Dockside Press
WordPress 6.9 Beta 3 was released today, and we decided to take the new features for a spin. We’ll be testing the many new features, to the best of our ability, announced on the 6.9 roadmap.
As always, the Site Editor is one of the key focuses on any major WordPress release. There are three key areas that should have focus.
The ability to toggle between write mode and design mode was initially planned for 6.9. However, as of 6.9 Beta 3, this isn’t live yet. According to the feature on GitHub, it appears that an alternative option is in the works, but it is still to be determined whether or not it will make it this release.
6.9 will introduce the ability to have multiple templates with the same target slug, the ability to activate or deactivate a template, and duplicate templates.
This improved template management makes it easy to create a second template for the same target slug, such as a 404 template, and perfect the layout before making it live.
Additionally, new templates default to deactivated. This is an amazing feature as previously new templates were published immediately, resulting in a blank template on the front end. Now, you’ll be able to publish it when you want to.
The activate/deactivate feature is also pretty straightforward, you can only have one template active for a specific target slug. Maybe a future version will include conditions to determine when a template is active or not, but we’ll see.
This release also introduces a new feature for theme templates. Rather then edit a template directly, you’ll now be prompted to duplicate the template where you can then make your changes and activate the template once you are satisfied.
WordPress 6.9 will also introduce the ability to hide blocks both within the editor and on the front end. This is another great feature that will help in staging and planning before going live with content. It will also assist in future improvements. One goal in particular is the ability to hide blocks based on screen size.
Honestly, our overall thoughts for these new features were pretty welcoming, with the Template Management being the most exciting. That said, right after our initial test for this, we discovered that the Release team has decided to push the template activation until 7.0, which was very disappointing.
While the hiding blocks feature is nice, it would be great if we could still see them in the editor so that we could continue working on a block or group while it wasn’t published. Until then, we’ll just have to unhide/hide between saves.
The Write Mode, which we expect won’t make it into 6.9, might be really helpful for editorial workflows, especially if you can lock some users in write only mode.
WordPress 6.9 Beta 3 Now Available – Dockside Press says:
[…] the release, it was announced on the Making WordPress Slack that the Template Activation feature, which we were really excited about, will be delayed until the WordPress 7.0 release. From the notice, it sounds like this was delayed […]