Time to Update! WordPress 4.3 Now Live

Today WordPress 4.3 was released into the wild. This official video gives a good idea of how the changes will impact your site:

The major updates were:

Stronger Passwords

This is a great feature that is long overdue. Now WordPress gives you the option to generate a strong password when you create a new user instead of creating a weak password that you can remember. Resetting your password will also be more strict.

Site Icons (Favicons)

This is a nice addition, but almost all premium themes already have a field to add a favicon to your site. This will be nice for sites using a theme without the feature.

A Different “Menus” Interface

The WordPress menus interface can still be found with its original interface when you go to “Appearance” then “Menus”. 4.3 has added a new interface to the “Customizer” which allows you to see the menu in a live preview as you change it. This will be helpful for seeing if a new menu item fits in your navigation before you make it live.

Formatting Shortcuts

This is a cool feature that allows you to add formatting to your page without clicking on the tools above the text box. This is very similar to markup editors that let you format as you type (our favorite is Ulysses).

Comments Turned Off On Pages

This is an annoying quirk left over from the blogging days of WordPress (a comment field showing on your static pages). Now you don’t have to worry about comments showing on pages in case your theme did not already take care of it.

A Word of Warning!

Unfortunately, there is a bigger chance of this update breaking your site than previous core updates. WordPress 4.3 is removing the ability to use PHP 4 style constructors, which means your plugins can break if they have not updated to the PHP 5 standards. You should do a search of your plugins on this page to make sure your plugins won’t break with the update: http://gist.github.com/chriscct7/d7d077afb01011b1839d

All wpONcall clients don’t have to worry about this update as it will all be taken care of by us! Good luck with your updating!