WordPress 6.4 is set to be released on November 7, 2023 and is being led by an underrepresented gender release squad. This release brings a sharp focus to enhancing items across the WordPress experience, from the details of writing a new post to managing patterns across your site. Amongst these efforts, new features aim to be added, like font management and a new default theme, and gaps filled in current functionality, like more tooling to go further with designs. Initial explorations for phase 3 will continue in the GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party., and any early wins will be added alongside the foundational work already planned in this major releasemajor release A release, identified by the first two numbers (3.6), which is the focus of a full release cycle and feature development. WordPress uses decimaling count for major release versions, so 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, and 3.1 are sequential and comparable in scope.. An additional post will be shared covering the various additional wish list items that didn’t make it into this post to provide an update with possible next steps. As always, what’s shared here is being actively pursued, but doesn’t necessarily mean each will make it into the final release of WordPress 6.4. Approximately, 5 Gutenberg releases are planned for inclusion in 6.4.

For a more detailed look at the work related to the blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. editor, please refer to this overview issue for ongoing work and the 6.4 board.

Introducing new functionality

Font Library 

The Font Library aims to make it easy for anyone to install and use fonts across the site, with the added goal of extension points for plugins. The Font Library will be available globally, independently of the theme activated, similar to the Media Library. Efforts can be followed in this tracking issue. 

Font Face

The Font Face works alongside the Font Library, handling the server-side @font-face styles generation and printing. Efforts can be followed in this tracking issue.

RevisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. for templates and template parts

Building on the effort to add revisions to Styles, revisions for templates and template parts will complete the editing experience allowing for the ability to roll back any change made anywhere. Efforts can be followed in this trac issue.

New blocks

Three new blocks are being considered for 6.4 with relevant GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged by the repository owner. https://github.com/ issues: 

• Table of Contents block.
• Time to Read block.
• Scrolling Marquee block.

Below is a visual showing the Time to Read block in use: 

Image lightbox 

Lightbox functionality is being explored as an option to toggle on for individual image blocks to start. Efforts can be followed in this tracking issue.

Auto-insert blocks 

To better accommodate more intuitive experiences, the ability to auto-insert a block into context specific sections is being explored. For example, imagine upon installing a plugin, an option appears when editing your navigation to enable a log in and out option automatically. The outcome of this work is likely to take the form of a new block inspector panel for now until the experience can be further refined. Efforts can be followed in this tracking issue.

Post formats in block themes

WordPress has supported post formats since 3.1 and, while block themes align with post formats in various ways, there are a number of enhancements to center and take advantage of the post format including: 

• Handling of title less posts in the loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop and in templates. 
• Starting with a pattern in a new post flow. 
• Improving the specific formatting of the post content block in the query loop..

Efforts and discussions can be followed in this issue.

Advancing current features and experiences

Writing experience

Writing in WordPress, whether a latest post or new page, needs to be seamless and enjoyable–the tooling should aid creativity rather than get in the way. Blocks with all of their variations, design tools, and transforms should make you feel empowered to create what you want. This release contains a dedicated focus to ensure this remains the case. Efforts can be followed in this tracking issue for writing specific issues, in this tracking issue for link control improvements, and in these additional efforts to capture toolbars for a few specific situations (List Items, Quotes, Navigation items).

Interfaces and tools

The tools available continue to be improved to make creating a site or writing a post more streamlined with the following focus areas: 

• List View iterations with custom naming of Group blocks, media previews for gallery and image blocks, the ability to resize, keyboard shortcut for duplicating blocks, and more. 
• Top Toolbar improvements, including resolving some keyboard navigation.
• Distraction Free improvements.
• Command Palette: Add new block commands, update the design, add support for registering commands without icons, improve command palette rendering on smaller viewports.

Below is the latest design iteration for the Command Palette:

Site editing

Outside of the various sub items that make up all of site editing, like the Navigation block or Global Styles, the following specific refinements and enhancements are a focus for this cycle to improve the broader experience:

• Add “Show Template” toggle when editing pages.
• Add discussion settings / detail for pages.
• Display current modifications in the “Browse styles” panel. 
• Remove coupling of template and template parts when switching themes.
• Site Editing: Hide page / post title.
• Site Editor → Page Inspector: Add ability to switch templates.
• Align page edit features in Site Editor and Post Editor.
• Add missing CSS classes to templates.
• Explore improvements to Styles panel in Site Editor.

Efforts can be followed in this tracking issue. Below is an early look at what it might look like to switch between templates in Pages in the Site Editor: 

Design tools 

To enable more complex designs, various design tooling related enhancements and additional functionality is being explored. These efforts range from block specific changes, like adding support for background images to the Group block, to larger efforts, like extending theme.jsonJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. to provide spacing size presets: 

• Add box shadow component.
• Extend theme.json to provide spacing size presets.
• Add ability for theme developers to configure their own default min and max viewport widths for calculating fluid font sizes.
• Expanding and simplifying layout controls, including block support and the UIUI User interface.
• Custom CSS Enhancements.
• Addressing design tooling consistency. 
• Add block instance elements support for buttons and headings as a first step in the broader idea of element sets. 
• Advancing more aspect ratio support. 
• Global Styles: Add support for elements to individual blocks.
• Site Logo: Add width unit support.
• Cover: Set custom color when applying initial background image.
• Elements: Add support for text based inputs.
• Categories: Add a list style type option to the categories block.
• Group Block: Add support for Background Images.
• Media + Text: Support featured image.

Efforts can be followed in this tracking issue. Below is an early design exploration of the box shadow component:

Global styles (Styles, Style Book, and more)

Global styles is both a system and an interface for managing styling across your site, from individual changes to a block to sweeping changes across an entire site. This current effort continues to evolve along the same lines and across a broad range of items, from more technical updates in theme.json to more UI centered work around the Style book tool. To continue to broaden the possibilities with the built-in style system and to make it as easy as possible to use, the following work is planned:

• Style revisions: Add a side by side comparison, add pagination, add a reset to default revision.
• Style book: Iterate on presentation and design, add ability to focus on individual block types, and integrate patterns.
• Theme.json: enable references to work, add section specific theme.json capabilities.
• Styles experience: exploring how best to represent the hierarchy of styles, show inherited styles, and manage style variations.

Efforts can be followed in this tracking issue. Below is an early design exploration of adding the ability to focus on individual block types in the Style book:

Patterns

After introducing the ability to create patterns directly in the editing experience, more advanced features and various quality of life improvements are planned for 6.4, including the following: 

• Add the ability to set categories. 
• Update the inserter experience to ensure consistency between synced and unsynced. 
• Improve compatibility for non-block themes.
• Iterate on patterns page’s empty category state.
• Synced Patterns: Not receiving alignment attribute in editor.

As a stretch goal, partially synced patterns are being explored, allowing for the layout and styling components to be locked while part of the content can be updated independently. 

Efforts can be followed in this project board. Below is a demonstration of how adding pattern categories might look:

Navigation creation and management

As with every release since WordPress 5.9, the Navigation block and navigation management continues to have a specific focus to make it more robust and useful, including when it comes to various responsive needs: 

• Overlay referenced as a template part
• Add the ability to see where each menu is used.
• Add the ability to style the current menu item.
• Allow an option to set a custom icon.
• Add the ability to set different links on mobile.
• Explore a bulk add mode.
• Continued iteration to improve fallbacks.

Query Loop block

To better enable more complex queries and bring more options for displaying posts, the following items are being worked on:

• Consider adding a Term Query Loop Block.
• Add option to not repeat posts already shown by previous Query Loop on the same page.
• Query block: client-side pagination, powered by the Interactivity APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways..

This work will likely evolve based on the needs of Twenty Twenty-Four. 

Footnotes

Introduced in WordPress 6.3, the Footnotes block continues to evolve with more design tooling available and custom post typeCustom Post Type WordPress can hold and display many different types of content. A single item of such a content is generally called a post, although post is also a specific post type. Custom Post Types gives your site the ability to have templated posts, to simplify the concept. compatibility work: 

• Add typography, dimensions, and border block supports.
• Add link, background and text color support.
• Ensure compatibility with Custom Post Types.

Below is an example of a Footnotes block using additional block supports:

Twenty Twenty-Four

The Twenty Twenty-Four default theme will launch alongside 6.4, bringing with it a unique take on the power of using the latest and greatest from WordPress. It brings together the complete experience, bringing everything from block themes together. Expect designs to be shared as work progress and join #core-themes-projects to learn more.

Performance

The Performance team and broader contributors will be focusing on the following:

• Making use of the new script loading strategy APIs in CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress..
• Improving auto-loaded options.
• Continuing to work on identifying and improving server performance bottlenecks, in particular template loading.  
• Improving reliability and flexibility of applying the loading optimization attributes `loading`, `fetchpriority`, and `decoding`.
• Expanding capabilitiescapability A capability is permission to perform one or more types of task. Checking if a user has a capability is performed by the current_user_can function. Each user of a WordPress site might have some permissions but not others, depending on their role. For example, users who have the Author role usually have permission to edit their own posts (the “edit_posts” capability), but not permission to edit other users’ posts (the “edit_others_posts” capability). of the automated performance testing workflows and dashboard.
• Continued efforts to improve theme.json APIs.

Rollback for plugin and theme updates for automatic updates

Building on prior efforts released in WordPress 6.3, rollbacks for automatic updates to plugins and themes is underway.. Specifically,  this means that checks will be added to ensure that an updated plugin does not cause a PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher fatal error when activated. If it does, this error is captured and the previously installed version is restored, along with an email sent to the site adminadmin (and super admin). Efforts can be followed in this trac ticket.

General bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. fixes and enhancements 

In TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress., there are already 38 tickets closed and 8 set for early across various components and focuses. It’s still early in the cycle so expect these efforts to continue. 

Early, foundational Phase 3 Work

While initial phase 3 plans have been shared, only a very limited and iterative set of work is being explored for 6.4 including the following:

• Expanding the Table component as part of broader admin redesign work.
• Exploring improvements to Media handling. 
• Evolving the commands and design of the Command Palette (listed above under Interfaces and tools).

Expect broader phase 3 work to continue in the Gutenberg plugin without inclusion in Core for 6.4.

Thank you to @sereedmedia @priethor @hellofromtonya @cbringmann @francina @clarkeemily @karmatosed @siobhyb @oandregal @flixos90 @mikachan for contributing in various ways to the creation of this post and to the Design Team for the various design assets pulled from GitHub issues and Gutenberg release posts.

#6-4, #release-roadmap