The PublishPress Podcast
We talk with people interested in WordPress publishing. You'll hear interviews with publishers who are using WordPress, and also people in the WordPress space.
Episodes
Using AI Deep Research to Improve WordPress Plugins
Yes, vibe-coding is useful.But the most powerful way to use AI may be deep research.Ross Morsali is the developer of the Search and Filter plugin. He uses deep research to find entirely new solutions to complex WordPress problems.For example, WordPress search is normally slow for large sites. If you have over 10,000 WordPress posts, it can take a while for your visitors to see search results.Ross
2026 Has Changed Everything About WordPress Security
February 2026 was absolutely revolutionary for WordPress security. Austin Ginder runs a hosting company and he was suddenly overwhelmed by new hacking attempts. Austin's response was creative, constructive, and inspiring.In this episode of the PublishPress Podcast, I talk with Austin about how AI is transforming WordPress security. Austin started as a skeptic but has come to embrace AI tools like
WordPress Businesses Are Moving From Products to Services
Robbie Adair has run her agency for over 20 years and has navigated many technology shifts. In this episode, Robbie says that we're in the middle of a major shift in the WordPress business. AI means that products are less valuable, but services are more valuable than ever. Customers need experts to help them navigate all the choices and challenges presented by AI. Robbie is incredibly positive abo
What Publishers Need to Know About Web Accessibility
Amber Hines from Equalize Digital has spent years helping publishers to make their websites more accessible and user-friendly for everyone, including those with disabilities. I ask Amber questions I've heard from publishers. For example, is it helpful to have an audio version of my articles? Should we offer a text-only version of the site? Can we trust automated tests for accessibility?More about
Paywalls and Advertising are a Perfect Combination for Publishers
We have a lot of guests on the PublishPress podcast who are building paywalls for publishers.Chris Ward from the Publisher Desk believes we should take a different direction. He argues that paywalls only make sense when you combine them with a strong commitment to advertising. Some users will just never pay for content, but you can still provide value for them and earn revenue from them.Chris has
AI is Now a Contributor to WooCommerce.
What Comes Next?
Brian Coords is a Developer Advocate for WooCommerce. I invited Brian on the podcast after seeing that AI is now listed as an official contributor to WooCommerce. We talk about what comes next for WooCommerce and other open source projects? Is AI going to be building new plugin features? Writing the documentation? Fixing long-standing bugs in our backlogs?We also discuss how AI will change the sho
How to Use AI to Publish Better WordPress Content - and Books!
Malcolm Peralty has been writing with WordPress since before version 1.0!In this episode we discuss how writing has powered his career, even now in the AI area. Malcolm thinks that storytelling is an essential skill, even for people in technical roles.We talk about how AI can be an excellent writing companion. Malcolm has just published a book with a ton of help from AI! How do you find the right
What are Alternatives to Google Analytics for WordPress Users?
Google Analytics 4 is not a good platform. It's hard to use. It's not privacy-friendly. You can do better.Derek Ashauer runs Conversion Bridge which can connect your WordPress site to over 20 different platforms including Plausible, Fathom, User Maven, Pirsch, Microsoft Clarity and others.In this episode, we consider many of these alternatives to Google Analytics. How can you get conversion analyt
What's Going to Happen With WordPress in 2026?
In this episode of the PublishPress podcast we welcome Birgit Pauli-Haack, a developer advocate for Automattic. She also publishes the Gutenberg Times which is the best place to keep up with everything that's happening with the block editor.We discuss the recent release of WordPress 6.9, its new features, and the future of WordPress development next year, including the upcoming WordPress 7.0. What
How to Optimize Your Websites for AI Search
Alex Denning has been in the WordPress and SEO communities for years. But for the last few years, he's been seeing those topics through on AI lens. Alex now runs the Ellipsis agency and helps his clients to get recommended by AI chats. Alex's life was changed when GPT-3 launched, because it radically changed the services he could provide to clients. In this episode we unpack all the changes that h
The Fediverse and WordPress Should Be Better Friends
Evan Prodromou is often called "The father of the Fediverse". It's amazing how much overlap there is between the aims of WordPress and Fediverse. These two communities should work together more! The Fediverse consists of independent social networking platforms including Mastodon (micro-blogging), PeerTube (videos), Pixelfed (images) and more. Just like WordPress, most of the Fediverse runs on open
Journalism Across North and South America, With Carol Cavaleiro
Carol Cavaleiro lives in Brazil and supports journalists across North and South America through her work at Indiegraf.In this episode of the PublishPress Podcast, Carol discusses her journey from co-founding the fact-checking agency AusFatos in Brazil to becoming a product director at Indiegraf, a Canadian publishing platform. We talk about misinformation, and the importance of community journalis
How Gutenberg Powers The Pew Research Center, With Seth Rubenstein
Seth is the Lead Engineer at the Pew Research Center. He's been an early adopter of using Gutenberg in WordPress. He's often on the cutting edge of many of the coolest Gutenberg features. In this episode we dive into how Gutenberg is driving innovation throughout the Pew organization.We cover these topics and more:What is the Pew Research Center? How does it help publishers?What is about blocks th
WordPress as a World-Class Publishing Platform, With Brad Williams
Brad Williams is the CEO and Co-Founder of WebDevStudios, a leading WordPress agency. He's been involved in some ground-breaking projects, such as moving Microsoft's blog networks from closed-source code to WordPress. Microsoft's adoption of WordPress really helped validate the platform for enterprises.On this episode of the PublishPress Podcast, Brad discusses how his team have moved publishers t
Community is the Foundation of Great Journalism, With Matt Medeiros
Matt Medeiros is a foundational member of WordPress community, as a journalist and a podcaster. He believes that community is far more valuable than large number of newsletter and social media followers. Matt believes deeply in community, and also curiosity. It's fascinating to hear about his journey and how his curiosity as led him from project to project. At the end of the conversation, we hear
Quality Over Noise: How a Shy Engineer Builds Awesome WordPress Products
Akshat Choudhary is the founder of WP Remote, which is an awesome and successful backup service for WordPress sites. But you won't hear him boasting about that. Akshat doesn't talk much. He's a self-professed shy guy. He's not someone you'll always be hearing from on YouTube, social media, podcasts. Instead, Akshat is an engineer who loves to focus on building great products. We dig into Akshat's
Blogging is Still Very Big Business, With Colin Devroe
Colin Devroe has been a blogger since the 1990's. He currently runs Hubbub, a social sharing and website growth plugin for WordPress. He is passionate about helping bloggers succeed. And in 2025, that means owning your audience.On this episode of the PublishPress Podcast, Colin shares his vast experience in the blogging industry. He talks about how social networks are swinging back towards with hu
Helping Print Publishers Find Success with WordPress, With Simea Merki
Simea is part of a digital agency called Morntag, based in Switzerland. Her agency helps people navigate between different worlds. Many of Simea's customer are traditional print publishers and they need her help to navigate the online world including WordPress, AI and YouTube. Also the customers often need to work in different linguistic worlds including English, French, Italian, multiple versions
This WordPress Dev Bought a Newspaper in Indiana, With Chris Hardie
Chris Hardie is a software engineer with a deep interest in journalism. Chris worked for Automattic for five years and recently completed a master's degree in journalism. In 2022, Chris combined these two passions by acquiring Western Wayne News in Wayne County, Indiana. The paper has a WordPress site and a weekly printed edition. It covers the spectrum of local news, including events, sports, gov
Why the Most Successful Media Companies Use WordPress, With Ben May
Ben May runs The Code Company, one of the most successful WordPress agencies in Australia. In this episode of the PublishPress Podcast, we discuss Ben's journey in the Australian publishing industry, the evolution of WordPress, and the importance of community engagement.Ben has tons of experience with scaling WordPress sites, particularly with comment and community systems. He believes we're seein
WordPress is the Ultimate Platform for Food and Travel Blogging, With Andrew Wilder
In this episode of the PublishPress Podcast, we talk with Andrew Wilder from NerdPress. His team specializes in WordPress support and maintenance for independent publishers, particularly in the food and travel blogging niches. Because he works with very high-traffic websites, Andrew and his team do things differently. For example, their plugin updates are always done manually, with very careful ro
What WordPress Media Operators Need to Know in 2025, With Jacob Donnelly
Jacob Donnelly is the founder of A Media Operator (AMO) Over the last five year, he's grown AMO from a newsletter to a fully-fledged media organization. Soon after launching, Jacob moved from Substack to WordPress with the goal of owning his platform and audience.Jacob and AMO have covered huge changes in the publishing industry over the last few years, and his insights will be fascinating for Wor
Teaching Web Design to Everyone from Harvard to Human Trafficking Survivors, With Jen Kramer
Jen Kramer has taught web design for decades. Her career spans Harvard, community colleges, LinkedIn, Frontend Masters and now Annie Cannons, a nonprofit boot camp for human trafficking survivors. In this episode of the PublishPress Podcast, Jen talks about her career and how web design teaching has changes over the years.Jen believes that good teaching requires the same skills, no matter where th
Using Real News Skills to Cover What Happens In WordPress, With Rae Morey
Rae Morey launched "The Repository" in 2019. It's a weekly newsletter that often break real news about what's happening in the WordPress ecosystem. Sign up for Rae's newsletter athttps://www.therepository.email.Here are some of the topic we covered:Each weekly issue has about 5 major stories, with lots of community comments, plus a couple of dozen other stories. How does Rae collect and sift throu
Running a Successful TV Review Website With WordPress, With Andy Dehnart
Andy Dehnart has run the Reality Blurred website for 25 years now. He writes about reality TV and now also about true crime TV shows. Andy talks about his career as an independent reviewer, and how small publishers can still thrive in 2025.This episode features Steve Burge from PublishPress and Dan Knauss from Multidots.Here are some topics we covered:It has been fascinating to hear Andy talk abou
Using WordPress and Open Source to Improve Government, With Luke Fretwell
Luke Fretwell is one of the most creative and pioneering people I've met in open source. He's enjoyed a 25+ year career that has covered multiple projects, collaborations, and businesses. The through-line for all Luke's projects has been making government better through technology. Luke created GovPress, a very popular WordPress theme focused for governments. He built Proud City, a WordPress-based
How to Make Your Publishing Paywall Successful, With Pete Ericson
In this episode of the PublishPress Podcast, we interview Pete Ericson, the founder of Leaky Paywall. He has many years of experience building paywalls for publishers. Pete says that publishers are still nervous about paywalls, but increasingly see how valuable they can be. We talk a lot about the importance of newsletters in building audience engagement. Once you have the customer's email address
The PressConf Story: How Raquel Manriquez Launched the Best WordPress Business Conference
In this episode of the PublishPress Podcast, Raquel joins Dan and Steve to chat about bringing PressConf to life. PressConf is the spiritual successor to Pressnomics, a business-focused WordPress conference. Raquel tells the PressConf story and shares her lessons for other event organizers, including Dan who was part of the WordCamp Canada team. Raquel talks about what it’s really like to organize
The Story Behind Checkout Summit: the New WooCommerce Conference
In this episode of the PublishPress Podcast, Rodolfo Melogli shares his journey from the early days of WooCommerce to the creation of his new Checkout Summit conference. This new WooCommerce conference will be in Sicily in April 2026. If you work with WooCommerce, you should be there. This is a conference we've been missing in the WordPress space. Rodolfo's aim with this conference is to prioritiz
Green Street News: How A Major Real Estate Publisher is Thriving on WordPress
In this episode, I talk with Than Taintor from the Human Made agency and Zeshan Ahmed from Green Street News. Together they've been part of the project to revamp the Green Street News website. Green Street News is a major real estate publisher. They're based out of the UK, but have recently been expanding to Europe, Australia, and North America. That's meant a lot of changes to their business and
How YouTube and AI Unlocked Jamie Marsland's Creativity
In this episode of the PublishPress Podcast, Steve Burge chats with Jamie Marsland.Jamie is known for his YouTube work on the PootlePress channel and now the official WordPress channel. A few years back, he had a regular job in publishing, but a career change unlocked a whole new wave of creativity.First, they talk about how AI has changed Jamie’s writing. It helps him create content faster and ev
How Native Advertising Can Drive Revenue for Publishers, With Matt Hoy
Matt Hoy is the Chief Revenue Officer of Revcontent which provides native advertising for publishers.In this episode of the PublishPress Podcast, Matt talks about how publishers can drive revenue despite the challenges posed by changes in Google search and the rise of AI. Matt believes the key to success is trust. The advertising landscape is shifting away from low-quality ads. There needs to be t
This Dev is Moving 100s of Newspapers to WordPress, With Tyler Channell
Tyler Channel runs PaywallProject which is a WordPress stack for news publishers. Tyler recommends that the publishers use a paywall to drive revenue, no matter how small or regional their audience is. When he was in college, Tyler heard a professor say that someone needs to discover a way to make newspapers sustainable. That's been his goal for years, and now he's making it happen.Find out more:
Building a Community on Authentic Content, With Kyle Van Deusen
Kyle Van Deusen runs the popular The Admin Bar community, a platform for WordPress agency owners and freelancers. He's been able to grow the community to over 12,000 people because he's still an agency owner and is constantly dealing with the same problems as his members.Find out more: - https://theadminbar.com- https://www.facebook.com/groups/theadminbar/ Kyle talks about community management and
Big Business Loves WordPress Because It's Open Source
Our guest is Karim Marucchi from the Crowd Favorite agency and the FAIR project. With Karim's help, we're going to try and tell two stories in this episode.The first story is Karim's life working with some of the biggest agencies in the world, and selling projects to some of the largest companies in the world. He tells the story of how he sat down and sold Steve Jobs on a website project. The seco
How to Build a Successful Media Company in 2025, With Brian Morrissey
Brian Morrissey is a veteran of the media industry after long stints at DigiDay, Adweek. He is full of interesting opinions about where the industry is going. He thinks that smaller is better for publishers. He believes that relationships are often far more valuable than large number of newsletter and social media followers. And scarily for WordPress users, Brian says we may not even need a websit
Kimberly Lipari on Staying Intentionally Small as a WordPress Agency
Kimberly Lipari is CEO of Valet, a WordPress agency. She had made the very intentional choice to remain a small agency. We talk about how Kimberly balances work and family life, plus the importance of human touch in agency work.Kimberly introduces me to the tools that Valet relies on. She does a great job of selling me on the Bricks page builder that I've never used before. She thinks it has a lot
Introducing the New Content Publisher From Pantheon, With Josh Koenig
Josh Koenig is the Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Pantheon. When I scheduled this interview, I thought Josh was launching a tool called "Content Publishers" to connect Google Docs to WordPress. Given Josh's achievements, I should have known better. Josh's goals with this product are far bigger and more interesting.We cover these topics and more:An introduction to Pantheon's Content Publi
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