Welcome to The Open WordPress Community
The Open WordPress Community is a group of WordPress enthusiasts providing free themes and
plugins for WordPress. WordPress is more than just a
blogging platform, it is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) that can be adapated to
power nearly any type of website.
The main goal of The Open WordPress Community is to provide one central place where WordPress
enthusiasts can meet to share their free WordPress themes and plugins, and to discuss all
things WordPress related.
Well, it looks like the WordPress folks have opted to skip version 2.4, and head straight into 2.5. Apparently the large number of changes to be made, combined with the busy holiday schedule prompted them to make the decision to cut version 2.4, previously promised to us on January 24.
I can understand them wanting to push back the release date as to not rush things, but I’m not quite sure why they felt the need to skip version numbers. Since this is the next “major” release, doesn’t it make sense that it would use the next version number (2.4)? Anyways, the moral of the story is that we are now going to have to wait until March for the next major WordPress release. I’ve been able to check out a few previews of what they have in store for us in this next version, and from what I’ve seen so far, it will definitely be worth the wait.
It was just announced that we can expect WordPress 2.4 on January 24th. Is it just me, or does it not seem that long since WordPress 2.3 was released? It’s exciting that their development cycle has been so quick lately, hopefully they can keep it up!
Details are still pretty sketchy at this point regarding exactly what features will be included in the next release, but you can check out the official WordPress Roadmap for more info.
The first release candidate of WordPress 2.3 is hot off the presses today as they move towards the planned release date of September 24.
So if you’re feeling a bit spunky, download the RC1 and give it a whirl - just be sure to backup your database first!
Although we consider this release candidate to be stable, keep in mind that this is still pre-release software. You may find some lingering bugs. Please back up your database before upgrading. If you have problems with RC1, you will not be able to revert back to your previous release without a database backup.
The fine folks behind our much-beloved WordPress recently announced that they will be pushing out a new beta release every Monday until WordPress 2.3 ships on September 24th. This week’s beta 2 release includes “a bunch” of bug fixes from the last beta release a week ago.
This is still rough code, so you should only test the beta if you are comfortable troubleshooting PHP issues, filing tickets, and backing up your blog’s data.
Still want to play? Go ahead and join the wp-testers mailing list and download beta 2 here.
Over at the WordPress development blog, they just announced the release of WordPress 2.3 Beta 1. First-version betas are not typically for the faint of heart, so I won’t recommend that you try it for anything that’s truly “important”. If you do decide to take the plunge, remember these 3 words of advice - backup, backup backup!
A few of the new features you can look forward to:
- Plugin and core update notification
- Built-in tags support
- Faster Javascript
- SEO-friendly URL redirection
Hopefully this means that we’ll be seeing the stable version of WordPress 2.3 in the coming weeks.
