We’ve been waiting for WordPress 2.9 for quite a while now and its nice to see that the wait will soon be over as the first release candidate is now ready for testing.
There are a lot of new features in version 2.9 to try out and test, I suggest checking out the full list of features that can be found here.
While you’re at it, you might also want to test all of your plugins and inform the community on its compatibility with the new version. All you have to do is to go to the plugin’s home page at Wordpress.org (Check out Akismet’s page), look for the “Compatibility” section found on the right, and cast your vote on whether the plugin is working or not. For more information regarding this new feature (what it does, how it works, etc), you could check out the post that we made here.
If all goes well, expect the final version of 2.9 to be released by the end of the week! Finally!
With the release of WordPress 2.9 expected over the next weeks, it is time to dig a little deeper and discover new features. Since the translation string freeze no new features will be added anymore. Since some days I noticed on another blog where I run the latest nightly developer build, that the new plugin updater had integrated the WordPress.org plugin compatibility check we mentioned some here some weeks ago.
It seems now that this feature comes to your plugin updater within your blog.
WordPress 2.9 New Plugin Updater Functionalities
But that is not all. Another new and very handy function of WordPress 2.9 is that you have the possibility to upgrade all plugins at once.
Both are nice additions to the built-in core updater of WordPress but sadly the new plugin compatibility check is not implemented platform wide yet. Read More
Matt Mullenweg dropped the bombshell yesterday in IRC: bbPress, the often forgotten forum option, could become a WordPress plugin in the near future.
Anyone who has ever looked at integrating forums with their WordPress blog knows that right at the moment bbPress an underpowered option is. Integrating other forums can be a real headache (Vanilla 2 Beta has a one way integration add-on, from WP to Vanilla) and bridges can break when changes to the database are made with new releases.
The first reaction of several people in IRC and on Twitter was that they prefer bbPress to be a standalone option but possible advantages of bbPress as a plugin largely outweigh here:
User database integration;
The possibility of an improved role management system to deal with the roles for integrated boards (extra admins, moderators)
Most of al I liked the possible [bbpress] shortcodes Matt hinted at:
[13:11] <Ryan_> There’s a lot of stuff in WordPress which would automatically become available with no effort if the two were combined.
[13:11] <photomatt_sf> that’s more along the lines of my [bbpress] shortcode idea
[13:11] <hajii> shortcodes for bbpress would be great
[13:11] <photomatt_sf> [bbpress tag="akismet-plugin"]
[13:11] <benhuson> @hajii – Yes, I think being able to benefit from existing wordpress theme would be a huge asset
[13:11] <photomatt_sf> [bbpress forum="newbies"]
The WordPress Shortcode API is very powerful and can be used to eliminate many plugins (related posts, Adsense in posts, send to Twitter, image galleries, image captions to mention only a few) and there is no doubt that this shortcode integration could lead to new possibilities, both for developers/designers and users. It would also be very nice to be able to post to your forum from the regular post page in the dashboard.
For those who prefer bbPress to be used as a standalone option, you could always set your forums as home page while still benefitting all the advantages which come with the WP integration.
One last thought: could it be that Matt’s motivation to convert bbPress to a plugin would make bbPress the first canonical plugin?
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…
If the community decides to open up the platform more this could have great advantages for these plugins but it would only restrict the damage done daily elsewhere. The inconvenience of being a popular open source platform with extensions and themes directory: popular plugins become orphans, themes aren’t updated with the newest features and could break a standard WordPress setup with new releases.
All themes and plugins hosted on WordPress.org are required to be GPL licensed so it would be simple for developers, designers to re-release ‘updated abandoned’ plugins and themes but users would not receive updates in the plugin and themes installer.
Enter GitHub. GitHub is a popular distributed platform used for many opensource software projects. Rails uses it, scriptaculous and Lussumo garden are other popular projects using GitHub. The SourceForge of the modern internet.
Git is a fast, efficient, distributed version control system ideal for the collaborative development of software.
GitHub is the easiest (and prettiest) way to participate in that collaboration: fork projects, send pull requests, monitor development, all with ease.
I am not saying that GitHub the future of the themes and plugin directory is, but GitHub does offer an easy platform to overview many different projects. If a plugin or theme becomes orphaned, chances that someone else has created a fork are big and ‘repository moderators’ could opt to replace the main, original plugin with an updated commit. A GitHub similar platform would also offer an easy platform for theme designers and child-theme designers to keep ‘connected’. It literally becomes easy to follow a plugin’s or theme’s history (themeline?) and to download new commits.
The first question which comes to mind is ‘What are canonical plugins?‘. The team has provided the following definition:
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.
Canonical plugins will not be developed by one plugin developer anymore but by the community. They will also have their official web presence on the wordpress.org plugin repository instead of on website of the (original) developer.
What does this mean for several plugin developers? If you have a popular plugin and your plugin contains a ‘Donate’ button, be prepared to ditch this button if you want your plugin to be taken in consideration. This would be the case for example for. Arne Brachold’s Google (XML) Sitemap Generator and Donncha’s WP Super Cache plugin.
How to name ‘canonical plugins’?
The team clearly identified that the term canonical rather niche is and asks the community to vote on how these ’super plugins’ should be categorised/labelled. The entry on the develop blog offers some names for canonical plugins:
Translation strings for WordPress 2.9 have been frozen. This means that no new changes other than bug corrections will be made to 2.9 anymore and we can expect a Release Candidate (RC1) anytime now.
The WP Core team is in Orlando, discussing the future of WordPress, the 3.0 branch and WPMu merge, and possible changes to the WordPress.org site after Matt filed a report of WordPress.org specific Trac tickets. An update about their decisions is expected today or tomorrow.
What do you think, can we expect WordPress 2.9 before Christmas? If you have been using Beta2 or update daily with the newest nightly build, how has your mileage been? I have not experienced any problems on any of my sites.
Whenever I think of open sourced CMS (Content Management System), I often think of Drupal and Joomla which are used by web masters to make powerful websites without breaking the bank.
So you can imagine my surprise when WordPress–software created primarily for blogging–defeated Joomla and Drupal as the Overall Best Open Source CMS for 2009.
Update: Corrections made to article. See below for details. Read More
The WordPress team is currently hard at work in completing version 2.9 but that doesn’t mean they’re going to allow their older versions to be open with vulnerabilities.
As a security release, WordPress releases version 2.8.6 which fixes two security problems that can be exploited by untrusted users in your blog who have posting privileges.
The first problem is an XSS vulnerability in Press This discovered by Benjamin Flesch. The second problem, discovered by Dawid Golunski, is an issue with sanitizing uploaded file names that can be exploited in certain Apache configurations.
Download version 2.8.6 from WordPress.org or you could just upgrade automatically through your blog’s WordPress Dashboard.
More and more people are now using their mobile phones to access the internet. Noticing this growing trend, the Wordpress team has released a new upgrade that makes Wordpress.com blogs more mobile friendly.
When a mobile phone views a Wordpress.com blog, the contents are now shown using special mobile themes. The theme that is displayed differs depending on the device used. For IPhone and Android devices, a theme which is a modification of WPTouch is displayed. Visitors get easy access to posts, pages, and archives, as well as AJAX commenting and post loading. When viewing using other mobile devices, a theme developed from an old version of Wordpress Mobile Edition is displayed which shows the all the important important information of the blog’s content while making sure that it loads everything quickly.
The only thing lacking with this new upgrade is the ability to customize the mobile themes. There’s no option that lets you change colors or even the use of CSS. This means that your blog will look the same as all the other Wordpress.com blogs. Well, at least, visitors are given the option to switch the “Full site” mode to view the original non-mobile version of your blog.
This new feature is automatically enabled on all Wordpress.com blogs. To turn off this feature, go to Appearance > Extras in the Admin Dashboard and uncheck the “Display a mobile theme when this blog is viewed with a mobile browser.”
For self-hosted Wordpress users, you can also make your blog mobile-ready using the following plugins: WPTouch, CarringtonMobile or MobilePress.
Automattic, the company behind Wordpress, has just acquired a new grammar and spell checker tool called “After the Deadline“, last September 8, as a replacement for the old one used by Wordpress.com blogs.
After the Deadline helps you write better and spend less time editing. It basically works like your typical grammar and spell checker tools in word processing software, like words or phrases being underlined if the program suspects an error, as well as giving out suggested corrections that the user can choose from.
“When I first tried After the Deadline I was blown away; it was so much better than other checkers I’d used,” said Matt Mullenwag, founder of Automattic.
For more information about After the Deadline, check out the video below.
The new After the Deadline spell checker tool is now enabled on Wordpress blogs. Those who have self-hosted blogs can get the plugin here.
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Matt Mullenweg dropped the bombshell yesterday in IRC: 
