Today WordPress.org announce the release of WordPress 3.1. Reading the changes to this release got me digging a bit deeper also looking at the new feature found in the 3.0 release. I must admit I start liking WordPress again. I will touch on a few of the features that got my attention.

New WordPress Default Theme

The new default theme, Twenty 10, looks great. For the first time I don’t need to look at hundreds of themes only to not find one I like.

Quickly Change Header Image or Background Colors

No need to dive into the CSS editor to change the background color or the image used for the header. WordPress 3 adds an image browser for the header and a color wheel to change the background color, making these changes a snap. And it even comes with a few background images out of the box.

An Intro Page Feature

Previous versions required a lot of magic to create a unique page that appears as the site’s “Home/Front” page. The process is now simplified to the point of choosing what WordPress calls your front page in the General > Reading settings.

Help Me!

Get context-sensitive help on any page from within the WordPress admin area by clicking the unobtrusive Help tab on the upper right of the admin pages. You get extensive help straight from the enormous WordPress Codex without having to search manually.

Blog Posts on a Static Page

A special new Posts Page means you can now treat the blog as just another drop-in module, at peer level with a static page.

Multiple Blogs

WP 3 now allows the managing of many WordPress installations at once. Until now they were relegated to a WordPress underclass, using a somewhat-incompatible version called WordPress MU. That’s a thing of the past. Adding multiple blog support means editing a single line.

Besides the new features, what also caught my eye was the availability of a WordPress iOS app for iPhone and iPad allowing admin to use their iDevice to manage their blog.

I am seriously thinking of switching. Why? I do like Enki, but the fact that I have limited time to maintain the code as well as write posting is a major reason. Case in point, for about 8 weeks now I wanted to add code to Enki to stop the spam that suddenly appeared in the comments. I just never found the time. The new WP addresses so many issues I had with earlier versions. So don’t be surprised if in the near future I switch.