WordPress 6.0 Released

WordPress 6.0 is Out

This new version of WordPress is our latest and greatest WordPress release. This is not a security update, but a feature upgrade.

WordPress 6.0 Release (wordpress.org)

WordPress 6.0 brings you Enhancing Accessibility & Performance Improvements

Enhancing Accessibility:

Enhanced Writing Experience: Writing improvements abound, whether you’re writing a brand new post or adding elements to an existing page. Explore more ways to streamline your content creation process, including:

• Select text across multiple blocks for easier copying and pasting.
• Type two open brackets `[[` to quickly access a list of recent posts and pages.
• Keep existing styles when you transform some blocks from one kind to another—from a Paragraph block to a Code block, for instance.
• Create customized buttons and any new buttons you make will retain the style customizations automatically.
• Make tag clouds and social icons even more appealing with updated settings and controls, and a new outline style for the tag cloud.

Style Switching: Block themes now include the option to contain multiple style variations. This expands the new Style system even further and enables shortcuts to switch the look and feel of your site all within a single theme. In block themes that support this feature, you can change both the available settings, like the font-weight, and the style options, like the default color palette. Change the look and feel of your site with just a few clicks.

More Template Choices: WordPress 6.0 includes five new template options for block themes: author, date, categories, tag, and taxonomy. These additional templates provide greater flexibility for content creators. Tailor each with the tools you already know or with the following new options in this release:

• Featured images can be used in the cover block.
• New featured image sizing controls make it easier to get the results you want.
• While editing a template, at the root, or between blocks, the quick inserter shows you patterns and template parts to help you work faster and discover new layout options.
• The query block supports filtering on multiple authors, support for custom taxonomies, and support for customizing what is shown when there are no results.

Integrated Patterns: Patterns will now appear when you need them in even more places, like in the quick inserter or when creating a new header or footer. If you’re a block theme author, you can even register patterns from the Pattern Directory using `theme.json`, enabling you to prioritize specific patterns that are most helpful to your theme’s users.

Additional Design Tools: Design tools grow more powerful and intuitive with each release. Some highlights for 6.0 include:

• A new color panel design saves space, but still shows your options at a glance.
• New border controls offer a simpler way to set your border exactly as you like it.
• Transparency levels for your colors allow for even more creative color options.
• Control gaps, margins, typography, and more on a collection of blocks, all at once, in the Group block.
• Switch between stack, row, and group variations to position groups of blocks with more layout flexibility.
• Use the gap support functionality in the Gallery block to create different looks – from adding spacing between all images, to removing spacing altogether.

Better List View: New keyboard shortcuts enable you to select multiple blocks from the list view, modify them in bulk, and drag and drop them within the list. List View can be opened and closed easily; it comes collapsed by default and it automatically expands to the current selection whenever you select a block.

Block Locking Controls: Now you can lock your blocks. Choose to disable the option to move a block, remove a block, or both. This simplifies project handover, allowing your clients to unleash their creativity without worrying about accidentally breaking their site in the process.

Performance Improvements:

This release includes several updates focused on improving the performance of WordPress. These enhancements cover a range of performance areas includes:

• Improving the page and post-load speed
• Reducing the execution time of various query types, caching, navigation menus, and much more

More About the Upgrade…

The previous version of WordPress was 5.9.3 on January 25, 2022.

Our Website Maintenance Department will be in contact with you regarding these upgrades. Clients that have signed up for our Automatic WordPress Update Program or Website Care program will get their website updated in the next week or so or if a follow-up version of WordPress is released.

View the complete list of WordPress versions here and here.

Read more about why WordPress updates are important.

What is Website Care?

If you haven’t heard about our Website Care, then you’re missing out on savings and peace of mind!

There are different levels to choose from but with each level, you get your installation of WordPress checked weekly for updates to the core software, plugins and themes. The benefit is that your website software is kept up to date. This work is done by hand and we test your website after the upgrade to make sure everything works like it should.

The program is either by monthly subscription or you can save 10% and pay for a year in advance. When you use this program you save about 40% on updating WordPress. It’s kind of a no-brainer!

Sleep better knowing that your website is being taken care of when you enroll in our Website Care today!

-Webstix Support