WordPress News Roundup March 2012: Twitter Buys Posterous as WordPress Courts Its Users and Twenty Twelve Slips to 3.5

March 2012 began, as it often did, in Austin. South by Southwest Interactive brought the WordPress community together at the festival where Matt Mullenweg had first met some of the project’s early supporters back in 2003. The bigger news of the month came from a competitor, though: on March 12, Twitter bought the blogging service Posterous, and Posterous users began moving their sites to WordPress in large numbers.

Core development hit a bump. WordPress 3.4 was running behind schedule, and the new Twenty Twelve default theme was moved out of the release to a later version. WordPress also learned it would not take part in Google Summer of Code that year, and plugin authors were warned about a phishing campaign aimed at their WordPress.org accounts.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

• Twitter acquires Posterous (March 12): Twitter bought Posterous, the email-based blogging service, mainly to bring its engineers and product team into Twitter. Terms were not disclosed. Posterous said its service would continue for now, but many users decided not to wait.
• VIP Featured Partner Program (March 15): Automattic launched a featured partner programme for WordPress.com VIP, designed to give VIP customers more for their money by pointing them to recommended development partners.

WordPress Core Updates

There was no core release in March, but development on WordPress 3.4 continued ahead of its first beta in early April.

• Twenty Twelve moves to 3.5: On March 20 the core team decided that Twenty Twelve would not ship with WordPress 3.4 and would likely arrive with 3.5 instead. The responsive theme’s code was available on GitHub for anyone who wanted to test it early.
• Team-based development: WordPress 3.4 was being built with a new team-based approach, with small groups of contributors leading different features such as the theme customizer.

Other WordPress News

• WordPress at SXSW: The official blog marked the festival and its special place in the project’s history, recalling that the author first met Mullenweg at SXSW in 2003, before WordPress even had its name.
• Posterous users move to WordPress: WordPress saw a 250% jump in imports from Posterous in the hours after the Twitter deal, according to The Next Web. Users could bring their sites across from the dashboard by choosing Posterous under Tools and Import.
• No Summer of Code: WP Tavern reported on March 21 that WordPress had not been accepted into Google Summer of Code for 2012, after taking part for several years. The reason was not clear at the time.
• WordPress.com on Windows 8: Mullenweg noted that a WordPress.com app for Windows 8 had been shown on stage at Mobile World Congress on February 29.
• BuddyPress 1.5.5: BuddyPress shipped another maintenance release for its 1.5 branch on March 27.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

• Phishing plugin authors: Plugin developers received emails asking them to click a link to check their plugin’s “status.” The link led to a convincing copy of WordPress.org that asked for their password. Volunteer forum moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) warned authors not to reply or log in, noting that genuine notices would come from a wordpress.org address. Because a stolen account could be used to push a malicious plugin update, the attack was a serious threat to users as well as authors.
• Brute force attacks: WP Tavern looked at the growing number of automated attempts to guess WordPress admin passwords, a problem that would become much larger the following year.

Industry Trends and Insights

The Posterous deal showed the risk of building on a hosted service owned by a start-up: when the company is bought, its product can quickly become an afterthought. Posterous would in fact be shut down the following year. WordPress’s open source model, and the ability to export content and move hosts, became a selling point.

• PHP 5.4: PHP 5.4.0 was released on March 1, adding traits, short array syntax and a built-in development web server. WordPress still supported PHP 5.2.4, so plugin and theme authors had to wait before using the new features.
• Responsive design: Twenty Twelve’s responsive layout reflected how important mobile-friendly design had become, even though its release was pushed back.

Theme of the Month: Atahualpa

Atahualpa, from BytesForAll, was one of the longest-running popular free themes in the directory. Its huge set of options let users change layouts, colours and fonts without code, making it a favourite of do-it-yourself site owners at a time when WordPress’s own customisation tools were still being built.

Plugin of the Month: Limit Login Attempts

Limit Login Attempts blocked an IP address after a number of failed logins, a simple defence against the automated password-guessing attacks WP Tavern was writing about. Along with strong passwords, it was one of the easiest ways for site owners to harden their logins in 2012.

Host of the Month: WordPress.com VIP

WordPress.com VIP launched its featured partner programme in March, building a network of recommended partners around its enterprise hosting. It was a step towards a fuller ecosystem for big publishers running WordPress.

Founder of the Month: Joost de Valk

Joost de Valk, founder of Yoast and creator of the WordPress SEO plugin, was one of the most visible people in the WordPress business world in early 2012. His hosting survey and his plugins kept him at the centre of conversations about how to run WordPress sites well.

Looking Ahead to April 2012

The first beta of WordPress 3.4, with its live theme customizer, was expected in early April. WordCamp season was getting into full swing, and Posterous users would keep weighing their options.