New plugins Contact Form with a Meeting Scheduler is an inviting contact form with built-in appointment dcheduler and video meetings. Updated plugins BackWPup allows you to backup your WordPress database, files, and more. jQuery Vertical Accordion Menu creates vertical accordion menus from any WordPress custom menu.

SchipulCon 2011, a web marketing conference, hosted a very thought-provoking discussion between WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and Drupal founder Dries Buytaert. Despite some technical issues, the founders of platforms often thought of as rivals had some interesting thoughts to share about competition and community in the open source world. You can see the video below, and there are some choice quotes available at Schipul’s coverage of the event.

Exhibition is a perfect theme for any artist to showcase their portfolio and blog about their work. Journal is a simple, attractive, one column theme that would suit a diary or journal site. Terminal features multiple layouts, a custom Twitter widget, and theme options.

New plugins Urtak allows you to gather your users’ opinions by enabling them to ask and answer questions about your content. Watu allows you to create exams with unlimited questions and answers, and define grades based on collected points. Widgets in Columns allows you to show your widgets in desired columns and rows. Updated plugins BuddyPress lets users register on your site and start creating profiles, posting messages, making connections, creating and interacting in groups and much more. It’s a social network in a box. Viper’s Video Quicktags allows you to simply click one of the new buttons that this plugin adds to the write screen (rich editor included) and then paste the URL that the video is located at into the prompt box. You can fully configure how the videos are displayed and much more.

Danco is a blue and beige three-column theme. Setrage is a brown one-column theme. Slopes is wonderful for blogs or websites related to winter sports, photography, sports events, outdoor pursuits, etc. Vintage has a vintage look combining textures and complementary colors.

WordPress 3.3 Beta 1 has been released. While this release isn’t ready for live usage yet, it’s time for plugin and theme developers to test their products against the upcoming 3.3 release, and time for you curious folks with test installations to get a sneak peek at what’s new. Along with a few miscellaneous fixes, WordPress 3.3 adds a new media uploader, an improved admin bar, and fancy fly-out menus in the Dashboard. Users of this first beta release are encouraged to report any bugs that they find and visit the support forums for help as necessary.

New plugins Custom Field Suite allows you to create and manage groups of custom fields. Q2W3 Post Order lets you manipulate the order in which posts are displayed. Updated plugins Bad Behavior complements other link spam solutions by acting as a gatekeeper, preventing spammers from ever delivering their junk, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place. Fast Secure Contact Form lets your visitors send you a quick e-mail message and blocks all common spammer tactics. Additionally, the plugin has a multi-form feature, optional extra fields, and an option to redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent. Gravatar Signup Encouragement encourages users without a Gravatar to make one. Slick Social Share Buttons allows you to add Facebook, Twitter, Google +1, Digg, Google Buzz, Linkedin, and Stumbledupon social media buttons in a floating or slide out tab.

WordPress was first released over 8 years ago, and the latest version has been downloaded over 9 million times. With that number growing dramatically every release, hundreds (if not thousands) of new users are being introduced to WordPress every day. I started using WordPress with 1.2, just two days before 1.2.1 was released, on MacManX.com. Of course, I moved that over to WordPress.com not too long ago, but I still have several other self-hosted blogs running on 3.2.1. I think it’s safe to say that without WordPress 1.2, I wouldn’t be here today. What was the very first version of WordPress that you ever used? We’d love to know! And, of course, WordPress.com counts too.