Great piece by WinningWP on what the big changes we’re seeing with Google and AI mean for WordPress website.

The Death of Google Search: A Looming Crisis for WordPress Websites

We’re discounting Pro and Partner Membership pricing for those living in regions where market and economic dynamics are different: South America, Africa, Middle East, Oceania (except ANZ).

• Pro Membership: $49 / year, instead of $99
• Partner Membership: $299 / year, instead of $499

Community Membership remains free, of course.

For more information about what each tier offers, see our Join For Free page

Introduced as: Exploring WordPress through conversations with leading developers and creatives.

The latest episode is an interview with Jessica Lyschik, a developer at Greyd:

Building a Block Theme for 1 Million Users ft. Jessica Lyschik

Subscribe via your favorite Podcast player.

He’s looking for sponsorship too.

Here’s the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCE-YSAYYVd4d6H6pXV_xvPbyg8EzYiUd

WordCamp Asia 2025 organizers have announced the first batch of speakers:

• Katie Keith of Barn2 Plugins (EMEA)
• Nirmal Desai of CreedAlly (APAC)
• Riad Benguella of Automattic (EMEA)
• Jo Minney of House Digital (APAC)
• James Giroux of WordPress VIP (Americas)

I’m going to keep track of where speakers are from as well as where their companies are from too, as I did for WordCamp Asia 2024.

The organizers are aiming to have 60% of local representation, which would be just about twice as much as the previous event (27%). This would be a great result.

It seems like everyone’s giving Bluesky a go, which is great news. Good to have more choice.

If you’re on Bluesky feel free to connect: https://bsky.app/profile/wpbizdev.bsky.social

If you’re not, give it a go!

I’ll be telling my story – how I pivoted from web production and management to marketing.

All thanks for a Marketing Automation project, which forced me to learn about marketing fundamentals to be able to set up the contact database correctly, lead scoring, automation flows, etc…

How Devs Can Learn About Marketing from Data

Date & Time: 2 November @ 1.55pm
Where: WordCamp Sydney – Hallway Track

Event info and registration: https://sydney.wordcamp.org/2024/schedule/

Interesting move by Barn2, considering they started out as an agency.

Here’s the announcement: Simplify your web journey: Barn2 now offers full-service web development

Services offered are:

• New WordPress and WooCommerce websites
• Plugin installation and setup
• Plugin customization
• Website fixes and troubleshooting
• Speed optimization
• Ongoing website maintenance

More info here: https://barn2.com/services/

I wonder if this is part of a trend. It may be a topic worth covering via a more detailed post.

The report, by PR Newswire, is based on the analysis of over 100,000 press releases and surveying over 665 professionals in the US and Canada. As you can imagine, it makes a strong case for using Press Releases and is ultimately a lead gen piece. But there’s some interesting info to keep in mind:

• The main purpose is brand visibility
• Also used for building relationships with journalists and influencers
• Only 4% do it as part of an SEO strategy

The biggest challenge is not generating as much media pick up as one would expect, and not reaching the right people is the second concern.

60% of Press Releases are about  product or service news, followed by events (47%) and company news (42%).

The report covers AI too – 26% of those surveyed said that they used gen AI to craft press releases. About use to to write headlines.

The two more interesting stats relate to performance:

• Action verbs in headlines – The three more performing ones are ‘Announce’, ‘Launch’ and ‘Reports/Reported’
• The following days/times performed better – 10am to 4pm Monday to Thursday

The report covers much more. It’s free – you can download it here:

State of the Press Release Report

I think this is a very important initiative – a step towards a better model for social networking.

Good that Automattic is behind it, as reported by the Tavern.

Read about the launch here: Launch of Social Web Foundation.

Leaders of the open social networking movement have formed the Social Web Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to making connections between social platforms with the open standard protocol ActivityPub.

The “social web”, also called the “Fediverse”, is a network of independent social platforms connected with the open standard protocol ActivityPub. Users on any platform can follow their friends, family, influencers, or brands on any other participating network.

ActivityPub was standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 2018. It has attracted over 100 software implementations, tens of thousands of supporting web sites, and tens of millions of users.

Advocates of this increased platform choice say it will bring more individual control, more innovation, and a healthier social media experience. But there is work to do: journalism, activism, and the public square remain in a state of uncertain dissonance and privacy, safety and agency remain important concerns for anyone participating in a social network.