<div class="rss-widget"><ul><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://ma.tt/2015/06/webmonkey-podcast/' title='I was on the Webmonkey Podcast talking about WooCommerce and tech in general, my part starts around 26 minutes in.   '>Matt: Webmonkey Podcast</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-launches-insights-better-stats-for-visualizing-publishing-trends' title='WordPress.com announced major improvements to its Stats feature today. The new Insights tab gives users a bird’s eye view of posting activity and visitor trends. The Stats panel now displays all-time numbers for posts, views, visitors, and the day the site received the most number of views. Insights also calculates the most popular day of the week and the most popular hour based on when the site gets the most views on average.  Posting Activity is another new addition that provides a way to visualize how often you are publishing. The feature is reminiscent of GitHub’s Contributions calendar, which makes it easy to view contributions from specific times. Insights allows you to mouse over a specific date with a color marker to see how many posts were published that day.  If, for some reason, you’re missing the old version of WordPress.com’s stats, it is available for a limited time under wordpress.com/my-stats/. Insights is not yet available on WordPress mobile apps but will likely be added soon. When asked when Insights will be available to self-hosted users, WordPress.com representative Jonathan Sadowski replied, “If you install Jetpack and enable the Stats module, you’ll be able to view these stats on WordPress.com for your .org blog.” Stats is arguably one of the most popular features in Jetpack and a major factor for many in the decision to connect with WordPress.com. However, the view from inside the self-hosted Jetpack stats panel is starting to look a little dated when compared to the mobile apps or WordPress.com. Adding Insights to Jetpack’s stats panel would save users a trip over to WordPress.com to discover this information. Most people don’t have the time or motivation to log into Google Analytics and create a meaningful interpretation of that data to improve their publishing habits. The new and improved stats with Insights offers a better understanding of when you’re posting and even interprets your traffic to provide actionable data, such as what hour might be the best for scheduling a post, what months lend you the most time to commit to blogging, etc. The all-time stats also make it easier to track your blogging progress and set milestones for increasing posts, views, and visitors, and ultimately beating your best traffic day on record. The new feature is live on WordPress.com today and we’ll be watching for it in future updates to the mobile apps.'>WPTavern: WordPress.com Launches Insights: Better Stats for Visualizing Publishing Trends</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/sergej-muller-creator-of-antispam-bee-says-goodbye-to-wordpress' title='Sergej Müller is saying goodbye to WordPress after nine years and nearly three million downloads of his free plugins. Antispam Bee, his most popular contribution, is currently in use on more than 200,000 WordPress sites. Müller penned a farewell Gist on GitHub in his native German, which Caspar Hübinger was kind enough to translate into English. For me, a chapter of my life is coming to an end. A chapter that has brought an abundance of experience, learning, and fun. A chapter that, on the other hand, demanded a lot of time, nerves, and motivation. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and I deeply hope my software and my commitment may have made the WordPress community a bit better in terms of quality. Müller is discontinuing his WordPress contributions due to health reasons, but he plans to find a suitable successor who will be able to deliver the level of quality and support that his users have come to expect. His plugins, most notably Antispam Bee, Cachify, Statify, wpSEO and Optimus, are used widely around the world, particularly throughout Germany, Austria, and the germanophone parts of Switzerland. Hübinger, who is active in the German and European WordPress communities, has been using Müller’s plugins for the past six years. “Just as valuable for me personally were his blog posts and tutorials,” he said. “I pretty much learned WordPress development from his blog, and Frank Bueltge‘s. “There are a lot of comments expressing great surprise. No one saw him quitting, obviously. Sergej has been a key figure of the German-speaking WordPress community for the last nine years. While not quite so popular beyond the Germanophone context, I think his note that almost every WordPress user over here has heard of or uses at least one of his plugins is no exaggeration.” While Müller does have a couple commercial plugins available, he has never made a living from them. For the past nine years he has been working as a software engineer outside of WordPress. Anyone aspiring to adopt his plugins will need to meet the high standards that he has set in terms of quality and support, especially in regards to supporting the German community. “Monika Thon-Soun, a WordPress veteran from Austria, mentions she doesn’t remember a single instance where one of Sergej’s plugins would have been hacked,” Hübinger said. “Given the popularity of his plugins, that’s truly worth mentioning, as it underlines a character feature that everyone loves him for: reliability.” Müller’s plugin contributions have always been a hobby for him but he is no longer able to sustain their development and support. He is currently in conversations with parties who are interested in his projects and will announce the new maintainers once it has been finalized. Sergej Müller’s contributions signify the importance of having WordPress extensions and tutorials available for users to learn WordPress in their own language. His role in cultivating the German development community and supporting its many users will not be easily filled. “As a friend, I understand and support his decision completely,” Hübinger said. “As a WordPress user, it’s…a catastrophe. “Whoever follows him on G+ will have seen occasional moments of disappointment. In those moments, you could see all his passion. Because it really wasn’t about money for him. Acknowledgement and paying it forward is his favorite currency.”'>WPTavern: Sergej Müller, Creator of Antispam Bee, Says Goodbye to WordPress</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://ma.tt/2015/05/beethoven-mozart-bach/' title='Beethoven tells you what it’s like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it’s like to be human. Bach tells you what it’s like to be the universe. ― Douglas Adams  '>Matt: Beethoven, Mozart, Bach</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://ma.tt/2015/05/martian-review/' title='On the recommendation of my friend Timothy Young I checked out the book The Martian: A Novel by Andy Weir. Think of it like Shackleton’s Voyage (a great recommendation from Toni) but on Mars. I really enjoyed the book, and if you like geeky, science-filled novels you will too.  One thing about the publishing I thought was really cool, as the Wikipedia puts it: Having been rebuffed by literary agents when trying to get prior books published, Weir decided to put the book online in serial format one chapter at a time for free at his website. At the request of fans he made an Amazon Kindle version available through Amazon.com at 99 cents (the minimum he could set the price). The Kindle edition rose to the top of Amazon’s list of best-selling science-fiction titles, where it sold 35,000 copies in three months, more than had previously downloaded it for free. This garnered the attention of publishers: Podium Publishing, an audiobook publisher, signed for the audiobook rights in January 2013. Weir sold the print rights to Crown in March 2013 for six figures. I was hoping it was on a WordPress blog, but it appears to be more of a static HTML site (his official site is WP-powered) and includes some awesome short vignettes like Meeting Sarah.'>Matt: Martian Review</a></li></ul></div>