WordPress 4.0 is now available, and millions of sites worldwide are in the process of upgrading. Version 4.0 of WordPress, named “Benny” in honor of jazz clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman. WordPress 4.0 may be the most significant update in years.
There have been changes to the UI, enhancements to the writing experience, and some intriguing additions that hint at what’s to come in the future.
Writing experience
The first thing you’ll notice when you fire up WordPress 4.0 is the vastly improved writing experience.The dashboard now has a sticky header and footer, so you don’t need to scroll up or down to reach formatting options or check your word count. It’s a small thing, but it really helps the overall experience. It’s certainly a welcome addition and anyone who uses WordPress like it’s a word processor will enjoy the performance boost.
Focus on your content
Writing and editing is smoother and more immersive with an editor that expands to fit your content as you write, and keeps the formatting tools available at all times.
Manage your media with style
Explore your uploads in a beautiful, endless grid. A new details preview makes viewing and editing any amount of media in sequence a snap. You can click a thumbnail to view a detailed shot and move through the uploaded media one item at a time. If you’ve uploaded a video, you can also watch it here, right in the dashboard.
Plugin discovery
There are more than 30,000 free and open source plugins in the WordPress plugin directory. WordPress 4.0 makes it easier to find the right one for your needs, with new metrics, improved search, and a more visual browsing experience. Plugins can now be filtered by Featured, Popular, Newest, and Favorites. In addition, reviews can now be read right in the dashboard.
Conclusion
WordPress 4.0 offers something for everyone: content authors get a better writing experience; and developers get a more advanced UI, and a greater chance for their products to be discovered and utilized by the substantial WordPress community.