WordPress

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WordPress is a blog publishing system written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License and is available free of charge. The latest version is 2.0.5.

History

b2

b2 was the precursor to WordPress. Also written in PHP for use with MySQL, b2 was originally developed 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.

Beginnings of WordPress

The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck, a friend of lead developer Matt Mullenweg. WordPress is the official successor of b2\cafelog and has a thriving user and developer community.

WordPress currently supports one weblog or site per installation, but there is a multi-user version available called WordPress MU. Even with normal WordPress, a user can still have more than one WordPress blog in the same server, even on the same database, by placing the files in different subdirectories.

WordPress releases are named after well known jazz musicians (e.g. Mingus).

Movable Type changes

In 2004 the licensing structure 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' popularity.

Version 1.5

Released mid-February 2005 and codenamed "Strayhorn" after Billy Strayhorn, version 1.5 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.

Version 2.0

Released in December 2005 and codenamed "Duke" after jazz pianist and composer Duke Ellington, version 2.0 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.[1]

Features

Generates standards-compliant XML, XHTML, and CSS
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
...more features

Developers

WordPress main theme, based upon Kubrick.

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

The contributing developers are

Dougal Campbell
Alex King
Donncha O'Caoimh
Michel Valdrighi

Though developed much by the community surrounding it, WordPress is closely associated with Automattic (of which most of WordPress's main contributing developers are employees [2] [3]).

References

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