Matt Mullenweg

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

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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

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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!

Post Status Picks for the Week of August 29

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Dan Knauss
Building an empire on free code: Matt talks WordPress outside the bubble. James Kemp, Anh Tran, and Phil Webster on WooCommerce options for licensing. Adam Silver on testimonials that help you grow. Anne Bovelett on accessibility and page builders. Jamie Marsland wonders if people building third-party plugins for the block editor have been too preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to ask if they should. Are they heading in the wrong direction?

Writing is a Challenging But Needed Profession in WordPress

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Eric Karkovack
The WordPress project, software, and community are equally important. They all play a role in ensuring growth, progress, and success. A sizeable economy of users, builders, and business owners depends on it. That’s why staying informed is vital. And so much of the reporting and learning opportunities come from unofficial sources. We need more people within the WordPress community who are interested in writing and more places to amplify their voices.

The $500 Website

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Dan Knauss
A decade ago, Chris Butler's survey and report for Newfangled provided other agencies with the numbers that meaningfully define their market. WordPress agencies and freelancers could use something similar today.

Languages of Contribution and Creation

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Dan Knauss
The Creator Economy owes a lot to WordPress, but that doesn't mean WordPress is valued or even understood by Creators as an open source project and community. Are the stories we tell and the words we use compelling to newcomers and the younger generations we need to succeed us? Is the story and language that got WordPress where it is adequate to take it where it wants to go?

Post Status Picks for the Week of July 18

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Dan Knauss
Your Post Status Podcast Picks of the week include Seeking Satisfaction with Victor Ramirez on the importance of networking, managing anxiety, and rethinking the way websites are built. WP Coffee Talk features the woman with the best personal Wapuu, Michelle Frechette, talking with Mark Westguard, founder of the WS Form plugin about his work, the love and opportunity in the WordPress community, and more.

The Unsung Hero of Indie Journalism

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Blake Bertuccelli
Since its arrival in 2019, Automattic's Newspack hasn't attracted much attention within the WordPress community, despite a decent amount of coverage by WP Tavern and some from Post Status. It's been largely unreported on beyond its role as a flashpoint…

Market Size and Market Shares: Thinking Bigger About the WordPress Economy

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Dan Knauss
$635.5 billion…That’s "billion," with a “B.” Let's look at the size of the universe inhabited by our market of markets of cathedrals and bazaars: the WordPress ecosystem. How should we think about WordPress's market share or, maybe more accurately, its shares? Are we selling them short and dampening growth?

Post Status Picks for the Week of July 4

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Dan Knauss
🎧 Podcasts worth catching: "Tumblr can be a better Twitter than Twitter ever was." • The unfolding recession. • Catch up with GitHub Actions • How to think about accessibility and the things we forget about being inclusive and open.

Post Status Excerpt (No. 62) — The Open Web Universe with Matt Mullenweg

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Olivia Bisset
David and Olivia Bisset sat down for a chat with Matt Mullenweg about open source, Tumblr, and how Matt deals with negativity. Matt has three roles today: CEO of Tumblr, CEO of Automattic, and project lead for the next release of WordPress. He shares what went wrong with post formats and what he would love to acquire next if he could. The answer may (or may not) surprise you! Recorded shortly before WordCamp Europe 2022.

An Operating System for the Web

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Dan Knauss
What if WordPress, growing as an operating system for the web, spawns distributions and spins, like Linux? What do nine years of Jetpack teach us about Automattic and WordPress — the project and the dot-com? Rethinking how we think about SaaS, hosting, and the WordPress ecosystem...

Not Dead Yet! Just Mostly Dead?

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Dan Knauss
Gutenberg 13.4 • Learning FSE sooner rather than later • Gutenberg in Tumblr and Day One • WordCamps and the vitality of the WordPress community • AUS WordPress community only mostly dead? • Get SEO Schema graphs • Web font loading geek out • PHP is 28! • PHP namespaces and autoloaders • You can work anywhere... why not Cleveland? • North Commerce — faster than the rest? • and more...

Post Status Notes #496

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David Bisset
Lots of WordPress core, Gutenberg, and WordCamp news this week. Are off-forum .org support requests OK? Matt: Tumblr will be open sourced. What's the WP Way?
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