Word­Press 3.0, the thir­teenth major release of Word­Press and the cul­mi­na­tion of half a year of work by 218 con­trib­u­tors, is now avail­able for down­load (or upgrade within your dash­board). Major new fea­tures in this release include a sexy new default theme called Twenty Ten. Theme devel­op­ers have new APIs that allow them to eas­ily imple­ment cus­tom back­grounds, head­ers, short­links, menus (no more file edit­ing), post types, and tax­onomies. (Twenty Ten theme shows all of that off.) Devel­op­ers and net­work admins will appre­ci­ate the long-awaited merge of MU and Word­Press, cre­at­ing the new multi-site func­tion­al­ity which makes it pos­si­ble to run one blog or ten mil­lion from the same instal­la­tion. As a user, you will love the new lighter inter­face, the con­tex­tual help on every screen, the 1,217 bug fixes and fea­ture enhance­ments, bulk updates so you can upgrade 15 plu­g­ins at once with a sin­gle click, and blah blah blah just watch the video.

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. (We’re try­ing to keep these announce­ment posts shorter.) Whew! That’s a lot packed into one release. I can’t think of a bet­ter way to kick off the 3.X cycle we’ll be in for the next two and a half years.

Eas­ier menu sup­port = Pure Awe­some­ness!! [Gregbo]

(Via Word­Press Devel­op­ment Blog.)