WordPress version 3.6 is expected to be released within the next month or so, and we’ve been playing with the latest beta versions of it to see what’s new. Here’s what you can look forward to:
A new default theme, “Twenty Thirteen”
Each year WordPress revises the default theme, but Twenty Thirteen will be a drastic change from previous versions. It’s loud, colorful, and makes great use of the new “post formats” that you can read about below. You can play with it a bit on the official Twenty Thirteen demo page.
Post Formats
A few themes already have special “post formats” in them, but now WordPress is making it official. These are shortcuts to create special kinds of posts, such as image posts, quote posts, gallery posts, etc. Having it built into WordPress will make things easier, though the theme you use will need to have support for them to really make the feature shine.
Audio/Video embeds
You can now embed audio and video files directly into your posts without relying on a special plugin or third-party service (like YouTube). You’re still typically better off to use a quality plug-in or service to help with those kinds of files, but now it’s no longer a requirement.
Autosave and post locking
The autosave feature now can help you even more – if your browser crashes, your computer dies, or the server goes offline as you’re saving, you won’t lose the your post. In addition, when you can see when someone is currently editing a post, and kick them out of it if they fall asleep at the keyboard.
Navigation Menus
The menu editing system that was added in WordPress 3.0 back in 2010 are amazing, and in 3.6 they get even better. It’s mostly subtle enhancements, but great little tweaks nonetheless. In particular, they now sport an accordion-based UI, and a separate tab for bulk-assigning menus to locations.
Revisions
Post revision history was added way back in WordPress version 2.6, and has been a lifesaver for the times that you mistakenly saved a bad version of a post and needed to go back to an older one. The enhanced revisions UI features avatars, a slider that “scrubs” through history, and two-slider range comparisons.
All in all, WordPress 3.6 has some great enhancements to make it even more powerful and easy to use, and we’re looking forward to seeing it released. It’s currently scheduled to be released on April 29, but that will depend on how smoothly the beta testing goes. If you’d like to test out version 3.6 for yourself, you can download the beta version here.
What are you most looking forward to in WordPress 3.6?
