WordPress 6.0 is Here

This week saw the release of WordPress 6.0 the next major release of WordPress. While the update does not have a lot of user facing features unless you have a theme that supports full site editing it is still a major release and an important update on WordPress’s roadmap.

This release optimising a lot of backend operations while each one might only save fractions of a second they all add up to faster loading websites with less server resources needed for each page load. What more, WordPress 6.0 introduces some new developer features for improved caching support.

For a full list of changes, refer to the WordPress changelog. The Highlights I have picked out below:

• Accessibility. The WordPress open-source software itself has received upgrades so that it’s easier to use overall.
• Block editor.
• Bundle multiple style variations for block themes.
• Create page content patterns that you can choose from to create your pages.
• New ancestor property in block.json. This will allow you to restrict where blocks may be placed.
• A new user interface will allow you to set a lock attribute for every block in the editor.
• Registration of blocks from within themes
• Unrecognized content in the content can now be preserved thanks to upgraded support.
• The block theme export feature in the Site Editor has been given a very robust upgrade as well.
• Block markup updates for image, quote, list, and group blocks
• A new set of Post Comments blocks, No Results block, and more
• Bootstrap/load. Skip unneeded queries by applying a do_parse_request filter.
• Cache API improvements. wp_cache_*_multiple is now full CRUD.
• Media. New filters and user interface additions.
• More dynamic hooks for custom post types
• Taxonomy improvements. Query caching, taxonomy query limits, navigation menu items, terminology changes, and more.
• Themes. Streamlined patterns functionality for theme authors, support for multiple theme.json files, better export themes with Site Editor, and more.
• Users. Sites with particularly high traffic will now be able to query and count users.

As with all WordPress upgrades it is important that you apply the update on your site as quickly as possible, always take a backup first and throughly test your site after the update is complete.