WordPress recently announced the latest update to their CMS platform: WordPress 3.4.1. After only two weeks of going live the online web and blogging site had over 3 million downloads of the new software.
So how is it different to 3.4?
It has been described by WordPress as a ‘maintenance and security update’ – so nothing fancy but practical can be good! It resolves 18 bugs that were spotted within the original 3.4 version, these include:
- Fixing the problems of some theme’s page templates not being detected.
- Addressing problems with some category permalink structures.
- A better handling for plugins and themes to prevent JavaScript loading incorrectly.
- Adding early support for uploading images on iOS 6 devices.
- Allowing for a technique commonly used by plugins to detect a network-wide activation.
- A better compatibility with servers running certain versions of PHP (5.2.4, 5.4) or with uncommon setups (safe mode, open basedir), which had caused warnings or in some cases prevented emails from being sent.
- Fixing several security related issues and hardens the security of the software further.
So like we said functional rather than fancy – but the increase in security is always well received with users as WordPress previous to the updates has been vulnerable in the security stakes. It is recommended that blogs running WordPress are updated to the newest version as soon as possible because of the heightened security with the new version.
The new software can easily be downloaded from www.wordpress.org, but all Webmasters and administrators should see notifications in the admin dashboard that the new version is available. We would always recommended backing up any blogs, files and databases, before installing the update on the server – just in case.
For the full list of fixes in the new update see the WordPress Trac and on the Version 3.4.1 Codex page