WordPress News Roundup April 2004: WordPress 1.2 Beta Begins as Movable Type Users Start Switching

April 2004 was busy in the repository and busy with switchers. Before Movable Type’s licensing change in May, a steady stream of its users was already moving to WordPress. The dev blog started a category just to list them. In the code, Ryan Boren added gettext-based localisation, plugin hooks multiplied, and on April 29 Matt Mullenweg opened the 1.2 beta, calling it the biggest step forward since WordPress began.

WordPress Core Updates

• Localisation (April 16): Boren replaced the old translation approach with gettext. The dev blog explained the difference between localisation (l10n) and internationalisation (i18n) and asked users who spoke other languages to help.
• More plugin hooks: Mullenweg added action and filter hooks throughout editing, formatting and page output, including a shutdown hook. Markdown and Textile text formatting were checked in as plugins on April 19.
• New requirements and options: Michel Valdrighi raised the minimum PHP version to 4.1.0 and added GMT timestamps for comments. WordPress could now be installed in one directory and display the blog at a different address. A new the_permalink() tag made templates more consistent, and a new RSS importer was added.
• 1.2 Beta (April 29): After a long alpha spent on time zones, Unicode and the new options screens, the beta offered sub-categories, custom fields, a localisation framework with Unicode support, post times stored in both local time and GMT, cleaner permalinks, automatic thumbnails, strongly encrypted passwords, a rebuilt options interface and clean links without mod_rewrite.

Other WordPress News

• The switchers: From April 4 the dev blog collected switch stories from bloggers leaving Movable Type. They praised three-minute installs, fast imports and dynamic pages that did not need rebuilding.
• Burningbird moves: Shelley Powers wrote a series on her move from Movable Type, covering how she chose a new tool and how she migrated. An .htaccess method for redirecting old MT URLs appeared on the wiki, and Powers used an adapted version.
• Ping-o-Matic: Mullenweg’s Ping-o-Matic, a service that notified many blog update trackers in one step, went online in April.
• Docs status: The dev blog addressed frustration about documentation, noting that the wiki had kept growing while the official docs had fallen behind.
• Tasks Pro: Alex King released Tasks Pro 1.1, the task manager the team used to track bugs and assignments.
• Hiring a hacker: The dev blog promoted Dougal Campbell’s job search as he prepared to move to Atlanta for family reasons.

Industry Trends and Insights

The switch stories had common themes. Movable Type was Perl-based, could need extra modules from a host, and rebuilt static files on every change. WordPress was PHP and MySQL, installed in minutes and built pages on request. The 1.0 importer made moving easy. Even before Six Apart’s pricing news, WordPress had become the obvious alternative for self-hosted Movable Type users who wanted a change.

Plugin of the Month: Markdown

John Gruber’s Markdown, a plain-text formatting syntax that converts to clean HTML, went into WordPress as one of the first plugins under the new architecture. It was checked in with Textile on April 19. Writers who preferred plain text could now choose their markup without hacking core, which was exactly what the plugin system promised.

Founder of the Month: Shelley Powers

Shelley Powers, a technical author and the writer behind Burningbird, was one of the most influential bloggers to leave Movable Type for WordPress this spring. Her detailed posts on choosing a platform, migrating data and preserving old URLs became practical guides for others making the same move.

Looking Ahead to May 2004

With the 1.2 beta in testers’ hands, release candidates and then the final 1.2 were expected in the coming weeks. The team was asking for beta feedback in the forums.