WordPress News Roundup October 2011: WordPress 3.3 Enters Beta and Automattic Makes Its First Investment

October 2011 was the month WordPress 3.3 became something people could test. The first beta arrived on October 11 and a second followed nine days later, bringing the new toolbar, flyout menus and a welcome box for new users into the hands of testers.

Automattic was busy on the business side. It made its first investment in another company, newspaper technology start-up OwnLocal, and struck a deal with Federated Media to sell advertising on high-end WordPress.com blogs. Matt Mullenweg also shared a stage with Drupal founder Dries Buytaert, a rare joint appearance by the leaders of two rival open source CMS projects.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

• Automattic invests in OwnLocal (October 19): Mullenweg announced Automattic’s first investment in an outside company, OwnLocal, which built tools for local newspapers. The amount was not disclosed.
• Adobe acquires Typekit (October 3): Adobe bought Typekit, the web font service. Mullenweg was an investor, and Typekit powered fonts in WordPress.com’s Custom Design upgrade.
• Federated Media partnership: WordPress.com agreed a deal that let bloggers on the platform sell premium ads through Federated Media. The partnership was revealed at the Web 2.0 Summit and was pitched at high-end publishers who wanted more than Google AdSense.

WordPress Core Updates

• WordPress 3.3 Beta 1 (October 11): The first beta was released with the usual warning not to run it on a production site and to report bugs from a test install.
• WordPress 3.3 Beta 2 (October 20): Beta 2 updated the blue admin colour scheme, fixed IE7 and right-to-left language support, refined the flyout menus, completed the new Pointers feature and added a Welcome box to the dashboard for new installs.
• More polish: Beta 2 also restyled the contextual help panels and changed the admin bar, along with a number of bug fixes.

Other WordPress News

• Mullenweg and Buytaert: Mullenweg and Drupal’s Dries Buytaert gave a joint talk in Houston, with the video published on WordPress.tv. The conversation showed the two projects as friendly competitors with a shared interest in open source.
• WordPress meets maps: Mullenweg highlighted a travel site that combined WordPress, Google Maps and photography, one of many creative uses of the platform beyond blogging.
• Women in technology: At the end of the month Mullenweg shared an essay on myths about women in technology, part of a wider conversation about diversity that would grow inside the WordPress community.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

October brought no core security release. WordPress 3.2.1 remained the version to run on live sites, while 3.3 was tested on separate installs. The cleanup from August’s TimThumb flaw was still going on, and owners of premium themes were advised to check that every bundled copy of the script had been updated or replaced, using tools such as the TimThumb Vulnerability Scanner plugin released in September.

Industry Trends and Insights

Automattic’s moves in October showed a company looking beyond its own products. Investing in OwnLocal tied it to the news industry, a key market for WordPress.com VIP, while the Federated Media deal was a step towards a wider advertising programme for WordPress.com bloggers.

• Web fonts go mainstream: Adobe’s purchase of Typekit showed how important custom typography had become on the web. For WordPress.com users, it meant one of the services behind the Custom Design upgrade now belonged to a much larger company.
• CMS cooperation: The Mullenweg–Buytaert talk was a sign that the open source CMS world saw closed platforms, rather than each other, as the bigger competition.
• Usability for beginners: 3.3’s Welcome box and Pointers reflected a growing focus on new users, a theme that would run through the next several releases.

Theme of the Month: Suffusion

Suffusion, a free theme by Sayontan Sinha, was one of the most feature-rich themes in the WordPress directory. Its long list of layout and design options let non-developers build very different-looking sites from one theme, which made it a favourite with self-starters in 2011.

Plugin of the Month: bbPress

bbPress 2.0, released in late September, turned WordPress’s forum software into a standard plugin. For the first time, site owners could add forums that shared WordPress’s users, themes and admin, and by October many were trying it on their own sites.

Host of the Month: Laughing Squid Hosting

Laughing Squid Hosting, run by Scott Beale, was a long-time WordPress-friendly host popular with San Francisco’s creative and tech communities. Its WordPress hosting plans suited bloggers and small publishers who wanted a host that understood their needs.

Founder of the Month: Dries Buytaert

Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, earns an unusual spot in a WordPress review this month. His joint appearance with Mullenweg in Houston was a reminder that the two largest open source CMS projects shared values and challenges, even as they competed for many of the same sites.

Looking Ahead to November 2011

More WordPress 3.3 betas were expected in November as the team worked through bug fixes, with a release candidate to follow once major tickets were closed. Automattic was also expected to say more about its advertising plans for WordPress.com.