Category Archives: Uncategorized
The STIX fonts, a set of free, open source, royalty-free fonts for engineering, mathematical and scientific documents, has
been added to the Free Fonts page. Besides
the usual characters found in most fonts, these additionally contain the symbols needed in engineering and scientific
documents but are not usually found in the standard fonts. Incidentally, if you don't need a font with such an extensive support
for scientific symbols, there are also numerous other free fonts found on that page, including fancy ones (eg, if you want
something to adorn your images on your website).
As Matt teased earlier, the first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 3.0 is now available. What’s an RC? An RC comes after beta and before the final launch. It means we think we’ve got everything done: all features finished, all bugs squashed, and all potential issues addressed. But, then, with over 20 million people using WordPress with a wide variety of configurations and hosting setups, it’s entirely possible that we’ve missed something. So! For the brave of heart, please download the RC and test it out (but not on your live site unless you’re extra adventurous). Some things to know:
- Custom menus are finished! Yay!
- Multi-site is all set.
- The look of the WordPress admin has been lightened up a little bit, so you can focus more on your content.
- There are a ton of changes, so plugin authors, please test your plugins now, so that if there is a compatibility issue, we can figure it out before the final release.
- Plugin and theme *users* are also encouraged to test things out. If you find problems, let your plugin/theme authors know so they can figure out the cause.
- There are a couple of known issues.
If you are testing the RC and come across a bug, you can:
We hope you enjoy playing with the 3.0 RC as much as we’ve enjoyed making it for you. Enjoy!
Download WordPress 3.0 RC1
Has it really been seven years since the first release of WordPress? It seems like just yesterday we were fresh to the world, a new entrant to a market everyone said was already saturated. (As a side note, if the common perception is that a market is finished and that everything interesting has been done already, it’s probably a really good time to enter it.)
The growth over the past year has blown me away. Since our last birthday we’ve doubled theme downloads to over 10 million, and doubled plugin downloads to 60 million. Most importantly, we continued to grow the development community to 1,528 people active on Trac and 13 committers, both numbers the highest in the history of WordPress.
That’s 1,528 people pouring their hearts and souls into GPL software we all own, we all build on, we can use as we please, we can all make better. We’ve evolved from a simple script to a web platform.
We’re on the cusp of version 3.0, with a release candidate coming out any minute now.
If you’d like to celebrate WordPress’s birthday with us — tell a friend! Help them upgrade their blog or find the perfect theme. Talk about how WordPress is built by and for a community. Drop in to help test 3.0, including all the plugins you use. Write something to take advantage of the new 3.0 features, or teach your friends how to. If you buy any themes or plugins, make sure they’re GPL or compatible just like WordPress. We’ve got a long road ahead of us, it’s important that we not forget that Open Source got us this far, and is the only way we’re going to get to the next level. The whole of what we can build together is far greater than the sum of our parts. Spread the good word. 
A new free web host featuring an online website builder has been added to the
Free Web Hosts with Site Builders
or Free Web Templates page. Online website builders let you create websites from your web browser, without having to
get a web editor (although they are not without
disadvantages).
Following the successful post-WordCamp San Francisco code sprint, we are now ready to release the second beta of WordPress 3.0.
Things to test:
- Revised menu user interface
- Changes to the WordPress exporter and importer to make it more flexible
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 the release candidate is ready.
Download the WordPress 3.0 Beta 2 now!
UpTools, an open source C++ library from the University of Palermo, has been added to the
Free C / C++ Libraries, Source Code and Frameworks page.
This library has support for parallel processing, multi-threading, databases, timers, memory management, regular expressions,
networking and sockets, etc. Check it out if
you're writing C++ programs.
A new Windows resource editor has been added to the Free Resource Editors,
Compilers and Icon Editors page. Resource editors are used by 3 groups of people for different purposes.
Ordinary computer users sometimes use these editors to create customized icons for their desktop (to make their desktop interesting
or different from others). Programmers use them to create things like icons, menus and dialog boxes for their programs. Webmasters
use them to create a favicon for their websites.
(A favicon is an icon that is placed next to your website's address in a browser's location bar and bookmark.)
A week from today on May 1, hundreds of WordPress users, developers, designers and general enthusiasts will descend upon San Francisco for the 4th annual WordCamp SF. Since that first WordCamp in 2006, back when WordPress was on version 2.0 (Duke), the number of people using WordPress to power their web publishing — from personal blogs to large-scale commercial sites — has grown by millions. It’s no wonder this year’s event is going to be so great.
If you’re unfamiliar with WordCamps, here’s the skinny: the San Francisco event is the flagship, put together each year under the direction of WordPress co-founder and lead developer Matt Mullenweg, who traditionally reports on the “State of the Word” and assembles a lineup of speakers that have inspired him over the past year. This year’s lineup includes luminaries such as Richard Stallman, the father of Free Software, best-selling author Scott Berkun, and Salon.com co-founder Scott Rosenberg. As the final speaker list is finalized, the remaining speakers will be added to the WordCamp SF website, but a surprise or two is still possible.
Though the main event is on Saturday, May 1, there are additional days of WordPress goodness in store. Saturday, May 1 will be the main conference with scheduled speakers. There will be keynotes, session tracks for both bloggers/end-users and developers, and lightning talks to provide a broad mix of content, followed by a raging afterparty. Sunday, May 2 will shift location and tone, with a low-key developers’ unconference for the super-code-focused attendees. May 3 and 4 are conference-free, but a WordPress core contributor in-person code sprint will span those two days, bringing together core contributors old and new from around the globe for two days of intense hacking (and let’s face it, 3.0 bug fixes).
If you’re in the Bay Area, or can be, and want to attend WordCamp San Francisco, go get your ticket today!
* * * * *
Other Upcoming WordCamps
It’s definitely WordCamp season; just check out the growing list of upcoming WordCamps over the next couple of months! If you don’t see a WordCamp near you listed here, check the rest of the schedule at WordCamp.org. In the meantime, don’t forget that many WordCamps post video of their presentations on WordPress.tv.
April 24 (today!) – WordCamp Orange County
Irvine, CA USA
April 29 – WordCamp Nashville
Nashville, TN USA
May 1 – WordCamp San Francisco
San Francisco, CA USA
May 8 – WordCamp Paris
Paris, France
May 8 – WordCamp Argentina
Buenos Aires, Argentina
May 8 – WordCamp Chile
Santiago, Chile
May 15–16 – WordCamp Denmark
Copenhagen, Denmark
May 15 – WordCamp Victoria
Victoria, BC Canada
May 21–22 – WordCamp Italy
Milan, Italy
May 22 – WordCamp Malaysia
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
May 22–23 – WordCamp Raleigh
Raleigh, North Carolina USA
May 29–30 – WordCamp Fayetteville
Fayetteville, Arkansas USA
May 29 – WordCamp Yokohama
Yokohama, Japan
June 5–6 – WordCamp Chicago
Chicago, Illinois USA
June 12 – WordCamp Reno-Tahoe
Reno, Nevada USA
June 12 – WordCamp Vancouver
Vancouver, Canada
June 18 – WordCamp Catania
Catania, Italy
June 19 – WordCamp Columbus
Columbus, Ohio USA
Early next week, we’re hoping to release the 2nd beta release of WordPress 3.0 on our journey toward the final version. There are still over 200 bugs in the 3.0 milestone, and we can use all the help we can get on fixing these problems. If you’re a developer, take a look at the list of bugs that still need fixing in 3.0. Write a patch, or test and give feedback on someone else’s. The tickets around custom post types and taxonomies are especially in need of help. Every little bit helps, so if you’re a developer who’s never contributed to core before, maybe now is the right time! Check out our information on contributing to WordPress core, and head over to Trac to see if there’s a problem you might know how to fix. If you get stuck, need collaborators, or have a question about the best way to approach a fix, hop into the dev channel on IRC at irc.freenode.net, channel #wordpress-dev. Core developers will be around over the weekend working on bugs themselves, so if you’re trying to help, don’t be afraid to ask questions. With your help, maybe by Monday we can knock the bug count down to half of what it is right now. How great would that be? (Answer: pretty great)
The sprint will go full force until Monday afternoon, when the lead developers and core committers will all stop to take a breath and look at the remaining bug reports to see how we did over the weekend, so don’t wait! And thanks!
Webthumb.bluga.net has completed its move to a new server. Everything should be running smoothly at this point, but if you run into any problems let me know.
If your dns is slow to update, you can use new.bluga.net.