The team behind WordPress have launched their latest version on the 26th March 2024, WordPress 6.5 Regina, an award-winning artist and storied jazz educator. The previous three updates were called WordPress 6.4 Shirley (derived from the name of a jazz pianist), WordPress 6.3 Lionel (named after the celebrated American jazz artist Lionel Hampton), and WordPress 6.2 Dolphy (named after the woodwind jazz wiz, the multi-instrumentalist, Eric Allan Dolphy Jr).

The latest version Regina has been named after Regina Carter, a renowned jazz violinist. Through her deep understanding of jazz and strong foundations in classical music, Regina has earned a reputation of going beyond what is possible with the violin. WordPress 6.5 Regina is now ready to download and it comes with an exciting set of new features. Here’s a few of the most powerful features.

  • Font library
  • Block bindings API
  • Interactivity API
  • User-defined API fields
  • DataViews
  • Improved revision system
  • Plugin dependencies
  • Cover block aspect ratio support
  • Duplicate and rename patterns
  • Shadow support to Columns, Column, and Image blocks
  • Enhanced block renaming
  • Improved PHP compatibility
  • Section specific Theme.json and Colorways
  • Improvements to the Gutenberg editor

With over 100 performance-related updates, users can expect a faster and more efficient experience.

Updating WordPress

If you’re a client of our managed software updates service, you’ll have your site updated by one of our team shortly, alongside a proper manual check that the site is running OK afterwards. We’ll let you know if you need to update any plugins, themes, or bespoke code to work with the new version.

If you’re using an automatic update service, your site might have updated already or will do soon.  Please check your site thoroughly to make sure that everything is still working OK; a version update like this might have a knock-on effect on plugins, themes, or bespoke code.

If you carry out updates yourself, be sure to read all the release notes and any information published by plugin/theme authors about knock-on effects.  It’s recommended that you update your WordPress installation as soon as possible wherever your templates, plugins and any custom code allow.  Take a backup and be sure that everything will be compatible before you update, and make sure that any custom code is transferred to your new installation where needed.

Pro WP hosting for WP pros

If you’re looking to supercharge your WordPress hosting, look at our feature-rich plans designed for hosting WP sites. Whether you’re a business owner or agency, there’s a plan for you.

In order to run WordPress 6.5, the following requirements are recommended:

  • PHP 8.1 or higher 
  • MySQL 5.7 or higher, or MariaDB 10.1 or higher
  • Nginx or Apache

WordPress 6.5 runs on PHP 7.4 but this version of PHP was discontinued in late 2022. Our advice is only run a website on a currently supported version of PHP but some older WordPress themes and plugins haven’t been updated to work with PHP 8.1 and above.

A small security and maintenance update, 6.5.2, was published a few days after the release.

If you’d like to start a site with WordPress 6.5 Regina then check out our great WP6G WordPress hosting plans today.

Please note: the information in this post is correct to the best of our endeavours and knowledge at the original time of publication. We do not routinely update articles.