WordPress 6.6 is coming soon: Everything you need to know

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WordPress 6.6 is just around the corner and brings with it a number of new features and improvements. The team behind the scenes says they have focused primarily on "polish and finesse". So it's less about big, new features and more about optimizing existing features. In this article, I'll give you an overview of some of the most important points relating to design, user-friendliness and technology.

Improvements to design, layout, themes in WordPress 6.6
Pattern Overrides: More Flexibility for Synchronized Designs
Patterns are a quick and easy way to store recurring elements that consist of multiple blocks. They currently come in two versions: synchronized and unsynchronized.

With synchronized patterns, any changes made to one instance are automatically propagated to all others. For example, you can change a name, image, or color in one place and it will automatically change everywhere.
Unsynchronized patterns , on the other hand, work more like templates: you add them and adapt them as needed. They are not linked to other instances. The disadvantage here is, of course, that changes are not automatically updated everywhere you have used the pattern.
Now there is a third option with overrides : This allows you to specify that moj database individual blocks in a synchronized pattern should be customizable without these changes being transferred to all instances. This is an important addition, as web developer Dominic Vogl explains:

"This flexibility allows me to have a consistent design without compromises when creating content. Simply brilliant, because it saves me a lot of time and makes maintenance much easier for my editors."

Dominic Vogl, web developer, Raidboxes
A concrete example makes it clear: You have a hero element on your website for the top area of ​​your product pages and you want to ensure that these hero patterns can be changed centrally, for example to set the color scheme for all instances. At the same time, however, the product name should be changeable and only apply to one page at a time and not to all. You can now select the block with the placeholder for the product name and set it as customizable in the block settings using the Overrides button.

Behind the scenes of this convenient function is the new Block Bindings API, which enables the connection of block attributes with dynamic data sources. It significantly improves the editing of dynamic data within blocks, says Dominic Vogl, adding:

“A real benefit for anyone who regularly works with dynamic content and doesn’t want to create special solutions with ACF or similar.”