After a long hiatus, I have resumed announcements of new WordPress versions on freecode.com (formerly freshmeat.net). I missed putting up release info for versions 3.2 and 3.3, though I have picked back up with WP 3.4. While reviewing the project details, I updated some links for things like the URLs for Trac and SVN. And I’m also rewording the general description a bit.

The old version was like this (short description followed by long description):

A standards-compliant Weblog/CMS.

WordPress is a state-of-the-art, semantic, personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, Web standards, and usability. It was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architected personal publishing system. While primarily geared towards functioning as a Weblog, WordPress is also a flexible CMS capable of managing many types of Web sites. In addition to the basic blog functions, it also has an integrated link manager, categories, tags, custom taxonomies, file attachments, XFN support, support for stand-alone pages, Atom and RSS feeds for both content and comments, blogging API support (Atom Publishing Protocol, Blogger, MetaWeblog, and Movable Type APIs), spam blocking features, advanced cruft-free URL generation, a flexible theme system, and an advanced plugin API.

The new wording is like so:

A powerful, easy-to-use, extensible web publishing platform.

WordPress is a state-of-the-art, semantic, personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, Web standards, and usability. It was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architected personal publishing system. WordPress is a flexible CMS capable of managing any type of web site, from blogs, to news outlets, to e-commerce store-fronts. It also has an integrated link manager, customizable menus, categories, tags, custom taxonomies and content types, file attachments, support for stand-alone pages, Atom and RSS feeds, an API supported by many desktop and mobile clients, cruft-free URL generation, a flexible theme system, and an advanced plugin API.

In each case, the first line, which stands alone, is the “short description”. The new version de-emphasizes the blogging aspect, and highlights the fact that WordPress is a more general web publishing platform. In the long descriptions, the first two sentences remain the same, but I’ve reworded the rest to be more up-to-date and a little less “fluffy”.

I’ve tried to highlight that WordPress has shifted from primarily being a “blogging” platform to being a more general-purpose CMS. I hope that everyone agrees with me that this is an improvement. But if anyone disagrees, I’m open to suggestions. To answer a question that was asked on Twitter, I will post updates for all releases, both major (e.g., 3.4, 3.5), and minor (3.4.1, 3.4.2). Also, when time allows, I try to post announcements for the start of Beta and Release Candidate stages.

Lastly, if you are a developer who depends on staying up-to-date with many open source projects, you should take another look at freecode. You can subscribe to your favorite projects, and you can get an email whenever a new release comes out. And if you have a project of your own, and it’s not already listed there, shouldn’t it be?