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WordPress 4.6 Review

Its rare that one gets to use a new feature in a WordPress release – but WP4.6 was different. First, I was having problems with a clients site because they wanted their own default fonts to be used in the Admin and outputted pages and posts. With 4.6 they now get that. Even better for me I saved a lot of time in my tests of over 200 responsive grid, portfolio, and sticky post: themes Here is how the new Theme | Add New command helped out on some extensive testing:
wp46themes
So having filtered the themes by my responsive, grid and portfolio filter criteria I was now able to install several themes at once. But there is a trick – don’t activate a theme until you get to the  end of the themes you want to select and install.

The same feature now applies to plugin selection. Unfortunately you cannot filter plugins by category except using a general search term like “calendar” or “cache”:
wp46pluginsAgain just install the new plugins and then activate in the Installed Plugins admin window.

WordPress Export/Import Still Weak

Third Party backup and export plugin vendors have done well by the weakness in WordPress backup and import/export features. The new Import/Export UI is cleaned up as 4.6 talesover the task of importing the plugins required for all of its operations. Here is the new screen:
wp46importNow users are informed if an intermediate Installation step is required before Importing/Exporting.

But the real problem is that WordPress does not do exports well for plugin content such as Page Builders, Contact Forms and Sliders, For example here is the results using a Site Origin  Page Builder post:
wp46exportedpbuilder-vertWordPress is able to get some of he Page Builder widgets properly transferred but not all.as an Image widget, which is present and active on both WordPress websites, has to be manually filled in. On a more complex pages with Calls to Action and Sliders the same missing elements and incomplete styling occurred.

In case of the Revolution Slider in a post, WordPress export/import failed  to bring any of he images over:
wp46exportedrevslider-vertAs noted in the screenshot, Revolution Slider has its own template system with import/export capabilities.

But backups [large website bachups fail on restore], migrations [from a development WP website  to a live WP website is just a nightmare] and even simple export/import of posts and pages with 3rd party plugin data as we see above is a hit or miss proposition. That is why the market for Manage WP software is currently exploding as a number of vendors offer their solutions to these ongoing and serious WordPress problems.

Summary

This version brought a number of backend improvements for those delivering multi-language websites, needing better meta daa control and a consistent caching framework. And of course the 7th Level of Hell in Development, the bug and security crews had their work invisibly changelog attached. In general, this was a modest, agile update to WordPress.

But perhaps the most interesting no-show was any big chunks of Calypso JavaScript code in the WordPress.org core system. If you go over to WordPress.com  you will see that most of the WordPress.com codebase is moved to Calypso while only smatterings appear on WordPress.org . Surely more Calypso is to come.to hosted WordPress – the question is What, Where and When.

 

 

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