WP Candy was an incredible source of inspiration for what we’re doing here at WP Daily – in fact, all of the staff here have the pleasure of watching the property grow into a positive force of information, community, and all-around fun.

But if you’ve been around for some time now you’ve seen what appears now to the be rise and fall of such a great site with the last post now dating back more than a month ago. With recent conversation surrounding editorial burnout, Bermuda Triangles, and business models, there’s a lot of healthy reasoning of why an editorial news site can and may fail.

I put my two cents into the ring via the comments (which you should definitely read) as well as explained my position in the beginning of this past weekend’s roundup and why we even began entertaining such an idea as WP Daily. As positive as I am about our beginning (which has been very positive) the fact remains that it will eventually have to return a dollar so that we can keep the lights on.

Thankfully we haven’t bet the farm (or any farm for that matter) on this being the lifeblood of a staff’s livelihood. But it would be really neat to hear what became of WPCandy and why it ultimately has stopped posting.

Sure, there’s moments where you need to take a break and there are moments where life gets in the way or new adventures appear, but there’s been very little notice except this cryptic tweet the other day about “evolution”:

@sdenike WPCandy isn’t going anywhere, but perhaps evolving. — WPCandy (@wpcandy) January 10, 2013

I’d love to know how it’s going to evolve! I remember when it was first purchased by Ryan Imel a few years back and we all had high hopes. It grew like a weed and tons of people contributed amazing content to it.

And it’s not that I don’t completely understand – I mean, from what I gather Ryan’s been involved in some big things as of late, like launching a new brick-and-mortar coworking spots, Founders.

After watching my father-in-law launch 3 or 4 odd brick-and-mortars I know how difficult and how time consuming that really is. It’s not even in the same universe as launching an online-based business!

And what about WPCandy Quarterly? It’s one thing to abandon a blog since Ryan doesn’t really owe anyone an explanation for abandonment, but this changes a tad when you involved ecommerce and a financial transaction:

Order an issue and it will be sent your way within 24 hours. Or, subscribe for a year to receive the next four issues of the Quarterly before anyone else can order it.

I interpreted this to mean that I’d get a total of four issues within the next 12 calendar months after purchase. Technically I suppose he could launch the next 3 sometime before I die and the deal would be honored, but most people won’t see it that way, right?

I’m not going to ask Ryan for my money back as I did enjoy the first release, but I would like an explanation. We were promised one a week or so ago but I never got any word:

@awdl2011 tomorrow we’ll be sending out an email to those who ordered a magazine about what happened and the newest dates. — WPCandy (@wpcandy) January 10, 2013

Did anyone get any more info? I’d love to know. Finally, what about Pressed Ads, the advertising network that was powering a lot of WP Candy’s monetary strategy as well as being a network for independent publishers?

The domain is now completely broken:

It was a beautiful site at one point:

But even that site seemed to quickly die out. To be completely transparent, I signed up for the service and even made a few dollars from it but I’m still waiting for the a few months of back-payment which still haven’t shown up (I’m not in desperate pain though, so I’m not complaining.). But, I can’t imagine that I’m the only one still waiting for business to be cleared.

I got this email from Ryan in late November of last year:

Hello John, I hope this finds you well. I’m writing to inform you that for now, Pressed Ads will be scaled back to allow for some restructuring. The system Pressed Ads was built upon was far from ideal, and has proven unable to grow with the network. I apologize for the inconvenience, and for not getting word out sooner about the change. All unpaid revenue shares will be paid out as soon as possible. Please allow up to 60 days for the remaining payments to be sent; I appreciate your patience while we get the outstanding payments taken care of. Thank you for trying out Pressed Ads during its first iteration. It didn’t quite scale as well as I hoped it would — due to my own failures, as well as scaling issues. I’m just sorry it didn’t work out this time, but hopefully we’ll still be able to work together in various ways in the future. Thanks John, Ryan Imel Editor, WPCandy.com @wpcandy

Perhaps they are still restructuring and it’s great to see Ryan acknowledge that the struggles of running a business are legit and very, very real. The 60 day window ends in a few days so perhaps I just have a wait a few days more.

To be sure, this isn’t a witch hunt by any stretch of the imagination but I’m genuinely curious as to what the hell happened to such a glorious start. With Quarterly, the blog, the great editorial and interviews, and an advertising network, it seemed to have it all. Where did it go wrong and where will it go from here?

Ryan, much of this community is anxiously waiting with bated breath to hear from you. We support you 100%.

***EDIT***

Just to give some more credence to my voice of support for Ryan and WPCandy, I wanted to provide additional proof that myself and our staff here at WP Daily has been supporters for a while, even participating in the monthly giving program:

There’s no reason why WPCandy can’t rise from the ashes to be amazing once again.