WordPress has recently released version 4.0 named “Benny” in honor of the great jazz clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman. The new version of the popular publishing platform is now available for download on the wordpress site, or available for update in your WordPress dashboard. 4.0 brings you a smoother writing and media management experience.

Managing your media with style

Explore your uploads in a beautiful, endless grid. A new details preview makes viewing and editing any amount of media in sequence a snap.

Focussing on your content

Writing and editing is smoother and more immersive with an improved editor that expands to fit your content as you write, and keeps the formatting tools available at all times.

Finding the right plugins

There are more than 30,000 free and open source plugins in the WordPress plugin directory. WordPress 4.0 makes it easier to find the right one for your needs, with new metrics, improved search, and a more visual browsing experience.

Working with embeds has never been easier

Paste in a YouTube URL on a new line, and watch it magically become an embedded video. Now try it with a tweet. Oh yeah — embedding has become a visual experience. The editor shows a true preview of your embedded content, saving you time and giving you confidence.

The services supported by default are expended too, you can embed videos from CollegeHumor, playlists from YouTube, and talks from TED. Check out all of the embeds that WordPress supports.

Customizer API

Contexts, panels, and a wider array of controls are now supported in the customizer.

Query Ordering

Developers have more flexibility creating ORDER BY clauses through WP_Query.

External Libraries

Updated libraries: TinyMCE 4.1.3, jQuery 1.11.1, MediaElement 2.15.

WordPress is Free and open source software, built by a distributed community of mostly volunteer developers from around the world. WordPress comes with some awesome, worldview-changing rights courtesy of its license, the GPL. You have the freedom to run the program, for any purpose. You have access to the source code, the freedom to study how the program works, and the freedom to change it to make it do what you wish. You have the freedom to redistribute copies of the original program so you can help your neighbor. You have the freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes.