The free and open-source content management system WordPress releases version 4.8. Popular as a platform for blogging, WordPress calls the version "Evans" in honor of a jazz pianist and composer William John "Bill" Evans.
Evans here introduces some additional features to the existing WordPress. They aim is to provide ways for users to express themselves and their brand. While some updates are minor, they've been built using references from 346 WordPress contributors.
The first is the link improvements.
"Have you ever tried updating a link, or the text around a link, and found you can’t seem to edit it correctly? When you edit the text after the link, your new text also ends up linked. Or you edit the text in the link, but your text ends up outside of it. This can be frustrating!" said WordPress.
Using link boundaries, the process is more streamlined.
There is also a news section in the Dashboard which brings information about nearby and upcoming WordPress events.
And for developers, WordPress 4.8 also includes some additional under-the-hood improvements, including a new JavaScript API, new CSS rules, more accessible admin panel headings, removal of core support for WMV and WMA files, multisite capabilities, media widget API, and customizer Width Variable.
WordPress "Evans" 4.8 also brings updates to widgets. They include:
- Image widgets: Webmasters can easily add an image to a widget, without having to know about coding. To do this, they just need to insert the image within the widget setting.
- Video widgets: Having the ability to add any video from the Media Library to the sidebar of their website. Webmasters can use this to showcase a welcome video to visitors, for example.
- Audio widgets: For bloggers, podcasters or even musician, they can add audio file to their WordPress' Media Library using the widget settings.
- Rich Text widgets: Rich-text editing capabilities are built native for Text widgets.