Terms

The Code Company founder Ben May talks at an industry event (c) thecode.co

The Code Company, a professional agency that is focused on publishing digitally It is one of the preferred partners. They are WordPress experts , and they work on large-scale redesigns including migrations and integrations. developing hundreds of technology stacks for hundreds of publishers.

The company has just replatformed Substack huge The Dispatch, a publication to provide news and comment about politics, policy, and culture that is worth $1.9 million and with many thousands of subscribers. I talked to Stacey Astley Clark from the partnerships and communications team regarding the business and its services:

"Our founder Ben May has been using technology to solve problems since grade 10," begins Stacey. "He made his first website for a local business in the year 12 and made $400." Ben noticed that there was a growing opportunity and a potential profession in all of this and thus launched his very agency in the year of 22.

Code Company Code Company didn't deliberately get into publishing, but did get a few publishing clients initially. Stacey explains: "We've carved out a market for ourselves by building technologies for digital publishers as well as migrating from other platforms to WordPress and building membership capabilities, and ad tech. We were initially platform agnostic, but then realized that nearly all of them were a disaster! Now we work exclusively with WordPress; there were numerous'rescue operations' from some of the other platforms."

"The critically important engineering stuff, that goes into publishing websites, is what We do" Stacey continues. They help publishers solve complicated problems by using WordPress and find ways to utilize technology to "increase their revenue, create more efficiency within their company and reduce the risk of business involving technology".

Stacey and I agree that  technology is becoming less technical', which is really important for publishing. "Sometimes you have journalists, content creators and marketers using tech and they need to have the ability to utilize it , without calling an engineer each five minutes.These are 'words people' and not tech people."

Code Company helps people create or migrate to technology stacks that make them self-sufficient. Code Company helps these people build or move to technology platforms that allow them to be fully self-sufficient "They require a system that is able to do everything it did before but in a much easier way. We frequently work with publishing companies that have websites that are creaking with tech debt. Most plugins don't offer all the functionality they require, therefore we believe it is easier to create an integration that is custom, to ensure they get everything they want with none of the items they do not."

Clients

The Code Company works with content organizations of all types that range from small-scale publishers to major entertainment companies. They recently launched the highly-publicized launch of Wondermind, a content hub for mental health that is backed by celebrity Selena Gomez and Newsette CEO Daniella Pierson. Speaking of the launch, Bhavik Trivedi, Chief Operations Officer at Wondermind stated: "I've never had a flawless launch. Until now. The site went live and was scaled to accommodate the increase in traffic and our integrations performed flawlessly."

FuqQ9UfLAmNAKjVpzFCV The new Wondermind media hub (c) thecode.co

They also work with Nine which is the largest entertainment group in Australia. "We created their corporate website and also publications drive.com.au one of the top auto portal and Future Women, a membership group for women who are professionals." The Code Company also launched eBay's local ads website. "That was an important one because they never had regional leads before and they began to receive Australian leads because of the site," Stacey confirms. "We recently built a new website called Science Alert, which is an important science magazine within the US. It's operated from Australia however, the majority users are in the US. We worked on that project for a year and a quarter of a year!" she remembers.

But it seems the company's best fit is with publishers that are a little smaller which are trying to expand. "We are asking, 'How do demonstrate that you are able to publish? How do we get your company and the tech stack in the right shape so that you can grow your business?'" Stacey says. That's probably where the bulk of the clients of The Code Company are located; for instance, non-traditional media organizations like news websites Crikey and Her Campus, an all-female college student media group within The US (that The Code Company has moved to Drupal in order to switch to WordPress).

The HerCampus.com content hub is accessible to multiple devices (c) thecode.co

"We aid talented and creative creators who find themselves frustrated, or frustrated with their current platform as well as CMS (content management systems)," Stacey adds. "They're seeking us out to find alternatives as they realize the platform they're using is limited in terms of their capabilities. It's not flexible enough and also they earn a huge part of their income." Additionally, it's getting more and essential for creators at all levels to gather first-party data. "They're simply unable to access that data via platforms like Substack. We're building custom creator stacks to allow the creators to have their own audience," she explains.

Solutions and Services

The Code Company's clientele might be the ones who built their site themselves, or might have asked someone else to create the site. Either way, they're working with a lot of plugins. "As the site has grown, they're finding that things are starting to break and they're unable to fix them themselves. This is causing problems, and complaints from the readers, and they can't accomplish what they would like to accomplish. There are times when they're unable to do something as simple as adding something on the menu." she says.

Mike McPhate at the California Sun affirms: "The biggest problem with my previous membership website was the fact that it was rife by errors, as well as confusing instructions on how to navigate the site. I'd get emails almost every day from unhappy users. When I created the site in conjunction in conjunction with The Code Company and , I'm not getting these emails from users and that's great!"

The California Sun (c)thecode.co

As we all know, performance is critically important for publishing companies "If there is a drop in performance it could cost them thousands of dollars," Stacey continues. "And they're constantly hacking away at one plugin and sticking on the next. Their performance keeps dropping until they're not efficient no more. Then they'll come with us with this huge technological stack creaking in the background, conscious of the risk of their website going out of commission due to poor performance."

A growing number of publishers want to diversify their income sources, so they are increasingly looking at subscriptions and memberships. "We need to find a solution that is effective and safe. Our main task is looking into tools that are going to be life-changing for publishers," she says. The Code Company works specifically with subscription solutions to get around the what Stacey calls "leaky paywalls". Stacey explains: "We've worked with other subscription solutions in the past and it's really simple to bypass the paywall. If your model of business is based on publishing, and is reliant on the sale of content to users This creates a major challenge."

Events and new projects are in the near future

"The creator economy has boomed," Stacey notes. "Creators have realized that SaaS platforms come with limitationsand are looking to explore other options. Diversification isn't going out of the window for publishers, but there is a need to kind of keep looking at ways to be more engaging with audiences with more personalized and targeted content. Subscriptions do more than just generate income, they provide an opportunity to get closer to viewers as well and increase the amount of engagement."

"There are still print publications available that aren't online and we're receiving interest from the ones who are realizing that, in order to be successful the competition, they'll need to change into digital and subscriptions could be one of those ways."

In the context of recent events "Ben is well-known in the world of conferences," adds Stacey. Recently, Ben gave a talk at the Mumbrella conference for publishers in Australia as well as WordCamp US in San Diego. His talks focused on the creator economy and focused on 'the minimalist publisher' as well as how publishers can do more with less. This includes taking lessons from the creators of larger publishing companies, often using membership solutions.

Founder Ben May is a familiar name in the world of conferences. (c) thecode.co

It appears that the founder of the company has a deep understanding of the business. "Ben's done this for the entirety of his life and there's not a problem he's not capable of answering," says Stacey. "The information I gather when I speak to customers is that in the event of an issue, they may be required to pay a different agency two weeks to go and look into. The team at Code Company's technology can literally solve it in twenty minutes via phone, because he's seen each of them. This is a huge advantage for any business to be able to do that type of troubleshooting."

To conclude, Stacey says: "Publishing or operating a site doesn't have to be as complex as people make it. The whole purpose of our company is to avoid complexity." Stacey and I agree that it's easy to be caught up in the latest technology or theme or plug-ins "these flashing lights aren't going make a difference significantly," she smiles.

The Code Company revels in "smart simplicity" it seems. Stacey says: "We offer the chance to connect with a tech company that can actually help you get the business results you desire, in the simplest possible method that is effective, not using any buzzwords of the moment."

More information

To read more details about The Code Company, to see case studies on prior integrations and migrations and to look into working with them, check out their website thecode.co.