Work is well underway on WordPress 3.1 and a quick update detailing the status of some of the new features as we approach the November 1st code freeze has been posted. The following features will more than likely be included in WordPress 3.1: Post Formats – “Allow denoting a post as a certain format. Some example formats are aside, gallery, link, quote. This will allow themes to style these posts according to format.” (ready to go, awaiting decision to include a UI that themes can enable) Theme Search/Filter – “Lift some of the search and browse ideas from the WordPress.com themes.php.” (still in first draft) Internal linking – “. . . you click a button for an internal link . . . and it allows you to search for a post or browse a list of existing content by title, date, author, etc. and select it for inclusion.” (patch provided) […]

The WordPress development team had a very successful meeting last Thursday, where they solidified their plans for WordPress 3.1. The finalized goals for WordPress 3.1 are “to have a very short dev cycle, a decent amount of testing time, and a release in mid-December. Low on new features, heavy on ui and code cleanup, and avoidance of schema changes. Save the big ideas for 3.2 where we’ll have the liberty to implement those ideas in PHP5. No schema changes and no big new APIs.” Besides bug fixes and code cleanup, users can look forward to a new wordpress.com inspired admin bar and theme browser, as well as post templates and styles, and a separate network dashboard. The team plans to halt new feature submissions on October 15th, followed by a primary code freeze on November 1st, and a string freeze on December 1st. The beta period will begin November 15th […]