WordPress 3.0 Beta Released

WordPress fans, it’s here: The first beta of WordPress 3.0 has been released.

In a late-night announcement Jane Wells, the UX lead at Automattic (the parent company of WordPress ()), laid out some of the many new features in the version 3.0 beta of the popular blogging software. The first thing she points out is a new custom menus system, which she makes clear “is not quite finished.”

The newsworthy aspect of the release is the merger of WordPress and WordPress MU (multi-user), a fork of WordPress that allows multiple blogs to operate from a single installation. These two features are fully merged in Wordpress 3.0, although you should probably read the instructions before taking this feature out for a test drive.

There are other changes to the UI and interface as well, including the addition of a new default theme, Twenty Ten, and custom post type functionality improvements.

If you’re brave, you can download the update and take it for a test drive yourself. If you do, let us know what you think of the newest build of WordPress in the comments.