WordPress acquires TextPattern?

After publishing my previous post about blog spam, I spotted this news item in my WP Admin Dashboard:

On behalf of the WordPress community, I’m proud to announce a merger we’ve had on our minds since the first time we saw Dean Allen’s dog — WordPress and Textpattern are joining forces to create the greatest CMSMS ever, WordPattern. “WordPress and Textpattern: Two great tastes that taste great together.” As with any great union, there []

From that item, you go to a well-written soliloquy that introduces a vision for the future:

WordPattern represents a revolution in weblog technology, a paradigm shift for the emerging army of citizen journalists, diarists and technologists known as bloggers.

Still in its early stages, this new application brings together for the first time the best of both worlds: Textpattern’s legendary documentation, the style and sophistication of WordPress, and the community spirity that helped make the two the successes they are today.

Read on, and discover our vision for the future…

A stunning move. But wait! It’s April the 1st! Is this real, or is it an April Fool’s Day joke? As I write this, nothing on the TextPattern website.

If it is true, then excuse my “But wait!” question. There are quite a few plausible-sounding announcements being made today…

[Update] It is an April Fool’s joke – see the comments.

Neville Hobson

Social Strategist, Communicator, Writer, and Podcaster with a curiosity for tech and how people use it. Believer in an Internet for everyone. Early adopter (and leaver) and experimenter with social media. Occasional test pilot of shiny new objects. Avid tea drinker.

  1. Dave

    It’s a hoax, of course, but a pretty elaborate one! The WordPattern homepage has a link to the only WordPattern site – http://andryshuzain.com/ – which features the text:

    Error establishing a telepathy connection

    This either means that the username and password information in your mt-config.cgi file is incorrect (try nelson or electric) or we can’t contact the Jedi Archive server at Corruscant.

  2. neville

    It is a clever one, Dave. I didn’t click on that link (note to self: always click on links!). If it hadn’t been April 1 today, I think I would have been quite convinced this was a genuine announcement.

    Of course, if I had clicked, what would have given the game away is the mis-spelling of Coruscant :)

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