Got an email from a long-time client this morning. The subject was just “WordPress 6.9?” He’d seen the news about the WordPress 6.9 RC2 being out and wanted to know if he should be worried. Smart man. Major updates can be a minefield if you’re not paying attention.
First off, an “RC” or “Release Candidate” means the core team thinks it’s done. This is the final dress rehearsal before the official release. For developers, this is our last chance to test our themes and plugins before things go live and clients start calling. For clients, it means… don’t touch anything. Not on a live site. Period.
What Devs Should Actually Watch in WordPress 6.9
My first instinct used to be just skimming the official announcement, like the one for RC2 on the WordPress News blog. But that’s how you get burned. I learned that lesson the hard way back when a minor update completely changed how the widget editor worked, and it took down a dozen client sites. The real story is always in the developer notes, and there’s one change in 6.9 that caught my eye: the “Heading Block CSS Specificity Fix.”
Sounds boring, right? Trust me on this, it’s not. For years, developers have had to fight with overly specific CSS from the core blocks. You’d write a style for your H2s, and the block editor’s own styles would just override it. Total nightmare. So we’d write even more specific CSS to win the war. Something like this:
/* Old, hacky way to override Core heading styles */
.entry-content h2.wp-block-heading {
font-family: 'Your-Theme-Font', sans-serif;
color: #222;
font-size: 2.5rem !important; /* The dreaded !important */
}WordPress 6.9 aims to fix this by reducing the specificity of core styles. This is a good thing. A great thing, actually. But if your theme is full of overrides like the one above, there’s a chance they might not be needed anymore, or worse, they could now be causing conflicts with other styles. It means you have to go back and audit your own CSS. It’s a small thing that can cause big headaches if you’re not prepared.
So, What’s the Real-World Plan for Updating?
So, what did I tell my client? The same thing I’ll tell you. Don’t update on day one. Ever. Unless it’s a critical security release, let the rest of the world find the bugs first.
- Staging First: We will update the staging site the week 6.9 is released. We’ll click every page, test every form, and check the front-end styling for any weirdness from changes like the CSS fix.
- Wait for the “.1”: The first minor release (e.g., 6.9.1) usually comes out a couple of weeks later and cleans up any issues found after millions of sites have updated. That’s a much safer time to update a live site.
- Read the Dev Notes: This is my job, not the client’s. But it’s the most important part—understanding the subtle changes that the official announcements gloss over.
Look, this stuff gets complicated fast. If you’re tired of debugging someone else’s mess and just want your site to work, drop my team a line. We’ve probably seen it before.
Is This Update a Big Deal?
Yeah, it is. There are a lot of developer-focused improvements in here, especially with the Interactivity API and Block Bindings. For a business owner, it just means WordPress is getting more powerful. For a developer, it means you’ve got homework to do. So get it done on a staging server, not on a client’s live site.
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