The Edublog Awards demonstrate the educational value of these tools, promoting blogs and social media as a fantastic resource for educators. It’s also an opportunity for educators to learn what blogging and social media tools work in different contexts. And, of course, it’s a great way to showcase the-best-of-the-best in the education blogging community.

You can read all about it on the Edublog Awards website. 

In fact, if you count our Edublogs Campus users (there’s several hundred thousand of those guys) we are well over 1 million.

The good news is that since we’ve reached 1 million blogs well before the end of August all of our Edublogs, Pro and free, will be advert free. That’s made a whole load of users very, very happy.

If we reach 1 million blogs by the ed of August, the advertisements will be staying away for good. With just over 1,500 blogs left to go we’re confident we’ll hit our target and make over 1 million Edublogs users very, very happy.

Watch this space for more news!

Responsive Theme Design

Responsive design has been the talk of the internet for more than a year, ever since Ethan Marcotte published his influential article on A List Apart. With the number of devices that people are viewing the internet on increasing all the time, we knew that we wanted a design that would look beautiful on any device. And we have it. The new design looks great on the biggest monitor and the smallest smartphone.

Wider Content Area

We’ve got a much wider content area to really show off our writers’ content. This makes it much more readable and accessible for our readers, while enabling our writers to show off their creative flare.

New Layout and Navigation

We wanted wpmu.org to feel more like the leading news and tutorial site that it is. This means that when people land we want them to have full access to our content. By switching to a news layout we have all of our great content ready at a click.

Comments Plus

We’ve made it easier than ever to leave a comment. We’ve developed Comments Plus – a commenting plugin that lets our visitors leave comments via normal commenting, Facebook, Twitter and Google. We’re getting this together to release as a plugin.

The new design is gorgeous, if we do say so ourselves. Visit wpmu.org for yourself to try it out.

Our CEO and Founder, James Farmer, has been doing the rounds in the media over the past few weeks, spreading the word about Edublogs, technology for education and blogging.

Larry Ferlazzo, popular Edublogger, has done an interview with James on his blog. In the interview, James takes about way back when he founded Edublogs, his biggest achievements and the mistakes he’s made along the way. It’s an interesting interview for anyone starting out their own business, and anyone interested in using technology for education.

James has also been featured in major Australian newspaper, The Age. Appearing in both print and online versions of the publication, James talks about the rise of blogging in academia, and how academics can use blogs to help with their career.

Here’s some of what the book has to say:

James [Farmer]  found out that websites were evolving into vertical specializations, that is, becoming specialized by industry. His idea was to build a hosting platform that would target an industry with a tailored brand and community. This would be the value added compared to signing up for any general purpose blog or building a standalone website. [...] James found that there was a significant demand for the uses of blogs in education and thus acquired the domain and built a web hosting service dedicated to the education market: edublogs.org. The site grew from ten thousand users in 2006, to one hundred thousand users in 2008, to reach over half a million users in 2010.

It’s great to see Edublogs be held up as a good business model. Hopefully other entrepreneurs will find the information helpful and develop success stories of their own!

Who are you and where in the world are you?

I’m Mason James living in Sarasota, Florida – retirement capital of the United States!

Before working with Incsub what did you do?

I worked for a few years building websites for folks based on WordPress of course! Other than that, I’ve worked for several years with my brother on various commercial and indie film projects.

How did you end up working with Incsub?

I was actually a member at WPMU DEV for about a year. I really enjoyed the products and found myself enjoying trouble-shooting other members problems. I began helping out and after a bit they contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in coming on Full Time

What is your role within Incsub?

I currently work as a sales and support rep for WPMU DEV answering loads of emails and support questions and also handle the project management for custom development.

What is a typical working day like for you?

Ahh.. the day starts at 9AM with emails. I’ll catch up on everything that’s happened since I last logged in and get up to speed on everything. Mid-day and early afternoon I catch up with our custom development clients and work on plugin documentation for WPMU DEV, then round out the day with hanging in the forums. It keeps me busy, but I do enjoy the variety of activities.

What is your favorite aspect of working with Incsub?

Our team here is absolutely first rate. It’s a pleasure to work with folks who are experts in their fields. We go all out every day – there’s really no limit to what someone will come up with and we’ll just decide to go for. I love that. It makes every day a blast!

What do you like about working with WordPress?

WordPress just plain rocks. I haven’t found a development platform that is easier for the non-techy. That combined with how extendable it is through various plugins just allows the imagination to run wild!

What is your favourite software/development tool/plugin/aid?

Hmm… Just one? I love having mailplane and gmail filters to handle all the email I get. Throughout the day I’m using Versions for SVN, Espresso and Coda, Sequel Pro, and of course, firebug rocks for some quick troubleshooting.

Apart from working at Incsub what do you love to do?

I’ve studied music and film for years and love both. I play the guitar and piano and try to make it onto film shoots with my brother as often as I can.

If you had an alternative life, what do you think you’d be doing?

I’ve always thought it’d be cool to be a test pilot. Are action heroes an option? I so, I’d take that.

Who are you and where in the world are you?

I’m the one and only Barry Getty and I’m currently based in Murcia, in the South Eastern corner of Spain.

Before working with Incsub what did you do?

In the end pretty much everything I could think of to avoid a life sitting behind a computer screen. I started working in the tourism industry straight from University and gradually worked my way through the consulting, charity and teaching parts of the IT world. I spent almost a year working in the city (of London) before the securities house I worked for imploded (not my fault honest), then ended up contracting myself out to the most interesting projects.

Almost in parallel I’ve taught Tae-kwon-do, self defence, qualified as and worked for a bit as a personal trainer, drove jeeps of tourists through mountains and deserts, worked in a few bars, and occasionally helped run a holiday company.

How did you end up working with Incsub?

Incsub were looking for a new developer so I made contact, unfortunately though, my workload conflicted with joining them at that point. A few months later I contacted Incsub again and after a bit of emailing back and forth, they let me in on a cool project they wanted to try – so shortly afterwards I developed the blogs.mu system (which eventually became the basis for a large number of plugins available on WPMU DEV).

What is your role within Incsub?

I’m a core developer – I guess that means I’m in the middle I develop, maintain and support quite a few of the plugins over on WPMU DEV and also developed, maintain and run the WP Plugins site.

What is a typical working day like for you?

I don’t really have one, and try deliberately to not let myself get into a routine as I work better and more creatively if I can vary the times of day and periods of sitting at a desk. So one day I’ll work during the day (particularly if it’s not nice out) and others I’ll work from about 8pm through to sunrise the following day.

What is your favorite aspect of working with Incsub?

We have a great and fun team at Incsub. Considering that I’ve never met any of them face to face, the online atmosphere very positive. We also have a lot of interesting projects to keep us entertained, thanks mainly to the non-stop imagination of James.

What do you like about working with WordPress?

Basically it implements 70% of a project for me so I can concentrate on the details of what I am trying to develop. Other than that I have no great love for it, I see it as more of a tool to accomplish a task rather than something I’d jump up and down and be excited about

What is your favourite software/development tool/plugin/aid?

I don’t know how I would survive without the CSSEdit application. Well, I could, but my plugins would look a lot plainer. jQuery is also a fantastic tool which removes a lot of cross-browser interface issues and I love it to bits.

Apart from working at Incsub what do you love to do?

I’m a mad historian, so I read *a lot* and whenever I can. When not indoors though I try to run ridiculous distances, cling to cliffs or pop underwater for a bit of a look around.

If you had an alternative life, what do you think you’d be doing?

In my wildest dreams I’d like to be a cross between Indiana Jones and Mel Fisher

At Edublogs we know that the power of blogging in education shines through when students are allowed to have their own blogs. That’s why we’re now including unlimited student blogs with most of our new Campus Packages. You can check out our packages here.

It’s fantastic to be able to offer this unique opportunity for e-learning at new prices. Here are some of the ways that Edublogs users are using our platform already:

• Classroom and course websites
• Student ePortfolios
• Group Projects
• Literature Reflections
• Professional Development
• Writing Journals
• School Newspapers
• And Much More!

Check it out or contact our sales team for more information.

The WPMU DEV survey was an interesting read for all of us at Incsub. We received more than 26,000 written words of feedback with loads of interesting suggestions and ideas for how we can make improvements to WPMU DEV. Of course, we want to give our members what we want so here are some of the ways we’ll be improving WPMU DEV over the next 12 months.

More Single Site Plugins

Although many of our members have signed up to get out multi-site plugins, around 90% of our plugins are compatible with single site as well. We want all of our members to be happy so we’re going to start rolling out even more single site plugins. This will make WPMU DEV the best place for plugins for any WordPress user.

Everyone Loves our Plugins

We love our plugins, and it’s great to see that the majority of people sign up for WPMU DEV to get hold of them. Our members want more plugins, and with the best team on the net we’re going to give them as many plugins as we can. We’ll also work more on developing our core plugins such as the massively popular eCommerce and Membership Plugins.

And, importantly, we’re going to get them out fast. James, our CEO, wants to get 150 plugins out this year. That’s a rate of 15 plugins for the next ten months. Our plugin developers are going to be wearing out their keyboards getting it done.

Improvements to Support

While we have a well-regarded support forum we’re always looking for ways to improve it. A great suggestion that came out of the survey was that we should include a ticketing system in the support forum. And, that’s right, we’ve already implemented it, with users able to open support tickets that will be tackled as quickly as possible by our support staff and devs. We’ve also employed new members of support staff to help keep all of our members happy. This will help us to keep on top of any problems that arise.

No price increase

This year we will not be increasing our prices. This is third year in the row that they’ve remained the same. In fact, you can buy any of our plugins for only $39.

We want to make our great plugins as accessible to everyone, whether you’re a WPMU DEV member or not, and you’ll find our plugins are the lowest cost out there.

Over the next year we’ll be building on our status as the most widely used premium plugin provider on the web. We’ll be giving our members the best plugins, services and support that are within our quite considerable powers.