It’s about time everyone was let in on the progress we have made towards version 1.0 of bbPress.

I expect the next alpha release to be made sometime in the next two weeks. This release will include our first implementation of Pingbacks both to and from your bbPress installation. The first draft implementation of this is now in trunk.

Also to be included in the next release is an implementation of the pseudo cron feature from WordPress. This will allow plugin developers to schedule jobs in the future or on a regular basis. It is 100% compatible with the WordPress implementation, so the existing documentation is all you need to get started with using it.

To enable cron I’ve included the very new WP_Http class in BackPress. This new class is a robust HTTP fetcher which is meant to replace the Snoopy class in WordPress. This will allow all sorts of RESTFUL services to be utilised within bbPress plugins, like fetching data from other pages, embedding search APIs and even pulling data from WordPress via RSS or XML-RPC.

On the drawing board is the beginnings of an XML-RPC publishing interface. This will make it easier to use bbPress as a data store for more exotic clients like custom flash applications and XML-RPC desktop clients. It also opens the door to creating an iPhone app for bbPress much like the existing WordPress iPhone app.

An alpha version of bbPress’ new export/import format and tools has also landed in trunk thanks to our Google Summer of Code student Dan Larkin. You can read a little more about that at the BBXF website.

There will also be several fixes for bugs found by our courageous alpha testers.