WordPress co-founder Mike Little will be given the outstanding contribution to digital media award at Sascon6. Sascon is a conference in the UK dedicated to a national audience of senior level digital and marketing professionals both agency and in-house working in the public and private sector. While Matt Mullenweg has been the high profile, public face of WordPress, Mike Little has for the most part, stayed behind the scenes.
If you would like to see the birth of WordPress, you can read the post as well as the comment that started it all.
It’s not like Mike has been silent over the years. In fact, he’s conducted a number of interviews. Here are a couple of the ones I found.
iThemes, the company behind products such as BackupBuddy and the Builder theme are reporting that their headquarters as well as all of their staff are ok following the Tornadoes that ripped Moore, Oklahoma apart on May 20th. Not only has their company donated $2,000.00 to the Red Cross for relief efforts, but they are asking everyone to consider texting REDCROSS to 90999 which will donate $10.00 to the Red Cross to help support tornado relief efforts in Oklahoma.
In late 2012, VaultPress announced that they had acquired security company Code Garage. At the time, the acquisition seemed like a talent grab more than anything else. Even though VaultPress stated that they would continue to work on the Code Garage product, it didn’t make much sense to have both services. When I initially reported on the acquisition, I told Code Garage customers to watch the situation closely because at some point, Code Garage was going to close up shop in favor of VaultPress.
VaultPress has now confirmed that they will be shutting down Code Garage after July 1st.
Today we’re happy to announce a migration plan that provides Code Garage users with the protection they’re used to — while letting us improve security and backup services for everyone by focusing our resources on VaultPress. Through July 1, all Code Garage customers are invited to migrate to VaultPress. To sweeten the deal, your first two months are on us — you won’t see a charge from Code Garage or VaultPress for two months after the migration. After those 2 months, your Code Garage bill will remain unchanged – you’ll keep paying what you’ve been paying as a Code Garage customer.
If you’re not interested in migrating, we’ll maintain your service at Code Garage through July 1, and give you your last month free.
Any Code Garage customer that migrates to VaultPress will automatically be placed on the VaultPress Lite plan with the addition of daily security scans. For a detailed look at how Code Garage was founded and how Timthumb played a role in the company’s success, read this blog post by founder Peter Butler.
The wait is over for those that have wanted an affordable offering from VaultPress. The service announced on May 8th that a new service level called VaultPress Lite would be available for an astoundingly cheap $5.00 per month, per site. The plan covers the basics:
Daily backups that happen automatically, so you can focus on creating, not logistics.
Automated site restores, so you can restore your entire site with a single click.
Thirty days of saved backups, so you can go back in time to restore the last clean version of your site.
Customers also have access to their support staff as well. Since VaultPress launched, there have been a number of people who have exclaimed their jubilation of being able to easily restore their sites after a catastrophe. I bet it only takes one experience like that for VaultPress to seem like a bargain, regardless of the price.
Automattic or more aptly VaultPress, has acquired security company, CodeGarage. This is the first time I’ve ever heard about CodeGarage but they appear to be a VaultPress alternative. Looking over the pricing and plans for each service, I see that CodeGarage was definitely cheaper as you can monitor 5 websites for $25 a month while VaultPress charges a flat fee PER website. The acquisition appears to be a talent grab as well as being a learning exercise. As an example, CodeGarage has a great pricing structure that allows businesses to have multiple websites monitored for a nominal fee, something which VaultPress doesn’t have.
I have to say though, I’m a bit perplexed as to why Automattic/VaultPress would continue to build and expand upon CodeGarage considering the existence of VaultPress. Even though it was not announced, if I were a customer of CodeGarage, I’d be watching the news very carefully to watch for any hints of the service shutting down and everyone having to migrate over to the VaultPress platform.
The WordPress iOS team has released version 3.3 of the popular mobile app. Thanks to 3.3, the app now has sounds such as clicks, refreshes and a crumple sound when you discard panels on the iPad. Since I use my iPhone on vibrate all the time, the sounds are a minor addition. However, they are a nice touch for the app overall. Outside of the addition of sounds, the release boasts more than 20 bug fixes and stability improvements. The next version looks like it will include a new Notification feature for WordPress.com and Jetpack enabled blogs. A new Visual editor is also in the works.
Adam Whitcroft has released a 300 icon kit for web and user interface design called Batch. Each icon is a single Photoshop layer making blend modes and scaling a breeze. According to the license, WordPress theme or plugin authors should be able to use these in their works:
You are free to use Batch (the “icon set”) or any part thereof (the “icons”) in any personal, open-source or commercial work without obligation of payment (monetary or otherwise) or attribution. Do not sell the icon set, host the icon set or rent the icon set (either in existing or modified form).
While attribution is optional, it is always appreciated.
Intellectual property rights are not transferred with the download of the icons.
This icon set previously had a price tag attached to it. Adam explained why that’s not the case anymore.
For those of you looking for in-depth reviews of both paid and free WordPress plugins, you may want to add WPNuggets.com to your feedreader or bookmarks. The site is brand new and so far, features three different plugin reviews. From what I’ve read thus far, Adela does a good job of describing how the plugin works as well as outlining the good and the bad. Considering the large breadth of plugins available for WordPress, Adela shouldn’t be running out of plugins to review anytime soon.
In what I believe is the first of it’s kind, PressNomics aims to bring together the various commercial entities that are successfully making a living around WordPress. The conference is being held in Chandler, Arizona which by the way, is a great name for a city between November 8th and 10th, 2012. There is room for around 150-200 attendees with ticket prices starting at $150.00. The tickets go on sale starting in June but most of the attendees will be personally invited. While Joshua and Sally Strebel are among those organizing the conference, this is not a Page.ly focused event. Among the list of confirmed speakers thus far include Mark Jaquith and Mikkel Svane, the CEO of ZenDesk.
When I asked Josh why he’s helping to put on this event, here was his response:
I had this idea for a while and finally decided to execute on it after discussing it with others. People seem to agree that having a meet up of sorts to discuss best practices and learn from each others experiences and stories would be helpful. The programming is for the benefit of the businesses that drive the WordPress economy, not so much the end user of WordPress. + it is a good excuse to get together with our peers.
Sounds like a great idea to me. There is already a lot of collaboration between commercial WordPress entities in the community but I think this will do a lot of businesses some good to get together in person, especially to share success and failure stories. One thing worth noting is that this is definitely not a WordCamp event as illustrated via their disclaimer.
This is not a WordCamp, and it has not been endorsed by or is affiliated with the WordPress Foundation. WordPress is a trademark of the WordPress Foundation, respect.
While organizing an event like this is not easy, it has to be considerably easier to be able to put on a conference about a specific aspect of WordPress with 0 restrictions.
While WooThemes was experiencing a crisis that involved the loss of 6 months of data along with their main website going offline, they still managed to provide great customer service. During the entire ordeal, WooThemes kept customers and the public updated with what they knew and what they were doing to fix the problem via their status blog. Their status blog was updated multiple times a day. Many people commended the company on Twitter for doing such a great job and it’s definitely deserved.
I wish companies whether they be WordPress based or not would so something similar when a crisis hits. Customers want to know what happened, what’s currently happening, who’s doing what, etc. When a crisis hits and takes a website offline, people don’t want a canned response to a support ticket or email, they want information. Information keeps customers calm or at least, calmer then they would be without it. I personally hate that feeling I get when a company seems to shove me off and pretends as if nothing is wrong. As for information, inform the masses, not just a few. That way, everyone is on the same page. Use your company site as a means of controlling the conversation so people don’t have to guess what’s happening.
