On August 1st, 2013, WordPress rolled out its latest version, WordPress Version 3.6. We were excited to try it out, and we can say that we’re very impressed with it. With WordPress 3.6 came many much-needed features, which designers will also appreciate. Learn about some of them here:
The pop-up login notification
Have you ever left WordPress up for so long that your session expired and you were brought back to the login screen without warning? If so, don’t you hate when that happens? Apparently enough people complained about it, because WordPress created a pop-up login notification. Here’s how it works: whatever you’re doing on WordPress, may it be editing a post, tweaking a widget, or checking the stats on your dashboard, the screen darkens and a small login notification pops up. You log in, and then the box disappears and you can resume to whatever you were doing. This only happens when a session cookie expires or is deleted. This is probably the most convenient change brought to the table by WordPress 3.6!
The new, improved, and thorough revision system
When we found out about this amazing new feature, we screamed, cheered, and threw a party… in our heads, that is. The bottom point, we were excited that WordPress finally integrated a revision system into their platform. The revision system keeps track of the revisions you’ve made to your post and allows you to compare them side-by-side. It shows you the old version and the new version next to each other and highlights the changes you’ve made. There’s also a timeline you can browse to see all the changes you’ve made to the post. This comes in especially useful if you suddenly realized that the paragraph you wrote last week was actually just what your post needed. Instead of rewriting the paragraph, you can just refer to your timeline and pull up the deleted paragraph, word-for-word. Easy peasy!
For multi-user posts, each author has his/her own autosave.
Don’t you hate when someone else overrides your edits, especially when their edit is (in your opinion) a lot worse than yours? With this nifty new feature, you won’t have to worry about this problem anymore! When a post has multiple writers, WordPress allows each writer to have their own stream of autosave, which can save on the server or locally or both. This way, you’ll get to save your own masterpiece to use in the future or when the other writer realizes how much his/her own version stinks.
Post locking
This new feature goes hand-in-hand with the autosave feature. Rather than refresh the document after an editor or administrator opens it and starts editing it while you’re still working on it, WordPress simply “locks” the post. It lets you know with a note that reads, “Someone else is editing this. No need to refresh; the lock will disappear when they’re done”. It also backs up the post you’re editing so your hard work won’t be long gone forever once the editor or administer leaves and the post refreshes. It also notifies you when you’re not viewing the latest version.
Automatic video & audio embedding
Gone are the days when you need to jumble around with a bunch of gibberish-looking codes in order to embed some video or audio on your website. Now, with WordPress 3.6, all you need to do is to paste the URL of the audio or video file into the post. WordPress will do the rest; it’ll automatically recognize it as a video or audio stream and then embed it for you. It’s astoundingly easy; heck, it’s so easy that a caveman can do it!
Simpler user interface for creating and editing menus
A lot of WordPress users complained about how confusing and difficult it was to create and edit menus in WordPress, and guess what? WordPress went ahead and fixed it! Gone are the vague headers, confusing menu structure, and uncertain menu locations. The new user interface makes everything crystal clear. There are tabs, thorough descriptions, checkboxes, and even a search feature! Creating menus has never been easier!
Did you find any other awesome features brought on by the new & improved WordPress? If so, please share your exciting find with us!
This guest article was provided by Simon, who is working for Jangomail a mass e-mail service provider. You can check out more of Simon’s work at his blogs at: http://simonsblogpark.com/.
Lead image via managewp
