WordPress News Roundup September 2011: WooCommerce Launches

September 2011 was a landmark month for the WordPress plugin ecosystem. On September 27, WooThemes released WooCommerce, a free e-commerce plugin built on a fork of the Jigoshop codebase. Few could have predicted it at the time, but WooCommerce would grow into the most widely used e-commerce platform on the web and, in 2015, become part of Automattic.

Earlier in the month, the WordPress project’s own community plugins took a big step forward. bbPress 2.0, rebuilt as a WordPress plugin, and BuddyPress 1.5 both shipped on September 21. Core development, meanwhile, was racing towards the WordPress 3.3 feature freeze.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

There were no acquisitions in the WordPress space in September 2011. The closest thing to a deal was the way WooCommerce came about: WooThemes hired developers Mike Jolley and James Koster, who had worked on Jigoshop, and built its plugin from a fork of that project. The move was controversial in the Jigoshop community and split its user base.

WordPress Core Updates

Heading to feature freeze: On September 15 the project said WordPress 3.3 was about to hit feature freeze, making that weekend the last chance to finish features and fixes for the release.
Software Freedom Day hackathon: The same post marked Software Freedom Day on September 17 with a weekend hackathon for contributors.
What was coming in 3.3: The release was shaping up around a new drag-and-drop uploader, flyout admin menus, a new toolbar and better support for tablets.

Other WordPress News

WooCommerce launches (September 27): WooThemes released WooCommerce as a free plugin, with a revamped admin, improved reporting and built-in HTML email templates. Core developer Mark Jaquith was hired to audit its security, and the launch came with a free theme, commercial themes and paid extensions.
bbPress 2.0 and BuddyPress 1.5 (September 21): bbPress 2.0 moved the forum software into a standard WordPress plugin, and BuddyPress 1.5, codenamed “Lombardi,” arrived the same day as a major feature release for the social networking plugin.
A busy WordCamp weekend: WordCamp Cape Town took place on Thursday, September 15, followed that weekend by the first WordCamp Albuquerque and the returning WordCamp Portland, the first of several autumn weekends with more than one WordCamp.
Big publishers: Mullenweg noted that at least 40% of TIME.com’s traffic ran through WordPress, and that the URL in Amazon’s press release for its new Silk browser pointed to a free WordPress.com blog.
SXSW voting: The project asked readers to vote for WordPress session proposals for South by Southwest 2012.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

The TimThumb fallout from August was still being cleaned up. With the vulnerable script copied into so many themes and plugins, tools for finding old copies became important.

TimThumb Vulnerability Scanner: Peter Butler of Code Garage released a free plugin, added to the directory on September 3, that searched a site’s wp-content folder for outdated copies of TimThumb and offered a one-click upgrade.
Theme code quality: Mullenweg pointed readers to a ThemeShaper article arguing that theme code deserved the same scrutiny as plugin code, a lesson underlined by the TimThumb episode.

Industry Trends and Insights

WooCommerce’s arrival changed the e-commerce picture for WordPress. Store plugins such as WP e-Commerce, Jigoshop and Shopp already existed, but WooCommerce combined a free core with a large theme company’s marketing reach and a paid extension model. That mix would make it the default choice for WordPress stores within a few years.

Forking in open source: The Jigoshop fork showed both the strength and the tension of the GPL. Anyone could build on existing code, but doing so by hiring a project’s lead developers caused hard feelings.
Owning your content: Mullenweg linked to Alexis Madrigal’s essay on cloud computing and digital ownership, making the case for having a home of your own on the web as social networks grew.
Competition: Tumblr raised an $85 million funding round in September, a reminder that WordPress faced serious competition in casual blogging.

Theme of the Month: BuddyPress Default

BuddyPress Default, the theme bundled with BuddyPress since version 1.2, shipped again with the 1.5 release. It gave community sites a ready-made layout for profiles, groups, activity streams and forums, and it was the starting point for most new BuddyPress sites that autumn.

Plugin of the Month: WooCommerce

WooCommerce was the pick. Free to download, built on WordPress conventions and backed by WooThemes’ themes and extensions, it made it far easier to run a full online shop on WordPress. Its September 27 launch was the beginning of WordPress’s rise as a major e-commerce platform.

Host of the Month: SiteGround

SiteGround was building a reputation among WordPress users for helpful support and WordPress-friendly shared hosting. As more people set up shops and community sites with new plugins like WooCommerce and BuddyPress, hosts that understood WordPress were in growing demand.

Founder of the Month: Andy Peatling

Andy Peatling created BuddyPress, which Automattic backed when it hired him in 2008. The release of BuddyPress 1.5 in September, alongside bbPress 2.0, showed how far his idea of turning WordPress into a social network platform had come.

Looking Ahead to October 2011

With feature freeze behind it, WordPress 3.3 was expected to enter beta in October. Several more weekends with multiple WordCamps were on the calendar, and WooCommerce’s first users would be putting the new plugin through its paces.