I draft outlines with AI then write the rest myself. Often I'll ask the AI what it thinks of the writing and what it could do to mimic my style better. While it says things like "plain spoken", or "casual", I can't help but think it actually means "sound slow and dumb and simple-minded."

You've seen my work, you know what I can do. Now's your chance to work with me. I've got capacity for a few new engagements, but they're filling fast. Check out my services here, and DM me or email if you've got some ideas or plans. rootsandfruit.com/services/

Work With Matt: Growth Services🌳 Roots & Fruit

Solo Coaching, Team Coaching, and Fractional CGO with Matt Cromwell. Time-boxed growth services with clear scope, real deliverables, and a discovery call first.

rootsandfruit.com

I know the top reasons people LOVE your plugin or hate it. It's not opinion, I did the research. 3,400+ reviews across 77 plugins. One thing users never praise or complain about? Missing features. Here's what actually drives 1️⃣⭐and 5️⃣⭐ reviews: mattc.link/create-produ...

Agent Skills need to be written for agents, which means agents are better at writing them than humans are. At least that's been my experience. I wrote a skill to write all my skills with. Get it for yourself and read the how and the why here: rootsandfruit.com/articles/wri...

How I Write my Cursor Skills for Marketing Work - Roots & Fruit

I write my Cursor skills with a skill. Here's how write-a-skill turns a marketing job into a lean SKILL.md instead of another folder you never finish.

rootsandfruit.com

I audited 130+ robots.txt files then created an agent skill to fix them. It's not the sexiest marketing skill ever, but it's a deep dive you never thought you wanted. rootsandfruit.com/articles/rob...

How I baked 136+ product sites' robots.txt into a skill you can download for free - Roots & Fruit

I audited 136 product sites' robots.txt files—then ran my Cursor skill on my own domain. Here's the 3-factor prompt and what the data shows.

rootsandfruit.com

I've seen and tested a lot of marketing Skills for Claude and Cursor. My Conclusion? Marketing Skills are overrated. But I use them anyway. And I'm kicking-off a public series on how I write them and use them for marketing. rootsandfruit.com/articles/mar...

Marketing skills are overrated and why I still use them - Roots & Fruit

Agent marketing skills are overrated; but I still use them. Here's what they are, the 3-factor invocation method, and how I write tested skill packages. Free on GitHub.

rootsandfruit.com

FullText Search for WP… Matt Cromwell has released a community plugin, FullText Search for WP. With this, you can find posts by tag, custom field, or SKU – not just by the title and content. mattcromwell.com/fulltext-sea... via WPWeekly_285 @mattcromwell.bsky.social

FullText Search for WP: A Community Plugin

FullText Search for WP is a community plugin to improve wp-admin search with FULLTEXT, meta, taxonomies, and better relevance.

mattcromwell.com

YouTube Companion Post This free WordPress plugin helps build popups with synced patterns inside the block editor we already use—consistent design, faster updates, and a visitor experience that feels intentional. No Affiliation. Just Info. 👇 influencewp.com/iwp/spp @mattcromwell.bsky.social

Synced Pattern Popups WordPress Plugin – InfluenceWP First Look

An InfluenceWP First Look at the Synced Pattern Popups WordPress Plugin: Setup, Customization, and Overall Experience.

influencewp.com

I'm blogging again. And it feels new and different this time around. But mostly, it's just making me have more public conversations, which I love. Different people interact with my content in different ways and it all just broadens my perspective. Blogging in 2025: Highly Recommended.

Move over LLMs, make way for HRMs. The goal-posts in AI just keep getting moved further. venturebeat.com/ai/new-ai-ar...

New AI architecture delivers 100x faster reasoning than LLMs with just 1,000 training examples

Hierarchical Reasoning Models (HRM) tackle complex reasoning tasks while being smaller, faster, and more data-efficient than large AI models.

venturebeat.com

I've been writing a lot more. I am seeing great engagement on LI with both my posts there and click throughs. It's been fascinating. I'm trying to figure out Bluesky. Right now, I won't link-spam you all, but I'd love to hear what value you all find here compared to other platforms.

It's time to fix the image of WordPress and its security: progressplanner.com/time-to-fix-...

Security and WordPress: It’s time to fix the image

People perceive WordPress as insecure. Joost explains why that view persists and what we can do to start changing it.

progressplanner.com

Github Pages allows you to point one url to a repo of your choice. A free static site sounds like the perfect usecase for a "link in bio" type site in my mind! So I made one that is theme-able & configurable for everyone! Check it out here: www.mattcromwell.com/connect-a-li...

Issue 156 of Loop WP is out now! This week in WordPress - Why I chose Fluent Community over Circle and Podia to build my WordPress-based email marketing community, Campfire, Fluent Community is seriously impressive!

Issue #156 Loop

Why I chose Fluent Community over Circle and Podia to build my WordPress-based email marketing community, Campfire, Fluent Community is seriously impressive!

newsletter.loopwp.com

Hey @pressconf.events people! I'm excited to attend with Benjamin Ritner on behalf of StellarWP 🪐 I'd love to talk with anyone and everyone about Customer Experience for WP product businesses. 🌟BONUS: I'll have 5 copies of Sustainable Support by Ben Meredith with me to give to anyone interested.

Political conversations in the public sphere have never been more important or necessary than now. And yet, we're also so much worse at doing it than ever before. Time to do some real adulting folks: learn how to talk about political issues without being a complete ass.

Why your company sucks at Youtube, and what to do about it. By @jamiemarsland.bsky.social Really well-said. www.pootlepress.com/2025/03/why-...

Since launching Give back in 2015, online fundraising needs have gotten more and more complex, which means Give has gotten more complex too. But many folks just want something simple to plug and play and run and not fiddle with. Give's got you covered there too. givewp.com/online-donat...

The Problem with an Online Donation Button (And Better Solutions)

Still using a PayPal donation button? You could be losing donors and donations. Discover the best online donation button alternatives.

givewp.com

I've experimented with tons of different Analytics platforms. By far the most helpful and engaging is: Youtube Analytics Why can't web analytics be as good as Youtube analytics!?

Dear web developers with clients who push plugin updates to live sites with no abandon.

I'm excited to have Joel Butler from StellarWP join us on WP Product Talk today to talk about product logos. HOT TAKE: If you're a WP product business owner – you're probably BAD at this, like I am. This one is for you! wpproducttalk.com/podcast/how-...

This was our Season 6 & 7 kick-off! It was a great convo with my co-hosts about how to choose the next product you should build. It's a question I hear folks discuss a lot in the WP product space. Would love your thoughts on how the show helped you personally wpproducttalk.com/podcast/how-...

As an American, I always thought Brits saying "cheers" meant BYE! Now working with some Brits I realize that "cheers" is complicated. It rarely means Bye, it often means "thanks", and It can mean "well f off then!" When American's say "cheers" is always, only, simply means "Let's drink!"

This is what a first-in-class, independent conference does. It brings first-in-class speakers. Nice work @pressconf.events team! 🎉 And thank you Mary and Matias for speaking!

PressConf@pressconf.events · 2y ago

📣 We're thrilled to welcome Mary Hubbard and Matías Ventura to the #PressConf stage this April! pressconf.events/news/mary-hu... 📍 Tempe, AZ, USA 🎟️ links.pressconf.events/tix-bsky 📆 April 23 - 26, 2025

I'm excited for @joost.blog and Marieke and the future of the Post Status community. It's a vital community for all of WordPress and this is a breath of fresh air for them. Also, memberships are more affordable now, only $50/yr! Very much worth it. poststatus.com/ringing-the-...

Ringing the Bell for Our Own Acquisition

Big News We, Marieke and I, are acquiring Post Status from Cory and Lindsey Miller. And we're excited about this community and the history that has

poststatus.com

I don't know how I ever did any Google Sheets without AI… it's almost like thinking of driving without GPS for me now.

I opened this account ages ago and forgot about it. Circling back and wow my feed over here is SOO nice! Thinking about staying/hiding over here for a while… If you're here, would love a comment about anything that makes you happy.

🚨 First Speaker Announcement! 🚨 We're honored to welcome Sally Strebel to #PressConf! 🎉 As co-founder of Pagely & Pressnomics, she helped shape the WordPress industry. pressconf.events/news/sally-s...

WordPress is dropping support for PHP 5! This is coming in the next version (6.3) which will be released in August. https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/05/dropping-support-for-php-5/