Heading into 2024, WordPress is ramping up its features, introducing updates that make managing your website easier and more powerful. With the new Font Library, you can change fonts as easily as changing gears, and the improved custom fields mean your site can quickly adapt and perform better, making it more user-friendly and adaptable than before.
Font Library
Significant enhancement arriving with WordPress in 2024, revolutionizes how fonts are managed on your site. Designed for ease and flexibility, it allows for the simple installation, removal, and utilization of fonts, operating independently of your chosen theme. This feature ensures that any font, whether personally added or theme-included, can be seamlessly integrated into your site’s design during the editing process, mirroring the functionality of the familiar Media Library. This is just one of the key updates set to enhance WordPress’s usability and customization capabilities.
Custom Fields
The “Custom Fields” update simplifies the process of adding extra details or settings to your website’s content by allowing you to easily link these custom fields with Gutenberg blocks. This means you can personalize and vary your web pages more efficiently, enhancing the overall editing experience.
Revisions
The WordPress 6.5 update brings significant improvements to template and template part management. It introduces a revision history feature, allowing users to track and review changes over time. Enhancements also include better handling of style changes, with tools to compare edits side by side, navigate revisions more easily, and access detailed change descriptions, streamlining the design process.
Data Liberation ( Matt’s push for the better web )
Matt Mullenweg said during the state of the word and in his blog post “ Imagine a more open web where people can switch between any platform of their choosing. A web where being locked into a system is a thing of the past. This is the web I’ve always wanted to see. That’s why I announced a new initiative called Data Liberation for 2024. Migrating your site to WordPress, or exporting all your content from WordPress, should be possible in one click. I want WordPress’ export format to become the lingua franca of CMSes, whether coming to WordPress or moving within WordPress. “
Colorways
The new feature enhances your website’s design control, particularly through “Colorways,” enabling you to add color to specific sections like group blocks. Although initially for those proficient in coding, it offers a straightforward selection tool. This system, aimed at improving aesthetics and readability, is primarily utilized by designers for creating visually appealing color schemes in themes. Future updates will allow all users to directly customize these color schemes via the site’s style settings, making design personalization more accessible.
Navigation Block Improvements
Version 6.5 is set to enhance the design flexibility for varying screen sizes, offering full customization of your site’s overlay menu. This means more control over color, spacing, and layout adjustments to ensure the menu’s optimal performance and appearance across devices, creating a consistent and tailored browsing experience for all viewers.
New APIs
Interactivity API
The Interactivity API is designed to standardize the way developers enhance block frontends with features like liking posts or adding items to carts seamlessly. It simplifies the creation of interactive elements, ranging from basic counters and popups to advanced functionalities like instant navigation and searches, or seamless cart and
checkout processes. After extensive testing in the Gutenberg plugin and WordPress 6.4, the next steps include refining the store based on user feedback, improving server-side processes for SEO and performance, and integrating ES Modules support, each significant enough to require separate consideration for future releases.
Custom Fields API
This feature is designed to easily link block attributes with Custom fields/metadata. In version 6.5, the plan includes a simpler version that will enable connecting block attributes and custom fields without a UI, incorporate a basic UI for setting up these links, allow for meta field values to be edited directly in the editor, and expand support to more core blocks based on their significance and relevance.
Block binding API
This API is designed to dynamically link block attributes with context-sensitive values, like a post’s author, enhancing blocks’ functionality without creating new ones. This approach not only simplifies development for theme creators and website owners by allowing for more dynamic content, like displaying the post author’s name in a heading block without a dedicated block for it but also focuses on integrating with Custom Fields and Partial Sync Patterns in the 6.5 update to support broader roadmap objectives.
Wrap Up
The excitement for WordPress in 2024 is building, especially with the anticipated release of version 6.5 at the end of March. This update promises to enhance features and simplify the user experience for Block Themes, although there’s hope for even more focus on ease of use. With several great new features expected, it’s shaping up to be a great year for WordPress users.
Let me know which upcoming feature excites you the most in the comments!
