WordPress 4.3 Beta 1

Today WordPress announced the release of 4.3 Beta 1. One feature I’m pretty excited about, as most WordPress developers probably are, is the merging of the Menu Customizer plugin into core WordPress. This is a great boost to menu management, namely the ability to preview menu changes before publishing them. Hopefully adding this plugin to the core baseline will allow for future menu enhancements without needing specialized plugins.

One feature that is still missing that I’d love to see is the ability to disable menus on a per-page basis. A lot of times when I develop a new site and use a Coming Soon landing page, I don’t want the menu to display on that page. Currently the best solution I’ve found is to use some custom CSS to hide it the navigation area. This works well for some themes, but others decorate the menu area and make it difficult to completely hide it

As always, I never suggest my clients use beta software on their sites. WordPress has a solid track record of releasing major versions every 3 months and I will look to start upgrading client sites once the 4.3 becomes final.