The beta is out now but they’re being careful because this one has quite a few major functionality changes. They say that it might be released as an upgrade this month (May 2010).

What’s new in WordPress 3.0?

  • Navigation Menu Builder – Right now the menu part of WP is rather rudimentary.  The new one will have a slick menu builder similar to Woo Themes, which will also allow you to add external links to your nav, or change up the order of pages and categories without developing a workaround to the system as it stands. Drag and Drop functionality also. (Note: Woo Themes agreed to release their code to be rolled into the core of WordPress and its style.)
  • Custom Post Types: Right now you can have pages and posts. In 3.0 you can have more “sections” such as a book section, movie section, etc. And you can have custom themes for each section.
  • Custom Taxonomies – This means that they are improving on the concept of tags in particular ways. Tags get all jumbled together all on one level.  Custom taxonomies are hierarchical and can bring up cross references of posts by type (nesting). An example: Movie reviews, cross referenced by title, actors, reviewers, genre, etc.
  • WordPress Multi Site (Previously WPMU) – If you want to have more than one site running on a single WordPress, this is key for you. It’s all in one package. You can set them up so that there are subdomains or sub directories of your site, or with a plugin you can have them on their own domain name. You can manage multiple sites from one admin panel.
  • New Default Theme – “2010″ This is really for developers to see how the new stuff works so they can incorporate everything in their custom theme designs. Not many people choose to use the default themes.
  • Custom Background and Header – Themes can, if the developers choose to, enable these.  WP 3.0 provides some header images but you can also upload your own and crop it within the system to fit. Backgrounds have the same capability.

Remember, if and when you upgrade to 3.0 when it’s released, deactivate your plugins first!

I’m excited about the upcoming release. I saw a new widget. You will now be able to drag and drop the navigation menu in a widget area so it shows up vertical instead of horizontal.

How do you feel about an upgrade of this magnitude… or upgrades in general?

Related posts:

  1. Are You Ready for WordPress 3.0?
  2. Rock Your WordPress Widget World
  3. WordPress 3.2 – What’s New? Plenty!
  4. WordPress Plugins, Apps and Resources