Popular Content Management System WordPress will shortly have a a major update to the new WordPress version 4.4. WordPress users are invited to test the version 4.4 Beta 2 release in advance of the Dec. 8 full release.
For users the following new features will be available:
A new 2016 theme
Since 2010, WordPress comes with a new default theme for each year. Keeping up with this tradition, WordPress 4.4 comes with a new default theme for 2016, called Twenty Sixteen.
Twenty Sixteen features the traditional blog layout with a sidebar and content area. The design focuses on readability and elegant display on all devices. It comes with five color schemes Default, Dark, Grey, Red, and Yellow. Users can also choose their own colors to create unlimited color schemes.
It supports custom headers, and has two menu locations one for site navigation and other for social links.
Responsive images out of the box
Users access the web using lots of different kind of devices with different screen sizes, resolutions, pixel density, etc. Low resolution images for mobiles look poor on devices with larger screens and better displays. This compels site owners to use better quality images which increases the page size and effects download speeds. 
WordPress will now provide a better solution to address this problem by showing responsive images out of the box. This is done by using
srcset
attribute. This attribute allows client’s browsers to display an image based on device capabilities.
The srcset attribute is added on the fly and is not stored in the database. This means all images you previously added will benefit from this feature.
All images added to a post, featured images, attachment pages, and image galleries will be responsive out of the box. This will greatly improve page speeds and user experience on WordPress sites.
Easier embedding of social media posts, videos etc
WordPress users will automatically be able to embed videos, Tweets, and Facebook status updates by simply entering their URL in a post.
With WordPress 4.4, it would be possible for you to add embeds from any site that supports oEmbed. This also includes all WordPress sites. If you add a plain URL in your post from another WordPress site, then it will automatically embedded.
Developer features for new WordPress version 4.4
The team is also offering a lot of changes for developers, including:
- REST API (phase 1) — The underlying infrastructure of the WordPress REST API plug-in has been included in WordPress 4.4. Plugin authors can take advantage of this by adding custom endpoints.
- Term Metadata — Taxonomy term metadata is now included in WordPress 4.4. If you’ve already been using a plug-in to implement term metadata, you should readthis post on how to prepare. Also, the underlying WP_Term class improves caching when working with terms. (#14162)
- Improved <title> output — wp_title() is now deprecated; WordPress canhandle the rendering of the document title automatically.
- Comments — Comment queries are now split for performance. Also, the underlying WP_Comment class improves caching and introduces strong-typing. (#8071, #32619)
WordPress is a great choice as the Content Management System for your website. It is easy to use and the websites deliver good performance for search engine optimisation and user experience. The developer community is very active with frequent updates and new features and there is a huge choice of free and commercial plugins that add useful features to your website. New WordPress version 4.4 will be a welcome development.
See this post for further reading: What’s Coming in WordPress 4.4 (Features and Screenshots)
Contact Dinesh on 07941 686113 or use our contact form to discuss your next WordPress website.
