Post Status Podcasts

David Bisset makes his podcast debut for Post Status, as he interviews Joost de Valk, of Yoast, and discusses all things WordPress marketshare related.

Miriam Schwab is co-founder and CEO of Strattic, a business making a big bet on the future of WordPress — and in particular for using it to create static websites.

They recently raised $6.5 million dollars in an oversubscribed round. Strattic aims to enable the power and flexibility of a dynamic WordPress website like we all know, with the security and speed of a completely static website.

In this interview, Cory Miller talks to Miriam about her journey to this moment, the Strattic product, raising money, and more.

This episode is brought to you by Yoast, the best WordPress SEO solution, hands down. You can upgrade to Yoast SEO premium, or take advantage of their great bundles that include outstanding training resources so you can fully take advantage of all the awesome tools Yoast SEO provides.

Professional WordPress Plugin Development was one of the most helpful books I've ever read. To see a new edition with two returning authors, nine years after the original, is very exciting.

This edition of the book will be sure to offer a great resource for developer education for years to come. Brad Williams, Justin Tadlock, and John James Jacoby are each extremely talented developers and communicators. The work they can accomplish together is even greater.

Cory talks to them about their histories, the book, the process, and much more. We hope you enjoy this episode of Post Status Draft.

You can pre-order Professional WordPress Plugin Development now on Amazon. It is slated to be released June 10th.

• Brad's announcement
• Justin's announcement
• John's announcement

Gravity Forms is the easiest, most trusted tool to create advanced forms for your WordPress-powered website. I use Gravity Forms on every WordPress site I own, and I know I can always rely on its power, flexibility, and reliability.

Try Gravity Forms today.

Dr. Sherry Walling is a psychologist and entrepreneur, adept at, “helping smart people do hard things.” She was gracious to talk in a Post Status Webinar with Cory Miller, about how to navigate life in uncertain times like we have now.

• Managing fear, worry, and anxiety
• The Coronavirus, and how to handle it
• Isolation, social distancing, remote work, and our mental health
• Q&A on work boundaries, stress, and more

• Zen Founder
• Dr. Sherry Walling's website
• @zenfounder — Dr. Walling's Twittr

If your website is mission-critical you can't afford the downtime, reputation challenges or SEO impact of getting hacked. That's why so many sites rely on the real-time protection provided by Wordfence Premium.

Wordfence protects your websites with the best WordPress security available, and offers a powerful and efficient way to manage security for multiple sites in one place with Wordfence Central.

Ken Wallace runs Mastermind Jam, which according to the website, “gives you everything you need to join, create, and manage your mastermind group, all without having to waste time cobbling together a bunch of different software, forms, and shared documents, even if you don't have a large personal network.”

Some of the topics discussed about Masterminds

• Defining what a mastermind is
• The difference between a mastermind and other community channels
• Why masterminds are important to hold with peers outside of your company
• Learning to trust your mastermind
• The importance of consistency, and setting up a regular cadence
• How to structure conversations
• How to find people for a mastermind

No matter what you're working on with your WordPress website, Sandhills Development probably has a tool that can help you.

• Easy Digital Downloads – Sell digital products with WordPress
• AffiliateWP – A full-featured affiliate marketing solution
• Restrict Content Pro – A powerful membership plugin for WordPress
• Sugar Calendar – WordPress event management made simple
• WP Simple Pay – A lightweight Stripe payments plugin

Syed Balkhi joins me to discuss the acquisition of AIO SEO.

Some of the questions he answers:

• So who is your target customer with All in One SEO?
• How is the model structured? You’re directing strategy… is there a Christoff or Atchison in this setup?
• How does your vision for AIOSEO compare to what you see in Yoast SEO?
• How do you envision the free/premium divide?
• What are the first three things you plan to do?
• How did the conversation w/ Michael start? You approach him? He approach you? Tell me a story.
• How far do you think you can scale this business model?
• What do you think about the consolidation we’re seeing in the plugin ecosystem — the consolidation you’re a major player in?

Links:

• Awesome Motive
• AIO SEO on WP.org
• Acquisition announcement

A lot of folks in the WordPress economy, whether employed with a side hustle or self-employed, manage multiple things. Also, many of us work with partners, or are interested in partnerships.

Cory has long worked with partners, and we're now running Post Status as partners. Also, we are both working on several projects.

In this episode of Draft, we talk about how to balance multiple things, how we try and structure our weeks, and some things to consider when working with partners.

• Kolbe
• Strengthsfinder
• Wait But Why

Pagely offers best-in-class managed WordPress hosting, powered by Amazon's Cloud, the Internet’s most reliable infrastructure. Pagely helps big brands scale WordPress. Their new platform NorthStack is a completely serverless solution for managed application hosting. Thank you to Pagely for being a Post Status partner!

I created Post Status in January 2013 and started the Club in January 2015. January 2020 marks another huge milestone for this community and business.

I’m very excited to share that Cory Miller is now an equal partner of Post Status. Cory purchased half the business and will be working with me in the day-to-day management, writing, community engagement, and everything else we do with Post Status.

Many should know Cory from his ten years running iThemes. After they sold the business to Liquid Web and he spent some time there, he decided to step away and continue his entrepreneurial journey. He’s working on a few projects, and Post Status is a significant part of where he’s dedicating his time and energy.

Cory is a long-time friend, and iThemes has been a Post Status sponsorship partner since 2015. Cory understands the community, the role Post Status plays in the space, and he brings so much to the table, from established community relationships to product and business experience.

We’ve known one another going back to 2010 or so. I got to watch as he navigated the WordPress space as the CEO of a theme company turned plugin company, from inception to exit.

Cory has so many qualities I admire. Most of all, I admire his honesty, his compassion, his passion for people, and his vision for what’s possible. I look forward to working with a true partner on Post Status after so many years of managing the primary responsibilities with much help from many friends and contractors along the way.

In addition to Cory and myself, David Bisset and Dan Knauss continue to be integral parts of the Post Status effort. Cory and I are thankful for their energy, consistency, and talents.

We are working together in Oklahoma City this week to finalize our plans for the 2020 year. We already have a lot planned and are looking to get these new initiatives and processes off to a rocking start.

There is so much potential in the WordPress community, and Post Status plays an important role through news, community, and professional development. We are going to continue to do that, and we are also going to make changes that we think will benefit the community as a whole and Post Status Club Members in particular.

If you’ve ever thought about joining the Post Status Club, it’s a great time to do so. At a minimum, anyone in the WordPress community should subscribe to the newsletter. If you’ve been a member before, we thank you, and we hope we are able to continue to serve you for years to come — better than ever, better together.

I asked Cory to share a couple of his own thoughts on why he’s investing in Post Status, both with his money and energy.

I’ve been a fan and supporter of Post Status since the beginning. At iThemes we were one of Brian’s first sponsors. Over the years I leaned on Brian’s insights and counsel — personally as well as through Post Status — to inform and grow iThemes.

When Brian approached me about becoming a partner my first reaction was, “Heck yes!” Over our weeks and months of conversations, my excitement grew and grew as our goals and aspirations for Post Status were revealed to be so well aligned.

I truly believe in what Brian has built. And I only want to be a value add and look forward to coming alongside Brian, the Post Status team and this great community.

We're so excited to finally be able to make this official. We look forward to continuing to serve you our readers, our Club members, our partners, and the broader community.

In this episode, Scott and I dig into his world as an indie developer within the WordPress landscape.

Scott has long used JavaScript as a core technology with AppPresser. I think he's on the forefront of thinking about various technologies that are newer to WordPress but out in full force in other worlds.

Scott is really into JAMstack (JavaScript, APIs, Markup). He's working on Static Fuse now, which helps connect WordPress to Gatsby -- which has a lot of attention in the web space right now.

We also dig pretty deeply into the challenges and opportunities facing independent developers, and the interest levels in WordPress from the indie dev crowd. It's an interesting episode and I learned a lot from Scott. I hope you enjoy.

• GraphQL and WPGraphQL
• Scott's website
• The Product Business podcast
• Zac Gordon's JavascriptforWP courses

Sandhills Development makes a suite of excellent plugins to power your WordPress website. Whether you need to sell digital downloads, restrict content, create an affiliate program, or manage an events calendar, they’ve got you covered. Thanks to Sandhills for being a Post Status partner.