WordPress 4.5 is a major update which most likely requires you to manually run on your WordPress sites unless you have a hosting account that handles it for you. (ie. It’s not a minor security update.) If you are not sure how to update your WordPress, this step by step article on updating will help you.
Learn the Highlights of WordPress 4.5
Responsive Previews
With WordPress 4.5, previewing your site in different device formats has gotten so much easier! When you go into the WordPress Customizer (Appearance – Customize), you’ll see 3 buttons at the bottom-left.
As you toggle among these three buttons, you’ll see the site preview on the right change for the desktop, tablet, and smart phone. Many newer themes started offering a feature like this over the past few years, but it’s now a standard WordPress feature!
Custom Logos
Another feature that has become standard with WordPress 4.5 is “Custom Logos.” Go to Appearance – Customize – Site Identity, and you’ll see a new logo can be easily uploaded from there. (Depending on the theme, the place to upload logos might be somewhere else. Some older themes don’t support this new feature)
Inline Linking
Every time a new WordPress version comes out, you can tell a big emphasis is put on the “writing experience,” making it easier for the users to focus on writing with less distraction.
Up until now, when you add a hyperlink to a part of the post/page by clicking on the link button, it opened up a new window where you can specify the link destination, target, and more. For many writers, this stops the flow of writing.
WordPress 4.5’s inline linking dramatically simplifies this process by simply displaying a little box right below the text you want to link, allowing you to enter the link destination (internal or external) right there.
Formatting Shortcuts
You may recall WordPress introduced some handy formatting shortcuts with release 4.3. With 4.5, they made a couple more shortcuts available for a less-distracted writing experience.
If you love shortcodes, refer to this page for more comprehensive list of shortcuts currently available in WordPress.
Under the Hood Improvements
And as with any WordPress updates, WordPress 4.5 involves many more new features that improve the overall functionality and performance!
If you want to get in to the technical details, go ahead and read about WordPress 4.5 in WordPress.org’s blog post here.
Any new features you particularly like with this release? I’d love to hear from you… Please let me know by adding your comment below.
Wow – that preview feature looks very cool! Thanks for keeping us in the know.