The latest version of WordPress, WordPress 4.7, is now available for download or automatic update through your dashboard. With the new year just around the corner, WordPress has unveiled its new default theme for 2017.
Here’s a look at Twenty Seventeen in both mobile and desktop versions:
The theme can be personalized with widgets, navigation, social menus, a logo, custom colors, and other WordPress customization features you’ve come to expect.
### All New Customization Experience
Speaking of customization, the entire process of setting up a new theme has been revamped. Now, themes provide placeholder content that appears when you enter customization mode. This feature allows site owners to arrange homepage content in various ways without making any permanent changes to the site.
When in customization mode, editing shortcuts will appear on the left-hand side, indicating what’s available for quick editing. Click on one of the shortcuts to start editing immediately. Here’s an example, noting the blue circular icons:
### Video Headers
WordPress 4.7 now supports videos as header media instead of the traditional header image. This can be done by uploading your own video in MP4 format or providing the link to a YouTube video.
### Smart Menu Building
You might have an idea for site layout before having actual content. Now, when creating navigation menus in WordPress, you can create new pages on the fly. When you publish your changes, the new pages will be ready in the backend for adding content.
### Custom CSS
Easily add custom CSS to your site and get a live preview of changes before going live. This is much more efficient than the older method, which involved refreshing the page multiple times.
### More Back End Tweaks
Additional backend tweaks include the addition of thumbnail previews for PDFs, so now PDFs will appear just like images and videos in the media library.
There’s also the ability to add new languages to the admin area of a site. This is especially useful if a diverse team manages a website and prefers different languages than the one the site is written in.
For more technical details behind the WordPress 4.7 update, refer to the company’s official announcement.
