Been hanging out with a few WordPress.org hackers — Scott, Nacin, and Otto — the last few days in a BBQ-fueled haze of hacking to make plugin directory better. There are over 19,000 plugins listed and they’re really the heart and soul of WordPress for many people, so they deserve a little tender loving care. Here’s a quick before and after snapshot you can zoom in on to see a visual overview of some of the changes:

Our first focus was around improving the discussion and support around plugins.

You’ll now notice that threads about a plugin are pulled directly into a “support” tab on the plugin page — each plugin has its own forum. We’ve made authors much more prominent and with bigger Gravatars and better placement, so you can get a sense of who made the plugin you’re using. And finally to show how active and well-supported a plugin is, you can see  ”16 of 75 support threads in the last two weeks have been resolved.” Finally, if you’re logged in you get access to the new “favorites” feature that lets you mark the plugins you use the most so you can share them on your profile page and find them quickly later. We soft-launched favorites a few days ago and there have already been 2,000 saved!

If you’re a plugin author, we’ve started with a short threshold (2 weeks) for the resolved stats so it’s easy to catch up and stay on top of it. (It’ll eventually go to two months.) You also now have the ability to set stickies on your plugin forum to put FAQs or important information at the top, and of course any person you put as a committer on the plugin will have moderation access. People on the forum tag will see your custom header and links to the other resources attached to your plugin.

We’ve tightened up the styling a bit on the forums and plugin pages, though still some cleanups to do there. Some older improvements you might have missed, but are still useful for users and developers alike:

• “Plugin headers” or those cool graphics you see at the top of plugin pages have really taken off, there are over 1,600 active now.
• You can now subscribe to get an email whenever a commit is made to a plugin repository even if it isn’t yours. There is no better way to follow the development of your favorite plugins. There’s nothing like the smell of fresh changesets in the morning.
• Behind the scenes, we’ve dramatically ramped up proactive scanning of the entire repository to help authors fix security and other problems they might not even know about yet. The quality level of the repo has gone way, way up.

All of this will continue to evolve as we get feedback and see usage, but we’re happy to have been able to make some key improvements in just a few days while hanging out in Memphis. (This is why WordCamps usually have BBQ — it imparts magical coding powers.)

More proof that women are the active majority of internetters.

Whether its by blog or by Pinterest, by now it’s a recognized fact that women are the driving force behind much of the internet. Ahead of this Sunday’s annual observance of the difficult and often under-appreciated labor women endure to raise their progeny, Mother’s Day, now is as good of a time as ever to take a moment to see just how mothers are occupying their time on the internet.

A study from NM Incite earlier this year revealed that 1 in 3 bloggers are mothers and in general moms are more likely to visit blogs. While women make up the majority of Facebook users, nearly 3 out of 4 moms visited Facebook in March. And yes, to perpetuate the misguided assumption that Pinterest is only for women, 61% of mothers are more likely to visit the site than the average American. What can I say, moms know a well-designed site when they see one.

Internet savvy moms are on the go a lot, too, as 50% of them access social media via mobile devices and more than 54% of les mères own a smartphone.

So what does this all look like? I’m glad you asked, because Nielsen knew you would ask and so it compiled an infographic that details what the moms of America are up to in their online lives. Happy (early) Mother’s Day, ladies, and don’t stop until you get enough internet.

For more information, you can visit related link Facebook and Pinterest

Cited from Webpronews

“If all else fails, you may need to start a new site”

Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land put up a great Penguin article with some new quotes from Matt Cutts. We’ve referenced some of the points made in other articles, but one important thing to note from the whole thing is that Cutts pointed to two very specific videos that people should watch if they want to clean up their sites and recover from the Penguin update.

We often share Google’s Webmaster Help videos, which feature Cutts giving advice based on user-submitted questions (or sometimes his own questions). I’m sure we’ve run these in the past, but according to Sullivan, Cutts pointed to these:

Guess what: in both videos, he talks about Google’s quality guidelines. That is your recovery manual, as far as Google is concerned.

For more information and to watch the videos, you can visit related link
Matt Cutts

Cited from Webpronews

Spam blogs link to WordPress theme creator, ruin creator’s Google traffic

James Farmer at WPMU.org wrote a very interesting Penguin-related article, which doesn’t make the update look too great, despite its apparently honorable intentions.

The update hit WPMU.org, sending it from 8,580 visits from Google on one day pre-Penguin to 1,527 a week later.

Farmer maintains that WPMU.org engages in no keyword stuffing, link schemes, and has no quality issues (presumably Panda wasn’t an issue).

According to Farmer, the Sydney Morning Herald spoke with Matt Cutts about the issue (which may or may not appear in an article), and he provided them with three problem links pointing to WPMU.org: a site pirating their software, and two links from one spam blog (splog) using an old version of one of their WordPress themes with a link in the footer. According to Farmer, Cutts “said that we should consider the fact that we were possibly damaged by the removal of credit from links such as these.”

Farmer shares an Analytics graph illustrating the steep drop, Google Penguin Update

The whole thing speaks volumes about what many have been saying about Penguin’s effects on negative SEO practices – the kind that Fishkin has challenged the web with. For Fishkin, however, everything seems to be going well so far.

For more information, you can visit related link.

Cited from Webpronews

Spam blogs link to WordPress theme creator, ruin creator’s Google traffic

James Farmer at WPMU.org wrote a very interesting Penguin-related article, which doesn’t make the update look too great, despite its apparently honorable intentions.

The update hit WPMU.org, sending it from 8,580 visits from Google on one day pre-Penguin to 1,527 a week later.

Farmer maintains that WPMU.org engages in no keyword stuffing, link schemes, and has no quality issues (presumably Panda wasn’t an issue).

According to Farmer, the Sydney Morning Herald spoke with Matt Cutts about the issue (which may or may not appear in an article), and he provided them with three problem links pointing to WPMU.org: a site pirating their software, and two links from one spam blog (splog) using an old version of one of their WordPress themes with a link in the footer. According to Farmer, Cutts “said that we should consider the fact that we were possibly damaged by the removal of credit from links such as these.”

Farmer shares an Analytics graph illustrating the steep drop, Google Penguin Update

The whole thing speaks volumes about what many have been saying about Penguin’s effects on negative SEO practices – the kind that Fishkin has challenged the web with. For Fishkin, however, everything seems to be going well so far.

For more information, you can visit related link.

Cited from Webpronews

Each year, the WordPress core development team meets in person for a week to work together and discuss the vision for WordPress in the coming year. As annual events go, it’s easily my favorite. Don’t get me wrong, I love attending WordCamps and local WordPress meetups (which are awesome and you should try to attend if you are able), but at the core team meetup, the focus on working together and getting things done is unique, as is the experience of every person in the room being so highly qualified. This year, instead of just planning a core team meetup, I’m aiming a little higher and shooting for a full-on contributor/community summit.

Core code isn’t the only way to contribute to the WordPress project. We have an active theme review team, support forum volunteers, people writing documentation, plugin managers, community event organizers, translators, and more. The teams have been siloed for too long, so we’ve recently begun the process of bringing them together by having teams elect representatives to facilitate more communication between the contributor groups. These reps will form the nucleus of the contributor summit now being planned for a long weekend at the end of October in Tybee Island, GA. This is completely different from a WordCamp. It will be a combination of co-working, unconference, and discussions among the project leaders, and participation will be by invitation.

In addition to bringing together the active contributor team reps to work together, I think it’s important to include community members who don’t fall into that category (at least not yet!). Successful WordPress-based business, authors of popular plugins and themes, and people using WordPress in unexpected but intriguing ways should have a place at the table, too. That said, part of the magic of the core team meetup is the small size; it allows every voice not only to be heard, but to engage. Since this is my first attempt at bringing together so many groups and points of view, I want to try and keep it small enough to retain that personal atmosphere while at the same time ensuring that the best possible mix of people and businesses in the WordPress ecosystem is represented. This is where you come in!

Taking a cue from events with limited availability like AdaCamp (attendance) and the jQuery conference (speaker roster), I want you to nominate people and/or WordPress-based businesses to participate in the summit. Yes, you can nominate yourself.* You can nominate up to 10 additional people — be prepared to provide URLs and the reason you think they should participate. You can also nominate up to 10 WordPress-based businesses without naming individual people, so if there’s a theme or hosting company (for example) that you think should be there, you don’t need to go looking for employee names. This nomination process will hopefully ensure that we don’t overlook someone who is making a difference in our community when it comes time to issue invitations.

Nominations will be open for a week, after which the survey will be closed and the process of analyzing the results** will begin. The nominations process will lead to invitations in June, confirmations in July, planning in August and September, and the summit itself in October. Hopefully we can stream and/or record some of the activity to share online at WordPress.tv. Additional invitations may be extended up until the event if there are people/businesses that become more active in the community. If you’re thinking to yourself that maybe now’s the perfect time to start contributing time to the WordPress project, good thinking! In the meantime, if you want to weigh in, fill in the community summit nomination form. Thanks, and wish us luck!

* Nominating yourself: Do nominate yourself if you fall into one of the categories described in the post above, or if you believe that you have a unique point of view. Please do not nominate yourself if you just think it would be cool to hang out with this group. This is a working event, and everyone is expected to bring something special to the table.

** I (and/or a helpful community volunteer) will sift through the nominations and compile a shortlist of the most-nominated people/businesses and the most intriguing underdogs. This list will be reviewed by the summit planning committee (made up of team reps) to create the invitation list.

If you run your business like Google doesn’t exist, you may find that Google likes your content even more

ClickZ ran one of those good wake-up call type articles about search marketing. It comes with a Penguin headline, but it’s really about much more than Penguin. It’s about how you shouldn’t run your business relying too heavily on how Google is ranking your content.

The article was written by Sage Lewis, who made one statement in particular, which I think is worth reflecting on a bit:

“It is very possible to build a business without Google traffic.”

It may not seem like it sometimes, but I believe Sage is right. Do you? Can you run a business without Google traffic?

It may mean doing some things differently than you’re currently doing them. In fact, if you were hit by the Penguin update (legitimately), you’re definitely going to want to rely on tactics that don’t involve gaming search results. It’s just not a sustainable business model. Even if you weren’t hit, and you’re managing to get away with something, it could be only a matter of time. If you think Google launched this Penguin update and that’s the end of it, you’re living in a dream world. If it’s anything like the Panda update, we’ll see numerous iterations of it. Google launched 2 Panda data refreshes in April alone – bookends for the Penguin update.

It will be interesting to see how often we even hear about new Penguin updates. Since it’s designed to hit spammers, I don’t expect we’ll see the amount of complaints we’ve seen with Panda, which is more about content quality.

Google’s advice is not to worry about specific algorithm changes so much, and focus on good content. Sure, it’s possible to play to certain signals Google uses, but that piece of advice really is more than just hot air from Google. There really is a great deal of merit to that mentality.

Still, it nerver hurts to keep up with Google’s latest algorithm changes, and be aware of what’s going on.

For more information, you can visit related link Google Traffic

Cited from Webpronews

Almost all those minutes reading through your news feed in bed, text messaging friends over lunch, and searching photos on the bus truly add up. Time spent on Facebook’s mobile site and apps monthly (441 minutes) has lastly exceeded usage of its traditional website (391 minutes) – for Americans whom make use of both Facebook interfaces in accordance to the latest report from comScore. And that’s actually a serious problem for the social network.

Facebook typically shows four to seven ads for each page on it’s website, but only several ads per day in its mobile news feed. That indicates it can make much less money whenever you visit through your little devices. In reality, this week Facebook needed to warn potential investors in its IPO that the more and more people who access it coming from mobile rather than the web, the even worse its business is doing.

Right now Facebook need to walk the tightrope. Inject a lot of ads in the mobile news feed and individuals will minimize visiting, inject not enough and it will lose money. No pressure, there’s only a half a billion mobile users observing.

For more information, you can visit related link Facebook Mobile

Cited from techcrunch.com

Almost all those minutes reading through your news feed in bed, text messaging friends over lunch, and searching photos on the bus truly add up. Time spent on Facebook’s mobile site and apps monthly (441 minutes) has lastly exceeded usage of its traditional website (391 minutes) – for Americans whom make use of both Facebook interfaces in accordance to the latest report from comScore. And that’s actually a serious problem for the social network.

Facebook typically shows four to seven ads for each page on it’s website, but only several ads per day in its mobile news feed. That indicates it can make much less money whenever you visit through your little devices. In reality, this week Facebook needed to warn potential investors in its IPO that the more and more people who access it coming from mobile rather than the web, the even worse its business is doing.

Right now Facebook need to walk the tightrope. Inject a lot of ads in the mobile news feed and individuals will minimize visiting, inject not enough and it will lose money. No pressure, there’s only a half a billion mobile users observing.

For more information, you can visit related link Facebook Mobile

Cited from techcrunch.com

The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship honors the memory of Dr. Anita Borg, exactly who devoted her life to motivating the presence of women in computing and started the Institute for Women in Technology in 1997. Anita died in 2003, and that we created the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in 2004 to honor her memory. Anita’s legacy lives on these days through this scholarship and also the organization she created, which has given that been re-named the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology.

This year we’d want to recognize and congratulate the 70 Google Anita Borg Memorial scholars and also the 79 Google Anita Borg Memorial finalists, all of whom attend universities in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East or Africa. All these students will show up at the annual Google Scholars Retreat over the summer, where they’ll have the chance to attend tech talks on Google products, network along with other scholars and take part in social activities. Students from the U.S. and Canada will attend the retreat in Mountain View, Calif., and students from Europe, the Middle East and Africa will attend the retreat in Zurich, Switzerland.

Here’s the full list of this year’s scholars and finalists along with the institutions they attend. In the coming months, we’ll also announce the recipients of the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

For more information, you can visit related link Google

Cited from Google Student Blog