It’s a rap: WordPress 3.9 hangout

By Christopher Carfi May 22, 2014

Time to make a mixtape

Thank you! Nearly 200 designers, developers and other Web professionals RSVP’d for our Google® hangout on May 19 to do a deep dive into what’s new in WordPress® 3.9 and 3.9.1. Suzette Franck, Media Temple’s WordPress Evangelist, led the conversation with GoDaddy’s Kurt Payne and Felix Gorodishter.

After intros and a big shout-out to Andrew Nacin (@nacin) and others who drove this release, Suzette dove into a demo, showing the breadth of new capabilities in WordPress — including image and video editing and upload enhancements, the ability to drag and drop images, and a preview of the new Gallery in the editor window.

Her demo of the ability to edit images directly in the authoring environment and to create video and audio playlists was, frankly, pretty sweet. Suzette wrapped her demo by showing a number of the new capabilities of the WordPress theme browser, which now enables site owners to easily locate themes in a fraction of the time it used to require.

The hangout also featured a lively Q&A, with viewers from both the hangout proper and contributions from those following the #gdwp hashtag on Twitter®. Felix, Kurt and Suzette dropped knowledge on items as diverse as:

When will 3.9.1 be available?
How are we handling updates to 3.9 in managed and self-hosted WP environments?
How are JavaScript embed codes supported?
How are keywords and other metadata supported?
What database changes are included?
Is there a way of inserting raw PHP or mySQL code into pages?

For those who are just getting started with the WordPress universe, here are some resources that the team noted as solid places to start:

By the way, members of the GoDaddy and Media Temple teams will be at a number of WordCamps in 2014 — including WordCamp Chicago, WordCamp SF, WordCamp New York, WordCamp Orange County and others. We hope to see you there in person!