WordPress.org

WordPress 3.6 Beta 2 is now available!

This is software still in development and we really don’t recommend that you run it on a production site — set up a test site just to play with the new version. To test WordPress 3.6, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”). Or you can download the beta here (zip).

The longer-than-usual delay between beta 1 and beta 2 was due to poor user testing results with the Post Formats UI. Beta 2 contains a modified approach for format choosing and switching, which has done well in user testing. We’ve also made the Post Formats UI hide-able via Screen Options, and set a reasonable default based on what your theme supports.

There were a lot of bug fixes and polishing tweaks done for beta 2 as well, so definitely check it out if you had an issues with beta 1.

Plugin developers, theme developers, and WordPress hosts should be testing beta 2 extensively. The more you test the beta, the more stable our release candidates and our final release will be.

As always, if you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. Or, if you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on the WordPress Trac. There, you can also find a list of known bugs and everything we’ve fixed so far.

We’re looking forward to your feedback. If you find a bug, please report it, and if you’re a developer, try to help us fix it. We’ve already had more than 150 contributors to version 3.6 — it’s not too late to join in!

As an open source, free software project, WordPress depends on the contributions of hundreds of people from around the globe — contributions in areas like core code, documentation, answering questions in the support forums, translation, and all the other things it takes to make WordPress the best publishing platform it can be, with the most supportive community. This year, we’re happy to be participating as a mentoring organization with two respected summer internship programs: Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and the Gnome Outreach Program for Women.

Google Summer of Code

GSoC is a summer internship program funded by Google specifically for college/university student developers to work on open source coding projects. We have participated in the Google Summer of Code program in the past, and have enjoyed the opportunity to work with students in this way. Some of our best core developers were GSoC students once upon a time!

Our mentors, almost 30 talented developers with experience developing WordPress, will provide students with guidance and feedback over the course of the summer, culminating in the release of finished projects at the end of the program if all goes well.

Students who successfully complete the program earn $5,000 for their summer efforts. Interested, or know a college student (newly accepted to college counts, too) who should be? All the information you need about our participation in the program, projects, mentors, and the application process is available on the GSoC 2013 page in the Codex.

Gnome Outreach Program for Women

It’s not news that women form a low percentage of contributors in most open source projects, and WordPress is no different. We have great women in the contributor community, including some in fairly visible roles, but we still have a lot of work to do to get a representative gender balance on par with our user base.

The Gnome Outreach Program for Women aims to provide opportunities for women to participate in open source projects, and offers a similar stipend, but there are three key differences between GSoC and Gnome aside from the gender requirement for Gnome.

1. The Gnome program allows intern projects in many areas of contribution, not just code. In other words, interns can propose projects like documentation, community management, design, translation, or pretty much any area in which we have people contributing (including code).
2. The Gnome Outreach Program for Women doesn’t require interns to be college students, though students are definitely welcome to participate. This means that women in all stages of life and career can take the opportunity to try working with open source communities for the summer.
3. We have to help raise the money to pay the interns. Google funds GSoC on its own, and we only have to provide our mentors’ time. Gnome doesn’t have the same funding, so we need to pitch in to raise the money to cover our interns. If your company is interested in helping with this, please check out the program’s sponsorship information and follow the contact instructions to get involved. You can earmark donations to support WordPress interns, or to support the program in general. (Pick us, pick us! )

The summer installment of the Gnome Outreach Program for Women follows the same schedule and general application format as GSoC, though there are more potential projects since it covers more areas of contribution. Women college students interested in doing a coding project are encouraged to apply for both programs to increase the odds of acceptance. All the information you need about our participation in the program, projects, mentors, and the application process is available on the Gnome Outreach Program for Women page in the Codex.

The application period just started, and it lasts another week (May 1 for Gnome, May 3 for GSoC), so if you think you qualify and are interested in getting involved, check out the information pages, get in touch, and apply… Good luck!

Google Summer of Code 2013 Information
Gnome Summer Outreach Program for Women 2013 Information

In honor of the upcoming 10th anniversary celebrations, we’ve put a special 10th anniversary tshirt in the swag store at cost — $10 per shirt plus shipping. They’ll be on sale at this price until the anniversary on May 27, and they’ll start shipping out the week of April 29.

Some people who are planning parties or who organize meetups are already talking about doing group orders to save on shipping costs, which is a great idea — just make sure you allow enough shipping time. If you’re not sure if the tees could make it to you in time on your side of the world, use the contact options at the bottom of the store page to ask about shipping times. If they can’t reach you in time and you want to have a local printer do some for your group, we’ll post the vector file on the wp10 site within the next week (and this post will get updated accordingly).

The shirts are available in black or silvery gray. Why silvery gray? Because of trivia: the traditional gift for 10th anniversaries is tin or aluminum.

What’s on May 27, you ask?

May 27, 2013 is the 10th anniversary of the first WordPress release!

We think this is worth celebrating, and we want WordPress fans all over the world to celebrate with us by throwing their own parties. We’re using Meetup Everywhere to coordinate, and will be putting up a website just for the 10th Anniversary so that we can collect photos, videos, tweets, and posts from all the parties.

The rules are very simple:

1. Pick a place to go where a bunch of people can be merry — a park, a bar, a backyard, whatever
2. Spread the word to local meetups, tech groups, press, etc and get people to say they’ll come to your party
3. If 50 or more people RSVP to your party, we’ll try to send you some WordPress stickers and buttons
4. Have party attendees post photos, videos, and the like with the #wp10 hashtag

We’ll be using Meetup Everywhere to coordinate parties all over the world, so get your city on the map and register your party now !

We’ll follow up with registered organizers  over the next few weeks with some tips for how to publicize your party and to get addresses for swag packages. To that end, make sure you check the option that lets WordPress 10th Anniversary know your email, or we won’t be able to get in touch with you for these things or to give you access to the WP10 blog.

Whose party will be the biggest? The most fun? The most inventive? Will it be yours?

Note: If you already run a group on meetup.com, making your party an event in your group is great, but you still need to post it and have people RSVP at the special party page, because regular groups and Meetup Everywhere groups aren’t connected yet. 

WordPress 3.6 Beta 1 is now available!

This is software still in development and we really don’t recommend that you run it on a production site — set up a test site just to play with the new version. To test WordPress 3.6, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”). Or you can download the beta here (zip).

We’ve been working for nearly three months and have completed all the features that are slated for this release. This is a bit of a change from the betas of previous release cycles. I felt very strongly that we shouldn’t release a beta if we were still working on completing the main features. This beta is actually a beta, not an alpha that we’re calling a beta. If you are a WordPress plugin or theme developer, or a WordPress hosting provider, you should absolutely start testing your code against this new version now. More bugs will be fixed, and some of the features will get polished, but we’re not going to shove in some big new feature. We’re ready for you to test it, so jump in there! The more you test the beta, the more stable our release candidates and our final release will be.

As always, if you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. Or, if you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on the WordPress Trac. There, you can also find a list of known bugs and everything we’ve fixed so far.

Here’s what’s new in 3.6:

• Post Formats:  Post Formats now have their own UI, and theme authors have access to templating functions to access the structured data.
• Twenty Thirteen: We’re shipping this year’s default theme in our first release of the year. Twenty Thirteen is an opinionated, color-rich, blog-centric theme that makes full use of the new Post Formats support.
• Audio/Video: You can embed audio and video files into your posts without relying on a plugin or a third party media hosting service.
• Autosave:  Posts are now autosaved locally. If your browser crashes, your computer dies, or the server goes offline as you’re saving, you won’t lose the your post.
• Post Locking:  See when someone is currently editing a post, and kick them out of it if they fall asleep at the keyboard.
• Nav Menus:  Nav menus have been simplified with an accordion-based UI, and a separate tab for bulk-assigning menus to locations.
• Revisions: The all-new revisions UI features avatars, a slider that “scrubs” through history, and two-slider range comparisons.

Developers:  You make WordPress awesome(er). One of the things we strive to do with every release is be compatible with existing plugins and themes. But we need your help. Please test your plugins and themes against 3.6. If something isn’t quite right, please let us know. (Chances are, it wasn’t intentional.) If you’re a forward-thinking theme developer, you should be looking at implementing the new Post Format support in some of your themes (look to Twenty Thirteen for inspiration).

We’re looking forward to your feedback. If you break it (i.e. find a bug), please report it, and if you’re a developer, try to help us fix it. We’ve already had more than 150 contributors to version 3.6 — it’s not too late to join the party!

WordPress 3.5.1 is now available. Version 3.5.1 is the first maintenance release of 3.5, fixing 37 bugs. It is also a security release for all previous WordPress versions. For a full list of changes, consult the list of tickets and the changelog, which include:

• Editor: Prevent certain HTML elements from being unexpectedly removed or modified in rare cases.
• Media: Fix a collection of minor workflow and compatibility issues in the new media manager.
• Networks: Suggest proper rewrite rules when creating a new network.
• Prevent scheduled posts from being stripped of certain HTML, such as video embeds, when they are published.
• Work around some misconfigurations that may have caused some JavaScript in the WordPress admin area to fail.
• Suppress some warnings that could occur when a plugin misused the database or user APIs.

Additionally, a bug affecting Windows servers running IIS can prevent updating from 3.5 to 3.5.1. If you receive the error “Destination directory for file streaming does not exist or is not writable,” you will need to follow the steps outlined on the Codex.

WordPress 3.5.1 also addresses the following security issues:

• A server-side request forgery vulnerability and remote port scanning using pingbacks. This vulnerability, which could potentially be used to expose information and compromise a site, affects all previous WordPress versions. This was fixed by the WordPress security team. We’d like to thank security researchers Gennady Kovshenin and Ryan Dewhurst for reviewing our work.
• Two instances of cross-site scripting via shortcodes and post content. These issues were discovered by Jon Cave of the WordPress security team.
• A cross-site scripting vulnerability in the external library Plupload. Thanks to the Moxiecode team for working with us on this, and for releasing Plupload 1.5.5 to address this issue.

Download 3.5.1 or visit Dashboard → Updates in your site admin to update now.

Another year is coming to a close, and it’s time to look back and reflect on what we’ve accomplished in the past twelve months. The WordPress community is stronger than ever, and some of the accomplishments of the past year are definitely worth remembering.

Software Releases

We had two major releases of the WordPress web application with versions 3.4 and 3.5, as well as 5 security releases during 2012. 3.4 included the theme customizer, while 3.5 became the long awaited “media release” featuring a new uploader and gallery management tool. 3.5 contained code contributions from more people than ever, and we hope to continue growing the contributor ranks in the year ahead. We currently have native apps on 6 mobile platforms — iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Nokia, and WebOS — and saw several updates there as well.

Plugin Directory

A number of improvements were made to the Plugin Directory in 2012. More cosmetic  updates, like the introduction of branded plugin page headers, make it a nicer browsing experience, while functional changes like better-integrated support forums, plugin reviews, and a favorites system made the plugin directory even more useful as a resource.

The “Make” Network and Team Reps

2012 was the year that saw the creation of Make.wordpress.org, a network of sites for the teams of contributors responsible for the different areas of the WordPress project. Now anyone can follow along and get involved with the teams that work on core, theme review, forum support, documentation, and more. In 2013 we’ll work to improve these sites to make it easier to become a contributor. Each team also now has elected Team Reps, a new role that has already led to more cross-team communication. Team reps post each week to the Updates blog so that the other reps can keep up with what’s going on in other teams.

WordPress Community Summit

At the end of October, about 100 of the most influential and respected members of the WordPress community attended an inaugural summit to discuss where we all stand, and to figure out where we go next with WordPress. A “conference of conversations,” this unconference made everyone an active participant, and while not every issue brought to the table was solved by the end of the event, the right questions were being asked.

Meetup.com

The WordPress Foundation now has a central account with Meetup.com. We’ve brought in a couple dozen existing meetup groups as a pilot to test the system, and are in the process of working with more existing meetups (as well as new ones) to join us so that local organizers won’t have to pay organizer dues and can get more support from the WordPress project.

Internet Blackout Day

We participated in the protest against SOPA/PIPA, Internet Blackout Day, on January 18. Though we usually stay out of politics, this campaign was important, and we not only participated in the blackout on WordPress.org, we encouraged our users to do so as well, and recommended plugins to provide blackout functionality. It was deemed the largest online protest in history.

WordCamps

And finally, it wouldn’t be a recap without counting up the WordCamps! There were 67 WordCamps around the world in 2012, bringing together WordPress users, developers, and fans. If you didn’t make it to a WordCamp this year, maybe it can be one of your new year resolutions: check the schedule to find one near you!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: a new WordPress release is available and chock-full of goodies to delight bloggers and developers alike. We’re calling this one “Elvin” in honor of drummer Elvin Jones, who played with John Coltrane in addition to many others.

If you’ve been around WordPress a while, the most dramatic new change you’ll notice is a completely re-imagined flow for uploading photos and creating galleries. Media has long been a friction point and we’ve listened hard and given a lot of thought into crafting this new system. 3.5 includes a new default theme, Twenty Twelve, which has a very clean mobile-first responsive design and works fantastic as a base for a CMS site. Finally we’ve spent a lot of time refreshing the styles of the dashboard, updating everything to be Retina-ready with beautiful high resolution graphics, a new color picker, and streamlining a couple of fewer-used sections of the admin.

Here’s a quick video overview of everything you can share with your friends:

Introducing WordPress 3.5

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For Developers

You can now put your (or anyone’s) WordPress.org username on the plugins page and see your favorite tagged ones, to make it easy to install them again when setting up a new site. There’s a new Tumblr importer. New installs no longer show the links manager. Finally for multisite developers switch_to_blog() is way faster and you can now install MS in a sub-directory. The Underscore and Backbone JavaScript libraries are now available. The Codex has a pretty good summary of the developer features above and beyond this, and you can always grab a warm beverage and explore Trac directly.

Percussion Section

Behind every great release is great contributors. 3.5 had more people involved than any release before it:

Aaron D. Campbell, aaronholbrook, Aaron Jorbin, Adam Harley, akbortoli, alecrust, Alex Concha, Alex King, Alex Mills (Viper007Bond), alexvorn2, ampt, Amy Hendrix (sabreuse), andrea.r, Andrew Nacin, Andrew Ozz, Andrew Ryno, Andrew Spittle, Andy Skelton, apokalyptik, Bainternet, Barry Kooij, bazza, bbrooks, Ben Casey, Ben Huson, Ben Kulbertis, bergius, Bernhard Riedl, betzster, Billy (bananastalktome), bolo1988, bradparbs, bradthomas127, Brady Vercher, Brandon Dove, Brian Layman, Brian Richards, Bronson Quick, Bryan Petty, cannona, Caroline Moore, Caspie, cdog, Charles Frees-Melvin, chellycat, Chelsea Otakan, Chouby, Chris Olbekson, Christopher Finke, Chris Wallace, Cor van Noorloos, Cristi Burcă, Dan, Dan Rivera, Daryl Koopersmith, Dave Martin, deltafactory, Dion Hulse, DjZoNe, dllh, Dominik Schilling, doublesharp, Drew Jaynes (DrewAPicture), Drew Strojny, Eddie Moya, elyobo, Emil Uzelac, Empireoflight, Eric Andrew Lewis, Erick Hitter, Eric Mann, ericwahlforss, Evan Solomon, fadingdust, F J Kaiser, foxinni, Gary Cao, Gary Jones, Gary Pendergast, GeertDD, George Mamadashvili, George Stephanis, GhostToast, gnarf, goldenapples, Gustavo Bordoni, hakre, hanni, hardy101, hebbet, Helen Hou-Sandi, Hugo Baeta, iamfriendly, Ian Stewart, ikailo, Ipstenu (Mika Epstein), itworx, j-idris, Jake Goldman, jakub.tyrcha, James Collins, jammitch, Jane Wells, Japh, JarretC, Jason Lemahieu (MadtownLems), javert03, jbrinley, jcakec, Jeff Bowen, Jeff Sebring, Jeremy Felt, Jeremy Herve, Jerry Bates (JerrySarcastic), Jesper Johansen (Jayjdk), jndetlefsen, Joe Hoyle, joelhardi, Joey Kudish, John Blackbourn (johnbillion), John James Jacoby, John P. Bloch, Jonas Bolinder, Jonathan D. Johnson, Jon Cave, joostdekeijzer, Jorge Bernal, Joseph Scott, Juan, Justin Sainton, Justin Sternberg, Justin Tadlock, Kailey Lampert (trepmal), Kelly Dwan, Keruspe, kitchin, Knut Sparhell, Konstantin Kovshenin, Konstantin Obenland, Kopepasah, Kristopher Lagraff, Kurt Payne, Kyrylo, Lance Willett, Larysa Mykhas, leogermani, lesteph, linuxologos, Luc De Brouwer, Luke Gedeon, Lutz Schroer, mailnew2ster, Manuel Schmalstieg, Maor Chasen, Marco, MarcusPope, Mark Jaquith, Marko Heijnen, MartyThornley, mattdanner, Matthew Richmond, Matt Martz, Matt Thomas, Matt Wiebe, mattyrob, Max Cutler, Mel Choyce, Mert Yazicioglu, Michael Adams (mdawaffe), Michael Fields, Mike Bijon, Mike Glendinning, Mike Hansen, Mike Little, Mike Schinkel, Mike Schroder, Mike Toppa, Milan Dinic, mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine), Mohammad Jangda, mohanjith, mpvanwinkle77, Mr Papa, murky, Naoko Takano, Nashwan Doaqan, Niall Kennedy, Nikolay Bachiyski, ntm, nvartolomei, pavelevap, pdclark, Pete Mall, Peter Westwood, Pete Schuster, Philip Arthur Moore, Phill Brown, picklepete, Picklewagon, Prasath Nadarajah, r-a-y, Rami Yushuvaev, Ricardo Moraleida, Robert Chapin (miqrogroove), Robert Wetzlmayr, Ron Rennick, rstern, Ryan Boren, Ryan Imel, Ryan Koehler, Ryan Markel, Ryan McCue, Safirul Alredha, Samir Shah, Sam Margulies, Samuel Wood (Otto), sara cannon, Satish Gandham, scott.gonzalez, Scott Kingsley Clark, Scott Reilly, Scott Taylor, ScreenfeedFr, sergey.s.betke, Sergey Biryukov, Simon Prosser, Simon Wheatley, sirzooro, ssamture, sterlo, sumindmitriy, sushkov, swekitsune, Takashi Irie, Taylor Dewey, Taylor Lovett, Terry Sutton, Thomas Griffin, Thorsten Ott, timbeks, timfs, Tim Moore, TobiasBg, TomasM, Tom Auger, tommcfarlin, Tom Willmot, toscho, Travis Smith, Vasken Hauri, Vinicius Massuchetto, Vitor Carvalho, Waclaw, WaldoJaquith, Wojtek Szkutnik, Xavier Borderie, Yoav Farhi, Yogi T, Zack Tollman, and ZaMoose.

The third release candidate for WordPress 3.5 is now available. We’ve made a number of changes over the last week since RC2 that we can’t wait to get into your hands. Hope you’re ready to do some testing!

• Final UI improvements for the new media manager, based on lots of great feedback.
• Show more information about uploading errors when they occur.
• When inserting an image into a post, don’t forget the alternative text.
• Fixes for the new admin button styles.
• Improvements for mobile devices, Internet Explorer, and right-to-left languages.
• Fix cookies for subdomain installs when multisite is installed in a subdirectory.
• Fix ms-files.php rewriting for very old multisite installs.

At this point, we only have a few minor issues left. If all goes well, you will see WordPress 3.5 very soon. If you run into any issues, please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums.

If you’d like to know what to test, visit the About page ( → About in the toolbar) and check out the list of features. This is still development software, so your boss may get mad if you install this on a live site. To test WordPress 3.5, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”). Or you can download the release candidate here (zip).

The second release candidate for WordPress 3.5 is now available for download and testing.

We’re still working on about a dozen remaining issues, but we hope to deliver WordPress 3.5 to your hands as early as next week. If you’d like to know what to test, visit the About page ( → About in the toolbar) and check out the list of features! As usual, this is still development software and we suggest you do not install this on a live site unless you are adventurous.

Think you’ve found a bug? Please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums.

Developers, please continue to test your plugins and themes, so that if there is a compatibility issue, we can figure it out before the final release. You can find our list of known issues here.

To test WordPress 3.5, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”). Or you can download the release candidate here (zip).

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We are getting close
Should have asked for haiku help
Please test RC2