WordPress 4.2 Released
WordPress 4.2 was released today. This is a major (0.1) update, adding new features to improve the experience of using WP.
What’s New
There are a few significant improvements in this update:
– Better Press This: If you click Tools -> Available Tools you will find a bookmarklet for Press This. Drag that to your browser’s bookmark’s bar and it will make it very easy to share anything you find on the web on your WP site. This experience is much improved from the past – in my experience it’s something very few users even realize exist, so it might be good to check it out if you’re not familiar with Press This.
– More Characters: The new WordPress supports more characters. Some Asian languages will have better support, along with anyone using mathematical or musical symbols. In addition, you can use emoji ? ? – if your operating system doesn’t have an easy way to use these, you can copy-past them out of http://getemoji.com/
– Preview Themes: By clicking Appearance -> Customize, you can modify the appearance of your site. You can now select a different theme here, activate it in a preview mode, make changes, and only apply it to your site when you are satisfied with the result.
– Better Plugin Updates: You can now click ‘Update Plugin’ on the Plugins page and not have to load a new page, then go back to do the next update. The update no longer requires a new pageload, updating the plugin right in-place (something I just did on the Lightning Base site immediately after updating to 4.2).
– More Embeddable Content: WordPress now natively embeds content from Tumblr.com and Kickstarter. You can copy/paste a link and have it automatically appear in your post.
– Developer Features: As usual, there are also improvements that are less obvious but will help developers work with WP. You can find this info on the official WP release page.
Upgrading to WordPress 4.2
This is a major update, meaning that the odds of trouble are generally higher than with minor updates. It is not, however, an update with major changes to a lot of the core features (such as the major media library changes that happened recently and caused significant problems with media plugins). That makes me suspect it will be relatively trouble-free, and in our testing there have not been large numbers of issues. This site is up and running on 4.2, and test sites at Lightning Base have been running on pre-release versions for some time.
For critical sites, particularly if they are complex, you may want to delay the update for a couple weeks to see if any problems crop up or if a minor patch release comes out shortly. Checking this thread is a good way to see what issues others are having, and the general WP support forum can help spot almost any potential problem. Generally after a few weeks the trouble reports die down and if there are any serious problems with WP core itself they will be patched with a 0.0.1 update.
Our Upgrade Process
If you have turned on automatic core updates for both major and minor releases then your site will automatically be updated within the next 24 hours. As always, we have nightly backups from which a restore can be made if any problems become apparent post-update.
Problems?
There is always the potential for a problem post-update. If that happens, remember that we have automatic backups taken offsite nightly, which can be restored via the ‘Bacula4’ icon in cPanel. If you need any assistance, don’t hesitate to open a ticket in our client area and we can help. It’s usually best to check the ‘error_log’ file in your site’s root directory to see if there are any problems listed there, then run a restore. The error_log file’s content describes PHP errors and may help you determine what needs to be fixed/upgraded/removed before your site can move to 4.2.