The thirteenth major release of WordPress that took half a year of work by 218 contributors is now available. WordPress 3.0 has been named “Thelonious” and comes packed with plenty of new features including the sexy new default theme, Twenty Ten.

Other features includes an easy implementation of backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus, post types and taxonomies. The guys at WordPress have gone one step further and made available new APIs to allow theme developers the ability to implement these new features into their themes.

As always, a word of warning – backup, backup, backup before you push that upgrade button. The database version is changing from 15274 (WP2.9.2) to 15260 in WP3.0 so when upgrading you will be prompted to upgrade your database – good luck! If you run into any problems I am here to help.

Feature Highlights…..

• WordPress and WordPress MU have merged, allowing the management of multiple sites (called Multisite) from one WordPress installation.
• New default theme “Twenty Ten” takes full advantage of the current features of WordPress.
• New custom menu management feature, allows creation of custom menus combining posts, pages, categories, tags, and links for use in theme menus or widgets.
• Custom header and background APIs.
• Contextual help text accessed under the Help tab of every screen in the WordPress administration.
• Ability to set the admin username and password during installation.
• Bulk updating of themes with an automatic maintenance mode during the process.
• Support for shortlinks.
• Improved Custom post types and custom taxonomies including hierarchical (category-style) support. (Try the Custom Post Type UI or GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools plugins to see the possibilities.)
• A lighter admin color scheme to increase accessibility and put the focus more squarely on your content.

If you have some PHP/HTML coding knowledge, you can now call the login for anywhere on your blog by inserting the code <?php wp_login_form(); ?> where you want the form to appear. And with the merging of stand alone WP with WPMU you the end user now has the ability to have a Multisite setup. Once again, this require some coding knowledge as you will be required to add a line of code to the wp-config.php file to enable the multisite menu on the dashboard. Personally I would like to see a check box placed on the install form/dashboard to allow for enabling of multisites, but I do understand the current procedure since we are working with the config file.

All in all WP3.0 promises to deliver a feature loaded easy use piece of software and there is room for more to come – in the coming few months we are going to see a lot of plugins springing up to take advantage of the new release, lets hope that the vast majority are indeed useful.

Have you upgraded yet? If so please share your views and experience of the new WP3.0! Any issues with upgrading? Leave a comment or raise a topic in the forum and lets start a discusion and find solutions.