This document summarizes the code history of WordPress from its founding in 2003 to the present. It discusses major releases, contributors, added features like post meta and plugins, tools used for development like Git and unit testing, and the future direction of new APIs. The timeline shows steady growth from a few early contributors to over 200 today, with major releases every 6-12 months adding significant new functionality that maintains backwards compatibility.
2. Who I am?
• Marko Heijnen - @markoheijnen
• Working at 1&1 as their WordPress
specialist
• WordPress core contributor
• GlotPress core developer - @GlotPress
• Co author of WP_Image_Editor
3. Our timeline
• 2003 - WordPress was founded
• 2005 - WordPress 2.0 got released
• 2006 - I started to use WordPress
• 2010 - My first contribution to WordPress
• 2012 - Recent rockstar of 3.4
• 2013 - WordPress becomes 10
• 2013 - 3.8 was the 21 major release
14. 0.70
• WordPress had its first release as a fork of
b2 on May 27, 2003
• A lot of code cleanups to make it more
stable and faster
• Functions like texturize and manual excerpt
were added
16. 1.2 “Charles Mingus”
• Post meta
• New plugin architecture
• Encryption of password
• Localization
• Sub categories
• Thumbnail creation
May 22, 2004
17. The WordPress Plugin Repository
• On January 10, 2005 the WordPress Plugin
repository was announced
• It was then on WP-Plugins.org
• It was focused on Trac since it didn’t have a
user friendly front-end, yet
18. 1.5 “Billy Strayhorn”
• The basic template engine
was added
• Pages was added
February 17, 2005
19. 2.0 “Duke Ellington”
• AJAX functionality got added
• Capability API
• Inline uploading
• User level options
• Pluggable object cache
• Functions.php was added
• Nonces 2.0.3
December 31, 2005
20. 2.1 “Ella Fitzgerald”
• Autosave
• All queries got checked
• More AJAX
• Cron API
• WP_Error class was added
January 22, 2007
21. 2.2 “Stan Getz”
• Widgets API
• Started using jQuery
• PHPMailer got added
• Increased the inline
documentation
May 16, 2007
23. 2.3 “Dexter Gordon”
• Updating system
• Taxonomy API got added
• Canonical URLs
• $wpdb->prepare()
• Activation protection
• Restructure of wp-admin
folder
September 24, 2007
24. 2.5 “Michael Brecker”
• Shortcode API
• Multi-file upload with
March 29, 2008
progress bar
• EXIF extraction
• Search posts and pages
• Installing/updating plugins
22 contributors
25. 2.6 “McCoy Tyner”
• Post Revisions
• Full SSL support
• Theme previews
July 15, 2008
75 contributors
26. 2.7 “John Coltrane”
• HTTP API
• Uninstall a plugin
• Settings API
• wp_page_menu()
• Plugin installer
• WordPress upgrader
December 10, 2008
144 contributors
27. 2.8 “Chet Baker”
• New Widgets API
• HTTP API updates and fixes
• Search/Install themes
June 11, 2009
28. 2.9 “Carmen McRae”
• Built-in image editor
• Post thumbnails
• Basic post type support
• Meta data for comments
• oEmbed
December 18, 2009
140> contributors
29. 3.0 “Thelonious Monk”
• WordPress MU merged
• Custom menus
• Custom post type support
• Lots of other improvements
June 17, 2010
218 contributors
46. The future
• 2014 looks like a great year for new API
features like:
• WP API
• Media improvements
• Post Meta library
• More see: http://make.wordpress.org/
core/features-as-plugins/
47. WPCentral.io
• @WPCentralio
• Work in progress
• If you like to see this information back in a
interactive way
• Currently building the features like:
• Download & Version history
• Timeline of features