WPCandy

First the news got out that 200 themes were pulled out out of the WordPress.org Theme Directory. The action was done overnight with no prior warning to the theme authors affected, and this sparked some responses within the community, most notable from Justin Tadlock (Automattic putting the boot to premium theme developers) and Jeff Chandler (Why Were 200 WordPress Themes Removed?). Jeff also posted to the wp-hackers mailing list inquiring about this issue, which then generated some interesting discussions as well.

Then, Matt explained what had happened. On Inquisitr’s “More Hypocrisy from Mullenweg and WordPress with new themes jihad” (wow!) post, Matt also explained that there were close to 300 themes removed, most of them were actually themes that didn’t comply with the guidelines but went in anyway. Inquisitr wasn’t the only one getting unhappy about this: some others like David Peralty (WordPress’ “GPL” and Theme Mess) and that girl again (”here we go again“) weighed in their opinion as well.

Alister Cameron did a thoughtful article (”Matt Mullenweg, WordPress, GPL and why I think he really gets it.“) on the issue with another follow-up by Jeff Chandler (“More Thoughts On Premium Themes”). Another recommended reading was done by kristarella, “WordPress and the GNU General Public License”.

For those interested to know further, WP Weekly’s 2 hours of interview with Matt covered a lot about this. Also, WP Snippets did the community a great deal of service by transcribing the long interview (part one | part two | part three) with more part forthcoming as per this article.

What do you guys think? Was it smart for WordPress to do this? Sound off in the comments!

The WordPress Development team has been making some progress over the past week, so here’s some information about the upcoming release of WordPress 2.7:

- WordPress 2.7 Beta 1 Released: The new design has almost been completely implemented.
- The original release date (Nov. 10th) has been moved to a later date, but will hopefully be released by the end of November.
- Participate in a poll regarding your favorite thing about the WordPress 2.7 beta.
- Participate in a survey regarding all the new features of WordPres 2.7, where you can provide additional feedback.
- Make your themes comments compatible with WordPress 2.7 and earlier versions.
- WordPress 2.7 Comments Enhancements: An in-depth post on the changes WordPress 2.7 brings to theme comments.

For those of you in the San Francisco area after WordCamp 2008, there’s another WordPress-based event taking place the following day that promises to be a cavalcade of fun for everyone - a scavenger hunt! Read more…

A few days ago we wrote about two upcoming WordCamps: San Francisco and New York City. Shortly after posting, even more details emerged about the upcoming WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco, CA. This particular WordCamp is usually the biggest and greatest WordPress event of the year, showcasing an abundance of speakers, workshops, and more.

When?

WordCamp 2008 will be held in San Francisco, CA on Saturday, August 16, 2008. This year, the event is located at the Mission Bay Conference Center, just down the road from AT&T park along the shore of Mission Bay. Tickets are just $20 and include admission for the day and a free t-shirt. You can still sign up online, so get your ticket soon!

Speakers

WordCamp 2008 features a great list of speakers. Those conducting presentations at the conference include Lloyd Budd, Andy Peatling, Sam Bauers, Tom Coates, Liz Danzico, Tantek Çelik, and Chris Lea.

Topics Of Discussion

Among these speakers, a variety of topics will be discussed such as “Secure Coding with WordPress”, “Open Source business models”, “Crazyhorse, Next-generation WordPress”, “WordPress APIs — iPhone and Beyond!”, and “Hassle-free Upgrades”. Sounds like it’s going to be one hell of a party.

Gravatar Badges

Do you have a gravatar on the web? Well, this year’s WordCamp SF badges will include a gravatar (up to 512×512 pixels) with an image of your choice. If you plan on going, make sure to set up your badge before attending!

So Who’s going?

If you’re going, let us know in the comments! We’re hoping that a few people who go will either do a live blog, Twitter the event, or set up a live video feed. WPCandy is also looking for a person to do some stuff for us while at the event, so if you’re interested, please let us know!

One of the conferences we’ve seen growing in popularity lately is WordCamp. These events are great opportunities to get together and meet other WordPress users from around the area. Most of these events aren’t hosted by Automattic. Rather, they can be planned and organized by anyone who has the time, resources, and organization skills to host a conference in their area. Here are two major WordCamps coming up in the US that we thought you might like to know about. Read more…

Not long ago, our team was online 9 a.m to 4 p.m. PDT to answer your questions and keep your blog running smoothly. Soon after, we brought it up to 24-hour support, five days and week, so those across the country and across the globe wouldn’t have to wait for their answers.

The time has come for help without delay. We hereby announce 24-7 support on WordPress.com.

WordPress.com Blog

The WordPress support team has decided to go to full 24-hour, 7-day free support for WordPress.com-hosted blogs. First they were 9am to 4pm PST, then 24-hours for five days a week, and now you can get support on weekends too.

The official WordPress support team handles issues pertaining to blogs hosted on WordPress.com. If you have a WordPress.com blog, you can contact them if you come across any functionality problems or have a question about how to use the system.

If you’re looking for support for a self-hosted weblog, you can visit the support forums where there are a number of experienced developers waiting to help answer your questions.

Adii and the Premium News Theme development crew have recently re-branded as the all-new WooThemes. This new branding will allow them to offer a larger variety of premium WordPress themes to the public. Along with their new brand, they’ve added Elliot Jay Stocks, ex-senior designer of web startup Carsonified, to the team, where he will be designing themes for the rest of the crew to develop. Elliot has already released ProudFolio, his first theme for WooThemes. Read more…

Last Friday, like every usual Friday night, I tuned into WordPress Weekly, with host Jeff Chandler and a few guys from the WordPress community.

For the first 35 minutes of the show, Jeff interviewed Patrick O’ Keefe, book author and owner of the online network iFroggy. Patrick talked about managing forums and online communities, and issues that coincide. It was pretty sweet to get the insight by someone with so much experience in the field.

After that interview, Jeff interviewed yours truly, Dan Philibin. Dan was asked questions about our new design and different aspects of it. It was a fairly sudden interview with no previous preparation, but Dan did pretty well, if you ask me.

Next, Jeff talked about the Show125 plugin (via a post by HackWordPress.com) and the All-In-SEO plugin not being supported anymore for future versions (which is now being supported by hallsofmontezuma at WordPress.org). Jeff also brings on Richard Paul who shared his opinions on the All-In-SEO plugin and how it should be implemented into WordPress.

Anyways, I don’t want to spoil all the fun, so check out the episode for more WordPress news. And If you’ve never tuned into WordPress Weekly, there’s one usually every Friday night at 10pm, so make sure to stop on by!