Running a successful membership site in real life, with Jonathan Williamson
Brian Krogsgard
This interview is with Jonathan Williamson, co-founder of CGCookie. He’s going to talk to us about running a real world membership website on WordPress. Jonathan is Pippin Williamson's twin brother, and he has years of experience running membership websites. There is much that we can learn from him.
The results of a $50,000 redesign
Brian Krogsgard
This isn't WordPress-specific, but Andrew Youderian wrote an outstanding case study of his company's $50,000 redesign. The redesign is for an eCommerce company and includes more than just the website design -- it's branding, migration from Magento to Shopify, and…
Yoast SEO vulnerability, disclosure, and forced upgrade
Brian Krogsgard
Yoast released a new version of the WordPress SEO plugin in the last 24 hours, which fixes a blind SQL injection vulnerability. According to a post mortem by Joost de Valk, the bug wasn't caught in security audits, but was…
New theme page has caused a large drop in referrals for commercial shops
Brian Krogsgard
The new WordPress.org commercial theme page -- which was launched just a couple of weeks ago -- seems to have greatly reduced the number of referrals to commercial theme shops. Many commercial theme providers featured on WordPress.org are noting 80%+…
Micro and niche conferences abound
Brian Krogsgard
There have been many announcements of late for micro and niche conferences. This is a steady occurrence these days, which I'm happy to see, but it's not easy to keep up with it all. I'm even considering a calendar of…
WordPress security whitepaper
Brian Krogsgard
The WordPress.org website now includes a WordPress security whitepaper, donated by WordPress.com VIP. It's sparse in its current form, but it's a great start. Why does this matter? Well, a whitepaper from the official project is a great tool for…
Find WordPress themes for a business
Brian Krogsgard
This is one of those articles that's just good to have for referencing friends, family, or under-budget leads to. Clay Teller gives a nice intro at WP Site Care to small business owners that need to get a website up…
Adii Pienaar is making a WordPress comeback with stake in Obox
Brian Krogsgard
Adii Pienaar is making a WordPress comeback after over a year away from the community. The WooThemes co-founder has made a strategic investment into Obox, the team behind the newly launched Layers product. In return, he's received a 30% stake in the company to complement Receiptful, his new eCommerce product.
A case for the front-end editor
Brian Krogsgard
On WP Shout, Fred Meyer makes an impassioned case for the front-end editor, and why he believes it deserves a renewed effort as a WordPress feature plugin and eventual WordPress core inclusion. It's a really thoughtful post, and at well…
The big business of fashion blogging
Brian Krogsgard
This is a bit offbeat for me, but I found a story shared by Longreads this weekend that I really enjoyed. It's about how Amber Venz created rewardStyle, a (now) huge player in fashion affiliate marketing. In three years the…
The most popular WordPress plugins
Brian Krogsgard
WordPress plugin popularity has always been pretty tough to figure out. We only had download counts or independent, third party website scrapers to tell us anything. Now, WordPress.org itself has more data that's being tested and launched to give us real insight into the popularity of WordPress plugins.
Theme design for developers
Brian Krogsgard
Yes! This is important. I get really worked up when I see basic concepts of design ignored by developers. I mean, I'm not a great designer by any means, but we can all learn a few things. Here are some…
It’s time to ditch download counts on WordPress.org and get real stats
Brian Krogsgard
I'm grumpy today. Clickbait journalism annoys me, and WordPress security related clickbait journalism especially annoys me. Ars Technica, PC World, ZD Net, and TripWire are just a few sites that reported over a million WordPress sites were susceptible to being hacked…
Twitter introduces an official plugin for WordPress
Brian Krogsgard
Twitter has finally announced an official WordPress plugin. It's pretty thorough, and on a quick test run, works as advertised. Here's a rundown of some of the features and background.
The problem of link rot and data loss
Brian Krogsgard
Link rot is a serious issue on the web, as many links of the past are going away. We lose that data for good if we don't back it up somewhere. It may seem insignificant now, but we simply don't know what is being published today that we'll wish we'd kept in the future. But we can solve this issue.
