Plans for WordPress 3.1 have been delayed as the team will focus on adjacent stuff

Jun 18, 2010 09:08 GMT  ·  By

The latest update to the world’s most popular blogging software has landed. WordPress 3.0 comes packed with new features and improvements and a lot of bugfixes. WordPress 3.0 is now available for download, but you can also upgrade through the dashboard if you already have a WordPress-powered blog. Some of the highlights include a new default theme, Twenty Ten, menu management, custom post types and the merger with WordPress MU (multi-user).

“Arm your vuvuzelas: WordPress 3.0, the thirteenth major release of WordPress and the culmination of half a year of work by 218 contributors, is now available for download. Major new features in this release include a sexy new default theme called Twenty Ten,” WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg announced.

“Theme developers have new APIs that allow them to easily implement custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus (no more file editing), post types, and taxonomies,” he added. “Developers and network admins will appreciate the long-awaited merge of MU and WordPress, creating the new multi-site functionality which makes it possible to run one blog or ten million from the same installation.”

WordPress 3.0 comes after several months in development and features some 1,217 bug fixes and updates. There are plenty of things to like, for the users who get a more polished Dashboard to the admins of major sites who will appreciate features like custom taxonomies and the multi-site functionality. WordPress has put together a video that goes through all of the updates.

Along with news of the release, Mullenweg also made an interesting announcement. It looks like the team is so pleased with WordPress 3.0, that it’s stopping here and calling it a day. Well, not really, but development for WP 3.1 won’t start right away because the team wants to focus on all of the things around the WordPress project, stuff like the showcase, Codex, forums, profiles, update and compatibility APIs, theme directory, plugin directory, mailing lists, core plugins, and wordcamp.org. In fact, anything that could use some work may get the attention it deserves. In about three months’ time, the team will get back to its main focus, so a WP 3.1 is definitely coming, just a little later than you might have expected.

WordPress 3.0 is available for download here.

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