This minor release features 29 bug fixes in Core and 21 bug fixes for the block editor. WordPress 6.1.1 is a short-cycle maintenance release. You can review a summary of the key updates in this release by reading the RC1 announcement.
The next major release will be version 6.2 planned for 2023.
If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.
WordPress 6.1.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of more than 105 people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver several enhancements and fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.
This post was written in collaboration with Lauren Stein (@laurlittle) and Anne McCarthy @annezazu).
Twenty Twenty-Three is here, alongside WordPress 6.1! The new default theme offers a clean, blank canvas bundled with a collection of style variations.
Style variations are predefined design options that give you the opportunity to alter the appearance of your site without having to change your theme. This means that you can keep your template structure but change the visual details of your site with ease.
For a truly diverse collection, Twenty Twenty-Three’s featured style variations were submitted by members of the WordPress community, resulting in 38 submissions from 19 people in 8 different countries. From those submissions, a curated collection of ten was chosen and bundled with the new theme.
This approach to style variations ushers in the next generation of block themes, able to harness the potential of the platform’s latest design capabilities and tools directly in the Site Editor. Since style variations don’t require any code experience, you’re encouraged to tweak and/or create your own.
Say hello to WordPress 6.1, “Misha,” inspired by the life and work of Soviet-Norwegian jazz pianist Mikhail “Misha” Alperin. Misha introduced the work of jazz ensembles in the USSR and globally. He is also celebrated as a founding member of the Moscow Art Trio.
“Misha” further refines the site-building experience. Inside WordPress 6.1 you’ll interact with enhancements that continue to make site creation more intuitive while pushing your creative boundaries further than ever. Don’t forget to enjoy some of Misha’s jazz piano as you take in all WordPress 6.1 has to offer.
The third major release of 2022 is here. Download it now! As of the time of this release, WordPress powers 43% of websites worldwide.
Site owners and administrators should upgrade today to take full advantage of the many stability, performance, and usability enhancements. Furthermore, WordPress content creators will enjoy a suite of new features geared toward improving the writing and designing experiences.
This release includes features that many in the WordPress Community have been most excited about since the start of this project. Additional enhancements and improvements to the editor give site owners more control and easier customization while offering a more cohesive experience to users. A lot of writing-focused improvements are included in the release, because if you’re giving voices to the voiceless you’ve got to focus on folks writing the copy.
Some of my favorite enhancements are the refined ability to select partial paragraphs in a block; settings to keep list view open by default; and the keyboard shortcut to add internal links expanded to all blocks.
Twenty Twenty-Three: A fresh default theme with 10 distinct style variations
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.
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.
Learn More About WordPress 6.1
See WordPress 6.1 in action! Watch a brief overview video highlighting some of the major features debuting in WordPress 6.1.
Explore learn.wordpress.org for brief how-to videos and lots more on new features in WordPress. Or join a live interactive online workshop on a specific WordPress topic.
Developers can explore the WordPress 6.1 Field Guide, complete with detailed developer notes to help you build with and extend WordPress. Read the WordPress 6.1 Release Notes for more information on the included enhancements and issues fixed, installation information, developer notes and resources, release contributors, and the list of file changes in this release.
The WordPress 6.1 Release Squad
The group listed below tirelessly supported the release, from conception to ship date, and beyond:
WordPress 6.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of more than 800 people in over 60 countries. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver hundreds of enhancements and fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.
By release day, 71 locales had translated 90-percent or more of WordPress 6.1 into their language. Community translators continue after a release ensuring more translations are on their way. Thank you to everyone who helps to make WordPress available in over 200 languages.
Many thanks to all of the community volunteers who contribute to the support forums by answering questions from WordPress users around the world.
If contributing to WordPress appeals to you, it’s easy to learn more and get involved. Discover the different teams that come together to Make WordPress and explore the product roadmap on the core development blog.
The WordPress Mission & You
WordPress is software designed for everyone, emphasizing accessibility, performance, security, and ease of use. The project believes great software should work with minimum setup, so you can focus on sharing your story, product, or services freely. The basic WordPress software is simple and predictable so you can easily get started. It also offers powerful features for growth and success.
WordPress believes in democratizing publishing and the freedoms that come with open source. Supporting this idea is a large community of people collaborating on and contributing to this project. The WordPress community is welcoming and inclusive. Our contributors’ passion drives the success of WordPress which, in turn, helps you reach your goals.
Learn more about WordPress and how you can join our community to help shape the future of the world’s most popular website platform.
Haiku Fun for 6.1
Another release, Mark it down as completed. Breathe, relax, and cheers!
Release Candidate 3 (RC3) is now available for testing! The general release is just one week away with WordPress 6.1 scheduled for release on Tuesday, November 1, 2022.
This RC3 release is the final opportunity for you to test and help to ensure the resilience of the 6.1 release by performing a final round of reviews and checks. Since the WordPress ecosystem is vast and composed of thousands of plugins and themes the entire project benefits from the time you take to assist.
This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test RC3 on a test server and site.
You can test WordPress 6.1 RC3 in three ways:
Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
All plugin and theme developers should test their respective extensions against WordPress 6.1 RC3 and update the “Tested up to” version in their readme file to 6.1. If you find compatibility problems, please post detailed information to the support forums, so these items can be investigated further prior to the final release date of November 1st.
Testing for issues is critical for stabilizing a release throughout its development. Testing is also a great way to contribute. This detailed guide is an excellent start if you have never tested a beta release.
Testing helps ensure that this and future releases of WordPress are as stable and issue-free as possible. Anyone can take part in testing – regardless of prior experience.
If you have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. This is also where you can find a list of known bugs.
To review features in the Gutenberg releases since WordPress 6.0 (the most recent major release of WordPress), access the What’s New In Gutenberg posts for 14.1, 14.0, 13.9, 13.8, 13.7, 13.6, 13.5, 13.4, 13.3, 13.2, and 13.1.
RC3, A Penultimate Haiku
The time ticks forward Release nears ever closer Download and review
Props to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: Dan Soschin, Jonny Harris
The second release candidate (RC2) for WordPress 6.1 is now available!
“Release Candidate” means that this version of WordPress is ready for release and it is a key milestone in the 6.1 release cycle! Before the official release date, the community sets aside time to perform final reviews and help test. Since the WordPress ecosystem includes thousands of plugins and themes, it is important that everyone checks to see if anything has been missed along the way. That means the project would greatly benefit from your assistance.
WordPress 6.1 is planned for official release on November 1st, 2022, two weeks from today.
This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test RC2 on a test server and site.
You can test WordPress 6.1 RC2 in three ways:
Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Since Release Candidate 1, approximately 65 items have been addressed, bringing the total count to more than 2,000 updates since WordPress 6.0 in May of 2022.
All plugin and theme developers should test their respective extensions against WordPress 6.1 RC2 and update the “Tested up to” version in their readme file to 6.1. If you find compatibility problems, please post detailed information to the support forums, so these items can be investigated further prior to the final release date of November 1st.
Testing for issues is critical for stabilizing a release throughout its development. Testing is also a great way to contribute. This detailed guide is an excellent start if you have never tested a beta release.
Testing helps ensure that this and future releases of WordPress are as stable and issue-free as possible. Anyone can take part in testing – regardless of prior experience.
If you have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. This is also where you can find a list of known bugs.
To review features in the Gutenberg releases since WordPress 6.0 (the most recent major release of WordPress), access the What’s New In Gutenberg posts for 14.3, 14.2, 14.1, 14.0, 13.9, 13.8, 13.7, 13.6, 13.5, 13.4, 13.3, 13.2, and 13.1.
The first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 6.1 is now available!
This is an important milestone in the 6.1 release cycle. “Release Candidate” means that this version of WordPress is ready for release! Before the official release date, time is set aside for the community to perform final reviews and help test. Since the WordPress ecosystem includes thousands of plugins and themes, it is important that everyone checks to see if anything was missed along the way. That means the project would love your help.
WordPress 6.1 is planned for official release on November 1st, 2022, three weeks from today.
This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test RC1 on a test server and site.
You can test WordPress 6.1 RC1 in three ways:
Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Fluid typography allows for more responsiveness (give feedback)
Ability to style elements inside blocks like buttons, headings, or captions in theme.json
Please note that all features listed in this post are subject to change before the final release.
Plugin and theme developers
All plugin and theme developers should test their respective extensions against WordPress 6.1 RC1 and update the “Tested up to” version in their readme file to 6.1. If you find compatibility problems, please post detailed information to the support forums, so these items can be investigated further prior to the final release date of November 1st.
Testing for issues is critical for stabilizing a release throughout its development. Testing is also a great way to contribute. This detailed guide is an excellent start if you have never tested a beta release.
Testing helps ensure that this and future releases of WordPress are as stable and issue-free as possible. Anyone can take part in testing – regardless of prior experience.
If you have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. This is also where you can find a list of known bugs.
To review features in the Gutenberg releases since WordPress 6.0 (the most recent major release of WordPress), access the What’s New In Gutenberg posts for 14.1, 14.0, 13.9, 13.8, 13.7, 13.6, 13.5, 13.4, 13.3, 13.2, and 13.1.
Haiku Fun for RC1
Languages abound Test today, releases soon Freedom to publish
Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @webcommsat
WordPress 6.1 Beta 3 is now available for download and testing.
This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test Beta 3 on a test server and site.
You can test WordPress 6.1 Beta 3 in three ways:
Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Testing for issues is critical for stabilizing a release throughout its development. Testing is also a great way to contribute. This detailed guide is an excellent start if you have never tested a beta release before.
Testing helps ensure that this and future releases of WordPress are as stable and issue-free as possible. Anyone can take part in testing – especially great WordPress community members like you.
If you have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. This is also where you can find a list of known bugs.
To review features in the Gutenberg releases since WordPress 6.0 (the most recent major release of WordPress), access the What’s New In Gutenberg posts for 14.1, 14.0, 13.9, 13.8, 13.7, 13.6, 13.5, 13.4, 13.3, 13.2, and 13.1.
This release contains more than 350 enhancements and 350 bug fixes for the editor, including more than 300 tickets for WordPress 6.1 core. More fixes are on the way in the remainder of the 6.1 release cycle.
WordPress 6.1 Beta 2 is now available for download and testing.
This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test Beta 2 on a test server and site.
You can test WordPress 6.1 Beta 2 in three ways:
Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Testing for issues is critical for stabilizing a release throughout its development. Testing is also a great way to contribute. This detailed guide is an excellent start if you have never tested a beta release before.
Testing helps ensure that this and future releases of WordPress are as stable and issue-free as possible. Anyone can take part in testing – especially great WordPress community members like you.
If you have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. This is also where you can find a list of known bugs.
To review features in the Gutenberg releases since WordPress 6.0 (the most recent major release of WordPress), access the What’s New In Gutenberg posts for 14.1, 14.0, 13.9, 13.8, 13.7, 13.6, 13.5, 13.4, 13.3, 13.2, and 13.1.
This release contains more than 350 enhancements and 350 bug fixes for the editor, including more than 300 tickets for WordPress 6.1 core. More fixes are on the way in the remainder of the 6.1 release cycle.
WordPress 6.1 Beta 1 is now available for download and testing.
This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test Beta 1 on a test server and site.
You can test WordPress 6.1 Beta 1 in three ways:
Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Testing for issues is critical for stabilizing a release throughout its development. Testing is also a great way to contribute. If you have never tested a beta release before, this detailed guide is a great start.
Testing helps make sure that this and future releases of WordPress are as stable and issue-free as possible. Anyone can do it – especially great WordPress community members like you.
If you think you have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. This is also where you can find a list of known bugs.
To review features in the Gutenberg releases since WordPress 6.0 (the most recent major release of WordPress), access the What’s New In Gutenberg posts for 14.1, 14.0, 13.9, 13.8, 13.7, 13.6, 13.5, 13.4, 13.3, 13.2, and 13.1.
