WordPress Devs recently had a meeting about the future and plans for the upcoming WordPress 3.1. Goals for WordPress 3.1 include: “to have a very short dev cycle, a decent amount of testing time, and a release in mid-December. Low on new features, heavy on ui and code cleanup, and avoidance of schema changes. Save the big ideas for 3.2 where we’ll have the liberty to implement those ideas in PHP5. No schema changes and no big new APIs.”
So what new features to expect in WordPress 3.1?
- Advanced Taxonomy Queries
- Internal Linking – Linking to another post/page/category from the WYSWIG without having to grab the URL from the public site. This is one hell of a feature and would save lot of time.
- Ajaxified Admin Screen – Somehow I don’t think its required. Would add to the bloat if you ask me. Well will have to see how it gets implemented.
- WordPress.com Style Admin Bar – Another awesome thing coming. Would save lots of time again to reach a particular admin page especially from the frontend.
- Separate Network Dashboard – I think this is totally justifiable. Having settings for both under common dashboard can make things a bit confusing.
- New UI For Browsing/Installing Themes
- Post Templates/Post Styles – Another must have considering how fast WordPress is becoming more of CMS oriented rather than being a blog only software.
- QuickPress Template Tag – Would allow posting from the frontend. Awesome. :D
Apart from these new features there would be lots of bug fixes as usual, some bug fixes in Custom Post Types implementation, UX/UI cleanups and possibly few cleanups in Role/Capabilities.
A schedule to WordPress 3.1 has also been released according to which WordPress 3.1 final should be out by December 15 max and expect beta to start from November 15. Feature Freeze will be implemented by October 15.
A Special Note: WordPress 3.1 would be the last version to support PHP 4. WordPress 3.2 would support PHP 5.2 and above only. Be ready for the switch. You can use Health Check Plugin on your blogs to test whether your blog is 3.2 ready or not.
So What do you think about the new features for WordPress 3.1? Which ones excite you the most?
October 28, 2010 at 8:02 pm
What do you mean with “Linking to another post/page/category from the WYSWIG without having to grab the URL from the public site” for internal linking? it is special for wp 3.1 or you mean only for wp not for other cms?
any way thanks for advice. I still newbie.
October 4, 2010 at 3:03 pm
WordPress is only upgrading graphical subject. I using WP but i won’t see development
September 28, 2010 at 11:05 am
as like azis, i am still using wordpress 2.9 due to some reasons such as first i hear a lot wordpress users said wordpress series 3 isn’t better than wp 2.9, what do you think ????
Second, i have installed some wp plugins appropriate with wp 2.9 and then some plugins i am using can’t be fit with wp series 3, hence i am afraid that when i am going to update my wordpress, all plugins will be error….
Last, what about you Navjot, what is your favorite wp series, 2.9 or 3-up ?????
September 28, 2010 at 12:06 pm
3.x is definitely much better than 2.9. I am not saying just out of compulsion but because of the feature upgrades it has got. Custom Post Types feature in WordPress 3.0 really lets WordPress become more of a CMS. The improvements in templates and new tags introduced make the job of writing and managing templates so easy. (Modular templates – check my post http://nspeaks.com/1014/template-changestags-for-wordpress-3-0/ for it )
All Plugins in error? Well there can be few plugins which might break in 3.0. Have you tried looking for alternatives to them. I am sure..there might be some alternatives which might work better than the ones you are using. When I upgraded, I had not much of a problem finding the alternatives and getting all my plugins ready for the upgrade.
I would definitely recommend you to switch to 3.0.1 now. And do remember, that you get better security with each upgrade.
September 26, 2010 at 12:50 pm
I still use worpress version 3.0.1. Is there much difference with the version I use? Should I upgrade my wordpress? please advice
September 26, 2010 at 4:55 pm
You are already using the latest version of WordPress. WordPress 3.1 has not been released yet. The post was about what can we expect from 3.1 when it releases in December.
September 5, 2010 at 10:40 pm
I still use Wp 2.9… some of blogger includding me… still confuse about duplicate content in WP blog… Peace :)
September 6, 2010 at 12:44 am
I understand there can be duplicate content issues if you are using default settings of WordPress. But it can be solved completely. Search Google for it. Lots of excellent tutorials have been posted to tackle duplicate content issues on WordPress.