The WordPress 3.4 “Green” version, went out of the door, yesterday.
The new release includes significant improvements to theme customization, custom headers, Twitter embeds, image captions, query improvements, live preview, theme customizer, new header api, admin / login / register redirects etc.
Let’s dive in and see what WordPress 3.4 brings new to the table.
Custom Headers & Background
In WordPress 3.0, WordPress introduced the ability to add custom header images. That wasn’t good enough and could be problematic in some cases. The header image had to be a specific width and height, but in 3.4 you can have flexible headers.
Another nice addition in this area is that, you can now add custom backgrounds and header image from the Media library as well. This is really neat feature to have and it improves the media library usability-wise.
If you want to add the custom background and header image feature in your theme, then head over to the WordPress Codex page to get the code.
Embed Tweets with oEmbed
Now you can easily embed the tweets by just pasting the url, very similar to how you embed the youtube videos. In the past, you might have used a plugin like Twitter Bird Pie to embed the tweets but that’s all gone. You don’t need any plugins or anything to embed the tweets. All you have to do is copy & paste the urls in your blog posts.
This is another astonishing feature that, the latest WordPress version has. Check out the example below:
17 High Quality WordPress Themes for Creating a Coming Soon Page fb.me/O1YCorQH
— WordPress Kube (@wpkube) May 22, 2012
This works with URLs from some other sites, too. For more, see the Codex article on Embeds.
Live Theme Customizer
This is one of the most amazing feature in the WordPress 3.4 Green. The theme customizer allows users to edit the site with a front-end experience.
With this feature, users would be able to customize the site before even activating the theme. This is a neat feature that’s going to help both the WordPress users and developers.
HTML in Captions
In the past, adding HTML to image’s caption wasn’t possible. In the latest green update, HTML is well supported in the image caption field. Previously you couldn’t add the credit or links in the image caption but with the latest 3.4: all is fixed. Now you can easily style or add links in the caption of your images.
Other Improvements
- Login & admin redirects – WordPress now redirects the /login, /dashboard, or /admin page to the WordPress equivalents, if they would otherwise have returned a 404.
- XML-RPC Revamped – WordPress 3.4 introduces a brand new XML-RPC API to support things like taxonomies, pages and post types.
- Custom Header API – The new API will replace the get_themes() functionality.
- Query Improvements – Developers saw 2-3x speed performance improvements.
What are your favorite features in WordPress 3.4 “Green” version? Please let us know in the comments below.
Question for you, if the theme you are using doesn’t show that it’s ready or compatible with 3.4, is this something I update? I haven’t yet and checked back with my current theme support. I get uneasy with updates because there is always some type of drama behind it. It either doesn’t work with certain plugins or you have to get rid of some you like allot. Can you shed some light on that? Great post by the way!
Hey Sonia,
Yes, you should update the site. I’ve upgraded 50+ WordPress sites in last 2 days and not a single one got crashed. Though, if you aren’t using Thesis or Genesis or Elegant Themes, than I’d advice you to contact the theme support to make sure it works perfectly with the 3.4.
You’ve to get a rid of some plugins that’s because of the theme you’re using.
Glad you liked post, thanks for stopping by.
I have upraded my wordpress account but my frn’s theme supports only v3.0, so tell me will his theme work in this new version or we have to do something else.
Yes, it should be working with your theme.
Thanks for stopping by.