WordPress 3.6, after a little delay, is finally here and Genesis 2.0 has followed on it’s heels, as promised. What does this mean for WordPress users?
HTML5 Compliant:
One main change coming down the pipelines is the transformation to HTML5. HTML5 is a markup language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web and a core technology of the Internet. This will mean at some point your existing themes or child themes will need to be HTML5 compliant. Some HTML 5 Features include:
- Making your website future compatible
- improves cross-browser compatibility
- makes your site truly mobile-friendly
- It allows for extensible design and supports video and audio like no other markup language.
- It is cleaner and more efficient in terms of storage, API interaction, and other ways impact user experience.
WordPress 3.6:
The latest WordPress release, is named “Oscar” in honor of the great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson and includes some of the following features:
User Features
- The new Twenty Thirteen theme inspired by modern art puts focus on your content with a colorful, single-column design made for media-rich blogging.
- Revamped Revisions save every change and the new interface allows you to scroll easily through changes to see line-by-line who changed what and when.
- Post Locking and Augmented Autosave will especially be a boon to sites where more than a single author is working on a post. Each author now has their own autosave stream, which stores things locally as well as on the server (so much harder to lose something) and there’s an interface for taking over editing of a post, as demonstrated beautifully by our bearded buddies in the video above.
- Built-in HTML5 media player for native audio and video embeds with no reliance on external services.
- The Menu Editor is now much easier to understand and use.
Genesis 2.0
Additionally, if you run your WordPress site on the awesome Genesis Framework, you will be prompted to upgrade to the shiny new Genesis 2.0
Genesis 2.0 is a major leap forward for the framework, as we corral essential web standards like HTML5 and schema.org to make your WordPress website as fast, secure, flexible, and findable as it can be.
See all the changes included in Genesis 2.0.
IMPORTANT: Please note upgrading your Framework to 2.0 DOES NOT make your child theme HTML compliant! Genesis 2.0 is compatible with both XHTML & HTML5 so your child theme will still work, but in the future you will need to update your theme with the new HTML5 compatible version when it’s released OR use one of the new HTML5 compatible themes StudioPress will be releasing. At some point your current theme will become outdated, but for now you are safe.
Have Eco-Office Gals Perform Your Updates
WordPress 3.6 is not a general maintenance roll out, so proceed with caution. Perform a back up (I prefer a full cpanel back up so your host can easily do a full restore if needed) put your feelers out on your social networks and make sure no one else is experiencing issues, your plug ins and theme may also require updates to keep up with your new and improved version of WordPress.
Do updates make you nervous? Eco-Office Gals can perform the update for you if you are not comfortable doing it yourself. The 1 hour minimum will include:
- WP BackUp or cpanel backup in your hosts control panel
- Plug In Updates
- Theme Update (including Genesis 2.0), if needed
- WordPress Updated to 3.6
Upgrades are performed on a first come first serve basis. Once you pay using the PayPal button found below I will email you so you can provide me with your log in credentials if needed. Or, if you prefer you can email them directly to jsmith (at) eco-officegals dot com. In the past EOG has charged the $50 minimum per site, but with so many people building multiple sites I decided it’s only fair to offer a multi-site discount. If you have more then 3 sites needing updating, please contact us.
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