UW Theme Release v2.6.0

Release date:

January 14, 2026

This release includes many theme updates made to account for WordPress 6.9.0 changes and new features, along with some additional theme fixes and new patterns.

Download the new version and plugins.

Known issue

With this release, we’re aware of a design issue that was introduced for sub menu items within the main navigation where the link underline extends beyond the text. This will be fixed in our next release in early February after the campus change freeze.

WordPress 6.9 (what you may notice)

Blocks

New WordPress blocks available:

Time to Read block: Show an estimate reading time for your page or post.
Math block: Display mathematical content using LaTeX or MathML.
Terms Query: Display a list or grid of taxonomy terms (categories, tags, etc)

Some new WordPress blocks are disabled:

Accordion
Comment Count
Comment Link

Stretchy text has been removed

The new Stretchy text feature has been removed from blocks.

Hide block behavior has changed

WordPress 6.9 released a way to hide blocks. UW Theme only enables this feature for the Group and Cover blocks. Learn how to hide blocks in the theme.

If you used the previous UW Theme hide option, you need to update that content to use the new method. The old “hide a block” setting for Group blocks will be removed in a future release of the theme. Once that happens, any content using this option will be visible on the page.

At this time, you must manually find content that’s hidden on your pages to update them to this new method. A message will display in the block settings about this change:

Theme updates

Added

Added the default border color (#CFCFCF) so that when a user adds a border, but doesn’t choose a color, this color value is the default.
New patterns added and their titles:
- Pre-footer pattern category
  - “Pre-footer with group of links”
- Banner pattern category
  - “Banner with center content on white overlay”
- Featured pattern category
  - “Profile image with right content”
- Cards pattern category
  - “Cards with images and linked headings”
  - “Cards with facts and figures”
  - “Card-style events and posts list with pre-footer”
Added schema.org markup for:
- Homepage
- Post
- People / Person (UW People Plugin)

Preview of new patterns

Fixed

Accessibility: Fixed color switching so text and other elements automatically change colors on different gradient backgrounds in the Cover block.
- Learn more about the Cover block and its gradient options in the theme.
Accessibility: Increased the space between site title and tagline so that a linked tagline is easier to click.
- Learn more about this touch target issue.
Accessibility: Fixed alt text warning not showing on images (WP 6.9 related).
Fixed a bug that output HTML on descriptions on top of category archive pages.
Fixed CSS for the main navigation to center text and improve spacing and width issues.

Removed

Removed HTML tags from archive page description.
Removed the Red Mini Bar from the heading in the callout content card in the Service Area full-page pattern.

Updated

Moved text block style changes to PHP and added new 6.9 blocks to this file (WP 6.9 related).
Decreased the font weight of bold body text from 700 to 640 to enhance readability when used within content-dense pages.
Updated Required PHP version to 8.2 and Required WordPress version to 6.8.
Updated Google Theme Settings Admin UI with new links.
Updated the “Linked headings with text” pattern so users can remove the top border if desired.
Updated components to remove editor deprecation warnings.
Updated caching and transient updates to improve performance.

Theme plugins

Changes made to UW Theme plugins.

UW Theme Blocks v2.6.0

Update a block editor CSS class in the UW Link block to be more specific so that it does not change WordPress UI elements accidentally.

UW People v2.4.0

Fixed bug that prevented the Clear button for resetting filters from appearing in the UW People Listing block.