This year Post Status is celebrating a decade of serving WordPress professionals with its member-supported community. The site was founded by Brian Krogsgard in 2013, and now runs an active Slack community with 2,083 members, a weekly newsletter with 4,300 subscribers, and a job board.
As a testament to the community’s continued growth, Post Status announced it has added WordPress veterans Joost de Valk and Marieke van de Rakt as equity partners who have invested cash in the business. They will also be taking on active roles in leading the Post Status community – de Valk as CTO and van de Rakt as an advisor and editorial contributor.
“Post Status has created the most important networking possibilities for us in the past and helped us grow our WordPress businesses,” van de Rakt said. “It seems only fit to contribute and to take on an active role in the Post Status community at this point.”
Post Status CEO Cory Miller said the organization will be moving forward with “the same vision and values – supporting the business of WordPress, with an emphasis on agency owners.” Co-owner Lindsey Miller will be taking on a new role as CMO.
Although maintaining the professional community remains their first priority, Post Status will be expanding with two new initiatives this year that will benefit both partners and members. The team has soft launched the new poststatus.com, featuring a new Partner Directory that showcases WordPress businesses.
“I believe a healthy growing business ecosystem inside of WordPress is absolutely key to WP continued growth and success,” Cory Miller said.
“We want to get a little more organized, professional as an industry, and that means cooperating, communicating, working together, with Post Status being that collective brand, showcasing the agencies, software and professionals of WordPress better.
“The next step is our directory. We want to say, here’s our professional industry for those looking at WordPress for their web projects.”
In addition to ramping up editorial commentary and analysis on industry trends, with the depth of expertise of new partners de Valk and van de Rakt, Post Status is in the early stages of planning an annual summit. It will be similar to WordPress’ contributor summit but for businesses and individuals who are making their way in the marketplace.
“The second step is to gather together, talk business and what are we seeing, what are the issues, challenges, and opportunities as an industry,” Miller said. “That naturally gives us focus and initiatives to cooperate on together.
“Most industries have this already.
“Doctors, lawyers, big businesses have these kinds of venues and platforms for conversations about the state of their industry. We need that for WordPress and Post Status is taking next steps to do so.”
These two initiatives are next on the organization’s roadmap, and with the new partnership they now have the resources to execute on them.
“Showcase the collective, that’s our directory,” Miller said. “And gather us together to have the key conversations we need about where we’re going as an industry and community. That’s our summit.”
Sponsors are what keeps the lights on at Post Status. The organization has historically been focused on driving individual membership for WordPress professionals but is shifting its focus on businesses as members now.
“We want every WP pro in Post Status, this is their home, their trade association,” Miller said. “Those who work at WP companies or with WP as part of their gig, we always want to welcome them in to PS.”
Post Status is one of the few WordPress organizations that has been operating for longer than a decade. Now that the Pressnomics event has been retired for four years, the WordPress community is sorely in need of an event where the business-focused community can connect and help each other grow WordPress’ success in the wider industry. Post Status is the organization best-suited to step into this role. To stay on top of the their efforts and plans and to support the business community, join as a member and/or subscribe to the weekly newsletter.
