The new WordPress 6.8 is finally here! It focuses on making your website faster, safer, and easier to manage. Instead of adding big new features, this version improves the tools we already use — making WordPress smoother and smarter.
Let’s look at the most useful changes in WordPress 6.8 and how they can help you.
1. Faster Websites with Speculative Loading
WordPress 6.8 introduces a new feature called Speculative Loading. It helps your website load pages faster by “preloading” them in the background before visitors click.
For example, when someone hovers their mouse over a link, WordPress starts loading that page early — so when they click, it opens almost instantly.
This makes browsing your site feel much smoother and improves user experience.
2. Improved Style Book (Now for Classic Themes Too!)
The Style Book has a new, cleaner design. It’s easier to find and manage your website’s colors, fonts, and block styles.
Earlier, the Style Book worked only for block themes, but now it also supports classic themes that use a theme.json file or editor-styles.
You can open it directly from the Styles menu in the site editor sidebar.
3. Better Block Editor Features
The block editor in WordPress 6.8 comes with several small but useful updates:
- Set image as featured image directly from the image block.
- New Query Total block — shows the total number of posts in a list or search result.
- Control sticky posts — choose if sticky posts should appear at the top or not.
- Improved list view — see post previews, slugs, and templates, and adjust the table layout for comfort.
These updates make content editing faster and more flexible.
4. Stronger Password Security
WordPress 6.8 now uses bcrypt, a modern way to protect user passwords.
This upgrade makes it much harder for hackers to guess or crack passwords. The best part? You don’t need to do anything — WordPress handles it automatically in the background.
5. Accessibility and Performance Improvements
The new version also includes over 100 accessibility fixes, making WordPress easier to use for everyone.
Developers will notice faster database queries and cleaner code under the hood. WordPress also gives helpful console warnings to improve performance and catch small coding mistakes early.
Final Thoughts
WordPress 6.8 is not a huge redesign — but it’s a strong and smart update that makes your site:
- Faster
- Easier to design
- More secure
- Better for all users
If you plan to update your site:
- Back up your website first.
- Test the update on a staging site (if you have one).
- Explore the new features, especially Speculative Loading and Style Book.
Overall, WordPress 6.8 proves that small improvements can make a big difference in how your website performs and feels.
