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Automattic Raises $160 Million in Venture Funding

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May 5, 2014

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It’s confirmed, Automattic has officially hit the billion dollar mark! The company just raised $160 million in venture funding, placing its new value at $1.16 billion. A blog post by Matt Mullenweg reported that the financing round was led by Deven Parekh of Insight Ventures, with other investors including Chris Sacca, Endurance, Tiger, and Iconiq. Mullenweg indicated that several other investors expressed a high-level of interest, but he focused on finding the best partners. The new funding is further validation of Automattic’s future plans for growth. Mullenweg said: This is obviously a lot of money, especially considering everything we’ve done so far has been built on […]

Photoblogging Made Easier with Postbot

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April 23, 2014

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Photos are an important part of the WordPress.com blogging experience. They can illustrate, emphasize, and sometimes even narrate the stories we want to tell. Photos provide an artistic element to millions of WordPress blogs. Some blogs are even centered entirely around photographs, rather than text. These are called photoblogs. Whatever your interest, it’s likely that you can find a photoblog that is captivating to you. If you’re a blogger using WordPress.com then it’s likely you’ve gone through the process of individually uploading and scheduling photos for your blog. To help facilitate this process, Automattic has developed a favorable panacea—Postbot. This application enables […]

WordPress 3.9 Is Now Available

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April 16, 2014

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The whopping 267 contributors to WordPress 3.9 have been working hard since Beta 1 was announced on March 11. All the creases have now been ironed out and the much-anticipated release date has arrived! Matt Mullenweg just announced the release of WordPress 3.9, and there’s a slew of new updates to enjoy: Visual editor has been updated to improve speed, accessibility, and mobile support. New image-editing abilities while editing posts. A new drag and drop features allows you to simply drag and drop images in the editor. Gallery previews display a stunning grid of images in the editor. New audio and […]

An Overview of this Week’s Security Updates

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April 11, 2014

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It’s been a big week for WordPress security. There have been several important security updates this week; including one that arose out of rather unnerving circumstances. These updates make the WordPress space more secure, and participate (more broadly) in the ongoing battle for internet security. Here’s an overview of this week’s security updates: OpenSSL 1.0.1g  Monday, April 7 The week started in a state of panic when the infamous heartbleed bug was announced to the public. A computer security bug (aka heartbleed) has been targeting a security flaw in a widely-adopted security practice for over 2 years. Heartbleed is unique […]

Automattic’s Newest Addition

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April 10, 2014

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Longreads provides a breath of fresh air for readers, acting as a centralized source for quality-content stories on the web. For 5 years, Longreads has cultivated a strong community of writers, readers, and publishers. It has provided a global haven for publishers and writers to share in-depth stories, naturally establishing itself as trusted source for stories of 1500 characters and longer. Yesterday, Automattic announced their acquisition of Longreads. A practical reason for the acquisition could be the complementary nature of Automattic (and WordPress.com) and Longreads. In a recent blog post, founder of Longreads Mark Armstrong discussed his deep respect for the principles […]

3.8.2 Security Update is Now Available

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April 9, 2014

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WordPress has reached milestone 3.8.2. Yesterday, Andrew Nacin announced the security release—urging users to update their sites right away. The update requires urgency as it addresses substantial security concerns that have been reported to the WordPress security team over the past few months. One security concern that 3.8.2 addresses is site vulnerability to forgery of authentication cookies. The fallacy, identified and resolved Jon Cave, was that attackers could potentially obtain access to WordPress sites by forging authentication cookies. Another change 3.8.2 has provided is new privilege-setting abilities. You can now prevent “Contributors” from publishing unwanted posts. In the announcement, Nacin went […]

Dictator: Configuring WordPress One State at a Time

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April 3, 2014

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On March 31, Daniel Bachhuber announced the release of Dictator. Dictator aims to alleviate the difficulties of website configuration by providing users with the ability to easily configure WordPress to YAML state files. This has been cultivated through the way that Dictator understands WordPress as states. Bachhuber breaks down exactly what states are in the announcement: States are collections of regions. Each state file has the state declaration along with tracked configuration details for each region. Regions have a defined schema which produces the translation between the human-readable YAML file and how WordPress stores state in the database. Additionally, Dictator provides users with the […]

AppPresser Represents WordPress at Macworld/iWorld

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March 31, 2014

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Over the weekend, March 27-29, Macworld/iWorld was hosted at Moscone Center in Northern San Francisco, California. Among the Mac-centric festivities was the first-ever 6 About to Break competition. The competition aimed to spotlight the most innovative apps, accessories, software, and utilities uniquely positioned to breakout in the Apple marketplace. 1 out of 5 websites are powered by WordPress. With @apppresser you can easily turn your website into an app #6toBreak #Macworld2014 — Macworld/iWorld (@MacworldExpo) March 28, 2014 Among the 6 finalists was AppPresser—a  plugin that allows you to build a mobile app from the ground up using only WordPress. On the first day of […]

The Risks of Downloading Plugins from Unofficial Sites

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March 28, 2014

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Yesterday, a post by Denis Sinegubko addressed the dangers of downloading plugins from unofficial sites. Sinegubko explained how “patched” malicious premium plugins work, what they do, and how some websites build their entire business around these stolen plugins. There are people that—due to lack of knowledge—download free plugins from untrusted sites. But, more often than not, people download pirated software to avoid paying the premium costs. While this, quite obviously, leaves them with the benefit of a free premium plugin, their site is nonetheless left vulnerable to a variety of attacks. Sinegubko said: Why would someone spend their time to steal […]

WP Curve’s Alex McClafferty Interviewed on Fox Tech Take

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March 27, 2014

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Clayton Morris of Fox Tech Take started out this segment—titled WP Curve takes WordPress to the next level—by asking his viewers this: What percentage of the web do you think is run on WordPress? Ding ding ding! Torque readers all know the answer to this one. As WP Curve‘s Alex McClafferty confirmed, the answer is: over 20% of the entire internet. Strangely, this doesn’t seem to be common knowledge outside of the WordPress ecosystem. In response to the revelation, Clayton Morris exclaimed: So that’s a great business opportunity! It is indeed. As Alex explained in the interview, WordPress has a thriving ecosystem that continues to grow […]

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