WordPress News Roundup May 2010: WordCamp San Francisco and the WordPress 3.0 Release Candidate

May 2010 carried WordPress 3.0 from beta to release candidate. The month opened with the fourth annual WordCamp San Francisco on May 1, followed by a post-conference code sprint that produced Beta 2 on May 6. On May 28 the first release candidate arrived, signalling that the biggest release in the project’s history was nearly done.

In between, WordPress marked its seventh birthday on May 27, and WordCamp Raleigh turned into a showcase of the businesses now built on the platform, from theme shops to e-commerce plugins.

WordPress Core Updates

• WordPress 3.0 Beta 2: Released on May 6 after a code sprint that followed WordCamp San Francisco, the second beta asked testers to focus on a revised menu interface and changes to the exporter and importer.
• Toward the release candidate: Developer chats through the month tracked the remaining tickets and readiness for an RC.
• WordPress 3.0 RC1: On May 28 the first release candidate was made available, with features complete and known bugs addressed. Plugin and theme developers were urged to test.
• Plugin activation output: Ryan Boren reminded plugin authors that 3.0 would check for unexpected output during plugin activation, one of several developer notes published as the release approached.

For testers, RC1 was the first chance to try the complete 3.0 feature set in its near-final form. Turning on multisite required adding a constant to wp-config.php and then visiting a new Network screen under Tools, while the menu manager under Appearance let users build navigation from pages, posts, categories and custom links. Custom post types and taxonomies gained admin interfaces, the installer asked for an administrator username instead of assuming “admin,” and Twenty Ten replaced Kubrick as the theme on new installs. Plugin authors were encouraged to test against the RC rather than wait for the final release, since many sites would upgrade on day one.

Other WordPress News

• WordCamp San Francisco: The May 1 event was the fourth WordCamp SF and once again the venue for Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word, delivered as 3.0 neared completion.
• Lucky seven: On May 27 WordPress.org marked seven years since WordPress’s first release, recalling how the project had launched into a blogging market some considered saturated.
• WordCamp Raleigh: WP Tavern recorded a series of interviews at WordCamp Raleigh with Jane Wells on 3.0 and its menu system, Brad Williams of WebDevStudios, iThemes founder Cory Miller, StudioPress’s Nathan Rice and Shopp developer Jonathan Davis.
• Community talks: Also at WordCamp Raleigh, community manager Patrick O’Keefe spoke about extending an online community beyond the blog, and Bitwire Media’s Dave Moyer discussed brand reliability.
• Contributing as training: Developer Glenn Ansley wrote about how contributing to core had made him a better developer, part of a broader effort to recruit contributors during the 3.0 cycle.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

There was no core security release in May, and WordPress 2.9.2 remained the current stable version. With April’s Network Solutions attacks still fresh, testers paid attention to the hardening built into 3.0: a chosen administrator username at install, security keys generated automatically for new sites, and new constants that let administrators switch off the built-in theme and plugin editors or block file changes from the dashboard altogether.

Industry Trends and Insights

By May 2010 WordPress had a professional ecosystem large enough to fill a conference by itself. The interviews at WordCamp Raleigh alone covered agencies, theme companies, e-commerce plugins and book authors, all making a living from software anyone could download for free.

• Managed hosting startups: WP Engine, founded in Austin earlier in 2010, had signed its first few dozen customers by May, joining Page.ly in offering hosting dedicated to WordPress.
• E-commerce on WordPress: Plugins such as Shopp and WP e-Commerce were giving store owners an alternative to standalone shopping cart software.
• A CMS, not a blog engine: Custom post types, menus and multisite in 3.0 were widely expected to change perceptions of WordPress among developers who had previously preferred Drupal or Joomla.

Theme of the Month: Twenty Ten

Twenty Ten was being tested by beta users throughout May ahead of becoming the default theme in 3.0. Built to show off custom headers, backgrounds and menus, it also introduced many users to child themes, which 3.0 strongly encouraged as the safe way to customise a design.

Plugin of the Month: Shopp

Shopp, developed by Jonathan Davis, was a commercial e-commerce plugin that turned WordPress into an online store with product catalogues, a shopping cart and payment gateway integrations. Davis discussed new features and 3.0 compatibility at WordCamp Raleigh in May.

Host of the Month: Linode

Developers preparing to test WordPress 3.0’s multisite features needed servers they could configure freely, including wildcard subdomains. Linode’s virtual private servers were a popular choice for that kind of experimentation.

Founder of the Month: Mike Little

Mike Little co-founded WordPress with Matt Mullenweg in 2003, when the two forked the b2 blogging software. The project’s seventh anniversary on May 27 was a fitting moment to recognise the developer whose comment on Matt’s blog post about forking b2 helped start it all.

Looking Ahead to June 2010

June was expected to bring further release candidates and the final release of WordPress 3.0, with its merged multisite code, menus and Twenty Ten. Plugin and theme developers were racing to confirm compatibility before launch.