Yahoo had the opportunity to have a conversation with Matt Mullenweg when he stopped by to talk with Yahoo! bloggers about the current and future state of WordPress. Some of the topics that were covered in the interview:
- Turning 24
- Surprising uses of WordPress
- The next big WordPress release (new features)
- Scaling Automattic and WordPress.com
- bbPress (Automattic’s message board software)
- PHP4 vs. PHP5
- PHP vs. other languages for web development
Some interesting things that I picked up from the interview are as follows:
- Lots of websites are using the core of WordPress for other applications.
- 2.5 is going to be the largest release since 1.2
- Lots of things that WordPress users were used to have been reworked.
- WordPress is going for an even more slimlined, simplified user experience.
- Automattic still employs 18 people. 14 of those 18 people deal with coding.
- WordPress.com is still growing by leaps and bounds. WordPress.com seems to be hosting a number of savvy or high trafficked blogs.
- Talkpress will indeed be a hosted version of BB Press. It will be looked at as an experiment that might or might not be successful. BB Press will reach 1.0 this year.
- 2.5 won’t contain database changes, it will mostly deal with the use intgerface.
- PHP 4 compatibility with WordPress will not be broken anytime in the near future.
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 