WordPress News

Trademarks, Woo, and you

Brian Krogsgard

May 12, 2016

There's been talk lately about Automattic enforcing trademarks for the term "Woo", by sending takedown notices to websites utilizing the term in their domains and offering services or products associated with WooCommerce. Automattic has been sending letters, primarily to sites…

There are a few nuggets of wisdom in…

Brian Krogsgard

May 7, 2016

Business

There are a few nuggets of wisdom in Matt Medeiros' answers to questions on running a WordPress product and service business after his appearance on the OfficeHours.fm podcast. BTW, OfficeHours.fm reached 100 episodes recently, so congrats to Carrie Dils.

Templatic, a WordPress theme company, was…

Brian Krogsgard

May 2, 2016

Business

Templatic, a WordPress theme company, was recently hacked and that hacker is holding it's customer data for ransom. This is terrifying, for both Templatic clients and for Templatic itself. Thankfully billing information wasn't stored and Templatic's customers at least so…

Follow-up on Server Pilot

Brian Krogsgard

April 27, 2016

BusinessHosting

I talked to Justin Samuel, the CEO of Server Pilot, on the phone today, to do a bit of follow-up after my last post. I'm still intrigued by Server Pilot, which I see as unique in our space right now,…

Weekend listening: The A16Z podcast talked…

April 15, 2016

Business

Weekend listening: The A16Z podcast talked about open source business models in a short episode the other day. Automattic isn't mentioned, but the conversation around investing in community influencers, winning over developers, and building out a sales team is pretty…

Managing products is about focus

Brian Krogsgard

April 13, 2016

Business

I have to hand it to Jeff Chandler, he's pretty good at raising a ruckus when he's annoyed with a plugin. Yesterday, I guess he reached his boiling point with Edit Flow, the quasi-abandoned plugin by Automattic for managing an…

Understanding reference transactions and PayPal

Brian Krogsgard

April 13, 2016

Business

During my WooConf talk, I discussed a little bit about PayPal, why it's useful as an eCommerce checkout option, and why site owners with subscriptions need Reference Transactions enabled. The common question after that was: what they heck are Reference Transactions?…

GoDaddy targets Digital Ocean with new cloud infrastructure

Brian Krogsgard

March 21, 2016

Business

GoDaddy is targeting products by companies like Digital Ocean and Amazon with their new by-the-hour Cloud Services and Apps project. The pricing is pretty much a direct mirror of Digital Ocean's right now (starts at $5 per month), and they…

Dates for CaboPress have been announced.…

March 15, 2016

Business

Dates for CaboPress have been announced. The event is happening on November 14th - 17th in Los Cabos, Mexico and according to event organizer Chris Lema only 20-30 spots are available. CaboPress is a unique WordPress event not only in…

Automattic has purchased a majority stake in Pressable

Brian Krogsgard

March 10, 2016

BusinessHosting

Automattic has taken over a majority stake in Pressable, the managed WordPress hosting company, with a purchase of Pressable CEO Vid Luther's shares of the company. They were already a significant investor.

The Jorbin Test

Aaron Jorbin

March 4, 2016

BusinessCareers

The Joel Test has largely stood the test of time, yet there isn't a WordPress specific version to help WordPress developers judge job opportunities. The Jorbin Test is the Joel Test, updated for the WordPress engineers of today.

Mandrill ditches free plans, stacks onto paid Mailchimp

Brian Krogsgard

February 26, 2016

Business

Most of you know this by now, as it's been all over the web and a hot topic in Slack, but Mailchimp is ditching free Mandrill plans for transactional emails, and stacking Mandrill onto paid Mailchimp plans. But even if…

Rainmaker Digital passes $12 million in revenue, 60+ employees

Brian Krogsgard

February 24, 2016

Business

Rainmaker Digital is the newish name of the formerly known Copyblogger Media. Brian Clark recently did an interview with Andrew Warner of Mixergy, where he discussed the state of the business, where things are going, and what to expect. It was…

Mason James doesn’t like the term…

February 12, 2016

Business

Mason James doesn't like the term "maintenance", which may come as a surprise considering many folks lump his company, Valet (formerly WP Valet) into a group of "maintenance service" agencies. Maintenance is a completely inadequate and backwards approach to running…

A few (surprisingly good) things I have recently learned about PayPal

Brian Krogsgard

February 11, 2016

Business

PayPal is one of those companies people love to hate. I know I do. But sometimes, PayPal shows how good it can be. And in some ways -- please don't hate me for saying this -- PayPal has some WordPress-y-ness…

Complete coverage should not be a requirement for core inclusion of WordPress REST API endpoints

Brian Krogsgard

February 9, 2016

BusinessDesign

The WordPress REST API is at a bit of a crossroads. There is a proposal on the table by the core team of four contributors — Ryan McCue, Rachel Baker, Daniel Bachhuber, and Joe Hoyle — to ship endpoints to WordPress core iteratively. There is a pushback on this proposal by WordPress Project Lead and co-founder Matt Mullenweg.