WordPress 3.0 New Features Examined

WordPress 3.0 is one of the most highly anticipated web application releases of 2010; A major version update to the most widely used blogging/cms software that brings with it 1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements to improve the blogging experience from both an admin and user perspective. We’re going to examine some of the most important changes which will benefit you, the WordPress blogger!

  1. New Default Theme – Twenty Ten

    2. Kubrick, the default WP theme for the last 5 years is finally being retired, gone are the days of the blue rounded blog header on a grey background – step in Twenty Ten – a modern theme that embraces clean lines, pushes the content more into the focal point and has a nice smooth new menu system that offers total flexibility. Speaking of flexibility, the theme offers liquid layouts, custom background and header images which can be easily set to be blog wide or per post, this rapid theming is a great improvement over Kubrick and makes it simple to put up a visually stunning blog in just 5 minutes.

  2. Custom Post Types

    3. Support for allowing people to define their own custom post types is a feature that many of us longed for, this allows much more flexibility than being limited to just posts and pages, and gives WordPress a platform to launch itself more credibly as a Content Manangement System instead of just a blog. Custom post types let you define for example Products as a type of post, so for a business you can populate these product posts with your range of products, these can then have custom templates designed for displaying these products and will be differentiated from standard blog posts that you may be writing.

  3. Bulk Plugin Upgrade

    4. One feature that will be a great timesaver for plugin heavy blogs is the bulk plugin upgrade. This does exactly what it says, you can upgrade all your plugins in just a single click, very convinient and just another way that WordPress is making blog maintainence simpler.

  4. WordPress + MU(Multi-User) Merged

    5. With this merge there is no longer a need for a seperate WordPress MU product, straight out of the box (or .zip?) a WordPress installation can be used to power multiple blogs, hassle free. This is most useful for large sites using subdomains to split their content, take for instance a review site that offered reviews for unrelated products (e.g. clothing, music, restaurants) but would like to use the same review templates, plug-ins and features for all reviews, it would save a huge amount of admin being able to update all plugins, features and blog templates from a single installation.

These are the major new features, one enhancement that is worth mentioning is the new user interface, this is even more user-friendly than before, it has been cleaned up so that it is very intuitive as an admin back-end and can be used straight off even by someone who has never blogged before. Almost every change to WordPress makes it a simpler, more efficient platform to admin letting users create, design, manage and style blogs quicker than ever before. WordPress 3.0 is available through Installatron for automatic install on NetHosted, you can get your blog started today!