After 8BIT recently closed shop, many people expressed concern over the destiny the company’s core product, Standard Theme. Was it going to be retired…discontinued? No one seemed to know. On 8BIT’s blog—which has been notably silent as of late—an announcement was just made: Standard Theme has been acquired by WooThemes. It lives on! 8BIT’s been working on a “transition” strategy behind the scenes, and as they explain in their post, WooThemes will be providing support for Standard Theme and its customers moving forward. Existing customers will receive more information from 8BIT soon, and new customers can go straight WooThemes in the near future […]

If you follow many WordPress blogs and news sites you’ll know by now that Pressgram is in the wild—released into the iOS App store at the end of last week. Starting life as a Kickstarter project launched by John Saddington, Pressgram promised to be a couple of things. One, a direct response and alternative to Instagram’s new policies around the images that are submitted to their service. And secondly, a simple way to connect the dots for the many WordPress users who’d like a way to quickly and easily take photos on your smartphone and send them to your WordPress […]

In an over-simplified nutshell, it’s WordPress + iOS + Filtered Photos. Described simply as “the best way to filter and publish photos to your WordPress powered site,” Pressgram is now available for download, for free, on iTunes. But what exactly is Pressgram and why would we want to use it instead of…say…Instagram? For starters, Pressgram is more philosophically aligned with the core values of the WordPress community. The target users for Pressgram are publishers. Creative control lies solely in the hands of the user. Publishers own —and always will own—all of their images. There is no fine print and no big […]

Looks like WP Avengers has taken the next step in their GPL-fueled coup attempt. This link was sent to me a few minutes ago over instant message via Facebook group—it’s original source unknown at this time. Which, by some standards, would make this gossip hearsay. I followed the link and since it does, in fact, exist, I thought I should share it with you all as “news” (with a little hesitation, admittedly). So take it for what it’s worth, with: When you go to WP Avenger’s website, all it really says is: “Revolution Starts Soon!” and gives you an option to […]

8BIT surprises once again with a seemingly sudden game changer. As of today, the company is officially closed for business. Their Support Forums will continue to be open for another 30 days, but after that, they will no longer support their products—including their core product, Standard Theme. For those looking for a partner post-Standard, 8BIT recommends Woothemes and StudioPress. The company behind Standard Theme was made up of John Saddington, Chris Ames, Jared Erickson, Tom McFarlin, Michael Novotny, Eric Dye, and Jason Bradley. 8BIT was also the organization behind WP Daily, and the closure of 8BIT comes on the heels of […]

Hold onto your hats, a key component of WordPress is getting a makeover! The goal is to have it included as part of the 3.8 release tentatively scheduled for December, 2013. The target?  Widget management, and the widget user interface—introducing a whole new way of working with widgets. Have you ever been frustrated by the current setup, dragging and dropping widgets to the sidebar, possibly scrolling and “dropping” a widget in the process? Have you learned workarounds to make widgets behave the way you want them to, or added plugins for conditional placement? Maybe you haven’t given widgets much thought […]

Hope everyone is having a relaxing Sunday! If you’re having WordPress news withdrawals, feel free to check out this past week’s episode of Week in WordPress with Matt Medeiros, below. I was lucky enough to be a guest this episode, along with Jason Coleman and Brian Casel. Also, if you look close enough you might be able to spot a Mogwai on my couch. I better not let it get wet…or: But back to the show—we talk about WordPress Connect, gossip vs. news, aggregated vs. curated…and widgets. Enjoy!

We’ve known for a little while that ManageWP has had something in the works, we just didn’t know exactly what. Until yesterday, that is, when they made their project available to those willing to submit their email address to get invited to test it out. Turns out I’m still waiting for my email invite, so I can’t give you my full opinion quite yet. But I can share with you my initial thoughts and reactions! Hmmm…another news site? That’s what I heard through the grapevine (aka saw on my Twitter feed) when I woke up yesterday morning. Upon further investigation, and after […]

WordPress.com Connect is now available for third party developers. This new feature is comparable to Facebook Connect, Sign in with Twitter, and Open ID. It offers a secure and easy way for WordPress users to login to your site or app, by simply using their own WordPress credentials. This makes connecting with other WordPress users that much easier. By integrating WordPress.com Connect on your site, people have the option to login without having to create or remember any new login information. What’s in it for the users? From their dashboard, users can control which apps have access to their data […]

What WordPress and WooThemes can learn from Linux History I’d like to tell you all a story to give some perspective on recent events that have happened in the WordPress community. Once there was a smart Founder who wanted to change the world. He was a scrappy and outspoken 20-something who decided to build his own Open Source Software (OSS) project with a few friends because he knew he could design something that was better than the competition. He chose principle over profit and picked an OSS license that would protect the community over even his own interests. He handed over […]