Today, WordPress released Version 4.0 to the public. It has been 142 days since the release of WordPress 3.9.
As a business owner, you can see how WordPress 4.0 will affect you by reading our post here.
Remember, backup your website before updating!
Is your site ready to upgrade to WordPress 4.0? The update is planned to come out next week if all things go to plan. The release candidate (the version that goes out in the official release) was released today.
If you have plugins that are out of date, we suggest updating them before doing the core WordPress update. This ensures new versions of the plugins are compatible with the new version of WordPress (if the plugin had any conflicts). Of course, make sure to make a backup of your site before updating when it is released next week.
Most posts about “What’s coming in the new version of WordPress” focus on the technical details that only really matter to web designers and developers. This summary will tell you, as a business owner, how the changes in WordPress 4.0 will affect you in practical terms using WordPress on a day to day basis. Let’s get into it!
WordPress 4.0 is not a huge update in terms of interface or features. Most of the changes are behind the scenes, so you won’t notice a huge change. Here are the main changes, in order of how they might affect you as a WordPress user:
The post editor will perform faster and has been optimized for mobile. The biggest upgrade for most users is the ability to paste text directly from Word without carrying over the annoying formatting. A lot of my clients make the mistake of copying directly from Word and bring over font styles and colors that are not wanted. This will no longer happen!
Instead of clicking “Add Media” then uploading your image, you can now drag and drop images directly into the post editor.
When you go to your media library (by clicking “Media” on the left side), you will see a new view grid view. The old media library could only be viewed as list, not a grid of images. This weill help when you are trying to find a particular image, but are not sure of the name of the file. There is also an option to change the grid image size from large to small and other sorting options to make the media library easier to work with.
Media Library Before
Media Library After
When you added a gallery to a page or post in the past, you were taken to a new screen to manage the gallery. Now, it is all done in the editor.
If you are daring and like managing your own plugins, the “Add Plugin” page has been redesigned to a grid view with better searching features.
What features are you most looking forward to?