September 2009
4 posts
The Happiness Engineers had a great time in London last week. We worked on some cool projects and came up with a lot of great ideas. We’ll bring more updates to you over the coming weeks and months.
One of the items we worked on is a widget we call RSS Links, which allows you to display text and/or image links to the comment and post feeds of your blog.
No need to mess around with HTML in a...
Last week you guys published 1.4 million new blog posts, but you only ran the spell checker about 204 thousand times. Ahem. The two possible explanations for this are that we’re all perfect writers or that we just forget to run the spell checker. I’m in the latter camp.
I don’t blame you — spell checkers are usually pretty lame. They are bad with most proper nouns and usually my problem isn’t...
Clouds from my trip to WordCamp Dallas
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it’s a way for people to subscribe to updates to your blog using a client like Google Reader or Bloglines. You may not know what RSS is but chances are people are using it to read your blog. We track over 50,000,000 posts read via RSS every week. (Around a 18% addition to our on-site views!)
Today we turned...
I’m back in San Francisco after a trip to London for the Happiness Engineer meetup. It’s serious business, but the group has managed to have a little fun along the way.
Our developers have been hard at work, too. In August, we launched the SoundCloud shortcode and WP.me, a URL shortener for WordPress blogs. And at your request, we introduced two new themes: iNove and Sandbox 1.6.1.
Here are...
August 2009
6 posts
In the coming week, the Support crew (seen among the lovely faces here) will be meeting in London to brainstorm new ways of providing you with the resources you need. While us Happiness Engineers are putting our heads together to churn out some big ideas, we’ll be closing our email support system.
Support will be unavailable from 10 a.m. EST on Friday, August 28 to 4 a.m. EST on Monday,...
Sandbox 1.6.1 is now available to all WordPress.com blogs.
Alongside Sandbox 1.6.1 you’ll also find the older Sandbox versions. We’ve left them intact. If you’ve been using them, don’t worry, they haven’t changed. However, we do urge you to check out 1.6.1.
Sandbox is a skeleton theme for WordPress. Though you can use it by itself, it’s mainly intended for dressing up with a custom Custom CSS...
Check out this address:
http://wp.me/sf2B5-shorten
If you visit it, you’ll end up right back here. The nice thing about it is that it’s a short link, about 70% smaller than the permalink for this post. URL shorteners are nothing new, Tiny URL has been around for 100 years, but WP.me is different in a few ways.
WP.me is the only two-letter .me domain in the world.
Every blog and post on...
We are big fans of SoundCloud, a really useful service that is part Flickr for music, part professional music collaboration hub. Artists such as Beck, Moby and Sonic Youth now use the service to distribute tracks through their blogs and connect with their fans.
We’ve received many requests from WordPress.com bloggers that they would like us to work with SoundCloud to enable this service, and...
iNove by mg12 is one of the top themes used for self-hosted WordPress blogs, and a commonly requested addition to our offerings here on WordPress.com. We’re always doing what we can to bring you the cool new stuff you want, so now you’ve got it, too! iNove for WordPress.com:
Some handy features of this theme:
Display pages or categories in the menu below your header.
Display your page...
We kicked off July with an open vote on new media features. Thanks to all of you who voted and submitted comments. Your feedback determines the future of WordPress.
Later in the month we introduced PollDaddy ratings and polls, the Gravatar widget, and the archives shortcode (one of many you can check out here).
Here are July’s stats:
394,609 blogs were created.
5,666,839 posts were...
July 2009
7 posts
You publish a lot of quality content (trust us, we know). And so we understand that making it easily accessible to your faithful readers is very important for you as a blogger. Sure, our Categories, Tag Cloud, and Archives widgets do their parts, but we’ve come up with an extra little something that you may care to use.
Enter our newest shortcode – [archives].
This little guy will allow you to...
Say goodbye to messing around with HTML in a Text widget just to get an “About Me” in your sidebar. With the new Gravatar widget it only takes a few seconds to achieve this and stamp your blog as your own!
If you’re not familiar with a Gravatar it’s a graphical representation used to identify yourself in WordPress blogs and other sites. It’s already built in to your WordPress.com account and...
PollDaddy joined the Automattic team last year, and we have been working on adding some of our great features directly into the WordPress platform ever since.
Ratings
The PollDaddy rating feature that was enabled on WordPress.com last week has really started to see some use. Over 100k blog posts, pages and comments on WordPress.com are now being rated. If you need some help getting started,...
Here at WordPress.com, we always run the most recent version of the WordPress open source software. In addition, we do custom development so that we can offer features not included in the open source core product (like VideoPress, built-in polls, etc.). Because WordPress.com gets new features implemented as they are developed, we don’t usually talk too much about big version releases. For...
Remember National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) back in November? You all used the opportunity to take a swing at churning out a 50,000-word novel on your blogs in only one month — some with great success!
There’s also NaBloPoMo, which has nothing to do with post-modernism, but with blogging! It stands for National Blog Posting Month.
It’s an even more fitting occasion for posting regularly...
Last month we launched the Yahoo! App and 360 importer so you can migrate your content to WordPress.com quickly and easily. And we introduced the SocialVibe widget, which helps you earn donations for the charity of your choice. July will bring more feature updates, and more of the themes and customizations you’ve been asking for. We’re listening.
Here are the stats for June:
388,580 blogs were...
Remember National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) back in November? You all used the opportunity to take a swing at churning out a 50,000-word novel on your blogs in only one month — some with great success!
There’s also NaBloPoMo, which has nothing to do with post-modernism, but with blogging! It stands for National Blog Posting Month.
It’s an even more fitting occasion for posting regularly...
June 2009
2 posts
You spend a lot of time creating great content and attracting an audience for your blog. What if you could use that influence to make a positive social impact? Now you can.
We’ve teamed up with SocialVibe, and now by adding the SocialVibe widget to your blog, you are able to earn donations for the charity of your choice by getting sponsored by a brand that appeals to you.
Each time someone...
Sorry for this being the latest wrap-up ever.
May was a fun month for us. We rolled out a ton of new features: the ability to add YouTube videos and polls to comments, stats in your time zone, the VideoPress upgrade (with HD!), post by email, new stats charts, comment search, improved comment reply by email, and VideoPress.com.
May was also the month for our largest-ever WordCamp San...
January 2009
2 posts
So I was checking the stats to my story, which is now 23 chapters long I am happy to say and I notice that I have a new review. I’m always happy to get them, but this one kind of struck a nerve with me. Out of allllllll the chapters I’ve written the only thing this person could find to pick at me for was…a comma! This to me is someone who has zero time on their hands that you can read so much...
Today the back of my mouth has just been aching terribly. It feels really swollen and I thought maybe I had chewed something to hard or something. Me being the gross person I am shoved my hand in my mouth trying to see if maybe I got some foot stuck between my tooth and my gum (don’t you just hate that?) and what I felt I didn’t expect. Shocker of the century I have a wisdom tooth coming in! I...
December 2008
6 posts
The holiday’s are coming to an end. Now all we need is New Year’s and than not another Holiday until Easter…or if you live in New Orleans than it’s Mardi Gras. I’ve just been so busy writing and taking pictures. I actually ended up getting a new lense for my camera which I am sooooo excited about! It’s a 55-250mm and I got it because it has the Image Stabilizer. It’s a big help because I don’t...
It’s just with the holiday’s and all coming up it’s just hard to get a moment to sit down and actually type something. Sorry.
Lots of upgrading going on recently. We have the new WordPress 2.7, which I am still getting use to, but it seems pretty cool. I also got an email on my blackberry curve that the update for it’s software had finally been released! Hooray! Nothing to spectacular I have to say I mean yeah hooray for getting video, but other than that nothing to impressive. They updated the browser and stuff so...
Snow In New Orleans!, originally uploaded by The Epileptic.
You heard right. It snowed today! I am probably just as baffled as you are, but than again I didn live in Jersey City, NJ for about 17 and a half years of my life so snow is no big deal to me. My grandparents however were all excited. Snow to them is like a huge deal, but I was confused by one thing. Why are people walking out in...
I haven’t updated this thing in forever! Now here’s the part where I make up all these lame excuses for why. Bottom line I’m just not that interested anymore. I went back to regular schooling (I’m in class as we speak and my teacher is definitely glaring at me) and it’s been consuming most of my time. I still work part-time with my grandpa and I’ve lately become really into my story and Animal...
My grandpa got a hold of my story and proceeded to humiliate me by showing it to everyone in the office! Ugh I don’t know why these things always happen to me. It was something I was trying to keep low key probably because my father, god rest his soul, never really liked that I was into writing. He always saw his only son as being some kind of macho athlete and well I think I disappointed him a...
November 2008
18 posts
I know I haven’t been around much. I hope everyone in the U.S. had a nice Thanksgiving. We did the usual turkey dinner and all that rubbish. I haven’t really been around because I have been throwing myself into writing my fiction story called Kindle. I have gotten sooooo immersed in writing it that I haven’t really spent any time doing anything else. It definitely is a great stress reliever and...
Sucked badly! I saw it last night with my cousins, who by the way read the books, and even they said it was awful. It was just too awkward with Bella and Edward and no offense to all the Edward fans but he was not cast well at all. The guy who played him was horrible! We were talking about him the other day and concluded that he always looks drunk. So that being said we decided if Stephanie...
I came across this site called Alphainventions.com and its a pretty neat little site to help put your blog out there. All you have to do is submit your blog and it shows it in real time to attract more people to your site. You will definitely see and increase in hits you get per day so if you’re someone like me who actually has something to say and you want to be heard I would definitely try the...
2 more days and than I will be in Houston hanging out with people close to my own age. Thank you God! I also just got some illegal entertainment for the ride there, but we don’t need to discuss it. Let’s just say I really like it and I think they did great. Have fun figuring it out. Short update as I am trying to pack because I haven’t yet and mysteriously all my skinny jeans have disappeared....
I found something to write about thanks to someone mentioning global warming today. I am just soooo tired of hearing about global warming. I mean yes it is happening, but there is just sooooo much information being left out. I feel like they’re putting it all on us humans like we’re the only people at fault for all ice melting. What about the things that aren’t human though? What about…cow...
It’s true these past couple of days I have had absolutely nothing to write about. I’m thinking of maybe taking a break for about a week until I get back from my trip to Houston. At least by then I’ll have something interesting to write about. Until then I’m signing off! PEACE!
Tomorrow it’s suppose to get cold, but the way the weather is here it’s not likely. It was suppose to rain today, but I don’t know if you consider drizzling really a rain storm. I’ve been checking the weather for my trip to Houston next Friday and it’s suppose to be in the 70’s. Ugh. I’m from New Jersey I am not use to this middle of November hot weather. Monday in New Jersey it’s suppose to be...
That is quite an accomplishment on my part, but I had good reasoning behind it. Being that my right hand is now bandaged with gauze, medical tape, scotch tape on top of that (to hold it all together you know what I mean?) and band aids to hold that together, it’s safe to say my right hand is completely unusable. I kind of wish the burn had been in a better place like on the top of my hand, band...
…and the toaster oven won I was cooking chicken just kind of reheating it and just as I was putting it in the top of my hand hit the roof of the toaster. Ouch. At first I looked at it FYI this may gross some people out so if you have a weak stomach don’t read this partand I swear it looked like nothing I had seen. It was like brown and yellow looking so me being the idiot I am thought it was...
People leave crappy reviews on an item they purchase and the only real reason they have for not liking it is something stupid like they didn’t know how to use it. I’m going to be purchasing a Sony Cybershot DSC-W170 and like everyone else I like to read up on what I’m buying and look at the specs. I have an older Cybershot that’s 6 megapixels and it works great, but it’s definitely time to...
This butt is ridiculous!, originally uploaded by The Epileptic.
I saw this lady in Toys R Us the other day and honestly I didn’t think her butt was real at first. Man that is way to much ass for one person and I know a few girls who could use some of that. This should be illegal!
I was browsing through Amazon looking for some lenses for my SLR and holy crap! Talk about expensive! The cheapest I found were Sigma lenses I can get a nice 300mm one for about $200 bucks and they’ve gotten slightly good reviews problem is…I don’t think I need anything that huge! 300mm is a lot I mean the lense I use right now only goes to about 55mm and I have heard some people have such...
Yumm-O!, originally uploaded by The Epileptic.
Wow it’s kind of crazy to think that Christmas is only a month away. Well give or take a few days. It might be surprising to know that I actually do not like Christmas all that much. The main reason being I’m red/ green color blind No joke. Everything about Christmas revolves around the colors red and green two colors that I completely can’t...
Anyone else read about how they voted in favor of a Gay Marriage Ban? I personally always say to each their own, but this state cannot seem to make up their damn minds. I’m kind of wondering what is going to happen to all those LEGAL marriages performed before this marriage ban was implemented. I mean obviously now these unions are not technically considered legal by any form of the word, but...
Or am I the only one who knows his grandparents were definitely maybe WHITE?
I mean it is what it is election wise, but enough with all the media hype I’m really sick of it. I’m tired of these people treating him like a damn celebrity instead of what he really is. A simple man who believed in change, ran for office and was elected PRESIDENT (who cares if he’s black, white, orange,red or...
Today I think I discovered what it is that truly gets under my grandma’s skin. Lately I’ve been kind of lazy when it comes to shaving. I figured I’m a17 and the kind of messy facial hair look is in so maybe I could just leave it for a bit. I was sitting in the car with her today and my face started itching (like it tends to do when you have an over-growth of hair on it) so I started scratching...
She has no ass. How is she hot?
Originally uploaded by The Epileptic
I was going through the pictures I had from our trip to Gonzales and I came across this picture I took of Paris Hilton’s picture they had up in Guess. I honestly never realized how flat assed she is. I for one find nothing even remotely attractive about this girl so I have no idea what all the hype is about. She’s also as...
Today is officially my last day of church. I just don’t think I can really stomach sitting there being lectured on what’s right and what’s wrong. I’m so tired of hearing the constant babel about politics and sex before marriage. We’re here for God not to be judged and prosecuted. Also the politics I mean you can preach all you want the people who are set in their ways are going to vote the way...
October 2008
7 posts
Gum, M&M’s, and American History X, originally uploaded by The Epileptic.
Also happy birthday to my grandpa who turns 61 today! I know he’s young than again I was one of those “out of wedlock” kids. Thanks mom and dad! I didn’t do much today my grandma took me out to Wal-Mart to get my grandpa a cake and I ended up picking up some things for myself. I got all my necessary survival...
I use to not care if people bitched and moaned all day about ever little ailment, but ever since I got diagnosed I’ve just had such a low tolerance for complaining. Especially when it’s people who complain about such stupid bullshit. “Oh my gosh I have high blood pressure because someone said something about me and it just made it sky rocket!” Well no duhhhh you moron! Whenever you get hyped up...
Barack Obama, the lead Presidential Democratic Party candidate, is for
banning all guns in America . He is considered by those who have dealt
with him as a bit more than just a little self-righteous.
At a recent rural elementary school assembly in East Texas , he asked
the audience for total quiet. Then, in the silence, he started to
slowly clap his hands once every few seconds, holding...
My poor grandma thinks I’m abandoning her I got invited this weekend to go out to Gonzales to the Outlet Mall that I never knew existed. Ha ha. Anyways I don’t really have much to say today and if I did this guy said it all…
AWESOMENESS
Ok so I’ll probably get a lot of flack for writing this, but at this point I don’t really care because I am super super pissed off. My grandma came to get me and take me out to lunch no big deal. We got into the turn lane and the light is already red so what was said next was just not necessary. This black girl walked out in front of our suv and said out loud “Stop WHITE bitch.” I don’t think...