WordPress Version 3.0  is set to be released in the next week or so and contains some exciting new enhancements and improvements over previous versions.

I have been working with the beta and release candidate versions over the past few weeks to develop a client project. I had to make the decision early on to use WordPress 3. My choice was to develop it with the older version and be safe or take a chance with the new version and the possibilities of things going wrong along the way.

Luckily everything turned out great and I only encountered a few minor issues along the way.

I made it a point to keep up with the nightly builds and back up the database daily before every update. I benefited by becoming an expert in custom post types and taxonomies and I want to share some of this knowledge and will be writing a series of articles and tutorials on everything from the new built in menu system, custom post types, custom taxonomies, customizing the login page and admin interface and much more.

This post will serve as a starting point and will list many of the enhancements, fixes, and new features in Version 3.0.

Will the new version break my theme or cause any conflicts?
No everything will still work when you install WordPress 3.0.

Can I start using the new features right away?
Most of the new features including menus and custom post types require theme support via functions.php.

User Enhancements

• New default theme 2010
• New menu management user interface
• Custom backgrounds for themes
• Custom header images for themes
• New admin color scheme
• Enhanced media upload interface
• Ability to add theme css classes to post editor
• Category to tag and tag to category converter
• More secure install process (removes default admin username

Developer, Theme and Plugin Enhancements

• Custom post types with built in UI
• Custom taxonomies for any post type with built in UI
• New template files: front-page.php, single-{post_type}.php, author-{nickname or ID}.php, taxonomy.php, taxonomy-{taxonomy}.php, taxonomy-{taxonomy-term}.php
• New template tags and functions see Codex Version 3.0
• JQuery updated to 1.4.2 and JQuery UI to 1.7.2
• add_theme_support function call to include the new features
• Built in multi site built in via: WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE in config-php
• wp-ajax.php file to use for front end and plugin ajax support

As a developer and web designer, I am very happy with WordPress 3.0. It moves it more to being a full fledged content management system than it was before and opens up more options for the theme developer, plugin developer, web designer and end user.