Last Sunday July 11, WordPress reached another milestone – the total number of WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs have passed the 50 million mark with fifty percent. Of that number, fifty percent or half of it are self-hosted blogs.

Based on statistics, WordPress now powers 14 percent of websites in the world wide web. WordPress.com users publish an average of 500,000 new posts and 400,000 new comments each day while 285 million people view/visit WordPress.com blogs each month generating more than 2.5 billion pageviews.

Here’s an excerpt from Matt Mullenweg’s post regarding this WordPress milestone:

..we passed over 50,000,000 websites, blogs, portfolios, stores, pet projects, and of course cat websites powered by WordPress..It’s always fun to pass a big round number and over the weekend many libations were consumed with friends old and new, but ultimately the press has always been more concerned with those top-line numbers than we have in the WordPress community. More sites being created is a good benchmark for our adoption, but ultimately WordPress matters not for the blogs it creates but for the lives it affects. We have some huge opportunities this year, particularly around making our software more accessible to the next 50 or 500 million people who want to have a voice online…

Other statistic that some of you might find interesting – WordPress.com blog posts are written or published in over 120 languages. Here are the top 10 languages – English 66%, Spanish 8.7%, Portuguese 6.5%, Indonesian 3.5%, Italian 2%, German 1.8%, French 1.4%, Russian 1.1%, Vietnamese 1.1% and Swedish 1.0%.

This milestone is definitely a great day not only for founder/creator Matt Mullenweg and the rest of the Automattic & WordPress teams but also for the entire WordPress community.

Btw, congratulations to all the winners of the AllBusinessCards.com 1,500 premium Business Cards giveaway and the MediaLoot Elite Membership giveaway. I have a several giveaways scheduled this month and two of them will be launched within the next few days so watch out for it.

Blogging

• How to Use Private Label Rights to Get Content for Your Blog
• Your Secret Blog Decision-Making Weapon
• Would You Ditch Your Blog For Facebook Notes?
• How I Gained 3,500 Subscribers in 12 Months

WordPress

• WordPress Photo Gallery without a Plugin
• Best 3 Advanced Chrome Extensions To Manage a WordPress Blog
• 3 New Ways to Attract More Twitter Followers from WordPress.com
• WordPress tip: Quick maintenance mode

SEO

• Introducing: The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors
• Schema.org – A New Approach to Structured Data for SEO
• Why SEO Link Building Strategies Look More Pathetic Than Ever
• Search Engine Optimization – A Top Down Approach

Social Media

• Why You Need To Focus Less On Social Media
• Social Media Is Still A Mystery To Many Businesses
• Will Social Networks invade Your TV?
• Top 5 Twitter Tools for Social Media Community Managers

Technology

• The Machines That Sparked the Beginning of the Computer Age
• Malware Scanner Finds 5% of Windows PCs Infected
• What’s Killing Your Wi-Fi?
• Pentagon Says Cyberattacks Can Count As Act of War

Gadgets

• Toshiba WT310 – 11.6-inch Oak Trail Windows 7 Tablet
• DIY iPad Audio Dock
• iCADE – iPad Arcade Cabinet
• Barnes & Noble Nook WiFi review

Pinoy Blogs

• HTC ChaCha: The Facebook phone you’ve been waiting for! (Part I)
• LG Optimus 7 is only the third Windows Phone 7 in the country
• Nokia N8 Pink – Price, Photos : Now Available in the Philippines!
• ASUS Padfone = Smartphone + Tablet Device

JaypeeOnline Weekly Recap

• WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin
• General Files – File Search Engine/Directory
• Manny Pacquiao Endorses HP Veer Smartphone
• Nokia N8 Unboxing Photos
• MediaLoot Elite Membership Giveaway Winners
• AllBusinessCards.com 1,500 Business Cards Giveaway Winners

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or would want to share your article or any interesting story that you found in the Internet and have it featured in the next Weekend Roundup, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message via the contact page.

Just found out earlier today that some of the WordPress.com servers were hacked. Matt Mullenweg revealed the incident and posted a warning about passwords via the WordPress.com blog. Although the hacks were low-level, there’s a possibility that all or any of the information kept on those servers could’ve been revealed.

Matt Mullenweg has this to say about the incident:

We have been diligently reviewing logs and records about the break-in to determine the extent of the information exposed, and re-securing avenues used to gain access. We presume our source code was exposed and copied. While much of our code is Open Source, there are sensitive bits of our and our partners’ code. Beyond that, however, it appears information disclosed was limited.

Even though WordPress passwords are hard to crack because they use phpass – a Portable PHP password hashing (password encryption) framework, it’s still a good idea to update your password after an event like this. Additional advise for WordPress.com users – use strong passwords (at least 8 characters – using combinations of letters, numbers and characters), use different passwords for different sites and never use the same password for two different sites.

Please take note that the ones affected by this hacking incident are blogs hosted on WordPress.com not WordPress.org (self-hosted blogs). However, if you run a self-hosted blog but also have a WordPress.com account, make sure that you don’t use the same password for both sites.

Aside from working on WordPress.com and their other products, one of the priorities of Automattic is keeping their employees healthy. With that, the company recently came up with an idea for Worldwide WP 5K which will allow Automatticians (employees of Automattic) to run/walk together for 5K (3.1 miles) on the same day and be able to exercise together as a company even though they’re from different places across the globe.

The folks from Automattic are not only concerned about their personal health but also with that of WordPress users. That’s why they’re inviting all WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (WordPress.org) users to join them in their Worldwide WP 5K.

Here are more details from the official blog post:

WHAT IT IS: A 5k run/walk (approximately 3.1 miles). You can run, walk, or skip. It’s up to you. There’s no time limit and there’s just one requirement: that you participate! [Updated: You can do it inside or outside, on a treadmill or on a track, or even do a swim or a bike ride instead of running/walking - just get moving!]

It’s roughly equal to:

• 3.1 miles
• 12 laps around a track
• approximately 6000-7500 steps
• approximately 50-60 minutes of brisk walking

WHEN: We’re all busy, but we want you to participate, so we’re giving you some flexibility, too. The WWWP5k is set for Sunday, April 10th, but you can do your walk anytime from April 4th -10th (you’ve got a week to fit it in). Just post about it and use the tag “wwwp5k” so we can find you (and for a chance to be Freshly Pressed). :)

WHO: Anyone who’s ever used or loved WordPress (and your families and friends, too).

HOW: You’re welcome to blog your entire route and your preparation (videoblog, perhaps?) but above all we’d love to see where you are and how you’re completing your 5k. Give us a picture of you and what you see when you cross the finish line and tell us your location as you complete your 5k with the rest of the world.

I think that it’s a very cool idea, especially for Automattic to invite bloggers, specifically WordPress users to participate in this event. Staying healthy should be a priority for bloggers and we shouldn’t just focus on making money online, increasing traffic, improving writing skills, improving site performance, search engine optimization, etc.

Although it officially starts on Sunday, April 10th, you can start today, tomorrow or anytime this week as long as you complete the 5K. Personally, I plan to participate in Automattic’s Worldwide WP 5K or WWWP5K by running on the treadmill tomorrow for 50-60 minutes. If I can’t complete it by tomorrow, I’ll continue it the next day.

What do you think of Automattic’s Worldwide WP 5K? Do you plan on joining this event? If so, how (run, walk, swim) and where (track, park, treadmill) are you going to do your 5K?

Now that WordPress.com users are starting to get more features that previously were only available to WordPress.org blogs like premium themes, it’s now WordPress.org blogs turn to get features that were previously only available to WordPress.com users.

How? This is all made possible by Jetpack, a plugin released by Automattic last week that brings WordPress.com features and functionality to WordPress.org or self-hosted WordPress users.

Here’s an excerpt of Matt Mullenweg’s post on the Jetpack blog:

Today we’re launching the first version of what’s been a dream of mine for several years now, really since my State of the Word presentation in 2009: a way to provide feature parity between WordPress.com and WordPress.org for everybody.

Our users have been banging down the door for this. Every time we launch something new on WP.com the first question is always asking how people can get it for their self-hosted blog. Now you can have your cake and eat it too — host your own blog, completely under your control and with the freedom of the GPL, and still get all the cloud goodies of our hosted service. It’s the best of both worlds, the decentralized and the centralized, the control and the convenience, the peanut butter and the chocolate.

For the initial launch, Jetpack will include eight of the most-requested features –

• Gravatar Hovercards: Find out who’s commenting on your posts with enhanced information for Gravatars (includes full name, bio, other web profiles).
• WordPress.com Stats: Keep on top of your traffic with powerful and simple to understand statistics for your site.
• Twitter Widget: Keep your readers more up to date by syncing your tweets to your site via a simple widget.
• Shortcodes: Quickly add movies, images, and more to your posts and pages with a single line of code.
• Shortlinks: Automatically creates an easy to copy/paste mini-url for any post on your site.
• LaTeX: Use the famous markup language to quickly create beautiful mathematical expressions and equations.
• Sharedaddy: Your readers can easily share your posts via email or their favorite social networks.
• After the Deadline: Your writing will improve thanks to this artificial intelligence based spell, style, and grammar checker.

Personally, I haven’t tried Jetpack here on JaypeeOnline but am planning to do so one of these days. Anyways, kudos to Matt Mullenweg and the rest of the WordPress team for creating and releasing Jetpack so self-hosted WordPress users like me can use WordPress.com features on our blogs.

Download Jetpack and supercharge your self hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com.

Anyone here who’s installed Jetpack into their self-hosted WordPress blog? Which initial feature do you like the most? What other feature/s would you like to see added to Jetpack? Please share your thoughts.