WordPress 4.9 is available now for new installs and updates. The latest version of WordPress brings a range of new features and bug fixes and is available as a 1-click install and update on Ecenica web hosting plans.
WordPress have announced the release of WordPress 4.9 “Tipton”, a new update to the popular blogging and CMS platform you can use to create a website.
How do I update?
If you have automatic updates enabled then the good news is your websites will be updated for you without you needing to lift a finger.
Manually updating WordPress is simply a case of logging in to your WordPress Dashboard, clicking Updates > Update Now. Just remember to take a quick backup before updating.
You can also set up a new site and test a new copy of WordPress 4.9 in just 1-click with our Ecenica Free Apps, available with our web hosting packages. Simply login to your Ecenica Dashboard and then follow the steps for How to Install WordPress from our support knowledge base.
New Features in WordPress 4.9
Draft and Schedule Theme Changes in Customizer
It’s now possible to save changes you make to your WordPress site in Customizer as a draft. This means your, or your other site editors can review the pending changes and choose whether to publish or discard them.
Auto-saves of your Customizer changes are also available, so you’ll never lose a change again by accidental ‘back’ clicks or 4G connection drops.
Another new feature is scheduling which allows you to publish Customizer site changes at a set date. Super useful for seasonal campaigns like Christmas or New Year sales.
You can also use the new Share Preview Link to share a preview of your latest changes with anyone without access to Customizer. The Share Preview Link will be very handy for you to preview frontend changes with your clients without giving them admin access.
New Theme browsing in Customizer
Changing themes has been added to Customizer. This new feature makes it easier to browse, download and live preview a new theme for your WordPress site directly from Customizer.
Gallery Widget
Hot on the heels of the audio widget in WordPress 4.8 is the new WordPress gallery widgit. This new widget lets you quickly and easily create galleries which can be dragged and dropped into widget spaces on your WordPress site.
Add Media Button in Text Widgets
You can now add images to widgets by clicking a simple ‘Add Media’ button. No more need to write HTML code to add images!
Easier Menu Creation
Menus are now even simpler and easier to add to your website through the newly improved and much more intuitive add menu process added to Customizer in WordPress 4.9. The new process guides you step-by-step through creating, placing and adding pages to your menus. Nav has never been easier!
Embed videos from Facebook and more
Currently it’s only possible to add videos from YouTube and Vimeo to the Video Widget. WordPress 4.9 add oEmbed support which means it’s now possible to add videos from other video hosting providers. This makes it possible to include your videos directly from
New Developer Features
WordPress dev’s also benefit from the much improved inbuilt code editor.
The new Syntax highlighting, code suggestions and auto-completion helps avoid code errors from typos and let’s you quickly add and edit code on your WordPress sites. Saving you time and money.
And there’s more…
WordPress 4.9 brings over 600 fixes, enhancements and changes so there’s lots of changes under the hood. A full list of the changes in the update is available via an accompanying release note.
What’s coming soon from WordPress?
Work is already underway on the next major version of WordPress, which hopes to include a newly designed frontend editor Gutenberg which will make creating websites with WordPress even easier and faster than before.
Looking for fast WordPress hosting?
We offer free migrations of your WordPress websites to our high performance WordPress hosting packages. You’ll benefit from fast, easy to use WordPress hosting with expert support from our team of WordPress experts.
For more information contact us today to discuss how we can help your business.