News
In case you missed it, the latest version of WordPress was released about a couple of hours ago. WordPress 3.7 “Bayside” is named after American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader and composer William James “Count” Basie.
This latest version includes some very important architectural changes and updates to the WordPress core:
Here are some of the updates and new features included in WordPress 3.7:
General
Dashboard
Media
Comments
Appearance
Bug Fixes
Users can update their WordPress installation directly from the admin panel – Dashboard > Updates or do it manually by downloading WordPress 3.7 from WordPress.org and uploading it via FTP. As usual, make sure that you backup all your important files – wp-config.php file, wp-content folder (themes, plugins, etc.) and deactivate all active plugins before upgrading.
For those of you who do the upgrades manually – if you update your system to WordPress 3.7 and choose to enable automatic updates, then this could be the last time that you do an upgrade manually. I know some users would rather do the updates themselves while some Managed WordPress Hosting providers will be disabling this feature for their clients. In my case, I think I’ll continue doing the updates manually myself since I’m always online and I monitor my site constantly.
Btw, if you’re wondering how the new Automatic Background Updates feature works, it is activated by enabling WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE in the wp-config.php file. If you already installed WordPress 3.7 and would like to check if your site is compatible with automatic background updates, then you should install and run the Background Update Tester plugin.
Since this release isn’t a maintenance or security update, I’ll be giving it about a week or two before upgrading to make sure that all bugs and issues get resolved.
The development of WordPress 3.7 was led by Andrew Nacin and backed up by Dion Hulse and Jon Cave and is the first release to use the new plugin-first development process (gives plugin leads more autonomy and allows the dev team to separate feature development from a release). The next release, version 3.8 will continue this development cycle and is scheduled for release in December.
Anyone upgraded to WordPress 3.7? What do you think of the new Automatic Background Updates feature? Are you gonna enable it or not? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
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