WordPress News

Update: In our effort to optimize we made two mistakes in 1.5.1, one related to feeds and one related to trackbacks and pingbacks. We’ve updated the download with 1.5.1.1 which corrects these bugs and a few others. It seemed like a good time to brighten everyone’s Monday with a new release of everyone’s favorite blogging […]

When I was a kid I would wait anxiously every month for the new issue of Popular Science because I had a fascination with the future and always wanted to check when those darn flying cars were coming out. I’m still not sure about the flying cars, but Popular Science seems to be on top […]

It seems like every few days a post comes up on the support forums about hosting — people asking for recommendations, talking about problems, or sharing advice. Where your blog lives is really central to your WordPress experience, and for a long time we’ve wanted to highlight some excellent resources to consider next time you’re […]

It seems like just a few days ago I was blogging about hitting 50,000 downloads and now we’re a few days away from doubling that. Seems like the perfect opportunity to throw a party for WordPress users in San Francisco’s Mission district. Scott Beale of Laughing Squid has arranged for us to have the Odeon […]

Since WordPress is easy to upgrade, and support is efficient and easily available, a lot of users had been using nightly builds and betas prior to the release of version 1.5 just because they were impatient for the release. (We were too!) This created a tricky problem for the support volunteers and for the users […]

Fifty thousand is a big number, but over 50,000 of you have downloaded WordPress 1.5 in the two weeks since it’s been released. The rapid uptake of the Strayhorn release has been surprising and rewarding, and I thought this milestone was a perfect opportunity to say thank you for making WordPress part of your world. […]

WordPress 1.5 is not just cool and suave on the outside, there are quite a few programming enhancements and added features for coders, hackers, plugin developers and enthusiasts. Some of these are obvious while others are more difficult to track down without digging through the code. This is a highly technical post, so feel free to skip it if that’s not your bag.

(This is my favorite part of what I do.) To the 12,126 of you who have already downloaded WordPress 1.5, congrats for being on the ball. We had a “soft launch” on Monday the 14^th while we worked out some infrastructure issues and we’re now very ready to announce WordPress 1.5 to the world. This release is named “Strayhorn” in honor of Billy Strayhorn the pianist and sublime composer who worked closely with Duke Ellington and wrote tunes like “Take the A Train” and “Lush Life.” We thought he was perfect to represent the power and elegance of this release, which has been under intense development and testing the past few months.

If you’re ready to get right to the meat, go download WordPress and don’t forget to read the installation or upgrade instructions. If you’d like to know more about the release, please make yourself comfortable and read on, we’ve got a lot to share.

1.5 has been our most user-focused development ever: we’ve listened closely to your requests, complaints, praise, pleas, and we’ve done our best to address these both in the core and through enabling plugin authors more flexibility. Any sentence that started “I love WordPress except for…” was fuel for the fire. Here are the key areas we addressed with in Strayhorn:

One of the most interesting things for me as a uni-lingual developer has been the incredible international community that has formed around WordPress, creating localizations, translations, and incredible resource sites around the project. When I last checked the translations available for 1.2, there were 26 different languages available. This is something we want to embrace […]

Tuesday, Feburary 15th, from 6-11PM, I will be hosting an upgrade party for people interesting in moving their blogs to 1.5. There will be food, drink, and wi-fi, so bring a laptop or your account details and get your blog on the most advanced blogging software in the world. You can upgrade from any previous version of WordPress or any other platform we have an import script for. If you’re worried about breaking something, the best time to do it is when a developer is right there.

Upgrading will only take about 5 minutes, but stick around afterward and socialize with fellow WordPressers. I also heard a rumor that there will be celebrity guest appearances by gurus Eric and Molly. After the party I’ll update this entry with a list of everyone who got upgraded.

WordPress Upgrade Party
6 PM — 11 PM
333 1st Street, at Folsom
San Francisco

If you need more details email M at this domain. If you want to come but don’t use WordPress at all, that’s cool too, just enjoy yourself.

Craig Hartel, aka NuclearMoose sits down with Matt and Ryan, and asks them a few question about WordPress 1.5, Life, and Everything in The Inside Scoop – an interview of sorts. Matt talks about helping out with managing the project, while also keeping track of changes in one’s personal and professional lives, and also about […]

We are proud to announce wp-plugins.org, the WordPress Plugin repository. A need was felt for a set of common tools, and a common playground for developers creating plugins and themes to extend WordPress. WP-Plugins.org seeks to fill the gap by providing stable and reliable hosting, complete with version control, an issue tracker, and wiki to […]