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Mmmm, cookies. Who doesn’t like cookies?
Well, the European Union, it seems.
Tomorrow marks the day when websites based in the UK are “technically” supposed to be compliant with the new Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations (in order to be in line with the EU’s e-Privacy Directive).
This past week the WordPress Plugin Repository has gotten a complete refresh that will greatly improve discussion and support for the 19,000 plugins currently listed. Some of the tweaks may seem small but they’re bound to make a huge difference in the community for developers and plugin users alike.
Here are the most important updates you should know about:
New Support Tab
WordPress has recently released its latest app (version 2.1) for managing a WordPress site on an Android device.
The app is available at the following links for Android, Nook, and BlackBerry PlayBook:
Google Play Store
Amazon Appstore
Nook Store
BlackBerry App World for PlayBook
Some of the improvements seen in the latest version are the following:
Comment Editing
The newest version allows you to easily edit comments by tapping on an “Edit” button. In addition to being able to edit the actual comment, you can edit information such as the commenter’s name, email address, and website URL.
Post Autosave
The app now autosaves post every sixty seconds.
Scaled Image Setting
Today we get to talk to Ned Dwyer, the mind behind ThemePivot, a super exciting theme customization service that gives your WordPress site the power of multiple developers working together. It’s a new kind of marketplace which makes it easy for people to make minor changes, or tweaks, to their website.
1. What inspired you to create ThemePivot?
It was inspired by a couple of things actually.
A unique WordPress theme site popped onto my radar today. ThemeThrift is a new creation by Jake Caputo of Design Crumbs with a bit of an unorthodox pricing structure. The site will be selling themes at a substantial discount and even giving them away for free. Deals have a set time before they expire and users can choose exactly how much they want to pay:
Caputo is currently offering his Modest Theme on the site as the first deal. You can view the features and the live demo and elect how much you’d like to pay:
According to a recent article at AllThingsD, Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg and CEO Toni Schneider revealed that the company anticipates revenues in the $45 million range this year.
How do they make that much? According to the AllThingsD article,
The majority of Automattic revenue comes from premium subscription services, and that’s supplemented by a “VIP” enterprise publisher business — in total, there are half a million paying customers — as well as a recently launched advertising revenue-sharing network.
In light of this growth, Automattic has hired, for the first time ever, a Chief Financial Officer and a General Councelor.
According to security software firm Kapersky, the recent Apple Mac Flashback Trojan that made such a splash in the news recently can most likely trace its roots back to infected WordPress sites.
Alexander Gostev from the Kaspersky Lab Global Research and Analysis Team explains how compromised WordPress sites were used to infect Macs, “From September 2011 to February 2012, Flashfake was distributed using social engineering only: visitors to various websites were asked to download a fake Adobe Flash Player update. It meant the Trojan was being distributed as installation archives named ‘FlashPlayer-11-macos.pkg,’ ‘AdobeFlashUpdate.pkg,’ etc.”
According to a recent report from Pingdom.com, WordPress is the blogging system of choice for 49 out of the Technorati Top 100 blogs. This is an increase from 32 out of 100 from three years ago.
The number of self-hosted WordPress blogs stood at 40 while hosted WordPress blogs stood at 9. (“Hosted” WordPress blogs include sites hosted on WordPress.com and WordPress VIP SaaS Hosting.)
It should be noted that 8 of the blogs were from the New York Times, and 4 of the blogs were from Wired. Therefore, 12 of the 49 blogs were from two organizations.
The WordCamp Central website has recently gotten a full re-design. This is the place to find all of the latest news about upcoming WordCamps. Click on “Find a WordCamp” and you’ll see the scheduled dates for upcoming events. You can also check out featured speaker profiles, find information on organizing a WordCamp and learn what to expect when attending a WordCamp.
WordPress.org has announced the beta version of WordPress 3.4. You are advised to use this version for testing purposes only. You can see more about how to report bugs you find, etc., on the WordPress announcement page.
According to WordPress, these are some of the major changes you will notice:
Theme Customizer with Previewer
Flexible Custom Header Sizes
Selecting Custom Header and Background Images from Media Library
Better experience searching for and choosing a theme
And these are some of the “under-the-hood changes”:
New XML-RPC API for external and mobile applications
New API for registering theme support for custom headers and backgrounds
