WordPress 6.0 “Arturo” was delivered on May 24. The most popular open-source CMS in the world contains a series of new features for both users and developers. Here are all the new features of WordPress 6.0 version.
It is the second major release of 2022, following 5.9, launched in January. This 6.0 release includes nearly 1,000 fixes and improvements covering most areas of the WordPress platform.
WordPress 6.0 has all kinds of improvements. Here are a few :
- Change of style without changing theme
- More template options: you will be able to use the blocks to modify five additional templates (author, date, categories, tag, and taxonomy).
- Multi-selection: The ability to easily select text from multiple blocks.
- Style retention: Keep your custom styles in place, transforming between blocks or creating new buttons.
- List view enhancements: new keyboard shortcuts (shift + click) allow you to select multiple blocks for mass editing (reposition, delete, etc.) and see your content at a glance with a view reduced by default.
- Improved design tools: new color panel, transparency options, more group block variants to create new layout options (stack, row), ability to set your hero (featured) image in a Cover block, control the exact size of your featured image, space support for the Gallery block, and more.
- New blocks: Comments, Read More, post author biography, Avatar blocks.
- Web Fonts API to manage local fonts with PHP or theme.json.
Explaining New features for Full Site Editing (FSE)
Site construction in blocks already gave rather satisfactory results with version 5.9 but did not absorb all the users’ use cases. However, version 6.0 will improve the range of available tools and consolidate the existing ones by bringing many functional improvements. Contrary to the intermediate releases, which mainly contained maintenance patches (82 patches with release 5.9.1 primarily related to the editor correcting some warnings appearing under certain conditions for particular use cases).
Pattern block management
The difference between pattern blocks and reusable blocks is that pattern blocks are ready-made layouts that can be modified without changing them anywhere on the site. In contrast, a reusable block is a layout that can only be modified in one place which is modified everywhere on the site. It will be possible to create pattern blocks from pattern blocks that you already have. Version 5.9 had already highlighted this possibility, but version 6.0 will make it more accessible and easier to use with a pattern library that will work very well with a simple copy-paste. In addition, access to these patterns will now be possible from the WordPress admin, which will significantly streamline the manipulations. (FYI, the plugin will be called MyWP Block Pattern).
Beyond highlighting pattern blocks
Improvements to blocks already in place with the FSE should be noted. In particular, the Menu block will have more customization possibili0ties, and the Comment block, which will work as the Book block. It will also be possible to add and remove parts. It will be a block in which other blocks can be arranged. Another exciting point is that there will be the possibility of having several variations of the theme. That is to say that in the .json configuration file (or manually in the admin), it will now be possible to operate theme variations in terms of type, text size, color, etc., which will turn out very interesting for agencies who will be able to create basic themes with many variations to offer to their clients.
Publisher-level consolidations
We will see a better interaction with the site editor; global styles will be impacted as well as navigation and templates. All these thanks, among other things, to a more intuitive interface. Concretely, suppose the block editor limited the management of the content of each publication. In that case, the FSE will now make it possible to maneuver each editorial element found in the interface, such as the navigation menus, the site header, the widgets, or the footer, just as it will also be possible to manipulate the templates of pages dedicated to the theme such as those concerning articles, search results or 404 errors, etc. The template will remain fully responsible for the graphic charter of the entire site through the style sheets. Still, the layout and organization of all content elements will be administered through the Gutenberg blocks. It will be possible, for example, to create and configure the footer of a site from scratch while keeping the overall graphic charter of the site defined by its template.
When was WordPress 6 released?
The release date of WordPress 6.0 was May 24, 2022. Downloading WordPress 6.0 is done via the official website or from your dashboard if you are already using the CMS.
Conclusion
It will be understood that the objective of this WordPress 6.0 version is like the transition from 5.0 to 5.1: to provide comfort with a range of new easy-to-use tools and allow intuitive handling of the CMS.
An essential step for users regarding the creation of blocks or pages. But also for developers and all entities impacted by these significant changes. Development agencies must now take these changes into account so that their activities do not suffer. It would be a shame to stay on the side of the road.
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