{"id":100042,"date":"2023-09-29T10:08:15","date_gmt":"2023-09-29T10:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bluehost.com\/blog\/wordpress-news-updates-september-2023\/"},"modified":"2023-09-29T10:08:15","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T10:08:15","slug":"wordpress-news-updates-september-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bluehost.com\/blog\/en-in\/wordpress-news-updates-september-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"WordPress News Roundup \u2014 The 2023 Bluehost Creators Awards + 7 More Updates | September 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The release of WordPress 6.3 brought a lot of excitement to the community. While September 2023 has been relatively laidback compared to August\u2019s WordPress news<\/a>, there were still some exciting developments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among them is the release of the Performant Translations plugin, which can instantly improve the performance of localized websites. On top of that, there\u2019s the approach of WooSesh, an event for WooCommerce enthusiasts, along with various small feature releases and developer updates for WordPress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most exciting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bluehost has kicked off the 2023 Creators Awards, giving innovative WordPress creators a chance to rank in the top 20 and win prizes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>The 2023 Bluehost Creators Awards<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Are you passionate about WordPress? Have you designed an exceptional website or created your own theme or plugin? Do you use WordPress to pursue creative passions or build exciting projects?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve just announced the 2023 Bluehost Creators Awards. Whether you\u2019ve made an awesome tool as a developer, crafted unique websites as a designer or put passion into your work as a blogger, you can show off your creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If your work is unique and innovative, you could rank in the top 20 and win cash and other rewards from a prize pool worth $9,100!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Submit your application today<\/a> if you think you have what it takes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gutenberg 16.6 releases<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Plugins
Image source<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Gutenberg 16.6 recently released<\/a>, bringing some small but impactful quality-of-life (QoL) updates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Auto-inserted blocks are now known as Block hooks. If you missed the memo, you can use this experimental feature to automatically insert a block when certain conditions are met, saving time from configuring the same block repeatedly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Navigation, List and Quote blocks also support attaching child toolbars to their parent blocks, which is a little more intuitive.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Besides that, the WordPress team made several dozen bug fixes and minor QoL improvements. This is a great update if you\u2019ve been having small but annoying issues with Gutenberg like fixed background images being zoomed in too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minor WordPress update<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"WordPress<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

WordPress released version 6.3.1, a minor maintenance update that squashes a few pesky bugs. If you don\u2019t have automatic updates enabled, you can install the latest version from your WordPress dashboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Work continues on WordPress 6.4 Beta 1<\/a>, slated to be released in late September 2023. You can expect to see more Beta and Release candidate versions throughout October, with the full release of 6.4 in early November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curious about how WordPress 6.3 has improved the platform? The core team posted an analysis of Core Web Vitals\u2019 performance in 6.3<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results show that 6.3 was a big step towards improving WordPress\u2019 performance, with block themes loading 27% faster since the update.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Developer updates: Updated blocks, new hooks and functions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As always, WordPress continues to add exciting new features for developers. Here\u2019s a quick overview of developer updates for September<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n