WordPress version 3.1, named “Reinhardt” in honor of the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt pictured in the center above, has just been released. Yeah!!!!

I’ve only been excited about one other WP release, which was for 3.0’s custom post types (now one of my favorite features to use in WordPress).

So, why am I so excited about 3.1? Mostly because of one fix: The Password Reset Redux.

This fix greatly simplifies the WP lost password process by replacing the two email process with a single email process.

So why would I be so happy about this?

At work I manage a membership only blog with (currently) a little over 2,000 members/users and I am tired of having to answer customer support emails from members that can’t figure out how to reset their passwords. A number of the site’s members experience PEBKAC errors because they either don’t understand the WP-generated passwords provided, they don’t read the emails carefully, they don’t wait to receive any email, or they just really are technologically challenged.

So, to the WordPress open source community, a big THANK YOU!!!!!