Back in April 2009, we wrote about Automattic purchasing WP.com. At the time there was a lot of speculation about what the role of this incredible new domain would be.  It has now been a few months since they took over possession and it looks like we finally have some hints about what the role of this domain may be.

As of the publishing of this post, it looks like WP.com still redirects to WordPress.com, but if you visit their Get WordPress subdomain, you can see the following splash page promoting their hosted service, as well as a quick comparison to WordPress.org:

It will be interesting to see what they decide to do with the root of the domain.   I can’t help but wonder if it would be a good idea to move WordPress.com to a shorter domain like WP.com, giving their bloggers a smaller URL for their hosted blogs. In the age of Twitter it would be nice to have a domain like xxxx.wp.com instead of xxxx.wordpress.com.

What would you like to see WP.com ultimately used for?

These days there are so many excellent WordPress blogs and articles, it can be hard to keep up with all the brilliant WordPress articles around, so here are some great articles I’ve saved on my feed reader; feel free to add some posts you’ve found around the web in the comments.

1. First up, ‘10 Handy WordPress Comments Hacks‘ on Smashing Magazine by Jean-Baptiste Jung of WP Recipes fame.
2. Next, a post on Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr’s Digging into WordPress caught my eye: ‘Include jQuery in WordPress (the right way)‘. In this post, as you might have guessed, Chris shows how to include jQuery the right way – using the copy of jQuery built into WordPress.
3. Third, a post on WPWebHost in two parts – ‘Securing your WordPress Install the Foolproof Way’ – parts one and two. A couple of tips in there that you might not have thought of.
4. Another post that caught my eye was ‘Multiple WordPress Loops Explained‘. I would say more, but it’s pretty self explanatory.
5. A post that has been around a while, but is worth mentioning anyway – WPCandy presents ‘10 Things You Can Do With WordPress Besides Blogging‘. Again, pretty self explanatory, but definately worth a look.
6. And finally, a little plug for a post I wrote the other day – ‘10 Tips to Improve Your WordPress Theme‘. Check it out. Some rather nice tips in there.

And there we have it. Six links of note!  Add your own in the comments.

I’ve received a few inquiries this weekend expressing their concern over the lack of posts published here the past few weeks.   To those who noticed, I appreciate the concern!   Unfortunately, I do not draw my entire income online at this point in my life and my day job has required me to work 60+ hour weeks for the last few months.   It appears this trend will be continuing over the next few weeks at least, so it may be a bit before I am able to resume my regular posting schedule that our long time readers have enjoyed for the past couple years.

I’ve also noticed that I’m not the only one who hasn’t posted much lately, as it seems most of the WordPress blogs that were active a year ago are rarely updated these days.   I think this shows just how hard it is to maintain a blog over several years with regular updates.   That said, a next generation of WordPress bloggers have really stepped up to fill this void.   If you are looking to get your fill of WordPress related content, here are a few WordPress websites or blogs which are updated regularly:

1. Weblog Tools Collection (I know this one isn’t new, but is still updated regularly)
2. WordPress Tavern (WordPress blog and active forums)
3. WordPress Recipes (Regularly posted WordPress code snippets)

If you aren’t already, make sure you are tracking these three websites!

From time to time, I run across a number of very useful WordPress resources or interesting posts related to WordPress, which I share in my WordPress news and notes posts.   Here is a few that have caught my attention over the past month or so:

• WordPress Optimization Bible -The WordPress Optimization Bible is a collection of useful tips and tutorials on how to speed up your WordPress site. If you ever experienced slow WordPress admin panel, “MySQL server has gone away” message, pages taking forever to load or you want to prepare your site for a major increase in traffic (for example Digg front page) this is the guide for you.
• What’s in Store for WordPress Themes in 2009? – Justin Tadlock shares his thoughts on what he expects out of WordPress themes in 2009.   In my opinion, you’ll see many more premium WordPress themes, as well as a shift towards theme frameworks and child theme releases.   Click over to see what Justin is expecting!
• 135+ WordPress Tutorials – Instant Shift has compiled another large collection, this time featuring a number of our WordPress Tutorials and our WordPress code page.
• The A to Z of .htaccess – Alex of Nometech has published an excellent post covering a bunch of information about the .htaccess file.    Useful resource to bookmark for any webmaster!

Over the weekend I noticed that WordPress has launched a sweet new visual resource for their blogging software, which can be found at WordPress.tv.   As you would probably guess by the domain extension, WordPress.tv will provide video tutorials for both WordPress.org and WordPress.com installations.

If you look at it now, you’ll find a lot of extremely basic tutorials for people new to WordPress, but one cool thing is you can submit requests to see future WordPress video tutorials.  I would imagine over time you’ll start to find a lot more advanced WordPress tutorials.

Some other cool things about WordPress.tv:

WordPress.tv is also now the place to find all that awesome WordCamp footage that was floating around the web without a home. See the presentations you missed and get a peek at behind-the-scenes action. We call it WordCampTV.

You’ll also find slideshows of presentations made by Automattic employees and other WordPress gurus, plus interviews I’ve done with the media and fellow bloggers.

I hope you’ll consider WordPress.tv not just a support resource, but also a place to hang out and keep up with all the geeky goodness going on in the WordPress community. Tune in regularly for fresh content and updates to the WordPress.tv blog. Lots more is on the way.