WordPress hosting has seen a revolution over the last couple of years, with a huge shift away from cheap, crappy shared hosts and a move towards expensive, quality, managed hosting. In the space of three years, paying for quality hosting has become the norm, and for the firms at the forefront, it’s big business.

Ever since I launched Empty Spaces last month as a free/pay-what-you-want theme, I’ve been asked repeatedly whether people are actually paying when they can just download the theme for free, and as an extension of that, whether “pay-what-you-want” actually works.

As you’ll know if you’ve read my recent post, I find practical applications of economic theory quite an interesting topic.

I was doing some writing for Siobhan recently, and one of the topics I was covering was WordPress theme shops, and the economy that’s built up around them.

Ever since I started blogging, nearly four years ago now, I’ve been fascinated with tracking analytics, tweaking copy and working out how changing little things impacts the “success” of that post.

Last week I friend of mine who’s a mathematician was helping me out with a formula I was trying to create which could predict how successful a post from a brand page on Facebook was going to be.

I’ve been working on a design for my girlfriend’s blog recently.

Like nearly a hundred thousand others last week, I was very interested to see John O’Nolan’s concept of a simplified blogging platform, Ghost.