WordPress News Roundup May 2013: WordPress Turns 10 and Post Formats UI Is Pulled From 3.6

May 2013 belonged to one date. On May 27, ten years after Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little released the first version of WordPress, fans gathered at hundreds of #wp10 parties from Auckland to Zambia. In his anniversary essay Ten Good Years, Matt noted that the fork of b2 they started in 2003 now powered 18% of the web.

The celebrations were tempered by a hard decision in core. After months of work and two rounds of redesign, the Post Formats UI that had been 3.6’s headline feature was taken out of the release.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

No WordPress-specific deals were announced in May. The month’s defining deal was elsewhere in publishing: Yahoo’s agreement to buy Tumblr for about $1.1 billion, announced on May 20, which Matt Mullenweg discussed on his blog. Ghost’s Kickstarter, launched in April, closed with £196,362 from more than 5,000 backers.

WordPress Core Updates

• WordPress 3.6 Beta 3: Beta 3 landed on May 10 with about a hundred changes, including drag-and-drop image upload in the image format flow, a more polished revision comparison screen and a better quote format in Twenty Thirteen. It also added oEmbed support for Rdio and Spotify, the latter created an endpoint within a day of the team noting its absence.
• Post Formats UI removed: At the end of the month the release leads concluded that the Post Formats UI was not ready, and it was pulled from 3.6. The decision delayed the release but kept the rest of 3.6 (revisions, autosave, post locking and media) on track.

Other WordPress News

• #wp10 around the world: On May 27 the project shared a live feed of photos and posts from hundreds of parties, and Matt published a personal letter, Dear WordPress, reflecting on the decade.
• Summer interns announced: The same post named eight interns for Google Summer of Code and the GNOME Outreach Program for Women. Among them, Ryan McCue would work on a JSON-based REST API, Kat Hagan on a Post by Email plugin to replace the core feature, and Siobhan Bamber on support and training. Ryan’s project would grow into the WP REST API.
• Honour for Mike Little: Co-founder Mike Little was named the first recipient of SAScon’s Outstanding Contribution to Digital award in Manchester, to be presented in June.
• MP6 gains fans: The experimental MP6 admin redesign kept iterating, and early testers praised its flat, high-contrast look as a glimpse of WordPress’s future dashboard.
• VaultPress for more people: Automattic introduced a lower-priced VaultPress plan, bringing real-time backups within reach of smaller sites.
• WP Tavern returns: WP Tavern resumed regular publishing in early May after a quiet spring.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

• BuddyPress 1.7.2: BuddyPress released version 1.7.2 in mid-May with security fixes, and community site owners were advised to update.
• Brute-force aftermath: Hosts and security companies continued to see login attacks after April’s botnet, and the conversation shifted to two-factor authentication and moving away from the “admin” username.

Industry Trends and Insights

• 18% of the web: Ten years in, WordPress was the dominant self-hosted publishing platform, and the anniversary underlined how much of that came from volunteers and community events.
• Tumblr and the value of blogging: Yahoo’s billion-dollar purchase of Tumblr put a price tag on social blogging and sharpened the contrast between hosted, venture-backed platforms and open-source WordPress.
• Shipping discipline: Pulling Post Formats UI showed the project was willing to cut a headline feature rather than ship something half-finished, a lesson that fed into the features-as-plugins approach soon after.

Theme of the Month: Kubrick

For the anniversary, it is worth remembering Kubrick, Michael Heilemann’s design that served as WordPress’s default theme from 2005 until Twenty Ten replaced it. Countless #wp10 nostalgia posts this month featured its blue header, and it shaped how a generation of users pictured a WordPress blog.

Plugin of the Month: VaultPress

VaultPress, Automattic’s real-time backup and security scanning service, picked up a cheaper plan this month. After April’s attacks, an affordable off-site backup that could restore a compromised site was exactly what many site owners needed.

Host of the Month: WP Engine

WP Engine used May to make the public case that WordPress itself was secure, pushing back against the brute-force headlines. As one of the leading managed WordPress hosts, its message helped frame security as a matter of hosting, passwords and maintenance rather than a flaw in the software.

Founder of the Month: Mike Little

Mike Little was the developer who answered Matt Mullenweg’s January 2003 blog post about forking b2, and the two released WordPress together that May. Ten years later, with a new award recognising his role, he was a fitting founder to honour in the anniversary month.

Looking Ahead to June 2013

June should bring further 3.6 betas now that post formats are out of scope, with a release candidate to follow. Summer interns begin their projects, and Mike Little receives his award in Manchester. Google Reader’s July 1 shutdown is also approaching, so expect more discussion of RSS alternatives.