WordPress 6.9 arrived on December 2, 2025 and immediately created problems on a scale that many long time site owners have never experienced. The update introduced new collaborative tools like Notes, an expanded Command Palette, updated typography controls, a more visual drag and drop system, and the new Abilities API intended to modernize permission handling. These additions were supposed to improve workflows, but the result has been widespread breakage across classic themes, child themes, custom coded layouts, and even some block based sites. The WordPress 6.9 update disrupted everything from front end rendering to admin accessibility and has become one of the most damaging releases in the platform’s history.
One of the most common problems reported is layout destruction across classic themes. Many sites that had stable designs for years suddenly lost structural integrity. Sidebars moved under post content, grid layouts collapsed into single column flows, mobile menus stopped working, and CSS rules that had always been respected were ignored. Some themes lost container sizing, causing posts to stretch across edge to edge widths. Others broke spacing and padding globally. The update introduced significant changes to the way block styles load for classic themes, and while the goal was to improve rendering performance, the result was unpredictable behavior across older themes that were never designed for the new style system.
Mobile pages were heavily affected. Site owners noticed broken menus, missing responsive breakpoints, inconsistent image scaling, and sticky elements that no longer stuck. These failures led to sharp drops in user experience metrics and raised concerns about ranking declines. Several publishers reported that Google began crawling malformed pages shortly after the update. When a site’s mobile layout breaks at scale, traffic loss usually follows, and some users are already reporting unusual drops across mobile impressions. Although correlation is not causation, the timing is consistent across multiple reports.
Another problem appeared inside the WordPress admin area. Some site owners were locked out of wp-admin entirely. In certain cases, the login page redirected to the homepage. Others encountered partial loads, missing admin menus, or white screens triggered by older plugins that had not been updated to handle the new APIs present in 6.9. Classic compatibility plugins, older caching tools, and plugins that modify login URLs were among the most frequently reported causes. Easy Hide Login, for example, broke instantly for many users. When combined with the update’s changes to rewrite rules and permission handling, the combination sent administrators into redirect loops.
Sitemaps also broke for a significant number of sites. Some users reported missing index files, unreachable sitemaps, or Google Search Console errors stating that sitemap URLs could not be fetched. The update modified how some internal rewrite and canonical rules behave, which impacted XML generation for sites that rely on built in WordPress features or certain SEO plugins. Rank Math and Yoast users both reported sporadic failures. A broken sitemap can stall indexing, slow ranking recovery, and cause older pages to disappear from Google’s crawl cycle.
Performance issues were also widely observed. Although WordPress advertised improved Largest Contentful Paint scores and optimized loading paths, many sites slowed down instead. Some users experienced increased Time to First Byte, heavier blocking scripts unloading later than expected, and CSS files loading in unexpected orders. When the block editor’s styling logic was updated internally, it altered how theme stylesheets are prioritized. This caused several themes to visually “jump” on load or render partially before styles finished loading.
There were changes in the editor itself that caused problems for content creators. Notes, the headline collaborative feature, introduced new block markup that older plugins had not accounted for. These plugins expected a specific block structure that no longer existed. This resulted in broken formatting, disappearing blocks, and plugin based editors failing to initialize. Some users found that switching to the classic editor temporarily resolved these issues, while others had to disable third party editing enhancements entirely.
The update also removed or modified several internal functions that were considered deprecated, which broke older themes and plugins that still relied on them. Many developers did not expect the removal of certain legacy behaviors, especially those tied to older menu walkers, classic widgets, media modals, and the customizer. Sites with heavy customizer reliance reported missing settings or styling that no longer applied.
A significant community complaint involves the Abilities API. While powerful in theory, the rollout created compatibility issues for plugins that manage user permissions, membership systems, or security rules. Some plugins began throwing fatal errors, while others silently failed. Any change to capability mapping can destabilize a large number of sites, and this appears to have happened again at scale.
Because of these widespread issues, many site owners attempted to roll back WordPress to a previous stable version. Rolling back core safely is not always simple. However, the Core Rollback plugin provided an easy method for many users to revert without manually replacing files. The plugin offers a dropdown selector to choose a version like 6.6.4, then automatically handles the installation process. This method works, but rolling back can leave a site vulnerable if the version in question contains known security issues. Users should understand that restoring older core files should be temporary. After rolling back, some users found they were unable to log in until plugins were manually disabled through FTP by renaming the plugins directory. This is a common and effective method for regaining wp-admin access when redirect loops occur.
Some users found partial fixes by clearing caches, purging CDN layers, or regenerating their permalinks by resaving the permalink settings page. Others had to manually re-register sidebars, update functions.php, or restore older copies of their theme’s templates. Sites using heavily customized themes required direct file edits to restore sidebar placement or remove new block generated markup that the theme was not designed to handle. In several cases, simply editing index.php or single.php to reposition get_sidebar calls did not resolve the problem because the update changed where certain wrapper elements were injected.
For many users, enabling AMP temporarily fixed mobile rendering issues because AMP constructs a simplified and more predictable markup environment. This acted as a bandage rather than a solution, since the underlying theme still had structural issues that needed to be corrected manually or through a rollback.
Other site owners reported that their caching plugins stopped functioning correctly. Plugins like WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache sometimes served cached versions of broken pages, making troubleshooting more difficult. Some caching layers needed to be disabled entirely until theme and plugin compatibility could be restored.
Security plugins also created conflicts. Older versions of login protection tools, file scanners, and permission managers blocked access or crashed after update. These plugins attempted to write or check capabilities that had changed in 6.9, producing errors or locking out administrators. Many users resolved this by disabling plugins manually via FTP or using hosting control panels to rename folders.
Across the community, users have noted that the number of bugs visible in this release is unusually high. It is not common for a core update to simultaneously break layouts, disrupt admin access, cause ranking concerns, interfere with sitemaps, and destabilize long standing plugins. Developers who have been using WordPress for more than a decade describe this release as the most chaotic update they have ever seen. The problems appear across Linux hosting, shared hosting, cloud instances, managed WordPress hosts, and custom environments alike.
Despite the issues, the new features are valuable to users who rely on collaborative workflows. Notes may eventually become an important part of editorial systems. The new drag and drop controls are visually cleaner. The Abilities API has potential for advanced tools. The problem is not the features themselves but the state of the release. The transition between older theme architectures and the constantly expanding block environment continues to create instability.
Users attempting to recover from the update should begin by disabling all plugins, clearing all caches, testing themes individually, and checking Google Search Console for sitemap or indexing errors. Rolling back the update is an option through the Core Rollback plugin or through manual file replacement, but should be approached carefully and only after backups are created. Sites with custom themes may require developer intervention to restore layout consistency.
This release created more issues, visible bugs, and severe breakage than most users have seen in many years of running WordPress. Many site owners are now waiting for emergency patches or minor releases to address the problems introduced in 6.9, while others have already reverted to older versions to restore site stability.
