WordPress – the most popular blog software on the planet and the content management system powering this very site – has just enjoyed a major upgrade to version 3.0.
The thirteenth major release of the open source software – called “Thelonious” – is now available for downloading (or upgrading from within the admin dashboard), and comes with a slew of new features and widgets and – count ’em – no less than 1,200 bug fixes.
Phwooar
A major new features is the improved default theme, which goes under the name of ‘Twenty Ten’. WordPress describe this theme as “sexy.” Frankly, we think you must have something wrong in your ‘downstairs’ department if you get aroused by a page design, but each to their own.
Goodies galore
Other goodies include shiny new APIs that allow theme designers to implement custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus, post types, and taxonomies, and the overdue merge of MU and WordPress, which makes it possible to run multiple blogs from the same installation.
We’ll be updating the site later tonight when things go quiet. And hopefully we’ll be straight back!
Edit 2.00AM: happy to report that the update took under a minute and everything’s working fine.
Glad to hear it went ok, I was observing some folk in the WordPress support forums complaining about a ‘white screen of death’ where the advice seems to be to check for plugin compatability with 3.0 – i.e. switch them all off and then on one-by-one to see which is the culprit. *gulp!* may attempt it later…
We recklessly went a bit gun-ho with the update, running it on both the urban75 blog and here, and apart from a niggling server permission error on wirefresh, it all went swimmingly.
Phew!
*naturally, we backed up both sites before hitting ‘update.’
That’s a relief, good to hear – my only conundrum is whether the theme I’m using is compatible or will bork my blog in 3.0, the alternative being to migrate to a shiny new theme which inevitably will involve a lot of time tweakin’ ‘tings as well… hmmm…
Both urban75 and wirefresh have customised themes but the WP 3.0 installation left them well alone. Which was a relief. 🙂
Yep – I got a reassuring reply to my question in the support forums and my upgrade has gone without a hitch. Woohoo!