This latest version of WordPress sees the release of a new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Five, new font management features (for FSE Themes), and a new ‘Zoom Out' feature.

Introducing Twenty Twenty-Five

Twenty Twenty-Five is a simple theme built specifically for the Full-Site Editor. It has some flexible design options, with a variety of patterns, making it ideal for building personal blogs or professional portfolios & business websites. It supports a range of styles, palettes and typography choices for easy customisation.

Zoom Out

The new Zoom Out button will ‘Zoom Out’ your page, giving you a higher level look at your content. When selecting the Patterns tab or the Media tab within the Block Inserter, the Zoom Out button is automatically activated, making it easier for you to drag ’n drop your patterns and images into your content. Closing the Block Inserter, or switching back to the Blocks tab, will deactivate the ‘Zoom out’ button. Alternatively, you can activate it manually by using the new ‘Zoom Out' button within the Block Editor.

Updated styles interface

You can now create, edit, remove, and apply font size presets using the updated styles interface within the Full-site Editor. This allows you to override theme defaults or set your own custom font size, complete with fluid typography for responsive font scaling.

Performance

WordPress 6.7 includes performance updates, including faster pattern loading, optimized previews in the data views component, improved PHP 8+ support, auto sizes for lazy-loaded images, and more efficient tag processing in the HTML API.

Accessibility

The WP 6.6 release includes 65+ accessibility fixes and enhancements, from improving user interface components and keyboard navigation in the Editor, to an accessible heading on WordPress login screens and clearer labeling throughout.

Latest guide updates

In this latest version of the guide there's new images for every single block, and every part of the Block Editor. There's also updated descriptions for numerous blocks, a new additional block, and other various chapters to improve clarity. All these updates ensure that what you see in the guide is exactly what you see when using WordPress. I hope that you'll find this update makes it easier for you, or your clients, to work with WordPress.

Head on over to the download page to download the latest version of the Easy WP Guide, or if you want to get stuck straight into it, you can always read it online.

This latest version of WordPress sees more design options, safer plugin auto-updates with automatic rollbacks along with performance and accessibility updates.

More design options

With the Site Editor, you can now create color or font sets to give you more flexibility and options when creating your next site. To access this functionality, you'll need to be using a Block Theme specifically built to make use of the Full Site Editor, such as the default Twenty Twenty-Three or Twenty Twenty-Four themes.

Pages layout

The Site Editor now gives you a new side-by-side layout of all your pages, giving you the opportunity to easily preview any selected page.

Safer plugin auto-updates

Auto-plugin updates have been available for a little while now, giving you the ability to sit back and let your site automatically update your selected plugins automatically when new updates become available. With WordPress 6.6, these auto-updates are now even safer with auto-rollbacks if anything goes wrong. This gives you an increased level of safety and security if the unfortunate should happen and one your plugin updates fails.

Performance

WordPress 6.6 brings with it, important performance updates like removing redundant WP_Theme_JSON calls, disabling autoload for large options, and eliminating unnecessary polyfill dependencies. There's also new lazy-loading post embeds, a new data-wp-on-async directive, and faster template loading in the editor.

Accessibility

The WP 6.6 release includes 58 accessibility fixes and enhancements. These focus on foundational aspects of the WordPress experience, and in particular, the data views component which powers the new site editing experience and areas like the Inserter, for interacting with blocks and patterns.

Latest guide updates

In this latest version of the guide there's new images for every single block, the Site Editor, Media Library and Plugin screens, just to name a few. There's also updated descriptions for numerous blocks and a new section for the Patterns Library. All these updates ensure that what you see in the guide is exactly what you see when using WordPress. I hope that you'll find this update makes it easier for you, or your clients, to work with WordPress.

Head on over to the download page to download the latest version of the Easy WP Guide, or if you want to get stuck straight into it, you can always read it online.

This latest version of WordPress sees the introduction of a new Font Library within the Site Editor. There's also new ways to access your site revisions, some new tools for developers with the new Interactivity API and Block Bindings API, more performance gains and more Block Editor updates.

Font Library

WordPress 6.5 brings with it a brand new way to modify your site's typography, with the new Font Library. The Font Library allows users to upload new fonts to your site, as well as the ability to connect your site to Google Fonts where you can download fonts directly from their expansive open-source font library. The bad news though, is that your site needs to be using a Block based theme as this new feature is only available within the Site Editor. The Full Site Editor (FSE) will only be available if you’re using a theme that is specifically built to make use of its functionality, such as the default Twenty Twenty-Three or Twenty Twenty-Four themes. For all other (non-FSE) themes, the Appearance > Editor menu option simply won’t appear, which unfortunately, also means you wont be able to access the new Font Library.

Improved site revisions

You can now get a better picture of everything that's changed with improved site revisions. Within the Site Editor you can get details like time stamps, quick summaries, and a paginated list of all revisions. These new revisions are also available for templates and template parts.

Block Editor improvements

You can now control the size, repeat, and focal point options for background images in Group Blocks. You can also set aspect ratios for Cover Block images, and easily add colour overlays that automatically source colour from your selected image. Box shadow support has also been added to more block types. Drag-and-drop has also been improved, giving you a better, smoother experience when moving blocks around within your content.

New Developer Tools

If you're a developer, the Block Editor now provides you with a new Interactivity API that provides a standardised method for building interactive front-end experiences with blocks. You can also link core block attributes to custom fields and use the value of custom fields without creating custom blocks, using the new Block Bindings API.

Plugin authors can now also supply a new Requires Plugins header with a comma-separated list of required plugin slugs, which presents users with links to install and activate those plugins first.

Performance & accessibility improvements

This release includes 110+ performance-related updates for a faster editing experience across the Block Editor and the Site Editor. Translated sites also see up to 25% improvement in load time. WP 6.5 also includes more than 65 accessibility improvements, including an important fix that unblocks access to the admin submenus for screen reader users and others who navigate by keyboard. This release also adds fixes to colour contrast in admin focus states, positioning of elements, and cursor focus, among numerous other improvements.

Latest guide updates

In this latest version of the guide there's new images for all the Block Editor and Site Editor updates, along with all the other Dashboard updates. There's also updated descriptions for numerous blocks. All these updates ensure that what you see in the guide is exactly what you see when using WordPress. I hope that you'll find this update makes it easier for you, or your clients, to work with WordPress.

Head on over to the download page to download the latest version of the Easy WP Guide, or if you want to get stuck straight into it, you can always read it online.

This latest version of WordPress brings with it a brand new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Four. Alongside the new default theme, there's improvements to the writing experience within the Block Editor, including new keyboard shortcuts, smoother list merging, some key fixes, and more.

Twenty Twenty-Four

The new default theme was designed to be used with any type of site, incorporating a collection of different templates and patterns. Using modern design trends, Twenty Twenty-Four uses an elegant serif font for its headings (Cardo) and a sans-serif system font for paragraphs. The default colour palette is light but it also includes a dark style variation. Twenty Twenty-Four is a block theme that is fully compatible with the Full Site Editor.

Writing enhancements

WordPress 6.4 brings with it improvements to the writing experience within the Block Editor, including new keyboard shortcuts in List View, smarter list merging, and enhanced control over link settings. An improvement to the way the toolbar displays for the Navigation, List, and Quote blocks helps to make those blocks easier to use.

Command Palette improvements

The Command Palette, introduced in WordPress 6.3, has had a few design tweaks along with addition of new commands to perform block-specific actions.

Block Editor and Site Editor improvements

Block Patterns are predefined block layouts. They’re typically a group of blocks that have been pre-built and custom styled. They're also a really useful way to add content to your page, a section at a time, rather than having to build everything from scratch. WordPress 6.4 allows you to organise your Patterns with custom categories, plus there's now filtering options to make it easier to find patterns. You can also import and export Patterns as JSON files within the Full Site Editor.

It's now easier to add buttons into your Navigation menu and the Image block also provides you with an option to use a lightbox popup to display your images. When looking at your Blocks using the List View tool, Gallery and Image blocks now show tiny image previews which help you locate your images within your content.

Performance & accessibility improvements

This release includes more than 100 performance-related updates for a faster editing experience. Accessibility wise, there's several List View improvements and aria-label support for the Navigation block. The admin user interface includes enhancements to button placements, “Add New” menu items context, and Site Health spoken messages. PHP 8.1 or 8.2 are now recommended for use with WordPress 6.4.

Latest guide updates

In this latest version of the guide there's new Block images, reflecting the UI changes in the Dashboard. There's also updated descriptions for numerous blocks. All these updates ensure that what you see in the guide is exactly what you see when using WordPress. I hope that you'll find this update makes it easier for you, or your clients, to work with WordPress.

Head on over to the download page to download the latest version of the Easy WP Guide, or if you want to get stuck straight into it, you can always read it online.

This latest update sees more work on the Full Site Editor, along with new Blocks and some renaming of existing blocks. Along with general Block Editor and Site Editor updates, there's also performance  and accessibility improvements.

Site Editor updates

The Full Site Editor (Appearance > Editor) has been updated to allow editing across more of your site. You can now edit page content, browse style variations, create synced patterns, and tweak navigation menus.

Preview Block themes

It's now possible to preview Block Themes. This is functionality has been sorely missing since the introduction of Block Themes. Regular (Non-FSE) themes have had the ability to be previewed within the Customizer for many years now. Unfortunately though, when block themes were introduced, this functionality was left out. Thankfully though, this has been recitified in WordPress 6.3. When browsing all your installed themes, you now have the option to preview Block Themes. When clicking on the Live Preview button, you'll be taken to the Full Site Editor where you can preview the theme as well as make modifications to it, prior to activating it. With that said though, it's still not as intuitive to preview different pages within the theme as you can't navigate around the actual preview window like you can when previewing Non-FSE themes in the Customizer.

Create and sync patterns

Reusable Blocks are now called Synced Patterns and the Site Editor now allows you to arrange blocks and save them as patterns, for use throughout your site. You can specify whether to sync your patterns so that when a patterns is changed, those changes are seen across your whole site. Alternatively, utilise patterns as a starting point, and have the ability to customise each instance you insert into your content.

New Command Palette

WordPress 6.3 sees the introduction of a new Command Palette to help you access tools more quickly within the Dashboard. Using Ctrl+k on Windows or Cmd+k on Macs, within the Block Editor or Site Editor, will open a small popup that allows you to enter commands directly. While its use is currently quite limited, both in terms of what commands you can use and whereabouts it can be utilised, over time this Command Palette will spread throughout the rest of the WordPress Dashboard.

New Blocks

WP 6.3 introduced two new Blocks to the Block Editor. There's a new Footnotes block that allows you to add convenient annotations to your content. Footnotes are typically used to cite sources, figures or provide further additional information to your readers and are a great way to provide additional context.

There's also a new Details block. This block acts like a single accordion that allows you to display a number other blocks, such as paragraph or List blocks for example, whilst keeping it hidden or minimised until clicked. When the block is clicked, the content will become visible and when clicked again, the content will hide.

Performance & accessibility improvements

WP 6.3 also includes some performance improvements including defer and async support for the Scripts API and fetchpriority support for images, along with improvements with block template resolution, image lazy-loading, and the emoji loader.

There were also more than 50 accessibility improvements including improved labelling, optimised tab and arrow-key navigation, revised heading hierarchy, and new controls in the admin image editor to allow those using assistive technologies to navigate more easily.

Latest guide updates

In this latest version of the guide there's new images for every single block, reflecting the UI changes in the Dashboard. There's also updated descriptions for new blocks and significant changes to the Editor section. All these updates ensure that what you see in the guide is exactly what you see when using WordPress. I hope that you'll find this update makes it easier for you, or your clients, to work with WordPress.

Head on over to the download page to download the latest version of the Easy WP Guide, or if you want to get stuck straight into it, you can always read it online.