A bit of background about me: I started a WordPress agency back in 2007.
I didn't know anything about the WordPress community, how to find clients, or where to recruit talent. Back then, WordPress was enjoying phenomenal growth, both in features and the people promoting it.
I was a hardcore Drupal user before learning WordPress. I lead a small web agency division of a local ISP where Drupal 4 & 5 were the primary install base. Yes, I'm that old.
Before leaving to start my own agency, a colleague had recommended WordPress as a better alternative to Drupal. Easier to style, ready-made themes & plugins, plus it was an overall better experience for the end user– perfect tool to build an agency around.
Back to my immediate problem: I didn't know anyone in the space.
I attended WordCamps, in-person events where the the community came together. As an avid listener to the Mixergy podcast back then, I knew I wanted to create some type of content for reaching the WordPress community.
At first I thought it would be a blog, but I saw what Andrew was doing with Mixergy and thought, "Maybe I can be the Mixergy of WordPress?!"
From there, Matt Report was born. I was building connections across the community, bringing in projects from bigger agencies that trusted me, and we were quickly building up a portfolio of clients we worked with.
Fast forward some time, I quietly closed down Matt Report and started The WP Minute where I've been covering WordPress news and the greater ecosystem for the last 4 years.
The Problem with WordPress & Why CMS Minute
If you haven't heard, WordPress is living in some uncertain times.
I don't think WordPress is going anywhere, but the next year or two are going to be challenging. Challenged by Matt Mullenweg & Automattic's direction for the software, challenged by community members that are giving up on WordPress as a CMS, and challenged by the vast amount of competition.
Much like in 2010 when I started my first podcast to help me explore an area of tech I didn't have much background in, I'm launching CMS Minute, to better understand the landscape of other apps building the web.
The WP Minute continues on, and I'm even re-investing in WordPress with an educational series headed to MasterWP, another property I own.
The one permanent outcome for the CMS that powers ~45% of the web is that the community isn't coming back like we knew it. There's also a chance the way we experience open source WordPress is going to become vastly different as well. CMS Minute helps me and my audience diversify our industry knowledge.
If you're part of a CMS app, big or small, I'd love to hear from you. The CMS Minute is a limited series podcast for now. Sponsored by John O'Nolan, founder of Ghost.
After interviewing him on WP Minute+ I presented him with the idea of the CMS Minute series and he happily agreed to be the headline sponsor. If you're a founder or marketing lead at a CMS and you want to sponsor, contact me!
What's next?
I'm wrapping up an initial series of interviews to publish and soon I'll be getting the first podcast uploaded to the feed for you to add to your favorite podcast app.
All you have to do is join the newsletter so you know when the first episode launches!
