Custom Navigation Menus feature in WordPress 3.0 will make WordPress even more user friendly for beginners. This function let you organize your menu, create drop down menus, add new items to menu, and much more. The drag-and-drop function of this feature is what makes it extremely easy to use. This feature will not be available in older themes unless the theme author(s) update their themes. In this article, we will show you how you can enable and install custom navigation menus in your themes.

We see this feature as one of the most demanded feature in the future of WordPress themes. Below is a simple screenshot that shows you what you can do with this menu option.

You can create multiple menus, add existing categories or pages to the menu, and you can add custom links to menu as well. You can organize the menus and create drop-down menus with a simple drag-and-drop feature.

How to enable Custom Navigation Menus in WordPress 3.0
Like the custom background, header image, and post thumbnails, the custom navigation menus also needs to be enabled through your theme’s functions.php file.

Simply add the code below to your theme’s functions.php file:

add_theme_support( 'menus' );

If this code is not added in your functions.php file, the user will not see this as an option in the Admin panel.

How to Add Custom Navigation Menus in WordPress 3.0 Themes

Once you have enabled the feature, now you can add it in your theme. These menus are not limited for header.php file only. You can add them anywhere you like to fit your design’s need by pasting the code below:

 'menu_order',
 'container_class' => 'menu-header' ) ); ?>

If this code is not added in your functions.php file, the user will not see this as an option in the Admin panel.

How to Add Custom Navigation Menus in WordPress 3.0 Themes
Once you have enabled the feature, now you can add it in your theme. These menus are not limited for header.php file only. You can add them anywhere you like to fit your design’s need by pasting the code below:

 'menu_order', 'container_class' => 'menu-header' ) ); ?>

The main function as you can see is wp_nav_menu. The arguments we have in the code are sort_column and container_class. The sort_column value tells WordPress to follow the order you pick in the options panel, and the container_class is the css styling class that you pick for this specific menu.

For custom themes: If you are using more than one menu, then you need to specify either the menu ID, menu slug, or menu name. The parameters are: $id, $slug, $menu respectively.

Additional Resource: WordPress Codex

WordPress 3.0 is released with lots of breathtaking improvements and exciting new features which will surely bring this platform one step ahead. So, what actually we can expect to bundle up with this release? Here is a walk through!

1. WordPress.org and WordPress MU Wedding
Yeah WordPress MU and WordPress.org are all set to tie up with each other. Almost over a year of hard work the floks at Automattic are all set to merge their standalone blogging platform WordPress.org with multi user platform WordPress MU. This feature will come handy specially for large blog networks.

It is an add-on for the existing users which means it won’t hurt them if they don’t want to use it. The upgrade process will be smooth and won’t cause any difficulties to existing users. Most importantly it will be a win win situation for WordPress MU users as they can now easily use WordPress.org plugins out of the box needless to modify.

2. Choose Username and Password while Installing
Earlier when you do new installation WordPress automatically choose ‘admin‘ as default username and generate a random password, however in 3.0 it allows you to choose custom username and password while installing WordPress.

3. New Default Theme
It’s time to bid adieu to Kubrik theme which comes up default with WordPress. WordPress 3 has been packaged with a new theme called “Twenty Ten”. This new theme is really outstanding and minimalist at the same time. Twenty Ten has some outstanding features such as Custom Background, Custom Header, Simple and Clean Look, Multi Widget Areas Supported, Two-Columns and Drop Down Menu.

4. Custom Background
WordPress 3.0 now adds support for custom background for themes. To enable custom background functionality to your theme you just have to add following code in your theme’s functions.php file:

add_custom_background();

And it will enable “Background” option in WordPress admin “Appearance” tab.

5. Custom Post Types
This is another feature which will boost up WordPress as a CMS. This feature is due since WordPress 2.9 it allows you create different post types such as Portfolio, Products, Reviews etc. all you have to do is to just add following code in your functions.php file:

function post_type_portfolio() {
    register_post_type( 'Portfolio',
                array( 'label' => __('Portfolio'), 'public' => true, 'show_ui' => true ) );
    register_taxonomy_for_object_type('post_tag', 'Portfolio');
}

6. Navigation Menu
This feature is inspired by WooTheme’s WooNav which allows you to create different menu items containing Categories, Pages, External or Internal Link. It also support a widget so that you can place these menus in your sidebar as widget.

7. Author Templates
Earlier we had category specific templates which we use to develop category based templates using category-slug.php now WordPress 3 brings the same functionality for author based templates now you can create author based template files such as ‘author-chef.php‘.

Other Features Worth Mentioning
1. Now every WordPress installation will have a Welcome Guide for which helps newbies to understand WordPress better.
2. Plugins will now developed by community rather than sole developer, so you can now expect updated plugins every time.
3. In WordPress 3 plugins can not be edited until they are active so you must first deactivate them to be able to edit.

Major new features in this release include a sexy new default theme called Twenty Ten. Theme developers have new APIs that allow them to easily implement custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus (no more file editing), post types, and taxonomies. (Twenty Ten theme shows all of that off.)

Developers and network admins will appreciate the long-awaited merge of MU and WordPress, creating the new multi-site functionality which makes it possible to run one blog or ten million from the same installation.

As a user, you will love the new lighter interface, the contextual help on every screen, the 1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements, bulk updates so you can upgrade 15 plugins at once with a single click

1. Create the Circle Shapes
First create a circle path and fill it with orange color. Then Copy (Ctrl+C) it and Paste in Front (Ctrl+F). Scale down about 40% and drag it slight below the center point of the orange circle.

2.Blend Tool
Select the Blend Tool, click on the top edge of the yellow circle and then click again on the top edge of the orange circle. Or you can blend them by selecting both circles, go to Object > Blend > Make (Ctrl+Alt+B).

3. Add Final Light Reflection
Make an oval path and fill it with black & white Gradient and place it on top of the circles. Note if your color setting is CMYK, make sure the black for the gradient is full black(C=100, M=100, Y=100, K=100). With the oval path selected, go to Transparency pallate, select Screen Blend Mode. If your Transparency is not showing, go to Window > Transparency or press Ctrl+Shift+F10.

Advantages
There are serveral advantages to create this glossy button with Illustrator than Photoshop:
- It is vector, which mean it is scalable.
- It is easier and faster to make this with Illustrator (less steps).
- Easier to change colors, just need to fill the circles with different colors.

Today I’ve finish my latest WordPress theme Blackboard. This theme has also been approved by wordpress.org.  This means you can download it from wordpress.org or through the back-end of your wordpress installation.

A preview can be found on this location.

You can download the Blackboard theme from this location.

Enjoy!

If you enjoy this theme or you have a question or comment, please leave a message.

There’s good reason why WordPress is the most popular blogging platform. It’s easy to use and has tons of great features. But what’s really made this open source software excel is its passionate community. Yes, WordPress has lots of features built in, but it doesn’t have everything. The WordPress community fills this need. It’s full of talented developers that are constantly creating plugins to extend the features and make it even better.

There are many WordPress plugins out there, but in this article we’re focusing on the most essential. Below is a list of 10 plugins that every WordPress website could use.

All in One SEO Pack

All in One SEO Pack optimizes your WordPress blog for search engines. Some key features include:

• Advanced Canonical URLs
• Fine tune Page Navigational Links
• Built-in API so other plugins/themes can access and extend functionality
• ONLY plugin to provide SEO Integration for WP e-Commerce sites
• Nonce Security
• Support for CMS-style WordPress installations
• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After an html file is generated, your web server will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps generates a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog. With such a sitemap, it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently. The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs. Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post about the new content.

Akismet

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.

WP-DB-Backup

WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your core WordPress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database.

WP-PageNavi

WP-PageNavi adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress site.

WordPress Automatic upgrade

WordPress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the WordPress installation to the latest one provided by WordPress.org using the 5 steps provided in the WordPress upgrade instructions. It automatically does the backups and provides links for downloading.

cforms II

cforms is a powerful and feature rich form plugin for WordPress, offering convenient deployment of multiple Ajax driven contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page.

Broken Link Checker

This plugin will monitor your blog looking for broken links and let you know if any are found. Some key features include:

• Monitors links in your posts, pages, the blogroll, and custom fields (optional).
• Detects links that don’t work and missing images.
• Notifies you on the Dashboard if any are found.
• Also detects redirected links.
• Makes broken links display differently in posts (optional).
• Link checking intervals can be configured.

FeedBurner FeedSmith

This plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed and optionally, your main comments feed as well.

source: webdesignledger.com

One major upgrade which is expected to come in 3.0 is the merge of WordPress and WordPress MU. Which means you will be able to install multiple sites on your normal wordpress installation as part of expansion. Currently if you want to expand your reach by adding multiple sites on your normal wordpress installation, you will have to install a new copy of wordpress each time. But after the release of WordPress 3.0, that expansion will be much easier.

Menu Settings on WordPress 3.0

New featured and nice one is Menu Setting, this menu is based on WooNav WooThemes Framework menu. This menu system will have a drag and drop

functionality that will combine Pages, Categories, and Links. It will also allow the ability of re-ordering, along with sub-menus, and hiding specific Pages or Categories from the menu altogether.

Custom Image Background on WordPress 3.0

In WordPress 3.0, it will have, additional to the Custom Header Image support, also a Custom Background Support. A first snapshot is in the current trunk. To use the functionality, the theme needs in functions.php this line: add_custom_background();

After that, there is in your backend under Appearance the menu Custom Background available. After uploading an image, you have the option to activate “Tile the background” and delete the background image.

New default theme

The WordPress 3.0 release will be packed with a brand new default theme called 2010. This theme will include Custom header, Custom Background, Clean Design, Multiple Widget Areas, Cascading Menus and a lot more. Overall, it will be a good base to build on for custom themes.

Choose your own Username/Password

This is a feature that I have always wanted from WordPress. From version 3.0, whenever you install WordPress, you will be able to choose your own username and password. You will no longer have to accept “admin” for the username and a randomly generated password.

Custom Post Types

Until now, you could only add posts or pages to your WordPress blog. This feature will give you power to create content of any type that you want. For example, you can have Portfolio listings, Products, Catalogs, Library etc. This feature is not going to replace categories or Tags. You will still be able to use categories. Custom Post Types will allow a different way of sorting/displaying your content.

It’s a idea by Oliver Schlöbe of WPSeek, who created the WP Worldmap. Now it is possibel for you to  see where you can find all those WordPress Users and Developers. Don’t forget to put your location and profile on the map. It’s easy to zoom and move around.

I’ve changed the background. Instead using a big .PNG file it’s now a small .JPG file with a repeat-x function. The circles in the right corner are a small transparent .PNG file. Also, I’ve downsized some other graphic parts of the theme.  As a result the theme is less then 1MB and most important: it will load a lot quicker in your browser!

You can download the latest version from wordpress.org.

Here are some of the best icon sets out there for use in your design.

Hand Drawn Doodle Icon Set

Stickers Icons

Onebit icon set

WP WooThemes Ultimate Icon Set

Led Icon Set

MinIcons

Grunge Peeling Stickers

WatercolorIicon Pack

Must Have Icons

Social Icons hand drawn

Hand Drawn Vector Icons

Hand-drawn sketch icons

OldSchool Icon Set

Icon Feed Jeans

Retrofukation Icons

Basic set

Handycons

IconPack

Sketchy Paper

Blossom Icons

Cute Blogging Icons

Old Bottle Crowns Icon Set

Chinese Wind Icon

Distortion Icons