  • site wide block styles
  • & much more

performance improvements

Probably the most exciting thing about the new release is how it is helping to improve website performance through lazy-loading images. We know how important it is to ensure your images are optimized so they will not slow down your website. Lazy-loading helps to delay images from loading onto a page until they are needed instead of all at once.

The improvements to the lazy-loading used in WordPress will help with your website’s page load speed which we know Google uses to rank your website for SEO.

what does this update mean for us?

We are always looking for ways to implement new technology. With this new update in mind, we hope to use the new features in our development process and continue to make better performing websites.

A lot of the new features will be going into the back-end of our site builds, but we’ll also be looking for ways to blend this into the monthly maintenance we do for our clients!