The long wait is now over, WordPress have announced via their blog that the new version WordPress 3.0 Beta is now available for download by the public. This is pretty exciting considering that we will also being seeing Drupal 7 some time soon too.

The final version of WordPress 3.0 is due out later in WordPress, but in a move to release early could also be beneficial for WordPress and the community for a number of reasons:

1.Theme developers also get to see the new Twenty Ten theme

One of the most consistent features of WordPress over the years had been the default Kubrick theme that served so dutifully for many years. However, to be honest Kubrick and later the old K2 theme, were starting to look a bit dated, and with all the new features available in the WordPress core like the automatic post thumbnails feature meant Kubrick needed to be retired.

Wordpress Twenty Ten Screenshot

Instead we see the new theme Twenty Ten which is a simple, light clean theme, that comes built in with some simple and easy to ready typography and neutral color scheme. A welcome change, and you also have the ability to switch out the hero image in the header out depending on your current page.

The new version will also feature a new menu system by Woothemes which should hopefully make, managing your menus from within your admin section a lot easier.

2. A sneak-peek at the new Multi-site functionality

It seems like a natural marriage between the two platforms, but one question that did linger was how smooth would the transition from WordPress MU the default version to WordPress 3.0 was going to be.

One of the things to look forward to is being able to make the  switch from a single instance site, to a multi-site setup with relative ease, and all from the WordPress admin section. This is definitely big news especially for competition like Drupal, and Joomla where create an multi-site instance is not as smooth.

Coupled with the new easy installation of Buddypress means that you almost have a social network in a box, without having to download a set of different modules/plugins/extensions to get the same result in another CMS.

For those who manage large social network and websites that run MU may want to take a bit of caution as the impact of the switch on plugins and custom changes may leave you down.

3.Plugin Developers can get a better look at the new content type feature

If you have worked with Drupal you will be aware of how easy it is to create new custom content types that are based off of the default node content type. As a result you can create new content like products in Ubercart that you can also access with the default functions for nodes and not have to write your own methods and functions to perform simple tasks like retrieve your post or content, list, create, and update.

image via kovshenin.com

This could mean a change in the way a lot of WordPress plugins are coded, as a lot are not built to naturally extend the default WordPress post type, and may have created tables and objects to manage and work with their plugins.

4.More testing means less bugs at the time of the final WordPress 3.0 release

With a lot of new functionality added to platform, it may actually be the time that WordPress moves from just a simple blog to a true Content Management System. Of course there is still a lot of room for improvement in terms of features like more advanced, and easier to manage user and content permission management.

Conclusion

It has definitely been a long time coming so to see the and get my hands on even a beta version of WordPress 3.0 is exciting. Of course there are still a few features that are still in developmentlike Super Admin functionality in the multi-site environment, the new custom header functionlity, as well as some UI features.

Links

Official WordPress 3.0 Beta Release

Download WordPress 3.0 Beta- WordPress.org

Demo the Wordress Twenty Ten Theme

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