Nexcess is the latest host to adopt Till Krüss‘s Object Cache Pro, which offers a really interesting model for partnerships between a WordPress plugin product business and a valuable niche market: hosting companies and anyone running WordPress sites at scale. I recorded this conversation with Till back in August, and it’s about time we pushed it out. This isn’t the final cut for a Post Status podcast, but I wanted to release it now, as-is, since it’s very timely.
Performance is a pressing concern for WordPress and WooCommerce — and a large part of the challenges people have running WordPress in the wild are plugins that have not been built and tested to perform at scale. There’s likely a lot of opportunity in aligning on performance as a key, common interest for product, agency, and hosting companies in the WordPress space. And, as Till’s example shows, a small WordPress company, or company of one that wants to stay that way, still can thrive today.
Till’s particular niche is not for everyone, but some of his ideas are very portable. For one thing, what plugin owner has not felt the pain of an extraordinarily busy support forum? Till is up to (wait for it..) 5-10 minutes a day on support — which he aims to decrease. How? Testing to ensure the highest quality. It’s an idea that needs to become a reality and a habit in the third party WordPress product ecosystem, Till insists — and I think he’s right about that and much else.
