WordPress News Roundup July 2006: WordCamp Is Announced as WordPress 2.0.4 Ships

July 2006 started with a bug hunt and ended with a security release. In between it produced one of the most important ideas in WordPress community history. Matt Mullenweg announced WordCamp, a free, one-day gathering for WordPress users and developers in San Francisco. More than a hundred people signed up within a day.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

There were no WordPress deals. In the wider web world, 37signals, the small software company whose “big things from small teams” approach Mullenweg often cited, took an investment from Jeff Bezos through Bezos Expeditions.

WordPress Core Updates

• Bug Independence Day: The 24-hour bug hunt began at midnight between July 4 and 5, San Francisco time, in the #wordpress-bugs IRC channel, aimed at both 2.0.4 and 2.1.
• WordPress 2.0.4: Dated July 28 in the official version history and announced on the dev blog the next day, 2.0.4 included several important security fixes and more than 50 bug fixes. The team credited Geoff and Mark Jaquith for finding the problems, and asked users to help less technical friends upgrade.

Other WordPress News

• WordCamp announced: Mullenweg proposed a WordPress user conference called WordCamp for August 5, 2006. It would be free, last a day, end with a party, and follow the BarCamp model, with the agenda largely set by attendees. The dev blog promoted it on July 11.
• 104 sign-ups in a day: A day after the announcement, Mullenweg reported that 104 people had said they were coming and 58 had joined the mailing list. The hard part was now finding a venue.
• A WordPress podcast: A new WordPress podcast blog began covering news from around the WordPress world.
• I ♥ WordPress: Members of the WordPress.com forums designed a series of “I [heart] WordPress” logos.
• CMS awards: Mullenweg encouraged readers to nominate their favourite project for Packt Publishing’s Open Source CMS Award.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

WordPress 2.0.4 was the month’s security release and was strongly recommended for all users. Mark Jaquith’s name was becoming a regular in security credits, reflecting his growing role in looking after the stable branch.

Industry Trends and Insights

BarCamp had shown in 2005 that a loosely organised, attendee-driven event could draw serious technical people. WordCamp applied that to a single open-source community. The format proved easy to copy, and within a few years WordCamps were being held all over the world, organised by local volunteers and becoming the main way the WordPress community met in person.

Founder of the Month: Ryan Boren

Ryan Boren was WordPress’s lead developer alongside Mullenweg and had committed much of the code behind 1.5 and 2.0. As the bug hunt and 2.0.4 showed, he did much of the unglamorous work of keeping the stable branch healthy while also building 2.1. He was one of the first developers to join Automattic.

Looking Ahead to August 2006

The first WordCamp, on August 5 in San Francisco, was the main event on the calendar, once organisers had found a venue big enough for the growing sign-up list. Work on WordPress 2.1 continued after the bug hunt.