Salon Article

Blogging grows up, not as interesting as it could have been, but a good overview of Six Apart. When I talked to Farhod about two weeks ago I estimated around 15k WordPress blogs. Today the WP blog crawler has over 18,000 in its database. Six months ago the list was small enough to list every WordPress blog on the counter page. Nine months ago you could count the number of WP blogs on your hands. Since I started writing this entry 82 people have downloaded WordPress for free. It’s not where we’re at, it’s where we’re going.

17 thoughts on “Salon Article

  1. I’m curious if LL’s tracker is capable of producing time-sensitive graphs. It would be interesting to see what events might or might not have had an effect on the logware’s popularity.

  2. Yes you have Michael. 🙂

    Janice, thank you.

    Geof, Carthik is running it now, I’ll send him a ping to see if we can get some sort of graph.

  3. Congrats Matt.
    I’m a new user since a month. I’m now getting to learn the way wordpress is coded. But with so many users, i think the development goes a little bit to slow. Especially because there are things that aren’t not so good in my eyes. A few examples: the way error messages are displayed, no preview of comments like MT, … I know there are hacks, but these things should in my opinion be in the core code.

    If I know the code good enough, I really would like to help you guys.

  4. I read the article – and would agree that it was not all that interesting. (Also didn’t like having to watch an ad just to read it.)

    Congrats. I used to be a Movable Type user, and previously before that a Blogger user. I just cannot find another system that comes even close to holding a light to WordPress. Great job!

  5. Thanks for the link to the Database. I have been using WP for just over a month now and I added myself to that database. Keep up the good work… from one Matt to another.

  6. Here is my 2 cents, MT might have started the beautification of blogging, but WP made it better. I almost broke MT several time just trying to make my blog look the way I wanted to. Now I have the blog I have always wanted using WP. I am so greatful I tried it out and made the switch.

  7. Knowing how much work you have put in to this (along with so many other people), I’m really excited to see where you’re going. And I’m still glad that I can say that I knew you when…

  8. once upon a blog timestamp, wordpress saved my life, i was driving to work when a 16 wheeler truck hit my car… then i almost died, and wordpress saved me… the end…

  9. Geez, Matt. I feel like an old-timer! My first post on my WP-powered blog was Nov 7, 2003, and if I recall correctly, it was version 0.7. I believe 0.72 came out very soon after.

    I loved it then, and I love it now. The software is developing nicely, and the community is robust, friendly, knowledgeable and generous with their time and talents.

    Dextro,
    WordPress is not MT. It runs better, works better, plays better and is the blog tool to watch these days. Rushing the development cycle to be more like any other blogging software is not what WP is about. Development happens neither too quickly nor too slowly; it happens precisely as it should, which is one reason why it is the excellent product you can download for free today. It’s the other tools that are rushing…to be more like WordPress.

  10. Some graphing and cleanup of the data is in order. I never imagined that the crawler would become this important. I will get in touch with Carthik to see what can be setup/done. Yay WordPress!!

  11. Craig:
    Don’t feel yourself attacked ;). My criticism is meant to be constructive. It’s not because i have some remarks, that the whole software is bad? I use it myself, and I am very happy with it. I just want to know what the software is going to. Is there some roadmap? Not a timed roadmap, but a map where users can see what will be coded. In my previous comment, I say for example the error handling. How can I know that this is already planned or not?

  12. I came to WP at v1, so I guess that counts me at the start, or maybe just before, the big growth spurt.

    The reason I chose it was simple – it was easy to use, fast, gave vaild code, and highly customisable.

    I concidered MT for a while, but realised it was slower, ran in perl (ugh) and was generally rather bloated.

    However the real kicker was that there was a HUGE user love and development for WP (of cource their still is), more so than MT I felt, and it all felt like everyone mucked in and helped. Not like something that wanted to be commercial and the next big thing (I still get that impression from MT).

    There’s a love for the product that is hard to find in software. Games want it too – just look at the fanbase for half-life, or many of the modable games. There’s a supported love there by the fans. Not just toiling for geeky reasons.

    Plus.. WP just keeps getting better. in just a 0.2 revision it has gone from a good product, to a product that is twice as good. Many lesser authors would have called it a 2.0 release.

    This is why I love WordPress.

  13. All is ok with wordpress.

    Only one thing: in the home page it’s very difficult to find the info on the current version available.

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