You Gotta Love Automattic

Posted on July 16, 2008 by Nate Whitehill

You Gotta Love AutomatticI was lucky to meet the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, at Blog World Expo last year.

Matt is one of the founders of Automattic, the company that makes WordPress. I wrote an article over a year ago about how Matt was changing the web at age 21 with the massive popularity of WordPress as the bloggers’ platform of choice.

I first started using WordPress back in November of 2006, almost two years ago. It is amazing how far WordPress has come in the past few years, both in regards to its software and how widely used it is being used. Major companies like Sony, General Electric, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal are now using WordPress for major sections of their websites. That’s quite the list of clients.

WordPress just stepped up the game, once again, with the incredibly quick release of version 2.6. – a full month ahead of schedule. Version 2.6 offers many more useful features, including:

  • Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
  • Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
  • Bulk management of plugins.
  • A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
  • Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
  • Plugin update notification bubble.
  • Customizable default avatars.
  • You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
  • You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
  • You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
  • A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
  • Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.

Rather than tell you about all of the new features, check out this video:

The WP 2.6 upgrade for the UBD blog and my blog were absolutely painless. I strongly recommend everyone check out the new version of WordPress.

I’ve been playing around with another piece of Automattic software lately that is not as well-known as WordPress. I will be writing about that experience in my next post!
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  • http://www.greatpriceshere.com Nicole Price

    I intend downloading after I read more about it. I agree that they have come a long way and the way they innovate constantly keeps them way ahead of any other platform.

  • http://www.netage.co.za Goran Giertz

    So soon after version 2.5 we have 2.6 already. WordPress rates as the definitive blogging software. Who can realistically compete with their offering?

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    This really is a great company!

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    I love wordpress! I wonder how I would blog without it today.

  • http://www.thepinkc.net/wordpress/wordpress-26-released-a-month-ahead-of-schedule/ WordPress 2.6 Released a Month Ahead of Schedule : ultimate geek girl

    [...] the Blogosphere: WordPress 2.6 from the WordPress Blog You Gotta Love Automattic from NateWhitehill.com WordPress 2.6 Rocks from Michelaneous Google Gears and WordPress 2.6 Is Not [...]

  • http://mp3crown.com/ Lana

    WordPress has been doing very well in making improvement. They provide very great features.

  • http://www.xmanblog.com ::XMAN::

    I started out using Blogger way back in the day when I “attempted” to build a blog and I think the reason that I did not like it was because of the customization. Anyway, I was a web designer and I liked things to look cool and custom.

    I found Word Press last year and I have been so happy with it. I love that you can do so much with it, and if you have the skills you can make it do about anything you can think of so thanks to them for that and it really is great for the newbies AND the advanced so it is all I recommend now.

    Thanks and Great post Nate!

  • http://www.jordankasteler.com/utah-seo-pro-blog/ Utah SEO

    WordPress is a God-send

  • http://www.metaspring.com Metaspring

    Certainly WordPress IS the platform of choice for bloggers. There seem to be some terrific features 2.6 has, definitely need to check them out.

  • http://www.dcrblogs.com/ dcr

    I’ll go against the grain here… I’m holding out on upgrading until maybe version 2.6.1. I’ve never been entirely happy with version 2.5, especially photo uploads which it made a real pain in the neck. I’m going to wait until I’ve heard from more people who had problems with 2.5 uploads as to whether or not 2.6 has made things any better or not.

  • http://simplisticthoughts.com/ Satyawadi Mishra

    Could the ability to restrain yourself from eating one marshmallow make a difference between struggling through life and the ability to retire wealthy and early? Yes it can, according to a study done in the the 1960’s by Stanford University psychology researcher, Michael Mischel. For more information please visit http://simplisticthoughts.com/category/finance/.

  • http://www.findtraveldeals.info/ Traveldeals

    Hi
    Best way to upgrade ?
    Fantastico OR auto upgrade plugin or manual ?

  • http://www.shroomheat.com joe gelb

    very cool it must have been a great experience meeting the computer legend,

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    Yeah im not gonna upgrade. I think it’ll be fine.

  • http://www.jjshoponline.net Shopping USA

    Oh, Thanks Nate for this update, will check it out the upgraded one.

  • http://www.remarkableblogging.com/inside-preview/ Codrut Turcanu I Remarkable Blogging dot Com

    You put up good points regarding WordPress 2.6.

    It seems interesting. Thanks for sharing the video.

  • http://www.greatpriceshere.com Nicole Price

    I have now downloaded the upgrade and am extremely happy.
    The downloading experience itself however was something about which the less said the better. Took some doing it did!

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    WordPress is cool . A product that brings the web publishing process to everyone cannot be a bad thing

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    What a guy. I owe him alot

  • http://www.chwebdesign.com.au CH Web Design Sydney

    I started using wordpress casually about 12 months ago now i’m completely addicted. I’ve lost my house, my girlfiend and my dog. All I’ve got left is my blog! Heh heh! The latest version is awesome, i love the live preview feature! I too am amazed at how far it has come!

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    WordPress is so useful!

  • http://www.netage.co.za Internet Age

    WordPress is setting the standard and not resting on their laurels either. It is going to take something really special to go up against them.

  • http://www.evawhite.com Eva White

    I’ve been with them for some time now and I have been most satisfied with their services.

  • http://www.fiftystudio.com Fifty Studio

    - I’m a huge fan of WordPress, especially for getting a site indexed quickly.
    - I’ve been hoping for image captions for a long time.
    - can’t stand the flash uploader

  • http://www.jjshoponline.net Shopping USA

    Do you have any plugins or tool for checking duplicate post content.

  • http://watchmedium.com watch medium

    Gahhh i ended up upgrading. Doesn’t seem that much better lol

  • http://www.chanceforme.com German Romance

    I just have started blogging, and the WordPress makes it so easy for me to get going. Cool with all the additional features you can use with WordPress too!

  • http://www.paystolivegreen.com Pays to live green

    WordPress is an awesome application. I am still afraid to upgrade to 2.6 in case some of my plugins don’t work for the newer version, but I want to get around to it soon.

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    Have to check myself if it run ok on my blogs.

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    “reordering of Galleries”…cool!

  • http://www.globalcardealers.com Car dealers

    The most waited version of WordPress, Version 2.5 is out. WordPress 2.5 was in the making for nearly 6 months now and it has lot of new features and most.