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Release Candidate stage means we think we’re done and are about ready to launch this version, but are doing one last check before we officially call it. So take a look, and as always, please check your themes and plugins for compatibility if you’re a developer.
Stayed up late tonight,
Hammering toward RC1.
Now with more icons!
The march toward 3.3 continues!
With all our major tickets closed, we are very close to a release candidate. In Beta 4 we’ve fixed a bunch of bugs, cleaned up the UI, added real text in some of the screens that still had placeholder text in Beta 3 (post-update screen, the Dashboard welcome area, new feature pointers), and generally tightened things up. We updated to jQuery 1.7.1 and addressed a LOT of bugs.
If you are a plugin or theme developer (or distributor), please test against Beta 4 to ensure there are no issues.
If you find any problems, please report them as usual. Many thanks!
Thought 3 was the last?
Ha ha! Beta 4 is here –
Better get testing!
We need your opinion! One of the features we’re adding to WordPress 3.3 (currently in beta 3) is intended to reduce widget pain. Say you’re using Theme A and you have a handful of widgets set up. You switch to Theme B, and it has different widget areas, so you add/remove/edit your widgets. Then you realize that you hate Theme B. “This theme doesn’t represent my innermost soul!” you cry to the heavens. You switch back to Theme A, but because it had different widget areas, now your widgets are messed up. Argh, right? Not for long!
Imagine being able to change themes and modify widgets as needed, and if you decided to go back to your old theme, it would return your widgets to how they were the last time you had that theme activated. Sounds good, yeah? The problem we’re facing is deciding how long to save the old widget configuration, since there are so many potential workflows. If you changed From Theme A to Theme B and added more widgets over the next few weeks, if you switched back to Theme A after a month, would you still expect it to go back to the widgets from a month ago? At what point does it go from handy timesaver to unexpected widget mangler? What do you think?
View This PollToday is the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the (20)eleventh year, and in several parts of the world, it is a holiday related to war. In the U.S., where I live, it is Veterans Day, which honors military veterans. In much of Europe, today is Armistice Day or Remembrance Day, commemorating the armistice signed at the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918 that ended the fighting on the Western Front in World War I.
Whether serving in the military, living in an area of unrest or attack, having friends or family in the fray, or just being human enough to think war sucks (there’s really no gentler way to say that, is there?), war impacts most people in the world today.
The mission of WordPress is to democratize publishing. Sometimes we’re fortunate enough for that to mean providing a platform for communication that helps people work toward peace in their communities and around the world. Sometimes it means providing a platform for keeping people informed and aware of the other things that are happening around the world, including the horror of wars and revolutions.
At WordCamp San Francisco in August, one of the most popular and well-respected sessions was led by Teru Kuwayama of Basetrack.org. On this day of remembrance, I thought it would be good to share the video of his presentation. Not only is it a very cool example of how WordPress can be used in unexpected ways (this is not your father’s Oldsmobile usual blog), it’s a reminder of how much work still needs to be done to move from war to peace. So here is Taking WordPress to War: Basetrack.org. Peace out, yo.
Testers, Beta 3 is now available! You know the drill: use a test install, see what you can break, and report any bugs you find. There have been 200 commits since Beta 2, but at this point, betas are not adding new features — it’s all about fixing bugs, making things a little prettier, and editing text strings.
As always, plugin and theme authors, PLEASE test your code against the beta so you can catch any incompatibilities now rather than after your users update their WordPress installation and find bugs for you. This time we really mean it, especially if your plugin uses jQuery. We’ve now updated to jQuery 1.7 in core, so please please pretty please check your plugins and themes against beta 3.
These silly haikus –
With so many releases,
I run out of words.
Download WordPress 3.3 Beta 3 now.
Changes since Beta 1:
Consult the full change log for details, and see the Beta 1 announcement for information on how to help test Beta 2.
Welcome for the new –
3.3 at beta 2.
(IE7, woo!)
Download 3.3 Beta 2.
WordPress 3.3 is ready for beta testers.
As always, this is software still in development and we don’t recommend that you run it on a production site — set up a test site just to play with the new version. If you break it (find a bug), please report it, and if you’re a developer, try to help us fix it.
If all goes well, we hope to release WordPress 3.3 by the end of November. The more help we get with testing and fixing bugs, the sooner we will be able to release the final version. If you want to be a beta tester, you should check out the Codex article on how to report bugs.
Here’s some of what’s new:
Remember, if you find something you think is a bug, report it! You can bring it up in the alpha/beta forum, you can email it to the wp-testers list, or if you’ve confirmed that other people are experiencing the same bug, you can report it on the WordPress Core Trac. (We recommend starting in the forum or on the mailing list.)
Theme and plugin authors, if you haven’t been following the 3.3 development cycle, please start now so that you can update your themes and plugins to be compatible with the newest version of WordPress.
And now, haiku.
Features almost done…
3.3 at Beta 1.
Test it now — have fun!
Having useful design resources under our hands always ease the process of creating beautiful websites, banners, posters, etc.
Mega Bundle 2, which is a big collection of design goodies offered for a very good price ($29 rather than $545), is providing WRD readers a chance to grow their design libraries by giving away 5 licenses (please check the details on joining it below).
VectorPack.net is a design studio creating professional vector art and design elements including stock vector art, Photoshop brushes, backgrounds, textures, fonts, seamless patterns and WordPress themes. Simply, every design element that we are in need of.
The Mega Bundle 2 is a set of 650+ design elements that VectorPack.net is offering for a price of $29 instead of $545.
It is available until the 13th of October (8 days from now on). This great Mega Bundle 2 contains the following items:
Considering VectorPack.net presents such useful Mega Bundles at a discounted price regularly, subscribing to their newsletters would make sure you know about them in advance.
You can choose one of the methods below to join the giveaway:
Winners will be selected randomly on 12 October 2011 (1 week later) and good luck!
Special Downloads:
Ajaxed Add-To-Basket Scenarios With jQuery And PHP
Free Admin Template For Web Applications
jQuery Dynamic Drag’n Drop
ScheduledTweets
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Saturday, September 17 is Software Freedom Day. To that end, a few announcements about this weekend’s hackathon and WordCamp Portland.
WordPress 3.3 is about to hit feature freeze. This means it’s the last chance to squeeze in features that haven’t quite been finished, and enhancements and fixes that no one has had time to address yet. Around this time, there are often dozens of tickets that have patches, but the patches have not been tested enough to be committed to core. Then the contributors who worked hard on the patches are disappointed that their code doesn’t make it into the current release. You can help us prevent this!
This weekend, we’ll be running a has-patch needs-testing marathon for the 3.3 milestone. Basically, we’re looking for people who can help test patches and/or refresh patches that need updating. Lead developers and core contributors will be hanging around in the #wordpress-dev channel on irc.freenode.net to answer questions as needed, and will be committing patches as they get enough verification. As you test the patches, report your findings on the trac tickets in question. If all developers who make a living working with WordPress helped out for even an hour or two this weekend, we could clear the 200 tickets or so that are in this situation. To make it fun, why not get together with other WordPress devs and have an in-person hackathon meetup?
At WordCamp Portland this weekend, some of the WordPress core team will be in attendance, including me, Nacin, and Koop. In addition to giving presentations and participating in the unconference sessions, we’ll be involved with a couple of other cool things at WCPDX:
So, if you live it the Portland/Seattle area and haven’t already bought a ticket to attend WordCamp Portland, hurry up, as it’s going to be a great celebration of Software Freedom Day and WordPress.
This coming weekend, two WordCamps will be going on simultaneously — yep, it’s WordCamp season again! This weekend will be the first of many this autumn with multiple WordCamps. Tomorrow (not quite the weekend but close enough) is WordCamp Cape Town, and then this weekend, first-time WordCamp Albuquerque coincides with 4-time returning champ WordCamp Portland, a cool juxtaposition of a more established local community with one that is just getting started. If you’re anywhere near the Portland area, you should try to attend. The WordPress Foundation will be sponsoring some special activities around Software Freedom Day, and some members of the core team (me, Nacin, Koop) will be there.
Is there a WordCamp coming up near you? Let’s find out!
Sep 15: WordCamp Cape Town Cape Town, South Africa
Sep 16-18: WordCamp Albuquerque Albuquerque, NM
Sep 17-18: WordCamp Portland Portland, OR
Sep 24: WordCamp Lisboa Lisboa, Portugal
Sep 24: WordCamp Germany Koln, Germany
Sep 25: WordCamp Sofia Sofia, Bulgaria
Oct 1: WordCamp Louisville Louisville, Kentucky
Oct 8-9: WordCamp Sevilla Seville, Spain
Oct 15-16: WordCamp Jabalpur Jabalpur, India
Nov 5-6: WordCamp Toronto Toronto, ON
Nov 5-6: WordCamp Gold Coast Gold Coast, Australia
Nov 5-6: WordCamp Philly Philadelphia, PA
Nov 12: WordCamp Caguas Caguas, Puerto Rico
Nov 12-13: WordCamp Kenya Nairobi, Kenya
Nov 12-13: WordCamp Detroit Detroit, MI
Nov 12: WordCamp Richmond Richmond, VA
Nov 12-13: WordCamp Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark
Dec 17: WordCamp Las Vegas Las Vegas, NV
Feb 3-4 WordCamp Atlanta Atlanta, GA
There are also a number of WordCamps still in the early organizing stage that do not yet have dates set. These include: Ft. Wayne, IN; London, UK; Edmonton, Canada; Baku, Azerbaijan; Oslo, Norway; Sacramento, CA; Birmingham, Alabama; Pittsburgh, PA; Omaha, NE; Orlando, FL; Tokyo, Japan; Paris, France; Zagreb, Croatia; Nashville, TN, Washington DC, Baltimore, MD; Bangkok, Thailand; Istanbul, Turkey.
Hope to see you soon at a WordCamp near you!