New features in WordPress 3.0
WP Beginner digs into the new features coming in the big WordPress 3.0 release. Also recently, Jane Wells posted a report on the latest developments with the current cycle. Third, WP 3.0 is set to enter feature freeze mode on March 1.
What do these all mean? Now is the best time to get familiar with the new features. As we all know, we’ve got some big ones coming:
- WordPress and WordPress MU merging
- Custom post types
- Menu management
- New default theme, 2010
- Welcome guide upon installation
- Canonical plugins
Early look at the WordPress 3.0 Menu Management interface
Over at the WordPress Development Updates blog, there’s an alpha preview of the Menu Management user interface that will be included in WordPress 3.0. Here’s the video:
Here’s a quick preview of the new menu management admin page (still alpha stage).
It highlights the dropdown section, which is the only unfamiliar element. All the rest are borrowed from the widget management screen.
Feedback on the UI is very welcome, either here, or on the dedicated ticket: #11817.
As mentioned in the post by Scribu, the interface is similar to the Widgets page. You can select either a page or a category from its respective dropdown menus, and when clicked it gets sent to the active menu panel on the right. There you can reorder the items. You can also add specific links and the Home link.
This feature can’t come soon enough! People tend to “hack” together site navigation menus in WP themes and for ordinary users editing them is a pain. Making WordPress features more usable through new interfaces like this is always a good thing.
Got feedback or want to keep up with this upcoming WP feature? Bookmark this Trac page.
WordPress Foundation established
The WordPress Foundation has just been launched. It’s inspired by the likes of the Mozilla Foundation, and aims to preserve, protect, and educate with the WordPress platform and related projects.
The WordPress Foundation is a charitable organization founded by Matt Mullenweg to further the mission of the WordPress open source project: to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software.
Aside from this great milestone for WordPress and its community, it’s worth noting that the new site runs on a develoment version of WP 3.0 and the next default theme, 2010. Check it out!
WordPress Multi User becomes WordPress Multi Site
The road to the merger has begun. And the first step is a pretty major one: WordPress Multi User (WPMU) has now been renamed to WordPress Multi Site (WPMS). I mentioned in a previous post that the WPMU term “multi-user” in the context of a typical WordPress install could be confusing, so it’s great that they got this out of the way immediately. “Multi-site” is much better.
Another major change that’s been made: the old WPMU term “Site Admin” has also been renamed to “Super Admin”—again, to erase confusion between WordPress single-user and multi-site jargon.
These and other important topics were discussed in the January 7 WordPress Dev Chat on IRC, and WordPress Tavern has a fantastic report on it. Some tidbits:
- There is no ETA on WordPress 3.0 yet
- WordPress
MUMS 2.9.1 is just around the corner - Work on The Merge has begun
- Canonical plugins “need a community of developers like the core to survive”
- Priorities for WordPress 3.0 include: The Merge, menus, custom post types, the new default theme, core plugin integration; Media “will not happen” in said version
- WordPress.org will be redesigned starting “sometime in late February”
Exciting times for the future of WordPress, and it’s all happening this 2010!
Discuss features you’d like to see in WordPress 3.0
Even during Christmastime the WordPress team is hard at work planning for the next version of WordPress. Version 3.0 will definitely be a big release with the merging of WordPress MU into the core, but they’d also like to map out as early as now other features to be included.
Easy blog menu management, dynamic image resize/crop, media upload UI redesign (begun in 2.9 but postponed for implementation due to technical issues), photo albums, custom content type UI and API, supercharging queries (cross-taxonomies), categories/tags for pages, auto-taxonomy UI, custom fields UI (possibly to be registered by themes or plugins for something to be displayed), settings UI redesign, improve the upgrade process (inc. distros for specific use types), SVN awareness, canonical plugins and a UI for displaying them, plugin page redesign, themes UI redesign, comments UI touchup, decouple language updates and files, new default theme, choose your own start page, caps lock detection, accessibility admin theme, mobile admin theme, synching custom fields > taxonomies, exif refresh, role management simplification, credits page in app, default custom types (microblog, galleries, asides), admin bar, front end comment moderation, front end posting (a la P2), better importers, widget installer, importer installer, more inline documentation, built-in “Welcome to WordPress” guide for 1st time admin use/checklist (set settings, add profiles, set up comment options, dashboard modules, add widgets, pick a theme, etc) with ability to dismiss as you move through, better help tab, more template tags, better zone selector, new code editor, XSL for RSS feeds (pretty feeds), bulk user creation (lazy load importer?), below post widgets, image importing, HTML validation, customizable comment form, Twitter and Flickr importers, WordPress capitalization catcher, configurable QuickPress configurable (add categories), more dashboard modules, easy linking to internal content when writing new content in editor, audit of error messages and updating them to be clearer revisions for custom fields and taxonomies… the list is endless, really, because there are so many cool things we could do. But which ones *should* we do? And specifically, which should we do in 3.0? Discuss!
Whew, what a huge (and not so readable) list! The important thing is to figure out what should go into the core and what can be better served as a plugin. Discuss it in this thread. And if you’re interested in joining the weekly IRC chat, the topic for the next one will be the same. It’s great to see that no time is wasted looking ahead and to the next iteration of WordPress.
Discuss the future of the new Default WordPress theme
There’s been talk about changing the Default WordPress theme (called Kubrick, for those who aren’t aware) when WordPress 3.0 comes out, around the middle of 2010. It’s gotten a lot of people excited, but the details aren’t set in stone yet. As with most things in the WordPress development timeline, Jane Wells and the rest of the team are asking the community to sound off on what the next Default WordPress theme should be like.
Should it be a new framework? Should it be an updated Kubrick? Should it have two sidebars or three? Should it come with a boatload of customization options? Should it stay minimal? There are a lot of questions to ask and answer.
Already there are a lot of ideas in the forum thread, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to chime in. Eventually there probably will be more structure to the decision making process such as the community polls we had for various WP features, but this free-for-all is a great way to get started, to get all the ideas out there. Jump in, the water’s great!
WordPress MU merging with WordPress in version 3.0
Donncha O’Caoimh writes about what might be the last merging of code from WordPress (2.9 beta 1) to the WordPress MU (2.8.6) Trunk. He writes later on in a comment that WP MU will merge with WP in version 3.0:
It’s probably the last big merge because WP and MU will be merged in WordPress 3.0
He’s talked about it before but now another confirmation of the WP version to look forward to when this merge happens. Since we’re still waiting for version 2.9 to come out though, the date for the next release will take a while. In any case, a good heads-up for those running WP MU or planning to.
10 things coming in WordPress 2.9
We’ve talked about WordPress 2.9 quite a bit already, but Aaron Brazell of Technosailor has a comprehensive list of new features and things to expect when that upgrade notice arrives on your dashboard. He classifies each item according area: themes, plugins, users, and system.
Another important thing to note is that in WordPress 3.0, running PHP 5 will be a requirement. That’s not until a several months from now, but it’s good to be ready.
WordPress and WordPress MU to merge!
Update (06/03/09): Matt himself left this comment:
While WordPress.org-the-website will include more BuddyPress features, that was a separate announcement from the elimination of MU and bringing its code into core WP.
Update (06/02/09): Lorelle VanFossen has a different interpretation of the cryptic merger. It’s anybody’s guess at this point, it seems.
At WordCamp San Francisco, where Matt Mullenweg delivered his annual State of the Word keynote, he announced that WordPress and WordPress MU (multi-user) will be merging in the near future. Apparently he told users to “watch out for version 3.0″. There weren’t many details given during the event, which means we’re left to speculate on how this merger will actually happen.
Still, WordPress MU has been less accessible to the ordinary users compared to WordPress given its feature requirements. And BuddyPress, which runs on top of WordPress MU, is a very appealing CMS for those interested in building communities and social networks. So integrating multi-user features into the WordPress is great news.
