WordPress
Encyclopedia
WordPress is a free and open source blog
ging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP
and MySQL
. It is often customized into a content management system
(CMS). It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet
's "top 1 million" websites and as of August 2011 powers 22% of all new websites. WordPress is currently the most popular CMS in use on the Internet.
It was first released on May 27, 2003, by Matt Mullenweg
as a fork of b2/cafelog. As of February 2011, version 3.0 had been downloaded over 32.5 million times.
WordPress has a web template system
using a template processor
.
. Themes allow users to change the look and functionality of a WordPress website or installation without altering the informational content. Themes may be installed by using the Wordpress "Dashboard" administration tool, cPanel or uploading theme folders via FTP. The PHP and HTML code in themes can also be edited for more advanced customizations.
to adding widgets.
or HTML
code.
WordPress MU merged with WordPress as part of the 3.0 release.
-friendly, clean permalink
structure; the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to articles; and support for tagging
of posts and articles. Automatic filters are also included, providing standardized formatting and styling of text in articles (for example, converting regular quotes to smart quotes
). WordPress also supports the Trackback
and Pingback
standards for displaying links to other sites that have themselves linked to a post or article.
by Michel Valdrighi, who is now a contributing developer to WordPress. Although WordPress is the official successor, another project, b2evolution
, is also in active development.
WordPress first appeared in 2003 as a joint effort between Matt Mullenweg
and Mike Little to create a fork
of b2. The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck, a friend of Mullenweg.
In 2004 the licensing terms for the competing Movable Type
package were changed by Six Apart
and many of its most influential users migrated to WordPress. By October, 2009, the 2009 Open Source content management system Market Share Report reached the conclusion that WordPress enjoyed the greatest brand strength of any open source content management systems.
Open Source CMS Award.
In 2009 WordPress won the Packt best Open Source CMS Award.
In 2010 WordPress won the Hall of Fame CMS category in the 2010 Open Source Awards.
In 2011 WordPress won the Open Source Web App of the Year Award at The Critters.
On July 18, 2008, a new theme directory opened at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/. It was styled along the same lines as the plug-ins directory, Any theme that is uploaded to it will be vetted, first by an automated program and then by a human.
On December 12, 2008, over 200 themes were removed from the WordPress theme directory as they did not comply with GPL License requirements. Today, author mentions are permitted in each theme but the official policy does not allow for sponsorships or links to sites distributing non-GPL compatible themes. Non-GPL compliant themes are now hosted on other theme directories.
musicians starting after version 1.0.
, WordPress in April 2009 had 7 unpatched security advisories (out of 32 total), with a maximum rating of "Less Critical". Secunia
maintains an up-to-date list of WordPress vulnerabilities.
In January 2007, many high-profile Search engine optimization
(SEO) blogs, as well as many low-profile commercial blogs featuring AdSense
, were targeted and attacked with a WordPress exploit. A separate vulnerability on one of the project site's web server
s allowed an attacker to introduce exploitable code in the form of a back door to some downloads of WordPress 2.1.1. The 2.1.2 release addressed this issue; an advisory released at the time advised all users to upgrade immediately.
In May 2007, a study revealed that 98% of WordPress blogs being run were exploitable because they were running outdated and unsupported versions of the software.
In a June 2007 interview, Stefan Esser, the founder of the PHP Security Response Team, spoke critically of WordPress's security track record, citing problems with the application's architecture that made it unnecessarily difficult to write code that is secure from SQL injection
vulnerabilities, as well as some other problems.
Since then, WordPress has improved in terms of security and the latest versions are more secure with only minimal security issues. The last major security issue was found on WordPress 2.7, released in 2008.
Individual installations of WordPress can be protected with security plugins such as Better WP Security, WP Security Scan and many others.
and Mike Little were co-founders of the project. The core contributing developers include Ryan Boren, Mark Jaquith, Matt Mullenweg, Andrew Ozz, and Peter Westwood.
WordPress is also developed by its community, including WP testers, a group of volunteers who test each release. They have early access to nightly builds
, beta versions and release candidates. Errors are documented in a special mailing list
, or the project's Trac
tool.
Though largely developed by the community surrounding it, WordPress is closely associated with Automattic
, the company founded by Matt Mullenweg. On September 9, 2010, Automattic handed the WordPress trademark to the newly-created WordPress Foundation, which is an umbrella organization supporting WordPress.org (including the software and archives for plugins and themes), bbPress and BuddyPress
.
s and more formal conferences. The first such event was WordCamp 2006 in August 2006 in San Francisco, which lasted one day and had over 500 attendees. The most recent event was WordCamp San Francisco in August 2011, which ran for three days and had over 1,000 attendees. The first WordCamp outside San Francisco was held in Beijing
in September 2007. Since then, there have been over 150 WordCamps around the world, for an average of nearly one a week. WordCamp San Francisco, an annual event, remains the official annual conference of WordPress developers and users.
platform, WordPress relies on peer support. The primary support website is WordPress.org.
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
ging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
and MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
. It is often customized into a content management system
Content management system
A content management system is a system providing a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based...
(CMS). It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and Web site. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the Web site where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's Web traffic...
's "top 1 million" websites and as of August 2011 powers 22% of all new websites. WordPress is currently the most popular CMS in use on the Internet.
It was first released on May 27, 2003, by Matt Mullenweg
Matt Mullenweg
Matthew Charles Mullenweg is an online social media entrepreneur, web developer and musician living in San Francisco, California. He is best known for his development of the free and open source web software, WordPress...
as a fork of b2/cafelog. As of February 2011, version 3.0 had been downloaded over 32.5 million times.
Features
Web template system
A Web template system describes the software and methodologies used to produce web pages and for deployment on websites and delivery over the Internet. Such systems process web templates, using a template engine...
using a template processor
Template processor
A template processor is software or a software component that is designed to combine one or moretemplates with a data model to produceone or more result documents...
.
Themes
WordPress users may install and switch between themesTheme (computing)
In computing, a theme is a preset package containing graphical appearance details, used to customize the look and feel of an operating system, widget set or window manager....
. Themes allow users to change the look and functionality of a WordPress website or installation without altering the informational content. Themes may be installed by using the Wordpress "Dashboard" administration tool, cPanel or uploading theme folders via FTP. The PHP and HTML code in themes can also be edited for more advanced customizations.
Plugins
One very popular feature of WordPress is its rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install; WordPress has a database of over 17,000 plugins with purposes ranging from SEOSEO
SEO or search engine optimization, the process of improving ranking in search engine results.SEO may also refer to:* Seo , a Korean family name* SE-O or Västra Götaland County, a county on the western coast of Sweden...
to adding widgets.
Widgets
Widgets offer users drag-and-drop sidebar content placement and implementation of many plugins' extended capabilities. Users can rearrange widgets without editing PHPPHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
or HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
code.
Multi-user and multi-blogging
Prior to WordPress 3.0, WordPress supported one blog per installation, although multiple concurrent copies may be run from different directories if configured to use separate database tables. WordPress Multi-User (WordPress MU, or just WPMU) was a fork of WordPress created to allow multiple blogs to exist within one installation that is able to be administered by a centralized maintainer. WordPress MU makes it possible for those with a website to host their own blogging community, as well as control and moderate all the blogs from a single dashboard. WordPress MU adds eight new data tables for each blog.WordPress MU merged with WordPress as part of the 3.0 release.
Mobile
Native applications exist for Android, iPhone/iPod Touch, iPad, Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry which provide access to some of the features in the WordPress Admin panel and work with WordPress.com and many WordPress.org blogs.Other features of note
WordPress also features integrated link management; a search engineWeb search engine
A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web and FTP servers. The search results are generally presented in a list of results often referred to as SERPS, or "search engine results pages". The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other...
-friendly, clean permalink
Permalink
A permalink is a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot. Most modern weblogging and content-syndication software systems support such links...
structure; the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to articles; and support for tagging
Tag (metadata)
In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...
of posts and articles. Automatic filters are also included, providing standardized formatting and styling of text in articles (for example, converting regular quotes to smart quotes
Quotation mark
Quotation marks or inverted commas are punctuation marks at the beginning and end of a quotation, direct speech, literal title or name. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony...
). WordPress also supports the Trackback
TrackBack
A trackback is one of three types of linkback methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to their articles...
and Pingback
Pingback
A pingback is one of three types of linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles...
standards for displaying links to other sites that have themselves linked to a post or article.
History
b2/cafelog, more commonly known as simply b2 or cafelog, was the precursor to WordPress. b2/cafelog was estimated to have been employed on approximately 2,000 blogs as of May 2003. It was written in PHP for use with MySQLMySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
by Michel Valdrighi, who is now a contributing developer to WordPress. Although WordPress is the official successor, another project, b2evolution
B2evolution
b2evolution is a multi-lingual, multi-user, multi-blog publishing system written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License and is available without charge. François Planque forked b2evolution from version 0.6.1 of b2/cafelog in 2003...
, is also in active development.
WordPress first appeared in 2003 as a joint effort between Matt Mullenweg
Matt Mullenweg
Matthew Charles Mullenweg is an online social media entrepreneur, web developer and musician living in San Francisco, California. He is best known for his development of the free and open source web software, WordPress...
and Mike Little to create a fork
Fork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...
of b2. The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck, a friend of Mullenweg.
In 2004 the licensing terms for the competing Movable Type
Movable Type
Movable Type is a weblog publishing system developed by the company Six Apart. It was publicly announced on September 3, 2001; version 1.0 was publicly released on October 8, 2001. On 12 December 2007, Movable Type was relicensed as free software under the GNU General Public License...
package were changed by Six Apart
Six Apart
Six Apart Ltd., sometimes abbreviated 6A, is a software company known for creating the Movable Type blogware, TypePad blog hosting service, and Vox. The company also is the former owner of LiveJournal. Six Apart is headquartered in Tokyo and is planning to open a new, U.S.-based office in New York...
and many of its most influential users migrated to WordPress. By October, 2009, the 2009 Open Source content management system Market Share Report reached the conclusion that WordPress enjoyed the greatest brand strength of any open source content management systems.
Awards
In 2007 WordPress won a PacktPackt
Packt, pronounced Packed, is a print on demand publishing company based in Birmingham, UK.-Company:Packt published its first book, Mastering phpMyAdmin for Effective MySQL Management, in April 2004, and continues to specialize in publishing focused books on specific technologies and solutions...
Open Source CMS Award.
In 2009 WordPress won the Packt best Open Source CMS Award.
In 2010 WordPress won the Hall of Fame CMS category in the 2010 Open Source Awards.
In 2011 WordPress won the Open Source Web App of the Year Award at The Critters.
Removal of sponsored themes
On July 10, 2007, following a discussion on the WordPress ideas forum and a post by Mark Ghosh in his blog Weblog Tools Collection, Matt Mullenweg announced that the official WordPress theme directory at http://themes.wordpress.net would no longer host themes containing sponsored links. Although this move was criticized by designers and users of sponsored themes, it was applauded by WordPress users who consider such themes to be spam. The official WordPress theme directory ceased to accept any new themes, including those without sponsored links, shortly after the announcement was made. Sponsored themes are still available elsewhere, as well as free themes with additional sponsored links added by third parties.On July 18, 2008, a new theme directory opened at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/. It was styled along the same lines as the plug-ins directory, Any theme that is uploaded to it will be vetted, first by an automated program and then by a human.
On December 12, 2008, over 200 themes were removed from the WordPress theme directory as they did not comply with GPL License requirements. Today, author mentions are permitted in each theme but the official policy does not allow for sponsorships or links to sites distributing non-GPL compatible themes. Non-GPL compliant themes are now hosted on other theme directories.
Releases
Most WordPress releases are code named after well-known jazzJazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
musicians starting after version 1.0.
| Version | Code Name | Release Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.70 | 27 May 2003 | contained the same file structure as its predecessor, b2/cafelog, and continued the numbering from its last release, 0.6. Only 0.71-gold is available for download in the official WordPress Release Archive page. | |
| 1.2 | Mingus Charles Mingus Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music... |
22 May 2004 | It's notable for containing the support of Plugins. The same Plugin identification headers are still used unchanged in the latest WordPress releases. |
| 1.5 | Strayhorn Billy Strayhorn William Thomas "Billy" Strayhorn was an American composer, pianist and arranger, best known for his successful collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington lasting nearly three decades. His compositions include "Chelsea Bridge", "Take the "A" Train" and "Lush Life".-Early... |
17 February 2005 | Strayhorn added a range of vital features, such as the ability to manage static pages and a template/theme system. It was also equipped with a new default template (code named Kubrick Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career... ) designed by Michael Heilemann. |
| 2.0 | Duke Duke Ellington Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions... |
31 December 2005 | This version added rich editing, better administration tools, image uploading, faster posting, an improved import system, and completely overhauled the back end. WordPress 2.0 also offered various improvements to plugin developers. |
| 2.1 | Ella Ella Fitzgerald Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist... |
22 January 2007 | In addition to correcting security issues, version 2.1 featured a redesigned interface, enhanced editing tools (including integrated spell check and auto save), and improved content management options. |
| 2.2 | Getz Stan Getz Stanley Getz was an American jazz saxophone player. Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of his idol, Lester Young. Coming to prominence in the late 1940s with Woody Herman's big band, Getz is described by critic Scott... |
16 May 2007 | Version 2.2 featured widget support for templates, updated Atom Atom (standard) The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a... feed support, and speed optimizations. |
| 2.3 | Dexter Dexter Gordon Dexter Gordon was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and an Academy Award-nominated actor . He is regarded as one of the first and most important musicians to adapt the bebop musical language of people like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell to the tenor saxophone... |
24 September 2007 | Version 2.3 featured native tagging support, new taxonomy Taxonomy Taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a classification. The field of taxonomy, sometimes referred to as "biological taxonomy", revolves around the description and use of taxonomic units, known as taxa... system for categories, and easy notification of updates. 2.3 also fully supports Atom 1.0 Atom (standard) The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a... along with the publishing protocol, and included some much needed security fixes. |
| 2.5 | Brecker Michael Brecker Michael Leonard Brecker was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Acknowledged as "a quiet, gentle musician widely regarded as the most influential tenor saxophonist since John Coltrane," he has been awarded 15 Grammy Awards as both performer and composer and was inducted into Down Beat Jazz... |
29 March 2008 | Developers skipped the release of version 2.4 so version 2.5 contained two releases worth of new code. WordPress 2.5 saw a complete overhaul of the administration interface and the WordPress website was also redesigned to match the new style. |
| 2.6 | Tyner McCoy Tyner McCoy Tyner is a jazz pianist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet and a long solo career.-Early life:... |
15 July 2008 | Tyner contained new features that made WordPress a more powerful CMS: you can now track changes Revision control Revision control, also known as version control and source control , is the management of changes to documents, programs, and other information stored as computer files. It is most commonly used in software development, where a team of people may change the same files... to every post and page and easily post from wherever you are on the web. |
| 2.7 | Coltrane John Coltrane John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz... |
11 December 2008 | It once again saw the administration interface completely redesigned. It also introduces an automated upgrade feature, and automatic installation of plugins from within the administration interface. |
| 2.8 | Baker Chet Baker Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer.Though his music earned him a large following , Baker's popularity was due in part to his "matinee idol-beauty" and "well-publicized drug habit."He died in 1988 in Amsterdam, the... |
10 June 2009 | Baker offered improvements in speed, and automatic installation of themes from within the administration interface. It also introduces the CodePress editor for syntax highlighting and a redesigned widget interface. |
| 2.9 | Carmen Carmen McRae Carmen Mercedes McRae was an American jazz singer, composer, pianist, and actress. Considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century, it was her behind-the-beat phrasing and her ironic interpretations of song lyrics that made her memorable... |
19 December 2009 | Carmen offers a global undo feature, a built-in image editor, batch plugin updating, and numerous under-the-hood tweaks. |
| 3.0 | Thelonious Thelonious Monk Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"... |
17 June 2010 | Thelonious offers a new default theme called "Twenty Ten" along with new theme APIs; the merge of WordPress and WordPress MU, creating the new multi-site functionality; and numerous under-the-hood tweaks. |
| 3.1 | Reinhardt Django Reinhardt Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture... |
23 February 2011 | Reinhardt is most notable for the addition of the Admin Bar, which is displayed on all blog pages when the admin is logged in. Also significant is the introduction of Post Format, best explained as a Tumblr like micro-blogging feature. It provides easy access to many critical Wordpress functions, such as comments and updates. This version also includes internal linking capabilities, a newly streamlined writing interface, and numerous other changes. |
| 3.2 | Gershwin George Gershwin George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known... |
4 July 2011 | Gershwin was released only four months after version 3.1, reflecting the growing speed of development in the WordPress community. The focus for this release was making WordPress faster and lighter. |
Future
After the release of WordPress 3.0, the development team took a release cycle off from the WordPress software to focus on expanding and improving the WordPress community. WordPress 3.1 was subsequently released in February, 2011. With version 3.2, released on July 4, 2011, the minimum requirement PHP version and MySQL were raised as well.Vulnerabilities
Many security issues were uncovered in the software, particularly in 2007 and 2008. According to SecuniaSecunia
Secunia is a Danish computer security service provider best known for tracking vulnerabilities in a large variety of software and operating systems.Numbers of "unpatched" vulnerabilities in popular applications are frequently quoted in software comparisons....
, WordPress in April 2009 had 7 unpatched security advisories (out of 32 total), with a maximum rating of "Less Critical". Secunia
Secunia
Secunia is a Danish computer security service provider best known for tracking vulnerabilities in a large variety of software and operating systems.Numbers of "unpatched" vulnerabilities in popular applications are frequently quoted in software comparisons....
maintains an up-to-date list of WordPress vulnerabilities.
In January 2007, many high-profile Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid search results...
(SEO) blogs, as well as many low-profile commercial blogs featuring AdSense
AdSense
Google AdSense which is a program run by Google Inc. allows publishers in the Google Network of content sites to automatically serve text, image, video, and rich media adverts that are targeted to site content and audience. These adverts are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google, and they...
, were targeted and attacked with a WordPress exploit. A separate vulnerability on one of the project site's web server
Web server
Web server can refer to either the hardware or the software that helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet....
s allowed an attacker to introduce exploitable code in the form of a back door to some downloads of WordPress 2.1.1. The 2.1.2 release addressed this issue; an advisory released at the time advised all users to upgrade immediately.
In May 2007, a study revealed that 98% of WordPress blogs being run were exploitable because they were running outdated and unsupported versions of the software.
In a June 2007 interview, Stefan Esser, the founder of the PHP Security Response Team, spoke critically of WordPress's security track record, citing problems with the application's architecture that made it unnecessarily difficult to write code that is secure from SQL injection
SQL injection
A SQL injection is often used to attack the security of a website by inputting SQL statements in a web form to get a badly designed website in order to dump the database content to the attacker. SQL injection is a code injection technique that exploits a security vulnerability in a website's software...
vulnerabilities, as well as some other problems.
Since then, WordPress has improved in terms of security and the latest versions are more secure with only minimal security issues. The last major security issue was found on WordPress 2.7, released in 2008.
Individual installations of WordPress can be protected with security plugins such as Better WP Security, WP Security Scan and many others.
Key developers
Matt MullenwegMatt Mullenweg
Matthew Charles Mullenweg is an online social media entrepreneur, web developer and musician living in San Francisco, California. He is best known for his development of the free and open source web software, WordPress...
and Mike Little were co-founders of the project. The core contributing developers include Ryan Boren, Mark Jaquith, Matt Mullenweg, Andrew Ozz, and Peter Westwood.
WordPress is also developed by its community, including WP testers, a group of volunteers who test each release. They have early access to nightly builds
Neutral build
In software development, a neutral build is a build that reflects the current state of the source code checked into the source code version control system by the developers and done in a neutral environment, that is in an environment not used for development....
, beta versions and release candidates. Errors are documented in a special mailing list
Mailing list
A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the...
, or the project's Trac
Trac
Trac is an open source, web-based project management and bug-tracking tool. The program is inspired by CVSTrac, and was originally named svntrac due to its ability to interface with Subversion. It is developed and maintained by Edgewall Software....
tool.
Though largely developed by the community surrounding it, WordPress is closely associated with Automattic
Automattic
Automattic, Inc. is a web development corporation founded in August 2005.It is most notable for WordPress.com , as well as its contributions to WordPress .-Projects:Other projects include:...
, the company founded by Matt Mullenweg. On September 9, 2010, Automattic handed the WordPress trademark to the newly-created WordPress Foundation, which is an umbrella organization supporting WordPress.org (including the software and archives for plugins and themes), bbPress and BuddyPress
BuddyPress
BuddyPress is an open source social networking software package owned by Automattic since 2008. It is a plugin that can be installed on WordPress to transform it into a social network platform...
.
WordCamp developer and user conferences
"WordCamp" is the name given to all WordPress-related gatherings, both informal unconferenceUnconference
An unconference is a participant-driven meeting. The term "unconference" has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees, sponsored presentations, and top-down organization...
s and more formal conferences. The first such event was WordCamp 2006 in August 2006 in San Francisco, which lasted one day and had over 500 attendees. The most recent event was WordCamp San Francisco in August 2011, which ran for three days and had over 1,000 attendees. The first WordCamp outside San Francisco was held in Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
in September 2007. Since then, there have been over 150 WordCamps around the world, for an average of nearly one a week. WordCamp San Francisco, an annual event, remains the official annual conference of WordPress developers and users.
Support
As an open sourceOpen source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
platform, WordPress relies on peer support. The primary support website is WordPress.org.
See also
- List of content management systems
- bbPress
- AutomatticAutomatticAutomattic, Inc. is a web development corporation founded in August 2005.It is most notable for WordPress.com , as well as its contributions to WordPress .-Projects:Other projects include:...