WordPress News Roundup June 2015: WordCamp Europe in Seville and a New Security Czar for WordPress

June 2015 belonged to WordCamp Europe. The third edition of the event gathered the European community in Seville from June 26 to 28, and Matt Mullenweg used his question-and-answer session there to name a dedicated security czar for the WordPress project after a rocky spring of vulnerability disclosures.

There was no core release during the month and nothing published on the WordPress.org news blog, but WordPress 4.3’s headline feature was settled, BuddyPress shipped a major update, and the WordPress Foundation went to court to defend the WordPress trademark.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

• Automattic acquires WP Job Manager (June 2): Mike Jolley sold his job board plugin to Automattic, which he had joined with the WooThemes deal in May.

Automattic also marked its 10th anniversary during the month, now a considerably larger company after absorbing the WooThemes team.

WordPress Core Updates

• Menu Customizer heads for 4.3: The Menu Customizer feature plugin was officially proposed for merge on June 3, tentatively approved on June 5 and formally approved on June 16 after a call for user testing. It meant menus could be created and edited with a live preview in WordPress 4.3.
• Customizer debate: A proposed filter to disable the Customizer entirely was rejected on Trac, underlining the project’s commitment to the Customizer as the future of site customisation, even as a new plugin appeared to strip it out for those who disliked it.
• BackPress revival: A proposal to revive BackPress, the shared library once used by standalone projects such as the original bbPress, received a rocky reception from developers.
• Code examples for themes: The Theme Review Team launched a library of code examples on GitHub and asked for feedback on the review process and the directory.

Other WordPress News

• WordCamp Europe 2015: Held at the Barceló Gran Hotel Renacimiento in Seville from June 26 to 28. Organisers announced that WordCamp Europe 2016 would take place in Vienna, Austria, from June 24 to 26, 2016.
• A security czar: Answering a question at WordCamp Europe about WordPress’ security record, Matt Mullenweg acknowledged communication problems around the 4.2.1 disclosure and named Automattic’s Nikolay Bachiyski as the project’s first security czar, responsible for communication and triage of security reports.
• Trademark lawsuit: On June 18 the WordPress Foundation sued Jeff Yablon, owner of The WordPress Helpers, for trademark infringement over five domain names containing “WordPress,” which the Foundation’s trademark policy does not allow without permission. Yablon had also opposed the Foundation’s pending trademark application.
• WordCamp US: Applications opened for cities wishing to host the first WordCamp US later in the year.
• BuddyPress 2.3 “Livio”: Released on June 3, BuddyPress 2.3 introduced the BP Attachments API, and BuddyDrive 1.3 was among the first plugins to use it.
• WordPress.com Insights: WordPress.com launched Insights, a new stats view for visualising publishing trends. Automattic also put its o2 collaborative theme on GitHub, then shifted the o2 team’s focus to WordPress.com’s core products.
• Recommended hosting reset: The recommended hosting page on WordPress.org was cleared and the selection process started again from scratch.
• Departures and directories: Sergej Müller, creator of Antispam Bee, announced he was leaving WordPress development, while Steven Gliebe launched a directory of commercial WordPress plugins and Easy Digital Downloads made all of its official themes free.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

• WooCommerce 2.3.11: Patched an object injection vulnerability on June 11, a few weeks after the Automattic acquisition.
• prettyPhoto XSS: WooThemes fixed a cross-site scripting vulnerability across products that used the prettyPhoto lightbox library.
• Disclosure process: The security czar appointment was the month’s most significant security development, aimed at preventing a repeat of researchers going public after failing to get a response.

Industry Trends and Insights

Performance was on developers’ minds as PHP 7 neared release. Benchmarks published in June showed Facebook’s HHVM running a WordPress workload 18.7% faster than a PHP 7 build at the time, keeping the HHVM-versus-PHP 7 debate alive among hosts deciding which runtime to bet on.

Backups were another theme. A survey of WordPress backup tools put Automattic’s VaultPress on top, reflecting how many site owners now paid for automated off-site backups. And WooCommerce’s growing popularity led Stack Exchange to test a dedicated question-and-answer site for the plugin, a sign of how large its user base had become.

Theme of the Month: Argent

Argent, a free portfolio theme released in June, gave creatives a clean, image-led layout for showing off their work. It fit neatly into the run of polished free themes that WordPress.org and WordPress.com users were enjoying through 2015.

Plugin of the Month: Menu Customizer

The Menu Customizer feature plugin, led by Nick Halsey, earned its place in core in June. Bringing menu management into the live preview was one of the most visible Customizer improvements yet, and its merge into 4.3 showed the feature-plugin model delivering a real user-facing change.

Host of the Month: WordPress.com VIP

As Automattic celebrated its 10th anniversary in June, its WordPress.com VIP platform remained the company’s answer for large publishers, offering managed hosting and code review for high-traffic WordPress sites. It was a reminder that enterprise WordPress hosting had been part of Automattic’s business for years.

Founder of the Month: Matt Mullenweg

Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress and founder of Automattic, saw the company he started in 2005 reach its 10th anniversary in June. At WordCamp Europe he openly admitted the project’s security communication had fallen short and acted on it immediately by appointing a security czar.

Looking Ahead to July 2015

July was set to bring the first beta of WordPress 4.3, with the Menu Customizer, site icons and formatting shortcuts expected to be the headline features. The host city for the first WordCamp US was also due to be decided.