Persistence Marketing:

As of the end of last week the announcement was made regarding the first release candidate of WordPress 3.0. For any of you that have been looking forward to this release of WordPress you can rest assured that within a few weeks you should have the availability of WordPress 3.0 in a stable format.

For anyone that has not been following the development of WordPress and the announcement concerning WordPress 3.0 the biggest change is Merge of WordPress MU + WordPress.

If you are unsure of what WordPress MU is, no need to worry. WordPress MU is basically WordPress platform that allows users to run multiple sites under one installation. As a great example WordPress.com is running on the WordPress MU code base. While Matt Mullenweg announced the merge news during WordCamp San Francisco 2009, the WordPress developers have finally announced the first release candidate of 3.0.

While the merge was the major feature enhancement to WordPress there are a number of additional features that can be reviewed at the following link:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.0

Some of the highlights that you will want to know about are:
* New menu management feature
* New theme “Twenty Ten” is the only theme in the WordPress distribution.
* Improved child theme support; child theme use is highly encouraged and as described in the Child Themes article, very simple to accomplish
* New comment_form() that outputs a complete commenting form for use within a theme template
* Expanded contextual help
* All importers moved to the plugin repository (e.g. WordPress Importer)
* Custom backgrounds for themes
* The Default (Kubrick), and Classic themes, are no longer included in the WordPress distribution, but are available in the Theme repository
* Bulk theme update ability
* Improved custom post types (try the Custom Post Type UI or GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools plugins to see the possibilities)
* Improved custom taxonomies including hierarchical (category-style) support (again, try the Custom Post Type UI or GD Custom Posts And Taxonomies Tools plugins)
* Standalone WordPress and WPMU code merged and is called Multisite (Note: extra domain stuff remains plugin territory for this version)
* Multisite requires wp-config.php file changes to institute