You are probably starting to see articles about the planned November 7th release of version 6.4

This version will have several feature upgrades though not as many as the previous release. This is because of the compressed time span between releases. The decision was made to release 6.4 before the US holidays and all of the worldwide holidays at the end of the calendar year.

All of the recent releases are concentrating on improvements to block and full-site editing, making it easier for WordPress users to make changes to their website design without having to learn how to develop code in PHP, Javascript or HTML/CSS. No-code designing is improving with each update.

Some of the updates we will probably see in this release are:

• Updates to block patterns, their use and selection,
• The ability to use background images with the group block,
• The ability to name group blocks to make it easier to identify them in the list view,
• Lightbox viewing of website images,
• The ability to use the button block in navigation menus and
• A new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Four.

There were initial efforts to include a font library in this release but apparently it was felt that the feature was not yet ready for ‘prime time.’ Look for the font library in version 6.5 next March.

So, should you update to version 6.4 when it is released? If you are using a block-based theme on your website then I recommend definitely yes. If you are using a classic, non-block theme then the decision is a little more complicated. I would definitely recommend updating first on a development (non-live) installation of your site to see if anything that you have installed is not compatible with the update. If you do have incompatibility issues it will most likely be related to theme or plugin code.

A really great thing about WordPress is its backward compatibility. I have never had a website that broke because of a version update. I have, however, had old plugins and themes that were using code that was not compatible with a version update.