Weekly WordPress News: Automated Theme Reviews Help, Building a Business with WordPress

I noticed on WPTavern this week, that the theme review team are looking to automate some of the theme review process. They published a list of things which could be automated. I think this is great news, the waiting list from submitting themes to them going live is 4 – 5 months currently which is far too long. The theme review is quite an intensive process for the reviewers who have to check all of the code meets the WordPress standards, plus there are all the visual checks to make sure the theme doesnt break any core functionality and everything displays as it should using the dummy content. Anything that can help speed this process up has to be good.

If you are looking to build a business around WordPress products, there were a couple of interviews this week you should take a look at. The owner of the CaptainForm plugin offers some advice here on the Pojo blog, and the founder of Macho Themes was interviewed on WPKube here.

Here’s the best news and content from the last 7 days …

WordPress News and Articles

• This CEO runs a billion-dollar company with no offices or email – Interview with Matt on Business Insider.
• Careful! This Simple Pricing Experiment Cost Us $2,000 in Revenue – Monthly vs Annual billing for a WordPress plugin.
• Is WordPress really dreaded? – A recent survey put WordPress near the top of the “dreaded” technology list.
• How to Build a WordPress Business – An Interview With Macho Themes.
• Ask Sucuri: How Does Sucuri Clean a Website? – Some insight into Sucuri’s clean up process.
• WordPress Theme Review Team Moves Towards Automating Review Process – This is good news, its currently taking 5 months for new themes.
• A model for the new WordPress plugin directory – WP Dev Plugin for keeping track of your plugins on the official directory.
• How to Develop a WordPress Plugin Business – Part 1: An Interview With CaptainForm

Tutorials and How-Tos

• 12 Facebook Instant Articles insights for WordPress content creators – How to setup for Facebook’s new Instant Articles.
• DIY Popular Posts – How to display popular WordPress posts.
• How to Remove Slow WordPress Plugins and Find Faster Alternatives – Guide to finding plugins which slow your site down.
• Understanding PHP Globals and Variable Scope in WordPress – Global variables in WordPress.
• What the WordPress REST API Means for Ordinary Users (and Not Developers) – How this new feature could be used for the end users.
• How to Migrate a WordPress Site to a New Domain and Hosting – Sitepoint guide to migrating a WP site.

Resources & Freebies

• Optimizer Pro WordPress Theme Review: A Flexible Theme for Almost Any Project – Joe reviews a very versatile WordPress theme.
• Instagram Journal Review – A WordPress Plugin for Displaying Custom Instagram Feeds on your Site.
• Social Marketplace – Build an Online Multi-Vendor Marketplace using BuddyPress & WC Vendors.
• 11 of The Best Wireframe & Prototype Tools for Planning Your Sites & Apps – List of Wireframing apps and tools.
• The WPLift Roundup of the Best Free WordPress Themes March 2016 – Our monthly pick of the best Free themes.