WordPress News Roundup April 2007: WordPress 2.1.3 Security Release and a Delayed WordPress 2.2

April 2007 began with another round of security fixes and ended without the major release many had expected. WordPress 2.1.3 and 2.0.10 shipped on April 3, and two weeks later Matt Mullenweg announced that WordPress 2.2 would miss its April 23 target. In between, the project welcomed its first Google Summer of Code students and WordPress.com VIP picked up some very visible customers.

The month also saw a lively debate about sponsored themes and licensing, an argument that would shape WordPress’s theme ecosystem for years.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

No WordPress-related deals were announced. Automattic did add to its team, with Mullenweg announcing that Joseph Scott was joining Automattic on April 13.

WordPress Core Updates

• WordPress 2.1.3 and 2.0.10 (April 3): A security release for both branches that fixed several minor cross-site scripting issues and one major XML-RPC problem, alongside a broader proactive review of the code.
• WordPress 2.2 delayed: On April 18, Mullenweg wrote that 2.2 would be pushed back from its planned April 23 date, ending hopes of a release this month.
• Summer of Code students: WordPress’s first group of Summer of Code students was announced in mid-April, marking the project’s first year in the programme.

Other WordPress News

• VIP customers: AllThingsD, the technology site from the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, launched on WordPress MU with WordPress.com VIP hosting. Baseball pitcher Curt Schilling’s blog was also hosted on VIP.
• Viral hits on WordPress.com: I Can Has Cheezburger, one of the breakout sites of 2007, was running on WordPress.com.
• Institutional adopters: A project at NASA’s Ames Research Center was built on WordPress, one of several government and enterprise examples Mullenweg highlighted.
• New York meetup: Photos from a WordPress community meetup in New York showed the growing number of local gatherings.
• Plugin authors: Mullenweg argued that plugin developers were thriving in a post responding to claims that they got “no love”, pointing to the new plugin directory.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

The 2.1.3 and 2.0.10 updates were strongly recommended for everyone on either branch. The XML-RPC flaw was the most serious issue fixed, and it arrived only a month after March’s tampered download had put WordPress security in the headlines.

Industry Trends and Insights

Sponsored themes, free designs that carried paid links in their footers, were becoming a problem. Mullenweg linked to an essay on sponsored themes and highlighted a designer who switched themes from a Creative Commons licence to the GPL. The pressure to treat themes as GPL software, and to keep hidden links out of them, would only grow.

In the wider web, Google agreed to buy DoubleClick in mid-April, a reminder of how valuable online advertising had become for the sites that publishing tools like WordPress powered.

Theme of the Month: Cutline

Chris Pearson’s Cutline offered a clean, uncluttered layout that suited writers who cared about typography. It was a popular free theme in 2007 and a good example of the quality designers were offering without paid links attached.

Plugin of the Month: Random Redirect

Mullenweg released the Random Redirect plugin on April 22. It added a link that sent readers to a random post, a small but fun way to resurface older writing on long-running blogs.

Host of the Month: WordPress.com VIP

VIP was Automattic’s premium hosting tier, and April showed why it mattered: AllThingsD and Curt Schilling’s blog chose it for reliability and scale. Mullenweg noted that VIP pricing had been raised months earlier because of demand.

Founder of the Month: Donncha Ó Caoimh

Donncha Ó Caoimh created WordPress MU, the multi-blog version of WordPress that powered WordPress.com. AllThingsD’s launch on WordPress MU was a strong endorsement of the software he had started.

Looking Ahead to May 2007

All eyes were on WordPress 2.2, now expected in May with built-in widgets as its headline feature. WordPress’s fourth anniversary at the end of May was also on the calendar, and Summer of Code students were set to begin work.