WordPress 4.3 “Billie” Released & Available For Download

WordPress 4.3 “Billie,” named after jazz singer Billie Holiday, was released yesterday with a few new features to improve site customization.

New WordPress Features

A few of the updates include:

  • Native support for site icons or “favicons”
  • Menus added in the Appearance customizer
  • Stronger password requirement
  • Improvements to the visual editor for faster formatting

Our Favorite Features

The Site Icon

The Site Icon, or “favicon” is an extremely useful too for adding an icon to the tab of your browser.  This is great for reinforcing your existing branding as well as allowing users to see which tab is yours if they wander off onto a different site or receive a social notification. We live in a world of multiple tabs and multitasking, so that feature is pretty valuable (how many tabs do you have open right now? I have 6).  More, instead of having to use your theme or multiple plugins you can now select a site icon in your Appearance Customizer.  Our only wish is that they will add a second icon slot for the internal admin to differentiate between your admin tab and site preview.

Text Patterns

We often avoid the visual editor, but WordPress is making it more and more attractive for bloggers who want to add design elements quickly with a few simple keystrokes.  For example, adding an H2 header is now as simple as placing ## in front of the paragraph, and a bulleted list is simpley preceded by a dash (-) or asteric (*).

##EXAMPLE

– List Item 1

– List Item 2

Turns into

EXAMPLE

  • List Item 1
  • List Item 2

This is a pretty powerful capability and great resource for those who are doing more and more blogging to execute your content marketing strategy or share your ideas with the world.  All in all, the update is built for ease of use and customization, and you can check out the official release on the WordPress site.

So, go forth and update, and enjoy these features and more that we haven’t even mentioned.  For a full rundown, check out WP Tavern’s WordPress 4.3 rundown.