The most latest version of WordPress was just released. On November 7, 2023, WordPress version 6.4 came out. The neighborhood is named for the famous jazz singer Shirley Horn. This is the third big update of 2023, and it includes a lot of new features, bug fixes, and better speed. As you unpack and play around with this new release, you will also get a new, flexible Twenty Twenty-Four theme.
It also has some important new features, such as Block Hooks, better pattern organization, and a revamped and improved Command palette. It also changes the attachment pages, adds a lightbox effect to pictures, and makes a number of changes to the way you write.
You can try out these features by downloading WordPress 6.4. You can set your site to regularly update from the Dashboard > Updates menu in the admin area.
We will talk about all the updates, improvements, and fixes that came with WordPress version 6.4′ Shirley’ in this post. Let’s find out what’s new in WordPress 6.4 right now.
WordPress version 6.4 has new features and improvements.
Creative designers, developers, and web builders can now do more with this big update. WordPress 6.4 lets you build with blocks, which gives you more freedom than ever before, and lets your ideas fly.
Take a close look at its highlights and improvements. Also, look into ways to make your ideas come to life and make changing the site easier with better tools.
Twenty-Four Theme
One thing that WordPress always does is add a new basic theme every year. It normally comes with the last movie of the year. Theme Twenty Twenty-Four is a simple WordPress theme that can be used for many things. Small business owners, photographers and artists, and writers and bloggers are the major groups that can use it.
It’s easy to use with the Site Editor and comes with 6 different styles to pick from. In the same way, this theme has about 35 patterns and layouts that make it easy to make pages quickly.
Block Hook Is Here
Block Hooks are a new feature in WordPress 6.4 that lets blocks automatically place themselves into other blocks that are similar.
Plugin developers will be able to use block hooks to work with the block editor and add to blocks without having to touch them. With this feature, you can add, remove, and change the way automatically added blocks look to suit your needs.
The user shouldn’t have to be told to directly add the block to the editor. The block is added to the front end as soon as the tool that provides the hooked block is turned on. If you turn off the app, the block should go away on its own. You can add the block hooks value to the block.json file to use block hooks. You can put the block in one of four positions: before, after, first-child, or last-child.
Lightbox Popup Lets You Make Pictures Bigger
With WordPress 6.4, users can make pictures in their posts and pages pop up in a lightbox. With the new “lightbox” feature, clicking on a picture lets you see it in a bigger window.
You can open an image in a lightbox popup by turning on or off the “Expand on Click” setting in the block settings after adding the image.
Better Command Palette
You can quickly find what you need, get things done, and speed up your building process with the Command Palette. It was first added in WordPress version 6.3, and now it’s better with some new features. The keyboard shortcut CTRL+K is now used to quickly type orders. In the same way, you can copy, change, remove, or add blocks before or after the command palette. There are also block selection options in the new version.
Image For The Group Block's Background
In the post or full site editor, the best way to make different parts of a layout is to group blocks together. Last but not least, you could choose pictures for the block’s background. But now you can add background images to your group blocks, which makes your parts look even better. This feature is great for making visually stunning hero sections, banners, or any other part that needs some imagination.
Name Change for Group Block
In WordPress 6.4, group blocks in the list view can now have different names. When you’re creating websites, this makes it easier to label your groups, which makes them easier to find when your page has a lot of group blocks. To put it another way, you can give Group blocks unique names that make it easy to group and tell them apart.
The Pattern Method Has Been Improved.
Before, you could only change the pattern name and type, as well as whether it was linked or not. You can now add a topic to your pattern, which will make it easier to find in the site and post author. You can use the patterns that come with your block theme, or you can copy designs from the Patterns Directory to add more. You can also start from scratch when you make a style in the site or post editor. You can also use a.php file to add styles to your current theme or a child theme if you know how to code.
The Synced Patterns tab has been taken away from the block inserter, and you can now view all of your patterns from the Patterns tab. This makes it easy to bring in or send out patterns as JSON from the site editor.
Added A Button to the Nav Bar
Buttons are now on the list of things that can be inside the Navigation block. From the block toolbar, it’s easy to turn a new menu item into a button when you’re done making it. To use this feature, open the page template to see the navigation block. Then, click inside the navigation block to see the black plus sign. Next, go to the right corner, below the navigation menu, and click the blue “+” button to add a block.
More Tools For Design
Color control for the Content block: The Content block has been improved in WordPress 6.4 so that you can now change the colors of the text, background, and links. In the post editor, you can use it to change a Query Loop. In the site editor, you can use it to make or change a template.
Object caching’s “split queries” tool helps WordPress break up big queries into smaller ones that work better. This makes the page speed up a lot.
More accessibility: There have been over 50 changes to accessibility, such as better labeling, better navigation, updated headings, and new controls for the image editor that make it easier for people to find their way around.
Footnotes block: The new Footnotes block lets you add notes to posts and pages. It can now handle backgrounds, text color, and links. In addition, it lets you change the fonts, sizes, and backgrounds.
Details block: With the new Details block, you can add parts that can be expanded for frequently asked questions (FAQs) or mix short and long answers into one section.
Under the Hood Changes: WordPress 6.4 Also Has Some Changes That Coders Will Find Useful.
There are new methods added to admin notices that make them easier to maintain, make them more consistent, and let you filter arguments and messages for all admin notices. What It Is
The WP_Query and WP_Term_Query caching system has been made better, which cuts down on database calls and makes things run more smoothly overall.
The values TEMPLATEPATH and STYLESHEETPATH should not be used anymore.
A framework for adding changes to WordPress post meta.
Theme makers can set their own minimum and maximum viewport widths that will be used to figure out the size of fluid fonts.
In Short
There are a lot of new features and design tools in WordPress Version 6.4. The user interface has also been improved and bugs have been fixed. It mostly adds a new, lightweight, flexible default theme with a lot of patterns and templates.
This version lets you connect the child toolbar automatically to the parent toolbar, so the user experience stays the same as they move between the inner blocks. Some of the changes that you can see are the background image in the group block, the replacement image ratio, the query loop pagination, the lightbox effect, the better list view, and the Block hooks.
Check out the new features in WordPress 6.4 to make making websites more fun.