WordPress 6.4 Codenamed “Shirley” Released

Wordpress

By Taylor Davis Last updated Nov 8, 2023

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WordPress 6.4, code named Shirley was released, featuring a new default theme with many incremental but important enhancements that taken together make WordPress an easier and more intuitive content management system.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of WordPress, described WordPress 6.4 best.

She wrote:

“Many of the features and enhancements in WordPress 6.4 fall in the “small but mighty” category.

Along with the adaptable beauty of the Twenty Twenty-Four theme, these updates help content creators and site developers alike save time and effort while delivering the high value, low hassle WordPress experience the world has grown to expect.”

New Default Theme

The latest version of WordPress ships with a new default theme, named Twenty Twenty-Four that contains 35 webpage layouts called patterns.

The thirty five patterns are full-page layouts that can be used to quickly create webpages.

Screenshot Of A Pattern Bundled With Twenty Twenty Four Theme

A new feature for 6.4 is the ability to categorize the patterns with custom names.

Users can create patterns then give them meaningful names that makes it easy to identify them.

Another new patterns feature is a filter that simplifies finding patterns.

These are examples of the small yet important changes, that while incremental together add up to a better experience.

Enhancements To Writing Experience

WordPress 6.4 contains improvements to make writing smoother and without friction.

New keyboard shortcuts and other enhancements that help make it easier to focus on the writing and not on the interface.

A new toolbar interface for navigation, list and quote blocks is attached to the parent block keeps it out of the way yet handy when needed.

The WordPress announcement explained:

“New enhancements ensure your content creation journey is smooth. Find new keyboard shortcuts in List View, smarter list merging, and enhanced control over link settings.

A cohesive toolbar experience for the Navigation, List, and Quote blocks lets you work efficiently with the tooling options you need.”

More New Features

Other features are new design tools, a lightbox functionality for site visitors to click and interact with images, ability to assign custom names to group blocks, new image previews in list view improves finding image blocks, and the ability to import and export patterns for use on other sites.

Developer Features

There are useful features for developers like block hooks.

WordPress describes how they will be useful to developers:

“Block Hooks enables developers to automatically insert dynamic blocks at specific content locations, enriching the extensibility of block themes through plugins.

While considered a developer tool, this feature is geared to respect your preferences and gives you complete control to add, dismiss, and customize auto-inserted blocks to your needs.”