Though there are a number of popular magazine WordPress themes on the market, including a number of great free magazine themes, I think it is pretty safe to say that none have been more popular over the past year than the Mimbo theme (and the Mimbo Pro version).

This morning I just noticed that my friend Darren Hoyt, the author of Mimbo and Mimbo Pro, has updated his original free theme, calling it Mimbo 3.0.

Here is a screen shot of Mimbo 3.0:

You can view the live demo here.   Here are the updates features in the newest version of Mimbo:

• No more custom fields. Most importantly, custom fields are no longer necessary to call thumbnails. Mimbo 3.0 includes a script that pulls images automatically from the post body, then resizes them with TimThumb.
• Support for WordPress 2.7. This includes code for sticky posts, comment pagination, threaded comments, wp_logout_url, and the rest of the new features.
• Sticky Posts. In the past, you had to create a “Lead Story” category. With the new version, that beige box contains whichever post you’ve marked as sticky, or whichever is most recent.
• Standard Bloggy Behavior. What I learned about Mimbo 2.2 is that a lot of people missed having a regular old blog component on the homepage, ie, simple chronological display. So I tried to retain the popular magazine-style layout, while organizing the middle column more like a standard blog.
• Featured Categories. Thanks to some great coding help from the talented Jean-Baptiste, Mimbo 3.0 has a custom control panel that sets featured categories with a configurable number of headlines
• Localization/Translation. As I’ve realized, there’s really no excuse for not localizing your WP themes so they can be enjoyed by people all over the world. Feel free to contact me with translation help.
• 125×125 Ad Support. Mimbo 3.0 comes pre-styled to work with the excellent WP125 plugin and its companion widget.
• Better body id/classes. As I’ve written about, this can make your theme tremendously flexible, but now things are even flexible-er. Tip of the hat goes to Thematic, by way of Sandbox.
• Multi-Level Dropdown Menus. People asked for them and now they’re here. They’re semi-transparent, too, if you use a decent browser.
• Custom Sidebar Conditionals. If child pages exist, they will now appear in the sidebar when viewing a page section. And on single post pages, the sidebar will dynamically display a handy “Related Posts” box.
• Better Custom Archives. Personally, I almost never browse by month or year. I prefer a full archived list with dated headers. Mimbo 3.0 comes with a custom template that displays posts organized by month, plus pagination.
• Better Author Archives. Looking back, it’s not really necessary to have the author bio included at the bottom of every single post, as with v2.2. In the new version, author archives can be viewed only when the person’s name is clicked. Also, gravatars are now used for both author photos and comments. No more lame hacks.
• Gallery, Inline Image & Caption Styling. There are now styles for all the various ways you’d insert an image in a post which became possible with version 2.5.
• More Widget Freedom. In the past, I probably included too much custom code in the sidebar whereas most of it could be replicated/re-ordered with widgets anyway. So currently, the entire right-hand sidebar (minus the aforementioned Page submenu and “Related Posts” module) is widgetized and pre-styled for your pleasure.

[Download the Mimbo 3.0 Theme]

In what is probably the most anticipated premium WordPress theme to date, it looks like the Mimbo Pro Theme has finally been released!

Darren created the free Mimbo Theme quite awhile ago and the demand was so high that he decided to follow it up with this work of art. Here are the features Darren lists for Mimbo Pro:

• Control panel options for Google Analytics and Feedburner, logo and header image management, homepage categories, optional color schemes, and advertisement management
• Custom templates for categories, archives, authors, sitemap, search results
• Auto-resizing for images
• Built-in contact form
• HTML controls for comments (bold, italics, blockquote, link)
• Print-friendly options on single-post pages
• Two widgetized sidebars with optional advertising
• Tabbed and separated comments/trackbacks
• Built-in gravatars and author highlighting
• Cookie crumbs on single-post pages
• Print.css stylesheet
• Optional microformats in the footer

Sound good? The screenshots are even better! Here is the demo of the homepage:

And here is a sample of a single page:

So what about the price? This theme is very competitive, with the single-use license available at $89.95 and the multiple-use license is only $199.95.