WordPress 2.7 at WordPress.com
December 5, 2008
The 2.7 features are now here at WordPress.com (where this blog is hosted, despite it’s .org URI). My reaction is mainly positive:
- The transition time was announced in advance. In the past, some WordPress.com bloggers have felt ambushed by new features, especially if they didn’t like the change.
- I didn’t like some of the previous changes, particularly categories and tags being pushed “below the fold” so that I had to scroll down to them on the post screen. 2.7 restores them almost to their rightful place, near the top and alongside the post itself.
- 2.7 also allows me to customize my admin interface by dragging boxes around. And yes, I have already dragged the categories and tags boxes even higher.
My main dislike so far is that WordPress.com seems very slow at the moment. I expect this to pass: there are probably a lot of people trying the new features, and there may be some back-end tuning that will speed up the new regime.
There are some other changes to which I am indifferent. In particular, corners seem rounder. (Hey, should I include a screenshot? It’s probably not necessary, since if you’ve read this far, you’re probably on WordPress.com yourself, or able to get a release candidate 2.7 for your self-hosted WordPress blog.)
So a thumb up from me on the WordPress 2.7 changes at WordPress.com. Rather, I should say at the “write new post” screen. One thing I would like is a small and simple Publish button (not in a box that includes things like post status, just a publish buttom).
Avatars, Blavatars, and Gravatars
December 2, 2008
Blavatars? Blog + avatars, explained Heather earlier today on the WordPress.com blog. I was confused, because a WordPress.com user can already have an avatar: an image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on avatar enabled sites.
There’s no explanation of the differences between an avatar (as already available at WordPress.com) and blavatar (as announced today). I think that there are two main differences. First, an avatar is associated with a user, while a blavatar is associated with a blog. A WordPress.com user can have many blogs.
Second, an avatar appears when you comment on a blog or when you post to the support forums. A blavatar provides the much-requested favicon, and also appears when you ping another blog.
If you’re wondering where gravatars fit in: a WordPress.com avatar is essentially a gravatar. The Gravatar web service was acquired by Automattic last year.
Freemium the 13th
November 13, 2008
If “we” had to throw away “our” jargon – blogosphere, Web 2.0, social media, and so on – and could keep one term, I would vote to save freemium. I like portmanteau words: wijard = widget + card, freemium = free + premium, etc.
Dries of Drupal, Acquia, and Mollom fame posted earlier today about freemium as used in his projects. His remarks on Mollom are particularly interesting.
We currently have more than 3000 active users that use Mollom for free. Say each user spends on average 15 minutes a week moderating his site’s content and reporting classification errors to Mollom. Mollom learns from this feedback and automatically adjusts its spam filters so that all other Mollom users benefit from it. At a rate of $10 USD/hour, we get $390,000 USD worth of value from free users a year — 3000 users x 15 minutes/week x 52 weeks/year x 10 USD/hour = $390,000 USD/year. If these numbers hold up, the value of a free Mollom user could be estimated at $130 USD/year. And that doesn’t include the marketing value they add.
Meanwhile, Chris of the Long Tail identified four different freemium models. One of these is the “feature limited” model, of which WordPress.com is an example. I pay to make this blog changingway.org (as well as changingway.wordpress.com). By the way, WordPress.com is an example of multiple free business models, not “only” of freemium.
The first comment on Chris’s post is by Ben Watson (no relation). “New platforms are often hard to learn, and you can ease rapid adoption by not putting all the bells and whistles on the free version” is a strong argument in favor of the “feature limited” model.
If there is a black belt in the art of freemium, it is worn by 37signals. Looking at the options for my Backpack account, I see a combination of the “feature limited” and “seat limited” freemium models. For example: my free account allows me 2 users, 5 pages, and no storage; a solo account would cost $7/month and give me 100 pages, a shareable calendar, and some file storage; and so on.
Long live freemium. I like, not only the word, but also what it stands for and what it gives me: good software at no charge; more features, if I am willing to pay; and something interesting to write about.
Clearspring Widgets at WordPress.com
October 16, 2008
The previous post provides an example of a Grooveshark music widget on this WordPress.com blog. It also notes that Clearspring’s widget platform is involved. How do I know that? Because the code generated by Grooveshark for WordPress.com includes the shortcode: clearspring_widget.
The existence of the clearspring_widget shortcode was news to me. It might also be news to whoever maintains the FAQ: What are the WordPress shortcodes?
If you’re interested enough in WordPress.com to have read this far, you’ll probably agree with me that this is news of the big and good variety. You might even forgive me for pointing out that Automattic seem to have taken the advice I offered Automattic 11 months ago: Make a wide variety of widgets available. Partnering with a trusted “widget broker” might be the best way to do this.
Having said that, I can’t claim to be breaking this news, given a post two months ago by Justin of Clearspring: when you post an ad-free Clearspring widget to a WordPress.com blog it will now show the entire widget inside of a blog post. But I didn’t see Justin’s post until I went looking for it this evening.
I certainly didn’t see the Clearspring shortcode mentioned over at WordPress.com, and I can’t find any reference to it in the official blog, in the FAQ, or in the forums. Guess I’ll mention it in the forums myself now.
By the way, other interesting Clearspring reading includes: their White Paper: What’s a Widget and Why is it Important? and the Wikipedia entry on Clearspring (which is where I found the logo at the top of this post).
Intense Debate Now Automattic
September 23, 2008
Automattic, the firm behind WordPress, has acquired Intense Debate, the firm behind… Intense Debate. The ID comment system fits neatly into Automattic’s range of projects.
In particular, ID fits between the WordPress blogging platform and the Akismet spam-fighting system. There have also been requests for ID at the hosted WordPress.com service; however, if the support forums are any guide, there have been more requests for Disqus, a comment system that competes with ID.
Jon of ID is excited about wider distribution and about integration of ID with the Automattic offerings. To balance that, he emphasized that ID will continue to work on other blogging platforms, such as Blogger and Movable Type. Similar points come from the Automattic side of the deal, from Matt and from Toni.
ID will remain a stand-alone service that can be used with WordPress as well as many other types of web sites (similar to the way we run our Akismet and Gravatar services). In addition, some ID features and technology will be built directly into future versions of WordPress and Gravatar.
It’ll be interesting to see how competing firms react. I’m thinking in particular of Disqus, which currently uses Akismet. In other words, one of its main competitors has just been acquired by the developer of a service it uses. Mashable Adam contacted Disqus, and his post includes a quote from CEO Daniel Ha, but there’s understandably little in the way of specifics.
Finally, the timing of Intensomattic deal is such that it’ll be overshadowed by the Google/T-mobile circus. That’s a pity, because it’s a significant change to the social media landscape.
New WordPress.com Upgrade: No Ads
September 18, 2008
WordPress.com is run by Automattic, a for-profit firm. The blogging service is a good example of making money from free stuff: Automattic uses multiple “free business models” to earn profits from WordPress.com.
One of them is advertising: ads sometimes appear on WordPress.com blogs. Another is the freemium model. Although it’s free to blog at WordPress.com, there is a charge for some premium features. For example, I pay $10 a year so that this blog can go by the URI changingway.org.
There is now a new premium feature. Matt posted today, explaining (yet again) why WordPress.com needs to run ads – and explaining the new feature:
it’s easy to imagine blogs that would never want ads on them… Because of this we’ve introduced a premium option that gives you control: the No-ads upgrade.
With this upgrade, no one, whether they’re logged in or not, will see any ads on your blog. Ever. (Or at least as long as you subscribe to the upgrade.)
The No-ads upgrade can be purchased for 30 credits a year ($0.08 a day)
This is very good news, especially since this upgrade costs less than many of us expected. However, some will be disappointed that this is not the often-requested “let us run our own ads” upgrade.
But enough about other bloggers: what about me? Or, to be more precise, what about this blog? WordPress upgrades prices are per blog per year. The cost of running this blog will, when I buy the new upgrade, go through the buck a week barrier ($10 for domain mapping, $15 for CSS, $30 for no ads).
So, as a result of the new upgrade, this blog may become more, rather than less, commercial. In order to keep it at better than breakeven, I’ll have to use more affiliate links. That reminds me, did I tell you about Amazon’s new video on demand service, featuring such fine shows as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles?
WordPress.com Admin Interface
September 8, 2008
The newest change to the WordPress.com blog admin interface makes it easier to make a post sticky. Here’s how Heather explains it. Regular updates are what blogging’s all about, but sometimes you want to keep hot topics or other static info at the top of your posts… In the publishing options for each post you’ll now see “Stick this post on the front page.” I know that some of the many who blog at WordPress.com want the sticky feature.
On the other hand, I’m sure that most of us will never use it. So what it is doing in a prominent, above the fold location? We still have to scroll down to categorize and tag our posts. We have to scroll past options, such as “sticky,” that we’ll use rarely, if at all.
I hope that admin interface customization will come to WordPress.com soon. I am familiar with the argument that if you want to customize WordPress, you should find a host other than WordPress.com. But I feel that I shouldn’t have to scroll down on the post page to get to features I always use, while precious screen real estate is given up to features I’ll never use.
