WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems in the world, if not the most popular, with tens of thousands of devout users and hundreds of new people joining the community each month. If you have been looking for a simple solution to manage your web site (be it small or very complex) then you should consider WordPress 3.0.
There has been a lot of mystery surrounding this new edition of WordPress, with many people wondering exactly what new features will be introduced.
The Worldpress 3 Feature List
1. WordPress.org and WordPress MU Wedding
Yeah WordPress MU and WordPress.org are all set to tie up with each other. Almost over a year of hard work the floks at Automattic are all set to merge their standalone blogging platform WordPress.org with multi user platform WordPress MU. This feature will come handy specially for large blog networks.
It is an add-on for the existing users which means it won’t hurt them if they don’t want to use it. The upgrade process will be smooth and won’t cause any difficulties to existing users. Most importantly it will be a win win situation for WordPress MU users as they can now easily use WordPress.org plugins out of the box needless to modify.
2. Choose Username and Password while Installing
Earlier when you do new installation WordPress automatically choose ‘admin‘ as default username and generate a random password, however in 3.0 it allows you to choose custom username and password while installing WordPress.
3. New Default Theme
It’s time to bid adieu to Kubrik theme which comes up default with WordPress. WordPress 3 has been packaged with a new theme called “Twenty Ten”. This new theme is really outstanding and minimalist at the same time. Twenty Ten has some outstanding features such as Custom Background, Custom Header, Simple and Clean Look, Multi Widget Areas Supported, Two-Columns and Drop Down Menu.
4. Custom Background
WordPress 3.0 now adds support for custom background for themes. To enable custom background functionality to your theme you just have to add following code in your theme’s functions.php file:
And it will enable “Background” option in WordPress admin “Appearance” tab.
5. Custom Post Types
This is another feature which will boost up WordPress as a CMS. This feature is due since WordPress 2.9 it allows you create different post types such as Portfolio, Products, Reviews etc. all you have to do is to just add following code in your functions.php file:
6. Navigation Menu
This feature is inspired by WooTheme’s WooNav which allows you to create different menu items containing Categories, Pages, External or Internal Link. It also support a widget so that you can place these menus in your sidebar as widget.
7. Author Templates
Earlier we had category specific templates which we use to develop category based templates using category-slug.php now WordPress 3 brings the same functionality for author based templates now you can create author based template files such as ‘author-chef.php‘.
Future of WordPress
The graphical interface of WordPress is expected to stay relatively similar, with the only major difference being the incredibly improved functionality. The WordPress development team at WordPress.org is doing everything within their power to keep WordPress the most popular CMS available by extending its capabilities even more through the development of the WordPress API, plugins, Codex, and theme directories. The goal is to make the software more compatible and easier to deal with for both the developer and the end user. In basic terms, you should expect the most powerful content management system available for free, with a seemingly unlimited library of plugins, and an exponential growth in interest amongst independent plugin developers.
Although the major differences between previous versions of WordPress and WordPress 3.0 are not readily apparent, they will become more pronounced as the year passes and more plugins are introduced with the new WordPress framework. With each upgrade WordPress users have come to expect more functionality and greater capabilities, and WordPress 3.0 has lived p to these expectations and more by reshaping the way the program works as a comprehensive and robust content management system.
WordPress is now not just a blogging software. You can use it to build any kind of website and it is no doubt very powerful yet the easiest one to use amongst all CMS.