WordPress News Roundup June 2016: WordCamp Europe Vienna, WordPress 4.5.3 and the New Plugin Directory Beta

June 2016 was WordCamp Europe’s biggest year yet. The community gathered in Vienna from June 24 to 26 for what organisers had expanded into the largest WordCamp ever held, with every session streamed live for free, and left with Paris confirmed as the 2017 host.

Around the event, WordPress shipped a security release that fixed seven issues, approved Shiny Updates for WordPress 4.6, opened the redesigned Plugin Directory for public testing and released the first 4.6 beta on the last day of the month.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

No significant WordPress acquisitions or funding rounds were announced in June. WP Tavern did publish a look at how Hari Ravichandran founded Endurance International Group, the hosting giant behind Bluehost and many other brands, offering context on the consolidated companies that hosted a large share of WordPress sites.

WordPress Core Updates

• WordPress 4.5.3: Released on June 18, it fixed a redirect bypass in the Customizer reported by Yassine Aboukir, two cross-site scripting problems via attachment names reported by Jouko Pynnönen and Divyesh Prajapati, a revision history information disclosure reported by John Blackbourn and by Dan Moen of Wordfence, an oEmbed denial of service reported by Jennifer Dodd of Automattic, and unauthorised category removal reported by David Herrera of Alley Interactive, among others. It also fixed 17 bugs.
• Shiny Updates approved: Proposed for merge on June 3, Shiny Updates was approved for a partial merge into 4.6 on June 13, bringing faster, page-load-free installs, updates and deletions of plugins and themes.
• WordPress 4.6 Beta 1: Released on June 30.
• New Plugin Directory in beta: The redesigned Plugin Directory entered open beta on June 28, and the Plugin Review Team announced it would add new members to tackle its workload.

Other WordPress News

• WordCamp Europe 2016: The Vienna event ran from June 24 to 26, with free live streaming of all sessions and recordings posted within days. Matt Mullenweg’s question-and-answer session was among the most discussed moments.
• Paris in 2017: Organisers announced that WordCamp Europe 2017 would be held in Paris from June 16 to 18.
• WooCommerce 2.6: Released on June 14, it introduced shipping zones and a new design for customer account pages.
• Gravity Forms 2.0: Also released on June 14, with reCAPTCHA 2.0 support and security hardening.
• BuddyPress 2.6 “Espejo”: Released on June 22 with activity embeds and new APIs for navigation and group types.
• WordCamp US 2016: Speaker applications opened for December’s event in Philadelphia.
• Community debates: Discussion about whether WordCamp after-parties should be alcohol-free ran through the month, with WordCamp London cited as an example of a more inclusive social event.
• New WordCamps: Kyiv, Ukraine, announced its first official WordCamp for September, and WordCamp Belfast set an October date.
• WP-CLI’s future: Contributors began working towards a more sustainable future for WP-CLI, an early step in a funding effort for the project.
• Community giveaway: A giveaway in the Advanced WordPress Facebook group grew past $70,000 in prizes after Automattic joined in.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

• WP Mobile Detector: An arbitrary file upload vulnerability in the WP Mobile Detector plugin was patched in early June while exploits were already under way.
• EWWW Image Optimizer: A critical vulnerability was patched in the popular image optimisation plugin on June 9.
• Jetpack 4.0.4: Patched three security vulnerabilities on June 20.
• Pressable incident: Managed host Pressable rolled back a database change that had caused some customer sites to display garbled content.

Industry Trends and Insights

WordCamp Europe’s scale showed how international WordPress had become. A European event with more than 2,000 attendees and a free global livestream rivalled anything in North America, and the community’s growth in Eastern Europe, with new WordCamps in Kyiv and elsewhere, continued to accelerate.

E-commerce was the other big story. WooCommerce 2.6’s shipping zones answered one of the most common complaints from store owners, and with Automattic backing it, WooCommerce was becoming a serious alternative to hosted platforms. Meanwhile Google redesigned Google Fonts, a reminder of how much of the web’s typography, including many WordPress themes, depended on one free service.

Theme of the Month: Canapé

Canapé, an elegant free theme for restaurants released in June, showed how niche, beautifully designed themes could serve small businesses without heavy configuration. It arrived as WordPress.com and WordPress.org were both expanding their catalogues of business-focused free themes.

Plugin of the Month: Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms 2.0 was the biggest update in years for one of WordPress’ best-known commercial plugins. Released in June with reCAPTCHA 2.0 and security hardening, it reinforced Gravity Forms’ position as the premium choice for complex forms even as newer, beginner-focused competitors appeared.

Host of the Month: SiteGround

A month after joining WordPress.org’s recommended hosting page, SiteGround was one of four hosts that the project pointed new users towards. The Bulgarian company had already shown its commitment to the project by sponsoring a full-time core contributor in 2015.

Founder of the Month: Carl Hancock

Carl Hancock, co-founder of Rocketgenius, shipped Gravity Forms 2.0 in June. Gravity Forms had long been one of the defining commercial WordPress plugins, and the 2.0 release showed the company continuing to invest in its core product rather than chasing new markets.

Looking Ahead to July 2016

July was set to bring further 4.6 betas and a release candidate ahead of an August launch, with Shiny Updates, native system fonts and editor improvements on board. The first WPCampus was scheduled for July 15 and 16, and the BuddyPress 2.7 cycle was due to start.