WordPress 3.4 Update: Everything You Need to Know

WordPress 3.4 Update: Everything You Need to Know

If you’re a big WordPress fan, you may already know that the newest version of WordPress was released just a few short hours ago. At ManageWP we love upgrades, for two reasons:

  1. They bring awesome new functionality to our favorite content management system
  2. They’re just so easy to handle with ManageWP’s one click update feature

If you’re a ManageWP user, you have no excuse not to take a few seconds out of your day to upgrade all of your sites.

However, you may be wondering what 3.4 has to offer in order to make upgrading worthwhile. The short answer is “rather a lot”. So let’s get into more detail.

“Green”

In continuing with their long-running tradition of naming updates after jazz musicians, this newest version of WordPress is named after jazz guitarist Grant Green.

Here’s a quick summary of the new features, courtesy of WordPress.org:

There are three main new features for you tuck into – what I would refer to as two great “bonus” additions, and one improvement that has been a long time coming. Let’s take a look at all three.

The Theme Customizer

This is by far the most considerable change for WordPress 3.4. The theme customizer allows you (where supported) to make cosmetic changes to your theme in real-time, including (but not limited to):

Theme Customizer

The theme customizer must be supported by whichever theme you are using, which means that its usefulness will be limited to those themes which are equipped to handle its features. However, Automattic are no doubt banking on theme developers developing with the theme customizer in mind from now on.

This major addition to WordPress is a sign of things to come, as Automattic work towards producing a very user-friendly CMS. One thing is for certain – being able to see your changes live, rather than constantly updating your site and then checking the results, is an attractive prospect.

Embedded Tweets

WordPress developers have in recent times worked hard to implement intuitive embedding of third party content, such as YouTube videos. They’ve taken that one step further in 3.4, with the inclusion of embedded tweets.

Embedding tweets is really simple – just grab the URL of the tweet you want to embed, and paste it into the visual editor. The end result will look something like this:

Embedded Tweet

Embedding tweets is a great way of boosting follower rates and re-tweets, so don’t be afraid to use it liberally now that it is so easy with WordPress 3.4.

Image Caption HTML Styling

Finally! This new feature has to take the prize for “longest time coming”. You can now add basic HTML tags to your image captions, which most importantly means that you can easily add links for attributions, and simple styling such as bold and italics.

Image Caption Styling

To be honest, it is rather embarrassing that it has taken this long for such a seemingly straightforward feature to be integrated, but now it is here, it is another box ticked.

Developer Updates

Although WordPress 3.4 includes three new exciting features, that doesn’t mean that the developers have been slacking off on the back end. They have been working hard to make WordPress more lightweight than ever, with the following improvements:

As a developer, there is a lot to get stuck into here. Some improvements are simply efficiency-based, but others (such as better external library support) have the capacity to be more influential in future development.

For a full list of absolutely every little tweak made in WordPress 3.4, check out the Codex and the Trac.

What Do You Think?

So there you have it folks – WordPress 3.4 is now upon us, and comes bundled with a healthy set of new features. What are you first thoughts? Do you think the developers have done a good job? Or do you think that there are glaring omissions? Let us know in the comments section!

Tom Ewer

Tom Ewer is the founder of WordCandy.co. He has been a huge fan of WordPress since he first laid eyes on it, and has been writing educational and informative content for WordPress users since 2011. When he's not working, you're likely to find him outdoors somewhere – as far away from a screen as possible!

5 Comments

  1. Tyron

    Thanks for the detailed info on what all new feature Wp 3.4 got.. Though, I will wait for sometime before updating, as many users in forum are reporting issues with media gallery.

  2. Rp

    hi there!
    someone know where can i find “free themes” for wordpress 3.4??
    thanks…

  3. Christian

    Loving the Theme Customizer!

  4. dvsboy

    Hi guys

    how do I start the WordPress 3.4 Upgrade from my logged in Dashboard please? doesn’t seem to be any obvious links to do a core update.

    Cheers

    Damien

    1. CloudVenturesOnline

      Hi

      Once you were login into mangewp have you done a refresh?

      Once thats done under overview on that screen you should see the wordpress upgrades

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Over 65,000 WordPress professionals are already using ManageWP

Add as many websites as you want for free, no credit card required. Sign up and start saving time!



Have questions? Get in touch!

Over 65,000 WordPress professionals are already using ManageWP

Add as many websites as you want for free, no credit card required. Sign up and start saving time!



Have questions? Get in touch!