bradt

The large outlets seem to be making subscriptions work, though it does seem to be challenging for them. Ironically, the NYT is constantly running ads in The Daily podcast to subscribe to the NYT to support their journalism. It seems the smaller publishers really struggle to make subscriptions work.

AI companies are causing a content drought that will eventually starve them.

tl;dr Some people travel only to say they did. Those people suck.

Great idea, I love it!

Keep an eye on https://level.app/ if you're interested in self-hosted chat and/or are tired of the interruptive nature of Slack.

Thanks, I'll definitely be sharing results. Probably put out another blog post and/or discuss it here: http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/t/i-ll-give-you-a-job-and-hel...

Trying a new hiring strategy here. I'm trying to appeal to talented developers who also have ambitions to start their own product business. What do you think?

Thanks for the comments! Bonus stories for you wonderful HN'ers:

My dad started out as an auto mechanic and painter. He decided to setup his own shop with his first cousin and it was a disaster. They butted heads constantly. My dad sold his shares to his partner and moved on to other things. They tried it, it didn't work out, and so they moved on. Throughout my childhood our family was very close with my dad's first cousin and his family. They relationship is still strong today.

My mother and her brother had a dispute about money over fifteen years ago. They still do not speak today.

Family and friends can be tricky when it involves money, there is no question.

This is my favourite comment so far.

“[In 2003] hosting PHP was not as trivial as it is today.”

Really? I think it was. I setup a PHP hosting company in 2002.

"Ghost is a Tesla."

Aw man...

1) Ah, excellent! Perhaps I missed the communication on this?

2) Yep, re-prioritizing based on this makes complete sense.

TL;DR - Putting up a marketing site and asking for money up front sets customers expectations for what is to be delivered. But startups change significantly in the early stages, so it's very difficult to meet customer expectations.

I'd like to hear more about what people said in the customer interviews. Here's my experience as a consumer...

After flipping through the library, I signed up immediately. The cost/value was very high.

After putting in my credit card details, I was put in a queue, which was a little frustrating as I was expecting instant access, but I got over it quickly and didn't mind waiting. I think this was fine.

The big problem came when the library disappeared from the site and the business went in a very different direction. I had pledged $30/month for something specific (the videos from high-profile entrepreneurs), so it was disappointing to see that it wasn't going to happen. It even entered my mind that it was only ever a carrot to get my credit card details and that there was never an intent to make the videos. So, some confidence lost there. Also, still having my credit card on the hook for something else that I hadn't yet learned about was a bit disconcerting.

Adii is a friend and I was still curious about what it would be, so I stuck with it. It's highly likely if I didn't know the founder, I would have cancelled immediately.

I struggle to consistently participate in communities, so I will be cancelling my membership. The video library was more my thing, consumption without engagement. And that's what I pledged my $30/month for.

Would love to have a discussion about this here...

I guess your question is why read a book when you can just learn as you go and as you need to. I didn't read a book, but I probably should have because it took a long time for me to pick up things that would have helped a ton earlier on. For example, I recently learned that you can turn off "greedy" when using .* by adding a ? after it. This was a huge revelation that I would have benefited from day one, ten years prior.

It's WordPress' PHP Coding Standards: http://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/coding-standards/php...

Agreed.

Thanks for clarifying. I guess my point was that if you're just matching one email address in a form submission for example, is performance significant?

A little back story on this article for those who are interested...

I noticed my coworker was going out of his way to use string manipulation, writing many lines of code instead of a simple regular expression. When I asked why, he explained that he didn't know regular expressions, but more importantly that he felt that he had read a lot of posts on Stack Overflow discouraging use of regular expressions. From what he had read, he felt that it was better practice to avoid regular expressions. Although this could be anecdotal, there may be a real danger here that inexperienced programmers are getting the wrong message, that regular expressions are somehow bad in most situations and not worth learning.

Great question. I learned them through osmosis over many years of looking at them in other people's code and tinkering myself. I don't remember ever going through a tutorial or reading a book. Probably not the best way to learn them as it definitely took a long time to have a good grip on them and I was missing important pieces for a long time. For example, it was only relatively recently that I learned that you can turn off "greedy" when using .* by adding a ? after it.

I'm the author of this post and would love to discuss refunding the difference for customers who purchased within 30 days of a promotion with the HN community. Might it increase your sales?

The craftsmanship in the work that these guys release is impressive.

What steps do you take to make it look like they are a contractor? Also, would you recommend having a lawyer draft the contract agreement, or is adapting a template good enough?

I'm not sure what you mean. The WP App Store is me, I am the developer of the plugin.

Awesome points. I'll try to work in the day-to-day stuff. Good point about money. I'd like to avoid mentioning specific numbers and "commensurate with experience" is pretty lame. How about something like "Generous, competitive salary"? Would that work?

I started out with a bit of a running dialog format, but then realized if I was looking for a job, I'd appreciated bullet points and the usual "Requirements" and "Responsibilities" sections. Any specific suggestions to make it less vanilla?

I had tweeted Ryan the suggestion of writing this post yesterday and am delighted that he's published it already. I was considering hiring employee #1 for WP App Store and this post has given me some extra confidence that the time is right. Thanks again Ryan. I'd love to hear experience and advice from HN'ers on this topic as well. Fred Wilson, perhaps a post of your own?

I haven't drafted the job posting yet, but if you're interested, sign up to the email newsletter at http://wpappstore.com and I'll send out an email in the next couple of days.

The concept of the WordPress App Store does not align with the philosophy of the WordPress Foundation, so it's very unlikely.

Yes, both search and ratings/reviews are high on the priority list.

Yes, we're exploring the idea of allowing free themes and plugins in the store. It would allow easy upgrades to PRO versions. I also like the idea of making donations easier for free theme/plugin developers. So instead of "Buy & Install", it could be "Donate & Install" where the user would have to explicitly skip donation before installing the theme or plugin. All of these are just ideas at this stage though, no plans yet.

Yes, I did discuss this with my advisors and we did consider rebranding to avoid potential legal issues. In the end, we decided against it, mainly because others are using the term "App Store", like Amazon and Shopify. Last I checked, Amazon was winning their battle with Apple as well.