WordPress 4.5 is expected to release in April 2016

WordPress, the world's most popular blogging software is supposed to give a great surprise this new year. According to, WordPress-ism a new version 4.5 of WordPress will be released in mid of April 2016. Mike Schroder, the WordPress core developer, will be the release lead along with Mel Choyce and Adam Silverstein.

Bloggers, Writers, and WordPress Developers must have already checked the latest security and maintenance version WordPress 4.4.1 which was announced officially via WordPress blog on 6th January 2016. Now let's wait for the next surprise!

You can experience the beta-1 version of WordPress 4.5 in February itself, and  three more beta versions are expected to be released before the final release candidate. 

Check out the chart showing the project schedule for WordPress version 4.5.

The few essential features that are expected shall be: 

1. Improvements with customizer that shall include customize pane resizer and customize device preview.
2. Improvements in post edit and publishing process.
3. Improvements in core compression of images.
4. HTTPs improvements to fix mixed content.

According to the project schedule for 4.5 version, new enhancements and feature requests will need to be added by the release of Beta 1 version. All the new features will be first worked on as plugins and will be decided to merge in the core over the course of development.

The call for feature plugins is beginning early, this time, around and a Feature
Plugin chat is scheduled for Tuesday, January 12, 2016, 3:00 PM CST. The main
purpose of the early chat is for plugins that believe they are ready for merge, and to start up new ones for future releases. Those who have ideas and plugins to put forward will have an opportunity to get feedback from other contributors.

Additionally, some new features, which are currently used as Plugins are: 

- Two-Factor Authentication for WordPress
- Background Image Cropper– It will enable cropping of background images in the Customizer, similar to the header images.
 - Shiny Updates – It removes the ugly bits of updating plugins and themes.
- WP Toolbar Experiments– some potential UX changes to the WordPress toolbar.
- WordPress REST API (Version 2)

Now let's see what how will the team maintain momentum and how 4.5 version will be executed according to the project scheduled.