WordPress

This article is about the self-hosted blog software. For the free blogging service, see WordPress.com.

WordPress

File:WordPress logo.png
WordPress's default configuration
Developer(s)	Matt Mullenweg Ryan Boren Donncha O Caoimh
Stable release	2.3 / 24 September 2007
Repository	core.trac.wordpress.org/browser
Operating system	Cross-platform
Platform	PHP
Type	Blog publishing system
License	GNU General Public License
Website	http://wordpress.org/

WordPress is a blog publishing system written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. WordPress is the official successor of b2\cafelog, developed by Michel Valdrighi. The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck, a friend of lead developer Matt Mullenweg.

The latest release of WordPress is version 2.3, released on 24 September 2007. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

Features

• Integrated link management
• Search engine-friendly permalink structure
• Extensible plugin support
• Nested categories and multiple categories for articles
• TrackBack and Pingback
• Typographic filters for proper formatting and styling of text
• Static Pages
• Multiple Authors
• Can store a list of users that visit your blog
• Can block a person's IP address
• Tag support

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 2000 blogs as of May 2003. It was also written in PHP for use with MySQL by Michel Valdrighi, who is now a contributing developer to WordPress. Though 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.

In 2004 the licensing terms for the competing Movable Type package was changed by Six Apart, and many of its users migrated to WordPress - causing a marked, and continuing, growth in WordPress's popularity.

Releases

WordPress's administration interface

WordPress releases are named after well known jazz musicians. WordPress 1.0 was codenamed Mingus (after Charles Mingus).

WordPress 1.5 was released mid-February 2005 and codenamed Strayhorn after Billy Strayhorn. It added a range of new vital features. One such is being able to manage static pages. This allows content pages to be created and managed outside the normal blog chronology and has been the first step away from being simple blog management software to becoming a full content management system. Another is the new template/theme system, which allows users to easily activate and deactivate "skins" for their sites. WordPress was also equipped with a new default template (codenamed Kubrick after the late Stanley Kubrick) designed by Michael Heilemann.

WordPress 2.0 was released in December 2005 and codenamed Duke after jazz pianist and composer Duke Ellington. 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.

On 22 January 2007, another major upgrade, WordPress 2.1, codenamed Ella after jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, was released. In addition to correcting security issues, version 2.1 featured a redesigned interface and enhanced editing tools (including integrated spell check and auto save), improved content management options, and a variety of code and database optimizations.

WordPress 2.2, codenamed Getz after tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, was released on 16 May 2007. Version 2.2 featured widget support for templates, updated Atom feed support, and speed optimizations. Wordpress 2.2 was initially slated to have a revised taxonomy system for categories, as well as tags, but a proposed revision led to the feature being held back from release.

WordPress 2.3 codenamed Dexter after tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, was released 25 September, 2007. Version 2.3 features native tagging support, new taxonomy system for categories, easy notification of updates as well as other interface improvements. 2.3 also fully supports Atom 1.0 and the publishing protocol. WordPress 2.3 includes some much needed security fixes.

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 servers 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 are exploitable.

In a June 2007 interview, Stefen 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 make it unnecessarily difficult to write code that is secure against SQL injection vulnerabilities, as well as other problems.

Multi-blogging

WordPress supports one weblog per installation, though multiple concurrent copies may be run from different directories if configured to use separate database tables.

WordPress_MU is a fork of WordPress created to allow simultaneous blogs to exist within one installation. Wordpress MU makes it possible for any one with a website to host their own blogging community, control and moderate all the blogs from a single dashboard. Wordpress MU adds a new data table for each blog. Notable communities that use MU are WordPress.com and Harvard University.

Lyceum is another enterprise-edition of Wordpress. Lyceum, unlike WordPress MU, stores all of its information in a set number of database tables. Notable communities that use Lyceum are TeachFor.Us (Teach For America teachers' blogs), BodyBlogs and the Hopkins Blogs.

Developers

WordPress development is led by Ryan Boren and Matt Mullenweg. Mullenweg and Mike Little were co-founders of the project.

The contributing developers include:

• Dougal Campbell
• Mark Jaquith
• Donncha O'Caoimh
• Andy Skelton
• Michel Valdrighi
• Peter Westwood

Though developed much by the community surrounding it, WordPress is closely associated with Automattic, where some of WordPress's main contributing developers are employees.

WordPress is also in part developed by its community, among which are the WP testers, a group of people that volunteer time and effort to testing each release. They have early access to nightly builds, Beta versions and Release Candidates. Upgrading to these versions, they can find and report errors to a special mailing list, or the project's Trac tool.

Sponsored themes

On 10 July 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 criticised by designers and users of sponsored themes, it was applauded by some WordPress users who consider such themes to be spam.

See also

• Comparison of content management systems

Further reading

• Douglass, Robert T. (2005). Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress. New York: Apress. ISBN 1-59059-562-9. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Hayder, Hasin (2006). WordPress Complete. United Kingdom: Packt Publishing. ISBN 1-90481-189-2.
• Langer, Maria (2006). WordPress 2 (Visual QuickStart Guide). USA: Peachpit Press. ISBN 978-0321450197. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

External links

• Wordpress official site, including documentation.
• Wordpress MU official site, including documentation.