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.

I haven’t had time to spend much lately on the WordPress Support Forums and WordPress.com Forums, so I set aside an hour to help out, then found myself spending two. The support forums are addictive. Helping people is addictive. And fun.

If you are a WordPress, or familiar with the inner workings of WordPress.com, spend some time on their forums. It’s a huge learning experience.
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WordPress.com have rolled out the sticky post feature, said to debut in WordPress 2.7 due in November. This new features let you check a “Stick this post to the front page” box on a per post basis, which will keep the post up top, even if you publish something else after it. Screenshots and more in the announcement post, but you could give it a go yourself if you’ve got a WordPress.com blog, of course.

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.

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.

WordPress iPhone has already been updated. Over 201,000 blogs using WordPress 2.6. More than 300 WordPress Themes uploaded to the new WordPress Theme Directory. Simon Dickson rocked WordCamp UK with great info on WordPress as a CMS for businesses. WordCamp San Francisco opens registration. Need help tracking changes in WordPress versions? There is now a Plugin that will help your WordPress Themes and Plugins make the transition. WordPress 2.5 is dead. WordPressMU 2.6 is alive. And Mark Jaquith writes a one line WordPress Plugin.

WordPress News

WordPress iPhone: The WordPress iPhone is now at version 1.1 with a lot of improvements and a couple bug fixes. You can learn more about it on the WordPress iPhone Development Blog and study the source code on the WordPress iPhone SVN.

WordPress 2.6 Released: WordPress 2.6 was released last week and appears to be a fairly stable release. It is a mandatory release with security patches and you should Download WordPress 2.6 now. Over 194 bugs were fixed, too. I’ve included a lot of the new features in past issues of the WordPress Wednesday News. For those with WordPress Themes that have not been updated to handle the new image placement, see Hack WordPress and WP Lover for technical help.

WordPress 2.6 Stats: Matt Mullenweg released some numbers on WordPress 2.6. Within the first 10 days, there are 201,000 blogs using 2.6. The English version had been downloaded on average 23,000 a day. According to the WordPress Development blog, there have been 34 issues fixed so far for the upcoming release of 2.6.1.
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WordPress MU is out in 2.6, finally syncing their version history with WordPress, who recently launched 2.6 as well. Donncha O Caoimh’s got the full story as usual, so if you’re even remotely interested in using the WordPress version that powers WordPress.com, his post is for you.

Download WordPress MU 2.6 here.

Fake Steve Jobs, you know, the fake Steve Jobs blog, have closed for the time being. Enter the real Dan Lyons, being the guy behind the whole Fake Steve thing. As far as I can tell, he pretty much rambles on as always on his new blog, incidentally designed by cnp_studio, and is powered by WordPress.com’s VIP hosting plan.

I wonder if people will find the real Dan as interesting as fake Steve?

WordPress iPhone mania sweeps the WordPress Community. WordPress will now rule an entire nation. WordCamp UK a resounding hit. WordPress 2.6 appears to be a stable release. The new WordPress Themes Directory is now an extend. WordPress working hard on improving localization and international translations. Go VOTE for your favorite new WordPress Plugin.

WordPress News

iPhone for WordPress: It’s the talk of the web. The WordPress for iPhone brings your WordPress blog to your iPhone. It is Open Source and compatible with iPhone 3G, iPhone, and iPod Touch and works with full-versions of WordPress (2.5.1 or higher) and WordPress.com. You can download it for free from the iTunes App Store. There is a WordPress iPhone frequently asked questions page to help, and a place to report iPhone WordPress problems. A walk-through video on WordPress for iPhone is on the Automattic Publisher blog. CNet Webware gives a positive review of the iPhone WordPress app, including pros and cons such as uploading photos from your Media Library or from your phone’s camera, and a good post preview. The downside is not being able to copy and paste links and text. It’s all hand HTML coding, too. There are a lot of WordPress mobile options for blogging and keeping up with your WordPress blog via your cell phone.

WordPress Now Rules a Nation: Simon Dickson announced at WordCamp UK that Number 10 Downing new site will be on WordPress.
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That’s right, the iPhone application from Automattic we talked about earlier is now available from the iTunes App Store, free of charge. It supports self-hosted WordPress versions from 2.5.1 and up, as well as WordPress.com hosted blogs.

What do you think, iPhone owners?