The PublishPress Podcast

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. R...

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...

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...

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...

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 ha...

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 sh...

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 righ...

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 anal...

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. Wha...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ope...

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...

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 an...

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 lo...

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...

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...

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-base...

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 journali...

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 Wo...

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...

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...

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 seei...