Popular blogging platform WordPress had a couple of big announcements these past few weeks. A counter on WordPress.com, which tallies the number of  WordPress installations on their own servers as well as self-hosted blogs, just hit the 50 million mark, an update confirmed by  WordPress’ Andrew Nacin, in a tweet.

However, this is not the only milestone the platform announced lately – not too long ago, the 15^th major WordPress release was rolled out by Automaticc. Version 3.2, dubbed Gershwin, comes with an interesting update from developers, as well as several new additions for users. First and foremost, there’s a new developer portal and integration with open authentication protocol OAuth 2.

From the WordPress.com blog:

“Starting today WordPress.com supports a new method of authentication which makes it extremely easy for third party applications to connect with WordPress.com blogs.

In addition to supporting the new authentication feature, we’re also launching develop.wordpress.com. If you’re interested in learning more about OAuth2 and other ways to integrate with WordPress.com, then this developer portal is for you.”

Access to the OAuth2 integration will be handed out on a limited basis for the time being, and Automaticc says that it will add more resources to the new portal as its developer ecosystem grows.  On the user end, v3.2 delivers a post editor that fills the screen and hides icons while writing deliver a “”distraction-free writing or zen mode.” The new release comes with the fully updated HTML5 Twenty Eleven theme.

WordPress has a very strong position in the CMS space, though competition is abundant. Tumblr, for instance, recently updated its iPhone and iPad apps, enhancing its mobile support. The iPhone app comes with a simplified interface, a while the iPad version delivers the same features, in addition to an optimized web view that scales content to the tablet’s screen. Posterous also had some recent news; the release of a new API that lets developers create sites, add users and assign themes for each user.

While there’s a good deal of development coing from existing players, a new CMS startup just launched a specialized tool for musicians. ArtistData founder Brenden Mulligan’s newly launched Onesheet is a niche fermium content management and site building service that is designed specifically for bands.