O:9:"magpierss":19:{s:6:"parser";i:0;s:12:"current_item";a:0:{}s:5:"items";a:10:{i:0;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:19:"Upcoming Bug Hunts!";s:4:"link";s:60:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/10/upcoming-bug-hunts/";s:8:"comments";s:69:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/10/upcoming-bug-hunts/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:28:00 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Jane Wells";}s:8:"category";s:49:"DevelopmentEventstestingbetabugssprintticketstrac";s:4:"guid";s:39:"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=953";s:11:"description";s:339:"As we near completion of the 2.9 milestone, it&#8217;s that time of dev cycle again, when we ask all you community developers who&#8217;ve been putting off contributing to core to dust off your dev environments and help us get closer to being release-ready. How? Bug hunts! Yes, that time-honored tradition (in the time of WordPress, [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:3637:"<p>As we near completion of the 2.9 milestone, it&#8217;s that time of dev cycle again, when we ask all you community developers who&#8217;ve been putting off contributing to core to dust off your dev environments and help us get closer to being release-ready. How? Bug hunts! Yes, that time-honored tradition (in the time of WordPress, anyway) of everyone pitching in to test patches and report the results, working on solutions to major bugs, and helping to clear out Trac has come around again, and we&#8217;re scheduling not one, but two bug hunts over the next couple of weeks to ensure that everyone has enough time to prepare and <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/">participate</a>.</p>
<p><strong>#1</strong> &#8211; The first bug hunt of 2.9 will be Thursday through Saturday, November 5-7, 2009. This should give people a few days to plan for it, upgrade their dev environments if they haven&#8217;t been following trunk, and figure out how to allot their time. We&#8217;re stretching over both weekdays and weekend to try and accommodate everyone&#8217;s schedule.</p>
<p><strong>#2 </strong>- The second bug hunt will be a week later, Saturday through Monday, November 14-16, 2009. This should make it possible for anyone who needs more than a week to set some time aside to participate. This bug hunt will coincide with <a href="http://2009.newyork.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp NYC</a>, where a special Hacker Room will be set aside for people to go and work on 2.9 bug tickets alongside regular core contributors including Mark Jaquith and Matt Martz (sivel from IRC).</p>
<h4>The Goals</h4>
<p><strong>Test, test, test existing patches!</strong> You can see all tickets with patches that need testing by checking <a href="http://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/13">this report</a>. When you&#8217;ve tested a patch, report your results in the ticket comments, so core committers can see how the patch is faring.</p>
<p><strong>Fix known bugs! </strong>You can see the bugs that need patches by checking <a href="http://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/16">this report</a>. Look for the ones that seem that they&#8217;ll affect the most people or have the biggest impact by being fixed. Edge case bugs should be lower priority.</p>
<p><strong>Report new bugs! </strong>As you&#8217;re testing out the development version, if you come across a bug, <a href="http://core.trac.wordpress.org/search">search trac</a> to see if someone has reported it yet. If so, add a comment with your experience to the ticket so we&#8217;ll know it&#8217;s affecting more than one person. If no ticket exists yet, <a href="http://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">create one</a>.</p>
<p>Core committers will be around (in the #wordpress-dev channel at irc.freenode.com) both weekends to review patches that have been thoroughly tested, answer questions as needed, and give feedback on patches that need more work before being commit-worthy.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;ve never participated in a WordPress bug hunt before, but you&#8217;d like to get involved, we&#8217;d love to have you join us! To prepare, you&#8217;ll want to <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=setting+up+a+wordpress+test+environment&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;aq=t&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a">set up a test environment</a>, start using the current development version/maybe install the <a href="http://westi.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/making-it-easy-to-be-a-wordpress-tester/">beta testing plugin</a>, join us in the #wordpress-dev IRC channel, and read up on <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Automated_Testing">automated testing</a>.</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:65:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/10/upcoming-bug-hunts/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:339:"As we near completion of the 2.9 milestone, it&#8217;s that time of dev cycle again, when we ask all you community developers who&#8217;ve been putting off contributing to core to dust off your dev environments and help us get closer to being release-ready. How? Bug hunts! Yes, that time-honored tradition (in the time of WordPress, [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:3637:"<p>As we near completion of the 2.9 milestone, it&#8217;s that time of dev cycle again, when we ask all you community developers who&#8217;ve been putting off contributing to core to dust off your dev environments and help us get closer to being release-ready. How? Bug hunts! Yes, that time-honored tradition (in the time of WordPress, anyway) of everyone pitching in to test patches and report the results, working on solutions to major bugs, and helping to clear out Trac has come around again, and we&#8217;re scheduling not one, but two bug hunts over the next couple of weeks to ensure that everyone has enough time to prepare and <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/">participate</a>.</p>
<p><strong>#1</strong> &#8211; The first bug hunt of 2.9 will be Thursday through Saturday, November 5-7, 2009. This should give people a few days to plan for it, upgrade their dev environments if they haven&#8217;t been following trunk, and figure out how to allot their time. We&#8217;re stretching over both weekdays and weekend to try and accommodate everyone&#8217;s schedule.</p>
<p><strong>#2 </strong>- The second bug hunt will be a week later, Saturday through Monday, November 14-16, 2009. This should make it possible for anyone who needs more than a week to set some time aside to participate. This bug hunt will coincide with <a href="http://2009.newyork.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp NYC</a>, where a special Hacker Room will be set aside for people to go and work on 2.9 bug tickets alongside regular core contributors including Mark Jaquith and Matt Martz (sivel from IRC).</p>
<h4>The Goals</h4>
<p><strong>Test, test, test existing patches!</strong> You can see all tickets with patches that need testing by checking <a href="http://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/13">this report</a>. When you&#8217;ve tested a patch, report your results in the ticket comments, so core committers can see how the patch is faring.</p>
<p><strong>Fix known bugs! </strong>You can see the bugs that need patches by checking <a href="http://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/16">this report</a>. Look for the ones that seem that they&#8217;ll affect the most people or have the biggest impact by being fixed. Edge case bugs should be lower priority.</p>
<p><strong>Report new bugs! </strong>As you&#8217;re testing out the development version, if you come across a bug, <a href="http://core.trac.wordpress.org/search">search trac</a> to see if someone has reported it yet. If so, add a comment with your experience to the ticket so we&#8217;ll know it&#8217;s affecting more than one person. If no ticket exists yet, <a href="http://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">create one</a>.</p>
<p>Core committers will be around (in the #wordpress-dev channel at irc.freenode.com) both weekends to review patches that have been thoroughly tested, answer questions as needed, and give feedback on patches that need more work before being commit-worthy.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;ve never participated in a WordPress bug hunt before, but you&#8217;d like to get involved, we&#8217;d love to have you join us! To prepare, you&#8217;ll want to <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=setting+up+a+wordpress+test+environment&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;aq=t&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a">set up a test environment</a>, start using the current development version/maybe install the <a href="http://westi.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/making-it-easy-to-be-a-wordpress-tester/">beta testing plugin</a>, join us in the #wordpress-dev IRC channel, and read up on <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Automated_Testing">automated testing</a>.</p>
";}i:1;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:25:"Plugin Compatibility Beta";s:4:"link";s:67:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/10/plugin-compatibility-beta/";s:8:"comments";s:76:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/10/plugin-compatibility-beta/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:11:39 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:12:"Mark Jaquith";}s:8:"category";s:11:"Development";s:4:"guid";s:39:"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=944";s:11:"description";s:351:"The number one reason people give us for not upgrading to the latest version of WordPress is fear that their plugins won&#8217;t be compatible. As part of our continuing efforts to make WordPress core, plugin, and theme upgrades as painless as possible, Michael Adams developed and launched a beta of a new &#8220;Compatibility&#8221; feature in [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:3193:"<p>The number one reason people give us for not upgrading to the latest version of WordPress is fear that their plugins won&#8217;t be compatible. As part of our continuing efforts to make WordPress core, plugin, and theme upgrades as painless as possible, Michael Adams developed and launched a beta of a new &#8220;Compatibility&#8221; feature in the plugin directory, powered by your votes. When viewing a plugin in the directory, select a WordPress version and a plugin version from the drop-downs. If there has been feedback about this WordPress / plugin version combination, we&#8217;ll show you what percentage of responses marked that combination as compatible vs how many marked it as incompatible.</p>
<p><img src="http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/compatibility-viewing.png" alt="Compatibility: Your Setup: (WordPress Version drop-down) (Plugin Version drop-down). Log in to vote. The Concensus: 44% negative, 56% positive" title="Compatibility viewing" width="220" height="254" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-365" /></p>
<p>If you log in, you&#8217;ll be able to help us gather this information! Just select a WordPress version / plugin version combination and click the &#8220;Works&#8221; or the &#8220;Broken&#8221; button. Please note that this shouldn&#8217;t be used to report minor issues with a plugin. You should mark a plugin as &#8220;Broken&#8221; only if its core functionality is truly broken when run on the specified WordPress version.</p>
<p><img src="http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/compatibility-voting.png" alt="Compatibility: Your Setup: (WordPress Version drop-down) (Plugin Version drop-down). (Broken button) (Works button). The Concensus: No data" title="Compatibility voting" width="227" height="276" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-366" /></p>
<p>Right now we&#8217;re just in information gathering mode. So get out there and vote! Don&#8217;t just vote on broken plugins&#8230; cast a &#8220;Works&#8221; vote for every plugin that works on the version of WordPress you are using. This can help improve the signal-to-noise ratio in our data and prevent a few mistaken &#8220;Broken&#8221; votes from weighing too heavily.</p>
<p>For developers, we&#8217;re now including this data in our API. The <code>plugin_information</code> action now returns a &#8220;compatibility&#8221; member with the multidimensional array format:</p>
<p><code>array( {WP version} => array( {plugin version} => array( {% of reporters who say it works}, {# responses} ) ) )</code></p>
<p>If the API knows which version of WordPress you are using (for example, if you are making this query using the <code>plugins_api()</code> function from with WordPress), the API will only return compatibility information for your version of WordPress.</p>
<p>Eventually, we&#8217;d like to gather this compatibility feedback from within WordPress, allowing you to vote directly from your plugins admin screen. The ultimate goal is to use this information to inform you of plugin incompatibilities with a new version of WordPress during the upgrade process. For that to be useful we need a large set of high quality compatibility data. Start voting!</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:72:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/10/plugin-compatibility-beta/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"1";}s:7:"summary";s:351:"The number one reason people give us for not upgrading to the latest version of WordPress is fear that their plugins won&#8217;t be compatible. As part of our continuing efforts to make WordPress core, plugin, and theme upgrades as painless as possible, Michael Adams developed and launched a beta of a new &#8220;Compatibility&#8221; feature in [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:3193:"<p>The number one reason people give us for not upgrading to the latest version of WordPress is fear that their plugins won&#8217;t be compatible. As part of our continuing efforts to make WordPress core, plugin, and theme upgrades as painless as possible, Michael Adams developed and launched a beta of a new &#8220;Compatibility&#8221; feature in the plugin directory, powered by your votes. When viewing a plugin in the directory, select a WordPress version and a plugin version from the drop-downs. If there has been feedback about this WordPress / plugin version combination, we&#8217;ll show you what percentage of responses marked that combination as compatible vs how many marked it as incompatible.</p>
<p><img src="http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/compatibility-viewing.png" alt="Compatibility: Your Setup: (WordPress Version drop-down) (Plugin Version drop-down). Log in to vote. The Concensus: 44% negative, 56% positive" title="Compatibility viewing" width="220" height="254" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-365" /></p>
<p>If you log in, you&#8217;ll be able to help us gather this information! Just select a WordPress version / plugin version combination and click the &#8220;Works&#8221; or the &#8220;Broken&#8221; button. Please note that this shouldn&#8217;t be used to report minor issues with a plugin. You should mark a plugin as &#8220;Broken&#8221; only if its core functionality is truly broken when run on the specified WordPress version.</p>
<p><img src="http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/compatibility-voting.png" alt="Compatibility: Your Setup: (WordPress Version drop-down) (Plugin Version drop-down). (Broken button) (Works button). The Concensus: No data" title="Compatibility voting" width="227" height="276" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-366" /></p>
<p>Right now we&#8217;re just in information gathering mode. So get out there and vote! Don&#8217;t just vote on broken plugins&#8230; cast a &#8220;Works&#8221; vote for every plugin that works on the version of WordPress you are using. This can help improve the signal-to-noise ratio in our data and prevent a few mistaken &#8220;Broken&#8221; votes from weighing too heavily.</p>
<p>For developers, we&#8217;re now including this data in our API. The <code>plugin_information</code> action now returns a &#8220;compatibility&#8221; member with the multidimensional array format:</p>
<p><code>array( {WP version} => array( {plugin version} => array( {% of reporters who say it works}, {# responses} ) ) )</code></p>
<p>If the API knows which version of WordPress you are using (for example, if you are making this query using the <code>plugins_api()</code> function from with WordPress), the API will only return compatibility information for your version of WordPress.</p>
<p>Eventually, we&#8217;d like to gather this compatibility feedback from within WordPress, allowing you to vote directly from your plugins admin screen. The ultimate goal is to use this information to inform you of plugin incompatibilities with a new version of WordPress during the upgrade process. For that to be useful we need a large set of high quality compatibility data. Start voting!</p>
";}i:2;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:34:"WordPress 2.8.5: Hardening Release";s:4:"link";s:75:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/10/wordpress-2-8-5-hardening-release/";s:8:"comments";s:84:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/10/wordpress-2-8-5-hardening-release/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:30:00 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:14:"Peter Westwood";}s:8:"category";s:16:"ReleasesSecurity";s:4:"guid";s:39:"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=935";s:11:"description";s:313:"As you know over the past couple of months we have been working on the new features for WordPress 2.9. We have also been working on trying to make WordPress as secure as possible and during this process we have identified a number of security hardening changes that we thought were worth back-porting to the [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:1610:"<p>As you know over the past couple of months we have been working on the new features for WordPress 2.9. We have also been working on trying to make WordPress as secure as possible and during this process we have identified a number of security hardening changes that we thought were worth back-porting to the 2.8 branch so as to get these improvements out there and make all your sites as secure as possible.</p>
<p>The headline changes in this release are:</p>
<ul>
<li>A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.</li>
<li>Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.</li>
<li>Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.</li>
<li>Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.</li>
</ul>
<p>We would recommend that all sites are upgraded to this new version of WordPress to ensure that you have the best available protection.</p>
<p>If you think your site may have been hit by one of the recent exploits and you would like to make sure that you have cleared out all traces of the exploit then we would recommend that you take a look at the <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exploit-scanner/">WordPress Exploit Scanner</a>.  This is a plugin which searches the files on your website, and the posts and comments tables of your database for anything suspicious. It also examines your list of active plugins for unusual filenames.  You can read more about this plugin here &#8211; &#8220;<a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/exploit-scanner/">WordPress Exploit Scanner</a>&#8220;</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:80:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/10/wordpress-2-8-5-hardening-release/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:3:"287";}s:7:"summary";s:313:"As you know over the past couple of months we have been working on the new features for WordPress 2.9. We have also been working on trying to make WordPress as secure as possible and during this process we have identified a number of security hardening changes that we thought were worth back-porting to the [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:1610:"<p>As you know over the past couple of months we have been working on the new features for WordPress 2.9. We have also been working on trying to make WordPress as secure as possible and during this process we have identified a number of security hardening changes that we thought were worth back-porting to the 2.8 branch so as to get these improvements out there and make all your sites as secure as possible.</p>
<p>The headline changes in this release are:</p>
<ul>
<li>A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.</li>
<li>Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.</li>
<li>Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.</li>
<li>Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.</li>
</ul>
<p>We would recommend that all sites are upgraded to this new version of WordPress to ensure that you have the best available protection.</p>
<p>If you think your site may have been hit by one of the recent exploits and you would like to make sure that you have cleared out all traces of the exploit then we would recommend that you take a look at the <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exploit-scanner/">WordPress Exploit Scanner</a>.  This is a plugin which searches the files on your website, and the posts and comments tables of your database for anything suspicious. It also examines your list of active plugins for unusual filenames.  You can read more about this plugin here &#8211; &#8220;<a href="http://ocaoimh.ie/exploit-scanner/">WordPress Exploit Scanner</a>&#8220;</p>
";}i:3;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:42:"Getting involved with the 2.9 beta testing";s:4:"link";s:84:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/10/getting-involved-with-the-2-9-beta-testing/";s:8:"comments";s:93:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/10/getting-involved-with-the-2-9-beta-testing/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:16:09 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:14:"Peter Westwood";}s:8:"category";s:25:"Development2.9betatesting";s:4:"guid";s:39:"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=922";s:11:"description";s:292:"We have been hard at work now for a few months on the new features that will be coming in WordPress 2.9, and we are near the time when the first beta version will be available. We&#8217;ll need your help with beta testing the new features and ironing out any bugs.
There are a number of [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:2938:"<p>We have been hard at work now for a few months on the new features that will be coming in WordPress 2.9, and we are near the time when the first beta version will be available. We&#8217;ll need your help with beta testing the new features and ironing out any bugs.</p>
<p>There are a number of different ways in which you can get involved in the testing process, and each way is suited for each persons skill set and comfort level.  First of all, you can join the <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Mailing_Lists#Testers">wp-testers</a> mailing list to keep up to date with the testing progress and to discuss things with the other testers.  Secondly, you can head over to the <a href="http://core.trac.wordpress.org/">Trac ticketing system</a> and either create tickets for bugs you find or <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/milestone/2.9">use some of the useful searches</a> to look for patches that need testing or that need someone to try and reproduce the issue.</p>
<p>During the beta phase we are going to focus on stabilizing the new features and removing existing bugs which are well-understood and have easily testable solutions.  During this process we will not be adding any new enhancements so as to ensure that the focus is on making the 2.9 release as bug-free as possible.  We will also try and have a few special bug hunt days where one or more experienced WordPress developers will be available to help people track down issues and get patches committed to fix bugs.</p>
<p>To make is as easy as possible for you to get a beta testing install up and running we have put together a small WordPress plugin which makes it really easy to convert a test install of the latest release version of WordPress into a beta test install of the next up and coming release.  The plugin is called <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> and is available to download from WordPress Extend or can be installed using the built-in plugin installer.  Please make sure you to only install this plugin on a test site. We do not recommend running beta versions on your normal, live sites in case anything goes wrong.  You can read more about the plugin in &#8220;<a href="http://westi.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/making-it-easy-to-be-a-wordpress-tester/">Making it easy to be a WordPress Tester</a>&#8221;</p>
<p>We are aiming to release the first beta version of 2.9 around the end of October, after we have put the finishing touches on the new features. Then we switch to full on beta testing mode and your help and feedback will be very much appreciated.  During the beta test program will push out new builds for automated upgrades regularly. Once we feel that a suitable level of stability has been achieved we will move into the release candidate phase. We hope to be able to make the final release 2.9 build available in either late November or early December.</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:89:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/10/getting-involved-with-the-2-9-beta-testing/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:2:"72";}s:7:"summary";s:292:"We have been hard at work now for a few months on the new features that will be coming in WordPress 2.9, and we are near the time when the first beta version will be available. We&#8217;ll need your help with beta testing the new features and ironing out any bugs.
There are a number of [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:2938:"<p>We have been hard at work now for a few months on the new features that will be coming in WordPress 2.9, and we are near the time when the first beta version will be available. We&#8217;ll need your help with beta testing the new features and ironing out any bugs.</p>
<p>There are a number of different ways in which you can get involved in the testing process, and each way is suited for each persons skill set and comfort level.  First of all, you can join the <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Mailing_Lists#Testers">wp-testers</a> mailing list to keep up to date with the testing progress and to discuss things with the other testers.  Secondly, you can head over to the <a href="http://core.trac.wordpress.org/">Trac ticketing system</a> and either create tickets for bugs you find or <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/milestone/2.9">use some of the useful searches</a> to look for patches that need testing or that need someone to try and reproduce the issue.</p>
<p>During the beta phase we are going to focus on stabilizing the new features and removing existing bugs which are well-understood and have easily testable solutions.  During this process we will not be adding any new enhancements so as to ensure that the focus is on making the 2.9 release as bug-free as possible.  We will also try and have a few special bug hunt days where one or more experienced WordPress developers will be available to help people track down issues and get patches committed to fix bugs.</p>
<p>To make is as easy as possible for you to get a beta testing install up and running we have put together a small WordPress plugin which makes it really easy to convert a test install of the latest release version of WordPress into a beta test install of the next up and coming release.  The plugin is called <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> and is available to download from WordPress Extend or can be installed using the built-in plugin installer.  Please make sure you to only install this plugin on a test site. We do not recommend running beta versions on your normal, live sites in case anything goes wrong.  You can read more about the plugin in &#8220;<a href="http://westi.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/making-it-easy-to-be-a-wordpress-tester/">Making it easy to be a WordPress Tester</a>&#8221;</p>
<p>We are aiming to release the first beta version of 2.9 around the end of October, after we have put the finishing touches on the new features. Then we switch to full on beta testing mode and your help and feedback will be very much appreciated.  During the beta test program will push out new builds for automated upgrades regularly. Once we feel that a suitable level of stability has been achieved we will move into the release candidate phase. We hope to be able to make the final release 2.9 build available in either late November or early December.</p>
";}i:4;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:28:"How to Keep WordPress Secure";s:4:"link";s:63:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/09/keep-wordpress-secure/";s:8:"comments";s:72:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/09/keep-wordpress-secure/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sat, 05 Sep 2009 19:22:03 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:8:"category";s:19:"DevelopmentSecurity";s:4:"guid";s:39:"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=908";s:11:"description";s:301:"A stitch in time saves nine. I couldn&#8217;t sew my way out of a bag, but it&#8217;s true advice for bloggers as well &#8212; a little bit of work on an upgrade now saves a lot of work fixing something later.
Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:6131:"<p>A stitch in time saves nine. I couldn&#8217;t sew my way out of a bag, but it&#8217;s true advice for bloggers as well &#8212; a little bit of work on an <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress">upgrade now</a> saves a lot of work fixing something later.</p>
<p>Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts.</p>
<p>The tactics are new, but the strategy is not. Where this particular worm messes up is in the &#8220;clean up&#8221; phase: it doesn&#8217;t hide itself well and the blogger notices that all his links are broken, which causes him to dig deeper and notice the extent of the damage. Where worms of old would do childish things like defacing your site, the new ones are silent and invisible, so you only notice them when they screw up (as this one did) or your site gets removed from Google for having spam and malware on it.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m talking about this not to scare you, but to highlight that this is something that has happened before, and that will more than likely happen again.</p>
<p>A stitch in time saves nine. <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress">Upgrading is a known quantity of work</a>, and one that the WordPress community has tried its darndest to make as easy as possible with one-click upgrades. <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ_My_site_was_hacked">Fixing a hacked blog, on the other hand, is quite hard</a>. Upgrading is taking your vitamins; fixing a hack is open heart surgery. (This is true of cost, as well.)</p>
<p>2.8.4, the current version of WordPress, is immune to this worm. (<em>So was the release before this one.</em>) If you&#8217;ve been thinking about upgrading but haven&#8217;t gotten around to it yet, now would be a really good time. If you&#8217;ve already upgraded your blogs, maybe check out the blogs of your friends or that you read and see if they need any help. A stitch in time saves nine.</p>
<p>Whenever a worm makes the rounds, everyone becomes a security expert and peddles one of three types of advice: snake oil, Club solutions, or real solutions. Snake oil you&#8217;ll be able to spot right away because it&#8217;s <em>easy</em>. Hide the WordPress version, they say, and you&#8217;ll be fine. Uh, duh, the worm writers thought of that. Where their 1.0 might have checked for version numbers, 2.0 just tests capabilities, version number be damned. </p>
<p>The second type of advice is Club solutions; to illustrate, I&#8217;ll quote from <a href="http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/10/29/club_vs_lojack_solutions">Mark Pilgrim&#8217;s excellent essay on spam 7 years ago, before WordPress even existed</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>The <em>really</em> interesting thing about these approaches, from a game theory perspective, is that they are all <a href="http://slate.msn.com/?id=2041" title="Slate, August 3, 1997: Property Is Theft: When protecting your own property is stealing from others">Club solutions, not Lojack solutions</a>.  There are two basic approaches to protecting your car from theft: <a href="http://www.theclub.com/">The Club</a> (or The Shield, or a car alarm, or something similar), and <a href="http://www.lojack.com/">Lojack</a>.  The Club isn’t much protection against a thief who is determined to steal <em>your</em> car (it’s easy enough to drill the lock, or just cut the steering wheel and slide The Club off).  But it is effective protection against a thief who wants to steal <em>a</em> car (not necessarily <em>your</em> car), because thieves are generally in a hurry and will go for the easiest target, the low-hanging fruit.  The Club works as long as not everyone has it, since if everyone had it, thieves would have an equally difficult time stealing any car, their choice will be based on other factors, and your car is back to being as vulnerable as anyone else&#8217;s.  The Club doesn’t deter theft, it only deflects it.</p></blockquote>
<p>Club blog security solutions can be simple (like an .htaccess file) or incredibly complex (like two-factor authentication), and they can work, especially for <em>known exploits</em>. Club solutions can be useful, like using a strong or complex password for your login &#8212; no one would recommend against that. (Another club solution is switching to less-used software on the assumption or more like the software&#8217;s claim that it&#8217;s perfect and more secure. This is why BeOS is more secure than Linux, ahem.)</p>
<p>In the car world, if someone figured out how to teleport entire cars to chop shops, The Club wouldn&#8217;t be so useful anymore. Luckily for manufacturers of The Club, this hasn&#8217;t happened. Online and in the software world, though, the equivalent happens almost daily. There is only one real solution. <strong>The only thing that I can promise will keep your blog secure today and in the future is upgrading.</strong></p>
<p>WordPress is a community of hundreds of people that read the code every day, audit it, update it, and care enough about keeping your blog safe that we do things like release updates weeks apart from each other even though it makes us look bad, because updating is going to keep your blog safe from the bad guys. I&#8217;m not clairvoyant and I can&#8217;t predict what schemes spammers, hackers, crackers, and tricksters will come up with with in the future to harm your blog, but I do know for certain that as long as WordPress is around we&#8217;ll do everything in our power to make sure the software is safe. We&#8217;ve already made upgrading core and plugins a one-click procedure. If we find something broken, we&#8217;ll release a fix. Please upgrade, it&#8217;s the only way we can help each other.</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:68:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/09/keep-wordpress-secure/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:3:"450";}s:7:"summary";s:301:"A stitch in time saves nine. I couldn&#8217;t sew my way out of a bag, but it&#8217;s true advice for bloggers as well &#8212; a little bit of work on an upgrade now saves a lot of work fixing something later.
Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:6131:"<p>A stitch in time saves nine. I couldn&#8217;t sew my way out of a bag, but it&#8217;s true advice for bloggers as well &#8212; a little bit of work on an <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress">upgrade now</a> saves a lot of work fixing something later.</p>
<p>Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts.</p>
<p>The tactics are new, but the strategy is not. Where this particular worm messes up is in the &#8220;clean up&#8221; phase: it doesn&#8217;t hide itself well and the blogger notices that all his links are broken, which causes him to dig deeper and notice the extent of the damage. Where worms of old would do childish things like defacing your site, the new ones are silent and invisible, so you only notice them when they screw up (as this one did) or your site gets removed from Google for having spam and malware on it.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m talking about this not to scare you, but to highlight that this is something that has happened before, and that will more than likely happen again.</p>
<p>A stitch in time saves nine. <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress">Upgrading is a known quantity of work</a>, and one that the WordPress community has tried its darndest to make as easy as possible with one-click upgrades. <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ_My_site_was_hacked">Fixing a hacked blog, on the other hand, is quite hard</a>. Upgrading is taking your vitamins; fixing a hack is open heart surgery. (This is true of cost, as well.)</p>
<p>2.8.4, the current version of WordPress, is immune to this worm. (<em>So was the release before this one.</em>) If you&#8217;ve been thinking about upgrading but haven&#8217;t gotten around to it yet, now would be a really good time. If you&#8217;ve already upgraded your blogs, maybe check out the blogs of your friends or that you read and see if they need any help. A stitch in time saves nine.</p>
<p>Whenever a worm makes the rounds, everyone becomes a security expert and peddles one of three types of advice: snake oil, Club solutions, or real solutions. Snake oil you&#8217;ll be able to spot right away because it&#8217;s <em>easy</em>. Hide the WordPress version, they say, and you&#8217;ll be fine. Uh, duh, the worm writers thought of that. Where their 1.0 might have checked for version numbers, 2.0 just tests capabilities, version number be damned. </p>
<p>The second type of advice is Club solutions; to illustrate, I&#8217;ll quote from <a href="http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/10/29/club_vs_lojack_solutions">Mark Pilgrim&#8217;s excellent essay on spam 7 years ago, before WordPress even existed</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>The <em>really</em> interesting thing about these approaches, from a game theory perspective, is that they are all <a href="http://slate.msn.com/?id=2041" title="Slate, August 3, 1997: Property Is Theft: When protecting your own property is stealing from others">Club solutions, not Lojack solutions</a>.  There are two basic approaches to protecting your car from theft: <a href="http://www.theclub.com/">The Club</a> (or The Shield, or a car alarm, or something similar), and <a href="http://www.lojack.com/">Lojack</a>.  The Club isn’t much protection against a thief who is determined to steal <em>your</em> car (it’s easy enough to drill the lock, or just cut the steering wheel and slide The Club off).  But it is effective protection against a thief who wants to steal <em>a</em> car (not necessarily <em>your</em> car), because thieves are generally in a hurry and will go for the easiest target, the low-hanging fruit.  The Club works as long as not everyone has it, since if everyone had it, thieves would have an equally difficult time stealing any car, their choice will be based on other factors, and your car is back to being as vulnerable as anyone else&#8217;s.  The Club doesn’t deter theft, it only deflects it.</p></blockquote>
<p>Club blog security solutions can be simple (like an .htaccess file) or incredibly complex (like two-factor authentication), and they can work, especially for <em>known exploits</em>. Club solutions can be useful, like using a strong or complex password for your login &#8212; no one would recommend against that. (Another club solution is switching to less-used software on the assumption or more like the software&#8217;s claim that it&#8217;s perfect and more secure. This is why BeOS is more secure than Linux, ahem.)</p>
<p>In the car world, if someone figured out how to teleport entire cars to chop shops, The Club wouldn&#8217;t be so useful anymore. Luckily for manufacturers of The Club, this hasn&#8217;t happened. Online and in the software world, though, the equivalent happens almost daily. There is only one real solution. <strong>The only thing that I can promise will keep your blog secure today and in the future is upgrading.</strong></p>
<p>WordPress is a community of hundreds of people that read the code every day, audit it, update it, and care enough about keeping your blog safe that we do things like release updates weeks apart from each other even though it makes us look bad, because updating is going to keep your blog safe from the bad guys. I&#8217;m not clairvoyant and I can&#8217;t predict what schemes spammers, hackers, crackers, and tricksters will come up with with in the future to harm your blog, but I do know for certain that as long as WordPress is around we&#8217;ll do everything in our power to make sure the software is safe. We&#8217;ve already made upgrading core and plugins a one-click procedure. If we find something broken, we&#8217;ll release a fix. Please upgrade, it&#8217;s the only way we can help each other.</p>
";}i:5;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:33:"WordPress 2.8.4: Security Release";s:4:"link";s:64:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/08/2-8-4-security-release/";s:8:"comments";s:73:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/08/2-8-4-security-release/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:41:54 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:4:"Matt";}s:8:"category";s:16:"ReleasesSecurity";s:4:"guid";s:39:"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=903";s:11:"description";s:329:"Yesterday a vulnerability was discovered: a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:724:"<p>Yesterday a vulnerability was discovered: a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password would be emailed to the account owner. This doesn&#8217;t allow remote access, but it is very annoying.</p>
<p>We fixed this problem last night and have been testing the fixes and looking for other problems since then. <a href="http://wordpress.org/download/">Version 2.8.4 which fixes all known problems is now available for download</a> and is highly recommended for all users of WordPress.</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:69:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/08/2-8-4-security-release/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:3:"392";}s:7:"summary";s:329:"Yesterday a vulnerability was discovered: a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:724:"<p>Yesterday a vulnerability was discovered: a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password would be emailed to the account owner. This doesn&#8217;t allow remote access, but it is very annoying.</p>
<p>We fixed this problem last night and have been testing the fixes and looking for other problems since then. <a href="http://wordpress.org/download/">Version 2.8.4 which fixes all known problems is now available for download</a> and is highly recommended for all users of WordPress.</p>
";}i:6;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:18:"Upcoming WordCamps";s:4:"link";s:62:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/08/upcoming-wordcamps-2/";s:8:"comments";s:71:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/08/upcoming-wordcamps-2/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 07 Aug 2009 01:07:03 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Jane Wells";}s:8:"category";s:11:"Development";s:4:"guid";s:39:"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=899";s:11:"description";s:322:"Every now and then I see someone ask in the dev channel how they can meet up with other local WordPress developers. We&#8217;re thinking about ways to make WordPress.org more of a resource to facilitate local connections, but in the meantime, I thought it might be helpful to publicize some  upcoming  WordCamps, the [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:2708:"<p>Every now and then I see someone ask in the dev channel how they can meet up with other local WordPress developers. We&#8217;re thinking about ways to make WordPress.org more of a resource to facilitate local connections, but in the meantime, I thought it might be helpful to publicize some <a href="http://central.wordcamp.org/schedule/"> upcoming  WordCamps</a>, the weekend conferences organized by local communities to talk about all things WordPress. </p>
<p><strong><a href="http://wordcamp.org.nz">WordCamp New Zealand</a>:</strong> Wellington, New Zealand, August 8-9, 2009</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://wordcamphsv.org/">WordCamp Huntsville</a>:</strong> Huntsville, Alabama, USA, August 15–16, 2009</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://la.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp Los Angeles</a>:</strong> Los Angeles, California, USA, September 12, 2009</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://wordcamp.ph">WordCamp Philippines</a>: </strong>Makati City, Philippines, September 19, 2009</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.wordcampportland.org/">WordCamp Portland</a>: </strong>Portland, Oregon, USA, September 19-20, 2009 <em>(Last year&#8217;s PDX WordCamp was awesome, IMO.)</em></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.wordcampseattle.com/">WordCamp Seattle</a>: </strong>Seattle, Washington, USA, September 26, 2009</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://wordcampbirmingham.org/">WordCamp Birmingham</a>:</strong> Birmingham, Alabama, USA, September 26-27, 2009</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://wordcampnl.org/">WordCamp Netherlands</a>:</strong> Utrecht, Netherlands, October 31, 2009</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://2009.newyork.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp NYC</a>:</strong> New York, New York, USA, November 14-15, 2009 <em>(<a href="http://2009.newyork.wordcamp.org/2009/07/24/logo-contest-again/">Logo contest in progress</a>!)</em></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://wordcampmexico.wordpress.com">WordCamp Mexico</a>:</strong> Mexico City, Mexico, November 20, 2009</p>
<p>If any of these are within a reasonable distance to you, consider attending. WordCamps are a great way to meet other WordPress users, find collaborators, and expand your t-shirt collection*. I know I&#8217;ll be hitting at least a few of these; WordCamps are also a great way to get user feedback to take into consideration while we&#8217;re making decisions about what to include in core. </p>
<p>You can always find an up-to-date list of upcoming WordCamps at <a href="http://central.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp Central</a>. You can also try searching for WordPress groups at <a href="http://www.meetup.com/">Meetup.com</a> to find more regular monthly gatherings in your area. </p>
<p>*<em>Most WordCamps include an event t-shirt in the registration fee. </em></p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:67:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/08/upcoming-wordcamps-2/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:2:"13";}s:7:"summary";s:322:"Every now and then I see someone ask in the dev channel how they can meet up with other local WordPress developers. We&#8217;re thinking about ways to make WordPress.org more of a resource to facilitate local connections, but in the meantime, I thought it might be helpful to publicize some  upcoming  WordCamps, the [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:2708:"<p>Every now and then I see someone ask in the dev channel how they can meet up with other local WordPress developers. We&#8217;re thinking about ways to make WordPress.org more of a resource to facilitate local connections, but in the meantime, I thought it might be helpful to publicize some <a href="http://central.wordcamp.org/schedule/"> upcoming  WordCamps</a>, the weekend conferences organized by local communities to talk about all things WordPress. </p>
<p><strong><a href="http://wordcamp.org.nz">WordCamp New Zealand</a>:</strong> Wellington, New Zealand, August 8-9, 2009</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://wordcamphsv.org/">WordCamp Huntsville</a>:</strong> Huntsville, Alabama, USA, August 15–16, 2009</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://la.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp Los Angeles</a>:</strong> Los Angeles, California, USA, September 12, 2009</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://wordcamp.ph">WordCamp Philippines</a>: </strong>Makati City, Philippines, September 19, 2009</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.wordcampportland.org/">WordCamp Portland</a>: </strong>Portland, Oregon, USA, September 19-20, 2009 <em>(Last year&#8217;s PDX WordCamp was awesome, IMO.)</em></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.wordcampseattle.com/">WordCamp Seattle</a>: </strong>Seattle, Washington, USA, September 26, 2009</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://wordcampbirmingham.org/">WordCamp Birmingham</a>:</strong> Birmingham, Alabama, USA, September 26-27, 2009</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://wordcampnl.org/">WordCamp Netherlands</a>:</strong> Utrecht, Netherlands, October 31, 2009</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://2009.newyork.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp NYC</a>:</strong> New York, New York, USA, November 14-15, 2009 <em>(<a href="http://2009.newyork.wordcamp.org/2009/07/24/logo-contest-again/">Logo contest in progress</a>!)</em></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://wordcampmexico.wordpress.com">WordCamp Mexico</a>:</strong> Mexico City, Mexico, November 20, 2009</p>
<p>If any of these are within a reasonable distance to you, consider attending. WordCamps are a great way to meet other WordPress users, find collaborators, and expand your t-shirt collection*. I know I&#8217;ll be hitting at least a few of these; WordCamps are also a great way to get user feedback to take into consideration while we&#8217;re making decisions about what to include in core. </p>
<p>You can always find an up-to-date list of upcoming WordCamps at <a href="http://central.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp Central</a>. You can also try searching for WordPress groups at <a href="http://www.meetup.com/">Meetup.com</a> to find more regular monthly gatherings in your area. </p>
<p>*<em>Most WordCamps include an event t-shirt in the registration fee. </em></p>
";}i:7;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:32:"WordPress 2.8.3 Security Release";s:4:"link";s:74:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/08/wordpress-2-8-3-security-release/";s:8:"comments";s:83:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/08/wordpress-2-8-3-security-release/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:30:54 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Ryan Boren";}s:8:"category";s:8:"Releases";s:4:"guid";s:39:"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=891";s:11:"description";s:380:"Unfortunately, I missed some places when fixing the privilege escalation issues for 2.8.1.  Luckily, the entire WordPress community has our backs.  Several folks in the community dug deeper and discovered areas that were overlooked.  With their help, the remaining issues are fixed in 2.8.3.  Since this is a security release, upgrading is highly recommended.  Download [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:476:"<p>Unfortunately, I missed some places when fixing the privilege escalation issues for 2.8.1.  Luckily, the entire WordPress community has our backs.  Several folks in the community dug deeper and discovered areas that were overlooked.  With their help, the remaining issues are fixed in 2.8.3.  Since this is a security release, upgrading is highly recommended.  <a href="http://wordpress.org/download/">Download</a> 2.8.3, or upgrade automatically from your admin.</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:79:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/08/wordpress-2-8-3-security-release/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:3:"252";}s:7:"summary";s:380:"Unfortunately, I missed some places when fixing the privilege escalation issues for 2.8.1.  Luckily, the entire WordPress community has our backs.  Several folks in the community dug deeper and discovered areas that were overlooked.  With their help, the remaining issues are fixed in 2.8.3.  Since this is a security release, upgrading is highly recommended.  Download [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:476:"<p>Unfortunately, I missed some places when fixing the privilege escalation issues for 2.8.1.  Luckily, the entire WordPress community has our backs.  Several folks in the community dug deeper and discovered areas that were overlooked.  With their help, the remaining issues are fixed in 2.8.3.  Since this is a security release, upgrading is highly recommended.  <a href="http://wordpress.org/download/">Download</a> 2.8.3, or upgrade automatically from your admin.</p>
";}i:8;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:25:"2.9 Features Vote Results";s:4:"link";s:58:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/07/2-9-vote-results/";s:8:"comments";s:67:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/07/2-9-vote-results/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:26:29 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Jane Wells";}s:8:"category";s:24:"Features2.9resultssurvey";s:4:"guid";s:39:"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=877";s:11:"description";s:308:"Earlier this month, over 3500 of you responded to our survey asking you to help us prioritize some of the media features that had been suggested for the 2.9 release. While the exact features for 2.9 have not been hammered out yet, as we continue to match up developers with features, we wanted to share [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:8608:"<p>Earlier this month, over 3500 of you responded to our survey asking you to help us prioritize some of the media features that had been suggested for the 2.9 release. While the exact features for 2.9 have not been hammered out yet, as we continue to match up developers with features, we wanted to share the survey results and let you know what we&#8217;re thinking in terms of approach.</p>
<p>First, the results. The first question, and the only one that was mandatory, asked what single media feature you would choose to include in version 2.9. The top vote-getter was standalone editable photo albums (as opposed to the current per-post gallery) at 17.5%, followed closely by easier embeds for videos and other third-party content at 16.5%. Next came basic image editing (such as rotating, cropping and resizing) at 13.7%, and post thumbnails (image teasers for posts featured on the home page) at 12.9%. The rest of the features each took less than ten percent of the vote. The full list came in like this:</p>
<p><a href="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q1.png"><img src="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q1.png" alt="Results of question 1" width="620" /></a></p>
<p>The second question was optional (3406 people answered it), and asked you to rate each feature on a scale going from <em>top priority</em> down to <em>definitely not</em> for implementation priority. Results here were in line with the results from the first question, with most features rated as <em>nice to have</em> more often than anything else. The features that scored the highest in question 1 were more likely to have earned higher votes in the Top Priority column, but no feature was ranked as a Top Priority more often than it was ranked as a Nice to Have (though Media Albums, Easier Embeds and Post Thumbnails came close). The complete tabulations are shown in the chart below.</p>
<p><a href="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q2.png"><img src="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q2.png" alt="Results for question 2" width="620" /></a></p>
<p>Question three was getting at the same thing, but in a more granular fashion, asking you to rank the eleven features in order of priority to you. As only one feature could be assigned to each position, this prevented people from assigning the same priority to multiple features, and we wondered if it would alter the results. Though some features got more recognition in this question, the overall rankings were still in line with the results from question 1. Here are the exact votes per feature/per position:</p>
<p><a href="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q3.png"><img src="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q3.png" alt="Results for question 3" width="620" /></a></p>
<p>The fourth question asked for your preferences regarding including new media features in core, bundling them as plugins with the core download, or developing them as plugins but not bundling them with the core download. This vote was more interesting to watch. As the notice for the voting went first to the development community, then to the user community, it was possible to see a shift in the voting. Earlier in the voting cycle, there were more votes for bundling &#8216;core plugins&#8217; for the advanced media features, while later votes skewed heavily toward just putting the features in core. This vote shows, I think, one of the differences between developer and user perspectives. While developers are heavily interested in keeping the core code lean and relying on plugins for advanced functionality, many users would prefer features they want to be included in core rather than being a separate plugin. The final tally on this question was 56.2% for including features in core, 38.1% for bundled plugins, and 5.7% for non-bundled plugins. The actual numbers:</p>
<p><a href="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q4.png"><img src="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q4.png" alt="Results for question 4" width="620" /></a></p>
<p>Clearly this issue deserves more discussion, and the concept of how we move toward a system of canonical plugins and/or core &#8220;packages&#8221; intended for different use cases (CMS, photoblog, portfolio, etc) will be a big topic in the months ahead.</p>
<p>So where does that leave us regarding features coming down the road? When the vote closed, the results were discussed in the #wordpress-dev IRC chat to divvy up feature development.</p>
<p>The top-voted feature, standalone photo albums, is being worked on as a <a href="http://gsoc2009wp.wordpress.com/rudolf-photo-albums/">Google Summer of Code project by Rudolf Lai</a>, under the mentorship of WordPress Lead Developer <a href="http://markjaquith.com/">Mark Jaquith</a>. The &#8220;pencils down&#8221; date for GSOC is in less than two weeks, at which point we&#8217;ll be assessing the state of Rudolf&#8217;s project. Hopefully, we&#8217;ll be able to incorporate it with 2.9 development, do some testing,  amend the code and/or UI as needed, and have this launch with the 2.9 release (in core or as plugin TBD). Undoubtedly, additional functionality will be contributed by core contributors who have also been working on media plugins.</p>
<p>Easier embeds, the second most popular feature, is being looked at in a couple of ways. One, more shortcodes for third-party services. Work on this has already begun. In addition, <a href="http://viper007bond.com">Viper007Bond</a>, of <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/vipers-video-quicktags/">Viper&#8217;s Video Quicktags plugin</a> fame, has taken on the task of working on a way to improve the embed experience in core. We&#8217;re not sure quite how this will work yet, but stay tuned.</p>
<p>Adding some basic editing functions like 90-degree rotation, cropping and resizing was considered an obvious winner in the dev chat, and as several plugins handle this functionality, we&#8217;re hopeful it will be included soon.</p>
<p>Post thumbnails are being handled by Mark Jaquith, who has created this functionality before, with an assist from <a href="http://scribu.net/">Scribu</a>, who has a <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-field-images/">similar plugin</a> in the repository.</p>
<p>Lower ranked features aren&#8217;t off the radar, but may take lower priority than some other (non-media) features we have in the works. One of my favorite 2.9 features is in trunk now, and changes the way we delete content. Goodbye, annoying popup asking me if I&#8217;m sure I want to delete a comment/post/etc. Hello, fast and quiet removal into a trash can, from which the content can be retrieved if it was deleted by accident. Think Gmail style. We&#8217;re also hoping to work on improving page management, though that has a number of technical issues that may cause it to be a 3.0 feature instead.</p>
<p>As always, you can keep track of development progress in a number of ways:<br />
1. Keep track of Trac. Contribute a patch, test a patch, just read through tickets if you have some time to kill, whatever. There are <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=reopened&amp;status=assigned&amp;status=reviewing&amp;status=new&amp;status=accepted&amp;group=status&amp;milestone=2.9">over 500 tickets against the 2.9 milestone</a> currently. Patches and testing can help us get that number down.</p>
<p>2. Follow Trac commits on Twitter. Don&#8217;t want to get involved in the nitty gritty, just want to see what&#8217;s getting committed? Follow <a href="http://twitter.com/wpdevel">wpdevel on Twitter</a> and you&#8217;ll get core commit updates in your stream.</p>
<p>3. See what&#8217;s on the dev agenda. Each week for the IRC dev chat, there&#8217;s an agenda, created based on developer suggestions posted at <a href="http://wpdevel.wordpress.com">wpdevel.wordpress.com</a>. This blog also contains discussions about specific development issues.</p>
<p>4. Join the dev chat. The day changed this week, to accommodate European schedules. Chats are now held for one hour each week on Thursday at 21:00 UTC. That&#8217;s 5pm NYC, 2pm in California, etc. Chats are in the #wordpress-dev room at irc.freenode.com.</p>
<p>5. Watch this blog. If you&#8217;re not a developer and prefer to stick to major announcements, the occasional survey to help decide a feature, and security notices, just keep doing what you&#8217;re doing. Reading this blog will get you all of these things.</p>
<p>Thanks again for your help in prioritizing features for version 2.9, hopefully coming toward the end of the year to a server near you!</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:63:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/07/2-9-vote-results/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:2:"28";}s:7:"summary";s:308:"Earlier this month, over 3500 of you responded to our survey asking you to help us prioritize some of the media features that had been suggested for the 2.9 release. While the exact features for 2.9 have not been hammered out yet, as we continue to match up developers with features, we wanted to share [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:8608:"<p>Earlier this month, over 3500 of you responded to our survey asking you to help us prioritize some of the media features that had been suggested for the 2.9 release. While the exact features for 2.9 have not been hammered out yet, as we continue to match up developers with features, we wanted to share the survey results and let you know what we&#8217;re thinking in terms of approach.</p>
<p>First, the results. The first question, and the only one that was mandatory, asked what single media feature you would choose to include in version 2.9. The top vote-getter was standalone editable photo albums (as opposed to the current per-post gallery) at 17.5%, followed closely by easier embeds for videos and other third-party content at 16.5%. Next came basic image editing (such as rotating, cropping and resizing) at 13.7%, and post thumbnails (image teasers for posts featured on the home page) at 12.9%. The rest of the features each took less than ten percent of the vote. The full list came in like this:</p>
<p><a href="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q1.png"><img src="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q1.png" alt="Results of question 1" width="620" /></a></p>
<p>The second question was optional (3406 people answered it), and asked you to rate each feature on a scale going from <em>top priority</em> down to <em>definitely not</em> for implementation priority. Results here were in line with the results from the first question, with most features rated as <em>nice to have</em> more often than anything else. The features that scored the highest in question 1 were more likely to have earned higher votes in the Top Priority column, but no feature was ranked as a Top Priority more often than it was ranked as a Nice to Have (though Media Albums, Easier Embeds and Post Thumbnails came close). The complete tabulations are shown in the chart below.</p>
<p><a href="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q2.png"><img src="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q2.png" alt="Results for question 2" width="620" /></a></p>
<p>Question three was getting at the same thing, but in a more granular fashion, asking you to rank the eleven features in order of priority to you. As only one feature could be assigned to each position, this prevented people from assigning the same priority to multiple features, and we wondered if it would alter the results. Though some features got more recognition in this question, the overall rankings were still in line with the results from question 1. Here are the exact votes per feature/per position:</p>
<p><a href="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q3.png"><img src="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q3.png" alt="Results for question 3" width="620" /></a></p>
<p>The fourth question asked for your preferences regarding including new media features in core, bundling them as plugins with the core download, or developing them as plugins but not bundling them with the core download. This vote was more interesting to watch. As the notice for the voting went first to the development community, then to the user community, it was possible to see a shift in the voting. Earlier in the voting cycle, there were more votes for bundling &#8216;core plugins&#8217; for the advanced media features, while later votes skewed heavily toward just putting the features in core. This vote shows, I think, one of the differences between developer and user perspectives. While developers are heavily interested in keeping the core code lean and relying on plugins for advanced functionality, many users would prefer features they want to be included in core rather than being a separate plugin. The final tally on this question was 56.2% for including features in core, 38.1% for bundled plugins, and 5.7% for non-bundled plugins. The actual numbers:</p>
<p><a href="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q4.png"><img src="http://wpdotorg.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/q4.png" alt="Results for question 4" width="620" /></a></p>
<p>Clearly this issue deserves more discussion, and the concept of how we move toward a system of canonical plugins and/or core &#8220;packages&#8221; intended for different use cases (CMS, photoblog, portfolio, etc) will be a big topic in the months ahead.</p>
<p>So where does that leave us regarding features coming down the road? When the vote closed, the results were discussed in the #wordpress-dev IRC chat to divvy up feature development.</p>
<p>The top-voted feature, standalone photo albums, is being worked on as a <a href="http://gsoc2009wp.wordpress.com/rudolf-photo-albums/">Google Summer of Code project by Rudolf Lai</a>, under the mentorship of WordPress Lead Developer <a href="http://markjaquith.com/">Mark Jaquith</a>. The &#8220;pencils down&#8221; date for GSOC is in less than two weeks, at which point we&#8217;ll be assessing the state of Rudolf&#8217;s project. Hopefully, we&#8217;ll be able to incorporate it with 2.9 development, do some testing,  amend the code and/or UI as needed, and have this launch with the 2.9 release (in core or as plugin TBD). Undoubtedly, additional functionality will be contributed by core contributors who have also been working on media plugins.</p>
<p>Easier embeds, the second most popular feature, is being looked at in a couple of ways. One, more shortcodes for third-party services. Work on this has already begun. In addition, <a href="http://viper007bond.com">Viper007Bond</a>, of <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/vipers-video-quicktags/">Viper&#8217;s Video Quicktags plugin</a> fame, has taken on the task of working on a way to improve the embed experience in core. We&#8217;re not sure quite how this will work yet, but stay tuned.</p>
<p>Adding some basic editing functions like 90-degree rotation, cropping and resizing was considered an obvious winner in the dev chat, and as several plugins handle this functionality, we&#8217;re hopeful it will be included soon.</p>
<p>Post thumbnails are being handled by Mark Jaquith, who has created this functionality before, with an assist from <a href="http://scribu.net/">Scribu</a>, who has a <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-field-images/">similar plugin</a> in the repository.</p>
<p>Lower ranked features aren&#8217;t off the radar, but may take lower priority than some other (non-media) features we have in the works. One of my favorite 2.9 features is in trunk now, and changes the way we delete content. Goodbye, annoying popup asking me if I&#8217;m sure I want to delete a comment/post/etc. Hello, fast and quiet removal into a trash can, from which the content can be retrieved if it was deleted by accident. Think Gmail style. We&#8217;re also hoping to work on improving page management, though that has a number of technical issues that may cause it to be a 3.0 feature instead.</p>
<p>As always, you can keep track of development progress in a number of ways:<br />
1. Keep track of Trac. Contribute a patch, test a patch, just read through tickets if you have some time to kill, whatever. There are <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=reopened&amp;status=assigned&amp;status=reviewing&amp;status=new&amp;status=accepted&amp;group=status&amp;milestone=2.9">over 500 tickets against the 2.9 milestone</a> currently. Patches and testing can help us get that number down.</p>
<p>2. Follow Trac commits on Twitter. Don&#8217;t want to get involved in the nitty gritty, just want to see what&#8217;s getting committed? Follow <a href="http://twitter.com/wpdevel">wpdevel on Twitter</a> and you&#8217;ll get core commit updates in your stream.</p>
<p>3. See what&#8217;s on the dev agenda. Each week for the IRC dev chat, there&#8217;s an agenda, created based on developer suggestions posted at <a href="http://wpdevel.wordpress.com">wpdevel.wordpress.com</a>. This blog also contains discussions about specific development issues.</p>
<p>4. Join the dev chat. The day changed this week, to accommodate European schedules. Chats are now held for one hour each week on Thursday at 21:00 UTC. That&#8217;s 5pm NYC, 2pm in California, etc. Chats are in the #wordpress-dev room at irc.freenode.com.</p>
<p>5. Watch this blog. If you&#8217;re not a developer and prefer to stick to major announcements, the occasional survey to help decide a feature, and security notices, just keep doing what you&#8217;re doing. Reading this blog will get you all of these things.</p>
<p>Thanks again for your help in prioritizing features for version 2.9, hopefully coming toward the end of the year to a server near you!</p>
";}i:9;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:47:"The WordPress 2.0.x Legacy Branch is Deprecated";s:4:"link";s:89:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/07/the-wordpress-2-0-x-legacy-branch-is-deprecated/";s:8:"comments";s:98:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/07/the-wordpress-2-0-x-legacy-branch-is-deprecated/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:07:23 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:12:"Mark Jaquith";}s:8:"category";s:45:"DevelopmentSecurity2.0branchdeprecationlegacy";s:4:"guid";s:39:"http://wordpress.org/development/?p=866";s:11:"description";s:344:"The WordPress team had initially committed to maintaining the WordPress 2.0.x legacy branch until 2010. Unfortunately, we bit off more than we could chew—the 2.0.x branch is now retired and deprecated, a few months shy of 2010.
Many of the security improvements to the new versions of WordPress in the last couple of years were complete [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:1149:"<p>The WordPress team had initially committed to maintaining the WordPress 2.0.x legacy branch until 2010. Unfortunately, we bit off more than we could chew—the 2.0.x branch is now retired and deprecated, a few months shy of 2010.</p>
<p>Many of the security improvements to the new versions of WordPress in the last couple of years were complete reworks of how various systems were handled. Porting those changes to the 2.0.x branch would have been a monumental task and could have introduced instability or new bugs. We had to make hard decisions between stability and merging in the latest security enhancements. Additionally, far fewer people stayed on the 2.0.x branch than we anticipated. I take that as a testament to the new features in WordPress and perhaps even more the features offered by plugins, many of which don&#8217;t support older versions of WordPress!</p>
<p>I&#8217;m disappointed that we weren&#8217;t able to keep the branch maintained until 2010, but since one of the big reasons for that failure was the massive scope of our security improvements for the newer versions of WordPress, 2.0.x doesn&#8217;t die in vain!</p>
";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:94:"http://wordpress.org/development/2009/07/the-wordpress-2-0-x-legacy-branch-is-deprecated/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:2:"21";}s:7:"summary";s:344:"The WordPress team had initially committed to maintaining the WordPress 2.0.x legacy branch until 2010. Unfortunately, we bit off more than we could chew—the 2.0.x branch is now retired and deprecated, a few months shy of 2010.
Many of the security improvements to the new versions of WordPress in the last couple of years were complete [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:1149:"<p>The WordPress team had initially committed to maintaining the WordPress 2.0.x legacy branch until 2010. Unfortunately, we bit off more than we could chew—the 2.0.x branch is now retired and deprecated, a few months shy of 2010.</p>
<p>Many of the security improvements to the new versions of WordPress in the last couple of years were complete reworks of how various systems were handled. Porting those changes to the 2.0.x branch would have been a monumental task and could have introduced instability or new bugs. We had to make hard decisions between stability and merging in the latest security enhancements. Additionally, far fewer people stayed on the 2.0.x branch than we anticipated. I take that as a testament to the new features in WordPress and perhaps even more the features offered by plugins, many of which don&#8217;t support older versions of WordPress!</p>
<p>I&#8217;m disappointed that we weren&#8217;t able to keep the branch maintained until 2010, but since one of the big reasons for that failure was the massive scope of our security improvements for the newer versions of WordPress, 2.0.x doesn&#8217;t die in vain!</p>
";}}s:7:"channel";a:8:{s:5:"title";s:26:"WordPress Development Blog";s:4:"link";s:32:"http://wordpress.org/development";s:11:"description";s:33:"WordPress development and updates";s:13:"lastbuilddate";s:31:"Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:28:00 +0000";s:9:"generator";s:32:"http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9-rare";s:8:"language";s:2:"en";s:2:"sy";a:2:{s:12:"updateperiod";s:6:"hourly";s:15:"updatefrequency";s:1:"1";}s:7:"tagline";s:33:"WordPress development and updates";}s:9:"textinput";a:0:{}s:5:"image";a:0:{}s:9:"feed_type";s:3:"RSS";s:12:"feed_version";s:3:"2.0";s:5:"stack";a:0:{}s:9:"inchannel";b:0;s:6:"initem";b:0;s:9:"incontent";b:0;s:11:"intextinput";b:0;s:7:"inimage";b:0;s:13:"current_field";s:0:"";s:17:"current_namespace";b:0;s:19:"_CONTENT_CONSTRUCTS";a:6:{i:0;s:7:"content";i:1;s:7:"summary";i:2;s:4:"info";i:3;s:5:"title";i:4;s:7:"tagline";i:5;s:9:"copyright";}s:13:"last_modified";s:31:"Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:28:00 GMT
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