On this day in 2003, Matt Mullenweg announced that first release of WordPress was available for download. Version 0.7 features included:

  • Texturize — So good it’ll make your quotes curl.
  • WordPress Links — A link manager with everything you’d expect, from Weblogs.com support to a handy bookmarklet. Manage as many blogrolls as you like, and have complete control over their display.
  • XHTML 1.1 — WordPress is complaint with XHTML standards up to 1.1, though by default it sends a 1.0 document type to avoid compatibility issues.
  • Highly Intelligent Line Breaks — Occasionally called “nl2br on steroids,” this brand new function adds line breaks except where there is already a block level tag or another line break.
  • New Administration Interface — We’ve made it as simple as possible, and no more. Everything has been restructured from the ground up in a fully compliant XHTML/CSS interface.
  • Manual Excerpts — This allows you to handcraft summaries of your posts to appear in your RSS feed and other places.
  • New Default Templates — Again we’ve streamlined theses with the latest in simple, easy-to-understand standard XHTML and CSS. And not a CSS hack in sight.
  • Plus numerous behind the scenes code cleanups, making this release faster and more stable than ever.

Thanks, WordPress – enjoy the party!