WordPress 4.5, “Coleman,” Has Landed!

WordPress today released version 4.5, aka “Coleman” after jazz saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, which adds numerous new features and functions, along with a host of updates.

What Can You Expect From WordPress 4.5?

Some highlights of WordPress 4.4 include:

• Customizer improvements, such as Device Previewer Buttons in the controls footer to show how your site looks on other devices before making the changes and theme logo upload and adding
• Visual Editor improvements like inline link editing and new shortcuts
• Comment refinement, such as a refreshed Moderate Comment Screen and maximum length enforcement of each field in the comment form
• Image generation optimization, which generates image sizes more efficiently and removes unneeded meta data while still including color profiles for reduced sizes of up to 50 percent with near identical visual quality

And for developers, WordPress 4.5, adds:

• Selective Refresh: A comprehensive framework for rendering parts of the customizer preview in real time. The same framework is used in Theme Install Preview
• Backbone and Underscore update: Backbone is upgraded from 1.1.2 to 1.2.3 and Underscore is upgraded from 1.6.0 to 1.8.3
• Embed templates: Embed templates were split into parts and can now be directly overridden by themes via the template hierarchy.
  • embed-{post-type}-{post_format}.php
  • embed-{post-type}.php
  • embed.php
  • wp-includes/theme-compat/embed.php

• Term Edit Page changes: wp-admin/term.php was introduced

Those are just some of the highlights; check out the WordPress blog for a full lineup of what’s new in WordPress 4.5.

WP Engine Handles WordPress Upgrades For You

Here at WP Engine, we aim to make WordPress upgrades as smooth and painless as possible, so we do the heavy lifting for our customers.

According to our WordPress Update policy for non-security WordPress releases, we start automatically updating customer sites two weeks from the launch date. For this update, we will begin on April 26. However, if you would like to upgrade your site on your own schedule prior to our automatic upgrade, you are welcome to do so at any time through WP Admin.

We will send you two notices before the update process starts; one will be sent seven days prior to your scheduled update, and the second will be sent on the day of the update. Our Automated Upgrade Protection process then creates a backup of the current state of your site, and our automated script performs the update to version 4.5.

Once the update is complete, we’ll test the site to make sure it is loading.

If the site comes up without any detected problems, we will notify you that your install has been successfully updated to WordPress 4.5. In the case that something doesn’t work properly, our script will automatically roll your site back to the previous version, and let you know there was an issue. And all of this happens without any action required from you!

If you need more time to prepare your site(s) for WordPress 4.5, you can request a deferral for up to 60 days–we’ve made the upgrade deferral process super easy.

Smooth, Automatic WordPress upgrades are one of the many benefits you receive as a WP Engine customer. Thank you for trusting your digital business to WP Engine and for choosing us to host and manage your WordPress site!