WordPress says its latest version, WordPress 6.0, is now available for installation. But should you click that ‘Install’ button?
WordPress 6.0 includes more than 500 enhancements and 400 bug fixes, according to its developers. Yoast calls it a “major release with major improvements.”
It is now available for installation on self-hosted blogs.
It’s hard to imagine one release containing 500 enhancements. That seems like a lot. With that many enhancements, I suppose I can understand why they’d probably need another 400 “bug fixes.” If they churn out that many enhancements over time, that’s a lot of space in which something can go awry.
Do you really need to install WordPress 6.0?
I know the temptation when you see a question like this. Before you answer, you want to check out that list of enhancements. If there are 500, surely there should be at least a few that could benefit you or your blogging efforts. But you still want to see what made the list.
If you don’t see a single enhancement that you care about, the easy answer might be to say you’ll hold off.
If there’s something in the list that you find earth-shattering, that might be the point at which updating becomes a priority.
I think it’s only natural to wonder to yourself, What have the developers done for me lately?
WordPress claims the changes include an “enhanced writing experience” that includes making it easy to edit across multiple blocks, faster access to link menus, and more flexibility with customized buttons, tag clouds and social media icons. Style switching allows you to change the look and feel of your site with just a few clicks. You’ll find five new template options: author, date, categories, tag, and taxonomy. There are integrated patterns available for certain parts of your design.
New keyboard shortcuts allow you to select multiple blocks from the list view, modify them in bulk, and drag-and-drop them within the list.
Design options include a new color panel, new border controls, transparency options for colors, and controls for gaps, margins, typography for blocks.
The developers assume you have already embraced WordPress’s no-longer-new Gutenberg block editor. Seriously, it has been out for three-and-a-half years: long enough that you really should have had time to embrace it. The future of WordPress seems geared to making more and more use of that option.
They even produced a fancy video to show off what’s new:
Yes, a lot of the focus in WordPress 6.0 is on Gutenberg.
I’ve said in the past that if you just absolutely don’t want to switch to Gutenberg, do what you want. There are plugins that allow you to do things the pre-Gutenberg way.
But when I said that — three years ago — it appeared the support for the old editor would continue through Dec. 31, 2021. Honestly, I don’t know if that support has been extended. If I had to guess, I’d guess that it has been.
Still, there comes a point where you need to go with the flow. This seems to be the direction in which WordPress has chosen to proceed. Sooner or later, you’re probably going to be on Gutenberg.
Trust me: It’s not terrible. In some ways, it’s easier to deal with than the old editor once you get used to it.
It is definitely not the end of the world.
I remain curious, though, about the notion of being able to build an entire website — pages, headers, footers, posts, everything — through the Gutenberg editor.
TechRadar says this new WordPress “makes building a website easier than ever.” That’s a little frightening.
This would seem to mean that we’ll someday no longer need themes. I’m not sure that I like that. I found a theme that mostly does everything I want it to. I do not, however, think I could build something using Gutenberg that I would like better.
As long as WordPress continues to add more horsepower under Gutenberg’s hood, I think that’s a great thing. The more options a blogger can use, the better.
I just hope that using professionally-built themes is never an option bloggers lose.
But there’s a much more simple answer to the question of whether to update.
The short answer to the question of whether you really need to upgrade to WordPress 6.0 is yes. You always want to make sure your site is running the latest version of its platform. You should also update your site’s themes and plugins whenever updates become available.
For bloggers, that should be a no-brainer.
Those little updates sometimes contain critical security patches. Those patches can remove previously-discovered security vulnerabilities that could give someone dangerous access to your site’s backend.
No blogger wants to have their site hacked.
The updates give you the peace of mind that any known problems up to that point have presumably been addressed in the update.
Even if you don’t use any of the 500 enhancements, keeping your site secure is worth the effort of updating.
By the way, you’re looking at a blog running on WordPress 6.0. I had no issues in the upgrade.
