WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” Is Now Available

WordPress 3.0, codenamed Thelonious, has just been released by WordPress and is the thirteenth major release of WordPress. WordPress 3.0 Beta releases have been available for the last few months, but now the final version is released officially.

Among the features listed in the official blog post: a new default theme called Twenty Ten, new lighter interface, and 1,217 bug fixes. Theming has gotten a bit of attention, with APIs that make it easier for theme designers to allow for customized menus, post types, headings, backgrounds, and more.

Another big change is the fusing of WordPress Multi User (MU) and the core WordPress install. WordPress MU is a fork of WordPress that allows for one install to administer multiple (even millions) of blogs, but until now it was separate from ‘regular’ WordPress. Now you’ll get the functionality of both from the same install.

Normally this is where I’d say we’re about to start work on 3.1, but we’re actually not. We’re going to take a release cycle off to focus on all of the things around WordPress. The growth of the community has been breathtaking, including over 10.3 million downloads of version 2.9, but so much of our effort has been focused on the core software it hasn’t left much time for anything else. Over the next three months we’re going to split into ninja/pirate teams focused on different areas of the around-WordPress experience, including the showcase, Codex, forums, profiles, update and compatibility APIs, theme directory, plugin directory, mailing lists, core plugins, wordcamp.org… the possibilities are endless. The goal of the teams isn’t going to be to make things perfect all at once, just better than they are today. We think this investment of time will give us a much stronger infrastructure to grow WordPress.org for the many tens of millions of users that will join us during the 3.X release cycle.

Here’s a video showcasing some of 3.0′s new features:

https://videopress.com/v/wp-content/plugins/video/flvplayer.swf?ver=1.21

For a more comprehensive look at everything that has improved in 3.0 check out 3.0’s Codex page or the long list of issues in Trac.

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