WordPress 6.0: What’s New and How to Prepare

The new version of WordPress 6.0 is here!

WordPress released version 6.0 on May 24th, 2022. Here you read everything you need to know about what’s new in WordPress 6.0, including features and changes that will affect you and your website.

WordPress 6.0 introduce several significant new features and includes many other improvements, bug fixes, and changes. I also covered some of the major new features in previous posts, and now I’ll dig deeper into the changes with WordPress 6.0.

The WordPress dev team claims “WordPress 6.0 includes more than 500 enhancements and 400 bug fixes.”

How to prepare?

While it’s not necessary to prepare for the update right away, there are a few things you can do to get ready:

First, back up your website. Always make sure you have a website backup before updating WordPress or any plugins.

You can use a WordPress backup plugin like Duplicator Pro or UpdraftPlus to create an automatic backup schedule. Or, if you prefer, you can manually create backups by exporting your content and backing up your database and files separately. Either way, it’s crucial to have a recent backup before updating WordPress.

If you have a WordPress hosting account with a company like Siteground, they will automatically create backups of your site for you.

Another option is to create a staging website, a clone of your WordPress site.

Secondly, I would turn off automatic updates of WordPress core. Edit the wp-config.php file:

define('WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', 'minor');

This code line ensures that WordPress won’t automatically update to WordPress 6, but you will still receive security updates automatically. I use this code on all my sites.

What’s new with WordPress 6.0

List View

There are three new improvements. First, when you open the list view, now the list is not automatically expanded. It is collapsed. Secondly, if you click on a block in the editor, the block is highlighted in the list view. So you always see where you are. A welcome new change. Third. You can multiple select blocks in the list view and delete them.

New Keyboard Shortcuts

With the new keyboard shortcuts, you can drag and drop multiple blocks at the same level to move them around.

To select multiple blocks, use the following keyboard shortcuts:
Shift Key + Click
Shift Key + Up/Down arrow

For multi-block selection, use:

Shift Key + Home and End keys

Theme Global Style Switcher

You will be able to switch between pre-designed styles with ease. You won’t have to change the existing global style through the style interface to introduce a new design.

Select text in cross block

Select part of the text in multiple headers or paragraph blocks. Currently, in Version 5.9, it will automatically select the whole text in the paragraph block when you do that. Now, you can choose the last sentence in a paragraph block and the first sentence in the next paragraph block.

Columns block

Change border with colors or padding. Now the styling of the columns block is possible.

Copy block retains the style

If you copy a block, it will now automatically retain the same style. For example, if you have designed a nice button and want to replicate it with the same style.

Additionally, you can now maintain existing styles when converting blocks from one type to another, such as a Paragraph block to a Code block. Certain styles like color and font size preserve when transforming between blocks in WordPress 6.0 and later.

Transparency

Set transparency for background images.

Export your theme

You can export the entire theme to a zip file and use it on another site.

Adding links to your text

Just type to open brackets [[, and a suggestion of current links pop up, which you can use for links.

Full-Site-Editing (FSE)

The block-based theme twenty twenty-two also receive a makeover in WordPress 6.0 with several new templates

• 404 – The “page” that displays when no content is found.
• Single Post – How a single post displays.
• Page – How a single page displays.
• Home – Your home page.
• Index – The “page” that displays all your posts.
• Single Post (No Separators)
• Page (No Separators)

Code Editor in Site Editor

New Blocks and improvement

Block style preview

Hovering over the block style options in the design tool will show a live preview in the content area. This should help you better understand how a specific style will look before applying it to your content.

Block locking UI

Group Block

Add border and colors for a group.

Gallery Block

Set spacing between each image

It’s now easier to make beautiful galleries. With Block Spacing, you can now adjust the space around images in the Gallery block, from zero whitespace to large gaps like in an art gallery.

Comment Block

Get more control to customize the comment section on a post page.

New customization options are available with the Comments Query Loop block that replaces the Post Comments Block. You can now display nested comments, which improves the user experience because it’s easier to see whether a comment is a reply to another comment or if it’s a first-level comment.

Cover Block

Set the feature image dynamically to your post title with background

The block-based theme twenty twenty-two also receive a makeover in WordPress 6.0

As you can see, there are quite a few new features and improvements in WordPress 6.0.

Bottom line

WordPress is constantly working to improve the user experience. I hope you will enjoy all the new features and improvements in WordPress 6.0.

Make a good backup and first install the WordPress 6.0 update on a staging site. I usually wait a few days or at least a week or two until the theme and plugin maker releases an update.