For those of you who know us as a Cheshire Web Design Agency, you will know firsthand that we are passionate about all things creative, particularly anything that involves DotNetNuke or WordPress.
Following the highly successful release of WordPress 4.1 over the busy Christmas period, WordPress developers hardly let the dust settle before instantly focusing on improvements inside the brand-new WordPress 4.2 update. Scheduled to release the week commencing 20th April 2015, the update is currently in its fourth version of beta testing before being rolled out to the public.
Behind the scenes, there are a lot of exiting things happening so inside our latest blog we will take a look at some of the progress and latest features that have been made and what we can expect from the final 4.2 release. As a Cheshire Web Design Agency, we simply cannot wait to see what WordPress can produce.
WordPress 4.2 Features Overview
- Instantly Switch Themes in the Customizer
- Live Plugin Updates
- Emoji Symbols Arrive
- Press This Returns
Instantly Switch Themes in the Customizer
Usually, when testing out a theme, you would have to first install the theme then switch your site to the new theme so you can just test out the look and the functionality. Well taking a huge leap forward, WordPress users now have the ability to switch, preview and activate themes straight from the theme customizer screen.
For you WordPress developers out there, you can also click on the ‘Add New’ option at the top of the dashboard to browse, preview and install new themes.
Live Plugin Updates
The web performance team here are very excited with the announcement of this update. On any previous versions of WordPress, when you wanted to update or install a plugin, you would first be taken to a page that contains a list of plugins and those that needed updating, installing or deceiving. You would have to manually do each activity which would provide a live ‘update’ as for example the plugin was being installed before returning back to the plugin page again.
Well on the latest release, this process will be heavily reduced as you can now not only install but also activate plugins instantly without the need to navigate elsewhere on the dashboard. The plugins will now be completed within seconds so will cut time management considerably.
Live WordPress 4.2 Plugin Update Demonstration
It is however important to note that once a plugin is installed, it is automatically activated on your WordPress website so if you want to install but deactivate, you will have to navigate to the plugins on your dashboard and physically deactivate yourself. You may see this as a negative but to be honest, if you want to enforce this step; it takes just as long on any other WordPress update.
Emoji Symbols Arrive
It seems like a large population of the world seem to use Emoji symbols as way of communicating. I know I’m guilty of using the occasional Emoji symbol in the odd text message, but it seems like there’s more to this than just using them to comment on blog posts…
Looking to improve the WordPress database, Emoji symbols were made possible as a way to use Han Characters, which are used within Chinese, Japanese & Korean languages, as a native in WordPress.
Press This Returns
So you know when you read a really great article online and want to use it as a reference or as inspiration to write your own blog post and need to remember the URL? Well Press This is a feature that’s returning to WordPress that acts as a app that runs on your browser that will grab text, images and videos from any web page you can find on the world wide web.
Simply bookmark the URL and it will open your WordPress post editor inside a pop-up that will automatically bring the page title, image and an excerpt from the page along with hyperlink to credit the original source. Referencing on blog posts couldn’t be made simpler!
The WordPress ‘Press This’ feature returns…
WordPress Experts
So if you currently have a WordPress Website and would like to know more about WordPress 4.2 or suitable plugin recommendations from security to SEO, why not get in touch with your local Cheshire Web Design Agency who are WordPress experts? Why not give us a call on 01565 653616 or simply pop in for a coffee at our Knutsford offices.
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