WordPress 3.2 and features you should know prior to installation on your system.

WordPress 3.2 final release to be has ready and made available for everyone is on the horizon. Currently, the WP3.2 candidate (RC1) release is available to download and install. If you intend to install this latest release, you should use a test server to assess all of your plugins and themes continue to work correctly.

I have tested some of my up to date plugins, such as the WordPress Shopping Cart, WordPress membership on this WordPress version and they are working fine.

Caveat; you must test your own installation and plugins as your system could have varying configurations that could affect your installation and or operation differently.

WordPress 3.2 version downloads a new copy of the WordPress core. It replaces the current core code entirely. This procedure can cause some non-routine issues and errors from failures.

It is best to consider WordPress 3.2 when the incremental upgrade is made available and there will be only the difference in the code that will be upgraded.

Are all your sites WordPress 3.2 ready?

Features different in WP 3.2;

1. Minimum MySQL5 and PHP5 Required.

Plugin and/or theme developer no longer have to create plugins and themes compatible with older versions of PHP or MySQL. Some hosting providers must upgrade to newer versions of PHP and MySQL as WP 3.2 will not work on outdated applications.

If your provider has not upgraded from PHP4 or MySQL4, you will need to contact them with the requirement. If your hosting provider does not upgrade, you will have to changing your hosting provider if you intend to use WordPress Version 3.2 or greater.

There are no excuses for a hosting provider to stay current.

To verify the version of PHP and MySQL your hosting company uses, review the information from the “phpinfo”. Additionally, you can install WordPress phpinfo plugin. It will give you the version installed on your providers’ servers.

2. WordPress Admin Interface has some changes.

The admin interface has a new and streamlined look to utilize a more efficient working dashboard.

3. No More Support for Internet Explorer 6

Programming certain effects to work on IE6 was a dreadful. Developers welcome this removal.

4. WordPress 3.2 has faster performance

WordPress gets a boost in version 3.2., as the large amount of a legacy older code removal from its WordPress core makes it lighter to perform executions faster. There is a faster page load time for WordPress site optimization speeds.

5. New Twenty Eleven WordPress Default Theme

Twenty Eleven is the default theme for WordPress 3.2. There are a lot of new improvements and features to create Posts, new header images, color schemes, layouts, and custom link colors. All those features, construct a great looking and quality performance blog to showcase all your posts, images and more.

Twenty Eleven Theme Preview

6. Incremental Upgrade of WordPress Core

Currently the upgrade to WordPress 3.2 version downloads a completely new copy of the WordPress core and totally replaces all of the current core code.

This method can cause some failure issues. In the near future WordPress 3.2 will provide the incremental upgrade which means only the difference in the code will be upgraded and not the core code.

If you set up your sites in WordPress, Joomla or use a WYSIWYG HTML editor, you probably will not be concerned with the developments of HTML 5. However, if you create your own sites’ web pages, you should become aware of HTML 5 and its future standardization.

Although HTML5 will not become standard at least until 2014, and Internet Explorer 8 does not fully support it, you are smarter if you consider using it sooner rather than later.

Browser developers are continuing their efforts to support HTML 5 and its newest specifications. You should know that HTML 5 maintains backwards compatibility if you should require more time to learn its specifications.

There are a lot of new attributes and tags built just for Web applications and support for HTML continues to grow. Staying alongside the coming changes will prepare you for when the new specification become widely available by many developers and programmers.

You can learn more on HTML 5 at About.com website link

“A new group called WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) devoted to evolving the Web. They started by working on a new specification of HTML – HTML 5.”

There are specifications and more information, “published by the WHATWG and developed in conjunction with the W3C. W3C defines the core HTML language and some the infrastructure on which it relies. The W3C also publishes parts of this specification. One of these parts is called “HTML5″.

Wikipedia quotes;

“HTML5 is a language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web, a core technology of the Internet. It is the latest revision of the HTML standard (originally created in 1990, most recently standardized as HTML4 in 1997, and currently remains under development. Its core aims have been to improve the language with support for the latest multimedia while keeping it easily readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devices (web browsers, parsers etc.). HTML5 is intended to subsume not only HTML4, but XHTML1 and DOM2HTML (particularly JavaScript) as well.”

“HTML5 is a response to the observation that the HTML and XHTML in common use on the World Wide Web is a mixture of features introduced by various specifications, along with those introduced by software products such as web browsers,”

“It is also an attempt to define a single markup language that can be written in either HTML or XHTML syntax.”

The importance of HTML 5 is its new specifications and the intent to make them standard for the World Wide Web and Internet technology:

“In particular, HTML5 adds many new syntactical features. These include the<video>, <audio>, and <canvas> elements, as well as the integration of SVG content. These features are designed to make it easy to include and handle multimedia and graphical content on the web without having to resort to proprietaryplugins and APIs. Other new elements, such as <section>, <article>,<header>, and <nav>, are designed to enrich the semantic content of documents. New attributes have been introduced for the same purpose, while some elements and attributes have been removed. Some elements, such as <a>,<cite> and <menu> have been changed, redefined or standardized. The APIsand DOM are no longer afterthoughts, but are fundamental parts of the HTML5 specification. HTML5 also defines in some detail the required processing for invalid documents, so that syntax errors will be treated uniformly by all conforming browsers and other user agents.^”

You can test your browser compatibility at http://www.html5test.com/

This site provides a suggestive HTML5 test score as it is only an indication of how your browser supports HTML5 standard specifications.

The site states it does not test all new specifications and features or functionality. Its testing is merely a guide for the future. This testing site is not affiliated with the W3C or the HTML5 working group.

W3C has provided a basic tutorial that may assist you with some of HTML 5 features and specifications. You can access this tutorial at http://www.w3schools.com/html5/default.asp

Their site provides excellent references and tags to see the specifications and features in examples.

Another very interesting website with information referencing HTML 5 is http://diveintohtml5.org/.

This site is created and written by Mark Pilgrim. He has defined and introduced information and HTML 5 knowledge that is easily understood.

It is a wonderful site to learn the features easily. He provides excellent illustrations and fantastic Table of Contents with links to the discussion or information. This is one site, you should not ignore.

He provides you with an Introduction chapter that details how easy it is on “Getting Started”.

You should definitely take some time to review this site and others, as HTML is here to stay.

Additionally, you can be sure W3C plans to accelerate and stay closely informed of HTML 5 progression and W3C’s position regarding the future of HTML 5.