Wix, Weebly, Squarespace and other hosted services are an increasingly big threat to open source platforms.

We discuss whether open source projects should be nervous. This episode's guests are Mike Demo from http://BoldGrid.com, and Aleksander Kuczek from http://PerfectDashboard.com.

Follow Mike on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mpmike/ and Aleksander at https://twitter.com/A_Kuczek.

If you've been to a WordCamp over the last few years, there's a good chance you've met Mendel Kurland. Mendel works for GoDaddy where he's played a central role in improving that company's reputation. In this episode, Mendel tells his story: a journey from early start-up success in Iowa to a key role inside GoDaddy. Mendel is also starting a new project called Camp Press which encourages tech workers to get switch off and get outdoors.

Follow Mendel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ifyouwillit

Find our more about Camp Press: https://camp.press/

In this week's episode, I talk with Aleksander Kuczek and Brad Morrison about WordPress site maintenance.

Alex runs a SaaS service (PerfectDashboard.com) and Brad runs a WordPress support services (GoWP.com). We discussed all about the ups-and-downs of maintaining thousands of sites. Which plugins break the most sites? How to make sure nothing goes wrong when running thousands of updates?

Towards the end of the podcast, Aleksander and Brad share what they've learned about the platforms competing with WordPress. Aleksander runs a scanner to find out where people go when they leave his service? Do you they go to Drupal, Squarespace, Wix, or somewhere else?

Andy Miller has a long and storied history as web developer and businessman. Andy started as the first webmaster at ExxonMobile, before starting Rockettheme, the company that created the commercial theme industry. One of the founders of Joomla, he's now also the founder of Grav, a new and exciting flat-file CMS.

In this episode, Andy talks about his background, and also explains his philosophy for the right way to grown an open source software project.

Find out more at http://rockettheme.com and https://getgrav.org.

Alan is the lead engineer at Mautic, a marketing automation platform that's 100% open source: https://www.mautic.org. Alan started his career as a nurse and led a fascinating life in the medical world before becoming a developer. Follow Alan on Twitter at https://twitter.com/alanhartless

Tessa is a developer advocate for Cisco. She also organizes some of the largest open source conferences on the US West Coast. She also runs local meetup groups. She helps to get open source taught in local school and colleges. And those are just the first couple of lines on her resume.

Tessa's an inspiring person. She has a relentless energy that she uses to help herself and others get better. Find out more at https://tessamero.com.

Chris Wiegman was an airline pilot in Hawaii, before developing iThemes Security - one of the most popular WordPress plugins of all time. Chris is one of world's leading WordPress security experts.

Find Chris on Twitter @ChrisWiegman and visit him at https://chriswiegman.com.

In this episode, I talk with Olivier Karfis who runs FrenchToday.com, a successful business teaching people how to speak French. He uses WooCommerce as a platform for digital downloads, and increasingly for mobile and desktop apps, based on the WordPress API.

Justin started painting houses and is now the lead developer behind CMB2, the framework with powers hundreds of successful WordPress plugins. We chat with Justin about his career and why you should use CMB2 for your WordPress development.

In this episode, I chat with Matt Medeiros who has built his WordPress career and being friendly, helpful and social. He shares everything he learns and as a result has carved out an enviable niche for himself. We talk about how he started working in a car dealership, and slowly transitioned into tech.