What’s New in WordPress Version 4.8.1

Video Transcript

Normally, I only do a class on what’s new when a major new release of WordPress comes out and not when what’s called a maintenance release like 4.8.1 comes out. A major release on WordPress is a version when the number four or eight changes, for example, like version 5.0 or 4.9, not when a number is added to the right of the eight, like 4.8.2 or 4.8.3. But version 4.8.1 of WordPress is a little different than the normal maintenance release. I say different because there was a bit of a problem with one of the new features that came to us on version 4.8. That new feature from version 4.8 was the rich text widget. That widget had a bug that messed up certain types of HTML coding. This class is gonna cover what WordPress did to fix that bug.

Now what I’ve done here is I’ve got three different sites that represent three different versions of WordPress. It appeared in the browser address bar. You can see that this one is representing 4.8.1. I’ve already logged in at the back end here and we’re gonna be visiting the widget area that’s in the appearance section fly-out. We’re gonna click on widgets here. So let’s go and do that now. This is the most recent version of WordPress 4.8.1 that has that fix. And the main fix that they’ve got, and I’ll cover both of them here, but the main fix is that they’ve added a new widget here called custom HTML. Now if we go to the next tab over, this represents version 4.8. This is the one that has a little bug in it. And we go to the appearance fly-out, click on widgets. This text widget is where they introduced the visual and text tab that kind of resembles the same functionality that you get in the editor of your post and pages but a little scaled down.

Now to go back even earlier in version 4.7 something, and we go to the widget area here and then text widget, you’ll gonna see this one has no visual or text tab in here. You can enter HTML code, but you gotta pretty much know what you’re doing. Whereas with 4.8, you could use more of what they call a “What you see is what you get” kind of widget. That’s the idea behind this. Problem was, is that whenever you entered your code in here and then flip back to text and then back to visual, in some cases, it would strip out certain bits of HTML code, not a good thing. And the fix that they had in version 4.8.1 is whenever you open up a text widget that had that certain kind of HTML code in there, it would give you a pop-up notice here saying, “Hey, we notice you’ve got some HTML code in here that would be better suited in our new custom HTML widget.”

Now, I would show that to you, but once you click on the dismiss link that shows up at the bottom of that pop-up, it won’t regenerate. But when you get that, what you should do… Let’s go ahead and copy the code and put it in the custom HTML widget because whenever you first open up that text widget, by default, it’s gonna automatically open up in the text tab so that nothing is broke. The only time it’s gonna break is if you toggle to the visual tab, but you got that big notice right there in front of you that’s blocking everything. So as soon as you see that notice, go ahead and grab that code, it’s gonna copy that into the clip board. Come over here to the custom HTML widget and click on that, add it to the same location, ’cause basically you’re gonna use this custom HTML widget to replace this old buggy text widget that you’ve got HTML code in.

Let’s go and add widget and it brings you down to the bottom here. And I’m just gonna paste that code in here, then I click on save. Just like you do with any other widget. And then we’re gonna close that up. And then I’m gonna drag that up into the same spot as this text widget. Then I’m just gonna delete this text widget. So, that’s their fix. As soon as you open up that buggy text widget that has HTML code in there, it automatically defaults to the text tab so nothing is broken, but it also gives you that big notice right in front of that HTML code saying, “Hey, it’s a good idea to go ahead and get this code out of here and put it into our new custom HTML widget.” So go ahead and do that.

That said, if you’ve got a whole bunch of WordPress sites out there that have a whole bunch of text widgets that have a whole bunch of HTML codes scattered amongst them, don’t worry because nothing is gonna break until you or someone else actually goes into the widget area, opens up that text widget, and toggles from the text tab to the visual tab, and then back to text. So it’s nothing that you have to drop everything and go in and make this fix, go ahead and update to version 4.8.1 with no worries. The thing is though, is that as soon as you go into a widget area, open up one of those old text widgets and you get that pop-up notice, go ahead and do the change right then and there. Just like we did. Copy the code out of there, bring in the custom HTML widget, paste it in there, save it, delete the old text widget, and you’re fine.

Now, one other notice that you might get is that an older text widget that doesn’t have the visual or text tabs that you got with the new widgets from version 4.8, kind of like what I showed you here in version 4.7, whatever. Some of these may still linger even in version 4.8.1. And I cannot replicate that kind of notice, but I can show you here through a screen capture that I got that says basically the same thing, “We notice that you’ve got some HTML code in this text widget, it will be better suited in our brand new custom HTML widget.” So just do what we did here, get the code out of that old text widget, put it in the new custom HTML widget, and you’re fine.

And that’s gonna bring us to the end of this class on what’s new in version 4.8.1 of WordPress. Thanks for checking it out and you have a great day.