WordPress 4.0 aka “Benny” in honor of the famous jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman on September 4th, 2014 and has a few interesting new features to make your life as a content writer (or editor) much easier.
In earlier versions of WordPress, one has to install special plugins to embed videos from Youtube or any other video sharing sites. But in WP 4.0, embedding videos is a breeze – you just need to copy and paste the video URL into the editor window and WordPress will do the rest. How cool is that?
Besides Youtube videos, you can also talks from TED as well as embed tweets. Another enhancement is in the area of finding plugins for your WordPress site. With over 30,000+ plugins from WordPress.org repository, one can easily get lost in the sea of options, but with WP 4.0, the developers have improved the search algorithm and included new metrics to help you find the most relevant plugin quickly and easily.
The million dollar Question: Should you upgrade?
Although there has been over 3 million downloads of WordPress Benny since its launch, I’d rather wait a couple more weeks before upgrading and wait for 4.x (e.g. 4.1, 4.2, etc) to be released. This will allow the good folks at WordPress to iron out any bugs or security flaws discovered by the open source community.
Also, if you’re using custom themes or premium plugins, it would be a good idea to check with those developers first to see if there are any compatibility issues. This is to prevent your site from getting those confounded “Internal 500 Errors” when upgrading.
For those of you who prefer to live on the edge, you can grab the latest WordPress 4.0 by clicking on this link. 🙂
TIP: run WP 4.0 on your development server or home PC. You might save yourself from headaches down the road.