Business Roundup Week Ending March 1

Automattic’s AI Content Deal Sparks Criticism Automattic is reportedly in talks to sell access to the content of Tumblr and WordPress.com users to AI companies like Midjourney and OpenAI. Website 404 Media broke the news this week, claiming possession of insider info and documents that confirm ongoing negotiations. In response, Automattic published a policy outlining… Continue reading Business Roundup Week Ending March 1

You Don’t Need to Know Code to Build a Successful WP Plugin Business.

With all the consolidation happening in the WordPress plugin ecosystem, it’s easy to think that it’d be futile to start your own WP plugin business.  But the reality is that there are many small plugin developers making a living flying under the radar of the big dogs. As Valuable as 1 Big Project Per Year… Continue reading You Don’t Need to Know Code to Build a Successful WP Plugin Business.

Business Roundup Week Ending February 23

WordPress Performance Team Releases 2 More Speed-Focused Plugins The Core Performance Team released two plugins that accelerate lazy loading and pre-render predicted page navigation. The Auto-Sizes for Lazy-Loaded Images plugin sets the sizes attribute to auto for deferred images. This speeds up the download of images that will be needed when users scroll. The Speculation… Continue reading Business Roundup Week Ending February 23

Changes in the plugin business in the last 15 years

Note from Joost: Marieke and I have decided to start taking turns writing this weekly column, to even better reflect the multiple words within WordPress. So, this week, it’s me! When I started building plugins in 2006, premium plugins did not exist. I just built plugins because I felt functionality was missing in the WordPress… Continue reading Changes in the plugin business in the last 15 years

Business Roundup Week Ending February 16

Content Marketing After the Content Apocalypse TLDR: Facing falling revenue, traffic declines and reader exhaustion with news, the media industry needs to dramatically reinvent itself for long-term survival in the digital era. The media industry is facing an “extinction-level event” with declining revenue, falling readership, and widespread layoffs across print, digital, and broadcast outlets. Factors… Continue reading Business Roundup Week Ending February 16

Business Roundup Week Ending January 19

The Unexpected Attack Vector Responsible for 60% of Hacked WordPress Sites in 2023? Thomas J. Raef, Founder of WeWatchYourWebsite, recently released a surprising finding based on analysis of 851+ billion WordPress log entries from more than 4 million WordPress websites. Compromised login credentials, and theme and plugin vulnerabilities were key attack vectors, but were not… Continue reading Business Roundup Week Ending January 19