WordPress 6.5 : Exploring the newest features

In the evolving world of content management systems, staying ahead of the game is crucial. WordPress has been on a roll with its recent updates, and now in 2024, comes its first major release of the year. This update is filled with new features and improvements designed to take your website to the next level.

Wibble are a leading web design and development studio in Belfast and have a web design portfolio that is entirely built on WordPress – we only use one CMS and are well-known as experts in its use and management. As part of our Wibble Support Package which sees us maintain hundreds of WordPress sites, it is important we keep ourselves and our clients up to speed in the latest WordPress changes and developments.

Let’s delve into some of the highlights of this eagerly anticipated release.

At last, the Font Library

The much-anticipated Font Library feature has been published for WordPress 6.5, having being postponed with the release of 6.4, needing more time to ‘bake’. Users now have more control over the typography used across their websites. Both local and Google fonts may be added, giving users more influence on design options.

The font library is accessible by going to the site editor, Appearance / Editor, and selecting the ‘Styles’ section. Fonts are managed via the ‘Styles’ sidebar, allowing users to upload their own fonts or install from the Google fonts library.

The benefit of this new feature is that you don’t need to add an additional typography plugin to your site to use a custom font.

Block Editor

WordPress is ever-evolving with regular, scheduled releases and much more frequent updates and hotfixes. Each release of WordPress usually sees improvements to the block editor, and 6.5 is no different. We will highlight some of the cool tweaks here.

Renaming

The first, block renaming. This feature already existed for ‘group blocks’, but 6.5 allows individual blocks to now be renamed also. This is handy if the same block is used numerous times on the same page; users can rename the block to maintain a more ordered layout.

Design options

New block design features have been introduced in 6.5 for more blocks, including the image and column blocks.

The drop shadow effect has been added to WordPress, creating the appearance of depth and making items in your layout stand out. This effect has been added to Image / Column and Buttons blocks. There are a a number of styles to choose from to match your design better.

The cover block overlay is another new feature that was implemented in version 6.5. The overlay will be automatically selected based on the image or colour that you have selected for it. The opacity can be easily adjusted in the sidebar panel to match the design of your site.

Style Revisions

Robust edits are now supported by the site Editor, which enhances the administration and oversight of website updates. This tool shows a history of changes made to your website over time, providing even more insight into its progress. Because they let users know what changes have been done, by whom, and when, timestamps and change summaries are great features.

Other noticeable changes

WordPress’s speed and accessibility have both been significantly improved in this edition. The most noticeable improvement is probably the increased performance while using the Block and Site editor. Speed gains will also be visible on translated websites, with faster load times thanks to the new lightweight library.

The site icon, also known as a favicon, has been moved to a more accessible place of the backend. The site icon, which is located in the ‘Customiser’ area, can now also be altered through the general settings.

There are many more new features and enhancements, but these are the most visible and noticeable.

Managed WordPress support

Our support team have been testing out this newest release and have begun pushing this out to all the sites that we manage and host – so far the updates have not caused any issues with the sites that we have built and maintain.

As a leading web design and development studio, we monitor and test all new WordPress changes constantly. We are always running changes and updates to the sites that we manage. You can read about how we manage sites under our “Golden Gate Bridge Approach” to WordPress management.

If you want to work with an award winning, web design studio in Ireland just get in touch. If you are an existing Wibble client and want any more info about the above, reach out to your support team.