Every time WordPress is loaded, it goes through the bootstrap or loading process. In WordPress 4.6, there will be a few changes to the process focused on making pieces available earlier. Many of these changes will have no effect whatsoever on the vast majority of WordPress sites. However, if you are the type that maintains your own advanced-cache.php drop-in, host/run large profile sites, or work on tools that bootstrap WordPress is odd ways than this article is for you!
Load plugin.php earlier in wp-settings.php
plugin.php contains the functions such as add_filter() and add_action() that form the foundation of the WordPress plugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. system. The file (and thus those functions) are now being loaded earlier in wp-settings.php. This allows for some hooks In WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same. to be placed earlier, but also for advance-cache.php drop-ins to use the plugins API An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. rather than directly manipulating global variables. For more information, see #36819.
Reconcile wp-settings-cli.php with wp-settings.php
Any time WordPress made a change to wp-settings.php, it inevitably broke WP-CLI. In order to allow WP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/ to no longer need to maintain a custom fork, a handful of new hooks were added to the bootstrap process. These hooks happen before plugins load. They are designed more for non-web uses such as WP-CLI. For more information about these hooks, see #34936.
is_ssl() is now located in wp-includes/load.php
Many advanced-cache.php drop-ins duplicate is_ssl(). They will no longer need to do that as it will be available earlier in the bootstrap process. See #35844 for more info on this change.
ABSPATH can now be safely defined before WordPress is loaded
Defining ABSPATH in an auto_prepend_file will no longer cause notices to be generated. This can lead to less complexity for some WordPress specific hosts. See #26592 for more info on this change.
In conclusion
The bootstrap process provides the foundation for WordPress. It’s not pure, but dang zimit, it works. These changes are all expected to be backward compatible. Please test and report any regressions on Trac.
Thanks to the following people who contributed to the Bootstrap component this release. @jorbin @danielbachhuber @DrewAPicture @ocean90 @barry @SergeyBiryukov @johnjamesjacoby
#4-6, #bootstrap-load, #dev-notes
