What’s New with WordPress 3.8?
It seems like WordPress 3.7 more or less just made its debut and with a variety of new features such as automatic updates for many themes and extensions, many users really seemed to enjoy the new system. Now WordPress 3.8 has dropped and the focus on this new version is to improve the user interface in the admin area, which can mean more customization and visual improvements for all WordPress websites. We’re going to look at some of the main changes in WordPress 3.8 and give you some screenshots of the new interface.
The new user interface in admin mode:
You may be familiar with the MP6 plug-in for WordPress and you may have used it before, this old plug-in will become the new polished look of the admin interface. It could be a bit scary at first but this really just modernizes the entire dashboard and makes it easier to use.
An interesting aspect of this new user interface is you can select your own color scheme for the dashboard. The 3.7 version of the user interface only comes with two different options but you can change things like fonts, colors and more with the new dashboard.
Optimized dash:
The dashboard screen is another big change with the 3.8 update. You may recognize the new dashboard from the plug-in that Less bloat created. This new dashboard will include the most used widgets and you will be able to customize the widgets that are displayed on your dashboard so that the whole feel of the dashboard is less cluttered.
Widget ready areas:
You may have used drag-and-drop widgets to instantly put in side bars into areas that have open spots for widgets. Themes will become more customizable so that there can be more widget ready areas on a page. This can mean more different content and different web elements on each WordPress page. 3.8 makes it easier to add widgets with the new user interface. Users can simply select where they would like to add the widget without having to drag it into multiple sidebars.
Theme Previews that make sense:
When selecting new themes in the admin area it can be really difficult to see exactly what a team might look like when it’s applied. In 3.8 you can experience a theme before applying it to your website. This means that the new theme preview experience will be much better and you won’t have to activate a theme to really explore what it could do for your website. Theme previews can also be done much faster and much more comprehensively using this new format.
A brand-new Default Theme, TwentyFouteen:
TwentyFourteen (2014) is the new default theme that new WordPress websites will become equipped with. This theme is sort of an online magazine style theme with great image sizes and plenty of room for headlights. Twenty Fourteen allows for an insane level of customization and can give you a easy format to publish an online magazine or blog from. You can customize the grid layout of this scheme entirely as well as optimize it in a variety of different ways. Customizing the steam is very easy and can be done with layouts or sliders to get just the type of look that you want without having to fiddle around and tinker too much.
WordPress Theme Customization:
Additional Features:
One of the most talked about new features is the Omni search which will let you search through global admin sections of WordPress to find posts across the web, content, seems, pages, files and images that are all displayed across WordPress. The Omni search will be a brand-new search tool to be released with 3.8.
With all of these new features coming out with 3.8, it will be exciting to see just how they all work when this new version of WordPress is actually released. Feel free to provide us with some input on what you think of these new features. Which are you most anticipating? What would you like to see most with the 3.8 update?
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