WordPress 4.8 is Now Available!

On June 8, 2017 WordPress Version 4.8 was released. This version is named “Evans” in honor of the jazz pianist and composer, William John “Bill” Evans. He made a name for himself by being the main reformer of the harmonic language of jazz piano. This included added tone cords, modal inflections, unconventional substitutions, and modulations. Evans influenced the character Seb in the film La La Land musically and in fashion. One of his most notable compositions is “Waltz for Debby.” He received seven Grammy awards and was honored in 1994 with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Bill Evans died on September 15, 1980.

What’s New in WordPress 4.8

In this update, contributors have made several updates that include features to help express yourself and represent your brand. This updated includes link improvements, three new media widgets for images, audio and video, an updated text widget that supports visual editing, and an upgraded news section in your dashboard which will display upcoming WordPress events. Read on to learn more!

New WordPress Widgets in WP 4.8

Widgets are objects that help contain objects on your WordPress websites. A couple of the most recognizable widgets include “Recent Blog Posts,” Blog Categories,” and “Text” widgets. They will typically appear in a sidebar but can be used throughout the site.

Image Widget

Have you ever wanted to add a headshot or another image to your sidebar? You no longer have to use the Text widget and HTML. The Image Widget simplifies adding an image to your website.

Video Widget

The video widget will allow you to add any video in your Media Library to a sidebar on your site. There’s lots of possibilities with this one. For example, you can greet visitors with a welcome video or feature your latest vlog entry.

Audio Widget

Podcasters will love this. You can now add your audio file to your media library and using this widget, can feature your latest podcast episode in the sidebar. Cool, right?

Rich Text Widget

The Rich Text Widget incorporates the same editor you use to create a page or a blog post. Now you can create content like lists, links and much more in this widget.

Link Boundaries

If you’ve ever had the issue creating links using the Visual Editor where the text around the link ends up included in the text you intended to link? Well, this fixes that issue.

Nearby WordPress Events

Now, on your admin dashboard you will see what WordPress community events are happening near you. For example, WordCamp is a WordPress sponsored event that marketers and developers usually attend. So why shouldn’t their clients be part of the WordPress Community too?

Updates WordPress Developers Will Love

The features and fixes below are geared towards the happiness of developers. But as they say, happy developers make great websites! If you’d like to see a full description of each feature, visit the WordPress 4.8 release announcement.

• More Accessible Admin Panel Headings
• Removal of Core Support for WMV and WMA Files
• Multisite Updates
• Text-Editor JavaScript API
• Media Widgets API
• Customizer Width Variable
• WordPress 4.8 Ends Support for Internet Explorer 10 and Below

Why Should You Update to WordPress 4.8?

It’s the same reason every time. You need to keep your site performing at its best and it needs to be protected from exploitable vulnerabilities that can cause you to lose access to your site resulting in you having to spend gobs of money to fix you up and get you back online. Following this release will likely be security releases. Stay tuned!

Tags: WordPress