After a little delay in the development timeline due to a necessity for a 4th beta release, WordPress 6.0 has reached the release candidate phase. The first RC version for WordPress 6.0 is now ready and backports some fixes. The release candidate phase means it will have fewer bugs than the beta phase; although it might not be as stable as the final release.
Backporting the bug fixes
WordPress 6.0 RC1 once again brings some fixes related to comments; backporting updates and fixes for Comment blocks and Comment Template block pagination. It backports the bug fixes for WordPress 6.0 from Gutenberg as well. Overall, RC1 includes a total of 1,000 fixes and improvements after WordPress 5.9. Here are some of the highlights of WordPress 6.0 RC1:
- Style Switching: switch up the look and feel of your site, all in one block theme.
- More template options: use blocks to edit five more templates (author, date, categories, tag, and taxonomy).
- Multi-select: Easily select text across multiple blocks. Edit to your liking.
- Retain Styles: Keep your custom styles in place, whether transforming between blocks or creating new buttons.
- More patterns in more places: the Quick Inserter surfaces patterns that might work well for the condition you’re in, baking in relevant patterns for template parts and pages you’re working on.
- List View improvements: New keyboard shortcuts (shift + click) let you select multiple blocks to modify in bulk (reposition, delete, etc.), see your content at a glance with a collapsed by default view, and more.
- Refined design tools: Explore a new color panel, transparency options, more group block variations to create new layout options (Stack, Row), the ability to set your featured image in a Cover block, control the exact size of your featured image, gap support for the Gallery block, and more.
- New blocks: Various Post Comments, Read More, No Results in Query Loop, Post Author Biography, Avatar blocks.
- Block Locking: Choose to disable the option to remove a block, move it, or both, right in the editor.
- Export block themes: Explore the improved block theme export tool, as WordPress heads closer to codeless visual block theme building.
WordPress Team suggests the plugin and theme developers test their products in WordPress 6.0 RC1 and update their “Tested up to” version to 6.0 in their readme file; if they find no problems. In case of compatibility issues, the team asks for detailed information in support forums.
You can download and test WordPress 6.0 RC1 by installing WordPress Beta Tester plugin and selecting the Bleeding edge channel, and Beta/RC Only stream. Additionally, you can directly download the release as a zip file. Both of them are linked below:
Click here to install the WordPress Beta Tester plugin
Click here to direct download WordPress 6.0 RC1 as a zip file
You can also use WP-CLI to upgrade from beta versions on a case-insensitive filesystem by using the following commands:
wp core update --version=6.0-RC1
wp core update --version=6.0-RC1 --force