It’s been about a week now since the 4.0 update for WordPress codenamed “Benny” was released. Overall, 4.0 makes the step from draft to publishing a much more seamless experience and I love it.

The new update includes a lot of bug fixes and security updates as well as lots of nice nifty new features that WordPress enthusiasts will love. Video embeds are so much easier now. All you have to do is paste in the URL directly from your web browser into your blog post; no more looking for the video embed codes. In addition, WordPress 4.0 supports more sites not just YouTube Sites like WordPress.tv, Ted.com, Vimeo.com, Spotify.com and a ton of other media sites are all supported with this new feature. Furthermore, video and audio files are playable right within the editor.

Plugins are a lot easier to find with the new interface as well. Instead of an all text interface, the plugin view now sports thumbnail pictures of all the plugins plus a whole lot more detailed information that you will find useful. Even currently installed apps show more detail than they ever did before. Without even opening the page, you can more easily see how popular a plugin is as well as when it was updated and even if its compatible or not with your current version of WordPress. Clicking the “More details” link opens up a pop-up window giving you a more detailed description of the plugin. Prior to this you had to go directly to the WordPress.org page for the plugin in another browser window or tab. Certainly the new plugin view makes this makes plugin searches and selection a whole lot easier.

Editing and viewing your posts is a lot more fluid as well. With 4.0 you get a better picture of what your finished masterpiece will look like on your blog page. The new media library, sports an interface with infinite scrolling of your uploaded media. I find this is a great tool to find any broken media as I do occasionally find. Being able to scroll my media lets me find things more easily. The editing window fits your content as you write and keeps the formatting toolbar in view even as you scroll your post, kind of the same way you might freeze panes in Microsoft Excel.

Ultimately, I think the 4.0 update makes the WordPress interface more fun!