I keen on hearing it, at WordCamps, in podcasts,  and the various communities I part of: WordPress product owners, Devs and agencies need to do more marketing.

Here’s the thing: unless you are a Marketer… you just don’t know where to start. I’ talk about this here a little, but this is a topic that needs to covered as a course.

If you can answer this question it will help me figure out what topics to write about and how to structure the online course I intend to create.

So, what is your #1 blocker to growing your WordPress business?

Have a look: https://www.liquidweb.com

The new UI is quite conservative (compared to Kinsta’s recent efforts) but polished and on brand.

It provides real estate to their broad range of products. I’m not a big fan of sliders but I think the one they have adopted works well because it looks like one that I can scroll through myself.

This is what stands out, IMHO: Setting the standard in web hosting for 27 years

It’s hard to argue against the quality if a web product or service that is as old as the web itself 🙂

Interesting webinar that I think is of interest to both established and higher-traffic publications and smaller ones that are seeing their traffic increase.

Covering some of the more technical considerations:

• Performance optimization
• Scalability
• Integrations
• Headless

Speakers are from The Publisher’s Desk, 10up, Big Bite and WP Engine.

It’s free to attend

When: Thursday, August 22 at 12:00 pm EDT / 5:00 BS
Register: Webinar | WordPress for Media & Publishing Sites

Remote work is great unless you’re working for a globally distributed organization that hasn’t quite embraced async.

Twist addresses this, or so they say:

Builderius is a new page builder that features:

•  Full CSS Development Environment
• Global Components
• Tabbed Canvas Interface, Dynamic Data Previews
• To Publish Releases Straight from the Builder

You can see the walkthrough here: https://youtu.be/-ecvt6xrqCA

And test it yourself here: https://builderius.io/alpha/

Great piece by Equalize Digital comparing accessibility of websites built using a number of popular WordPress builders.

Kadence came top and Bricks, which is what I use on this website, was 8th out of 10, so not doing well at all. I’ll need to look into this for WP BizDev and make the necessary changes.

Read the article: WordPress Page Builder Accessibility Comparison

Instead, Chrome users will be prompted to opt in or out.

Anthony Chavez, vice president of Google’s Privacy Sandbox, said:

“Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time”

Here’s his post: A new path for Privacy Sandbox on the web

It’s still not a done deal – they are discussing this new approach with regulators.

It’s also too early to speculate whether this means that it’s business as usual or whether businesses will still need to adapt to a new approaches and new solutions (that have been developed in preparation for a cookie-less world). We will have to wait and see how many people decide to turn cookies off.

In the meantime, businesses who are setting themselves out to capture first-party data should not change their plans. It’s still a solid strategy to adopt.

Ann0uncement: WP Engine Acquires NitroPack, Extending Leadership in Managed WordPress Site Performance

It will be added to their new ‘Tools & Plugins’ category of their refreshed brand architecture.

From the Content Marketing Institute:

“Marketers should stop using attribution models and return to a 1985-like measurement model if they want their brands to succeed in 2024 and beyond.”

That is, before the internet and the ad / distribution channels telling us that we can measure campaigns accurately.

Can a 1985 Marketing Playbook Fix Measurement Problems in 2024?

SparkToro and Datos (a SEMRush company) have compared searches that end with a click with those that don’t, giving us insight into the former too:

Here are the key numbers (for American searches):

• 41.5% of searches feature a click (70.5% of which go to the open web, 1% to ads, and the rest to Google properties)
• 37.1% end up with.. no click
• 21.4% end up with another search

So, 58.5% are considered Zero-Click searches.

Source: 2024 Zero-Click Search Study: For every 1,000 EU Google Searches, only 374 clicks go to the Open Web. In the US, it’s 360, by SparkToro