Open source code for world’s largest blogging platform releases 3.0 extending reach to largest organizations

WordPress.org released 3.0 of the popular blogging and content management system yesterday. The big question is should you upgrade now or wait?

If you’re like me, it’s upgrade and damn the torpedoes. However, recent crisis with hosting and other blog disasters has made me gun shy.

The new version of WordPress has loads of powerful and cool features. You can manage multi-sites from one login. Like many people with multiple blogs that will save time.

There are new post types beyond the original five or post, page, attachments, revisions and nav menus. New post types reflect the multi-media reality of the web today: photo posts, quotes, chats, audio / podcasts and video. This will enable us to make our blogs media richer.

Themes will now support different page headers and backgrounds which will allow you to have a different look and feel for sections of your blog like fashions, chats, photos, or technology.

The menu structure will allow hierarchies to be built and modified by the administrator not a programmer.

Here’s a video of all the cool new features.

Many of the plug-ins have been updated to WordPress 3.0 but it’s important to check first before upgrading with testing. We advise setting up a parallel testing blog to see if the upgrade causes any problems. Or you can just plunge in and see what happens, picking up the pieces afterward. Backup the blog first.

If your blog is hosted on WordPress.com, don’t worry. WordPress have already upgraded the site for you. For us that’s six blogs and they all seem to be working great.

WordPress 3.0 is available free of charge under a GNU license. It was developed by 218 volunteers who collaborated from around the world.

These days everyone is using WordPress from CNN, The Washington Post, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, CNET, Gizmodo…like everyone including NJN Network and NJN Video.

It’s interesting to know that many sites are using WordPress for both blogging and content management systems. WordPress 3.0 will make that easier with multi-site and more post types.

Postscript – I backed up the files over lunch and the upgrade is done – about 3 minutes. If something isn’t working, let me know.

PPS – upgraded to WordPress 3.0 on both NJN Network and NJN Video and no problems. Amazing.