Yet another small purchase for Automattic. The parent of the WordPress blogging platform has bought up After the Deadline, a startup behind a free WordPress plugin that provides sophisticated spelling and grammar checking. In a blog post, Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg explains that he reached out to After the Deadline’s only employee, Raphael Mudge, to “see how we could get this technology in front of WordPress users and ended up doing a deal for Automattic to buy his entire company.” The deal was done in July—and the After the Deadline plugin is now live for 7.5 million WordPress.com blogs.

Automattic—which has raised at least $30 million in funding—has made several small acquisitions over the last year. It purchased the blo.gs pinging and blog trackback service from Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) in April; online polls service PollDaddy in October; and blog commenting system Intense Debate last September.

• Automattic Rolls Out A WordPress For Social Networks
• Yahoo Spins Off Blo.gs To Automattic
• Updated: Automattic Acquires Intense Debate For Blog Comments; Sharethis Buys Madkast