What you need to know about Wordpress....

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WordCamp, Utah
September 27, 2008.
Matt Mullenweg, one of the founding developers of WordPress was the keynote speaker at
Saturday's WordCamp event in Provo, Utah. His speech included a summary of WordPress
developments this year and included a large list of what's next for the fast-growing, free blogging
service.
The WordPress blogging service started with only 5 developers and 2 blogs. In the beginning the
developers focused on building a system for friends who were not technical in order to help them
join the web community. The goal was to develop something that was both simple and user
friendly. Currently WordPress.com has about 4 million new posts and 6.5 billion page views per
month. WordPress has had a strong development schedule which has continued to accelerate.
WordPress 2008 Year-in-Review
In 2007 there were 1090 commits made and so far in 2008 there are already 2840. WordPress
has made 11 releases in the last year alone which is much higher than normal. The WordPress
team also just added 3 new core developers increasing the development team back to five full
time members. The upcoming WordPress 2.7 release is currently scheduled for November 2008.
In the year 2007 there were 2,849,349 downloads of WordPress tracked and in 2008 they have
already surpassed 11 million downloads. This number does not include the number of downloads
and installs from hosting companies which would significantly increase that number.
Combating Blog Spam
Over 5 billion spams were caught in the last year with 99.925% accuracy using the WordPress
Akismet plugin. This shows that Akismet is staying very high on accuracy. There is a new type of
spam that is now getting through due to spammers being very clever. They are starting to copy
comments on other posts and change the URL referenced to gain a free link. Spammers are also
paying people to go in and leave relevant comments and spam you with their links in them. The
most common is spammers leaving kind remarks and compliments and having the webmaster
approve the messages due to them feeling flattered by the positive remarks.
WordPress Mobility
Due to the website friendly nature of the iPhone and the success of the iPhone application (over
100k installs) WP is considering the creation of some new apps for other platforms as well

2. including the blackberry and other mobile handsets.
WordPress Plugins
WordPress plans on improving their observance of plugin stats. Mullenweg mentioned there is a
plan to watch the bottom 1000 plugins to find the new and upcoming trends. It is easier to see
what is gaining fast popularity when monitoring the tail end of the plugins. He also mentioned the
use of intelligent tails or the monitoring of the use of plugins and packages in order to gain
valuable intelligence from the free market. Currently there are a huge number of features brought
in via plugins. He mentions a few examples such as one that does real estate management and
another that is an independent record label system.
Thoughts on PHP5
Matt Mullenweg predicted that PHP5 would fail early on due to its lack of major changes. He was
wrong and fully admits it. PHP5 is now being used to host WordPress in 79% of WordPress
installs. This means that when PHP4 usage falls below 10% or so they will pull the trigger and
move ongoing development and support to PHP5 only. This will allow them to speed up and
optimize the WP system.
The Future of WordPress - WordPress 2.7 Live Demo
Included during his speech was a live demo of WordPress 2.7. Version 2.7 is expected to be
released sometime during November of 2008 and currently has 13,000 blogs testing it.
One of the key features of 2.7 will include a dashboard redesign. Mullenweg began by apologizing
for a lack of tests regarding usability with a previous dashboard redesign. This time there is much
more focus on ensuring that there won't be issues such as the large number of user complaints
which came with the removal of the edit feature in comments.
Version 2.7 also introduces a number of major changes with one of the largest being the
dashboard navigation being moved to the left hand side. This new navigation has expandable
categories that can be viewed in real time when you click them (i.e. no waiting for the page to
reload etc.) The right side of the default dashboard setup has a quick blog post and the center
features an inbox. The dashboard still has stats and other dashboard features WordPress blog
owners will be familiar with. The whole dashboard has been built in ajax which allows changes to
be made on the fly. Users will therefore be able to, for example, drag a section in between
columns to move stuff over and around as well as the ability to hide or show specific sections.
Other key changes include:
A new sticky posts feature which will allow bloggers to keep important or interesting posts at the
top of their blog's homepage.
An insert media button has been added which allows for one click uploading of pictures, video,
audio, etc. WordPress will automatically know what to do with the media uploads and will set them
up appropriately.

3. Inline editing - you can see your actual blog and quickly edit tags, categories etc, or mass edit an
entire batch of posts at once to add new tags etc.
Comments API - most commonly people edit comments and check stats, now you can moderate,
approve, delete etc. and reply to comments via your mobile phone as well as the dashboard.
Comments can now be threaded (you can enable it and have limits set etc.) which allows you to
have conversations without the current hacks that people do to keep a conversation linear.
Keyboard Shortcuts introduced for moderating comments
Automatic plugin installation and upgrades via the browser. This includes the ability to search,
upload, upgrade, install, and manage plugins from within the dashboard. It will also allow for one
click installs for plugins that are in the WordPress.org library. Mullenweg also mentioned a goal of
including this same feature for themes in the future (i.e. search, install, upgrade etc. all with a
simple, intuitive interface).
Upgrades - one click installers built into the WordPress.org website.
Security is an increasingly important aspect of WordPress development. Currently there are over
20 US government entities using WP including: Air Force, Army CIA, Coast Guard, Department of
Energy, Homeland Security, State Treasury, DEA, Marine Corps, FBI, National Security Agency,
Navy, National Reconnaissance Agency, Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and the Defense
Intelligence Agency.
Mullenweg also discussed what he considers to be upcoming blogging trends. The use of media,
namely photo galleries and videos are going to become more main-stream in blogs. Additionally
this includes bloggers making posts that can just be a comment, a video or some small item on its
own, and the ability to include the media content inline with your post. This will allow WordPress
become a more complete hub of information.
He continued to discuss WordPress as a hub noting that people's blogs will become their best
possible social profile and they intend to make it so when you post something on another social
site such as Twitter or YouTube it will work on WordPress. Of important note there he mentioned
that your data will live on your blog and in your database so you don't have to worry if the other
site goes down, you will still have all the data and stay in control. This hub system is a long term
goal of their team.
BackPress is another system he discussed which will help show the underlying framework for WP
and Theme Press, their user systems, internationalization, security systems, etc. making it easier
for developers to make use of the WordPress base.
Another exciting development in the works is BuddyPress. This will allow users to have take a
group such as a Boy Scout, church, or team and build a small "Facebook in a box" type of system
in which you can have a full set of plugins and extensions that build a small social network with
activities, profiles, interests, photos, groups etc. - all in a small private group. BuddyPress will
allow small groups the ability to develop their own public or private social-networking site.
Mullenweg also discussed an improved feedback loop - trying to incorporate user feedback and

4. testing earlier in the process of making updates. A core goal with this is the desire to incorporate
more "normal" people in the process of development.
Mullenweg also mentioned how he feels that this is the year of themes. While everything used to
be plugin driven, themes are really taking off with new automatic plugins built into them. They are
being used for things such as a monotone theme which can make your site change the
backgrounds to be complimentary to the photos you are updating.
What Else if Coming Up for WordPress?
Launching sometime in the near future will be WordPress.tv which will be a video site with
screencasts that will show WordCamp videos including key speakers. This service will be
searchable, include tags, and will also include HD video content.
Some Interesting WordPress Statistics
WordPress Usage Statistics:
5,671,649 WordPress.org Blogs - also includes WordPress.mu (multi-user version that hosts
multiple blogs)
4,831,429 blogs on the system have run updates are now using the most up to date version.
WordPress Plugins
The average WordPress blog has 4.96 active plugins per blog.
Some Popular WordPress Plugins
Some of the currently most popular plugins are:
1. Akismet (anti-spam)
2. all-in-one-seo-pack
3. google-sitemap-generator
4. nextgen-gallery
5. stats
6. wp-db-backup
7. wp-cache
8. WP Automatic Upgrade
9. wp-polls
10. cforms (contact forms)
Ed Grier is an author for www.bestofthewebhosts.com - a web hosting news site with news,
reviews, and tools for the webmaster.
Article Source:

5. http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ed_Grier
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