Matt Cromwell

A Visit from the Good Idea Fairy

Dan Knauss

October 21, 2022

Building, Supporting, and Selling a Winning Product — With or Without WordPress.org • Are Active Install Counts Relevant to Your Business's Success? (Even if they are accurate? And they haven't been.) • Let's Fix What's Broken (The Plugin Repo) Not What Isn't (The Freemium Model) • Follow Leaders, Adopt Standards • Tools and expertise from rtCamp • Some great and "doable" ideas for the future of plugin business metrics on the .org repo. Could some of them help put an end to intrusive and manipulative dark patterns in the WordPress Admin dashboard and notifications?

Post Status Excerpt (No. 71) — Building, Supporting, and Selling a Winning Product — With or Without WordPress.org

Dan Knauss

October 21, 2022

BusinessDesign

This week I sat down again with Eric Karkovack to talk about the WordPress stories and topics that are on the top of our minds. Independently, we made nearly the same selections. There's a single throughline in this episode — what works, what doesn't, and what will take WordPress businesses forward in the product, agency, and hosting spaces.

Connect freemium plugins to premium extension sales?

Dan Knauss

October 21, 2022

BusinessNotes

Justin Labadie's wishlist for the WordPress.org plugin repo:

1) Ensure all search results are relevant.
2) Standardize a Premium product upsell interface.
3) Make it possible to show other products by the same author.

Five takes on helpful plugin stats and insights

Dan Knauss

October 20, 2022

BusinessFeatures

Good ideas for the future of data disclosed to plugin authors using the wordpress.org repository:

1) Identify surges of unhappy users reacting to a bad release — and the opposite, happier outcome.

2) Use pageview analytics to estimate total potential user interest and conversion rates.

3) Assess a plugin's performance with the .org search algorithm, the quality of releases, and plugin incompatibility as well as PHP compatibility issues.

4) Collect significant user behavior data anonymously without phoning home.

5) Just reveal all the raw data with privacy options for individual authors — no interpretive analysis on wordpress.org.

BONUS: Let's take this discussion somewhere else!

WordPress Podcast and Video Picks for the Week of June 19

David Bisset

June 24, 2022

PlanetThe Week in Review

A chat with Matt at WCEU • Glam That Plugin • BlackPress Slack meetup • SSG vs. WordPress for landing pages • The Web Designer's Tech Stack • A Medeiros rant on the WordPress vibe

Your WordPress Company Has Been Acquired: Now What?

Michelle Frechette

September 22, 2021

BusinessGet Hired Blog

Has your WordPress company been acquired? You're not alone.

Devin Walker and Matt Cromwell on GiveWP’s Acquisition by Liquid Web

Dan Knauss

May 14, 2021

BusinessDraft

Brian Krogsgard talks with GiveWP's (former) CEO and COO, co-founders Devin Walker and Matt Cromwell following their acquisition.

Liquid Web’s Latest Acquisition: GiveWP

David Bisset

May 14, 2021

WordPress News

Liquid Web's acquisition of GiveWP came as a surprise to many people in the WordPress community. WP Business Reviews is part of the deal too.

Here’s a great podcast episode from Bob…

Dan Knauss

January 5, 2019

Here's a great podcast episode from Bob Dunn interviewing Devin Walker and Matt Cromwell from GiveWP. They get into some helpful tips and best practices for fundraising campaigns.

Matt Cromwell shares the people and…

Brian Krogsgard

January 23, 2018

Matt Cromwell shares the people and projects he's most interested in following in 2018. It's a good list -- much more thorough than what you normally see.

Speaking of Gutenberg, you can download the…

Brian Krogsgard

June 26, 2017

Speaking of Gutenberg, you can download the Gutenberg plugin from the plugin repo as well and try it out yourself. Some are already sharing their first impressions. Matt Cromwell notes it's flexible, but also mentions some weaknesses and concerns. Chris Lema…

Matt Cromwell argues for the Single…

Brian Krogsgard

May 17, 2017

Matt Cromwell argues for the Single Purpose Philosophy in WordPress plugin development: "a plugin should have one central purpose, no matter how great or small." Matt shows how this philosophy operates in WooCommerce, Give, and the Activity Log plugin. Overall…

Matt Cromwell shows us how to…

Dan Knauss

December 9, 2016

Notes

Matt Cromwell shows us how to enqueue scripts only when a widget or shortcode is present. Useful if you don't want something like a stylesheet to be enqueued EVERYWHERE regardless of whether it's being used on the page or not.

Scaling for support can be especially…

Brian Krogsgard

September 30, 2016

Scaling for support can be especially tricky for small businesses and agencies. Matt Cromwell shares his formula on support, with one of the main takeaways being to collect data and know your capacity limits. Matt also shares a spreadsheet and…

WordPress needs bigger data

Brian Krogsgard

August 3, 2016

WordPress needs big data -- knowledge of how the product is used -- to make better decisions as to how to direct the future of the software. To make my point, allow me to drift off into the wonderful world…