Welcome to the Melapress Show, where we explore everything WordPress, security, and website management. Tune in as we chat with industry experts about the latest trends, tips, and strategies for securing and optimizing your WordPress site. Brought to you by Melapress.com, the creators of powerful plugins for compliance, management, and security.
In episode 59 of The Melapress Show, Robert Abela speaks with security consultant Kathy Zant about the security challenges facing small businesses that use WordPress. Kathy explains why long login sessions create opportunities for session hijacking, how AI connector keys can increase the value of a compromised website, and why people should receive only the…
Most WordPress users never think twice about the plugins repository: search, install, done. But behind that simple flow sits a review pipeline that handles roughly 800 new submissions a week, run by fewer than 10 active volunteers, with help from automated tools and AI. Francisco walks through how that process actually works, why plugin submissions…
In Episode 57 of the Melapress Show, Josh Hall, founder of Web Designer Pro, joins Robert Abela to discuss how to turn one-off WordPress projects into recurring maintenance revenue. Selling a maintenance plan is one of the trickiest parts of running a web design business: sell too early, and you seem pushy; wait too long,…
Do you quote a price after one 30-minute call? Kyle Van Deusen, owner of OGAL Web Design and founder of The Admin Bar community, stopped doing that years ago. Instead, a structured inquiry form, a no-cost “vibes check” call, and a paid discovery workshop come before any number gets attached to a project: a process…
Most organizations only consider accessibility when faced with a legal deadline or a complaint. Anne-Mieke Bovelett’s approach begins much earlier, at the stage of product decisions, design systems, and CMS workflows that ensure a site is accessible for everyone before any code is written. With 27 years of experience in web infrastructure across retail, academic,…
Agencies applying updates across dozens of client sites face a consistent challenge: the issues that matter most, such as broken forms, failed checkouts, and layout regressions, rarely surface on the homepage. Without a structured testing process, these issues surface only when a client notices. Mike Miler, Founder of WebChange Detector, works with agencies on exactly…
Getting started with WordPress, whether as a learner, a contributor, or an agency evaluating plugins for a client, has always required more setup than it should. WordPress Playground was built to address that friction directly, making it possible to run a full WordPress environment in the browser, instantly, with no installation required. In this live…
Supply chain attacks against WordPress plugins are difficult to spot because they often hide behind legitimate update processes that users trust every day. In this episode, Austin Ginder, Founder of Anchor Host and WPBeacon, shares how investigating compromised sites across a large managed WordPress environment led him to uncover multiple examples of plugin supply chain…
In Episode 51 of the Melapress Show, Jonathan Bossenger, Developer Advocate at Automattic, joins Robert Abela to break down how WordPress is being rebuilt from the ground up to work with AI and what that means for the people who build and manage WordPress sites. The conversation covers the four Core AI building blocks that…
In this 50th episode of the Melapress Show, Vova Feldman, Founder & CEO of Freemius, joins Robert Abela to explore how AI is transforming the way WordPress products are built, maintained, and supported. While AI is making development faster than ever, many plugin vendors are discovering that speed alone doesn’t solve the harder problems: technical…
In Episode 49 of the Melapress Show, Matthew Rollings, application security professional and bug bounty hunter, joins Robert Abela to break down RegexXSS: a vulnerability class hiding in the regex code of WordPress plugins. Mat explains how post-sanitization regex manipulation can reintroduce cross-site scripting even after WordPress has done its job, and demonstrates how an…
WordPress powers nearly half the web, but the people doing the actual core work are often underfunded, under-supported, and contributing on their own time. Chris Reynolds has seen this firsthand as a long-time contributor, hosting team lead, and now as president of the WP Community Collective, an organization building a new model for independent, community-funded…
In Episode 47 of the Melapress Show, Dan Knauss, Solutions Architect (worked with Multidots and Solid Security), joins Robert Abela to break down the gap between how enterprises perceive WordPress security and what’s actually driving risk in real production environments. Enterprise teams often enter WordPress security conversations shaped by headlines, vendor narratives, and secondhand assumptions…
In Episode 46 of the Melapress Show, Matt Cromwell, co-founder of GiveWP (acquired by StellarWP) and founder of Roots & Fruit, joins Bram Vergouwen to talk through what the GiveWP journey really looked like from the inside. A lot of WordPress product founders focus on building but underinvest in understanding their market, and that gap…
In Episode 45 of the Melapress Show, Daniele Besana, CEO & Founder of WP-OK, joins Robert Abela to break down what really happens when WordPress sites fail in production and what it takes to keep them running reliably. WordPress is often described as easy, but that reputation doesn’t hold up to first contact with a…
