There are some great new features coming, including custom post types, a new default theme, and a menu manager. Read on to find out what to expect in version three!
1. Choose your Username and Password
You’ll encounter new features as soon as you start! Currently, when you first install WordPress, you are assigned a default username of admin, and a randomly generated password. No more – now WordPress lets you choose a username and password when installing.
2.New Default Theme!
WordPress 3.0 comes with a new default theme, called TwentyTen (2010, like the current year – go figure). Apparently, the WP team has an aim to release a new default theme every year! TwentyTen is a nice theme. The main typeface used is Georgia; it has two columns, with a widgetized sidebar and footer – and it even has some nice dropdown menus built in! Needless to say, custom header and background (new feature) functions are also available.
3.Custom Background Support
add_custom_background();
4. Multi-site Capabilities and WPMU Codebase Merge
WordPress and WPMU (WordPress MultiUser) are merging their codebases. This makes it much easier to handle large WordPress networks. See the Multi-Site settings under Settings>Network.
5. Custom Post Types
A great new feature! Before, all you could add from the WordPress admin section was new posts and pages. Now, you can create new post types to show up. Add the following code to create a new post type called ‘Portfolio’:
function post_type_portfolio() {
register_post_type( ‘Portfolio’,
array( ‘label’ => __(‘Portfolio’), ‘public’ => true, ‘show_ui’ => true ) );
register_taxonomy_for_object_type(‘post_tag’, ‘Portfolio’);
}
add_action(‘init’, ‘post_type_portfolio’);
6. Custom Taxonomies
Custom taxonomies have been made easier to use, as well as hierarchical – which means you could have a taxonomy called ‘Rating’, with sub-taxonomies like PG-13, R , U etc.
7. Easy Menu Management
This is my favorite new feature in WordPress 3.0 – a menu manager. It’s developed by WooThemes’ WooNav, and I absolutely love it. You can create multiple menus, categories, and even custom external or internal links! The menu feature even comes with a default widget to add to any widget ready area – awesome, isn’t it?
8. A Bunch of Other Smaller Features
Welcome guide: WordPress 3.0 will be including a guide with it which helps users to know the system better and teach them basic usage.
- Specific author templates: We already have hierarchy for categories and tags like category-{slug}.phpfollowed by category-{id}.php in the Template Hierarchy, but now you can do the same for authors. So, if the author name was ‘Rohan’ with id 1, WordPress would first look for author-rohan.php, thenauthor-1.php before author.php in the template files for display.
- Media UI redeign: Started, but not implemented in WordPress 2.9, the Media tab in the admin panel may get a UI redesign
