Salient 18.2 is a minor release: four small additions to the page builder, plus one large piece of invisible work. The additions are button presets, image icons, global heading and paragraph spacing, and a rebuilt social repeater. The invisible work is an accessibility overhaul across ten builder elements. Nothing you have already built changes when you update, so the risk is low.
If you are on 18.1 or earlier, install it. The overhaul matters most if you build client sites held to an accessibility standard: it pays that debt down across the elements people use most, without your touching a page.
Button presets: style, shape, and size in one control
The Button element now has a Preset control that sets a button’s style, shape, and size together, described in the panel as “Quickly configure button style, shape, and sizing.”
In the WPBakery editor, add or edit a Button element and pick a style under Type: the Preset field appears with three groups. Style is Solid or Outline, Shape is Square, Rounded, or Pill, and a row of three previews sets the size (small, medium, large). The panel previews each choice, so you pick a finished button instead of typing numbers. The preset appears on most button styles; Material and Next Section keep their own controls.
An accessibility overhaul across ten builder elements
The overhaul rewrites the markup of ten builder elements: Animated Text, Tabs, Toggle, Carousel, Team Member, Flip Box, Fancy Box, the Testimonial Slider, the self-hosted Video Player, and the Gallery. To a screen reader they were nearly opaque; 18.2 supplies the structure that was missing.
Tabs now carry the full ARIA tab pattern: a tablist of tab controls wired to their tabpanel through aria-controls and aria-selected, with a roving tabindex so the strip is one tab stop. The Carousel, Testimonial Slider, and Gallery are each a labelled region that announces itself as a carousel. Decorative icons and gradient SVGs are marked aria-hidden, and the self-hosted Video Player now uses native, keyboard-operable HTML5 controls.
On the Team Member element’s full-screen bio layouts, a LinkedIn icon that used to read as a bare “link” now announces “Jane Doe on Linkedin,” assembled from the person’s name and the icon’s class. Nothing a sighted visitor sees changes.
Global spacing controls for headings and paragraphs
Two new theme options set the bottom spacing for every heading and paragraph at once, from the Customizer instead of a stylesheet.
Under Salient’s theme options, Heading Bottom Spacing sets the bottom margin on all h1 through h6 headings, falling back to 8px when blank, and Paragraph Bottom Spacing sets paragraph bottom padding, 28px when blank. Both accept px, em, or rem. Leave them empty and Salient renders as before. If you have kept this spacing in a CSS override under the Typography theme options, this is where it retires.
Use an image where you used to need an icon
Three elements can now take an uploaded image in place of a font icon, so a brand mark that lives in no icon font no longer means a plain Image element. Each adds an Image Upload choice to its Icon library dropdown, which reveals a field labelled “Upload a custom image to use in place of an icon.”:
- The Icon element, where the image becomes the element’s main icon.
- The Flip Box, under its Front Side group.
- Items in an Icon List, set per item.
The image keeps the sizing and alignment a font icon would have, so it lines up with the text beside it.
A dynamic social repeater, with five more networks
Salient’s social networks are now a repeater you fill in yourself, and the icon set behind it added LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Telegram, Bandcamp, and TripAdvisor.
Under Salient’s theme options, the Social Networks section carries a mode toggle: leave it on Legacy for the old fixed fields, or switch it to Dynamic for the repeater. Each row takes a network name, a profile URL, and an icon, chosen from the built-in social network brand set or uploaded as your own, up to ten rows. The five new brands close common gaps: the LinkedIn a B2B site wanted, the Bandcamp a musician, the TripAdvisor a local business.
Everything else in this release
A few smaller additions round out 18.2. A theme option can now strip the category list from the single-post header: set Blog Header Category Display to None, useful where categories are structural rather than clickable. Animated and highlighted text built from SVG outlines now renders correctly with variable fonts. There is new styling for the PropertyHive real-estate plugin, and a developer filter that lets a contained header opt into the before-scrolling hook.
The release also clears roughly a dozen bug reports, most around WooCommerce (minicart quantity handling, sale and best-selling filters under pagination) and animation edge cases (background video flashes, fade and blur effects with animations disabled). The full 18.2 changelog has the line-by-line.
How to update
Update the theme and its bundled plugins together. In the WordPress admin, update the Salient theme first, then let it prompt you for the bundled plugins, or run them from the Salient control panel. 18.2 ships Salient Core 3.1.5, Salient WPBakery 8.7.3, and Salient Portfolio 1.8.5; moving them as a set keeps the editor and front end in sync.
The release is tested against WordPress 7.0, so you are clear to run current WordPress. On a live client site, update on staging first and keep a backup, though a minor release like this rarely needs more than the standard update steps and a look at the front end afterward.
Frequently asked questions
Will updating to 18.2 change how my existing site looks?
No. Every new control is opt-in: global spacing falls back to Salient’s defaults when blank, button presets apply only where you set them, and the dynamic social repeater stays off until you switch it from Legacy. Your current pages render the same after updating.
Is Salient 18.2 compatible with WordPress 7.0?
Yes. Salient 18.2 is tested against WordPress 7.0, so you can update WordPress and the theme in one pass. It does raise the minimum WordPress version from 6.7 to 6.8, so update WordPress first if you are on 6.7 or earlier; the PHP requirement is unchanged at 7.4.
Which elements can use an image instead of a font icon in 18.2?
Three: the Icon element, the Flip Box, and items in an Icon List. Each adds an Image Upload choice to its Icon library dropdown, which reveals a field for a custom image in place of the font icon.
Can I apply a button preset to a button I already built?
Yes, and nothing you already built changes on its own. A preset starts empty, so existing buttons keep their manual style, shape, and size until you open one and pick a preset, which sets all three at once.
