December 14, 2006
Tonight, with great excitement, the team at Automattic launched the new WordPress.com. Designing and coding the new site was my second task as a full-timer at Automattic, and it was definitely the one project I was most looking forward to tackling when I took the position.
As with all relaunches, there are a few things to finesse here and there, but we’re all quite excited about the new site. Our users’ content is the star of the show here, but we’ve made it even easier for the first-timer to get started, or for the old hat to log in and get back to work. Tags are right on the home page now, along with featured content, and it’s all tied presented as efficiently as possible thanks to some JavaScript magic originally developed by Simon Collison.
So, we’ve relaunched automattic.com and wordpress.com in the past two weeks, and I’ve got more on the horizon. I’m happy to say that my career with Automattic is off to an auspicious start.
December 13, 2006
As you might imagine, with my new job I’ve been thinking a lot about the fine art of blogging. I’ve been doing it less and less myself, as being both busy and tired left me little motivation for getting online and writing when I didn’t have to. But working for Volvo and not owning a driver’s license. So, in the interest of eating my own dog food, rather than “rebooting” my site with yet another redesign, I’ve formatted and reinstalled. Because the best part of blogging is that you can delete your old content anytime you’d please.
One thing I’ve noticed since I began working with WordPress every day is the amount of work outside parties put into extending and enhancing the software. Textpattern’s a great little platform, but it has nothing like WordPress’ community when it comes to things like Themes. And so, being the busy man I am, I’ve opted, rather than porting my—let’s face it, dull—previous design to WordPress, I’m embarking on my journey assisted by the lovely Hemingway. Part of being a designer is recognizing when another designer’s created something you can’t top, and for the time being, in the heady world of WordPress themes, Hemingway’s done it.
So what to expect from me now? Well, Automattic has unveiled its new site, which was designed by yours truly and coded by Bryan Veloso. Next up are some exciting new changes to Automattic’s flagship product, which I’ve had the opportunity to play an even larger role in. But I’m just getting started, and look forward to sharing more about what the future holds—just as soon as I can predict it.
December 12, 2006
You will find below a snippet taken from four emails, all received within a span of 60 seconds, all from BestBuy.com regarding a single item in a single order:
You can’t beat that.
