It's been available a few weeks now so I thought I'd write a few words about my experiences of using the latest (and greatest?) version of WordPress.
The first thing to say is that the transition has been fairly painless, upgrading is simple using the automatic update and nearly all of my standard' plugins (by this I mean the 5-10 I use on most installs) have authors who anticipated the upgrade and made sure everything worked without a hitch.
The admin panel interface manages to appear familar yet uncomplicated. Indeed, a few weeks on and I have almost completely forgotten how WordPress used to look. I can say that it is now cleaner, more refined and feels like a more heavyweight CMS rather than its now historic status as a mere blogging platform. There is nothing there to throw you' though. Everything is pretty much where it used to be, so there is thankfully no real learning curve for developers or end users. The update introduces additions rather than wholesale changes to the admin panel.
So what new features are there? Well, we now have custom backgrounds and headers available from within the admin panel. We also have a long-awaited menu feature which allows navigation to be easily managed from within the admin panel. This includes a handy drag and drop feature to order the pages that is very welcome to anyone with previous experience of the WordPress menu ordering process! Wordpress MU has now also been merged allowing for multiple blogs to run from a standard install, great for many I'm sure and is definitely a natural progression for the software.
One of the biggest (and most obvious) additions is a new standard theme. 'Twenty Ten' is a modern, well thought out design allowing for full experimentation with the new WordPress features. Its look great right out the box and I'm sure there will be many a new blog using this pretty much as is'. I like it, it is clean, uncomplicated and professional, much like the new admin panel. As you might might have guessed this new version is named aptly after Thelonious Monk, famed for his adaptation and (to use WordPress terminology) customisation' of the melodies he was playing.
This is a much appreciated overhaul which shows the developers have really listened to the suggestions of the WordPress community. A update that combines a minimal learning curve, great new theme and more refined admin panel, bring on WordPress 4.0!
