There’s been quite a bit of activity in the WordPress community as of late and it’s worth summarizing in brief.
First off, the development version of WP has been “rebranded” from 1.6 to 2.0 and Beta 1 was officially announced last Saturday. To coincide with Beta 1’s release, Matt Mullenweg has been soliciting help from WP beta users to test plugin compatibility so that plugin developers can get their code shipshape before 2.0 goes final. If you’re at all adventuresome, please set up a test blog and help determine what work needs to be done on those plugins – the community will thank you, I’m sure.
Beta 2 quickly followed beta 1’s release, and things seem to be humming along nicely.
Secondly, WordPress.com, has exited its GMail-esque “invite-only” beta phase and registrations are now open. Some decent press attention has accompanied said opening, including a nice writeup from Red Herring. If you haven’t tried out WordPress on your own dedicated box, WP.com offers the perfect opportunity to try out what many consider to be the best free blogging tool around, no strings attached. WP.com runs on a version of WordPress 2.0/WPMU, so if you’re looking to get a preview of WP2.0, WP.com offers you that chance.
Last of all, if you are the adventuresome type and want to try out 2.0 on your own systems, Mark Jaquith offers a helpful “toolbox” tutorial for UNIX-inclined testers, while Peter Westwood offers a comparable guide for Windows users (complete with pretty pictures!).
All-in-all, an exciting time in the WP community.
