WordPress 3.0, the latest major release of WordPress is now available for download or upgrade, after more that a half a year of work done by 218 contributors.
Just watch the video below to learn more on this major release. (HD recomended)
Major WordPress 3.0 Features
Well, there are 1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements, so here are listed only the most important ones:
- WordPress and WordPress MU have merged. This cool feature is allowing the management of multiple sites (called Multisite) from one WordPress installation (e.g. think of WordPress.com)
- WordPress 3 comes packed with a new, very cool default theme called Twenty Ten that takes full advantage of the new features.
- Custom menu management options, allows you to create custom menus combining posts, pages, categories, tags, and links for use in theme menus or widgets.
- New APIs that allows implementation of custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks etc.
- Help tab offers contextual help and can be accessed from every screen in the WordPress back-end.
- Ability to set a custom admin username and password during installation.
- Now you can also update themes automatically, similar to plugin update.
- Support for shortlinks.
- Custom post types and custom taxonomies were improved, including hierarchical (category-style) support.
- The admin (back-end) color scheme is lighter now to increase accessibility and put the focus on your content.
You can see all the features on WordPress 3.0 Codex page.
(Click the screenshot to preview Twenty Ten Theme)
What helds the future?
The guys at Automattic will take a release cycle (3 months) off to focus on all of the things around WordPress, so WordPress 3.1 will be released in about 6 month. So over the next three months they’re going to focused on things like WordPress experience, showcases, the WordPress Codex, forums, profiles, theme directory, plugin directory, mailing lists, core plugins, WordCamp etc. But let’s hope for at least a 3.0.1 release with eventual security bug fixes ;)
Bonus
Check out Matt Mullenweg speech at WordCamp 2010 San Francisco, it’s jam-packed with information on the growth of WordPress, 3.0, what it’s planned for the future and the philosophy of WordPress.
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