One of the best new features of 3.1 – this brings Internal Linking to the forefront, allowing you to quickly link to old posts, pages, or other content types.

Admin Bar

Also super important – this adds a bar to any logged in user that has commonly used functions or actions within easy reach – I love the fact that I can edit the page right from that link, as well as heading straight to the add new page or post menus, and even to the CSS editor.

Streamlined Writing Interface

A lot of the options in the interface have been hidden by default for a more simplistic interface – you can click the “Screen Options” tab to bring them back, but on my screen all it showed was the title, content, publish box, categories, and tags – and all in one SEO, but that’s a plugin – everything else had been hidden by default.

Post Formats

Post Formats allow you to choose different styles of posts depending on what format it is.  This lets you specify video, audio, “asides” or other types and format the style of the post accordingly.

Network Admin

This is more multi-site related, but this takes some of the functions out of the normal admin menu and drops them into a network admin – useful for actions that are specific to the overall network administrator

List-type Admin Screens

Notice how the above columns can be sorted either by Title, Author or Date –this makes sorting content even easier.  Any list-style content type (posts, pages, even plugins) can be sorted.

Import/Export Overhaul

Improved Export functionality lets you choose exactly what types of content, and what other data, you want to export.

Custom Content Type Improvements

FINALLY allows for creation of archive pages for custom content types, as well as better controls in the menu and capabilities.  Good times.

Advanced Queries

Allows for querying posts by custom field data and using multiple taxonomies – basically, gives you better control on querying content no matter what content you need to query.

New Admin Color Scheme (Blue)

It looks real purdy 😉 In all seriousness this really goes a long way in refreshing the blue admin screen.  Kudos to my homegirl Sara Cannon, as I believe she played a part in the new color scheme.

So yeah, there’s lots of great stuff coming down the WordPress pipe.  If you haven’t updated, there’s nothing that should break anything you already have, so go forth and update!