As the second major WordPress update this year, 6.6 continues to enhance the platform with a host of new features and improvements that provide greater control over design elements, streamline user workflows, and introduce new technical capabilities for better performance and usability.
Enhanced design tools
Notable design additions include grid layout support, which allows users to create grid layouts with both automatic and manual options, providing greater control over page designs. Additionally, the update brings expanded style variations which enable users to mix and match typography and colour palettes across different variations, as well as section-specific styling which means theme authors can now define style options for sections of blocks.
Moreover, 6.6 extends support for setting background images site-wide through the Site Editor or theme.json, and it introduces the ability to set negative margins for blocks directly in the editor. It also adds support for box shadows in the Featured Image block, aligning with the Image block.
Improved UX
As part of the platform’s ongoing commitment to build a better user experience, the WordPress 6.6 release offers a number of new and improved features to strengthen production. This includes starter patterns in the Site Editor for easier layout creation, as well modernised pattern management for classic themes.
The addition of a unified publish flow also streamlines the publishing process with a cohesive design and workflow across post and site editors, plus new inspector enhancements make it possible to browse and switch templates and template parts directly within the Inspector.
Tech advancements
The latest update drops support for PHP 7.0 and 7.1, raising the minimum supported version to PHP 7.2.24, however users still running the older versions will continue to receive security updates by remaining on the WordPress 6.5 branch.
Alongside an HTML API update that refines the HTML Processor for better handling of HTML documents, 6.6 also introduces a token map for efficient string parsing and replacements, as well as a Block Bindings API that improves the editing experience of dynamic data within blocks.
Additional features
Further features of note for WordPress 6.6 include new custom field editing functionality that allows direct editing of custom field values in the block settings, plus pattern shuffling which adds a shuffle button for cycling through similar patterns.
With 6.6, it’s now also possible to indent and outdent list items using the tab key, and multiple patterns can be exported as JSON files for easy transfer. Performance improvements are also worth highlighting, with a 40% reduction in template loading time, making the platform faster and even more efficient.
