Anne McCarthy has unveiled the roadmap for WordPress 6.7, offering a preview of the exciting new features and enhancements expected to arrive on November 12th, 2024. This release will be the third major release of this year and will advance Phase 3 of the Gutenberg project.
The release squad members were announced earlier, and as per the release schedule, we can expect Beta 1 on October 1, 2024.
What’s Coming in WordPress 6.7
Besides the upcoming new theme, features, and enhancements, the goal of this release is also to refine the WordPress experience. As Anne McCarthy stated, “ More than anything though, this release brings refinement to how everything connects together to create a more seamless WordPress experience, whether you’re trying to upload an HEIC image to your site or display a selection of posts with the Query Loop block.”
Twenty Twenty-Five, the New Default Theme
WordPress 6.7 will come with a new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Five, with its concept thoughtfully explained by the Default Theme Design Lead, Beatriz Fialho, “ Twenty Twenty-Five embodies ultimate flexibility and adaptability, showcasing the many ways WordPress enables people to tell their stories with many patterns and styles to choose from. The glimpses of natural beauty and ancestry woven into the theme evoke ideas of impermanence, the passage of time, and continuous evolution.”
This new theme will ship with new patterns, styles, fonts that support multiple languages, and templates. Carolina Nymark and Juanfra Aldasoro are leading the development. The Figma file has been made available to everyone and the development can be tracked on the Twenty Twenty-Five GitHub repository.
Data Views Enhancements
Data Views started getting an overhaul since WordPress 6.5, and the upcoming version will improve it further. This is part of Phase 3 of the Gutenberg project, and for those who are unaware of what Data Views is, Anne had provided a detailed overview earlier, “ Data Views refers to an improved and reusable UI for different screens in WordPress that deal with collections of things whether that’s templates, patterns, posts, media, and more.”
The enhancements will include quick editing, customizing column order in table views, and more.
Fine-tuning the Query Loop
The Query Loop is set to receive a host of updates for WordPress 6.7, such as context detection for the Query block and more. You can follow the progress on GitHub and even share your feedback.
Enhancements to Patterns
The patterns are also set to receive various updates, such as a new zoom-out mode, improvements to UX for dragging patterns, and more.
Media Upgrades
One of the biggest media upgrades for WordPress 6.7 will be the HEIC support, which we already got a glimpse of. Robert Anderson explained the benefit of the upcoming change earlier, “ HEIC image uploads will be automatically converted to JPEG on the server when possible. This allows you to view HEIC images in WP Admin and use them in posts and pages regardless of whether a visitor’s browser supports HEIC.”
Other planned improvements include auto sizes for lazy-loaded images, update background image support to use a modal, add support for background attachment (fixed backgrounds), and allow block-level background images in global styles.
Updates to Design Tools
The majority of the blocks are in line to receive updates, which include support for border, color, and so on. These enhancements will enable users to accomplish more with greater ease.
New Font Size Presets
WordPress 6.7 will also include new controls for defining font presets. As per the roadmap,” The Styles interface introduces an enhanced feature for creating, editing, removing, and applying font size presets, allowing users to easily modify theme-provided presets and provide custom options.”
Various API Updates
The work continues on various APIs such as Interactivity API, Block Bindings API, and HTML API to enhance them further. We can also expect two new APIs, the Template Registration API and the Preview Options API.
Besides all these, the team is also working to improve support support for PHP 8.x. Now, the roadmap has clearly stated that “ what’s shared here is being actively pursued, but doesn’t necessarily mean each will make it into the final release of WordPress 6.7.” We’ll need to wait until WordPress 6.7 is officially released to know for sure.