WordPress News

Rainmaker goes service only, sells partial stake to Nimble Worldwide

Brian Krogsgard

May 29, 2017

Rainmaker launched in April of 2014, and now it's moving from a SaaS product model to a service-only model, which includes a partial buyout to a new stakeholder -- Nimble Worldwide. I was excited about the launch of the hosted…

Publish tickets, initial speakers, sponsors

Brian Krogsgard

May 12, 2017

BusinessHosting

I'm super excited to finally be able to say that tickets for Publish 2017 are available. The event, as many of you already know, is in Atlanta, on August 3rd and 4th. That's a Thursday and Friday. Go straight to…

Business in a Box is a…

Brian Krogsgard

May 5, 2017

BusinessHosting

Business in a Box is a new small business eCommerce toolset from Paypal, and they have partnered with WooCommerce and Xero to provide a bundle to those looking to setup eCommerce sites. Michael Steele goes into more detail about it,…

First web interaction for small businesses

Brian Krogsgard

April 25, 2017

Business

The great battle for the small business side of the web is for a customer's first web interaction. Want to create a website? Where do you go? That's the battle that every player wants to win: Automattic, GoDaddy, EIG, Envato.…

Breaking into and building community, with WordPress and beyond — Draft podcast

Katie Richards

April 24, 2017

BusinessDraft

In this episode, Brian is joined by Matt Medeiros, a veteran of building communities in the WordPress Space. They talk about the challenges and rewards of diving into a new community.

Recurring revenue versus lifetime value

Brian Krogsgard

April 20, 2017

Business

I enjoyed a conversation in Slack recently where plugin authors were discussing the difference between recurring revenue and lifetime value. I think it's worth restating for the newsletter, as it's a common question. In recent years, there have been several…

Crate wants to help you escape license key hell

Brian Krogsgard

April 4, 2017

Business

Crate turns your WordPress site into a plugin repository to improve release management between environments and automate Composer support for commercial plugins. That's the promise of Brady Vercher's idea that he's calling Crate. This is something that I would really,…

The importance of tech in government, from Obama’s chief of staff

Brian Krogsgard

March 29, 2017

BusinessSecurity

Denis McDonough -- President Obama's chief of staff -- spoke to Ezra Klein about how to run the White House. In it, he described a process where President Obama would meet with cabinet secretaries on a quarterly basis, and the…

What you should know about the Sucuri acquisition deal by GoDaddy

Brian Krogsgard

March 24, 2017

BusinessHosting

In fewer than six years, Sucuri went from a team trying to decide when the founders should go full time, to a team of more than one hundred people, and an acquisition deal in their hands from one of the…

WordPress.com is testing custom plugins and themes for Business plans

Brian Krogsgard

March 20, 2017

BusinessHosting

Automattic is testing the ability for Business plan customers to upload custom plugins and themes on WordPress.com. The test has only been open a few days, and they are enabling the feature for around 10 sites per day, so it's…

Meet me for Publish, in Atlanta, in early August 🔥

Brian Krogsgard

March 20, 2017

Business

I've paid the deposit for our venue for Publish in Atlanta, August 3rd and 4th. If you liked the first first Publish, I think you'll love this one. It's standalone, in a great venue, in an accessible city, and I'm…

John Maeda posted his slides (along…

Brian Krogsgard

March 15, 2017

BusinessDesign

John Maeda posted his slides (along link to video) of his 2017 Design in Tech Report at SXSW together with Jackie Xu. Some "key observations" include: - Design isn’t just about beauty; it’s about market relevance and meaningful results. -…

Here’s an insightful interview with John…

Brian Krogsgard

March 15, 2017

Business

Here's an insightful interview with John O'Nolan on Indie Hackers about raising money and growing Ghost to $750k a year. Even if you don't use Ghost, it's a nice peak into how you can approach a business that is born…

Making a living without client work, with Carrie Dils — Draft podcast

Katie Richards

March 6, 2017

BusinessDraft

In this episode, Brian interviews Carrie Dils -- a self-employed entrepreneur -- about using multiple channels to make a full time living, and giving up client work.

Automattic has built an importer for…

Brian Krogsgard

March 3, 2017

Business

Automattic has built an importer for folks to move from Medium to WordPress.com, and gave a tiny jab to Medium while at it: With the recent news about Medium’s change in business model we’ve been receiving a number of requests…

The theme directory disconnect

Brian Krogsgard

February 27, 2017

BusinessDesign

In many ways, the WordPress theme directory is an invaluable resource -- for theme developers to have access to put their work out there in the wild for a huge audience, and for users to have a relatively safe way…