What’s New in WordPress 3.1 (“Reinhardt) Features and Screenshots
Update: WordPress changed the name of the project to Reinhardt.
Matt Mullenweg has announced the release of the long-waited WordPress 3.1 on the official WordPress blog. In September, we wrote an article about What’s Coming in WordPress 3.1 (Features) to give you an sneak peak on the features that might be included. In this article, we will show you exactly what made in the release in terms of features with cool screenshots, and what features did not make it in.
WordPress Post Formats
WordPress has added an option for you to have multiple Post Formats in WordPress 3.1. What the heck is Post Formats? Post Formats are meta information that can be used by themes to customize presentation of a post. Ok, now in plain english post format are a method of styling a specific post. By using this feature, you can specify the display “format” of a specific post. This feature expands the micro-blogging aspect of WordPress because now you can have videos, links, images, audios, quotes, statuses, etc. all in one place, and the best part is that they will be styled accordingly. For developers, it is not really different from Custom Taxonomies except this is more organized and it is built-in for standardization. Now, users can expect more themes like Wumblr – Microblogging Theme for WordPress.
For developers: here is the What, Whys, and How to’s of Post Formats in WordPress 3.1
WordPress Admin Bar
If you have used a WordPress.com blog, then you are already familiar with this. In WordPress 3.1, an administration bar will be added to connect the back end to the front end of your blog. This feature will be most useful for people on multisite installs, but it will be useful for single-site users also because it provides 1-click access to dashboard, new post form, etc. According to Matt Mullenweg, this is the “first step toward a front-end editor”.
Internal Linking in WordPress
Internal linking is great for WordPress SEO. Previously, if a blogger wanted to add links to their previous articles, they had to open a new tab in their browser, find the url, and then add it. Well, in WordPress 3.1, the core team has provided an internal linking system that allows you to search through your database for the right post and link to it. To use this feature, you must use the Visual Post Editor, and try to make a hyperlink. There is a new option added that you can see in the screenshot above.
Ajaxified Pagination and Columns
Previously, sorting through WordPress posts pagination was a pain. Now, you can simply enter the number of the page you want to go to. Also, columns are now sortable. As you can see there is an arrow right by the title.
Admin Blue Theme Refresh
The Blue Theme for the Admin Panel saw a refresh in UI. Here is the core ticket for that.
Advanced Taxonomy Queries
This is not for beginners, but we figure that developers will be happy about this. This feature will create an easier way to run advanced queries. For example, right now there is no way to ask for posts that are in the “cars” category but lack the “BMW” tag. This causes users to create complex category systems to simulate multiple taxonomies. This will make sorting of posts and other post types very easy for developers who are looking to push WordPress beyond it’s limits. Read more at Multiple Taxonomy Queries.
Cleaner Write Panels
Because WordPress is used by audience of all types (beginners, intermediates, advanced, etc.), the UI team has decided to make the write panels a lot cleaner by removing a lot of confusing fields by default such as the WordPress Custom Fields area, and others. But you can get those fields by customizing your WordPress dashboard via the Screen tab.
New Super Admin Network Dashboard
This allows the network admins to get a new super admin dashboard that is separate of user-admin dashboard. It has it’s own menus, pages etc. This removes the clutter from the regular admin dashboard for individual sites. More about Network Admin Screen.
Custom Post Type Archives
In WordPress 3.0, Custom Post Types were introduced. But there was no way to have an archive page that list an specific custom post type unless the developer creates a custom page for each custom post type. In WordPress 3.1, a new page will be generated automatically. (SWEET!)
There were over two thousand commits for WordPress 3.1. The core team worked hard, and the release was even delayed 2 months because it was planned for before Christmas holidays. But again, we would rather have a complete version, rather than dropping tons of features. One good feature was pushed onto WordPress 3.2 which we hope gets included in the next version.
Enhanced QuickPress Template Tag
There were plans to make the QuickPress, custom post types ready and have a front-end code for it. This has been moved for version 3.2. Core Developer, Andrew Nacin said:
“Ultimately, a group of contributors needs to run with something like this to truly make it properly flexible. This didn’t see much traction beyond the fine work by jorbin”
We hope that this feature makes it in WordPress 3.2.
We want to thank the WordPress core developers and everyone else who contributed in making this release possible by contributing codes or beta testing. It is an amazing release.
See the full list of WordPress 3.1 features. [Don’t forget to use our Ultimate Guide to upgrade WordPress Infographic]
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