WordPress News Roundup March 2008: WordPress 2.5 “Brecker” Redesigns the Dashboard as Automattic Backs BuddyPress

March 2008 delivered the biggest WordPress release in years. WordPress 2.5 “Brecker” arrived on March 29 with a completely redesigned admin, built-in galleries, multi-file uploads, one-click plugin upgrades and stronger password security. It was the result of six months of work, including the skipped 2.4 cycle. Earlier in the month, Automattic hired the developer behind BuddyPress and took the social networking project under its wing.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

• Automattic backs BuddyPress: On March 4, Matt Mullenweg announced in “Backing BuddyPress” that Andy Peatling had joined Automattic full-time and that the company would support BuddyPress, his set of plugins for turning WordPress MU into a social network. A new BuddyPress website went up on March 31.

WordPress Core Updates

• Delays and previews: The release slipped from early March. A 2.5 sneak peek on March 18 previewed the new dashboard, and Release Candidate 1 appeared around the same time.
• RC2 and a screencast (March 26): The team released Release Candidate 2 with a short screencast of the new dashboard and uploader, noting that RC1 had drawn more than 580 pingbacks of feedback.
• WordPress 2.5 “Brecker” (March 29): Named for saxophonist Michael Brecker, 2.5 introduced a redesigned admin developed with the agency Happy Cog, a customisable dashboard with widgets, multi-file uploads with progress bars, a media library, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, full-screen writing, concurrent editing protection, search across posts and pages, and a visual editor that left HTML alone.
• Security changes: 2.5 added salted passwords and encrypted cookies, a significant upgrade to how WordPress stored and checked credentials.
• A new WordPress.org: Matt Thomas designed and built a refreshed WordPress.org to match the new admin look.

Other WordPress News

• WordCamp Dallas: The two-day event in Frisco, Texas, opened on March 29, the same day 2.5 shipped. Mullenweg wrote about both.
• WordPress MU in the wild: A baby scrapbooking site built on WordPress MU was among the new projects Mullenweg highlighted.
• Scaling research: Mullenweg pointed to an article on consistent hashing and its potential use in HyperDB, the database layer behind WordPress.com.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

No standalone security releases shipped in March, but 2.5 itself was a security milestone. Salted password hashes made stolen database dumps far harder to crack, and encrypted cookies reduced the risk of session theft. One-click plugin upgrades also addressed a long-standing weakness, since outdated plugins were a common route into compromised sites.

Industry Trends and Insights

With Joomla 1.5 and Drupal 6 released earlier in the year, WordPress 2.5 was its answer on usability. Bringing in a respected web design agency to rethink the admin showed how seriously the project now took the experience of non-technical users. The BuddyPress move pointed the same way: social features were becoming expected, and WordPress MU was a natural base for them.

Plugin of the Month: BuddyPress

BuddyPress added profiles, friend connections and other social networking features to WordPress MU. Automattic’s backing this month gave a young project the resources and visibility to grow.

Founder of the Month: Andy Peatling

Andy Peatling created BuddyPress and joined Automattic full-time this month to keep building it. His work would eventually make BuddyPress one of the best-known community plugins in the WordPress ecosystem.

Looking Ahead to April 2008

After a release as large as 2.5, a maintenance update was expected quickly. Mullenweg was also due to speak at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, and plugin and theme authors were racing to update their work for the new admin.