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WordPress just released its latest version, WordPress 4.7 to give incredible web developing experience to their end users. It is named as “Vaughan” to give an honor to the famous jazz vocalist Sharah Sassy “Vaughan”. You can download this version from WordPress.org or update it via your WordPress dashboard.

WordPress 4.7 introduced a plethora of new features and significant modifications that will help you create a stunning website from scratch. You will get to experience the new default theme setup, new features in WordPress customizer, content endpoints, improved menu building, custom CSS with live preview, and other developer friendly features.

Here, in this blog post, we’ve compiled the key features of WordPress 4.7 to help you explore more about this latest WordPress release.

1. Twenty Seventeen: A new default theme

Since the new year is around the corner, WordPress introduced its latest default theme, Twenty Seventeen, offering a ton of stunning features that will bring your website to life – all thanks to images and video headers.

There are four customizable panels on the front page of the theme to let you showcase custom logo, existing content, full-screen featured images in the most engaging way. It is an ideal solution for average to small scale businesses who want to display their work in a single page format, along with a big featured image. You can further customize it with widgets, navigation, social sharing menus, colors and more.

The best part about Twenty Seventeen theme is that it works amazing on multiple devices, and is compatible with different languages.

2. REST API & content endpoints

WordPress is now available with REST API and content endpoints to make it more flexible and extensive for web developers. This is an incredible improvement for posts, terms, meta, settings, and users. Now developers can access and present the WordPress content in plugins, themes, and apps in a more convenient way using simple, and user-friendly interface.

Using WordPress as a content store, or creating a custom writing interface becomes a lot easier, thanks to the WordPress REST API content endpoints functionality.

Note: The WordPress REST API is now offering an official reference for documentation on WordPress.org.

3. Improved Customizer Features

Although WordPress is a fully-customizable CMS platform, WordPress 4.7 introduced a whole slew of improved customizer features that will help you create a site the way you want. These features will take your WordPress customization to the next level. Below are the few new features added to the WordPress customizer:

(a) Customizer Edit Shortcuts

This new feature will allow you see the edit shortcuts next to the section of the page while editing your site. However, it is a modest UX improvisation, but will help you work efficiently in the customizer.

(b) Video Headers

Now adding video header on the website becomes super easy. The new default theme allows you to add video headers on your site in minutes. You can either upload your video in MP4 format or can add YouTube video iframe.

(c) Custom CSS with live previews

You will love this feature. WordPress customizer made it easy for you by displaying you the preview live when you are customizing your site in real time. Isn’t it amazing?

The WordPress core allows you to create custom CSS straight from the customizer, without even installing any third party plugin.

(d) PDF Thumbnail Previews

WordPress users can easily create thumbnail images to display the uploading PDFs in a more organized way. This means the PDFs will come just like videos and images in the media library.

(e) Custom menu building

Creating a menu is one of the vital steps of a website development. With the help of Menu customizer, you can create multiple pages of your website on the fly. Now you can create navigation menus, new pages before adding the actual content on your site. When you publish your tweaks, the new pages will automatically get ready in the back-end to let you add content.

4. Starter Content

WordPress 4.7 simplifies the job of theme developers by providing them the starter content, such as a business info. Widget, or a sample of services menu. Here the content will act as a placeholder but won’t get live on the site until you customize and publish it.

5. Post Type Templates

This new feature will allow theme authors to develop multiple types of templates so that the content creators can easily select a layout whenever they want to use it. It simply opens up the functionality of page template to all post types.

Other developer-friendly features:

Custom bulk actions: Easy to access more bulk actions such as editing or deleting the post, images or other content of the site in bulk.

More theme API Goodies: WordPress 4.7 introduces new functions, features, hooks and behaviors for theme developers. Now developers can extend the functionality of the theme quickly and efficiently.

WP_Hook: The code behind the actions and filters has been improved and modernized. In fact, the new WordPress version fixed the bugs related to the WP_Hook.

To know more about the WordPress 4.7 release, visit its official announcement page.