Post Status Podcasts

Welcome to The Excerpt Episode 4, part of the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes. With The Excerpt, we cover a few of our favorite stories from the Post Status Club over the last week or two. The primary goal is to keep it short and informational: we keep the podcast to around 15 minutes. In Episode 3, I'm joined by Daniel Espinoza, who is a WordPress developer with a focus on eCommerce, and he also owns ShopPlugins, an eCommerce plugin marketplace for EDD and WooCommerce. Stories discussed: Automattic versus WordPress WordPress 4.2, RC 1 Clever use cases for the WordPress REST API. Taxes! (members only) Big marketing for hosted website solutions. Also in Notes (members only).

Welcome to The Excerpt Episode 3, part of the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can find on iTunes. Draft consists of two formats: long form interviews like I’ve done for a long time, and The Excerpt for a summary of news around the WordPress ecosystem. With The Excerpt, we cover a few of our favorite stories from the Post Status Club over the last week or two. The primary goal is to keep it short and informational: we keep the podcast to around 15 minutes. In Episode 3, I'm joined by Beka Rice, who writes the excellent eCommerce blog SellWithWP and is a partner at eCommerce company SkyVerge. Stories discussed: Mesh by Automattic, an in-progress app I discovered by accident. Release leads for WordPress 4.3, and 4.4 were announced. April Fools' roundup (Club only, but we talk about them individually), including my own about Jetpack bundling WordPress. A theme shop's year in review. I also covered this in the Club.

StoryCorp is an organization that aims "to provide people of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share and preserve the stories of our lives." Featured stories are broadcast nationally on NPR. StoryCorp has published more than 50,000 interviews with almost 100,000 participants since they launched in 2003. A small to mid-size non-profit organization, StoryCorp's interviews are logged in the Library of Congress, and over the years they have created new and ingenious ways to enable story telling. There are recording booths in a number of cities throughout the country where anyone can go and record and interview or story. The first was in Grand Central Station, though it's since shut down due to budget issues. However, booths are open in Atlanta, San Francisco, and Chicago where anyone can make a reservation to record. They also have an Airstream trailer that travels the country and records interviews all over the place. Creating ways for people to share stories is the heart of StoryCorps mission. [caption id="attachment_12144" align="aligncenter" width="752"] The StoryCorps MobileBooth. Credit: StoryCorp Flickr[/caption] One WordPress developer that worked on the StoryCorp project told me, "I cry almost every time" as they listen to StoryCorps on their local NPR station every Friday morning. The stories to tend to be very powerful. I was nearly brought to tears by one where a lady hugs her son's murderer. Another moving story (from my hometown no less), features a father that comes to terms with his daughter's homosexuality. Or there's one where President Obama interviews a boy who overcame adversity to join My Brother's Keeper. Record stories anywhere The latest initiative for creating ways for people to share their story is via StoryCorps.me, a website and companion apps that make it easy for anyone with a smartphone to record an interview and publish it. StoryCorps.me is built on WordPress, and utilizes the WordPress REST API to enable access to a customized content architecture. The StoryCorps app utilizes the API to consume data and publish stories from the app back to the website. I interviewed Dean Haddock, Director of Digital & Technical Innovation at StoryCorp, about how the idea for the app came about, how they use and think of WordPress, and other insights from their short three month development period. A national day of listening Dean says he thinks the StoryCorps app really dates back to a program they ran three years ago called A National Day of Listening, where instead of shopping on Black Friday, they hosted an event where people could tell stories. Dean's team expanding on the idea, and the event turned into a micro-site using SoundCloud's API that made that process easier. That project eventually expanded into the idea that would become StoryCorps.me. Funding for the app The StoryCorps app was funded thanks to StoryCorps founder Dave Isay winning this year's TED Prize Winner. He gave a TED Talk in Vancouver just a few weeks ago, where he shared how everyone has a story to tell. [caption id="attachment_12145" align="aligncenter" width="752"] Dave Isay at TED[/caption] The TED Prize is awarded to an individual with a creative, bold vision to spark global change. By leveraging the TED community’s resources and investing $1 million into a powerful idea, each year the TED Prize supports one wish to inspire the world. - TED Prize website His wish after winning the TED Prize was to "to grow this digital archive of the collective wisdom of humanity." During the TED Talk, he noted that StoryCorps is "the single largest collection of human voices ever collected." The new app makes this mission even more plausible, by having almost no barrier for interview creation. The $1 million TED Prize made it possible. Development of the StoryCorps app With "one tap", interviews can be created and uploaded to the StoryCorps.me website and the Library of Congress archive. Dave shared some of his vision for the app during the TED Talk: Imagine, for example, a national homework assignment where every high school student studying U.S. history across the country records an interview with an elder over Thanksgiving, so that in one single weekend an entire generation of American lives and experiences are captured. Development of the app was managed on three levels. The StoryCorps team did project management, communication, and handled RFPs for app and website development. They also ensured that everything fit the StoryCorps model, and ensured that the new website and app talked to existing StoryCorps software and APIs properly. 10up built the website infrastructure, manages scalability issues, and managed the integration of the WordPress REST API. MAYA design designed and built the app for the end-user, utilizing PhoneGap so that the app could be launched simultaneously to both iOS and Android platforms. [pullquote align="right"]"We knew we going to use WordPress before we started looking for partners to help us build this thing."[/pullquote] As a "small to midsize non-profit," StoryCorps has few resources. StoryCorps.org has been on WordPress, and they wanted to use WordPress for StoryCorps.me as well. The development phase was quite short: from funding to launch took only three months. They launched at TED after receiving the funding last October. For public facing web technology, WordPress is so flexible and so malleable and amenable to whatever we need to do with it, that it really wasn't much of a question whether this was the right platform. What their real question was, Dean shares, was how WordPress could scale if and when they hit a million users, and that's why they brought in 10up. What they learned They are really pleased with how the project has gone so far. However, not everything was a success. They had to pivot and make adjustments as they went along and learned new things and requirements. Dean noted, [pullquote align="right"]"You have to be willing to completely submit to the process."[/pullquote] He says it wouldn't have succeeded if 10up and Maya weren't committed as StoryCorps to the success of the project. They also learned what Dean calls "more tangible" things, like the usage of PhoneGap. Without using a tool like PhoneGap, they wouldn't have been able to "get to market as soon as possible." However, he admits the app could be slightly better if it were built in a native platform to either iOS or Android. Powerful stories I really enjoyed digging into StoryCorps mission and the new StoryCorps.me project. I'm addicted to their stories, and some of the stories that have been uploaded -- such as those in the audio intro -- are really endearing. While there may be an element of noise to the StoryCorps.me archive, it's already evident that many gems will emerge, and who knows what ideas people will come up with for creative ways to perform interviews and record stories. The apps are available on Google Play and in the App Store. It'll be improving over the next weeks and and months. If you're excited about technology at StoryCorps, you can reach Dean at dhaddock@storycorps.org or you can also report issues or ask questions about the app at contactus@storycorps.me. StoryCorps is a great testament to WordPress and its ability to be an infrastructure to an app at scale, while also enabling efficient development cycles. This is probably my favorite utilization of the new REST API yet.

Welcome to The Excerpt, part of the Post Status Draft podcast, which you can also find on iTunes. Draft consists of two formats: long form interviews like I’ve done for a long time, and The Excerpt for a summary of news around the WordPress ecosystem. With The Excerpt, we cover a few of our favorite stories from the Post Status Club over the last week or two. The primary goal is to keep it short and informational: we keep the podcast to 15 minutes. Content covered in The Excerpt will largely be samples from the members only content, but may also cover free articles and resources. You don’t have to be a member to enjoy The Excerpt, but it is a nice way to preview what members get every day. Here’s Episode 2, which Julie Kuehl hosted with me: Shiny Installs removed from 4.2, in Beta 3 release, (Beta release and Aaron's post). Pagely and WP Engine are growing. Finding your place, by Rarst on HeroPress 1.2 of the REST API (Original release post).

Welcome to The Excerpt, part of the Post Status Draft podcast, which was submitted to iTunes recently. Draft will consist of two formats: long form interviews like I've done for a long time, and The Excerpt for a summary of news around the WordPress ecosystem. With The Excerpt, we'll cover a few of our favorite stories from the Post Status Club over the last week or two. The primary goal is to keep it short and informational: we set a hard stop at 15 minutes. Content covered in The Excerpt will largely be samples from the members only content, but may also cover free articles and resources. You don't have to be a member to enjoy The Excerpt, but it is a nice way to preview what members get every day. Here's Episode 1, which Brian Richards hosted with me:   Stories discussed: WordPress Beta 1 & Beta 2 — April 22nd live date Recommendationss to improve the WordPress editor by Mark Root-Wiley. Yoast, WooCommerce, AffiliateWP, and others’ security updates. Growth from free themes. I will try and have guest hosts as much as possible. They may rotate or it might just be a few people that are relatively consistent. We'll see how it goes, and your feedback will always be welcome. Let me know what you think about the new show.

Jonathan Williamson is the co-founder and COO of CGCookie, a membership website that provides as an educational resource for computer graphics and modeling. CGCookie has been around since 2008, and today is a network of five websites, has thousands of paying members, a team of six full time employees plus a number of contractors. CGCookie is built completely on WordPress and has a built in membership component. Some astute readers may recognize both the site and Jonathan's name; Jonathan is Pippin Williamson's identical twin brother, and Pippin has worked with Jonathan on CGCookie many times. So, in this interview, you're not listening to me talk to Pippin -- though it sounds like it -- but I'm talking to Jonathan Williamson. Jonathan is as passionate about CG, modeling, 3D printing, and the software that surrounds these disciplines as Pippin is about WordPress and programming. It was a pleasure to talk to Jonathan about what it's like to run a membership site that runs on WordPress. I think this interview will be beneficial for those that want to run a membership site, and also those that work with clients who make their living off of their website. How CGCookie evolved CGCookie started as a blog with news, tutorials, and resources for CG enthusiasts. The first form of its monetization was by selling the source files for the various tutorials. Within about two years, Jonathan and co-founder Wes Burke decided to add a membership component that ended up working far better than they anticipated. Jonathan has been working full-time on CGCookie since around the summer of 2009. They originally launched on aMember, before eventually migrating to Pippin's Restrict Content Pro plugin, along with Easy Digital Downloads. Today, CGCookie has more than 120,000 free users, and they have around 4,700 paid members. Since 2008, CGCookie have managed to not have a full time web developer until February of 2014, when they hired Nick Haskins. You may recognize Nick as the founder of Aesop Stories as well. Nick manages front-end development for the site, and they still don't have a backend developer -- though a backend developer and designer are on their roadmap. How CGCookie's eCommerce setup runs Considering Jonathan is using his brother's own plugins in the real world, it makes for a great avenue for feedback and insight for Pippin to improve those products. CGCookie is using Restrict Content Pro for memberships themselves, and EDD for their store. We talked about whether EDD could be used for both, or if there is room for improvement in the marriage between the two systems, and he believes there is and that it's a goal for the two plugins. For instance, currently, reporting and user management and a number of other features are independent between each plugin even though often times the users that utilize the system may overlap. I asked Jonathan about scaling WordPress and eCommerce for their large user base. He says that scaling for eCommerce has not been difficult, but with over a hundred thousand users, some default WordPress functionality has not scaled well; for instance, some admin areas create dropdowns for all users, which does not work well. Fortunately, there are some trac tickets in place currently to help solve some of these problems. Prioritizing goals for a membership site When discussing challenges running a membership site, Jonathan highlights the internal battles: balancing new features versus iterative improvements. Based on my short experience managing this membership site, I completely agree. For an example, Jonathan told me about a potential question and answer system to help his members get answers for specific technical topics that may be beyond the scope of a specific course. They believe a Stack Exchange style setup that allows them to refer their courses to specific questions would allow them to better serve their customers with the same content they already have. How do you get people to find your content that answers their question, but you don't have a way of just explicitly saying that these are the questions this course answers? They're considering a method of post to post relationships that direct courses as question answers and vice versa. For this feature and others, they try to do things with a short return on investment, but they also don't want to be a slave to it. They sometimes do things "that are important to the quality of CGCookie, that never make a dime." They removed ads last year under that very premise, to make CGCookie a better learning experience. Not the only place to learn Jonathan knows CGCookie isn't the only place to learn, so they focus on creating an excellent community and learning experience for their customers. Realizing that our sites aren't the only way to get certain information is an important thing to know to be able to better focus what we create for our users and why we create it. Pricing for CGCookie CGCookie has pricing for monthly, quarterly, or yearly pricing; all plans renew automatically unless explicitly cancelled. This is a feature they actively A/B test to see what's working and what's not. Behavior of customers varies between the three levels. Jonathan says that the users are more invested in their purchases (and getting more out of it) when they sign up for longer. Quarterly members have 10% longer lifetime memberships and spend three times longer on the site. However, they do have "a fair bit" of what I called "download and dash" members that sign up for a month, download a bunch of assets and cancel. Monthly memberships are also the most popular plan. They've considered locking down downloads for monthly signups but it's not something they want to do unless it becomes a bigger problem; however they do lose money on those customers that download gigabytes of files and videos but only stay subscribed for one month. Testing During A/B tests, they have found that people will be just as likely to sign up for quarterly as monthly if monthly isn't available, and quarterly members are more engaged. One thing they noted is that once people stick around for a few months, the average tenure of a user skyrockets; they have some users that have been a paying member as long as the site has been running. One of my big takeaways talking to Jonathan was about how significant testing can be. Their tests help them decide on the optimal pricing and payment plans to maximize a lifetime value. For testing, insights, and statistics they use both Optimizely, Mixpanel, and Google Analytics. Mixpanel allows you to create custom events in your software, and does require some code knowledge, but it can deliver valuable insights if you use it correctly. Jonathan notes, "It's basically as comprehensive as you make it." They can also mesh tools. They can track which A/B test from Optimizely a customer signed up with, and then use Mixpanel to track what they did and how they did it. They can get login metrics, renewal numbers, and more for each plan and signup flow. Mixpanel requires PHP and JavaScript knowledge to utilize, but Optimizely has an extensive visual interface that doesn't require code knowledge to utilize. What encourages membership signups "It varies day to day, week to week, month to month," in regard to how their signups work. A bad month in the economy can make their signups go down. Sometimes quarterly users will spike while monthly users are steady. Their biggest thing that affects signup rates is customer support. Some presale, but also support for new members to help answer questions and get people engaged. [pullquote align="right"]When they can help someone answer the question, "Where do I go next?", they are able to keep them for a long time.[/pullquote] They have one or two courses that drive a ton of traffic to their site, and it is therefore their largest onboarding channel for new members. However, they don't have a silver bullet for what it takes to get new users. They are always trying new things. On competing and the industry Jonathan doesn't see themselves as a part of a singular industry. While many think of CG as a part of the film industry, it's one of dozens of potential applications, and they don't want to narrow themselves to a particular one. They also poll users to get a feel for who they are and what industry actual users come from. Based on around a thousand responses, they had no real pattern at all. The results were all over the board. So they don't want to compete with a film tutorials site or any other industry site. They want to focus on the tool itself. They want to teach people how to use Blender and show them how it can be applied to various industries their users are a part of. Advice for those running membership sites "Build your community would be the main one. It's one thing to offer a really good product. It's one thing to build a really good website. But if you don't have the community behind you that's going to be willing to trust in you with their wallet ... it's not going to go anywhere long term, sustainably." Jonathan says it's about building the community as well as the sense of trust within that community. He believes that customers will want to know that not only the content will be worth it, but that it will continue to be worth it -- and that the communication and support from the team behind the site will be consistent as well. He believes that subscriptions and products are very different. With a subscription, the interaction is just as or far more important than specific content itself. When he refers to community, he doesn't mean it has to be strictly through something like a forum. He considers it a broad term, and for them it evolved out of their Blender community user base. At the time we recorded this, they didn't have forums, a dedicated chat system, or an actual community integration part. But the community exists and thrives within comments and their gallery functionality. Wrapping up Jonathan is full of great advice and I could listen to him talk about membership sites for a long time. I have no experience with CG but at the end of this interview he had me wanted to go build something with Blender. You can (and should) keep up with Jonathan on Twitter, or perhaps you'll see him at a conference near you -- but you'll probably think it's Pippin at first. Also be sure to checkout CGCookie's website; it's really great.

Last week, I was in New York City for WordCamp and some client meetings. The event was a huge success, with four full tracks of expert designers, developers, and WordPress professionals sharing what they’ve learned. I had a great time with everyone there. I saw old friends, and met new friends. I had my recording equipment with me, and I asked a question to some folks there: how has WordPress changed your life? Here are their answers: http://s3.amazonaws.com/PostStatus/DraftPodcast/how-has-wordpress-changed-your-life.mp3 Direct Download And here are just a few of the pictures I took, from WordCamp and some just from around the city. I’m not much of a photographer, but feel free to use any of these however you wish: I’d like to thank the organizers for their efforts, the sponsors for their investment in the WordPress community, the speakers for their wisdom, and the attendees for their hunger to learn and connect with like-minded individuals. If you’ve never attended a WordCamp — especially one outside of your own city — I highly encourage you do. They are so fun. There are a number of events coming up that I’ll be at as well, so I hope you’ll say hi there: WordCamp Birmingham (August 16th), WordCamp San Francisco (October 25-26th), and PressNomics (January 22nd-24th).

On May 28th, 2012, I was virtually introduced to Chris Lema. He had 653 Twitter followers at the time. I know so, because that’s how we were introduced — through an email from Twitter telling me he was now following me. At the time, he’d not even started daily writing on his personal blog; he didn’t start that until September of that year. It’s hard to imagine a time where I didn’t know who Chris Lema was, or a time where I wasn’t learning from him. Today, Chris is a significant voice in the WordPress world. He was just announced, deservedly so, in the first batch of speakers for WordCamp San Francisco. He’s been blogging nearly every day for two years. I’ve met him at a number of events. We’ve shared meals together. We’ve had phone calls where Chris gave me advice for my career and life. We even spent a week in Cape Town, South Africa traveling together for a WordCamp that I won’t forget. Chris Lema is my friend, and a mentor. I owe him a tremendous amount for his advice, his continuous generosity, and his kindness toward me. And I also know I can’t pay him back; giving to others is his passion, and I’ll never be able match that in return. What I know I can do is pay it forward. As I gain knowledge, and maybe even a shred of my own wisdom, I can pay forward that mentorship to others that are up and coming in their careers, and be to them as Chris has been to me and as others have been to Chris. I’m one of many, many people that feel this way about Chris. He now has 6,500 followers on Twitter — something I note purely as a way to compare to the beginning of this post, and highlight how many people he’s impacted in such a short time. He’s also a direct mentor to dozens of people who make their living with WordPress. What if Chris did WordPress full time? Incredibly, Chris has had this influence and impact on the WordPress community without having a full time WordPress job. For eight years, he’s been at Emphasys Software — a successful company, but not one you’d know of in the WordPress ecosystem — and he’s been coaching WordPress companies and blogging in his spare time. It makes you wonder, what would he do if his full time job were WordPress-centric? I certainly have thought so. And as Chris notes in our interview, I asked him this question while we were in Cape Town. I wanted to see what would happen with Chris full time in the WordPress world, and now we’re about to find out. Joining Crowd Favorite as CTO Chris is announcing today that he’s joining Crowd Favorite full time as its new Chief Technical Officer. Chris was already on the board of the VeloMedia Group, which has utilized the Crowd Favorite brand since its acquisition of the company late last year. CEO Karim Marucchi has wanted Chris to be a full time part of the VeloMedia group for some time as well. But the logistics weren’t easy to work out. However, in the last month or so they really pushed to make it happen, and now Chris will be the CTO as well as a chief strategist for Crowd Favorite and other companies within the VeloMedia group. Chris will focus heavily on reaching out to the enterprise space, via consulting opportunities and a variety of other concepts they are working on. Hear about Chris’ journey to full time WordPress In this interview, Chris and I talk about his journey to working full time with WordPress. We talk about his career, his entry into blogging and the WordPress community, about the structure of Crowd Favorite, and the WordPress economy in general. http://s3.amazonaws.com/PostStatus/DraftPodcast/chris-lema-post-status-draft.mp3 Direct Download It was an absolute pleasure to talk to Chris, and I’m thrilled to see him join Crowd Favorite full time. You can see Chris’ announcement on his blog, as well as Crowd Favorite’s. Also be sure to follow Chris on Twitter, and definitely tell him congratulations on this new journey.

Chris Coyier is not a stranger to most of us web workers. He’s a designer at CodePen, a writer at CSS-Tricks, and a podcaster at ShopTalk. He uses WordPress on all three of his primary projects. For years, Chris has been a consistent advocate for the platform. He develops his own websites with WordPress, but his day-to-day interactions are as a user. Chris brings a unique perspective, I believe. He did some client work early in his career, but he’s been more involved in SaaS projects and membership websites; his current membership websites are on WordPress (CSS-Tricks) and Ruby on Rails (CodePen). I asked Chris about his projects, his perspective on various aspects of WordPress, and the community around it. I enjoyed learning from him, and I hope you do too: http://s3.amazonaws.com/PostStatus/DraftPodcast/chris-coyier-post-status-draft.mp3 Direct Download What have you learned from working on membership websites?  It’s just a good dang business idea. Chris was sold on the idea of membership websites from his tenure at Wufoo and SurveyMonkey (where he worked once they acquired Wufoo). He uses Pippin Williamson’s Restrict Content Pro for managing The Lodge on CSS-Tricks. At CodePen, they spend time thinking about pricing, churn, and other membership metrics. They talk about some of these things (and much more) on the CodePen Radio podcast — an awesome podcast for anyone interested in SaaS, not just CodePen. Delivering value Another aspect Chris noted about membership websites is how it makes you want to continually deliver value for customers. He always wants to make people feel like they’re getting excellent features and value for the price of their membership. Another thing he and the CodePen team are learning is prioritizing feature requests. When you are building for members, you want to build features members want; and sometimes that goes against other fixes that are less glamorous. So they are consistently trying to balance time spent on customer-facing features versus behind the scenes development. Build the feature, get the reward Chris talked about how important it is for him to build something, then be rewarded for the work he does, versus selling something and then having to build the feature for it. He experience this with his big Kickstarter project for a CSS-Tricks redesign a couple of years ago, and said that mentality was really difficult for him. What do you appreciate more now about WordPress, after using other software? WordPress comes with a lot of built-in features that many of us (I do at least) may take for granted. Need a user system? Check. Need comments? Check. Need categorization? Check. Building CodePen, Chris is able to appreciate (even more than before) just how powerful WordPress is and how much thought goes into every feature. We dove into something seemingly simple as an example: tags. It turns out that something even that simple takes a lot of thought, consideration, and user experience considerations. What it ends up as, is something you’ll have to iterate on for years to get anywhere close to how good the WordPress one works already. And that’s like the tiniest thing we could think about. Think about the login system, or something else. So his advice was to focus on simplicity and decisions when building features, because required effort grows rapidly as a feature gets more complicated. How would you compare the WordPress community to other web communities? Chris has exposure to a much broader web community than I do. I’m pretty locked into the WordPress bubble. He sees the Ruby on Rails world, the more generic web world, and attends and speaks at a slew of non-WordPress conferences every year. Even though he says he’s mostly in a WordPress bubble himself (he’s not exactly attending Drupal conferences, he notes), he thinks that the WordPress community is pretty top-notch, and hasn’t seen other communities that are “better” than the WordPress community. There’s definitely no other CMS that I’m jealous of that community. What questions about WordPress are you always seeing on the ShopTalk Podcast Chris and his co-host Dave Rupert (seriously, follow Dave and gain laughs and knowledge in life) get a lot of questions about WordPress on the ShopTalk Podcast. Some of these questions are repeated pretty frequently, and they see trends of common issues. Working locally and syncing remotely For WordPress, the most common questions tend to come around syncing the local development environment with the live environment. They’ve been recommending WP Migrate DB Pro for people trying to get around that, though Chris says he doesn’t think it’s perfect for huge websites like CSS-Tricks. I think, to a degree, the common confusion is logical. WordPress development is really centered around three different layers of “stuff”: the content (posts, pages, etc), the files in the directory, and the site management database options. I think there is plenty of room for confusion when it’s not easy to decouple website management with website content, from a database perspective. Learning more about WordPress through the lens of a different audience I used this segment to talk about other confusing aspects of WordPress. We talked about database management, the degree of PHP knowledge required for WordPress theming, using pre-processors in distributed versus custom themes, responsive images, and the asset-itis of many WordPress websites that utilize plugins that each load their own scripts and styles. Regardless of the specific issues people are having, I find tremendous value listening to ShopTalk — which is not as hardcore of a WordPress audience as I have here — where the trends of people’s struggles help reveal real struggles that perhaps we could build better tools for in WordPress. It’s also worth noting that some of the “struggles” we talked about are very modern struggles, and WordPress has been around for over eleven years. WordPress iterates pretty quickly and does a great job of supporting modern web features, but it’s rarely immediate, especially in terms of core support. But plugin support and the shear number of people innovating on top of WordPress is significant and awesome. Just build websites! So many people want to be told what to do and what to learn next. That’s for sure the #1 question on ShopTalk. In the face of lots of new and changing technology, Chris is often asked about what to do first, or what to do next. He and Dave have a core mantra at ShopTalk to encourage people to “just build websites!” The things that you learn will happen as a result of building those websites and things for other people. The degree of paralysis by analysis they see is significant, and Chris and Dave hope that people will let their experiences guide them versus a to-do list of things they must learn today. You’re desirable Another note is that pretty much everyone has something they can do to provide value to others. People surely know something from a tooling perspective that’s worthwhile; even sans-modern tools, basic knowledge of HTML and CSS — the building blocks of the web — could be a great asset to lots of business. Even more important than tooling though, is the ability to solve problems. Chris used an example of a business that sells wrenches. If you can help a business that sells wrenches to sell more wrenches, then you are able to provide that business a lot of value; so focus on helping businesses do what they do better. Learn by sharing I admire Chris’ degree of sharing what he’s learning, through ShopTalk, CodePen Radio, and for years on CSS-Tricks. He doesn’t do anything special to write about what he learns. He keeps his drafts right there in WordPress. He doesn’t take special notes. He just writes, and he often writes about what he’s learning. Over time he’s been able to refine his writing and learn what to expect, as far as feedback goes. But at the core he just writes, and through that writing he’s been able to grow his own audience and get better at everything else he’s doing professionally. Staying consistent and avoiding burnout I was curious what Chris has done to stay so consistent online and avoid burnout. It seems to me that a lot of people get temporarily motivated and quickly disenchanted. I’ve learned in my own experience with the web that any measure of success takes lots and lots of consistent effort. Chris hasn’t done a lot to think about avoiding burnout, but figures there are some things he subconsciously does to stay motivated. That may be taking extended breaks from the web and disconnecting for a trip to the woods, or shorter breaks just in the day like stopping and playing the banjo for a few minutes. Stay in touch with Chris At the end of every episode of ShopTalk, Chris and Dave give guests an opportunity to plug whatever they want. Chris’ plug for our interview was to advise folks to take some time off from building their own product and instead go into their issues list and clean up after themselves and their project — which is what Chris and team are doing at CodePen right now. He also noted that nothing would make him happier than folks going Pro on CodePen. If you teach, interact with others, or want a way to store private pens, you should definitely check it out. And it’s affordable too, at only $75 for the year. While he didn’t take the opportunity to plug much of his own stuff, you should definitely still check out his various projects. I’ve learned a ton from Chris since I started my own journey on the web. If my learning journey on the web were a university, I’ve definitely taken multiple classes from CSS-Tricks and the ShopTalk Show. Chris’ business is built on a three-legged stool right now. Check them out: CodePen – a playground for the front-end side of the web. ShopTalk Show – a podcast about front-end web design (and sound effects). CSS-Tricks – where the whole internet learns CSS. Also check out Chris’ fun about page with his life’s timeline and follow him on Twitter. I’d like to thank Chris for the time he spent with me, and I hope that if you enjoyed this interview and write-up, that you’ll share it!

Finally, finally someone has done it. They’ve combined the power of self-hosted WordPress with the ease of hosted WordPress.com. Evermore is WordPress for everyone. It comes with “the most important functionality built in.” There aren’t loads of tiny upsells like other hosted services (I’m looking at you, WordPress.com), and there are only two plans. It is not free. You can pay $50 per month, or $75 per month, and each plan comes with a 10x setup fee. But the result is exactly what you’d hope for: a very powerful, functional, easy-to-use website. http://s3.amazonaws.com/PostStatus/DraftPodcast/evermore-cliff-seal-draft-podcast-poststatus.mp3 Direct Download If I had to give Evermore a competitor, I’d say it’s much closer to Squarespace than WordPress.com. But it’s built on WordPress, meaning you can leave Evermore any time and take your install with you. In fact, they sell the ability to leave Evermore as a feature. Because they should. Evermore offers you true portability and freedom: as your needs outgrow it, we’ll help you move to another service by giving you all the files and instructions you need. We’ll even suggest new hosts that will take care of you and your site. I just love that. It reminds me of Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street sending people to another store instead of trying to side-sell them what they don’t want. Little will help establish my loyalty to a service like the ease one offers me to leave it. I have no desire to take WordPress and try to hijack the open source process and make people feel like they’re closed into another product system. Who is behind Evermore? Evermore is a project by Cliff Seal and Kyle Bowman. Cliff is a respected WordPress developer and works full-time at Pardot, a division of SalesForce. Kyle is an accountant and avid WordPress fan who has invested heavily in the concerns of WordPress users. In our interview, Cliff accounts many Evermore decisions to Kyle’s attunement to the end user. Together they make Evermore, a service that represents exactly three clients — or a 50% increase since I interviewed Cliff. Yes, Evermore is a new service. But I haven’t been this excited about a relatively generic WordPress product in a long time. For one, I think Cliff is a great developer. He’s the type of guy that will work through the difficult technical challenges a hosted service will inevitably face. For instance, he helped work on the ability to symlink plugins in WordPress 3.9 before launching Evermore so he could more easily share directories between sites. Second, I love that Kyle has recently faced some of the same concerns as many of their future customers face. This allows him to be empathetic to their needs and better serve them. His business savvy as a self-described “recovering CPA” probably won’t hurt either. Why a hosted solution? More than Cliff and Kyle’s qualifications to operate a service like Evermore, I just like their motivations. Cliff and Kyle felt that there was a gap in the market for web design, development, and maintenance services. They would run into users and site owners with common frustrations: frustrations with getting their initial site setup, managing their hosting and updates, finding the right plugins to use for particular functionality, and more. They decided they had an opportunity, and they wanted to see if they could fill the gap. The process Evermore is a multi-stage process. First, there’s a setup fee. With this fee ($500 for the base plan, $750 for the secondary plan), they’ll walk you through getting a new domain or using your own, choosing a theme and setting up your site with demo content, including sample menus and widgets. The setup period is currently 24 hours, since they haven’t automated every aspect of it. They are going to force themselves to scale in this arena, versus automating things that don’t need it yet. They also want to have that time to do the kind of individual site testing they want to do with early customers. Once you get setup, they have some generic guides for helping clients manage their site. But for the most part, they don’t have an interest in massively changing the admin. They want people to feel like they are in WordPress. The features Evermore is baked with a number of features. Some highlights: Forms eCommerce Google Analytics An events calendar A slider Podcasting functionality They are also willing to add functionality over time to enable customers to do more with Evermore. However, you will never be able to add your own plugins on Evermore. It is restricted in that sense just like other hosted website solutions. This is for support and maintainability reasons. You have to have this critical mass of knowledge to operate — even the best CMS out there. So, instead what we’ve chosen to do is say, curate themes and plugins for you. Especially with plugins, we’ve gone through and combined some of the best plugins specific to features. The plugins they use are a blend of commercial plugins they pay for and free plugins from WordPress.org; but importantly they curate the plugins and are able to manage them at a network level to benefit their users. For commercial plugins Evermore uses their own licensing, so site owners don’t need to own their own versions or manage license keys or anything else. Evermore currently has 35 themes to choose from. Some are the WordPress default themes, many are from Genesis and StudioPress, and others are free or commercial options from a variety of locations. Pricing The $50 per month (and $500 setup fee) for Evermore gets users a website setup with a commercial theme, and up to 50,000 monthly visits. The deal is for one website and includes a free domain registration. The $75 option (and $750 setup fee) includes mostly the same features, but includes support for up to 100,000 monthly visits and the option to enable eCommerce. Regarding the pricing, Cliff calls their choices, “a best guess” based on a year of research he and Kyle have done, to fit in the market that includes a variety of different styles of managed WordPress hosting and support solutions. As far as the setup fee goes as well, that’s an attempt to kind of cover for us as well; because there is nothing stopping you from signing up for a day, getting your website back and asking for the dump and then leaving. … And so much of that setup is the difficult part. So much of that expertise, and automation, manual labor and things like that come at the beginning. Nearly impossible to fail Another aspect I really enjoyed about our talk was that no matter how Evermore turns out, Cliff wouldn’t see it as a failure. They aren’t trying to scale a free product. They definitely have some up-front investments in Evermore, but more importantly, it equips them to better serve their own service clients both now and in the future. Additionally, honestly I’m really tired of seeing people launch, sort of, products and SaaS products and things like that and not be able to support anything long term. They have to shut down in six months because they didn’t have enough money to keep it going. If other people don’t think it’s a great idea, then they will be happy with it as a service even for just a few people. They can live with that. There isn’t a “runway” to consider, as so often motivates the startup culture. Worst case scenario, Evermore stops taking new customers and just maintains existing customers as long as they are happy. And as Cliff notes, customers have little risk. No matter what, there’s no way to get locked into a bad business decision [as a customer], because you can always leave, and you always have that information, and it’s always yours to begin with. Going generic versus a niche They basically didn’t see anyone looking for the market in same way they are. We’re trying to explore whether we’re in the right place or not. … Instead of trying to pick a niche and go for it directly — we want to see if we can create some awareness in this space. Can we begin solving a problem? Even if it ends up that other people come and take the exact idea and target them and “run them out of town”, they’ll still be happy because they’ll have helped drive the market forward. While they think multiple people can work in the market together, and that they can do well even with competition, they would love to see the hosted WordPress space evolve. The evolution of the hosted WordPress space While I think Evermore is going to need to rely on slow growth — since organic search will be competitive and hard to come by without a niche — I think they can still strike a chord and make some noise in the hosted space by referral and leveraging the power of WordPress as their platform. I agree with Cliff. I think there is room for dozens of Evermores. Maybe hundreds of them. It wouldn’t surprise me if many theme shops start creating a seamless theme purchase to hosted website transition for quick setups. Whether that works through white-labeling services with hosts, fully automated hosted solutions, or some kind of hybrid, I think it’s coming. I also think that the framing of Evermore as a springboard to the greater WordPress experience shouldn’t be understated. As a WordPress consultant that often struggles with whether to recommend my friends to WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress, something like Evermore sounds like exactly the type of service I’d love to refer people to. Do I think Evermore is perfect? No, of course not. It’s a brand new service and product, and I’m sure they’ll learn a ton as they onboard new users. But I’m incredibly excited to see that something like Evermore even exists, and that people like Cliff and Kyle are thinking of these kinds of problems to solve. I really look forward to following up with them in a year to see what they’ve learned and how Evermore has evolved. If you enjoyed this post and interview, I’d really appreciate it if you share it. These type of posts take more effort than any other, with hours of research, interviews, processing, and writing. I love doing them, and also love seeing them shared on all your favorite social networks! Also check out Chris Lema’s post on Evermore, which compliments this one well. You can follow Cliff and Kyle on Twitter if you want to stay in touch with them, and of course be sure to check out the Evermore website.