WordPress News

Envato has acquired Pressed to create a complete hosting solution

Brian Krogsgard

July 6, 2017

In 2015 Envato invested $1.5 million dollars into Pressed -- the white-label WordPress hosting service -- for a one third stake in the company. Now they've fully purchased ownership in the business, and the majority of the Pressed team is…

The future of the WordPress economy, and why I’m not worried

Joshua Strebel

June 22, 2017

BusinessHosting

Joshua Strebel -- the CEO of Pagely -- shares his view of the current state of the WordPress economy, and why he is confident in both its strength and future.

WooCommerce ending renewal discounts is a good thing

Brian Krogsgard

June 22, 2017

BusinessHosting

WooCommerce has — at least for now — decided to end renewal discounts for extension sales. This is a smart business move and the right thing to do, even if it could've been rolled out better. Matt Mullenweg said in…

Rebecca Gill announced the Web Savvy…

Brian Krogsgard

June 14, 2017

Business

Rebecca Gill announced the Web Savvy Marketing Genesis theme business has been sold to 9Seeds.

Much more interesting than a regular…

Brian Krogsgard

June 14, 2017

Business

Much more interesting than a regular Jetpack upgrade is how (as I predicted) Jetpack is bringing "professional themes" to the plugin, effectively making it a full-on marketplace. I am very, very interested in how that's going to work, specifically in…

Rainmaker goes service only, sells partial stake to Nimble Worldwide

Brian Krogsgard

May 29, 2017

BusinessHosting

Rainmaker launched in April of 2014, and now it's moving from a SaaS product model to a service-only model, which includes a partial buyout to a new stakeholder -- Nimble Worldwide. I was excited about the launch of the hosted…

Publish tickets, initial speakers, sponsors

Brian Krogsgard

May 12, 2017

BusinessHosting

I'm super excited to finally be able to say that tickets for Publish 2017 are available. The event, as many of you already know, is in Atlanta, on August 3rd and 4th. That's a Thursday and Friday. Go straight to…

Business in a Box is a…

Brian Krogsgard

May 5, 2017

BusinessHosting

Business in a Box is a new small business eCommerce toolset from Paypal, and they have partnered with WooCommerce and Xero to provide a bundle to those looking to setup eCommerce sites. Michael Steele goes into more detail about it,…

First web interaction for small businesses

Brian Krogsgard

April 25, 2017

Business

The great battle for the small business side of the web is for a customer's first web interaction. Want to create a website? Where do you go? That's the battle that every player wants to win: Automattic, GoDaddy, EIG, Envato.…

Breaking into and building community, with WordPress and beyond — Draft podcast

Katie Richards

April 24, 2017

BusinessDraft

In this episode, Brian is joined by Matt Medeiros, a veteran of building communities in the WordPress Space. They talk about the challenges and rewards of diving into a new community.

Recurring revenue versus lifetime value

Brian Krogsgard

April 20, 2017

Business

I enjoyed a conversation in Slack recently where plugin authors were discussing the difference between recurring revenue and lifetime value. I think it's worth restating for the newsletter, as it's a common question. In recent years, there have been several…

Crate wants to help you escape license key hell

Brian Krogsgard

April 4, 2017

Business

Crate turns your WordPress site into a plugin repository to improve release management between environments and automate Composer support for commercial plugins. That's the promise of Brady Vercher's idea that he's calling Crate. This is something that I would really,…

The importance of tech in government, from Obama’s chief of staff

Brian Krogsgard

March 29, 2017

BusinessSecurity

Denis McDonough -- President Obama's chief of staff -- spoke to Ezra Klein about how to run the White House. In it, he described a process where President Obama would meet with cabinet secretaries on a quarterly basis, and the…

What you should know about the Sucuri acquisition deal by GoDaddy

Brian Krogsgard

March 24, 2017

BusinessHosting

In fewer than six years, Sucuri went from a team trying to decide when the founders should go full time, to a team of more than one hundred people, and an acquisition deal in their hands from one of the…

WordPress.com is testing custom plugins and themes for Business plans

Brian Krogsgard

March 20, 2017

BusinessHosting

Automattic is testing the ability for Business plan customers to upload custom plugins and themes on WordPress.com. The test has only been open a few days, and they are enabling the feature for around 10 sites per day, so it's…