In this article we will cover all the newest and important features that WordPress has to offer for your websites. It is important to stay up-to-date on the latest version of WordPress not only for having the latest and greatest, but to have bug fixes that may have stopped you from working properly in the past, and of course provide security for any possible backdoor threats that the older ones may have. You can keep track of the latest releases on the official WordPress page here.
New Default Theme for WordPress Version 6.7
Like with every other more global update, WordPress offers a new version of their default theme which can be checked directly from your Dashboard in the Appearance menu (1) and select Themes (2):
You can additionally hover over with your mouse cursor to check the theme itself with the option for Live Preview to see if it would fit your needs:
As always, WordPress default themes tend to be stripped from overall complexity or design features, however, they provide a lot of functionality and integration for all kinds of sites like blogs, businesses and more. Additionally, they are optimized to be fast, both on desktop and mobile versions.
The key elements with this theme design are 3 points in total:
- Design that can re-shape – in simpler words, the design of the theme is made to be flexible and provide the best user experience, depending on the device they use. For example, if you are using a mobile device with a small screen, the theme would fit everything in order without distorting the look of your website when it is re-shaped to fit.
- More functionalities – it provides users more options to customize their colors, styles of different pages and fonts to better suit their design language and ideas.
- Design that is focused on readers – this partly connects to the first point, however, it involves better typography and readability throughout the website that is using the theme. It ensures that the text is fitted into every screen with enough space and format that would be pleasant for the user’s eyes.
There is a new Site Editor update on this theme allowing further functionalities and options for its users. We will go through them with another structured list:
- Enhanced Editor Mode allows you to view the website while making updates in the background. That gives a better perspective on how your website looks after each change and can make you more effective and not waste much time browsing through different tabs.
- Enhanced Media File Library allows you to support and add HEIC to JPEG image formats. Imagick as an extension still needs to be installed on a server level, however that can be done from the hosting side through the technical support.
- Different Design Tools to further your work on the website. They are optimized from older versions, often combining features that were separate or confusing altogether. Most of the options now offer editing different blocks, changing fonts and colors on one tab, from one place, which again saves time and makes you more effective with your work.
Additionally, there are a lot of developer oriented updates that allow you to more easily integrate software with the open-source code of WordPress through API. To summarize this update in particular is incremental and is mainly focused on providing bug fixes with the core file structure and the block editor. If you wish to stay ahead of what’s coming, you can additionally view different BETA versions of WordPress that are coming up.
A good tip for going forward is to have a staging site on which you can test the newer versions of WordPress and familiarize yourself with everything that is new. Sometimes that includes preventing incompatibility issues with certain plugins or themes you may have, depending on the PHP version of your website which you actually save some issues with your live site.
Another thing to mention are the automatic updates feature on WordPress which pushes all the changes to your website. You can enable that through your Dashboard by the Updates menu and selecting Switch to automatic updates for maintenance and security releases only:
Another way is to contact the technical support of your hosting provider to ensure that you have the latest version. With WPX, our technical staff can assist you with everything that was said in this article, including fixing or troubleshooting an issue with your website.
That’s all there is to it! We pretty much covered all the important topics of a general WordPress version update and the new features that can make your life easier when working on your website. If you have any questions regarding the topic, do not hesitate to contact WPX.
