Version 4.4 of WordPress, named “Clifford” in honor of jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown, is available for download or update in your WordPress dashboard. New features in 4.4 make your site more connected and responsive. Clifford also introduces a new default theme, Twenty Sixteen.

Introducing Twenty Sixteen

Our newest default theme, Twenty Sixteen, is a modern take on a classic blog design.

Twenty Sixteen was built to look great on any device. A fluid grid design, flexible header, fun color schemes, and more, will all make your content shine.

Responsive Images

WordPress now takes a smarter approach to displaying appropriate image sizes on any device, ensuring a perfect fit every time. You don’t need to do anything to your theme, it just works.

Embed Everything

Now you can embed your posts on other WordPress sites. Simply drop a post URL into the editor and see an instant embed preview, complete with the title, excerpt, and featured image if you’ve set one. We’ll even include your site icon and links for comments and sharing.

In addition to post embeds, WordPress 4.4 also adds support for five new oEmbed providers: Cloudup, Reddit Comments, ReverbNation, Speaker Deck, and VideoPress.

Under the Hood

REST API infrastructure

Infrastructure for the REST API has been integrated into core, marking a new era in developing with WordPress. The REST API gives developers an easy way to build and extend RESTful APIs on top of WordPress.

Infrastructure is the first part of a multi-stage rollout for the REST API. Inclusion of core endpoints is targeted for an upcoming release. To get a sneak peek of the core endpoints, and for more information on extending the REST API, check out the official WordPress REST API plugin.

Term meta

Terms now support metadata, just like posts. See add_term_meta() , get_term_meta() , and update_term_meta() for more information.

Comment query improvements

Comment queries now have cache handling to improve performance. New arguments in WP_Comment_Query make crafting robust comment queries simpler.

Term, comment, and network objects New WP_Term , WP_Comment , and WP_Network objects make interacting with terms, comments, and networks more predictable and intuitive in code.

The Team

This release was led by Scott Taylor, with the help of these fine individuals. There are 471 contributors with props in this release (by far the most ever!). Pull up some Clifford Brown on your music service of choice, and check out some of their profiles:

Special thanks go to Siobhan McKeown for producing the release video with Sara Rosso, and Cami Kaos for the voice-over.

Finally, thanks to all of the contributors who provided subtitles for the release video, which at last count had been translated into 23 languages!

If you want to follow along or help out, check out Make WordPress and our core development blog. Thanks for choosing WordPress. See you soon for version 4.5!

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