All You Need to Know About New WordPress 4.4

WordPress has released its 4.4 version as the end of the year 2015 approaches. As expected, it has come out with a default theme in addition to some great looking features. This blog covers all the features that are new in WordPress version 4.4.

Important Tip: Don’t forget to create a backup for your site before starting the update.

Feature #1 Responsive Image

The device screens and the different display sizes add to the complexity of the different quality images. Previously, technologies such as CSS and the other solutions had to be designed for making the images fit on the mobile screen devices, but with WordPress 4.4, you no longer have to deal with it.

The Version 4.4 comes equipped with the out of the box responsive images. What this means is that WP would automatically serve the appropriate image size for the user’s device, browser, and the screen size.

It uses the srcset attribute in the img HTML tag, allowing the client’s browser for displaying an image based on the device capabilities. As the responsive images work out of the box, you no longer have to do anything. It adds a srcset attribute on the fly using a filter.

WordPress also powers more than 25% percent of the websites on the internet. The users visiting WP powered sites would no longer have to waste their bandwidth on the loading of images for the large screens. However, this doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t have to optimize the images for speeding up WordPress.

Feature #2 Using the External Embedding

WordPress also uses the oEmbed for embedding the tweets, videos, status updates, and content from the other sites supporting the oEmbed feature.

Starting from the 4.4, the WordPress sites would all become a provider of oEmbed. In simple words, it means that the users of WordPress would get the functionality of embedding the posts from the other WordPress sites. In case, you don’t want to use this feature you can always disable the plugin called: disable embeds.

Feature#3 2016 Theme

WordPress 3.0 was released in the year 2010. Since that year, it has come out with a new theme at the end of every year. This is how the new WordPress 2016 theme looks like:

The theme is designed beautifully according to the mobile first approach. It appears responsively across all the screen devices and sizes.

The 2016 theme has come with the traditional sidebar and content blog layout. The sidebar is optional, to provide you with the full-width pages if you want. It has also built-in color schemes which you can use for your own colors to make it unique to yours.

Feature#4 The Improvements For the Developers

WordPress is easily extended with the plugins and thousands of themes. The 4.4 version has brought some of the most exciting improvements and changes for the developers. This means that you can always expect more from updates and features from your favorite WordPress plugins.

• The Rest API
  WordPress 4.4 kicks off the inclusion of the REST API plugin into the WordPress core. It has allowed the WordPress developers the creation of new APIs and to work on the existing WordPress API in their own applications. The plugin authors are able to take advantage of this API by the addition of custom endpoints.
• WP_Network for Multisites
  There are a lot of improvements done for the multisite networks in the WordPress 4.4. Most important ones include the wp_Network class introduction. This offers a better way for handling the multi sites and for fixing the several bugs.
• Taxonomy Team Metadata
  With the WordPress 4.4 version, different terms in the taxonomies have a metadata associated with them.

Improved Comment Queries and Output

The common query and objects are easily improved with the introduction of the WP_Comment class. Comments from the out are now changed for displaying the text area first followed by the name, email, and the URL text fields.

A lot of WordPress users and developers are excited about using the responsive image and improved embed features of WordPress 4.4. You can comment below to share what you are excited about.

About the Author:

Muneeza is a passionate blogger and Full stack designer who likes to review the latest technology updates. She has been writing on the SEO, graphic design and wordpress topics for the last 4 years. You can follow her on Google+