WP Cloud

Every hosting company will face a product shortcoming at some point. What matters is the response. On the latest episode of Impressive Hosting, Jesse Friedman and Stacy L. Osten, Director of Affiliate and Influencer Marketing at Automattic, discussed how transparency during failures builds more trust than a flawless track record ever could. Stacy shared an example of an influencer who ran a blind review across multiple hosting companies and hit a real support issue. The companies that took accountability and fixed the problem earned trust. The ones that never responded lost it. Perfection is not achievable. Accountability is. Your response to friction defines your brand far more than the absence of it. https://lnkd.in/eJtBss3Q

Stacy L. Osten shared a goal that every hosting company should take seriously. She wants people to forget who their hosting company is. Not because hosting doesn't matter. But because when it works, you shouldn't have to think about it. After running a business online for 12 years, she knows firsthand what unreliable hosting feels like. For hosting companies, make invisibility your benchmark. Create the kind of reliability that disappears into the background - so your customers can focus on building their business. https://lnkd.in/ey9cyQGf

Tomorrow night in NYC. Jesse Friedman (Head of WP Cloud) sits down with Hilary Mason (CEO of Hidden Door, previously founder of Fast Forward Labs and Chief Scientist at bit.ly) for a fireside on how AI is actually reshaping creativity, products, and the way people build. 166 Crosby Street. Doors 5:30 p.m. Fireside 6:00pm. Drinks and bites after. A few tickets left. https://luma.com/jae3jufw

Stacy L. Osten, Director of Affiliate and Influencer Marketing at Automattic, recently shared why content creators need to stop building exclusively on social media platforms. Platforms can remove your access at any time. But a website with an email list gives creators ownership of their audience. No third party can take that away. For hosting companies, this is an opportunity. Creators are looking for reliable homes for their content. The businesess who make that transition easy and trustworthy will earn long-term customers and grow revenue. https://lnkd.in/ey9cyQGf

Our own Jesse Friedman is sitting down with Hilary Mason on April 29 at dev/ai/nyc. Hilary is the co-founder and CEO of Hidden Door, and was Chief Scientist at Bitly before that. Jesse runs WP Cloud. The conversation will get into what's actually changing for people building with AI, and what it means for the teams supporting that work. 166 Crosby Street, NYC. Doors at 5:30 p.m., fireside at 6:00 p.m. Free but ticketed. Last one was standing room only.

On the latest Impressive Hosting, security expert Thomas Raef from We Watch Your Website shared a clear recommendation for hosting companies: build AI-powered security monitoring in-house rather than outsourcing it entirely. Real-time access log analysis is non-negotiable. Reviewing logs after an infection is too late. With AI, hosting companies can implement pattern detection and alerting without hiring a full security team. This is a strategic, important question. Yes, third-party tools have their place. But the companies that invest in internal capabilities will have a real advantage. https://lnkd.in/eARdw7x9

When hosting companies race to the bottom on pricing, security becomes a bolt-on. That has consequences for the WordPress ecosystem. On the latest episode of Impressive Hosting, Jesse Friedman makes the case that hosts need to take a more active role. Set-up security on your own. Or, install security plugins. Pre-configure them. But if you do, don't assume customers will figure it out on their own. The customers paying the least for hosting are often the ones who need the most help. Every security support ticket has a cost. Preventing problems is cheaper than cleaning them up. https://lnkd.in/eARdw7x9

On the latest Impressive Hosting, Thomas Raef from We Watch Your Website offered a memorable way to think about WordPress security. You could either give everybody unlimited bottles of DEET or you could come up with a way to kill mosquitoes. Yes, third-party tools have their place. 100%. But the broader question is whether the ecosystem is spending too much energy on symptoms and not enough on the source. Better plugin review processes, AI-assisted code analysis, and hosts that surface vulnerabilities early could shift that balance. WordPress powers a significant share of the web. Fixing problems at the root benefits everyone. https://lnkd.in/eARdw7x9

On the latest episode of Impressive Hosting, Thomas Raef of We Watch Your Website shared how his team combines Python-based code analysis with AI models to detect vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins more accurately. The approach is layered. Python scripts handle the initial tracing of authentication paths and suspicious patterns. Only findings that meet a confidence threshold get passed to an AI model for deeper review. The result is a significant reduction in false positives. In one case, a team member was confident they had found a real vulnerability, but both Wordfence and the AI model independently confirmed it was not exploitable. This is a useful model. AI works best when it's paired with structured analysis rather than used as a standalone solution. Listen to the full conversation for more on how AI is shaping WordPress security. https://lnkd.in/eSjQ6sTW

Many site owners don't understand why their small website would be a target for hackers. On the latest episode of Impressive Hosting, Jesse Friedman and Tom Raef of We Watch Your Website discussed the reality that most attacks aren't personal. They're automated and indiscriminate. Password reuse is one of the biggest risks. When credentials from a breached service get sold, attackers try them on every platform they can find, including WordPress sites. Services like Have I Been Pwned exist to help, but most site owners don't know about them. Hosting companies have an opportunity to close this education gap. The goal is to inform customers without creating fear. Building that trust through practical guidance is what keeps customers confident in both their host and their platform. https://lnkd.in/eSjQ6sTW