WordPress 3.1 is now available. Codenamed ‘Reinhardt’ after jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, the latest version of WP brings with it quite a few notable updates, including increased backend speed. This translates into a new admin bar featuring shortcuts to the most used pages and a redesigned linking mechanism. WordPress 3.1 also come with some new features and enhanced developer tools:

“The long-awaited fourteenth release of WordPress is now available. WordPress 3.1 “Reinhardt” is named in honor of the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. Version 3.1 is available for download, or you can update from within your dashboard.

This release features a lightning fast redesigned linking workflow which makes it easy to link to your existing posts and pages, an admin bar so you’re never more than a click away from your most-used dashboard pages, a streamlined writing interface that hides many of the seldom-used panels by default to create a simpler and less intimidating writing experience for new bloggers (visit Screen Options in the top right to get old panels back), and a refreshed blue admin scheme available for selection under your personal options.”

There’s a bucket of candy for developers as well, including our new Post Formats support which makes it easy for themes to create portable tumblelogs with different styling for different types of posts, new CMS capabilities like archive pages for custom content types, a new Network Admin, an overhaul of the import and export system, and the ability to perform advanced taxonomy and custom fields queries.

With the 3.1 release, WordPress is more of a CMS than ever before. The only limit to what you can build is your imagination.

“(.No video yet for 3.1, we’re going to add it later)

More than 180 individuals participated in the development of WordPress 3.1, but just like any other product, it needs to stay relevant. This, however, may turn out to be a particularly difficult according to a recent New York Times article, which deemed blogging to be completely overthrown by social networking.

Naturally, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg blogged his two cents on the NYT article. He noted WordPress gained an additional 80 million unique visitors last year, and that Google’s Blogger rose 9 percent to 323 million unique visitors in the same period. These stats were also noted in the NYT article, but it seemed to focus primarily on the 12-17 year-olds demographics.