WordPress Joins Google As An Official Domain Register

by

Despite their partnership with GoDaddy, it looks like Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) has been granted status as a domain register by ICANN.

As some folks have noticed already, Automattic is now a “real” domain registrar (ID #1531). This has been a goal of mine for several years now, chiefly because I am a bit of a domain collector myself and I’ve never been completely satisfied with the domain buying or management experience on any of the usual players. Second, custom domains are a popular feature on WordPress.com and should become even more popular with some changes we’re introducing this month and it’ll be good to be able to provide a fully integrated experience for our users there. It’ll be a few months while we build all the tools necessary to begin taking advantage of our registrar status so in the meantime we’ll continue to use Godaddy, who has been an excellent partner. (Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress).

Automattic joins Google (the latter who owns Blogger) as an official domain register which should give the company some extra leverage over rivals like Squarespace as well as Say Media’s Typepad.

Depending on their prices, domain registration could potentially provide WP.com with yet another major revenue stream outside of WordPress VIP, various premium services and VaultPress (the latter which is still currently in beta).

It’s still unclear as to which domain extensions Automattic will be able to register (aside from the .com, .net and .org tLD’s), although hopefully the company will be able to expand its reach into international extensions like .co, .uk or .wp (note: joking on the last one!).

(Image Credit: Norebbo)

Gravatar.com Site Gets Updated, Video Released

by

The Automattic owned avatar service Gravatar.com got a much needed site refresh just recently, and an introductionary video for you to show off to your visitors, or anyone not really getting the global recognizable avatar concept. Since Gravatar.com is integrated in just about every WordPress theme these days, you might think that the video is a bit redundant, but the service supports a lot of other platforms as well. Check out the refreshed website and the blog post that talks about everything but just the new site.

WordPress launches WP.me shorturls for WordPress hosted blogs

by

WordPress logoThe Automattic has announced the launch of wp.me shorturls for WordPress.com hosted blogs. According to Matt Mullenweg the wp.me shorturl is different from other services such as tiny.url or tr.im who had their 5 minutes of fame last week.

  • WP.me is the only two-letter .me domain in the world
  • Every blog and post on WordPress.com has a WP.me URL now
  • These are all exposed in the using rel=shortlink
  • It doesn’t work for any URL in the world, just WP.com-hosted ones
  • The links are permanent, they will work as long as WordPress.com is around
  • WP.me is spam-free, because we are constantly monitoring and removing spam from WP.com

Other than the restriction of only being available to WP.com users, WP.me sounds like pretty much any other shorturl service to me. Most bloggers will not care about the rel="shortlink" code in the header nor will most users bother thinking long term if their links will still work in a year. But all credits to the Automattic team to cover most angles for their users and keep adding services to their platform, making WP.com better and better on an almost daily base.

TalkPress: The Forum Revisited and Revitalized

by

Recently, Sam Bauer announced TalkPress, the of .

With the power of the WordPress Community behind it, could TalkPress ignite the fire under forums?

WordPress.com has been an incredible success with millions of bloggers registering millions of blogs and having their chance to blog free, or for a small fee for some services. Blog topics range from personal and private to politics and raising social consciousness. Some WordPress.com blogs have become popular and even famous, such as Robert Scoble and icanhascheezburger.

As a hosting company, WordPress.com hosts some of the largest websites and blogs in the world including icanhascheezburger, CNN news sites including Political Ticker, the Dow Jones’ All Things D, GretaWire, Time’s The Page, People Magazine’s Style Watch, and more. These companies provide the revenue to keep the free blog hosting services rocking and prove that WordPress has the strength and capabilities to support serious demands from users and servers. [Read more…]

Wired Drops TypePad, Moves To WordPress

by

Now this is a huge feather in the already pretty feather-heavy WordPress hat: Wired switches from TypePad to WordPress.

We’ve switched content platforms to WordPress, which should allow for all kinds of widgety fun and games as we move our stuff into the new place and figure out where to hang things.

While at it, the Wired blogs have also gotten something of a facelift to “bring all the Wired blogs into closer sync with the main site, and with the magazine”, which sounds like a good idea.

Naturally, the WordPress Publisher Blog is reporting this, and so is Automattican Matt Mullenweg and Toni Schneider. Six Apart owns the TypePad service, and I bet they are a bit pissed that Wired didn’t go for Movable Type instead.