WordPress has recently released its 13th major update since it was first developed, and this is a significant. I’ve been using WordPress for 5 years now, and It’s definitely the best open-source blogging platform in the world. You cannot find a better blogging platform with more plugins, free themes, and premium themes than WordPress. It’s now evolved into more of a comprehensive content management system. Here’s a video put together by WordPress to highlight some of the highlights of the 3.0 release:
Key New Features:
- WordPress and WordPress MU have merged, allowing the management of multiple sites (called Multisite) from one WordPress installation. I’ve got to look more into this. I am not sure how it will work, but this could really help someone like me who manages about 5 different WordPress sites.
- New default theme “Twenty Ten” takes full advantage of the current features of WordPress. Thank god, they’ve finally retired the default “Kubrick” theme.
- Bulk updating of themes with an automatic maintenance mode during the process and bulk plugin-in upgrading. I hated going through plug-ins individually and updating them. This is a nice feature that was long overdue.
- New custom menu management feature, allows creation of custom menus combining posts, pages, categories, tags, and links for use in theme menus or widgets.
So if you’re wondering if you should upgrade to version 3.0, my opinion is “yes”. I know that the new installs can be buggy sometimes, but since this is such a big roll-out, I think it will be generally bug-free. Of course, there always seem to be conflicts with third-party plug-ins, so make sure you back up your database and upgrade your plug-ins before you make the new install. You can either do the automatic upgrade in your WordPress install’s dashboard or click here to download it.
