WordPress 4.1 Released
WordPress 4.1 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 features in this update:
- – New default theme: The default theme is now 2015, which is a back-to-the-basics type them, focusing on blogging and content.
- – Distraction-free writing mode: This hides all the extraneous menus while you’re typing, making it easy to focus on your writing. This is turned on with a button in the top-right of the visual editor, and is a nice experience (I’m using it right now). Slide your mouse to the edge of the screen and the menus come back, but start typing and they slide out of the way.
- – Easily change language: WordPress now has a setting under the “General” -> “Settings” menu that allows you to easily change the language used for WP itself. There are over 40 languages available at this time.
- – Log out everywhere: Under the “Users” -> “Your Profile” menu in WP’s dashboard, there is a button to “Log Out of All Other Sessions”. This will keep you logged in on your current machine, but log you out of any other computer’s that you may have used. That’s a great option if you use your WordPress on a public computer and later become concerned that you forgot to hit the log out button.
- – Vine embeds: Vine joins the long list of easily embedded forms of media.
- – Plugin recommendations: WordPress will now provide recommendations for new plugins, learning from what other users like you use.
- – There are also some under the hood changes which will help developers create even more advanced plugins/themes.
Upgrading to WP 4.1
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 4.1, 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 a backup will be taken of your site, followed by an automatic update. This is rolling out across the servers as I write, and will be applied to all sites within the next 24 hours.
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 files content describes PHP errors and may help you determine what needs to be fixed/upgraded/removed before your site can move to 4.1.
