Business

Don’t make enemies, invest in friendships

Cory Miller

July 29, 2015

Enemies are trouble and tear you down. Friends support you and build you up. Building a friendship is not easy, especially when the potential friend could just as easily be your enemy. But it's a worthwhile endeavor and a lasting investment.

Thesis, Automattic, and WordPress

Brian Krogsgard

July 23, 2015

BusinessDesign

Chris Pearson and Matt Mullenweg have hardly communicated with one another in the last five years, but they are ideological enemies. They have very strong personalities and unshakable beliefs on business and software. This is a story of their dispute, their idealism, and the implications it will have on the WordPress project.

Pearson versus Mullenweg, a history

Brian Krogsgard

July 21, 2015

BusinessDesign

This is a preview of the first part of my upcoming article on Thesis, Automattic, and WordPress. Chris Pearson and Matt Mullenweg have hardly communicated with one another in the last five years, but they are ideological enemies. They are…

The commercial theme tides

Brian Krogsgard

July 13, 2015

Business

Commercial WordPress theme sales is a known business today. Folks have been selling themes since 2007 and many sellers experienced some very good years. The market commoditized itself quite significantly, and it's harder and harder each year to stand out. Of…

PressNomics 4 set for March 3-4, 2016

Brian Krogsgard

July 6, 2015

Business

PressNomics 4 is set. You can (and should) start planning to visit sunny Phoenix March 3-4th next year. This is one of the best events of the year, and probably the best event for business oriented WordPress professionals. I launched…

Growth in the French community

Jenny Beaumont

June 24, 2015

BusinessPlanet

Jenny Beaumont, a freelance web developer based in France, describes the recent growth boom in France's WordPress community and some of those who've helped it thrive.

A future API

Ryan McCue

June 19, 2015

BusinessPlanet

Ryan McCue, the lead developer of the WordPress REST API, imagines the year 2020, when the REST API is mature and in WordPress core. He tells us stories of some of the fun things that are possible.

Stepping up reporting in WordPress eCommerce

Brian Krogsgard

June 16, 2015

Business

If I could give this post 1,000 +1's, I would. Brianna Norcross is operations manager at Reaktiv Studios and she is super obsessive with the numbers and good reporting. In her experience, and I wholeheartedly agree, WordPress eCommerce plugin reporting…

Google Analyticator sold to SumoMe, the team behind AppSumo

Brian Krogsgard

June 15, 2015

Business

Troy Dean -- of WP Elevation and Video User Manuals -- was until recently also the maintainer of Google Analyticator, the WordPress analytics plugin with 400,000+ active installations. Troy sold Google Analyticator to Noah Kagan and SumoMe. SumoMe is directly related…

Twenty myths about building a business

Brian Krogsgard

June 15, 2015

Business

Alex Turnbull shares some myths about business that resonated with me. I’ve learned a lot – we all have – and I look at business and entrepreneurship in a completely different way now than I did five years ago. There were so…

What is Code?

Brian Krogsgard

June 12, 2015

BusinessDevelopment

"What is code?" Paul Ford answers the question, with a 38,000 word masterpiece in Bloomberg. This is the first article I'd tell an aspiring programmer to read, and the one that anyone working in technology should have in their permanent collection.

Web pages are now 2MB on average, and it’s largely because of images

Brian Krogsgard

June 11, 2015

Business

The steady climb in average website sizes isn't stopping. And according to Tammy Everts, more than 60% of page weight today is due to images. As internet users, we crave images — the bigger, the better. Site owners play to…

A commercial plugin directory

Brian Krogsgard

June 4, 2015

Business

Steven Gliebe has launched a commercial plugin directory called Pro Plugin Directory. My point is that commercial plugins are a big deal but there is no central place to locate them. I usually search WordPress.org and find something free that…

Automattic to acquire WP Job Manager from Mike Jolley

Brian Krogsgard

June 2, 2015

BusinessPlanet

Mike Jolley has agreed to terms to sell WP Job Manager to Automattic. Mike is already joining Automattic after the WooThemes acquisition -- under his role as WooCommerce lead developer -- and the sale of WP Job Manager is in part due to Automattic's rules for employee side projects.

WP Stagecoach launches with host agnostic staging site tool

Brian Krogsgard

June 1, 2015

BusinessHosting

WP Stagecoach is a tool that's been in development, alpha, and beta testing for around two years. It's a host agnostic tool that allows website owners to create staging sites and merge changes back to the live site. Morgan Kay announced…

Free WordPress themes and the elephant in the room

Brian Krogsgard

May 28, 2015

Business

There has been a big kerfuffle the last few days in the community of theme authors and theme reviewers on WordPress.org. The theme review team discovered that some themes are skirting (knowingly or not knowingly) some old-standing rules around content creation.…