WordPress 6.4, named ‘Shirley” was released on November 7th.
Whilst not as big as some of the more recent updates, 6.4 still brings plenty to the table.
Let’s take a look at some of the key updates. This is not intended as an extensive deep dive, just a brief overview of the main points of interest.
Performance
Although there aren’t as many performance enhancements in 6.4 compared to the last couple of releases, it still include over 100.
These can be summarised as:
- Improvements to theme template load performance
- The addition of script loading options (‘defer’ & ‘async’) for core blocks and themes
- Optimisation for particular autoloading options to improve server response times.
Management Updates
- WordPress recommends PHP 8.1 or 8.2 for stable compatibility with 6.4.
- 6.4 has also introduces an option to control how attachment pages are handled. By default, in new installations of WordPress, they will be disabled, with the option to enable if required.
Usability & Accessibility
As with each release, there are a number of changes and fixes that aim to make WordPress more accessible for all.
Changes include:
- Adjusting the spacing, colour contrast and using clearer labelling for certain buttons and toggles in the admin interface.
- The addition of various missing Aria roles and fixes to attributes.
- Aria-label support for the navigation block.
- The addition of missing accessible descriptions.
- Improvements to semantic structure on the backend for screen readers.
- Changes to focus behaviours in the editor.
Site Editing & Blocks
- For developers, Block Hooks have been added, which allow for the insertion of dynamic blocks in specific content areas.
- Improvements to the command palette that was introduced in 6.3.
- You can now export and share custom patterns across websites, as JSON files.
- Create custom categories for patterns, and improved filtering.
- You can now preview images in the list view.
- Group blocks can be renamed to help you better organise your content.
- Add buttons to the navigation block.
New Default Theme
- 6.4 brings a new version of the WordPress default theme. Twenty Twenty-Four.
For our clients, your websites will be updated to 6.4 shortly, after full testing on the staging version of your website, to ensure there are no issues or conflicts.
