WordPress is an open source blog publishing application. WordPress is the official successor of b2\cafelog which was developed by Michel Valdrighi. The latest release of WordPress is version 2.7.1, released on 10 February 2009.

Features

WordPress has a templating system, which includes widgets that can be rearranged without editing PHP or HTML code, as well as themes that can be installed and switched between. The PHP and HTML code in themes can also be edited for more advanced customizations. WordPress also features integrated link management; a search engine-friendly, clean permalink structure; the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to articles; multiple author capability; and support for tagging of posts and articles. Automatic filters that provide for proper formatting and styling of text in articles (for example, converting regular quotes to smart quotes) are also included. WordPress also supports the Trackback and Pingback standards for displaying links to other sites that have themselves linked to a post or article. Finally, WordPress has a rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install.

History

b2\cafelog, more commonly known as simply b2 or cafelog, was the precursor to WordPress. b2\cafelog was estimated to have been employed on approximately 2,000 blogs as of May 2003. It was written in PHP for use with MySQL by Michel Valdrighi, who is now a contributing developer to WordPress. Although WordPress is the official successor, another project, b2evolution, is also in active development.

WordPress first appeared in 2003 as a joint effort between Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little to create a fork of b2. The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck, a friend of Mullenweg.

In 2004 the licensing terms for the competing Movable Type package were changed by Six Apart, and many of its users migrated to WordPress – causing a marked and continuing growth in WordPress's popularity.Fact: date=March 2009

In 2007 WordPress won a Packt Open Source CMS Award.

Releases

Most WordPress releases are code named after well-known jazz musicians starting after Version 1.0

WordPress .70 was released on 27 May, 2003 and contained the same file structure as its predecessor, b2\cafelog. Only 0.71-gold is available for download in the official WordPress Release Archive page.

WordPress 1.2 was code named Mingus (after Charles Mingus), and released on 22 May, 2004. It's notable for containing the support of Plugins. The same Plugin identification headers are still used unchanged in the latest WordPress releases.

WordPress 1.5 was released on 17 February, 2005 and code named Strayhorn. It 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 (code named Kubrick) designed by Michael Heilemann.