WordPress founder, Matt Mullenweg, has given the “State of the Word” address, which focused on the growth that the open source web software company saw in 2011. WordPress now powers 14.7 percent of the top million websites in the world, up from last year’s 8.5 percent. Additional data shows that WordPress is powering 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the U.S. Mullenweg also included information in his speech about a WordPress survey that was recently conducted. More than 18,000 people from all over the world responded to the survey. Their responses showed that 6,800 of them were…more»

The wildly popular blogging platform and CMS WordPress is the host to dozens of affiliate marketing sites and blogs, but for some marketers, there is a desire to take their business to the next level by making it membership or subscription based, which means finding the WordPress membership plugin that is right for them. While there isn’t a huge market for WordPress membership plugins, there are a few that really standout as far as their capabilities and features go. Below is a list of ten of the top WordPress membership plugins available, and they range in price from totally free…more»

jQuery is one of the wonders of the modern design world, enabling for the creation of hyper-impressive animations and interactions. Couple it with the power of WordPress and you’ve got a whopper of a duo to achieve some amazing effects. In today’s Design and Development Digest, let’s look at five WordPress plugins that add some jQuery interactivity to your site that you should know. WP Sponsor Flip Wall is a plugin using jQuery and CSS for creating boxes that flip when clicked by the user. The plugin provides administrators a way to upload and crop images, and add custom text for…more»

Popular self-hosted blogging platform WordPress received an update that brings it to version 3.1.1.  This version contains several important security fixes including two relating to the media uploader, an XSS flaw, and one that caused a PHP crash in certain conditions when handling “devilishly devised links in comments.” Keep in mind that failing to upgrade may leave your blog vulnerable to attacks. Current WordPress users should have already received notified about the update in their Dashboard. If not, or if you aren’t a user just yet, you can download WordPress 3.1.1 from the official website. Alongside the security patches come…more»

WordPress has the volume and Drupal gets the money, but what about Joomla? The content management system in no way receives the attention that its fellow open source platforms do but that might just be unwarranted – particularly when you check out some of the available extensions. Here are a few of the top Joomla extensions (from various categories) for serious Web professionals. We’ve been taking a closer look at Joomla and are getting reacquainted with the powerful platform. If there is an extension/module you think WM editors should know about please comment below and share it with us.   sh404SEF: Yes, that’s…more»