WordPress 6.0 exciting new features and improvements

WordPress 6.0 comes with exciting new features that focus on improved writing and editing experience, performance, and block customization.  

WordPress 6.0

WordPress 6.0 final version will be released on May 24, 2022. The release will be led by WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg.

We have used the beta and release candidates version to test the new features.

New Features in WordPress 6.0

There are hundreds of new features in WordPress 6.0. We are going to highlight major features only.

• Selecting text for multiple blocks or paragraphs

Since the introduction of the block editor, it was not possible to select text at once for multiple blocks. For example, if you had 5 paragraphs in your editor and you wanted to select all the text in the five paragraphs, it was not possible, with WP 6.0 it is possible. 

• Open brackets shortcut

WordPress 6.0 introduces a new shortcut for accessing link menus. If you type the two open brackets [[ in your editor, the link menu will popup.

• Lock Blocks

WordPress 6.0 provides an option to lock blocks (for example paragraph blocks). You can disable the movement of the paragraph up/down or deletion of paragraphs. When you disable movement, the icon to move block up and down will not be visible, instead, you will see a lock icon. The same applies when you prevent removal. You can always disable these options anytime.

• Export Customized Theme

WordPress 6.0 makes it possible to export the whole customized theme, including template changes. This means that you can customize your block theme using the editor and export it in zip format. However, you cannot upload the theme directly to the WordPress theme repository unless you make changes in readme.txt, screenshot, the version number in style.css, theme name, license, etc.

To download your customized theme, go to appearance>editor>on the top right, click the three dots>Export.

This is an exciting feature for users without coding skills that have always wanted to make changes or create WordPress themes

• Performance Improvement

Full CRUD has been added via wp_cache_add_multiple, wp_cache_set_multiple and    wp_cache_delete_multiple functions to support multiple cache objects creation and deletion.

Term query caching limit of 25 hours for persistent object caching has been removed to improve performance. To make the values stored in the cache memory smaller, only the term ID will be cached instead of the entire term object.

WordPress websites with many users like eCommerce sites, directories, and membership sites will experience performance improvements due to the changes in user querying and counting.

Some terms have also been changed to improve performance.

• Emoji Update

WordPress 6.0 comes with an update of Twemoji to 14.0.2 to support emojis added in Emoji 14.

• PHPMailer

PHPMailer has been updated to version 6.5.4 and 6.6.0 to prevent web hosting companies from disabling security functions escapeshellcmd() and escapeshellarg().

NOTE: WordPress 6.0 is a major release which means that you should test your plugins and themes for compatibility before updating. Changes made to terms, hooks, and functions are likely to break some plugins that have not been updated.

For more features and changes, read WordPress 6.0 Dev notes.