Paul De Sousa writes in: “One of South Africa’s largest media groups, Avusa, which owns most of the countries BIGGEST newspapers is now using WordPress. Here are 2 of their MU installations: The Times is South Africa’s first interactive newspaper, it’s part of The Sunday Times which is the countries largest newspaper. Financial Mail is a largely financial newspaper also owned by Avusa. It’s expected that in the near future more rollouts for other publications, newspapers, and magazines will happen as WordPress is ingrained into our online strategy.”
The Times is one of SA’s only two independent newspapers. Never afraid of courting controversy or difficult subjects, never shying away or backing down – a worthy client.
6k.
http://6000.co.za
Looks good and I’m glad to see Africa is stepping up to the plate with WordPress. However, someone needs to tell them that black font does not look good on a dark red background.
Its pretty wide spread in SA, SA’s biggest blog by a long way
Keo.co.za is run on wordpress as well.
Paul De Sousa is guiding the new SA WordPress MU with a very traditional, smart hand.
Check his “SEO in a nutshell”:
http://blogs.thetimes.co.za/desousa/2007/07/26/seo-in-a-nutshell/
Packed with basics I see people pretending aren’t.
… It must not take much deep-thinking, once someone shopping for a multi-user solution wanders into WordPress.com and sees it’s MU keeping order for 2 million. 😉
Hey Matt
Thought Leader (http://www.thoughtleader.co.za) is powered by WordPress, the single user version. The admin area has a few tweaks, but it’s I was impressed when I heard it wasn’t a WordPress MU installation.
Thought Leader is owned by an South African publisher, Mail & Guardian (http://www.mg.co.za).
Tyler, why you gotta rain on my parade?
lemme bask in this warmth while it lasts…
Matt – Does this mean you’re up for WordCamp in South Africa!? I’ve been designing with WP for more than a year now, whilst also running SA’s third most popular blog (according to Technorati, the most popular) and it’d be insane if you could visit SA in the near future…
The South African New Media space might be relatively small, but we’re a close-knit and vibrant community… So WP would do well here… Oh come on! Just visit already! 🙂
WordPress is actually suprisingly pretty big in South Africa, especially since South Africa is emerging as a minor player in the blog scene.
Codezed – A Zambian technology site also uses WordPress.
Paul: Congrats on converting to WordPress. I am originally from South Africa and still have family there, and the technological shift that is occuring is monumental. You are making part of that happne :).
Even our little italian independent media network – http://amisnet.org – is powered by WordPress MU, after 5 long years with a custom CMS; we are really proud of it! 🙂
Our install have a notable amount of custom code and plugins, and we are willing to make public some of them soon, because if we can use a nice piece of software like MU, we feel is a good thing share something back to the community.
All my personal sites run on WordPress and hopefully soon I will be developing my own themes for people to use.
In fact most of the blogs I know use WordPress.
A thanks is in order 🙂
It is no surprise that WordPress is being used even in SA and not only
– if big American-budget-blogs rely on WordPress why not third world countries; it is free and reliable.
WordPress is enormously popular in South Africa, Matt.
Thanks for mentioning our country in your blog! 😀
The South African Blogosphere is very active. You can find SA blogs on these two aggregators:
http://amatomu.com
http://afrigator.com
I’m a huge fan of WordPress and I have successfully converted two of my blogging friends from blogspot to WordPress just this last year.
Both of them found converting to WP extremely easy and thoroughly satisfying.
Their blogs are:
http://insidecandy.co.za
http://ifthesewallscouldtalk.co.za
YEBO! WordPress is irresistible and we South Africans just know what is good! 🙂
Lovely to see some International recognition. South Africa has a big handful of bloggers, all running blogs on WordPress and it’s growing exponentially!
I know WordPress is very popular in SA, and not just for blogging.
I’ve used it as a CMS for a couple of sites, and it works like a charm. The thing I like most about it is how easy it is to customise.
Of course, after having used it for over 2 years already, I guess it’s easy because of familiarity…
Most African blogs not hosted by blogger, are on wordpress –
just like this: http://www.africanloft.com/
WordPress has probably become the most popular blogging engine in South Africa.
http://www.blat.co.za
http://www.iblog.co.za
Those are just two sites running WordPress installs. There are many more private bloggers that run WordPress (I’m one of them).
It’s just, simply, the best. Period.
~ Wogan
WordPress is taking off big time in South Africa and the players involved are increaing in number. We organise a regular wordpress meetup in Cape Town and there’s a wordcamp being planned for Johannesburg soon as well. SA loves wordpress … did someone say there are other blogging platforms out there???