In this episode, John James Jacoby and I spend the first half of the show discussing WP Engine’s acquisition of StudioPress. We share reactions from social media, debate on whether it’s a good or bad thing for the WordPress ecosystem, and webhosts being at the top of the food chain. (more…)
StudioPress, founded by Brian Gardner in 2007, has been acquired by managed WordPress hosting company WP Engine, for an undisclosed amount. In 2007, Gardner created the Revolution theme which took the WordPress world by storm. According to some people, it ignited the WordPress Premium theme market. Revolution Church Theme In (more…)
Liquid Web, a managed hosting service founded in 1997, has acquired iThemes. iThemes recently celebrated its 10th year in business. PostStatus reports that it was an all cash deal and sources confirmed to the Tavern that it was a multi-million dollar acquisition. iThemes will continue to operate as an independent (more…)
UpdraftPlus, a popular WordPress backup plugin actively installed on more than 1 million sites has acquired the Easy Updates Manager plugin for an undisclosed amount. Easy Updates Manager disables core, theme, and plugin updates in WordPress and provides granular control over them. It was created in 2015, is actively installed (more…)
In this episode, John James Jacoby and I are joined by Heather Burns, Founder of WebDevLaw. We have a lengthy discussion about GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), what it is, what’s at stake, and its potential impacts on the WordPress ecosystem. We also discuss the cultural differences between the North (more…)
WP Site Care, a WordPress management and maintenance service provider has acquired WP Radius. Ryan Sullivan, Founder of WP Site Care, says the acquisition has been in the works for some time. "We’ve been working toward growing our customer base and learning about new business models in the WordPress support (more…)
9seeds, a WordPress development agency launched in 2009, has acquired Web Savvy Marketing’s theme store for an undisclosed amount. Web Savvy Marketing launched its theme store in 2012 and currently has a library of 26 themes built on the Genesis Framework by StudioPress. Chris Cree who helped launch and manage the theme store in (more…)
In an effort to diversify and expand into the commercial WordPress theme market, Imagely, maintainers of NextGEN Gallery, have acquired TeslaThemes for an undisclosed amount. TeslaThemes launched in 2013 as a theme club and recently celebrated its fourth anniversary. The company has 68 themes in its library, including the TeslaThemes framework. Eric Danzer, Founder and CEO (more…)
Seriously Simple Podcasting, created by Hugh Lashbrooke in 2012, has been acquired by Podcast Motor. The plugin is actively installed on nearly 20K sites and out of 104 reviews, has an average rating of 4.9 stars. Lashbrooke no longer has the time to dedicate to the project, “I am in (more…)
UpdraftPlus, a European company that maintains a backup plugin by the same name with nearly 1M active installs, has acquired the WP-Optimize plugin. WP-Optimize was created eight years ago by Ruhani Rabin and is actively installed on more than 500K sites. Its primary function is to clean and optimize databases. (more…)
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Jeff King, General Manager of hosting at GoDaddy, and Vladimir Prelovac, founder of ManageWP. We discuss a number of topics related to GoDaddy’s recent acquisition of ManageWP including: Why Vladimir chose GoDaddy. Vladimir’s thoughts on the negative (more…)
Nikhil Vimal, who runs Techvoltz.com, a WordPress development agency, is the new owner of the Front End Registration and Login Forms Plugin created by Pippin Williamson. Earlier this month, Williamson put the plugin up for sale and noted that it needed some development work. I would like to sell my (more…)