Matt’s State of the Word at WordCamp SF 2009
Video of the annual State of the Word, delivered by Matt Mullenweg at Automattic-hosted WordCamp San Francisco 2009, is now up at WordPress.tv. It’s also embedded above for your easy viewing pleasure.
For the uninformed, the State of the Word is a fun little presentation on WordPress, of course, to see how far it’s come and what’s in store in the coming months. You might remember that one of the biggest highlights in this State of the Word was the announcement that WordPress and WordPress MU are going to merge, so now those who weren’t at the event itself can find out exactly how Matt said it.
Those who are looking for text-based summaries of the State of the Word, check out the press coverage links on the homepage of WordCamp San Francisco 2009.
WordCamp SF State of the Word and Q&A with Matt Mullenweg
Aside from the merging of WordPress.org and WordPress MU, many other announcements were made during WordCamp San Francisco’s State of the Word, delivered of course by Matt Mullenweg. Check out the summary posted by The WordCamp Report, including this Q&A.
Some highlights:
- Lots of changes that caused “minor revolutions”: return of Quick Post, threaded comments, 1-click upgrades, etc.
- WordPress core focuses on speed and simplicity, then “let the people do whatever they want”
- WordPress themes and the GPL still a big issue
- WordPress is the fastest growing skill on Elance
- WordPress.tv
- WordPress 2.8: coming soon! New features: rewritten Widgets, theme directory built into admin, CodePress syntax editor, multiple galleries per page, per page options for plugins, improved language support
- WordPress 2.9 to focus on under-the-hood improvements
For more links, catch this round up by Weblog Tools Collection.
WordPress and WordPress MU to merge!
Update (06/03/09): Matt himself left this comment:
While WordPress.org-the-website will include more BuddyPress features, that was a separate announcement from the elimination of MU and bringing its code into core WP.
Update (06/02/09): Lorelle VanFossen has a different interpretation of the cryptic merger. It’s anybody’s guess at this point, it seems.
At WordCamp San Francisco, where Matt Mullenweg delivered his annual State of the Word keynote, he announced that WordPress and WordPress MU (multi-user) will be merging in the near future. Apparently he told users to “watch out for version 3.0″. There weren’t many details given during the event, which means we’re left to speculate on how this merger will actually happen.
Still, WordPress MU has been less accessible to the ordinary users compared to WordPress given its feature requirements. And BuddyPress, which runs on top of WordPress MU, is a very appealing CMS for those interested in building communities and social networks. So integrating multi-user features into the WordPress is great news.
Sticky Posts for WordPress.com users
As Matt Mullenweg had mentioned in a demo of WordPress 2.7 “Crazyhorse” during WordCamp’s State of the Word, there will be a new feature called Sticky Posts. It turns out that feature is already installed on WordPress.com blogs. This is patterned after forum posts which you want to keep at the top of the page for everyone to see.
Chances are WordPress.org users have a blog at WordPress.com, so be sure to try out that feature as we await WP 2.7!
