Episode 66: WordPress 4.6 Release

Today’s sponsor is WP Pusher, a product that allows for “pain-free deployment of WordPress themes and plugins directly from Git.” WP Pusher is offering 20% off to our listeners; just use the code “applyfilters.”

In today’s episode, we find out what Brad and Pippin are up to and delve deep into WordPress 4.6.

Pippin’s Update

In an effort to really build up Restrict Content Pro, they have released two new plugin add-ons: Woo Commerce Member Discounts and Restrict Access Content.

Brad’s Update

Brad had a big release of the Assets add-on for the WP Offload S3. They have also improved the user experience to include better feedback.

Some of the topics you’ll hear about include:

Why Pippin is promoting WooCommerce despite EDD having its own e-commerce products.

Pippin and Brad discuss WordPress REST API vs admin-ajax.php.

Meta-environment: what it means, and why it’s important.

A discussion of the upcoming launch of WordPress 4.6, which includes:

How meta registration works and why it’s helpful.

Changes pertaining to persistent comment caches.

WP post type changes.

Native fonts.

Shiny updates: to get rid of the “bleak screen of sadness.”

Resource hints, which are optimizations of the browsers.

Translation improvements.

Improvements made to the customizer API.

Bootstrap/load updates.

Multi-site changes.

Links and Resources:

WP Pusher review on DeliciousBrains.com

Comparing WordPress REST API Performance to admin-ajax.php

Git Repositories

WP 4.6 Field Guide

WP Resource Hints

If you’re enjoying the show we sure would appreciate a Review in iTunes. Thanks!

Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Apply Filters, the podcast all about WordPress development. Now here’s your hosts, Pippin Williamson and Brad Touesnard.

BRAD: Welcome to Episode 66. This time Pippin and I will be talking about what we’ve been up to and dig deep into WordPress 4.6. But first–

PIPPIN: This episode is sponsored by WP Pusher. WP Pusher is a pain free deployment for your WordPress themes and plugins directly from GitHub or Bitbucket. With WP Pusher, you’ll never have to manually copy files over FTP again or manually create zip files. If you enable automatic updates, your client websites will automatically be updated every time you push a change to one of your GitHub or Bitbucket repositories.

Right now, for a limited period of time, as an Apply Filters listener, you can get 20% off your purchase of WP Pusher by using the discount code APPLYFILTERS. That’s all one word.

I’ve got to say, I think this is a really slick system. Not too long ago we turned on GitHub deployments for all of our plugins, so any time that we released a plugin update for EDD, Affiliate WP, Restrict Content Pro, et cetera, it gets deployed directly from our GitHub repositors. And I’ve got to say, it is probably one of the best timesavers we’ve implemented in a long time. Our releasing an update, no matter how big or small, went from a 20-minute process of carefully making sure that we build the zip file and all those things and upload it to 30 seconds. We simply tag, select, and we’re done. It’s awesome.

BRAD: Yeah. When you go from something like that taking 20 minutes to not at all, you really appreciate it.

PIPPIN: And you realize how much time, especially if you release a lot of updates, that those updates actually take. It was interesting. When we switched over to using get deployments, I originally had always thought about, like, you know that that’s cool, but not really a big deal. It’s just a couple minutes. It doesn’t matter.

Oh, my gosh! No. I was so wrong. The amount of just stress that it removed from not having to do all of that, and it suddenly made pushing the smallest point release pain free that you don’t even worry about it at all.

BRAD: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We actually reviewed WP Pusher on the Delicious Brains blog a few months ago. If anyone missed that, go