WordPress 6.5

For more information on this release, read the WordPress 6.5 announcement.

New WordPress Version 6.5 – Regina

Let’s go through some of the most significant changes to WordPress with version 6.5:

Font Library Integration

Take charge of your website’s typography effortlessly with the WordPress Font Library. Install, remove, and activate local and Google Fonts seamlessly across your site, catering to any Block theme.

Additionally, customize your font choices by incorporating custom typography collections, offering more versatility in content styling.

Enhanced Revision Management

Navigate through your creative endeavors more efficiently with comprehensive revision tracking. Gain insights into revisions for templates and template parts, accessing timestamps, summaries, and a paginated list of changes. Visualize alterations through the Style Book, facilitating a clearer understanding of their impact on individual blocks.

Advanced Background Image Controls

Empower your layout creativity by fine-tuning size, repetition, and focal point settings for background images within Group blocks. Experiment with subtle or striking visual enhancements, enriching your site’s aesthetics.

Precise Image Management in Cover Blocks

Define aspect ratios for Cover block images and effortlessly apply color overlays sourced from selected images, ensuring visual consistency and appeal.

Expanded Box Shadow Functionality

Elevate your design elements with box shadow support now available across various block types, adding depth and personality to your layouts.

Intuitive Data Views

Streamline data organization with new views for pages, templates, patterns, and template parts. Easily toggle fields and make bulk changes, enhancing efficiency and usability.

Improved Drag-and-Drop Experience

Experience smoother content management with intuitive visual cues and frictionless dragging, enhancing workflow efficiency from start to finish.

Streamlined Link Controls

Simplify link creation and management with a more user-friendly interface and convenient shortcut for copying links, facilitating a smoother content editing experience.

Additional Enhancements

WordPress 6.5 includes many additional “under the hood” enhancements aimed at developers. These include:

• Interactivity API: Simplify building interactive front-end experiences with blocks using the Interactivity API. This standardized method reduces dependencies on external tools while ensuring optimal performance. Developers can create engaging user interactions such as instant search results retrieval or real-time content interaction.
• Block Bindings API: Connect blocks to custom fields or dynamic content effortlessly. Link core block attributes to custom fields without the need for custom blocks. Extend this capability further to connect blocks to any dynamic content source with just a few lines of code.
• Enhanced Classic Theme Support: Upgrade the design experience for Classic theme users by enabling support for spacing, borders, typography, and color options. Access these appearance tools without utilizing theme.json, with additional tools automatically added upon enabling support.
• Plugin Dependency Management: Manage plugin dependencies more efficiently with the new “Requires Plugins” header. Plugin authors can specify required plugin slugs, providing users with installation and activation links for necessary plugins.

Performance Improvements

WordPress 6.5 introduces over 110 performance updates, significantly enhancing speed and efficiency in the Post Editor and Site Editor.

Loading times are now more than twice as fast as in the previous release, with input processing speed up to five times faster.

Translated sites benefit from up to a 25% improvement in load time, alongside AVIF image support and enhanced block variation registration with callbacks.

Accessibility Commitment

WordPress 6.5 prioritizes accessibility with over 65 enhancements, ensuring inclusivity for all users. Key updates include unblocking access to admin submenus for screen reader users and keyboard navigators.

Improvements also address color contrast, element positioning, and cursor focus, enhancing the WordPress experience for everyone.