On September 4, 2014, WordPress Version 4.0 “Benny”, named for jazz musician Benny Goodman, was released to the public.
The latest version of the WordPress CMS adds an improved rich-content editor and plugin discoverability.
So How Big is this Update?
This version of WordPress 4.0, was released this week. WordPress 4.0 does not represent as big an upgrade as WordPress 3.0 did.
Released in June 2010, WordPress 3.0 merged the previously separate WordPress and WordPress MU (Multi-User) variations, bringing with it the ability for a single installation of WordPress to host multiple sites.
WordPress 4.0 offers no such groundbreaking new features; it could just as easily have been dubbed WordPress 3.10. But it does offer an improvement over its predecessor, with little reason not to upgrade.
There have been intermediate updates, of course. For example, WordPress 3.7 introduced automatic background updates, but only for minor versions of WordPress, such as 3.7 to 3.7.1.
Major updates, including to 4.0, will still need to be manually applied (unless you’ve configured your site to automatically grab these updates, too).
Why Benny?
Version 4.0 of WordPress, named “Benny” in honor of jazz clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman.
Highlights from the WP Team
Manage your media and embedded content with style
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- Explore your uploads in a beautiful, endless grid
- A new details preview makes viewing and editing any amount of media in sequence a snap.
- The content-editing experience is better than ever
- The visual editor now expands to fit your content
- A fixed toolbar in the editor when you scroll
- Embeddable content previews right in the visual editor
- Better workflow for finding and installing plugins
- A new grid view adds some visual flair to finding and installing plugins, bringing relevant plugin info front and center
- For Developers
Should You do It?
And the simple question if you should click that button and “Just do it“, is a resounding YES!
We have upgraded 22 sites so far without ANY hiccups!
Note that WordPress 4.0 is a major release, so it will not get automatically updated.
You will have to manually initiate the update in your Dashboard as Admin…
More Info
For more information on this enhancement and bug-fix release, read the WordPress Blog, and see the Changelog for 4.0.
