Business

WP Stagecoach launches with host agnostic staging site tool

Brian Krogsgard

June 1, 2015

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.…

Finding stability in WordPress

Brian Krogsgard

May 27, 2015

Business

Lara Littlefield's is the latest story on HeroPress, and it is a moving one. Lara has been using WordPress since the very beginning and today runs SimmerWP, which looks like a really neat tool for managing recipes. Lara really opens up…

Five years of Yoast

Brian Krogsgard

May 22, 2015

Business

Joost de Valk sent a newsletter this morning noting that Yoast has been in business for five years. It's hard to believe just five years ago he had a job working for someone else. Now they are a team of…

Transparency in WordPress businesses

Brian Krogsgard

May 21, 2015

Business

I love seeing companies open up and share their business details. Income and transparency reports have become more and more popular. Alex Turnbull, of Groove, notes why transparency alone should not be just about the numbers: Why is transparency effective? Because…

A couple more notes on the WooThemes acquisition

Brian Krogsgard

May 20, 2015

Business

Thank you to all members for your patience on the newsletter, as I spent a great deal of time on the WooThemes acquisition post. I have a couple of thoughts I thought I'd leave specifically for you. New space in…

Automattic has acquired WooThemes, makers of WooCommerce

Brian Krogsgard

May 20, 2015

BusinessHosting

Matt Mullenweg announced today that Automattic has acquired WooThemes, whose flagship product is the popular eCommerce plugin, WooCommerce. All 55 team members at WooThemes will join Automattic, swelling ranks at Automattic by around 18%.

One year of Post Promoter Pro

Brian Krogsgard

May 6, 2015

Business

We often hear of big fails and big success stories with WordPress plugins and products. It was refreshing to hear Chris Klosowski blog about his experience selling Post Promoter Pro, his commercial buffer-style plugin that has done okay, but certainly…

OptinMonster goes SaaS in effort to cater for more hosting environments and non-WordPress platforms

Brian Krogsgard

May 6, 2015

BusinessHosting

OptinMonster has changed the very core of their product today, and it is now a standalone SaaS (software as a service) product, versus a plugin that runs on users' servers.

Audience Ops aims to offer regular editorial content for your business blog

Brian Krogsgard

May 1, 2015

Business

Brian Casel, who is half of the Bootstrapped Web podcast and the founder of Restaurant Engine, has a new project called Audience Ops. Audience Ops is a recurring service business that offers content marketing for online businesses. Brian is a…

Sync adds customer maintenance reports to their site management tool

Brian Krogsgard

April 29, 2015

Business

iThemes Sync has a decent amount of competition between ManageWP, Jetpack Manage, and others that offer site management services that allow you to manage and update themes, plugins, and WordPress core. But they've recently come out with a feature that…

Postmatic begins rollout of commercial version at $9 per month

Brian Krogsgard

April 23, 2015

Business

Late last year I wrote about Postmatic, a plugin that aims to improve your WordPress email and commenting experience. The plugin allows for comment management directly from your email, as well as handles post and comment subscriptions for your blog. The…

How to decide what should be a paid add-on

Brian Krogsgard

April 21, 2015

Business

James Laws writes about what to consider when determining whether a new plugin feature should be a paid add-on or not. At NinjaForms, they balance a number of criteria, but in the end he says it comes to a gut…

A podcast series on web design

Brian Krogsgard

April 6, 2015

Business

Matt Medeiros is doing a series on web design, and the business of it. In the fourth part, he interviews Carson McComas in regard to managing a $50,000 project. Carson worked on the eCommerce site I shared a while back.…

A theme shop year in review

Brian Krogsgard

April 3, 2015

Business

Mike McAlister has shared an in-depth post recapping his first year as an independent theme shop, Array. Array sells themes on their website, but has also been on WordPress.com for a while. However, they also experimented with Creative Market. What…

Happytables 3 is taking on Squarespace and Wix for restaurant websites with a brand new platform

Brian Krogsgard

March 24, 2015

BusinessPlanet

The new Happytables is a slick setup, and they've invested more time and energy into a hosted WordPress solution than perhaps anyone but Automattic on WordPress.com. The difference here is they are going after a niche, and it's a huge one with a big need: restaurants.