WordPress News Roundup December 2003: The Great Renaming, Multiple Categories and XFN on the Road to WordPress 1.0

December 2003 was the push to WordPress 1.0. Matt Mullenweg made more commits than in any month so far, and most of the remaining b2 code was either cleaned up or renamed. Files got consistent wp- names, posts could finally belong to more than one category, hack writers got a safe place for their code, and WordPress gained support for XFN, a new friendship-linking format Mullenweg had co-created.

On Christmas Day, Mullenweg wrote that he hoped to release 1.0 on the first of the new year.

WordPress Core Updates

• Multiple categories (December 4): Posts could now be filed under any number of categories, with an upgrade system to convert existing posts. Categories also gained clean nicename URLs and new mod_rewrite rules.
• The Great Renaming (December 8–12): Mullenweg converted b2’s mixed-up filenames to a consistent scheme: lowercase, hyphenated and prefixed with wp- in the root directory. Alex King celebrated the change on the dev blog, saying it would give hack writers stable filenames and counter the idea that WordPress was just b2 with hacks. He admitted it would break most existing hacks.
• my-hacks.php (December 15): A new option let WordPress load a my-hacks.php file from the root directory, so custom code would survive upgrades.
• The Road to 1.0 (December 15): Mullenweg explained the reorganisation and the simpler, faster way files were now included.
• Feeds and errors (December 18): The RSS 2.0 feed supported multiple categories, includes switched to constants, and setup errors became much clearer. Missing configuration files and database problems now produced plain explanations with links to the forums instead of a wall of PHP errors.
• XFN and Atom (December 22–30): Initial XFN support went into the link manager, followed by early Atom syndication with autodiscovery.
• Last-minute additions (December 30): An edit_this_post() template tag from Ryan Boren, a new wp-config.php setup from Chris Anderson, and updated install and upgrade scripts.

Other WordPress News

• XFN launches (December 15): The XHTML Friends Network, created by Tantek Çelik, Eric Meyer and Mullenweg, used the rel attribute to describe relationships between people, such as friend, colleague or met. WordPress already allowed rel values on links, so its users were ready.
• A WordPress wiki (December 19): A public wiki opened at wiki.wordpress.org after the wp-docs group pushed for it, giving documentation a place anyone could edit.
• Thanks for the year: In his Christmas post, Mullenweg thanked the developers, forum helpers, new documentation volunteers, IRC regulars and people promoting WordPress.

Industry Trends and Insights

XFN came out of the same standards-focused blogging scene that had shaped WordPress. It was an early, decentralised attempt at social networking, built with ordinary HTML links instead of a central service. Atom support showed WordPress following the new syndication format as it took shape. Taken together, the month’s work moved WordPress from a b2 fork to a project with its own structure, ready to compete on features with Movable Type.

Plugin of the Month: my-hacks.php

A single optional file sounds modest, but my-hacks.php was WordPress’s first supported way to extend the software without editing core files. Hack authors could finally write install instructions that would survive an upgrade. It was a direct step toward the plugin system that would arrive in 1.2.

Founder of the Month: Tantek Çelik

Tantek Çelik, a web standards veteran, co-created XFN with Eric Meyer and Mullenweg. XFN’s simple approach of adding meaning to existing HTML became a model for the microformats movement Çelik later championed. It also gave WordPress’s link manager a use beyond blogrolls, since every link could now describe a relationship.

Looking Ahead to January 2004

WordPress 1.0 was planned for January 1, 2004, with a few items still to finish. Headline features would include search-engine-friendly permalinks, multiple categories, a simpler installer, comment moderation, XFN, Atom feeds and importers for Movable Type and Textpattern.