WordPress News Roundup October 2008: WordPress 2.6.3 Release, Automattic Buys PollDaddy as the WordPress 2.7 Design Is Unveiled

October 2008 was the month WordPress 2.7 came into focus. The core team published wireframes on October 1 and the finished visual design on October 17, replacing the rough “Crazyhorse” prototype that had been used for testing. Automattic made its second acquisition in a month, buying the polling service PollDaddy, and a small security release patched a third-party library bundled with WordPress.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

• Automattic acquires PollDaddy: On October 15, Matt Mullenweg announced in “PollDaddy Goes Automattic” that the company had acquired the poll and survey service, founded in 2006 in Sligo, Ireland. On the day of the announcement PollDaddy was integrated with 4.4 million WordPress.com blogs, and its founders joined Automattic. Terms were not disclosed.
• Gravatar at one: Mullenweg marked a year since the Gravatar acquisition with server and traffic statistics in an anniversary post on October 10.

WordPress Core Updates

• 2.7 wireframes (October 1): The team shared wireframes for 2.7, noting that nightly builds were adding new features and layout changes quickly.
• The visual design of 2.7 (October 17): The finished visual design replaced the hacked-together Crazyhorse interface, followed on October 20 by a post on the new 2.7 dashboard and the largely positive response to it.
• WordPress 2.6.3 (October 23): A security release for a vulnerability in the Snoopy library, which WordPress used to fetch dashboard feeds.
• Calling icon designers (October 24): With the 2.7 menus described as almost ready for beta, the team invited designers to create new menu icons.
• Usability report (October 29): A report on testing 2.5 and Crazyhorse explained why the admin was being redesigned so soon after 2.5.

Other WordPress News

• Microsoft installs WordPress: Microsoft’s Web Application Installer added WordPress, making it easier to set up on Windows servers.
• Famous bloggers: Stephen Fry’s new website ran on WordPress, and Nobel laureate José Saramago had two blogs on WordPress.com.
• Meetups and WordCamps: Community events took place in Berlin alongside the Web 2.0 Expo there, in Honolulu as a combined PodCamp and WordCamp, in Mobile, Alabama, and at the Latinoware conference in Brazil.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

The Snoopy vulnerability fixed in 2.6.3 sat in a bundled HTTP library rather than WordPress’s own code. The developers rated the risk as low but shipped the update immediately. It was a reminder that WordPress’s security also depended on the third-party code it included.

Industry Trends and Insights

Microsoft adding WordPress to its installer was a notable sign of mainstream acceptance for a PHP application that had grown up on Linux hosting. On the design side, WordPress’s openness about wireframes, surveys and usability findings was unusual for software of its size and invited the community into decisions that many projects made behind closed doors.

Plugin of the Month: PollDaddy

PollDaddy let bloggers create polls and surveys and embed them in posts. Already integrated with millions of WordPress.com blogs on the day of the deal, it now had Automattic’s full backing.

Founder of the Month: David Lenehan

David Lenehan co-founded PollDaddy in Ireland in 2006 and joined Automattic with the acquisition, bringing one of the web’s most popular polling tools into the WordPress family.

Looking Ahead to November 2008

The first public beta of WordPress 2.7 was close, with the new menus nearly ready. November was also expected to bring results from the icon design call and more WordCamps, including one in Australia.