WordPress 3.0 Beta 1

WordPress 3.0 Beta 1 has been released. WordPress 3.0 is set to be released on 1st May 2010.

Remember when I posted earlier about the Twitter account, and I said that hopefully you’d find out later today what has been keeping us all so busy? Beta testers, this is your moment: the WordPress 3.0 Beta 1 has arrived!

This is an early beta. This means there are a few things we’re still finishing. We wanted to get people testing it this weekend, so we’re releasing it now rather than waiting another week until everything is finalized and polished. There’s a ton of stuff going on in 3.0, so this time we’re giving you a list of things to check out, so that we can make sure people are testing all the things that need it.

You Should Know:

  • The custom menus system (Appearance > Menus) is not quite finished. In Beta 2, the layout will be different and a bunch of the functionality will be improved, but we didn’t want to hold things up for this one screen. You can play with making custom menus, and report bugs if you find them, but this is not how the final screen will look/work, so don’t get attached to it.
  • The merge! Yes, WordPress and WordPress MU have merged. This does not mean that you can suddenly start adding a bunch of new blogs from within your regular WordPress Dashboard. If you’re interested in testing the Super Admin stuff associated with multiple sites, you’ll need some simple directions to get started.
  • We’re still fiddling with a few small things in the UI, as we were focused on getting the more function-oriented code finished first. For example, we’re getting a new icon for the Super Admin section.

Things to test:

  • Play with the new default theme, Twenty Ten, including the custom background and header options.
  • Custom Post Type functionality has been beefed up. It’s really easy to add new types, so do that and see how it looks!
  • WordPress MU users should test the multiple sites functionality to make sure nothing broke during the merge.

Already have a test install that you want to switch over to the beta? Try the beta tester plugin.

Testers, don’t forget to use the wp-testers mailing list to discuss bugs you encounter.

We hope you like it! And if you don’t, well, check back when beta 2 is ready.

Download: WordPress 3.0 Beta 1

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WordPress 2.9.1

WordPress 2.9.1 has been released.

This release addresses a handful of minor issues as well as a rather annoying problem where scheduled posts and pingbacks are not processed correctly due to incompatibilities with some hosts.

Changelog: WordPress 2.9.1
Download: WordPress 2.9.1
Download: Modified files since WordPress 2.9

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WordPress 3.1 RC3

WordPress 3.1 RC3 has been release.

In summary, RC3 has removed the AJAX list tables implemented in RC2 because of bugs and usability issues.

Here is the blog post from WordPress.org:

WordPress 3.1 Release Candidate 3 is now available. After careful evaluation of the 3.1 features in RC2, we recognized the need to make some adjustments. There are some significant differences from previous versions of 3.1, so please review the changes if you have been developing against a beta or RC version.

The biggest change is the removal of AJAX list tables, which had been an effort to move all of our list-style screens to full AJAX for pagination, searches, and column sorts, and to consolidate the list-style screens into a single API that plugins could leverage. Unfortunately, with more testing came realizations that there were too many major bugs and usability issues with how the functionality was implemented, so we’ve spent the last week rolling back the most important portions of the feature.

  • For users: AJAX has been entirely disabled for the list tables. We hope to bring this back again, in a form that is properly and fully implemented, in a future release. Column sorting remains, but everything else has returned to its 3.0 state.
  • For developers: The entire list table API is now marked private. If you attempt to leverage new components of the API, you are pretty much guaranteeing that your plugins will break in a future release, so please don’t do that. We hope to enable all the fun new goodies for public use in a future release.

This is the only way we could prevent any regressions in functionality and usability from WordPress 3.0 to 3.1. That’s right, users and plugin authors can still do everything you used to be able to do (and a little bit more).

Because of the code churn between RC2 and RC3, this release candidate needs a lot of testing. Every list screen needs testing. In particular, the comment moderation screen needs testing, especially with keyboard shortcuts (if you didn’t know about those, now’s your chance to try them out).

Other fixes in RC3 include:

  • Properly display the author dropdown in Quick Edit
  • Various important fixes to numerous taxonomy query variables
  • Fixes to the theme deletion process
  • Fixes to pages used for posts
  • IIS and Multisite: Avoid resetting web.config on permalink save
  • Properly validate post formats and their rewrite rules

I’m assembling a group of friends in Washington, D.C., this weekend to test WordPress 3.1 and provide feedback. We’d love to see this idea catch on among friends at coffee shops around the world. (We’ll blog our results, and we’re thinking about using the hashtag #wptest on Twitter.) If you are testing the release candidate and think you’ve found a bug, there are a few ways to let us know:

To test WordPress 3.1, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”). Or you can download the release candidate here (zip).

We’re going to study this release carefully to see where we can improve on our internal processes in the future. With that, our requisite haiku, authored by Jane:

Pulling the AJAX –

sometimes you need to step back

and show some restraint.

Happy testing!

Download: WordPress 3.1 RC 3

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WordPress Plugin Developer Day

Matt has announced today (28th January 2009, 29th in my timezone) to be WordPress Plugin Developer Day.

WordPress by itself is very simple – what makes it compelling for most of its users is the wide array of plugins (and themes) available for WP. The average WordPress blog has about 5 plugins installed! Today we just passed 4,000 plugins available in our plugin directory. (Which is also embedded into everyone’s WordPress 2.7 or above.)

I declare January 28th our official “Thank a Plugin Developer” day. To celebrate take a look at the plugins you use and love, visit the author’s site, find their contact form, and drop them a note thanking them. (Or Paypal!) Look for the links in the plugin directory to “author homepage” and also to donate directly if they’ve specified a Paypal address.

Thank you to everyone who has ever written a plugin for WordPress, and here’s to the next four thousand.
🙂

Donations I received today:

  1. John Kolbert – http://www.johnkolbert.com/
  2. WP Candy Team – http://wpcandy.com/
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WordPress 3.1.3

WordPress 3.1.3 has been released and it contains security fixes and enhancements.

  • Various security hardening by Alexander Concha.
  • Taxonomy query hardening by John Lamansky.
  • Prevent sniffing out user names of non-authors by using canonical redirects. Props Verónica Valeros.
  • Media security fixes by Richard Lundeen of Microsoft, Jesse Ou of Microsoft, and Microsoft Vulnerability Research.
  • Improves file upload security on hosts with dangerous security settings.
  • Cleans up old WordPress import files if the import does not finish.
  • Introduce “clickjacking” protection in modern browsers on admin and login pages.

Changelog: WordPress 3.1.3
Download: WordPress 3.1.3
Download: Modified files since WordPress 3.1.2

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