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For the second time in 2016 WordPress released a major update bringing lots of improvements in this new version.

As usual, the new WordPress core update got its name “Pepper” in honor of jazz baritone saxophonist Park Frederick “Pepper” Adams III.

In the video bellow is a very clean and nice presentation of all the major Improvements made.

Credits to Jerry Bates for producing the release video and Hugo Baeta for providing marketing graphics.

4.6 is a major update which you will have to manually update (unless you are on a managed WordPress hosting service). In case you get some errors after updating it here are some things to do in order to fix issues after a WordPress core update.

Before beginning to update to the new version remember to backup your website. Bellow will be a short description of the things that improved in case you prefer to read rather than watching the video.

Streamlined Updates

With this new WordPress core update, it is much faster to install and update your Plugins & Themes without leaving the page.

Native Fonts

The WordPress dashboard now takes advantage of the fonts you already have, making it load faster and letting you feel more at home on whatever device you use.

Editor Improvements

Inline Link Checker

Ever accidentally made a link to https://wordpress.org/example.org? Now WordPress automatically checks to make sure you didn’t.

Content Recovery

As you type, WordPress saves your content to the browser. Recovering saved content is even easier with WordPress 4.6.

Under The Hood

There are also a lot of improvements for developers. Let get to know those under the hood improvements.

Resource Hints

Resource hints help browsers decide which resources to fetch and preprocess. The 4.6 version adds them automatically for your styles and scripts making your site even faster. This speed integration was first implemented into the core by @swissspidy, my regards to him!

Robust Requests

The HTTP API now leverages the Requests library, improving HTTP standard support and adding case-insensitive headers, parallel HTTP requests, and support for Internationalized Domain Names.

WP_Term_Query and WP_Post_Type

A new WP_Term_Query class adds flexibility to query term information while a new WP_Post_Type object makes interacting with post types more predictable.

Meta Registration API

The Meta Registration API has been expanded to support types, descriptions, and REST API visibility.

Translations On Demand

WordPress will install and use the newest language packs for your plugins and themes as soon as they’re available from WordPress.org’s community of translators.

JavaScript Library Updates

Masonry 3.3.2, imagesLoaded 3.2.0, MediaElement.js 2.22.0, TinyMCE 4.4.1, and Backbone.js 1.3.3 are bundled.

Customizer APIs for Setting Validation and Notifications

Settings now have an API for enforcing validation constraints. Likewise, customizer controls now support notifications, which are used to display validation errors instead of failing silently.

Multisite, now faster than ever

Cached and comprehensive site queries improve your network admin experience. The addition of WP_Site_Query and WP_Network_Query help craft advanced queries with less effort.
I hope the article helped you understand what’s new in the WordPress core update and how the improvements can make you experience with WordPress even better. If you encounter any issue while updating to the new core, remember, we are always here to help.