WordPress 6.1

What's new in this version:

- After introducing foundational elements for block themes and style variations in releases 5.9 and 6.0, WordPress site builders welcome a new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Three, that is powered by 10 different styles and tagged as “Accessibility Ready.” These intentionally unique styles ensure users can apply a different look and feel to their site with a single click—all within a single theme.

New templates for an improved creator experience:
- New and more refined templates now give site builders more control over the creation of their sites. In this suite of new templates, find a custom template for posts & pages in the Site Editor. Create and edit template parts like headers and footers more quickly with a new search-and-replace tool and easily view your new site.

Design tools for more consistency and control:
- Thoughtful upgrades to the controls for design elements and blocks make laying out and building your new site a more consistent, complete, and intuitive experience

Manage menus with ease:
- New fallback options in the navigation block mean you can edit the menu that’s open; no searching needed. Plus, the controls for choosing and working on menus have their own place in the block settings. The mobile menu system also gets an upgrade with new features, including different icon options, to make the menu yours.

Cleaner layouts and document settings visualization:
- View and manage post and page settings with a better-organized display improving the use of features like template picker and scheduler

One-click lock setting for all inner blocks:
- When locking blocks, a new toggle lets you apply your lock settings to all the blocks in a containing block like the group, cover, and column blocks

Improved block placeholders:
- Various blocks have improved placeholders that reflect customization options to help you design your site and its content. For example, the Image block placeholder displays custom borders and duotone filters even before selecting an image.

Compose richer lists and quotes with inner blocks:
- The List and Quote blocks now support inner blocks, allowing for more flexible and rich compositions like adding headings inside your Quote blocks

More responsive text with fluid typography:
- Fluid typography lets you define font sizes that adapt for easy reading in any screen size

Add starter patterns to any post type:
- In WordPress 6.0, when you created a new page, you would see suggested patterns so you did not have to start with a blank page. In 6.1, you will also see the starter patterns modal when you create a new instance of any post type

Find block themes faster:
- The Themes Directory has a filter for block themes, and a pattern preview gives a better sense of what the theme might look like while exploring different themes and patterns

Keep your Site Editor settings for later:
- Site Editor settings are now persistent for each user. This means your settings will now be consistent across browsers and devices.

A streamlined style system:
- The CSS rules for margin, padding, typography, colors, and borders within the styles engine are now all in one place, reducing time spent on layout-specific tasks and helps to generate semantic class names

Updated interface options and features:
- Updates include styling elements like buttons, citations, and links globally; controlling hover, active, and focus states for links using theme.json (not available to control in the interface yet); and customizing outline support for blocks and elements, among other features.

Continued evolution of layout options:
- The default content dimensions provided by themes can now be overridden in the Styles Sidebar, giving site builders better control over full-width content. Developers have fine-grained control over these controls.

Block Template parts in classic themes:
- Block template parts can now be defined in classic themes by adding the appropriate HTML files `parts` directory at the root of the theme

Expanded support for Query Loop blocks:
- New filters let Query Block variations support custom queries for more powerful variations and advanced hierarchical post types filtering options

Filters for all your styles:
- Leverage filters in the Styles sidebar to control settings at all four levels of your site—core, theme, user, or block, from less to more specific

Spacing presets for faster, consistent design:
- Save time and avoid hard-coding values into a theme with preset margin and padding values for multiple blocks

Content-only editing support for container blocks:
- Thanks to content-only editing settings, layouts can be locked within container blocks. In a content-only block, its children are invisible to the List View and entirely uneditable. So you control the layout while your writers can focus on the content. Combine it with block-locking options for even more advanced control over your blocks.

Other notes of interest:
- 6.1 includes a new time-to-read feature showing content authors the approximate time-to-read values for pages, posts, and custom post types
- The site tagline is empty by default in new sites but can be modified in General Settings
- A new modal design offers a background blur effect, making it easier to focus on the task at hand

Enhancing WordPress 6.1 Accessibility:
- Accessibility is an integral part of the WordPress mission of fostering an inclusive community and supporting users of all types around the world. With this in mind, WordPress 6.1 includes nearly 60 updates specifically focused on enhancing the accessibility of the platform. Read these updates to learn more about the continual initiatives aimed at improving accessibility.

Improved Performance in WordPress 6.1:
- WordPress 6.1 resolves more than 25 tickets dedicated to enhancing performance with improvements for every type of site. A full breakdown can be found in the Performance Field Guide.