Today WordPress.com announced support for Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), Google’s open source project to improve the experience of the mobile web for publishers. When visitors arrive to a WordPress.com site via a mobile search, posts will load faster than ever before. Each post is dynamically generated according to the AMP spec, with /amp/ added to…
Automattic’s team of theme developers announced the release of Components today along with a suite of themes that extend the popular Underscores starter theme for specific use cases. These include a classic blog, modern blog, portfolio, magazine, and business theme. The new Components website lets theme authors download a theme that includes reusable components tailored…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I discuss the latest news in the WordPress ecosystem. On the first episode of 2016, I rant about the conspiracy theorists who believe Automattic owns and controls the WordPress project. I try to set the record straight and explain why it’s not the case. Later in…
Between posts and comments, WordPress.com is an enormous hub of activity. The service recently published its 2015 year in review and the numbers are staggering. Last year, users published 660M posts that generated more than 655M comments. The review looks back at posts that went viral, books published by authors, and coverage of world…
In 2014, we wrote about the trend of more people receiving commit access to WordPress core. Fast forward to the beginning of 2016 and a total of 35 people can commit code to the core of WordPress. Helen Hou-Sandí, WordPress Lead Developer, published the stat on Twitter and notes that 22 out of the 35…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I wrap up our year in review. We look back at the biggest stories from July-December of this year. Thank you to everyone who listened to the show throughout 2015. Marcus and I plan to expand beyond WordPress in 2016 to discuss mental health, distributed worker…
Automattic announced today that its WordAds advertising network is now available to self-hosted WordPress sites via Jetpack and the new AdControl plugin. WordAds, which bears a name confusingly similar to Google’s AdWords, delivers all the advertising seen on WordPress.com’s free sites. (Ad display on VIP or upgraded sites is opt-in.) Self-hosted WordPress site owners who…
Today Automattic announced that the WordPress.com desktop app is now open source and available on GitHub under the GPLv2 (or later). A Linux version joins the OS X and Windows apps that were released at the end of November and early December, making desktop publishing accessible to users on all major operating systems. The apps…
Last week Automattic unveiled Project Calypso, a brand new architecture for WordPress.com and a Mac app that mirrors the experience on desktop. The overhaul was nearly two years in the making, a risky bet for Automattic but one that shows a glimpse of what the future of WordPress could be. The new JavaScript and REST…
In the last two years, Automattic has made significant improvements to WordPress.com and Jetpack. From managing plugins, themes, and other updates to New Dash and a revamped post editor. The individual changes represent iteration but when seen as a whole, show off an entirely new WordPress.com. Automattic has announced that the improvements its made in…
This post was contributed by Tom J Nowell. Tom is a VIP Wrangler at WordPress.com VIP, lead of the WP The Right Way project, blogger, and community moderator at WordPress Stack Exchange. Tom will be speaking at WordCamp New York later this month on escaping and security. This is a story about my job as…
In this week’s episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I review WordPress 4.3. We discuss the Kim Parsell memorial scholarship and the events that led to its creation. We also discuss Nick Haskins’ rebrand of Lasso. Last but not least, we spread the news that Automattic is hiring. Stories Discussed: WordPress 4.3 “Billie” Named…
First reported by Domain Name Wire, Automattic has won their Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) case against Chris Pearson. UDRP requests are a process established by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for the resolution of disputes regarding the registration of internet domain names. Automattic Wins Thesis.com According to findings by the…
VideoPress, Automattic’s video hosting service, has undergone a complete overhaul. The video player is now responsive and adjusts well to mobile devices. Videos can be embedded anywhere and are easier to share, thanks to permalinks. There’s also a couple of neat options for sharing videos. Similar to YouTube, you can select a time stamp where…
Automattic is celebrating its 10th year in business this week. WordPress.com opened its doors in the summer of 2005 and is now closing in on a globally distributed team of 400 employees. Against all odds, CEO Matt Mullenweg, a college dropout with no initial startup funding, built a company that is now valued at $1.2…