Automattic, the commercial operation of the team behind the WordPress open source blogging software (somewhat obvious disclosure: this blog uses WordPress) has taken its first round of external funding.

It is not disclosing the name, type of funding or the amount, but given Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic is a partner at early stage VC True Ventures we’d be surprised if it didn’t contribute to the round, but we’re endeavoring to find out the details and will update this posting with them when we have them.

UPDATE: Toni got in touch and has now in fact listed what details the company is prepared to release on his blog, appropriately enough. The money - the amount of which is something Automattic’s not disclosing - comes from CNet, Blacksmith Partners, Polaris Ventures and Radar Ventures. Blacksmith Partners also invested, although the partner that invested, Phil Black is now at Schneider’s True Ventures,

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg described the funding as “a small amount of capital” to insure the company dealt with potential scalability crunches before they happened.

Schneider came on board around the start of 2006 after being a VP at Yahoo! for a couple of years following its acquisition of his startup Oddpost. Automattic is also the home of the Akismet trackback and comment spam blocking service.