WordPress 5.9 was released in January 2022 and served as the stepping stone to what looks to be the future of WordPress. Just four months later, we got WordPress 6.0 which is jam packed with new features.
New Blocks
Here’s a list of all the newly introduced blocks in WordPress 6.0:
- Comments Query Loop
- Read More block
- Post Author Biography block
- Avatar block
Let’s start with the new core blocks. One of the new core blocks is the Comments Query Loop which will display the comments in a post. It’s composed of different blocks that you can edit. You can also add blocks to further customize how the comments on a post appear.
Another new block would be the Read More block. This will give you more control over the appearance of the Read More link on your content, like adding borders, colors, typography, and more!
A new block that we’d find really useful is the Avatar and Post Author Biography blocks which we can now use separately in content. The Post Author Biography block gives us the ability to use the author’s description in our content. This has the usual typography design controls like changing the font color and adding a background color. You also have the option to change the font size using the size presets or by setting a custom value.
On the other hand, the Avatar block will display the avatar of the user that you select. This has various block settings where you can link the image to the user’s profile (and even open it in a new tab when clicked). You can adjust its size, margins, and border radius to customize it to your liking.
Global Styles
A new feature we’re particularly excited about is the Global Style switcher. This gives users the ability to change the look and feel of a website in just one click.
Global Styles are dependent on what theme you’re using, like in Twenty Twenty-two, it includes three style variations. You can see what available styles are in your theme by going to the Browse Styles section of the Global Styles sidebar.
You can also add a preset of your own by adding a JSON file to the styles folder of the theme you’re using. To learn more about how to create your own style presets, you can check out this article by the WordPress core team.
Theme Exporting
Another feature we’d like to talk about is the theme exporter which will allow you to download the theme with all the customizations you’ve added to it.
You can find this by clicking the Options button in the top toolbar where you will see the Export option in the Tools section. This will download a zip file to your computer with all your custom styles and settings.
This brings a lot of possibilities because you can unleash your creativity and start creating your very own unique theme right from the WordPress site editor and export them to use for other websites!
Templates
The templates that came with WordPress 5.9 were very limited (although you were given the ability to create your own) but in the latest release, you get more core templates such as Author, Category, Date, Tag, and Taxonomy.
You can customize these templates when you open the Site Editor, click the WordPress icon on the toolbar, and select Templates in the sidebar that opens. Just click the Add New button at the top, and click the template you want to customize.
You can use any block to design templates, whether it’s core blocks or third party block libraries like Stackable! Once you’re done, hit Save and it gets applied right away! Here’s an example of us creating a simple design for the Author template.
Once we’ve hit save, it is automatically applied when you visit the Author’s profile.
This is very helpful in making a smoother and more streamlined design workflow on WordPress. Instead of assigning a template to a custom page or post, you can just design the template according to what you envision and it’s automatically applied to that!
List View
Before, the List View was expanded by default, meaning all blocks present in the editor were listed in full view.
Now, in WordPress 6.0, the List View is collapsed by default, giving us a high-level view of the structure of the page or post. When you select a nested block, the parent block expands to highlight it in the List View. This makes the interface so much easier to navigate around while editing in WordPress.
They’ve also added a new feature that allows you to select multiple blocks at once and drag and drop them around the List View to rearrange your content. You could also click on the three dots to see more actions!
Post Publish Reminder
This next feature is for the ones that have forgotten to add tags and categories to their posts (honestly, I have been guilty of this)!
WordPress has added this new feature that “reminds” users not to forget to add tags and categories before publishing.
It comes as a panel in the sidebar that appears when you are about to publish the post.
I personally find this very convenient!
Style Retention
When you transform a block to another, say for example a list to a paragraph, it will adopt the styles from the previous block.
The same goes for buttons, which will inherit the style of the first button adjacent to it. This saves a lot of time and effort in designing a new button from scratch.
To Summarize…
We’ve only highlighted a few of the more significant changes included in WordPress 6.0, however, the latest release brought in a lot of improvements to what was first established in WordPress 5.9, despite them only being released four months apart.
With Full-Site Editing (FSE) now being a part of WordPress core, we can only expect that it will change the way we use WordPress. As developments keep coming along, WordPress is, little by little, becoming a standalone CMS.
How about you? What are your thoughts and what is your favorite new feature in this release?
Loved the article, you showed me a few features I was not even aware of in WP 6.0. I am a big fan of Gutenberg and I am glad to see it evolving into something wonderful.
I have started to rebuild my main website using Gutenberg, and I am making use of Stackable in that process.
At the moment Gutenberg, on its own, is still limited in its feature set, but adding Stackable and similar plugins will provide a lot of the features previously only available from expensive Page Builders without much of the downside that they bring such as slower page load times.
Hi Lee! We’re glad to hear that you found this article helpful and that you’re enjoying Stackable 🥳