Enjoy watching Top Chef, Project Runway, or The Apprentice? Love WordPress? We’ve got just the show for you. Episode 1 On November 8, 2013, “hopeful motivator” Matt Medeiros—of Matt Report and Slocum Design Studio—produced the first episode of Matt Report: WordPress Startup Challenge. Matt invited a cast of early-stage WordPress startups to pitch their new product or service to a panel of WordPress entrepreneurs. Judges It was an exciting first episode, featuring the wise words of 3 seasoned WordPress judges—Syed Balkhi, the founder of WPBeginner, Eric Hamm of CobaltApps, and Bill Erickson, a WordPress Engineer. Contestants The 4 contestants for the […]
Nervous About Automatic Updates?
There has been some controversy surrounding the inclusion of automatic updates in WordPress 3.7. The biggest question for site owners has been: What if the updates break my site? Well, Andrew Nacin and the WordPress.org team have put together a plugin called Background Update Tester that tests your site for this possibility. After you install the plugin, you can go to Dashboard -> Update Tester and a test will automatically be run, checking your site for its computability with 3.7 updates. It will test the largest blocks to automatic updates like version control, secure communication with WordPress.org, FTP credentials, and that […]
Fastest Release to Reach Half a Million
As lead developer Andrew Nacin just pointed out via Twitter, there were 592,948 downloads of WordPress 3.7 in just 24 hours. This is the fastest release in the history of WordPress to reach half a million. Click here to see a counter showing how quickly the version is being downloaded—in real time. Pretty exciting, don’t you think?
Welcome “Basie” WordPress 3.7
Version 3.7 of WordPress is now available for download! Named “Basie,” in honor of jazz musician Count Basie, the newest version of WordPress includes the following: 1. Automatic updates 2. Stronger password recommendations 3. Better global support Led by Andrew Nacin, and backed up by Dion Hulse and Jon Cave, this is the first release to use the new plugin-first development process. Version 3.8 , due in December, will continue using this plugin-first development approach. Learn more about the process here. We’re excited to hear what you think of 3.7. Who wants to share their thoughts first?
2nd Release Candidate of WordPress 3.7 Available for Testing
In a WordPress.org blog post dated October 23 (tomorrow?), Andrew Nacin announced that the second release candidate of WordPress 3.7 is now available for testing. Who’s game? People already testing 3.7 will be automatically updated to RC2, which is convenient. And for those of you who would like to start testing now, you can try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin, or download the the zip of release candidate from Nacin’s post. He asks that testers please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums to report bugs. You’ll also be able to see any known issues here. For more on […]
Interview with Vladimir Prelovac of ManageWP.org
Community-powered WordPress news aggregation site ManageWP.org has been in action for one week and people are loving it! Upon first hearing about the project in mid-August, I was very interested in the idea and wanted to learn more. I signed up right away to be a beta tester, but for some reason I didn’t get an email back. So I wrote about the news of ManageWP having an aggregation site in the works, without yet having the chance to test it. Instead, I focused on finding out how people were currently organizing and consuming their WordPress news on their own, without […]
Media Temple Acquired by GoDaddy
In its sixth acquisition in just over a year, GoDaddy has purchased Media Temple for an undisclosed amount. Media Temple is a smaller, LA based hosting company with a much stronger reputation among professional developers and designers. As GoDaddy’s Chief Executive Blake Irving explained in a phone interview with VentureBeat, “We have not done a great job with that customer segment.” And he’s right. Developers and designers generally don’t use GoDaddy. Known more as the generic giant of web hosting—and with a questionable marketing history to boot—it will be interesting to see how Irving, and GoDaddy, plan to further attempt to attract a more […]
Ghost is Among Us, Now What?
A few months ago, John O’Nolan surprised the WordPress world with his idea of creating a whole new blogging platform called Ghost. The theory in his mind was that the WordPress ecosystem had spent too much time focusing on turning WordPress into a CMS, and had lost touch with its origins in blogging. Though his ideas were echoed positively by many in the community, a few saw the idea behind Ghost as a potential rival to WordPress. Most of the higher end enterprise clients who use WordPress still maintain it as part of their blogging ecosystems. I will try my best […]
Cloudup Acquired by Automattic
Automattic has acquired Cloudup, a file-sharing service whose mission includes the desire to make media sharing “simple and beautiful.” This acquisition means two exciting changes for WordPress users: 1) The not-so-ideal Media Library is going to be vastly improved, and 2) Multiple people will be able to work within a post at the same time. From an editor’s perspective, these are two major changes that should make the publishing experience on WordPress that much more pleasant and efficient. I can’t wait! With Cloudup’s technology soon enabling multiple parties to edit at the same time, WordPress publishing can be taken to the […]
The End of WP App Store
WordPress entrepreneur Brad Touesnard announced on his blog today that he has shut down his premium plugin marketplace project, WP App Store, which has been in the works for roughly two years. I had the chance to chat with Touesnard about his decision, and he explained that it was “time to kind of clean house.” The last change made to WP App Store was over two months ago, and with no plans for future changes, the project was stagnating—neither growing nor evolving. On finally making the decision to pull the plug, Touesnard confides that the choice wasn’t based on numbers, […]
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