14 DAY TRIAL // A couple of months after the first release candidate came out, WordPress 3.1 is now finally available. The first stable release in a quite a few months, WordPress 3.1 comes with several enhancements for bloggers and developers alike. There's a new system for linking to your own posts, an admin bar similar to the one on WordPress.com and other enhancements and tweaks.
"The long-awaited fourteenth release of WordPress is now available. WordPress 3.1 'Django' is named in honor of the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt," WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg announced.
"Version 3.1 is available for download, or you can update from within your dashboard," he said.
If you often link back to past posts, to provide context or just to highlight something interesting you wrote about, there is now an easy way of searching, finding and adding links to those posts.
A version of the admin bar that shows up on WordPress.com if you're logged in, enabling you quick access to the Dashboard for example, is now available for stand-alone blogs using the WordPress platform as well.
Another welcomed improvement is to the writing interface. Panels that are rarely used are now hidden by default to provide a cleaner interface.
This makes it easier to find the stuff you actually need and also easier for new bloggers to pick up. If you like the old version better though, you can enable all the panels right back.
"There’s a bucket of candy for developers as well, including our new Post Formats support which makes it easy for themes to create portable tumblelogs with different styling for different types of posts, new CMS capabilities like archive pages for custom content types, a new Network Admin, an overhaul of the import and export system, and the ability to perform advanced taxonomy and custom fields queries," Mullenweg also explained.
WordPress 3.1 is available for download here.