Our favorite blogging platform has released version 2.2 according to Matt. Here are the features:
Did you know that for over a year, Big in Japan has provided WordPress support services to clients both large and small. Automattic, the company behind WordPress, partnered with Big in Japan last year.
Specifically, we have experience supporting WordPress based blogs hosted on our systems or on those of other vendors including WordPress.com. We also have experience integrating CSS and HTML from great designers such as Mule Design and Hyku into WordPress. Finally, we have built and customized various plugins to make WordPress work the way you need it.
If it is WordPress we can help (sorry we don’t do MovableType*). From custom development, installation and support we can make your blog big in Japan ~ big wherever you want…
*we can; however, migrate your MT blog to WordPress!
Jack Slocum mashedup WordPress’s comment system with Yahoo!’s UI. Very neat project as Jack describes,
I think it turned out to be a perfect example of what can be done in a very small amount of time with Yahoo UI and YAHOO.ext. In a day’s worth of work, I have completely transformed the comments system on this site. Around half of that time was spent on the user interface, and the other half modifying WordPress to do the things it needed to do on the backend.
The system looks nice and it speeds up page loads as the comments are posted via Ajax. NICE!
I’ve always loved having Like It Matters as my personal blog to use to cover subjects not quite right for Weblogs Work. Now, I’ve finally started some clean-up on that site, moved it to a more logical URL (http://www.brianoberkirch.com) and started fresh with the latest version of WordPress. Playing with themes now, but maybe I’ll get one of my rockstar design pals to do something funky fresh at some point.
Toni Schneider is announcing the launch of the Automattic Support Network for enterprise-grade support of WordPress and WordPress MU.
Says Toni:
WordPress is already used to power blogs and sites by several well known large companies, places like the New York Times, CNET, and About.com. In talking to other large corporate users over the past few months, I’ve received the same request over and over: if we could pay you to provide us with enterprise level support for WordPress, we’re ready to deploy it in a big way. We’ve responded by creating the Support Network. It’s loosely modelled after similar offerings from companies like MySQL and Red Hat who provide support subscriptions for open source software.
WordPress is our primary platform, and we’ve been talking with Matt & Toni about serving as one of their recommended professional service providers for integration, development, marketing support and other types of professional services that are adjuncts to the core platform support Automattic will focus on. We are also moving ahead on integrating white-label versions of some of the Big in Japan apps (PodServe, primarily), which we think are an ideal complement to extensible platforms like WordPress.
Check out what the Support Network has to offer.
Update:Â Marshall weighs in at TechCrunch.
One of the questions I get all the time is how to measure ROI for social media. (A better question is how do we value return on attention, but, let’s bracket that.) Naturally, you want to know if this stuff is helping you achieve your business objectives. As Hugh correctly points out, blogging’s impact is mostly indirect. And it’s also a long-haul thing. You have to stick with it to build your tribe. Some of the metrics we look at are readership, feed subscribers, comments, links, inquiries, leads, partners and so on.
That said, sometimes the gains are so immediate and direct you sort of get slapped in the face. Exhibit A: the blog for the as-yet-unreleased open source ticketing system called SimpleTicket. SimpleTicket was developed by Architel, who started blogging about it on their own site. Soon, they were getting so many inquiries for the code & questions about the project, that they needed to launch a blog just to more efficiently communicate with this growing community. So, we put together another WordPress-driven site for SimpleTicket, and they started blogging the project progress there.
Results to date:
Again, the impact of blogging & social media is often indirect, but these are some pretty good results for a blog that is just a few weeks old.
Technorati Tags: architel, hugh+macleod, simpleticket
I get this question a lot, ‘what is a trackback?’ Wikipedia says, ‘a TrackBack is a mechanism used in a blog to show, around an entry, a list of other blogs that refer to it.’ They continue:
The term TrackBack was introduced by Six Apart which introduced a mechanism in their blogging server, Movable Type, that works by sending a ‘ping‘ between the blogs, and therefore providing the alert. The blog receiving the ping typically displays the TrackBack information below a blog entry. This usually includes a summary of what has been written on the target blog, together with a URL and the name of the blog. The Referer field in the HTTP protocol was originally intended as a means of supporting features similar to those TrackBack offers.
Tom Coates has answered the question here. Another beginner’s guide can be found here. The official specification can be found here. Trackback issues relative to WordPress can be found here. Good luck!
The Architel corporate web/blog site has been launched. The open source WordPress architecture allows the company to launch the site and make continious changes to it over time. So you can never say a site is ‘done.’ Kudos go to Dan Cederholm from SimpleBits for the xhtml/css design (as well as the new Architel logo). Weblogs Work integrated the xhtml/css into WordPress (actually three WordPress installs).
Architel is a boutique IT support company located in Dallas, Texas that supports small businesses (20-100) employees. Their unique IT service delivery model (one flat-monthly-fee for all-you-can-eat support) aligns the interests of the small business owner and Architel. The company was a pioneer in this space and is now a pioneer in the ‘blog as corporate website’ meme. Here are screenshots or just visit the site yourself here @ architel.com.
The site was entered in the website design contest at SXSW conference and we are crossing our fingers that the judges will enjoy the tight integration between the blog CMS and Dan’s xhtml and css. What do you think about our work?
Josh Hallett (I really enjoy his blog, this is the second post in a row I have blogged about) posted an interesting post about tagging. His point? The truth is, it difficult for novices (who barely understand the concept of tagging) to tag their posts in TypePad or Blogger. Obviously, WordPress and Movable Type make it easy as pie to tag (we typically launch client blogs on WordPress). Why tag? Here is Josh’s thought:
"I know that tagging my posts has led to increased traffic from Technorati and other search tools that support tags. Granted it is very easy for me include them in my posts."
In our recent post here, we detailed the migration of M | Ventures corporate website to WordPress. Lots of folks have commented on the migration including Matt Mullenweg (who happens to be lucky in love) who posted about it here. Matt reminds us that it was a Texan who developed WordPress (i.e. him).
NewsForge has an interesting article about using WordPress for your website. Here is their conclusion:
"WordPress is a powerful tool, and in many ways exemplifies open source at its best. It gives any user an array of features with minimal technical effort, and its extensibility and versatility are displayed by the large pool of user-designed plugins. This power and versatility extends beyond WordPress’s traditional use of blogging into more traditional Web design, and — as our new AmSteg.org site displays — makes WordPress a powerful tool for many kinds of Web sites. Our site would not have many of the features it has, nor would it be as easy to administer, if it were not for WordPress and its plugins."