Scott Taylor on WordPress + Memcached

Scott Taylor, Software Engineer III at eMusic, recently posted a comprehensive article on using WordPress + Memcached.

eMusic relaunched on WordPress a couple of months ago, and it’s great to get Scott’s perspective on a key component of their setup.

Here is a quick blurb, and be sure to go read the full post for all the details:

One of the most bizarre critiques of WordPress that I often hear is “it doesn’t come with caching” – which makes no sense because Cache is one of the best features of WordPress out of the box. That’s kind of like saying: “my iPod sucks because it doesn’t have any songs in it” – when you first buy it. Your iPod can’t predict the future and come pre-loaded with songs you love, and your WordPress environment can’t come already-installed without knowing a minimal number of things. You have to pick a username / password, you have to point at a database, and if you want to cache, you have to pick how you want to cache (you don’t HAVE to cache – but really, you HAVE to cache).

…

Memcached (pronounced: Mem-cash-dee), or Memcache-daemon, is a process that listens by default on port 11211. Like httpd (H-T-T-P-daemon), it runs in the background, often started automatically on server load. A lot of huge websites use Memcached – at least: Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

[Read the full post]

WordCamp San Francisco videos available

If you weren’t able to make it to the annual WordPress conference at WordCamp San Francisco, never fear! Videos from WordCamp San Francisco 2011 are steadily being added to WordPress.tv (where you can find a lot of of videos from past conferences and WordCamps, too)

If you only have time to watch one presentation, make sure you watch Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word where he tells you how WordPress is doing and shares some great statistics from the 2011 user survey (video embedded below).

Matt Mullenweg: State of the Word 2011

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WordCamp San Francisco August 12 – 14

The official annual WordPress conference, WordCamp San Francisco, is coming up next week, August 12 -14th! As of today there are still some tickets available (at $50 for the entire 3 days, it’s an incredible bargain) as well as there are some opportunities available to sponsor as well.

Many members from the VIP Team at WordPress.com, Automattic, and the larger WordPress community will be present and speaking, too. We hope to see you there!

Ready to become a VIP Services Client? Some of the world’s biggest brands rely on WordPress.com VIP Services.

Upcoming WordCamps

On the WordPress.org News blog, Jane has highlighted some upcoming WordCamps:

Looking for something fun to do during your summer vacation? Why not check out a WordCamp! WordCamps are locally-organized casual conferences of, by, and for WordPress users, developers, and enthusiasts just like you. The focus of a WordCamp is to foster face-to-face connections and collaboration among the local WordPress crowd, but there are usually some out-of-towners there as well.

Click through to see the latest approved WordCamps for this summer, and visit WordCamp Central for all upcoming WordCamps, and information on how to help organize or participate in one.

WordPress at South by Southwest

WordPress is all over the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival this year – from networking parties to a WordPress Genius Bar at the trade show, WordPress has definitely left its mark on the conference.

The WordPress Genius Bar will be at the trade show through Thursday, March 17th. Stop by and say hi, grab some swag or talk to the geniuses about WordPress. But get there early – it’s been packed! (Booth #s 829, 831, 928, and 930)

More details on the WordPress Development site

Photo by Terry Chay

The VIP Services team meets in London

The entire Automattic VIP Services team (minus Lloyd, who thankfully held down the support queue!) spent the past week in London to talk strategy, fraternize, and meet with existing and prospective VIP clients in the area.

We had a VIP meetup one night, and we were pleased by the turnout and the conversations that were flying between the guests, both VIP project owners and developers alike. We continue to expand our VIP Services offerings for both self-hosted and WordPress.com VIPs, and the response has been very, very positive. One thing to us is clear – demand for WordPress is increasing, and our clients are hungry to apply it to all their upcoming projects.

They’re even happier when we tell them, “Yes, WordPress can do that, too!” Here on the Publisher blog, we’ll continue to highlight some of those outside-of-the-blog uses of WordPress (yep, it’s a CMS, too) that are becoming the driving force behind new enterprise adoption of WordPress.

Thanks to everyone who came out for a drink & a chat – and we look forward to another VIP meetup closer to where you are!

If you’d like more information about VIP Services for your WordPress site, be sure to contact us!

MediaPost: “The winner will be WordPress”

Interesting post from Philip Leigh of MediaPost this week, titled “The Implications Of Blogging“:

…Similarly, it’s likely that the future of blogging — and the future spread of knowledge — will reflect the characteristics of whatever blog platform achieves dominance. Increasingly it appears that the winner will be WordPress. It first appeared seven years ago as a successor to software typically used for online diaries. Thus, it was originally text-based, but has since evolved to also encompass audio, video, and animation. It has even become a popular platform for entire websites as well as important components of prominent sites such as The New York Times.

(Emphasis mine).

Philip goes on to state:

In short, WordPress is not merely a blogging tool. It’s a platform that can lead to an explosion of new media properties capable of text, video, audio, music, animation, interactivity, online merchandising, podcasting, and even social networking. Successful innovations will rapidly take root and expand while unsuccessful ones will quickly perish or remain marginal.

[ Read the full article on MediaPost.com ]

WordPress Top Demanded Skill on Elance

Since last year when we wrote about “WordPress in Demand on Elance“, WordPress has surged into the top ten, and now is the sixth most in demand skill on Elance!

Online publishing dominates this list. It’s exciting that the ever evolving WordPress, built on it’s PHP, MySQL, and CSS stack, continues to be the web development platform in demand.

Elance’s 2010 Q2 Online Employment Report also includes a single profile, that of Ron Z Zvagelsky, highlighting his success as a WordPress Expert on Elance.  Represent!

Computer Courage On Why You Should Use WordPress

Great summary over on computercourage.com, on the “Top 10 Reasons To Use WordPress.org For Your Website”:

4. The Visual Editor and CMS are Outstanding

The intuitive, user-friendly backend of WordPress is probably what made it so famous in the first place. I’ll never remember the relief I felt when I first installed WordPress after a few Drupal experiences. I always tell my clients, “if you can do it in Word, you can do it in WordPress.” In fact, with the Paste From Word tool, that statement is more true than you would imagine (this article was written in Word). WordPress is continually improving its CMS, adding features such as threaded comments, galleries, revision histories, trash, custom post types, and more. If you haven’t maintained a WordPress site yet, give it a look.

[ Read the full post computercourage.com ]

Mike Pratt on BuddyPress – Social Networking in a Box

At a recent Dallas Fort Worth WordPress meetup, Mike Pratt gave a presentation on how he’s using WordPress and BuddyPress to build his very own social network:

… there are a ton of excellent needs and reasons to use BuddyPress to take your site and turn it into the community it is begging to become. That’s the killer point: there needs to be a community underlying all of this. Maybe your focused on gardeners in Texas or stamp collectors in Des Moines or people around the world dealing with Cystic Fibrosis – if you have a community in mind then BuddyPress is an amazing tool because you can shape the community according to you/its needs. Take that Facebook (or Ning)!

The slides and the full video from the presentation and more of his thoughts are available at mikepratt.tv