Dan Knauss

Over, Under, Around, and Through

aerial photography of great wall of china

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.

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?

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.

Active Install Data Story Update: Not a breach but abuse of an endpoint

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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.

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.

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.

Going from Agency to Products: The Story of Barn2 — Post Status Draft 125

From client services and agency work to a successful product business — Katie Keith tells Cory the Barn2 Plugins story in this episode of Post Status Draft.

Open Source Communities: You May Not Be Interested in CISA, But CISA is Very Interested in You

United States national security interests are poised to become more invested in and engaged with open source projects classified as public infrastructure. From Log4j to the Securing Open Source Software Act, how did it all come together in 2022, and what may lie ahead?

Active Install Charts Removed from Plugin Repo

In reaction to as-yet-unpublicized details about the abuse of active install data in the WordPress.org plugin repository, the charts displaying that data have been removed from plugin pages in a move expected to be temporary. Important (and some familiar) questions are emerging as this story unfolds: how to balance the values of openness, security, and privacy as well as cooperation and competition at WordPress.org — still the central hub for WordPress plugin businesses.

WordPress Careers Roundup for the Week of September 26, 2022

Craft your origin story • Pointed questions for devs to ask prospective employers • Strategies against Ageism • IBM’s a**hole test • Take a pass on a “fast-paced environment.” • WordPress Translation Day • Writing Tips for Engineers • Preventing burnout as a manager

Shiny New Things!

From Abstract: WP Tests for Faster WordPress Projects. Independent Analytics – A Reliable Google … Read more

WordPress Biz Roundup for the Week of September 26, 2022

2022 Web Almanac CMS findings • WP Cloud • Sponsored core contributor and sponsor data • WP Biz Dev • Female-Owned and Led WP Businesses • and more →

What is WP Cloud?

WP Cloud is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) built on the hosting infrastructure that’s behind WP.com, Pressable, and WordPress VIP with GridPane soon to follow. Agencies that want to white label their client hosting are ideal customers for WP Cloud via GridPane.

WordPress Core Contributor Stats: 19.9% Sponsored for 6.0 Release

The percentage of sponsored contributors has steadily increased to almost 20% now.

Radiopaper

Radiopaper is like a ring of threaded and publicly aggregated full-text Webmentions created via … Read more