I love TED Talks as they expand my mind, stir up excitement, and provide incredible insight into what’s happening in our ever-changing world. I listened to a talk this morning via Ken Robinson and his thoughts on education, which were brilliant, but his thoughts in the closing part of his argument got me thinking passionately about the WordPress culture and overall ecosystem, especially in regards to the “controlling” forces that are in play. Here’s what Ken had to say:

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day which means that every married man with kids (well, not all of them…) is fretting about doing something legit tomorrow. I’ll probably be at my local Target early tomorrow trying to find some crappy Mother’s Day card that means little more than the ridiculous $4.99 that I will pay for it. Hm… I can do better (and so can you)! Ok, but before that, enjoy our weekly roundup. 🙂

As announced via official WP News, WordPress 3.6 Beta 3 is now ready for your tests: Beta 3 contains about a hundred changes, including improvements to the image Post Format flow (yay, drag-and-drop image upload!), a more polished revision comparison screen, and a more quote-like quote format for Twenty Thirteen. As we had shared previously, this update includes the neat new audio oEmbeds via Rdio and Spotify.

With all of the security discussions as of recent it’s been top of mind for many WordPress users and developers alike. Most of us are firming up our security options, downloading plugins, and asking better questions about WordPress security. There are also some that are reminding us that WordPress is secure, so don’t get it twisted! It’s time to clear up the debate once and for all. Despite all the doubts (and some haters), WordPress core is without a doubt one of the most secure platforms you can choose to put a site on. Of course, a WordPress install is only as secure […]

There’s been a handful of posts this week that have focused on the theory and possibility of forking WordPress. Instead of reacting immediately to some of the posts I’ve spent a bit of time in introspection reading these posts and asking myself if I would ever, myself, seriously consider forking WordPress. What I’ve come away is pretty clear and I’ll go ahead and say it for the record (as if the title of this blog post didn’t give that away): I will never fork WordPress. I will spend a little bit of time explaining my position as follows:

I had to share this today because I’ve encountered far too many people emailing me over my lifetime asking me the question of whether or not one should follow their passions in terms of their blog. In other words, they are asking me whether or not they should blog about their passions and whether that’s the right path to go so as to achieve success. Although you’ve heard that you should follow your passions and that your passions will keep your blog fresh with new ideas and a never-ending flow of community development and posts and strategy and, of course, […]

I’ve seen a bit of coverage on other sites recently about this premium browser (Firefox, Chrome) extension that’ll *gasp* show you what’s really going on under the hood of someone’s WordPress website. It’s called SpyBar by Rob Cornish, an acclaimed “internet entrepreneur” who’s bringing you such a sweet deal. What the extension does is simply scans the site and pulls up the sites’ plugins and themes that it uses, thus giving you an “inside” look at what is going on and the things the site owner is using. I suppose that’s why it’s called the “SpyBar”… here’s a very long […]

The story continues to gain steam and excitement for the successfully-funded Kickstarter Ghost project, which is now at a point where they are trying to reach their stretch goals with force and gusto. In a recent update they’ve shared a few key things that make this update pretty special, the first being that they’ve “sold” out their top partner space to 8 great companies, adding atechmedia, MarketPress, and SingleHop to their lineup. Another addition is Code School, which is a great resource for continuing education and for those that may want to start a new career – they are partnering in a neat way where […]

Daniel Bachhuber, the very talented developer that left Automattic just a little while ago and then joined Human Made, has shared the news that he’s retiring his role with 7 plugins and having Automattic claim ownership of them: Edit Flow Co-Authors Plus Ad Code Manager P2 Resolved Posts Document Feedback Rewrite Rules Inspector Custom JavaScript Editor The first one, Edit Flow, is one of the best plugins that I’ve ever used and is a current install on this blog WP Daily. Daniel makes mention that specifically the VIP team will take control over continued development, maintenance, support, and more, adding that he […]

This has been a long time coming! When VaultPress first arrived on the scenes one of most common reactions from bloggers (of all sizes) was: Ugh, $15 per month? I can’t do that! Well they just made their incredible service much more in reach of the average blogger and consumer by dropping into a $5.00 per month plan that they are calling ‘Lite’. I think this makes complete sense and I believe that scaling in this way will see an incredible increase of subscriptions and users.