WordPress Version 4.6, nicknamed “Pepper” in honor of jazz baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, was unveiled four months after the previous update: WP 4.5 Coleman. In addition to standard performance improvements, new features and functions make managing and creating content easier.
Pepper updated many things, from emoji support to translation. Here are a few highlights of version 4.6:
WordPress 4.6 Highlights
Editor Content Back-Ups
When editing content, WordPress 4.6 automatically saves as you type in Editor, making it easier than ever to recover content if,for example, you accidentally close the window. While this auto-save isn’t necessarily a new feature, it has been improved to save content every 15 seconds to help you safeguard your content.
Broken Link Highlighting
With this latest version, links are checked automatically as they are inserted into content so that you can be notified immediately of any errors. Similar to highlighting typos, you will be alerted of broken links so that they can be fixed before publishing. This auto-checking process saves you time as the content manager, and also ensures your content is not tarnished by broken or misleading URLs.
Native System Fonts
WordPress added native font support to the back-end. The WordPress admin dashboard now uses the system font of your operating system rather than pulling fonts from external sources. This speeds up load times and gives you a more at-home feeling.
Under-the-Hood Improvements
The new version includes many notable back-end updates. From a more robust Requests library to JavaScript updates, WordPress 4.6 adds flexibility, accessibility, and speed to help your site run faster and support more data. Here is a good example from WordPress’s 4.6 release blog about how back-end improvements help:
“Resource hints help browsers decide which resources to fetch and preprocess. WordPress 4.6 adds them automatically for your styles and scripts making your site even faster.”
As with all WordPress updates, be aware of incompatible plugins and bugs. Make sure to have your developer back up your site before installing the new version, and test out the new features to see if the update runs smoothly with your template and plugins.
(Post provided by OmniStudio, a Capitol Communicator sponsor.)
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