Just yesterday WordPress 3.0 was finally made available. Featuring the new default “Twenty Ten” theme and the long-awaited (by some) merging of WordPress and WordPress MU. The interface, also, has had some cosmetic changes. Everything is still in the same place, but it’s all “lighter” and bit different. (I can’t say I’m a fan of the new header. I prefer the dark gray to the light gray gradient…)
Matt Mullenweg, in his announcement, stated that work on WordPress 3.1 will not begin in the next development cycle, but in the one after. The team is going to work on improving WordPress.org instead.
Normally this is where I’d say we’re about to start work on 3.1, but we’re actually not. We’re going to take a release cycle off to focus on all of the things around WordPress. The growth of the community has been breathtaking, including over 10.3 million downloads of version 2.9, but so much of our effort has been focused on the core software it hasn’t left much time for anything else. Over the next three months we’re going to split into ninja/pirate teams focused on different areas of the around-WordPress experience, including the showcase, Codex, forums, profiles, update and compatibility APIs, theme directory, plugin directory, mailing lists, core plugins, wordcamp.org… the possibilities are endless.
