I’ve decided to become a tester for the nightly builds of the next version of Wordpress, though I’m using it only on my local host. Considering what stage it’s in, I could easily see it chewing up this site and spitting it out in bloody chunks.

For those of you not into the whole back-end software part of things, let me lay it down for you at a basic level.

This site, along with about 400,000+ others, uses wordpress. It’s a highly flexible blogging software that is free and easy to use. Well, kinda easy. But that’s mainly what this post is about.

The reason I bring up testing the next version of Wordpress is because I see changes in it that I think will make a huge wave in the world of blogging. Not all by themselves, no, but in conjunction with some other things coming down the pipe.

The first thing you notice in the new version of Wordpress is the post writing interface. No longer do you need to get dirty with html. There’s now a smooth interface that allows you to easily insert links, images, etc, without knowing a lick of code. I think this is a really important first step to making wordpress a blogging software of choice for everyone, not just the computer-savvy. Add to that the ability to compress the options windows that you don’t need, and the interface comes off as slick and unintimidating. Exactly what a blogging software should be if it wants to gain a foothold with the average web user.

This is only one aspect, though, in what appears to be Wordpress’ master plan to take over the internet. Once you make the interface easy, you need to make the damn thing accesible. Not everyone has the time or energy to figure out MySql, FTP, etc..

And that, my friends, is where wordpress.com comes in. Matt Mullenweg, the wizard behind the wordpress curtain, announced today that the .com site, recently registered, will soon provide free webhosting using wordpress (wordpress.org will remain the site for development and support). Seeing what I have of the new version (release date unknown), this gets me very excited. Making wordpress user friendly and available will rocket its popularity through the stratosphere. Believe me. Other blogging software just doesn’t compare. The day when every man, woman and child has a blog might still be pretty distant, but it just got a lot closer.

You can read many more articles on this subject here at Matt Mullenweg’s site.