Newsletter

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    FluentCommunity + How I Make Videos

    Fresh off the release of WordPress 6.9, we’re now about to go into the “quiet” time of the year. Not only across plugin land, but even here internally. This week will be my last FULL work week of the year, likely. Not like I’m going anywhere, of course. But, between birthday plans for my daughter…

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    The 8 Principles of Digital Sovereignty

    Fresh off a long Thanksgiving weekend and ready to rock-and-roll into the new week. For all of my US subscribers…. I hope you had an awesome Thanksgiving. 🙏 Of course, this week also means lots of Black Friday and, now, “Cyber Monday” deals. Every plugin developer out there is spamming me. 🤪 Just wait for…

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    Your Email Open Rates + Huge Cloudflare Outage

    Can’t believe we’re already at that time of year again. Thanksgiving week here in the US. Which also means…. Black Friday promos. For the third year in a row, it is just business as usual for me. I won’t be sending you a pile of Black Friday promos. You’re welcome. 😎 But, if you’re going…

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    Engineering Authority + Spotting Slow Plugins

    Fresh back from a short weekend out with the family in the RV. Perfect weather down here in Florida right now, so might as well take advantage. 😎 As with every week, though, I start off with a fresh issue of The WP Edge. This week… As you’ll see below, I’ve got some fresh videos…

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    Saying No (To Yourself) + Why You Should Use Cloudflare

    Hope everybody had a great weekend. 😎 Time to jumpstart the new week… In the WP Edge, I try to mix it up a bit. I do some strategy stuff…. and we also get technical with WordPress stuff. This issue is one of those issues where we have both. Find yourself overwhelmed by trying to…

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    The issue on hosting… and slow admin panels

    Last week, I started jumping back into the rabbit hole of researching web hosts. It began with an observation… Some of my clients have been mentioning that their WordPress admin panels have felt…. sluggish. It comes and goes, but… the clients with membership sites running a lot of plugins have more issues with load time….

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    The Cutthroat World of Plugin Competition

    Before we dive into this week’s issue, may I ask a quick favor? 🙏 I’m actually building a standalone site for The WP Edge… and one of the things I’d like is some additional reviews of this newsletter by you – the readers. I actually get a fairly steady stream of testimonials from folks in…

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    Privacy Concerns With Stripe? + Vibe Coding? 😜

    So, last week, an interesting topic arose yet again. It was in a Facebook thread about FluentCart… and a guy who made a comment that one of the reasons he likes a self-hosted shopping cart is the privacy. Adam, the co-founder of SureCart, said there is no privacy from self-hosting your cart because connecting your…

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    The Worst Plugins (For Performance)

    Hello there…. and welcome to a new week. We’re all going to make the most of it, right? 😇 It just dawned on me that we’re already 2 weeks into Q4. This year has FLOWN by. But, also a reminder that we’re well into the last quarter of 2025. What we do in the next…

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    The Power of a Nerd Hug 🤗

    You know you’re getting old (and need to exercise) when you do yard work over the weekend and… you’re sore. 😜 And yes, as I sit here in this chair, I feel like I just worked out. Yet, all I did was work on catch-up yardwork over the weekend. I guess it gives me an…