WordPress 4.7 Update Now Available
WordPress 4.7 makes WordPress easier to customize the way you want it.
Things to note
- New Twenty Seventeen theme
- Customizer allows you to set up your theme easier in the initial set up as well as allows you to easily preview changes without actually making the changes to the site until you are happy with what you see.
- Themes can now provide starter contact to get you up and ready faster.
- Header background video now are available
- Creating menus/adding custom CSS is now easier.
- PDF thumbnails allow you to quickly view your documents in the media library
- Creating menus/adding custom CSS is now easier.
- Users can now choose their own language of the dashboard
- Long awaited – we now have the WP REST API built into WordPress 4.7
- All sort of great functionality for developers as well including new functions, hooks, post type templates, etc
If you have not done so already – download the update or simply use your existing installation of WordPress to update your site. Either way – this is an excellent time to make a backup copy of your site(s) before upgrading.
As always, a big thanks to all the contributors for their time and attention to the new features/fixes!
WordPress 4.6.1 Update Now Available
WordPress 4.6.1 is a security release and should be applied immediately.
Things to note
This update not only contains a security fix for WordPress, it also addresses 15 bugs from version 4.6.
If you have not done so already – download the update or simply use your existing installation of WordPress to update your site. Either way – this is an excellent time to make a backup copy of your site(s) before upgrading.
WordPress 4.6 Update Now Available
WordPress 4.6 makes WordPress look/feel better than ever before.
Things to note
- Faster Multisite
- The WordPress dashboard now uses your native fonts which will help with load times.
- The editor now has an inline link checker.
- Better content recovery by saving content as you type in the editor
- Javascript library updates (most notable: Masonry 3.3.2, imagesLoaded 3.2.0, MediaElement.js 2.22.0, TinyMCE 4.4.1, and Backbone.js 1.3.3)
- Various bug fixes and additional developer features (always good)
If you have not done so already – download the update or simply use your existing installation of WordPress to update your site. Either way – this is an excellent time to make a backup copy of your site(s) before upgrading.
A big thanks to all the contributors for their time and attention to the new features/fixes.
WordPress 4.5.3 Maintenance and Security Release Available
WordPress 4.5.3 is now available for download and is a security release for all previous versions. It is highly recommended that you update your sites immediately. There are also a number of bug fixes which apply to WordPress versions 4.5, 4.5.1 and 4.5.2.
More information on the update is available: https://wordpress.org/news/2016/06/wordpress-4-5-3/
Full list of changes: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?milestone=4.5.3
If you have not done so already – download the update or simply use your existing installation of WordPress to update your site. Either way – this is an excellent time to make a backup copy of your site(s) before upgrading.
WordPress 4.5.2 Security Release Available
WordPress 4.5.2 is now available for download and is a security release for all previous versions. It is highly recommended that you update your sites immediately.
More information on the update is available: https://wordpress.org/news/2016/05/wordpress-4-5-2/
If you have not done so already – download the update or simply use your existing installation of WordPress to update your site. Either way – this is an excellent time to make a backup copy of your site(s) before upgrading.
WordPress 4.5.1 Update Now Available
WordPress 4.5.1 is a maintenance release.
WordPress 4.5.1 contains twelve bug fixes from the recently released version 4.5. You can see all the changes in WordPress 4.5.1 as well as read the release notes.
If you have not done so already – download the update or simply use your existing installation of WordPress to update your site. Either way – this is an excellent time to make a backup copy of your site(s) before upgrading.
WordPress 4.5 Update Now Available
WordPress 4.5 will help streamline your workflow.
Things to note
- Inline Linking (link to your content easier/quicker)
- Responsive Previews (Preview mobile, tablet, and desktop views)
- Custom Logos (themes can now support them)
- Smart Image resizing (Generated images now load up to 50% faster)
- Javascript library updates (most notable: jQuery 1.12.3, jQuery Migrate 1.4.0)
- Various bug fixes (always good)
If you have not done so already – download the update or simply use your existing installation of WordPress to update your site. Either way – this is an excellent time to make a backup copy of your site(s) before upgrading.
A big thanks to all the contributors for their time and attention to the new features/fixes.
Control Image Cropping Better (WordPress)
Recently we were working on a project that used the WordPress add_image_size() function to crop images a specific size for the archive view. We noticed that there were a lot of faces getting cut off (at the top of the image). Fortunately – there is a way to fix this:
In our theme we were using:
add_image_size(‘archive, 220, 120’, true) which hard cropped the image at 220px x 120px) but the hard crop started at the center of the image and went out. In order to reduce the head cropping – we changed it to:
add_image_size(‘archive, 220, 120’, array(‘center’, ‘top’)). Having something in the array still signals for a hard crop – but it starts at the top/center (as I specified) vs. center/center.
After changing the crop options – make sure you rebuild your thumbnails with something like: AJAX Thumbnail Rebuild
There are other options as well:
- x_crop_position accepts ‘left’ ‘center’, or ‘right’
- y_crop_position accepts ‘top’, ‘center’, or ‘bottom’
Further documentation: https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/add_image_size/
Premailer: Great Tool for HTML Email Newsletter Pre-Flight Checks
Recently I had to debug an HTML email issue where the layout was not showing as expected. I soon found and used Premailer which was a huge help. Simply point the tool to either a URL or copy and paste in the code you would like to use and it will do the following:
- Remove classes
- Remove unused IDs
- Remove comments
- CSS styles are converted to inline style attributes
- Relative paths are converted to absolute paths
- CSS properties are checked against e-mail client capabilities
- A plain text version is created
After you submit your URL or code, it will give you the HTML and plain text versions to download as well as show you any warnings about remaining styles/code which if you know your audience – you can then use to further make decisions about styling/coding your newsletter.
WordPress 4.4.2 Security and Maintenance Release
WordPress 4.4.2 is now available for download/install. This update contains security updates for all previous updates and you are strongly encouraged to update your site(s) immediately.
WordPress versions 4.4.1 and earlier are affected by two security issues (XSS and open redirection).
Along with the security updates, WordPress 4.4.2 fixes 17 bugs from 4.4 and 4.4.1 (see release changes).