With WordPress 6.7, a new version is in the starting blocks - and with it some features that will make developers and website operators sit up and take notice.

With Twenty Twenty-Five, there will be a new standard theme, which is intended in particular for blogs and news sites and brings a breath of fresh air to the design. Another interesting feature is the new "Zoom Out" mode in the editor for all those who frequently create large pages and posts. But that's not all: this version offers numerous other improvements that can optimize your work with WordPress. In this article, we take a look at the most exciting new features - WordPress 6.7 will be released on November 12.

New standard theme "Twenty Twenty-Five"

It has become a long-standing tradition that WordPress introduces a new default theme with the new year. Among other things, it is intended to highlight the latest functions and improvements in WordPress. It is also a showcase for how the WordPress team envisions a modern theme.

Twenty Twenty-Five goes back to the roots in a way, as it is clearly intended as a theme for a blog. The predecessors were designed to be more universal and showed that WordPress can be used for many types of websites. However, WordPress originated as a blog system. And you can see that here.

Twenty Twenty-Five has three basic variants:

1. Classic blog where the focus is on the text.
2. Photoblog, which, among other things, emphasizes the post pictures.
3. A version for "complex content" that is reminiscent of a news website.

But that's not all: the team provides numerous patterns as design elements for various purposes. These include modules for landing pages, "About us" pages, call to actions, events and more. So if you install this theme, you get many useful templates included.

Last but not least, it offers you a wide selection of color combinations and fonts that you can select with a single click. The team has selected the fonts with particular care: They should also elegantly display languages that do not use the Latin alphabet. Last but not least, this fits in with the topic of internationalization: WordPress should be better prepared for global use in the future. According to the official roadmap, "Multilingual" is the fourth and final phase of the Gutenberg project - right after the current topic of "Collaboration". The preparatory work for this is already underway, as we will see below. But more on that later.

As beautiful as Twenty Twenty-Five is: In the comments to the official post, people question why WordPress continues to introduce a new theme every year. After all, a basic idea of Full Site Editing (FSE) is that all parts of the website can now be freely customized, provided you use a block theme. In this respect, one alternative would be to provide a universal FSE theme that can be adapted for the latest functions and updates as required. There was no response from the design team.

Improvements for user-friendliness

New "Zoom Out" mode in the editor

Section Styles is another new feature that gives you more flexibility when designing your website: This allows you to customize entire sections of your pages or posts with eIn WordPress 6.7, the Gutenberg versions from 18.6 to 19.3 are included. New in the block editor is the "Zoom Out" mode. This allows you to switch to a kind of bird's eye view when creating or editing pages. This means you can edit content at a higher level - for example, patterns instead of individual blocks. This should give users simplified navigation and a better overview: they can switch back and forth between different content areas more quickly or adjust designs on a larger scale without getting lost in the details. You can switch to this mode via a toggle switch in the toolbar. It also activates automatically when you select the "Pattern" tab.

Der Editor erkennt bei alledem selbstständig den Hauptinhaltsbereich einer Seite – meistens den Post-Content-Block oder einen Gruppenblock, der das HTML-Element <main> nutzt. Damit der Modus korrekt funktioniert, sollten Entwickler:innen ihre Templates entsprechend anpassen. Sie müssen etwa sicherstellen, dass der Hauptinhalt in einem solchen Gruppenblock liegt.

Block Bindings UI now official

With WordPress 6.7, the Block Bindings UI reaches an important milestone: it leaves the experimental phase and is now permanently integrated into the editor. A new user interface allows you to link compatible blocks such as headings, paragraphs, images and buttons directly to external data sources. You can manage these connections via a new "Attributes" panel in the block settings, whereby only administrators can make changes by default.

One of the main uses of block bindings is to create templates for custom post types. Developers can use them to connect user-defined fields to different blocks and thus create dynamic layouts without having to create their own blocks. 

The user interface is currently limited to linking to post-meta data. The connection of further data sources is under development and will be made possible in future versions via an API.

Further innovations and improvements in the backend

With WordPress 6.6, CSS specificity in the core will be fundamentally revised to make life easier for theme developers. The aim is to make it easier to overwrite core styles while retaining support for global styles.

With WordPress 6.7, the editor and the backend have undergone numerous further optimizations. Here is a selection:

• Until now, metaboxes could prevent the post editor from being displayed in an iFrame. A new split view fixes this problem. However, there are still other exceptional cases.
• WordPress now accepts images in HEIC format and automatically converts them to JPEG. HEIC is the standard format for Apple devices, among others. This feature depends on your web host, as it requires a compatible version of Imagick. You can easily find out if it is available for you: Go to "Website status" and look under "Report" at "Media handling". The available file formats should be listed there. If Imagick is not compatible, you will be prompted to manually convert the image to a JPEG before uploading it.
• The "Styles" settings have an option to set standard font sizes globally. 
• The blocks for quotes, verses and post content can now have background images. Previously, only container blocks such as Cover or Group offered this option. These backgrounds can also be set globally.
• The group block can now also have a shadow.
• The date of a post or comment can be displayed in a relative format such as "2 hours ago".
• The "Query Loop" block is easier to use: As you know, you use it to integrate a list of posts into your layout. Now, for example, the theme can specify basic settings. In addition, the block options can now all be found in the sidebar, whereas previously some of them were located in the block's toolbar.

Improvements around the topic of internationalization

Even though the "Multilingual" phase of the Gutenberg project is still to come, there are still some interesting improvements in detail.

Checking the existence of translations

With the new has_translation() function, developers can efficiently check whether a translation exists - without having to load it first. This should improve performance, as the system avoids unnecessary loading times.

Improved warning system for early loading of translations

WordPress also introduces an improved warning system that informs you when translations are loaded too early. The core functions load_plugin_textdomain() and load_theme_textdomain() have been optimized so that they only load translations when they are actually needed. This not only avoids warning messages, but can also increase the performance of the website.

Automatic translation of e-mails

In addition, administrators automatically receive emails in their preferred language if they use the official administrator email address as their personal email address.

Improvements for developers

Update for Interactivity API

The Interactivity API has received an important update for dynamic page navigation. Developers can now more precisely control how the state of their interactive elements behaves during client-side navigation. The API introduces the new functions getServerState() and getServerContext() to react specifically to changes in the page state. A typical use case is the development of interactive blocks such as quiz components: Here, developers can now specify exactly which properties should be updated when a page is changed. The new functions return read-only objects that are automatically updated with the values from the new HTML after each navigate() call.

Preview Options API

Plugins can now extend the preview function of the editor via the Preview Options API. For example, a newsletter plugin could add a point to display a post as it would look in an email program. Or a social media plugin could show what the article preview looks like in various social networks. This is available in the post and page editor as well as in the site editor.

Performance when registering multiple blocks

The new function wp_register_block_metadata_collection() optimizes performance when registering multiple blocks. Plugins can now bundle their block metadata in a single PHP manifest file instead of processing individual block.json files for each block. Integration into existing development workflows is extremely simple: the @wordpress/scripts package automatically generates the required manifest files using the new build-blocks-manifest command - a feature that previously only WordPress Core itself could use. Outlook: Support for themes is being discussed. There are considerations to extend the concept to theme.json files, which would improve performance, especially for extensive theme configurations.

Plugin Template Registration API

With the new Plugin Template Registration API, developers can now register their own block templates directly via their plugins and integrate them into the site editor. This important function was previously reserved for themes. The new API makes the process particularly easy with two central functions: templates can be created with register_block_template(), while unregister_block_template() removes them again if required. Developers define the template name and can specify further parameters such as title, description, standard content and supported post types. The templates then appear seamlessly alongside all other templates in the site editor. At the same time, theme templates continue to take precedence over plugin templates: themes can therefore override plugin templates if required.

Loading lazy-loaded images

Lazy-loaded images are now loaded more intelligently: The new sizes="auto" function enables the browser to select the exact appropriate image size from the srcset list as soon as the image scrolls into the visible area. Since the layout is already known at this point, the browser can determine the actual display width of the image and load the optimal version accordingly. WordPress now automatically adds "auto" to the sizes attribute for lazy-loaded images.

Data Views component

The "Data Views" component is a building block for the upcoming redesign of the backend and will ultimately replace the previous list views. It is being developed step by step and will undergo various changes and improvements with WordPress 6.7. For example, you can adjust the column order in table views and change the density of grid views. In addition, the list views for pages display the author's avatar next to the publication status. In addition, combined fields can be displayed, e.g. page thumbnails next to the title. 

This is just a selection of the numerous changes and improvements. As always, a good starting point for in-depth research is the current "Field Guide" to the new WordPress version.

Conclusion

WordPress 6.7 impressively demonstrates that the platform not only remains sovereign, but is also constantly being prepared for the future. The new default theme, which focuses on blogs and news sites, is a welcome sign that WordPress is not forgetting its roots - something that makes me particularly happy as a long-time user. Those who, like me, have known WordPress since the very beginning will perhaps appreciate this. With exciting features such as the "Zoom Out" mode and many small improvements, WordPress 6.7 also shows that it is well equipped for the next generation of web design.