Archive for the ‘WordPress News’ Category
by Jonathan Bailey on March 13th, 2013
With the 10-year anniversary of the first release of WordPress coming up on May 25 of this year, a lot of attention is already being paid to the reigning champion of the blogging platforms and both how it changed the Internet and how the Internet changed around it.
On one hand, it’s amazing to look at how an upstart fork of b2/cafelog, one that was created simply because Textpattern wasn’t being updated, came to be such a dominant force on the Web and launch a company, Automattic, that now employs some 150 people worldwide.
On the other hand, it’s easy to look at WordPress as a besieged king. An application and a service created in a world of desktops and blogs now living in a world of mobile devices and social media.
It’s obvious that WordPress has helped to shape the Web we’re in today. It’s used by millions of blogs large and small, including many of the most popular sites on the Web. However, the question remains, will WordPress and the WordPress platform be as important in the next ten years as it has been the previous?
It’s tough to say, but I agree with Matt Mullenweg that there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic.
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Categories: WordPress News
Tags: anniversary, blogging, Internet, plugins, sites, Social Media, social news, Themes, Tumblr, websites, wordpress, wordpress anniversary
by Jonathan Bailey on June 27th, 2012
I have been a WordPress user for over 7 years and I deeply love the platform, it’s developers and its users. WordPress currently powers over 16% of the entire Internet and the latest WordPress release, 3.4, has already been downloaded some 2.8 million times since it’s release barely two weeks ago.
WordPress isn’t going anywhere quickly but the fact remains that WordPress is vulnerable to the same tidal shifts that have affected other companies. After all, Yahoo! was once the runaway lead search engine and MySpace was by far the most popular social network.
Like MovableType before it, WordPress faces threats to its dominance both in the traditional sense, meaning other platforms that compete directly, the existential sense, meaning shifts to the Internet that could wipe out such platforms, and even from within in the form of forks and community splitting.
So what would a post-WP blogging world look like? Here are a few possible scenarios to consider and what they might mean for the bloggers working within them. Read More
Categories: Blog Software, WordPress News
by James Johnson on December 19th, 2011
The WordPress experts at WPMUDev.org have created a support and features system that is unparalleled in the WordPress environment. Customers to their platform receive hundreds of templates, plugins and support for Wordress, WordPress Multisite and BuddyPress.
As part of our holiday giveaway series WPMUDev has agreed to give away two 1-year licenses to their system for just 1% of the cost. That’s a $408 value for just $4.08!
So what do you receive for that price? How about 300+ WordPress plugins and WordPress themes, quality code, updates guaranteed, 24/7/365 WordPress Support and Manual, Videos and Webinars!
Because their experts in the field and intimately aware of WordPress coding standards the WPMUDev team also guarantee each plugin they create will work out of the box or they’ll give you your money back guaranteed.
You can see what they have to offer by visiting:Â premium.wpmudev.org
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Categories: WordPress News
by Franky Branckaute on July 11th, 2011
The colleagues over at The Next Web report that WordPress has hit the 50 million websites milestone. The open source software now is used on 14% of all sites on the internet, half of them being hosted by WordPress.com.
WordPress.com users now publish close to 3 million posts per week and more than 1 million pages. Around 4 million files have been uploaded weekly per week in 2011 already and on average more than 4 million comments are posted every week on the platform managed by Automattic.
Check out more WordPress stats here.
At the time of writing WordPress 3.2, which was released less than a week ago, had already been downloaded more than 1 million times.
Check the WordPress download counter for actual up to date numbers.
Categories: Linking, WordPress News
Tags: Statistics, wordpress, wordpress.com
by Darnell Clayton on June 15th, 2011
Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) has released a new feature that will please non-geek bloggers attempting to customize their sites.
Today we’re excited to bring you Custom Design, a powerful new tool that combines easy to use, code-free font selection from Typekit and a beautiful CSS editing interface with world-class support from our famous WordPress.com Happiness Engineers. [...]
The Font Editor provides a visual preview of your blog with over 50 gorgeous premium Typekit fonts—from foundries like Mark Simonson, exljbris, FontFont, and the League of Moveable Type—and allows you to easily modify the size and style of your fonts. (Official WordPress Blog) Read More
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: wordpress, wordpress.com
by Darnell Clayton on June 8th, 2011
Lovers of WordPress.com can finally allow readers to comment using their Facebook and Twitter credentials without having to install IntenseDebate.
As an important touch, we let you stay logged in to multiple services. This means you can stay logged in to Facebook for convenience, but still leave a comment through Twitter or your WordPress.com account. Just click whichever identity you’d like to use, and the selected one will be associated with your comment when it is published. You’re in control of your identity, as you should be. (Official WordPress.com Blog)
Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) is planning on porting this feature for self hosted blogs via JetPack, which should help fill a gap for bloggers who want social commenting without having to embrace third party options like Disqus or Facebook.
Currently there is no option to post a comment using your Google account, although the team may consider the search engine giant in the not so distant future (depending upon demand of course).
For those of you powering your blogs via WordPress.com, have you activated social commenting upon your sites? Also what other services (aside from Google) would you like to see added?
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: Facebook, twitter, wordpress
by Darnell Clayton on June 7th, 2011
VaultPress (a real time backup and security service by Automattic) has released a new feature that will alert self hosting WordPress fans if their site is experiencing any problems staying online.
We’ve just enabled a new feature for all VaultPress customers that will now automatically notify you via email when we detect a connection error between VaultPress and your site. [...]
If VaultPress is unable to contact your site for five consecutive hours, we’ll send an initial alert email to you. We’ll send additional follow-up alerts to you and then to our concierge support team so we can work with you to make sure your site is protected. (Official VaultPress Blog) Read More
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: vaultpress, wordpress
by Darnell Clayton on May 19th, 2011
After many months of waiting, WordPress has finally blessed iOS fans with features that have long been enjoyed by Android, Nokia and Blackberry fans.
While the inclusion of WP.com stats will please data geeks (which requires JetPack or the WP.com Stats plugin), photo bloggers will love quick photo which is even easier than Tumblr’s iPhone app.
As you launch the app, you’ll notice there’s now a button in the bottom of your blogs list. Tap it to launch the camera and take a picture, when you’re satisfied you can add a title or a description (if you want, both are optional), and boom — you’re done! (WordPress for iOS)
It takes only 4 quick taps (from launch to publish) to send a photo to your blog compared to Tumblr’s 6 taps (7 if you start within the dashboard).
For those of you with WordPress Tumblogs, you will be glad to hear that the team is also planning on supporting post formats in the future, although there is no time table as when that will appear (as WordPress has to implement a core patch in order correctly assign the image post format).
Hopefully WordPress will consider other media formats such as video, quotes and audio files (note: perhaps changing between them by sliding the “quick photo” button to the side?), as their mobile apps could help WordPress regain some lost ground against Tumblr.
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: iOS, iPad, iphone, wordpress
by Darnell Clayton on May 17th, 2011
WordPress.com has recently passed 20 million blogs, a notable milestone which will hopefully kill off rumors that regarding the death of blogs (due to the popularity of social networks like Facebook and Twitter).
WordPress.com has also jumped a spot upon Quantcast top million rankings as the blog service has overtaken AOL.com for the 18th spot.
Surprisingly WP.com seems to be within striking distance of Bing.com (who currently occupies the 17th spot), although WordPress.com has a long ways to go before they can catch up to Blogger (who proudly sits at 13).
Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) has continued to release a slew of new features in order to attract new users (such as Writer Helper and premium themes) and it will be interesting to see how long it takes for WP.com to reach 40 million hosted blogs.
Note: With competition heating up from services like Tumblr, what features or services do you think WP.com should add in order to effectively compete in the micro blogging craze that has swept the web?
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: wordpress
by Darnell Clayton on May 12th, 2011
The first beta of WordPress 3.2 is out, which promises to not only speed things for your blog (provided that you’re not using IE6), but also a slight redesign of the admin area.
However one of the biggest changes (at least for non-geeks) is the fact that WordPress is finally embracing a simpler posting interface.
Distraction-free Writing. The visual editor’s full-screen composing experience has gotten a major overhaul, and is now available from HTML mode, too. More than ever, WordPress allows you to focus on what matters most — your content. (WordPress News)
Note: Emphasis theirs.
Along with Writing Helper, the new interface should help reduce the friction when it comes to creating a post, as well as appease fans of rival services (like Posterous and Tumblr) who desire simplicity without sacrificing on power.
Fans can test the beta by installing the WordPress Beta Tester plugin, although make sure you use a test blog or site (lest your break a few plugins or your theme in front of your readers).
Note: If you come across any bugs while beta testing WordPress 3.2, feel free to report it in the alpha/beta forum.
Categories: WordPress News
Tags: wordpress
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