I want to make you mine, all the time… oh wait. Hello. I’m here on behalf of the entire WordPress development team and community to announce the immediate availability of WordPress version 2.9 “Carmen” named in honor of magical jazz vocalist Carmen McRae (whom we’ve added to our Last.fm WP release station). You can upgrade easily from your Dashboard by going to Tools > Upgrade, or you can download from WordPress.org. And of course, it wouldn’t be a major release without a short video summarizing some of the cool things about the new version:
The coolest new stuff from a user point of view is:
Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.
Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).
2.9 provides the smoothest ride yet because of a number of improvements under the hood and more subtle improvements you’ll begin to appreciate once you’ve been around the block a few times. Here’s just a sampling:
We now have rel=canonical support for better SEO.
There is automatic database optimization support, which you can enable in your wp-config.php file by adding define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true);.
Themes can register “post thumbnails” which allow them to attach an image to the post, especially useful for magazine-style themes.
A new commentmeta table that allows arbitrary key/value pairs to be attached to comments, just like posts, so you can now expand greatly what you can do in the comment framework.
Custom post types have been upgraded with better API support so you can juggle more types than just post, page, and attachment. (More of this planned for 3.0.)
You can set custom theme directories, so a plugin can register a theme to be bundled with it or you can have multiple shared theme directories on your server.
We’ve upgraded TinyMCE WYSIWYG editing and Simplepie.
Sidebars can now have descriptions so it’s more obvious what and where they do what they do.
Specify category templates not just by ID, like before, but by slug, which will make it easier for theme developers to do custom things with categories — like post types!
Registration and profiles are now extensible to allow you to collect things more easily, like a user’s Twitter account or any other fields you can imagine.
The XML-RPC API has been extended to allow changing the user registration option. We fixed some Atom API attachment issues.
Create custom galleries with the new include and exclude attributes that allow you to pull attachments from any post, not just the current one.
When you’re editing files in the theme and plugin editors it remembers your location and takes you back to that line after you save. (Thank goodness!!!)
The Press This bookmarklet has been improved and is faster than ever; give it a try for on-the-fly blogging from wherever you are on the internet.
Custom taxonomies are now included in the WXR export file and imported correctly.
Better hooks and filters for excerpts, smilies, HTTP requests, user profiles, author links, taxonomies, SSL support, tag clouds, query_posts and WP_Query
2.9 has been an exciting development cycle, and I must say it has whetted our appetite for 3.0, which is coming next (probably this spring) and will include at the very least the merge of MU with the WordPress core, and a new default theme. We can’t wait to start working on it. But first, some Carmen McRae tunes and a beer. Join us!
(After you upgrade, of course!)
I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season.
After the video from the core team meetup was posted, the topic that seemed to get the most attention on Twitter and various community sites was Matt’s announcement that there would be a new default theme in 2010, so I thought I’d start with that as the first of the meetup summaries.
When Kubrick was bundled with core back in 2005, it was a cutting edge theme. Custom header, rounded corners, clean design… if you were using WordPress back then, let’s face it, you were impressed. Time moves on, though, fashions change, new styles become old standards, and what was once cutting edge suddenly seems old-fashioned and out of date.
So, a new bundled theme in 2010? We think it’s a good idea. Something nice and light that can serve as a good example theme, include newer theme-based features, and look nice (and current) on a public site. We’d like to introduce a new default theme with version 3.0, which is anticipated to come out in mid-2010 (hence the name), and think it would be good for it to blend well aesthetically with WordPress itself.
I’d been advocating moving toward Elastic, the theme framework/WYSIWYG theme editor that was one of our Google Summer of Code student projects, but after some discussion I agreed with the guys that while Elastic is awesome and should be promoted as a community development project, it’s heavier than a default theme needs to be. The default theme doesn’t need to be a full-featured framework, it just needs to work well, look awesome, have good code and be a good starting point for beginning themers. We were thinking of a fairly minimalist design that would make it easy to customize.
As for the code, there’s a question of if it will really be a new theme, or if it will be a re-styled and updated version of Kubrick. We don’t know the final answer to that yet, because the ultimate decision will be made with the community’s input, but we believe all new markup is the way to go. What do you think? Without venturing into theme framework territory, are there features you think a new default theme should have? Some people have been talking about it on Trac over the past year, if you wonder what’s been tossed around so far. I thought about posting a poll here (you know how I love posting polls to gauge opinion), but in this case I think a discussion thread might be better, so that each vote can explain the reason behind it. So, have an opinion on what a new default theme should include? Weigh in at the forums.
The free online (and searchable) Chambers Dictionary has been added to the Free Online English Dictionaries
page. This dictionary not only gives the usual definitions and spelling (both US and UK variants) of words searched,
it also supplies their etymology (history/origin). If you need the pronunciation, you can get it from one of the other dictionaries listed on the page. As always, only dictionaries from reputable dictionary publishers are listed here.
We’re at that exciting point in WordPress development where the dev team feels like version 2.9 is complete and ready for the world.
If you’ve been waiting for your moment to pitch in, it’s now. First we need tech savvy testers to upgrade their blogs and kick the tires, make sure everything is rolling like you expect it to. Here’s a list of all the fun and geeky new stuff in 2.9 to try out. Second, and more importantly, we need everyone to test out their plugin compatibility.
If you’re a user of plugins, there’s a groovy new compatibility feature on the plugin directory where you can vote on whether a plugin is compatible with a version or not and it’ll get registered in the new plugin compatibility checker. This is as a replacement to the old wiki-based lists we’d do before. To see it in action check out this Akismet plugin page, as you can see 14 people have already registered that it’s compatible with 2.9.
If you’re a plugin author, of course you should update your “Tested up to:” in the readme.txt for your plugin.
The AMD x86 Open64 Compiler Suite has been added to the
Free C/C++ Compilers and Interpreters page.
This optimizing compiler for C/C++ (and also Fortran) can generate both 32-bit and 64-bit code, and has numerous other
features. For those who are thinking of writing C or C++ programs, there are
now 36 C/C++ compilers listed on that page so even
if this newest entry doesn't appeal to you, you'll probably be able to find something suitable. And for those who only go for
well-known brands, note that major brands like Microsoft, Apple, Intel, AMD, Sun, etc, are also listed, since they too provide compilers for free.
A new virtual machine from Microsoft has been added to the
Free x86 / PC Emulators and Virtual Machines page.
Virtual machines and emulators let you run another operating system (even the same one you're using if that's what you wish)
within your current system, without having to reboot or use another computer. For example, run Windows on Mac OS X, or run XP on
Vista at the same time, etc. They are useful if you want to test programs but don't want them affecting or harming your
main system, run programs that don't work in your current system, etc.
There have been a lot of references to “canonical plugins” over the past year, especially at WordCamps by Matt, but we haven’t really posted anything official about the idea, nor have we really made much progress beyond discussions about how awesome it would be to have canonical plugins and how good it would be for the community. But what are canonical plugins, you ask? Well, that’s one of the many things the core commit team has been talking about over the past few days, and everyone agrees that we need to prioritize this aspect of the project sooner rather than later. So, here’s a super high-level description of how we’re currently thinking about canonical plugins, which we’d like to use to initiate some focused community discussion on the topic.
Canonical plugins would be plugins that are community developed (multiple developers, not just one person) and address the most popular functionality requests with superlative execution. These plugins would be GPL and live in the WordPress.org repo, and would be developed in close connection with WordPress core. There would be a very strong relationship between core and these plugins that ensured that a) the plugin code would be secure and the best possible example of coding standards, and b) that new versions of WordPress would be tested against these plugins prior to release to ensure compatibility. There would be a screen within the Plugins section of the WordPress admin to feature these canonical plugins as a kind of Editor’s Choice or Verified guarantee. These plugins would be a true extension of core WordPress in terms of compatibility, security and support.
In order to have a system like this, each canonical plugin’s development community would probably need similar infrastructure to WordPress itself, including things like Trac, mailing lists, support forums, etc. These things will be worked out within the development community over the coming months, but in the meantime, we really need a better name for this. Many people have no idea what canon/canonical means (clearly, they are not Dr. Who fans!), and having to define the word distracts from discussing the core ideas behind the concept. So, we thought we’d do a community poll to see what people think we should call canonical plugins. We brainstormed a few dozen ideas yesterday and whittled it down to our top handful. Based on the definition of canonical plugins given above, which of these terms do you think best describes them? I’m including a short description of our thoughts on each.
Standard - Implies that these are the standard by which all other plugins should be judged, as well as the idea of them being the default plugins. Core - Makes the close relationship to core WordPress development very clear, and has the implication of bundled plugins (even though we don’t need to actually bundle them now that the installer is right in the admin tool). Premium – Identifies these officially-supported plugins as best-in-class and of the highest value, and could potentially disambiguate the word Premium as it is currently being used in the community (to refer to anything from commercial support to licensing terms to actual code quality). Validated - Focuses on the fact that the code is reviewed for compatibility with core and for security. Official – Makes it plain that these are the plugins officially endorsed by the core team as being the best at their functions. Canonical – Maybe once people get used to it, canonical wouldn’t confuse so many people?
Cast your vote in the poll below to have your opinion considered during the decision-making process. And if you can think of a word that we haven’t listed here that you think is better, please submit it in the poll! The poll will remain open until 11:59pm UTC Thursday, December 10, 2009.
Just a heads up that Trac commits will be pretty low over the next couple of days, as all the core committers are in Orlando: Matt, Ryan, Andrew, Peter and Mark. We all came for WordCamp Orlando (fun!) and are staying a couple of extra days to discuss the vision for WordPress in the coming year, the merge, canonical plugins, the WordPress.org site, community stuff, and all the other things that are important but that we never seem to have time to address. Since when things like this come up in the IRC dev chat or in various forums there’s inevitably a point at which someone says, “We really need to have [insert a core committer name here] here to make a decision,” we thought it would make sense to get together and figure out where everyone stands on all these ideas so that we can move forward a little more efficiently. Also, not all the committers had met in person before (and I’d never met Andrew or Peter), so it’s also a chance for us to just get to know each other a little. Watch this space around Tuesday or Wednesday for a post summarizing the things we’ve discussed, and the beginning of planning for how members of community can get involved in (or spearhead) the things that interest them.
Version beta-2 of WordPress 2.9 is ready for your testing pleasure. You can download it or use the WordPress Beta Tester plugin and auto-upgrade a test installation. See all changes since beta 1.
Thanksgiving was last week, and I thought about doing a post to thank the people who contribute to WordPress core, since this is a group of people I’m thankful for on a daily basis. I started a draft, and then realized that with 2.9 in beta, we’ll have a release announcement sometime in the next few weeks (barring unforeseen complications, etc), and all the core contributors will be thanked then. Though I think it’s worth giving thanks every day for the people who make WordPress possible, I don’t like to clutter up anyone’s feed readers with repetitive posts, so I decided to wait until today for my post, and to focus solely on the other group I’d planned to include: support forum volunteers.
Forum volunteers don’t get a lot of flashy attention. There aren’t flame wars about whether or not the support forums should be commercial instead of free and community-run. There generally aren’t big arguments and debates over whose point of view is the right one. What the forums do have is amazing volunteers who give their time to help other WordPress users and developers learn. People who only know a little answer easy questions that maybe they’ve only recently learned the answers to themselves. People with more expert skills help troubleshoot larger issues. If someone offers advice that could be better, others will add their solutions to the mix. Of all the WordPress users I’ve met in person, not one person got started without visiting the forums. In many cases, people turn to the forums even before the Codex. In the support forums, I see a lot of what is best about our community, and almost none of that which is not.*
Without further ado, here’s my thank you to the volunteers who make the support forums work. Without them, we would be less than what we are today. I’m listing people by their Wordpress.org usernames, since that’s how you see them in the forums.
Official WordPress.org Support Forum Moderators
These are the people who’ve officially got your back and have been active in the past few months. See them at a WordCamp? Buy them a beer! Otto42, jeremyclark13, MichaelH, samboll, Chris_K. MichaelH suggested we also recognize Moshu, Podz, Kafkaesqui for past meritorious service.
The Honor Roll
These people are not official moderators, but their knowledge and activity levels have caught the attention of those who are. A big round of thanks to these folks for selflessly sharing their knowledge with other WordPress users.
Most active volunteers, nominated by more than one official moderator for recognition (for the reasons given): alchymyth – “Overall knowledge” apljdi – “Overall knowledge and programming skills” t31os_ – “Programming skills” whooami – “For her security responses” “Knows her stuff”
As we close out 2009 and get closer to 2010, it would be great for us to start thinking about some ways we could make it easier/more rewarding for people to be involved in the forums and other aspects of the open source project. I’ve started a forum thread to discuss some ideas with the thought that we can try a couple after the holidays and see what takes.
* I say almost because let’s face it, we all get caught in the traps of trolls sometimes, and patience can be hard to keep when someone is a jerk. So a reminder to all who use the forums: be nice to the people who are trying to help you!
P.S. While I’m at it, here’s another tip/request. Search the forums for your problem before posting; if it’s already been answered before (often more than once), you’re kind of wasting people’s time by posting it again without trying the previous solutions first. Please respect the time of the volunteers by searching first (and mention in your post what you’ve already tried).
Just a heads up that Trac commits will be pretty low over the next couple of days, as all the core committers are in Orlando: Matt, Ryan, Andrew, Peter and Mark. We all came for WordCamp Orlando (fun!) and are staying a couple of extra days to discuss the vision for WordPress in the coming year, the merge, canonical plugins, the WordPress.org site, community stuff, and all the other things that are important but that we never seem to have time to address. Since when things like this come up in the IRC dev chat or in various forums there’s inevitably a point at which someone says, “We really need to have [insert a core committer name here] here to make a decision,” we thought it would make sense to get together and figure out where everyone stands on all these ideas so that we can move forward a little more efficiently. Also, not all the committers had met in person before (and I’d never met Andrew or Peter), so it’s also a chance for us to just get to know each other a little. Watch this space around Tuesday or Wednesday for a post summarizing the things we’ve discussed, and the beginning of planning for how members of community can get involved in (or spearhead) the things that interest them.