Last week, WordPress released the 6.8 update. While there weren’t any major changes, there are a few notable improvements worth mentioning. Let’s walk through what’s new.
Styles Panel Gets a UI Update
One of the most visible changes in 6.8 is in the Styles panel.
WordPress 6.7 View
In WordPress 6.7.2 and earlier, when navigating to Appearance > Editor > Styles, all styling options are condensed into the left panel. Clicking through options updates the preview on the right-hand side.
WordPress 6.8 View
Now in 6.8, when you click into Styles, you’ll see a more expanded and accessible panel. Clicking Browse Styles opens a more full-page view, with easier access to individual style categories like typography, colors, and background.
This new layout improves clarity and usability compared to previous versions.
New Block: Query Total
A new Query Total block is now available—but only when you’re working inside a Query Loop.
This block displays the total number of results in a query. It’s useful for:
- Category or tag archive pages
- Custom post type queries
- Displaying result counts on search or listing pages
Updated Sticky Post Control in Query Loop
In previous versions, the Query Loop block had limited control over sticky posts—only offering options like Include, Exclude, or Only.
With 6.8, there’s now an option to Ignore sticky posts, giving more flexibility in how your content is displayed.
Performance Boost: Speculative Loading
One of the more significant performance-related updates is the introduction of speculative loading.
This feature preloads a link’s destination in the background when a user hovers over it—essentially loading the page before it’s clicked. This creates an instant-like page load experience for users on modern browsers.
Note: Speculative loading only works in modern browsers. It is ignored on unsupported browsers.
How to Disable Speculative Loading
If this feature causes issues with your performance plugins or custom setups, you can disable it by adding a small PHP snippet to your functions.php file.
If you’re not using a child theme, you can insert the snippet using a plugin like Code Snippets.
add_filter( 'wp_speculative_loading_enabled', '__return_false' );
Improved Password Security with bcrypt
WordPress 6.8 also brings an enhancement to password security by introducing bcrypt. This adds an additional layer of password hashing and hardening.
Even though the technical side of this might go over most users’ heads, it’s a welcomed update—especially with WordPress powering over 40% of the internet.
Other Enhancements
In addition to these key features, WordPress 6.8 includes several accessibility improvements and general performance updates behind the scenes.
You can read the full release notes via the official WordPress 6.8 release page (link included in the video description).
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you in the next post.
