What’s New in WordPress 6.8

WP 6.8 will ship with over 370 enhancements and 520 bug fixes for the editor. These changes helped the devs close 230 support tickets, some which have been lingering for years.

New Password Hashing

For 20+ years WordPress has used MD5 Hashing as a way to encrypt the storage of passwords in the database. It looks like a bunch of gobblty goop characters that require a special decryption key to see the actual password in plain text.

But that method is considered weak against modern hack attacks now.

WP 6.8 will include the new bcrypt hashing method that is far superior and harder to crack, even if hackers use new AI tools to do it.

This new hashing method will be automatically applied, so there is nothing for us to turn on to get it.

Speculative Loading

WordPress can now play a guessing game as to which post a visitor may want to open next and then go ahead and preload it.

This can be accomplished through the new experimental Speculation Rules API.

Cloudflare introduced a similar feature that runs on RUM, which is Real User Management.

WP’s Speculation Rules monitors when a user hovers over a link and preloads that page.

RUM analyzes all clicks across the entire website to predict which page a visitor is likely to go to next, even before they hover over the link to do so.

While I’m all for speedy sites, both of these methods are going to cause more host resource usage by preloading pages/posts that visitors may or may not ever see.

Plus, that data has to be kept somewhere. 

And there could be issues with session history, meaning that the visitor’s Back button on their browser has to retain meaningful session history as they navigate through the site.

I don’t know how that affects GA4 tracking, but betting it has negligible effect on it, as GA4 counts actual clicks and page loads.

The bottom line – we won’t be using this feature at this time.

Block Updates

Query Loop Changes

By default, the Query Look Block places a sticky post at the top. 

There is a new setting to turn that behavior off and give you more control over post layout.

Minor Button Change

Box sizing and border have been added to help the button to help the browser understand these design elements.

Cover Block Background Image

Code has been added so you can control the size of the background image in a Cover block.

And code has been added so you can control the resolution of that image too.

Gallery Block 

An option has been added to have all images in the Gallery Block open with a Light Box effect.

Previously you had to choose that option on each individual image.

Set Embedded Image as Featured Image

I typically use the same image for the first one that I embed in a post and then as the Featured Image.

And I would have to select that Featured image in the Page sidebar before publishing the post.

In 6.8, you will be able to click on any image you have embedded in your post and you’ll now find an option to select it as the Featured Image.

Separator Block

Designers are going to love this change.

You can now select between <div> or <hr> tags for the Separator Block. The choice is under Advanced > HTML Element.

That will open up more possibilities for styling options on the Separator Block.

See this post and this one for details.

Accessibility Improvements

There were 26 accessibility improvements included in WP 6.8. Below is an important one.

Screen Reader Compatibility

Some WP elements have redundant title attributes, and that confuses screen readers.

Those redundancies have been removed.

FSE Improvements

WP continues to focus on shoring up design elements, and their placement, in Full Site Editing Themes.

FYI, most of us are not using FSE-compliant themes, so I’m only going to cover the basics here.

Designers, if you are working with FSE themes, you may want to read this post from WPBeginner about those changes for more in-depth coverage.

StyleBook Available for Classic Themes

StyleBook is a comprehensive overview of all styles on a theme. It was introduced for FSE themes, but is now available to Classic themes that support it.

I suspect this is something we may see adopted by Kadence, as they are beginning to focus hard on creating FSE themes. They may bring this feature into the Kadence core.

You will be able to find it under Appearance > Design > Styles.

Field Guide

To see all of the changes in WP 6.8, read the official WP 6.8 Field Guide.