New features in WordPress 4.8 you’re going to love

WordPress 4.8 is coming soon. As usual there are lots of tweaks and updates to our favourite content management system. However, there are some standout features that users are really going to love. We’ll dig into these in this blog post and tease you with what to expect. Before we get into that, just a reminder that all of our Managed WordPress hosting clients will have this update test and installed soon. We’ll be rolling it our for all users during June.

Ok, so what’s new?

WordPress Video Widgets

This one is super popular within the ranks here at The DMA. And we think it will be something that end users are going to enjoy. Finally, WordPress gets some native media widgets. Think … “I want to put a Youtube video in my side bar“. No more embed codes from streaming services like Youtube or Vimeo.

Simply drag the widget into a widget area, slot in the URL of the video from any oEmbed supported service (Youtube, Vimeo etc.. ) and you’re done.

Image Widgets

There is also a new image version, it’s just as easy to use. Images are drawn from your media library, or you can upload it on the spot.

Previously you’d have to write a little HTML to get an image in a widget area. This new solution is fantastic for users, who shouldn’t have to know HTML to get their job done.

Text Widgets

In a similar theme to the above there is a new text widget also coming with WordPress 4.8. No longer to you have to be learning HTML to bold some text that you’d like to have in your sidebar.

When can you get all of this widget goodness?

The release candidate was published in the last few days of May, usually the final version will ship a week or two after that. It should be early June that you can enjoy these new features.