Search featured: Matt Mullenweg from Wordpress

Matt Mullenweg is the creator of Wordpress :

MD: Hi Matt, first of all thank you for the interview. I have seen that you guys have been working on previous security issues. What has been the biggest obstacle when it comes to making wordpress blogs more secure and what have you learned from recent attacks?

MM: Well in the past year we haven’t had a security issue that wasn’t already fixed with a release by the time it was announced.

Now nothing is 100% secure, and I’m sure there will be issues at some point in the future, but I think as we’ve matured as a software project and so many thousands of people have reviewed the code, issues should become less frequent and severe.

So we have a good track record of getting updates into the hands of users before they’re at risk, so now I think the main focus has to be making upgrading easier — it’s way too hard right now. We’ve got a half a dozen things in the cooker right now for that.

 

MD: How much effort do you spend on search engine ranking related issues and are you working on making your platform easier to spider or whatever else you can do to ensure that your users get the right recognition by Google.

MM: I think you have to remember that the point of Google is to connect their users with the best information in the world. So rather than targeting how Google may or may not work today, you should focus on creating the best resources for their and your users. WordPress does very well in search engines thanks to its structure and clean URLs, but long-term it’s the content on your site that will make it valuable to searchers or not.

 

MD: Your Open Source iPhones application has been the hot new thing
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/july-wrap-up-2/
Give us a glimpse on what new we might be expecting from you next?

MM: We’ve been thrilled with the adoption of the application so far. Basically we want to make writing and managing your blog on the iPhone easier. In the future I think you’ll see landscape keyboards, comment moderation, stats integration, copy and paste, better galleries, maybe even some light HTML editing.

 

MD: In order to satisfy the need that people have to connect to people, which social networks out there do you believe have it right and what are you planning to do to keep people from wondering away from good old fashioned blogging? Do you believe that internet users’ attention spans will become shorter and shorter and less and less will be blogging the old fashioned way?

MM: People have been predicting the death of blogging for longer than WordPress has been alive. I think that blogging is more vibrant than ever. It’s evolving to include richer forms of media, be available in different mediums, even something like Twitter you could look at as short-form blogging. I think blogging has more legs long term, after all Friendster, Six Degrees, and a dozen other social networks have fallen by the wayside, but Blogger is still around.

 

MD: Give me an idea on what the wordpress team consists of. How many people work there, are most of them programmers? Who comes up with new ideas and how much of an impact do users’ suggestions have on decisions that you make when it comes to upgrades?

MM: For the core WordPress.org software it’s a team of volunteers, we had over 90 people contribute to our 2.5 release. I would say almost all of them program, though just as important is the large teams of people who contribute to our documentation Codex and help people on the support forums.

User suggestions drive 99% of our development roadmap, and people seem to like that as every version we release breaks new records for downloads and usage.

 

MD: To those of us who do not know you, tell us what else you’re a part of, what drives you and if you actually benefit from wordpress financially. I know that it has great value, but it’s a free platform after all. I don’t normally ask people about income related stuff and am not asking for anything specific, just wondering if there is an end goal so to speak which you may have set before you started out with wordpress?

MM: WordPress was started purely because I wanted better software to use for my own blog, and there were a few other people I worked with that wanted the same. It was never created with any broad goals or ambitions.

I think most people who contribute to WordPress do it for the karma rather than the cash. There are plenty of people who make their living from it, and in fact my entire company Automattic contributes to WordPress in many forms, but if all you want to do is make money you should be an ibanker or something, not contribute to Open Source.

 

MD: Think about any question you can ask any internet celebrity out there. Something you have always wondered. Name the person and state the question.

MM: I would like to ask Jeff Bezos what he has in the labs. Apparently things like the Kindle were under development for 4-5 years before we found out about it. I can’t imagine what’s in their labs today.

 

MD: Overall speaking, what do you believe the internet is lacking. What will be the shift that users and bloggers and also site creators go towards?

MM: I think ultimately the internet abhors closed systems, and finds ways to route around them. The way that many social networks and web 2.0 sites work today is somewhat of a roach motel for data, it should be easier to get your data and preferences out of a system than it was to put it in.

Open Source will be at the core of this.

 

MD: Will there be more search engines similar to Google?

MM: I hope so!

 

MD: How will the online behaviour change now that people grow up using the internet from as early as age 4?

MM: This is the generation that will take blogging mainstream - they’re so comfortable with publishing online.

 

MD: At what age do you believe a kid should start blogging?

MM: In the womb.

 

MD: Do you believe that the internet is becoming safer and do you recommend a certain age at which blogging and opening yourself up to the world is secure and not a good idea before that?

MM: I think the world in general can be unsafe, but that parental guidance and a healthy dose of common sense can protect you from 99% of what’s out there.

That said, I don’t have any children (I know of) so perhaps my views will change when I do.

 

MD: OK last but not least, I am clueless about anything technical, yet I want a blog and no domain name that is any good can be found. Give people who want to brand themselves some hints on how to do it efficiently and name a few mistakes to avoid.

MM: I think WordPress.com is a great place to start blogging. Get a domain right away, and if or when you want more features or customizability it’s easy to move your posts, comments, and everything else to a self-hosted install of WordPress.org. From a user point of view the two are identical in many ways, so moving between them is pretty effortless and since you have your own domain all your links will stay the same.

Never invest too much time in a subdomain that someone else owns.