What’s New In WordPress 6.5?
WordPress Hartford CT Meetup
March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024
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Watch Recording
Click below to watch our January 2024 meetup on YouTube, or visit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl7-ygJpVLQ
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Agenda
- Speaker Introductions
- Enhancements to the Block Editor User Experience (Peter)
- More Design Control for Blocks (Peter)
- Site Editor Improvements (Ray)
- Other Improvements in WP6.5 (Ray)
- Wrap-Up
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Ray Michno
- Hartford WordPress Co-Organizer
- 25+ years in IT
- Developer/Software Architect
- Pratt & Whitney, Aetna, UnitedHealthGroup
- 7+ years using WordPress
- Self-employed – CTWebGeek
- Married, No Kids, Lives in Newington, CT
- Geek
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Peter Ingersoll
- Hartford WordPress Co-Organizer
- 25+ working on the Web
- Marketing, communications, design, tech guy
- Hartford Courant, logistics, agency
- 10 years using WordPress
- Self-employed – Ingersoll Interactive
- Married, two adult kids, lives in South Windsor, CT
- WordPress Admin and DIY Advocate – IngersollWP.com
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What’s New In WordPress 6.5?
Block Editor Improvements
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Discovering New Releases
- WordPress.org / make.wordpress.org
- Beta with WordPress Beta Tester plugin
- Experiment in Local, Playground, test sites
- Learn WordPress Online Workshops Meetup
- WordPress 6.5 Source of Truth
- Blogs like The Gutenberg Times (site & podcast) and web hosting blogs
- Favorite YouTube channels, including WordPress, Anne McCarthy, Jamie Marsland, etc.
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6.5 Overall Quality of Life Improvements
- Too many to list all
- Drag and drop improvements
- Improved performance in the editor
- Improvements to the Preferences panel
- Scrolling top toolbar on smaller screens
- Appearance tools for Classic Themes, e.g. Patterns
- Set site icon in General settings
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Drag & Drop Improvements
- D&D to the beginning or end of content (hooray!)
- Improve D&D between adjacent group or cover blocks
- Indicate when block D&D is allowed or not
- Use D&D to create rows and galleries, e.g. place an image next to another to automatically create a gallery
- In the List View…
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List View Improvements
- Drag cursor shown for draggable blocks
- D&D items will show the block in place vs. blue line
- D&D in a collapsed block will expand it
- Right click, click 3-dots or keyboard shortcuts for block options
- Rename any block for clarity
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Live Demo
It’s Demo Time!
New Style Option: Drop Shadows
- Available in group, column, buttons, and image blocks
- Option found in style, border & shadow, enable drop shadow
- Initially set style choices with no options
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Cover Block Changes
- Overlay color & opacity (under block style)
- Automatically selected based on image, can be edited
- Set a fixed aspect ratio
- Keeps ratio for different screen sizes
- Found in over block, style, aspect ratio
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Group Block Changes
- Can add background image to group block
- Group, style, background image
- Positioning and size options
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Gallery Block & Images
- Random order option for galleries
- Image “Expand on Click” is now under link button
- Long image captions can scroll
- Drop shadows on images
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Live Demo
It’s Demo Time!
What’s New In WordPress 6.5?
Site Editor Improvements
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The Font Library
- Install, remove, and activate local and Google Fonts across your site.
- Eliminates the need to create a child theme or install a fonts plugin.
- The Font Library is under the Styles panel in the Site Editor.
- By default, it will show you the currently installed fonts for your Theme.
- To install fonts from Google you must give permission to connect directly to Google servers.
- Currently all fonts are installed under wp-content/fonts directory.
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Live Demo
It’s Demo Time!
Data Views
- View your Pages, Patterns, and Templates within the Site Editor in grid (with previews) vs. table layouts.
- Filtering, Sorting and Searching supported.
- This may be a preview of what to expect for an eventual “overhaul” of the entire WordPress Admin back-end?
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Style Revision Tracking
- Previously, only the date, time, and author of each Style revision were visible.
- Now Style revisions show you a more detailed description of changes made for each revision.
- Clicking on a revision gives you a visual look at the changes.
- You can click “Apply” to go back to a previous revision.
- The maximum number of Style revisions you can view is no longer limited to 100. Pagination now supported.
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Live Demo
It’s Demo Time!
Other Changes
- Preferences Panel has been better organized – sections for General, Appearance, Accessibility, Blocks settings.
- Interactivity API – provides a framework for developers to create modern front-end interfaces that don’t require complete page reloads. Example: https://wpmovies.dev/
- Plugin Dependencies – plugin authors can define the plugins required to be installed and activated for their plugin to work. Limited only to plugins hosted on WordPress.org.
- Binding Custom Fields to Blocks – display data stored in custom fields within core blocks, including buttons, headers, images, and paragraphs. No UI for this – have to use the Code Editor.
- Performance Improvements – faster Site Editor navigation and overall back-end feels “snappier”
- Synced Patterns with Overrides – Moved to WordPress 6.6 Release!
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The Standing WordPress Reminder
Your WordPress experience is defined by your theme, plugins, and custom code. WordPress environments can vary greatly!
Understanding concepts is more helpful than specifics.
Block Themes & Classic Themes
- Block themes use the site editor
- Classic themes use the customizer
- Examples of classic themes: Kadence, Astra, GeneratePress, OceanWP, Blocksy, etc.
- Examples of block themes: Twenty Twenty-Four, Variance, Powder, Ollie, Spectra One
- Theme authors control what specifics are enabled in their themes
- Reviewing the 6.5 Welcome / About page
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Live Demo
It’s Demo Time!
Wrap Up & Q&A
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Resources
- https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-6-5/
- WordPress 6.5 Field Guide
- Learn WordPress Online Workshops Meetup
- WordPress 6.5 Source of Truth
- Gutenberg Times (site & podcast)
- YouTube channels: WordPress, Anne McCarthy, Jamie Marsland, etc.