WordPress 6.8: The highlights you should know about

On April 15th, 2025, ​WordPress 6.8 was released. This release, named Cecil, is aimed at bringing more control when it comes to the design of your website. It also comes with features that improve performance and enhance security for users and developers. Let’s dive into a few of the highlights in this latest release.

The Style Book for Classic themes

The Style Book, previously exclusive to block-based themes, is now accessible for Classic themes that have editor-styles or a theme.json file. It also comes with a new look and a few new settings to play around with. You can find this feature, or see if you have access to this feature, by going to Appearance > Design > Styles in your vertical navigation bar on the left side.

This tool gives you an overview of your site’s design elements, including colors, typography, and block styles. Just scroll down to have a look at all the design elements and whether you’re happy with everything design-wise.

Increasing performance with speculative loading

WordPress 6.8 introduces speculative loading, a feature that leverages the Speculation Rules API to prefetch or prerender pages based on user interactions. When someone clicks on a link, this page can now be preloaded. This anticipatory loading results in faster page transitions and a smoother browsing experience.

Of course, WordPress will not load everything as this would compromise performance if it becomes too much. This feature aims to keep a balance between speed and efficiency in choosing which pages to load. Developers can customize this behavior by using a plugin or writing code if they want it to act differently. It’s also good to know that this feature only works in newer browsers.

This feature is part of a longer list of enhancements focused on performance and speed, for both editing and browsing. Without going into too much detail, this update comes with improvements to the block editor, query caching and shorter interactions thanks to the Interactivity API.

WordPress 6.8 brings a few new enhancements to the design and editing experience. We’ll go into a few of them, such as the improved global styles panel, the option to turn image blocks into featured images and new density settings in table layouts.​

Global styles panel

The Global Styles Panel in the full site editor has had an update, making it easier than ever to give your website a cohesive and polished look. Now, users can tweak typography, colors, and layout settings for their entire site — all from one convenient place. Whether you’re adjusting heading sizes, setting your brand colors, or fine-tuning spacing, this central hub helps you manage your site’s design without having to dive into custom CSS or theme files.

Set image blocks as featured images

One of the most welcome little updates in WordPress 6.8 is the ability to turn any image block directly into a featured image with a single click. No more uploading the same image twice — once in the content and once for the featured image. If you’ve already added a perfect image to your post, you can now designate it as the featured image straight from the block editor, which simplifies your workflow and saves time.

Density options for your tables

WordPress 6.8 introduces new density settings for table-based layouts, particularly useful when you’re managing data-heavy content like tables in the admin or Data Views. With these new controls, you can choose how compact or spacious you want your table rows and cells to appear, depending on your personal preference or the type of content you’re handling. Whether you prefer a minimal, airy look or a dense, info-packed table, WordPress now gives you the flexibility to adjust it to suit your needs.

Under-the-hood improvements

Beyond the user-facing features, WordPress 6.8 includes a lot of enhancements under the hood. Let’s check out a few highlights.​

Higher security with bcrypt

Although less visible, this feature is one to get excited about as well. As it brings a significant boost to security. The system is moving away from the MD5-based system for password hashing and transitioning to bcrypt. This change improves overall password security and requires no action from you or your users. It’s automatically implemented and will make it a lot harder to crack passwords.

Efficient block type registration

The new release introduces a new function that makes registering multiple block types much easier for developers. Instead of writing separate code for each block, plugin and theme creators can now register a whole collection of blocks in one go. This not only reduces repetitive code but also helps keep projects organized and easier to maintain, making life simpler for developers and creating fewer opportunities for bugs.

Internationalization improvements

With WordPress powering sites across the globe, internationalization is always a priority. This release ensures that error messages generated by PHPMailer (WordPress’s email handling system) are properly localized, so users see helpful and understandable messages in their language. Additionally, any plugin update notifications sent via email will now respect the site administrator’s selected language, making routine updates more user-friendly for non-English speakers.

Accessibility enhancements

WordPress 6.8 continues the platform’s commitment to making websites more inclusive by improving accessibility across the board. One of the key changes in this release is the removal of redundant title attributes, which were often unnecessary and could cause confusion for users relying on screen readers.

This small but meaningful update helps streamline the browsing experience for people using assistive technology, ensuring that WordPress websites are more welcoming and accessible to all visitors. Other than that, there are over 100+ accessibility fixes and enhancements in this release.

Update your site to WordPress 6.8

Those are a few of the features that you’ll find in this latest release. There’s a lot of focus on enhancing the overall user experience and refining existing functionalities. Whether you’re a developer or website manager, this update is meant to make your life a bit easier and your website more secure and performant. Read the official WordPress release post for more information on this newest version of WordPress. Or, if you’re curious to see these features in action, update to the newest version and try them out yourself!

Read more: Learn how to use WordPress without touching any code »

Camille Cunningham

Camille is a content specialist at Yoast. As part of the Search team, she enjoys creating content that helps you master SEO.

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How Do You Resolve A WordPress Plugin Conflict?

One of the scariest things that can occur with a WordPress user is that you install a plugin, and upon activation, you get a white screen of death.

This screen, where your beautifully crafted website once lived, is now plain white or produces a line or two of unformatted text.

A plugin conflict is when you have two plugins installed, and while they both work fine, running them together breaks the site.

It usually happens when plugins run in tandem, and they both come packaged with the same or similar library functions. There’s a naming conflict, and PHP produces an error.

This article will discuss how to fix them.

Plugin Conflicts Are Becoming More Rare

First of all, plugin conflict: where somebody installs a plugin that conflicts with another plugin, is becoming more rare.

WordPress, in the last few years, has introduced protections in place that means if an error does occur, rather than activate the plugin fully, it’ll backtrack automatically, provide an error, and leave the plugin deactivated.

For the majority of users, this is what they see.

The plugin “Broken Plugin” is unable to be activated within WordPress as it generates a fatal error. (Image from author, March 2025)

At this point, an investigation should be done in a staging environment with this plugin, but unless it’s a unique plugin, an alternative may need to be found that doesn’t conflict with your setup.

Plugin conflicts tend to occur when you install a Must Use (MU) plugin via a service like FTP, an update to one or more plugins takes place, or you have a custom plugin activated and changes are pushed to the server.

I’ll walk you through my process of resolving plugin conflicts.

Do You Have Access To WordPress?

To begin, the first question you should ask is if you have access to WordPress.

If you do, conventional wisdom dictates that the course of action to take is to deactivate all plugins and switch to a default theme, to try and troubleshoot where the problem occurs.

If you are doing this on a live site, this isn’t ideal, as the site may still have a lot of functionality.

A different approach is to install the Health Check and Troubleshooting plugin. Installing this plugin would allow you to run a version of the site with a default theme, and no plugins installed.

Simply activate each plugin in turn until you identify the one that is causing the issue and then leave that one deactivated.

Make sure the theme is the last thing activated, as custom themes could use functionality in plugins that could bring down the site.

If You Don’t Have Access To WordPress

If you don’t have access to WordPress, then there could be a bit of a process in order to diagnose and fix the problem.

This approach is what I take as best as I can when diagnosing plugin conflicts. It can be done in any order, depending on your knowledge and what you have access to.

Have Access To The Administrative Email? You May Get An Email

If you have access to the administrator email with WordPress (set in Settings > General), you may receive an email.

This will allow you to put the site into Recovery Mode. From there, you can log in, and it will identify the plugin that has the issue, and you can deactivate it.

WordPress recovery mode with the plugin conflict highlighting Hello Dolly, as where the conflict lies. (Image from author, March 2025)

Check The Hosts’ Log File

The first step would be to check the host’s log file.

Depending on the host, it may be easily visible in your host’s dashboard or from within cPanel, but if you only have a file browser, they tend to be put outside of the /public_html/ or /www/ (which are publicly available). Usually, one level up in a file called /logs/ tends to be where it’s located.

Should you find the file (it should have a name like error_log), download it and search for any Fatal Error within the document, maybe towards the bottom.

Within the error message, you should have a couple of file locations that will dictate where the file issues occur.

No Logs? You May Need To Activate Them

If you have FTP/SFTP access to the site but no logs, you may need to activate them.

Within the root directory of WordPress, add the following lines to the wp-config.php file.

define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );
@ini_set( 'display_errors', 0 );

This will create a file debug.log within the wp-content/ folder. From there, you can see the errors in this file.

Security Tip: The debug.log will be publicly visible, so once you’ve fixed the issue, remove these lines from wp-config.php and delete the debug.log file.

Resolving These Plugin Conflicts

Whichever method you use, your logs should produce lines like this below:-

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare hello_dolly_get_lyric() (previously declared in/wp-content/plugins/broken-plugin/index.php:17) in /wp-content/plugins/hello-dolly/hello.php on line 46

Each element means:

• “Fatal Error” determines the error. A fatal error in PHP means that the site immediately stops working. You can get other errors or warnings.
• “Cannot redeclare hello_dolly_get_lyric()” is the fatal error. In this case, there are two PHP functions with the same name (hello_dolly_get_lyric()). This is the basis of the plugin conflict.
• “/wp-content/plugins/hello-dolly/hello.php on line 46” tells you where this error occurs. While the line number isn’t important (unless you’re coding yourself), it does tell you the plugin where the plugin error occurs – in this case, “hello-dolly”.

The next step is to manually change the plugin.

In your chosen FTP programme or file manager, go to the plugin folder within WordPress – /wp-content/plugins/ in this case – and rename the plugin folder (in this case, change “hello-dolly” to “broken-hello-dolly”). This will deactivate the plugin when you next log into WordPress.

The plugin “Hello Dolly” has been deactivated due to it not existing. In reality, it’s been renamed so WordPress can’t find it. (Image from author, March 2025)

It’s a good idea not to delete the WordPress plugin if you can prevent it. This will force the deactivation of the plugin in question.

From there, you can investigate the two plugins and identify why the two functions are called twice.

For Developers: Good Practice Can Prevent Plugin Conflicts

If you are a developer building WordPress sites, following good practice can prevent plugin conflicts.

Here are some tips for preventing your plugin or WordPress sites from having plugin conflicts with other plugins out there:

1. If you are not using PHP Namespaces, then I’d recommend naming your classes or functions with a prefix. Something like plugin_name_function_name can prevent similar functionality from having the same function name. Try to make them unique (so don’t use wp_ as a prefix).
2. Using function_exists around your functions to prevent your functions from loading if they already exist.
3. If you are importing functionality, using class_exists can check to see if the class has already been loaded.
4. Loading your functionality late, so naming your plugin folder with a late alphabet letter is useful. Not every developer follows the same approach as you!
5. If you are building on one site, make sure your server setup is the same (or as close to being the same) as the live environment.

You’re never going to completely guarantee your plugin or theme doesn’t conflict with the millions of plugins that exist in the WordPress space.

However, by following the above steps, you can minimize conflict as much as possible, and simple changes to your code writing can prevent a world of debugging hell later.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Whiskerz/Shutterstock