Wordpress 3.0 is all set release on May 1st 2010 with lots of breathtaking improvements and exciting new features which will surely bring this platform one step ahead. So, what actually we can expect to bundle up with this release? Here is a walk through!
Yeah Wordpress MU and Wordpress.org are all set to tie up with each other. Almost over a year of hard work the floks at Automattic are all set to merge their standalone blogging platform Wordpress.org with multi user platform Wordpress MU. This feature will come handy specially for large blog networks.
It is an add-on for the existing users which means it won’t hurt them if they don’t want to use it. The upgrade process will be smooth and won’t cause any difficulties to existing users. Most importantly it will be a win win situation for Wordpress MU users as they can now easily use Wordpress.org plugins out of the box needless to modify.
Earlier when you do new installation Wordpress automatically choose ‘admin‘ as default username and generate a random password, however in 3.0 it allows you to choose custom username and password while installing Wordpress.
It’s time to bid adieu to Kubrik theme which comes up default with Wordpress. Wordpress 3 has been packaged with a new theme called “Twenty Ten”. This new theme is really outstanding and minimalist at the same time. Twenty Ten has some outstanding features such as Custom Background, Custom Header, Simple and Clean Look, Multi Widget Areas Supported, Two-Columns and Drop Down Menu.
Wordpress 3.0 now adds support for custom background for themes. To enable custom background functionality to your theme you just have to add following code in your theme’s functions.php file:
add_custom_background();
And it will enable “Background” option in Wordpress admin “Appearance” tab.
This is another feature which will boost up Wordpress as a CMS. This feature is due since Wordpress 2.9 it allows you create different post types such as Portfolio, Products, Reviews etc. all you have to do is to just add following code in your functions.php file:
function post_type_portfolio() {
register_post_type( 'Portfolio',
array( 'label' => __('Portfolio'), 'public' => true, 'show_ui' => true ) );
register_taxonomy_for_object_type('post_tag', 'Portfolio');
}
Checkout more complex and advance use of Post Type feature here
This feature is inspired by WooTheme’s WooNav which allows you to create different menu items containing Categories, Pages, External or Internal Link. It also support a widget so that you can place these menus in your sidebar as widget.
Earlier we had category specific templates which we use to develop category based templates using category-slug.php now Wordpress 3 brings the same functionality for author based templates now you can create author based template files such as ‘author-chef.php‘.
Thanks to Jane Walls for confirming about unavailability of these features.
Canonical Plugins .. ? .. Canonical – the Ubuntu community .. 
..
Not the Ubuntu community but a community consist on multi developers rather than one more details here
Really nice and useful features. Wordpress will be finally a much more robust CMS and so there will be much more possibilities to use it for more complicated templates without need to extend it.
This is exciting. Most of my clients are running WP. I just downloaded the latest 3.0 build and will give it a try on my test domain.
Word Press is an amazingly dynamic and evolving CMS. Looking forward to more updates.
Here’s a detailed article about Custom Post Types in WordPress 3.0 
You might want to add that to the list
Beautifull. I love wordpress
Roll on the 1st May, some of these changes look great. I will personally be very glad to see the back of the Kubrik theme, it was pretty boring.
I’m interested in learning more about the custom post types!
It all sounds great doesn’t it! On the Custom Posts bit, I found this Custom Post Type UI Plugin a couple of days ago, this looks a fantastic way to add the Custom Post types without the need to code. Have a look at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/
Hi. I think you might have been working from some semi-outdated information. The welcome guide was an idea proposed for 3.0, but was not accepted as part of the scope. That will hopefully appear in a future version. As well, core plugins (no longer referred to as canonical) are not releasing with 3.0; we simply began working on a pilot program at the same time. The menus screen will also be changing–it appears your screenshot is from a pre-beta alpha version, as our beta release has messaging to this effect on the screen. You can also edit active plugins. The disappearance of the Edit link was temporary and was fixed before we released the beta with this changeset: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/13874
Thanks Jane for correcting and confirming us about the upcoming release. It’s good to see some one from the official camp.
Fantastic everything but I wonder if in the future bear HTML5
[...] could expect in the upcoming release? WPCookies has answered this question with a great post on “Wordpress 3.0 Features Walk Through” which gives a brief guide on the upcoming features of Wordpress [...]
[...] Wordpress 3.0 Features Walk Through [...]
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