What Can We Expect From WordPress 3?
WordPress has grown from a simple open source blogging engine into a very powerful content management tool. With the upcoming release of WordPress 3, the software will be more robust than ever. Below are some of the awesome new features we can look forward to.
Multiple Sites With Single WordPress Install
We will now be able to create multiple sites using a single installation of WordPress, where each site may have its own set of themes and plugins. Your multisite setup can work with sub-domains or sub-directories:
- Subdomains work by using wildcard subdomains. You must have this enabled in Apache, and you must also add a wildcard subdomain to your DNS records. Some hosts will not support this, so you may need to ask your webhost before enabling this feature.
- Subdirectories work based on mod_rewrite. If you are using pretty permalinks in your blog already, then subdirectory sites will work as well.
By default, the Multisite feature in WordPress is disabled. To enable this new feature, you will need to do the following:
- Go to Tools > Network under WordPress admin menu and specify Network settings
- Create “blogs.dir” in wp-content folder
- Add following line in your wp-config.php file: define(‘WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE’, true);
- You may also need to modify your .htaccess file
Once the above steps are completed, you will see a new menu section called Super Admin. This section will allow adding and managing additional sites in your network. Your base WordPress install is now the main site in your network.
New Default Theme
Believe it or not the long time default theme “Kubrick” has been replaced with new default theme: Twenty Ten. Twenty Ten is a theme with features like:
- two column layout
- support for custom background and header images
- provides built-in support for microformats, widgetized sidebar, and horizontal drop down menu.
Twenty Ten has been developed keeping in mind that a large number of theme developers use default WordPress theme as base for learning and designing their own themes. It therefore illustrates several new features like:
- Custom Background Images
- Editor Styles
- Improved Child Theme Support, etc.
Custom Menus
This is probably the most useful new feature for theme developers. WordPress 3.0 allows you to register any number of menus and display them in your themes template files using a simple function call. Most importantly it provides an easy to use menu section in the admin area – from where users can easily add, edit and remove menu items. Users will be able to add, edit and remove: pages, custom post types, categories, taxonomies, and custom links to these menus.
Custom Post Types & Taxonomies
Custom taxonomies were added in WordPress 2.8, enabling developers to create new ways to classify content. WordPress 3.0 improves this feature significantly by including support for hierarchical (category-style) taxonomies, and providing end users with custom taxonomy UI for pages as well as for posts.
WordPress introduced custom post types in version 2.9, but a lot of work was left for plugin and theme developers. However, WordPress 3.0 provides full support for custom post types, simplifying the whole process. This is a big deal – developers can now build easy to use CMS solutions for wide range of sites, meeting needs for specific type of content (portfolios, projects, video libraries, podcasts, quotes, chats, etc).
Implementation is pretty straight-forward. All you need to do is register post type in your functions.php file. WordPress 3.0 will automatically add admin section for your new custom post type, enabling content managers to add, edit and update content. To add a template for your custom post type, you will create a new template file named “single-{post_type}.php” (you can use any standard WordPress template tags in this file).
New Template Files
In addition to other enhancements, WordPress 3.0 has also added several new template files in its template hierarchy. Here is list of new template files for quick reference:
- Template For Front Page of Site:
Will be used for both your latest posts or a static page as set by the admin (File: front-page.php). - Template For Custom Post Types:
If custom post type is books, WordPress will look for single-books.php (File: single-{post_type}.php). - Author Specific Templates
If the author’s name is “admin”, WordPress would look for author-admin.php. If the author’s ID is 1, WordPress would look for author-1.php (Files: author-{nicename}.php, author-{id}.php). - Templates For Custom Taxonomies
If the taxonomy is “sometaxtonomy”, and taxonomy’s slug is “someterm”, WordPress would look for taxonomy-sometaxtonomy-someterm.php (Files: taxonomy.php, taxonomy-{taxonomy}.php, taxonomy-{taxonomy}-{term}.php).
So when can we expect WordPress 3 to be available for download? RC3 is currently available in beta mode for testing. For a stable release, we can expect an updated release sometime between August and November 2010. What do you think about the new tools and features available in WordPress 3? What would you add to the mix?
