WordPress 6.6 has just been released and includes an impressive flurry of new features and updates. Join along in this article and video as we talk about what is new with version 6.6 of our favorite Content Management System.
Full Site Editing / Block Themes Are The Future Of WordPress
It looks like the classic way of creating and editing themes is taking a back seat to full site editing via the editor and block themes.
WordPress is investing a lot of time and energy into developing block themes to be fully feature rich and capable. If you haven’t started developing much using block themes or the editor (like me!), it’s time to start.
This is the future of WordPress.
WordPress 6.6 New Features
There are quite a few new features in wordpress, and these are the ones that I give an overview of in the video.
Color Palettes & Font Sets
From WordPress:
Add more design options to any block theme. Block theme authors can create unlimited individual color or font sets to offer more specific design options within the same theme. These sets provide more contained design possibilities, allowing for customization without changing the site’s broader styling, beyond color or typography settings.
Quick Previews For Pages
A new overview screen has been added to the pages layout, so that you can see your pages before you begin editing them. It’s a nice side by side view that may be helpful when you have a lot of pages or similarly named pages. In either case, it’s fast and adds a nice touch.
Rollbacks For Plugin Auto-Updates
Gone are the days of an auto-update disabling your site. Well, not really. But it just got a lot easier to fix. Simply roll back to the previously working version. Huge update here! This has been needed for a long time.
Overrides For Custom Content In Synced Patterns
From WordPress:
Add the ability to customize content in synced patterns. Allow specific pieces of content to be customized in each instance of a synced pattern while keeping a consistent style for all instances, simplifying future updates. Currently, you can set overrides for Heading, Paragraph, Button, and Image blocks.
Performance Updates
WordPress has squeezed some performance updates in here. Some redudant calls to WP_Theme_JSON were removed, and very large autoloaded options fields were removed from autostarting when your page loads. If you have a lot of plugins or plugins that use large options fields, you should see a modest performance improvement here.
Accessibility Updates
Over 55 accessibility improvements have been made. Yay! Accessibility should be a common concern for us all, and it’s nice that WordPress takes this seriously and bakes it in with their product.
Add Styles To Block Groups / New Grid Block
WordPress has added styles to block groups. Also, a new grid block! Now, you can have CSS grid and define your rows and columns from within the Gutenburg editor.
Negative Margins
You can now give negative margins to your blocks in the UI. This allows for easily creating overlapping sections. I’m curious to see how this plays out. Does it become confusing when responsiveness is taken into account? This setting has been there if you coded it, previously, but now it’s available to non-coders as well.
Support For Classic Theme Patterns
If you have a theme that was build the classic way, you can now see your patterns inside of the Full Site Editor. Just click on Patterns and you’ll see your files under template parts.
And More Updates
Refined publish flow, aspect ratio presets, keyboard shortcuts, & more. See the WordPress release page for WordPress 6.6 and this awesome Kinsta article that does a deeper dive into WordPress 6.6.
More WordPress
See my WordPress category and scottsweb.dev on YouTube.