WordPress News Roundup September 2007: WordPress 2.3 “Dexter” Adds Native Tags and Update Notifications
September 2007 brought WordPress 2.3 “Dexter” with native tags and update alerts, a 2.2.3 security fix and new lead developers Mark Jaquith and Peter Westwood.
WordPress 2.3 “Dexter” Adds Native Tags
And Update Notifications
CoreBetas and RC
CommunityPlugin directory statistics
September 2007 delivered the release many users had been waiting for. WordPress 2.3 “Dexter” finally brought native tagging into core, along with dashboard notifications for new WordPress and plugin versions, canonical URL redirects and a pending-review workflow for multi-author sites. Three weekly betas and a release candidate led up to it, and the project also promoted two longtime contributors to lead developer.
Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments
No acquisitions or funding rounds were announced in September.
WordPress Core Updates
- Betas and RC: Beta 2 arrived on September 4 and Beta 3, the last, on September 11, followed by Release Candidate 1 on September 19. The team also published advice on preparing for 2.3.
- WordPress 2.2.3 (September 8): A security and bug-fix release for the 2.2 series with two high-priority fixes.
- WordPress 2.3 “Dexter” (September 24): Named for saxophonist Dexter Gordon and announced on the WordPress blog on September 25, WordPress 2.3 added native tags with importers for Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome’s Keywords, Simple Tags and Bunny’s Technorati Tags; update notifications for core and plugins; canonical URL redirects; pending review for posts; and the full set of TinyMCE editor buttons behind a “kitchen sink” toggle.
- Under the hood: A new taxonomy schema, the biggest database change since 1.5, Atom 1.0 and the Atom Publishing Protocol, a faster jQuery, and the new $wpdb->prepare() method for safer SQL. More than 350 tickets were closed by over 100 contributors.
- New lead developers: On September 24 the project congratulated Mark Jaquith and Peter Westwood on becoming lead developers alongside Matt Mullenweg and Ryan Boren.
Other WordPress News
- Plugin directory statistics: The official directory began showing stats, with 1,021 active plugins and about 1.6 million downloads, according to Mullenweg.
- WordPress.com rising: Quantcast ranked WordPress.com as the 22nd-largest site in the US, with roughly 87 million global unique visitors over 30 days.
- Upgrade parties and meetups: Mullenweg hosted a 2.3 upgrade party in San Francisco and proposed meetups in Paris and London, with a small Paris gathering held on September 30.
- WordCamps spread: Organisers began planning WordCamps in Melbourne, Australia, and Hamburg, Germany.
- Switchers: Broadcaster Leo Laporte moved his main blog to WordPress.
Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities
WordPress 2.2.3 fixed two high-priority problems, and the team urged an immediate upgrade. Version 2.3 then took aim at the root cause of many hacked sites: outdated software. Its update notifications told administrators when a new WordPress or plugin version was available by checking with api.wordpress.org, which meant sending the blog’s URL, plugin list and version information to WordPress.org.
Industry Trends and Insights
Tags had become a defining feature of the social web, and WordPress had relied on plugins to offer them. Bringing tagging into core, with importers for the leading plugins, put WordPress on equal footing with hosted rivals. Update notifications were just as important in the long run: they were the first step toward the one-click and automatic updates that would later keep millions of sites patched.
Plugin of the Month: Ultimate Tag Warrior
Ultimate Tag Warrior was the plugin many bloggers had used to add tags before 2.3. Its inclusion in the new tag importers was a fitting send-off, letting users move years of tagging into the core system without losing work.
Host of the Month: WordPress.com
A top-25 ranking in the US and close to 90 million monthly global visitors made WordPress.com one of the largest publishing platforms on the web, barely two years after it opened.
Founder of the Month: Ryan Boren
Ryan Boren, one of WordPress’s earliest core developers and a lead developer since the project’s early days, guided 2.3 through its run of weekly betas. The expansion of the lead team this month showed how the project he helped build was growing up.
Looking Ahead to October 2007
With 2.3 out, a maintenance release to fix early bugs was the next expected step. The project’s next major version, 2.4, was planned for later in the year, and WordCamps outside the US were moving from ideas to dates.
