WordPress Community Roundup
A New Home for the WordPress Community? RSS Friends • WP community stories of the pandemic • The History of Screen Readers • Dumb questions about disability • “Crip Time”
Tech Roundup for the Week of October 17
Move Over CSS, Here’s JSON • A New Generator Goes Turbo • The Hidden World of Javascript in WordPress • Cool Tool: URL Params
Business | Design | Hosting | Planet | Post Status Podcasts | The Excerpt
Post Status Excerpt (No. 71) — Building, Supporting, and Selling a Winning Product — With or Without WordPress.org
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.
Local Development Tools and the Open Web
Who is not using Local? Is it an Open Web tool? Let’s review some “Local history” and consider where WP Engine’s popular developer tools could be headed.
WordPress Podcast and Video Picks for the Week of May 15
Good viewing and listening for you this weekend! Krogsgard on memberships and churn. Web 2.0 tech leaders reflect. Mike McAlister on the journey from Atomic Blocks and Array Themes to the Liftoff Creator Course. Paid services at Underrepresented in Tech. The Pattern Creator and Directory. WCEU. Inclusive Open Source Processes and Governance.
StudioPress recently announced it is rebranding…
StudioPress recently announced it is rebranding the popular Atomic Blocks plugin it acquired from Mike McAlister in 2018 as Genesis Blocks. There is a free version still, and the pro version of Genesis Blocks is available in the Genesis Pro package. ⚛️
Array Themes, as well as the…
Array Themes, as well as the associated Atomic Blocks (a library of customizable blocks for Gutenberg), has been acquired by WP Engine. Array founder Mike McAlister and contributor John Parris will be joining WP Engine as part of the acquisition. Mike writes that he will focus energy on “creating new themes for the StudioPress theme…
Sallie Goetsch has built a plugin…
Sallie Goetsch has built a plugin that generates a portfolio Custom Post Type whose entries are pre-populated with core Gutenberg blocks. When you create a new portfolio item, the blocks are pre-arranged in a template to make it easier to create a project case study. Tess Needham at WordPress.com VIP blogged about Amnesty International using Gutenberg to build…
W3TC, Placester, and Frederick Townes
Placester is a Boston-based startup that gears toward real estate agents, and they’ve recently raised $50 million in a Series D round — bringing their total fundraising to $100 million. Why should you care? Well, two reasons. Placester uses WordPress — big time. Their real estate websites are made with WordPress. It’s a big real…
The latest episode of the Apply Filters…
The latest episode of the Apply Filters podcast has a nice interview with Devin Walker, and they discuss the Github announcement on pricing. Speaking of podcasts, it’s a new season of the Matt Report and Matt has a great chat with Mike McAlister about how to start (or maybe why you shouldn’t start) a WordPress theme business….
Also in the theming world, Mike…
Also in the theming world, Mike McAlister has redesigned Array Themes (it’s beautiful, by the way), and he goes into depth in the announcement post about his thinking behind the changes. It looks like a win all around.
The responsibility of a plugin provider
The economics of WordPress are tricky. There have been many free plugins that have gained popularity, with demanding users requesting free support, and the plugin author eventually just lets it all go. It’s completely understandable. We shouldn’t expect something for nothing, no matter how popular the plugin is. When it gets complicated is when the…
How to design a commercial WordPress theme — Draft podcast
This week’s Post Status Draft podcast is hosted by Brian Krogsgard, and he interviews WordPress theme designer Mike McAlister. Brian also talks about the value of attending events.
Mike McAlister on creating a WordPress theme
I did another interview, that for now is for members only. This one is with Mike McAlister, on the process of creating a WordPress theme: Mike recently released Paperback, a magazine focused WordPress theme. I really like Paperback (like I like almost all of his themes at Array Themes), and I wanted to talk to…
WordPress.com and Jetpack should lead the way toward standardizing custom post types
Two themes were released in the last few days by a couple of theme shops I hugely respect: Bailey by The Theme Foundry (above) and Designer by Array (below). Both themes are for portfolio websites, and both themes use a custom post type for the portfolio. What’s interesting, is that both themes are offering support…
From ThemeForest to Array, the story of a theme business
Mike McAlister has been an active member of the commercial WordPress theme space since 2009. He started by selling themes on ThemeForest. He transitioned to the Okay Themes brand in December of 2011. And at the end of March of this year, Mike transitioned yet again to Array. While these transitions may seem like arbitrary branding, to me…
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