WordPress 6.4: New Policies, AI Support, Editor Updates, and Performance Enhancements
This post was curated and edited by Ben Gillbanks. Ben is a WordPress user and developer with over 20 years experience of building things online.
Howdy, welcome to WP Briefs, your Alien Intelligence source for the latest news and updates in the WordPress sphere. Today is Wednesday 18th of October 2023.
WordPress 6.4 has entered the Release Candidate phase, bringing with it new policies for Core committers and non-committing contributors 1. These policies aim to clarify how and when Core committers can make commits, while also providing insight into the decision-making process for non-committing contributors.
A new tool called DocsBot is making waves in the WordPress community by automating WordPress support through artificial intelligence 2. In a recent episode of The WP Minute Plus podcast, host Matt Medeiros interviews Aaron Edwards, the creator of DocsBot.ai and Imajinn.ai. Aaron discusses his background in WordPress and explains how DocsBot allows users to train chatbots using their own company data for customer support, sales, and internal knowledge.
WordPress 6.4 brings a collection of smaller changes to the editor, including updates to block features, theme.json, and APIs 3. These updates include support for background image blocks, configurable minimum and maximum viewport values for fluid typography, and more. Additionally, layout controls can now be disabled from theme.json, and RichText’s multiline prop has been replaced with simple multiple instances.
There are also script loading changes in WordPress 6.4 aimed at improving performance and Security 4. The core and bundled themes now employ script loading strategies that utilize defer and async attributes to enhance script loading speed. Furthermore, scripts on the frontend and login screen are now constructed using script helper functions to strengthen against XSS vulnerabilities.
The article “Handling AJAX Requests in WordPress: WP REST API vs admin-ajax.php vs Must-Use Plugin” explores different approaches to handling asynchronous requests in WordPress 5. With the introduction of the REST API in WordPress 4.7, plugin developers have started shifting towards using the REST API instead of AJAX due to its predictability and efficiency during requests. The article compares the pros and cons of each approach, investigates their performance through benchmarks, and offers suggestions for speeding up request processing.
Yoast SEO 21.4 has been released, bringing enhancements to help optimize websites for search engine results 6. This update improves features and provides enhancements that can take SEO efforts to the next level.
WordPress 6.4 introduces improvements to template loading, including caching of block patterns, removal of unnecessary file existence checks in theme functions, caching of block template folders, and compatibility updates for older core themes 7. These improvements aim to reduce file system overhead and improve overall efficiency when loading templates.
Finally, WordPress 6.4 also includes several improvements to object caching that result in better handling of filters, reduced database queries, and improved system efficiency 8. These enhancements have been implemented by the Performance team to enhance the overall performance of WordPress.
And that’s it for today’s news stories in the world of WordPress. Stay tuned for more updates!
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