WordPress News Roundup March 2010: Automattic Unveils VaultPress as Kubrick Leaves Core

March 2010 was the month WordPress said goodbye to its oldest look. On March 29 the Kubrick and Classic themes were removed from the 3.0 development code, clearing the way for Twenty Ten to become the default. A day later, Automattic introduced VaultPress, a subscription backup and restore service for self-hosted WordPress sites.

Elsewhere, thousands of WordPress users gathered in Austin for South by Southwest Interactive, the project opened applications for Google Summer of Code 2010, and the 3.0 team grappled with how to name the pieces of a merged WordPress and WordPress MU.

WordPress Core Updates

WordPress 2.9.2 remained the current release while 3.0 development pressed on toward a first beta.

• Kubrick and Classic removed: The two bundled themes were taken out of the 3.0 codebase at the end of March. They would remain available from the theme directory, while Twenty Ten would ship as the new default.
• Sites, blogs and networks: With multi-site features coming into core, contributors including Andrew Nacin worked through a terminology change: what MU had called “blogs” would be “sites,” and what it had called a “site” would become a “network.” The shift caused confusion that WP Tavern and others tried to untangle.
• Admin header and menus: Developer chats covered the 3.0 admin header, an icon for the new Network menu and support for multiple post thumbnails.

Other WordPress News

• VaultPress announced: Automattic announced VaultPress on March 30 as a premium service that continuously backed up a site’s database, files, themes and plugins, with tools to restore a site from those backups. It launched in a limited, invite-based beta, and Matt Mullenweg wrote about it on ma.tt.
• WordPress at SXSW: WordPress.org invited attendees of South by Southwest Interactive in Austin to a WordPress BBQ on March 14.
• Summer of Code 2010: WordPress.org ran a two-part series of classroom skits encouraging students to apply for Google Summer of Code, with applications opening on March 29.
• A WordPress Firefox Persona: After Firefox 3.6 added support for lightweight Personas, WordPress.org shared a WordPress-themed design for the browser.
• Freemium talk: Automattic CEO Toni Schneider spoke at a San Francisco summit on the freemium business model, the approach behind WordPress.com and services like VaultPress.
• Growth across projects: WordPress Weekly interviewed Automattic’s Paul Kim about user growth across WordPress-related projects.
• Commercial month on WordPress Weekly: The podcast announced that April would be dedicated to the commercialisation of WordPress, covering themes, plugins and services.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

There was no core security release in March. The month’s security conversation centred on resilience instead: VaultPress was pitched partly as protection against data loss after a compromise, and WP Tavern published raw server logs from a distributed denial-of-service attack on its own site involving trackbacks, illustrating the kind of abuse site owners were facing.

Industry Trends and Insights

VaultPress marked Automattic’s first major paid product aimed squarely at self-hosted WordPress users rather than WordPress.com. It signalled that the company saw a business in services wrapped around the open source software, a strategy that would later expand considerably.

• Backups become a market: Coverage immediately compared VaultPress with iThemes’ BackupBuddy, and WP Tavern concluded the two would coexist rather than one killing the other.
• Freelancers and WordPress: Articles on the opportunities for freelance designers building WordPress sites reflected a growing services economy.
• Premium theme shops proliferate: Reviews of new commercial themes from shops such as The Theme Foundry and SimpleThemes showed how crowded the market had become.

Theme of the Month: Traction

The Theme Foundry’s Traction, reviewed in its Pro edition by WP Tavern at the end of March, offered a clean two-column layout with widget-ready sidebars and a featured post slider. It was typical of the polished, design-led themes that independent shops were selling as WordPress moved beyond Kubrick.

Plugin of the Month: VaultPress

The VaultPress plugin connected a self-hosted site to Automattic’s backup service, sending changes to off-site storage in near real time. Its March 30 announcement made automated backups a mainstream topic for WordPress site owners.

Host of the Month: Laughing Squid

Laughing Squid’s community-minded hosting, run by Scott Beale in San Francisco, fitted a month in which WordPress people gathered in person at SXSW and looked toward WordCamp San Francisco on May 1. Smaller, personal hosts like it remained an important part of the WordPress.org ecosystem.

Founder of the Month: Drew Strojny

Drew Strojny founded The Theme Foundry, whose Traction theme was among the commercial designs drawing attention in March. His shop focused on careful typography and clean code, and it became one of the respected independent theme businesses of the era.

Looking Ahead to April 2010

April was set to bring the first beta of WordPress 3.0 and the Google Summer of Code student application deadline. WordCamp San Francisco on May 1 was the next big date on the calendar.