The first Beta for the next major release, 6.0 is here. WordPress 6.0 Beta 1 has been released with many exciting new features and enhancements.
The highlights in WordPress 6.0 Beta 1 include Style Switching, More Template Options, Retain Styles, More Block Patterns, ListView Improvements, Refined Design Tools, New Blocks, Block Locking UI, Export block themes, Webfonts API, and more. Also, the update includes several tiny improvements as well.
The software is still in development, so the development team recommends you to not run it on a production site and so do we. Simply set up a test site just to play around with the new version.
The major release, WordPress 6.0 is targeted for release on May 24, 2022. It is our responsibility to help the team roll out the major release with minimal (to no) issues. Therefore, let’s start testing!
To test WordPress 6.0, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want the “bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). Or you can download the beta here (zip). Another way you can test WordPress 6.0 is through WP-CLI: wp core update –version=6.0-beta1.
Check out the big items to test to find as many bugs as possible in the coming weeks to make things easier for the developers.
WordPress 6.0 Beta 1 Highlights
- Style Switching: switch up the look and feel of your site, all in one block theme. No need to change themes!
- More template options: use blocks to edit five more templates (author, date, categories, tag, and taxonomy).
- Multi-select: Easily select text across multiple blocks. Edit to your liking.
- Retain Styles: Keep your custom styles in place, whether transforming between blocks or creating new buttons.
- More patterns in more places: The Quick Inserter surfaces patterns that might work well for the condition you’re in, baking in relevant patterns for template parts and pages you’re working on.
- List View improvements: New keyboard shortcuts (shift + click) let you select multiple blocks to modify in bulk (reposition, delete, etc.), see your content at a glance with a collapsed by default view, and more.
- Refined design tools: Explore a new color panel, transparency options, more group block variations to create new layout options (Stack, Row), the ability to set your featured image in a Cover block, control the exact size of your featured image, gap support for the Gallery block, and more.
- New blocks: Comments, Read More, No results in Query Loop, Post Author biography, Avatar blocks.
- Block Locking UI: Choose to disable the option to remove a block, move it, or both, right in the editor.
- Export block themes: Explore the improved block theme export tool, as WordPress heads closer to codeless visual block theme building.
- Webfonts API: Manage local fonts with PHP or theme.json.
WordPress 6.0 addresses more than 189 tickets. It includes 91 new features and numerous small bug fixes and improvements to help smooth your WordPress experience.
As mentioned above, the WordPress 6.0 Release ison for May 24 and the development team can surely use all the help. If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.
News Source: WordPress.org