WordPress News Roundup July 2013: WordCamp San Francisco Sets Up Parallel 3.7 and 3.8 Releases

July 2013 was the month WordPress changed how it builds software. At WordCamp San Francisco, Matt Mullenweg used his State of the Word to announce that WordPress 3.7 and 3.8 would be developed at the same time, with new features incubated as plugins before being considered for core. The plan came as WordPress 3.6, delayed by the Post Formats saga, reached its release candidates.

Elsewhere, iThemes moved into e-commerce, Automattic picked up a domain-search developer, and a new service applied Akismet’s crowdsourced approach to the login attacks that had plagued WordPress since April.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

• Automattic acqui-hires Lean Domain Search: Matt Mazur, creator of Lean Domain Search, joined Automattic in mid-July to improve how WordPress.com users discover and buy domains. The tool stayed online and became free to use, with an option to register names through WordPress.com.

WordPress Core Updates

• WordPress 3.6 RC1: The first release candidate arrived on July 12. It confirmed the Post Formats UI had been backed out, and highlighted the reworked revisions browser, which could scrub through hundreds of revisions quickly.
• WordPress 3.6 RC2: RC2 followed on July 24, tightening revisions, autosave and the media player, with the final release promised within days.
• State of the Word: At WordCamp San Francisco on July 27, Matt said WordPress now powered 18.9% of the web. He announced that 3.7 would be a short, stability- and security-focused release led by Andrew Nacin and Jon Cave, while 3.8, led by Matt himself, would be more experimental and was expected to include the MP6 admin redesign and a new default theme. Both would rely on features developed as plugins.
• Contributor Day: WordCamp San Francisco closed with a contributor day on July 28, where teams began organising around the new release plan.

Other WordPress News

• Annual survey: The project launched its third annual user and developer survey on July 9, with results presented at WordCamp San Francisco and a livestream ticket available for remote viewers.
• iThemes Exchange: iThemes launched Exchange, a new e-commerce plugin aimed at making simple stores easier to set up, entering a market led by WooCommerce.
• Page.ly launches PressCDN: Page.ly introduced PressCDN, a content delivery network built for WordPress sites.
• Post Status 2.0 and the end of WPDaily: Brian Krogsgard relaunched Post Status as a dedicated WordPress news site, while WPDaily announced it was closing.
• Trademark reminder: The community was reminded that domains using “WordPress” are restricted under the WordPress trademark policy, which favours “WP” instead.
• Building schools with WPBeginner: WPBeginner’s Syed Balkhi asked readers to help fund the construction of a school, an early version of the charitable campaigns the site would repeat in later years.
• Jobs board moderators: The official WordPress Jobs site looked for volunteer moderators to keep listings useful as demand for WordPress developers grew.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

• Plugin security report in focus: Checkmarx’s June report, which found more than 20% of the 50 most popular plugins vulnerable to common attacks, drew wide discussion in early July and prompted calls for better developer education.
• Cloud services as malware hosts: Reports showed attackers using Dropbox and WordPress.com to host malicious files and redirects, a reminder that trusted domains could be abused.
• BruteProtect: A new plugin and service, BruteProtect, tracked failed logins across many sites to identify attacking bots, and said it had already blocked more than 1.3 million malicious login attempts.

Industry Trends and Insights

• Faster, smaller releases: Moving to parallel releases and feature plugins was a response to 3.6’s delays. It aimed to decouple feature development from release dates.
• Google Reader closes: Google Reader shut down on July 1, accelerating the shift of RSS readers to other services and pushing publishers to promote email and social follows.
• Crowdsourced security: BruteProtect’s network approach showed how data pooled across many WordPress sites could protect each of them.

Plugin of the Month: BruteProtect

BruteProtect described itself as Akismet for logins. Built by Sam Hotchkiss and team, it gave site owners a free, low-configuration way to block botnets that had been probing WordPress logins all year, and it would become part of Jetpack in 2014.

Host of the Month: Page.ly

A month after buying BlogDroid, Page.ly launched PressCDN, a content delivery network aimed squarely at WordPress sites. Bundling performance services with hosting was becoming one of the main ways managed WordPress hosts tried to stand apart from cheaper shared hosting.

Founder of the Month: Cory Miller

Cory Miller, founder of iThemes, took his company into e-commerce with Exchange this month. It was a bold move into WooCommerce’s territory, and it reflected iThemes’ habit of expanding from themes into tools and training for WordPress professionals.

Looking Ahead to August 2013

WordPress 3.6 is due in the first days of August. Development of 3.7 and 3.8 begins immediately afterwards, with meetings to pick 3.8’s feature plugins. Expect more on automatic updates for 3.7 and on MP6 as the likely new admin design.