WordPress 3.1 : What to Expect

WordPress is going to release a major version upgrade anytime soon. The last major version upgrade (WordPress 3.0) released on June 17, 2010 and the WordPress 3.1 is going to be released this January. Once again, this will be another upgrade with some additional features.

The release of wordpress 3.1 is already delayed by a month as the public lunch was scheduled on December 15, 2010 after releasing the RC1 on December 1 last year.

Wordpress 3.1

There are no new features for front end. However, the admin panel (Dashboard) got a lot of new and useful features like Ajaxified Admin Screens, Admin Bar, Internal Linking, Network Admin etc.

Here are some of the dashboard features you will love to use

1. Ajaxified Admin Screens: Sortable columns for list-type screens, better pagination, improved API, improved user search, filters for bulk actions, fixes for long URI problems.

2. Admin Bar: If you used WordPress.Com blogs, you are already aware of this. It will add a Admin Bar at the top of front end pages (including the home, single posts, pages etc.). It will enable the access to the admin panel quickly and show up only if you already logged in as an admin.

Wordpress 3.1 Adminbar

3. Internal Linking: This perhaps is the most awaited and most interesting feature in WordPress 3.1. It will allow the post authors to search for previous posts and link in with in the content very easily. A button, like the existing link button, will be included in the WISIWYG editor panel. It will allow you to search for posts, or browse a list of existing content by title, date, author etc, and select it for inclusion.

4. Post Formats: It will be a theme feature. Now you can have different templates for different posts. Like, if you want a post to look like a gallery and you have a custom post style for that, you can choose to use that for that post instead of your regular layout.

Wordpress 3.1 Post Format

Now, these are some of the main features that are going to be introduced in WordPress 3.1, we should wait for the public lunch to know the full list of the new features.

Oh, by the way, the WordPress 3.2 is probably coming in spring of 2011 with the minimum requirement of PHP 5.2 and MySQL 5.0.15.