I am really excited about WordPress 3.0. The good news is WordPress 3.0 has released this month on 17th June 2010. We at DiGiTSS has been using WordPress since more than 2 years now on our multiple domains like Blogs@DiGiTSS and Life@DiGiTSS. It has always been fun working with WordPress. Updates are always as easy as piece of cake; previously with Auto-Update plugin and later since 2.7 I guess auto-upgrade has been integral part of WordPress. WordPress has always evolved in it's features and functionality.
Since I came to know that WordPress3.0 is under the hood and being backed I can't stop myself from downloading a copy and install it on my local system.
Wordpress 3.0 with new default theme
It comes with new defaulet packed theme "Twentyten".
Here is the updated information from WordPress 3.0 release post:
- WordPress and WordPress MU have merged, allowing the management of multiple sites (called Multisite) from one WordPress installation.
- New default theme "Twenty Ten" takes full advantage of the current features of WordPress.
- New custom menu management feature, allows creation of custom menus combining posts, pages, categories, tags, and links for use in theme menus or widgets.
- Custom header and background APIs.
- Contextual help text accessed under the Help tab of every screen in the WordPress administration.
- Ability to set the admin username and password during installation.
- Bulk updating of themes with an automatic maintenance mode during the process.
- Support for shortlinks.
- 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.)
- A lighter admin color scheme to increase accessibility and put the focus more squarely on your content.
Now let's see What's new and exciting features WordPress3.0 has packed with it:
Custom Post Type:
Previous version of WordPress allowed us to define our contents in Posts and Pages and now we can categorize further our Posts into different categories with the help of Custom Post Types. Read here how to create Custom Post Types or download WordPress Plugin which provides UI to create/define Custom Posts.
Menu Management:
Menu Navigation allows us full control over site’s navigation menus. It has an easy to use drag and drop interface UI where you can place internal or external links.
So if a website has several static pages, plus a blog, featured video posts, and we also want to promote your social media presence. We can customize our main navigation to look something like this:
- HOME
- BLOG (links to the main blog page)
- VIDEOS (links to the video category, or post type)
- INFORMATIONAL PAGE
- INFORMATIONAL PAGE
- SUB PAGE
- TWITTER (links to Twitter profile)
- FACEBOOK (links to Facebook profile)
Changing the order, titles, and destination of these links is very easy with menu management in WordPress 3.0.
Custom Taxonomies:
This feature adds great value for those who user WordPress as CMS. Custom Taxonomies allows us to create additional pieces of meta information for posts. By default there are "Categories" and "Tags", now we can add additional types with the option of being hierarchical or not.
Multi-site (WordPress MU in the Core):
WordPress MU allows us to run multiple websites (with multiple domains) in versions prior to 3.x, but now we have WordPress MU at the core of WordPress 3.0. Which means they are merged together. Though it requires some code/configurations but this is great addition at the WordPress-3.0 core .
Custom Author Templates:
With WordPress 3.0 we can have personalized templates for authors. Meaning that we can create two or more template and can name them like "author-digitss.php" or "author-11.php". WordPress will call applicable template based on author username or id from the template hierarchy.
Shortlinks:
WordPress 3.0 provides "Get Shortlink" option by default, just below the post title textbox. Which will get us the short link for our post in following format http://blogs.digitss.com/?p=380, with the help of which we can avoid using 3rd party short-link utilities on websites like Twitter.
That's all for now from DiGiTSS, please let us know your experience with WordPress 3.0.!
References:
http://mashable.com/2010/05/10/new-features-wordpress-3/
http://www.blogohblog.com/whats-new-in-wordpress-3-0/
P.S: We have upgraded both our blogs Blogs@DiGiTSS and Life@DiGiTSS with WordPress 3.0 with ease and running smooth..!
