Matt Cromwell

A Visit from the Good Idea Fairy

Photo of author
Dan Knauss
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

Photo of author
Dan Knauss
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.

Five takes on helpful plugin stats and insights

Photo of author
Dan Knauss
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!

Here’s a great podcast episode from Bob…

Photo of author
Dan Knauss

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…

Photo of author
Brian Krogsgard

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…

Photo of author
Brian Krogsgard

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…

Photo of author
Brian Krogsgard

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…

Photo of author
Dan Knauss
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…

Photo of author
Brian Krogsgard

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

Photo of author
Brian Krogsgard

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…
A2 Hosting
WordPress.com