WordPress 6.8, the much anticipated and first release of the year 2025, is almost ready! 🥳 This release focused primarily on improving existing functionality and fixing bugs for a more seamless and effective user experience and is scheduled to be officially available on April 15, 2025.
Major updates of WordPress 6.8 are the integration of the Speculative Loading plugin to the Core, enhanced security by using bcrypt for password hashing, style book support for Classic Themes, and more. Are you excited for us to explore all new additions and prepare to explore everything new? Then dive right in and start reading.
Let’s Unpack What’s New in WordPress 6.8
According to WordPress enthusiasts, WordPress 6.8 is considered to be more of a refinement release, focusing on bringing enhancements and fine-tuning existing features.
This release contains over 370 enhancements and 520 bug fixes for the editor, including design improvements, polishing the query loop and more than 230 tickets for WordPress 6.8 Core, which is massive for a new WordPress release version.
Here is a glimpse of the major features of WordPress 6.8 in one place:
- Support for Speculative Loading plugin to the Core
- Using bcrypt for password hashing
- Style Book support for Classic Themes
- Editor Improvements
- Accessibility Improvements
- API Launches and Iterations… and so on.
We will look at how WordPress 6.8’s enhancements and new features work below.
Support for Speculative Loading Plugin to WordPress Core
The Speculative Loading plugin improves WordPress performance by prefetching or rendering specific URLs via the Speculation Rules API. This proactive loading strategy can lead to near-instant page load times, as linked pages begin loading based on user interactions like hovering over links. By default, the plugin is configured to pre-render WordPress frontend URLs when the user interacts with a relevant link, which can be customized.
WordPress 6.8 includes native support for speculative loading, which uses the Speculation Rules API to improve site performance with near-instant page loads. This feature prefetches or prerenders URLs based on user interactions, such as hovering over links, which reduces load times on subsequent pages.
By default, WordPress 6.8 uses a conservative prefetching strategy that balances performance gains with resource efficiency. Because the API lacks UI-based controls, developers can use new filters to modify speculative loading behavior.
Style Book for Classic Themes
Must say, one of the most exciting improvements in WordPress 6.8 is the addition of the Style Book feature to classic themes. Previous major releases were heavily focused on improving block themes, which would eventually render classic themes incompatible. However, with the release of WordPress 6.8, the Style Book will now work with classic themes that have editor styles or a theme.json file.
The Style Book has been updated with a more structured layout, making it easier to preview site colors, typography, and block styles. All style groups and block examples are now clearly labeled, making it easier to understand and preview the existing design settings in your theme.
To experiment with the new updates, first, install and activate a classic theme like Twenty-Ten or Twenty-Eleven. WordPress 6.8’s Style Book is now located under Appearance → Design, with improved labeling and a more user-friendly interface. Site patterns for classic themes that support the Style Book have been moved to Appearance → Design → Patterns. This consolidates all design-related functionality from the Site Editor in one place.
💡If you want to get a glimpse of all the upcoming updates for newly released WordPress versions, then check out this guide on testing WordPress’s new versions.
This enhancement provides modern design tools to users of classic themes, bridging the gap between traditional and modern WordPress experiences.
Enhanced Security Using Bycrypt for Password Hashing
WordPress 6.8 significantly improves security by introducing bcrypt for password hashing. This update dramatically strengthens WordPress’s defenses against potential security threats, providing better protection for user accounts and sensitive data.
The new hashing algorithm will be used to save security keys and application passwords, making your WordPress site more secure against unauthorized access. The best part is that these improvements work behind the scenes, so you will not have to make any changes to your daily workflow to benefit from the increased security.
Notable Editor Improvements
WordPress 6.8 improves the Gutenberg editor experience significantly, making it more usable and powerful. You can now view and manage your options in Data Views more easily.
The ability to ignore sticky posts is a welcome addition to the Query Loop block, giving you more control over how you display your content. Other enhancements include pagination, block spacing enhancements, filtering by year and fetching results with an offset. The data views have also been improved, with smaller action button sizes in the Grid layout and a new table layout with density options.
Improve Website Performance by Upgrading to WordPress 6.8
Here is the wrap-up of WordPress 6.8 major updates. Updating to a new WordPress will make your web-building experience smooth, enhance security and bring versatility. If you are using an old version, then you can take a test drive to WordPress 6.8 and enjoy all the exclusive features. And there will be RC versions too.
Need to mention that, this blog will be regularly updated and you should keep an eye out here for all the latest updates about WordPress.
Hopefully, you found this article helpful. We would like to learn more about your experience with WordPress 6.8. And if you want to keep in touch with the latest WordPress updates, trends and tips, subscribe to us.
