June 17 2010, day when long waited WordPress 3.0 code name Thelonious is released. After several beta and release candidates released over last 2 months, many, many bugs were fixed and right now WP 3.0 looks very stable and well worth the upgrade.
Dev4Press compatibility
First, all our plugins and all themes are fully compatible with new WordPress. There will be minor updates over the next few days if the errors are found in any of them, so please, report any problems if you find them.
Upgrading
I have auto updated most of my WordPress driven websites to WP 3.0, without any problems. But this is only on systems with PHP memory limit set higher than 32MB. I tried two older blogs running with 32MB running WP 2.8, and on both upgrade failed due to lack of memory caused by average number of plugins these websites were using. I think that many users will have to perform manual upgrade if they run in the problems with the memory and auto upgrade.
Another problem is compatibility. All existing themes should be working fine, but with plugins there will be problems. Most plugins that use JavaScript to improve and modify WP will simply fail and cause many problems. I hope that plugin developers will fix the problems soon, because even number of popular plugins are affected by problems.
Big problem with WP 3.0, as it was with previous versions is that uses more memory. This is unavoidable, and 32MB is simply not enough to run website with WP if you plan to use 5-6 or more plugins. Compared with WordPress 2.9.2, this website memory usage grew by 20% when upgraded to WP 3.0. Similar is with my other websites. And with 20 plugins I use on this website, admin pages use from 42MB to 50MB depending on the page.
Features
I am not going to go into details about what this version added, the list is very long. You can check the full list on official website using links at the bottom. Bu,t most important addition are fully implemented custom post types, improved custom taxonomies, custom navigation and much, much more. I think that custom post types will prove to be the most important addition to WordPress added in the last 2 years to make WP even more competitive in the CMS market offering high degree of flexibility.
Merging with WordPressMU and changes that lead to new networks mode is also very important change. Installation of the multi site / network mode is not very complicated, and upgrading from WPMU goes smoothly.
Theme 2010
Well, I said it before and I will say it again: I don’t like the new default theme. It was the time for WordPress to get theme to replace good old Kubrick, but new theme is just not as good as I expected. But, I never run website with default theme anyway, so I don’t really care about that. But, for the overall image of WordPress, better theme was needed.
And in the end
There will be much more talk over the next few weeks, but right now this is hands down the best WordPress release in years. From all my testing in the past 4 months and the tests of the final WP 3.0, I can tell you that it’s very stable and reliable like no other major WordPress release I have tried since WP 2.3. I am sure that bugs will surface soon enough but that’s nothing new, important thing is that you can safely upgrade and benefit from new features. Also, make sure that plugins you use are up to date with WP 3.0 to avoid problems.
Finally, all the developers working on WordPress 3.0 deserve a big thanks from the whole WordPress community, because they did a great job on making this latest release. You can check out the list of all developers and contributors on the official WP website. I am honored to be mentioned among contributors even so I only reported several bugs and fixed one.
And to celebrate
To celebrate release of new WordPress I have decided to offer a 30% discount for all our plugins licenses. Discount coupon is WORDPRESS30. It has limited number of uses, so hurry up and use it for individual plugins or bundle pack.
Links:
WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” Release Post
WordPress 3.0 List of Features and Changes
