The latest version of WordPress most popularly named as “Smith” is definitely the most awesome experience for those who use it. You can see a lot of changes made in the core that makes its experience amazing. More than its front, it was the backend that was worked upon most this time. You can find a lot off editing and changes in the admin functions this time. For example you will experience an updated visual editor with TinyMCE . Not only that there are a lot of other improved features that makes WordPress 3.9 a much better option.
Let’s discuss each of these latest features in detail for better understanding:
-
1. A new Widget Interface
Unlike the old widget interface, the widget customizer plug-in is not set in its standard place. This can also be stated as one of the biggest changes of WordPress 3.9. Customizer plug-in has been built in the core of WordPress 3.9 and this has led to possibilities like editing widgets that already exist, adding more widgets, removing the widget entirely etc. you can also record a widget if need arises.
-
2. Visual Editor with new updates
As discussed earlier, the visual editor of Smith has seen a major change. The changes are visible at the UI end as well as under the hood. A horizontal line button is added, the Pulpload has been updated. Not only is this TinyMCE also updated for improvement. Apart from this, a lot of small changes are applied to various buttons to help them work much better.
You can find gallery previews that save you time of placing holder boxes in galleries. Now handling all your file upload interfaces has become much easier as TinyMCE has entered in its latest avatar.
The drag and drop facility in visual editor helps you drop images directly to the post. You don’t have to worry about formatting the pics as well.
-
3. Theme previews added
WordPress 3.9 has been provided with live theme previews that help you get a feel of your website looks before it is live. Although you were allowed to do that before as well but a new framework has been built with 3.9 versions. Here, not only the color and title but you can add various widgets as well as arrange them according to you. You experience a better flexibility with these new updates in live theme additions.
-
4. Theme installation becomes easier
Those who have used previous versions, they will realize that the new theme installation interface of WordPress 3.9 has made life much easier as you can install new themes within no time at all. You can find most popular themes in Featured tab so that they can be installed within no time at all. Overall you enjoy a better theme installation experience now.
-
5. Create new Video and Audio playlists
Audio and video playlists can now be created so easily using a shortcode. The process is similar to image gallery where the media uploader handle your videos and audios. You can add them to playlists from there only. Not only has that, the ID3 tags in the media file helped you make album cover artwork automatically without any hassle.
Other key factors to be kept in mind
If you are a developer using wordpress for long, you need to know other key points for using WordPress 3.9. keep a check on four functions of utility. These include doing_action(), doing_filter (), has_image_size() and remove_image_size().
Apart from that there are various external libraries are included like jQuery. Not only that the layer for database has been improved a lot. With this new database, the compatibility of WordPress has been improved to a large extent with MySQL 5.6 and PHP 5.5.
You can find a lot of improved features with WordPress 3.9 that will help you technically. All these heavily modified features will make your experience fun and you will love your work. What else could anyone ask for?