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Introducing the user guides šŸŽ

While we all avoid reading documentation, at some point, usually after we have spent too much time trying to figure out things by ourselves, we do start to look for some.

So here come theĀ user guides for calmPress. The guides are under “Documentation” and are focused on the bare essentials right now such as, installing, upgrading, migrating and specific documentation on the difference between calmPress and WordPress.

A developers guide will also come at some point in the future.

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Alpha 2 of the 1.0.0 release is available

The second Alpha release of the 1.0.0 line is here. In addition to incorporating the PHP 7.3 compatibility changes from the 0.9.9 release, the major change in this release is removal of all shims related to emojis.

From now on it is assumed that, for better or worse, proper support for displaying emojis is up to the browsers and it does not require software based crutches (which many times produce a sub-optimal result). Just like with using text which is in a different language then the main language used on the site, it is up to the author to decide whether the target audience is likely to use softwareĀ  that will properly display the emojis being used.

Our impression is that for the most used emojis there is a very broad support, and you are not likely to run into display problems unless you use some fringe or very new emoji in the content.

Get it now!Ā Ā Just be aware that PHP 7.0 is a minimum requirement to run it.

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Beta 4 of the 0.9.9 release is ready for a test drive

Beta 4 is very likely to be the last test release before the full release of 0.9.9. The only thing left to do with it is, to document and test the migration path from WordPress installs.

There are two changes from Beta 3:

  • Compatibility with the upcoming PHP 7.3 version.
  • Fix for a minor bug which in a development environment caused JS errors, as there was an attempt to use non existing un-minified JS files.

You can download itĀ here

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First alpha of the 1.0.0 release

The first release of the 1.0 line is here. Among many somewhat esoteric improvements, theĀ Ā 1.0.0-alpha1 releaseĀ handles two major pain points that were bothering all WordPress users:

  • Trackback and Pingback spam. All of the code related to receiving and sending them was removed.
  • User name discovery through /author=id type of URLs. This is an intentional side affect of the decision to not support ā€œplainā€ URLs anymore, as they tend to display in public, private information that is just better kept secret even when there is no immediate security issue related to it.

Get it now!Ā Just be aware that PHP 7.0 is a minimum requirement to run it.

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Tentative roadmap for the 0.9.x and 1.0.x releases

Since the idea behind calmPress is to create and maintain an improved version of WordPress over time and not just to divorce WordPress here and now, we are (and will always be) dependent in some way on the release schedule of WordPress itself.

Now that there is an actual roadmap for versions 4.9.9 and 5.0 of WordPress, it is possible to at least get some ballpark dates for the release of versions 0.9.x and 1.0.x

0.9.9
This version is meant to provide a simple migration step from WordPress to calmPress. The most important feature of it is changing the software update mechanism from getting core updates from wordpress.org to getting them from calmPress.org.

There were some other changes, but they were mostly focused on branding related changes.

The current status of the version is that it is a beta quality software, all planned features were coded and no new features will be added.

The plan was to release it when WordPress 4.9.9 version will be released, but the recent changes to the WordPress roadmap due to the release of Gutenberg in version 5.0 ā€œpulled the ragā€ from under the 4.9.9 planning and at this time it is not clear if and when such a version will be released (although it is needed if WordPress wants to support PHP 7.3 for the 4.9 branch).

As we have no idea about when WordPress will have such a release, we will just go ahead and release 0.9.9 on the the 2nd of November 2018.

1.0.0
The first release in which we will start to show our long term vision. It will have the following focuses

  • Essential and easy implemented security improvements. They are going to be about removing XML-RPC, preventing external access to places to where there is no reason to have such access, and removing the exposure of user names.
  • Introduction of a core plugins concept. Those plugins will be an answer to the situation where many people need a feature, but not enough to justify having it in core, and they will be maintained directly or indirectly by core.
  • Deprecation of code and features that should have died long time ago. Starting with the generator tag, emojis,Ā  code editing from the admin, XML-RPC, RSS feeds, own oEmbed support, and more. Some of them will be moved to core plugins, some will be removed and most likely there will be no one that will shed a tear.

We will try to release this as a stable version by the 8th of February 2019.