It’s that time in the release cycle again, when all the features are basically done, and we’re just squashing bugs. To the brave of heart and giving of soul: Won’t you help us test the new version of WordPress? As always, this is software still in development and we don’t recommend that you run it on your normal live site — set up a test site just to play with the new version. If you break it (find a bug), report it, and if you’re a developer, try to help us fix it. (Especially you U.S. types who are taking a long weekend for Thanksgiving! )

If all goes well, we hope to release WordPress 3.1 to the world at large by the end of the year, though that is (as always) subject to change/dependent on how the beta period goes. The more help we get with testing and fixing bugs, the sooner we will be able to release the final version.

If you want to be a beta tester, you should check out the Codex article on how to report bugs. Some of the new features to check out include:

• Post Formats (#14746)
• Theme Search (#14936)
• Internal Linking (#11420)
• Admin Bar (#14772)
• Ajaxified Admin (#14579)
• Updated Tiny MCE (#12574)
• Multi-taxonomy Queries (#12891)
• Custom Post Type Index Pages (#13818)
• Admin CSS Cleanup (#14770)
• User Admin (#14696)
• Network Admin (#14435)
• Password Reset Redux (#5919)

There are also some known issues: things that aren’t *quite* finished, but that weren’t worth holding up the beta release. They will be fixed before 3.1 is released for general use. Note that as things get fixed, the beta release will update nightly. What you should know:

• Fatal error: Call to a member function is_page() on a non-object in /wp-includes/query.php. is_page() may be any conditional tag. This issue occurs when a theme or plugin is doing something wrong. Some code is checking the value of a conditional tag before we actually set up the Query, which means they don’t work yet. In 3.0, they silently failed and always returned false. In 3.1 Beta 1, this is throwing a fatal error. This will be handled in the final release, so use this opportunity to fix your plugins. (#14729)
• All known issues slated for fixing before launch are listed in Trac. Please check this list to see if a bug is already on the list before reporting it.

Remember, if you find something you think is a bug, report it! You can bring it up in the alpha/beta forum, you can email it to the wp-testers list, or if you’ve confirmed that other people are experiencing the same bug, you can report it on the WordPress Core Trac. (I recommend starting in the forum or on the mailing list.)

Theme and plugin authors, if you haven’t been following the 3.1, please start now so that you can update your themes and plugins to be compatible with the newest version of WordPress.

Note to developers: WordPress is built by the contributions of hundreds of developers. If you’d like to see this release come out on time, I encourage you to pitch in. Even if you don’t have time to do testing on the beta version, you could help us by contributing a fix for one of the many bugs we already know about.

To those of you in the U.S., have a lovely long holiday weekend, and if you’re looking for something to occupy your post-turkey hours, we hope you’ll take the beta for a spin!

Download WordPress 3.1 Beta 1

Original post by Jane Wells

Attention Apple-gadget-owning WordPress users! Have you been using the WordPress iOS app for iPhone and iPad? Or maybe you tried it a while back and thought it wasn’t for you? Either way, the new release — v2.6 — will knock your socks off. Why? A bunch of reasons:

• Video. Record, upload, attach, and play videos within the app. Yay for being able to catch your friends’ and co-workers’ most embarrassing shenanigans creative moments with iPhone video and publish them immediately for all the world to see on your WordPress site.
• A total rewrite of the way local drafts are handled, to prevent the unintentional loss of your pending posts.
• Autosave/post revisions. Bam! One of the “oh, thank goodness” features of the web app makes it into the iOS version.
• Easier setup. Faster and easier process for adding your sites to the app.
• Media Library. We’re gradually getting closer to the media management you’re used to in the web app.

There are also numerous bugfixes and performance enhancements in this release, so if you haven’t been using the app lately, you should consider giving it another try. I’m personally pretty excited to start using the iPhone version more often now that there are all these fixes and new features. Especially the video upload. You know, for those creative moments that make life fun.

You can read the full 2.6 release post on the WordPress for iOS blog, and can download v2.6 from iTunes/the app store. Happy mobile blogging!

* * *

Not an iPhone user? We’ve still got your on-the-go back! Check out the WordPress apps for Android, Blackberry, and Nokia (beta). They’re all 100% GPL, of course, and we’re always looking for contributors to the development projects, so check the blogs if you have mobile dev skills and want to get involved.

Original post by Jane Wells