WordPress 6.5: First Major Release of 2024

Hear ye, hear ye! We are just hours away from greeting WordPress 6.5 – the first major release of 2024.

WP 6.5 was scheduled to come out on March 26, over four months after WordPress 6.4 “Shirley” rolled out, however it got delayed with a week, and was rescheduled for April 2.

This time around, WordPress will be named after jazz violinist Regina Carter. Here is everything you need to know about WordPress 6.5 “Regina”.

WordPress 6.5: What’s New?

1. Font Library
2. Custom Block Fields
3. Required Plugins Instructions
4. Drop Shadow Functionality
5. Smart Overlay Colors in Cover Blocks
6. Rename Blocks in List View
7. Link Control Updates
8. Synced Patterns Upgrades
9. Improved Style Revisions
10. Interactivity API

1. Font Library

The font library is a brand-new feature that makes its way into WordPress. It will enable you to manage the fonts you use across your entire WordPress theme, and website.

You can view your Font Library through the Site Editor, underneath the Styles panel. Simply switch to the Typography view and then select Manage Fonts, which will make the Fonts popup appear.

This will display the fonts you have currently installed for your WordPress theme. If you want to add new ones, you can go to the Upload tab, and import fonts from your computer.

Using this functionality, website owners can customize the typography of their sites with custom fonts for their existing theme.

2. Custom Block Fields

Custom fields have been added to WordPress quite a while ago, and have already become a commonly used feature. In this release, users will be able to associate custom fields with block attributes.

Developers and more advanced users, in particular, can benefit from assigning custom fields data to individual block attributes. Thanks to the block binding API introduced for this functionality, users will also be able to use other sources to provide dynamic data for blocks.

3. Required Plugins Instructions

Many WordPress plugins need other plugins to work properly. For example, WooCommerce is a popular plugin that has a lot of additional features that can be used via installing extra plugins.

However, you cannot use the additional plugins without having the main one installed first, making them dependent on WooCommerce.

Up until now, people would only see an error message when the plugin they have installed requires other plugins to be installed or activated, without any specification.

Thankfully, from now on, users will be able to better understand the dependencies between plugins with the new instructions that will appear underneath the plugin description.

Keep in mind that the plugin authors need to provide said information in the description.

4. Drop Shadow Functionality

With WordPress 6.5 even more blocks, like Images, Columns, and Buttons will have a drop shadow effect. All you need to do is click on the particular block and look for Border & Shadow under the Style Panel.

5. Smart Overlay Colors in Cover Blocks

A new user experience feature is the ability to add a smart overlay in cover blocks. In practice, this means that selecting the overlay color will automatically be based on the background color of your selected image.

6. Rename Blocks in List View

WordPress 6.4 allowed users to rename Group blocks, and now the 6.5 release takes it one step further by providing the option of renaming any block of your choosing in the list view.

7. Link Control Updates

With Link Control, users can highlight the blog and other front pages of their website by using different icons, making them more distinguishable. This is done by right-clicking to add a link and choosing an option from the context menu.

8. Synced Patterns Upgrades

Formerly known as Reusable Blocks, Synced Patters came to life in WordPress 6.3. Their goal is to help website owners in creating patterns to later reuse across their websites.

Now, Synced Patterns are getting even better. In this WP release, they will allow you to override locked synced patterns for individual use cases.

For example, you can edit the pros and cons in a pattern user review section without changing its layout.

9. Improved Style Revisions

Until now, Style Revisions showed a timeline of changes, and you had to scroll down to see the applied modifications. With 6.5, WordPress will have better style revisions that display a description of changes made for each revision.

10. Interactivity API

The Interactivity API is an exciting new feature for developers. It provides a framework to create modern day front page interfaces that do not require complete page reloads.

This way, developers can build more interactive user experiences compared to the old-school page layouts.

A demo website was made to showcase an Interactive API preview. Feel free to check it out, and test it yourself.

Summary

WordPress 6.5 has us excited, and we can’t wait to start playing around with the new features. How about you?

Don’t forget that DevriX is a world-class WordPress agency that can help you with your technical, marketing, and business needs.