The latest version of WordPress 3.1, code name “Reinhardt”, has went live since February 23 and is available for download, or you can update to the latest version from within your WordPress dashboard.
Like the earlier version releases, this latest version update contains bug fixes, new features and also minor user interface changes. I’ve updated to version 3.1 a couple of hours after the release. Have you update yours?
Okay, let’s take a look at some of the new cool features that are included in WordPress 3.1. 🙂
1. Internal Linking
WordPress bloggers with the habit of placing links pointing to their previously published articles in most (if not every) of the new article that they write will definitely love this feature. If previously, you need to search through your blog or look into the archive page, to find any related old posts that you can link to.
Now, WordPress has made it much easier to find and link to your existing posts and pages using the new internal linking feature, which is now integrated into the linking option.
To use the feature, simply click on the insert/edit link button from the writing panel. Then, click the “Or link to existing content” to reveal a search box. Enter keyword or phrase in the search box, and a list of related articles will show up. Simply click on the article title to automatically fill up the URL and Title boxes.
2. Admin Bar
There is an extension called the WordPress Admin Bar. If you are still using the extension on your WordPress blog, you can get rid of the extension now! Why? Because the new WordPress 3.1 has comes with a built-in WordPress admin bar which is enabled by default (But don’t worry. You can disabled it if you want to. Tell you later :-)).
The admin bar resides at the top of your WordPress (frontend) blog and is only visible to blog administrator(s). The admin bar provides quick access to various tools like adding new post or page, moderate comments, edit profile etc. Just to name a few. Not sure if you can change the menus in the admin bar.
If you’ve decided that the admin bar serves not much purpose to you, you can disable the bar. In the blog backend, go to you profile in the Users option. Look for the “Show Admin Bar” option, then uncheck the “when viewing site” option. The admin bar is now disabled! 🙂
3. Refreshed Blue Admin Color Scheme
Immediately after you’ve successfully upgraded to the version 3.1, the first change that you’ve noticed is the new blue color scheme for your blog dashboard. The color looks nice to my eye. 🙂
Other cool new features includes :
- new Post Formats support, which makes it easy for themes to create portable tumblelogs with different styling for different types of posts
- new CMS capabilities like archive pages for custom content types
- new Network Admin
- an overhaul of the import and export system
- ability to perform advanced taxonomy and custom fields queries
Learn more in the WordPress 3.1 release post.
