WordPress 6.1: What's New

If you've gotten a new notice for an update in your WordPress dashboard, that would be the news about WordPress 6.1 being available. In his article, you'll learn all about WordPress 6.1 and what's new. Hopefully this overview will give you a good insight on what to expect.

Version 6.1 of WordPress is the third major release of 2022 and was released on November 1st. And with this release, the WordPress community added many enhancements to the platform, and improved the Gutenberg block editor, particularly to help website owners customize their content a lot easier. In a way, version 6.1 carries on more features to make the Gutenberg content block editor more robust and easier to customize.

As with every WordPress version, all of them are named after a famous jazz musician. Don’t believe it? Check out the past versions of WordPress. WordPress 6.1 Misha is named after Michail “Misha” Alperin, a Ukrainian jazz pianist, who was also part of the classical and jazz Moscow Art Trio. Misha was born in 1956, and died in 2018.

1. Twenty Twenty-Three theme

2. Template Editor

3. Better block styling

4. Building with patterns

5. Other development features

1. Twenty Twenty-Three theme

With WordPress 6.1 the new 2023 theme is shipped with it; this theme works well with the Gutenberg content block editor and is said to be powered by 10 different styles, as well as being tagged as accessibility ready. As a note, accessibility ready doesn’t necessarily mean that the theme is web accessible or easy for people with disabilities to surf your website. It just means that your site is easier to make more web accessible for users.

This theme contains unique styles so you as the end user can choose different looks so your site looks more dynamic. It also ships with a few fonts. By the way, this is all within the theme, so this brings something different from other themes that have full site editing, as well as it being a lot different from previous major default WordPress themes.

2. Template Editor

If you've been wanting a more improved way to handle templates as a content creator, WordPress 6.1 gives you more to do that. The new templates include custom ones for both posts and pages in the site editor. You can even add or edit template parts like your header or footer far more easily with the search and replace tool.

Better yet, you can do this with no coding necessary! If you don’t know code, then the Twenty Twenty-Three theme may be what you need, especially because of the different template choices.

3. Better Block Styling

• Border controls

• Menu management

• Template picker

• Inner blocks

• Styling elements for various blocks

• Spacing presets

• Featured image cover block

• Site icon

Border controls

Depending on what block you are using, you can control the border spacing.

Menu management

You can add a new menu and manage it directly from the page or post that you’re editing.

Template picker

Picking a specific template isn’t just for pages, but also for posts! You can create more templates or use whatever Twenty Twenty-Three or other block themes offer.

Inner blocks

Some blocks like the lists (both ordered and unordered), and quotes have blocks within blocks to help you customize those further. With the lists block, you can drag and drop the list items, in case you prefer a specific order to them. The quotes block gives you room to have a separate inner block for the actual quote and the citation.

Styling elements for various blocks

WordPress 6.1 allows you more styling control over a lot of different blocks.

Spacing presets

You can adjust the spacing for the margin and padding of a block using the dimensions option.

Featured Image cover block

Whether you want to add your featured image to the post or page, or add other types of images, there’s a featured image cover block to do that.

Site icon

The site icon, which when you first install a WordPress site, uses the WordPress logo, can now be replaced with your own image. And for those who might not know what a site icon is, it is often known as a favicon.

4. Building With Patterns

In WordPress 6.0, patterns were introduced. However, in WordPress 6.1, patterns can be used for any post type, whether post, pages, or custom post types.

5. Other Development Features

• Better typography handling

• Improved search on block themes

• Consistent editor settings across browsers

• Ability to define block parts in Classic themes

• More support for Query loop blocks

• Create more templates using the block editor

Better typography handling

You can define the sizes of your typography from your editor to allow for easier reading.

Improved search on block themes

You can preview block themes and how they look with a specific pattern before you use the theme.

Consistent editor settings across browsers

Now you won’t lose your preferences when you’re editing your website.

Ability to define block parts in Classic themes

Still using Classic themes? No worries, you can add a little bit of code to add some of the block ability to your site.

More support for Query loop blocks

A query loop block allows you to display a specific set of posts, so you can build a page and display some posts from a specific category or tag.

Create more templates using the block editor

If you need more templates than what your theme offers, you can use the block editor to put together a new template.

If you’re not confident about updating your website to WordPress 6.1, that’s okay. It is a major version of WordPress. Just make sure you create a backup of your website before you update.

It’s important that you do eventually update as most versions of WordPress do contain some security patches, and overall, updating is one of the most vital ways to keep your website secure. Happy WordPressing!

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