WordPress.org

WordPress 3.3 is ready for beta testers.

As always, this is software still in development and we don’t recommend that you run it on a production site — set up a test site just to play with the new version. If you break it (find a bug), please report it, and if you’re a developer, try to help us fix it.

If all goes well, we hope to release WordPress 3.3 by the end of November. The more help we get with testing and fixing bugs, the sooner we will be able to release the final version. If you want to be a beta tester, you should check out the Codex article on how to report bugs.

Here’s some of what’s new:

• Media uploader
• Improved admin bar
• Fly out admin menus

Remember, if you find something you think is a bug, report it! You can bring it up in the alpha/beta forum, you can email it to the wp-testers list, or if you’ve confirmed that other people are experiencing the same bug, you can report it on the WordPress Core Trac. (We recommend starting in the forum or on the mailing list.)

Theme and plugin authors, if you haven’t been following the 3.3 development cycle, please start now so that you can update your themes and plugins to be compatible with the newest version of WordPress.

Download WordPress 3.3 Beta 1

And now, haiku.

Features almost done…

3.3 at Beta 1.

Test it now — have fun!

Saturday, September 17 is Software Freedom Day. To that end, a few announcements about this weekend’s hackathon and WordCamp Portland.

3.3 Hackathon

WordPress 3.3 is about to hit feature freeze. This means it’s the last chance to squeeze in features that haven’t quite been finished, and enhancements and fixes that no one has had time to address yet. Around this time, there are often dozens of tickets that have patches, but the patches have not been tested enough to be committed to core. Then the contributors who worked hard on the patches are disappointed that their code doesn’t make it into the current release. You can help us prevent this!

This weekend, we’ll be running a has-patch needs-testing marathon for the 3.3 milestone. Basically, we’re looking for people who can help test patches and/or refresh patches that need updating. Lead developers and core contributors will be hanging around in the #wordpress-dev channel on irc.freenode.net to answer questions as needed, and will be committing patches as they get enough verification. As you test the patches, report your findings on the trac tickets in question. If all developers who make a living working with WordPress helped out for even an hour or two this weekend, we could clear the 200 tickets or so that are in this situation. To make it fun, why not get together with other WordPress devs and have an in-person hackathon meetup?

WordCamp Portland

At WordCamp Portland this weekend, some of the WordPress core team will be in attendance, including me, Nacin, and Koop. In addition to giving presentations and participating in the unconference sessions, we’ll be involved with a couple of other cool things at WCPDX:

• Hacker Room. There will be room set aside for people to work on core bugs and features slated for the 3.3 release. Hopefully PDX developers will hang out in here some of the time helping with the marathon.
• Welcome Free Software Projects! Normally WordCamps are 100% focused on WordPress, but in light of Software Freedom Day, the WC PDX organizers, in conjunction with the WordPress Foundation, would like to extend an invitation to all free software projects to participate in WordCamp Portland. There are a couple of rooms set aside that can be used for unconference sessions and/or hacker rooms for other projects. It would be great to have local representatives from a bunch of projects there — almost a micro version of OS Bridge or OSCON — to maximize the free software love and cross-pollinate ideas. Developers from other projects are also welcome in the WP hackathon room if they’d like to pitch in. Saturday will also feature the Software Freedom Day Happy Hour at the end of sessions. For more information or to get your project involved, contact the event organizers via the WordCamp Portland website or email support at wordcamp dot org.
• Usability Testing of 3.3 Alpha. As mentioned, we’re about to hit freeze, so we’ll be giving WordCamp Portland attendees a sneak peek at 3.3, seeing how they adjust to the new features, and getting feedback to help us with our last round of fixes before we get to Beta. There will be a signup sheet to participate.

So, if you live it the Portland/Seattle area and haven’t already bought a ticket to attend WordCamp Portland, hurry up, as it’s going to be a great celebration of Software Freedom Day and WordPress.

This coming weekend, two WordCamps will be going on simultaneously — yep, it’s WordCamp season again! This weekend will be the first of many this autumn with multiple WordCamps. Tomorrow (not quite the weekend but close enough) is WordCamp Cape Town, and then this weekend, first-time WordCamp Albuquerque coincides with 4-time returning champ WordCamp Portland, a cool juxtaposition of a more established local community with one that is just getting started. If you’re anywhere near the Portland area, you should try to attend. The WordPress Foundation will be sponsoring some special activities around Software Freedom Day, and some members of the core team (me, Nacin, Koop) will be there.

Is there a WordCamp coming up near you? Let’s find out!

Sep 15: WordCamp Cape Town Cape Town, South Africa

Sep 16-18: WordCamp Albuquerque Albuquerque, NM

Sep 17-18: WordCamp Portland Portland, OR

Sep 24: WordCamp Lisboa Lisboa, Portugal

Sep 24: WordCamp Germany Koln, Germany

Sep 25: WordCamp Sofia Sofia, Bulgaria

Oct 1: WordCamp Louisville Louisville, Kentucky

Oct 8-9: WordCamp Sevilla Seville, Spain

Each year, members of the web community from around the world submit session proposals to the South by Southwest Interactive conference, an event that played a role in the birth of WordPress. We head to Austin every year, do a BBQ or throw a party, but despite the fact that almost 15% of the web is powered by WordPress, there aren’t many sessions related to WordPress on the schedule. This year, more than 3200 proposals are competing for about 350 slots, and who has time to read through, vote, and comment on 3200 proposals? Out of those 3200+ proposals, only 8 relate to WordPress! I thought it would be handy to post a guide to the WordPressy proposals for SXSWi 2012, so that if you would like to check them out and vote on them it woud be fast and easy. Leaving a comment in addition to your thumbs up/down vote helps the staff and advisory board know which sessions are likely to have an interested audience, so make sure to leave comments on the sessions you think would be cool (remember, they also publish the podcasts afterward). Voting ends in about 24 hours, so if you want to weigh in, now’s the time. Thanks for helping spread the word!

WordPress-specific Sessions

This list is based on searching for “WordPress” in proposal titles, descriptions, and tags. Clicking the proposal title will take you to that page in the SXSW PanelPicker, where you can vote and comment. Names that are linked go to those people’s WordPress.org profiles.

Blog Wars: Movable Type vs. WordPress Revisited

Mark Jaquith – WordPress Lead Developer
Byrne Reese – Endevver
These days people tend to pit us against Drupal rather than Movable Type, but looking back at the early rivalry and learning from the positive and negative aspects of it would be cool as we position ourselves in competition with new platforms. I like seeing Mark present at conferences, he always prepares well and does a good job. Though I’m guessing these guys will be all friendly and collaborative, I might take a nostalgia hit and imagine them in a fistfight just to liven things up.

Designing WordPress

Jane Wells – WordPress User Experience Lead
Disclosure: This is me! Balancing the desire for truly open and participatory design processes against the often more efficient and consistent results of a more curated design method is something we’ve been working on for the past year or so in WordPress core. I’d use the design process for several recent core features (like the UI refresh and internal linking) to illustrate the issues we’ve faced and the results we’ve achieved.

Open Source Social Networking

John James Jacoby – BuddyPress Lead Developer
J-trip (as John James Jacoby is fondly known by many in the community) is the lead dev for BuddyPress and the new bbPress plugin. He’s proposing a panel discussion among reps from several open source social network platforms. It’s always cool hearing more about BuddyPress, but it would be even cooler to figure out how it fits in with and/or stacks up against other platforms.

Welcome to the Chaos – the Distributed Workplace

Nikolay Bachiyski – WordPress Core Developer, GlotPress Lead Developer
Lori McLeese – Automattic
This one isn’t about WordPress per se, though using WordPress as a communication tool is one of the topics and Automattic is obviously a WordPress-based business. The main reason I think people should vote for this session is because Nikolay, core committing developer for internationalization and lead developer of GlotPress, our translation tool, is an awesome speaker. He is hysterically funny when he presents. I would bet money this presentation will involve a bear.

Deploying WordPress: From Zero to Ninja

Grant Norwood – Michael & Susan Dell Foundation
When Mark Jaquith says a presentation on security and deployment is on his short list, I’m impressed. (He said it in the comments on the proposal.)

Beyond the Theme – Using WordPress as an API

David Tufts – kickpress.org
Obviously a hot topic in the community right now, seems like a no-brainer to choose.

Local Government Online: WordPress Beats Drupal

Jase Wilson – Luminopolis
There was a presentation at WordCamp San Francisco this month on moving a news site from Drupal to WordPress. More and more the question comes up of which tool is best for various situations and requirements. And obviously getting government to use more open source software would be a cost-saver in these tough economic times.

WordPress website built live in 45 minutes

Glenn Todd – Dvize Creative
Live walkthroughs are always fun, and help prove to the uninitiated how easy WordPress can be.

So: go vote on these session proposals and help spread the WordPress love. If you know of any WordPress-related proposals that didn’t come up in my search, let me know in a comment and I’ll update this post. Thanks, and maybe we’ll see you in Austin in March!

This has been an exciting year for WordPress. We’ve grown to power 14.7% of the top million websites in the world, up from 8.5%, and the latest data show 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running WordPress.

We also conducted our first ever user and developer survey, which got over 18,000 responses from all over the world:

We found a few interesting tidbits from the survey responses already, including that 6,800 self-employed respondents were responsible for over 170,000 sites personally, and charged a median hourly rate of $50. In tough economic times, it’s heartening to see Open Source creating so many jobs. (If each site took only 3 hours to make, that’s $29.5M of work at the average hourly rate.)

I talk about this data, and much more, in my State of the Word address which you can watch here:

We know there’s more good stuff hidden in there and we’re open sourcing and releasing the raw information behind it. If you’re a researcher and would like to dig into the anonymized survey data yourself, you can grab it here. (Careful, it’s a 9MB CSV.)

There has never been a better time to be part of the WordPress community, and I want to thank each and every one of you for making it such a wonderful place to be. Now it’s time to get back to work, there’s still 85.3% of the web that needs help.

The annual WordPress conference, WordCamp San Francisco, starts in fewer than 8 hours. The sold out event — three full days of programming for bloggers, developers, theme designers, and professional WordPress users — will be shared with more than 1,000 ticket holders from near and far. If you are one of the many people who wanted to come but couldn’t swing the time off or travel expenses, you should check out the livestream tickets that are for sale. You can even get a conference t-shirt to commemorate your “virtual” participation.

Speakers include members of the WordPress core development team, leaders of WordPress-based businesses, hobbyists, and everything in between. Take a look at the schedules for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and if you see something that sounds interesting (how could you not?), buy a livestream ticket. The stream will start at 16:00 UTC on Friday, August 12.

Viewing Parties

Celebrate your own local WordPress community by calling together some friends and having a livestream viewing party. In the case of regular WordPress meetup groups, if you do a viewing party we will have a process after #WCSF is over whereby attendees will be eligible to buy conference shirts if their meetup group organizer confirms viewing party attendance.

Videos from all the recorded sessions will be posted for free on WordPress.tv within a couple of weeks, but watching the livestream allows you to support WordCamp while providing instant gratification. And let’s face it: the best part is that you’ll know what the heck people are talking about on Twitter using the hashtag #wcsf.

As we complete speaker selection for the annual WordPress conference (a.k.a. WordCamp San Francisco), it’s clear that even though there were more than 200 speaker applications, many great WordCamp speakers did not apply. No fear! We will seek them out to make sure that WordCamp SF has a fantastic lineup, including people who didn’t apply (too shy? who knows?) but have wowed local crowds at previous WordCamps.

This is about as basic a survey as there is. Tell us the three best WordCamp presentations you saw in the past year or so. For each, give the presenters name, the topic (exact title not necessary) and which WordCamp it was at (important).

Example:

1. Joe Shmoe, Using the Loop, WordCamp Sheboygan 2011
2. Jane Doe, Top 5 WordPress Plugins, WordCamp La Mancha 2010
3. Lee Smith, Your First Core Patch, WordCamp Atlantis 2011

That’s it. We don’t need your name or any info at all, just your three top speaker votes. We’ll take a look at the people with the most votes, and consider them for WCSF if they’re not already in the application pool. Thanks for your help in making this year’s conference better and more WordPressy than ever.

Vote Now!

P.S. Have you bought your tickets yet?

After more than a million downloads of WordPress 3.2, we’re now releasing WordPress 3.2.1 into the wild. This maintenance release fixes a server incompatibility related to JSON that’s unfortunately affected some of you, as well as a few other fixes in the new dashboard design and the Twenty Eleven theme. If you’ve already updated to 3.2, then this update will be even faster than usual, thanks to the new feature in 3.2 that only updates files that have been changed, rather than replacing all the files in your installation.

For a full list of fixes, view the changelog the list of tickets. Our release haiku:

JSON, the admin
A little bit tidier
Edge cases covered

Download 3.2.1 or update now from the Dashboard → Updates menu in your site’s admin area.

Here in the U.S. we are observing Independence Day, and I can’t think of a more fitting way to mark a day that celebrates freedom than by releasing more free software to help democratize publishing around the globe. I’m excited to announce that WordPress 3.2 is now available to the world, both as an update in your dashboard and a download on WordPress.org. Version 3.2 is our fifteenth major release of WordPress and comes just four months after 3.1 (which coincidentally just passed the 15 million download mark this morning), reflecting the growing speed of development in the WordPress community and our dedication to getting improvements in your hands as soon as possible. We’re dedicating this release to noted composer and pianist George Gershwin.

Before we get to the release, in anticipation of the State of the Word speech at the upcoming WordCamp San Francisco (the annual WordPress conference) we’re doing a survey or census of the WordPress world. If you have a moment, please fill out this survey and we’ll share what we learn by publishing the aggregate results in August.

The focus for this release was making WordPress faster and lighter. The first thing you’ll notice when you log in to 3.2 is a refreshed dashboard design that tightens the typography, design, and code behind the admin. (Rhapsody in Grey?) If you’re starting a new blog, you’ll also appreciate the fully HTML5 new Twenty Eleven theme, fulfilling our plan to replace the default theme every year. Start writing your first post in our redesigned post editor and venture to the full-screen button in the editing toolbar to enter the new distraction-free writing or zen mode, my personal favorite feature of the release. All of the widgets, menus, buttons, and interface elements fade away to allow you to compose and edit your thoughts in a completely clean environment conducive to writing, but when your mouse strays to the top of the screen your most-used shortcuts are right there where you need them. (I like to press F11 to take my browser full-screen, getting rid of even the OS chrome.)

Under the hood there have been a number of improvements, not the least of which is the streamlining enabled by our previously announced plan of retiring support for PHP4, older versions of MySQL, and legacy browsers like IE6, which allows us to take advantage of more features enabled by new technologies. The admin bar has a few more shortcuts to your most commonly-used actions. On the comment moderation screen, the new approve & reply feature speeds up your conversation management. You’ll notice in your first update after 3.2 that we’ll only be updating the files that have changed with each new release instead of every file in your WordPress installation, which makes updates significantly faster on all hosting platforms. There are also some fun new theme features shown off by Twenty Eleven, like the ability to have multiple rotating header images to highlight all of your favorite photos.

There is way more, like our new freedoms and credits screens (linked from your dashboard footer), so for the full story check out the Codex page on 3.2 or the Trac milestone which includes the 400+ tickets closed in this release.

A Community Effort

We now finally have a credits page inside of WordPress itself (though a cool revision is coming in 3.3), but for posterity let’s give a round of applause to these fine folks who contributed to 3.2:

Aaron Brazell, Aaron Campbell, Aaron Jorbin, Adam Harley, Alex Concha, ampt, Andrew Nacin, Andrew Ozz, andrewryno, andy, Austin Matzko, BenChapman, Ben Dunkle, bluntelk, Boone Gorges, Brandon Allen, Brandon Burke, Caspie, cfinke, charlesclarkson, chexee, coffee2code, Cristi Burcă, daniloercoli, Daryl Koopersmith, David Cowgill, David Trower, demetris, Devin Reams, Dion Hulse, dllh, Dominik Schilling, Doug Provencio, dvwallin, Dylan Kuhn, Eric Mann, fabifott, Franklin Tse, Frumph, garyc40, Glenn Ansley, guyn, hakre, hebbet, Helen Hou-Sandi, hew, holizz, Ian Stewart, Jacob Gillespie, Jane Wells, Jayjdk, Jeff Farthing, Joachim Kudish, joelhardi, John Blackbourn, John Ford, John James Jacoby, JohnONolan, Jon Cave, joostdevalk, Jorge Bernal, Joseph Scott, Justin Sternberg, Justin Tadlock, kevinB, Knut Sparhell, kovshenin, Kuraishi, Lance Willett, linuxologos, lloydbudd, Luc De Brouwer, marcis20, Mark Jaquith, Mark McWilliams, Martin Lormes, Matías Ventura, Matt Martz, Matt Thomas, MattyRob, mcepl, mdawaffe, Michael Fields, MichaelH, michaeltyson, Mike Schroder, Milan Dinić, mintindeed, mitchoyoshitaka, Mohammad Jangda, mrroundhill, natecook, nathanrice, Niall Kennedy, Nick Bohle, Nikolay Bachiyski, nuxwin, Otto, pavelevap, pete.mall, Peter Westwood, Prasath Nadarajah, Ptah Dunbar, Rafael Poveda, Rahe, Ramiy, Rasheed Bydousi, Reuben Gunday, Robert Chapin, Ron Rennick, Ross Hanney, Ryan Boren, Ryan Imel, Safirul Alredha, Samir Shah, saracannon, sbressler, Sergey Biryukov, shakenstirred, Sidney Harrell, Simon Prosser, sorich87, szadok, tetele, tigertech, trepmal, Utkarsh Kukreti, valentinas, webduo, Xavier Borderie, Yoav Farhi, Ze Fontainhas, and ziofix.

Bonus: On their WordPress.org profiles over 20,000 people have said they make their living from WordPress. Are you one of them? Don’t forget to take a minute for our survey.

WordPress 3.2 is going to be released very soon, and we want you to be ready! Take note: the minimum requirements are changing.

PHP and MySQL

As of 3.2, you’ll need to be running PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0. As we mentioned almost a year ago when we announced that this change was coming, the percentage of people running older versions of PHP and MySQL is relatively low. With more than 45 million people using WordPress, though, even a small percentage can mean a lot of people! Don’t caught with your pants dashboard down — make sure you’re running compatible versions of PHP and MySQL before you update tomorrow when WordPress 3.2 is released.

Log in to your hosting account, and check to make sure you have at least  PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0. Most of the major hosts already default to these or newer versions, but there are some exceptions. Check to see which versions you are running, and if you’re still on an older version, it should be as simple as changing a dropdown menu and clicking Save to get up to date.

If you don’t know how to find this information in your hosting account or you don’t even know how to access your hosting control panel because someone else manages that for you, don’t fret. You can find out if you’re ready for 3.2 with the Health Check plugin. In your dashboard, go to Plugins → Add New and search for “health check” (it should be the first result). Install it, activate it, and it will tell you if you need to update anything.

If you need more help, contact your host’s customer service and use this email template to ask them to help you.

Hi there. I host my domain [example.com] with you, and I run WordPress on my site. The minimum requirements are changing to PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0, and I would appreciate your help in confirming that my site’s setup meets these requirements. If I’m currently running an older version of PHP or MySQL, could you update it for me, or tell me how to do it? Thanks so much!

If your host replies that they can’t update to these versions, it might be time to look for a new host.

IE6 and Outdated Browsers

With 3.2, we’re also dropping support for Internet Explorer 6, a 10-years-old outdated browser that even Microsoft is ready to leave behind. From now on, if you access your WordPress dashboard from an outdated browser, we’ll let you know. Why? Because as web technology improves, so does WordPress, as we build features to take advantage of these improvements. If you’re using an out-of-date browser, chances are you’re missing out.

If your browser is out of date, you’ll see a friendly orangey-yellow box in your dashboard letting you know you a newer version is available (which you can dismiss, of course). If you’re using IE6, though, the box will be red, and your dashboard will not function properly. If you’re stuck on IE6 because the computer you use is maintained by a business, library, school, or the like, and you are not able to download a newer browser, here’s a sample email you can use to ask your boss/administrator/IT guys to update the browser.

Hi there. The computer I use at [where you use the computer] is equipped with an out-of-date web browser. Internet Explorer 6 was created 10 years ago, before modern web standards, and does not support modern web applications. More and more sites and applications are dropping support for IE6, including the new version of WordPress. Even Microsoft, the makers of IE6, are counting down until IE6 goes the way of the dinosaur (see http://www.ie6countdown.com/ for more information). Can you please install an updated version of IE or any modern browser (see http://browsehappy.com for more information) on the available computers? Thank you very much.

Welcome to the future!