WordPress has released version 6.8, bringing new features and improvements to enhance the WordPress site-building experience. The update focuses on streamlining workflows, improving design capabilities, and making content creation more intuitive.
WordPress 6.8, code-named “Cecil,” will be the only major release for 2025. Where normally there are 3 major releases each year, it seems that Automattic has chosen to focus on only one, with the main focus being on making tweaks to what is already in WordPress and providing database optimizations to improve overall performance.
The potential reasons for this are due to the continuing dispute with WP Engine still taking up a lot of the company’s focus and otherwise wanting to keep things simple at this time.
The software update is relatively straightforward with subtle changes that won’t majorly affect users as it focuses on minor bug fixes and tweaks, and also potentially opens the door to a re-design of the WP Admin site editor in future releases.
What’s instore in the latest release
The new WordPress 6.8 release aims to polish and refine the everyday tools to make sites faster, more secure, and easier to manage.
- Speculative loading
The speculative loading feature helps pages load faster than ever, speeding up navigation by preloading links before users navigate to them. When you or your user hovers over or clicks a link, WordPress may preload the next page, for a smoother, near-instant experience. The system balances speed and efficiency, and you can control how it works with a plugin or your own code. This feature only works in modern browsers – older ones will simply ignore it without any impact. There is also the option to remove this feature if preferred.
- Query loop changes
The Query loop feature manages how blog posts are presented and is very common in WordPress. The new update provides tweaks to the sticky posts and post count feature, giving users more control over how blog content is presented.
‘Sticky posts’ are a way of highlighting posts so they are always stuck to the top of the page, with the new update users will have more control over content lists with the ability to exclude sticky posts from your dynamic content lists, adjust the order, sort content in different ways and also retrieve pages from other hierarchical levels.
There is also the option to show the ‘post count’ inside the loop, although this will need to be inside the query loop function to work.
- Featured images changes
Where previously the featured image on a post was set by users through the post details section, the new updates will allow users to directly select an image already used in the text of a post and right click to ‘set as featured image’ to the page, speeding up the content creation process even more.
- Colour picker
Another addition is the ability to adjust colours easily with a ‘Colour picker reset action’ – a small minus button now appears next to the element so you can easily remove a selected colour and choose another one.
- View/Edit template
Previously, you could only access the Template options in the post sidebar, now you can access the view/edit template option in the toolbar dropdown. While this update may seem like a duplication, it is a noteworthy improvement, as placing this option in the toolbar dropdown makes switching between content and template views more straightforward and faster.
- Styles (for full site editing sites only – not classic themes)
The latest WordPress update has also revamped the style editor feature, giving users more control over the appearance of their sites.
The Style Book now has a new, structured layout and clearer labels, making it even easier to edit colors, typography and font sizes, with the ability to also set up ‘global styles’ that will apply to buttons and other design features throughout the site.
- bcrypt for security
The new update now uses bcrypt for a more secure login, bcrypt hashing strengthens password security automatically. Nothing will be needed here, as just using 6.8 will automatically switch to the new system.
- Issues with 6.8 being the only major update until 2026
Some may speculate that not releasing more enhanced features mean that WordPress is not staying as competitive compared to other current CMS systems in the marketplace, however with WordPress already being a popular, well-known system trusted by many customers and developers, it might not really matter and that by polishing up on current features and improving workflows, this new release can at least set the stage for something else in 6.9 in 2026.
The bottom line
So far, other users say they have upgraded their sites with no major issues and that the updates, such as speculative loading, is a ‘nice touch with pages loading faster’.
Sites for our clients will be checked and updated by us automatically and gradually rolled out. So there is no need to do anything.