December 12, 2011 is the day the newest version became available to the public and as a download link inside WordPress administration. In case you’re wondering what’s changed, not a lot that you would notice, except they really work hard at not letting you get by without seeing it.

Some improvements to the user experience that make it easier to use – especially for beginners – are most welcome.

Frameworks offer a new level of control over website development. Gantry is one of several frameworks available that extend your ability to layout and modify websites and themes with no coding skills. It’s’ based on a 960 grid system. You might want to review our article on 960gs before you start this tutorial.

Learning to use the framework controls is a learning experience that is well worth the effort if you plan on producing many sites rapidly. If you are using the multi-sites capability of WordPress, this framework will really help in creating new sites and updating existing ones. If you’re like me you’ve been skimming articles about this and watched a few videos, but haven’t really got down to trying it.

In this hands on tutorial, we’ll show you the absolute basics without any distracting details, and you’ll be up and running in about 15 minutes with a laid out site. You can spend as much time as you want experimenting after that.