The weirdest piece of email I’ve gotten all month was courtesy of Brian Krogsgard and the Post Status newsletter: Automattic (owner of WordPress.com, Jetpack, Akismet, WooCommerce…) has just bought blogging giant Tumblr.

I like the direction that Josepha Haden is pushing WordPress. She’s making strides to put the whole project on an even better trajectory. Toward better collaboration, better effectiveness, more inclusive. It’s not the case that I (as a random person far from the core of most of the projects) know a lot about how it feels to people more involved, but I hope and see signs that those more-involved agree.

We were on the BoldLife podcast. It was a great time. We (well, especially Fred) talked a length about the complex reality of where generous human people meet the weird world of corporate policies. More than that, we talked about what that means when you’re shopping for the best WordPress hosting for  your own website. And why talking to the nicest person from one of the those companies is probably a less reliable way of finding good hosting than we are.

Reviewing the SEO of small business websites.

Matt on WordPress at WordCamp Europe.

I realize this is local news, but we’re trying to make sure we sell out WordCamp Denver this year, which requires some exceptional effort. So if you’re near Denver, Colorado, and don’t have plans for Saturday July 29, you should come to WordCamp Denver.

Joost on why he’s stepping down as WordPress’ Marketing Lead.

When Matt Mullenweg announced last year that Josepha Haden and Joost De Valk would take significant new roles in WordPress leadership, I was excited. My excitement with Josepha is in evidence in a post about some of her public work from February. What I hoped would happen is that the stepping in of two independent people with annointed roles would be the creation of something resembling a leadership structure. Clearly, per Joost’s testimony, that isn’t quite what happened (for his part). I’ll lead you to get the full details from his very good and honest (seeming) post.

I received with great interest this latest post from the folks over at Delicious Brains. They successfully highlighted the most compelling part of their data to me: how much money people who identify as WordPress developers make. But more than that, they also captured a number of other interesting facts and figures about the roughly 400 people who answered their survey.

It looks like the WordPress.org plugin review team (which often means “Mika Epstein,” who is without a doubt the most dedicated and prominent member of said team) is looking to clarify and extend the guidelines about plugin admin notices in WordPress. You know those things that clutter up *a lot* of screens on *a lot* of the Dashboards of WordPress sites clients, friends, etc show you? Yes, let’s celebrate Mika’s pushing to clarify the rules and make these a little less common.