WordPress News

Layers, by Obox, introduces a beautiful page building interface

Brian Krogsgard

February 19, 2015

Layers is the latest WordPress theme with page building as the core feature. Obox has made a heck of an effort to ship 1.0, and while I have some issues, I'm incredibly impressed with the overall user experience. I think Obox has created something that's worth checking out, though I think this market has plenty of maturing to do yet.

Wikimedia, Automattic, and others file amicus in Twitter privacy case

Brian Krogsgard

February 18, 2015

Security

Automattic joined Wikimedia, Medium, and other organizations in filing an amicus brief regarding Twitter's National Security Letters lawsuit against the US government. https://twitter.com/Wikimedia/status/567857616006676480 This is all a bit confusing, but the brief opens in this way: We are small Internet companies…

Pickle is another WordPress restaurant solution

Brian Krogsgard

February 17, 2015

Design

Pickle is a project by Jason Schuller that offers both a hosted and self-hosted solution for WordPress restaurants. It's heavily focused on design and simplicity. I can't help but wonder why there is so much focus on restaurants in this space.…

The commoditized state of web design

Brian Krogsgard

February 17, 2015

BusinessDesign

There has been a great deal of talk in general web design circles regarding what some call the commoditization of web design. I have many opinions on this, but they boil down to the part where I feel some agencies…

Selling a lifestyle and getting personal

Brian Krogsgard

February 13, 2015

Business

I'm always intrigued by how companies market themselves, both to clients and potential employers. Envato has put a good bit of effort into their marketing videos, and they are definitely selling a lifestyle -- both to sellers and employees. They recently…

WPupdatePHP wants to be BrowseHappy for servers

Brian Krogsgard

February 13, 2015

Hosting

WPupdatePHP is a project by Coen Jacobs to evangelize the need for people to use modern PHP versions for their WordPress installs. It's both a website and a script people can include in their plugins, to function like BrowseHappy does.…

Revenue per employee

Brian Krogsgard

February 13, 2015

Business

It's always fun to think about how much money others are making in the WordPress world. We want to know what business models are working, what business models aren't working, and generally get an idea how successful various commercial properties…

The WordPress REST API

Brian Krogsgard

February 11, 2015

DevelopmentMake WordPress

The WordPress REST API is a huge initiative and feature plugin being developed for the core WordPress project. But it can be a bit confusing if you don't know much about it yet. Let's discuss what this project is, why it's important, and how to get involved.

I peaked across the fence at hosted Joomla, then ran home

Brian Krogsgard

February 9, 2015

Hosting

Joomla.com launched as a hosted version of the Joomla! CMS. I was interested because my host (SiteGround) had blogged about how they built the hosting platform for the new Joomla.com site. The tech is neat, as is the fact that…

Starting a mastermind

Brian Krogsgard

February 9, 2015

Business

Today, I had my first meeting with my new (and first ever) mastermind group. Not heard of a mastermind? It's typically a small group of individuals connected by at least some common thread, where the group meets periodically to discuss…

WordPress lead developer changes

Brian Krogsgard

February 4, 2015

Make WordPressPlanet

Yesterday and today there has been some significant news for the WordPress project. We now have two new lead developers, and two long-time leads are stepping down after outstanding tenures assisting with steering the ship.

Matt Mullenweg on profits and losses

Brian Krogsgard

February 3, 2015

Business

Matt Mullenweg has written a rare bit of in-depth insight to decision making at Automattic. The framework for his post is for balancing advice from advisors with the goals of the company, and how those things aren't always on the…

New journalism

Brian Krogsgard

February 2, 2015

BusinessPlanet

Bloggers and journalists are experimenting with new models of monetization and independent publishing. One of the pioneers of subscription-based independent blog-based journalism just called it quits, but we should still laud his pioneering effort, not call blogging dead (again).

Licensing matters

Brian Krogsgard

January 28, 2015

Security

There's a popular WordPress vulnerability scanner called WPScan. To validate its popularity: it has over 1,800 commits, 750 stars, and 165 forks on Github. The scanner is used by a lot of security folks, as well as other service and…

WooCommerce is going after photography

Brian Krogsgard

January 27, 2015

BusinessPlanet

WooThemes announced a new product today, aimed at selling photography with WooCommerce. This is a good first step, and I'm excited to see an eCommerce product target the photography super-niche. That said, there is a ton of room in this market, and WordPress isn't really solving photographers' problems yet.

Another Sucuri “responsible disclosure” postmortem

Brian Krogsgard

January 27, 2015

Business

James Giroux manages operations at PageLines. Last week, they were notified of a vulnerability by Sucuri, and he went through the rigmarole most of us are familiar with of juggling responsible disclosure and implementing a fix. James did a postmortem on…