WordPress 6.8 Maintenance Release notes.

Voorlopig nog in het Engels.

WordPress 6.8, released on April 15, 2025, introduces a host of enhancements focusing on performance, design flexibility, and developer tools. Here’s a breakdown of the key updates:​

Editor and Design Enhancements

Global Styles and Style Book
The Global Styles interface is now accessible directly from the Site Editor’s main menu, simplifying access to typography, color, layout, and shadow settings.
The Style Book feature, previously exclusive to block themes, is now available for classic themes that support editor styles or include a theme.json file. ​

Improved Data Views
Data Views in the Site Editor have been enhanced with customizable columns, including options like Preview, Slug, Parent, Discussion, Template, and Password.
A new density control allows users to adjust the spacing in table layouts with options such as Comfortable, Balanced, and Compact. ​

New and Updated Blocks
Query Total Block: Introduced to display information about query results, such as the total number of items or the range currently displayed.
Query Loop Block: Now includes an option to ignore sticky posts, aligning with the ignore_sticky_posts parameter in WP_Query. ​

Performance and Security Improvements

Speculative Loading
Leveraging the Speculation Rules API, WordPress 6.8 introduces speculative loading to prefetch or prerender pages based on anticipated user actions, enhancing perceived performance. ​

Enhanced Password Security
Passwords are now hashed using the bcrypt algorithm, replacing the older phpass method, to provide stronger security against attacks. ​

Developer-Focused Updates

Block Type Registration
A new function, wp_register_block_types_from_metadata_collection(), allows for the registration of multiple block types simultaneously, streamlining block development. ​

Interactivity API Enhancements
The Interactivity API now supports asynchronous handlers by default, improving the responsiveness of interactive elements and enhancing the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric. ​

Developer Warnings
A new warning system alerts developers in the console when the useSelect hook is used inefficiently, helping to identify potential performance bottlenecks. ​

Additional Features

Accessibility Enhancements: Improvements in keyboard navigation and screen reader support enhance the overall accessibility of the WordPress dashboard.
Emoji Support: WordPress 6.8 includes support for Emoji 15.1, ensuring that new emojis are displayed correctly even on systems that don’t support them natively.