WordPress News Roundup February 2007: WordPress 2.1.1 and 2.0.9 Arrive as bbPress 0.8 Ships

February 2007 was a month of follow-through. WordPress 2.1 had shipped in late January, and the weeks that followed were spent fixing early bugs, keeping the 2.0 branch secure and handling a surge in downloads. Two maintenance releases arrived together on February 21.

Beyond core, Automattic’s sister projects kept moving: bbPress reached version 0.8, WordPress.com added LaTeX support and a new Blogger importer, and the company began advertising for more staff. In hindsight, the month is also remembered for what came next, as the 2.1.1 download would soon be found to have been tampered with.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

No acquisitions or investments were announced. Automattic’s growth showed up instead in hiring: Matt Mullenweg posted that Automattic is hiring on February 20.

WordPress Core Updates

• WordPress 2.0.8 (February 8): A quiet update to the 2.0 branch, released without a blog announcement.
• WordPress 2.1.1 and 2.0.9 (February 21): The project released updates for both maintained branches. Version 2.1.1 carried around 30 fixes, mostly small issues involving character encoding, XML-RPC, the object cache and HTML output, plus a security fix. Version 2.0.9 contained only the security update.
• 2.1 adoption: Mullenweg reported that WordPress 2.1 was averaging 19,483 downloads a day, enough to strain the single server behind the download page, with more machines on the way.
• Ambitions for the year: In his 2007 resolutions, Mullenweg set a goal of three major WordPress releases in 2007.

Other WordPress News

• bbPress 0.8 “Desmond”: The lightweight forum software from the WordPress team reached version 0.8, borrowing features that had worked well in WordPress.
• New Blogger importer: An importer for the new version of Blogger arrived on WordPress.com, making it easier for Blogger users to switch.
• LaTeX on WordPress.com: WordPress.com added LaTeX formatting, letting bloggers publish mathematical notation directly in posts.
• High-profile adopters: Mullenweg highlighted WordPress use by the US Postal Service and Speaker.gov, a sign of the software’s growing reach into government.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

Both February 21 releases included a security fix, and 2.0 users were told to upgrade to 2.0.9 even though it changed nothing else. The 2.1.1 package would become notorious days later: in early March the team discovered that a cracker had modified the download on WordPress.org’s server, and 2.1.2 was rushed out to replace it. That story belongs to the March edition, but the team’s warning covered anyone who had downloaded 2.1.1 in the three or four days before March 2.

Industry Trends and Insights

Hosting environments were in flux. When DreamHost upgraded to PHP 5.2, many PHP 5 sites broke, and WordPress 2.1 needed workarounds to run cleanly on the new version, as Mullenweg noted on February 9. It was an early sign of the friction that would follow as the web moved off PHP 4.

Theme of the Month: K2

K2, developed by Michael Heilemann and Chris J. Davis as a successor to Kubrick, was one of the most popular advanced themes of the period. Its options panel and flexible layouts made it a favourite for people who wanted more control than the default theme offered without writing their own.

Host of the Month: DreamHost

DreamHost was one of the best-known shared hosts for WordPress users, and its one-click installs made getting started easy. Its PHP 5.2 rollout this month was bumpy, but the episode showed how much the WordPress experience depended on hosts keeping pace with the software.

Founder of the Month: Toni Schneider

Toni Schneider, who co-founded the webmail startup Oddpost before it was sold to Yahoo, was Automattic’s CEO and the person turning a small team into a company. February’s hiring push and the work to scale WordPress.com were very much on his desk.

Looking Ahead to March 2007

March would bring South by Southwest in Austin, where Mullenweg was due to speak, and continued work on the next major release, still targeted for April 23. Users on both branches were expected to settle into 2.1.1 and 2.0.9, though events would soon force another update.