WordPress

Why I’ve Switched to WordPress.com

Clicky Steve, , , , 3 Comments

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that not only have I switched the blog’s theme in the past few days, but I’ve also shifted the hosting completely over from a self-hosted WordPress.org instance, to one on the servers of WordPress.com. (Confused? This article will explain the difference.)

For years I’ve always run sites using WordPress software that I’ve configured myself, rather than those on WordPress.com, based on the following reasons:

  • Hacker Mentality – Not wanting to let go of complete control of my site, and the ability to do with it what I please (like hosting weird web apps and playing about with plugins)
  • Cost – I was always under the impression it would be relatively expensive to keep all of my stuff on WordPress.com’s servers, as generous pals have hosted my sites previously
  • Transition Pain – Moving from an already established and customised site to a different platform seemed like a faff, with inevitable SEO problems/broken links
  • Features and Customisation – Not believing that I’d be able to get my blog to look/feel the way I wanted it to within the WordPress.com boundaries, and that I would miss features (like permalink restructuring)

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I didn’t actually need to run a self-hosted site for http://iamsteve.in. The design of the site was pretty straightforward, there was no real complicated customisations involved, and the cost of shifting to WordPress.com wasn’t what I thought it might work out at; definitely not for a site that isn’t hosting large numbers of images anyway.

In fact, the benefits of being hosted on WordPress.com seemed more and more appealing:

  • A dedicated, and passionate support team that are on hand to help out with any issues (Working alongside them, this was an even bigger boon for me personally)
  • A streamlined interface that I use everyday (for both work and pleasure)
  • No more having to login to separate admin panels all the time
  • A site that is integrated into the highly active WordPress.com community – and so more engagement with other users on the posts
  • No more worrying about rogue plugins crashing or needing to be re-configured after an update breaks something
  • The ability to take massive spikes of bandwidth, as I’m hosted on WordPress.com’s massive network

and one of the most important things of all:

  • The knowledge that my host won’t be intimidated by any legal pressures that come from any of the critical posts I write. (See here for more)

I’m incredibly proud to be part of a team that fights back against those who attempt to censor bits of the Internet that they don’t like on a daily basis, and it makes sense to bring my own writing into that fold. I know I have good people on my side should anything hairy come up.

Really the only thing that I was left swithering over was the pain of moving across. I thought I would give it a bash, and two hours later, the entire site is completely migrated over (multiple domain names and all). The difficulties I thought I’d run into didn’t even crop up as issues at all. All of my custom permalinks are smartly resolved by the WordPress software to their new locations (which I am both almost in disbelief and awe at).

I’m pleased. Not a bad experiment after all.

Automattic/WordPress.com fight back against Censorship

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WordPress LogoAutomattic – the company behind WordPress.com, have taken a decisive step in the fight against bogus DMCA claims.

Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, people can submit a takedown notice to web service providers where their intellectual property is being used without permission. This is the legislative attempt to protect hosts like Google, WordPress, Tumblr, etc from being held responsible for the content that their users post – provided that they swiftly restrict access.

However, whilst this system is designed to give a balance between protection and enforcement, the reality is that many times it is abused by those who wish to silence critics, or to censor views with which they disagree. The Church of Scientology infamously issued thousands of DMCA takedown notices to stop the spread of anti-Scientology views on Youtube, for example. This tactic is highly effective, as the content is almost always restricted (at its peak moment of attention), and the process to challenge the notices (a ‘counter notice’) isn’t something that creators are, or arguably should be, familiar with. In effect, it becomes a virtual game of ping-pong, with the burden of proof shifting to the ‘author’ of the content to prove that they actually have the rights to publish. Sites themselves can take action, but with the sheer volume of notices that they receive, it is often impractical, and rarely a route that businesses want to go down.

I’m both pleased and proud to see that WordPress are fighting back against two such bogus DMCA claims, as announced in this latest blog post, where you can find all the details of the two cases in question.

For the full text of the original post from Oliver Hotham – one of those that fell victim to the misrepresentative DMCA, continue reading below, where it is republished with permission.

Continue reading “Automattic/WordPress.com fight back against Censorship” →

Engineering Happiness for WordPress.com

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happiness engineer
My interpretation of a happiness engineer turned out a bit horror film-esque.

I am more than excited to say that I’ve accepted an offer from Matt Mullenweg – founder of WordPress – to join Automattic as a full time Happiness Engineer, beginning at the end of November.

With just a shade over 200 employees, Automattic’s network gets more monthly unique visitors than Amazon.com, eBay.com, and Yahoo.com. It’s not too far behind Facebook either… They support some of the biggest names on the web, like CNN, TechCrunch, and TED, and get about 19% of the world’s web traffic.

‘Based’ in San Francisco, almost everybody works remotely – from locations around the world. I’m the only employee north of Manchester, which is pretty awesome in of itself. From what I’ve seen, they have an amazing culture with some incredibly smart, and talented people. I’m pretty blown away at the chance to be part of it all.

All that said, it’s been great working with Amor Group, – where I started out 9 years ago as a fresh-faced, terrified schoolie. They’ve been good to me over the years, and I’m particularly proud of what we’ve managed to achieve with their digital communications. I wish them all the best as they go forward as part of Lockheed Martin, but it’s time for me to bow out.

I’ll leave you with this, the Automattic creed:

I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me. I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything. I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation. I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company. I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day. Given time, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.