WordPress 6.7, “Rollins” is released as of November 12, 2024.
This release includes a ton of improvements to the WordPress Block Editor, under-the-hood improvements for Developers to increase performance and interoperability, and incremental changes toward the ultimate goal of enabling a collaborative editing process natively within the WordPress Dashboard.
Twenty Twenty Five, a New Default Theme for Bloggers
The Twenty Twenty Five theme shows off the full capability of the new Site Editor tool. With 9 different built-in styles, 9 color palettes, and 8 typography options, you can mix-and-match to fit your site’s style and make it unique.
Templates
The theme’s real power comes in the numerous templates available for each content type. Choose dynamic styles for your blog posts page, pages and posts, search results, archives and more.
Block Patterns
At least 125 block patterns are included in the new theme. Choose patterns from categories like Banners, Calls-to-Action, Galleries, Testimonials and more. These new patterns introduce full page-builder capabilities into the Block editor, giving stiff competition to page builder plugins that have dominated the WordPress landscape for the past years.
Zoom Out for a Bird’s Eye View of Your Content
While editing pages and posts, a new “Zoom Out” control is introduced so you can get a better view of how your full content coheres together.
While in zoomed-out view, you can still use the in-editor controls to rearrange your blocks, insert new block patterns, and even “Shuffle” your blocks to rearrange them if you’re feeling lucky.
Better Support for Apple Devices and Images
WordPress 6.7 will include support for the HEIC image format, common on iPhones, iPads, and other Apple devices.
While this image format does not yet have wide adoption in browsers other than Safari, you’ll be able to upload HEIC images directly to the WordPress Media Library and automatically convert them to JPEG. This feature does require server-side support from the iMagick Library, and you can check if your hosting supports it in the Site Health – Info – Media Handling section.
Improved Query Loop Block
The Query Loop block was introduced way back in WordPress 5.8, but it’s undergone a total overhaul in the new release. The block is meant to be a miniature “blogroll” element, showing a list of Posts or Pages, Custom Post Types, or other content based on user-configurable settings.
The new Query Loop Block is much easier to configure for non-developer users, allowing you to choose from among several Block Patterns and customize “Filters” to show only certain taxonomies or keywords in your block.
Numerous Improvements for Developers
Overall, WordPress 6.7 includes 445 enhancements, 464 Bug Fixes, and 55 Accessibility Improvements.
Notable improvements for Developers include new updates to the Interactivity API and HTML API. Additionally there are numerous improvements to internationalization and language translation.
Plugin Authors will have the new ability to register new templates without relying on complicated filters to interact with users’ themes. This will improve interoperability of plugins with themes so that eventually, plugin and themes won’t have to be designed specifically to account for each others’ usage.
…And all that Jazz
According to tradition, major WordPress releases are named for Jazz Musicians. This release is named in honor of Sonny Rollins, the influential tenor saxophonist whose standards include “St. Thomas” and “Oleo.”
