New WordPress 4.6 Pepper Update

WordPress is my all time favorite blogging platform. They have been on a steady stream of incremental upgrades. The next big update will be 5.0. This update is 4.6 and is called Pepper after jazz artist Pepper Adams. If you aren’t familiar with update names, all their updates take the name on jazz musicians.

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There are no mind-blowing advances in this update. So, you may ask why am I reporting on it. There is one update in particular that I have been waiting for.  It was one I didn’t know I needed till they released it. But more on that in a few. If you have a self-hosted blog. You should be getting the notification to upgrade today or tomorrow.

Updates – Plugins and Themes. In my opinion, the service of doing this has been kind of wonky. You had to select what you wanted to update and it went to a second screen and showed the process. In this update, you now stay on the same page for all updates on Themes and Plugins. If you have a lot of plugins, and I hope you don’t, this will be easier to manage over the long term. This same functionality is available with Themes. Note, however, if you have a paid third party theme this will not be an option. You will still have to update manually.

Native Fonts – Now pages will load faster because WordPress will use the native fonts on your computer. I have noticed this on the update. It also makes the back end look better as well. It’s cleaner and a great addition.

Link Checker – Have you ever put in a link only to have a reader contact you that the link didn’t work? There is nothing more annoying. Now in 4.6 if the link is not active, WordPress will alert you that the link isn’t valid. I have done this a few times when in a hurry. It’s a new double check from WordPress.

Content Recovery – This is the update I personally am glad they updated. Let’s suppose you are working on a post. You get it just right and you loose internet connection. All this work you just did is for naught. You can copy and paste or hope the connection comes back. Now, WordPress will save all posts locally. Once connectivity is restored, you will be able to post from the locally saved copy. This is brilliant! I have had many times when working on posts and something happened. Now I can relax and know nothing will be lost!

WordPress is always doing some great updates. These are the big ones. There are a lot more under the hood of the service. Try to update as soon as you can. You will get these and other benefits.

Tim is the founder of Element33. A social media agency specializing in education, management and strategy for small businesses. He comes from a traditional marketing agency but has embraced all things digital. He considers himself a marketing nerd and believes that all marketing is tied together. This means no matter what silo you are in, social, email, seach, etc, changes in one will affect the other!

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