During some preliminary technical issues …

Jane says, “I can feel the nerdiness vibes increase ….” And then checks her blog and sees that she just won another bloggy award.

Someone twitters that he doesn’t know a single person at Wordcamp. Guy next to me searches Twitter and finds his tweet. I follow him. Then Jane points out that the guy who sent the tweet is sitting right next to me. Same table. Holy smokes.

Technical issues solved, Matt gets into his presentation.

WordPress Stats

Matt mentioned some stats about WordPress:

• 2.8 million downloads of WordPress in 2007; 11 million downloads in 2008
• 11 new releases of WordPress.org this year
• Bloggers write the equivalent of “an English Wikipedia and a half” per month on WordPress.com blogs alone
• 230 million unique people viewed posts on WordPress.com blogs
• WordCamps have increased — 14 so far this year, 4 happening today, 10 upcoming. In places all over the world: China, South Africa, Philippines.
• 5 billion spam comments caught by Akismet in the last year

There’s a new type of spam sneaking through: (1) spam that is praising/flattering; (2) spam that copies your other comments, but changes the URL; (3) spam that comes from third-world spam sweat shops. Akismet’s challenge is to identify spam even when bloggers approve the comments.

New WordPress Developments Accomplished This Year

• The iPhone WordPress App. 100,000 installs of the iPhone app so far. Very popular in San Francisco, not so much in China.
• WordPress Theme Directory. The central repository filters out shady themes that have hidden sponsor links and other backdoor practices.
• WordPress Zeitgeist. More blogs than they thought: 5.6 million WordPress.com blogs, even more with WordPress.org and WordPress multi-user blogs.
  
• PHP 5. High adoption of PHP 5; WordPress may make it a standard.
  
• Intelligent tails/Better plugin stats. WordPress developers will look at the popularity of plugins and track usage to plan for future inclusions in the core.
  

Top 10 WordPress Plugins

1. Akismet
2. All-in-one-seo pack
3. Google-sitemap generator
4. Next-gen gallery
5. Stats plugins
6. Wp-db-backup
7. Caching plugins
8. WP Automatic Upgrade
9. WP-polls
10. 10. cforms (contact forms)

The average blog has 4.96 activate plugins. Plugins allow users to create a unique, customized blog. Other blogging platforms have more features than WordPress, but they can’t complete with the 3,000+ plugins that WordPress provides through its community.

Planned Features for WordPress 2.7

• Dashboard Redesign. The new design is based on usability eye-tracking tests. Expandable/collapsible navigation on the left.
• Drag and Drop arrangements. You can drag around the various components on the Write page. Ability to hide and show the components you want.
• Sticky posts. Ability to keep a post pinned to the top of your home page.
• Single Insert Media button. The upload media button automatically figures out what type of media you’re uploading.
• Quick Inline Editing. Ability to edit posts without fully refreshing the page. Ajax technology.
• Comments API. Update and moderate comments from your mobile device (rather than just write and edit posts).
• Dashboard comment replies. Reply to comments directly from the Dashboard.
• Threaded comments. Ability to thread comment conversations automatically, or allow users to thread their comments (insert replies below the relevant comment rather than at the end). Threading helps the conversation make sense.
• Keyboard Shortcuts. Similar to the abundance of shortcuts in Google Reader.
• Automatic plugin install in browser. Ability to install new plugins directly from within your blog, rather than FTPing them. They’ll attempt to do this with themes too. This is WordPress’ attempt to seamlessly integrate the strength of its community.

WordPress 2.7 will be available in November.

What’s After WordPress 2.7?

• Automatic upgrades. You’ll have the ability to update directly from within your blog.
• Web host updating. When a new release is available, WordPress wants to ensure all web hosts have the latest version.
• Security. The list of federal agencies using WordPress is extensive (includes Homeland Security, FBI, NSA, military divisions, Treasury, etc.). WordPress wants to ensure the platform is secure (even with all the vulnerability from plugins).
• Media. WordPress will do more with videos, slideshows, photos, and other media.
• WordPress as Hub. WordPress wants to incorporate all the activity you do online. For example, when you post to Twitter, Facebook, or Flickr, it should show it on your blog (or be included in your blog’s database).
• BackPress. Integrate the frameworks of other platforms more seamlessly into WordPress to allow sharing or transferring of information (BBpress, BuddyPress, etc.).
  
• Fashion + Tattoos. More WordPress apparel.
  
• Year of Themes. More and better themes (similar to Prologue), as well as themes with integrated plugins. Matt says, “Themes are where the action is.”
  
• Screencasts. WordPress hired a help author (I believe), who is creating 40-50 screencasts. They plan to integrate the screencasts throughout the WordPress interface.
  
• WordPress TV. Broadcasts of the Wordcamp sessions that take place throughout the world.
  

See Matt’s blog at http://ma.tt

WordPress's Biggest Mistake

For a company that recently secured $29 million in funding, has grown from nonexistence to worldwide popularity in just four years, and which has the reputation of being the platform for serious bloggers, it’s kind of bold for me to call attention to its biggest mistake in a post. But I’m convinced that it’s a huge miscalculation on the part of Automattic (the company that leads WordPress). The Automattic team, led by Matt Mullenweg, has about 25 engineers and …. not one technical writer.

In the engineer’s mind, writers are unnecessary because the code is so obvious. And WordPress even prides itself with its mission statement:

Through WordPress we’ve enabled millions of people to effortlessly publish to the web. Now we want to enable millions more.

“Effortlessly”? Excuse me, Matt should come over and watch my wife try to update something in her blog’s design. When the image don’t automatically float right or left to wrap around the text, when she wants to change her header’s banner, or limit the number of posts that show up in a category, she starts cursing WordPress under her breath.

My wife, who writes under the pen name “Jane,” is actually technically competent. She can edit and publish videos on Vimeo and Youtube, create linked image buttons for her sidebar, and resize and edit photos in Photoshop and Picasa pretty easily. But every time she wants to make slight adjustments to her blog … well, let’s just say last time she ended up throwing the mouse at me while I ducked near the kitchen microwave. Other times she literally pulls on her hair in desperation and says she’s “going to Blogger.” Swearing is also common.

The WordPress team overlooks an official technical writer and assumes everyone will update the WordPress Codex with the necessary documentation. Sure. Just like people will come out of their homes and automatically pick up the trash on the streets. If you’ve ever looked through the Codex for something, navigation is akin to backcountry hiking without a map. At least a quarter of the content is outdated. Much of the writing isn’t very task-oriented or clear to novices. It frequently resembles developer-writing, and screenshots are usually absent.

With the $29 million in funding WordPress has received, you’d think they’d at least pay an intern somewhere $20 an hour to update the Codex. Better yet, find someone with gusto and expertise like Lorelle to devote herself full-time to Codex upkeep. WordPress documentation is only getting worse. Is there not at least a 100 page manual that you can download (rather than buying a third-party book from Amazon)?

In the end, Blogger has much more marketshare because it’s an easier platform. WordPress could be more competitive in the marketplace if they simply hired a full-time technical writer to — I know this is shocking — add an online help file directly inside the application.

• You can make a living from the ad revenue from your site. Laura and Michael Moncur run a Quotations Page site, which gets 200,000 hits a day and provides their primary income. They started it in 1994 and use TribalFusion for the ads. You’d think they feverishly add dozens of quotes a day to keep up the rankings, but Laura said they add maybe half a dozen new quotes a week. The key is that they started so early.
• The most profitable readers are those who don’t find what they want on your site. They click the ads because your content doesn’t provide the answers. This provides an interesting irony about writing: to make money with ads, stack up your content with SEO qualities to attract searchers, and then leave them wanting more. (Of course, it’s a double-edged sword: if you don’t write useful content, no one will link to you, and your SEO rank will drop.)
• Sometimes the ads displayed on your site contradict the actual recommendations of your post. Sure you want readers to click the ads, but … oh the ethics of making money.
• Joseph Scott, one of the Automaticc employees behind WordPress, says WordPress 2.4 will offer a total redesign of the administrative panel, a complete UI overhaul that will make strides in usability.
• We talked about WordPress’s ability to attract volunteer forum moderators who feel their calling is to help users solve their problems, and they work all hours of the day in this calling. None of us understood the motivations of forum volunteers, but we all appreciated their help. Laura said that people even send her quotes all the time to add to their site.
• Text-link ads can hurt your SEO because Google penalizes you for your link relationship with spammy sites. You might make a few bucks from the ad, but it will hurt your rankings, and then your site will lose traffic.
• We talked about the dangers of syndicating your content to other sites, such as corporatewebsite.com. If you do a search for your post title, and their site appears higher than yours, you’re losing valuable traffic. (Because of this, I decided to stop allowing corporatewebsite to occasionally post content from my site, even with attributions.)
• We asked Joseph why WordPress doesn’t provide more attractive themes. Everyone agreed that most WordPress themes are visually amateur, and some are embarrassing. Joseph said WordPress doesn’t provide more themes in the default install because including themes also means excluding themes. Whenever they make a decision to include/exclude a theme, hundreds of upset people write in angrily complaining about the unfairness of not including their theme. I believe he said WP.themes.net is dying for the same reason.
• I recommended that WordPress include the Alex King’s Popularity Contest as a Top 10 Posts widget built into the core, but Joseph said the same thing happens with plugins as with themes: people go crazy when they realize their plugin was excluded. My wife and I were still in favor of the reality check.
• Rather than going to all the trouble to customize themes manually, someone recommended just buying a professional one for $50 to $100. It’s well-worth the hours you will spend trying to customize a free one. In fact, the guy I was talking to (Thom Allen), says he often builds sites for clients from themes he buys. About all he has to do, then, is set up the site, install the theme, and input the client’s content. I totally agree with this idea. I’m not a graphic designer, and it takes me a long time to customize a theme. So today I started surfing around for premium WordPress themes and saw one I like here: WordPress Magazine theme. My wife hasn’t given me permission to buy it, and it’s too magazine-ish for me anyway, but I’m on the lookout.
• We really appreciated the people who came up to talk to us. We arrived late (and the incorrect address didn’t help — like Newspaper Girl, we also used Goog-411 to find where the restaurant was). When we got there, the two big round tables were packed, especially the one where Matt Mullenweg was sitting. But some outgoing people pulled their chairs up next to our table and were extremely friendly to us, including Thom Allen, who is organizing the upcoming podcamp in SLC, and also Michael Moncur, Laura Moncur, and Joseph Scott.
• As a final note, I was really glad my wife joined me for this event, because otherwise I would have felt too nerdy alone.

By the way, if you’re local to SLC and want to get on the blogger mailing list, contact Laura Moncur and she’ll add you.

Feb 5 Update:

Rocky Mountain Voices posted an interview with Matt Mullenweg here (at the same restaurant, I believe). Matt talks about how they monetize WordPress and their new 29.5 million dollar funding.

Saturday, February 2, 2008
12:00 PM
Taj India Restaurant
3540 South State St
Salt Lake City, Utah 84115

See the original announcement or the event page. I’m looking forward to this opportunity, as I’ve never been to a WordPress meetup.