WordPress 4.6 “Pepper” is now available and is named after Pepper Adams who played the Baritone saxophone and the clarinet. This release doesn’t have any jaw-dropping features, but rather a collection of incremental improvements.
Managing Plugins and Themes is Faster
Building on the work introduced in WordPress 4.2, this release makes updating, installing, and deleting plugins and themes even faster. Gone are the days of watching a progress screen each time you install a plugin or theme.
Native System Fonts
One of the most striking changes users will notice is the switch from Open Sans to native system fonts. Open Sans was used at a time when the choices for fonts were small. Over time, native fonts have dramatically improved on modern devices.
Using native fonts not only increases WordPress’ performance, it also gives it a consistent look and feel. Developers are encouraged to note the specific changes to the font-stack and update accordingly.
Automatically Detects if a URL Has the Correct Syntax
WordPress 4.6 will automatically detect if a link contains the correct syntax. If a link is malformed, a red dotted outline is displayed. It’s important to note that the URL checker only works if you insert links via the button as pasting a URL onto text bypasses the check.
Improved Disaster Recovery Mode
By default, WordPress saves the post title, content, and excerpt in the browser every 15 seconds on the edit post screen and prior to submitting the form. Since content in the browser is newer, WordPress 4.6 will recover it first before resorting to an auto save.
Other Noteworthy Updates Include:
- The number of arguments for register_meta is decreased from four to three. There’s also a handful of other enhancements to register_meta.
- WordPress 4.6 standardizes the registration of meta keys.
- Comments can now be cached by a persistent object cache. Developers whose plugins modify comment data directly are encouraged to change them to make use of the various comment API functions or use clean_comment_cache()
- There’s now a WP_Post_Type for each registered post type.
- WordPress 4.6 uses a new W3C Specification that helps browsers determine which resources it should fetch and preprocess to improve page performance.
- Internationalization and localization improvements.
- The register_widget and unregister_widget functions now accept a WP_Widget subclass.
- Improvements to the Customizer with the addition of an API for validating and setting values.
- Improved APIs and performance for WordPress Multisite.
This release was led by Dominik Schilling, with Garth Mortensen as the Release Deputy. There are 272 individuals who contributed to WordPress 4.6. If you run into any issues or think you’ve discovered a bug, you can report it on the WordPress.org support forums where volunteers are ready to help.
Listen to Pepper Adams While You Update
While updating your sites, listen to Pepper Adams as he plays “Once Around” at the Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland in 1974.
Permalink
Yay! That’s the first update with my name in the credits. ^_^
Report
Permalink
That’s great, Hardeep!
First time’s a charm… ?
Report
Permalink
Congratulations and thanks for the contribution!
Report
Permalink
Congrats!
Report
Permalink
Held my breath and clicked update. No issues. :)
Report
Permalink
Now click on “Update Plugin” to see the magic. :)
Report
Permalink
Can’t say that impresses me much to be honest. :)
Report
Permalink
Not a major experience change but makes the flow easy. :)
Report
Permalink
Is it actually supposed to look different? As far as I can tell, it’s the same visual behavior as always: the update page sits there for a while, and then updates once with all the success (or failure) results for all the plug-ins.
Not that I would normally notice anyway: I always switch away to another tab to do something and then come back to the updates page later to see if anything else needs my attention.
Report
Permalink
When you update a theme or plugin, it’ll update without reloading the page.
But that’s not that fun. Try to install one. Even installation doesn’t require a refresh now.
Report
Permalink
The new installation process is very slick. As a WP writer, I may install/uninstall more than a dozen plugins any given day. I, for one, very much like both the new search and installation processes for themes and plugins.
Report
Permalink
What happened to finishing the REST api integration. Did that get pushed ahead again?
Report
Permalink
I have successfully updated my site. All is OK. I like it because to find broken link I don’t need to use any external plugin. It’s awesome.
Report
Permalink
The priority change for translation files is welcome for non-english written sites. Thanks.
Report
Permalink
Just updated about 20 WordPress sites. No issues so far!
Report
Permalink
Clicked update on 15 WordPress sites. No problem at all. Thanks.
Report
Permalink
JEFF
Thanks for the article!
Hardeep and the rest, thanks for the work: I appreciate the tweaking and keeping WordPress sharp.
Question: Does 4.6 make the Broken Links Checker plugin redundant? Can I delete it?
Bestest,
NEAL
Report
Permalink
Don’t delete it. The link checker in 4.6 just checks for malformed URLs.
Report
Permalink
Many issues have been reported with users not seeing posts correctly or at all.
I believe the WordPress are aware of this, but they have not said whether then intend to fix it or not. My advice is not to upgrade until you are sure there are no issues with your theme or server.
Report
Permalink
Hi, we just upgraded to 4.6; I am wondering whether it has any data audit functionality updates that will help us with this issue – we need to find out when were some revisions deleted on a few of our posts. (It will help us in probing whether there was unauthorized access to our site). We don’t have any automatic plugin that deletes revisions nor a security plugin that tracks user activities (beyond the base WordPress setup). My question is where in mysql tables can one see the revisions delete requests and will there be dates there and possibly source IP or user data… many thanks.
Report
Permalink
Try installing something like Stream. It logs all WordPress activity taken within the Dashboard.
Report