WordPress 3.7 Basie – Whats New?

Basie Has Arrived!

Well, yesterday marked the day that WordPress 3.7 released into the wonderful world wide web. WordPress 3.7 is code named “Basie” after Jazz musician Count Basie. Matt Mullenwig seems to have a thing for Jazz music, as he tends to name most of his releases after famous musicians of that era. The WordPress core development team has been doing a great job pushing out solid updates, and at Word Camp San Francisco, Matt announced they would be working harder than ever pushing out updates, even more frequently than before.

Right after Word Camp ended the core team buckled down and began working very hard on the future releases, and almost immediately following the event we saw WordPress 3.6, code named “Oscar” (for the wonderful jazz musician Oscar Peterson), released. There were some note-able changes in that release , including a newly re-designed 2013 theme. Following that came 3.6.1, which included some security updates.

Whats New With Basie?

On The Surface:

Some of the most note-able changes with WordPress 3.7, “Basie”, are the inclusion of automatic maintenance and security updates (the minor releases, like 3.6.1 etc.) as well as an increase in reliability and security when updating WordPress from the dashboard. They have also included a much stronger password strength meter which has the ability to pick up on common password weaknesses such as keyboard patterns (123456789), dates, names and even pop culture references. This is an extremely important update as most of the issues with WordPress to date revolve around security issues.

The core team worked heavily on the search feature inside of WordPress, beefing it up and allowing for a wider range and more relevant results. And finally the core development team has added better globalization support, meaning WordPress will receive faster and more complete translations for the millions of users around the world.

Under The Hood:

The core team has included a ton of features under the hood that most users will never see. Some pretty cool functions have been added to core for those developers out there. One of the major changes on the back end is the ability to update WordPress automatically. I know, some of you out there are groaning as it can literally take down your site if there is a conflict with a plugin or in your theme. But you can customize what gets updated, if anything at all. You can set plugins to update automatically as well as core from major updates to minor. I currently set mine to only automatically update minor patches, as I like to update my site manually…but that’s another story. That means while your sleeping your site can update from 3.7.1 to 3.7.2, with out you ever knowing. It’s pretty cool. Now Lets go through a list of some of the major updates WordPress received under the hood in the latest release:

• Optional Filters for background updates, to allow for fine-grained control.

This is a pretty neat feature, as it allows for greater control of the automatic update feature. You can schedule things like frequency and what specifically to update.

• Advanced date queries for posts (including date ranges, older/newer than options, and more)

Developers all around the world are jumping for joy with this one. Developers can now specify things like date ranges when querying posts, to pull posts from certain weeks months or years.

• Multisite now has a wp_get_sites() function, to list all sites on the network

Again, I’m sure developers all around the world have been waiting for this function to be written for a long time. Having the ability to list all sites in a network will allow for greater flexibility when working within multi-site networks.
Multisite now has wp_get_sites() to list all sites on the network

Dashboard Changes:

Along with the changes under the hood, some major things have changed on the user facing dashboard as well. Some of those things have aided in usability design, and visual styles.

• Display an error message when logging in with cookies disabled

This is a pretty important feature as much of the functionality of WordPress, the dashboard and many sites built on WordPress rely heavily on cookies being enabled to save user information and store data being passed around.

• Limit password-protected post passwords to 20-character max limit

This is one of those minor changes that most users wont take notice of, but its quite an important one as cracking passwords in WordPress has previously been comprimised in a multitude of ways. Strengthening the password is a minor code change, but a major security update that has long been needed within WordPress.

Appearance:

The core team has updated a few of the appearance features inside of WordPress this time around.

• Only show a custom header image preview when an image is actually set

This was an issue with the default theme releases within WordPress. Now only a header image is provided if the user actually sets one.

• Enable the Customizer to load the home URL

This was another one of those very annoying issues when using the customizer. It would often just show a blank white screen when trying to edit the homepage through the customization screen.

Plugins:

Only one major issue was fixed within the plugin realm, but a major one it was.

• Fix plugin search errors related to PHP 5.4

This was a major issue revolving around WordPress and PHP 5.4. Moving forward with the development of PHP and WordPress its important that both work together without any hiccups.

Classes (click through to read about each item in the codex):

• Introduce WP_Automatic_Upgrader
• Introduce Automatic_Upgrader_Skin
• Introduce Headerless_Upgrader_Skin
• Introduce WP_Date_Query

Functions (click through to read about each item in the codex):

• Introduce unregister_taxonomy_for_object_type()
• Introduce got_url_rewrite()
• Introduce get_previous_post_link()
• Introduce get_next_post_link()
• Introduce get_adjacent_post_link()
• Introduce wp_using_ext_object_cache()
• Introduce is_main_network()
• Introduce verify_file_md5()
• Introduce wp_clean_plugins_cache()
• Introduce find_core_auto_update()
• Introduce get_core_checksums()
• Introduce wp_get_translation_updates()
• Introduce wp_extract_urls()

That’s really just a few of the new functions included in WordPress 3.7. For a more comprehensive listing of the functions go check out the Version 3.7 Release Page. As of the time of writing this article, the Codex contains no new information regarding the new functions. As we move forward, the codex contributor team will build up those sections with descriptions and sample usage instructions. Until then, its up to you to play around and learn a bit more about them.

Bug Count

At last count, 437 tickets were closed and counted as “fixed” in WordPress 3.7 core trac. But countless more tickets have been touched, tweaked and patched this development cycle. A prominent goal of this release was house cleaning, and I think we can all say, it was a huge success.

The thankless effort deserves a major kudos to the development team.

A Major Achievment

WordPress 3.7 has been a major achievement. Thanks to the development lead, Andrew Nacin, and co-leads Jon Cave and Dion Hulse WordPress 3.7 was released very rapidly after the release of 3.6.1 and with some major updates that have been needed for a while. 3.8 is set to be released in December, and has already been in development for a few weeks now. Some of the exciting updates shipping with 3.8 are a new dashboard, a new themes page and Omnisearch. We’ll see what the development team can get done in the time frame proposed. Congratulations to all the developers that were involved. I’m hoping to see my name on the upcoming 3.8 release, but in the meantime keep up the good work everyone! Update, Update, Update! (backup first!)