What to expect from PressNomics
PressNomics is this week. Here’s a preview of some of the things I’m looking forward to. I can’t wait to hang out with those of you going!
Category: Business
WordPress and the new European Union VAT (Value-Added Tax) rules
The new European VAT rules rolled out at the beginning of January, and they really complicate selling digital goods to Europeans. I have done a ton of research and reading, and this is the most straightforward post I could make from it to try and wrap up the state of the EU VAT rules for WordPress business owners and eCommerce shops.
GravityView raises the bar for WordPress video advertisements
Okay, maybe it doesn’t raise the bar the way you think I mean. But this is worthwhile. I’m pretty busy building the new Post Status infrastructure, but not too busy to post this. GravityView is a WordPress plugin by Zack Katz and Katz Web Services that lists Gravity Forms entries on your site in a […]
Yoast Google Analytics plugin introduces stats dashboards, with lessons learned along the way
Yoast updated their popular Google Analytics plugin in December to include new stats dashboards that pull in Google Analytics data to your site. The stats are pretty fancy and give a nice quick glance at your stats without leaving your WordPress dashboard. They’ve learned some lessons about building a plugin feature at scale along the way too.
Website micro services provider, Elto, is shutting down for now
Elto, formerly Tweaky, is a micro services provider, for lack of a better term. They started with $25 tweaks, which until they shut down services today, worked it’s way to a $199 minimum. WordPress is a high focus vertical for Elto’s, and I presume it’s their largest as well. Elto is one of several such […]
5 years into business, Pagely is growing faster than ever
Pagely is celebrating their fifth year of business right now. They have just launched their newly designed website (note to early readers: it’s in process of launching at this moment, so some links may not work until later today) to reflect some of the ways they’ve changed over the years. They are also growing, rapidly. […]
WordPress.com is very mobile centric with their first video ad
WordPress.com has released what appears to be their first ever video ad, and it’s quite mobile centric. The ad portrays a number of users using the WordPress mobile app to snap and blog pictures. It’s only 16 seconds, and is (unsurprisingly) to the tune of a Childish Gambino song, the artist whose Deep Web tour […]
The anatomy of a security breach, and how to do good in a bad situation
On Tuesday, iThemes posted an announcement that they had suffered from a security breach of their website and servers. The attackers had reached the servers which stored customer information, including email addresses, IP addresses, full names, and yes, passwords. iThemes was quick to notify customers via their blog, social media, and their full customer email […]
iThemes to partner with Crowd Favorite to take their products to the enterprise
Today, iThemes and Crowd Favorite are announcing a partnership where they will collaborate to take iThemes products to a more enterprise-level market. Practically, this means that Crowd Favorite will contribute developers and other resources to help iThemes better structure and market their products beyond a consumer audience. iThemes will in turn list the enterprise versions […]
ThemeForest and CodeCanyon introduce mandatory support and renewable packages
Envato has announced a change in support terms for ThemeForest and CodeCanyon, which creates a requirement for authors to provide six months of support, and offers buyers “support packs” for renewing support. Support has not historically been required, but nearly every author notes that support is essentially required for sales purposes. From the Envato market […]
Audit WP to become part of WP Site Care with acquihire of Rob Neu
Audit WP had a short, but interesting life span. Started by Rob Neu and Jacob King, the site launched in February, and today it’s been acquired by WP Site Care. They made an early splash after their launch when Jacob wrote a provocative post about WP Engine’s SEO policies. Aside from that, they set out […]
The case for doing small website projects
Last week I posted about how much custom WordPress websites should cost. If you read that post, you know that it depends. Generally the feedback was fantastic, but many readers took from that post that they should raise their prices. I disagree. I mentioned in the post that I’ve worked on web projects ranging from […]
Lift has acquired ChurchThemes and intend to enter the hosted church website market
ChurchThemes was started by Frankie Jarrett in 2011. Frankie is now the Head of WordPress Product at X-Team, makers of Stream — a product I reviewed a few months ago. Frankie also talked about Stream and ChurchThemes on the Matt Report recently. Today, Lift is announcing the acquisition of ChurchThemes. Lift is a consultancy and also owner of UpThemes, […]
How much should a custom WordPress website cost?
Eventually, you have to talk about cost. If you’re a consultant, as I am, you’ve been asked how much your services cost. And you have to make some decisions: What services am I providing? How many hours do I think this will take me? How much is this worth to the client, from a business […]
Syed Balkhi and Thomas Griffin are joining forces
Syed Balkhi and Thomas Griffin first partnered together when they created Floating Social Bar, a free WordPress social sharing plugin. They decided to collaborate after meeting and getting along at WordCamp Raleigh. From there, their relationship blossomed, and they decided to create a second product together. Syed specializes in marketing and business development, and Thomas […]
Obox has launched Instant: white labeled, seamless hosting for their WordPress themes
Average customers often don’t know the difference between domains, WordPress themes, plugins, and hosting. They have to learn as they go, or hope they land somewhere someone will guide them well. I once did a WordCamp double-session on WordPress 101. I did two hours of information, that I felt was pretty basic. I finished the […]
Crowd Favorite to acquire Forty, a UX and design agency
Forty is a design and UX agency based in Arizona. James Archer, Forty’s CEO, is a founding member of the Gangplank incubator in Chandler, AZ. Forty is a team of six that have focused on design and UX for the past 11 years. Throughout their years, they’ve brought on a lot of young talent and trained […]