The latest, and frankly greatest, WordPress has been released. This release has been dubbed “Green” in honor of guitarist Grant Green and his soulful simplicity. The latest version is now WordPress 3.4 and it is already making websites better, faster, and more attractive. This release includes significant improvements to theme customization, custom headers, Twitter embeds, and image captions. Here is a short clip provided by the WordPress community with the highlights:
Here are a few of the enhancements we are now enjoying:
Live Theme Previews
Gone are the days of rushing to update your header, background, and the like as soon as you activate a new theme. You can now customize these options before activating a new theme. Note: this feature is available for installed themes only.
Customize Current Theme
Satisfy your curiosity and try on a fresh coat of paint — you can also use the live preview mode to customize your current theme. Look for the Customize link on the Themes screen.
Custom Headers – Flexible Sizes
You can decide for yourself how tall or wide your custom header image should be. From now on, themes will provide a recommended image size for custom headers rather than a fixed requirement.
Choose from Media Library
Tired of re-uploading the same custom header image every time you check out a new theme? Now you can choose header images from your media library for easier customization.
Twitter Embeds
You can now embed individual tweets in posts. It includes action links that allow readers to reply to, retweet, and favorite the tweet without leaving your site. Just paste a tweet URL on its own line.
This works with URLs from some other sites, too. For more, see the Codex article on Embeds. http://codex.wordpress.org/Embeds
Better Captions – HTML Support
Basic HTML support has been added to the caption field in the image uploader. This allows you to add links — great for photo credits or licensing details — and basic formatting such as bold and italicized text.
Faster WP_Query
Post queries have been optimized to improve performance, especially for sites with large databases.
Faster Translations
The number of strings loaded on the front end was greatly reduced, resulting in faster front page load times for localized installations. Also, better support for East Asian languages, right-to-left languages, theme translations, and more.
Themes API
WP_Theme, wp_get_themes(), wp_get_theme(). Faster, uses less memory, makes use of persistent caching.
Custom Header and Background API
Custom header and background API relocated into the theme support API.
XML-RPC API
A new WordPress API that supports custom content types and taxonomies, as well as dozens of other bug fixes and improvements.
External Libraries
jQuery, jQuery UI, TinyMCE, Plupload, PHPMailer, SimplePie, and other libraries were updated. jQuery UI Touch Punch was introduced.
RECOMMENDED WORDPRESS THEMES
Panda Themes has several WordPress themes that are well worth paying for (most under $50 and they’ll save you hundreds of dollars of your time). Feel free to contact me; Greg at 804-201-0008 if you need assistance setting up a WordPress site or customizing your theme. Click the banner below if you are a “do it yourself” type and you want a good WordPress theme that is ready out of the box. <br />
If you haven’t updated your version of WordPress make sure you do so. Many of the upgrades are security driven and old sites get hacked more easily. Need help? Feel free to contact us and we’ll be glad to provide the upgrade services to keep your site up to date and functioning properly.
Live Theme Previews
Gone are the days of rushing to update your header, background, and the like as soon as you activate a new theme. You can now customize these options before activating a new theme. Note: this feature is available for installed themes only.
Customize Current Theme
Satisfy your curiosity and try on a fresh coat of paint — you can also use the live preview mode to customize your current theme. Look for the Customize link on the Themes screen.
Custom Headers – Flexible Sizes
You can decide for yourself how tall or wide your custom header image should be. From now on, themes will provide a recommended image size for custom headers rather than a fixed requirement.
Choose from Media Library
Tired of re-uploading the same custom header image every time you check out a new theme? Now you can choose header images from your media library for easier customization.
Twitter Embeds
You can now embed individual tweets in posts. It includes action links that allow readers to reply to, retweet, and favorite the tweet without leaving your site. Just paste a tweet URL on its own line.
This works with URLs from some other sites, too. For more, see the Codex article on Embeds. http://codex.wordpress.org/Embeds
Better Captions – HTML Support
Basic HTML support has been added to the caption field in the image uploader. This allows you to add links — great for photo credits or licensing details — and basic formatting such as bold and italicized text.
Faster WP_Query
Post queries have been optimized to improve performance, especially for sites with large databases.
Faster Translations
The number of strings loaded on the front end was greatly reduced, resulting in faster front page load times for localized installations. Also, better support for East Asian languages, right-to-left languages, theme translations, and more.
Themes API
WP_Theme, wp_get_themes(), wp_get_theme(). Faster, uses less memory, makes use of persistent caching.
Custom Header and Background API
Custom header and background API relocated into the theme support API.
XML-RPC API
A new WordPress API that supports custom content types and taxonomies, as well as dozens of other bug fixes and improvements.
External Libraries
jQuery, jQuery UI, TinyMCE, Plupload, PHPMailer, SimplePie, and other libraries were updated. jQuery UI Touch Punch was introduced.