How many WordPress users and developers continue to use it because it truly is a web product, not just an app that happens to run in a web browser? Let me know. I want to be part of that club. The web says you have to support the features of the web. If you don't then you aren't of the web. And when you have the option to interop, you do. You don't lock users in, if they want to move, you help them. The web is still here, just like the pipes that carry water from the Catskill Mountains to buildings in Manhattan. None of this would work without the web. We can build lots of stuff that's fair to users and other developers.

If you run a feed reader or other form of news consuming software, you will encounter RSS 2.0 feeds that support rssCloud. This example Node app shows you how to hook into the network to get instant updates. No polling. As fast as a twitter-like system

I want to offer cross-posting to twitter in an upcoming product, but I think the user should pay the service, not me, a one-person independent developer. I doubt if they'll do it, but this is general advice to companies that provide online services that they want to get paid for. If you depend on developers, you're shutting out sole proprietors who don't want to get caught up in the VC world, or don't have a chance. In the early days of the web and in the PC/Mac platforms before that, a creative software writer could get going without having to fund their users' storage needs. PCs came with storage built into the hardware. And in the early web days everyone was something of a geek and could be relied on to find a place on their own, to store their writing (not a perfect system by any means). It's been 31 years since I started my blog and still I can't offer writing software easily, with one exception, with WordPress. This is something I'm not sure @photomatt et al are focused on. It's why WordPress has so much potential to grow the web. The thing many people don't realize is that WordPress unlike pretty much everything else does not lock users in. It's part of their ethos. They run their service as part of the web, not an exploiter of the web. When Matt talks about being an open source company (true) he's leaving out something equally important, that it's part of the web, unlike most if not all of the other choices. When I speak at WCUS in August, I'd like to invite Matt to come up on stage and take a bow. Because there's a reason why such a great community has grown around his product, but we haven't been focusing on it and encouraging independent developers to see WP as part of the web that welcomes them, and does not lock the users or developers in. PS: This will appear on my blog later today. I've started using twitter again to write early drafts of blog posts, and I especially like that they've eliminated character limits for paying customers. Nothing wrong with charging for services that people *want* to pay for. PPS: I'm posting here again because it's more alive than Bluesky, by a lot, and Bluesky is just as much of a ripoff as X, except they haven't sold out to a billionaire yet. They should work with the web instead of trying to replace it, then I'll feel more at home there.

BTW, the blogroll is a WordPress plug-in. github.com/a8cteam51/feedlan… We developed it in conjunction with the devs at Automattic. Set up the feeds you want in your blogroll in FeedLand. The updates flow to the plugin via WebSockets. It uses rssCloud to get instant updates, and OPML to transmit the feeds in your blogroll. This style blogroll is a significant update to the standard blogroll of the 20th century. It keeps the list ordered by when they updated, and it's all realtime thanks to the sockets. You can read the beginning of the most recent 5 posts on any blog when you expand it. Anything that supports RSS or Atom can be in the list. Ask me questions here if you like, if I don't know the answer I can try to find out.

One thing I'd like to call your attention to -- the blogroll on daveverse.org. It's a 2026 version of the humble blogroll. It works as a blogroll but get this -- it's also a feed reader! ;-) Here's a nice screen shot.

To my WordPress friends... I envision a network of twitter-like systems built out of components of the web and nothing more. Every part replaceable. WordPress can be an important part of that, as the place where text is stored and published. It's a big part of what I call the web's social web. Why WordPress? Longevity, the completeness of the API, and its long track record of competing through quality and performance and not lock-in. That combination doesn't exist outside of WordPress, and we are very lucky to have it. The API has existed since 2017, I didn't learn of it until two years ago. That's when I began to see what could be built on top of WordPress, today. Here's the path my development took from there. github.com/scripting/wpIdent…

Just saw this announcement of a tool for writers who use WordPress. wordpress.com/blog/2026/05/2… I'm kind of glad they did this, though I wish my product, WordLand, had an equal chance. wordland.social/ If you're into WordPress, please if you're reviewing this product please compare it to mine -- WordLand. We need more users to get this to lift off. And I have set it up so it's easy for new developers, even vibe-coding devs to add their own spin to writing using WordPress. I think that's what the platform is missing, a steady flow of new fun and interesting products for users, coming from developers all over the world, not just employees of Automattic. The over-reliance on employees has hurt the platform, imho. We need entrepreneurs here, again imho. This problem comes up in every platform, btw -- it just means they were listening. But that isn't the end of the story.

Y'all @davewiner should be a keynote speaker at @WordCampUS. Somebody on the organizing team should work some magic and make it happen. ✨

@jy, @donpark -- my philosophy is that i'll only use the absolutely necessary formats and protocols. i'll leave experiments with other stuff to other people. the purpose of my project is to show what can be done with just a few bits of tech. that the whole thing is really simple. RSS 2.0 with rssCloud, OPML, WebSockets, basic web UI stuff. That's about it. same as FeedLand btw. i want minimum complexity. a baseline for what can be done with very little.

what you say is interesting. i wrote a piece recently saying that it may be time for a reboot of wordpress. screenshot enclosed. i've had people ask if it's a fork, it's not. but i want to present wordpress to people from a different point of view. what if it were the place for writing on the web. it wouldn't have its own editor, it would just provide a place where people can write, share, and most important -- use more than one editor to edit the same text. i know that the web dev community would jump at this. i would. i have even though it doesn't exist yet. if that existed we would have a boom of new tools written by individuals in their garage or living room. it solves the problem we all have -- it's a place on the web you can write into and get stuff out of, and i don't mind paying for it, but it's the USER who pays, not the developer. big difference in economics. but as much as i try to describe it to people inside the wordpress community, they have a fixed idea of what wordpress is, and this lies outside that. all we need is a hosting server that has a lot of the options already set. where you get a blog-like website, and a bit of extra storage behind each piece, so you can use editors that need to store "source code" for each post, like for example macros, or outlines. i found out by accident they had a great api and that is part of the web because wordpress is. and there might be a flow of innovation that can be packaged, sold and supported, so there could be a lot of money made here beyond the money wordpress already generates. the api needs to be extended a bit so eveyrone can participate, not just jetpack users, but that also is right up my alley. i love problems like that.

I wish there was an initiative on X to prevent constant nasty mean comments. I’ve been a lot less active lately because the negativity is very heavy. People should be banned for repeated angry mean comments

This is interesting. I've been making that kind of progress with Drummer. All the contents is in OPML, which is very good input format for ChatGPT.

Finding myself going back to RSS/Atom feeds a lot more recently. There's a lot more higher quality longform and a lot less slop intended to provoke. Any product that happens to look a bit different today but that has fundamentally the same incentive structures will eventually converge to the same black hole at the center of gravity well. We should bring back RSS - it's open, pervasive, hackable. Download a client, e.g. NetNewsWire (or vibe code one) Cold start: example of getting off the ground, here is a list of 92 RSS feeds of blogs that were most popular on HN in 2025: gist.github.com/emschwartz/e… Works great and you will lose a lot fewer brain cells. I don't know, something has to change.

✨ Author Spotlight: Richard MacManus ✨ Richard sat down with ActivityPub creator @evanpro to talk about the protocol's history and the future of decentralized social media. thenewstack.io/the-creator-o…

I'm looking for some of the best RSS feeds to subscribe to that are about React Native, Native development and software engineering in general. Working on some nice n8n automation to summarize blog posts for me 🤖 Link them below ⬇️

A TechCrunch piece from 2009 about the work we did on rssCloud in WordPress as compared with PubSubHubBub, the precursor to WebSub. techcrunch.com/2009/09/09/rs…

# My State of the Word in a tweet I saw a post from my friend Matt Mullenweg, @photomatt, where he said they're working on WordPress for the next generation. I like that idea. I'm doing the same, myself -- only I'm one generation ahead of Matt. So the improvements I'm working on will likely end up benefiting people his age and younger (he's 41) more than people of mine (I'm a boomer). I want to leave them the web we had in the 90s and 00s, but doing a lot of the new things we've learned how to do since, but without the silos. Everything built on the web, everything replaceable, choice for users. And all the writing features of the web show through. When this done, the writer's web will be as open as podcasting, something I had a hand in developing. Any time you want to switch platforms, you can, and lose absolutely nothing. It's not decentralized, it's uncentralized. Important distinction. The storage system for writing, by default, is WordPress, thanks to their fantastic wpcom API, which very few people know about apparently. They opened this door in 2017, I didn't discover it until 2023. My chin dropped. All of a sudden storage for writers was openly available through a simple API. WordPress is "of the web." You're not locked into hosting with any specific company, and you can run your own, and it's a lot easier to install and uses less resources than Mastodon, which right now is the only social networking software you can install on your own server. We can do a lot better. So this would be my "State of the Word" from the point of view of the web. Let me know what you think! npmjs.com/package/wpcom scripting.com/2025/11/24/141…

My sister and her husband Jon opened this amazing Ice Cream Shoppe in The Dalles, and @CODaily made a video report on Shannon’s that is a work of art 🎵☀️

we may not have @rogerfederer but we can watch @Lorenzo1Musetti #Tennis #USOpen #USOpen2025

I would urge @TheKitchenPB to have some more educated takes rather than taking hits at powerful women who proudly wear their emotions on their sleeves and fight for every point. More power to you if you do regardless of the hate ❤️