There are few items of news more likely to send a non-technical audience to sleep than the announcement that some piece of software has been released with a new number. Are you feeling drowsy now? That’s because WordPress 4 is giving way to WordPress 5. What’s New? There are the usual bug-fixes and security updates. As one would hope. The big thing for the WordPress 5 series is the new editor, Gutenberg.
Around about the beginning of June I received a phone call asking if I could help complete a website for someone who is selling guitars online. Naturally I was intrigued and arranged a meeting at the earliest opportunity. That person turned out to be Uli Jon Roth. Sky Guitars is the website I have helped him create. A project with a difference. Unusually for me I came into the project part way through its gestation, so a number of aspects were already fixed.
The relentless march of WordPress improvements carries on. Yesterday (16th November 2017) we were greeted with the good news that those awfully nice WordPress people have an update for us: 4.9 “Tipton”, no less. Tipton is named after jazz musician and band leader Billy Tipton. The increase in number from 4.8.x to 4.9 indicates that this is a pretty important release, introducing major new functionality rather than addressing bugs or blocking security holes.
As sure as winter follows summer, here comes another Wordpress upgrade. I’ve just received emails from the sites I run to say that Wordpress 4.8.3 is now the recommended version. It looks to be a pretty important update - billed as a security release. The advisory page says: we strongly encourage you to update your sites immediately That’s Wordpress code for “We’re probably aware of something nasty wrong in the old versions and if you don’t get your site(s) updated / patched don’t blame us if someone or something nasty gets into your site!
Sometimes when you’re typing you need to do just that. Type, let the words flow without having to stop and lift your hands to grab the mouse, I don’t know, to maybe click here or there to italicise this word or embolden the other. OK - most people know about CTRL+I and CTRL+B; you do, don’t you? But beyond that, wouldn’t it be great if you could insert a heading with the same ease?
New (Old) Ways of Working Being in the business of creating websites for other people means that it’s sometimes easy to overlook the mess in ones own back yard! It’s with this in mind that I have made use of a few spare minutes to start to put together a new site for Jewelion using some of the latest & greatest techniques. These days it’s very easy, too easy some might say.