The Month in WordPress – October 2023 – WordPress News

September-October 2023 was yet another fun and eventful chapter in WordPress, with more WordCamps hosting exciting discussions, knowledge sharing, and learning. This month also welcomed the release of WordPress 6.4 and the Twenty Twenty-Four theme. Let’s check it out.

Meet WordPress 6.4 “Shirley”

WordPress 6.4 “Shirley” was released on November 7, 2023, and named after the iconic jazz artist Shirley Horn. With the release of WordPress 6.4 comes the new Twenty Twenty-Four theme, a multi-faceted, highly flexible default theme pre-loaded with more than 35 templates and patterns. 

This release includes more than 100 performance-related updates for a faster and more efficient experience. There’s also a host of new features and enhancements that help improve the content creation process and streamline site editing. 

WordPress 6.4 was made possible by more than 600 contributors in at least 56 countries. 

State of the Word 2023

Mark your calendars for State of the Word! The annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, will be held on December 11, 2023. For the first time, the event will take place outside North America—this time with the Spanish community in Madrid, Spain.

A live stream will be available for WordPress enthusiasts who will not be able to attend in person. Stay tuned for more information, including how to reserve a ticket, soon!

New in the Gutenberg plugin

Two new versions of Gutenberg shipped in October:

• Gutenberg 16.8 was released on October 11, 2023. It introduced enhancements to the Cover block and Font Library, and added the option to view the active template when editing pages.
• Gutenberg 16.9 was released on October 25, 2023. This update lets you rename nearly every block from within the editor, as well as duplicate or rename individual patterns. 

October’s Core Editor Improvement post dives into all the writing enhancements expected in the latest WordPress 6.4 release.

Team updates

Requests for feedback & testing

• Version 23.6 of the WordPress mobile app for iOS and Android is ready for testing.

WordPress events updates

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Thank you to Bernard Meyer and Reyes Martínez for their contributions to this edition of The Month in WordPress.