If you missed my session at WordCampFayetteville over the new awesome features WordPress 3.0 will have, never fear. For one, the new release candidate (a stable version, but not quite ready for deployment) is out, and most of the bugs have been squashed. Not all, but that’s ok, I’ll talk about that in a bit.
So, what do you have to look forward to in the newest version of the most popular blog/CMS ever? Well…
1) A New Default Theme (Hallelujah!)
Gone are the nasty default blue chunky headers, and in its place is an elegant, streamlined photo header complete with drop down navigation and stylish polished features. There are a total of 6 sidebar areas (2 side, 4 footer) and loads of customization options (background, header, etc).
2) MultiUser (MultiSite)
Taking the golden child of automattic and the still-ok-but-not-one-you’d-take-home-to-your-mother stepchild and merging them together has been no easy task. But, the awesome people at Automattic have done just that – they’ve merged the codebase for MU and WordPress together to one. This means that now there’s a new “MultiSite” WordPress option when you’re installing your new WP installation, and you can convert existing installations over with a few simple edits to your wp-config.php file. There’s also a new role – the SuperAdmin, which will have admin access to all sites, and let the individual sites have their own separate admins.
3) The Menu System
In my opinion this is the “game changer” for the new WP release. This custom navigational menu system will allow you to create menus from pages, categories, and even external URL’s. Support for drop-downs can be styled in, as does the new theme, and allows for a super-easy way to customize WordPress like never before (without having to move around, code, or plugin your way to a nice navigation menu).
4) Custom Taxonomies and Post Types
They’ve “sort of” been around a bit, but not in an easy to use form. Now, they are. Custom taxonomies allow you to sort posts outside of the normal category/tag elements. Have a certain color you reference in every post? Create a color taxonomy and let your users search by color, and not category. Custom post types let you specify taxonomies inside of them, giving you even further separation (a custom post type would be similar to how Tumblr does things – photos, text, etc.)
5) Choosing Your Own Dang Username
Been missing, been needed, and it’s here – and it should help eliminate 33% of all of the security issues for brute-force attacks. And, please, don’t set your username as admin – do us all a favor.
6) More Features
Some minor features, such as author templates, a welcome guide, URL shortlinks, automatic inclusion of feeds with a function and others are also included.
What can I do to help?
If you’re willing to go ahead and run the RC (I did, and I have been since beta with 0 problems) then do so. That way, if you find a bug, you can submit a ticket for it and help out 1000s of other users who may have that same bug. If you’re a developer, submit your tickets to trac and watch the fun. Get involved with the mailing list, the IRC chat, or other places to help submit the tickets and get it fixed. We are what makes WordPress so awesome – the community.
So what about you? What are you most looking forward to about WordPress 3.0?
