Doc Pop’s News Drop: kerfuffle dot blog

Doc’s WordPress News Drop is a weekly report on the most pressing WordPress news. When the news drops, I will pick it up and deliver it right to you.

This week we talk about how some folks were disappointed not to get a chance to bid on their .blog domain names. We also talk about WordCamp US.

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Back in May, Automattic had announced that they had acquired the .blog top level domain name and would soon start offering it to consumers via the website get.blog. Rather than straight up auctioning all of the domain names, they used a system were applicants paid $220 to apply for a domain. If no know one else applies for a domian you get it; if there are multiple applications then the domain will go to auction.

Over on his blog, Chris Schidle wrote about his experience trying to get chris.blog, but was frustrated to find out that .blog refunded his application fee without giving him a chance to even bid on the domain he applied for. It’s likely this domain was taken by an Automattic employee or some mistake was made, but it sounds like he’s not alone as a few other stories have come out this week by people who lost their .blog domain without having a chance to bid on it.

WordCamp US has announced that Nashville Tennessee will be the host city for the next two WordCamp US events (taking place in late 2017 and 2018). I grew up in Nashville and I’m crazy excited for these WordCamps.

Speaking of WordCamp US, we are just a few weeks away from the WCUS 2016 in Philly. The entire Torque team will be there, so be sure to catch us. We’ll be bringing some awesome new Torque t-shirts, some pins, and a small run of Torque Toons books. Torque Toons are the weekly WordPress comics that I make for TorqueMag.io. We have about a year’s worth of these toons now, so it seemed like a good chance to compile them into a booklet. Here’s a peak at the cover.

That’s it for this week, we’ll see you next monday for more WordPress news.