A Denial of Service attack brought down some WordPress.com blogs yesterday, including VIP hosted hotshots like the GigaOM network. The only obvious communication that I could find about this matter was a tweet linking to a blog post about DOS attacks in general, and the actual one in particular, also written by a WordPress.com team representative. Barry wraps up:

We keep hourly traffic metrics and based on those numbers, it looks like during the attack there was about a 5% decrease in overall pageviews during the 40 minutes before traffic was re-routed. All things considered, not a bad outcome for an attack this size. Looking at bandwidth graphs, this attack was in the 500Mbit - 750Mbit/sec range.

That might very well be true, and I can’t say that Automattic didn’t do a good job managing the attack. I do think that the communication with users were poor. For a company into blogging, and a service hosting blogs, I’m surprised to see that the DOS attack isn’t even mentioned on the official blog. I hope Automattic learns to communicate better in the future, because this is just not good enough.

The latest item on Automattic’s shopping list is PollDaddy, the hosted poll solution that apparently have served 195 million votes over some 1 million polls to date. The two man operation have joined Automattic, and PollDaddy polls are now hosted in the new owner’s powerful datacenter. Good for the stability of the service.

Matt Mullenweg explains why Automattic acquired PollDaddy:

As we started to look at building out our own service for this, it became more obvious that, while on the surface it’s a very simple problem, there’s a lot of hidden complexity and opportunities for some really powerful features under the hood. There are probably a dozen companies addressing this space right now, but as we started to survey the space I was struck by how often I’d see this “PollDaddy” thing pop up.

PollDaddy is now a part of the WordPress.com service, detailed here, and also available in a plugin for hosted WordPress installs. That adds to the current support of embedding polls, something that won’t change. read more

WordCamps are everywhere! WordPress 2.7 preview of the Administration Panels and interface wireframes released but not final. Theme changes in WordPress 2.7 will improve comments by design and code. Automattic buys Intense Debate for the comment power. WordPressMU updated. WordPress.com stats out. And more WordPress and WordCamp news and events.

WordPress News

WordPress 2.7 Wireframes: Jane Wells revealed the WordPress 2.7 Wireframes, the graphic draft versions being tested for the development of the new WordPress 2.7 and future version Administration Panels and interface. A work-in-process, the PDF files are going around the web and serve as guides not final versions of the interface. These are constantly in fluctuation as testing and updates are ongoing.

WordPress Theme Changes in WordPress 2.7 Comments: Otto of Ottodestruct covers the changes in WordPress 2.7 comments that may impact some WordPress Themes. While older WordPress Themes will continue to work but WordPress 2.7 includes some new features WordPress Theme designers need to know. They include creating a WordPress 2.7 compatible comments.php template file, changes in the comments loop, password protection checks, AJAX, and style changes. Some of the improvements and features explained are subject to change as WordPress 2.7 nears release.
read more

Automattic has announced that it has acquired IntenseDebate for an undisclosed sum. This should ensure that, in time, the free blog commenting service has the potential to find its way onto both hosted and self-managed WordPress blogs - over four million at present.

According to a CNet article, Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg has said that IntenseDebate software could become the default commenting option on both WordPress.org and WordPress.com, citing email replies and comment rating system as the two of the main reasons for taking on the service. read more

Well over 100,000 iPhone users have downloaded the official WordPress for iPhone application, according to the WordPress for iPhone blog, and based on figures Automattic has received from Apple.

The vast majority (nearly three in every five downloads) come from the US, with one in five downloads from Europe, 8% from the UK, and the rest from Canada, Japan, Australia, and other countries.

What the numbers can’t tell is how many people are actively using the software. That’s a feature which should be available to developers in a future release of the iPhone firmware, according to Steve Jobs’ keynote speech earlier in the year.

It’s also impossible to tell exactly how many times other applications have been downloaded, as Apple doesn’t divulge that information except to individual developers.

As an iPhone user, I haven’t done any serious blogging using the handset, though it’s great for some housekeeping tasks such as moderating and responding to comments, editing typos, and such like. However, 100,000 people obviously thought they’d give it a go, which must be encouraging for Automattic.

According to the blog post, version 1.2 of the WordPress for iPhone application will include landscape mode, comment moderation, enhanced image options, and other tweaks. It should be available in the next few weeks.

100,000 and Counting (via Sitepoint)

WordPress.com, Automattic’s hosted version of WordPress, just recently passed a whopping 4 million blogs, as the screenshot above shows. That is some impressive number! I do wonder how many of these are active, and how many are spam? Perhaps the folks over at WordPress.com will touch that in the inevitable blog post announcing breaking 4M, we’ll see.

First of all, WordPress 2.6.1 was released last Friday, which is probably what a lot of bloggers were waiting for before adapting to the 2.6 branch. I used to wait for the .1 release myself, but stopped doing that with 2.6 actually, and I’m glad I did:

If you’re happy with 2.6, however, keep on using it. You need not upgrade to 2.6.1 if 2.6 is getting the job done.

This is a first from the WordPress developers, telling you to nab the new version if you feel like it, but if you don’t think you need it then you don’t need to bother! Will you update your blog to 2.6.1?

WordCamp SF 2008 was held yesterday - here’s a brief look at sites covering the goings-on.

Matt Mullenweg himself calls the WordCamp coverage by ZDNet “the best ongoing coverage”.

CNet’s Webware has coverage by Dan Farber.

Aaron Brazell covers his talk on Search and Findability

TechCrunch has a strong roundup of coverage as well.

Patrick Havens offers detailed coverage at WordCamp Report.

Post your Wordcamp links in the comments and we’ll update this post later today.

WordPress.com is now offering support personnel around the clock, according to a post on the official blog.

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

We’ll try our best to reply to every request within 24 hours — usually much less. How fast can we really go? Send us a request to find out (but please only if you have a question, or want to tell us what a fabulous job we’re doing).

“Help without delay” and “reply to every request within 24 hours” might be a bit dubious when put together like this, but it is definitely a good thing that there’s a support team available 24/7 on WordPress.com.

Automattic is releasing an open source application for the iPhone, called WordPress for iPhone. Matt Mullenweg reckons it is the first open source application being made available in the iTunes App Store. The application is due soon, and supports both self-hosted blogs (version 2.5.1 and higher), and WordPress.com blogs.