WordPress 6.1 Field Guide

• Updated on: 2024-01-30
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WordPress 6.1 Field Guide
WordPress 6.1 Release Candidaterelease candidate One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta) . 1 is out and it’s time to take a look at what changes we can expect. Release squad and many contributors worked hard on both TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. and GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ ; with over 120 enhancements and feature requests , 241 bug fixes , 42 other blessed tasks , which makes it over 400 tickets in Trac ; and 50 Trac pull requests bringing GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ changes into coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. In Gutenberg repo there were 1684 pull requests of which 425 new features and enhancements and 428 bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. fixes, while the rest is tooling, testings, documentation, and code quality.
New release comes with massive performance improvements, accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) enhancements, first default blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. based themes marked as accessibility ready, new hooksHooks In WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same. and functions, private functions being open for public use and many more.
Performance
With 45 Trac tickets for 6.1, 19 components got various performance improvements. The most significant improvements arrived in WP_Query and REST APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/ ., which will impact a large portion of your next page load.
If there is one thing you take from performance updates, let it be caching queries in WP_Query. It’s been a long dream for many developers and, once you test it, it will be all that you hoped for. REST API is richer for several priming caches and lighter for prepare_links (if you want it). Site Health will check your Persistent Object Cache and Page Cache, while several private Cache APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. functions are now public. You’ll also be able to flush cache by group, declare supported cache features, validate cache keys and more.
Besides Query, REST API, Site Health, and Cache API, performance improvements can be found in Multisitemultisite Used to describe a WordPress installation with a network of multiple blogs, grouped by sites. This installation type has shared users tables, and creates separate database tables for each blog (wp_posts becomes wp_0_posts). See also network, blog, site, Bootstrap, Media, Post (Post Types), Editor, Database and many other components. There are too many changes to mention them all here, but you are invited to read the Field guideField guide The field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle . The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page. on performance improvements in WordPress 6.1.
Other performance improvements:
Posts, Post Types – Post title should not be translatable in get_user_data_from_wp_global_styles method. #55392
Quick/Bulk Edit – Check the show_in_quick_edit taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies . property when processing the data for bulk edited posts. #42474
RevisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. – Use latest_id as the array key for the latest revision ID. #55857
Accessibility
Similar to performance, accessibility improvements arrive in 28 Trac tickets , spread over 13 components. We have first block-based bundled themes marked with accessibility ready tagtag A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.), Twenty Twenty-Three and Twenty Twenty-Two . Forms, site/template and block editors, administration screens and many more accessibility improvements are coming in with 6.1 release.
Functions and hooks for required fields in WordPress 6.1
Block Editor
WordPress 6.1 is bringing 10 Gutenberg releases into core – 13.1 , 13.2 , 13.3 , 13.4 , 13.5 , 13.6 , 13.7 , 13.8 , 13.9 , 14.0 , and 14.1 .
Among many changes in these 10 releases of the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party, a lot of effort was made in making blocks and other Gutenberg features more available in classic themes, which will ensure easier transition to hybrid and block-based themes.
New ways to extend various parts of block editor tools which were very much needed in everyday development, such as scaffolding block variants with create-block tool, content locking updates, filtering theme.json data, extending Query block, Style Engine, new ReactReact React is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/ . hooks for easier data access, and many more.
Miscellaneous editor changes for WordPress 6.1
Themes
Themes are getting more control over styling elements, layout, and navigation while classic themes also get control over block-based template parts and theme.json. Read all about these in dev notesdev note Each important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include: a description of the change; the decision that led to this change a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase. below.
New is_login() function for determining if a page is the login screen
Media
In 5.8 we welcomed support for WebP image format and excitement was high when generating WebP format was merged into core ( #54097 , #54094 , and #54086 ). However, this commit has been reverted in #54226 with recommendation of integrating the feature into the Canonical plugin .
Changes in #54788 allow for the muted property to be used in video elements, which solves for content that wishes to autoPlay when a page is viewed.
Database
A file containing the wpdb class is renamed from wp-includes/wp-db.php to wp-includes/class-wpdb.php to conform to the coding standards. If you’ve been including this file directly, do not worry – a new wp-db.php file is created and it’s loading the old, now renamed file. Read more in #56268 .
Other developer updates
As mentioned above, WordPress 6.1 comes with a serious number of new hooks and functions, which will make Miscellaneous dev notedev note Each important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include: a description of the change; the decision that led to this change a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase. very useful for theme and plugin developers.
But wait, there is more!
Application Passwords
Allow a Super Adminadmin (and super admin) to set an application password on a site they’re not a member of. #53224
Autosave
Block autosaving from overwriting changes when locked from editing. #55659
Cache API
Prevent excessive notoptions key lookups. #56639
Charset
Normalize to Unicode NFC encoding before converting accent characters in remove_accents().  #35951
Cron API
Modify _get_cron_array() to always return an array. #53940
Add error logging and hooks to wp-cron.php. #56048
Editor
Universalize functions for checking block editor status. #51819
Clarify that get_page_template() doesn’t work on block themes. #56394
Block Patterns: Add new Footers categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. #56416
External Libraries
Several external libraries have been updated to their latest versions. These include PHPMailer, GetID3, Moment, Sodium Compat, jQuery, jQuery UIUI User interface, MediaElement.js, Clipboard.js, and Underscore
Add support for WebP images in the Thickbox library. #55786
Update PHPMailer to 6.6.4 #55976 , #56016 , #56413
Update the Underscore library for 6.1 #56030
Update Moment library for 6.1 #56031
Update jQuery UI library for 6.1 #56239
Update mediaelement.js to version 4.2.17 #56319
Update jQuery to version 3.6.1 #56451
Update Sodium Compat to 1.19.0 #56564 , #56653
Update GetID3 to version 1.9.22 #56692
Formatting
Normalize to Unicode NFC encoding before converting accent characters in remove_accents() #24661
Replace all esc_url_raw() calls in core with sanitize_url(). #55852
Allow min(), max(), minmax(), and clamp() values to be used in inline CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets.. #55966
KSES: Allow more layout-related CSS properties. #56122
KSES: Allow assigning values to CSS variables. #56353
General 
Formatting: Add support for Enums in is_serialized(). #53299
Replace phpversion() function calls with PHP_VERSION constant. #55680
Blocks: Remove duplicate use of realpath() in register_block_style_handle(). #56636
Block Editor: Remove repetitive calls to file_get_contents() in block editor settings. #56637
General: Remove file_exists() checks after calling realpath(). #56654
Blocks: Remove extra get_theme_file_path() calls in register_block_style_handle(). #56666
General: Ensure wp_rand() returns 0 when $min and $max values are equal to 0. #55194
I18Ni18n Internationalization, or the act of writing and preparing code to be fully translatable into other languages. Also see localization . Often written with a lowercase i so it is not confused with a lowercase L or the numeral 1. Often an acquired skill.
I18N: Introduce WP_Textdomain_Registry to store text domains and their language directory paths. #39210  
Login and Registration
Required fields in networknetwork (versus site, blog) registration. #54344
Explicitly associate errors with input fields. #54483
Media