Pressed Words » Users

Gravatar Now Supports Transparent Images

Austin Matzko — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:58:52 +0000

Since Automattic took over Gravatar.com, one thing users have repeatedly asked for is to be able to have transparent Gravatars. Now that feature has returned.

Yahoo! Answers Philippines Uses WordPress

Austin Matzko — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:11:05 +0000

… as WordPress Philippines points out. Oddly enough, Yahoo!’s blog is using WordPress 2.3.1, even though it started in May and WordPress 2.5 was released in March.

Wonkette Switches to WordPress

Austin Matzko — Sat, 31 May 2008 12:44:27 +0000

The popular political gossip site Wonkette has switched from using Movable Type to WordPress to power its site.

Who’s Using WordPress 5 Years Later

Austin Matzko — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:35:23 +0000

In honor of WordPress’s fifth birthday, I’ve surveyed about 6000 blogs to see how many are running WordPress. This is the same group that I queried back in January, when I created a spider that harvested the blogs from all of Technorati’s main blogging categories.

CMS	Count	Percentage
WordPress	2178	34.3
Unknown	1523	23.98
Blogger	1207	19.01
Typepad	340	5.35
Movable Type	338	5.32
WordPress.com	136	2.14

As you can see, WordPress dominates the known blogging platform world. From the numbers below, it looks as though most active WordPress users are keeping updated.

Health.com Switches to WordPress

Austin Matzko — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:37:34 +0000

Today Health.com switched its Healthy Eating, Healthy Living, and Poked & Prodded blogs to WordPress from Movable Type, hosted on Automattic’s WordPress.com VIP service.

Adobe on WordPress vs. Movable Type

Austin Matzko — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:57:27 +0000

Aaron Campbell points out that the Adobe Linux Flash blog seems to be making a snide comment about Movable Type.

Sara Rosso Interviews Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp Milan

Austin Matzko — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:57:03 +0000

I thought the most interesting question in this interview was Rosso’s asking Mullenweg to follow up on his comment during the WordCamp Milan Q&A about starting a WordPress “ninja” forum. During the Q&A, Mullenweg had said that he wanted the WordPress ninjas to provide free support help to other users. Here, he says that he wants to model it after the Mac store “Genius Bar.” Unfortunately, Rosso doesn’t follow up and ask how this can be implemented, and how it will be different from the existing WordPress.org support forums.

The salient difference between the “Genius Bar” and the proposed “Ninja” forum is that the “geniuses” are being paid. Almost two years ago, the WordPress hackers list discussed the issue of getting more code-savvy folks to help in the forums, and not much has changed (although there is an “advanced” section of the forums now). As some of the hackers pointed out, expert coders often find the “noise ratio” frustrating. But even assuming the signal-to-noise issue is eliminated, what will make the “ninja” forum encourage more expert help than does the current advanced forum? I’m looking forward to seeing what Mullenweg has in mind.

Magnify Plugin for WordPress

Austin Matzko — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:09:12 +0000

Magnify.net has supposedly developed a plugin for WordPress (and Movable Type) to allow bloggers to manage videos from their blog’s administrative interface. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a link to download the plugin, even after registering an account at Magnify.net. From the video here, it sounds like the WordPress version of the plugin may not even exist yet.

UPDATE: Alison points out in the comments that you can now download the Magnify manager here.

Interview with Matt Mullenweg

Austin Matzko — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:36:23 +0000

Phil Leigh interviews lead WordPress developer Matt Mullenweg in a short podcast. Leigh for the most part asks the usual questions: how Mullenweg got started with WordPress, Automattic’s funding, etc. However, the response to one question stood out to me: asked about the future of blogging, Mullenweg said he thought that the nature of blog “posts” would become more flexible. Leigh took this to mean that “video and audio blogging will gain significance along with podcasting,” but I think Mullenweg’s answer suggested more that he sees blogs as—and this is my terminology, not his—nodes in an distributed social network. Hopefully this will mean that Mullenweg and Automattic will support social networking projects that integrate WordPress.

Vidoop Hires Chris Messina and Will Norris

Austin Matzko — Wed, 14 May 2008 12:51:23 +0000

Chris Messina and Will Norris, leaders of the DiSo project, have been hired by Vidoop to continue their work on behalf of that company. This is good news for DiSo, because now these men have financial backing for continuing their work. It’s also good news for users of WordPress, because DiSo and related open, distributed social networking projects offer rich potential for social networking, and WordPress is a core part of that future.