WordPress News Roundup July 2008: WordPress 2.6 “Tyner” Ships Early as the Theme Directory and iPhone App Launch

July 2008 was one of the most eventful months in WordPress’s history to that point. WordPress 2.6 “Tyner” shipped on July 15, about a month ahead of schedule, with post revisions, Press This and theme previews. Three days later WordPress.org opened an official Theme Directory, and within a week a native WordPress app for the iPhone was available. Registration also opened for WordCamp San Francisco.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

No WordPress-related acquisitions or funding rounds were announced in July.

WordPress Core Updates

WordPress 2.6, named for jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, fixed about 194 bugs and added:

• Post revisions: A record of every change to posts and pages, showing who edited what and when.
• Press This: A bookmarklet for posting from anywhere on the web, including video embeds and images.
• Theme previews: The ability to see a theme with live content before activating it.
• Google Gears: Optional local caching of admin scripts and styles for faster page loads.
• Flexible installs: wp-config.php and wp-content could be moved, and SSL support was expanded with an option to force it.
• Smaller touches: Word counts, image captions, a plugin update bubble, bulk plugin management and custom default avatars.

Ten days after release, Matt Mullenweg reported in “2.6 by the numbers” that 2.6 was being downloaded about 23,000 times a day in English alone, and that 201,000 blogs, roughly 9% of known WordPress.org installs, had already upgraded.

Other WordPress News

• Theme Directory: On July 18, WordPress.org launched an official theme directory to replace the old themes site, which had stopped accepting submissions. Users could browse, search, rate and comment on themes. More than 300 themes were submitted in its first six days, with each reviewed before appearing.
• WordPress for iPhone: Announced on July 10 as a free, open source client for WordPress.com and self-hosted blogs, the WordPress for iPhone app became available on July 22.
• WordCamp San Francisco: Registration opened on July 25 at a lower price than the previous year, with a volunteer “Genius bar” planned to help attendees.
• Plugin competition: The Weblog Tools Collection plugin competition opened for public voting at the end of the month.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

WordPress 2.6 included several security-minded changes. Remote publishing through XML-RPC and the Atom Publishing Protocol was now switched off by default, closing an interface many site owners never used. Better SSL support and new cookie handling, which Mullenweg pointed to as the release went out, made it easier to secure the admin area.

Industry Trends and Insights

The iPhone app arrived in the App Store’s first weeks, positioning WordPress early in mobile publishing. The Theme Directory, meanwhile, brought the review-and-rate model of the plugin directory to design, and it would become the main way millions of users found free themes. Commercial themes were rising too: Chris Pearson released Thesis 1.0 this month, a premium theme with its own options panel.

Theme of the Month: Thematic

Ian Stewart’s Thematic, which reached version 0.6 in late July, was one of the first free WordPress theme frameworks. It was designed to be extended with child themes, an approach that would soon spread across the theme world.

Founder of the Month: Ian Stewart

Through Thematic and his ThemeShaper blog, Ian Stewart championed theme frameworks and child themes at the moment the official Theme Directory opened, helping shape how developers built WordPress themes.

Looking Ahead to August 2008

WordCamp San Francisco in mid-August was the main event ahead, alongside a 2.6.1 maintenance release to address early bugs in 2.6. Theme authors were also expected to keep filling the new directory.