WordPress 6.0: A New Era for Web Design?

WordPress 6.0 is finally here – and with it, there’s a raft of huge updates for building, editing, and design experts to tap into. It’s the second big release of 2022 thus far, and having launched on May 24th, millions of users have already triggered the manual update to take full advantage.

With every WordPress update, we benefit from more convenience and more control. What can web devs, hosts, and owners expect from this latest iteration – and is this the release to rule them all?

Themes Made Easy

Theme accessibility is a large facet of WordPress 6.0. It’s now possible, for example, to switch your theme style with a quick click. There’s no more hunting around, going off-window, and wasting time trialling new fonts and colour schemes.

This ties in nicely with an added boost that allows you to edit dates, tags, categories and authors within archive templates. That, again, cuts down on time and effort where you’d previously have to go off-window. Ultimately, these changes help to cut down the (slight) tedium in WordPress 5.9.

New Kids on the Block(s)

WordPress 5.0 arguably changed the web design game with the introduction of block editing. It was a move that took time to gain fans – but as of 6.0, it’s a ‘new normal’ we’re all glad we have access to. 6.0, in fact, makes the block editing process even more accessible and easier to use.

For example, WP 6.0 brings in more block options – such as ‘read more’, opportunities to insert bios, avatars, and a more engaging comment query loop.

Block locking, too, is a feature we are immensely pleased with in WP 6.0. Documents with multiple users now benefit from locks, preventing anyone bar page creators from moving blocks around in the hierarchy.

There’s extra accessibility in block arrangement, too. You can choose interlinked blocks, horizontal or vertical cascades. It’s easier for you to manage this from inside the WP UI. Add in extra tweaks such as opacity adjustments, column borders and multiple list item select (amongst others), and it’s clear to see WordPress is pushing blocks to the next level.

Is This The Future for Web Design?

WordPress has always been at the cutting edge of simple, accessible web design. However, 6.0 takes accessibility to the next logical stepping stone.

Changing to blocks was a big undertaking for many experienced web devs. Thankfully, 6.0 appears to drill deep into some of the time-wasting issues facing experienced and amateur web builders alike.

We’ve already adopted WP 6.0, and can thankfully say it’s exceptionally easy to get into. We feel this offers unlimited time-saving opportunities for developers – as well as a creative new playground for blocks and themes, which many of us still worried were a little too stilted.

WP 6.0 is still in its infancy – but now’s the time to explore. If you’re working on a non-managed build, we highly recommend that you manual install now and take full advantage.