WordPress Update: WordPress Version 4.2 – Powell (April 23, 2015)
WordPress has just released WordPress 4.2, named “Powell” in honor of jazz musician Bud Powell.
Learn about the new WordPress v. 4.2 changes, security fixes and features improvements and what to do before updating your software in this post.
WordPress version 4.2 Powell focuses on making communication and content sharing easier.
Here are just a few of the changes you will see in the new WP version:
Share Your Favorite Content Online With New And Improved Press This
Coinciding with the release of version 4.2 is the new and improved “Press This” tool (Tools > Available Tools) …
Press This is a simple application that lets you share your favorite content (e.g. text, videos and images) online and create new posts with ease.
You can save this app to your mobile desktop or your browser bookmarks bar.
When visiting a web site, click on Press This to repost content to your blog. You can share the latest news stories from around the web, YouTube videos, tweets from Twitter, pictures from Instagram, and more …
Once you have grabbed your content, edit it directly from Press This before you save or publish it to your site.
Extended Character Support
With the continued expansion of WordPress worldwide, WP version 4.2 now provides extensive native support for logographic characters used in languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean, as well as musical and mathematical symbols, hieroglyphs and emojis …
Simply use your native device keyboard to type your posts and WordPress does the rest …
Additional WP 4.2 Release Notes
Here are some other changes you will see when you next log into your WordPress admin area after updating to WP 4.2:
Switch Themes In The Customizer
Now you can preview installed themes from the Theme Customizer …
This helps you ensure that the theme looks good and works well with the content before using it on your site …
Additional Embeds
WordPress already lets you embed YouTube videos and content from Twitter simply by pasting in links.
With v. 4.2 WordPress continues to add more embed support for external content with your site or blog …
You can now paste links from Tumblr.com and Kickstarter.com into your content …
Embedding content is as simple as pasting a URL onto its own line in a post.
Go here to see the full list of WordPress-supported embeds.
Smoother Plugin Updating
WordPress has done away with the loading screen when updating plugins and streamlined the process …
Now, the process of updating your plugins takes place “behind the scenes” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Additional Bug-Fixes And Enhancements
In addition to all of the above, WP v. 4.2 also includes many other enhancement and bug-fixes.
Important WP Update Tips
We recommend doing the following before upgrading to any new version of WordPress:
- Perform a complete backup of all your WordPress files and database.
- Search online for any problems or issues that other WordPress users may be experiencing with the new version. This includes incompatibilities and conflicts with plugins, themes, and other issues (search Google for something like “WP version 4.2 Powell problems” or “WordPress v.4.2 Powell bugs”, then go through some of the results to see what kind of issues and errors users are experiencing).
- Once you have done the above, then upgrade to the new version as soon as possible to ensure that your site remains protected against any security vulnerabilities found in previous versions.
Note: Google recently introduced a new change on April 21, 2015 that will affect the search engine ranking of sites that are not mobile-friendly.
You can read the official announcement from Google here: Official Google Webmaster Blog
Also, you can test to see if your site meets Google’s mobile-responsive criteria using Google’s own Mobile Testing Tool …
Enter the URL of your website into the Mobile-Friendly Test field and click the “Analyze” button to see if your site meets Google’s mobile-friendly criteria …
If your site is not mobile-friendly, consider switching to WordPress as soon as possible to avoid SEO problems …
If you’re already using WordPress, then simply switch to a theme that is mobile responsive (most new WordPress themes are).
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Note: All images on this page were sourced from WP 4.2 release material.