Member Spotlight: Miriam Schwab
Miriam Schwab is the co-Founder and Head of Strattic, an end-to-end static hosting and publishing platform for WordPress websites.
Does WordPress.org Data Belong to the WordPress Community? Should It?
Today WP Watercooler sought Solutions to the Active Growth Problem. In a pointed but … Read more
Over, Under, Around, and Through
This week Alex Denning (Ellipsis) draws on Iain Poulson‘s historical, high-level plugin data at WP Trends to offer some thoughtful, somewhat contrary, but practical and grounded perspectives on the value of Active Install Data. At the WP Watercooler and elsewhere, a realization seems to be setting in that the data is not open source and not the property of the WordPress community. Like last week’s episode of Post Status Draft with Katie Keith of Barn2 Plugins, Till Krüss (Object Cache Pro, Relay) offers a lot of lessons this week about less travelled paths to success in the plugin business even as a very small company or company of one. Performance, testing, and support are key, interrelated parts of Till’s success and probably the most important ones to borrow in your own life and work if they resonate.
A Definitive Guide to WP-Config, the WordPress 6.1 Field Guide, and Twenty Twenty-Three
Here’s a glimpse of what’s going on in the world of design and development in the WordPress space this past week: A delicious developer’s advanced guide to WP-Config, the WordPress 6.1 Field Guide, and Twenty Twenty-Three looks amazing! Brian Gardner released a new FSE theme, Powder. Cool Tool of the Week: Lorem Picsum by David Marby and Nijiko Yonskai.
Why the WordPress.org growth charts might not matter
In 2019-20, only four plugins entered the space and broke into the upper tiers. These were Site Kit for Google, Facebook for WooCommerce, Creative Mail for WordPress and WooCommerce, and Google Ads and Marketing by Kliken. Has the WordPress.org repository become a closed shop, a tapped-out ecosystem where the winners have taken all? Here are some suggestions about how to break in or changes that could be proposed to open and diversify the repository. Until that happens, do growth charts matter?
Two Key Questions We Need To Answer
What are the best things the WordPress community can do to better support plugin developers and founders? Recent discussions around the Active Install data being removed from WordPress.org forces us to respond to this question if we believe a healthy third-party plugin market is essential to WordPress, as I do.
Till Krüss on Object Cache Pro, WordPress, Plugins, Testing, and Performance — Post Status Draft 126
Till Krüss explains how he found his way into WordPress and a successful business that’s solving the hard problems of caching and performance optimization. His work and business model suggest several areas of opportunity for developers and founders working in the WordPress plugin market today.
Till Krüss on WordPress, Performance, the Plugin Business, and Life
What plugin owner has not felt the pain of an extraordinarily busy support forum? Till is up to (wait for it..) 5-10 minutes a day on support — which he aims to decrease. How? Testing to ensure the highest quality.
WordPress 6.1 RC1 • DevNotes • Field Guides • New LearnWP Course
WordPress 6.1 RC 1 has shipped with a release date of November 1. It’s time to start testing! Check out the Developer Notes, Field Guide, and related team updates.
Active Install Data Story Update: Not a breach but abuse of an endpoint
John James Jacoby has been the main source of (unofficial) information about the removal of active install statistical tracking for plugins in the WordPress.org repository. On Friday, he provided more technical details on the WPwatercooler podcast.
How Open Source is WordPress?
Decision-by-committee is difficult enough, and decision-by-community is called an election. Surely there must be a way that we can gather information, keep the community informed, and move forward in a mutually-beneficial way.
Trust Issues
Cory Miller asks, “What can we do to better support our plugin developers and product owners?” Katie Keith offers some clues with the story of her WordPress/WooCommerce agency and product shop, Barn2 Plugins. Dan Knauss and Nyasha Green talk about microaggressions, the Active Install Growth Data story, and US federal legislation aimed at Open Source Security. In an increasingly “demon-haunted world,” how can we know who is doing what with the hardware and software tools we use? Ben Gabler, CEO and Founder of Rocket.net, is in our Member Spotlight.
What Can We All Do to Better Support Our Plugin Developers?
The recent discussions around the Active Installs data being removed from the WordPress Repo … Read more
Post Status Excerpt (No. 70) — Trust and Distrust: Microaggressions, Active Install Growth Data for Plugins, and Open Source Security
In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, Dan and Ny take on three issues in the WordPress community that can threaten or impair trust while also revealing how foundational trust and healthy communication are: 1) racism and microaggressions, 2) the sudden removal and uncertain fate of the active install growth chart in the WordPress.org plugin repository, and 3) open source and security. Briefly discussed: emerging US federal policy that aims to secure open-source software. Zero-trust architecture might work well for networked machines, but human relationships and communities need trust.
Diversifying Revenue, the 50% Coding / 50% Marketing Lifecycle, Active Install Clawback, and Turbo Admin
Here’s a glimpse of what’s going on in the world of design and development in the WordPress space this past week. As I look around the Post Status Slack and the chatter on Twitter, this week has been filled with conversations emphasizing the struggle of running a business as a solo devpreneur.
WordPress 6.1 Beta 3 • Active Install Growth Chart
Help test WordPess 6.1 Beta 3! 🧪 Check out the latest features that are coming in the 6.1 release. 📦 Follow updates about bringing back the Active Install Growth chart. 📈
