As everyone knows, we’re behind on the 3.1 release schedule, and as we have not hit RC yet, it’s unlikely we’ll release before the end of the year. Sad Christmas. There are 11 tickets in the milestone right now. I know it’s the holidays, so people are busy, but it also means people are taking time off work and hanging around killing time in a lot of cases, so if everyone could pitch in and test the crap out of things, that would be great.
This release has had fewer contributors than previous ones, and while some put that on the shorter dev cycle, I don’t know that that’s really right, since 3 months in on any release we usually have more activity. It’s easy to leave it all to @nacin since he’s fast and everything, but we really need more people trying to break things and find actual technical bugs to help ensure that we don’t wind up shipping a release that hasn’t been widely tested. Thanks!
(And happy holidays! Today specifically, happy Festivus!)
Darnell Clayton 6:36 pm on December 23, 2010 Permalink
Festivus for the rest of us! Ironically when I was high school, I had a teacher who would “punish” students in detention by forcing them to watch episodes of Seinfeld. We all became addicts after a few weeks.
Perhaps I’ll consider “upgrading” one of my other blogs in order to test out 3.1 features. After Christmas that is (as I have to make sure my theme is compatible with 3.1 first).
Jon Brown 7:10 pm on December 23, 2010 Permalink
I think the last sentence of Darnell’s comments says it, “waiting for theme support”
Arguably the biggest feature/incentive to test 3.1 is post formats which requires extensive theme support it’s not nearly as easy to add as featured images or menu support.
That said thanks to your plea I’m installing 3.1 on three sites today.
Denis 6:25 pm on December 24, 2010 Permalink
Happy Christmas!
And many thank you for not ruining my own year end vacation by releasing on schedule.
Holiday Cheer Needed to Help Release WordPress 3.1 « Lorelle on WordPress 6:30 pm on December 24, 2010 Permalink
[...] you have even the least coding experience, the WordPress development team needs your help over the next few days to test WordPress 3.1 Beta 2 and get the Release Candidates out to the world [...]
Malcjohn 9:56 pm on December 24, 2010 Permalink
Hi peope behind the WP. It’s important to say that WP is great (i also use it) and i hope that you will continue to release new versions, doesn’t matter when. I am a fan of WP, but i cant help you with PHP, just some easy HTML.
But i want to say one thing. It’s very, very important. I will not criticise the “production of next version”, but i will tell you the truth.
As far as i know : somebody says “the next realse will be on 15.7.20xx ” and the major improvements are …….
Afterwards, admin make a timetable and tickets starts to be doing.
So from this moment its a bad start to close tickets. Nobody should says when the next release will be published. It’s better to say : “we will close 250 tickets, doesn’t matter which one” (look in the trac, some tickets are should be closed in 2009 <<< something is wrong !) and only then realese a new version. We don't need a huge improvments, "but be with time" ( for example : HTML5,CSS3 etc., or just to maintain the hole WP, thought bugs etc. )
Also i must tell, that there isn't any marketing for devs. Of course, some WP sites publish arcticles (for users only), but we have to make marketing also for the developers !!! Only they can help us to make WP better. We have less people working on it and everybody (matt, jenne) has to convience devs and just normally people to work on WP in trac. It should be prestige to work for WP, as the same for HTML5 in W3C.
So my recommendations are :
complettly change the release plan (dev cycle plan). Start thinking hard on a change for pre-production of next WP.
make a lot of marketing for devs, some bonus for them. NOT MONEY, but something which matt and jenne must made up. (some small gifts). Just make WP valuable to contribute
I really like WP and a huge thanks to nacin and other people who make it. But we have to change our habbits and start a new period of WP
Merry Christmas to everybody.
John from Prague,
Jane Wells 4:38 pm on January 3, 2011 Permalink
Hi John. I’m sorry, but we disagree. Saying we should close 250 tickets and it doesn’t matter which ones, would mean we could have 250 tiny bugs and miss bigger ones, or that we do 250 feature tickets and don’t touch any bugs. Our releases get much more serious thought given to them, and will continue to do so. The best way to get involved for developers is to start writing patches, following the irc chats, seeing how things play out on tickets.
hakre 12:08 pm on December 25, 2010 Permalink
Happy Christmas and Holidays!
I hope all developers and contributors can re-charge their batteries these days for the amazing things to come. Enjoy yourself, family and friends.
Keith B Broadbent 3:15 pm on December 25, 2010 Permalink
how can I help. i have extensive experience in WP, just had a class in html and css, working with adobe cs5
Jane Wells 4:40 pm on January 3, 2011 Permalink
Testing the development beta/RC versions to help us find bugs is always good. Helping people in the forums is always good. Right now, at the tail end of the dev cycle, there’s not much to do re design or lightweight html/css, as we are only fixing unexpected bugs. We’ll start a new dev cycle the third week of January.
Malcjohn 6:27 pm on January 3, 2011 Permalink
OK, it was my opinion. Still we should not say, the next realese will be xx.xx.xx, but say “when it will be, than it will be” . The same does Blizzard, a game company with their games