Category: new wordpress versions

It is 2025, so I decided to switch my site theme to the latest default WordPress theme Twenty-TwentyFive. This switch was a lot smoother than past years. So far the only thing I need to update is the default navigation in the site footer.

Exploring a few of the blocks and patterns to see if anything exciting has been added. There are quite a few new blocks and integrations. I’m not fond of AI being in ALL THE THINGS, and it has been added to WP blocks now too. (Have fun with your planet killing and privacy destroying overlords…)

There are quite a few built in image options now that are great. A slider block (nice, no extra plugin for that anymore!), image compare (very nifty!), story block, smart frame, GIF and a lot more intgration embeds from 3rd party services.

I’m glad the theme swap was non-destructive this time around (other than my footer I suppose). We live in “interesting times” these days so I’ll just say that I hope I will be writing one of these posts for a 2026 theme next year.

I activated the 2023 theme and I must say, there are default behaviors that I’m not happy about. The blog page put in their “placeholder” title instead of keeping my own. It also threw in an unstyled, disconnected CTA at the bottom.

The Home page had an ugly “home” at the top and it wasn’t easy to just hide the page title. Editing the templates in the beta editor has been buggy. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to stand the default themes.

Seriously, what a mess. Widgets changed up a lot between the two versions and rather than TRY to keep existing footer settings, WordPress just decided to make those widgets inactive. No problem if you can find the inactive widgets and copy them to new blocks or the template, but no… you suddenly see this “Editor (beta)” option instead. Something that had been a consistent part of the appearance options is just nowhere to be found. I’m glad I’m doing this as a side project.

Today saw the release of WordPress 5.8.

Since this is my site to give WordPress default options a try, I’ve taken the plunge and updated on day one of the new release. I never do day 1 updates on my client sites or my other business sites to give the bugs some time to show up and be squished. But on this site I can be brave and try it out. I’m also running very lean on plugins, so there are fewer things to come into conflict.

I’ve already run across one bug or at least frustration in the default footer section. When I convert the legacy widgets to the new blocks, it does odd things with the layout and headers.

I also updated to the Twenty Twenty-One theme to try out the new patterns options. The top very large text is one of the patterns available. I’ve also got some contact info patterns that I’ll try out below and some image layouts that could be nice. And they’ve promised to give the sidebar some new options, so I’ll see what I can add after this post.

I’d like to figure out how to delete these full patterns without going into code view, if you can remove a pattern as easily as you add one… and you can, just like removing a block. I do find it odd that the “let’s connect” block above has Dribble as one of the defaults.