WordPress 6.0 was released on the 24th May, and is an exciting new version with some amazing enhancements. As many of the improvements are quite technical and focussed at what we do as WordPress web developers, we thought we would highlight some of the features we are most excited about that you might be able to make use of right away.
It is worth noting, that not all Themes will support these features yet, but we anticipate most theme authors will be adding them over the next couple of months.
New blocks!
Avatar and Post Author Biography Blocks
While you have been able to add the “Post Author” for a while, you now have the ability to add the Post Author Bio and Avatar separately, giving you greater flexibility in the layout of the Posts and pages. Scale the Avatar or adjust the radius, giving your posts a fresh feel. As before, both the Avatar and Bio are brought directly from the User profile.
Read More
When create a posts page, such as a blog page, you can now add a customizable Read More block. This block gives you greater flexibility in your design options for displaying a Read More style message for your posts or other content!
Other features
Block Locking
You can now Lock your blocks to make sure they are not moved or removed to ensure you have a consistent look across all your posts or pages. To do so, simply select the blog you want to lock, click on the three dot menu and choose the Lock option. This will open a new window, where you can specify what you want to restrict.
Selecting text across blocks
Up until now it has only been particularly to select text within a specific block. With WordPress 6.0 it is now possible to select text across multiple paragraph and heading blocks, making it easier to update or copy/paste text.
Shortcut to adding internal links
We all know that having links to other pages or posts on your website is a great way to help your visitors navigate around the site. To speed this process up for you slightly, WordPress 6.0 allows you to start a hyperlink by typing two open square brackets – so [[. You will then be shown a list of all your pages, and you can just keep typing the page title of the page you want to link to, until it shows as the only option. Then, hit Enter and the link will be added to your text as a hyperlink!
Grouping visibility options
If you have grouped any blocks, you can now specify how you would like them to appear on the different size screens. This is a great way to improve the mobile responsiveness of your site while still giving you the control over how the content appears.
You can choose between Group, Row or Horizontal, and each one gives your different layout and alignment options to play with.
List view
Related to the above, it is already easier to select the blocks you are looking to group thanks to the improvement of being able to select text across multiple blocks. However, to simplify things even more, you can also see the blocks on your page as a List View. To do so, simply click on the icon of three indented lines at the top of your page, and then you can select the relevant sections of your page from the list. You can select multiple adjacent blocks using Shift+Click or Shift+Up/Down.
Spacing for Image Galleries
One thing that has been needed for a while that WordPress 6.0 finally delivers is the ability to manually define the spacing between your images in an Image Gallery block. To adjust the spacing, simply select the Image Gallery block (not one of the images) and set the Block spacing in the Dimensions section.
Copy Image URL to clipboard
While we are on the topic of images, a small yet hugely helpful feature that has just been added is the ability to copy the image URL directly from the media library when you are viewing the images as a list. That’s one more click that WordPress 6.0 has saved you.
There are many other features this update has that really enhances the WordPress experience, for example the ability to set the opacity of your Spacer Blocks or the fact that Featured Images that do not have ALT text are automatically updated to contain the page title as the ALT text. We suggest you have a look around and see what you may not have previously seen. And we are of course here to answer any of questions you might have!
Time to update?
If you are on our WordPress managed hosting service, your website should have been updated to WordPress 6.0 already. Otherwise, you will have to manually initiate the update. Updating your website will not only give you access to these new and improved features, but will also help keep your website secure.
Do remember to create a backup of your website before you update and if you need any help in doing so, please go get in touch! You can call us on 01889 280010 or email hello@zephi.co.uk.
And remember, we also offer a comprehensive website maintenance package to help take the pain out of staying on top of your updates.
