I was digging around on Google recently and, completely coincidentally, came across three sites in a row which looked as though they were WordPress powered.  I glanced at the source code pages and, hey presto, they were!  This is one of them.  According to a survey in March this year there were roughly 163 million websites at the time with the number growing rapidly.  I’ve registered quite a few URLs over the past few months, and am about to register another one, so take part of the blame myself.

WordPress sites are easy to spot.  There are many high profile ones, but the easy to spot ones are often really good looking sites which are obviously aimed at relatively small groups.

It’s not surprising that WordPress is popular: it’s good.

A while ago I mentioned in a post that psychologist Susan Blackmore had coined the word ‘teme’ as a variation on Richard Dawkins’ ‘meme’ which referred to “information that is copied outside of human brains by some kind of technology”.  Here she is, writing about the idea – she says, rather charmingly – ‘I don’t think “teme” is a very good word.’

Well, I’ve come up with an even worse word – iteme – It refers to information that is copied outside human brains by some kind of technology which is itself about technology.  Hah!  I see your teme, Ms Blackmore, and raise you.  I considered tteme – or maybe t’teme (which has to be said in a Yorkshire accent) – but iTeme goes along with Ipod, Iplayer, Itunes, iPM and all the rest.  Like it?  No, I didn’t think you would.

We also need a new word for a website which is a blog as well as a website, if you see what I mean.  Many WordPress sites aren’t used for blogging at all.  Some are just blogs.  Others are both.  Perhaps we just need to go back to weblog and re-define it.  Or maybe weblogweb.  Tricky.