What’s New in WordPress 6.0 “Arturo”

WordPress 6.0 “Arturo” is here! As the version number suggests, this is a major update to WordPress. It’s named in honor of Arturo O’Farrill, a Grammy-winning jazz musician, known for his contributions to contemporary Latin jazz.

WordPress launches a major update a few times each year with minor updates in between. These major updates include improvements in WordPress capabilities, features, performance, and security in various areas.

With each major version update, we check out the new features and how useful they are to WordPress users. WordPress 6.0 includes more than 500 enhancements! Read on to learn about some of the new features that came with “Arturo.” 

Updating to WordPress 6.0

I strongly recommend waiting several days before updating your website to WordPress 6.0. Major updates like this one often require some plugins and themes to be updated to maintain compatibility. While most plugin/theme developers do their best to make necessary updates prior to the new WordPress release, it’s still a good idea to wait a bit in case an unexpected problem occurs.

Version 6.0 is a major update (not a minor security update). You may need to log in to your WordPress website and run an update manually. To learn how to do this, refer to this step-by-step guide & video on “How to Update WordPress to the Latest Version”.

Some web hosting services perform these WordPress updates for you. Also, you might have an automatic update option turned on within your WordPress. If that’s the case, the update should run automatically soon, if it hasn’t already.

New Features of WordPress 6.0

Below are some of the main WordPress 6.0 new features visible to users. Just like the previous few major releases, most of these are around the WordPress Block Editor, Gutenberg.

I don’t teach the WordPress Block Editor in my Website Creation Workshop since I still find it confusing for beginners and not as feature-rich and intuitive as other visual editors that I teach, such as Divi and Elementor , and of course the Classic Editor (a tried and true favorite)But I do see they have been constantly improving the WordPress Block Editor with every major release with non-techie users in mind, which I appreciate.

Writing Improvements

WordPress 6.0 came with many improvements that can help you write a post/page efficiently!

• Select text across multiple blocks. You can edit them at once, too.
  
• When converting block types, the original style will be maintained. You can see that in the preview screen before conversion.
  
• When you customize a button, the next button you create will inherit the same style as a default.
  

Avatar block (new block)

The Avatar block is a handy block that you can use to easily insert the avatar of the website user. You can either specify the user in the setting or leave it blank to display the avatar of the post/page author.

List view enhancements

The List View of the WordPress Block Editor can be a very useful tool to locate and organize each component of the post/page. It can help you work efficiently while building the site, too.

WordPress 6.0 leveled up the List View by adding more useful features.

• The default List View is displayed as “collapsed,” making it look much cleaner and easier to locate what you are looking for.
• “Block locking” (also available in blocks) lets you lock the block so that the block will not be easily moved or removed by mistake.
  
• You can now select multiple elements at a time and move them together.
  

Design Tool Enhancements

A big downside with the WordPress Block Editor has been, in my opinion, that users didn’t have much control over the design elements. While WordPress 6.0’s design features are still not at the level of many other popular WordPress visual editors, I’m excited to see these improvements.

• A new color panel is simpler to view and use.
  
• Color options now include transparency control.
  
• Border controls now lets you control the border radius for each corner.
  

Access to Patterns Easily

Using the ready-made patterns is now quicker with WordPress 6.0. Just add a block by clicking on the plus button, then enter the pattern name to search for the pattern you are looking for.

Full-site editing improvements

WordPress 5.9 introduced what they call “Full Site Editing.” With Full Site Editing, you can have more control over the look and layout of your website.

WordPress 6.0 came with some enhancements to the Full Site Editing, including:

• “Style Switcher” that allows you to switch styles easily
• Exporting tool that lets you export the style you built along with updated templates/styles.
• Additional template options (tag and taxonomy pages)

However, this is something that’s available only with so-called “Block Themes.” If you are interested, read more about the Full Site Editing here.

Other Improvements in WordPress 6.0

As mentioned above, WordPress 6.0 includes more than 500 enhancements. Read more about WordPress 6.0 in the WordPress.org official blog post. Or, watch this video for some of these new features in action!