Tag Archives: Updates

Loving the New WordPress 4.2 “Powell” Updates

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Whether it’s the new PressThis interface (used to publish this post 😉 ), character support for things like emoticons, switching themes in the customizer, or the complex query ordering in WP_Query and the other advanced querying classes, WordPress 4.2, “Powell” brings some nice updates to WordPress.

Check out the video above and the original blog post for the release over at the .org blog.  Shout out to Drew Jaynes for leading up the release.  Looks like he did things the right way once it rolled out to the world.

I Just Learned About This WordPress Plugin Podcast

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It’s been a while since I prescribed to and listened to podcasts. Videos, a little, but audio not so much.

I’m gonna make an exception and try checking out this podcast on WordPress plugins: WordPress Plugins from A to Z. It comes out weekly and they’re already on episode 130 (as of writing this post).

Here’s a sample episode:

http://wppluginsatoz.com/?powerpress_embed=475-podcast&powerpress_player=default

My Thoughts on Now Running wp.zacgordon.com on WordPress 3.6

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I’ve been anticipating the release of WordPress 3.6 for a while. Primarily for two reasons: 1) I have to record my new How to Build a Plugin Project for Treehouse and have been waiting for the latest version to drop, and 2) I was expecting the new admin theme based on the MP6 plugin (although it wasn’t in the RC).

I’m not terribly disappointed that they didn’t drop the new theme since I still have the plugin. I also anticipate they will add the new theme in a later 3.6.x release. Maybe it just wasn’t ready yet. They are still probably learning lessons from dropping it in WordPress.com recently.

Since most of the new features deal with Post Types I’m not sure how much they will affect this site. This theme originally came with Post Type integrations and then a while back I decided to switch the styling to working with categories instead.

I try not to put too much time into tinkering with the design of this blog since I mostly focus on writing content. Eventually I may go back and add some different styling for working with the new post type features. However, I’m used to embedding content and I usually like to have a good description with each post rather than just dropping in a video or link.

That said, it’s always nice to see WP keep updating their platform. I’m not sure that any other CMS does with the same regularity and frequency of WordPress.

WordPress 3.6 Brings a New Post Format UI

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Personally, I don’t use custom post formats too much. These are not custom post types, but rather a way of identifying whether a post is an article, quote, link, etc. If you’ve used Tumblr, you know what I’m talking about.

On the Make WordPress blog, the development team commented that post formats are one of those features that have a lot of potential, but just haven’t really been an intuitive and focused part of the admin UI. This new release will change that.  They said the design will do something like what the WordPress Post Formats Admin UI plugin does.  Here are some examples of what that plugin looks like:

Standard Post Format

Standard Post Format

Gallery Post Format

Gallery Post Format

 

Video Post Format

Video Post Format

One of the reason’s that post formats don’t get used as much is partially because not too many themes really leverage them (especially not the default WordPress themes). The new Twenty Thirteen theme changes this though and has a big focus on post formats on the front end.

I think that we will very quickly see more emphasis on post formats coming from theme developers after 3.6 is released.

I’m most curious how the new UI will handle the addition of custom post formats.  On a very related note, I have planned to do some custom post formats on WP Zac in the near future.