26
2005
Blogebrity interviews Matt Mullenweg of WordPress
Matt Mullenweg is the founding developer of the blogging platform WordPress, a developer of the ping service Ping-o-Matic, and the founding developer of the forum platform bbPress. He still wears a Blogger t-shirt. Yesterday we got a chance to chat with him. Read the interview to see what this:
Matt: It's the reason blogs on WordPress.com get virtually no spam, and also why there are almost no splogs on WP.com
can do for you.
Nick Douglas: Well, the big news right now is that you left CNET after a year there.
Matt Mullenweg: Indeed.
Nick: And now you're working on Wordpress and other projects full-time.
Will Wordpress be the main project for the next few months?
And of that, which do you feel needs your attention most right now -- the older .org or the new .com?
Matt: WordPress is definitely the main focus.
Nick: For our readers, WordPress.org hosts the WordPress blogging tool, which bloggers can use and customize on their sites. WordPress.com is a blogging host much like Blogger.
Matt: The dot-org needs some lovin', we've been working for the past few months on a redesign that I've started coding up this week, it'll integrate the different community elements of the site better and also make it easier for people who are brand new to WordPress to understand what the heck it is.
The dot-com is obviously just a placeholder design, that'll probably also get a revamp in the next month or so.
In terms of the codebase, they share 95% of the same code so working on one is working on the other.
Nick: Excellent. And Wordpress.com just gave API keys to its users last week. What can you tell us about the keys?
Matt: Basically we're building out a very exciting infrastructure in WordPress.com that can do the obvious things like host blogs, but it also can enable some fun stuff for people running WP themselves.
The API key is going to allow us to open up some of that core infrastructure to outside projects.
I can also tell you a bit more about the first application to use it in a few minutes, putting the finishing touches on it now.
Nick: Nice!
Looking at your list of projects, I noticed one called Automattic. What's up with that?
Matt: Just a fun little name and domain I can aggregate things under, sort of like an umbrella.
Nick: Groovy. So Kevin Burton mentioned on his blog that you're one of the new donors for his Tailrank system.
(Did anyone get a photo like the ones he's posting lately, of you handing over the $20?)
Matt: I'm boring, I just paypalled it to him.
I hate cash.
Nick: Get a chance to try it out?
No cash, eh
It's quite World 1.0
Matt: I haven't gotten a chance to play with it quite yet.
Nick: Great, Matt, make me burn through my questions. ;)
Matt: ;)
Nick: I do have a question as a user of Wordpress. Are there any plans to make it more network-friendly? This is, incidentally, one reason Blogebrity uses Movable Type -- it allows us to use existing blogger accounts.
Matt: Use existing blogger accounts?
Nick: (Accounts from other MT blogs, as far as I can tell -- I'm afraid I don't know too much about our backend.)
Matt: Oh sure, WordPress 1.6 allows you to share user tables among any number of blogs just by changing a configuration setting.
This is also built into WordPress MU (multi-user) which allows you to manage unlimited number of blogs under one installation, it's the same software that powers WordPress.com and is open-source just like WordPress.
Nick: Another major project is Ping-o-Matic. What are the next steps for that system?
Has ping spam been a problem lately?
Matt: Ping spam is an overwhelming problem, and has been for about a year now.
We block at least 80% of incoming pings as spam, and still millions get through.
However we're working closely with downstream ping receivers to address the problem.
The next big thing there is just getting it all under some sort of non-profit so it can be legally and financially independent from the founders, it's a public resource and should remain neutral.
Even run by Verisign, weblogs.com was down for hours last night, totally broken.
Nick: Wow. And in blog time, that's a serious problem.
Speaking of spam, and jumping back to Wordpress -- Matt Haughey said that after fighting Blogger spam blogs, splogs built with WordPress should be next. Do you feel that blogging software developers should be held accountable for spam blogs created with their software?
Haughey recognizes, of course, that WordPress shouldn't be held responsible -- but what steps can developers take to guard against misuse?
Matt: Well the same thing that makes us attractive to normal people -- it's easy to setup, very scalable, easy to use -- also make WordPress attractive to less savory parts of the blogosphere. If there was something I could do make it harder for them without hurting our normal users, I would.
But that's a slippery slope, and Open Source is specifically designed so you can't discriminate in the license against any one party.
Even if they're scum.
Nick: If you have a little time left -- I noticed you're a jazz fan, and you have an impressive jazz quote catalog on your site. What are you listening to lately?
Matt: hmmm
Recently I picked up a Brad Mehldau Live in Tokyo CD that's fantastic, solo piano.
There was the recently discovered Coltrane and Monk at Carnegie hall, been enjoying that.
Nick: I got a copy of that; crystal-clear, isn't it?
Matt: Yeah, it's amazing.
Other than that just random mainstream things, Kanye West's new CD is pretty well done, as is Fiona Apple's.
Nick: Awesome. Well, anything else you'd like to tell our readers? Shout-outs to fellow bloggers?
Matt: Want to see that new product I alluded to earlier?
Nick: Yes, that'd be grand.
Matt: Have a look - http://akismet.com/
Nick: Ooh, lovely design. Glassy and open.
Matt: Thanks!
The site is almost done, but the service has been running for a while now to great success
Nick: A solution to comment spam! I'm surprised I haven't heard it mentioned.
Matt: It's the reason blogs on WordPress.com get virtually no spam, and also why there are almost no splogs on WP.com
Nick: So we can all be John C. Dvorak.
Matt: Well, it's launching today.
Nick: That'd do it.
So was the service only running on WordPress.com?
Matt: We've had about 30 blogs testing the WordPress plugin, from photomatt.net to gigaom.com.
Nick: Great. Can you summarize, in one line, how it kills comment spam?
Nevermind, it's here on your FAQ: "When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to your blog it is submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down."
Matt: Spam is much easier to deal with in aggregate at scale than on the individual blog level.
Nick: Well, this is great news.
It's been a pleasure interviewing you. Good luck on WordPress, Akismet, and your other projects.
Matt: It was nice chatting with you.
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Blogebrity interviews Matt Mullenweg of WordPress:
» Is it true that blogs on WordPress escape spam comments? from Blogspotting
Matt Mullenwag, WordPress founder, says that the Akismet service eliminates comment spam. [Read More]
Tracked on October 27, 2005 07:30 AM
Comments
Sweet, the anti-spam gods do exist!
Posted by: pylorns at October 26, 2005 11:48 AM
Matt is my esteemed colleague, but shouldn't you have asked him to confirm or deny that ads on WordPress.org run $100K a year? This was approximately the claim made recently.
Posted by: Joe Clark at October 26, 2005 01:03 PM
Every time I tried to start a blog in, like, 2002-03, I never was able to do it for more than a few weeks.
But the blog I started on WordPress late last summer is still around, and it was the ease of the template system and updating that let me focus on writing and helped it thrive. And then helped me turn it into a job. (For the purposes of this gushing post, please ignore the fact my blog runs Movable Type now.)
Posted by: D-Mac at October 26, 2005 03:23 PM
