While WordPress 5.9, baptized Josephine, was launched on January 25 with the introduction of Full Site Editing, the CMS used by 43% of websites worldwide lifts the veil on its roadmap for 2022.
If the outlines of the next major version are beginning to take shape, the CMS has already given a preview of its new update in preparation: WordPress 6.0. It is part of phase 2 of the Gutenberg project, which must “reinvent” the way in which content is managed on the web, through the development of site creation tools. After a 1st phase which formalized the launch of the new Gutenberg block editor with the release of version 5.0, phase 2 constitutes the basis for the deployment of Full Site Editing, the new native experience offered by WordPress to manage the its entire site and no longer just the publications.
Concretely, the roadmap unveiled for the next major update of the CMS should be accompanied by its share of new features. Here are the main changes mentioned for the release of WordPress 6.0.
1. Editor improvements
The CMS should help provide a better “experience for interacting with the site editor, global styles, templates, and navigation as a whole” with a more intuitive interface. WordPress 6.0 will also be an opportunity to introduce a new mode of navigation on the site “to easily follow the links to the different parts”, or to benefit from a simplified template creation.
2. Model optimization
This is about placing templates at the center of the experience for creating new themes or pages. The use of the “Explorer” mode, which allows you to connect to the templates directory, should be improved. WordPress 6.0 may also offer the ability to save templates, which could take the form of “a templates folder with automatically saved file headers”.
3. New blocks
The development of the navigation block, launched with version 5.9, is on the agenda for the next major WordPress update, because “it contains a set of customizations and opportunities”. Other blocks should be reworked, in particular to be able to organize the display of comments, save the image of Headline as an “attribute of other blocks (Cover, Media & Text, etc.)”. Note that the CMS could update its block project dedicated to the table of contents.
4. Efforts made to design tools
Matias Ventura clarifies here that “for version 6.0, there would be a concerted effort to strengthen consistency, introduce more responsive features and extend the Supports & Elements API. Another important goal is to continue to make it easier for third-party blocks to adopt these tools.”
WordPress goals for 2022
If WordPress continues to work on new projects while integrating user feedback on the use of version 5.9 and FSE, no specific date for the release of WordPress 6.0 has yet been planned. After the postponement of the launch of version 5.9 from December 14, 2021 to January 25, 2022, it seems unlikely that 4 major versions will be deployed this year, as was mentioned for a while by CMS contributors.
According to the schedule proposed by Josepha Haden Chomphosy, executive director of WordPress, 2 major updates should see the light of day in 2022:
- WordPress 6.0: not before the end of May 2022,
- WordPress 6.1: mid-October 2022.
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