By Rudolf Ammann · August 26, 2005
Most EFL/ESL weblogs I’ve seen to date run on Blogger. This may be about to change shortly.
A new hosted weblogging service, WordPress.com, is in “closed beta” now, meaning that a few end-users are testing it and that it will be opened to the general public before long.
So far, WordPress has been known as a free weblogging application that runs on server space provided by its user. The stand-alone version has gained a huge following and may have surpassed Movable Type as the most popular software in its category.
Hosted WordPress weblogs will lack some flexibility, but they won’t require any technical knowledge to set up. While no pricing model has been announced yet, there’s a good chance basic accounts will be free of charge.
Lorelle VanFossen has a write-up: What can you do with wordpress.com.
There’s no word yet on when the service is going to launch, but the servers on which WordPress.com will be running have arrived at the data center in San Diego, California.
And yes, WordPress.com is hosted by the same folks that keep Dekita.org humming along: TextDrive.
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Aaron Campbell
wrote on August 26, 2005:
Assuming wordpress.com gets off and running, I’d be interested in seeing what, if any, social networking services they try to incorporate and whether any plug-ins might come pre-packaged with the blog hosting they offer. Any ideas?
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Rudolf
wrote on August 27, 2005:
I doubt they are going to have any social networking features. Wordpress.com is built on the multi-user branch of the software; I’ve got an install up, and from what I’ve seen it offers straight weblogs without any social networking extras.
You might ask a beta tester, though. Or better yet—ask the people who are building it. WordPress’s lead developer, Matt Mullenweg, has a weblog on Wordpress.com.
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Rudolf
wrote on August 27, 2005:
I’ve been poking around a bit. Matt started Wordpress.com on August 15 when he announced that the site was invite-only and that every invitee had one invite to pass along to someone else. I hope they’re not going to make this into a permanent non-launch like Google did with Gmail.
There’s one thing that strikes me as a bit weird about the whole thing. WordPress.com runs on WordPress Multi-user, a separate branch of the software that is distinct from the main single-user branch. The main branch has a bustling community of developers (check their mailing list for a feel of just how busy they are), yet the multi-user branch is run almost solo by a single man, Donncha O Caoimh. He doesn’t seem to get much help from the main branch developers.
That makes me think there won’t be any extra features, social networking or otherwise: Donncha just doesn’t have the extra developers who’d churn out the code.
And, hey!—I’ve just noticed I got a reply from Matt himself, who says “it’ll probably be in the invite-only stage for a good while”—given that each invitee only receives one invitation to pass along, it won’t be possible to sign up classes to the site “for a good while”. Oh well.
For the record, though: hosted WordPress weblogs have been around for a bit. There are, for instance BlogThing, Blogsome and Weblogs.us. All of them offer free WordPress weblogs, and none of them require invitations.
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Aaron Campbell
wrote on August 27, 2005:
Great mining Rudolf! I didn’t realize there were so many people offering free WP hosting. I wonder how they cover the bandwidth charges?
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Rudolf
wrote on August 28, 2005:
There’s another one: Anyone’s Blog.
How do those sites support themselves?
Free hosted weblogs without a business plan are hardly news: it was Blogger itself that set the pattern. When Blogger started in August 1999, nobody at Pyra, the company behind Blogger, knew how to cover their development/operating costs or make any revenue from which to pay the five employees. They managed to raise some money, but once that ran out in January 2001, Pyra/Blogger looked like another victim of the dotcom crisis. Evan Williams kept soldiering on until Google bought Pyra in 2003. In its early days, Blogger was one of the most popular and best-liked dotcom ventures ever, but it hardly made any money until Google bought it out. (Here’s the official Blogger story.)
My guess is the hosted Wordpress sites either support themselves through donations or remain small enough for somebody to run them pro bono, for the good of it, maybe waiting for a buyer or benefactor to come along.
I have no idea what WordPress.com is up to. Obviously, they’re aiming big: those servers in San Diego are a massive amount of computing power and cost a pile of money to buy and operate. Yet the invite-only system means they’re committed to a free basic service—it’ll be interesting to watch how this plays out. Somebody’s got a plan and they ain’t telling yet.
The people at Typepad may not be horribly excited about the news.
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