June was an exciting month for the WordPress team as it celebrated its 20th birthday and ushered in the first looks at the future core experience, WordPress 6.3.
WordPress 6.3 Beta 2 and Gutenberg 16.0 were both released this month, giving users a preview of the unified website editing experience that will mark the end of Gutenberg Phase 2: Make WordPress Core.
During this month, we also saw additional artificial intelligence (AI) features appear in popular WordPress plugins, and WordPress Accessibility Day returned with a new status. Keep reading to learn the latest WordPress updates in June.
WordPress Turns 20
On May 27, 2023, WordPress celebrated its 20th anniversary. Community members celebrated the company’s milestone at WordPress Chapter meetup parties around the world. WordPress team members and users also turned to Twitter to commemorate the day and share details about the impact of WordPress using the hashtag #WP20.
WordPress launched with a vision of creating a platform that would make website building more accessible and user-friendly. Since then, it’s grown to power 43.1% of websites on the internet.
Bluehost has worked closely with WordPress since 2003 and is excited to generate more growth in the future with features like our new WordPress Onboarding.
First look at WordPress 6.3 with Beta 2 release
Another milestone on the WordPress 6.3 roadmap has been achieved. WordPress 6.3 Beta 2 was released on June 28, 2023, giving an initial peek into the new core experience expected from 6.3. The team behind the update skipped Beta 1, citing technical issues.
Beta 2 offers over 170 performance-based updates and expansions to the Site Editor. Users can navigate and edit content, pages, styles and templates in the new unified Site Editor experience.
Other significant updates include the ability to test block themes before activating, a style revisions feature and a Command Palette that will simplify navigation and make it easier to start creating content.
The exciting additions also include Details and Footnotes blocks and enhanced block spacing. Reusable blocks now go by the name Synced Patterns, and they can be added to templates.
The WordPress team reminds users that the Beta version includes software that’s still under development, which means it’s not yet ready for production websites. As usual, the team encourages users to install Beta 2 on test servers and websites.
Gutenberg 16.0 ushers in a more powerful Site Editor
Gutenberg 16.0 launched on June 14, 2023, featuring updates to the Site Editor that serve as another preview of what users can expect in the WordPress 6.3 core experience.
One of the first big enhancements is the addition of page management to the Site Editor. This gives users the ability to create new pages, edit page copy and adjust page templates, enabling them to build out an entire website primarily in the Site Editor.
Beyond the changes to the Site Editor, the team stabilized the Details block that was initially launched as an experiment in Gutenberg 15.6. The Details block lets you hide additional content until a visitor interacts with the page to view it.
The Post Template block has also received improvements in the form of block spacing and more customizable dimensions. Creators will be better able to adjust spacing, margins and padding in the template to their liking without having to add custom CSS code.
Jetpack launches AI assistant
On June 7, 2023, Jetpack became one of the latest WordPress plugins to offer AI features to its users. The Jetpack AI Assistant integrates directly into the WordPress Editor. It offers AI content generation, tone adjustment, title and summary creation, grammar editing and translation.
The assistant features a user-friendly, conversational UI that mirrors the experience of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT. WordPress users can test out the new features with 20 free requests. After that, the premium feature is available for $10/month.
Other popular plugins that have added AI functionality to WordPress include Formidable Forms, AI Engine and All in One SEO (AIOSEO).
WordPress Accessibility Day to return with non-profit status
WordPress Accessibility Day is a 24-hour virtual conference that began in 2020 with the goal of highlighting accessibility best practices for WordPress websites. The event will return on Sept. 27, 2023, with non-profit status, which it achieved by partnering with Knowbility, a non-profit dedicated to internet accessibility.
The conference is a free global event available via livestream. The 2022 event drew attendees from 52 different countries and featured presentations on the relationship between accessibility and open-source platforms, forms and videos.
The new status makes sponsorships and donations to WP Accessibility Day tax-deductible. Any brands interested in the opportunity to be featured during the conference can inquire about sponsorship.
group.one acquires Rank Math
On May 30, 2023, group.one acquired Rank Math, a WordPress search engine optimization (SEO) plugin. Rank Math joins group.one’s already strong collection of WordPress tools, which includes the speed optimization plugin WP Rocket and the image optimization tool Imagify.
Rank Math’s goal of simplifying SEO for WordPress has made it one of the top SEO plugins for the platform, with over 2 million users. The plugin analyzes content and provides user-friendly SEO recommendations.
group.one is a leading provider of cloud hosting, digital marketing and other online presence services in Europe. The company is based in Sweden, and its suite of services includes one.com, the top web hosting provider for Nordic countries.
one.com offers affordable, user-friendly plans. However, it doesn’t have options for dedicated or virtual private server (VPS) hosting, which work better for high-traffic WordPress websites. If you need more resources, you can explore Bluehost’s dedicated hosting and VPS plans.
Rank Math’s co-founders — Bhanu Ahluwalia, Nimit Kashyap and Suraj Vibhute — and their staff will continue to operate and grow the business under group.one’s umbrella.
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