WordPress 3.0, the thirteenth major release of WordPress and the culmination of half a year of work by 218 contributors which includes 1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements, is now available for download. Major new features in this release include a sexy new default theme called Twenty Ten. Theme developers have new APIs that allow them to easily implement custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus (no more file editing), post types, and taxonomies. Some of our favorite features include: Twenty Ten Theme, Advanced Menus, Custom Post Types, and ability to upgrade multiple plugins from the plugins page.
This Is Couple “New Feature In WordPress 3.0”
-New default theme “Twenty Ten” takes full advantage of the current features of WordPress. This theme will include Custom header, Custom Background, Clean Design, Multiple Widget Areas, Cascading Menus and a lot more.
-Merge WordPress and WordPress MU, allowing the management of multiple sites from one WordPress installation. In the upcoming release, WordPress MU will be merged into the WordPress Core. So, from now on, you will be able to run more than one site/blog from a single installation of WordPress.
-Ability to set the admin username and password during installation.
-Bulk updating of themes with an automatic maintenance mode during the process.
-Improved Custom Post Types and Custom Taxonomies including hierarchical (category-style) support. (Try the Custom Post Type UI or GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools plugins to see the possibilities.). This feature will give you power to create content of any type that you want. For example, you can have Portfolio listings, Products, Catalogs, Library etc. This feature is not going to replace categories or Tags. You will still be able to use categories. Custom Post Types will allow a different way of sorting/displaying your content.
-Shortlink support, generate short link (wp.me) for posts. Could be supported by plugin or theme.
There is some good news for theme developers too with WordPress 3.0, it now includes new APIs to easily implement backgrounds, menus, headers and more. So developers can make use of those APIs instead of having to edit the themes over and over again.
What’s next for WordPress? Usually they follow a release announcement by giving some ideas as to what is next for WordPress. However, instead of giving insight on WordPress 3.1 the team has announced they will be taking a release cycle off so that they can “focus on things around WordPress.” That’s things like the WordPress forums, Codex, theme and plugin directories, core plugins, etc.
