WordPress outage floods premium blogs with images of succulents
Some sites reverted to default themes.
Succulents were front and center Tuesday after a WordPress outage led some sites to revert to default themes.
The outage, which occurred on WordPress' VIP Go platform, caused premium blogs to show 503 errors or go back to WordPress' default themes. In many cases, sites featured artsy shots of succulents before a fix was issued.
Outlets such as TechCrunch, 9to5Mac and BBC America were affected.
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"Ok... something's wrong with WP[.]com... like really wrong," tweeted Catalin Cimpanu, a reporter at CNET's sister site ZDNet. "Sites were down for 30 minutes, now some of them have default themes. Check out TechCrunch's 'new' look."
Rolling Stone, 9to5Google and VentureBeat were also hit by the outage.
"Big day for succulents. #WordPress," one person tweeted.
TechCrunch tweeted about the situation, saying: "We know you're wondering, so no, it's not a wild new succulent-based design direction, we're just experiencing some site issues. Hold tight."
The default themes may invoke some distant blogging memories.
"Wordpress styles being down is a reminder that old school blogs ruled," tweeted Mike Murphy, tech editor at Quartz. The publication also appeared to suffer from the outage.
All VIP Go sites were back up and running after about three hours.