It’s been just about a week since the final version of WordPress 3.0 was released to the world, bringing with it interface improvements, important core menu and post changes, and of course tons of bug fixes. Check out the announcement video to get a good overview of the new features of 3.0 along with the new default “Twenty Ten” theme:
I’ve now had a little bit of time to explore and play with the new features and some definitely stand out right away.
The Help tab on the top of every page includes vastly improved contextual help text throughout the system. Click the tab and get a great overview of the current page along with detailed description of options and links to more information and support forums. As someone who trains users to use WordPress, this will result in immediate cost savings for clients as they are able to retain information better and therefore need less follow up training.
The other two big new features that caught my eye combine to push WordPress 3.0 another step towards becoming a viable CMS in some situations. The new release includes custom menu functionality mixing posts, pages, categories, and other content into one menu and also gives developers the ability to easily create new custom post types. For most client projects that MarketNet takes on a more enterprise-level CMS will be the best solution, but these two new features are great additions. If you need to create a site or microsite that is primarily a blog with additional content such as employee profiles or e-mail newsletter archives, it just got a lot easier with WordPress 3.0.
Go checkout the the full changelog for 3.0 and of course download now to take advantage of all the new goodness.