Pantheon’s $100K WordCamp US Sponsorship Revoked the Night Before the Event

Nearly 2,000 people descended on Philadelphia, PA to attend WordCamp US last week. On the night before WordCamp US took place, Pantheon’s sponsorship was revoked and advertising materials, including the company’s booth, were hidden in a storage room inside the venue. The move generated a lot of controversy on social media and at the event. It cost Pantheon $100K to …

State of the Word 2016: Mullenweg Pushes Calypso as Future of WordPress’ Interface, Proposes Major Changes to Release Cycle

photo credit: WordCamp US organizing team Philadelphia welcomed 1,923 attendees to WordCamp US this weekend with an additional 2,028 enthusiasts watching via live stream. Matt Mullenweg delivered his 11th annual State of the Word address to a rapt audience ready to celebrate WordPress’ progress over the past year and hear the project leader’s vision for 2017. He began by thanking …

DigitalCube Launches Shifter, Serverless Hosting for WordPress

DigitalCube launched Shifter at WordCamp US today, the first serverless hosting product for WordPress. The Japanese development company specializes in WordPress and AWS integrations. Shifter was built by the same team behind the company’s Amimoto cloud hosting platform. Shifter converts WordPress sites into a series of static HTML files and serves them up via a global CDN (AWS) for high …

WordPress Will Only Recommend Hosting Companies Offering SSL by Default in 2017

In October, Let’s Encrypt was managing more than 10 million active SSL certificates. That number doubled to 20 million in November as large  providers continue to partner with the organization to manage their customers’ certificates. In 2014, Google announced that HTTPS is a ranking factor. Earlier this year, the Google Chrome security team announced that Chrome 56 will mark HTTP sites that transmit passwords or …

Elizabeth Shilling Awarded the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship

The WordPress Foundation has announced that Elizabeth Shilling, one of three co-founders of the Women Who WP meetup group, is the second recipient of the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship was created in 2015 to remember Kim Parsell and provide an opportunity for a woman who may not have the financial means to attend the largest WordCamp in the US. …

Why Are You Thankful for WordPress?

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the US. It’s a time of reflection and an opportunity to express gratitude for the good things in life. In episode 143 of the KitchensinkWP podcast, host Adam Silver asked his two sons why they’re grateful for WordPress. “I am thankful for WordPress because it gives you a job for the household that we live in …

Automattic Clarifies .blog Landrush Process After Bait and Switch Allegations

Earlier this year, Knock Knock Whois There LLC, an Automattic subsidiary in partnership with Primer Nivel, won an auction for around $19 million dollars to offer top-level .blog domains. On August 18th, an email was sent to users who signed up to Dotblog.WordPress.com notifying them that they could apply and secure a .blog domain name before November 21st. Applying For …