Yesterday, WordPress 3.4 was released. While we knew which features were coming, unlike other releases we did not keep a close tab of alpha and beta versions due to a very packed schedule. We would like to apologize to our audience for that. For those of you who did not click the one-click upgrade button just yet, please make sure that you upgrade. In this article, we will highlight what’s new in WordPress 3.4 in terms of features for users and developers.
Live Preview and Theme Customizer
The theme customizer is one of the most outstanding features in WordPress 3.4. Handy for both users and developers alike, the theme customizer will start a new era of WordPress theme development. In the past, users would never know whether a specific theme would work for their website without activating it. They would not know how the theme would look with their content. Well that problem is out the window now with the Live Preview and Theme Customizer. When you go to Appearence » Themes, you will see “Live Preview” below each theme.
When you click that link, a live preview will open with the Theme Customizer. For active themes, there will be a link named Customize that you can click which will open the live preview.
We hope that more developers start using this instead of complex theme options. Otto has a great article that will show you how to leverage the theme customizer in your themes. Check out the video walk through of the Theme Customizer.
Easy Tweets Embed with oEmbed
In the past, you would have to use a plugin to embed a tweet in WordPress posts. Well not anymore. Just like youtube videos, now all you have to do is add the link to your tweet in a separate line. WordPress will embed the tweet with reply, retweet, favorite, and follow features. Love it. Check the example below:
How to Get Google’s Verified Authorship for your #WordPress #Blog – http://t.co/lS6boWfP #seo
— WordPress Beginner (@wpbeginner) June 12, 2012
Custom Header Improvements
In WordPress 3.0, WordPress added the ability add custom header images. Well, all the header images had to be a specific width and height. If you decided to change things around, it would cause things to look weird. In WordPress 3.4, you can now have flexible headers. You can see the new code in the Codex.
Aside from that, you can now add custom header and background images from the Media Library as well.
HTML in Image Captions
In the past when adding images, you couldn’t link to the photo author in the caption. Well, in WordPress 3.4 you can. This will make things easy. Check out the example below:
Better Organization for Page Templates
If you ever worked on a complex site, you will find yourself creating a lot of custom page templates. Up until now, all page template files had to stay inside the theme folder along with all other files. This can get really clunky. For the sake of organization, you can now have a /pages/ sub-directory in your theme’s folder where you can place all page templates. Starting in WordPress 3.4, WordPress will identify all page templates in the theme folder or in any sub-directory of a theme folder.
We know this will be extremely handy for our theme.
Other Improvements
There were a lot of bug fixes and improvements. Below is a list of items that we found to be very useful.
- WP_Query Performance Improvements – Developers saw 2-3x speed performance improvements.
- Post Formats will now be added under Navigation Menus
- WordPress will now redirect attempts to visit /login, /dashboard, or /admin to the appropriate WordPress pages. Now you don’t need a plugin anymore
- A lot of XML-RPC improvements
- Internal functions and classes now add “rtl”, “ie7”, “ie8”, “ie9” for browser targetting
We would love to hear what are your favorite features in WordPress 3.4
Additional Resources
WordPress 3.4 “Green” Official Release Article
Full List of Features in WordPress 3.4
10 Things you Need to KNow about WordPress 3.4
How to Leverage the Theme Customizer in your own Themes
Syed Balkhi
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Philipp L
Thanks for this great article! A quick question: Does it also work for wordpress.com or just for wordpress.org
WPBeginner Support
Just for WordPress.org. Please see the difference between WordPress.org vs WordPress.com
Admin
Shahin
All new features are Good, but still want more
** A good admin interface for inter-related posts/custom posts.
Like a backend to manage primary + foreign key – relational database / information. Right now – not sure how to do this in WP way?
Kay
I understand that the Twitter embed does not work for everyone. Do you have any insights on this? Would this be the fault of the particular theme the user has?
Editorial Staff
IF it doesn’t work, then its probably a faulty theme.
Admin
Pádraig Ó Beirn
Not necessarily a theme issue. On your admin panel dashboard go to Settings > Media and make sure (under Embeds) that ‘Auto-Embed’ is ticked. Should work.
Editorial Staff
Ah good point. Totally overlooked that little aspect.
Admin
Prasant Naidu
Thanks for the article
quick question initially when i used to add caption to an image it use to work properly. now the caption doesn’t work and the line written comes in the next line. this has happened after the upgrade any help.
Orang Akaun
Two things I like the most from your mention.
1 – Hyperlink in image caption. That was cool. I’ve been waiting for that.
2 – Tweet embed. That of course will save out time.
But what if the tweet deleted? Will it stays in our blog?
Editorial Staff
I don’t think the tweet will stay. If its deleted on twitter, then its gone from your site too.
Admin
Toonna
Hallo, does the Twitter Embed feature work for free wordpress blogs? Thanks!
Graphics Cove
Yes! Theme subfolders! This is going to make theme creation more tidy. Although I wonder how the editor interface is going to handle them. I hated having theme css files in a /css/ directory and being unable to edit them from the editor menu, it was such a hassle to start up the ftp and text editor program every time I needed to change one thing. Time to try this thing out..
Gautam Doddamani
my favorite features were that dey added the latest jquery and jquery ui libraries…now we can make more customizations using jquery…also the embed tweets is a gr8 addition…i dont change themes so often but its a good thing dey added the preview feature
OriginalEXE
I am very pleased with a new update. As a WordPress user and developer in training, I am very happy with imrpoved query performance and ability to put custom templates in sub-folder, this will by far improve my organisation.
Thank you WP team
DaveL
Hurray for the page templates ! Viva structure !
Namebiztag
Is there anything new in regards to mobile?
Editorial Staff
Yes, touch support is added
You can read about that in the additional resources that we mentioned.
Admin
Paul Pruneau
Wow all of these additions look great.
Can’t wait to test drive them and see how they work.
The Twitter embed is very nice too.
Thanks for the summary.
Bob Dunn
Nice overview… I think my clients will like the theme customizer more than I do.
Agreed, the links in the captions are nice, and also like the Tweet embed. Might find some interesting new ways to use that : )
BTW – 7 live sites already updated and no issues
Keith Davis
Appreciate the overview boys.
Updated a site on local install, but not updated any live sites yet.
Will start updating live sites this weekend… fingers crossed.
Rebecca Gill
Nice overview. I hate to admit it, but the photo captions is what I’m most excited about. This change has been needed for a LONG time.
Keith Davis
Me too Rebecca, but I wasn’t going to mention it. LOL
Lissa
bravo On the new updates! Link the caption is my fav.
Any security improvement on the updates?
Editorial Staff
Can’t see any security improvement. Do you see any vulnerability?
Admin