WordPress News

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WP App Store launches with 17 theme and plugin partners

By 3 days agoMay 16, 2012

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WP App Store, the project aiming to make plugin and theme purchases easy within the WordPress dashboard — and which we previewed a couple of months ago — quietly launched yesterday (complete with slick intro video). Their plugin is downloadable on their website, which once installed will give you a new top-level menu item for browsing commercial themes and plugins recently added to their system.

Seventeen theme and plugin partners are in place at launch, a few more than announced when the original teaser page went up. Brad Touesnard, the developer behind WP App Store, said that a couple of the vendors that originally showed interest haven’t been responsive, while others just aren’t in the store yet. Developers interested in bringing their own theme or plugin products to WP App Store can request an invite.

Touesnard’s certainly not on his own with this project. In addition to the vendors partnering with WP App Store, his advisors include prominent WordPress business owners Adii Pienaar, Carl Hancock, and Jason Cohen.

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How 92% of us stiffed ThemeThrift in its first week

By 8 days agoMay 11, 2012

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On Tuesday evening the countdown clock on ThemeThrift counted down to zero, and the week-long experiment that theme developer Jake Caputo began on a whim came to a close. For seven days his theme Modest was available via a pay-what-you-want model, with options ranging from $0 to $50. By the time the clock ticked to zero the theme had seen downloads from 272 people, 8% of which opted to pay something for the theme.

When I spoke to Caputo this week he said he expected to see a bit of activity on ThemeThrift when he launched it last Monday. I asked him to clarify, thinking he meant to say he hadn’t expected that. But he said  he did expect some attention, since the idea was a bit off the beaten path and, well, risky.

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WPMods.com sells on Flippa for $80,000

By 8 days agoMay 11, 2012

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WPMods.com, Kevin Muldoon’s website that he put up for auction on Flippa last week, sold this morning for a final bid of $80,000. The bidding began up just over a week ago, but the bulk of the bidding activity took place in the last 48 hours.

Muldoon said in the Flippa listing that the site averages 105,000 page views and $1,300 in revenue each month. The final bid amount came in $20,000 over his original reserve price of $60,000.

This is easily the highest (publicized) amount for any WordPress-centric website sold within the community. There’s no public information on who the buyer was yet, nor any new activity from the buyer on WPMods.com, but we shouldn’t really expect to know anything for another couple of weeks. I’ll keep you updated as I learn more.

For those interested, we also discussed the Flippa auction the last two episodes (7 and 8) of the WP Late Night podcast.

What do you think of the auction, WPMods, and the final purchase price?

WordPress for Android 2.1 brings comment edits, autosave

By 10 days agoMay 9, 2012

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For those of you who have to get your blogging fix on the go, listen up: version 2.1 of the WordPress for Android app is now available. The update brings slight user interface updates and performance tweaks, but those aren’t the changes you’re interested in, right? Noteworthy features in this release include:

  • the app will autosave your post every 60 seconds,
  • comments can now be edited within the app, similar to the way you can edit them within the dashboard, and
  • a new option to link to a resized version of uploaded images.

A complete list of changes and more details are available on the WordPress for Android blog. You can download the updated app from the android.wordpress.org site, and those interested in contributing to the project can find more information on the development blog.

The app update also includes the WordPress.com reader as well, which may or may not be something you’re interested in. Android users, I’m curious: what do you think of the WordPress.com reader being included in the app?

Sucuri reports WPStats.org, Advanced Search plugin as spam

By 10 days agoMay 9, 2012

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This morning Sucuri reported that a website called WPStats.org seems to be behind a series of blackhat spam cases. Code found on compromised websites includes a call to WPStats.org for a Javascript file that hides a slew of spam links on the targeted website.

Along with the spam, the same group’s “Advanced Search” plugin includes hidden links and another callback to the WPStats.org website. The plugin itself has been removed from the WordPress.org plugin directory. If you’re already using the plugin, you should remove it immediately and run your site through a scanner (like Sucuri’s SiteCheck tool) right away.

For a breakdown of the offending code snippets, and exactly what to look out for on your blog, see Sucuri Security’s blog post.

Sucuri Security redesigns and revamps their website

By 10 days agoMay 8, 2012

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Sucuri Security has redesigned their website, from front page to their free SiteCheck scanner tool. Sucuri worked with WebDevStudios on the redesign, starting on the design and finishing with the development, well, yesterday.

Tony Perez, Sucuri CFO, explained their thought process when considering doing a full redesign:

The discussion as you might imagine, revolved around when would be the right time to change our virtual storefront, our website. We had the normal back and forth, “It’s fine” “We just did it two years ago” “People know who we are” etc.. but in the end we decided, that YES, it was time.

I think we’ve all gone through that thought process before, right? As you’d expect, comparison screenshots of the redesign are posted just after the jump.

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WordPress plugin directory now allows code licensed under GPL version 3

By 11 days agoMay 8, 2012

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Andrew Nacin announced the news on the WordPress development blog last week: plugins in the WordPress.org plugin directory can now be plugins licensed under the GPL version 3 or a compatible license. He does mention that developers are still encouraged to stick with “GPLv2 or later”, however:

The guidelines still encourage use of “GPLv2 or later,” the same license as WordPress. However, we understand that many open source libraries use other licenses that are nonetheless compatible, such as GPLv2 only, GPLv3, and Apache 2.0.

This update means the WordPress plugin directory is now identical to the theme directory when it comes to licenses.

At the very least, take this as a reminder to make sure your plugin has the proper licensing information included with it. Will this affect any of your plugins, or any plugins you’ve previously considered adding to the WordPress.org plugin directory?

(And if you’re really into WordPress and GPL stories, check out our old GPL timeline post.)

The Weekly WordPress Theme Release Roundup

By 15 days agoMay 4, 2012

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There are a lot of WordPress themes that come out every week. I mean, really. I know, because I just went through them all to put together the post you’re looking at right now.

I’m trying something a bit new today. I’ve rounded up every WordPress theme that I know of that released this week, and presented them in what I think is a logical order. I’m curious to know if this is helpful for you, so if you appreciate this kind of post let me know in the comments.

Just after the jump you’ll find the nearly 40 themes that came out this week: from WordPress.org, indie shops, and marketplaces. Let me know if you find it useful.

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WordPress blog WPMods is for sale on Flippa

By 15 days agoMay 4, 2012

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Kevin Muldoon has put his WordPress blog, WPMods, up for sale on Flippa. At the time of this writing the auction is at $30,000, though in the comments he mentions he set the reserve price at $60,000. The Flippa auction has another five days left on its nine-day listing, a listing length which Muldoon said he chose because the last 30 day auction asked buyers to wait too long.

In the listing, Muldoon says WPMods has an average of 105,000 page views per month and an average gross revenue of $1,300 per month. Muldoon also argued for the site’s potential in the comments of the listing:

The site has not really been monetized yet. I only started selling ads via buysellads and selling paid reviews two weeks ago so it should increase beyond $2,500 very soon. It’s real strength lies not with ads but with the site being a platform to push quality WordPress products and services to WordPress users. This is something that many other websites simply don’t have.

The last WordPress site I remember seeing sold on Flippa was WPVibe. We actually discussed WPVibe, WPMods, and even as far back as WPDesigner’s sale (remember that?) on the latest episode of WP Late Night, if you’re interested in this sort of stuff.

(Oh yeah, Flippa also saw WordPress auctions with the Pro Photo Theme and We Love WP sales.)

What do you think of the WPMods auction so far? Do you think Muldoon will hit his reserve price of $60,000?

Disclaimer: WPMods is a publisher site on the Pressed Ads advertising network, which I run.

WordPress 3.4 hits Beta 4, edges ever closer to a final version

By 15 days agoMay 3, 2012

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Late last night, right around the time we wrapped up recording WP Late Night #7 with Joshua Strebel, WordPress Lead Developer Ryan Boren broke the news of 3.4 Beta 4 on the WordPress news blog. His post was beautifully brief, so much so that I don’t feel bad quoting it in its entirety here:

Less bugs, more polish, the same beta disclaimers. Download, test, report bugs. Thanks much. /ryan #thewholebrevitything

Can’t beat that, right? For those seeking more than brevity, though, here are a few things you might want to know. First, the list of tickets for the 3.4 milestone on Trac is getting smaller and smaller, now entirely fitting on a single (large) monitor. Second, you should remember how to handle betas, and of course don’t run it live. Third, it’s about that time to start taking bets on just when 3.4 final will land in the comments below.

By the way, who’s been testing the new version so far? What do you think of the theme customizer?