<div class="rss-widget"><ul><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wordpress.org/news/2014/01/wordpress-3-8-1/' title='After six weeks and more than 9.3 million downloads of WordPress 3.8, we’re pleased to announce WordPress 3.8.1 is now available. Version 3.8.1 is a maintenance releases that addresses 31 bugs in 3.8, including various fixes and improvements for the new dashboard design and new themes admin screen. An issue with taxonomy queries in WP_Query […]'>WordPress 3.8.1 Maintenance Release</a> <span class="rss-date">January 23, 2014</span><div class='rssSummary'>After six weeks and more than 9.3 million downloads of WordPress 3.8, we’re pleased to announce WordPress 3.8.1 is now available. Version 3.8.1 is a maintenance releases that addresses 31 bugs in 3.8, including various fixes and improvements for the new dashboard design and new themes admin screen. An issue with taxonomy queries in WP_Query […]</div></li></ul></div><div class="rss-widget"><ul><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/campuspress-launches-managed-wordpress-hosting-for-multisite-networks?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=campuspress-launches-managed-wordpress-hosting-for-multisite-networks' title=' Managed WordPress hosts are popping up all over the web. The platform is now so widely used that mammoth hosting providers such as GoDaddy and MediaTemple have added specialized hosting packages dedicated to WordPress customers. WordPress hosting providers that cater to a specific niche are the latest trend. CampusPress is a newly branded managed host that specializes in WordPress multisite networks for educational organzations. It’s actually an offshoot of Edublogs, the largest educational blogging host that has been providing multisite hosting since 2005. Due to the high demand for more CMS features, the Edublogs team decided to differentiate the services with CampusPress focused on providing multisite network hosting for schools and universities. I spoke with Edublogs Director of Operations, Ronnie Burt, to discuss the reasons for launching CampusPress as a separate entity into the managed hosting market. He said that many of the existing Edublogs customers wanted to use the service for more than blogs but were hesitant due to “blogs” within the name. “Since WordPress is all grown up and used for way more than blogging,” he said. “We’re re-branding our Edublogs Campus service and really improving the network infrastructure and features to better support all types of sites.” How Multisite Hosting Works at CampusPress In addition to providing a hosting environment optimized for multisite networks, CampusPress accounts also include many built-in features specific to white labeling and managing a multisite network for education. A few examples include:  Domain mapping Class and student management tools Content filtering and moderation Native apps for iOS and Anroid LDAP, Google Apps, Shibboleth and LTI authentication options  I asked Burt if CampusPress is one giant network that manages all the multisite installations. “It isn’t technically networks within a network,” he said. “Each school has their own totally separate multisite install. We use SVN to manage WordPress core and our default plugins and themes across all of the networks.” CampusPress also provides a custom SVN folder for customers to submit and manage custom themes. The multisite hosting is truly managed in that the maintenance is handled professionally behind the scenes and customers do not have any server-level access such as FTP or the database. “This is how we can guarantee reliability and security,” Burt said. “While traditional managed hosting providers may have automated scans and a blacklist of plugins, we manually review line by line each line of code of every plugin and theme added to our networks.” The Challenge of Keeping Pace With WordPress Burt says that one of the biggest challenges of hosting multisite networks is performing upgrades. “Universities and schools often also have their own change management and branding policies and regulations,” he said. “They tend to not like upgrades or major changes in the middle of the school year, and they all seam to require different things when it comes to testing, timelines, and rolling out new plugins/tools.” For example, WordPress 3.8 introduced major changes to WordPress and many organizations din’t want to have to re-educate their users in the middle of the school year. “This is especially a challenge when they get on different versions of WordPress core,” Burt explained. “It seems like as soon as we finally get everyone happily upgraded, another version will roll out and we’ll start the process all over again. We’d upgrade them all at the same time if they’d let us.” CampusPress Expands Beyond Educational Blogs With the new CampusPress branding in place, Burt and his team are able to expand beyond providing educational blogs. One of the largest categories includes news/magazine sites like, such as the University of Denver Magazine. The other category they serve is faculty/department websites in need of CMS capabilities, such as the University of Oregon Political Science Department and Cornell’s Media Relations Office. A few interesting examples of multisite networks already hosted with CampusPress include:  Bill and Melinda Gates Hall Cornell’s Emergency Site University of Delaware Student Newspaper San Jose State’s Alumni Magazine University of Oregon Department Sites Ohio State’s Drumline  WordPress use is on the rise in the education sector.  “The buzz around WordPress at the conferences we attend and the WP in Education mailing list suggests a growth that parallels WordPress in business and other arenas,” Burt said. With the re-branded CampusPress website launched this week, Edublogs is officially entering the managed WordPress hosting market. The company joins Cart66 as one of the first managed WordPress hosts catering to a specific niche.'>WPTavern: CampusPress Launches Managed WordPress Hosting For Multisite Networks</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/mediatemple-launches-wordpress-managed-hosting-package?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=mediatemple-launches-wordpress-managed-hosting-package' title='photo credit: Leonardo Rizzi – cc MediaTemple has announced they have a new managed WordPress hosting package available dubbed Premium WordPress Hosting. The package has a cost of $29 per month which places it near the top of my price comparison chart. I created this chart a few months ago when GoDaddy announced their managed WordPress hosting package.  GoDaddy – $6.99 / month Siteground – $9.95 / month Flywheel – $15.00 / month DreamPress – $19.95 / month Page.ly – $24.00 / month Pressable – $25.00 / month Synthesis – $27.00 / month WP Engine – $29.00 / month MediaTemple 3 WordPress Installs For $29.00 / month  MediaTemple is owned by GoDaddy but both companies operate independently of each other. While I initially thought it was a bad idea for both GoDaddy and MediaTemple to offer managed WordPress hosting since they are in a way, the same company, I’ve come to the understanding that each one serves a different customer base. What MediaTemple Offers As is customary with other managed hosting providers, MediaTemple offers a staging environment to work on sites before they go live. Other notable features include:  Easy-to-use site templating Automatic updates Mobile Optimized Automatic security Automatic backups Next-gen cloud infrastructure  Perhaps one of the most important features offered is email, something not offered by WP Engine. MediaTemple Launches Invite Only WordPress Theme Market The market only contains one theme created by their creative directory but the company plans on adding more from talented designers in the future. I asked MediaTemple if there was any additional information they could give me regarding their theme marketplace. Their response: As it is now, the market place is “invite only” with specific designers and organizations building custom themes for (mt) Premium WordPress Hosting customers. The theme market place is an area of this product we’re really excited about. We have very strong partnerships in the creative and development worlds, so this model is likely to change/grow with opportunities and there will definitely be one-off scenarios here. Essentially, the sky is the limit with the market place. Customers are limited to three WordPress installations per account. If you need more, you’ll need to pay $9/month for each additional site. WordPress Multisite is currently not supported. MediaTemple states they are aiming to push out WordPress updates within 48 hours of their release. Other leading WordPress managed hosting providers can sometimes take up to a week or more to test major versions of WordPress before applying the updates to their customer’s sites. However, security and or maintenance releases are usually applied the same day. The automatic updates only apply to WordPress, not plugins and themes. When asked whether customers can initiate updates for WordPress, MediaTemple responded: “Only (mt) can initiate WordPress updates for sites running on Premium WordPress Hosting“. As we’ve mentioned on WPTavern before, this has become standard procedure. Speaking of plugins, they have their own list of plugins not allowed to be used on their managed hosting infrastructure. It’s important for customers to read through the list in case you’ve purchased a commercial version of any of the plugins listed. For example, BackupBuddy is not allowed because it duplicates existing functionality provided by MediaTemple.  Are Managed WordPress Hosting Companies The Unseen Competition For WordPress.com? While putting this post together, I thought about how many companies within the past three years have created specially crafted hosting environments to cater to customers using WordPress. Most of the WordPress managed hosting services I know of are extensions of established companies. WordPress.com Versus WordPress.org I look at managed WordPress hosting as providing the luxuries of WordPress.com but also allowing customers most of the freedoms associated with self-hosting WordPress. Customers can upload plugins, change themes, edit their themes, and perform tasks that are locked down on WordPress.com or require you to pay an upgrade fee. Plus, they have a team of people ready to help at a moments notice which places them a step above most shared webhosting services. Tough To Compete Against Free I think the one aspect preventing more WordPress.com users from purchasing a managed hosting account is the price. $29 per month, is $348 per year. That’s a lot of money for someone to spend if they just want to publish their thoughts to the web. If you want most of the freedoms self-hosting WordPress provides without having to pay a large sum of money, GoDaddy is a nice option. The price of free is hard to compete against which is why I think WordPress.com has nothing to worry about. They cater to customers who just need a quick and easy way to publish content online. I see managed WordPress hosting companies as the next step for users when they outgrow the constraints of WordPress.com or the total price of upgrades is more than the annual cost of a managed hosting account. Ask MediaTemple Anything The company is hosting a live Google+ Hangout on March 5th, 2014 at 9AM Pacific or Noon Eastern to answer any questions brought forth by the audience. No question appears to be off-limits. Are you happy to see MediaTemple enter the WordPress managed hosting space? Is their anything in particular you’d like to know about their offering before you’d consider doing business with them?'>WPTavern: MediaTemple Launches WordPress Managed Hosting Package</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-featured-on-jeopardy?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=wordpress-com-featured-on-jeopardy' title='Jeopardy, an American television game show, recently had a category dedicated to dot-com. Among the five answers within the category was WordPress.com. WordPress.com bills itself as “a better way to” keep one of these Internet diaries. #WordPress on Jeopardy, category “Dot Com”. pic.twitter.com/xXVyKTRvzF — Dougal Campbell (@dougal) March 4, 2014  The correct response is: What is a blog? If you’d like to play a version of Jeopardy dedicated to WordPress, check out WPGameshow.com created by the organizers of WordCamp Detroit, 2011.'>WPTavern: WordPress.com Featured On Jeopardy</a></li></ul></div><div class="rss-widget"><ul><li class='dashboard-news-plugin'><span>Popular Plugin:</span> <a href='http://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/' class='dashboard-news-plugin-link'>Better WP Security</a></h5>&nbsp;<span>(<a href='plugin-install.php?tab=plugin-information&amp;plugin=better-wp-security&amp;_wpnonce=b3710634a8&amp;TB_iframe=true&amp;width=600&amp;height=800' class='thickbox' title='Better WP Security'>Install</a>)</span></li></ul></div>