People have spoken in many forums about the delay in WordPress 3.0. In some places people even commented with some severity that this was a problem for WordPress and for the community, suggesting that there are internal problems and that’s why the dates are being delayed.
I think these critics’ point of view is not correct. Running late in the release date of WordPress 3.0 is fair and necessary, and cannot be more beneficial for the user.
The release date
WordPress 3.0 will be announced officially in WordCamp SF (May the 1st). Some of us thought it was the right release date for WP 3.0, and we proposed it in febrary when we were discussing WP 3.0 release dates. However, a prior date, April 13th, was proposed for the official release date. With a very logic reason: to have a 3-week feedback with WP 3.0 when we arrive to the WordCamp and be able to show much more interesting things and a more long term vision.
We are now suffering a delay that will make the official presentation to happen in WordCamp SF. Nothing serious. It will make more interesting, if possible, this WordCamp, that we can title like The Future is Now.
The avalanch
All processes have certain phases. If we focus on the five classic stages, WordPress is reaching people in different ways:
- Denial: Fear to the new, fear the changes. Better the evil you know.
- Anger: The affair with the WordPress publishing format is a classic. This too easy to use to be true. You must be kidding me, this is not as difficult as Facebook or Blogger, where everything is hidden.
- Bargaining: The classic start of a new user in WordPress. How to do this or that, in my old system it was different…
- Depression: Have I been wasting my time all this time?
- Acceptance: Hey, I like it!
Whether the final user can be in one stage or another, for developers these guidelines are slightly different. While source developers (programmers) are almost all in the acceptance phase (except a few plugin and theme developers, which are mostly in the bargaining stage, –their only interest is to earn money–), WordPress 3.0 has opened a new door to the interface developers (designers) to participate actively in the new version of WordPress and has risen to different reactions. Almost all have started at the stage of denial, thinking they would have little participation, and right now are in different phases.
This great boom of participation has had different effects in the development of WordPress 3.0:
- There are hundreds of new users in trac.
- Mailing lists have been populated considerably.
- IRC meetings are very active.
- Of the 200 original tickets for 3.0 we have reached the figure of 943.
- WordPress forums have over 1,000 visitors per day.
- Many users are using WP Beta tester plugin and testing development versions and reporting problems.
- There are lots of new ideas every day.
As you can see, a small date delay seems to be reasonable if we want to manage this.
The user
After many years (six!) and a lot of development, the real WP 3.0 revolution is the user. Yes, we are not crazy. WP 3.0 is designed and focused in the end user, trying to give him the best user experience using WordPress.
By the hand of Jane Wells, our User eXperience leader, we have focused in this WordPress version in making the end user experience and middle developers experience (those who don’t digg very deep in the code) easier. And we have many changes:
- Thumbnails. Now called featured images, which is more accurated with its functionality in WP 3.0.
- Custom post types. We had posts and pages. Now we have the type of publication that we need, and with only three lines of code. This will allow middle developers to create specific-publications plugins (books, music, magazines…) easily.
- Custom taxonomies. Now we can create new relations different from categories and tags. Hierarchical order and semantical tagging is very poor in a software like WordPress, which is more than a blog platform.
- Menus. Custom zones for widgets where we can put almost any content of our blog.
- Plugins repository. Developers now have a new site to upload and share their creations, updating in a simple way. The great advantage: end users only need to click in Update all in their dashboard and they will update automagically the last version of WordPress, its plugins and its themes.
- Themes repository. Same as prior.
- Plugins page. A page in which you can search semantically plugins from your dashboard and install them with one click.
- Themes page. A page in which you can search semantically themes from your dashboard and install them with one click.
- Child themes. A great revolution. We have already speaked about it.
- New galleries management. And multi-galleries per post or page with a simple plugin.
With WordPress 3.0 all middle code developers and theme developers are in the acceptance phase, regardless of in what they were before.
It’s here. The revolution begins.
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April 9th, 2010 at %I:%M %p
Con esta explicación tan extensa y entusiasta, me habéis puesto “La gallina de piel”
Muy bien explicado y muy clarito todo.
Un saludo
May 25th, 2010 at %I:%M %p
Que buena la info, se agradece