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In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, Michelle Frechette and Marcus Burnette introduce “Sponsor Me WP,” a new platform designed to connect WordPress contributors with potential sponsors. They discuss the motivations behind the project, their collaborative development process, and the platform’s user-friendly features. The conversation highlights the importance of community engagement, transparency, and direct connections between sponsors and contributors. Listeners are encouraged to provide feedback and share their experiences to help shape the platform’s future, reflecting the hosts’ commitment to supporting and empowering the WordPress community.

Top Takeaways: * Sponsor Me WP was created to connect WordPress contributors with sponsors in a simple, transparent way: Michelle and Marcus collaborated to launch Sponsor Me WP—a platform where WordPress community members can share their contributions and availability for sponsorship. It was born from Michelle’s need to supplement her income after being laid off, combined with Marcus’s technical skills and his existing work on WP World. The site allows contributors to create a profile, import data from WP World, and indicate their available hours for sponsorship, while letting sponsors reach out directly—no intermediaries, no money flowing through the platform. * The platform is intentionally simple, inclusive, and community-driven: The site avoids complex monetization, user gating, or financial processing. It’s designed to be lightweight and easy to use, with user control over profiles and direct sponsor-contributor communication. Michelle and Marcus emphasized that it welcomes both established and aspiring contributors, and they’ve taken steps to ensure fairness (e.g., randomized listing order) and community safety (e.g., ability to remove bad actors if needed). * Michelle and Marcus are passionate about building community-first tools—and open to evolving based on feedback: They view this project (like WP World and WP Speakers) as a gift to the WordPress community. The hosting was donated, and their time volunteered. They’re also actively seeking ideas for improvement or expansion, especially from people with experience in seeking or providing sponsorships. Their approach centers on reducing friction, encouraging transparency, and enabling community members to support each other’s contributions meaningfully..

Mentioned In The Show:* Kinsta * WP World * WP Speakers * Underrepresented In Tech * Sponsor Me WP * GitHub * Speed Network Online * Pressable

Sponsor: WordPress.comBuild and manage professional sites with secure managed hosting on WordPress.com. Beautiful themes, built-in SEO, and payment tools, and access to over 50,000 plugins. Everything you need for your business, plus 24/7 support from WordPress experts.

You can follow Post Status and our guests on Social Media:* Marcus Burnette (Creator, The WP World) * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

TranscriptMichelle Frechette 00:00:03 Here we are for another Post Status Happiness Hour Live. And I could almost call you a frequent flyer now, because I keep inviting you to talk about all the different things that you do and I do, and it’s kind of fun. Like usually it’s a little darker in your corner, though. You usually like all this mysterious, but you actually have a light on behind you this time.

Marcus Burnette 00:00:23 Yeah, there’s actually a window there that I just keep covered most of the time. But I felt a little bit like I’m being in a dungeon. So yeah, now I go up and let some light in.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:34 Now it doesn’t look like your wife makes you work in the basement, so. Awesome. Well, you and I have been working on quite a few things over the years that I call community gifts. And you call community gifts because, even though sometimes we have sponsorship on them, things like that, they’re really not created to be moneymakers. You and I are not trying to get rich of some of the services that we provide to the community. And so when you had put out. Shortly after I got laid off from working at Stellar and before I had secured some other contracts that would keep keep food on my table, as they say. I, I had been approached by Kinsta to sponsor some of my hours, so they sponsor five hours a month for me, which is super awesome. But that leaves about 35 hours a month. That is unsponsored. And I thought, I am really, really bad at going and knocking on doors and saying,’ would you give me some money, please?’ And I was just like, it’s not in my nature. And other people do it so well and like, no, no, no heat to them at all, no shame. Because, hey, if you’re really good at that, go for it. But it’s not not something I’m comfortable with. So I thought, what could I do to kind of put it out there as a need? And before I even had thought to solve a problem, you had added something to the WP World that said Open to sponsorship. And I thought, well, that’s great. But like, how do people know? How do they get in touch with me? I love that it’s there. And then I had this idea to create a similar database to some of the others I’ve created before, like the WP Speakers and Underrepresented In Tech. And I thought, I don’t want to replace anything that you do, because I think the things that we’ve done together, or even separately, that kind of meld together nicely, are really complementary and really work to help, across the board. And I have no idea how you make all the things work that you make work. And you keep saying, I’m not a developer. Well, in my book you are a developer because I’m not. But, but I so I said to you, what if we took that concept, like, one step further and did something like a sponsorship website where people who are seeking sponsorship can put it out there. They’re bio things like that. It’s not the WP World. So it’s not everything. Anything. but it’ll link back to the WP World because we put that in there and you made it. You can show in a few minutes how easy it is if you’ve got a WP World to just like, boom, all your information comes in, which I think is brilliant. But also a way for people to be contacted easily. Not be the middleman. Like no money is funneling through us all, all of that. But make it easy for sponsors to find contributors and for contributors to seek sponsorship. And you said, yep, I’m in which that was music to my ears because I love the WP World and everything that you put into it. And then I’ve learned this thing where if I get people to work with me, I don’t have to do all the work myself. Like, it took me 56 years, but I figured it out. And so partnering with you on this was just a no brainer to me. And you took what was in my head and made it so much better than I ever could have envisioned it being. And so Sponsor Me WP was born. And so I want to want to hear from your side of things like were you like, oh God, Michelle has another project and I can’t say no.

Marcus Burnette 00:04:05 No. I feel like it was it was almost kind of like serendipity, right? Because you, like you said, you had, you were going down this path after you got laid off, like, how do I how do I now supplement that income in different ways? Sponsorship is a great way for that. And at the same time, while you were mulling that over, our friend Taco over in the Post Status Slack was asking, hey, is there a place where people can find, you know, who’s looking for sponsorship? And I started, I read that message and I was like, you know what? That completely makes sense for something in the WP World to I already have, you know, there’s a list of people that are in the WordPress ecosystem that are doing things in WordPress. Why not add a simple checkbox and a link for people to be able to say that they’re looking for a sponsorship? Then you can click through that link and learn some more. A lot of those are like GitHub links, so people can can do the sponsorship stuff. And so when you approached me and were like, not everyone’s a developer, not everybody has that GitHub link. And like, this is what I’m looking for as well. Can we build something? You know, we you and I have been looking for a while to do some stuff together and a lot of our, a lot of our projects like sort of intertwined with each other but haven’t been something that we like together built. And so when, when you were like, hey, I see that you added this to the WP World, is there a way that we can do some version of that that’s maybe a little bit broader, a little bit more inclusive of people that aren’t necessarily developers? A place where people can can talk a little bit more about their contribution. Where on the WP World there’s not really a bio like, it’s sort of more of a resume, and you can see what people are doing in WordPress, those plugins and themes that they’ve built and videos now and all of that stuff, but there’s not really a place for a bio for you to really talk about who you are as a WordPress server and what you’re doing, and especially when it comes to contributions and how you contribute to the space and stuff. And so I thought that was a great idea. Let’s build a site where people can go ahead and sign up there. They can talk a little bit more about how they contribute to WordPress, and then there’s a direct contact link there. Rather than sending someone off to a GitHub page. We do have, you know, a place where people can still put that info in, but rather than sending people off to different places, let’s just give a direct contact there. So if you’re a sponsor, someone who has some sponsorship dollars and they’re looking to find places where you can plug into the WordPress ecosystem, this is a great place for you to go find people who are looking for money to be sponsored, to contribute to the ecosystem, and then, you know, they can tag themselves in the different teams and the stuff that they want to work on.

Marcus Burnette 00:06:45 So you as a sponsor, if you’re really excited about, like the WordPress photo directory, which is something that you and I are both part of. You can help that grow by contributing or by sponsoring contributors that are working on the photo directory and things related to the photo directory. So we’ll look at it in a second. But you can kind of narrow down even the things that you want to put your sponsorship dollars towards, depending on what things contributors are working on. And so anyways, you came to me with that and I was already sort of thinking about it because of the WP World, and it just sort of fell into place. I feel like it was the perfect time for us to put this together. And so you and I sat down and tried to determine, you know, what does this look like? What are we looking for from people? How does this tie into maybe some of the other things that we’re doing? Like you said, it connects to the WP World. So we have that tie in to our other projects. And in that particular case, it just makes it easier for you to pull your info in. If you’re already part of the WP World to sign up for, you know, Sponsor Me WP and get your info in there. Takes, you know, a click, you know, a few seconds and most of your entities in there. Then you can focus more on writing that. You know, that bio of like how you want to contribute, and really selling what it is that you’re doing in the ecosystem to sponsors who are looking to to come through and, you know, sponsor you for that work. So yeah, I think the timing was just perfect.

Michelle Frechette 00:08:12 And at the same time, I was having conversations with June Lou about Speed Network Online. And so I spun up a site with one of my hosts, and she went to work on it, like literally between Monday and Wednesday it launched and suddenly you’re saying, hey, look at this. I got the prototype. What does this look like? And I’m like, wow, that was fast. Like, I couldn’t let, like, the Speed Network just go that fast. It was making me jealous.

Marcus Burnette 00:08:41 I did like, I got a little jealous that somebody was publishing something and I wasn’t publishing something new. So I got to work.

Michelle Frechette 00:08:48 They both went up pretty quick. Hey June and June in the comments saying hello. They’re singing your praises, June. I don’t know if you heard that, but. So yeah, so I had two projects go up pretty darn fast, which is exciting to me. One of my biggest concerns and everybody that knows me is like, you should not have been concerned about that. But one of my biggest concerns was when you’ve been laid off, if you take any time off to regroup, kind of heal from emotions and all of that, that you start to become irrelevant. Like if people aren’t seeing you in the community, they can forget you for fairly quickly. And yes, I was still working with Post Status, so I know that wasn’t really going to happen, but I needed to be busy. I needed to sit down at my desk every day and work so I wouldn’t get comfortable laying on the sofa, watching movies, eating grapes.

Marcus Burnette 00:09:36 I think that’s definitely a possibility, but probably less so than than anyone thinks in their head.

Michelle Frechette 00:09:43 I probably for sure.

Marcus Burnette 00:09:44 Especially if you’ve been part of the community for a while, the way that you have and you’re still going to events and still in Post Status. Yeah

Michelle Frechette 00:09:51 Yeah for sure. But it’s still but it’s a fear right? And so I wanted to make sure that I was creating and, and doing things that felt like work and, put and putting things forward into the community positive way. So that June and I, you know, partnered up on one of that you and I partnered up on, Sponsored Me WP is was very exciting to me. But what I really want to show well, first of all, we launched it on whatever day we launched it, I don’t remember and like. But then I was like, I was a couple weeks ago, within a couple of days, there were like, there’s already like 30 people in there and like a couple more days go by and I’m like, I think I was at WordCamp Europe and I was like, I pulled it up. I was like, there’s 74 people in there. And then I look today and I think that the count as of right before the show was 90. So yeah, clearly there are a lot of people.

Marcus Burnette 00:10:36 92, 92 right now.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:38 Yeah.

Marcus Burnette 00:10:39 Getting close to that triple digit mark already.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:41 I know.

Marcus Burnette 00:10:41 Within a couple of weeks.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:42 So what I wanted to do was have you, because I manage all the other things while the shows going on here. Do a little demo, demo of this site. and kind of walk us through how people can get involved, what it looks like, and, how it works. So I’m going to add that to the screen now and let you kind of give us a little walkthrough.

Marcus Burnette 00:11:03 Awesome. Well, I’m already logged in, so let me log out real quick just to show how easy it is. I mean, we’ve got our main landing page that just kind of talks a little bit about what Sponsor Me WP is. pretty simple. Create your profile. sponsors can come in and find people that they want to, to, you know, to sponsor for contributions. And overall that helps us grow the WordPress ecosystem together. And then a little bit info about us down here. but.

Speaker 3 00:11:34 I love I love the.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:36 I love, I love the images of us, the little cartoons. It’s hysterical.

Marcus Burnette 00:11:41 Yeah. I had, I found some that looked pretty fun. And then I was challenging ChatGPT to turn our like avatar photos from. I think these are both our like Twitter photos.

MIchelle Frechette: I think so.

Marcus Burnette: Into the style of whatever the style was that I found in it. It did have a fun job. I thought it was fun photo, so I went with those instead of the usual ultra realistic photo photos. I thought they were fun.

Marcus Burnette 00:12:05 So yeah, it’s it’s super easy. Kept the the signup form nice and short. Email, First Name, Last Name, and Password and, and you’re in. So let me go ahead and log in to mine. And so once you’re, once you have an account, you and every time you log in, you’re automatically sent to the update profile page by default.

Marcus Burnette 00:12:32 So there’s always a chance for you to clean up anything, make any changes. Let’s say you get someone that sponsors contribution for five hours. It’s easy for you to come in here and update the number of hours, so that people can get a good look at, you know, how much contribution you’re still looking for or sponsorship you’re still looking for. So pretty simple. You know, the usual. Thanks. Mark Westcott, shout out for his form for making making life easy for us again. I use it all over the WP World. So it made sense to to put it in here as well and keep everything in check for us. And so there’s a couple of tabs here. It’s personal info. This is that bio area where you get to really talk about what it is that you do, contributing to the WordPress ecosystem.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:24 Including adding links. You made it possible to be able to even add links within the text there.

Marcus Burnette 00:13:29 Yeah, you can add some links within the text here if you want to share, you know, links to some of the examples of things that you’ve done or just kind of however you want to structure your. I kind of wanted to take the rules and limitations off a little bit about how you structure your own bio. So everyone kind of is, is able to, kind of share a little bit about what they do in their own way, which is going to differ whether you’re a developer or photo directory or marketing team or like all the different like ways that you can contribute are very different and you have different opportunities to share examples of what you’ve done or what you’re working on and stuff like that. So it’s pretty open. Yeah, you can share links in here to, to any of those spots. Then there’s a tab for social, which gives you a chance to put in all your different social links so that you can link to those including, you know, our other projects, WP Speakers and WP World. And then there’s a, the sponsorship section. Section itself is where you’re going to want to kind of fill out the bulk. Besides the bio, this is where you fill out your, your handle. Talk a little bit about the number of hours that you’re trying to get covered and how many you already have covered, sponsorship wise. If you have that GitHub URL that we were talking about before, or some other way to share some sponsorship information with potential sponsors, you can put the URL in here. And then we have all of the teams listed to make teams listed here so that you can choose any of the make teams that you want to be involved with. I know that contribution also sometimes falls outside of some of these make teams, like if you want to be sponsored to contribute to like PHP or Node.js or some of the other open source projects. I wanted to give people the opportunity to add those things in as well. So, if you have other projects outside of the make teams that you want to be sponsored for, you can add those here so that if you’re following along video, you see this little thing in the corner that popped up that’s just been sitting there and it popped up when I first got here onto the page and it says, want to speed up your profile creation and import your data from the WP World. This is kind of the like fanciness that I was excited. Not that I wasn’t excited to build the rest of the website, but excited to try to figure out if I could actually make this piece work.

Michelle Frechette: And you did so.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah I did. And so if you sign up with the same email address that you signed up for at the WP World. So that’s like the only real criteria there. If you’re using different email addresses it’s not going to work this way. That little pop up just won’t show up I don’t think.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:15 Because that’s the key.

Marcus Burnette 00:16:16 So that’s the key. If you sign up with the same email address that you signed up for at the WP World, then you can click this import from the WP World, and it will show you all of the things that you filled out at the WP World that correspond with what’s going on at Sponsor Me WP, and so you can fully apply all of them, or if you just want to update your .org handle and your speakers URL and your website URL. You can choose those individually and hit apply, and it’ll just only update those things for you so you have full control over what it is that you want to pull from the WP World over into Sponsor Me WP.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:57 Super nice, you don’t have to put all your social handles in and type those all out.

Marcus Burnette 00:17:01 Yeah, all the social handles, track them down, copy them, make sure they’re in the right format and everything. This handles all of that and pastes it in for you. So. Yeah, exactly. You know you could do just give me and Twitter, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Mastodon, and hit apply. And now all your social handles are in and ready to go. So I was very excited to to figure that one out. And

Michelle Frechette 00:17:24 I was super impressed when I saw it, that’s for sure.

Marcus Burnette 00:17:27 Yeah, very excited for that. So then you filled out your your information and you end up in our list of contributors here on the site. Very intentionally. This is a random pool of contributors. What we wanted to make sure was that we didn’t prioritize, you know, ten people or. Yeah, ten people because their last name starts with A, B or C or something like that. so.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:54 And those poor people whose last names are W never get sponsors.

Marcus Burnette 00:17:57 Sponsors all the way at the bottom, never, never get noticed or anything like that. So this is intentionally random. If you have a particular person that you’re looking for like Michelle, you can start to type it in and it’ll pull up that person for you. If you want to sort it by last name, there is a button over here where you can click the button, and then they will be sorted by last name for you. That’s totally up to you. And then, I’ll refresh again. Just a randomizes again. And then you can also filter by the teams. Like I said, sometimes as a sponsor you want to sponsor particular parts of the project, different parts of the ecosystem. Let’s say you’re building something that really relies on Gutenberg continuing to progress, right? So you’re going to want to find contributors that are contributing directly to Gutenberg and sponsor their time specifically so they can continue working on those things. If that’s the case, let’s say in this example, I can just click Gutenberg. And now I have a list of the four people currently in here that have noted that they’re specifically working on Gutenberg related things within the ecosystem. And so then you can see how many, how many hours they are looking to be sponsored, how many hours they’re already sponsored for their time. You can pick one. I’m going to click on Tammie’s name here and it’ll take you to their profile. You can read, right. This is the bio that Tammie put in. So you can read more about the person that you’re thinking about contributing to. See the different teams. Tammie does have a link off to GitHub where you can directly sponsor through GitHub if you want. And then everybody has this form at the bottom where you can send a message to that contributor to say, ‘hey, I’m interested in sponsoring you potentially for your time with Gutenberg, you know, time working on the Gutenberg project or part of the project. you know, let’s get let’s get it together and chat that through’. So you put in your first name, last name, email and a little message, and that will go directly to the contributor. Not to us. That goes directly to the contributor. They can see that message. And then via email you can go back and forth. As the sponsor with the contributor and figure out what works. And then the contributor can come back and update their sponsorship hours and all of that. So that’s kind of the walkthrough there.

Michelle Frechette 00:20:25 One of the things we wanted to make sure was that we weren’t the middleman, so to speak, in any of it. So I did have somebody, you know, when we first launched it say, well, how do we get paid? That’s between you and the sponsor. So that’s why there’s a contact form there. Every sponsor does pay out differently, sometimes less so for like Kinsta. I have to invoice them my time every month. I don’t have to give them a written account of everything I did. But I do have to invoice them. And that’s going to trigger a payment to me. Others may, you know, hit up your GitHub and automatically have a pay go through there. It really differs depending on who they are. And so we don’t want to be part of that at all. And we certainly don’t want to have any income through this that then shows up on our taxes because we funneled money through to anybody else. And so the whole idea was to create this, kind of a marketplace, I guess, a way to match up between sponsors and contributors so that you can talk to each other, find each other easily, and then take the conversation offline so that you can have those conversations one to the other. And we also didn’t want to put a lot of we didn’t want any financial information to go through the site either. It just makes it a lot safer and more secure for everybody. If your financial information is not showing up on our website.

Marcus Burnette 00:21:41 Yeah, absolutely. No, we’re we’re looking to be I mean, and this is very similar to really how I’ve structured things with the WP World, how you structure things with WP Speakers like this is all just to kind of foster that connection between between people in the WordPress space, whether it’s, you know, people connecting with other people or companies connecting with people, people connecting with, in this case sponsors, potential sponsors. You and I really enjoy building these projects that like just create that connection between people. And then from there, you know, like on the WP World, I foster the connection for people to meet up at a coffee shop, they have to figure out which coffee shop works for them and go hang out together and buy coffee and whatever. Same goes for this. We’re looking to to create that connection and the ones that connection is made, then the person who is sponsoring can say, here’s, you know, here’s what I need to be able to sponsor you financially, or the person who’s doing the contributing can say, here are the different ways that I can accept, you know, being paid or whatever. Like it’s all, like you said, it’s all going to be different from person to person. And so we didn’t want to we didn’t want to force a specific way on anybody. And we also didn’t want to really have our hand in any of that transaction, the monetary transaction. And so the site is just here to create a connection between between sponsors and contributors. And then how they work that out is going to be different from sponsor to sponsor and contributor to contributor.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:14 Yeah. We also don’t tell you how much your hour is worth. So how many hours you do and what your hour is worth, because an hour to one person may be valued differently than an hour to somebody else. And so that is 100% between you and whoever’s sponsoring your time in the community. Fantastic. So that’s I mean, literally that’s it. There’s a homepage and there’s a directory, and we haven’t done anything else with it. Because it’s by design, should be simple. It should be easy to use. I may throw something in there a little bit later about, you know, how you can just reach out to people and how we’re not to go between a little more in depth, if you will, of another page that just is a little more direct in how this all works. But for the meantime, I think it’s very simple, very clear, very concise, which I like a lot. And the design, you did such a great job on the design work Marcus. Thank you. I say it’s our project. It was my idea and 100% your execution.

Marcus Burnette 00:24:13 The, it’s funny because the design is like version six. It’s the only one that you saw, but it’s like version six behind the scenes, because I just could not, I could not get to a place that I was happy with it for a long time. and it was honestly not until I was playing with those silly avatars of ours, the AI generated avatars that I felt like I had some sort of a design direction. I was like, oh, I kind of want to follow this direction. So, you know, on the.

Michelle Frechette 00:24:44 I love that. So literally just go to SponsorMe.com for more information there. But a couple people have put some comments in the comments thread. If you have questions about this we would love to answer them. We’re a captive audience. We’re live right now. If you’re watching this later, you’ll have to reach out to us through the website, I guess. But, we would love to. What did I put through here? Yeah. If you have questions there it goes, if you have questions for us, post them in the chat and we will be happy to answer them. Speak now or forever hold your peace. Just kidding. It’s not that serious, folks, but it is a lot of fun. So yeah, if you have any questions or ideas for us, we’re also open to ideas, right? So if there’s something that we failed to see that would be really amazing to have in there. Tell us about it and maybe we’ll make it happen. And maybe we’ll be like, no, because you never know.

Marcus Burnette 00:25:38 Yeah, definitely one of the things that I’ve noticed through our projects, right, I’m sure you get the same is once you, once you toss it out there to the world and you start to share it more broadly, you know, folks start to have some ideas of like, well, what if it did this? Or what if it could do that? Like, I’m totally open to that, both with the WP World and Sponsor Me WP please share as like absolutely I have a roadmap. I have lots of ideas of what I would like to do with this and the WP World and everything else. There’s a nice long list, but I can only think of so much and I’m only going to think of so much, and I’m only going to think of so much from like one perspective, from my perspective. And I have not, like I was sponsored by my employer to work a couple hours a week, but that was like part of my regular job, so I haven’t had to go out and find sponsors to specifically come and say, hey, we’d like to sponsor five hours a week for you to do this. So I don’t have that perspective. I don’t have that context. You do. So you and I can bounce that off of each other a little bit. But others who have gone through this who have looked for for sponsorship or have gained or have gotten sponsorship, reach out to us, tell us what’s what’s worked, what’s helped. What would have been nice, right? Maybe there’s some things in that process where you’re like, oh, it would have been nice if the sponsor had this information ahead of time, or I knew this about the sponsor when they were contacting me, you know, how do I need to do I need to update the contact form, the individual contact form to have more information, less information, structured differently, like I’m open to all of that. Like and and I know that you are too. So if anybody has ideas on how, especially those that have been through some of the sponsors, the contribution sponsorship process, like tell us what worked, what would be great to have that’s not already there? We’re totally open to.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:26 Other than the payment process.

Marcus Burnette 00:27:26 Right. Other than the payment process, because we do want to just keep our hands out of the, out of the proverbial cookie jar that’s between you all. We’re not looking to have anything to do with the money part of it.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:38 And we’re not seeking sponsorship for the site either. So like, it’s literally it just lives there. The hosting was donated by Pressable, so we don’t even have to pay for that. I think I’m paying, like, 20 bucks a year for the domain name or something like that. So our time has been the gift. I well, Marcus’s time has been the gift because.

Marcus Burnette 00:28:00 Your time as well. Yeah. We’re we’re not looking to make anything from this other than connections between contributors and sponsors. This is this is our one of our our gifts back to the community.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:14 Absolutely. So if you have ideas, tell me and I’ll tell Marcus and he will know how to make it happen. It’s my favorite thing. It’s like, I love all your ideas, Marcus. This person had this idea.

Marcus Burnette 00:28:26 Marcus here is a list of ideas, and I’m. And I’ll be absolutely happy to work on them because.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:31 You make things happen so quickly, like the WP World from its inception to where it is today. Phenomenal, right? Just so phenomenal. And I think of all these other projects as being just like part of that whole universe of like it’s a Venn diagram and everything kind of, you know, overlaps a little bit. We got a question, Ericka. I we saw I saw Ericka just last week.

Marcus Burnette: Hey Erica.

Michelle Frechette: In, in Europe. So, and she’s on TikTok. Ericka is on the recent TikTok. On for, WordPress. And I was like, tell us in Spanish. And so she and I didn’t even know what she said until after I got it home. And like, she said hi to me, like it was so nice. So anyway, but the website is also for people who are not yet contributing, are also looking to be sponsored. Right? I would say yes, if they’re looking to get to be able to contribute and they need to be sponsored to do that, I have no problem with that. We’re not gatekeeping it. So, the thing I would hate the most is somebody says they’re contributing, they’re not actually contributing, and they’re just siphoning money from some company, but that’s up to the company to do some vetting and make sure that things align well. Because we are not gatekeeping any of that. But that said, I will say if there are bad actors in the community and they’re using our site nefariously, please let us know. I don’t anticipate this community will do that, but we can remove them from the site if we needed to. She saw the video because I tagged you on Twitter, isn’t it? Yeah. That was so cute. I’m having so much fun, by the way, with the WordPress org, Twitter or TikTok account.

Marcus Birnette: Tik Tok, yeah I’ve saw a couple of them.

Michelle Frechette: Oh my gosh, it is so much fun. So, Yeah. So those are that’s what we have got going on. And I hate to even say this part out loud, but if you have other ideas of gaps in the community that we can maybe help fill and pull other people into it, tell us, because there’s probably a way to work it into the WP World or so, or even Post Status and things like that. So recently posted a spot, WP Speakers, which means I still get to help manage it, but I am not. I don’t have to deal with the dev of it anymore, which is nice. So, Joost team is doing that. So, and Dave says he’s been following the WordPress TikTok videos. They are fun, a total fun. There’s some funny, funny ones coming up. Man. I make myself look a little silly and I’m 100% happy with it, so it’s a lot of fun. You know, we we usually save an hour for this show. I think this project was. I’m not going to say it was simple to do, because I don’t want to downplay the amount of work that you put into it, but we’ve made it simple to use. Or we, I’ll say the way we’ve made it simple to use. We’ve made it easy for you to be able to create that account for yourself. Now, my ask of people, if you’re paying attention and watching, share it with, share it on social media. Tell your company if your company is somebody who sponsors. The whole idea is not every company has the people power to be able to take 5 or 10% of their time and their and their, their team to contribute to the project. So they would rather use money to help other people who are already in the community do that. And so that’s why this is a perfect thing, is helping make those matches. So if you know people who are looking to sponsor you, you know, people are looking to be sponsored and and please, if you see us, posting it on social media, a simple share would be mean the world to us so that we can actually start to make some of those connections for people in the community.

Marcus Burnette 00:32:10 Yeah, absolutely.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:12 Any, any anything else you want to add, Marcus?

Marcus Burnette 00:32:15 No, I don’t think so. I think, Yeah. Like. Like you said, there’s there’s some complexity under the hood, but the whole point was to make the site itself as simple and user friendly as possible. And so. Yeah. Share it. Sign up if you’re not already signed up. And then we’ll, we’ll get those sponsors in and, and get some people sponsored for contributing.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:38 Let’s make some magic. Last chance, if you’ve got a question, hit us up because we’re going to close this down in a minute. I don’t have anybody for next week. I’m still working on getting a guest for next week’s Post Status Happiness hour. So if you have a project that you’d like to share, please hit me up.

Marcus Burnette 00:32:55 Means we have a week to come up with another project to collaborate on to build it, and then I’ll just be back on again.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:04 Like, hey Marcus, are you free tomorrow? My project fell through for tomorrow. Hear me out. WordPress the Musical. Can we do something by next week?

Marcus Burnette 00:33:15 By next week. I’ll get. I’ll get my daughter on it. She’s musical.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:19 She probably.

Marcus Burnette 00:33:20 I would not be much of a help there personally but.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:23 I was gonna I was in a meeting, earlier this week, and like, in the chit chat time before things get started, like, what are y’all watching on TV? And I said, I’m rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the beginning. It’s it’s like it doesn’t even fit the TV because it’s like square versus, like the letter box where you see now and and somebody in the group said once more with feeling Michelle. And that was the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So I have that in my head right now. I’m not really writing a musical. Oh Dave the musical, backed up by Disney.

Marcus Burnette 00:33:56 So yeah, it would be interesting. It’s almost, it’s almost worth asking ChatGPT to like, outline what a WordPress the Musical would be would look like.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:07 Oh my goodness. All right. If anybody does that. Share it.

Marcus Burnette 00:34:10 yes share it with us I want to I’m curious.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:13 To well thanks for being with us everybody today, Marcus. Thank you again, especially for the last minuteness. But for all of the hard work that you put in to Sponsor Me WP, I appreciate every time we have an opportunity to do something together to share each other’s projects. You are one of these people in the community that is just such a pillar of the community, and being friends with you on top of that is just the icing on the cake. So thank you.

Marcus Burnette 00:34:37 I super appreciate that. So happy to work, to work on anything at all with you and even just chatting outside of WordPress. Always a good time.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:46 I know. I wish you were going to Montclair too, because we had so much fun last year.

Marcus Burnette 00:34:50 I know.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:51 I’ve done all together and all the things.

Marcus Burnette 00:34:53 I’ve been in the last three years, and I am starting to feel a little sadness that I’m not going to be there this year. But, it is what it is.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:59 We’ll see you at US this year?

Marcus Burnette: Yes.

Michelle Frechette: Excellent, excellent. All right, so, Marcus, don’t hop off right now. I’m going to stop the stream, but I got a couple quick things to share with you before I let you go. Bye. Everybody will see you soon.

Marcus Burnette: 00:35:12 Bye.

This article, Post Status Happiness Hour Session Thirty Two, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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What is a community? I’ve been pondering this question a lot lately. There are so many ways to define a community, and so many questions arise when thinking about what that word means.

• Are we a community by virtue of living near others? Is my town a community?
• Are we a community by virtue of using common software? Is everyone who uses WordPress part of a community?
• Do we create community around common ground? Is a high school a community? Am I in a community because I like Lego? (Is there a Lego community?)
• Do we have to participate in order to be considered part of a community?

I talk about the WordPress community a lot. When people ask what I do at Post Status, telling them my title isn’t enough. They ask “but what do you do?” When I tell them I tend to a community, especially if they’re not in WordPress at all, that also means almost nothing to them.

So then, what is the WordPress community? Or community at all?

Definitions matter … to an extentI referred to Dictionary.com to find the definition of community. According to that source, you can consider a community defined as any of the following:

1. a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.
2. a locality inhabited by such a group.
3. a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists: the community of scholars;
   • the business community;
   • the community of scholars;
   • diversity within a college community;
   • London’s Jewish and Muslim communities.
4. a group of associated nations sharing common interests or a common heritage.
   the community of Western Europe.
5. Ecclesiastical. a group of men or women leading a common life according to a rule.
6. Ecology. an assemblage of interacting populations occupying a given area.
7. joint possession, enjoyment, liability, etc..
   community of property.
8. similarity; agreement; identity.
   community of interests. Synonyms: likeness, correspondence
9. the community, the public; society.
   the needs of the community.

I suppose given these definitions, the WordPress community would fall under definition three above. “[A] group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists.”

So I said definitions matter … to an extent. Because I still have questions.

Does one have to actively participate in a community to be considered part of it? Is a loyalty or allegiance required? And further, can one be considered a part of a community if they do not desire to be part of it?

Who then, are WordPress community members?As I see it (and please comment below if I’ve missed a group), the WordPress community might include the following:

• All WordPress users. (Anyone who has ever logged in to a WordPress website.)
  • Developers
  • Designers
  • Authors
  • Editors
• WordPress contributors. (Anyone who has ever contributed through a Make team.)
• WordPress contributors. (Anyone who creates or contributes in ways outside of a Make team.)
• Anyone who creates/sells/distributes through the ecosystem, whether free or premium.
• WordPress media. (Anyone reporting on WordPress or podcasting about WordPress.)

It seems to me that the last three easily fall within the definition chosen above for community. But what about the first one? Is every WordPress user a part of the community? And how does one leave a community? Is it possible, or will you always be known as part of what you once belonged to?

Still with me?If you’ve made it this far and you’re still with me, what are your thoughts? Or do you think it matters at all? Maybe it matters to some of us and not to others, but for me community also brings a sense of belonging, and belonging in WordPress helps move the community and the open source project forward.

This article, What is a Community?, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Transcript ↓

In this podcast episode, host Michelle Frechette welcomes Carrie Dils, Mika Epstein, and Ryan McCue to discuss their roles in the WordPress community and the new FAIR project. The group explores FAIR’s mission to create a federated independent repository system for WordPress plugins and themes, focusing on decentralization, community-driven moderation, inclusive governance, and privacy. They address challenges like supporting premium plugins, reducing environmental impact, and fostering global participation. The episode highlights FAIR’s collaborative, open-source approach and invites listeners to get involved through GitHub and community meetings, aiming to shape a more innovative and inclusive WordPress ecosystem.

Top Takeaways: * FAIR Is Reimagining Plugin Discovery and Trust for WordPress: FAIR is building a more open, decentralized ecosystem for WordPress plugin discovery—empowering both end users and developers. By enabling verified directories and authenticated plugin listings (via methods like DNS verification), FAIR provides an alternative to the limitations of the WordPress.org repo, while increasing transparency, user safety, and trust. * Community Participation Is Central to FAIR’s Success: The FAIR initiative is deeply community-driven. Contributors are encouraged to get involved through GitHub Discussions, introduce themselves, offer help, or join working groups. The leadership team is intentionally building these groups based on people’s skills and availability, rather than predefined roles—making FAIR flexible, inclusive, and open to evolving needs. * FAIR Encourages Innovation Outside Traditional WordPress Constraints: The project provides an alternative path for plugin creators who may not want to follow the traditional WordPress.org model (e.g., having to release a free version first). With FAIR, creators can request to be listed in aggregator directories that are more flexible, values-aligned, or niche-focused—fostering innovation and lowering barriers to entry. * FAIR Is Still in Early Development—and Actively Growing: While the FAIR plugin and protocol are live (accessible via fair.pm), the ecosystem is in its formative stages. The team is prioritizing essential needs (the “MVP”) and building infrastructure to support future growth in documentation, marketing, design, development, and user testing. They welcome feedback on plugin issues, conflicts, and ideas, encouraging broad experimentation and iteration.

Mentioned In The Show:* FAIR * LinkedIn Learning * Awesome Motive * Lez Watch TV * Human Made * Aspire Press * Gravatar * Linux Foundation Project * Bluesky * WPCC * Black Press * Mastodon * Drupal * Courtney Robertson * Automattic * MediaWiki * Monster Insights * Gravity Forms * Fastly

Sponsor: A2 HostingA2Hosting offers solutions for WordPress and WooCommerce that are both blazing fast and ultra-reliable. WordPress can be easily deployed on ANY web hosting plan from A2: Shared, VPS, or Dedicated. A2 also offers Managed WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting. Take a look at a2hosting.com today!

A2 Hosting You can follow Post Status and our guests on Social Media:* Carrie Dils (Independent Consultant & Web Instructor, Carrie Dils Consulting) * Mika Epstein (Senior Developer, Awesome Motive) * Ryan McCue (Director of Product, Human Made) * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

TranscriptMichelle Frechette 00:00:02 Welcome to the Post Status Cache Up. It’s my little play on like catching up with people. In case people didn’t place, people didn’t cache that. It’s not like a cache me outside kind of situation. So, Carrie, don’t bring up those weapons of mass destruction of your hands there. But it’s really good to have you all here. And I’d like you to introduce yourselves rather than, you know, that formality of me reading something, and you have to sit there looking all like, oh, that’s cool, that’s all about me. Yeah. So we’ll just kind of go around the I. I love how we say room, like we’re all in our own rooms, but, Carrie, tell us first and then you pass it on and we’ll keep going.

Carrie Dils 00:00:39 We’ll go around the Brady Bunch squares.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:42 Yeah, exactly. We just need Alice in the middle.

Carrie Dils 00:00:44 There you go. I am Carrie Dils. So I’ve been working with WordPress since 2011. based in Fort Worth, Texas, and outside of FAIR, I mostly do client work. I’m independent, freelancer, do development work and consulting. And then I also teach front end development courses for LinkedIn Learning.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:05 Excellent.

Carrie Dils 00:01:06 Mika.

Mika E. 00:01:08 Hi, I’m Mika Epstein. Most of you probably know me as Ipstenu still, which is actually just my last name. It’s not really all that deep, folks. Sorry. I currently work for Awesome Motiv. I am in their research and development, which actually means I’m not doing a lot of WordPress for work right now. I’m more like figuring out cool things that we can integrate to take off the load from our employees who are doing WordPress. So I get to do all sorts of cool things and blow things up. And right now yell at Google for, having an outage on the servers I’m working on. So that’s always fun.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:42 How dare they?

Mika E. 00:01:43 I know. But with regards to WordPress, I actually run a, a website with my friend Tracy Levesque, and it is entirely on WordPress. It is Lez Watch TV and it is the biggest database you’re going to find of LGBTQ, female, non-binary, and transgender characters on international television. And I stress this because it runs on WordPress. Every last bit of it is WordPress. So when you go and look at that site, you’re going to go, oh, WordPress can do that.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:15 And I will be looking at that site immediately after we’re done recording.

Mika E. 00:02:18 Oh yeah. Yeah, I always promote myself.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:21 I love it.

Ryan McCue 00:02:24 Thanks. Hi, I’m Ryan McCue. I think, people might know me from working on the WordPress rest API, which was merged into WordPress a little while ago, but I have been contributing to and working with WordPress for almost 20 years. At this point, I think my.org profile was created 2006 or something like that, but I’d been using it a little longer than that. Aside from the rest API, I also built the Request Library, which sends every HTTP request out from your WordPress install. I used to be the maintainer of Simple Pie, which was the RSS and atom feed reader. Worked on the Importer I helped build developer.WordPress.org. I am a member of the security team. I have done many things in, in WordPress contribution over the many years that I’ve been involved. And in my day to day job, I am the director of product at Human Made. So we are an enterprise WordPress services agency. We do agency work and also enterprise hosting. And I run the hosting division, which is, Altas Cloud. So, every day, having to deal with making sure that WordPress can, can scale up to do, you know, hundreds of millions and billions of views. So, it’s, sometimes stressful. Thankfully, we aren’t on Google Cloud, so or Cloudflare, so.

Mika E. 00:03:45 It wasn’t my choice. Yeah, actually, that’s not true it was my choice. I did the breakdown of what would cost us less and what would be more stable in Google one. I should have mentioned I used to run the WordPress plugin review team for. A long time.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:00 I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure if we were avoiding that altogether.

Mika E. 00:04:03 No, it’s not that I forgot, it’s that I retired from it. So it’s like I don’t do it anymore. But I did do it and I probably reviewed somewhere around 60,000 plugins.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:13 I think you reviewed mine because you reached out to me and said, we’re only going to approve this if you promise to keep it updated.

Mika E. 00:04:19 Oh, that’s true. I do remember that one because we were having a I swear this had a purpose. We were having a bunch of people submitting the exact same kind of plugins, and they weren’t keeping them updated. I’m like, okay, I know Michelle, I trust her, but I have to keep it updated.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:33 Yeah, I change the colors sometimes.

Mika E.: That’s fine.

Michelle Frechette: And add new text to it so it keeps updated. It doesn’t look like it’s been, you know, abandoned anyway, so I promise to keep the puns to a minimum. However, I’m going to start by saying it’s fair to say that you aren’t slackers. Oh, see what I did there?

Carrie Dils 00:04:53 Wow, but we’re in Slack. Does that make us slackers?

Mika E.: We don’t have a group Slack yet so.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:01 I guess we’ll have to. We’ll have to give that some thought, Carrie. For sure.

Carrie Dils 00:05:04 That’s fair.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:06 That’s fair. Oh, yeah. It’s like a lot of words you can substitute in there. There. So it just kind of happens. What drew you to be involved in developing FAIR? And somebody could tell us what the F-A-I-R stands for when they, when they first talk about this too. How did you actually become attached to the project? Because I knew that something we could feel the grumblings but literally had no idea who was involved. So much so that on that Friday night I’m chatting with Carrie at the beginning. I say to her, have you so what? Have you been busy? What’s been going on in your life? She’s like, oh, not much. And then they’re like, and the people who are involved come forward. I’m like, that liar.

Mika E. 00:05:48 Good job. Carrie, the check is in the mail.

Carrie Dils 00:05:52 Sorry Michelle.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:53 No, it’s all good. It was. I was just like, wow, she can keep a secret, man. But yeah. So how did you become attached to it? And what drew you to be involved in the first place? And I’ll we’ll just pop

Mika E.: Ryan should go first.

Michelle Frechette: Okay. Ryan, over to you.

Ryan McCue 00:06:08 Okay. Okay. You volunteered me.

Mika E. 00:06:10 I volun-told you.

Ryan McCue 00:06:12 So I think, like very many people in the community, like many of the contributors, I think, you know, had been following the situation from the announcement at WordCamp US and the events that kind of followed from that. And, you know, as part of that, I, I, you know, I kind of looked into, you know, what is actually the, the kind of reasoning behind some of these things and etc.. And I decided to write a blog post or two, about that in which I said, look, I think, I think that there are a lot of good points made around the ways in which you contribute back to open source and the things that we owe to the software and the community that we use. But I think that this is the wrong way to go about it. and then I found myself blocked from wordpress.org. I never received any information about why. So we’ll never know if those two were related at all. Maybe I’ll find out someday. But, you know, contributing to WordPress is part of my job, right? You know, I, people that report to me who contribute to WordPress. We are, you know, one of the largest contributors historically Human Made. as contributors. So, you know, it really got in the way of me being able to do work. And, you know, I think a lot of contributors were worried about the events that happened. So, you know, a lot of kind of ad hoc discussions kind of started, where we all, you know, started chatting to each other and, you know, it was very difficult to work out who, who can you actually chat to? You know, who can you trust? And, you know, particularly with, with people kind of getting blocked left, right and center. It was it was very much a, you know, there’s these people that I really trust and there’s these people who I think I trust, but I like I can’t be 100% certain. And so we ended up bringing together a group of about 20 of us, that created the letter that we published in the repository, about, you know, here’s how, as contributors, we’re feeling, and the things that we’re asking for in terms of how the WordPress community should change, I think just after we had published that, Joost and Karim published, their posts calling for, you know, very similar kind of changes. And from that, we kind of all started talking together as, as kind of the group of groups I think is, how certainly Karim has phrased it. And so that’s kind of how I joined into the FAIR project. And, you know, how how we started kind of creating things, was was really that kind of merging of the groups together.

Michelle Frechette 00:08:46 Mika, is there a secret handshake in this group?

Mika E. 00:08:51 I’m not allowed to do secret handshakes anymore after having stitches in my hand.

Michelle Frechette 00:08:56 So tell us how you were drawn to the project and how you became attached.

Mika E. 00:08:59 So after the letter goes live and after the debacle with what went on with plug-ins. It was really awkward for me in a lot of places because people would be like, well, if you were still in charge of the plug-in director, what would you have done in this situation? And I always say, I’d like to say that I would have quit in solidarity with this is not something I condone, taking someone’s plug-in away from them. but I don’t know for sure. And, you know, that’s for me and my therapist to continue talking about for the rest of my life, I think. But, you know, while all that’s going on, I’m an opinionated me, and I’m like, I don’t think these things are okay. I don’t like what’s going on. And I was slightly vocal at the same time. I had recently been laid off. So I’m looking for a job, so I’m kind of keeping myself a little bit more on the down low. I got, the I got a job and then a couple of days later, someone who was on that letter reached out to me and said, hey, we’re doing this thing. Are you interested? And I’m like, you know what, yeah, I am. Because I love WordPress. I, it let me change my life. It let me change my career direction. I’ve made some amazing friends, some of the best friends in my life. I’ve learned so much about development and working with people from so many different countries, and how to make things for people that they’ll use. And I’m not talking about like developers, I’m talking about end users. Like, I’m I really care about helping end users be able to do the things that they want to do more easily without having to pay a bajillion dollars to companies like Ryan’s. No, I’m just teasing him. But in order to do that, I had been firsthand watching how the plug-in directory, which has perfectly reasonable guidelines for what it is, is actually now at the point where it’s starting to stifle what innovation can be.

Mika E. 00:10:58 And this is not to slight the hard work that goes on in the plugin review team. Those, the folks that have taken up the mantle after me are incredible and amazing, and I praise them every chance I get. I will not hear horrible things said about them because I know how hard that job is. But it doesn’t fit everything. There’s nothing that fits everything. There’s a reason that you know your your Mac laptop. You can still download things from other servers and install them because not everything fits in the App Store. Not everything’s going to ever fit on WordPress.org hosting. It just isn’t. And that’s okay. But there has to be a better way to help grow that. Because right now, to tell an end user, go to this website, download this thing, log into your website, upload this thing and hope that it all keeps working. That’s not a great experience and we can do better. And we can expand and we can grow and we can all together make something better. So when I stepped in and I saw what Ryan had written, I was like, I can work with this, this, this matches something that I’ve been thinking about for the last decade, basically, and that I’ve been refining for six years as a 40 page document, which I showed everybody this week.

Mika E. 00:12:14 You know, I, I care deeply about WordPress getting to grow. And I want it to keep growing. And this is the way I saw of, we can go forward, we can go further. How far can we go once we start unshackling ourselves from believing there’s only one place to install. And, you know, I really hope that that, you know, we get a few dedicated servers and directories like WordPress.org that are like, this is a great safe place to install from. But also then this is my personal company’s directory. You can install all of my things from here. Just have a license key and that’s awesome.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:52 Yeah, absolutely. Carrie, same question to you.

Carrie Dils 00:12:57 What was the question? No, I’m just kidding. I was, I was not part of that contributor, anonymous contributor group that Ryan mentioned, but was involved in a different group. At that point in time that Karim had introduced me to and wanted me in the room as a representative of community and community interest and community has always sort of been the perspective that I’ve come to WordPress with. I’ve never contributed a line of code to core, but I’ve done many things over the years to support the adoption of WordPress and the health of the community. And after, You know, I don’t, won’t rehash. But just after WordCamp US and all the things that followed, I was just literally watching the community splinter and fracture. And so the, the opportunity kind of became when this group of groups started talking and I was introduced to some of these contributors that were part of that letter. And there was the opportunity to talk with these incredibly smart people. Some of them are on this call. And that was like eye opening that, oh my gosh, there is like, we’re not stuck. We don’t have to fork. There is something that we can do in the context of this current environment that can move WordPress forward and out of, this really ugly spot we found ourselves in. So it was exciting to me to get to be a part of it from from that perspective.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:39 Awesome. I do want to know at some point how you all kept it under wraps. So, so well. But before we get to there, because I have a lot of questions and.

Mika E. 00:14:48 Honestly we just just asked everybody to keep it quiet.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:50 And they did. And they did the that’s the hard part. Like I arrived to WordCamp Europe and and the first person I saw said, we’re going to be in Poland next year. And like, we’re not supposed to know that till the very last part. It’s like it was already being talked about. So I know how hard it can be to keep things under wraps. But I also know that this people’s like livelihoods are dependent on this and that there are people who are still attached to it who choose to remain anonymous because of that. And I respect that 100% for sure. What we didn’t do yet is talk about what is the FAIR plan. So, Mika, can you walk us through that a little bit? Because believe it or not, there’s probably people who will tune in to hear and go, what are they talking about? So.

Mika E. 00:15:27 Right. So hey, if you have no idea what we’re talking about and like, why are these three talking heads talking to Michelle about something FAIR. The concept behind. FAIR is, what did we say? Free and independent repositories. Is that what we say?

Ryan McCue 00:15:42 Federated.

Carrie Dils: Federated.

Mika E. 00:15:42 Federated, Federated and Independent Repositories. I will admit this is a back-ronym. We came up with the acronym after. It just fit so nicely. The idea behind FAIR is that instead of having a single resource for everything that is WordPress, by which I mean WordPress.org and its myriad servers that are all on WordPress.org services, instead of using just that to install for everybody. We have a what’s called a defederated, well, a federated group of servers, which is basically a bunch of different servers. If you’re familiar with Cloudflare, you can think of them as Cloudflare nodes that are all over the place, and you can install from any of them. And the, the, the starting point where we are today with our Minimum Viable Product, or MVP, is a plugin you can install on WordPress or a packaged WordPress install with this included, just like Akismet and hello, Dolly! And you will. Instead of being pointed at WordPress.org for everything, you’ll be pointed at an alternate repository. Right now it’s running on Aspire Press. This alternate repository, our goal is to be able to change it so you can point to whatever repository. So let’s say you’re a web host and you want a very curated list of plugins and themes that your hosting platform installs and supports. Well, now you don’t have to worry about blacklisting and blocking all these things. Just point everybody to your repository. In addition, we folded in a bunch of GDPR and privacy protection for things like tracking, because that is a huge thing. People want to know where their data is going. And so we’ve done things where you can turn off Gravatar because that sends things back. It doesn’t phone home to WordPress.org and give updates. All it does is go to this repository to be able to download your updates and install your plugins and themes. Simple. Easy. Done.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:37 It makes sense when you talk about that. I think of as I don’t I don’t refer to myself as a plugin developer because all I did was for Hello, Dolly..

Mika E.00:17:45 You’re a plugin developer. Congratulations.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:47 Okay so I have ten plus, ten plus active installs. Yes. Right? So for those people who are really into the metrics and are watching those active installs, how does that work between the, the, you know, the the WordPress.org repository and FAIR? And is there a way for them to actually have an idea of how many active installs they have between the two?

Mika E. 00:18:09 Ryan, you want to handle that because I remember what you wrote.

Ryan McCue 00:18:11 Yeah. I, so I think there’s kind of two parts of this. You know, we have the, the kind of mirror system that has really sprung up since September with things like Aspire Press with host specific mirrors, etc.. And I know that there has been a concern around how that will potentially change, how some of those metrics work. The difficulty really is that in a decentralized system of any description, you know, how do you actually have any sort of trust of things like that? How do you design a system where you can’t kind of gain metrics? So for the mirror system, it’s really hard to solve that. And that really is kind of a, you know, the mirrors are kind of a stepping stone towards the fully, you know, decentralized system that we’re aiming for. In the fully decentralized system that we’re looking at. There really isn’t actually a way to solve, at least so far as we’ve seen, to solve, decentralized analytics. So instead, we are planning on running a centralized analytics service that is not mandatory or anything like that. Users will be able to opt out. And it will comply with all privacy regulations, telemetry regulations, as a Linux Foundation Project. We are actually subject to certain restrictions that they place on us in terms of what telemetry we collect. We have to actually have approval from, from the Linux Foundation for the data that we collect. But we’re going to do that in an open way. So whereas right now, WordPress.org, that all collects a load of metrics, not just for plugin installs, you know, things like browse happy that collect, you know, browser information, for example. You know, a lot of that data is opaque, right? You go to WordPress.org and you can see, oh, I have ten plus installs, or I have 10 million plus installs, but what’s that actual number? What’s the actual breakdown of that data? You know, people don’t actually have access to that. And people have been calling for that for a long time. So our intention is to run a analytics service that will be centralized. But because of that, it will be an optional part of the system. Users can opt out if they would like, where the data is collected neutrally and is also given out neutrally. So any vendor will be able to go and view their data.View, you know, basically everything that we have kind of stored on that, it’ll be run with open governance, obviously as part of our kind of governance structure. The plan is for all of that code to be fully open source as well. You could go and run your own if you wanted, but it kind of wouldn’t really work in that regard. And so that’s how kind of playing with the analytics. We know how, you know, crucial those sorts of metrics are not just to the individual developers, but also when doing kind of industry wide analysis. Right? You as a new developer might be looking at, hey, where are there potentially needs in the ecosystem? You know, what are unfulfilled, kind of problems that users have and where could I kind of fit in and, you know, maybe make the next really successful plug in business? So that’s that kind of intention with that. You know, that’s that’s on the roadmap, I would say. It’s not something where we have finalized the design for yet.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:13 Okay. So, I think of the three of you, Mika can probably speak best to the fact that there are bad actors in every community because she’s had some major experiences over the years in that way. So what safeguards are in place to prevent abuse of bad actors in federated repositories like this?

Mika E. 00:21:31 See, this is almost like you notice that I dropped a 40 page document about how to moderate the community. So moderation again, this is our proposed plan. This is not something that we’ve locked down and said this is everything that we’re going to do. And it’s really hard to summarize what is actually 40 pages of checks and balances and guidelines and whatnot. But the ultimate thought came down to this, which is in a federated system where everything is decentralized. You need to rely more on the community as a whole than you do a small group of gatekeepers. So first of all, there are going to be technical requirements in order to be able to useFAIR. Your servers are going to have to meet the requirements of an open API, public and private contact information that can be used. So, you know, if you want to join in. You’re going to have to have these things. Otherwise, what’ll happen is if somebody adds your directory to their WordPress site, it’ll get automatically flagged as uncertified, unverified, whatever term we end up coming up with. So step one is if you don’t meet the technical requirements, you’re going to get flagged. This goes for plugins as well. If your plugin doesn’t have a public license statement it’s going to say cannot confirm this is GPL use at your own risk. The next thing that happens though is you start building in a moderation system that allows people to say, hey, I’m using this plugin, you know, Hello, Donny. And I don’t like it. It’s, it’s Donnie Wahlberg quotes, and I just, you know, sorry, Donnie. Donnie Wahlberg quotes and I don’t like it. And you can report the plugin and it gets reported to where you install the plugin from. And where the plugin was listed. So remember we’re talking about kind of two stages where I’ve got a server with all my plugins and then I’ve got another server that has a list of all the plugins that I can install. So, you know, just like you can have a host can say, I will allow plugins from Human Made from Carrie and from Mika, but not from Joe Smith over there. I don’t like him and that’s fine.

Mika E. 00:23:48 But people then using the plugin and be able to say, well, I’ve used this plugin and it’s got a security issue or it’s not meeting the guidelines and it can report it. It’s reported to the people that are hosting and saying, you can install this. It’s getting reported to the people who provided the code, but it also is something that gets shared back. And here we are back going, going. We’re going to have to have a centralized server. And the centralized server is just a moderation server that collects all these things and randomly goes and checks all the little things you have out there to make sure you’re actually tracking these reports. You’re actually doing what you’re supposed to do with them. And when something gets reported, you know I’ve started baking in logic for things like if 75% of the people who use this plugin as detected by the metrics, we’ve determined, which is like you’ve had the plugin installed, it shows up in your option tables as either installed or recently installed. An automatic flag goes up and says, hey, a lot of people are saying this plugin is bad.

Mika E. 00:24:48 Now you’ve got the information because one of the problems that WordPress has, and this is a legitimate problem, is that there’s really no way to say what’s going on. You know, yeah, we’ve got people that can leave reviews, but as developers constantly point out, anybody can log in and leave a review. There’s no way to verify that they actually use the plugin. People can make multiple accounts and do that. Well, now, if we’re requiring the report to be sent from WordPress, your WordPress admin, it can detect what you’ve got installed. Oh, you’re not actually pointing to this repository. You’re not actually using this plugin. You know what? We appreciate you wanting to contact us, make sure you’ve actually used it yourself and have a point and have verified these things before you send them over. It’ll hopefully mitigate some of that. And the overall moderation tool isn’t there to tell you what you can and can’t do. It’s to tell you what’s going on with everything. So, you know, communication. The one place that WordPress really needs help with. I mean, imagine if all of you can see all of the reviews on your admin dashboard and say, oh, okay. This is a good thing. It’s akin to that, but with a few safeguards built in based on my experiences doing forum support and plugin reviews for 15 years, I try not to think about that.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:12 So you made me think of another question though. Ryan, maybe you can answer this one before I let you jump in with your other answer. Is as I as you were talking about, people being able to give that kind of feedback is also that the support forum is a huge way. Especially on free, you know, plugins and I’m assuming seems to have never actually had to use it for themes, but to be able to get help from the developers who created that. Is there a way for that to happen through FAIR as well?

Ryan McCue 00:26:42 So that’s one of the parts where we are looking at the different ways that this might be handled. And, you know, that is kind of breaking away from the WordPress.org model, where WordPress.org acts as basically kind of this oversight and everything all in one. But the reality is, for a lot of, you know, the more professional software vendors who are, you know, offering plugins, you know, the very big kind of companies, they already have their own support systems, right? And so can we instead just encourage people to use those, get a better support experience out of that. As part of that. Now obviously we have to balance that with, you know, making sure that those privacy safeguards are in place. For example, you know, making sure that things are kept secure, etc.. So, you know, we don’t necessarily want to tackle it the exact same way that WordPress.org has where it’s there’s this big central forum where everybody can kind of talk about things. You know, one of the with a lot of what we’ve designed, we’ve taken inspiration from a lot of the decentralized protocols that already exist.

Ryan McCue 00:27:44 And I think the biggest one by far for that is Bluesky’s, at protocol, which powers their kind of decentralized network. They have put a lot of thought into moderation and how some of these services get built up. And so they have this approach, which they call Stackable Moderation, where you kind of have different moderation services that you can kind of subscribe to. And so we can see a model in that where, you know, we can offer a moderation service. Maybe that’s opinionated, maybe it’s less opinionated. And then you can subscribe to a different, you know, moderation service where you can subscribe to multiple. So, for example, you might subscribe to a moderation service from a security company or something like that, where, you know, they are going to make sure that everything that you’re installing is scanned and verified. You know, maybe there are opportunities for paid services and that sort of thing as well. And so for reviews, for example, we’ve talked a bit about, you know, maybe, maybe this is actually something where we don’t need to create a solution. But actually the community could, you know, is there an opportunity for something like the TripAdvisor for plugins? Where a separate service entirely, one that we don’t run, is actually looking at, you know, handling some of those things. And so we’ll have to decide as we go throughout this, which of these services do we want to build ourselves? Which of them do we want to make sure that there are ways to kind of handle. But actually we’re going to leave that to the community. And that’s a delicate balance as well, right? We need to make sure that we are keeping things secure private. You know, kind of still somewhat controlled while also allowing all the benefits of the decentralization. And, you know, having things go directly from vendors to users, without us being in the middle. So, you know, all of those things are there’s a lot to think about. All of our repositories are open. Our discussions are open. We welcome, you know, feedback and comments from everybody as we go through designing this and working out some of those solutions.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:43 Now, I will say that, that what happened at WordCamp US last year, in the final moments, for example, was a huge catalyst. But projects like this have been talked about and been part of the conversation for quite a long time. So as she takes a sip, I’m going to ask Carrie you my next question is what values and principles are shaping this project’s architecture and governance that are helping us move forward now? If that was a catalyst or not, what is bringing all of that together for? For the FAIR project?

Carrie Dils 00:30:15 That’s a great question. And my colleagues might have differing or things to add, but from my perspective, WordPress serves this massive ecosystem. And actually who’s on the call is really representative of the span of that. So at one end, I’m educating the end user and educating independent developers on how to build a small business around it. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got someone like Ryan who is serving enterprise clients and running WordPress installs that do some really bespoke things and, and bespoke ways, and have a whole different set of concerns than maybe the kinds of installs I’m working on.And then you’ve got someone like Mika, who’s working for a company that’s actually building products on top of it. So you’ve got this, this wide span of people, and each of them have very different concerns, for what comes out of WordPress. And so I think when we’re talking about, some of the principles and the values, it’s taking into consideration all of those things and not just the concerns of one particular commercial entity, or one particular segment of the community, but the, the breadth of that and trying to, create a governance structure that respects the input of all of that, but also has checks and balances to, make sure it’s not weighted too heavily in favor of, one entity over, over another, if that makes sense.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:55 Yeah, it does make a lot of sense. Which also brings me to my next question then. This is not lining anybody’s pockets with, like, none of you are making a ton of money and lining your pockets with cash?

Carrie Dils 00:32:05 Oh girl. If I stood up right now, you would see the dollar bills flooding out of my pockets.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:12 Hahaha! Now, before somebody believes you, correct that statement.

Carrie Dils 00:32:15 No. To date, nobody has made a dime off of this. And I think Karim in his post pointed out that just this, this group that’s actually the 50 or so that have been building, if you were to put a price tag on this, if somebody came to an agency and said, hey, build us this, this would be a high six figure project. Like, it’s been a ton of volunteer hours and efforts and skills that has gone into it. And none of it is, is because we’re making money or getting rich off of it. It’s my motivation and I can only speak to myself, but I think just in conversations, a lot of people share this. What we’re looking for is a future for WordPress. And we are building our livelihoods and have built our livelihoods on WordPress, and we hope to continue doing that. So this investment at this point, while it’s not directly making us anything, hopefully ensures the longevity for the platform that does earn us a living.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:18 So WordPress is global. We know that, this project, just from the vision of who I saw at the front of the room, tends to be fairly North American Eurocentric at this point in time. What kinds of principles, and decisions are you making to make sure that there is representation globally, but also for underrepresented groups ethnically? You know, all the different ways that we think about underrepresentation in WordPress and what are we doing for that within FAIR?

Mika E. 00:33:50 That’s that’s a really tough thing to ask, because you start by saying, well, we’re open for anybody. But the reality is that it’s hard to, to want to jump into something like this and from a minority perspective, it’s actually scarier. It is harder for women to get jobs. Women over 45. It’s terrifying. It is harder for minorities to get jobs, regardless of the industry. And to ask them, hey, come on over here and risk it because we’ve seen how bad things can get. We’ve seen people get, you know, banned and blacklisted from WordPress.org. It’s a big risk and it’s scary. And I suspect that that more than anything right now is sort of, people with the grace of privilege were able to step out and be public. People who were willing to take a huge risk, regardless of the cost, were the ones who were able to step out. And that’s kind of why it is, North American, European centric at the moment is because, well, that’s where.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:02 That’s where for the privilege.

Mika E. 00:35:04 That’s that’s where the privilege is at. But, you know, baked into our code of conduct, baked into our guidelines, baked into everything we’ve written is a place that is intentionally welcoming to people from every aspect of life, every language, every belief system, every sexuality, every gender, every country, every, you know, are you a cat person or a dog person? You’re still welcome. You’re a gecko person? Great. Come on in. You know, provided you can follow our code of conduct. Welcome aboard.

Mika E. 00:35:39 And you know at this point now it’s really we’re just going to have to start reaching out and saying, hey would you like to come over here. And that, you know that’s going to be a concerted effort. But thankfully we’re partnered with people like the WordPress WPCC, which say is running and it is just outstanding community coming together to sponsor community, and tying in with groups like that will actually start bringing in those other groups and minorities who feel that that’s a safer onboarding, perhaps. But I have heard directly from people from minority groups, of which I am a member of a few of them. That they’re scared. And and honestly, I can’t I can’t say they’re wrong to be scared, but they’re worried about their future ability to make a living, and that matters a lot.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:30 Yeah. So that brings me to another question then is, is what kinds of opportunities are there for people to be involved? And can they continue. Like if if I wanted to sign up today or if, you know, some somebody in one of the, let’s say, from Black Press wanted to sign up to help out today.Can they continue to remain anonymous if they participate in this project to protect their, their place in, in any of the communities? And they’re.

Mika E. 00:36:59 Absolutely.100%. We have a few community members who are doing just that. In fact. And, you know, you asked earlier how are we able to keep this a secret? It’s honestly, it’s because we’re all coming from a place of equitable trust that we all understand, even if we are privileged enough to not have to worry about that. None of us are post economic. We all have to worry a little bit about what’s going on. We recognize the risks people are taking. We accept them and we will do whatever we can to protect them. Like if I found out tomorrow that Ryan was leaking private information, I would be, you know, I know Ryan. Sorry, I just picked on you because that’s it.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:39 Ryan. You’re done.

Mika E. 00:37:41 This is what happens when you wear red. My eyes go over there and I’m like. Oh, it’s a red flag.

Ryan McCue 00:37:46 literally. Literally. Look, I’m in Europe anyway, so you could just report me under GDPR, so.

Mika E00:37:52 I could. And honestly, I would.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:55 Much easier.

Mika E. 00:37:56 I mean, you know, from my personal experiences, I take privacy super seriously. I take the requirement of anonymity in specific roles. Very seriously. I wish there were things we didn’t need. But you know, the truth is, bunch of people be wild out there. You got to protect. You’ve got to protect your community. And that means from the top down, that means everybody who contributes, everybody who comments, everybody who uses FAIR and WordPress have to be protected. And I that that’s like a lot of that is my driving motivation for why I want to do this. I want to make a place that is safe for people to install and run and make a living. Safely.

Michelle Frechette 00:38:43 Now, Mika, you said something. I’m going to oh go ahead.

Ryan McCue 00:38:49 So I’m just going to say being kind of part of the Linux Foundation as well. You know, there’s a wealth of programs that we can kind of, you know, join into. And, you know, we are only just starting to explore what that looks like. You know, I’m really excited to see, you know, something that we wanted to be really clear about when we were doing this project is, you know, WordPress is often quite insular. And actually, there’s a lot of great things that are going on, particularly around diversity and inclusion initiatives in the broader community. How can we be part of those sorts of things and, you know, bring them to there?

Michelle Frechette 00:39:32 I’ve lost Ryan. Oh, there he is.

Ryan McCue 00:39:34 So you know, I’m interested to see make use of some of those.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:38 Yeah.

Ryan McCue 00:39:39 Hi. I hope I’m back.

Mika E. 00:39:40 Ryan, maybe you should turn off some of those Docker images.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:45 I got. We got a little bit of lag.

Ryan McCue All of them. Okay.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:49 So. So, Mika, you said something about top down and that we tend to think of top down as being an organization that is controlled at the top and down. And I know that’s not what you mean. So can you. Can sure. One of you jump in and say, how does how is this governed? Is it a board? How are they elected? Just kind of the brief synopsis of how. Governance happens.

Mika E. 00:40:11 Somehow we made a tech, so we made a technical steering committee. And there was concern at the beginning that people would be like, well, technical. I’m not a technical person like you were saying. I’m not a plugin developer. The reality is WordPress is a technical product. At the end of the day. What is it? It’s software. So we have a technical steering committee that is sort of in charge of steering the boat. And the captains currently are me, Carrie, and Ryan. We were nominated for being the chairs. We accepted this position. I’m still trying to remember why. No, I actually had a long talk. And this, is this is for people who are wondering, like, how seriously are we taking this? I sat down and talked to my therapist and my wife before I said yes. Like when the nomination started going out, I said, there’s a real good chance I might get nominated. And do I want to do this? And my therapist for years has been informing me she will drop me as a client if I was to try to lead a WordPress release. So this involved a lot of talk and a lot of talk about what are we doing? We’re not trying to lead a WordPress release. We’re trying to make sure that all the groups that need to happen, like we call them Working Groups, WordPress folks are more familiar with them as Make Groups. That’s right. The equivalency is about the same. But like, appointing them, like, like we have a technical independence group that Ryan is, particularly steering, which is going to, you know, get us away from WordPress.org and they’ve released their MVP plugin and, that’s great. And then then the next steps are we got to build the protocol. We’ve got to build the servers. We’ve got to build all this stuff. That’s one working group. We had one that was working on getting the initial documentation done. We’re probably going to have to spin up another one for ongoing things like that. We’re going to need one for all sorts of aspects of this. And our job is to get those things rolling. We also have a board, but the board doesn’t get to decide what we do, per se. It’s I think I called it a Parliamentary Democracy, where we’ve got a House of Lords and a House of Commons. We’ve got a Senate in a. And a House, theoretically. And we’ve got, you know, I guess arguably we’re the Supreme Court in a very weird way. Because we get to, you know, decide.

Ryan McCue 00:42:35 The metaphor might break down a bit if you.

Speaker 5 00:42:37 It does.This metaphor, these don’t really last entirely far. But instead of having a single person getting to decide this is the direction that we’re going. We have to decide as a group, and we have to bring it to the board and say, this is what we’re doing and this is why. And if the board doesn’t like us, they can stop funding us.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:56 Right.

Mika E. 00:42:57 We got checks and balances built in. and more of this, as we work to acquire funding because we’re going to need it. You know, more of this will be coming to light, but it’s difficult to speak of something that doesn’t quite exist yet.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:12 Yeah, I can understand that. Carrie

Mika E. 00:43:15 Carrie, I know has an explanation that also helps this.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:20 Well, I was going to ask Carrie if, if you looked at other federated type projects like, Mastodon, Drupal, things like that. As far as how you built the governance here, did you look at other similar projects so that you didn’t have to kind of invent the wheel?

Carrie Dils 00:43:35 Absolutely. And I want to give a huge shout out to Courtney Robertson, who’s part of our Technical Steering Committee, and she has broad, exposure to many open source projects and did a great job of kind of collating what some of those different governance models look like and presenting those to us. I come from, WordPress is the only open source project I’ve ever worked with. So, my perspective, I mean, my perspective was shaped entirely by WordPress. So it Courtney helping bring some, some things to light and then also just being part of the Linux Foundation and looking at other open source projects that they, that they house. We reviewed many of those and looked at what’s the we know what we, just to be blunt, we know what we don’t want. We don’t want to BDFL so what is a governance structure that does involve these checks and balances that we talked about. And we came up with one and it’s not unique. These are you know, these are governance models that have served other open source projects. What we did do is, work with the Linux Foundation to make sure that it was WordPress flavored. So making sure that, for example, Mika mentioned earlier, you hear Technical Steering Committee and you think, well, I’m not technical, how do I contribute to this? So in our charter, we specifically deviated from a Linux Foundation norm, to say that you can contribute. These are all the sorts of contributions you can make to this technical project. And all of those are technical in nature. So I think there was definitely a leaning on what are some best practices from other projects out there. And then how do we customize this to, to fit, what, what we want as a group.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:36 That makes sense. We’re closing in an hour, so I do want to wrap things up. I know we could talk all day about this. But, Ryan, I’m going to ask you this next question is, what would you say to developers who might be hesitant to adopt FAir because they perceive potential conflicts with WordPress policies?

Ryan McCue 00:45:55 Yeah, it’s a good question. You know, I think that we are going to see some hesitancy of people kind of adopting this. But, you know, ultimately we don’t see this as being, you know, this is not a break away, you know, from what WordPress is. This is a continuation. And this is bringing together the community. You know, the way that I’ve phrased it is kind of the community is actually already a bit splintered, both organizationally with the way that, you know, particularly events since September, but just in general as well. And also, technically, we already have plugins that are distributed outside of .org. And so we see this as a way to stitch things back together on both sides. So, you know, we definitely think that we can kind of coexist with WordPress.org. We would love WordPress.org to be part of the protocol and to join into that network. And we’d love for, you know, Automattic and Matt to, you know, support the project as well. You know, in terms of kind of direct conflicts or anything, we’re trying to design things so that there are as few of those as possible. So for developers to opt in to using FAIR in their plugin or theme, they’ll add a single kind of header and that’s it. That’s all they have to do. So they can continue distributing via wordpress.org, as well as still opting into the FAIR system. And that applies for, distributing, you know, people who are using things like GitHub data, for example, or using EDD, they will be able to add a single header, opt in to the FAIR system, but still have those fallbacks. So, you know, we are trying to make sure as much as possible that these things are compatible with, you know, kind of coexistence, cooperation, but, you know, giving users that kind of better user experience, the better security, you know, the better privacy, things like that. You know, when it’s available and opting in.

Michelle Frechette 00:47:41 One of the questions that I’ve heard people say is there’s like there’s like almost like two, even before FAIR. Right? That there’s like two ecosystems. There’s the free through the repo and then there’s all these, premium plugins. And is there an opportunity through FAIR to include premium plugins that wouldn’t necessarily be part of the repo? And everybody’s nodding. So who wants to take that question.

Mika E. 00:48:03 That’s that’s that’s that’s my hill to die on. Yay. So I mentioned in passing that there are two different types of servers. There’s the server that basically acts as a directory and lists everything, and there’s the server that has all the actual code. So we’ve got these two servers. And let’s say I run a listing one. And I actually say I really love Awesome Motiv, I work here, I want to for my clients. I love Human Made as well. For my clients, I want to automatically include all of their premium plugins. They’ll have to put in their own keys and licenses, but I can connect directly to Awesome Motiv and have it be installable. Now I don’t have to send people to a bunch of different websites. As a company, I would be able to say, if you want to buy our license, here’s a license that’ll give you access to everything. Install this on your server, just paste in this line and automatically you have access. This is pie in the sky, by the way. I don’t actually have a paste in the URL and have access to everything yet, but this is like how I envision a nice world. And then going even further, we can say that like from FAIR’s point of view, we’re not going to be policing the GPL because we can’t. write.

Michelle Frechette00:49:19 Right.

Mika E. 00:49:20 It is a categorical impossibility to vet every single repository in the universe. It’s just that that is unsustainable. So instead, we’ve got our checks and balances, our little moderation and flagging system. That’s going to say this doesn’t say it’s GPL, can’t promise it’s okay for you to use it. But also by not locking ourselves into that, we’re able to say, hey, hey Drupal, are you interested in using this? You can. So, you know, we’re we’re we’re kind of building it out in what Ryan and I have been calling agnostic, which is we don’t care what CMS you use. The concepts that we’re building are beyond just WordPress. This is something that we’re hoping other CMS tools, especially ones that don’t have a way to install extensions and add ons. MediaWiki I am looking at you because manually FTP is just such a pain. I’ve been involved in a lot of different projects. Open source. They’re not all as good as WordPress with installations. In fact, most of them aren’t. But could a company deploy all of their own things and make them discoverable so that when I go to my WP admin and I’m like, you know, I’m looking for a, an alternate search plugin and I can type it in and it’s going to check the trusted directories that I’ve listed and it’s going to say, oh, hey, did you know Awesome Motiv has this, blue, blue tooth. And I was trying Bluehost has this, DreamHost has this, GoDaddy has this. You could use these and it finds them all. And it says, but this one’s going to cost you money. This one’s free. This one’s free to try. And, you know, suddenly you have all that information there. And you can do it from inside WordPress.org or your WordPress install, instead of having to go to Google or having to go to DuckDuckGo or whatever you want to use, we’re bringing it in and we’re making it easier for the users and the developers. Now, you don’t have to worry about spamming WP Admin to say, hey, check out my other products because they’re searchable and they’re findable and they’re listenable. You can even just have a very simple link. You like this, check out the other things we’re doing. Click here and you click and you’re still in WP Admin and.

Mika E. 00:51:34 Shows you the list. And all of a sudden those wonderful features that you get, like these Monster Insights. And I’m picking on this because I work for the company, but I’ve also been looking into it lately. There’s a thing where you can install extensions. You can once you’ve put in your license key, it tells you which ones you can click here and install. And Gravity Forms does the same thing. I don’t have any affiliation with them. I just like them. Yoast SEO does the same thing again. No affiliation. I just like them. You can go in and install add ons from within WP admin. Well, we’re just making that easier for you. We’re making it easier for you to find these things. We’re making it easier for a new company to be discovered. Because instead of having to say, well, I’m a company that’s premium, I have to release a free version and WordPress.org because otherwise no one will find me. This is no longer the case now. Hey, I’ve made this cool thing. Would you list me on your aggregator directory? And, you know, somebody will say, well, I’ve got these policies in place where I accept open submissions, so let me take a look and someone else can say, yeah, I only like to list the things I love. Okay, that’s fair too. We’re giving the freedom to be your own directory, and we’re giving the freedom to make more directories that can talk to each other and share things and have accountability. Because if you use Bluesky, they’ve got this great thing where you can verify yourself by editing your DNS. Imagine doing something like that with a plugin to be able to say, yes, site kit really is owned by Google. Now it is unquestionable. This is the official plugin. I don’t have to ask questions or wonder if they’re trying to trick me, or somebody just using a really dumb name that violates trademarks. I can say, oh, look at that. Their official cool. I can trust them more. And those kinds of fail safes are great for companies because you can say, well, did you see this picture when you installed it? No. Okay. You’ve installed a bad one. Let’s help you. And then you went over a customer and they’re like, hey, I really like these people. They helped me when I was in a bad place. WordPress is, Carrie pointed out, is the community. Without it, without all sides of it, the end users and the developers and the people that are writing core and the people who are building hosting platforms and the people who are making, you know, videos like this. Michelle, writing articles, all of us together is what’s making WordPress great. And we’re just as Ryan said, we’re trying to stitch it all back together. And show the awesome quilt we can make together.

Michelle Frechette 00:54:05 Absolutely. Ryan, I’m going to direct my next question to you. And it wasn’t in the original ones because things are popping up in my head as we go. But there is there has been over the last ten years. You know, I used to think that if it’s on the internet, it’s not really creating a carbon footprint because it’s not spam in my like, actual paper. What does something like FAIR do to a carbon footprint? is it somehow making it better. Are we paying attention to those kinds of things? Can you talk about that for just a brief minute or two?

Ryan McCue 00:54:37 Absolutely. I’m glad that you asked me that question, in fact, because, you know, this is like one of my passions really. So when we were looking around at decentralized protocols, we did have a look at, you know, what is the difference between, say, Mastodon versus something like App Protocol? And, you know, some of the ways in which decentralized protocols work is they’re kind of a mirroring system, right, where you kind of copy everything around. One of the key insights of that protocol was actually, you don’t have to copy things around. You can kind of, you know, reduce that down. And so there’s much less data kind of flowing back and forth. There’s much fewer CPU cycles being burnt on things. So there’s a couple of key ways in which we kind of tackle this in FAIR. One is that we don’t have a full system where, you know, we’re kind of taking mirrors constantly, and servers have to send data that might never be used. You know, to each other and things like that. The second is, that by building in, kind of cryptographic security into the entire protocol, we can safely, kind of cache packages closer to the source where they needed. So our CDN is powered by Fastly. That’s already an improvement over, you know, a site that might not have a CDN at all. But we’re also going to build into the protocol the ability for host to have mirror and caches inside their own data centers, where, you know, if this is a common package that people are installing. You know, maybe a jetpack or something like that or even need to leave the data, right? Right now, still having the same safety guarantees and being sure that this package hasn’t been altered. We can now guarantee that, we can build on those pillars of trust. You know, like the things that Mika mentioned, things like domain verification etc. and we can really help users understand this is exactly the same thing. This is what the vendor wants you to receive. And in doing so, reduce the amount of internet traffic that’s going back and forth across the world. You know, so I think, you know, we’re making some big strides forward in that regard. You know, it’s possible to do those things today, but it’s very difficult to do them in a secure way. And so by marrying those two together.

Michelle Frechette 00:57:00 So before I let you all go and thank you for that answer, I do want to know what I see needs. Right? So you do need people to be participating in this? Is there isn’t a website, website yet? At least that wasn’t as of last week. It points to a GitHub repository. I assume that you’re going to need marketing people. You’re going to need documentation people. You’re going to continue to need developers. What do you see in, like, let’s say, the next six months as to how people can get involved? How do they, if they go to the GitHub repository, is there a way for them to say, hey, I want to help? And how are you looking at some of the film forming some of those teams that might not be formed yet to help, not just create the, you know, the project itself, but tell people about it and document it well.

Mika E. 00:57:49 Carrie want to take that one.

Carrie Dils 00:57:52 Yeah, sure. So right now we’re, everything is taking place in what’s called GitHub Discussions. So if you go to that repository, click on the tab that says Discussions. Anybody could start a discussion. And we have several different labels on there like ideas or general. And so anybody is welcome to do that. We also have a thread called Introduce Yourself. So if somebody just wants to come literally introduce themselves and say that they’re interested in being a part of this, that’s a great starting point. There are already discussions coming up already, and Ryan and Mika probably speak to this on the on the technical repositories request coming in, pull requests. On the documentation side, we’ve got some movement there. We have discussions starting absolutely on the marketing and the website end of things. We haven’t formed any new working groups. I don’t know why I quoted that. But we we haven’t formed any.

Mika E. 00:58:52 Work is subjective.

Carrie Dils 00:58:55 Since, since the announcement last week. But I think that’s certainly on the horizon as we identify sort of the scope of, of, of needs. Because you’re right, Michelle, there is a lot to tackle. I don’t know, Ryan or Mika, if you want to add to that.

Mika E. 00:59:09 I mean, there’s needs and then there’s also us trying to define, okay, these are the needs, these are the wants, and these are the people we have who are willing to help us. Where can we fit people in best? Because like for example, you say, I’m not a plugin developer. I challenged that thought you wrote a plugin. Congratulations, you’re a plugin developer. You’re now a technical person. But like, if you wanted to say I want to just write documentation, okay, we’re going to see what kind of people want to write documentation first. We’ll just have them doing, you know, pull requests or just bringing up issues saying, hey, this is unclear. I think it could be better like this. And letting someone who’s more familiar with GitHub, you know, write the pull request and do all the coding, and that’s fine too. But then as we see more and more that we’ll be able to go, okay, these are the people we should say, hey, we’re going to be making a working group that handles the documentation of how to install plugins. Let’s just say, I mean, we all know how to do that. But, you know, maybe we need a better directions. Great. We’ll make a working group for that. Would you like to be in on it? And we’re kind of at the stage we’re collecting. Okay, I’ve got a designer, I’ve got a writer, I’ve got someone who’s really good at writing hosting setups. I’ve got somebody who’s really good at write at how to already call other systems and pull things in. You know, oh, you’re an expert on this. Great. And we’re just sort of slotting people in and then build the working group based on who do we have? And what is most important? So a lot of needs and wants. I went to a high school that like very specifically focused on understanding the difference between your needs and your wants. You need to take a shower every day. This was something that you had to teach the freshman boys. They didn’t believe you. You need to take a shower every day. You want to take a shower with hot water. You have to take a shower with hot water. It’s just a little bit more convenient.And it works better.

Michelle Frechette 01:01:08 It’s more pleasurable. Sure.

Mika E. 01:01:10 Right. We made fires to heat the water, to be able to have hot showers. Because it was a want, not a need.

Michelle Frechette 01:01:17 That makes sense. Yeah.

Mika E. 01:01:18 You know, I will say that they broke down on that when they were like, food has to be good because if it’s not good food, you’re just going to be miserable. And that’s and that was fair.

Michelle Frechette 01:01:26 But like let’s you can survive as a miserable person. There are plenty people who do it.

Mika E. 01:01:31 Like we didn’t. We don’t have, we didn’t have heating in the dorm in, in your cabins. And they were cabins. You wanted to have a warmer cabin. Congratulations. You chopped the wood and made a fire and warmed up your cabin. But because of that, I. That’s why I was, like, so pedantic when we were on the MVP. I’m like, that’s great. We’ll do it later. That’s great. Let’s make a ticket for this later. Because the need was the MVP and the want is things like, oh we could put in a doing it wrong here. We could go extra mile and do this okay. Let’s stub that out and pin it in the board for later. We need this. And so right now we’re collecting the need and the army.

Ryan McCue 01:02:08 Yeah. And now that we’re kind of transitioned to working in the open working with the community, we’re starting to pick up a lot of those. So one other way that people can also get involved is that we have regular meetings as well which are open to everybody to join. All you need to do is create a Linux Foundation open profile account. We post the agendas for those on the organization discussions on GitHub. You’re welcome to contribute to that agenda. And, join into the calls whether just to listen in. See what’s kind of happening and keep your finger on the pulse or, you know, whether you want to start contributing. So that’s also a great place to kind of dive in and see, you know, what exactly is happening and, how do I help out?

Michelle Frechette 01:02:52 Excellent. Well, I want to thank you all for meeting with me today and helping us get some more information out about the FAIR plan and what’s happening with it and how people can view it and also become involved if they want to. I’d love to have you all back in, like, six months, eight months, something like that, where we can talk about where the needle has moved to. And I think, I think we’re going to see things happen pretty quickly as far as the documentation, the marketing, all of those things. So we can talk again about how it’s going. So hopefully we can find, I can’t believe how quickly we were all able to come up with the same time today to record I. The stars aligned. Let’s see if they can do that again. And you know and.

Mika E. 01:03:29 Until then go to fair.pm which will redirect you to our git repository for now. and take a look. Install the plugin. If it has a problem let us know. We would love to know about that plugin conflicts, theme conflicts, conflicts with, you know, things we haven’t even thought about yet, like somebody brought up on with Classic Press just completely fell out of my mind. But now we’ve got to fix in for that too, because everybody’s welcome.

Michelle Frechette 01:03:55 Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Ryan, Mika, Carrie for spending some time with me today. We will definitely keep watching what’s going on and have you back at a later date just to see how where we’ve come from today till then. So thank you very much. And everybody enjoy your weekend.

Carrie Dils 01:04:11 Thanks, Michelle.

Ryan: Thanks for having us.

Mika E. 01:04:12 Thank you very much.

This article, Post Status Cache Up With Carrie Dils, Mika Epstein, and Ryan McCue, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Your Tech Stack Is Only as Strong as Its Weakest LinkWe build on layers of technology every day. The major internet services outage last Thursday reminded us how easily the dominoes can fall.

In just a few hours, a failure deep inside Google Cloud on June 12 triggered a chain reaction that knocked major parts of the internet offline. Services we use every day (like Gmail, Google Maps, Vimeo, Spotify, Discord, and many others) suddenly went dark. Behind the scenes, many agency platforms, hosting environments, and security layers faltered as one domino toppled into the next.

The failure quickly impacted Cloudflare, where much of their Workers KV system relies on Google as a backend provider. As Cloudflare struggled, more dominoes began to fall, taking down even more services that depend on its platforms.

Cloudflare’s postmortem was candid: while Google Cloud’s failure triggered the outage, Cloudflare’s reliance on that third-party storage exposed a weakness in their architecture. Ironically, they were already in the process of migrating off Google Cloud for Workers KV when the incident hit.

For agencies, the biggest takeaway from last week’s outage is not about a single vendor’s failure: it’s a sobering reminder about how intertwined our infrastructure has become. You may not run on Google Cloud, and you may not use Cloudflare directly. But many of the tools your agency relies on might be quietly dependent on providers you don’t control and may never even think about.

Incidents like this are relatively uncommon, but they expose two uncomfortable questions every agency should wrestle with:

1. Do you actually know which backbone providers your tools, platforms, and hosting partners rely on?
2. When these providers fail, does your client contract clearly state that you are not liable for outages beyond your control?

Last week’s incident is a fresh reminder that both answers need to be solid before the next domino falls.

The People Behind FAIR’s Push to Reshape WordPress In case you missed it, FAIR launched last week as a new initiative to create a more reliable and decentralized supply chain for WordPress (read my take in last week’s Agency News). * The Repository has excellent coverage of the people behind FAIR which I recommend that you read. Here’s a quick list of some of the WordPressers who are involved, and it’s encouraging! * Leadership: + Joost de Valk – Founder of Yoast + Karim Marucchi – CEO of Crowd Favorite + Carrie Dils – Co-chair of FAIR Technical Steering Committee (TSC), Developer and Educator + Mika Epstein – Co-chair of TSC, Former Plugin Review Team Lead + Ryan McCue – WP Security Team, Developer of WP REST API, Co-chair of (TSC) * Contributors: + Pascal Birchler – Core Committer, WordPress AI Team Member + Marcus Burnette – Creator of The WP World + Scott Kingsley Clark – Core Contributor, Fields API Creator + Joe Dolson – Core Committer, Accessibility Team + Andy Fragen – Core Contributor, Developer of Plugin Rollbacks + Francesca Marano – Head of Partnerships at Patchstack, Core Team Co-Rep + Siobhan McKeown – Director of Operations at Patchstack + Drew Jaynes – Core Committer + Courtney Robertson – Open Source Developer Advocate at GoDaddy + Sarah Savage – Founder of AspirePress + Sam Sidler – Core Contributor + Colin Stewart – Core Committer, Maintainer of Upgrade/Install and Filesystem API + Brent Toderash – Project Manager at AspirePress + Timi Wahalahti* – WordPress Community Team Program Manager

PHPVitals Puts PHP Performance Monitoring Inside WordPress (for Free!)* PHPVitals is a new WordPress plugin that surfaces PHP performance data directly inside the WordPress admin. * Developed by Quintin Russ, Technical Director at MyHost, PHPVitals was first introduced during his presentation at WordCamp Brisbane on June 15. * As highlighted in MyHost’s event recap, PHPVitals aims to help WordPress professionals detect backend issues that typical frontend performance tools often miss. * It includes a 29-point benchmark that measures the performance of various PHP operations and features and provides a letter grade at the end. * A benchmark history is saved so you can see any performance changes over time. * PHPVitals is available now in the WordPress plugin repository.

Worth a Look * Alt Ctrl Org released videos from its recent event focused on free speech and governance in Open Source and specifically in the WordPress project. * GitHub leaked White House plans to expand AI across government with a new website and API launching July 4. * Speed Network Online is a project from Michelle Frechette and June Liu to prompt quick, focused conversations and spark real connections, without the small talk or sales pressure. * Apple Liquid Glass is getting a lot of attention in the design world. Here’s a YouTube tut and a CodePen that show how to create the effect on your website. * A fake DeepSeek installer is spreading info-stealing malware that compromises victims’ passwords, crypto wallets, and sensitive data.

This article, Agency News Weekly, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Bartosz Gadomski mentioned his WP Password Policy plugin, aimed at those managing multiple user accounts.

Seth Goldstein released a new Entrepreneur’s Enigma episode with Shane Hicks.

Bud Kraus shared his recent experiment with AI plugin development on Kinsta, encouraging others to try.

Deborah Butler launched a creative “Waiting Room” experiment in Bolt.new, featuring retro terminal vibes, random user messages, and interactive easter eggs.

David Bisset highlighted recent work on the Charitable plugin, including Elementor integrations and new video content on LinkedIn.

Seth Goldstein discussed the growth of the decentralized web in his latest Marketing Junto newsletter.

Steve Burge featured Jacob Donnelly from A Media Operator as a guest on the PublishPress podcast.

Lawrence Ladomery offered commentary on the FAIR initiative’s announcement, contrasting it with WordPress’ PR efforts.

Roger Williams shared a personal post on the role of relationships in sales following conversations at WordCamp Europe.

Ryan Welcher hosted a live workshop on building automated tests with WordPress Playground.

Ronni K. Gothard Christiansen announced AesirX CMP 1.9.0 with an AI Privacy Advisor that helps automate cookie and beacon blocking for WordPress sites.

Jonathan Bossenger streamed a live coding session building an AI-powered Sensei course publishing workflow.

Jeff Chandler shared updates on his work with CivicPress 0.6.0, which includes a redesign and form templates.

Bud Kraus interviewed Stacy L. Carlson on a new episode of Seriously, BUD?.

This article, The Latest from Post Status Members, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Transcript ↓

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, host Michelle Frechette and Darian Lusk share their journey launching and managing the official WordPress.org TikTok account. They discuss overcoming initial nerves, embracing influencer marketing, and collaborating across generations to create daily, authentic, and engaging videos. The duo highlights their creative process, community-driven content, and the importance of spontaneity over corporate polish. They also reveal behind-the-scenes stories from WordCamp events, tease upcoming collaborations, and encourage audience participation, all while emphasizing the fun and connection at the heart of their WordPress TikTok adventure.

Top Takeaways: * TikTok is Being Used to Energize and Expand the WordPress Community: Michelle and Darian are using TikTok as a playful, engaging platform to showcase the global WordPress community. Their content captures behind-the-scenes moments at events like WordCamp Europe and aims to connect with younger, more diverse audiences in an authentic, unscripted way. The vibe is intentionally fun, personal, and accessible—not overly polished or corporate. * Community and Team Collaboration are Key to Real-Time Content Success: The success of the TikTok initiative was made possible by the fast support of the Automattic team across time zones. From helping Michelle access the TikTok account while traveling, to teammates assisting with content ideas, the distributed team model enabled agile, in-the-moment content creation and reinforced the value of strong internal collaboration. * Personal Joy, Humor, and Relationships Fuel the Project: Michelle and Darian’s enthusiasm and personal connection shine throughout the project. Their humor, openness (including joking about stunts and family involvement), and genuine love for the WordPress community create a sense of fun that draws people in. They prioritize joy and connection as central to their content and outreach.

Mentioned In The Show:* TikTok * Automattic * WordPress.org * Adobe Premier * Vid Cap * Cap Cut * WP Community Collective

Sponsor: A2 HostingA2Hosting offers solutions for WordPress and WooCommerce that are both blazing fast and ultra-reliable. WordPress can be easily deployed on ANY web hosting plan from A2: Shared, VPS, or Dedicated. A2 also offers Managed WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting. Take a look at a2hosting.com today!

A2 Hosting You can follow Post Status and our guests on Social Media:* Adam W. Warner (Director Of Field Marketing, GoDaddy) * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

TranscriptMichelle Frechette 00:00:01 We’re live with. I almost said TikTok. With the Post Status Happiness Hour. We’re talking about TikTok today. I’m so excited. I had been sitting on some information for quite a while about the fact that I have a contract to work with the amazing Darian Lusk, who is my guest today. About on TikTok for WordPress.org. And I have to tell you so. So Darian, let’s talk a little bit about how this all went down. I’ll talk from my perspective. You could talk from your perspective. And I’ll tell you all about how scared and nervous I was about all these meetings. I had no idea what was going to happen. I was like, I’m one of those people that says yes and then figures it out afterwards.

Darian Lusk 00:00:48 Well, I, I’m so excited to like, dive into our, you know, our meet cute. I mean sparks flew and it’s.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:57 It’s big hearts for Darian.

Darian Lusk 00:00:59 Big hearts all round. It’s been. We’re about three weeks into having launched the account the at WordPress on TikTok account. Please like subscribe follow. And I just wanted to say, first of all, thank you so much for having me.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:17 Yes. Thank you for joining me.

Darian Lusk 00:01:18 Thank you so much. And I’m just so excited to talk about what we’ve been doing, talk about, you know, maybe give some inspo to other people if they’re looking to get into TikTok a bit and or maybe scared of, you know, what it is, or having their socials taken by, the powers that be or you know, or don’t know where to start. So I’m just so happy to be here. So thank you.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:46 Yeah. It’s my pleasure. So. Okay, so for anybody who doesn’t know Darien. You I don’t remember your official title. I want to say Social Media Manager, but I could be wrong for WordPress at Automattic. And, shortly after I was laid off from my previous position, I get a text message from the amazing Bree McCready, and she says, ‘Hey, I’m wondering if you might be interested in doing some influencer marketing?’ And I was like, okay. First of all, I think it’s funny. They call me an influencer because here I am just sitting in Western New York living my, you know, kitty litter in the background, all the stuff. But I was like, yeah, I’m always open to conversations. Let’s talk. And she set up a meeting with you and me and her. And so we get on a call and I’m like, I don’t know who this person is. I don’t know if he’s judgey. I don’t know if he’s like, but now, like, we’re practically best friends. Like, you know.

Darian Lusk 00:02:39 More than best friends.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:40 Yeah, exactly.

Darian Lusk 00:02:42 We’re so locked in.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:44 I love it, I love it. And we are having so much fun with this. Originally, you all didn’t even know where you were going to put me. You’re like, well, we’ve got several channels. We’re not sure where to position Michelle. And so we decided, I think, well, you all decided, hey, we’re gonna do this for .org which seemed a little bit funny because we’re not necessarily, driving a lot of revenue right through .org, except for peripherals for the community at large for Woo and everybody has their own. But just getting into WordPress for people means getting into our ecosystem, which is good for everybody. I am not a top of funnel person because I have a lot of people already, and so I’m like a mid-funnel person. It’s like, what are we going to do with Michelle now that she said yes, but we have had so many meetings. First of all, we laugh through all of them, which I love. I will say like, I don’t know, I’m a, I’m a Gen Xer. you’re probably like a Z or I don’t know what they call everybody nowadays.

Darian Lusk 00:03:41 But thank you so much. I’m running with the Z. I’m like, yeah, I’m a 33 year old Gen Z. You know, I’ve got my Woo boo boo. I’m like, I’m going to be okay.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:53 So I got we got X and Z and I’m like so you know like I come up with this list. First of all I don’t fit into any of the I don’t organize the way you do. And I’m so grateful you run with the way that I do things. But it was really funny as I come up with all these TikTok ideas, I first of all, sitting and scrolling TikTok at night is not research. I love that I can call it research and not just a time suck, but I come up with all these ideas. And you didn’t say no to any of them. You just said, oh, let’s wait and see how that fits in. Which is like the perfect way to say maybe Michelle. Or like when I would take my daughter shopping and I’d say, oh, I don’t know. Let’s see. And she’s like, let’s see, means no. But we’re having a blast with it. So I’ll step back. You talk a little bit about the whole vision and how you saw this whole thing kind of playing out.

Darian Lusk 00:04:47 Oh, so first of all, great intro. My let see’s are, you know, we’re gonna see. Because I don’t think you’ve ever given me an idea that I wasn’t like, let’s do it.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:59 Right. That’s true.

Darian Lusk 00:05:00 It’s been the best. We just have. Yes anded each other from the jump. And. Yeah, like, you know, I guess you give a little context. I started it Automattic around five months ago, and. Yeah. I’m on the sort of cross brand social team running the socials. And, you know, we sort of have this, have this initiative that I’m taking to kind of scale our brands in terms of their short form video presence. You know, it’s the, the, the content we’re all seeing when we’re doomscrolling now. It’s these, you know, grabby videos with the text on screen and the very in vogue. And so, you know, we were talking about what brands to sort of use as like a, you know, statement of presence, sort of a proof of concept. And WordPress came to, you know, was like very seemed very viable. And and Michelle, you were the like the first name floated. Bree, who I work with, was like, we gotta hit up Michelle for this. She’s great. You know, she’s the she’s the mayor of WordPress. And it’s like, and I love how you.

Michelle Frechette 00:06:21 Say I love that you said mayor and not grandmother, thank you very much.

Darian Lusk 00:06:24 Of course. And you know, I love how you are so humble. Just to say you’re not an influencer. Influencer can mean a lot of different things. And I mean, it’s like I’m I’m like me mansplaining. But, to me, you are such a WordPress influencer. You know, I’m looking at the WordCamp socials. It’s like everyone wants their me and Michelle moment. I’m like, Where’s my me and Michele? Moment I’m like, getting FOMO and you know, but it makes so much sense. to have have you sort of like, lead this charge with me and it’s just. Yeah, it’s like you said, it’s been the best. It’s been the best. And, you know, if you guys check out our account, I think, you know, Michelle, you’ve sort of taken this, like, role as content creator, and I’ve sort of taken the role of social media manager and some of the videos. And, you know, I’m really excited for like, that onscreen relationship to develop. I think I think there’s.

Michelle Frechette 00:07:30 We already had the gif versus jif conversation, and we decided it’s a gif so everybody else can just, you know, peace out, because we. know.

Darian Lusk 00:07:37 We helped settle a very much trending topic last weekend. I’m really excited for the storytelling of it all. And, yeah, it’s just been such a fun account to sort of try to scale and kind of run with. And it’s just the best. You know, I, I think that, like, you know, Michelle, you’re so, like WordPress coded and I’m very, TikTok coded, unfortunately. And I think.

Michelle Frechette 00:08:10 You know, it’s a perfect marriage of, you know.

Darian Lusk 00:08:14 It so is because, you know, like, when and so and you can cut me off at any time. I’m a yapper.

Michelle Frechette 00:08:20 Yeah. Well, one thing I was going to say is, you know, so now we’re, we’re I was in Europe. We don’t have each other’s phone number, phone numbers because I was in Europe first we’ve got like we’re WhatsApp each other. Right? And now that I’m home, like my my partner, my boyfriend is like, are you messaging Darian again? Like, yes, we have ideas.

Darian Lusk 00:08:40 I know. Oh my gosh, it’s same deal. My husband’s like, I’m like, you have to see this TikTok live from Michelle. Like, you have to see this. You have to see the content. You know, you have to follow the journey. But I, I have to say, you know, like, as we’re sort of, I think that we’re sort of figuring out, like, what brands we want to pay attention to. I think we’re going to start to scale Tumblr, think like, Woo, that could be, down the pipeline for us to, you know, sort of picking like specific brands. But for WordPress, we’ve really we’ve done something really bold, which is. We’ve done something very bold. It’s never been done before. Which is that we are posting a video every day. And this is something that we’ve stuck to three weeks writing, and we’re pretty mapped. We’re mapped out for for pretty, pretty far in the future. And I have to say to anybody who’s, like, looking to crack TikTok, we could really get like into that, into that, but that this is sort of like part of the playbook. You know, you need to be like really out here. You need to be out here posting. And so that’s been such a fun part of it is just like, we’re really we just like sort of, hit the ground like sprinting. And it’s just been so much fun. We’re just like posting, hitting posts.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:05 And it’s so much fun because like originally when we all sat down together and we were like, talking about WordPress, I’m picturing in my head like, and this is how you do this with WordPress, and this is like, and this is CSS and like these little like educational moments. And I was starting to I don’t want to say panic. Like I was a little sweaty under the collar going, I’m not a developer. Like how am I going to move into this? Like be all like, and I’m not the kind of person that’s just like, so stoic and whatever, all those kinds of things. And when you and I first met after we were like, I signed the contract with all the things, you’re like, we’re going to have fun and we’re going to do TikTok trends. And I was like, what? This is gonna be a blast, right? And so we both come up with ideas, which is really cool. And then like the very first, the very first one I did was just my voice. And it was like an airline attendant, a flight attendant, saying, welcome to the WordPress dashboard. And kind of like walking you through the dashboard as though you were, you know, getting the buckle, your seat belt and stow away your luggage when you’re on a plane. And one person messaged like commented right under it. I know that voice. That’s Michelle. And I was like, ooh, cat’s out of the bag. And then we went into this whole like coming into WordCamp Europe and I loved it. I think it was Friday of WordCamp Europe, like you messaged me and you’re like, hey, we were wondering if you might do some TikTok lives while you’re out there. Would you be open to that? And I’m like, heck yeah, that sounds like a blast. And then I’m like, on my scooter, running through the venue and everything and like you. And let me just say this. That was fun to do it live. But what you have done with the videos that I send you, the way you like, speed up some stuff and how you cut it, like you are a master at editing those features because like it goes zoom, zoom, zoom. And then there’s Bernard from Omniscient, like doing the robot dance, right? And it’s like zoom, zoom, zoom. And then there’s Joost of all like, woo face big and like, you are the perfect editor. This is just a self-love thing.

Darian Lusk 00:12:04 We’re just I know, we’re just we’re just like, with each other up. It’s I love you love to see it. I mean, so.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:11 It’s so much fun. Yeah. I’ll turn it back on this on the screen here in case anybody wants to, take a look. It’s just TikTok at WordPress. And you can just search at WordPress. If you’re in TikTok to be able to see it.

Darian Lusk 00:12:23 You can. And so if anybody’s looking for some actionable advice in terms of what our, just being Michelle like, be like, we’re we’re so locked in. I would say we when we were sort of conceptualizing, like what the account would be. You know, we did do that. We did get centralized. So I think that was good. We sort of, we created like a, you know, sort of, a like a go to market plan and also a sort of a content map for the first month and like the story we wanted to tell.

Darian Lusk 00:13:01 So I will say, like, I, you know, there’s a lot of like us editing and posting on the fly, but there was like a vision. Which I think is a good way to go about, like launching an account is like, what do I want my first month of content to look like? So for us, we were like, let’s have it be like a launch theme where I’d get this because it’s crazy. It’s a wild, wild play on words. But we’re not only launching the account, but Michelle is launching off of the ground, flying to Switzerland. And so it’s really clever stuff. And you know, but so it was really fun and we sort of planned around WordCamp Europe and it’s sort of like, I think that if you start from I’m going to say it, if you start from video one and just scroll like scroll back up, I think it does like tell tells a story.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:52 It starts to tell a story. It really does. And it doesn’t just tell the story of, hey, look, Michelle’s on TikTok, on WordPress. It starts to tell the story of the WordPress community because it really very quickly gets into not just, hey, this is WordCamp Europe and the awesome it is, but the people of WordCamp Europe. And so I don’t, do you remember how many videos I shot asking people like, what was your favorite thing? At least a dozen, maybe more. And the first four of those went up today. And like, I’m tagging people in them and posting it over on, on Twitter as well, or X, whatever we call it, and tagging people there. And unfortunately, TikTok’s not available in every country of the world. So when people are like, oh my God, I can’t see it. I have been downloading them and uploading them, in comments so the people can see them on Twitter as well. And our goal at some point is to, yeah, to share those things out so people can see them, because they’re fun and you see your friends and you see all of this stuff happening. I did not jump in the Rhine, but I got pictures of the Rhine. So if you want to see what old town Basel looks like, you could go and scroll through that as well.

Darian Lusk 00:14:58 Yeah, and I think this is good. I’m like, I’m like. I’m like, let’s teach. Let’s teach from what we’ve done in three weeks. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:07 Right. I was like, we’re so good at this already. We’re such old, old hands.

Darian Lusk 00:15:11 But I, I will say, like, I, I think that for any brand, like, something I really enjoy so far is the balance of, like, top of funnel, sort of like anyone scrolling, like, if this is the first thing you see, you could maybe hopefully enjoy it. But also it also caters to and is sort of cultivating like a bit of the community. And I think that that is like two pronged approach. I think, I think it’s very it works.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:47 It’s very, very, very different from the WordPress.com, TikTok and the Woo accounts. They are very polished, very highly edited, and in a good way. I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing, but they’re like little mini commercials of why you would want to use those brands. This is the this is the cousin to.

Darian Lusk 00:16:09 It’s the unhinged mode. Dark mode, WordPress After dark.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:12 What I love also is like, you know, I’m I’m now like getting emails. I actually sent, you sent you one today that I know you subscribed to as well of. What are the trends like? There’s an email a week from this person who literally follows the trends, tells you what you should what audios you should be using. What kinds of trends are happening. What hashtags. If you’re using hashtags, that kind of stuff. Which makes it just a ton of fun too. But yeah, it’s it’s been it’s been I, I know some of the ones I’ve recorded that we haven’t put out yet and you know which one is my favorite one. You know, it’s the first one I sent you.

Darian Lusk 00:16:48 We have some we have some irons in the fire. I have to say, we have some, like, really good content coming and some series that I think are like some multi-part, sort of, types of content, which I’m really excited for people to see and just some way. But what’s the favorite? Because I, I feel like we, I should be able to read you like know.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:12 That my mind I know it’s it’s the one with the Game of Thrones attached to it.

Darian Lusk 00:17:17 Oh yeah. That is that’s a classic.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:19 And I don’t remember when that one’s coming out because it’s not out yet because we had other things out. I don’t think it’s out yet, but I think that one’s coming up in the next week or two. It is my absolute favorite because it’s like every web designers nightmare. I once logged into a website that I had built for a church, and there were five, five plug ins for the local weather. Okay. And I was like, because the church people had started to use their website, they had admin access, they owned the site, they could do what they want.

And there were five. They were trying to figure out which plugin they liked better, but they didn’t deactivate the others. They didn’t delete the others. Right? So like like there’s five weather plugins for a local business. Now, if you live here, all you have to do is look at the window and you know what the weather is. So does the church even need a weather plugin? I would argue they do not. So so like.

Darian Lusk 00:18:16 This church is like locked in on the weather. They’re like guys, we’re actually AccuWeather AccuWeather sponsored church.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:25 It was crazy. It was like, there’s not a Bible verse plugin on there, but there’s five weather plugins, you know. So yeah, so it kind of plays the one of my favorite one kind of plays into the whole that whole. How many plugins are on this website? Kind of ideas.

Darian Lusk 00:18:40 I, I think that the web dev humor has been, that’s been a really fun itch to scratch for me. An itch you probably didn’t know I had until I got this job, which is so fun. And, I have to say. Like what, what’s so great is like, I feel like I will, like, in the most positive sense, like, check you, Michelle. What? I’m like, oh, no, we should do like this. This is trending now. Like, we should do this this week, but then.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:11 We’ll put off the ones that are otherwise, you know, but like. Yeah, because if it’s trending now let’s let’s bump the other one.

Darian Lusk 00:19:17 Share and future are singing this duet. It’s the, it’s the, Sly and the Family Stone. RIP Sly. You know, different, you know, different strokes. It’s became a meme. And, like, we have, to we have to piggyback off of this meme. We have to trend jack this. And then on the other hand, with you, it’s so great because I’ll, I’ll be like, oh, we need to make, like, a Gutenberg joke. And you’ll be like, no, it’s dated.

Darian Lusk 00:19:46 I’m like, you know what? Love that. Like that. Like, keep me in check. And that’s.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:52 I love. I love how it’s like somebody said on Slack, should we do the pineapple on pizza joke? And everybody else was like, too soon, too soon.

Darian Lusk 00:20:02 We told the line, which I, which I love. And, you know, you touched on something that I think was, I wanted to speak on, you know, believe it or not, I again, I, I just am a yapper. But it’s sort of the polish of a lot of brand accounts, and I think it’s sort of an epidemic, right? Like, I definitely not and I and I don’t think this is like Automattic specific by any means.

Michelle Frechette 00:20:33 And we’re not throwing shade at all.

Darian Lusk 00:20:35 No. Because well, I mean I, I hope those. Well this is what I’ll say. Like, I think that there’s a lot of, brands that are trying to crack TikTok, or short form video and, they go through production hell and it shows. You and by production, how I mean, you can tell that like a million marketing people like, look this over before it went up. And, you know, you’ll see these videos from like Microsoft or Yahoo and it’ll be like somebody like, you know, at their at their standing desk being like, it’s giving EOD or something or they’re like pandering a little bit. And I think that it shows the sort of number of cooks in the kitchen and the sort of brand-ness of it? Like, you can kind of sniff it out, right? You’re like, it’s to me, I’m like, it’s giving brand TikTok. And like, you know, you can just imagine like marketing people being like, oh, can that person do like the giving again? Like, can they do giving one more time? Like, you know, like could you take ten of its giving? And I feel like I’m like really ranting. But the point being, I feel like all the WordPress TikTok is like so not that it’s so like, it’s such a distilled pipeline, like from our ideas to a video going up. And we are so lucky to, like, have that sort of editorial freedom to, like, be able to just create something in post, and I feel like it shines through. And I hope that, like, people resonate with that. I, it doesn’t feel like to me I’m biased, but it doesn’t feel like another, just another brand account. This doesn’t feel like it.

Michelle Frechette 00:22:33 So what’s interesting is when we first like from our first meeting to like our fifth meeting, the first meeting, we were like, have you all seen what Duolingo is doing with their account and how they are hitting all the marks? And they’re like literally like seven days later was like, okay, we’re not going to do what Duolingo is doing. Not with their account but with their product. Right. So that was a product issue that completely killed their account. And then they deleted all.

Darian Lusk 00:23:00 Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:01 And they ended up deleting all their really good videos. Like earlier this year I was like, oh my gosh, I’m texting people. Have you seen the Duolingo thing? Like duos dead. What, like who killed him and then like do a little. Dupa Lipa was like on it, like there was so many people and it was like it like skyrocketed. And then it just it fell just as quickly. So we’re looking to avoid that, of course.

Darian Lusk 00:23:22 Yeah. We, we’re looking to not do that.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:27 Wxactly. We learn from other people’s mistakes.

Darian Lusk 00:23:29 Yeah, we learn from that. We learned from Duolingo. I, I feel like, you know, and I love to talk for a place of authority. I’m like, oh, yeah. Like, take it from us. But I will say, like, I, I feel like the Duolingo gate on TikTok was like a big bubble burst moment of like, I feel like the culture shifted and people were like, we’re like, wait, like these brands like that we think are funny. It’s like it’s giving desperate, like it’s it’s like we we’re like, we need to be smarter than this. And like, you know, I feel like that was a big moment of being like, wait, these videos are kind of corny.

Michelle Frechette 00:24:10 Yeah, well, something between the Nutter Butter account, which is completely unhinged and doesn’t make. It’s like an acid trip, and I’ve never been on acid, but I can only imagine what the movie is described as an acid trip, and Duolingo, like somewhere in between, is our sweet spot. And that’s what we’re looking for, for sure.

Darian Lusk 00:24:29 I think so, and I’ll say, I think it’s it feels authentic and I and I really, I think that that’s like a really and, you know, that might just be me, but I feel like as opposed to a lot of unhinged accounts, I think that we’re able to like it’s not painstaking and there’s not this like, giant review process. And I think that like that allows us to maybe not be giving like Duolingo or, you know, 2.0 or like what a lot of these accounts are doing, but it kind of it’s sort of like it’s definitely becoming like a, a it’s crowded. It’s a crowded landscape. And it is that. I think that’s a that’s a charm of what we’re doing is it’s really just us.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:22 Yeah, sure.

Darian Lusk 00:25:24 And, you know, what you see on screen is what’s happening in the production house. And I think.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:29 Exactly what I love too is that, like, you’re open to ideas. It isn’t like, well, we’ve got the talent, ‘talent’, whatever. We got the we got the person who’s going to do all these things for us, and she’s just going to take direction and we’re going to tell her what to do. And that’s the way it is. So it’s a collaborative effort, a creative, collaborative effort between us and input from the rest of the team as well. But mostly it’s you and me kind of just having a couple meetings a week, coming up with the craziest ideas. And then, and what I love about it is like, I was in Europe all weekend, and so you asked me to do two lives. I did that one was like through the. through the, through the vendor hall, the other one, the other was, a little silly because it was great.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:12 I did the live for, Matt and Mary’s fireside chat into the Q&A, but not I didn’t bring my tripod because I didn’t expect that I was going to have to create that kind of content. So I had to hold my camera, my phone still for an hour and 15 minutes, I think. I think Automattic owes me a massage now, that’s all I’m going to say on that one but.

Darian Lusk 00:26:36 Michelle, we’re culpable. And, you know, I feel terrible about this because it’s an hour. It’s an hour and change.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:43 Right.

Darian Lusk 00:26:44 There. They’re going over. The Q &A is going over.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:48 They went over for like 15 minutes. And I was like, oh, are they done yet?

Darian Lusk 00:26:51 What was your WhatsApp. You’re like, here’s, here’s I did the the live work. Great. You’re like my answer. I’m like, oh, you know, you’re like on the front lines.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:04 I’m gonna have to hit the gym, I guess. I don’t know, I’ve seen seeing questions come up. We’re going to address the questions in a few minutes a day. Dave I know you got a bunch of questions. I promise we’re going to come back to them. But the other thing I wanted to say is I just had the idea to just walk around, well, roll around and put my camera in people’s face and say, tell me your name and what you like best about WordCamp. And the first one was terrible because I forgot my microphone. I wasn’t expecting to do that. And I will say that, Martin Reyes from Modular said, I have a microphone you can use. And so I walked around with her microphone, and that’s why we got such great audio to go with those, like the four that went up today. And I’m excited because they’re not even all in English. Like somebody who said, oh, I don’t speak English so well. I said, so tell me so say it in Italian. Say it in your language, say it in whatever language you want, because these are people I trust not to be like, say, dirty words and things.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:00 Of course, you know, but, but it was so much fun to then send you like 15 videos. I’m like, hey, I got you tons of content, figure out how you want to use it. But they’re all like such positive people talking about some amazing things that happened over the weekend, and also just the WordPress community at large, of course, too. So that was pretty cool.

Darian Lusk 00:28:22 Yeah, those are great. One of those one up today, we’ll have more down the line and I want to can I oh yeah. Let’s let’s go to enough for me.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:30 Let’s I want to say before the question though, can we tease out the one that I surprised you with that you probably fell off your chair. Should we keep that a secret?

Darian Lusk 00:28:39 I was beside myself. Let’s just say we have a, a big. We got the big guns. We have a video coming out tomorrow.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:47 Oh, tomorrow. Okay, good.

Darian Lusk 00:28:48 We have a C suite.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:55 We do.

Darian Lusk 00:28:56 An elite.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:57 Michelle is not afraid to ask. Get in people’s faces and ask for what she wants.

Darian Lusk 00:29:01 We have a great cameo tomorrow on the page, and what I’ll. What I want to say. I want to give you all the flowers. Because, well, first of all, just because of you as a human like you. Right? And it’s like the best. But it’s.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:17 So fun.

Darian Lusk 00:29:17 It’s so fun. And also, like, editorially, editorially, you there’s such good, like, on the fly, like you just crushed WordCamp, right? It’s like I’m, I’m, I’m sitting here and then up goes this post. I’m not breaking that WordCamp Europe 2026 is going to be in Poland. I’m like, that is so smart. Like, that is like what we want this to be like. You want we want this to be like.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:47 I didn’t ask permission. I didn’t tell you what was coming. I just filmed it and put it up in the moment.

Darian Lusk 00:29:52 That’s that’s like I’m like, you know, go off. And that was like so great because it’s like, that’s what I, you know, we want this account to be. It’s like we want it to be irreverent, but, you know, videos, but also like a place where you can, you know, get caught up. And so it’s great. It’s the best.

Michelle Frechette 00:30:14 So, so Dave is in the chat. Dave’s awesome. He’s got a lot of questions and some comments. We’re going to put those up. We have a bunch of people watching. If you also have comments, questions we want to know, I’ll put them up on the screen. We’re going to start walking through some of them I want to say. So Dave’s like ‘I just started going through the TikTok videos. I’ll watch them fully after the stream. After the stream saw the lift off, which I thought was fun.’ And I’m wondering. This is a good question. Also a YouTube shorts doom scroller. I love what we call ourselves doom strollers, but this is this isn’t doom, this is uplift scroller or something. We need a better term. are we going to be uploading these to YouTube as well? Dave wants to know.

Darian Lusk 00:30:53 Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the question. And thank you for your interest and for catching up. Yes. I think that we will be growing to YouTube shorts and hopefully Instagram Reels, either on the main WordPress Instagram or maybe even, like a dark mode offshoot down the line. I think, so watch, so watch this space because I think we’ll definitely because I know we got a comment on Twitter too, that TikTok isn’t available in.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:28 India, for example.

Darian Lusk 00:31:30 Yeah. Yeah. So like, yeah, we want everyone to see our insane, content. So yes.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:36 And not only that, if I, if I talk to anybody listening, if I talk on, on Twitter or any of the social media about a particular one, and I put a link and you can’t see it, just let me know and I will download and upload it to that social platform as well on my personal account, so that you can see those things because they’re pretty fun. Let’s see. Okay. This is great. So Dave wants to know what tools are you using to edit them. And since you’re doing all the editing, I’m just going to finish my tea.

Darian Lusk 00:32:02 Put it to me. I love this question. I will thank you. I love to be, I love to speak on my methodology. So for videos that are not necessarily, I would say as much as you can use Creator Tools. So if you’re making a video for TikTok, take the footage. Always, always shoot vertically. Rule one I would say take the footage, put it right into TikTok and use TikTok to edit it. I would say like, use their title cards, use their music. Because SEO, the SEO of it all likes that. I would say the same goes for Instagram Reels. Take that same footage and do the same treatment, but use Instagram Reels creator tools. That’s a very good way to approach editing. What I use, aside from the apps themselves, I use Premier. We have a nifty captioning, for for closed captions, open captions. We have a tool called Vid Cap. So our our subtitles are look the same for accessibility. And there’s so many very cool editing tools. Now, I would say Cap Cut is great. It gives you a lot of templates that you can play around with and you can get ideas from. And, but I would say it’s great to go right into the app to edit. And it’s also good to have like a standby video editing program because for something that’s a little more like complex, you probably want to like use like a real program.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:50 So are you doing most of the editing on on a phone, like an iPhone app, okay?

Darian Lusk 00:33:55 Oh yeah. If I the WordPress TikTok right now has like 20 drafts and I’m like, if something if I drop this like in water or if like I accidentally like uninstalled I’m gonna like, like we’re gonna be at square one.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:11 I mean, I’m logged into the let’s remember that I’m logged into, so maybe I can save us.

Darian Lusk 00:34:17 We’ll sort that later. But yeah, I’m in the app. I think that’s the best way, at least for TikTok. Just be in the app. Because it, it rewards you for using the editing tools of the app.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:32 Yeah. And, there’s going to be looking at into creating shorts. When you do make sure you send this link Dave so we can take a look at what you’re creating too. I would love, love to see what you come up with. I think it’s I mean, it is a lot of fun. I mean, here we are, like, gushing over the whole thing because we’re having a blast with it. It’s like I was telling people like, not only am I doing this, but I’m getting paid to do this. Like, when’s the last time you get paid to have this much fun? Like, all the jobs I’ve ever had have been fun. Don’t get me wrong. Right. Like, I, I enjoy what I do, but this is a lot. This is another level.

Darian Lusk 00:35:03 It is. I’m sorry to everyone who isn’t doing exactly what we’re doing. It is insanely fun.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:11 It’s so bad that you can’t be us because us are fun.

Darian Lusk 00:35:16 I yeah. You know what? What can you do? You know, we’re just really lucky. Really blessed. But, no, it’s fine. And. But I think that that’s. So it it needs to be fun because. No, but really, it needs to.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:31 Because a social media platform. Yeah.

Darian Lusk 00:35:33 It it is. And I think when it isn’t like it, it shines through in the videos. Right? Like, you see this, you know, and I, I feel like I keep coming back to this, but like, I think that there’s a deluge of brand accounts now. And I think that when it’s, it feels like this was such an ordeal to like, get this if is this was like such a there’s.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:52 Like heavy left. Yeah.

Darian Lusk 00:35:54 Heavy left team like behind. You know it’s like you can feel that. And that’s what I love about what we’re like cooking. Is that it. You can feel kind of how much we love it.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:07 Exactly. I’m having such. And it is it’s so much fun and we’re just having a ton of fun with it. And you know, that said, if people have ideas for us, I want to hear them because, you know, I think if you if you’re like, if you see a trend that you think we would have fun doing, if you have ideas, plays on words, things that we could do that would kind of really play into the WordPress idea, not just TikTok idea, but kind of marriage of the two whisper them in my ear. And I’ll pretend to Darian that that was my idea. No, not really. I’ll be like, oh, someone’s had an idea we can share. But yeah, it’s just it’s a lot of fun. And if you have an opportunity to kind of get on there, I’m going to pull it up again here, get on there and take a look at it. I suggest you do because you you might think it’s silly. That’s fine. You might think I’m silly. That’s fine too. But honestly, we’re just having fun with it. And at the bottom of it, it’s all about the WordPress community. It really, really is, and centered around the software and the open source project that we love so much. Absolutely.

Darian Lusk 00:37:05 I couldn’t have put it better, I don’t think. I mean, I probably would have put it worse. That was it. It really I urge anybody who is like hesitant about the whole the TikTok to just download the app and check us out. And, you know, I think that, it’s, it’s, a great place to. It’s a, it’s a very fun, very non-judgmental, sort of platform. I feel like, by and large, I think that there’s a lot of very fun corners and communities. And you know, I would urge anybody who wants to start their own channel. There’s, you know, there’s ask us for tips. You can message me personally. I can send you some tips that I’ve gathered. There’s a lot of good subreddits, but I think that the best way if you, if you’re on the fence about it, is just to start posting, you know, and all your videos with the hashtag of the name of your channel post every day. It’s not. And and the rest is, it’s the rest is gravy.

Michelle Frechette 00:38:20 I am, I amended the banner. So not only does it say TikTok at WordPress like and comment we want you to like. And I’ve never said that before. Like a comment because that’s what’s the that’s what helps the algorithm. Also, if you like the stuff we’re doing, like and comment it, because that will help us keep doing what we’re doing.

Darian Lusk 00:38:38 Please boost engagement if you have it in your hearts to.

Michelle Frechette 00:38:42 Smash that like button.

Darian Lusk 00:38:44 Please find it in your hearts to smash that like button.

Michelle Frechette 00:38:48 I don’t know.

Darian Lusk 00:38:51 I have such I think that, like, I have such grand plans for this channel. I think we both have, like, this sort of vision of like this, you know, WordPress TikTok universe where, like where. And I think it’s sort of starting to, to happen where it’s like we’re interacting with each other in the comments. When it’s the WordPress handle, it’s usually me.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:13 And when it’s me, it’s me.

Darian Lusk 00:39:15 If you can believe that. And, I know and and we’ll kind of like have we’ll be messaging like commenting and replying to each other, which I think is really fun. And I, I think that, you know, it’s worth the follow because I think we’re going to branch into some longer series, some, more multi-part stuff. We’re definitely gonna, we’re gonna hit WordCamp US like no other.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:42 We’re already starting the planning for that one.

Darian Lusk 00:39:44 I know I’m not going to be behind my screens. I’m going to be on site with you.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:48 I know you’re gonna have to keep up with where you’re wear your sneakers, because my scooter goes really fast.

Darian Lusk 00:39:54 Oh, yeah. It’s. I think we will probably be filming our, the first time that we get to meet in person, so that’ll be a very dramatic moment on the page.

Michelle Frechette 00:40:07 And then. And then somebody will have not had this computer at the phone, and we’ll have to recreate it as though it were happening. I’m kidding. We’ll get it right the first time.

Darian Lusk 00:40:15 I’m. I’m down for, like, six takes of a hug. I mean, you’re.

Michelle Frechette 00:40:19 You’re I mean, I’m good with hugging. Yeah.

Darian Lusk 00:40:22 And I have to say, like, go live. That’s another that’s another tip. Go live. And, Michelle, really, more flowers to you did this just great live. That was. And I didn’t, like, say, this is how you do it. TikTok. I’m not that I know the secret, but of the WordCamp Europe vendor hall. And it’s so it was so, it checked all the boxes for alive because Michelle is going around interacting with each booth, getting hellos from everybody, plugging the handle and like, it’s, it’s like so watchable. And I think that anybody who’s like scrolling and would be like, what’s going on? Who are the like, what are these booths? It was like basically just this great tour. And, we cut it into like a speed, like a supercar. That’s on our page too. And I, I just flowers to you for that because it was like a textbook TikTok live. And. Yeah, so I, I would urge anybody who’s looking to, like, crack the algo to take advantage of the live tools as well. Because the algorithm rewards you for that. And it was like, we got like, like 300 people watched you going around the sponsor hall because it was, it was so entertaining and everyone. And this is why you’re so great for this. One of the many reasons it’s like everyone is like coming to Michelle.

Michelle Frechette 00:41:56 It’s like everybody knows me.

Darian Lusk 00:41:57 Yeah, yeah. Like, it’s it’s like the best. And I feel like you’re, you know, we’re so lucky because not only are you, like, the best to work with, but yeah, everyone’s everyone stands. So like.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:12 Yeah, it was so much fun. It was just so much fun. I love so I posted that that video, the one that you created from that, the whatever you just called it, I can’t remember now. Like, but, the.

Darian Lusk 00:42:24 Like, official terms, I’m like.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:26 Where it’s like it speeds up through and whatever. And then, Bernard, what’s his last name? Meyer. I think, I posted I posted that one to Twitter today. And he said in response. Why am I always dancing? I like, I love it. So people are looking at them, they’re watching them, they’re looking for themselves in the video that, you know, like, hey, see if you see yourself. Somebody commented like, I’m at 21 seconds, you know, kind of thing. And I was like, that’s so fun. Yeah, so much fun.

Darian Lusk 00:42:55 And what do you think? Like, Michelle, do you think we should maybe reveal who’s going to be on our page tomorrow? Because.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:01 I really want to.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:03 I want to talk about how that happened.

Darian Lusk 00:43:05 I think let’s do like, guys like, drumroll, please. Like.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:09 So WordCamp was almost over. The only thing left was the after party. So we had just gotten out of the Q&A with Matt and Mary. We had found out where that we were going to be in Krakow next year. And there was there was only one bathroom in the entire facility of the accessible bathrooms that had a lock on it, because apparently there’s something in Europe that you have to apply for a radar lock so that you can use handicapped accessible bathrooms. And so every time I went to the bathroom until I discovered this one, I’d be like, somebody come guard the door, because I don’t want to feel like somebody’s going to walk in on me every time. So I tell you that because I had to go from like, the top floor all the way to the to the E floor, whatever that means, like below one, all the way to the back corner. And I’m in my scooter and I’m like, I’m going to the bathroom soon because I’ve been holding the camera for an hour and a half and on my way towards that corner, who do I see coming out of this hallway? But Matt Mullenweg and I said, hey, Matt, it’s good to see you. And we chatted for a minute. I told him I was working at Automattic now as a contract. He had no idea. I was like, oh, like I teased him. I’m like, but you signed the document, obviously. But, he signed my contract. But I said, hey, would you be willing to do like a 30 second TikTok video for us? He’s like, well, I’ve never done a TikTok video before. I’m like, just, I’m not going to ask you any questions. Just say what you want to say. Welcome people to our TikTok channel and welcome them to WordPress. And you know, he looked great in a nice sweater on the whole nine yards. And so I just thought, like I started it. I pointed to him and he just went into full on like it was perfect. One take and it was done. And so tomorrow you will all see that. I hope we’re going to pin that to the channel as well. It’s a super awesome like, welcome to our channel video from Matt Mullenweg himself. So so then so then I, I, I go to the bathroom literally. I didn’t tell you this part. Like I go to the bathroom. I locked the door. I’m literally still sitting on my scooter. Like my hands are shaking and I’m like sending it to Darian. And I’m like, please upload right now. Look what I just got. Like, I hadn’t even washed. Like, I haven’t even used the bathroom yet. I’m just in there with the door closed, like telling you. Guess what? I just got uploaded to you. And I think your response was like,OMG, how did you do that?

Darian Lusk 00:45:29 I was, I was fully I was beside myself, I think I said. I think I’m beside myself. I mean, was it something to know about me I was like, I’m matching your energy, right? I’m like, I’m here for it. And I really it made my weekend. I mean, I’m like, I’m running. I rush out of my room like running away. I was like, look, we did, we did it. We got him, we got him, we got Matt, we got we got Matt on main. Like that’s going to be on the grid. Guys. Like we got the big one.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:57 Like he even says he even starts off by saying like, this is my first TikTok video on purpose. Like I don’t even know what that means. But it was.

Darian Lusk 00:46:08 Coded like it was like cryptic. But it’s so great. And I, I mean, Michelle, like, you know, I, I never stopped giving you props like that, that you just, like, have the wherewithal. You just have the, the first all the clout and also the, the, gumption to just be like, hey, like, be that’s so me. And, like, just that is exactly what I want this account to be, which is just like, it’s it’s like, you know, right, right. Direct to exact. We’re giving people what they want. We’re giving the people what they want. They’re like, It’s great. And it’s like, it’s there’s no, like, sound effects, like people, you know, it’s just it’s just from Matt. And so we love to see it. It’s like, yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:46:59 We have to make sure the captions are spelled right so that there are no mistakes on the video at all.

Darian Lusk 00:47:04 And his name are definitely botched it.. It’s definitely wen at the end. My cap tool like did me dirty, yet again.

Michelle Frechette 00:47:16 Always fun.

Darian Lusk 00:47:18 so watch watch this space and yeah, I mean, the long and short of it is we’re, we’re posting daily indefinitely. So any time you check out the page, there’s going to be something.

Michelle Frechette 00:47:32 And it’ll be slightly, slightly unhinged and that’ll be fun.

Darian Lusk 00:47:36 I think so. I think so, and.

Michelle Frechette 00:47:39 It’s just a blast. Absolutely.

Darian Lusk 00:47:42 It’s the best. And now that we got Matt,, I’m like, who’s next?

Michelle Frechette 00:47:45 Like, I know I’m like. I mean, I went to the top first. I don’t know who else we ask now, but we can get Mary on there. She used to work for TikTok.

Darian Lusk 00:47:54 We could definitely get Mary, I think. Yeah, it would be cool. Maybe we could get, like, the Squarespace and Wix guys. Like, maybe we could get all the different CMS’s together at, like, a round, like a red table talk.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:10 Yeah. I don’t think that’s going to happen. But, you know, keep it real. That’s right. It is. I mean, the big thing is it’s just a lot of fun that we are really kind of exposing the community to the community, because if you only work or know your local community. This gives you an opportunity to see a little bit more of the global community, but not like in those really highly edited, you know, videos that you see on YouTube and things like that. And there’s nothing wrong with those. But this lets you see, like, what’s really happening, man on the street kind of stuff, or woman on the street kind of stuff as we go. So that’s what’s a ton of fun with it.

Darian Lusk 00:48:50 Yeah, we are finger on the pulse.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:51 Yeah. I mean, yeah, it helps that I’m slightly unhinged and fearless, of course, but you have a lot of fun with things. I wasn’t going to jump in the Rhine. Apparently, people swim to work in the Rhine. I wasn’t going to do that. But, you know, anything short of that? We’re good.

Darian Lusk 00:49:06 Yeah, you know, I, I think if we, if we hit 10,000 followers, we’ll jump in the Rhine. How about that? If we had 10,000 followers end of year. We will. We’ll book it back to Switzerland. And I at least I’m. And I’m jumping it. So if we hit 10,000 like I’m in.

Michelle Frechette 00:49:28 Yeah. Or or, you know, I live near Niagara Falls. We could go over in a barrel. I’m just saying.

Darian Lusk 00:49:32 We could barrel it. I live by the East River. That’s pretty gross. I’m saying.

Michelle Frechette 00:49:38 Do not do that.

Darian Lusk 00:49:39 The gross river. But if we hit10k EOI East River for for Darian. You have my word.

Michelle Frechette 00:49:47 Do you know what I heard today, Darian, is that, They’re hope they’re starting to pull together a team to do a WordCamp New York City again next year in 2026. So that’s another opportunity for you and me to be in the same space, creating together.

Darian Lusk 00:50:01 Oh my god welcome to my kingdom.

Michelle Frechette 00:50:02 Right? It’ll be awesome.

Darian Lusk 00:50:04 I’m like, I’m like, you know, bring the horse to the water. Whatever they say. Yeah, that would be great. I mean.

Michelle Frechette 00:50:12 So much fun.

Darian Lusk 00:50:13 Yeah. The word camp, the WordCamp factor is like such a nice thing because it allows us to like content capture insects in such a sweet way. And so I think those will definitely be like tent poles of the channel. But aside from that, it’s basically just us, like coming up with.

Michelle Frechette 00:50:33 On the fly. On the fly. Well, and now that we’ve been through one, we can actually plan a little bit better for the next couple. And just kind of refine our process. It’ll still be the same unhinged, fun on the street stuff, but we’ll actually have a plan behind it going, forward.

Darian Lusk 00:50:47 Well, what I will say, like, I think we had a, we had we had concepts of a plan. But what I will say is, you have to be registered. So there’s certain like goal posts to go live. And like, so it’s like be registered as a business or have a thousand followers or just shy right now. I have to say we’re getting we’re climbing. there’s a couple, but otherwise it’s like TikTok won’t let you. I did not realize that we could. Until you were. Until you were in the air. So that was sort of. It was a beautiful Hail Mary of a thing where we we like. Totally. I mean, it’s real.

Michelle Frechette 00:51:33 And what’s beautiful about it, too is that, like, well, you were still sleeping here because I was six hours ahead. Nick Rasmussen was awake in Australia. Australia? Is that where he is? And, no New Zealand, I can’t remember. Now. He’s over in that part of the world, and he and I are talking to get me online, to be able to do the live, because I hadn’t logged into the account yet to make sure that we could do all those things. And so I was getting feedback from around the world from this global team, which made it so much easier to move forward and not be like calling you like, wake up, I need help.

Darian Lusk 00:52:06 No, I, I will. It was amazing. It was like Hanukkah morning. I just woke up to this live and it was like the. So it was two. It was the Matt fireside, which was a physical, journey, for your arms.

Michelle Frechette 00:52:24 I mean, I have made a list of things to bring to WordCamp US already.

Darian Lusk 00:52:27 Yeah, yeah, that one. But but the one that was just the vendor hall was. So I just woke up to, like, Brett McSherry messaged me being like, you have to, like, this was great. And I was like, oh my god, this is I just I’m just like, waking up. I’m like, I’m just like sitting there like my face. I’m like.

Michelle Frechette 00:52:44 Oh, right. It was Brett that Nick. I work with two teams over there. I named the wrong person. Right? Brett. Brett was the one was helping me. Sorry, Brett.

Darian Lusk 00:52:51 No. No, don’t he’ll get over it. But, And I’m just like, this is the best. Like, I all. I just woke up to this, like, amazing content. And so the best.

Michelle Frechette 00:53:03 It was a lot of fun. A lot of fun. Yeah. So just keep your eyes on that channel because you never know. We never know what’s going to come next because we’re still creating it as we go. It’s a little bit like when I was in my MBA program, they used to say this thing and I’ve other people have probably heard it, but I hadn’t. You know, building the plane while we fly it, kind of thing. That’s kind of what we’re doing a little bit at the beginning here. But we’re very quickly finding our groove and having not only just creating what I think is really good content, but having fun doing it, which actually makes things better. If you enjoy what you’re doing, the content reflects that, and I think that makes it even better.

Darian Lusk 00:53:37 Yeah. Well, absolutely. And I think that there’s definitely intention and there’s definitely like a vision. And I think that we have this vision of this hub of community, this hub of entertainment around this CMS and around web building and just around. You know, I, I don’t want to be too broad strokes with it all, but I met ,I met Matt in like my first week. I was so green behind the ears and just I’m wet behind the ears.

Darian Lusk 00:54:08 I’m new. I’m a new magician. Yeah, yeah, I’m a new magician. And I’m doing my two weeks of support rotation and I’m onboarding and all those things, and I, it’s Matt’s birthday and they’re celebrating at the office in New York City, so. I’m like my, my, I should, my, my teammates like, go down there. So I, I meet Matt and I’m like, he’s and I’m basically like, listen, I’m going to, you know, start running some TikToks for us. And I was saying to him, how like the disparity of internet fluency and social media fluency for like Gen Z and lower is, is huge. And I think that like that really resonates with me. Like trying to get Gen Z and younger to like, be interested or like inspired about like UX and UI and WordPress. And I think that it’s like such an opportunity and like we want to meet them where they live, you know. And I know that sounds so like basic to be like. And it’s on TikTok. But, you know, I think it’s a it’s a great way to like, reach new people and entertain the OGs.

Michelle Frechette 00:55:28 And because of this, my 76 year old mother is now following us on TikTok as well because she wants to see what I’m doing. So there you go.

Darian Lusk 00:55:36 We got Mama Frechette in the chat. We were getting a howdy from Matt and we’re getting a hug for mom. And then we’re we’re then we’re viral. I think that’s.

Michelle Frechette 00:55:48 I mean, you know, we’ve pretty much run the gamut. My daughter’s like, whatever, but she’s your age. My daughter’s like, yeah, whatever, Mom, I yeah, whatever. You’re just. She once called me W.P. Madonna. The Purple ambition tour when I had purple hair, because she didn’t believe that people actually knew who I was until she went to WordCamp Europe in Athens with me. Now she believes she still doesn’t care, but whatever. So it’s all fun. It’s all fun. We’re going to wrap this up. It’s been almost an hour. I do want to say next week, join us. I’m going to have a conversation with, Reed and some of the people from the WP Community Collective, which, if you’ve been paying attention. Last year, GoDaddy gave WP Community Collective almost a half $1 million to be able to support different factions of what’s happening in the community, as well as underrepresented speakers. Sponsor, not sponsors. I say that speakers, sponsors, speakers, organizers, and some of the different, things that are happening in the community, like making sure that there’s accessibility, and they funded, they funded Alex Stein from a perspective of looking at WordPress from an accessibility standpoint, it’s getting long. I’m still jetlagged. All the words aren’t coming, but, so so next week will be that that conversation, they were also part of the Fare Plan. and we’re going to be talking about that a little bit too, which came out over the weekend during WordCamp Europe as well. So lots of things happening, but we’ll be talking to WP Community Collective next week.

Darian Lusk 00:57:18 Michelle, we could do another hour and get into the fair stuff if you want.

Michelle Frechette 00:57:21 I mean, let’s wait, let’s wait. But, Darian, thank you so much for joining me here today. It’s always fun when you and I get a chance to chat together. Hang on. While we. So that you and I can have just a word after we stop being live. And to everybody in the comments and who’s watching today. Thank you. We really appreciate hanging in there with us while we just gushed about this whole fun project together.

Darian Lusk 00:57:43 Thank you everyone, and thank you so much Michelle for having me. Thank you so much. And we’ll come back.

Michelle Frechette 00:57:51 This is my favorite comment ever. June says my cheeks hurt. My cheeks hurt from laughing me too June. I’m starting to get that like that. Little like I smile too much. My face hurts. All right, all right. We’ll see everybody next week. Thank you.

This article, Post Status Happiness Hour Session Thirty One, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Playing FAIR with the Future of WordPressWe thought the ground was solid. Then it shifted. It was a wake-up call for many of us several months ago to learn that WordPress.org is not owned by the WordPress Foundation, but personally by Matt Mullenweg.

That revelation, brought to light during the recent unpleasantness, reframed how many of us think about the ecosystem we rely on. That over 40% of the Internet is effectively tethered to one individual’s personal website is untenable. And after seeing trusted community members banned, plugin ownership jeopardized, and established norms disrupted, it’s become clear: the central hub of WordPress isn’t as stable or as neutral as we thought.

This is the context behind FAIR, a new initiative that aims to offer a more dependable, decentralized supply chain for WordPress. And it’s something every agency owner should be seriously considering.

FAIR (short for Federated and Independent Repositories) is backed by well-known names in the WordPress community and supported by the Linux Foundation. It’s not a fork or a hostile move. It’s a response to the uncomfortable reality that WordPress.org is a single point of failure, both technically and politically.

For agencies, this shift is less about ideology and more about risk management. Our clients expect their sites to just work – today, next year, and five years from now. If the tools we depend on can vanish overnight because of internal politics or opaque decision-making, that’s a business problem.

FAIR represents a path toward resilience. It’s an insurance policy against central failure and a step toward more agency autonomy in the true sense of the word.

The launch of FAIR may not change your tech stack tomorrow. But it’s a moment worth watching, and hopefully the beginning of a broader conversation about how we want to build and sustain the WordPress ecosystem we all rely on.

Important Links to Learn More About FAIR:

• FAIR Package Manager Project on Github (where you can also download the plugin)
• The Repository’s thorough article on FAIR
• The Linux Foundation’s press release
• Joost de Valk’s blog post
• Karim Marucchi’s blog post
• Matt Medeiros is not jazzed about FAIR
• SEJ’s article about Matt Mullenweg’s response at WCEU
• WP Minute’s recording of Matt & Mary’s Fireside Chat at WCEU where FAIR is discussed

The New ChatGPT Feature that Could Change How You Review Client Calls* ChatGPT’s new Record mode lets you capture live meetings, transcribe audio, and get instant summaries—all stored in your chat history. * The Record mode works directly within the ChatGPT app, and doesn’t require Zoom or any other third-party conferencing tools. * Just speak naturally, and ChatGPT will transcribe, summarize, and organize a discussion into key points automatically. * Summaries are stored in your chat history, so you can access meeting details without digging through recordings. * New connection options integrate Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and OneDrive, so you can upload, summarize, and reference other relevant project materials too. * Transcriptions support multiple languages, and OpenAI notes that audio is processed securely and only retained if history is on. * The feature is rolling out gradually to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Enterprise users.

Is FluentCart the WooCommerce Alternative You’ve Been Looking For?* FluentCart is a new e-commerce plugin from the team behind FluentCRM and Fluent Forms. * Performance is a top priority, with a modern codebase and fast-loading database queries optimized for speed. * It supports physical and digital products, product variations, custom product attributes, and inventory management. * What’s more, FluentCart includes subscription and installment payments out of the box, with Stripe and PayPal integration. * If you’re already in the Fluent ecosystem, you’ll appreciate the tight integration with FluentCRM, FluentForms, and FluentSupport. * Multilingual support, email notifications, and activity logs are included—no extra plugins needed. * Check out this first look from WPTuts * FluentCart is currently accepting early access signups through a waitlist at fluentcart.com.

Worth a Look * A Nuclear Take from ChatGPT. On The Admin Bar, Troy Glancy challenged ChatGPT users to try this prompt. I was blown away by the results. Tell me something about myself that I don’t know. Give me a nuclear take. Be real with me. * WooCommerce 9.9 is out with blazing speed improvements with no database update requried. * Attributing results to SEO is getting harder. Here are some ideas to rethink measurements. * Jamie Marsland interviews James LePage about the new Core AI Team. * Liquid Glass design elements are coming in Apples newest software updates. * Why your best content is invisible to AI search (and how to fix it). * Do the Woo has rebranded to OpenChannels.fm. * And in a final bit of terrifying news… a humanoid robot may start to deliver your Amazon packages.

This article, Agency News Weekly, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Topher celebrated submitting his 1,000th photo to the WordPress Photos repository, featuring a close-up shot of lichen.

Tammie reflected on embracing imperfection in her creative process in a blog post about coding with a messy vibe.

Seth Goldstein shared thoughts on how to stay top of mind in digital marketing.

Christos Paloukas announced that Prashant Baldha is now Pressidium’s first sponsored WordPress contributor. Prashant has been active in WordPress since 2013 and is known for his backend engineering work on plugins like AIOS and UpdraftPlus.

Eric Karkovack interviewed Jake Goldman about the origins of 10up, its 2023 merger with Fueled, and their rebranding journey. They also discussed AI and full site editing in the WP Minute episode.

Bud Kraus shared a series of interviews with WordCamp EU speakers including Birgit Pauli-Haack, Sabrina Zeidan, Anna Hurko, Roger Williams, Milana Cap, and Taco Verdonschot on Seriously, BUD?.

Fränk Klein announced that his block theme development course is now free and hosted by Mike McAlister, creator of the OllieWP theme.

Deborah Butler launched ScopeForge Pro, a GPT-4-powered Chrome extension for generating structured scopes of work, with a launch discount available.

Leonardo Losoviz shared that Bricks is being integrated with Gato GraphQL.

Seth Goldstein released the latest edition of the Marketing Junto Newsletter, focused on email and community ownership.

Chris launched a new podcast, Community + Code, featuring Michelle Frechette in the debut episode.

Jonathan Bossenger introduced a video series on AI developer tools, beginning with a look at DeepWiki for interactive documentation.

Prashant Baldha invited the community to attend JetBrains PHPverse 2025, a free event celebrating PHP’s 30th anniversary.

Joost de Valk shared insights on WordPress plugin stats and innovation.

Jason Cosper teased the return of a new podcast called the_query, nearly a year after WPwatercooler ended.

Kim Coleman released a comprehensive guide comparing WordPress and SaaS for membership businesses, featuring an interactive AI quiz to help users choose.

Kevin Batdorf announced his Code Block Pro plugin has reached 10,000 installs and highlighted its blur-on-hover feature and custom fonts.

Nakul shared a free plugin, Extension Info Exporter, that exports plugin data for audits and reports—particularly useful for agencies managing multiple sites.

Bud Kraus posted a link to Joe Hoyle’s interview on Seriously, BUD?, spotlighting the Human Made co-founder.

Simon Kraft released a podcast interview with Sebastian Miśniakiewicz about the local team behind WordCamp Europe 2026, which will take place in Kraków, Poland.

Tammie reflected on how to define roadmaps in open source, following discussions during WordPress Contribution Day.

Bartosz Gadomski introduced WP Password Policy, a free plugin that allows admins to enforce password complexity and expiration rules. More info at wppasswordpolicy.com.

This article, The Latest from Post Status Members, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Sirvelia, the makers of customized plugins for WordPress and WooCommerce, and the team behind Ploogins, a plugin directory for both free and premium plugins, have created a new WordCamp app, called WC & WP Events just in time for WordCamp Europe.

The app draws from the list of official WordCamps, then populates the app with speakers and sessions, which you can add to a list within the app of those you would like to attend. It also pays homage to event sponsors by listing them as well.

Amadeu Arderiu from Sirvelia said “We were thinking about some cool ideas for our booth at WCEU this year. Initially we thought about some ideas around raffles, but in the end we realized there was no app for the event. So, we quickly started to develop a mobile app that will help you choose talks, get to know the speakers and sponsors. We hope to add some networking features as well.”

While attendees are always able to pull up the event website, having all of the information available in an app is much more convenient and should help attendees navigate WordPress events going forward.

The app is now available in the Apple store and on Google Play. Check it out, and let us know what you think!

The team at Sirvelia is open to feedback, so let them know if there are features you’d like to see included in the future.

This article, New WordCamp App, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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WordPress Is Moving Again But Can It Regain Trust?WordPress turned 22 last week. And like many 22-year-olds, it seems ready to reconsider some of last year’s choices.

The milestone arrived with a wave of announcements—new leadership moves, a notable returning contributor, and even an AI team. On the surface, it looks like momentum. But many are wondering: is this progress, or just posturing?

Last week, Automattic raised eyebrows with the unexpected declaration that they are back to contributing to core. “We’re ready to press play again,” the post said. Their Five for the Future page confirms it: 80 contributors for more than 1,300 hours each week (at the time of this post). That’s encouraging. Still, the five-month silence left a gap in trust—and it’s unclear when or if other major contributors will return as well.

The Repository did a deep dive into Mary Hubbard’s recent efforts to rebuild trust inside the WordPress project. Her intentions seem genuine, but not everyone is convinced. Some see her changes as long overdue. Others view them as mostly cosmetic. The deeper issue remains the same: a lack of clarity, transparency, and follow-through from leadership. I personally have hope that Mary’s efforts behind the scenes are bearing real fruit.

Meanwhile, WordPress officially launched an AI team. The goal? To approach new AI features through a canonical plugin. Encouragingly, there are noteworthy people involved: James LePage (Automattic), Felix Arntz (Google), Pascal Birchler (Google), and Jeff Paul (Fueled/10up). There’s real potential here to do interesting things with WordPress and AI.

Finally, after some organizational delays, tickets for WordCamp US 2025 are on sale, and the call for speakers is live. The response so far on social media has been tepid—especially among agencies. Maybe it’s burnout. Maybe it’s frustration. Maybe it’s a quiet protest. Are you going? I’d love to hear why or why not.

There’s movement right now inside WordPress. That’s good. But lasting progress depends on what comes next.

Have I Been Pwned Just Got a Whole Lot Better* Have I Been Pwned just got its first major technical upgrade since 2013, making it faster, more scalable, and easier for its team to maintain. * Performance has dramatically improved, with faster and more reliable API responses for tools that rely on its data. * The user interface is modernized, with a smooth scroll to results when you check an email address. * Tools like WordPress security plugins using HIBP should continue to work as expected. * Check out the new Have I Been Pwned, and read the full details from HIBP’s creator, Troy Hunt.

Reviewing Client Videos? Let Gemini Handle the Summary* Google Drive can now auto-summarize videos using Gemini AI. * The feature is slowly rolling out to Workspace users, but soon you should see a new “Summarize this video” button on eligible videos. * The summaries are generated using AI transcription and summarization, making them useful for reviewing client calls or internal meeting recordings. * This could be a huge timesaver for agencies storing Zoom recordings, training videos, or client walkthroughs in Drive. * Imagine quickly turning that 30-minute training call into a written guide with a few prompts! * Gemini isn’t analyzing visuals (yet)—just audio—but that still covers many agency use cases.

Worth a Look * John Rush has tried all 46 AI Coding Agents and IDEs, and he gives his notes and quick demos in this epic X thread. * Sponsor Me WP is a new project from Michelle Frechette and Marcus Burnette to match sponsors with people who want to contribute to WordPress. * Fueled has published a case study about developing the Google Site Kit plugin. * Managing SEO? Check out this “ultimate” Looker Studio campaign dashboard. * Google Wallet is dropping PayPal support on June 13.

This article, Agency News Weekly, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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US DOJ Sues Visa Over Alleged Monopoly* The United States Justice Department (DOJ) has sued Visa over alleged monopolistic practices in debit payments and accuses them of imposing exclusionary agreements on partners to maintain market dominance. * The lawsuit claims Visa’s actions have resulted in billions in additional fees for consumers and merchants – in both storefront and ecommerce businesses. * Visa controls over 60% of U.S. debit transactions, earning $7 billion annually in processing fees. * The DOJ alleges Visa threatens merchants and banks with punitive rates for using competing cards. * Visa reportedly pays competitors to prevent them from developing innovative, competitive technologies, allegedly maintaining strict agreements with tech giants like Apple, Square, and PayPal that limit competition and hurt the consumer. * Visa denies the allegations, calling the lawsuit “meritless” and citing a competitive payments landscape. * The outcome of this case will certainly impact the future of payment processing and the fees associated with debit transactions. * Read this article on CNBC Finance to learn more about the allegations against Visa and the possible outcomes.

Cloudflare Unveils Tool to Monetize AI Data Scraping Cloudflare introduces a new marketplace for websites to monetize AI bot access, enabling sites to charge AI companies for scraping their data. * Website owners can set custom pricing and access rules for their content to create a level playing field for data exchange. * The move also benefits AI companies since they can efficiently access high-quality training data through the platform. * The marketplace could potentially transform the relationship between websites and AI developers as well as lead to new revenue streams for content creators and publishers. * The system provides transparency and control over how website data is used and sets a new standard for ethical AI data collection practices. * Do you have clients who could benefit from monetizing AI scraping?* * Find out more in this recent article from Techcrunch.

AI Gets Chatty – Inside ChatGPT’s New Voice Upgrade ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode is now available for paid subscribers, offering 9 different natural-sounding voices to choose from for conversations. * Advanced voice mode aims to understand speech speed and tone, and respond appropriately. * Users can interrupt ChatGPT mid-response to interject details, correct misunderstandings, or change the subject altogether. * The feature works best with headphones and Voice Isolation mode on iPhones to eliminate background noise and conversations which an interfere with the experience. * Feedback suggests that while the voices are an improvement, they still lack full realism compared to natural human conversations. This limitation might affect the overall effectiveness in professional settings. * There are some concerns regarding privacy, as OpenAI saves conversation recordings by default. But it’s easy to opt out under data controls. * If you’re a paid ChatGPT subscriber, give it a try. It’s pretty amazing.* * Read more in this Lifehacker article.

Worth a Look* What will AI look like by 2030? Industry experts lay out some extraordinary possibilities in this piece on the Wall Street Journal. * Google now values content usefulness to users more than anything, but how do you know what your readers want? Learn more in The Rundown on SearchEngineJournal. * Ever experience AI pulling information out of thin air? AI is not “hallucinating.” In fact, it can’t. Find out what’s actually happening in this informative article from The Next Web.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending October 4, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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The Tragedy of the Common (People)People I trust tell me that this is nothing new, that it’s happened before. Sure, I’ve seen #WPdrama in the past, but I’ve never experienced anything like the aftermath of Matt’s “spicy” talk that ended last week’s WordCamp US.

I’ve been using WordPress since 2010, and the community has changed my life. It started with WordCamp Birmingham 2012 where I was invited to speak for the first time. 63 WordCamps later, I’ve had the opportunity to speak across the USA and in a few other countries. And everywhere I’ve been, I’ve met amazing, interesting, caring people who are passionate about WordPress and love the community.

Meeting these diverse people has affected me deeply. They have broadened my view on life and made me a better person. I would not be who I am today as a human being without having experienced the WordPress community.

This is the WordPress I know. And this is the WordPress that’s being impacted.

Like you, I’ve watched with a heavy heart as wars on the other side of the world between powerful people with big agendas have destroyed the lives of common people – people who just want to live their lives in peace.

For the last 10 years, I’ve been coaching WordPress solopreneurs and microagency owners who just want to create businesses that support the lifestyle they choose for themselves and for their families.

This morning I talked to someone I’ve coached, a long-time WordPress agency owner in Florida, who said this: “None of my websites show available updates for WP or for plugins. We’re on the edge of a hurricane, and my entire business life is crumbling.”

I don’t know a lot about the “Tragedy of the Commons,” but I do know a little about the tragedy of the common person. And that’s who these latest WordPress battles hurt the most.

For better or worse, many agencies have built their hosting processes around WP Engine – some for more than a decade. These agencies are made up of WordPress people, our people, who are on the front lines of advocating for WordPress with the public. They are people who convince their clients that WordPress is the best way to build a website.

We agency people are likely responsible for a significant portion of the 43.5% market share WordPress currently enjoys. Yet, we agencies are routinely forgotten by WordPress leadership (or it often seems that way).

It’s happened for years, as core development resources are poured into new features that we don’t really want. And we see it now as many of our agency friends are caught in the crossfire of a war they didn’t ask for.

On Wednesday at around 5:00 central time (after work hours for many agencies), WordPress.org blocked connections from WP Engine so that sites could no longer receive theme and plugin updates.

This attack may have been aimed at WP Engine, but it hurts agencies. It creates uncertainty about systems that many have worked a long time to build. It impacts agency owners like my friend who is now having to deal with the fallout of WPdrama while preparing for a dangerous hurricane.

This isn’t “spicy,” it’s harmful.

It may be easier than ever to migrate a WordPress site – Matt said in his talk that you could do it in a day. But when you’re an agency with 100 or 1000 sites, it’s a little more complicated. And you never change hosts on a whim. It takes a significant investment of time and resources to make that kind of change and serve your clients well.

I don’t host on WP Engine, and Matt may be right about them in the end. And he may even be right about the Tragedy of the Commons.

Just please don’t forget about the common people, us agency owners, who are caught in the middle.

I’ll be back with our regular summaries of top news for agencies next week.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending September 27, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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WCUSLooking for info on the Q&A with Matt Mullenweg? That’s covered elsewhere on the blog.

For other stuff … read on!

Lots of selfies has earned over $700 to help support underrepresented speakers and organizers to future WordCamps. Thanks for everyone who took a pic with me!

I gave my first ever WCUS talk this year! I can tell you that when the audience lifts their phones in unison to take pics of your talk slides, it makes you feel really good! My talk was on Customer Success.

News BitsJoin us for Post Status Happiness Hour Live on Wednesday (Sept 25) at 4pm ET for a conversation with Katy Boykin about the upcoming Kadence Amplify event.

Later this month, for the first time ever, Paid Memberships Pro will be offering a lifetime deal for their PMPro Plus level.

WP Includes has released the key findings from the gender equality in WordPress study they did earlier this year.

The Product Directory over at IPAWP.com is now public, as Corey Maass and I continue to build the project in public.

WordCamp Rochester’s speaker lineup is out! Tickets are available for the October 5 event.

Join Us for a MeetupJoin us for our Meetups! Details on our Meetups are available on our Meetup page.

• Post Status July Professionals Meetup: September 24
• Post Status July Product Meetup: September 25
• Post Status July Agency Meetup: September 26

Quick Links:* Kadence Amplify call for speakers is open * WordCamp AsiaCall: Call for Volunteers, Call for Emcees, and Call for Sponsors are open * WP Accessibility Day: Registration is open

Find the complete WordPress events schedule here.

Photo of the WeekToday’s photo of the week comes from creativemz on WordPress Photos.

You — and your whole team — can Join Post Status.

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status.

This article, Community Roundup September 23, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Four days of WCUS. Four happy, helpful, fun, and learning-filled days. And it all became (at best) awkward, and (at worst) confrontational, in the very last session, a Q&A keynote with WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg.

In 2015 Matt urged us to “learn Javascript deeply.” In 2024 it seems he’s admonishing us to give back to WordPress deeply.

The Address(You can watch the whole talk here.)I won’t rehash the actual talk. You can watch it above. You can also read about it on MANY blogs and get many opinions. Some of which I’ll list here.

• Search Engine Journal
• Tech Crunch
• Nate Hoffelder
• Brian Coords
• Justin Ferriman
• Rodrigo Ghedin
• Kevin Geary
• Jonathan Jernigan
• James Giroux
• $hopifreaks
• WordPress.org
• Matt’s blog

And a few social posts to read, too:

• Hacker News
• Reddit Thread
  • Matt’s Reply on Reddit
• Eric Karkovack

The WordPress EcosystemOver 21 years ago WordPress was released to the world. Its open source nature going on to grow not only a global community, but also a global ecosystem, fueled to extend WordPress through themes and plugins, and to help grow WordPress to over 40% of the Internet through services and agencies to build sites for themselves and other businesses.

A quick look at the WordPress.org Showcase can serve to show how amazing WordPress websites can be. The recent WCUS Showcase Day is proof of innovation with WordPress. Work done at every Contributor Day is testimony of a community’s desire to help move the open source project forward, and one has only to look at any Slack channel in the official WordPress Slack instance to see the thousands of contributors to not only core, but community, photos, TV, testing, vetting, and so much more.

Many people contribute to WordPress.

And many people (and businesses) profit from business within the WordPress ecosystem.

Five for the FutureFive for the Future (FFtF) is one way that individuals and businesses can pledge to work toward the future of WordPress, the open source project (not to be confused with WordPress.com).

It’s looking at Five for the Future that seems to be at the heart of the controversy (or at least the catalyst for it), although the conversation and accusations grow from there (as seen in the posts listed above).

WP Engine makes a lot of money in the WordPress ecosystem. And their FFtF doesn’t seem to represent 5% of their organization. Which begs the question of how much of the FFtF reporting is accurate.

But it also makes one question how much other goodwill is being done by any organization that isn’t part of the FFtF metrics. Free plugins (in and out of the repo), YouTube tutorials, webinars, podcasts, forum support, and more, don’t seem to have any way to be counted, but certainly contribute to the overall health of the project. And while I’m not commenting specifically on WP Engine, I know that many, if not most of us (individuals and companies) give back to WordPress outside of those metric-driven contributions.

Questions for the Rest of Us* How accurate is the reporting for FFtF? + My guess is that you and your employees are lax in reporting how your pledge and actual work being done corroborate one another. If your company participates, I’d urge you to make sure your employees’ profiles list you as their employer (accurately), as well as listing the hours you sponsor them for work they do in the open source project and the teams they work on. * Can we use the word “WordPress” in advertising? + While there is no trademarked prohibition on using “WP” in your sites, domains, and advertising, maybe this is a good time to confer with your legal team on how you use the WordPress name in advertising. Refer to the WordPress Foundation’s Trademark Policy for more information.

What Now?Lawsuits are now in play, and I know we will all be watching to see what happens. And while the conversations will slow over the next week, they will continue while all of this plays out.

While none of this is comfortable for any of us (and the hashtag #WPDrama has had an uptick recently), I don’t believe the sky is falling. I do believe that this is an important call for diligence in how we all work within the WordPress community, a review of our own uses of any WordPress trademarks, and thoughtful planning on how to move forward.

I don’t claim to have any answers. But I, like most of you, will be paying attention. I may be a Polyanna, but I remain hopeful for the future of WordPress.

If you have comments and/or ideas for future posts, send them via our Contact Form.

This article, Give Back … Deeply?, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Patchstack Launches Vulnerability Disclosure Program Platform Patchstack’s new VDP Platform for plugin developers aims to streamline vulnerability management. * The platform offers developers a central dashboard for an overview of all current and past issues. * Each plugin has its own dedicated VDP page where issues can be securely reported then validated by Patchstack. * The VDP will also help developers comply with the EU’s new Cyber Resilience Act. * Patchstack is now the leading WordPress vulnerability intelligence provider and the #1 most active CVE naming authority in the world.* + Last year, 73% of all WP plugin vulnerabilities were first reported by Patchstack. + Patchstack just paid the highest ever bounty for a WordPress vulnerability ($14,400).

Google’s AI Overviews Have Significantly Improved Google’s AI Overviews now cite sources that match the top 10 organic search results 99.5% of the time (up from 6.2% in January). * This significant improvement suggests Google may be incorporating traditional search ranking signals into its Gemini AI model for Overviews. * The top 3 ranking results are cited in AI Overviews almost 80% of the time, with the top position featured 50% of the time. * This addresses previous concerns about Overviews citing less authoritative or trustworthy sources. * This may* mean that optimizing for AI Overviews now largely rests on the same strategies used for traditional rankings. * Read more in this article from Search Engine Journal.

California Mandates AI Content Watermarking* On August 29, the California legislature passed a bill that mandates watermarks on AI-generated content to fight misinformation. * The bill is supported by major AI companies like OpenAI, Adobe, and Microsoft. * The bill is currently awaiting the California Governor’s signature. * If passed, it could set a national legal precedent for AI content regulation. * However, permanently watermarking AI content is a technical feat that has not yet been reliably accomplished * Read more in this TechCrunch article (and hat tip to the featured image on this article from The Verge)

Worth a Look* Patchstack has announced $5M in funding and the addition of Joost de Valk to its board. * SolidWP has released Solid Mail, a re-imagining of the venerable WP-SMTP plugin with a significantly streamlined design and settings panel. The plugin is still free. * Google has rolled out guidance for dealing with the August Core Update. They recommend to avoid “quick fix” changes, improving low-performing content in meaningful ways, and deleting content as a last resort.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending September 20, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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WCUSI’m so excited because IT’S FINALLY HERE! WordCamp US, that is! I’m thrilled to have completed the WordCamp Flagship Trifecta for the second year. I’m doing my Selfie Challenge again, so if you’re there, let’s take a photo together!

News BitsJoin Marieke and Joost for a live webinar on October 3, 2024, to see how their new plugin, Progress Planner, helps you manage website tasks that need the human touch.

Every year, Melapress runs a WordPress security survey to understand real-world statistics. This year’s survey results are published here.

Marcus Burnette joined me on The Post Status Happiness Hour last week to talk all about The WP World, how it started, how it’s grown, and all the latest features, just in time for WCUS!

Join Us for a MeetupJoin us for our Meetups! Details on our Meetups are available on our Meetup page.

• Post Status July Professionals Meetup: September 24
• Post Status July Product Meetup: September 25
• Post Status July Agency Meetup: September 26

Quick Links:* Kadence Amplify call for speakers is open * WordCamp AsiaCall: Call for Volunteers, Call for Speakers, Call for Emcees, and Call for Sponsors are open * WP Accessibility Day: Registration is open * Woo Sessions Call for Speakers is open

Find the complete WordPress events schedule here.

Photo of the WeekToday’s photo of the week comes from Mehedi Hassan on WordPress Photos.

You — and your whole team — can Join Post Status.

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status.

This article, Community Roundup September 15, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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This Week at WordPress.org (September 7, 2024)News* WordPress Contribution Health Dashboards: An Experiment * WordPress 6.6.2 Maintenance Release * WordCamp US 2024: Oregon-a See You There?

I generated 1MB of PHP code using AI.

It was a MySQL query parser. I needed it to improve SQLite support in WordPress.

It took two nights, $520, and a passive aggressive prompt I felt bad about It worked, but not without bugs.

Here’s the story:https://t.co/H5vagMvIvh

— Adam Zieliński (@adamzielin) September 10, 2024

Community* WCUS2024 Contributor Day: Community Team Agenda

Core * Core Performance Team Update: August 2024 * Gutenberg development practices and common pitfalls * What is new in Gutenberg 19.2 (11 September) * Progress Report: HTML API

Create Block Theme* Add some kind of doc/explanation about the ‘Theme subfolder’ option. Core Trac Administration

Administration* Removed Unused Arguments From _wp_filter_build_unique_id Function * PHP warning in wp-includes/canonical.php when accessing custom feed with specific permalink structure

Application Passwords* Add copy button when creating new application password

Build/Test Tools* Test suite: update the tests for PHPUnit 10/11 and get ready for PHPUnit 12

Bundled Theme* Bundled themes: add initial-scale to viewport meta * Twenty Eleven: Previous and Next links are not clickable in Mobile Portrait mode * Twenty Twelve: fix heading typography in the editor * Bump default theme versions for WordPress 6.7 * Twenty Fifteen : Read More Block Hover effects is different in editor and frontend

Canonical* WP allows to inject random strings into archive page URLs, still returning 200

Customize* Inconsistent Text Selection Color Contrast on date, time, month, week & datetime-local

Editor* Extend Block Metadata PHP Cache to Third-Party Blocks * Editor: Add a ‘format’ parameter to query to enable filtering post formats in the Query Loop block * Link Control Hidden behind Metaboxes * Minor grammatical error in doc comment

Formatting wp_kses_post incorrectly escapes “<” attributes values * Unable to use wp_kses with JavaScript templating * make_clickable doesn’t handle closing parenthesis character just before the ‘dot’ on a file URL * Issue with is_email() and sanitize_email()

General* Error page viewport missing initial-scale=1 * PHP strict comparison * Inconsistent file name after cropping from Site Icon * Need to Correct @since documentation order in inline documentation * License adaptable text (e.g., suggested Privacy Policy) under liberal license * Paragraph margins not honored (in the backend) when global blockspacing is set to zero * Site issue

HTML API* HTML API: Satisfy return types in new methods * HTML API: Introduce normalization methods

I18N* The .json files with theme translations are loaded only if they are present in the plugins path

Media* Target media library svg images * Undefined array key “height” and “width” in wp-includes/media.php

Networks and Sites* Fixing the non yoda conditions in ms-functions.php * SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE broken in 6.3 or later

Options, Meta APIs* Proposal: Add label argument to register_meta function * Proposal: Set show_in_rest to true by default when label argument is defined

Plugins* Removed Unused Arguments From _wp_filter_build_unique_id Function * Allow plugins and themes perform extra checks upon install/upgrade via filter

Posts, Post Types* Old Blogs Getting Delinked (404 Errors) – Assistance Required * Slug Conflict When a Published and Draft Page Share post_name

Query* WP_User_Query with compare_key always get 0 user * Allow read access to users with edit_posts capabilities * WP allows to inject random strings into archive page URLs, still returning 200

REST API* Allow read access to users with edit_posts capabilities

Security* Enhance wp_hash function to support custom hashing algorithms

Taxonomy* Term cache is not properly cleaned when using persistent object caching

Themes* Can’t Access Some Block Templates in Classic Themes

Upgrade/Install* Debug log for updates not removed after RC 1 * Do not bloat Debug Log with Scraping home page when auto upgrade is OK

Users* User_Query cache triggers fatal error by ignoring ‘fields’ query var * Add copy button when creating or updating a user’s password * Forgotten Password Error: There is no account with that username or email address when email exits

Bundled Theme* TT3 and TT4: make template heading text translatable – Status: New – Type: Defect (bug) – Milestone: 6.7 * Twenty Twenty-One: Remove the use of empty rulesets – Status: New – Type: Defect (bug) – Milestone: Awaiting Review * Twenty Seventeen: Also define the standard property ‘filter’ for compatibility – Status: Closed – Type: Defect (bug) * Twenty Twenty-One: defining standard appearance property in the CSS files – Status: New – Type: Defect (bug) – Milestone: Awaiting Review * Twenty Eleven: Do not use empty rulesets css (emptyRules) – Status: Closed – Type: Defect (bug)

Editor* aspect-ratio setting for image in overwritten pattern not working – Status: New – Type: Defect (bug) – Milestone: Awaiting Review * Rename wp_should_load_separate_core_block_assets() to clarify its purpose – Status: Assigned – Type: Enhancement – Milestone: 6.7

General* Block Bindings: Add canUpdateBlockBindings editor setting – Status: Assigned – Type: Enhancement – Milestone: 6.7 * Uploading WAV files fail in Gutenberg editor on Firefox browser when drag-dropped – Status: Assigned – Type: Defect (bug) – Milestone: Awaiting Review * Website is a bit more than one minute behind the time! – Status: Closed – Type: Defect (bug) * Enhance Support for popovertarget and popover Attributes in Native Browser Popover API – Status: New – Type: Enhancement – Milestone: Awaiting Review * Provide a way for classic themes to use wp-block-library even when loading block assets only for blocks that actually render on a page – Status: New – Type: Enhancement – Milestone: Awaiting Review

Help/About* About Page – 6.7 – Status: New – Type: Task (blessed) – Milestone: 6.7

HTML API* Global documentation is missing in class-wp-html-decoder.php file – Status: Closed – Type: Defect (bug) – Milestone: 6.7 * HTML API: Add method to split text nodes by null or empty prefixes. – Status: Closed – Type: Enhancement – Milestone: 6.7

Media* Do not call getimagesize() against non-existent files – Status: New – Type: Defect (bug) – Milestone: Awaiting Review

Options, Meta APIs add_meta()/get*_meta() undocumented type juggling for some meta values – Status: New – Type: Defect (bug) – Milestone: 6.7

Plugins* error.log – can’t figure out issue with Google Search.. – Status: New – Type: Defect (bug) – Milestone: Awaiting Review * TranslatePress – Business – Status: Closed – Type: Defect (bug)

Posts, Post Types* Post guid for custom post type being modified – Status: New – Type: Defect (bug) – Milestone: Awaiting Review

REST API* Fatal error: Attempt to read property “ID” on null in /src/wp-includes/rest-api/endpoints/class-wp-rest-autosaves-controller.php – Status: New – Type: Defect (bug) – Milestone: Awaiting Review * Managing Dynamic Search, Category Filtering, and Pagination for Bulk Patterns – Status: New – Type: Defect (bug) – Milestone: Awaiting Review

Site Health* Allow site health management – Status: New – Type: Feature request – Milestone: Awaiting Review

Taxonomy* Taxonomies: Allow querying for all posts with any term of a given taxonomy – Status: New – Type: Enhancement – Milestone: Awaiting Review

Themes* Convert div to main tag for web accessibility – Status: Assigned – Type: Defect (bug) – Milestone: Awaiting Review

Users* Wrong argument type in documentation for hook new_user_email_content – Status: Closed – Type: Defect (bug)

WordPress.org SiteList user topics in a plugin or theme forum – Status: Closed – Type: Defect (bug)

Performance Update auto sizes logic in Enhanced Responsive Images plugin to no longer load if already in Core * Prepare PL 3.5.0 release * Unit test: AVIF image not supported Gutenberg Discussions General Script translation through load_script_translations * Any way to render shared inline SVG’s for block’s both in posts and templates? * Saving data from block to custom table * Command Palette API: Where to find command names provided by core? * Collaborative Editing * Effect on store of multiple blocks in same plugin * Css not injected upon installation from editor * You use my project as a dependency. * Interactivity API and the advanced usage * Does Gutenberg have a CDN? * interactivity api and the router package for multilingual support * How to check and update current post’s discussion settings? * Optimizing yielding prior to actions out of the box * Block editor usability improvement: Greater visibility to block parent container options when child block selected * Is possible to define a store independently from a block? * proper way to programmatically select an inner block in parent block’s edit() function * Better support for block themes and the Your homepage displays option * Create Block variation in custom block

Developer Experience* Better support for block themes and the Your homepage displays option – [Feature] Themes, Started 2 weeks ago by felixarntz * My experience trying to adapt a theme to Full Site Editing – Started on Jun 16, 2022 by Jeremy-Bolella * Exploring version control and Git workflows in block themes (Site Editor) – Started on Feb 29 by ndiego

Interactivity API* Effect on store of multiple blocks in same plugin – Started yesterday by AlphaZebra * Interactivity API and the router package for multilingual support – Started 2 weeks ago by hadimahoor * Interactivity API and the advanced usage – Started last week by giuliodelmastro

Q&A Css not injected upon installation from editor – * Saving data from block to custom table * Command Palette API: Where to find command names provided by core? – Gutenberg Issues
[Package] Components SearchControl style variants * Settings panel toggle button doesn’t expose the associated keyboard shortcut * BorderBoxControl: Horizontal scrollbar is displayed in block sidebar * Components: :focus → :focus-visible

[Package] Editor* Settings panel toggle button doesn’t expose the associated keyboard shortcut * Site Title block conflicts between typography and link styles * Modals: patterns selector appears over welcome guide modal

[Block] Query Loop* Post Formats: Query loop shows the wrong posts * Audit the Query loop ‘Reload full page’ labels and descriptions

[Block] Image* Image block resizer: layout issues in the editor * Image Block: Lightbox – Display image original size when lightbox is open for custom size image

[Block] Post Terms* Categories, Tags, Post Terms blocks do not reflect changes made in the editor

[Package] DataViews* Post formats: Archive templates have no description * DataViews: when there’s only one primary action, hide actions dropdown and display action directly * DataViews grid layout: Long pattern names are cut off

[Block] Navigation* Request to add dropdown menu on mobile devices * Navigation Block – Add setting to show submenus on arrow button click

[Feature] Inserter* Add some kind of “Add Inside” functionality for containers * 6.6.2: changed behaviour on pressing Enter on a selected block * In between block inserter: add exit animation

[Package] Block Editor* Refactor Insertion API * Nested blocks should always honor the parent content and wide widths

[Package] Dependency Extraction Webpack Plugin* Dependency Extraction Webpack Plugin: Support cyclical module dependencies * Improve dependency extraction to only include wp-polyfill when needed

[Block] Gallery* Gallery block setting Randomize order isn’t doing anything

[Feature] Zoom Out* Detect iframed editor before enabling Zoom Out feature * Fix vertical toolbar placement in Zoom Out mode * Zoom Out: All Template Content Must Be Inside Containment Block * Site Editor: Canvas width glitch when selecting ‘Browse Styles’ then closing inserter sidebar

[Package] Edit Post* Don’t force users to move their mouse when publishing

[Package] Edit Site* Global styles menu: avoid unnecessary mismatch between visible label and accessible name

[Feature] Block API* Explore adding media related roles to block attributes

[Feature] Writing Flow* Difficulty removing empty heading blocks

[Block] Paragraph* Add Dropcap Customization to UI

[Feature] Patterns* Modals: patterns selector appears over welcome guide modal

[Package] Keyboard Shortcuts* Distraction free: keyboard shortcuts conflicts with system-level shortcut in Safari on macOS

[Block] Gallery* Gallery block setting Randomize order isn’t doing anything

[Block] Embed* Embed Block: Match HTML in the editor and frontend

[Package] Block Library Nested blocks should always honor the parent content and wide widths Core Meetings Default Theme Chat Summary, September 11, 2024 * Summary, Dev Chat, September 11, 2024 * Summary of the Developer Blog editorial meeting on 5 September 2024 * Default Theme Chat Agenda: September 11, 2024 * Performance Chat Summary: 10 September 2024 * Admin Toolbar menu has new, higher priority values * Performance Chat Agenda: 10 September 2024 * Agenda, Dev Chat, September 11, 2024 * Default Theme Chat Summary, September 4, 2024 * Summary, Dev Chat, September 4, 2024

Developer Blog:* What’s new for developers? (September 2024) * Website security checks – WP-CLI for site owners and administrators

Dev Blog Content You don’t need CSS for that: All the ways you can use theme.json for styling * Modifying text with the HTML API in WordPress 6.7 * How to add contentOnly editing support to a custom block * Extending User profile views natively with DataViews * How to customize WordPress embeds to match your theme * How to conditionally register/unregister patterns * Exploring post formats in a block theme world (maybe with 6.7 additions) * List of summaries of monthly editorial group meetings 2024 * Building a multi-block plugin * Prevent a11y Errors Through Post Locking Design Design Share #63 (Aug 26-Sep 6) * Data Views Update #1 * Advancing the WordPress Design System

do_action* do_action Bhopal 2024 * do_action Cagliari 2024

Documentation* Summary for Docs Team Meeting (20-Aug-2024)

Docs Issue Tracker Theme Handbook Overhaul: Classic Themes > Basics > Templates * Theme Handbook Overhaul: Classic Themes > Basics > The Loop * In the WordPress developer documentation article titled “Updating WordPress,” several links are redirecting to different destinations. * Update fluid typography section in theme handbook to include min/max viewport width settings Five for the Future The Five for the Future site gets a refresh * [Component] Theme * New Theme: Use appropriately sized gravatar images * New Theme: Make sure {X} hours doesn’t wrap to a new line * New Theme: Add contributor count to “Contributor” page heading * New theme: Link teams in the profiles * [Component] Content * New Theme: Hide middot on pledge page when content is wrapped * New Theme: Add spacing between testimonials on mobile

Hosting* Hosting Team Meeting 2024-09-11

Media Corp Upcoming Media Corps Briefing on Mid-term Goals for WordPress * Crash when enabling network and adding a YouTube video to a post Meta WordCamp US Contributor Day * Agenda for September 4, 2024

Meta TracAPI

• Update Credits for WordPress 6.6.2

General* wp_kses missing style attribute for tr tags * Rendering arbitrary Tailwind CSS classes break in Gutenberg Block

Photo Directory* Allow for separate notes to user on approval and rejection

Plugin Directory* Live-Preview: load Playground in actual language

Support Forums* Responsive problem with the Max-Width: 480px in the topic page of the Persian support forum

Trac* Email addresses entered on trac are not truncated in slack bot. * span.time-ago line-height appears misaligned in Safari

Version Control* New Core Committer (Bundled Themes): Carolina Nymark (@poena)

WordPress.org Site Passkey work in chrome but not in firefox WP Org Main (Theme) Capabilities: Update “designer” role to access private pages * Update WPCOM copy on Dotorg /hosting page * Update the Accessibility page to match accessibility standards. * Homepage banner: WCUS 2024 Live Stream Hero Banner * Homepage banner: Small notice format for WCUS 2024

Showcase* Update front page tagline * Showcase archive pagination not center aligned on wide screens

Openverse* A week in Openverse: 2024-09-02 – 2024-09-09

Openverse Issues
aspect: code

• Playwright tests do not fail if the snapshot name is completely new
• Update the @openverse/eslint-plugin to use ESLint v.9
• Atlas of Living Australia
• Add/review Slack messaging for the new data refresh
• Handle constraint mapping failures in data refresh
• Stop sending reminder pings on “shipped” projects
• Dark mode visual bugs
• Tweaks to VSafetyWall component to support dark mode
• Address disabled workflows
• Flickr results do not use “raw” (human readable) tags
• RuntimeError: unable to perform operation on
• Requests causing 500 errors when verifying OAuth application registration do not have errors logged
• Media list endpoints have incorrect OpenAPI example definitions
• notify_slack should determine dag_id on its own
• Unify run_sql tasks across DAGs
• Unify ES CPU alarm names once they’re updated upstream
• TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading ‘value’)
• Sentry: Importing a module script failed
• Sentry: Failed to fetch dynamically imported module
• Add backoff to Stocksnap DAG for 5XX errors
• Changes to Catalog of Life data causing iNaturalist failure
• Refactor usage of environment variables for DAG configuration to use Airflow Variables

aspect: interface* The content switcher in the header is broken * Dark mode visual bugs

goal: improvement* Create an “always safe / always non-sensitive” version of Openverse * Handle constraint mapping failures in data refresh * Tweaks to VSafetyWall component to support dark mode

goal: internal improvement* Update the @openverse/eslint-plugin to use ESLint v.9 * Add/review Slack messaging for the new data refresh * Address disabled workflows * notify_slack should determine dag_id on its own * Unify run_sql tasks across DAGs * Unify ES CPU alarm names once they’re updated upstream * Refactor usage of environment variables for DAG configuration to use Airflow Variables

goal: fix* Playwright tests do not fail if the snapshot name is completely new * The content switcher in the header is broken * Stop sending reminder pings on “shipped” projects * Dark mode visual bugs * Flickr results do not use “raw” (human readable) tags * RuntimeError: unable to perform operation on * Requests causing 500 errors when verifying OAuth application registration do not have errors logged * Media list endpoints have incorrect OpenAPI example definitions * Sentry: Importing a module script failed * Sentry: Failed to fetch dynamically imported module * Add backoff to Stocksnap DAG for 5XX errors * Changes to Catalog of Life data causing iNaturalist failure

stack: frontend

• Playwright tests do not fail if the snapshot name is completely new
• The content switcher in the header is broken
• Update the @openverse/eslint-plugin to use ESLint v.9
• Atlas of Living Australia
• Dark mode visual bugs
• Tweaks to VSafetyWall component to support dark mode
• TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading ‘value’)
• Sentry: Importing a module script failed
• Sentry: Failed to fetch dynamically imported module

stack: catalog* Atlas of Living Australia * Add/review Slack messaging for the new data refresh * Handle constraint mapping failures in data refresh * Changes to Catalog of Life data causing iNaturalist failure * Refactor usage of environment variables for DAG configuration to use Airflow Variables

stack: api RuntimeError: unable to perform operation on * Requests causing 500 errors when verifying OAuth application registration do not have errors logged * Media list endpoints have incorrect OpenAPI example definitions PlaygroundPlayground Issues[Aspect] WordPress Consider setting “DISABLE_WP_CRON”: true by default in the web version

[Package][@wp-playground] Blueprints* Consider setting “DISABLE_WP_CRON”: true by default in the web version * Example “Load an older WordPress version” at “Blueprints > Examples” is not working

[Type] Bug* Recover from an invalid local directory handle

[Type] Enhancement* Consider setting “DISABLE_WP_CRON”: true by default in the web version * Recover from an invalid local directory handle * Consider maintaining stats for feature usage and kinds of errors

[Type] UI / UX / User Experience* Recover from an invalid local directory handle

[Type] Developer Documentation* Example “Load an older WordPress version” at “Blueprints > Examples” is not working

[Type] Documentation* Example “Load an older WordPress version” at “Blueprints > Examples” is not working

[Type] Repo / Project Management* Consider maintaining stats for feature usage and kinds of errors

[Type] Tracking* Consider maintaining stats for feature usage and kinds of errors

General Issues Site info doesn’t appear on first load * Simultaneous scrolling in multiple tabs within a code editor * How do I self-host and activate my theme? Photos Photo Directory Team Reps 2024: Submit your Votes!

Plugins* Upcoming Security Changes for Plugin and Theme Authors on WordPress.org * Plugin Review Team: 9 September 2024

Plugin Check Check: Badly named files (spaces etc) * Custom validation of Contributors in readme * Custom validation of Contributors in readme * Add end-to-end (e2e) tests Polyglots WordPress 6.6.2 has been released….

Support* Support Team Meeting – September 5th

Sustainability* Guidelines for making WordPress websites more sustainable. First steps and plans

Test* Team Chat Agenda: September 10, 2024 * Test Team Update: 9 September 2024 * Test Scrub Schedule for WordPress 6.7

Themes* Themes team meeting notes for September 10, 2024

Twenty Twenty Five* Default Theme Task Force update for August, 2024

TT5 Issues[Status] Needs Design Feedback

• Feedback: The line length on the home and archives of the right aligned blog feels too long

Accessibility (a11y)* Text-only blog single post: The category above the post title needs to be moved * News blog single post: The date above the post title needs to be moved * Default single post: The category above the post title needs to be moved * Right aligned blog with vertical heading: Make sure there is only one H1 heading * Add missing elements to template patterns * Posts without titles can not be reached from the list of blog posts

[Type] Bug* Text-only blog single post: The category above the post title needs to be moved * News blog single post: The date above the post title needs to be moved * Default single post: The category above the post title needs to be moved * All patterns that are not hidden needs a description * theme.json missing customTemplates of templates folder * Right aligned blog with vertical heading: Make sure there is only one H1 heading * Add missing elements to template patterns * The Quote block style is not working properly * News blog archive and News blog search results are referencing missing patterns

[Component] Block Patterns* All patterns that are not hidden needs a description * Right aligned blog with vertical heading: Make sure there is only one H1 heading * Add missing elements to template patterns * Audit patterns filenames

[Component] Template Parts* Right aligned blog with vertical heading: Make sure there is only one H1 heading

[Priority] High* Right aligned blog with vertical heading: Make sure there is only one H1 heading * Add missing elements to template patterns

[Priority] Highest* News blog archive and News blog search results are referencing missing patterns

[Type] Enhancement* Audit patterns filenames * Move the style variation specific font families from the main theme.json to the variation json file

[Component] Style Variations* Move the style variation specific font families from the main theme.json to the variation json file

[Component] theme.json Move the style variation specific font families from the main theme.json to the variation json file Training Training Team Meeting Recap – 05 September 2024 * Call for Contributors: Become an Online Workshop Host * Drawing new learners to the new Learn.WordPress.org

Learn Issues[Component] Environment* Feedback – Remove automatically generated development files

[Type] Enhancement* Feedback – Remove automatically generated development files * Consider removing locale prompt on Learn.WordPress.org * Feedback – Improve the lesson preview CTA banner

[Admin] Agenda* Meeting Agenda September 12, 2024 * Meeting Agenda September 5, 2024

[Content] Experienced Author* Lesson: Introduction to developing themes quiz * Online Workshop: Submitting an enhancement to the WordPress Playground Block

[Component] Learn Theme* A revamped design in Lesson flow * Feedback – Improve the lesson preview CTA banner

[Component] Sensei* A revamped design in Lesson flow * Feedback – Improve the lesson preview CTA banner

[Content] Needs Co-host* Online Workshop: Submitting an enhancement to the WordPress Playground Block

[Dev] Needs Design* A revamped design in Lesson flow * Feedback – Improve the lesson preview CTA banner

Awaiting Triage* Online Workshop: Submitting an enhancement to the WordPress Playground Block

[Component] Content* Course deprecation

General Issues React without JSX * Online Workshop: Setting up a WordPress blog * Block Hooks * Japanese Online Workshop – デザインデータからのテーマ作成。ブロックを活用して更新しやすいテーマを作ろう！ Online Workshops Developer Hours: An Introduction to Data Views * WordPress Playground Block code editor theme support

WordCamps* WP Campus Connect Ajmer, India * WordCamp Youth Hackathon Skopje

WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

Dependencies

JSConf is Back & Joining the OpenJS Foundation!

The legendary JavaScript conference has found its official home at the OpenJS Foundation.

Stay tuned and get ready to mark your calendars!

Read here https://t.co/h9x5JnWuuD#JSConf #OpenJS #JavaScript #TechCommunity pic.twitter.com/qKnuDiTbmq

— OpenJS Foundation (@openjsf) September 13, 2024

Released: PHPUnit Polyfills 1.1.2, 2.0.2 and 3.0.0.

Polyfills 3.0.0 adds full support for PHPUnit 11, including polyfilling new PHPUnit functionality for use with older PHPUnit versions.

Go upgrade & enjoy!

Props for @hellofromtonya for helping out.https://t.co/UeC6Xjlv7Q

— Juliette (@jrf_nl@phpc.social) (@jrf_nl) September 7, 2024

• Second Beta of jQuery 4.0.0
• Curl 8.10.0 – NEW
• Node 22.8.0
• React 18.3.1 / React 19 Upgrade Guide
• PHP 8.3.11 Released! –
• PHP 8.2.23 Released!
• PHP 8.1.29 Released!
• PHPUnit Polyfills 3.0.0
• PHPCS 3.10.2
• WPCS 3.1.0
• LibZip 1.10.1
• Changes in MySQL 8.4.3 (Not yet released, LTS Release)
• Composer 2.7.9
• Homebrew 4.3.21 – NEW
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes
• Safari 18 Beta Release Notes – NEW

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Transcript ↓

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, host Michelle Frechette interviews Marcus Burnette to dive into the many exciting features of WP World, a community platform designed for WordPress professionals. Marcus, the creator of WP World, walks listeners through its dynamic features, including customizable profile pins that reflect user specialties, a robust hosting review system, and privacy options for those who prefer not to share their location.

Top Takeaways: * User-Friendly Features in WP World: Marcus Burnette highlighted various user-friendly features in WP World, such as the ability to customize profile pins based on user specialties and the option to hide locations for privacy reasons. This ensures the platform remains flexible and inclusive, especially for those who prioritize privacy or are digital nomads. * Community-Driven Feedback and Development: Michelle Frechette shared how user feedback directly influenced the development of WP World. For example, her suggestion to add “accessibility specialist” as an option was quickly implemented. Marcus encouraged users to request features, showing that the platform is shaped by the needs of its community. * WP World’s Hosting Review Platform: Marcus introduced a comprehensive hosting review system where users can rate various aspects of hosting providers, such as performance and security. This community-sourced rating system provides valuable insights for people choosing WordPress hosts and ensures transparency by preventing paid listings. * Playful and Engaging Design Aspects: Marcus, as a designer, has adding fun products like the “Capital P, dang it” mug. He also shared how events like WordCamps feature their own unique ” u” mascots, contributing to the platform’s lighthearted and engaging atmosphere. * Collaborative Community Spirit: Both Marcus and Michelle emphasized their close collaboration and support within the WordPress community. Their plans to meet at WordCamp US to further discuss ideas highlight the strong, community-driven spirit behind WP World and its events. They also invited the audience to connect with them and grab stickers at the upcoming event, showcasing their approachability.

Mentioned In The Show:* WP World * WP Coffee Talk * WP Speakers * Seriously Bud? Podcast * Bud Kraus * ChatGPT * HeroPress * Javi Guembe * Topher DeRosia * Elementor * Do the Woo Podcast * WP WonderWomen * WP Career Pages * WordPress.org * Nexcess * Katy Boykin * Kadence Amplify

Sponsor: A2 HostingA2Hosting offers solutions for WordPress and WooCommerce that are both blazing fast and ultra-reliable. WordPress can be easily deployed on ANY web hosting plan from A2: Shared, VPS, or Dedicated. A2 also offers Managed WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting. Take a look at a2hosting.com today!

A2 Hosting You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:* Marcus Burnette (Creator, The WP World) * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

Transcript Michelle Frechette: Welcome to Post Status Happiness Hour. We’re here today with a good friend of mine. I say that all the time. I have a lot of good friends in WordPress, but Marcus, you are absolutely at the top of the list. Marcus Burnett from the WP World and other places too. I mean, it’s not your primary job, but that’s what we’re here to talk about today. So I’m, I’m grateful that you’re here. How are you? Are you there?

Marcus Burnette: Yep. Sorry.

Michelle Frechette: Haha. It’s okay. I said, how are you?

Marcus Burnette: I am good and hearing double. I had the other window open with the video stream and so I had to shut that off real quick.

Michelle Frechette: No worries. That happens all the time. Um, I was on a stream the other day and somebody wasn’t wearing headphones and so everything was echoing back because I was hearing myself through there. It’s rough, it’s rough, but it, but it works out and it’s all good.

Marcus Burnette: I don’t mind hanging out with two of you, but when you’re saying the same thing with a three second delay, it messes up my brain.

Michelle Frechette: Discombobulating, absolutely, absolutely. And I’ve been on phone calls before where that happens for whatever reason through cell technology and I just have to not listen. While I’m talking. Otherwise, it’s really, I actually, I sang the national anthem at an event in a big indoor arena. And they were, there was no time to like, you couldn’t get there early in practice. So you just had to go for it. And they warn you in advance that you are going to hear yourself echoing off the walls, as you sing. And it did, and it was incredibly difficult to stay on and not, not listen to that. But anyway, that’s not what we’re here for today. We’re here to talk about the WP World. And so it’s good to have you here. Let’s do it. So tell us, I mean, I’ve talked to you about it a lot, but I think there’s a lot of people who haven’t. So tell us a little bit about why did you even think about the WP World? How did it begin? Okay. Um, I think it was a spreadsheet, but tell us the whole story.

Marcus Burnette: Um, yeah, so the WP World began as an idea, I guess, maybe a year and a half, almost two years ago. Um, but it was really kind of, uh, The idea wasn’t for the site itself yet. It was, um, you know, we had had some, some, I live in Florida in central Florida and we had some hurricanes and I wanted to check with folks in our space and make sure that everyone was okay. And so, um, I, had previously maybe a month or so before that put together a little WordPress site with some Google Map pins because I was trying to play with what does that look like? Can I power a Google Map with WordPress post types? Uh, so I, I pulled that back out, um, and started adding a few of our WordPress friends in Florida to it. And, um, just as a way for me to personally keep track of, you know, who’s around, who’s in the path of some of the storms and stuff. And, Um, so I added a few, a few folks that were in this area and then I started to think about, well, what if I open this up to kind of everyone to be able to add themselves to the map and really build out this community where people can kind of see where each other are and check on each other and, you know, in case of storms or whatever, but also just see who’s in their local area and get a chance to maybe reach out and meet up for coffee or, or whatever the case may be. So I polished it up a little bit and then, uh, made it live for, for folks to sign up for themselves and, um, just been trying to grow it ever since. So the, the goal of the site now is to connect people in the WordPress community, both in person and online with a, uh, Focus on the in person part.

Michelle Frechette: I absolutely love it. I’ve been, I know I wasn’t the first member, but I was among the first sweep of influx of people who signed up because it was so cool. One of the, I’m going to, I’m going to say. The only negative thing about it is that when you signed up so early, you have to keep going back and adding more to your profile, which is a good problem to have because you keep adding some pretty immense, um, incredible features. It kind of reminds me of an old movie. The Englishman who went up a hill but came down a mountain. Like you built this hill and now it’s like, you keep adding to it. It’s going to be a mountain that’s by the end.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah. The, uh, the, the profile editing page I think is due for a little bit of work now because I’ve added so many things. Just things that you can add to your profile to kind of tell people a little bit about who you are and what you do in WordPress. And so, uh, yeah, you’re right. There are a lot of things. I added one even today, so you’re gonna have to go back today, uh, after this and decide whether you want your WordPress photo directories to show the latest six or a random six.

Michelle Frechette: Um, it’s a, mine’s already set to random because I discovered that as I was walking through it about an hour ago.

Marcus Burnette: I put that in there earlier today.

Michelle Frechette: I liked it. That was pretty awesome. Um, and I also updated a couple other things like my, I have a brand new website, michellefrechette.com, which you If you look at it, cause it’s still a little bit, you know, finding its way. But I switched from MeetMichelle.online, which is just basically a link tree to put that on there. So I was able to update my, my profile there. And I already had marked that I was attending WordCamp 2024, WordCamp US 2024, but today I was able to check off that I’m also a speaker there. Because that’s something that’s happened in the last week. So I love that you can go in and edit things and add to, and you’ve got languages in there you’ve got, uh, if you’re looking for work, so I’ve seen people every week in your newsletter who are looking for work. So we know those kinds of people that might be interested that we might be interested in contract work or hiring. Um, yeah, there’s a lot to it. Rating your, uh, hosting companies. And adding, um, venues that are near the venues for WordCamps. So, like, for example, for WordCamp Rochester, I think it was last year, I went in and added some restaurants that people might be interested in going to, and Buffalo, and things like that. So, yeah, like, it’s crazy. It’s awesome. It’s almost like its own little online city. Maybe we should just called it like WP Cities or something.

Marcus Burnette: It’s definitely a little, definitely a geo city is nice. Definitely a little overwhelming. If you like, think about all of the different things in there all at once. Um, I think I am trying to just continue to add whatever I think is relevant to kind of help people connect with each other. Uh, I do need to find a better way. I think of reaching back out to people who. Were in the first, you know, handful of people that signed up that maybe now have missed out on updating two thirds of their profile, which was their entire profile before, but now there’s so many more things there that they need to come back and, uh, and add to it.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, but it’s a, it’s a, like I said, it’s a good problem to have, right? It’s like, I have a pair of shoes. It doesn’t mean I can’t have more pairs of shoes. It just means I can make them better. I don’t know. I’m making up all kinds of weird stuff. Let me bring it up on screen and you can walk us through a little bit of what, um, the WP World looks like.

Marcus Burnette: Sure. Yeah. So just I’m logged out intentionally, so we can just kind of see. the, the view logged out at the moment without being signed in. Um, my goal for the most part is to have all of the information here that you would possibly need really without having to log in. I know that’s like not a great business plan to be able to just see anything that you possibly need to see without being logged in. But I really want this to be a resource for everyone. So, um, I’d love for you to create an account. There’s definitely some benefits to creating an account, especially when it comes to the actual connection part with people, um, and being discoverable within the site by other folks that are in your area. But when it comes to just looking at the data for like what people are in the site and the WordCamp events and all the different hosting information and all of that. You don’t have to be logged in to see any of the data. Now, again, you said you can, you mentioned that you can rate your host, your favorite hosting company. You do have to be logged in to do the rating. Um, you do have to be logged in for a couple of other pieces, but that’s the like interactivity piece. If you want to interact with the site a bit more, um, then signing up. Which is free and sign up for free. And, uh, then you can, you can do the interactivity piece, but, um, you can see anything there is in the site for the most part without having to log in.

Michelle Frechette: Which actually, if, if you were charging people for looking at things, if you’re charging people for being a member, that would make sense that you would put some things you would put searching functions, things behind a paywall. But the fact that the only thing that’s behind that registration is. Actually making changes to the site. So to your own, the things you have in, in your own profile and the ability to rate things and whatever, um, But there’s no paywall because even registration is free and even your continued subscription is free. So I think it’s perfect. It makes perfect sense that people could kind of check it out before they decide they’re going to give you their data.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah. And just so folks are aware. The site is free because of these fine people that are scrolling across the middle here. Um, and I’ll jump back up in a second, but they’re all listed down here at the bottom. They do have some really amazing sponsors for the site that have made keeping that free for everyone possible. So, um, if you do come and check out the site, do scroll all the way to the bottom and check out the, the sponsors there because they’re, they’re the ones making that possible.

Michelle Frechette: I really like that round logo.

Marcus Burnette: What’s that? Oh yeah.

Michelle Frechette: I really, I really like the round logo there.

Marcus Burnette: That’s WP Speakers is in here too. Yes. Thank you, Michelle. You are, you are one of the generous sponsors that are keeping the site free for everyone.

Michelle Frechette: It’s a good site to support for sure. So show us some of the features that I see, like, like, okay. That’s a lot of pins.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, this is the,this is the 1600 plus, you know, right off the bat. You can see. How many there are 1, 600 so far. I know that the community is a lot bigger. So come on folks, join us. Join us in the site. But yeah, that’s a lot of pins. There’s a lot of people. Pretty decent chance that there’s someone somewhere in your area at this point. Unless you live in, maybe, Mongolia, up here somewhere.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, I don’t see a lot of people probably in, um, Antarctica, so.

Marcus Burnette: No, not yet.

Michelle Frechette: There’s no permanent residence there, so.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, so if I jump to, well let’s just look at a few things under, like, the community aspect of it here, just seeing other folks. So you can search by location, which, um, I envision, like, Let’s say I’m traveling somewhere, let’s say I’m headed to Chicago or something for the weekend, and I want to see, you know, what WordPress folks are in the Chicago area, I can just type in Chicago. And hit search and I can see, you know, here are the folks that are in the Chicago area, see if I know anybody, see if, uh, I want to reach out to anyone and say, Hey, you know, I’m going to be in Chicago this weekend, who wants to grab lunch or coffee or, or something like that. Again, the focus is primarily for folks to meet up in person. I think pre-COVID, we all met up in person a bit more, and I think that that helped with. Um, some of the unity across the WordPress space, and I want to kind of foster getting back to that and allowing people to meet back up in person more often. Or if I’m in the Chicago area and I see that there are 21 folks nearby and there’s not a meetup in Chicago, now I also know maybe I should start a meetup in this area. There seems to be a number of folks that are, you know, within, I don’t know, 80, 90 miles. That might be a little bit far for a few folks to drive, but you know, there’s a significant number of folks in a particular area and there’s no meetup or WordCamp, um, you know, that gives organizers the potential to say, maybe we should have a meetup here. Maybe we should have a WordCamp here. Um, so again, just trying to continue fostering that in person connection.

Michelle Frechette: And what happens if you click on one of those people?

Marcus Burnette: Yep. So if you click on one of the people that will take you to their profile, um, I don’t know what any of these folks have filled out on their profile currently, but we’ll click on one and head there.And see what we see. I’ve spent.

Michelle Frechette: We are streaming so it’s, it’s taking up a lot of bandwidth. I’m sure.

Marcus Burnette: It is. And it’s sometimes it’s gotta go out and fetch some stuff to, to kind of refresh. Um, I do have a lot of, a lot of pieces for the profiles that I’ve. intentionally made automated so you don’t have to come back and do everything. I mean, there’s a lot of profile information for you to come back and update. Um, but there’s also a lot that doesn’t need to be updated and we’ll take a look at it when we get there. But like WordPress.org badges come in WordPress, um, photo directory photos are loaded in any of the plugins or themes. If you’re a plugin developer or a theme developer are loaded in. And so all of that stuff kind of comes automatically. Uh, not as many to see on Brian’s profile here, so let’s actually hop back here. Let’s go see Michelle’s. You said you updated some stuff, so let’s go look at yours.

Michelle Frechette: Mine is pretty, mine’s pretty full, yeah.

Marcus Burnette: Give it a second to load up here too. Yeah, the streaming bandwidth is taking up some of the speed here, but, um.

Michelle Frechette: There I am.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, so lots of things loaded in here.

Michelle Frechette: I added my first WordPress version today as well.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah. I have all of the, all of the releases that have ever come out, um, listed. So you can, I think I have dates in there. So like, if you’re trying to figure out when did I start using WordPress? That was probably around this date.

Michelle Frechette: That’s exactly how I found it.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah. Help facilitate figuring out which, uh, which version you likely started with. And then. These contributed WordPress releases, you’ve contributed to 5.6 and 6.4, those come in automatically, so you didn’t have to add those. Um, uh, bud, our, our buddy, Bud Kraus has a podcast called Seriously Bud? And, uh, he and I worked out a little bit of, um, me adding any of the podcast episodes that he does to the WP World. And in return, he’s adding the WP World links, um, in his, in his podcast episodes back to folks.

Michelle Frechette: Oh that’s cool!

Marcus Burnette: Anybody who’s been on the Seriously Bud podcast, I’ve added their episode link automatically. So no one’s had to do that.

Michelle Frechette: We can do that with WP Coffee Talk too if you’d like. We’ll talk later.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, absolutely. We’ll get that going. That’s going to be a lot longer of a list since you’ve been doing that for a while.

Michelle Frechette: Haha that’s true.

Marcus Burnette: So go back and add a bunch, but yeah, I’d be happy to do that. Um, all of the events and we’ll scroll down and look at those in a second. You’ve been at 74 events, which is just an insane amount of events.

Michelle Frechette: It’s a lot

Marcus Burnette: Developed a plugin and contributed 324 WordPress photo directory photos. So those are all a little bit lower. We’ll just scroll down the page a little bit. Um, you’ve got all the different ways that you can be connected with up here. Um, someone asked me earlier this week, if there was a way for people to chat with each other within the site, whether there was like direct messages or any kind of chat window or anything. And they’re honestly, I mean, if you just even look at yours, so many ways that people can,

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Marcus Burnette: Um, connect with you on. all the different social networks, but even the different Slack Channels and Discord and all of that, that I didn’t feel like adding another way of connecting with each other and the site was necessary. Um, if you want to connect with Michelle, there’s,

Michelle Frechette: There’s a lot of ways to do it.

Marcus Burnette: 11, 11 different ways.

Michelle Frechette:How did you, when did you decide to add birthdays? Cause I didn’t see that before I added my birthday today as well. Was that recent?

Marcus Burnette: Yep. Birthdays was, um, what’s today? Last week.

Michelle Frechette: Okay.

Marcus Burnette: My birth, my birthday was exactly a week ago.

Michelle Frechette: Happy late Birthday.

Marcus Burnette: Thank you. I added it for my birthday. So I put my birthday in and then I just made it open to everyone to add their birthdays. No years, just month and day so people can say happy birthday or hopefully I’ll get to a place where maybe I send a birthday email happy birthday or something like that, but Um you know, while I’m, while I’m going along and we can look at this other page in a minute, I’m also trying to add some, some fun things into the site. And so like, there’s also a WordCamp WAPU page with all of these. We’ll look at that in a second, but there’s opportunities for fun, happy, delight, enjoyment type stuff. And so, uh, I think your birthday is probably one of those ways that I can add some enjoyment to the site.

Michelle Frechette: I mean I like my birthday. It’s coming up soon.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah. A little over a month. A little over a month away. Uh, yeah, that was last week. I added last week because it was my birthday and I wanted to add birthdays to the site, so I did.

Michelle Frechette: I love it. I love it.

Marcus Burnette: Um, yeah, you can get a general idea of where you live at the city level and then the folks that are near you. Um, Jeff is extra near you cause I can see him back there in the background.

Michelle Frechette: He doesn’t live on that sofa. But once a week we co-work. Wave Jeff. He’s got his. Oh there he is.

Marcus Burnette: Um, and then we can also check out the business directory in a minute, but businesses also show up if businesses have, um, physical addresses, then the businesses are also shown so you can see there’s actually a, um, a web agency that’s about 30 seconds away from my house that I didn’t know existed until they added themselves to the WP World. And they, one of those days I was checking my profile and I saw the name of their agency in the sidebar. And I was like, Oh, I’ve never even heard of that agency. I looked them up and they’re literally 30 seconds from my house.

Michelle Frechette: It’s funny. Cause I put the WP Speakers as Rochester, New York, cause that’s the biggest city nearby, but it’s actually Hilton.It’s right where I am. So nice. It’s my house. And then you got your badges, too.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, then you have your .org badges, which, like I said before, get automatically pulled in, so you didn’t have to add any of these. Um, that gets pulled in from your .org profile. Um, your plugin gets pulled in directly from your .org profile. And then we have photos from the photo directory that you submitted. These are pretty, by the way.

Michelle Frechette: Thank you. Well, those were random because I just changed it to random. So if you hit refresh, it would be six different ones, right?

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, let’s hit refresh and see what we get. Um, yeah, I literally added that this morning because, um, even though one of the, uh, co-reps currently, um, it’s been a little while since I uploaded any photos. And I was tired of seeing the same six photos.

Michelle Frechette: So two of those photos are Taipei. Three of those photos are, uh, Torino and one is the car wash in the next town over .

Marcus Burnette: Oh, nice. Very nice. Yep. So little, little peek behind the scenes. You have uploaded 324 photos. I only grabbed the last 50, and then randomly picked 6 out of those, so that’s why a couple of these are shown again, they just happen to get shuffled around that way, but uh,

Michelle Frechette: That’s pretty cool though.

Marcus Burnette: But rather than grab all 103, all 324 photos, and then randomly pick 6 of them, kind of a resource hub.

Michelle Frechette: That’s pretty cool.

Marcus Burnette: Grab the latest 50 of them and then pick six randomly from there. So they’ll always be sort of recent photos, but with it set to random, you’ll see different six each time.

Michelle Frechette: I love that.

Marcus Burnette: Uh, instead of seeing the same ones. Yeah. Well, a little more fun that way, a little more variety than just seeing the same latest six, which is the default. So if you have uploaded photos to the photo directory and want to use. to be randomized. Go update your profile and change it to random. And they’ll, they’ll be randomized now. Um, automatically pulls in the latest three blog posts from your website. Um.

Michelle Frechette: I just changed that website today. So now there’s actually post there.

Marcus Burnette: Nice. If you, if you want it to, I think one of the options is for you to hide those. Um, I do have a handful of people that have messaged me and said, Hey, I have my website there, but my website isn’t all necessarily WordPress related content, so if people have like, fitness content or whatever, it doesn’t make sense for their profile. Um, and so, I gave them a checkbox to hide the posts if they don’t want to show their latest posts.

Michelle Frechette: That’s me in the sheep sweater in the middle picture, by the way. On the left.

Marcus Burnette: Oh, this one? That’s the Yeah, that’s like a pretty sweet sweater.

Michelle Frecehtte: Sophomore or junior year of high school. That’s a long time ago.

Marcus Burnette: Those are, that’s just sheep on there. I like it.

Michelle Frechette: It is. I’m going to have to write a couple more blog posts just to move that one off the page.

Marcus Burnette: Here’s your, your daily incentive to write more posts.

Michelle Frechette: Or change the featured image one or the other.

Marcus Burnette: Or change the featured image. And then one of the best sections of each profile.

Michelle Frechette: I love this.

Marcus Burnette: If you need a speaker, um, the content from this is pulled from WP Speakers, but then you hop back over to wpspeakers.com to actually connect with the person. Um, that’s intentional, but. A lot of the info or some of the info has been pulled over. So you get a general idea before you hop over to WP Speakers and reach out and say, Hey, we’d love you to speak at this meetup or Word Camp or whatever the case is.

Michelle Frechette: Exactly. That’s awesome.

Marcus Burnette: Your, your profile really is full of things. They don’t know, they don’t all continue this long, but, uh,

Michelle Frechette: Well, I will say too, that I want to say about, about my Hero Press article. I have since learned that saying like my tribe is, um, is not a good thing, right? So that’s, that’s, that’s language that belongs to the indigenous people.

Marcus Burnette: Sure.

Michelle Frechette: So I’m actually changing that article very soon to say I found my community. I got access to that today. So we’re going to see that be updated very soon too. In case anybody is like, how did you, why did she say that? Just wanted to put that on the record.

Marcus Burnette: Fair enough. Yeah. Things, things change over time. And the fact that you have access to go back and change it is great.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Marcus Burnette: And when you do, this will automatically be updated.

Michelle Frechette: I love that too.

Marcus Burnette: None of this is hard coded in here. This is being pulled from, from the HeroPress site, um, for folks that are unaware of HeroPress, that’s a Topher DeRosha project. Um, there’s actually a bunch of sites under the Heropress network. Um, but these stories, the Topher is had folks write stories over the course of many years,

Michelle Frechette: 10 years.

Marcus Burnette: Is it?

Michelle Frechette: I talked to him today. He’s going to come on this show in November, I think, and we’re going to celebrate 10 years of his doing HeroPress.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. There’s just tons and tons of stories about WordPress folks and how they, how they got into WordPress and some of the other parts of their personal stories. And so I wanted that aspect to be included here, too. But rather than ask people to rewrite those, I just connected with HeroPress, um, to do that as well. And to actually read the essay, you hop over to HeroPress and read it there, so.

Michelle Frechette: Makes sense.

Marcus Burnette: And then we get down to this insane list of events that you have been to, spoken at, organized, sponsored. Um, yeah, all the little icons have different meanings here, but look at that crazy wall of events.

Michelle Frechette: Isn’t that fun?

Marcus Burnette: It is fun. It’s fun in a couple of ways. One, it’s fun to look at that you’ve been to all of these events and just see where you’ve traveled, but also for you to be able to keep a list of how many events you’ve been to, where they’ve been, be able to click through and see information about those events.

Michelle Frechette: And believe it or not, there’s a couple missing, so I have to go and check a few more boxes, because I was, I’ve been at every single WordCamp US ever. And I don’t see 2016 on the list, so I’ll be updating that soon.

Marcus Burnette: Oh, yeah.

Michelle Frechette: I missed one.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, it’s not, not there. Yeah, one of the fun things, too. Well, it’s a little harder to do with yours because yours is so big, but if you hover over the, uh, legend.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, that’s cool.

Marcus Burnette: It will highlight. So these are all 51 of the ones that you’ve spoken at. Here are the 14 you’ve been an organizer for, here two that you’ve volunteered, and the one sponsor, which is this upcoming WordCamp US.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Marcus Burnette: Um, the sponsor one is new too. Marking the event is showing up, representing a sponsor.

Michelle Frechette: I’ll be adding a few more of those too.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah. That came out of a conversation, um, that I had at WordCamp Canada. Like what about going as a sponsor? Sure, let’s add that. So

Michelle Frechette: Awesome. I love it.

Marcus Burnette: I got it as well. And then we get down to the bottom again. But yeah, actually, your page was really great to walk through.

Michelle Frechette: Because I’m too busy.

Marcus Burnette: Just, yeah, just about everything you could possibly see. I mean, the only thing you don’t have, I think, is a theme that you’ve created, because that would be somewhere.

Michelle Frechette: I have not. Yep.

Marcus Burnette: That’s it. You’re going to have to do that, so you can just get a foot.

Michelle Frechette: We have some questions that came up before we move on to another page.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah.

Michelle Frechette: Let’s, uh, let’s, first of all, I want you to know that somebody’s already added themselves. Check that out. So you must, that number should have gone up by one now.

Marcus Burnette: Perfect. Thank you.

Michelle Frechette: Uh, Kathy Zant wants you to know, she says, happy birthday.

Marcus Burnette: Aw, thanks Kathy.

Michelle Frechette: James Lau says that the layout is very nice, and he does have a question. He says, uh, how is it built? Are you using block editor components?

Marcus Burnette: Good question. Um, the site is built with Elementor and a lot of custom code. Um, and a fair amount of that custom code is from ChatGPT, because I can develop some things, but I’m not a professional developer. And so I’ve definitely leveraged ChatGPT for a number of the parts that are in the site, especially things that are slightly more complicated. Um, like if I go to the

Michelle Frechette: It’s a good tool.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, if I go to the Presser list, um, this whole like search area here, I’m sure I could have leveraged another plugin for, but I said, Hey, here’s the, here’s the content I have in this format. Can you give me, you know, a way to filter for everyone who’s looking for work? So now you can see, you know, everyone who’s marked themselves as looking for work. If you’re looking to hire, come check out this page and, uh, see what, what folks have to offer. These are the people that are currently looking for work. Uh, if you just want to see plugin developers or theme developers, you can filter by, by that as well. So pieces like that, um, I’ve had Chat GPT helped me with like the event list here has some nice filtering at the top. Once this loads Um, to be able to check out events by month by region and online, online events. That’s all sort of been worked out with some Chat GPT help, but yeah, um, Elementor is one of the great sponsors of the site and a tool that I have been using for years and years and years. And so when I started kind of working this out from its original prototype of Floridians to something that, uh, I wanted to open up for everyone. I definitely reached for Elementor to kind of build out the, the majority of the site. Good question.

Michelle Frechette:Yeah. Mohamed Atta says this is a really cool features. Great work. I agree.

Marcus Burnette: Thank you. Yes. And thank you for signing up.

Michelle Frechette:That’s great. So the businesses you were going to show us businesses next.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah. The business director has been around for a while. Um, but I just made it free, just opened it up for free for everyone. So, um, it’s grown in the, I want to say three weeks ago, maybe a month ago, it’s definitely grown in that time. So if you’re looking for hosting companies, agencies, plug in their theme developer or community type things, um, you know, like our buddy Bob with Do the Woo podcast and WP Speakers, these are all kind of community. Um, related businesses among other things, right? Because there’s some overlap for sure. But if you’re looking for an agency, you can head to the business directory and check out agencies. Like I said, if you’re looking local, these agencies will show up on your profile in the box to show you that they’re local, or if you do a search for a certain location, the proximity search, um, it wil also show the businesses local to those areas. But if location doesn’t matter to you, you know, a lot of our work is done remotely and the location is a little less important. Um, you know, you can come check out these, these businesses, these agencies that are, um, all over the world. And, uh, see what they have to offer.

Michelle Frechette: And you can see if they’re hiring. I like that too. So you can tell.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, and also see if they’re hiring, probably create a filter for that, you think, right?

Michelle Frechette: Oh that would be a great idea.

Marcus Burnette: Filter by whoever’s hiring and get a, get a good picture of that. Yeah. Those, so that. Obviously shows a label here. Um, those also make their way into the newsletter. So I do send out a newsletter every Wednesday. Um, the time of the day varies a little bit depending on how busy I am. Um,

Michelle Frechette: I know that feeling.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah. But, uh, The, the newsletter itself includes like what’s new, not in WordPress, but with the WP World. Cause there are a lot of publications that do what’s new in WordPress and they do it well. I’m not trying to take that over. Um, so it’s what’s new in the WP World. And then. Upcoming events and people looking for work and companies looking for, um, to hire folks. So, uh, you’re automatically subscribed to that newsletter when you sign up for the WP World. Um, so you should see that in your inbox if you’re part of the site already, although you’re welcome to unsubscribe if you have too many newsletters in your inbox, which is also fair.

Michelle Frechette: I always read yours.

Marcus Burnette: Thank you. I try to, I try to keep it relevant and interesting. Like I said, there are a lot of people that do WordPress news well already. So that’s not what the newsletter’s intent is.

Michelle Frechette: And some of the things that the WP World supports are like the WP, um, Wonder Women have you as one of our staunch supporters over there. And I think, I think I have you. Yeah. My weekly tweet thread is also, uh, gives homage to the work that you’re doing as well for people who are looking for jobs. So,

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, we’ve got a little bit of, a little bit of cross pollination happening there. Um, I think WP. Speaker pages and WP Career Pages is also the sponsor for the section of the newsletter that shows who’s hiring and who’s looking for work. Um, so also a great, great resource if you’re looking for work is WP Career Pages. You and I have worked on some things together a little bit.

Michelle Frechette: We sure have. Absolutely. And, and you’re one of the, like, four people in WordPress that knows how to take my scooter apart and put it back together. Because you’ve had to do it for me so many times. In Montclair this year. But, um.

Marcus Burnette: Happy to help.

Michelle Frechette: I appreciate that. It’s one of the things about our community that I love is that if you have a need, people are willing to kind of step in and help you out. And the only way I could attend was, so I texted you and I’m like, is there any chance that if I stay at the same hotel as you guys, you’ll help me with my scooter? And you were like, absolutely awesome than I’m coming.

Marcus Burnette: Of Course. Of Course.

Michelle Frechette: So it worked really, really well. Um, one of the things that I love is I call what, what I call gap filling projects. So WordPress.org has a lot going for it. Our profile’s there, you can put a lot of stuff into them for sure, but you’re limited in what you can put in. There has to be part of what’s happening at wp.org, right?

Marcus Burnette: Yep.

Michelle Frechette: I can’t put in there a lot of, I mean, I could put in my bio, but I couldn’t connect to a lot of other things. And so the WP World I think fills a gap of connectedness and building that community even more. WP Speakers does that. Um. I’m going to forget all of the different things, but, um, Javi Guembe has, um, WP Talk. I think it is? Where we can learn foreign languages from each other. And, you know, I have the WP Career Pages and other people have done things that are similar. Why is it important for you in particular to build projects that really help our community and fill some of those gaps?

Marcus Burnette: Yeah. Again, it comes down to the mission of the site, just being connecting people with each other. Um, That has been the goal from day one, and continues to be the goal, and anything that I add to the site gets added through the lens of, will this help the community connect with each other? And there are things that we can do with the WP World with WP Speakers and, um, you know, all our gap filling projects that, um, may or may not be possible to do in the official channels on WordPress.org. Um, case in point, you know, the, I pulled up the WordCamp US, um, page in the WP World and, uh, all the side events here listed. Now the WordCamp US does have some side events listed, but there’s also specific criteria for getting them listed and, um, there’s not a great way to have ones listed that are invite only that then shouldn’t show up or should show up, but shouldn’t have registration access and all of that where. Like, I don’t have those constraints at this site, um, because it’s my own project, and so, literally anybody who wants to share with me that they’re having some sort of gathering, whether it’s a big party or just, you know, a small meetup, we have, um, a few, like, there’s a, which one was just added? The Presser Herf, which I didn’t even know what a herf was.

Michelle Frechette:I don’t either.

Marcus Burnette: I found out that it’s a gathering of people who enjoy smoking cigars and just chatting. And so they’re getting together on September 19th to just hang out at a cigar bar. And some of those are, you know, that size, small, everyone show up, you know, you pay for your own drink or whatever. But if you want to hang out with 20 people, 30 people come do that, up to, you know, some of the, here’s someone who wants to get together and go watch a soccer game in Portland, so they wanted the side event added so that they could invite people to come watch a soccer game together, and then you have some of the larger ones, like you said, an A2 and Cloudways they’re throwing these, you know, much larger parties and offering drinks and snacks stuff.

Michelle Frechette: Stellar WP.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, Stellar’s on here too.

Michelle Frechette: I saw that. Yep, I saw that over the list. Yeah.

Marcus Burnette: Um, I didn’t wanna, I wasn’t sure what you were, what you were offering and not offering, so I didn’t want to commit you to anything , but yeah, stellar Stellar’s having a happy hour on the 19th as well. Um, but just being able to you know, add those sorts of things, um, resources for people. I also added a calendar that you can subscribe to. Um, that’s not something that .org is ever, I don’t think, going to include. Um, it’d be difficult to keep up with. It’d be difficult for, I mean, organizers and, and have so much on their plates already that adding something like that just doesn’t even make sense. It’s the, They’re already working way harder than, than they, than they are probably physically capable of doing sometimes, um, they’re, they’re done and exhausted by the end of these, which is, I love that. I love that they’re doing that work, but to pile additional things on top was just unreasonable. So I can step in and help and fill those gaps, like you said. And if somebody wants to add the schedule to their calendar for the week, they can easily do that. So,

Michelle Frechette: And to be fair gap, like. To identify gaps is not a negative thing, right? It just means there’s room for more things and more projects that we can all contribute to the community, even if it’s not unofficial something that’s happening within WordPress.org.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah. And, and sometimes though it’s unreasonable to, to expect those things to even be added to the plates of people who largely volunteer their time to do these things. Um, they’re already doing so much that. I’m not filling a gap that I think they should be doing. It’s here’s me finding a way to contribute additional to the community that just doesn’t even make sense for them to take on.

Michelle Frechette: Yep. Absolutely. 100 percent agree with that. I also love that the countdown is showing me that I better start packing soon.

Marcus Burnette: I’m a last minute packer.

Michelle Frechette: I am too.

Marcus Burnette: I have a checklist.

Michelle rechette: Uh, I need to make the checklist ,

Marcus Burnette: But I usually, oh, two days. I think I should pack now, even though I’m gonna be gone for a week, I give myself two days to make sure I have everything I need.

Michelle Frechette: So today I messaged you and I said, oh, I think this, this. I would love to suggest a feature. I sent it to you via DM and then. Within five minutes, I found that there is a place when you’re logged in to request a feature. So I filled out that form as well. So you wouldn’t have to, you’d have it all in one spot. Not suggesting that it has to happen, but it’s like, Oh, this would be a nice additional thing to have in there. So, um, so I did fill out that form, which is pretty cool.

Marcus Burnette: I did not see that come in yet. However, I’ve already gone and done it.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, okay. So you know what it was because I messaged you, but then I was like, I should, what I’ve discovered, I was like, oh, I should go through the official channels and not expect people to remember what I DM’d them about. But, um, but yeah, it was part of the Presser Profile.

Marcus Burnette: Yep. So as part of the profile, if you, there’s a section in here where you can kind of choose your specialties, um, as a person in the WordPress space. And When you choose those, one, they get listed on the site so people can see, but two, whatever the, the top one is that you choose, which, you know, it’s, it’s sort of asked to be in an order of most relevant to, to not as relevant, I guess, uh, whatever the top one is also. Changes your pin on the map. And so while the majority of folks all have the little W for their spot on the map, um, you know, the people who have changed that get a little, get a little different custom pin. Um, so what you asked me for was to add accessibility as one of the options and I’ve added accessibility specialist.

Michelle Frecehtte: Thank you.

Marcus Burnette: So it shows you the little pins. In my case, I have community at the top here, so that would be the pin that shows for me on the map is the little community pin,

Michelle Frechette: That’s at the top of mine too.

Marcus Burnette: But these are, these are drag and drop, so you can kind of put them in whatever order you want.

Michelle Frecehtte: Oh, that’s cool.

Marcus Burnette: There you go. I think you’ve asked for a number of features that were great additions that I’ve implemented, I think. Should not sharing location was one of them too.

Michelle Frechette: That was the biggest one. Yeah, at the very beginning, there are people who don’t, who, because they’ve been stalked in the past or they have Ex’s or whatever reason, don’t want to show their location, but still want to participate. Now you can turn that off. I think that’s great. Or people who are just digital nomads.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah. Who may not have a permanent location and not want to update their location details 12 times a year.

Michelle Frechette: Exactly. That’s great.

Marcus Burnette: Because they move around. Yeah, like you can, you can definitely check. I prefer not to share my location and then you just don’t have a map section on your profile, but you can still use the rest of the site as you normally would.

Michelle Frechette: Exactly. Well, along the idea of feature requests, we do have one in the chat, which is that there should be a part for WordPress related memes and jokes.So will you get right on that?

Marcus Burnette: I will think about how that might be incorporated in a fun way. I’m not sure exactly what that would look like, but, uh, I’m open to it. That’s for sure.

Michelle Frechtte: Mohammed, you can also always put that as your, um, profile image if you wanted to override the gravatar

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, you could. Over here you can choose your own profile photo and that’ll override whatever you’ve chosen or yeah, it’ll pull in your wordpress.org profile photo or gravatar photo if you have them set But if you upload your own photo, that’ll override anything else Yeah, we didn’t check out. I’m gonna go here just because it’s a fun page to look at.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, yeah

Marcus Burnette: Here’s one of the one of the fun bits many many WordCamps have their own version of the the WAPU mascot and so anytime I add a camp, if I can find a Wapu for it, I’ll add it and that populates this page.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, there’s Rochester.

Marcus Burnette: So, yep.

Michelle Frechette: Awesome.

Marcus Burnette: Not sure what’s happening with these. Not loading in.

Michelle Frechette: I don’t know, but I made the Buffalo one. Do you see it there?

Marcus Burnette: There’s so many.

Michelle Frechette: Holding the giant chicken wing.

Marcus Burnette: Where was it?

Michelle Frechette: One more, there it is, on the right hand side.

Marcus Burnette: Not a, not a cartoonized chicken wing, but a true to life, realistic chicken wing.

Michelle Frechette: I went with a photo, yeah, I thought that would be more fun. A different, anyway.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, I think it might be the only realistic image. Although this, the WordCamp Europe 2021, I think is like a hand drawn.

Michelle Frechette: A plushie or something, yeah.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah.

Michelle Frechette: Interesting.

Marcus Burnette: Anyways, one of the, one of the ways that I’m trying to make sure that there’s some fun things happening, these all show up on their, the events list too for each of the events. If they have one, they kind of peek out.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, that’s awesome. I think that page might be the only page with more Wapus than my bulletin board.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah. It’s, it’s giving it a run for its money. I don’t know if it’s quite surpassed your bulletin board yet, but it’s giving it a run for its money.

Michelle Frechette: I definitely collect a lot of pins, that’s for sure. Awesome. Well, anything else that we should see? We got a few more minutes. I just want to make sure we haven’t missed anything that you want to share.

Marcus Burnette: Um, yeah, I think the only other one, we didn’t really look at the hosting page. Um, this is not new, but one of the newer pieces of the site. Uh, if you have, um, you know, opinions, which a lot of people do about their hosting provider or hosting provider that they’ve used in the past. Um, here’s a great way to let people to let people know, uh, coming to any one of these and. Let’s see, I’ll just pick one, not at random. We’ll go with Nexcess. Uh, you show up here, there’s kind of a breakdown of different pieces of the rating. It’s not just one overall rating, but if you hit rate, you get a again, this is one of those that You have to be logged in to do, um, to rate the hosts. The, the camps have these as well. If you go to one of the events, you can, uh, after it’s over, come back and rate as an attendee, as an organizer, as a speaker, I think, or no, attendee, speaker, sponsor. Um, and that way going forward, you can kind of see. How did this go for that event? Was, did people generally think it was a worthwhile event? There’s also a breakdown, right? There’s a number of different things that I’m asking you to rate. So it’s not just give me one overall rating and that encompasses everything, you know, you rate it and it’ll figure out the overall ratings for you. But there’s also information for, each of the hosts, you can visit the website, see their benchmark. This is a newer piece that I’ve added from, um, WP Hosting Benchmarks.com.

Michelle Frechette: Oh nice.

Marcus Burnette: All of these hosts are listed in there with more stats about performance and security and all of that. Most of the content on these pages has been given to me by the hosts themselves. Um, WP Hosting Benchmarks is kind of a third party performance and security, um, not rating, but benchmark site. So if you want to get some more information about that, each of the hosts has a hosting benchmark link. Um, but then you can read about the hosts here. And, and rate them. And then on the hosting page, get a overall view of how people feel about the different hosting companies.

Michelle Frechette:That’s awesome. And if somebody is a hosting company and they’re not on the list, how do they get on this list?

Marcus Burnette: Yep. I think. Uh, there’s a contact down here. Um, if you want to be listed on this page, I just hit contact at WP World and let me know, or go to my Presser profile and choose one of the 27 ways that I have that you can connect with me.

Michelle Frechette: You have as many as I do.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah. There’s. My page is nice and long too, but yeah, there’s, there’s lots of ways, but, um, officially you can contact me through the site and I’ll add you, there are some criteria down here, um, about this is not just for the hosts themselves trying to determine whether or not they should be listed on this page, but also kind of, you know, some more information for folks who are trying to determine, you know, why these, these hosting companies are on this page. There is a rubric and some, some other ways that this list was compiled. Uh, and my, my hope is that this becomes a really great resource for people looking for great WordPress hosting. And it’s all kind of community sourced. Nobody on this page pays me to be on this page or anything like that, and it’s all, all the ratings from people who have created accounts on the WP World and come over and rated it.

Michelle Frechette: That’s awesome. Uh, you have another question here, which is, did you face performance issues with this large amount of data?

Marcus Burnette: Um, yes, there’s a lot going on in here now. Um, I will say that I think, so I’ve upped my, my server level once or twice just to kind of help keep up with, uh, with the amount of data and having to pull it into different queries and stuff. I do think that at some point here in the near future, I’m going to have to a month or two, kind of re evaluating the code that ChatGPT has given me, um, and try to clean some of that up to be more efficient. It’s one of the things I appreciated being able to leverage ChatGPT to create some of the features that I wasn’t able either wasn’t able to create or would have taken me three weeks to do when I could do it in a couple of hours with ChatGPT helping me. Um, but what it’s not necessarily great at is giving you the most efficient code. So either I’m going to go back through and look at the code and see if I can make it more efficient or I’ll pit a couple of machine learning sites against each other to see who can come up with the most efficient. You know, take ChatGPTs and plug it into cloud or whatever and see if it thinks that the code could be written more efficiently. Um, or I would solve, you know, but we have plenty of developer folks. Maybe I’ll steal somebody at a WordCamp US and see if they would look over a few snippets of code and give me their, give me their opinion on what they think or how it could be better. So yes, with that amount of data, you do start to run into some, some performance stuff, but I think most of that has to do with code efficiency and not necessarily WordPress or the amount of data that’s in the site. Cause there are enormous WordPress sites that run just fine. And so I know it’s definitely possible. I think I just need to do a little bit of code rewriting.

Michelle Frecehtte: I’ve never had anything even be slow. Um, I think things are slower when you’re live streaming cause you’re using a ton of your local bandwidth, but, but I’ve always had no difficulty accessing anything on the site.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, there’s that too. Mohammed said, yeah, I can’t imagine server costs. It’s actually not, it’s not enormous. I’m it’s, I’m not running Facebook over here. Um, and the sponsors that I have on the site more than cover the costs that I need to run the site. So I appreciate them immensely.

Michelle Frecehtte: Absolutely. Um, any other questions? So we’ve got just a couple minutes left here. If you have a question, put it in the chat. Um, anything else that we haven’t looked at? Oh, show your shop. I, my mug is in the, is in the washer, the dishwasher. Otherwise I would have pulled it out. Just been drinking fake coffee. Cause I can’t drink coffee this late of the day, but I do own one of your mugs.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah, this is, um, just one of those other fun places. I occasionally will get, I saw I’m a designer first and then I’ve added development over the, over the years, but this is just kind of a fun place for me to explore design ideas. Um, I, if I come up with something in the shower or while I’m sleeping and think, Hey, that’d be a fun t shirt or mug or whatever, then, uh, you know, I’ll hop on and add it to the store. So there’s not a ton of products in here currently. I don’t know, 20, 25, something like that. Um, did you see your mug? There’s your mug.

Michelle Frechette: I do. There’s my mug. And it’s the bigger one, so it holds more coffee, so I can get through my day. I like it.

Marcus Burnette: All the coffee.

Michelle Frecehtte: Capital P, dang it.

Marcus Burnette: Yep. Capital P, dang it mug.I’ve had a few people order that one.

Michelle Frechette: Yep.

Marcus Burnette: This isn’t a, this isn’t a huge moneymaker for the site. It’s just a playground for me to get my silly design ideas out somewhere.

Michelle Frecehtte: I love it. I think it’s good. I like that. Learn empathy deeply. Also. That’s pretty cool.

Marcus Burnette: Yeah.

Michelle Frechette: Very, very cool. Well, thank you so much for spending some time today. I really appreciate it. I’ll take this off the screen and just put a couple of things on banner wise for any, anybody who wants to sign up or is looking for more information, The WP dot World is where you will find this. I know there’s other URLs that’ll take you there too, but that’s my favorite one, because it’s very cool.

Marcus Burnette: I just, it’s just the wpworld.com that I felt obligated to also get just in case, because if I just tell people it’s at the WP World, that’s where they likely will go, the wpworld. com, but it redirects you to thewp.world.

Michelle Frechette: It’s a cool URL and we pay more for it. So we’re going to put it out there. Right?

Marcus Burnette: That’s right. That is the, that is the main one.

Michelle Frechette: Exactly. Uh, we don’t have a show next week, next week I will be at WordCamp US. So we’re going to skip a week after that. When we come back, I’m going to have Katie Boykin from Kadence, um, talking about the Kadence Amplify event that’s coming up in October. So make sure to join us for that event. Uh, Marcus, thank you so much for being here today. Really appreciated you taking the time. And, uh, we got one more comment. Cool stuff. Thank you both. You’re very welcome Mohamed. Thanks for being here today. Appreciate that.

Marcus Burnette: For anybody who’s going to be at WordCamp US next week, I’ll have some WP World stickers with me. So come find me and, uh, I’ll give you a sticker.

Michelle Frecehtte: Yeah. And I’ll have my Michelle Wapu ones.

Marcus Burnette: Yes!

Michelle Frechette: So I will, uh, I’ll have those with me. If anybody wants a Michelle Wapu sticker, I will bring those along as well. Um, thanks again. I’m looking forward to seeing you next week. I know our paths are going to cross more than once. I think we even set aside some time to actually sit and chat for a change. Um, which will be nice to make

Marcus Burnette: Yep. I wanted to make sure we do it.

Michelle Frechette: Exactly. We always say we’re going to, and then we just never get the time.

Marcus Burnette: There’s so many people. I wanted to make sure that, I wanted to make sure that we, we made time to hang out with each other, so I scheduled a spot with you.

Michelle Frecehtte: Yeah, I’m very much looking forward to that, thank you. Um, everybody else, we will see you, if we don’t see you at WordCamp US, we’ll see you on the, on the other side of things, um, next time, but have a great day, and thanks for joining us today on the Post Status Happiness Hour.

This article, Post Status Happiness Hour Session Nine, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Do You Do Woo? Are Your Stores Ready for the Holidays? WooCommerce merchants are gearing up for Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM), with 66% of stores seeing a sales spike from October to December. * For 46% of merchants, BFCM and the holiday season contribute up to 30% of their annual sales volume. * 34% of merchants are changing their approach this year, focusing on adding new products, increasing marketing efforts, and upgrading website performance. * Stores are starting BFCM preparations earlier, with 27% beginning 1-3 months in advance and 17% starting more than 3 months ahead. * Over half of the stores plan to increase inventory before the holiday season to avoid stockouts. * 37% of stores are working on improving site performance, including load testing and database optimization. * Email marketing remains the most effective tool for reaching customers during BFCM.67% of merchants are adopting multichannel strategies, selling across physical stores and online marketplaces. * Are you helping your eCommerce clients gear up for BFCM as a paid service? If not, you might be leaving revenue on the table.* * The WooCommerce blog highlights ways to gear up for the most successful BFCM ever.

Taming the Shift: Practical Strategies to Conquer CLS Issues Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures unexpected content movement during page load and is a Core Web Vitals metric. A good CLS score is 0.1 or less. * Tools like PageSpeed Insights, DebugBear, and WebPageTest can help measure and diagnose CLS issues. * Minimal CLS is important for website performance and potentially search engine rankings. * It also negatively impacts user experience because it leads to accidental clicks or difficulty in reading content as elements move unexpectedly during page load. * Common CLS sources include theme code, dynamic JavaScript, optimization plugins, late-loading web fonts, and missing image dimensions. * Do you develop sites for your clients with CLS in mind? It’s worth taking a closer look.* * The Admin Bar gives some easy-to-implement suggestions for minimizing CLS. Take a look and think about adding this to your development processes.

What Does Your WordPress Agency Really Need in a Host?* Strong security focus: Features like Web Application Firewall, malware scanning, and automated server processes when malicious attacks are suspected. * Top-notch performance: Optimized server setup and delivery specifically for WordPress, with features like high-performance storage and routing. * Scalability: Ability to handle sites of various sizes and unexpected traffic spikes without downtime. * WordPress expertise: Understanding of WordPress-specific needs and potential issues. * Convenience and time-saving features: Tools that make managing multiple sites easier and more efficient. * Look beyond pricing: While cost is a factor, your agency should prioritize features that save time and provide value in the long run. * You may not need a host now, but this article from The WP Minute is a good one to archive for the next time you are evaluating your hosting needs.

Worth a Look* Automattic has an experimental project on Github, called “Create Content Model” that creates and manages Custom Post Types. It will be tested on .com, but it’s a glimpse at how Core CPT management may work in the future. Download it and use it with the Gutenberg plugin, or try it on WordPress Playground. * Stephen Wolfram celebrates 60th birthday with a look back at his last five years. TLDR; It was a very productive five years! * Did you know WooCommerce has hooks all over the checkout page where you can add pretty much anything you can dream up? I knew there were some, but I was surprised how many there actually are. This visual list and explanation of how to use them is definitely worth your time.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending September 13, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Transcript ↓

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, host Michelle Frechette interviews Alex Sandiford about his affiliate plugin, Siren Affiliates. Alex explains how the plugin simplifies the management of affiliate, loyalty, and royalty programs by centralizing various incentive structures. He discusses the development journey, challenges faced, and future plans for the plugin, including potential integrations. The conversation emphasizes the importance of building relationships with affiliates and providing them with the necessary tools and support to succeed. The episode concludes with insights into the ethical and collaborative aspects of affiliate marketing.

Top Takeaways: * The Power of Affiliate Relationships: Alex emphasizes that successful affiliate programs are built on strong partnerships and personalized support. Providing affiliates with both the right tools and fair compensation can lead to mutually beneficial success. It’s not just about the percentage they earn, but about helping them market effectively. * Siren’s Pricing Structure: Alex outlines Siren’s pricing tiers as very affordable, with a focus on bringing in early adopters. The initial pricing is $59 for the first year, renewing at $79. This pricing will likely increase as the plugin stabilizes and grows. * Challenges in Affiliate Marketing Perception: Alex is focused on shifting the negative stigma around affiliate marketing by showing that it can be honest, impactful, and built on genuine partnerships. He contrasts the negative view of affiliates with the popular trend of influencer marketing, highlighting their similarities. * Platform Migration and Customization: Siren offers platform migration support for users switching from other affiliate plugins like Affiliate WP. This feature has proven popular, and Alex plans to streamline the migration process to make it more efficient, showing a focus on enhancing user experience and meeting customer needs. * Future Development Plans: While Siren does not yet have built-in tools for providing affiliates with marketing resources like images and copy, this is on Alex’s roadmap. He recognizes the importance of giving affiliates the resources they need to succeed, although existing tools like Google Drive and the block editor can partially solve this for now.

Mentioned In The Show:* LifterLMS * Udemy * PayPal * Stripe * Kadence * Affiliate WP * WooCommerce * Easy Digital Downloads * LearnDash * North Commerce * Personalized WP * Restrict Content Pro * Google Drive * PartnerShip Podcast * WP World * Marcus Burnette * WordCampUS

Sponsor: WordPress.comBuild and manage professional sites with secure managed hosting on WordPress.com. Beautiful themes, built-in SEO, and payment tools, and access to over 50,000 plugins. Everything you need for your business, plus 24/7 support from WordPress experts.

WordPress.com You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:* Alex Standiford (Owner,Siren Affiliates) * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

TranscriptMichelle Frechette 00:00:02 Welcome to another Post Status Happiness Hour. I’m Michelle Frechette. I am here today with Alex Sandiford. Hi, Alex. How are you?

Alex Standiford 00:00:09 Hey, Michel. How’s it going?

Michelle Frechette 00:00:11 It’s going well. And I see that you have, your logo right next to your name. And so you’re gonna have to tell me later how you did that, because I’m like, I didn’t know that was possible. So is that your logo, or is that, like, the standard emoji?

Alex Standiford 00:00:24 Yeah, that’s the secret. It’s just it’s the mermaid emoji. So I just I just slap that on the end of my name everywhere I can.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:31 I love it. I’m gonna emojify myself now. Is that a word? Emojify.

Alex Standiford 00:00:34 It is now.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:35 It is not. That’s right for sure. Well, welcome to the Post Status Happiness Hour.

Alex Standiford: Thanks for having me.

Michelle Frechette: We make you and other people happy. Talk about the things that we do in the world. So we’re also recording this. So this will go on our website and in our YouTube channel for all of posterity so people can reflect back on it later if they’re not able to be here today.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:58 So, yeah. So you are here. You have recently gone full bore with Siren Affiliates. So tell us a little bit about Siren Affiliates and what it is.

Alex Standiford 00:01:07 Sure. So Siren is a, at its most basic level is an affiliate plugin, right? I mean, but, calling it that is kind of an insult to what it’s capable of doing. it’s a pay for performance platform. So you can build, not only can you build affiliate programs, but you can also build a royalty, loyalty program. So maybe you wanted to create like an Etsy clone, or you wanted to create your own Udemy using WordPress. You could do that with Lifter and have like multiple course creators and pay them for, whenever their courses are sold, for example. basically anything where you want to pay other people who work with you, whenever they, you know, successfully do something like sell a product or something like that. But it doesn’t even have to just be selling products. It could even be, a distribution where maybe you wanted to do a bonus once a month, based on revenue share or something like that.

Alex Standiford 00:02:06 So there’s all kinds of different programs, this, this tool, this plugin can do. And it allows you to do multiple programs at the same time. So if you wanted to have like a small affiliate program and then maybe a bonus program for specific products to like, motivate people to sell certain things, you can do that. And then the person could get credit for both of those programs. The sky’s the limit in regards to that. My goal really, whenever I built this program, this plugin, is to make it to where if there’s a if there’s an incentive program that you want to create for your website Siren can do it.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:39 That’s pretty cool. So is it does it activate on a trigger? So like if I make a sale, it triggers a payment or that kind of thing, or is it held for moderation? Can it be either or talk us through a little bit of the specifics?

Alex Standiford 00:02:53 Yeah, sure. So, it it works through a flow of several steps right now. So I’ve, I’ve thought about making it to where it can do the instant payout, an instant payout kind of approach. But I find that most people want for at least for auditing purposes and things like that. They want to have that, that paper trail. Right.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:13 WHich makes sense. Yeah.

Alex Standiford 00:03:13 Yeah, totally. So, the a typical program. So there’s two different ones. There’s a program that’ll run. It’s all about revolving around a sale. So whenever a sale happens on the website, that’s the trigger that the entire program revolves around. Right. So there’s things that happen before the trail, but the purchase and then whenever the purchase happens, that’s kind of like the event that says, okay, this happened. Here’s how much money every the various affiliates or collaborators can get. Of course, it can be more than one, right? And then the other one is time based. So maybe it’s like once every month it’s going to take a look at the aggregate totals of, maybe the total number of sales of a specific product. And it’s going to say, oh, hey, you know, your, your course or whatever your, your product sold was sold this many times.

Alex Standiford 00:04:01 We’re going to give you a 10% bonus for that or something like that.

Michelle Frechette: Okay.

Alex Standiford: And either way, they all of those things get funneled into what I call obligations or rewards. And basically those, just sit in the WordPress dashboard as a, as a Siren Manager. You can go in there and you can look at those and you can see who you owe, how much you owe. And then there’s a full on payout flow that happens after that. So you can actually generate a payout. Like for example, with mine, I have a fair bit of ones that I actually owe money for right now, just because over the next couple, because I have some affiliates who’ve been selling Siren. Right. So yeah, over the.

Michelle Frechette: Yay.

Alex Standiford: Yeah. so over the next, and dog fooding, you know.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:45 I was going to say , you own a plugin.

Alex Standiford 00:04:46 I love it, right? Right. So over the next, I have a 30 day return window for Siren, so I’m not. I don’t want to pay my affiliates until that 30 day window is done, just in case there’s something goes wrong. Right?

Michelle Frechette 00:04:58 Sure. That makes sense.

Alex Standiford 00:04:59 So. So after that 30 days up, I’m going to go into my site. I’m going to select all of the, obligations that I have that are older, that are 30 days and older, and then I can generate a payout from those and it’ll automatically tally up how much I owe every collaborator, and then allows me to export that as a CSV file or something like that, so that you can use it for PayPal or whatever.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:23 Okay. Does it automatically connect to PayPal or is it giving you the information to do that later?

Alex Standiford 00:05:29 Today it’s only exporting. It is going I am going to do the payout thing because again, dog fooding I’m going to want that myself.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:36 So for sure it’s.

Alex Standiford 00:05:38 It’s it’s been on the roadmap since day one. But I just, I every time I plan on doing it, I’m like, oh yeah, but maybe one more e-commerce integration. Yeah. It’s just yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:50 I can imagine. And so. So and if you’re not using PayPal or Stripe, it gives you that right now the opportunity to use whatever you’re using.

Alex Standiford 00:05:57 yeah.

00:05:58 And and another.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:58 You could write paper checks if that’s the way you want to do it.

Alex Standiford 00:06:00 Right. Exactly, exactly. If you. Yeah, exactly. So, and a lot of people I’m finding are using this, I’ve had, I’ve actually had several people who are telling me I’m using this with my, like, formal business partner. Like, literally we are splitting the profits of this 50/50 or some kind of relationship like that. But we wanted to like, have some kind of thing where some of these there’s there’s terms in our agreement where some products are at a different rate and stuff like that, and they wanted a way to just manage that whole thing. And they’re actually using Siren for that. So those kinds of people, like they don’t even, they don’t really want that. Right? They actually just want to be like they literally are just writing each other checks. Right? So so there’s all kinds of different approaches there. but yeah, I definitely want a straight I personally want to Stripe integration.

Michelle Frechette 00:06:44 Like I’m imagining that every conversation you would have with somebody like me or other business owners and things like that. You are not like adding toggles in your dashboard in your head like, okay, this would be great to toggle on or off. This would be great to have as a title, like not to automatically have it go, but oh, we should integrate that. But it has to be a toggle.

Alex Standiford 00:07:02 Yes. Yeah. It’s been it’s, it’s oh my gosh. It’s when it comes to features right now for me, it’s it’s like it’s like a hydra head. Every time I cut one off two more pop ups and I believe, you know, I’m trying and I’m early in the process. And like, I know conventional wisdom says to like, you know, pace myself, but, gosh, I don’t want to.

Michelle Frechette 00:07:23 It’s so hard, right? It’s so hard for sure. Absolutely. No, I, I understand that it’s like I have a roadmap, but it doesn’t mean I have to go 30 miles an hour. I can go 100 miles an hour if I want to.

Alex Standiford 00:07:35 Right. Exactly.

Michelle Frechette: I’m still on the road.

Alex Standiford: For me, it’s more like I have a roadmap, but there’s also shiny things. So it’s like, you know, maybe I’ll take this detour to go look at that ball of yarn off 66, you know.

Michelle Frechette 00:07:49 Yeah, no. For sure. I’m just gonna put this up here. If we do have a couple of people watching live, if you’re watching live and you’re on our YouTube channel, go ahead and, put any questions or comments you have for Alex, or me in the, in the chat, and we’ll make sure that we get them answered. Just want to make sure that I put that up there. and I should put a banner that has when I tell you what, when you’re showing the product, I’m going to make a banner that has your logo on it or not. It’s not your logo, but we’ll have your email. That’s the word I want you URL.

Alex Standiford 00:08:18 Website?

Michelle Frechette 00:08:21 Yeah. Yes. Website. It’s been a long day, Alex.

Alex Standiford 00:08:22 Yeah, I get it.

Michelle Frechette 00:08:25 So that people have more information. So I’ll put that there. But. Yeah. So when did you first think of building this product? How long ago versus like where you are today? Because like, for example, I had the idea for WP Speakers for like two months, and then I was just like on a Monday night, I was like, I’m going to build this thing. And on Wednesday I launched it like, I mean, it wasn’t as complex. I’m not a developer. I got to use Kadence, you know, it was a lot easier to do, but I’m sure that you didn’t build it in a day and a half. So. So what was your roadmap to this point and when did you start?

Alex Standiford 00:08:59 So honestly, the I would say the roadmap for this started, gosh, like 2016. I mean, I didn’t start building it then, but I was but I had what I would consider a rough prototype, like my first idea of an alternative program on my website that wasn’t an affiliate program. Right? It was a content bonus program for my agency that I was running at the time. and, I was frustrated because I couldn’t do it with Affiliate WP and. You know, I was a developer at the time for that product, and so I knew it well. And just the effort that it took to actually make that happen, it was like I was really bending that plugin to its to my will. Do you know what I mean? Like, it was just a lot of customizations I had to do. And I’m not trying to bash on the on again. I’m just but but like but it But it was one of those things I just couldn’t do. There wasn’t really a great solution in WordPress for that. And I didn’t really think much about it at the time. But fast forward several years, right? I’m no longer at Affiliate WP. I’ve been gone for several years. I’m working at a different place, and I’m I’m having a conversation with Chris at Lifter and we’re talking and I was just like, man, I’m I think I’m ready.

Alex Standiford 00:10:11 I think I’m ready to do a product. I think I’m ready to like, dive into this. I was talking with my coach, who I just hired at the time, and I was like, and his his advice was, go talk to some of the people. And you’re well networked. Go talk to the people in your network. Go find some people and ask them like, hey, you run a product company. What are some things that your product needs? I want to build them and sell them basically. And, and I did that. I struck out on a few that, you know, there were people who were like, no, I’m not telling you that. Or or you know, something. Or they would give me something that wasn’t relevant to what I was going to do. And but, Chris at Lifter was very forthcoming, and he was just like, yeah, man, I’ve got so many things that I that we need. And he gave me this list of like all these different ideas.

Alex Standiford 00:10:56 And one of them was a better affiliate solution for lLifter. And I was like, oh, I think I might be a really good fit for that. And it was, it was like, it was like, Stephen King says, like two unrelated ideas coming together. Wrote some of his best books. Right.

Michelle Frechette: Sure.

Alex Standiford: So and it kind of was that where it was like I had this problem with, with, my solution, my need for something. And he had these problems and they were different. Right. And it was coming from a very different perspective and a very different place. But I looked at it and I was like, I’m pretty sure I can bridge this gap, right? I can I can solve both of these problems. And that was last August. So basically I started I discovered this, I realized this, I was like, okay, I’m doing it. and I launched May of this year, and, almost a year to the day I launched the Lifter LMS integration with his product.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, that’s cool.

Alex Standiford 00:11:50 So it was it was a long time coming, but it it certainly felt longer. Gosh, it was such a it was quite the grind. I’m glad, I’m glad. I’m glad I’m over that. Although I do have to admit it didn’t get less crazy. It just. It’s just crazy in a very different way.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:10 Isn’t that the way it always is, though? It’s like you think of a solution for something and then like you said, it’s it’s like the Hydra. It spawns so many more. There’s a there’s a Giphy or GIF, I don’t know, whatever where like there’s a hand and there’s like more fingers, more hands off the fingers and more hands off those fingers. And that’s what it makes me think. It was like, I have this idea. It is the palm. And look at all the other ideas. Oh, and look at how those have spawned ideas. And it’s just giant root system of this.

Alex Standiford 00:12:38 It feels to me like climbing a mountain. And then I get to the top of the mountain, expecting to see a big horizon. And then I look in front of me, and I see a mountain that’s ten times bigger than what I originally just climbed. That’s kind of what it feels like. It’s like, oh, okay. Well.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:52 Funny story.

Alex Standiford 00:12:53 Yeah. Right.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:55 Little aside. So I am not a heights person. I can be at the top of the CN tower and look down through the floor like, that’s fine, but it’s what I’m actually hanging like from the gondola that goes up the side of the mountain. I don’t like that. And so years ago, with my ex-husband, went up to a Whiteface Mountain, which is one of the tallest mountain in the Adirondacks, and that the one of the ones that they used for, the Lake Placid Olympics.

Alex Standiford 00:13:25 Northeastern Adirondacks. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:28 Exactly. So I’m looking up and I’m like, okay, that doesn’t look too far. I can do that. So we get on this gondola and I’m like white knuckled and I’m just trying not to cry because I just have this fear, right? It’s like it’s not rational. I agree, we get to the point where I think we’re at the top, we level off and there’s like five times more mountain that we still have to go up. So yes, you just triggered that memory. Thank you.

Alex Standiford 00:13:54 Yeah. Whoops.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:57 But yes, it is exactly like that when you start working on a product.

Alex Standiford 00:14:01 Yeah, I get that

Michelle Frechette 00:14:03 So that made me think of that right away. Just thinking I’m going to go ahead and look at. I managed to get your.

Alex Standiford 00:14:09 You did it!

Michelle Frechette 00:14:10 Got your mermaid in there too. So yeah. It’s sirenaffiliates.com if you’re interested in exploring more. But why don’t you show us a little bit? I’m gonna, I can bring up your, your screen up here and walk us through a little bit.

Alex Standiford 00:14:23 Sure. Okay. So, whenever you have Siren installed, this, this current install happens to have Lifter installed, which has a few different, which allows it to have a few different engagement events and allows you to create some different programs. If you were using. But I’m also, currently Siren supports LifterLMS and WooCommerce.

Michelle Frechette: Okay.

Alex Standiford: I’m working on Easy Digital Downloads as well as an North Commerce now. And then I have my eyes set on a certain other course platform that, you may.

Michelle Frechette: Is it LearnDash? Please tell me it’s LearnDash.

Alex Standiford: I would, I would like to. Yeah, I’d love to. That’s on the. That’s on the list. Yes. Another. Another. Less less public time perhaps. Yes, but but, anyway, so so, over here, you’ll see. There’s a Siren. There’s Siren, and, there’s all these different options. There’s programs, there’s distributors, there’s collaborators, all these different things. But really what I want to show here is kind of the key thing about Siren, which is its key differentiator. Different differentiator is, it has a multi course approach to affiliate management. So let’s go ahead and delete these test ones because we don’t need those bad boys. Okay. So instead of so if you are coming from a space where you’ve worked with some kind of traditional affiliate plugin before, this concept doesn’t exist because the plugin itself is the program, right? Those plugins, they give you an affiliate program, they give you one specific solution and one specific thing.

Alex Standiford 00:15:55 They might have extensions. They might have things that allow you to like customize those plugins or those your one program in some kind of special way, but they don’t really have a way to be able to do more than one program at a time.

Michelle Frechette: Okay.

Alex Standiford: And a couple of the consequences of that is they end up spreading out all of their settings throughout the plugin. So, for example, maybe you want to have a certain affiliate, a certain set of affiliates who have a different rate, maybe instead of being paid 15%, maybe they’re like super special affiliates or something like that, and you want to give them 20% instead of 15%, right? Okay.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:32 You negotiated a different rate with them.

Alex Standiford 00:16:33 Yes, exactly. Maybe. Maybe they’re. Yeah, they’re they’re a plugin partner. Or they’re some kind of. They’re on some kind of different level.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:40 They’re they’re super influencers.

Alex Standiford 00:16:43 Yeah. Something like that. Exactly. You would have to go on those plugins. You go to that specific person, or you put them in a group or an affiliate group or something like that, and you set their rate right, and they’re able to do that. Siren takes all of that concept and the idea of different rates on products, different rates on collaborators, different rates on all this stuff and different terms. And it flips it all on its head. And it says instead of managing this stuff, instead of a collaborator or instead of an affiliate having a rate and instead of a product having a rate and all of these different things, we’re going to centralize all of this. Everything is through the program. The program has a rate, and you can have more than one program and collaborator and affiliates rather, affiliates in this case can be in as many programs as they want to be in. This allows you to create programs with different rates, right? And then add certain collaborators to those different programs, thereby giving them the special rate or the different rate. But it also gives you the added benefit of also allowing you to have programs that stack on top of each other. So maybe you want to have a, like I said earlier, where you have a program where it’s like a 10%. And then on top of that you also want to force specific products, right? Maybe you have a specific category that, you offer like a $5 bonus if it sells on top of that. You can do that, and one affiliate can get both of those on a single transaction. So it allows you to like, not only manage your programs a little bit easier because it’s all centralized, but it also allows you to break down the complexity of a monolithic affiliate program into smaller pieces so that you can actually manage it a lot easier.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:26 It almost sounds like you can be all things to all people if you need to.

Alex Standiford 00:18:30 Yes. That is the goal. Like I said, my goal was Siren is if there’s an incentive program, it can do it.

Michelle Frechette: Gotcha.

AlexStandiford: And I am very, very close. I think like I, I, today I had a support request for somebody asking me about a specific like, type of program that they wanted to run. And I was like, oh, you got me. I can’t do that one yet, but I know exactly how to do it and how to implement it in the system I have. And I was like, I’m good, I got you. I’m going to do it. It’s on the roadmap. Shiny object, you’re involved. Let’s go. so.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:03 I have tomorrow.

Alex Standiford 00:19:04 Yeah, right. I’ll have it tomorrow. Exactly. What are you talking about? I’ve been working on it during this whole livestream. So. Okay, so, so in the create program screen, you know, you’ve got your name, so we’ll just call it an affiliate program. Maybe my keyboard. Keyboard isn’t working right now. Hold on.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:22 Oh, no.

Alex Standiford 00:19:23 No, that’s how it goes. Well, tell me, is it my keyboard? Now? Yeah, it is totally my keyboard. Hold on a second. Let me.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:33 No worries. This is what happens when it’s live. You never know what you’re going to get, right? It’s all good.

Alex Standiford 00:19:40 Yeah. Live streams are dynamic.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:44 So, as I said, if you do have questions, put them in the comments. We’re going to get Alex to answer them live. And the link for Siren Affiliates is simply Sirenaffiliates.com. I love it when there’s a link that’s so easy. Yeah. We’re connected again. Go for it.

Alex Standiford 00:20:01 Yes. Okay. So, so let’s call this an affiliate program, right. you can give it a description so it pays may generate. Let’s say I’ve done this before. Okay. so you can set the status. You can also set the currency, to any kind of, you know, currency based on whatever you’re paying in. it doesn’t actually do the conversion. It’s currently assuming that, you know, whatever you’re putting in this is so if you’re if you’re selling products in US dollars and you want to sell in Euro, it’s not going to convert that for you. So you’d have to use fixed pricing or stuff like that. Okay. But the reason why the big thing that’s exciting about the currency is that in a future version, it’s actually on my roadmap for this month is, to, to make it possible to do, store credit.

Alex Standiford 00:20:54 So if you have. Yeah. So, one of the things that, North Commerce has been talking with me about is that. So the idea of, you know, you can instead of setting a currency here as US dollars, you could set it as, you know, store, credit store credit for North Commerce or store credit or whatever. Right? I haven’t quite figured out exactly what the terminology is, but the idea here is that you could pick that currency here and you could create like a refer a friend program. Right? So all of your all of your customers then instantly become collaborators who can then sign up for the Refer a Friend program. And they’re only on that program, they’re not a part of the affiliate program and all that other stuff, but they’re on this one. So if they refer a friend, they get $50 in store.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:37 Oh that’s cool. So if somebody is selling in pesos though, the the payout could be is also pesos.

Alex Standiford: Yes.

Michelle Frechette: So if they’re even even that that’s the same okay. Thank you, just making sure..

Alex Standiford 00:21:49 So then you can set an expiration time. So this is kind of like a cookie window. So if you’re creating a typical affiliate program right. You want to you don’t want to say so. Like just I’ll take a step back real quick. An affiliate program works by a, an influencer or a blogger or something like that. They’ll share a link with people, and you’ve probably seen these links before where it’s got a special little code at the end of it. And that code basically says tells the, the website, hey, this was referred by this specific affiliate. Right. And that’s how it tracks it. That’s how it knows. And then if the person who actually clicked on that link then turns around and makes a purchase, you know, time passes could be it could be two minutes, it could be 60 days, it could be two years. Doesn’t matter. As long as they make a purchase, that person, that affiliate would actually get the commission, they would get the reward, they would get credit.

Alex Standiford 00:22:44 But the problem is, is, you know, that two the two year example in those numbers, I said there that’s like really far in the future. And did that affiliate really actually make that sale happen, or did it just happen to be a link that got clicked two years prior to. And here we are. So, you kind of want to set a limit on how long you can wait before you invalidate that credit, right?

Michelle Frechette 00:23:07 Like a 30 days or even even a year if you want to. Right? So.

Alex Standiford: Totally.

Michelle Frechette: Okay.

Alex Standiford 00:23:12 Totally. Exactly. It doesn’t have to be, like, short, you know, it can be as long as you want. a common one is is 30 days. So we’ll just do 30 for this. So basically that’s saying that from the time they click on the link to the time they make the purchase. Let me say that again. From the time they click on the link, they have 30 days to make the purchase in order for you to be able to get credit for that sale.

Michelle Frechette: Gotcha.

Alex Standiford 00:23:37 So, that’s not relevant to all programs, but this specific program, it certainly is. Then you can set a program structure. So the program structure actually defines, who gets paid and how much I’m sorry, who gets paid and how that is divided out. Right. Because some programs in siren can actually divide the money among many affiliates instead of just being a single one. But in this case, we would just use probably newest engagement wins or oldest engagement wins. And basically what that means is, do we want to pay the last affiliate who referred this visitor before the sale, or do we want to reward the first affiliate? So because it’s possible that two affiliates could refer one customer before they actually make that purchase. So who do you report? Right. So that this kind of help this helps you determine that. Right. This allows you so newest engagement in order to gauge that shared engagement pool I’m sorry. Newest and oldest reward one top score runs also rewards one and then shared engagement pool and performance weighted pool actually would divide the money among all of them.

Alex Standiford 00:24:45 So if you had like five affiliates who referred somebody, you could actually use shared engagement pool and it would just divide the commission among all of them evenly.

Michelle Frechette 00:24:55 Oh that’s cool. Now if if, if I wanted to game the system, make sure that only my link gets used, could I tell somebody, open it in an incognito window. Well, that bypass all of this. I mean, not that I’ve tried to game the system or anything.

Alex Standiford 00:25:09 Yeah, technically, I think that might work. because, yeah, technically.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:15 Is it based on cookies?

Alex Standiford 00:25:17 Yeah, yeah, it’s based on the, Yeah. The the opportunity based on cookies.

Michelle Frechette: Just curious,

Alex Standiford: But just if they were, if they’re already logged into a site, if they already if they’re an existing customer or something like that, that wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t matter once the purchase is made, their account logs in, and we know who you are, you know?

Michelle Frechette: Gotcha. Okay, cool.

Alex Standiford: But, but, you know, fraud detection, there’s things like that. You got to kind of work.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:40 Just curious. Yeah.

Alex Standiford 00:25:42 So then you have, engagement tracking events, and these are the events that actually happen on the plugin. I’m sorry. These are the events that actually happen in order for the, the collaborator to earn their reward. These are the things they have to do, right? Or they have to make happen. So there’s several of these. Right. There’s site visited, blog posts visited, a collaborators product is sold. Coupon code used of course is completed or a lesson is completed. Right. So course completed and lesson completed are specific to LMS systems, right? So you can set it up to where, you reward your course creators whenever somebody completes their course. Right. Or something like that. But in the case of an affiliate program, what you really want is that what they need to do is drive somebody to the site using their affiliate link, or they’re going to use a coupon code, right. It’s going to be one of those two things.

Alex Standiford 00:26:47 So we’ll go ahead and tick site visited and coupon code used. And you’ll see here that this little value box pops up whenever you tick those boxes. And what that does, is it allows you to specify a value like how much doing that specific action is worth. Not in dollars, not in in money, but in terms of just points right in the system behind the scenes can track those point values to figure out, who gets paid and how much they get paid. This isn’t relevant. And this these only apply to the different program structures. So let’s say let’s say you’re using top score wins, right? So maybe instead of it being the first affiliate, it’s the affiliate who drove that visitor the most times or something like that. Right. You could do that. So you could say that’s worth a point. If they drive a visitor to the site, if the coupon codes use, that’s worth five points, you know. So it’s it’s a lot more loose. Like this isn’t the best example of this.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:45 But sure,no.But it shows how it’s weighted. Yeah.

Alex Standiford 00:27:48 Yeah, exactly. It allows you to apply a weight to these different things, if that is relevant to the program that you’re building. So then, like, of course, completed and lesson completed could get a lot of use out of there. Right? So if you were doing like a really long sales cycle where maybe you actually have an entire course that needs to be done before, the product can be sold. Maybe there’s some onboarding or some pre-sales, and you’re using an LMS system to actually do that pre-sales education. And that course creator is the actual collaborator. You could give them points for that. Right. And then so like let’s let’s build that example. So maybe there’s a performance ready to pull. And you have a whole bunch of affiliates. Right. And some of those affiliates are also creating course content to drive sales. Right. So you could actually do course completed and less and completed. And maybe when the course is completed you give like 50 points, the lessons completed, it’s like 10 points maybe site visited is worth f5 and a coupon code is like 10, right? Something like that.

Alex Standiford 00:28:48 So then when it’s done, and maybe you’re selling like a this would be a high dollar product, right? Several thousand dollars big, big sales process. whenever the sale is done, it would then say, okay, well, here’s all of the things that this customer did in its journey, in their journey to actually making this purchase. Here’s all the points that were tallied up based on that. The percentage that the course creator gets. Is this like the cut of the, the the, reward they get is is higher than the affiliate, right? Because they went through the whole course. And that was worth a whole lot of points for them to do that. So like there’s different ways and obviously like more complexity in this, the easier it is to game like you were talking about. So you got to be a little careful. but there’s a lot of, there’s a lot.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:40 But also assume people are honest. Yeah.

Alex Standiford 00:29:44 Yeah. I mean, honestly a good a good a good affiliate program, in my opinion, a really good affiliate program is probably, like that kind of one. You’re probably not having thousands of affiliates. You probably would have a very small sales team of, you know, a dozen or so people.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:58 You would have that your affiliates anyway for sure.

Alex Standiford 00:30:01 Yeah, totally. Absolutely. So yeah, if if you’re asking questions about fraud and you’re dealing with fraud a lot. Then, you know, you’re probably. That that raises a whole nother. That’s a whole. That’s a whole nother conversation.

Michelle Frechette 00:30:13 It’s not your plugin that’s broken. It’s your system that’s broken at that point.

Alex Standiford 00:30:16 Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. So, yeah, we’re playing a game and ultimately there’s going to be cheaters, you know what I mean? So you have to make sure that you’re working with honest people. So, the and then the next thing is the incentive structure. So what this does is it determines how much money is going to be available to the collaborators who actually, win, right, who actually are getting the reward. In the case of one, obviously they would get it all in the case where it’s divided, it would get divided among all of them.

Alex Standiford 00:30:49 So you can do fixed per product, fixed per transaction or percentage of transaction and the kind of self-explanatory rate. So a fixed per product, if you have ten items in your cart, it’s going to pay you that, whatever this value is here. So if we had this to 20. It would pay you $20 for ten of those products. So it would be a pretty big commission in that case, right? Or you could do fixed per transaction, one single fixed number every time a transaction happens. Or the most common one probably is percentage. So you can the thing is about percentage is it scales really well right.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:25 So like so if you have $2 products and $2,000 products it’s a percentage not.

Alex Standiford 00:31:30 Yeah sure. Right. Exactly. But I like the idea of fixed per product a lot too, because as like an extra incentive, I like to use that one for, a really good example that comes to mind for me is like, let’s say you’re running a clothing shop online or something like that, and you have some kind of article of clothing, maybe it’s a pair of shorts or something.

Alex Standiford 00:31:52 And winter is nigh, right? And summer’s passed and you still have all these shorts and you need to get rid of them and, you know, so you’re going to do this big sale to make them. You could either one do a big sale and do this big marketing push and all this stuff to make this stuff go away? Or you could create a program that’s specifically targeting that one specific pair of pants, notify all of your influencers or your collaborators and say, hey, I created a program in every pair of shorts that you pay, I’m going to give you a $10 bonus on top of your commission, right? So it’s this extra incentive. It doesn’t have to be permanent, right? That’s the thing that’s neat about these is like you can add them as you see fit, do whatever you want with them.

Michelle Frechette: Move inventory.

Alex Standiford: Right. Yeah. And get that get that dang inventory out. Move that inventory. It’s not the one you any good in your in your, storage. So. All right. So let’s say that we went with a percentage of transaction. Let’s just go with like a 25%. Now here you can specify do you want to credit conversions for credit your conversions for both sales, referral or referrals. So I’m sorry. Sales or renewals. So in other words a sale would just be a traditional sale, right? I bought this subscriptions. Yeah. So, any, any sale that happens after that initial first sale is considered a renewal. So if you wanted to create a recurring commission program, affiliate program, you could do that, right? You could say, I want I’m going to pay you 25%, like in this case right here. The way this is set, it would be I’m paying you 25% for life. As long as this person is paying me right.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:32 The sale and then the renewal subsequent.

Alex Standiford 00:33:35 Exactly. Now, what’s really cool about this is again, multi program approach. There’s a really cool opportunity here that is not easy to do with other solutions, is you can do 25% for sales and then create a second program that’s identical to this one. The only difference is it’s only for renewals okay. And then you.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:51 Lower it can be a lower yeah lower percentage.

Alex Standiford 00:33:53 So now you can say yeah. So now you’re motivating your affiliates to generate those sales. They get a big bonus for that. And then they get a smaller bonus for the recurring. Or maybe you have a whole different team that is focused on on keeping those customers, from, you know, helping reduce churn and all of that stuff. So

Michelle Frechette 00:34:09 There’s not a lot of work that has to go into selling a renewal, like a sales person isn’t really doing much to not calling like, hey, are you going to renew that? So yeah.

Alex Standiford 00:34:18 Yeah. And in fact, you actually hear people will say that it hurts them. From a sales perspective, because you’ll get the salespeople who will who go in for that recurring, and then they’ll get enough customers that they’re comfortable and they don’t really need to sell anymore. So, you know, I mean, that’s cool, right? That’s cool and all. But it’s also kind of not, it’s counterintuitive to what you’re trying to do. Right? It’s it’s doing the opposite. So, yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:43 Now can I ask can I interrupt to ask another question, though?

Alex Standiford 00:34:46 Sure.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:46 So if I want to change the incentive structure, let’s say the percentage for a limited time, let’s say I wanted to say in the month of November leading up to Black Friday sales. Usually we give 30%, but only this time I’m going to do 40%. Can I do that at a set? Okay.

Alex Standiford 00:35:04 Yeah, you totally could. So you could the the way I would do it though is instead of changing your program, your normal one, I would actually create another program and add the extra percent on top of that. The reason why is paper trail again. So, so on the back end, whenever you look at all those sales and stuff like that, it would actually show two rewards instead of one, one for the regular program and then one for the bonus on top of that.

Alex Standiford 00:35:30

Michelle Frechette 00:35:31 And so you won’t forget to reset it afterwards either.

Alex Standiford 00:35:34 That’s right. Exactly, exactly. But then and it also kind of gives you a little bit more clarity. It just adds more clarity to it because it’s like, oh, there’s my why. Like why is that percentage.

Michelle Frechette: It’s so clean.

Alex Standiford: There’s no question right now. It’s there’s two. Oh I didn’t get this one this time. Why is that. Oh because that sale is done.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:50 They also got the Black Friday one. Yeah. Makes sense.

Alex Standiford 00:35:52 Exactly, exactly. It adds a lot of extra clarity there.

Michelle Frechette: That’s cool. Yeah that makes sense.

Alex Standiford: So let’s go ahead and put this back to that 25% or just for sales now. The last piece here is what that says including commission calculations. Basically what this does is it makes it to where you can, it allows you to specify what parts of the transaction is actually going to be used whenever we’re calculating the value of the commission. Right. Because our commissions are typically going to be are always in fact, the transaction is always a part of that.

Right. Programs inherently in Siren revolve around a transaction okay. If they don’t, then that’s going to be a different thing called a distribution. But in this case they always revolve around a transaction. So in this case. Let’s let’s say that you well, okay. Sorry, there’s multiple pieces to a transaction, right? There’s there’s the discount. There’s there’s any discounts that were used. Right. That would subtract from the value. There’s fees for like a say you have a subscription and you want to charge a signup fee, right. There’s a that’s an example of a fee. You have line items, which is the stuff that’s actually bought, you have shipping sometimes and then you also have taxes. So this allows you to figure out what parts of that transaction you actually want to pay commissions on it. You’re probably not paying on taxes. You’re probably not paying on shipping. Right. But you’re almost always going to be paying on discounts, fees and line items.

Michelle Frechette: That makes sense.

Alex Standiford: Whenever you whenever you take line items here, you can see it actually allows you to specify, different categories and SKUs and types. So this allows you to filter out which products, are actually used okay for this program. So let’s say let’s say we only wanted to include or this that short the example of the shorts as we gave earlier. Right? So let’s say that in that case, you know, right now, if I, if I take all three of these like this, this program applies to every single product in our system, right? But let’s say that we don’t we only want it to apply to those shorts. So what we would do then is we could say with any of those SKUs, we know the skew of those shorts, and if we don’t, we just add one. Right. so then you would just say, you know, shorts, whatever. so now this program will only work for those shorts, even if there were multiple items that was in the cart. So if there was like a whole bunch of stuff, maybe they bought socks and a shirt and and a jacket and all this stuff.

Alex Standiford 00:38:34 But they also bought those shorts. The only thing that transaction would still apply, but the only part of that one that will apply are the shorts. Right? So it’s still going to trigger it. It’s just not going to trigger the whole transaction. It’s only going to trigger for those shorts.

Michelle Frechette 00:38:47 So because that’s the item you’re really trying to move and try and incentivize.

Alex Standiford 00:38:50 Yeah. exactly. So, that’s that’s how that’s how that works there. So with all of that, you’re setting up your program. I mean, well, and just like that, we’ve set up a basic affiliate program, right? 30 days, newest engagement wins, site visited, coupon code used, percentage of transaction, and then only for shorts. Let’s actually get rid of that. There we go. So and then you just click create and it will create the program. And then from here we can actually, add our collaborators to this program. So I have no idea what collaborators are in here right now. Oh good I do.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:30 So so so so let’s say you wanted to add somebody. You just you’re putting their information in, you can add.

Alex Standiford 00:39:36 So you can click Add New. So we’ll add Michelle.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:40 You don’t have to type my last name. It’s okay.

Alex Standiford 00:39:41 Thank you. Gosh.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:44 I didn’t put it on the screen. I was gonna see.

Alex Standiford 00:39:46 That was a great read. Did you I don’t know if you saw me look over at the screen. I was like, what is her last name? I got? I can’t spell it.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:52 I can say it, but I don’t know it. Yeah.

Alex Standiford 00:39:54 Right.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:55 Michelle at Post Status.Shot. Yeah.

Alex Standiford 00:39:57 Thank you. So, so yeah, it’s just as simple as just doing that. So.

Michelle Frechette: Super easy. Yeah.

Alex Standiford: And then I can add you to a program, I can set your status and I can click create. That’s it.

Michelle Frechette 00:40:09 There and there I am.

Alex Standiford 00:40:10 Yeah. And then if I wanted to add Brad and Steve later, I could do that just by doing a bulk action here and clicking Add Program and then.

Michelle Frechette: Oh very cool.

Alex Standiford 00:40:19 And now they’re a part of that program as well. Now what’s and there’s, there’s different flows for this. Right? I actually have a form that’s a block that allows you to kind of automate some of that stuff. But honestly, I, I’ve personally found that it just there’s an application process for this anyway. So the automation aspect of that is kind of limited on it’s on how valuable it is in my opinion. So I find that it is probably more valuable to just create a form using the forms plugin of choice to have an application, and then once the application comes in, you look at it and then you just manually add them like I just did. And then if you actually had a user, as long as it matches this email, it would automatically set it up to where you could see your, your dashboard from there. but if you don’t have a user and I just had to use a collaborator, I can also send you a login email right here. And if I click.

Michelle Frechette: Oh okay.

Alex Standiford: It would actually email. Yeah. And and then you would go, it would walk you through and say, hey, this person is trying to create this affiliate account. Is this actually you. Right. And you validate it. It’s a and then it sends you another email so that you can actually set your username and password in WordPress using the normal WordPress flow. So all of that works. Alternatively, if you wanted to just manually create the user, you could do that too. So yeah. So there’s a few. So now we’ve added them to a program. And then the other end of this are distributors, which is kind of like a program, but it’s retroactive. So a program is everything that happens that leads up to a sale. A distributor is everything aggregate that happened over the past certain period of time, and then that is used to figure out how much is being distributed, right? How much is being paid. So you’ll see it’s very similar.

Alex Standiford 00:42:11 So in this case, maybe it’s a, we’ll do a profit share. Right. And this is something that’s really common to use for say, let’s say you have a membership site with, course creators, or maybe it’s a, it’s a membership site with, like a gym. Right. And you have different trainers and they’re signing people up to different classes and stuff like that. And you happen to be using some kind of e-commerce solution through WordPress.Siren can actually track your gym trainers performance on how many people they’re getting to sign up to training classes, and how much their attendance is. And actually, you can associate their bonus with that performance. Right. Wit Siren. And that’s kind of what the distributor does. So you do a profit share maybe we’ll say pays for course creators based on performance. Right. So at the status you can set the revenue percentage. So we’ll say to like a 10%. So basically that’s saying 10% of the revenue that applies to this distributor over the last whatever however long we’re going to pay out.

Alex Standiford 00:43:09 Right. And you’ll see down here, you’ll see that including commission pool, this is very similar to the transaction thing that we saw programs. Right. So you can filter which products actually apply towards. So 10% of the products that we say are relevant to this. Then we can trigger it as often as we want, maybe monthly on the first or something like that. Sure. all the tracking events look a lot like a program, right? All the different things that have to happen. But this time, the points make a lot more sense, right? so maybe, of course, maybe maybe in the in the context of a profit share. You have course completed and lesson completed. So maybe every time a course is completed, we’re going to give you ten points. Every time a lesson is completed, we’ll give you one. Right. So this incentivizes our course creators to get people to get our existing members to watch their content, to get value out of their membership. Right. This is the kind of thing that helps reduce churn.

Alex Standiford 00:44:07 This is how we’re able to incentivize, this is how companies like Udemy, for example, actually incentivize, their course creators to actually give their course away for free for for those Udemy members who are paying a monthly membership, right? They’re paying like a 25%, distribution based on the number of minutes those videos are watched their videos. Okay. So, so you can you can do that and then you can specify the incentive structure. Right? Top score wins. Obviously you could do a single bonus, right? Whoever, whoever sells the most products in this month will get all the all the money, right. The full the full thing. You could do a shared engagement pool or performance weighted pool. So shared would obviously be anybody who’s who’s even participating in this at all will get an equal share performance weighted pool is is so cool though. So what this does is it takes this percentage, this number, their total point value. And it uses that to figure out how big of that revenue share they would get.

Alex Standiford 00:45:18 So like if I go to everybody. So I actually built this this thing to help me illustrate this. So let’s say you have a shared pool right? And you have I don’t know 20. And we’ll do 10. You have ten course creators right. So ten pays here. Those are your course creators right. And you over the course of a year or over the course of, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter. For this distribution, was earning, how many $100,000? Right. So some kind of large number there. And you’re paying 25% of that, right? So it’s going to be a $25,000 payout to all of them. Now, if it’s equal, they each get $2500 bucks apiece. Right? But in the case of a distribution pool, the weighted the performance weighted pool, we are actually going to calculate how big of a share they get based on how many points they scored during that period, based on how many times the members completed courses and completed lessons.

Alex Standiford 00:46:18 And, so if I add this little bias here, this kind of simulates that.

Michelle Frechette: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Alex Standiford: See like, so this person did a lot of the work or got the overwhelming majority of the points right. So they get a much bigger payout than the person who did less right. So this allows you to kind of, incentivize people to,

Michelle Frechette 00:46:41 It’s almost a contest at that point. Yeah. Like, how much of it can I mean, not a bad contest. It’s incentivized contest, which is a good thing.

Alex Standiford 00:46:49 Yeah, absolutely. so this allows you to create something like that. Now, it doesn’t necessarily have to be like even sites like Udemy, for example. This isn’t the sole source of income, right? Like, it could be. It could be, but it’s it’s a little it could get a little tricky, right? I mean, if you think about it, I guess like sites like YouTube are kind of this anyway, right? People who get the most views get the most money.

Alex Standiford 00:47:10 It’s, it’s you can build a program like that with this. So and then of course the including the commission pool, this allows you to specify what products are actually relevant to that, calculation. And in this case we would only want subscriptions. Right. We only want to calculate that revenue. We don’t really want to calculate every time a course is sold in this revenue, because that’s not a part of this. We only want to give you a revenue share of the membership subscriptions. So we can do that there. and then we can create that hopefully I added everything right. It’s kind of all over the place there. And then I can go in and add these people to that distributor, just like I did with the program.

Michelle Frechette 00:47:58 Oh. Very cool.

Alex Standiford 00:48:00 Here we go. So now they’re part of the profit share and a part of the affiliates. So that’s like a real quick.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:06 I gotta start selling man. Now that I’m in that pool.

Alex Standiford 00:48:09 That’s right, that’s right. So yeah, that’s that’s kind of a I mean, that’s a lightning quick demo.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:16 Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Standiford 00:48:17 The key things about Siren, the biggest thing, like I said, that excites me about it is just all the possibilities. Whenever I have, one on ones with my customers. Because whenever you buy Siren, you can actually get a one on one, I let you, I ask that, hey, one on one with me, you know.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:34 So some good onboarding so they can understand how to use it.

Alex Standiford 00:48:37 Totally, totally.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:38 I love that.

Alex Standiford 00:48:39 And it’s been really fun to talk to people about it because you’ll see, it’s like today I had somebody who I was talking with and I just saw the lights turn on as we were talking, and because they actually bought the product, they bought it because they were like, I think this might be relevant to what I want, but I’m not completely sure. So they bought it kind of on a little bit of a gamble and then scheduled the meeting with me. And we talked about it. And he he was sitting there describing the problem to me. And it was like, exactly what I have solved here. Right? And I was like, I’m just sitting here and I’m just thinking, I’m like.

Michelle Frechette 00:49:15 Let me show you something.

Alex Standiford 00:49:16 He’s going to love this, right? Yeah. So so then I, you know, I showed it to him and he was all he was, you know, you just saw his eyes light up and he was like, man, this opens up so many possibilities for me, you know? So it’s it’s cool. I’m really excited.

Michelle Frechette 00:49:27 Show us. Show us your pricing structure. Yes. You must have a pricing page up there that you can show.

Alex Standiford 00:49:35 Oh, yeah or. You mean to buy it?

Michelle Frechette 00:49:37 Yeah. People are interested in and becoming, like, using this on their own sites. How does that work?

Alex Standiford 00:49:43 Yeah. So I, So if you wanted to buy Siren, I have three different tiers. I’m probably pretty low right now.

Michelle Frechette 00:49:52 I was going to say.

Alex Standiford 00:49:53 That it’s still, it’s it’s aggressively low.

Michelle Frechette 00:49:55 Very, very affordable.

Alex Standiford 00:49:57 Still still still very the value that I’m offering is, is a lot on this.

Michelle Frechette 00:50:03 Does it renew at the regular price. That’s the next question.

Alex Standiford 00:50:06 It does renew at the regular okay. So so $59 for the first year $79 thereafter. so.

Michelle Frechette 00:50:12 Still very affordable.

Alex Standiford 00:50:13 Very affordable for sure. it’s not going to be priced like this forever for sure. It’s just mostly I’m just trying to get the people who want who can go on a limb and try this out with me and, and use this product and, and every integration I do, every feature I add the program. The the plugin stabilizes just that much more. And so anyway, yeah. So the price is basic, plus, and pro. I do one, three and ten sites. I also offer a platform migration from other plugins if you’re looking for that. So, you know, if you’re an Affiliate WP user or any of the other ones.

Michelle Frechette 00:50:52 It makes it easier than having to redo all that key entry, right?

Alex Standiford 00:50:56 Yeah, totally.mYeah. And, I’ve had enough people take me up on that. Then I’m like, oh, crap, I got to build something to speed this up, but but, you know.

Michelle Frechette 00:51:06 So let me ask you another question, and I don’t know the answer. So if I’m asking a question you don’t have a solution for yet, forgive me in advance, but there’s two things that incentivize affiliates. One is the money that they make. Right. But the other is the tools and resources that you give them to be able to market it well. Is that part of your dashboard yet, or is that something that’s coming to be able to give them images and language to use that kind of stuff?

Alex Standiford 00:51:34 So, yes, that is definitely something that’s coming, although it’s it’s so close to being solved without me, to be honest. I mean, between the block editor and the capabilities of plugins like, you know, Personalized WP or, or Restrict Content Pro even there’s there’s all these different plugins out there that can even.

Michelle Frechette 00:51:54 Google Drive, quite honestly.

Alex Standiford 00:51:56 Yeah, exactly. It’s it’s it’s like it’s one of those things. It’s like this. There’s so many different ways that can be solved really well without me needing to build a, a specific solution. That I just haven’t prioritized it. But I mean, as a practice. Yeah, absolutely. There’s there’s so many resources, like, I actually I do a, I have a on my, on my blog here, there’s a, right here, this guide, I have a like an affiliate. Well, that’s not neat. Live is dynamic.

Michelle Frechette 00:52:31 Yes it is. I didn’t know we had a theme song for it, though. Yeah.

Alex Standiford 00:52:35 No kidding. Da da da da da. so anyway, this guy, basically, it’s a it’s a campaign of things that I teach on how to, like, grow your first affiliate program, how to find your first affiliates, how to, you know, help them and support them.

Alex Standiford 00:52:51 And I think, I think, like, in terms of what you’re saying, with that number two being the support and things, I think that is arguably more important because I could I could tell you, I’m going to pay you 100% of every sale that you generate, and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you can’t sell it 100%. Zero is still zero, right? But if you go to a person and you say, hey, I’m going to pay you, 25% or 30% right of this, of my revenue, I am going to give you the resources I have just developed and set up this thing. I’m going to give you the resources that you need. I’m going to do a live webinar for your audience, and I’m also going to offer you a coupon code that is specific for your audience only. That is like really, really good. what do you think of that? That’s a whole different ballgame, right?

Michelle Frechette: Absolutely.

Alex Standiford: Because because the conversation, those two numbers are those two things. You’re talking about the assistance to be able to do it. And the percentage those two things together are a multiplier, right? By themselves. Either one of them, if either one of them zero, it’s still not going to help. You’re not getting money. so if you can really help somebody, you’re basically going to them and saying, hey, I want to make I want to give you a chunk of my money or the money from these sales. I’m going to do a lot of the legwork. I’m just asking you to, you know, give me an opportunity to wow your audience. Right? And if you come with that, with this humble, you know, like, I want to help and I’m. And I’m almost like a coach. Like an assistant, you know, and I yeah, it really changes this dynamic. I think a lot of people tend to look at affiliates as numbers instead of people.

Michelle Frechette 00:54:37 It’s about relationships.

Alex Standiford 00:54:39 Oh, absolutely.

Michelle Frechette 00:54:40 That’s I mean, I honestly think it’s all about relationships.

Alex Standiford 00:54:43 Yeah, for sure. I mean, even my, my podcast is called PartnersShip. Right. And it’s literally because that’s the that’s what this is all about. It’s working together. It’s finding people.

Michelle Frechette 00:54:53 I mean that kind of really went into your theme of the whole Siren and mermaid thing too. That was that was pretty nice. Yeah, I like that.

Alex Standiford 00:55:01 I couldn’t have lined up better. I got partnership.fm, the domain, and I was like, are you kidding me? Oh, oh that’s that’s mine. Yeah. I’m I’m taking that. That is mine now. Thank you. so.

Michelle Frechette 00:55:11 Yeah, you’re going to have to have me on your podcast now, you found out a couple of mine. We’ll talk later. We’ll talk later. Yes.

Alex Standiford 00:55:18 That is.

Michelle Frechette 00:55:21 I’m gonna take the screen off here so we can see your face, our faces again. A couple of minutes left. If anybody has questions. I know there’s always more people watching after the fact than live. If you have any questions, put them in the chat. we’d be happy to answer them before. Before I let Alex get on with the rest of his day. For sure. But, yeah, so I, I’ve asked a lot of really good questions, so it’s possible that I’ve asked all the questions there are to be asked at this point.

Alex Standiford: Nailed it.

Michelle Frechette: I’m just really excited. I I’m so good. I totally, but no, I’m just I’m super excited for you. I know this has been, like you said, a little a little ways in the making as far as road mapping to get to the point where you launch, get some feedback, start to get some activity around sales and things like that. And I’ve been watching, as you know, I’ve been watching you the whole time hoping for your success. Of course.

Alex Standiford: I appreciate it.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah. Of course. And I know that, you know, nobody builds a product and just walks away and says, oh, it’s going to take care of itself right now. So you are hustling all the time and like you said, adding more things, thinking about other ways to be successful with it and and help your customers be successful with how they’re using affiliate sales, for sure.

Alex Standiford 00:56:35 100% that’s the theme between the podcast and the one on ones I’m doing. And and all of that. It’s all about not only building this plugin, but also kind of challenging the notion that, affiliate program, affiliate networks or affiliate systems are bad. Because I hear that there’s such a stigma associated with it, and I, I really am. My goal is to challenge that and be like, no, we are, we can be. This can be good. This can be honest.

Michelle Frechette 00:57:01 This can. Yeah. But you also hear.

Alex Standiford 00:57:03 Friends, you.

Michelle Frechette 00:57:04 Know, affiliate sales are bad, but influencer marketing is where it’s at.

Alex Standiford 00:57:08 Yeah. Right?

Michelle Frechette 00:57:09 Joke. It’s the same thing. It’s the same thing.

Alex Standiford 00:57:12 My link in the bio.

Michelle Frechette 00:57:14 Yeah, exactly. I’m, I’m. I might have something like that in one of my bios, I don’t know.

Alex Standiford 00:57:20 I’m not judging. I mean, you should. Yeah. You should. Totally. If I get value from it, who cares?

Michelle Frechette 00:57:27 Absolutely, absolutely.

Alex Standiford 00:57:29 That’s that’s definitely where I’ve been mentally, though, is just, like, challenging that stigma and, helping people understand how they can create partnerships that can change their lives and their partner’s lives.

Michelle Frechette 00:57:42 So when is your next vacation? Because it sounds like you might need one.

Alex Standiford 00:57:46 Oh, geez.

Michelle Frechette 00:57:48 First day of WordCamp U.S.. Michelle, I know exactly.

Alex Standiford 00:57:51 Yeah, right. No kidding. No kidding.

Michelle Frechette 00:57:54 You will be WordCamp Us, though. So people.

Alex Standiford: Oh, yeah.

Michelle Frechette: So they want to do meetings one on one.

Alex Standiford: Yes.

Michelle Frechette: Is there a way for them to reach out to you? To set up a one on one. Do you have something like that that people can?

Alex Standiford 00:58:05 I don’t have a way to do that, but I totally should. I’ve been scheduling some. I totally should. I have, obviously I have, you know, they can reach out to me on X on Twitter or anything like that. Post Status. Of course. I’m in there all the time. Perhaps obnoxiously so.

Michelle Frechette 00:58:22 I mean, if you’re obnoxious, am I? So, yeah. No judgment there.

Alex Standiford 00:58:27 But, you know, I would love to schedule some one on ones, and now I’m going to be chewing on that for the rest of the day. And you might see a tweet from me that just says, hey, it’s good to have one on one with me.

Michelle Frechette 00:58:37 I may have a calendar link for that already set up for myself. So yes.

Alex Standiford: There it is.

Michelle Frechette: I would strongly encourage it.

Alex Standiford 00:58:41 Yes for sure a great idea. Yeah, I’m there for like a full week. Like I’m.I learned everybody starts showing up a week beforehand, so. Yeah. No kidding.

Michelle Frechette 00:58:51 Exactly. Excellent. Well, I want to thank you for being here. Before I go, I want to let people know who’s coming up next week. And I know, I know, you’ll want to be tuned in for this one. Next week. We’re going to have Marcus Burnett here to talk about the WP World. Since he launched that. Is your mind blown by all the stuff he adds?

Alex Standiford: It’s insane world.

Michelle Frechette: Like it’s how much it’s he should change it from the WP World to like the WP Universe, I think, because there’s so much baked into that. So I’m really looking forward to it.

Alex Standiford 00:59:21 Went from like this, it went from this a map of everybody in WordPress to like a job board, almost like it’s it is. Yeah, I’ll butcher any description of it, but it, it has.

Michelle Frechette 00:59:34 Do you know what the actual origin of it was? Because I do.

Alex Standiford: I, I don’t what?

Michelle Frechette: So he lives in Florida where there’s a lot of people who are impacted by hurricanes and weather. And so he wanted to create just a spreadsheet of people in the Florida area that he could that could check in on each other and make sure they were okay in those situations. And that turned into the map, which turned into the WP World, which is now worldwide, not just Florida. Isn’t that cool?

Alex Standiford 01:00:02 That’s wild. That is so cool.

Michelle Frechette 01:00:04 So that’s another example of seeing a need and finding a way to fill it for sure.

Alex Standiford 01:00:07 Would have been great when I was traveling. What am I going to stay?

Michelle Frechette 01:00:11 Exactly. Like who can I couch surf with? Yeah.

Alex Standiford 01:00:13 No kidding. Gosh.

Michelle Frechette 01:00:14 Next time. Next time.

Alex Standiford 01:00:18 Yeah. No kidding. Next time.

Michelle Frechette 01:00:20 Yeah. So we’ll have an opportunity to chat with him next week. So hopefully you’ll tune in for that. And everybody else will too. And then we will not have a Happiness Hour during WordCampUS because I’ll be busy. So we’ll return the week after that. I don’t know who we’ll have yet. We’re still working on the schedule beyond that point, but we’ll be there. Alex, any final words? Anything like you’d like to share that I forgot to ask you about?

Alex Standiford 01:00:43 Nope. I don’t think so. just just come see me ask questions on on Twitter or whatever, and and, I’ll be around.

Michelle Frechette 01:00:50 Excellent. And I’m sure we’ll be talking to each other between now and then, but I’ll see you at WordCampUS for sure.

Alex Standiford 01:00:55 Yeah. We’ll see you. Look forward to it.

Michelle Frechette 01:00:58 Me too. So thank you, everybody else, for being here. We really appreciate it. We’ll see you next week with Marcus Burnett. on the WP, the Post Status Happiness Hour. I can’t remember where I am today. That’s how long a day it’s been. We’ll see y’all next week.

This article, Post Status Happiness Hour Session Eight, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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WordCamp US for Agencies – A Few Talks I’m Excited to Hear WordCamp US is coming to Portland in a couple of weeks. * In the past, WordCamp US was the event that many attended exclusively for the hallway track, not the talks. * This year’s WCUS team has done an excellent job selecting practical talks that are helpful to those of us who run agencies. * Here’s a few I’m excited about: + Deeply Integrating AI with WordPress – James LePage has done some excellent work with CodeWP and AgentWP. + Building WordPress Websites with Privacy by Design in Mind – Donata Stroink-Skillrud is an expert when it comes to WordPress and privacy. + Growing and Sustaining a Digital Agency in Uncertain Times – Jessi Gurr knows what she’s doing when it comes to agency work and will have loads of practical experience to offer. + Scaling Your Agency: Lessons Learned the Hard Way – Karena Kreger is another savvy agency owner who has a lot to share about scaling from solopreneur to agency. * Check out the full WordCamp US Schedule.*

Google Restores AI Image Generation with New Safeguards Google is reintroducing image generation of people in its AI tools after a previous controversy. * The company had suspended this feature due to historically inaccurate and racially incorrect depictions. * While Google has made significant improvements to its Imagen 3 AI model, users will not be allowed to create photorealistic images, identifiable individuals, or inappropriate content. * Bloomberg’s article outlines the details. * Are you using generative AI for images in your agency? We have found some limited use cases that are pretty interesting.*

Worth a Look The WordPress Training Team really* wants learn.wordpress.org to be successful. They are looking for your feedback and ideas to get more first time and consistent, returning users. * Google’s John Mueller recommends prioritizing impactful content over worrying about spam scores, which he views as insignificant in the bigger picture. * WPLift has been acquired by E2M Solutions. The white-label partner that helps digital agencies grow their business and take on more projects without the added costs of hiring in-house staff plans to leverage the power of community that WPLift has built. * On a recent episode of WP Tavern Jukebox, Nathan Wrigley has a conversation with Chris Ferdinandi about working in tech with an ADHD diagnosis.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending September 6, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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News BitsTwo of Post Status’ sponsors (A2 and Omnisend) are cohosting WP Agency Link: Connect, Collaborate, Celebrate, a side event at WordCamp US for agencies. Sign up at the link!

More WCUS side events can be found on the WCUS website.

Last Week’s Post Status Happiness Hour featured Isla Waite and Danielle Zarcaro from WordPress Accessibility Day to talk about the importance of web accessibility and the upcoming event..

This week’s Post Status Happiness Hour will feature Alex Standiford from Siren Affiliates.

There is a lot of discussion on X (and other places) about Automattic’s announcement about moving Tumblr to WordPress. Matt Mullenweg is excited about the migration and shared a call for developers who might be interested in working on it.

Join Us for a MeetupJoin us for our Meetups! Details on our Meetups are available on our Meetup page.

• Post Status July Professionals Meetup: September 24
• Post Status July Product Meetup: September 25
• Post Status July Agency Meetup: September 26

Quick Links:* Kadence Amplify call for speakers is open * WordCamp AsiaCall: Call for Volunteers, Call for Speakers, Call for Emcees, and Call for Sponsors are open * WP Accessibility Day: Registration is open * WCUS: Tickets are Available

Find the complete WordPress events schedule here.

Photo of the WeekToday’s photo of the week comes from Da Chakrapan on WordPress Photos.

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This article, Community Roundup September 3, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Transcript ↓

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, Michelle Frechette Danielle Zarcaro, and Isla White discuss their roles and experiences with WordPress Accessibility Day. Michelle, the lead organizer for marketing, expresses her excitement and facilitates the conversation. Danielle, a web developer, emphasizes the importance of web accessibility for all users and shares insights from her three-year involvement. Isla, the project manager, highlights the event’s global impact and the collective responsibility of ensuring web accessibility. The speakers also discuss the significance of the 24-hour event format, the practical aspects of implementing accessibility, and the importance of community and sponsorships in making the event successful.

Top Takeaways: * Register Early for WP Accessibility Day: The event registration is open, and participants are encouraged to sign up early, even before the speaker list is finalized. This allows attendees to receive updates and stay informed about the event. * Seek Guidance and Explore Accessibility: Danielle Zarcaro emphasizes the importance of seeking help and asking questions when starting with accessibility. She encourages exploring different aspects of web design and accessibility to enhance knowledge and skills. * Diverse Perspectives on Accessibility: Isla Waite highlights the value of attending talks from international speakers. Gaining perspectives from around the world can greatly enrich understanding and appreciation of accessibility work. * Accessibility and Aesthetics: The discussion challenges the misconception that accessible websites are inherently unattractive. Both Danielle and Isla argue that accessibility does not preclude beauty and creativity in design. They stress that accessibility can be integrated with design principles to create functional and appealing websites. * User Control and Preferences: There’s a focus on allowing users to control their experience, such as providing options for dark mode or animation toggles. This approach respects users’ preferences and improves accessibility by accommodating different needs and settings.

Mentioned In The Show:* WP Accessibility Day * Lainey Feingold * Structured Negotiation * LinkedIn * Underrepresented In Tech

Sponsor: A2 HostingA2Hosting offers solutions for WordPress and WooCommerce that are both blazing fast and ultra-reliable. WordPress can be easily deployed on ANY web hosting plan from A2: Shared, VPS, or Dedicated. A2 also offers Managed WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting. Take a look at a2hosting.com today!

A2 Hosting You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:* Danielle Zarcaro (Founder, Overnight Website) * Isla White (Brand Strategist, Marketing by Design) * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

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TranscriptMichelle Frechette 00:00:01 Welcome to the Post Status Happiness Hour. I’m here with some of my co-organizers from WordPress Accessibility Day. This is my first year, being one of the organizers, and I’m not sure I probably knew at one point or another. Like what? You know how long you’ve been doing it, but can I let you introduce yourselves? Tell us a little bit about yourselves and, maybe where you live in the world and what you do when you’re not organizing for Accessibility Day. So, Danielle, let’s go with you first.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:00:27 Yeah. So, this is my third year helping out. Obviously each year you sort of get more and more involved. I do, web development. So I’m on the website team as well as helping, you know, wherever I’m needed. I’ll often fill in one of the slots for the day of kind of stuff. I’m in New Jersey. I run, you know, my own, web development studio focusing on accessibility as well as, you know, custom development and existing sites and things like that. So puzzling sort of sort of things. yeah. And and I’m happy to be here.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:02 Nice. Good to see you and Isla.

Isla Waite 00:01:06 Hey. Lovely to be here with you guys. I’m Isla Waite, and I am located in Sacramento, California, just outside of Sacramento. My accent gives away that I’m not from America. I originate from England. I have been involved with WordPress Accessibility Day for three years. Unlike Danielle, who was very smart, I jumped in at the deep end in the first year and the organizers, volunteer organizing role, which was boom. I learned a lot, and I still came back the next year, and it was great fun. And now I’m now I’m heading up the tech and vendors stuff.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:44 Oh very nice. Awesome. It’s so good to have you both here. I am also an organizer, so this is one of those times that I can interview myself as part of the process. But I am Michelle Frechette. As most people know, this is my podcast. This is my live stream, for Post Status. But I’m also the lead organizer for the marketing group. This year, my first year as part of the WP Accessibility Day organizing. And I’m very excited. We have got some amazing people on our organizing team who I mean, the amount of talent in that Zoom room every week is just mind blowing. I’m just so grateful for such an amazing team. But, I’m going to do most of the question asking and let you all answer, especially since this is my first year and you’ve been around the block a little bit more than me when it comes to WP Accessibility Day. So let’s just dive right into some of the questions. We’ll just kind of alternate. So Isla going to ask you to go first on the next question, and then we’ll just go back and forth. So we don’t have any of those awkward silences. So in a nutshell, can you tell us, like what is web accessibility and who does it benefit?

Isla Waite 00:02:47 Is it me first?

Michelle Frechette: Yes.

Isla Waite 00:02:49 You’ve already said that.

Michelle Frechette: I did. It’s okay. Yeah.

Isla Waite: I want to interject with, by the way, Michelle, thank goodness you are here this year because I know the first year we were muddling through marketing with all of us doing a little bit here and a little bit there, and it was, you know, you can imagine. So thank you, thank you.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:07 I’m happy to be here.

Isla Waite 00:03:08 Yeah. So what isweb accessibility and who does it benefit? I mean, gosh, you people have written books on this. But in a nutshell, web accessibility is, you know, the internet for all. At the end of the day, equal access, and equal experiences for every human, whether whatever, however they are in the world and if they have a disability or not. And who does it benefit? Everyone. We all benefit from web accessibility.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:39 Yeah, I think that’s a common misnomer, that web accessibility is only for people who have physical disabilities or who are blind or deaf or, you know, have mobility issues or, dexterity issues. But that’s not quite true, is it?

Isla Waite 00:03:54 No. And I think most people wouldn’t be able to list the things you just said. Most people would automatically assume blind.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:00 Right? Exactly. Danielle, what what would you like to add to that, definition or.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:04:06 Yeah, I usually if I’m going to boil it down to one sentence, it’s usually, ensuring access to for everybody. No matter what any kind of limitations you may have, temporary or otherwise.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:21 My first experience with web accessibility, I didn’t even know what it was. I didn’t like the idea of accessible web. Wasn’t even a thought to me. Right. As somebody whose I wear glasses. But I’d never really struggled with, you know, being able to see I had use of both of my hands. I could hear through my headphones or any other place, any other speaker. However, as I got into my 40s and I was using one theme quite often, I’m not going to throw them under the bus. I’m sure it’s better now than it was, say, ten years ago, but I was using one theme consistently and the default theme font was a gray. And I’m not talking dark charcoal, I’m talking a lighter gray and like a size 8 or 10 font. Right? And I was like, I was 43, 44 years old. And I was like, I can’t see it. And so my first step every time I designed a site was to make the font a little bit bigger and a little bit darker, so that people could actually see it. I didn’t even know I was making a more accessible web.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:05:24 Yeah, and making sure you’re not throwing up additional barriers, because sometimes the things that we do, like, end up preventing people from using whatever they need to use as well, without you even realize that you’re doing it, like zoom, being able to zoom in on a page, you know, you need to be able to do that. So you need to zoom in because you can’t read it. You need to be able to do that.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:42 Yeah, I remember early on, like the local newspaper had a selector at the top where you could select the size of your font. And now, of course, I just will zoom right. Like we’re used to that with, with the way our smartphones work nowadays. But there have been, improvements over the years as far as how we access the web, for sure. and I think having had those experiences as somebody who was just, you know, perhaps getting older eyes, for example, right, not born blind, not, you know, becoming blind, or other having those other kind of issues, but just like gradually going, wait, what? And looking like the person in the meme that’s like, I can’t see it. Jimmy. Right. So that whole, that whole meme. But yeah, for sure. So, I mean, I know a lot of the answers. I wrote the questions, but I’m going to ask you for your answers to the next one. So, Danielle, we’ll start with you. But why do you think having a 24 hour dedicated WordPress Accessibility event is important? And then, the second part after that. So go ahead and answer that part first. So why do you think?

Danielle Zarcaro 00:06:47 Yeah. I think part of accessibility is, for instance, Internationalization, making sure that, you know, you can translate a website into other languages and that you have certain tags available in different languages. So being able to access an event at any time zone is kind of pretty important. So, you know, it’s also helpful for people like me who maybe wake up later and so that, you know, yeah, things maybe are recorded or you can watch later, but there’s really nothing like being able to interact or chat with people who are also there or, you know, there’s something really special to that. And so if you only hold things in, you know, US time or European time, then you’re sort of leaving out this entire, you know, section of the globe. So it’s kind of really this important aspect of accessibility that, you know, it’s not always just disability related. You know, you kind of want to engage all of the community throughout the globe.

Michelle Frechette 00:07:44 I like that it’s not just for one section of the world, it’s for everybody. So I love that. Isla what would you add to that? I’ve got my own thoughts too.

Isla Waite 00:07:52 Yeah, I would agree with all of that. And you know, the internet being borderless, as we just said, it touches everybody. I think a 24 hour event is important because there’s a camaraderie there, that brings people together all at the same moment. And it reminds us all that we’re part of something much bigger than ourselves. And that’s not just part of the accessibility community. It’s part of humans. And that these same challenges, identical challenges, touch everyone all over the world. So by being a part of sharing the moving of the needle, you know, with, with people all over the world, that’s huge.

Michelle Frechette 00:08:40 I would add too, that just like accessibility isn’t just for people with disabilities because it can benefit everybody. There are people who like to work at 3:00 in the morning and live in New York state.

Michelle Frechette 00:08:52 And so there you go, see, and I’m also one of them. I’m often on or at least awake very late into the early wee hours of the morning. And so having something that fits my schedule, not just fits my time zone, is also something that I think benefits other people. Having also done 24 hour events in the past, I’ve discovered also, like you said, there’s also a camaraderie amongst the organizers, who are communicating like backstage, if you will, globally about that whole thing. And there’s just, I don’t know, there’s a feeling of really accomplishing something really great for other people, in a global way. That way. What can people of. Danielle, we’ll go back to you. What can people expect to learn during this event?

Danielle Zarcaro 00:09:40 Yeah, I mean, the agenda is going to give you the the specifics of everything that you can, you know, read into, but pretty much a little something for everybody. I know that kind of sounds generic, but it really is nice because you don’t have to worry about, you know? Oh, well, we’re only going to cover things for beginners. And then, so, you know, someone who’s doing this all the time is like, well, then it’s not for me because I’ll be bored. or I’m teaching other people in the comments, you know, then you also have these advanced things. You have really specific things about how to do this one very specific thing. But then you have this like sort of general, how does this affect, you know, the society as a whole, like, you know, how does how our, you know, legislation’s going versus, you know, the actual practical things that you can put into, you know, into practice on your own website. So it’s sort of really just, you know, what can you expect to learn? Something. You’ll take something away whether, you know, no matter what it is, you’ll learn something. So there is going to be something for you to take. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:40 Yeah. I love that. Isla you what do you think people can expect to learn other than what Daniel’s already said?

Isla Waite 00:10:45 Yeah, all of that. And it’s something and something for everyone. And you know, I’m I’m different from Danielle and that I’m, I’m not a developer or a coder. I’ve dabbled. And then I left that to the smart people. I am in the project management zone and I now in my own business. So I’m kind of coming at it from a very different perspective. All of the perspectives are important, and I think that’s what we try to push through Michelle the marketer, like there is literally something for everyone. You don’t have to be in the code. I think you can expect to learn things you would you would not have expected to learn. You will learn things that you you’ll be surprised by. And what I think is most fun about all of this is it’s so different to other conferences in that the majority, if not all of the people speaking have probably not spoken before. I’d say the majority have not presented before, but our evaluation process of, you know, the final speakers, is, is really thorough. So we’re looking for people who have, you know, figured out their own processes, figured out, like solve their own challenges in producing accessible things or working, working out how to work with clients or working out how to change the culture in their business. And they’re bringing that to the table and saying, hey, I want to share this with everybody. When does that happen these days? Who wants to share all the stuff that they’ve just discovered? Which is why I think it’s so important because it’s it’s grassroots people, for the most part, who have not done big presentations. And you can perhaps learn more from them.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:23 But looking at and I know that I don’t think the schedule is out yet, so it’s still a little bit of a secret. It’ll be.

Isla Watie: Soon. Very, very soon.

MIchelle Frechette: Because because I’ve been I’ve been working on getting the speaker cards and everything like lined up and in the back end of things. But, looking at the speaker lineup, these amazing people have such amazing pedigrees too right? Like I’m seeing a lot of UX design accessibility experts, things like that, that even if they don’t have a lot of speaking experience, they know their stuff. Like, I’m super excited to hear them talk for sure.

Isla Waite 00:12:55 Yeah, same.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:59 I put together processes for myself. I am a mobility challenged person, right? So I use a scooter when I’m out and about. And I use a cane in my home and I think several steps ahead because I know that if I have to walk down to one end of my home, to the to the bedroom. But I forgot something in the kitchen. That’s too many steps. That’s too many steps for me. I’d have to I have to think about. So I have to think several steps ahead. And I think that that is also what we do when we are thinking about accessibility on our websites. We should be thinking ahead. We should be thinking about all the things that we can do to make sure that they are what they need to be, and not trying to go backwards later in retrofit. Like, one of the things that I’ve always done is said when you put your pictures the very least right when you put a picture on your website, add the alt text at that moment, because saying you’re going to go back later and add the all, all the alt text, you’re never going to do that, because just also going back and just putting it in the media library doesn’t actually add it to the pages that you’ve had post that you’ve put it on. So you can’t literally go back and do it quickly and easily. which brings me to a question I didn’t put in the chat. I apologize, but how easy is accessibility, you know? Right. I just thought of it. Sometimes I think of these things on as like as I’m going. How easy would you say accessibility is? And of course, I’m not talking about overlays because that is not a good way to go about things, but, yeah. Do you have to be do you have to be a developer to have an accessible website? That’s a good question. we’re getting some comments from Adrian, and she says

Isla Waite: Yeah, I bet.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:14:38 Do you want to start with the non developer to answer.

Isla Waite 00:14:40 Oh, yeah.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:14:42 And then, yeah, I.

Isla Waite 00:14:45 Think I’ll make all the bloopers and Daniel can fix it.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:48 There you go.

Isla Waite 00:14:50 Is it easy? You know that? Is it easy? In some respects, yes. And in some respects, no. Can I can that be an answer?

MIchelle Frechette: Absolutely.

Isla Waite 00:15:01 I think there are visual things that anyone who owns a website can do, as long as they are aware. So bringing awareness to people is the biggest point. And that’s another reason for the conference. But things to do with color contrast and things to do with layout and like organizing a hierarchy that might be a little advanced for some. But, you know, as long as it’s logical, that’s going to help. Things to do with not having crazy motion, things that people can’t stop and start on their own accord. And then you’re into video transcripts and that kind of thing. But there is plenty that somebody can do to stop a toe in the water and realize, oh, this isn’t scary. Actually it’s totally doable. And I understand it because I’m also squinting at that light gray font that I can’t see. So maybe I’ll just make it a bit darker. You know, it’s once you start doing it, you’re like, yeah, of course.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:59 Yeah. Now I will say we started with a non developer, but you gave the developer answer, which is it depends.

Isla Waite 00:16:05 I’m sorry.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:16:08 Well no I mean. I can give I can give a much more technical process answer. So even though it’s maybe a more developer answer, I, you know, I can get into the weeds a little bit. I sort of like to talk about it in processes. Right. So if we’re talking about ease of implementation, that’s going to be way easier to do at the beginning and thinking through things. So like color choices. Right? Okay. That’s really easy to do because I don’t need to be a designer or developer I can plug these colors into a tool and it’ll tell me and then I can adjust from there. So like, there’s certain things that if you’re if you have it in the back of your head through everything you’re doing, then the things you do later are going to be a lot easier relatively. Then it’s about phases from there. So you implement what you know you can get right, which is like font sizes and, you know, colors and line heights. And so you do what you can do to make it, you know, a great site that you can still use.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:17:04 That’s great. And, you know, everyone loves coming to. And then as you want to implement these more advanced features, then you can insert, you know, a video that you can add a transcript to and make sure it doesn’t autoplay. Then you can get into those more advanced things. But so it’s not that you can’t do stuff, it’s just that like, oh, hey, I want to add this feature. Is this something I have to take special consideration for or just throw it on here? And because like, even like motion and animation, you have to know enough about how to test for it in order to see if your tool does it right. So you have to know how to turn your prefers reduced motion on on your computer in order to see if your builder respects that, because that’s sort of the bare minimum. So there’s these like little considerations you can do. There’s a bunch of tools out there that will help guide you through the process. And then when you have an existing site that you’re trying to sort of retrofit accessibility, that’s when I get into sort of the phase work where it’s like, okay, let’s tackle these sort of top level, you know, easy, quick start sort of things. And then we can get into these, you know, deeper things. So it’s it’s it doesn’t have to be intimidating I guess is is the answer.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:11 Yeah I’m it’s almost like Adrian is here with us the, the way we should have we should have had you on the show too. The the basics of designing content are easy, but you need to know what you’re looking for, so you need to have a little bit of education. It’s not that it’s difficult. It’s that it can be a little time consuming. and I think back to like, how many photos. Don’t apologize, Adrian. I say she’s like, sorry. No. Don’t apologize. It’s all good. We love it. We love it. I think back to how many inaccessible sites I’ve put out in the world in the past, right? And that most of them don’t exist anymore because those customers moved on to something else or whatever. And how when I was first learning to say alt text in Twitter, for example, how it would be like, I’m not even gonna post a picture because I don’t want to take the time to write it out. Right? But then like, realize that’s such the wrong attitude. Right? The right attitude is if I were to share a photo, share a photo, but write a quick description, it doesn’t have to be a book, but write a quick description so that my friends like Alex can know what it is that I’m putting out there. And so that’s.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:19:19 And the more you do something, the more second nature becomes right. That initial hurdle. And then as soon as you do it, you’re like, oh. And then you could just sort of spit something out and it’s just like, you know, just the same as writing the post itself. It’s just you just do it.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:32 Exactly. Just part of it just becomes part of your whole process. now, I don’t know who might know the answer to this, so better. So I’m going to let you kind of toss a coin on this one. But this year’s keynote is Lainey Feingold. who could tell us a little bit about her and what her session is going to cover? I think Danielle is pulling up the website right now, which is good.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:19:54 Yeah, I don’t know about her session specifically. I don’t remember what that is, but she’s basically, you know, the source of all things sort of lawyerly when it comes to accessibility. So she stays on top of all the latest, like, you know, cases themselves, the outcomes of them, what that means for the, you know, community at large. So we have somebody helping us out, you know, accessibility is a civil right. So the digital accessibility legal landscape for the WordPress community. So, you know, what what all of these. So as sort of time goes on, we’re going to get more and more, you know, sort of legal type things like, oh, I don’t want to get sued, but you know what? So what does that actually mean? You know, what does that mean for us as website creators? What does that mean for us as website consumers? And, you know, how do we sort of navigate that?

Michelle Frechette 00:20:45 Yeah, I think about the different reasons that somebody might think about making their site accessible. The first is like, I want it to be good SEO. The second is I don’t want to get sued. The best is I want people to get to my page. They’re going to get to my site and be able to use it. Right. But if if you don’t care about the third one, at least care about the first two so that the other people still get the benefit of it is basically.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:21:08 Yeah. I mean, you have people that are, you know, you have to convince sometimes when you’re part of a larger company. And so I typically will fall on the fact that like, because they’ll, they’ll ask for some kind of data. Right. Well, how many people are coming that need such and such. And it’s like, well, you don’t know. And that’s the point. And maybe they don’t know. much like I just, answered somebody’s question about like, how would you, you know, make the workplace a better place for yourself, like what kind of accommodations you need? And so my point was, sometimes people don’t know accommodations that they need because they don’t know that it’s available to them.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:21:42 And so if you make the website accessible in this one way and they’re like, oh my god, wow, that was so much easier to use, then they can start to, you know, it’s it’s sort of just you’re you’re doing it for the betterment of the people coming to your site. It’s not necessarily that you’re targeting this one, you know, subset of the population. You’re kind of just, you know, helping people use your site in general. So it’s I try to be more general about it. I as much as I’d like to, to think that everybody cares about the people coming to their site, I try to take a little bit of that while you’re doing the wrong thing out of it, because then you’re, you know, passing judgment on people. And I try not to do that. So I try to just, you know, give people the convincing things without trying to, you know, tell them how I feel about them.

Michelle Frechette 00:22:26 Exactly. It’s like I’m not judging you, but. Let’s let’s make it better. I’m not saying it’s bad, but let’s make it better.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:22:34 Yeah, and it’s all those reasons. There’s a million reasons why you should. And so why not?

Michelle Frechette 00:22:40 Yeah, absolutely.

Isla Waite 00:22:41 Hey, on the Lainey topic. I, I just want to throw out that I. I respect her quite a lot. I don’t respect all lawyers, but I respect her quite a lot because she’s all about, not being a shock and being a dolphin. And she writes about that on her website, so if you feel like going to read something. It’s worth a look. And she has written a book which I’m currently reading called Structured Negotiation. Look for her book. and she’s kind of a legal rebel in that she’s trying to say, less lawsuits, more negotiation. And that’s what I love about it, because living in California right now, this whole topic is very turbulent. I’m a business owner. I’m feeling that turbulence. we just had a bill that died in its second version. So it was AB 9- something. Now it was AB 1757 and that just died. So a version of it’s going to come back. and Lainey has recently posted on LinkedIn some stuff, so I follow her closely for her perspective on things like art and things like that.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:23:45 Yeah. Because like, you don’t as much as you don’t want people to get sued and all that. I’m I’m not totally against the idea of having some kind of, you know, rules and regulations to follow. But if we if we take a look at, like the privacy and, and the cookie banners and all that stuff that happened because of, you know, wanting to be able to tell people when they’re being tracked and then we just sort of implement these blanket cookie statements, and then sometimes they don’t actually even do anything. And so it just sort of creates this chaos. So like I love the idea.

Isla Waite 00:24:13 And then Google says let’s just do it at the browser level. Never mind.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:24:16 Yeah, right. It’s like, you know, and then like what cookie counts and this and that. So there’s all these like nuances of things that, you know, I would love to have guidelines that are rather than just conforming to these, you know, standards. I’d love to have some kind of actual thing for us to be told that we should follow. But I’m totally against just, like, superfluous, just suing people because you can.

Isla Waite 00:24:39 Oh, we could talk for hours. I’m like.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:24:43 I feel all the ways about all the things.

Isla Waite 00:24:46 I don’t know if you know, but in California, the bill was going to hold developers accountable.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:24:53 Yeah. Which is hard.

Isla Waite 00:24:54 Yeah. Fully, fully liable if somebody found a barrier on a website. So even if somebody else made a plug in and somebody else made a plug in.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:25:02 Yeah.

Isla Waite 00:25:02 You end up sharing that lawsuit with 55 people. Even if it doesn’t go to court, you’ve still got to settle.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:07 Yeah.

Isla Waite 00:25:08 Anyway, that’s a whole other topic. So I’m going to get off that..

Danielle Zarcaro 00:25:13 It’s fascinating and it’s amazing to to hear from on pretty much anything she ever talks about.

Isla Waite 00:25:20 Lainey is great! That’s what we’re going to say.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:21 I’m looking forward to her session very much. Absolutely. Okay. We’ll go with, I think we went with Isla first last time. We’ll go with Danielle. Now, why do you, as an organizer, choose to put so much time and energy into this event? And secondly, if you want to talk about it, has as web accessibility impacted you or others that you know personally, is there a personal stake in it?

Danielle Zarcaro 00:25:43 So why do I volunteer my time? I, I feel like it’s all for the betterment of the community. I can’t do what I do without the the value that others have brought me. Brought me, you know, either from sharing their information or walkthroughs or articles or their experiences. And so for me to be able to not just like somebody needs a site that’s accessible and then they pay me and I do it. I love being able to provide some kind of support to other people because I’m not I, I spoken at sessions and I but I’m not like an organizer. I’m not great at that side of things. So I’d love to like, do something like this too. But I can never put something like this on myself. So I love the idea of being able to help other people sort of bring this to a much larger audience and make it accessible. And, you know, just I love seeing other people do stuff like this. And so why wouldn’t I also want to contribute in that way as well?

Michelle Frechette 5 00:26:47 I love that.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:26:47 So I just, I just and then you get to like, hang around with a bunch of cool people that feel the same way as you do. Like there’s not there’s something to be said when you have that sort of base level of, you know, thing. I don’t know what it is. Anytime there’s community around something, there’s that like level of understanding and it just feels really nice. So.

Isla Waite 00:27:08 It’s an energy.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:27:09 Yeah, yeah. And I mean, yeah, even if I didn’t have a personal stake in it, I just feel really strongly about it. I do, I mean, I do in my own ways. I’m neurodivergent. I think my astigmatism has something to do with animation. I don’t have any confirmation on that, but I don’t know if it’s just because I’m on computers all the time, but I’m at this middle spot where I don’t necessarily want to turn animations off on my computer as a whole, but like, websites can get way too much. And so I really like turning it off on websites. So I’d love for like, browsers to have that option. But so I’m, I’m big on on that, especially on phones. Like I’ll have to leave a site or, or hope that I can scroll to the bottom, let all the animations go, and then I can scroll back up and do it. So I really hate when it like, runs and then undoes itself and then runs again. Pulling animation for me in motion. That’s personal. I think there has to be other things that I’m not thinking of. I don’t know about other ways that people use it.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:28:12 I mean, you know, you have parents and grandparents and stuff that use bigger text and, you know, utilize all these different accessibility things. But, yeah, a bunch of stuff for me for neurodivergent vision. I like being able to, you know, turn on dark mode because, you know, of sensory things and all that stuff. So, yeah, for, for personally, it’s mostly related to any kind of neuro divergence, but, yeah, I don’t, you know, so I, I don’t have it like a blind, you know, cousin or anything like that. But, you know, that’s not to say that that won’t, I won’t ever. You know.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:47 Adrian has a comment regarding some of what you said was that as her Dad always says, pay it back when you can and when you can’t pay it forward. And that’s I think that kind of sums up what you what you were just saying I love it.

Michelle Frechette: Sorry. You keep getting cut off Isla

Speaker 5 00:28:58 If I’m on my left.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:29:00 That’s all right. If I’m gonna. You know, need help someday I’d like, you know, I want somebody to be like me there. You know? I’d want to know that somebody was there, you know, having keeping me in mind.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:12 Yeah. What about you, Isla?

Isla Waite 00:29:16 Remind me the question.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:17 That’s okay. Why do you. Why do. You choose? Why do you choose to put so much time and energy into this event? And is there a personal connection for you, a reason that you are so interested in accessibility?

Isla Waite 00:29:29 Yeah. I choose it because I love it. And I didn’t know the first year that I was going to love it. But again, it, you know, like Daniel says, it comes back to there’s an underlying that undercurrent of something when you’re with these people. But even just in Slack, you know, it’s there’s an energy there and that that can feed me, you know, to get through my afternoon with clients or whatever. So there’s a there’s a selfish thing to that, I think, like this. This feeds me, but in a really great way. So, you know, and I know actually, I can reach out to any of these people with a random question about basically anything, and I’m going to get a response. I’m not speaking into a void, like, and I’ve worked on other conferences and volunteer, things where three days go by, you know, and I am not perfect at responding by any means, but sometimes you wonder. Is that person engaged? But I think there’s no question. Yeah, there’s no question with these organizers that these people are engaged. Certainly at this point along in the proceedings, you know, in the event is in not very long, a month and a half or something?

Michelle Frechette 00:30:38 Yeah. Yeah.

Isla Waite 00:30:39 So yeah, I, I do it because it feeds my soul. I love it, I love that, Yeah. is there a, personal reason? Yeah. My family tends to have the invisible disabilities. And right, right now, my dad has Alzheimer’s.

Isla Waite 00:31:05 And that began a while ago. and in the early days when he could still use a device which he’d never been very good at, but he had a little tablet, and he could do things, you know, you could do the things you wanted to do. And he came to me. I started to see him struggle with that. And so I think I have a, you know, a my nana had Alzheimer’s too. I have a very special place for the aging population in all of this, because as we get more progressive and more AI and more this and more that, I do feel like they’re the generation that gets left behind. So that’s that’s probably my biggest motivation. I don’t I don’t like that. Yeah. It hurts to to feel like people I love are going to get left behind. So yeah. So that’s probably my internal motivation.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:49 That makes a lot of sense. For me, you know, I do a lot of work with Underrepresented In Tech and underrepresented-ness and try to help be, you know, help people be more represented. And of course, I don’t represent everybody because I, I only can represent who I am. But what I thought about the fact that there are places that I’ve, I do not have access to because of physical disability. I, you know, a few years ago at WordCamp US, I wrote a big article called Five Days Without a Shower because I had so many places that were not accessible to me and that were very difficult to traverse, and I was in tears because I couldn’t like access. I got stuck in a bathroom like those kinds of things. There are places I’ve been to as a child that I would love to go back to. There’s, there’s a beautiful gorge walk in Watkins Glen that can’t be retrofitted. I mean, it’s it’s a nature thing, right? And I see that come up, like, in TikTok and, and videos and think, I wish I could go back and appreciate it again because I can’t walk those places. And I thought if my coming to a building with no curb cuts and no accessible doors probably feels a lot like what it would feel like to come to a website and not have access the way I don’t have access physically.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:05 And so for me, that’s my impetus. Right? So, I am still learning. I am a newb at figuring all of it out, but I am passionate about it because of just experiences that I’ve had in the past. Not web related, but Michelle related. Right. And so, so for me, that is one of the impetus and to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to access things. So it’s pretty much who sets it to so here’s a good question. I wish we had Bette for this one because she’s like, I could talk to the money the best. But. So we pay a stipend to our speakers and give them swag, I think. Danielle, I think you’re wearing our t-shirt there.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:33:46 Yeah, yeah, I’m wearing. Let me stand up. my shoes.

Isla Waite: I’m wearing last year’s This is last years shirt.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:51 And mines in the wash, so.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:33:56 Yeah, this year is, orange. It’s got the colon focus with the, the box around it. And then it says it’s a feature not a bug. And then WordPress Accessibility Day 2024.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:06 I love it.

Isla Waite 00:34:07 Because we all have such a great sense of humor.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:09 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So we give swag and we pay a stipend to our speakers. And we know that having an event like this is not free. Anyway. The labor may be, but there’s all kinds of technology and things that we need to include as well. How? I mean, I know it’s weird to ask this because I know the answers, but I’ll have you answer them. How do we afford it? Like, what are we doing? How are we offsetting the cost? I don’t remember who went first last time. So one of you jump in?

Isla Waite 00:34:41 We need those sponsorships. You know, they’re on the website, and we have filled a good number of them. I think we’re still looking maybe for some bronze. I can’t remember Bet would know. No, but, Yeah, my responses as well at all helps. so obviously I, you know, a gold or platinum sponsors, they are wonderful. And we literally couldn’t do it without them. Same for silver and bronze and micro. I mean, everyone gets their name up there right on social media or somewhere. it’s a great place to be seen. So yeah, that’s where we get the money from.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:35:13 I think, if I’m not mistaken, you can become a micro sponsor. When you sign up to attend.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:19 You can.

Isla Waite00:35:20 You can.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:35:21 It’s super easy. You could just sort of check a box. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that’s the main way. Yeah.

Isla Waite 00:35:27 Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:28 June coming into the clinch with all the information in the chat, I love that. Bronze level sponsorships are available to September 10th. We will take, an a Microsoft. if Microsoft micro level sponsorship. I like what. I clicked something, I thought I was clicking off, I clicked her next message. I was like, completely lost myself there. Micro level sponsorship is available at registration, as Danielle said. And if you can’t even afford that, but you want to contribute, we do take donations as well. You know, and a little bit helps us put it on, even.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:35:59 Even sharing about it, telling somebody about it. I mean, you don’t you know, people can’t come if they don’t know about it. And I mean, you know, the money also goes towards, you know, we have sign language interpreters and live captioning and all of the sort of access related things are.

Isla Waite 00:36:13 All and then the post-production, so that we can get it up on YouTube and share it forever.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:36:16 And translate it and all of that. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:19 So we’re we also translate it into other languages, which I think is important. Right. So that’s also.

Isla Waite 00:36:25 That’s new this year thanks to Joni. Shout out to Joni.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:29 Very exciting to be able to, to share with people outside of the English language as well and American Sign Language, so for sure. Okay. So Danielle, when is Accessibility Day this year.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:36:41 Accessibility Day is, because I know this answer right off the top of my head, I can tell you it’s October 9th to 10th, depending on your. Depending on your on your timezone.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:56 We didn’t hear your keyboard at all.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:36:58 I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:03 I love it. October 9th and 10th. Isla, what does it cost to attend?

Isla Waite 00:37:10 It’s free.

Michelle Frechette: It’s free. That’s right. It’s free.

Isla Waite 00:37:11 But you might want to buy a t-shirt. And since Danielle is modeling it, if you can see it, it is rather gorgeous. It is focus. It’s a feature, not a bug. Everybody needs that t-shirt.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:37:28 While running and you’ll be able to be seen.

Isla Waite Yeah. That’s right.

Michelle Frechette: That’s true.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:37:38 Walking, running or driving or was it, hitchhiking?

Isla Waite 00:37:40 You could pretend to be a traffic cone. Make sure all those driving.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:37:44 I do like it. I have shorts that are the same color, so I had to make sure I didn’t put those on today, because that would be too much.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:50 I will put the legal disclaimer in that while it is orange, it is not reflective.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:37:54 No, no, right. Don’t actually stand in the middle of a street.

Isla Waite: But wouldn’t that be awesome if it was?

Danielle Zarcaro 00:37:59 I love glow in the dark things. We should definitely have some kind of glow in the dark.

Isla Waite00:38:05 I would love to see. Yeah, like a hologram thing, but that sounds very inaccessible to me.

Michelle Frechette: It does.

Danielle Zarcaro00:38:10 That’s for sure. We’re like those shirts that changed colors. Oh, yeah. The sunlight was those.Somebody could, like, put their hand on you, and then it would change color.

Michelle Frechette 00:38:21 Under the heat? Yeah. I used to have fingernails that did that.

Isla Waite00:38:23 Because everyone’s supposed to put their hands on people. That’s not at all creepy.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:38:26 No like you’re siblings or, you know, you’re this way. If you if you got, like, if your siblings smacked you, then you have proof. You go run to your parents, say, look, look, they hit me.

Michelle Frechette 00:38:38 That’s right. But but Covid protocols have put that right out the window.

Isla Waite 00:38:43 Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. Do not try to.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:38:45 Change my shirt color.

Michelle Frechette 00:38:48 Which which is another benefit of this conference is you can’t catch Covid from any of the other attendees because you’re doing it from the comfort of wherever you set up your computer. So.

Isla Waite 00:38:58 You can wear your pajamas.

Michelle Frechette 00:38:59 Yes, you should wear your pajamas. That’s right. I joked that I’ll be wearing my pajamas from the waist down, but I will look very professional from the waist up.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:39:07 Yeah. So many, many people these days from. It doesn’t even have to be the waist up just from.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:14 Mid chest higher.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:39:15 Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:18 And the question I was going to ask but I have it ready for us in a, in a banner is that you can learn more and register registrations open. We will be forthcoming with the speaker list. But you want to register even before you know who the speakers are. Let’s go to 2024 dot WP Accessibility day. Accessibility dot day. Sorry I said it wrong. So that’s 2024 dot WP accessibility dot day and that will get you.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:39:44 If you sign up now then you can you’ll get updates and stuff so you don’t have to remember yourself. You’ll get you’ll get all the all the info.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:50 Exactly you.

Isla Waite 00:39:51 Let the computer remember for you. That’s the world we live in.

Danielle Zarcaro: All the time.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:55 And and our, our biggest fan today. Adrian says yay Joni for all of the translations. We adore you, Danielle. She has orange nail polish to match the t-shirt. Okay. And then she corrected this. So yes, I love it, I love it, I love it again. I’ll put that up back up on the floor on the, the bottom of the floor at the bottom of the screen here, which is learn more and register at 2024 dot WP Accessibility dot Day. Any final thoughts before we wrap this up, Danielle, to you.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:40:26 Um, if you’re ever not sure about anything, find somebody to ask. There’s a ton of people who are ready and willing to guide you in the right direction. I do videos and posts and all kinds of so many people do all kinds of stuff, so it’s super easy, to start your journey started anywhere, pick a thing and get into it. And, it’s just it’s a lot of fun.

Michelle Freche3tte 00:40:50 Absolutely. Isla.

Isla Waite 00:40:52 Exactly that. And also, once you’ve registered for a WordPress Accessibility Day, make a point of finding a speaker who isn’t in your country and try and attend, or at least watch on YouTube later. What it is that they have to say because finding perspectives from around the world are just so valuable. Honestly, for me, that has enhanced my knowledge and my appreciation for this work to the umpteenth level. So if you can find somebody out, you know, outside of your geography, I highly recommend that.

Michelle Frechette 00:41:26 Okay. If one more question that I didn’t even prep you for, but it’s based on something that I know it’s scandalous. Something that Bet posted today, asking a question of do you believe that accessible websites can still be beautiful? Or are all web accessible websites just ugly?

Isla Waite 00:41:46 Oh no!

Danielle Zarcaro 00:41:47 A whole presentation on this at WordCamp. Designing with Accessibility. It’s totally it’s so I’m somebody that really loves parameters and then I can, like, just go to town based on those. So I love being able to know, okay, I have to do this, this, this and this. And then given those guidelines, what do I have to do in order to make it work or make it nice? Yeah. There’s a million things that you can do. There’s trends you should probably stay away from, but that could be the fun in taking this thing that everybody’s doing and doing it in a way that is like, I love that kind of stuff, and it’s so creative. And so yeah, no, I hard disagree.

Isla Waite 00:42:30 Yeah, I know I’m right there with you in the parameters. It’s just such a great point. And I think obviously beautiful is very subjective. So what what does.

Michelle Frechette: So true.

Isla Waite 00:42:38 The hardest conversations I have ever had. And thank you. Not thankfully not too many, but I with designers who want to be the creative selves and how do we want we don’t want to take that away from them. Just recently I had one going, oh, I don’t want to implement any of that it’s terrible. But that’s, you know, we we all know that that’s not the truth. And we know the reasons why we need to do it, and it’s just back down to education.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:43:04 And if that’s your instinct, the important, most important thing you can do is, is ask yourself why or have somebody else ask yourself why. Start to explore why you’re having that reaction to it. Because there’s something that you learned when you didn’t know anything. And and you’re, you know, you asked, you know, oh, this is good design. This is bad design. This is what you should do. Okay. Well, why what makes that nice? Well, why don’t you want to implement these things? Do you think it’s limiting? And if so, you know, how can I challenge those, you know, ideas that I have about this particular thing? Because the the, the limitations are really only the ones that you put on yourself.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:43:42 These are just how do you make it? You want you want as many people as possible. We’re not talking about a pet project that you like launch for your family that you can have on, you know, wherever. We’re talking about this thing that you want people to access and see. And so, yeah, I think the most important thing to do is not take things personally. it’s not a personal attack on you or your skill or, you know, whatever. It’s just this like thing to sort of broaden your mind and, and start to ask yourself the hard questions. Basically.

Isla Waite 00:44:08 I think if it’s not functional, it’s not design and accessibility is a part of functional, functionality. And if it’s not functional, it’s art.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:44:18 I was I was reading about, like sort of abandoned buildings and architecture. And so it was this like thing about how you want to preserve this. I think it was a school or something. You want to preserve this thing, this architecture, this thing that somebody built, and it’s part of its history. And so how much can you change of it? But nobody’s using it. It’s sitting there just empty. And so if you don’t maintain a building, it no longer becomes that good architecture. So what are your choices here? Leave it empty and not fit for purpose and leaking and just totally unusable. All for the sake of, you know, good architecture, or do you make it something that somebody’s going to use for the purpose of being a building like. So it’s just sort of this it’s an eternal argument, I think. And I think if you start to ask yourself that those big questions about what is the main purpose that I’m doing here, making a thing that I want somebody to come visit? Well, you know, there’s some concessions you’re gonna have to make. And how do I do that creatively?

Michelle Frechette 00:45:20 Yeah, some people could argue that a ramp is an eyesore. I would argue that it’s a thing of beauty because it gives me access to places. So. Yeah, absolutely. And also, Danielle, I want you to be very proud of me that it’s been at least five years since I’ve used parallax on any web design.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:45:37 I love it, I love it. And there’s way to do stuff like that too. You just have to respect people. If to me, animation is one of the hardest things because you don’t want to give too many options for people upfront, but if you’re leaning heavy in that animation, give somebody like a toggle button at the top, let them turn it off and give them a different experience. Maybe that’s controversial. I don’t really know. But I think because you want to respect their initial preferences. But if you’re leaning heavy into that, let somebody turn it off. You can still have your fun little scrolling thing, but make it big right up front. Kind of like dark mode. People really feel strongly one way or the other about that too.

Michelle Frechette 00:46:13 Oh, I hate, I hate dark mode.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:46:16 Dark mode. Give somebody a toggle so you don’t maybe don’t always want to, you know, lean on those browser.

Isla Waite 00:46:21 I think you’re touching on the universal principles of design for education. And I only know about this because I just did the CPAC.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:46:29 I don’t know, I don’t know. That sounds great.

Isla Waite 00:46:32 So, you know, in essence, it’s give many options so that people can pick and sort of choose how they interact with the thing.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:46:41 I think within reason, because then you get into those overlay things where you’re starting to like give people too many options and then you’re not considering anybody and you’re saying, here you do it. It’s more like when you have this, when you’re leaning heavy into this 1 or 2 things. Yeah, yeah. Like the WordPress Accessibility Day website gives options for light and dark mode. So it’s like you can control this thing that, you know, we’re doing for you. You know, it just you want to enable it for everybody rather than just somebody who happens to know where they’re setting is. So I have I have a, an animation toggle because I don’t again, that’s one of my things. So I’m like, no, if I’m going to have these things automatically playing or on scroll, I have to give somebody the opportunity to stop.

Michelle Frechette 00:47:22 Absolutely. And the worst, my worst experience is, I’m not married anymore. But what I was is I would be online at night, he’d be sound asleep. I’d land on a web page that suddenly just started blasting music like, don’t do that either.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:47:38 Or videos. Or.

Michelle Frechette 00:47:40 Yes, exactly.

Danielle Zarcaro 00:47:41 But that’s why that’s why. Color preferences are important. Because people will sometimes. I mean, phones are so smart nowadays that they can put on different modes for different times of day. So somebody is in bed and they want dark mode when they’re in bed, and then you show them a white website. That’s bright.

Michelle Frechette 00:47:55 Oh, yeah, that is right. Very true, very true. Well, I want to thank you both for taking some time to be here today and answer all of my burning questions. We’ll put this up one more time. Please come register. Come be there. You don’t have to spend 24 hours. That’s. The other thing is, you don’t have to spend 24 hours in front of your computer. You can pick and choose the talk. Do you want to listen to. And we record them and we put them out later for you to consume in different ways. So if you if you want to hear a talk that’s happening when you should be asleep and you want to be asleep, you can hear it later, we promise. So again, you can learn more and register at 2024 dot WP Accessibility dot Day. Danielle, Isla, thank you so much for being here today. Your passion is awesome. Oh wait, I’ll put it back. Go ahead.

Isla Waite00:48:40 Read it, read it again.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:42 Learn more and register at 2024 dot WP Accessibility dot Day. And if you’re listening and you didn’t see that she was directing me of where to speak at the bottom of the of the page there. So the.

Danielle Zarcaro 5 00:48:55 The little bouncing ball.

Isla Waite 00:48:56 Big thumbs up at the end.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:58 Exactly, exactly. So thank you both. I’m looking forward to more opportunities to talk to you both as we move towards this day. It’s getting exciting and things are really ramping up. Very excited to put our, to put our, speaker lineup out there and our session so people can really start to get excited about it. I will say June also says thank you, and so does Adrian. So and thank you both June and Adrian for being in our, in our comments today. We really appreciate it. So all right. That’s it for this week. Next week. Oh I have a banner for this next week. Next week I’ll be talking to Alex Standiford, who has recently launched something called Siren Affiliates. And so, he’s going to come talk to us about affiliate programs and how you can use Siren for that. So look forward to seeing Alex next week. Again. Thank you. We’ll see everybody later.

Isla Waite 00:49:49 Thanks, Michelle. Bye Danielle.

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In this episode, Michelle Frechette and Corey Maass discuss their preparations for WordCamp US, including finalizing presentation slides and enhancing their product’s homepage for better user engagement. They explore offering personalized onboarding sessions and the complexities of different plugins. The conversation highlights the importance of educational content and clear communication about their product’s benefits, especially for users unfamiliar with WordPress. They also celebrate a successful classified ad in a newsletter and share experiences with user engagement and marketing strategies. The episode concludes with plans for future events and a light-hearted discussion about time management.

Top Takeaways: * Working on IPA WP Features: Michelle and Corey discussed their progress on developing features for IPA WP. They plan to refine these features and update the homepage to have a product ready to showcase at WordCamp US. * Networking and Relationships at WordCamps: Corey and Michelle both emphasize the importance of attending WordCamps and smaller WordPress events. These events have allowed them to build strong professional relationships and friendships, like Corey’s connection with Alex Standiford and others. They both miss the frequency of smaller, more intimate WordCamps, which foster closer interactions and connections. * Productivity and Time Management: Both expressed the challenge of balancing multiple responsibilities, including work, hobbies, and preparations for upcoming events. They joked about the idea of creating a plugin to add more hours to the day, highlighting the ongoing struggle with time management.

Mentioned In The Show:* Yoast * Rank Math * Stellar WP * StreamYard * MorgueFile * Dense Discovery * Seattle Magazine * Paws of Coronado * Squirrelly * Dall-E * Fiverr * Mastermind Group * Alex Standiford * Marcus Burnette

Sponsor: WordPress.comBuild and manage professional sites with secure managed hosting on WordPress.com. Beautiful themes, built-in SEO, and payment tools, and access to over 50,000 plugins. Everything you need for your business, plus 24/7 support from WordPress experts.

WordPress.com You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:* Corey Maass * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

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Transcript:Michelle Frechette 00:00:02 It’s just amazing for sure. Hey, Corey. How are you?

Corey Maass 00:00:06 Good. Hello. Hello.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:08 Hello, hello. Remember earlier this year when WordCamp US felt like, so far away?

Corey Maass 00:00:19 Yeah. And.

Michelle Frechete: News flash, it’s not.

Corey Maass: Yeah. And there. And now they’re mad at me because I’m taking too long to get them my slides.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:28 I haven’t done mine yet either, so I need to get those done too. So anyway, one of the things we did want to talk about today and we can kick it down to next week if we need to, is the homepage. I want to talk a little bit about what we want to get above the fold there. And then I just I think of ideas in like the five minutes before we get on the show and I’m like, oh, I can’t forget to tell you this idea. So I was thinking we could offer to the next five people who sign up a one on one with either you or me to help them get onboarded and show them how it works.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:09 Like we’ll do 30 minutes with you or whatever. And then maybe people would be interested in spending some time, learning how to use it and actually getting started, because that would be worth a lot more than just the cost of the software.

Corey Maass 00:01:25 Yeah. Yeah, I, I just did, I just signed us up for Siren Affiliates. and, Alex does the same thing right now. Where he’ll help you get set up, which was great because I, I’ve always signed up for affiliate programs because you’re supposed to, but. And it’s not that I don’t get it, but I don’t I don’t get the excitement of it or I don’t, because I’m so far removed from people who run Facebook Groups and then sign up for affiliate programs and then promote those programs to get the cash. Like, why would I why would I just do it? You tell me, like, I don’t know, it just I’ve never I’m so far removed from it. I don’t judge it like it works great for some people and makes people money and makes us money, like some of our sales came through affiliates.

Michlle Frechette: Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:02:18 But I just kind of like I so I spent, Alex was great. He helped me get set up with our program, but I was like, more than anything, I’m like, dude, just explain it to me. Like, what? What is this other the other side of the affiliate world that I don’t understand? but anyway, yeah, and.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:38 Some plugins are easier to use than others, right. So some plugins, it’s like it’s it’s very basic. You put in a plugin, it displays the date and time and weather on the front page of your website. Not a lot other than putting in a zip code or something like that, right? Some require a little bit of setup at the beginning, like maybe Yoast in those kinds of things where you’re connecting to your social media platforms and you’re doing some things like that. And then you have to understand how to use it within each blog posts and things like that for sure, but it becomes repetitive once you learn how to do it.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:10 I think OMGIMG is the same way. So there’s some setup at the beginning and then you have to practice with it and remember how to use it post by post until it’s second nature. Now for me that was two times right? Like two blog posts. I was like, I got this, I got this. But the first time I was like, I don’t get this. I was like, show me, right? So I thought, yes, there’s videos and things like that. So we I think a couple of things we could do is we could work on a and I said I was going to do one of these. And then I got, I chickened out because I don’t do those kind of videos usually like demonstration videos, but I will I will do it. But kind of like an onboarding video. I know we’ve got stuff on the website, but I like a step by step. This is how I did it. This is how you could do it kind of thing. And then and also maybe even showing sourcing from sourcing images from free image sites that you can use without any repercussions for, trademark infringement or copyright infringement.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:10 But, but, you know, just like a basic some basic onboarding steps and things like that and how to use it just, I don’t know, different things like that. So yeah, I was thinking about those lines. Anyway.

Corey Maass 00:04:21 I love it. The because it’s the use case differs based on if you use an SEO plugin and which one you use. And so it benefits me to see how people have their site set up and want to use it. And then whatever plugins I might be missing integrations with, and they benefit from me going, oh yes. So with this, if you’re using Rankmath, then do these steps. If you’re using Yoast, then do these steps. and then also I, I it’s fun to meet new people and have them pick my brain and and stuff like that. I also, it’s, a good educational opportunity. I gave my Image talk again last week at the word, the Meetup WordPress meetup in Keene, and third time’s the charm. I’d forgotten that giving a talk over and over again, it is.

Corey Maass 00:05:17 I mean, I knew it, I knew it’s beneficial and you work out the kinks, but it like, sure, three times definitely seem to be, I hit my stride even though I talked twice as long. Or maybe it’s just because, you know, Stellar WP cut me off at half an hour, and and this, this place just let me ramble for over an hour. So maybe rambling is better. I don’t know.

Michelle Frechette 00:05:43 How dare you, sir.

Corey Maass 00:05:44 I know right? Of course I’m kidding. bBut one of the the. So I like the Meetup with they. It’s a small Meetup but they, they had they, they more often draw in end users like sincere non-WordPressy. They’ve never even heard of Post Status. Kind of people who are just trying to use a website. Right. Or have a bunch of them, but they are, you know, power users, essentially. But they’re not they’re not loyal to any specific plugins. They are they do what they need to do, etc.

Corey Maass 00:06:27 Anyway, and I, I’ve talked in many places, many times about how I, and I think many of us have no idea what that looks like anymore. You know, I, I just, I if I actually both of my parents have WordPress sites. Of course. Thanks to me. My mom sells glass. She does like hand-cut glass pieces. And my dad was a forester and still does research about trees. And so he has a website about trees. If they were to sign in to their websites, they don’t because I maintain the sites for them. But if they were to sign in, you know what? What goes through their head, they they haven’t a clue. Most of the words that I use, they just, you know, and so like during so I like this image talk that I’ve been giving because it’s a lot of the, the front stuff, the, the, the first things I go over images in general, a little bit of photography in general, featured images and inline images and everybody goes, yeah, yeah.

Corey Maass 00:07:38 Like we, you know, we use WordPress. We get it. And then when I get into the open graph stuff, everybody kind of leans forward a little because they’re like, I don’t, you know, they they’ve heard about it or, or whatnot.

Michelle Frechette 00:07:52 Pull the veil back and, you know, reveal this to us. Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:07:56 And I think, I think that’s like, I think I’m actually going to pivot the talk to be like an open graph talk, or at least figure out how to get that more into the title, because I think, again, it’s neat because people are sort of like, yeah, cool, whatever. And then they’re like, oh, this is where it gets interesting. Like, I didn’t know we were going to cover this part, right? But I would argue that the, the other, other I, I recently added a new slide that lists explicitly, like, here are my favorite places to get free images. And and I’m like, this is the number one requested slide.

Corey Maass 00:08:32 And everybody’s like, yep, this is what I wanted.

Michelle Frechette 00:08:35 They all pull out their cameras to take a picture. Yeah, yeah.

Corey Maass 00:08:38 But also the emphasis on, as we’ve talked about many, many times the open graph image can be, should be separate different from the featured image. And people are like again you see like I, they, I say it about three times because I’m trying to drive the point home. And I think people are still confused by that. But it’s we’re starting to get that message across. Right. And so, I like the idea of being able to present that in one on one calls like, okay, you’ve installed OMG, it’s it might or might not be about featured images, but it’s definitely about open graph images. Here’s how you set that separately and explicitly. because I think a lot of people, again, still don’t understand that that’s one of the more crucial benefits that we offer. Which also speaks to how we should be changing our homepage.

Michelle Frechette 00:09:37 Yeah. No, I agree 100%.

Michelle Frechette 00:09:39 And and to help people understand, it’s one thing if you like this sounds interesting and you land on the homepage, you’re like, I don’t get it. What does it do? Right? Then then we’re not telling the story clearly enough, and we’re not setting a big enough call to action so that people understand what they would do if they do purchase it. So, and I just learned something about, what StreamYard is. You can’t just put things together like that because all those of all those things, there’s there’s hard breaks between them. But it did not work that well. So I apologize if you’re trying to pick those up. You’ll have to copy it. Then I put those, I’ll put them separately. But I was like, what I just have what just happened?

Corey Maass 00:10:20 So what you just said is you pasted and you said there are hard breaks between them. But what I heard was there are heartbreaks between them. Which is delightful.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:30 Which it was heartbreaking for me. It didn’t work the way it was supposed to.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:35 So you didn’t hear wrong?

Corey Maass 00:10:38 True. True.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:40 But I am faced with them separately. So if you are watching, I know we have a blog post about this as well. This is faster for me because I have these all saved where I go and look for images. So anyway, they’re coming in separate so you could get them in the chat right now if you’re looking for places for free images.

Corey Maass: There you go.

Michelle Frechette: And I don’t think I have more file in there. Did I turn you on to Morgue File at all? Yeah. MorgueFile is like, I have some photos in MorgueFile. It’s you don’t get paid for them, so you’re just literally putting them out there for free. But it’s just one other place for people to kind of look for maybe somewhat less professional photos, but it is where I found an incredible photo of Rochester, New York that I used for WordCamp Rochester last fall because it was free to use and everything else was not. So everyone’s trying to find a good something good in there.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:34 But I mean, my my photos in there are phenomenal.

Corey Maass 00:11:40 Obves, Obves.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:42 You know. Hey.

Corey Maass 00:11:46 Yeah. And we talk about or I talk about like licensing too and that’s, you know, so anyway, I think it’s, it’s neat because it’s I’m seeing more symbiosis. Right. Like the talk that I’ve been giving is, is more stuff that I, I think people might want to talk to me about and are things I can bring up when we’re talking about setting up OMG, you know, if they’re like, oh, I where I’m by the way, I’m sourcing images, I can be like, by the way, make sure you check the licensing. Kind of like, yeah, but yeah, cool, I like that. the, the thing that’s driving me crazy is that we are, I am I mean, of course I’m the roadblock, or a bottleneck.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:34 I don’t know about that. But I know what you’re about to say either. So.

Corey Maass 00:12:36 Well, just that like the product needs a big update, like part of your, you know, going in and going, I don’t know what to do is what I’m trying to fix.

Corey Maass 00:12:49 But the life of being a person with a house that just had a kitchen renovation. Being a freelancer and sudden and I a good thing, right? Like, a lot of work has dipped for a lot of people. And at the moment, like, my workload has gone up. And I’m very happy about that. I like billable hours. These are the billable hours that afford me being able to then work on OMG and stuff like that. But I’m right now like for months I’ve had this update to the product planned, which I think makes so much things, makes things so much more clear. And so I’m frustrated that I haven’t been able to get those out the door due to life and happenstance and life and happenstance happens. But it’s, you know, it’s frustrating.

Michelle Frechette: That is true.

Corey Maass: But because I also, as we’ve talked about then, I think that given a slight shift in the product, again, a lot of the the marketing copy is going to change where the emphasis of, of some of that marketing copy is going to change.

Corey Maass 00:14:04 Speaking of marketing copy, our one of our first classifieds went out, one of the first classifieds that is outside of the WordPress world. We’ll say.

Michelle Frechette: Right. Yeah.

Corey Maass: Went out today and I haven’t seen any stats yet. I, they, I think there is a way to, to see how many clicks it got. And and obviously we can look at analytics of how much traffic that page has received. So we’ll have to do that at some point. But the fun of it anyway is that today’s episode, today’s issue of Dense Discovery, the newsletter we’ve talked about a few times has gone out and, included our why am I sending that to you? I’m putting that in the chat comments, join the chat or not in the chat. And you’ll have to paste in the chat.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:01 Okay, I’ll paste it in the chat because you just sent it to me. Right. So one moment I’ll pick that up. There it is. Copy link. And here it is. Do you also want to pull it up on screen to show people?

Corey Maass 00:15:16 Sure.

Corey Maass 00:15:23 Boop boop boop boop boop boop boop. Present. Share screen.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:39 So there it is. Yeah. So this.

Corey Maass 00:15:40 I just noticed. Is that. This is, issue 303, which also has special meaning for me because it’s, one of the more crucial synthesizers in the history of dance music.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:52 Oh, I thought you were going to talk about a 303 error.

Corey Maass 00:15:56 I don’t actually know what the 303 is.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:59 I don’t either, but we got to be in issue 404, no matter what.

Corey Maass 00:16:02 The. Oh, oh, I’ll message, the guy who writes it. And and say, like, please, can we reserve that? But anyway. Yeah. So as we’ve talked about one of my more favorite newsletters, beautiful design, lots of interesting content. I shared the link. OMG on OMG his twitter account. So so go click on that did I? I think I did tweeted about it anyway and then if you get all the way to the bottom after beautiful art and typography and interesting numbers and things that are classifieds and I and as we’ve shared, we love how ours stands out just looks weird.

Corey Maass 00:16:49 And as you’re even if you’re skimming it, you’re like resourcefulness. Okay. Nervous system mastery to know what that is. Grandma’s cookie recipe. What?

Michelle Frechette 00:16:57 Yeah. What is that? Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:16:59 You know. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:01 Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:17:02 And and it’s not our brand name.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:04 As a reminder, show up happens when you do click it. And that’s going to skew our numbers by one. But that’s okay for people watching today. Is it opening in a new tab.

Corey Maass 00:17:17 There we go. There you go. There you go.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:20 So very very specific landing page for this event or for this ad Dense Discovery fans, we know you only came here for the cookie recipe. This is one from our teammate Michelle’s own grandmother. So without further ado. In her handwriting is the recipe for shortbread cookies. And then more importantly, below that, when you do need better social images for your WordPress post pages, recipes, or whatever, take a look at OMGIMG and I think that that link takes you back to the pricing page.

Corey Maass: It does.

Michelle Frechette 00:17:50 And then if you were. Yep, yep. And if you were somebody who was, low vision or blind, then I have the recipe actually in the alt text so that anybody who lands there will absolutely, still be able to use that.

Corey Maass 00:18:11 So love it. Yeah. So it looks like we’ve received somewhere in the ballpark of, say, 44 clicks.

Michelle Frechette: Nice.

Corey Maass: Which is double digits. Our recent best day, because we don’t, actually end up doing a lot of, driving a lot of traffic to the website.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:35 So that’s actually pretty good.

Corey Maass 00:18:36 Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:39 Love it. So, yeah. So that was it. Is this a monthly? So we need to come up with our next.

Corey Maass 00:18:45 Yep.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:45 Yeah. We had a couple ideas were bandied about before. So we’ll, we want to adjust that. We’ll we’ll start to think about it, but we won’t discuss that today and try to work through that. Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:18:57 Yeah.So we’ve got the last ad in the last.

Corey Maass 00:19:01 Right. This wasn’t the last. But anyway, last weekend of September and then last weekend in October, I think, but I like I like the format of you do this thing. You know, so I don’t know if we’ll repeat it, but I like I like the story of it. So that will be a fun one. Yeah. So on to other things. IPA I yeah. More bottlenecking. We have more than 30 submissions. I could use your help. We need to start going through them at least.

Michelle Frechette: Yes, yes.

Corey Maass: And just saying yes or no, and then, I’m scrambling to try to get finish getting the actual mechanism set up for people plugging in their, their products and maintaining a basic profile.

Michelle Frechette 00:20:02 I will export them into a spreadsheet so we can make some determination based on, what’s in the spreadsheet, then together. We won’t do that live because talking about other companies live is not something that we want to do. But we will we will work through that. asynchronously, As we take a look at the different companies, I want to say there’s like 30, 30 something now, isn’t there? As quite a few, actually.

Corey Maass 00:20:28 Yes. Yeah. And we, we just got another one a little.

Michelle Frechette 00:20:32 Yeah. Today. Yeah. 1 or 2 today actually.

Corey Maass 00:20:36 Ten minutes ago. Yeah. So yeah, it’s going well. The problem is, is at the moment or we’ve reached the point where it’s now been sort of floating out there for a couple of weeks. People have started, you know, asking to join. And so like I got called out on a Facebook Group, appropriately so, but called out on a Facebook Group in the last couple of days going, so what’s going on with this thing now? You know, like, and this is the, the problem with again, life getting in the way and building things live because it’s normally you’d make sure all this kind of stuff is set up and then announce it. Whereas yeah, that’s not how we do these things. So now, but hopefully in the next week. I mean, I like that people are anxious for it and asking about it and excited for it.

Michelle Frechette: Same.

Corey Maass 00:21:30 So, we just I got to actually, like, get the the dang thing moving.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:38 I, I, I have, I have to tell you. So actually, there’s 45 submissions. This is. Yeah, bigger than we thought. I, I made the mistake of opening OMGIMG and looking for the form submissions. And of course there were zero there because it’s the wrong website. But I was like holding back the panic. I’m telling you that like what happened, but it’s just a little on me on the wrong website. Now there’s 45 submissions. So yeah, I know, like who could have been worse.

Corey Maass 00:22:11 And I think, I think most of them will be quick like, either it’s either people we know or know, you know, vaguely know of or, you know, we can sort of click through and, and take a look at the product and just kind of go, okay, this isn’t this isn’t an enterprise product. Yep. They are an independent. Great.

Corey Maass 00:22:31 Let’s let them in. But again, it’s I, I and and then as we’ve talked about, I think the, the way forward is we create a subscriber level user profile for them in WordPress, and then we’ll figure out a way to email everybody and say you’re in kind of thing. But I, I’m trying to lock down the mechanism so that when you sign in, you get thrown to a dashboard and then you can maintain a basic profile, but also start adding your products, which emulates every other SaaS app I have built with WordPress. I just need to lock it all down. So. And in the meantime, I am building a, a dog voting app for one client and trying to gather.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:22 What have we dog voting? What are we voting on dogs about?

Corey Maass 00:23:27 So one of my clients is, Seattle Magazine, and they, one of our staff members is a photographer, and she scheduled a, taking pictures of the dogs of Seattle. And she’s going to do this in a few different neighborhoods.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, that’s fun.

Corey Maass 00:23:45 And so we now, of course, need to vote on who is the cutest. So I have to build the mechanism for putting two pictures of dogs together, and then you vote and then putting two more, and then you vote. And then a day later we’ll take all the winners and compare those.

Michelle Frechette 00:24:04 There was there was a similar fundraiser back in the day. I want to say it was Paws of Coronado, maybe where they did a, a competition every year, I can’t remember, honestly, it was so many years ago whether it was to to get into a, calendar or if it was to vote for the Mayor, like the dog mayor of the town kind of thing. And what they did is they, they used our, they used GiveWP and the form, the form grid. And you voted with your money. So your money you donated to the charity, right? Because it was a dog shelter and whichever dog had the most money at the end because they were the ones that got the most votes.

Corey Maass 00:24:46 That’s cool.

Michelle Frechette 00:24:47 Actually won. So it was a fun way to, like, have that competition going between the dogs all on the same page, and you could see which one like, oh, that one’s got too much. I’m going to vote over here or I love that dog too. That’s my my best friend’s dog. I’m going to vote over there, that kind of thing. So that was fun.

Corey Maass 00:25:05 Yeah. Well, I like the idea of it’s like when you go to a raffle where you can you buy ten tickets and then you can walk around and you can put ten tickets in the one thing where you can put one ticket in ten things. So you could you could donate to a bunch of dogs, or you could max out the dog named Max. But yeah. So I’m I’m.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:28 It’s fun. It is fun. That’s awesome. I love that.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:33 I’ve already exported the list and it’s already in a spreadsheet. So, I will clean that up a little bit, because there’s a lot of extraneous data we don’t need for.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:41 And we’ll make some columns for us to vote on and that kind of thing. So I’ll have that ready for us. The other thing that I started, and by started I mean I have a doc with a title at the top. That’s it, but I started. Some I did like basically, my own personal whiteboard, which I will share with you after I get at least 1 or 2 ideas on there of, monthly marketing ideas for IPA WP so that we can start to put together. So it’s not last minute like, oh, what are we going to do this month? That kind of thing. But we could put together a 12 month strategy of the kinds of marketing that we would like to see happen, between the people who are involved. And I think that we can like once we let people know, we could ask for their inputs as well, if they have other marketing ideas, because, you know, these are 45 other companies that also do marketing. So they may have some great ways to interact with one another and to do some co-marketing that way.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:40 And certainly to I think about the fact that, like, let’s say that I have XYZ plugin, I’m not as, as myself as my own company. I’m not going to send people to IPA WP to buy XYZ plugin. That’s not the purpose of it. I’m going to send them to my own website to buy x, x or whatever XYZ plugin. So it’s not like they’re each company is going to be promoting IPA WP because that’s not the purpose of it. Each company instead will have to promote somebody else within the company and or within the organization. And so, thinking along those lines and ideas of ways, because it’s not as simple as just like everybody, you know, post about IPA WP this month because that doesn’t help anybody. That’s not what we’re trying to do. So yeah. Yeah. So leaning into the collective, hive mind of other marketing, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and ideas that they might have, I think would be really helpful.

Corey Maass 00:27:41 I was talking about the site with somebody today and heard, heard myself say that the the directory is actually secondary, which is like we’ve talked to, talked a little bit about it before. but it, it started to sort of crystallize in my mind that this is not. Like you said, like the the directory is not the the directory is almost incidental. Like the more we talk about it, the more it’s. Yes, it’s the it’s almost like an employee directory or, you know, just these are the members of the Chamber of Commerce kind of thing. And yes, it’s great to it’s another backlink to your site and you can use it more explicitly if you want. And hopefully some people use it and find it or find it and use it and use it to find plugins and stuff. But it’s at a very abstract level, the site really, I, I’m the site or the organization, the Alliance, whatever that looks like is a resource ends up being a marketing resource. Like sign in.

Corey Maass 00:28:58 Once you once you’ve you’re a member of the Alliance, sign in and there’s these ten things like we might end up with a page. Predictably, we’ll end up with a page that has a bunch of discounts on it. So it’s like, oh, you know, EDD was nice enough to offer us 10% off, or, you know, an SEO plugin or, you know, so it’s like different things that they want built into. They’d love you to sell, you know, or premiums, you know, these ways for you to sell your plugin, but then also go to over here our resources for marketing. And then, like you said, whatever this month’s exercise, collective exercise is. I had a really nice coincidence. I have all these. I have dozens and dozens of mailing lists, newsletters that I subscribe to, often promoting products or whatever. And one of them was, mentioned a chemistry set and and whatever the preview text it was, and it was right next to an email that I have about IPA WP and like light bulb went off.

Corey Maass 00:30:08 And so what I wrote down was, IPA needs a section for product owners to choose other multiple products that work well together in a chemistry set. So like building these, you know, what is your preferred stack or what is your preferred, you know, but also being able to any I want any plugin or product to be able to list all the plugins or products that they integrate with, integrate with, like, you know, and, and and it can’t be all of them. Right? Even even though that might be true. But like, you know, OMG integrates well with a bunch of SEO plugins. So we might list a bunch of SEO plugins or something like that.

Michelle Frechette 00:30:58 That makes sense. Yeah. Absolutely.

Corey Maass 00:31:00 But that way it’s because it’s, as we said before, like as your good suggestion of if if we do an onboarding, I can find out that, you know, oh, they’ve got Squirrelly installed what we integrate well with Squirrelly in a specific way. So you know, here’s an advantage. And these plugins explicitly work well together. It’s not just yes they both can coexist on the same WordPress install.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:28 Right. So we also we also could create some kind of like a little badge out of our logo that participating businesses could put on their website saying, you know, proud member of the Independent Product Alliance. And then it could link back to our page in case people are looking for other products that they know are independently owned like that.

Corey Maass 00:31:52 Love it. All right. We’re officially starting a list.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:58 Now, if we could just come up with a logo because I sucked it. All of them.

Corey Maass 00:32:03 Let’s talk about the logo. Michelle.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:09 Okay. Sure. You made me cry. I’m kidding. I have done such good logo development in the past, but for this one I cannot get my head around it. So that’s when it’s time to let somebody else do it.

Corey Maass 00:32:22 Well, and I mean, as we’ve talked about in previous call or to in the previous call or two like, I mean, if you’re busy and if you, if you’re if it’s not the thing that you can sit down and get your head into and, and then inspiration, I mean there’s still art to it.

Corey Maass 00:32:38 So inspiration is inspiration and sometimes that’s not there. Or you know, sometimes you have a co-founder who’s a pain in the ass, who’s really picky. And so even though you’ve sent over a few perfectly adequate examples, that person said no.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:55 Do you know that adequate. Adequate is the worst? Is the worst thing you could say? Like, bad is fine. I’m happy with having bad design, but adequate designs is like, oh, those are just boring. Oh, those are just so the very one of the very first web pages I ever built back in the day. So this was back in 2000, I think. So stretching quite a ways back. I was working at a university and like the web, like registering online, like I was all part of that. We never had registration online until I worked there, that kind of thing. Anyway, they said to me, since you’re taking this classes on e-commerce, why don’t you design a page for our new e-commerce program? And I was the registrar, but I was like, sure, I’ll do it.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:43 And the instructor came back and he used the word pedestrian. It’s very pedestrian. And I was crushed. I would rather hear this sucked than it was just pedestrian or just adequate. So if you. So yeah, that’s that’s the way for me to either like I don’t want to be adequate. I’d rather suck big or be really good but like pedestrian, adequate. Okay. Yes. Okay. Perfectly adequate. I interrupted you.

Corey Maass 00:34:17 Well, you know, I, I, I don’t think you disagree. Like we.

Michelle Frechette: No I don’t.

Corey Maass: You didn’t sit down and and spend hours on a piece of fine art. These were.

Michelle Frechette: No, not at all.

Corey Maass: What can we generate. And so yeah, today in between other things generating on my, on my computer, I pulled up, Dall-E and started trying to generate and less than adequate results. Abounded.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:48 1 or 2 of them weren’t so bad.

Corey Maass 00:34:51 They were fine. Like there was something to it. yeah. But so I did. Finally, I did get on Fiverr and hired somebody. And so we should have, three ideas within a couple of days. And as we’ve, as we’ve mentioned before, I often end up using this as just source idea sourcing, essentially. And so I may or may not use whatever we get, but at it, somebody else who hopefully will do a little bit of deep thinking, hopefully not a lot because we don’t pay a lot. So I’d rather they. Just did did a bunch of things and got, you know, we got the appropriate value for what we’re paying. We would love to pay more. We don’t have the budget, So we know.

Michelle Frechette: Not yet.

Corey Maass: Yeah, but the idea being right, that, you know, somebody, an actual human, will sit down and come up with a bunch of ideas. And then often what I end up doing is taking the same. It’s an exercise in actually writing out the description as much as anything. And so then taking the the copy that I wrote and sending it to other people and seeing what we get back. So, we will start with one and see. See what happens.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:08 Exactly. And we will both be at WordCamp US.

Corey Maass 00:36:14 Yes. Yep.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:15 With stickers I have stickers. OMGIMG stickers. Stop by and get some. Ask me any time.

Corey Maass 00:36:23 Yep. Not a lot because I, you know, stickers are. I think that you you attract people who want stickers. But at least when I’m walking around and it’s like I think stickers are they’re not as popular as they once were. I also think that, like, swag in general has dropped off a little bit. That’s my impression because and without a table, like, I don’t want to be carrying around a box of swag. So, I haven’t. I will have.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:54 I will have. I will have stickers in my basket. There you go. In my, my scooter basket. So if anybody’s interested in grabbing a sticker from us, come on by and.

Corey Maass 00:37:05 I’ll have some.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:07 Vote for me on the back of the sticker.

Corey Maass 00:37:11 Well, did I tell you about I about that, I, I did I did decide to spend a little bit of money on ordering more t-shirts because at the last WordCamp US.

Corey Maass 00:37:21 I did not change my t-shirt for the entire time.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:26 Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’m glad that you invested in that.

Corey Maass 00:37:30 People. People probably gave me the benefit of the doubt. They’re like, oh, he ordered three black t-shirts for the five days. No, I didn’t, I wore one black t-shirt. It’s like a.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:40 Everyday and a lot of deodorant.

Corey Maass 00:37:41 A lot of deodorant. And I like most nights, I like I rinsed out, I at least rinsed the pits, you know, and then had it dry on the the air vent. But, you know, like the fear, right? You can’t spill anything on it or if you like, I actually checked every night, like, did I sit in anything? because, you know, that that would be a giveaway. So anyway, I ordered, Yeah, I ordered another t-shirt. I think that’s similar to the jacket. So it’s like print all over. So it’s pretty bombastic. And then.

Michelle Frechette 00:38:15 Is that the one you’re going to wear on stage?

Corey Maass 00:38:17 Probably. Well, it’s like we’ve talked about it. You know, usually at conferences it’s over air conditioned. So it’s actually the outer layer that matters more, the hoodie or the jacket that I ordered, you know. But when if you’re on stage and you’re sweating, you’re probably don’t want to. I’ve actually fallen into that trap before. I remember specifically at Belfast, WordCamp Belfast, and I was like, it was hot, but I didn’t want to take my branded, like track jacket off. And it was it was actually like fleece. So I was like, hot and I run hot as it was, but I like I can’t take it off. I can’t, just talk faster. I can’t take it off. but anyway, so now I have, coming towards me. I have a yellow, banana yellow t-shirt and then like, a bright teal or something because I was like, we’re all about big, bright colors and big bold, you know, having fun and stuff.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:14 So it’s about getting attention with your, your images. So why not get attention with your t-shirt? Absolutely.

Corey Maass 00:39:19 Exactly, exactly. So, but yeah, WordCamp US should be fun. I’ve got a bunch of events scheduled and I’m trying to line up, you know, some meetings with people because that’s kind of what you do. And if it mostly just catching up, talking tech, that kind of stuff. But yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:38 I should give you my calendar link so that we make sure that we actually eee each other at this event, because it’d be a lot of it would be easy to keep meaning to. And then you get to the end and you’re like, yes, sorry we didn’t get that drink together or whatever.

Corey Maass 00:39:53 No kidding. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m big on breakfasts, so we should we should pick a morning, you know, and even just get coffee and have a sit down.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, that’s.

Corey Maass: At a reasonable hour if you’re not.

Michelle Frechette 00:40:08 I am not a morning person, but I will make myself be a morning person for this event. I always do.

Corey Maass 00:40:13 You know, 11 a.m. is still morning.

Michelle Frechette 00:40:16 This is true. This is true. Steller does have a booth, so I will be staffing at at least one two hour period. So that’ll be a lot of fun. And then, yeah, we’re Stellar. We’re doing an affiliate Meetup, getting, people who are either affiliates or interested in affiliate marketing coming to that. And then we have, an event also, which I think I’ve invited you to both of those. The event is Thursday evening and is actually on the WordCamp US side events page. So if people are interested in signing up for either of those, we’d love to see you there. And Corey will be there too, right? So you can talk to people there too. You can hijack one, one, 1 or 2 chairs in our event to talk to other people for sure.

Corey Maass 00:41:01 Happy to. And then I’m yeah, I’m I’m the proverbial? I am the one of those people that’s just hallway track all day long. you know, I do go, but, wander around or go take a nap, usually in the afternoon. But I depending on the venue, some venues are more conducive to it than others. But like, usually there’s a good place to to stand. And I just stand because I want and I try to grab people as I walk by or, you know, inject myself into conversations or like super extrovert mode, you know, not in an obnoxious way, but it’s I’m like, this is why I’m here. I’m here to talk, you know? So.

Michelle Frechette 00:41:44 Yeah, exactly.

Corey Maass 00:41:45 And and last year was great. Like, I had my, WordCamp buddy, Matt Lowe, like, we had established, like, okay, let’s, you know, keep checking in with each other throughout and, like, so we have somebody to hang out with. And so I got to know him much better, which was great. And and then from standing around and just talking, I want that’s how I met, Alex Standiford, who’s now, you know, a better colleague. And, and is in my Mastermind Group and, and stuff like that. So there’s I, I love it like, it’s this is what I miss. Like I miss going to more WordCamps, you know, especially the smaller ones because you end up. I mean, that’s how I met Cory Miller 150 years ago.

MIchelle Frechette00:42:33 Exactly.

Corey Maass 00:42:34 And that kind of thing. So, yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:36 We just got our budget approved today for WordCamp Rochester, which is happening in October.

Corey Maass: Oh, that’s cool, that’s cool.

Michelle Frechette: The website will be turned on in a day or two after I, you know, build it. turn it on.

Corey Maass 00:42:50 Turn it on. Oh, man. They probably make you use Gutenberg, don’t they?

Michelle Frechette 00:42:54 Yeah, yeah.

Corey Maass 00:42:56 You used to be able to build it however you want, but.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:59 Yeah. No.

Corey Maass: Sorry.

Michelle Frechette: That’s okay. I’m just going to basically copy and paste a lot of what we did last year. So I don’t have to recreate the we’ll change out some images, things like that dates and the and the like. And then yeah, we’ll be able to do a call for speakers. It’s going to be October 5th to our call for speakers and our, call for sponsorship and volunteers. And all the things will be up live hopefully in the next day or two.

Corey Maass 00:43:26 That’s really cool.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:28 Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:43:29 So I’m sitting here going, how far is Rochester? But I’m gonna.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:34 I’m going to guess. Six hours?

Corey Maass 00:43:35 . It’s a real six hours. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:37 Yeah, yeah yeah, I, I do those kinds of drives all the time. Like I drove to Montclair earlier this year. I drove to, Ottawa. So six hours, seven hours or less is like my limit that I can drive straight. Anything more than that, it’s like, maybe we need to stop, but.

Corey Maass 00:44:01 Five and a half to 6.5 hours, so. Yeah. Round number six. Yeah. yeah, I, I miss, I miss, I just missed I mean, we talk about this all the time. I miss there being especially on the Meetups. Like we all miss there being more WordCampss and more small camps. Like when I was, in upstate New York, there were a whole bunch I could go to, you know, within four hours or so. And even in Tennessee, like, go down to Georgia or go down to Atlanta, go down to Birmingham, like go down to, you know, all these different ones that you could bop around to. And, and I miss things like, like I, I often in the same, in the same way that I think often about what is a non insider WordPress user. I think about, the word WordCamp Portland, Maine, because it was like one of the smallest but really good camps. But it was it, it attracted a very different type of like there were a lot of like deep nerdy developers, which was a little different vibe than, some of the others that were more like user types and.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Corey Maass: And then and the venue was sort of interesting and anyway, just like but to me it was the epitome of like the small camp and just we miss those.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:24 What year were you at Portland, Maine? I was just looking mine. I was there for 2017, I spoke there.

Corey Maass 00:45:31 I think it must have been before that.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:34 Okay. but let it be funny if, like we were, we didn’t know each other. Both. Right. There would have been kind of right.

Corey Maass 00:45:39 But it wouldn’t be the first time that that happened.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:42 I know for sure. Especially not in WordPress. Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:45:49 Portland. Maybe? Maybe 2017? 2017.

Michelle Frechette 00:46:00 Too funny. We were both there. I listened to a guy talk about podcasting at that. At that, WordCamp. And I didn’t even know what podcasting really was. I mean, I had an idea what it was, right? And then I thought, well, that’d be cool. Tuck that back in the in the back of my head. That way, if my customers, because I was freelancing at the time and my customers ever want to start a podcast, I’ve got this information on how to start a podcast. None of my customers ever did. But now I podcast way too much. I mean, is there such a thing as too much? Some people might say yes, I say no. I am enjoying it. It’s a lot of fun.

Corey Maass 00:46:37 I’m sharing my screen.

Michelle Frechette 00:46:38 Okay.

Corey Maass 00:46:39 You should throw that up.

Michelle Frechette 00:46:41 There it is.

Corey Maass 00:46:45 WordCamp TV WordCamp Portland, Maine, 2017.

Michelle Frechette 00:46:51 Oh, search Michele Ames for that one. I bet you’ll find my talk to, say, one same year. How funny. It was an interesting school. It was like an art school or something, if I remember correctly. Yeah.

Corey Maass00:47:07 Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:47:10 Because I would have been there.

Corey Maass 00:47:11 That was. That. The 2017.

Michelle Frechette 00:47:12 I was on. I gave a talk, but I also was on a panel for marketing that last there I am that’s that was me.

Corey Maass 00:47:24 But your hair’s not purple.

Michelle Frechette 00:47:26 It was not I did not dye my hair purple until 2021.

Corey Maass 00:47:31 She knows. She knows the day.

Michelle Frechette 00:47:34 It was after my daughter got married because I wasn’t going to go to her wedding with purple hair. So yeah, and I almost changed it back earlier this year and everybody was like, but it’s your signature. But I think at the end of this year the purple is going to be gone. It’s fine. It’s really high maintenance. And that was a fun camp. Yeah, we were both speakers, so we were both at the speaker dinner. That’s so funny. When you think back to the after party.

Corey Maass 00:48:02 The the after party I was at for about four minutes.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:07 Okay.

Corey Maass 00:48:09 so. Oh, okay. So do you remember in the lobby, a guy giving away tea?

Michelle Frechette 00:48:18 No.

Corey Maass 00:48:19 By any chance. Okay. So.

Corey Maass 00:48:22 One of my best oldest friends started a seaweed tea company and, and that is. And now he has a whole shop dedicated to seaweed products, but, focuses, not focuses, highlights the selling of his own tea. That is all seaweed based tea or tea that has seaweed in it as a primary ingredient. But that was the first event, I think one of the first events that he like tabled that because I convinced him I was like, it is, you know, this is not your market, but it’s a random cross-section of people. You should do it. And, and sponsor tables were cheap. Cheap, you know, because it was such a small local camp.

Michelle Frechette 00:49:04 This was not the one with the koi ponds in the lobby, right? That was Providence, I think.

Speaker 3 00:49:11 I’m pretty sure not.

Michelle Frechette 00:49:13 Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:49:14 yeah, I kind of remember. Yeah. It was in, Yeah. It wasn’t like there’s, there’s an actual art school, but it was and it was not in the actual art school that I went to as a kid. It was another different facility, much more new. but there were, rehearsal rooms in the basement because and like, sort of big, big art installation galleries because I snuck downstairs and found a rehearsal room that was open, unlocked, and went in and took a nap.

Michelle Frechette 00:49:51 Oh, perfect. That you’re going to say, started singing or something? Nope. I took a nap.

Corey Maass 00:49:56 No, I I’m a big napper. I take a nap almost every day and especially at, you know, an events like that, like I need to go pass out. I’m not a caffeine person. I’m a morning person and a night person. And that means I need a nap in the middle. And, I.

Michelle Frechette 00:50:11 Understand yeah.

Corey Maass 00:50:12 Finding a quiet corner is sometimes difficult, but I’m pretty shameless. Like, I will just go lay on a bench and, you know, try not to bother anybody. But in this case, there were, like, silent rooms, which is pretty awesome. Nice.

Michelle Frechette 00:50:31 Do it. Corey, come to Rochester. That’s right. Absolutely I agree Marcus. Absolutely. He should absolutely be in Rochester. We have a lot of fun. We’re going to do garbage plates again this year.

Corey Maass 00:50:41 Oh.

Michelle Frechette 00:50:43 Local delicacy.

Corey Maass 00:50:45 The famous the.

Michelle Frechette00:50:46 Marcus. Marcus can tell you how good they are. They’re so good.

Corey Maass 00:50:51 I’m looking, I’m looking.

Michelle Frechette: For garbage plate?

Corey Maass 00:50:55 No. Right now the fifth is free.

Michelle Frechette 00:51:01 I pencil it in.

Corey Maass 00:51:03 I’ll pencil it in. Go and come back. I’d have to go quick, because then I. Because I’ve got to be home with the dogs the following week, but.

Michelle Frechette 00:51:10 Yep.

Corey Maass: And then since we’ve reached. The, random random link hour. have I told you about what else I’m doing in October?

Michelle Frechette 00:51:19 No. What else are you doing in October?

Corey Maass 00:51:22 I’m hosting a or putting on an 80s night at our local country club where I bartend.

Michelle Frechette 00:51:31 Is this show me a uniform? outfit?

Corey Maass 00:51:35 Yes. An outfit. Okay. Yes. So I did show you, and then. And there are other accessories that have since arrived in the mail that are absolutely amazing. Some of them I think I might end up bringing to WordCamp US just to have more outrageous clothing to wear.

Michelle Frechette 00:51:49 I, I think I approve that message.

Corey Maass 00:51:53 But yeah, as a, as a we because the our country club is just, it’s, it’s this lovely old building from the 70s. It’s super 70s. It’s all wood paneled, you know, whatnot. But it’s like it’s just a great room. And so I, I’m like, we need to have I mean, they, they make a lot of their revenue from renting out the room. But I’m like, we need more events, more like social events and a buddy and I brainstormed. We should do an 80s night and and we’re going to do it as a fundraiser for our local humane society.

Michelle Frechette 00:52:27 So that’ll be fun.

Corey Maass 00:52:29 It should be a lot of fun. But yeah, so I’m looking forward to October already. It’s also my birthday month.

Michelle Frechette 00:52:34 So mine too. I too. October 15th.

Corey Maass 00:52:39 There are so many people with birthdays right around ours like.

Michelle Frechette 00:52:43 It is true.

Corey Maass 00:52:45 Four of my old best friends are all I’m. I’m the 10th and I just. I know I have a good friend who’s the ninth. The good friend who’s the 13th. Like now you the 15th. Like, everybody is right around there. So yeah, nine months previous was very popular, at least for our generation. Our parents generation.

Michelle Frechette 00:53:05 Yes, yes. Eight months for me because, my mother and, my mother had a car accident that broke her water. And then there I was.

Corey Maass 00:53:17 There you were.There you were.

Michelle Frechette 00:53:18 There was. I was looking for something. I have the I thought you’d like this. So every year at StellarWP, I add one more idea to the 24 I started in 2020, 20 ideas for fundraising online in 2020 added another 21 for 2021, right? So every year I add a new one. So this year I already started I like popped into my head. I already wrote it. It’s called hey DJ Play My Song. And the idea is that through the forum on your website, in advance of your wedding or your event, people could pay $5 or $10. Whatever you decide and name a song they want the DJ to play at the event. And then of course the bride and groom, the whomever.

Corey Maass 00:54:04 I was going to say approved by.

Michelle Frechette 00:54:05 Yes. Moderated by what specific language for that. But then, you know, some people sometimes put it on the card like, hey, if you want to hear a song, put it on there, whatever. But this way they could like, fundraise for the honeymoon or like, like I said. And you said the dogs. That made me think of it. I said, or, you know, for your your local shelters, bark bash if you have like that kind of thing for your for the dogs. But wasn’t that fun?

Corey Maass 00:54:27 I thought that was such a cute idea. Yeah, yeah. The, I’m I’m I’m starting to brainstorm more like that because it’s like the. So my buddy who who’s doing the party with me, he actually worked in a movie theater in the 80s and still has hundreds of posters, like the original movie posters from the movie theater in the 80s. we’re hoping he hasn’t looked at them since the 80s, so we’re hoping they’re in any sort of condition.

Michelle Frechette: That they are in good shape. Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:54:56 But we’re planning on going through them and ones we we don’t want to keep personally, like hanging them around. And then at the end of the night, like, let everybody take one home for five. An extra 5 or 10 bucks. Again, all donation based or all, you know, but like, yeah, finding those little activities or little things that can get people to throw in an extra buck or two, it’s amazing.

Michelle Frechette 00:55:18 It’s not a bad thing. You have been scolded. Cory needs to update his Presser profile on the WP World with all the events that you’ve attended and spoken at.

Corey Maass 00:55:28 All right.

Michelle Frechette 00:55:28 That is a new feature of the WP World.

Corey Maass 00:55:31 That’s true.

Michelle Frechette 00:55:32 We gotta get Marcus on the post that is Happiness Hour so he can talk to people about all the updates on the WP World. Corey. I’m sorry. Marcus hit me up in Slack and I will give you the link to schedule, on our Wednesday Happiness hour. I would invited you, Corey, because we already do this already for a full hour every week. Two days in a row. Might be a little much.

Corey Maass 00:55:55 It’s fine. I mean, not that we don’t then also see each other at all of the Meetups and all of the. But you know.

Michelle Frechette 00:56:01 Exactly, exactly.

Corey Maass 00:56:03 Edit my Presser profile. All right, I’m on it. I’ll do this first thing in the morning. I thought I did.

Michelle Frechette 00:56:09 It’s updated though. He’s added so many features, you can now go through and click all of the different events you’ve attended and whether you were a speaker or an organizer. Pretty cool stuff.

Corey Maass 00:56:21 I don’t know. Okay Marcus feature request. Can I pay you ten bucks to do this for me?

Michelle Frechette 00:56:31 it’s worth more than that.

Corey Maass 00:56:33 Oh, yes.

Michelle Frechette 00:56:34 Also, now, I don’t know. I haven’t checked, but you can now add, businesses for free to the directory. So if you haven’t yet, put OMGIMGin there. I already have a business associated with my account, so I cannot do that. For us. So you would have to do that for us.

Corey Maass 00:56:52 Business directory. I’m pretty sure I added it.

Michelle Frechette 00:56:57 I don’t remember, I haven’t looked.

Michelle Frechette 00:57:00 Just saying it out loud. Anyway, so we meandered all over the place today. But we have the. The bottom line is we’ve been getting a lot of work done and I think, I will work on that spreadsheet. So, we can take a look through the different, businesses for IPA WP, and then we can continue to work on what the features are that you want to get added in so that we can edit the home page. Hopefully all of that perfect storm happening before WordCamp US in three weeks so that we can have a product to show people. yes, we plan. God laughs. That’s what they say.

Corey Maass 00:57:39 Plus talks and slides and actual work and hobbies and everything else.

Corey Maass 00:57:48 More, more hours in the day. I’m going to WP More Hours in the Day is going to be my new plugin. There you go. And it introduces a wormhole and.

Michelle Frechette 00:57:56 It’s a magic. Anyway, it’s just magic. Yes.

Corey Maass: Something. But anyway, lovely talking as ever.

Michelle Frechette 00:58:01 Yes. And for everybody who’s hung in with us today, we’ll see you next week.

Corey Maass 00:58:07 Dome, ba dome, ba.

This article, Marketing a WordPress Product Live: Session 20, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Automattic to Migrate Tumblr to WordPress Infrastructure Automattic has announced plans to migrate Tumblr’s backend to WordPress… and they want to do it without changing the Tubmlr user experience. * “We’re not talking about changing Tumblr. We’re not turning Tumblr into WordPress… We’re talking about running Tumblr’s backend on WordPress. You won’t even notice a difference from the outside.” * Automattic expects the move to benefit both platforms: + Tumblr will run on the proven WordPress.com platform, and will benefit from the collective effort that goes into the open source WordPress project. + The WordPress project will benefit from the tools and creativity created for Tumblr. * The technical lift to migrate Tumblr’s more than 500 million individual blogs is mind-blowing! * I think this will also be another excellent study to combat the “WordPress can’t scale” argument, should things go well.* * Automattic is now recruiting passionate developers and creative thinkers to join this ambitious project.

The Alarming Reality of ‘Active Listening’ Ad Targeting Exposed! First of all, haven’t we at least suspected this was going on all along? Or am I the only one who would be talking about something only to later be presented with mobile ads for that very product or service? * Cox Media Group (CMG) claims it can target ads based on what potential customers say near device microphones. * A pitch deck obtained by 404 Media provides more details on this “Active Listening” capability. * The presentation explicitly names Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Bing as CMG partners. * 404 Media first reported on Active Listening in December, based on information from CMG’s website before it was deleted. * The pitch deck shows how CMG was marketing this product to companies interested in targeting customers based on microphone data. * Google has removed CMG from its advertising Partners Program after 404 Media asked for comment on the slide deck. * The full extent of how this technology works and its implementation remains unclear, but it certainly raises questions about the ethics and privacy implications of such technology. * If this is true, and there is evidence to suggest that it is, have advertisers gone to far? Have we, as consumers, given away too much privacy for the sake of convenient tech?* * Read 404 Media’s ongoing coverage of the use of Active Listening to target you for ads.

Watermarking AI Content and Why It Matters California just passed a bill that mandates watermarks on AI-generated content to fight misinformation, and major companies like OpenAI, Adobe, and Microsoft are supporting it. * The passing of this bill could set a national legal precedent for AI content regulation. * Watermarks are intended to increase transparency and help consumers identify AI-generated material (and they “can’t” be removed). * This law could protect you and your clients from future legal issues related to unmarked AI content. But does revealing your use of AI change things between you and your clients? * There is no word, yet, on what the penalties will be for not using watermarking for AI content. However, understanding the method of detection is important because there is currently no completely reliable way to recognize AI content. * The bill highlights the growing need for companies, agencies, and governments to manage AI tools ethically and honestly. * In my agency, we don’t use AI to write content, but we do use it to brainstorm and enhance content. If your clients knew that AI had at least helped you with content writing, would you still use it?* * This isn’t a topic that is going away. Get the facts on Techcrunch and The Verge.

Worth a Look* Which is more important – Good SEO or good content? It’s not that simple. This article explains how to prioritize SEO tasks to get the best possible performance in rankings, while providing useful content to users. * While we’re on the subject, learn how you can get some easy SEO wins by leveraging Google Search Console in SearchEngineLand’s easy-to-follow guide. * When you hear about a new SQL Injection Vulnerability, do you just nod and hope that no one asks you to explain what it means? The Admin Bar explains what SQL Injections are and why they are so dangerous.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending August 30, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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This Week at WordPress.org (August 25, 2024)News* Ramping up WordPress on YouTube * WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program Cohort #3 (2024

WordCamp US 2024 kicks off with Contributor Day, an in-person testament to the power of open-source software.

Help shape the future of WordPress by contributing your talents – wherever they may lie – next month in Portland!

Sign up today!https://t.co/SNCTikI7LP#WCUS pic.twitter.com/7bh52czfWO

— WordCamp US 2024 (#WCUS) (@WordCampUS) August 14, 2024

Accessibility* Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: August 30, 2024 * Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: August 16, 2024

Community* Meetup Organizer Newsletter: August 2024 * Event Survey Update and Discussion * Announcement: Sunsetting North American Camera Kit Rental Program * Contributor Working Group/Mentorship Chat Agenda | August 15th 07:00 UTC (APAC/EMEA) and 16:00 UTC (AMER)

Core * What’s new in Gutenberg 19.1? (28 August) * Bug Scrub Schedule for WordPress 6.7 * Updating jQuery shipped with WordPress to version 4.0 * WordPress 6.6.2 * Hallway Hangout recording: Let’s chat about what’s next in Gutenberg (August 2024) * Introducing Twenty Twenty-Five * Automatic conversion of HEIC images to JPEG in WordPress 6.7 * Control your contributions with mailmap

Create Block Theme[Type] Enhancement* Improve the CBT_Theme_Fonts class tests – Status: Open * Should font files be renamed when added to a theme? – Status: Open

[Feature] Font Management* Should font files be renamed when added to a theme? – Status: Open

[Type] Bug Modified default font size presets are not added to the resulting theme.json – Status: Open * Edits to custom block style variations are lost – Status: Open Core TracDefect (Bug) Deprecation Warning – Status: Closed * Uncaught TypeError in /wp-json/wp/v2/menu-items REST API POST operation – Status: New * REST API endpoint /wp-json/wp/v2/categories returns 500 instead of 400 – Status: New * Twenty Fifteen : Hover effect is different in frontend and editor side for the link – Status: Closed * Twenty Twelve: Button block Outline style has the wrong text color on the front – Status: Closed * WordPress plugin dashboard shows unrelated version number – Status: Closed * Improve performance and memory usage of wp_list_post_revisions() / wp_get_post_revisions() – Status: New * Link option Window hidden behind editor edge frame – Status: New * When Updating to 6.6.1 regeneratorRuntime is not defined error occurred – Status: Closed

Enhancement* Auto Sizes for Lazy-loaded Images – Status: Assigned * Add support for MySQL SSL connections – Status: New * Custom query args for search_box form in WP_List_Table – Status: New

Feature Request* disable fluid font sizes – Status: New * Notify users of links that open in new tab – Status: New

Awaiting Review* WordPress Version 6.6.1 home.php not working – Status: Closed * Uncaught exception ‘Error’ with message ‘Undefined constant “ABSPATH”‘ in /var/www/wp-settings.php:33 – Status: New * prepublish modal not appearing when we select custom post status – Status: New * fix(is_ssl): adds check for SSL when behind a proxy or load balancer – Status: Closed

Assigned Uploading WAV files fail in Gutenberg editor on Firefox browser when drag-dropped – Status: Assigned Performance[Plugin] Enhanced Responsive Images Incorporate layout constraints from ancestor blocks into the sizes calculations – Opened 2 hours ago by joemcgill

[Plugin] Modern Image Formats* WebP Images resolution not working in Gutenberg on wordpress.com – Opened 3 days ago by tehjaymo

[Plugin] Optimization Detective* Detection time window may not allow enough URL Metrics to be collected – Opened last week by westonruter * Unminified source JS files and source maps are not distributed with builds – Opened last week by westonruter * Query var normalization should be hardened to avoid infinite space – Opened 2 weeks ago by westonruter * Internal state of the page should factor into whether a stored URL metric is fresh – Opened 2 weeks ago by westonruter

[Plugin] Web Worker Offloading* Reconsider approach of using script dependencies to opt-in a script for worker offloading – Opened 2 weeks ago by westonruter * Offloading Google Analytics (gtag) to a Web Worker – Opened 3 weeks ago by westonruter

[Plugin] Speculative Loading* Speculative Loading readme needs improvement – Opened 2 weeks ago by westonruter

Infrastructure* Unminified source JS files and source maps are not distributed with builds – Opened last week by westonruter * Implement sanity checks in since, readme, and versions commands – Opened 3 weeks ago by felixarntz * Clear out and remove /tests directory – Opened 3 weeks ago by felixarntz

WP Core Trac 61847: Auto Sizes for Lazy-loaded Images – Opened 2 weeks ago by mukeshpanchal27 Gutenberg DiscussionsInteractivity API Optimizing yielding prior to actions out of the box – [Type] Enhancement, [Feature] Interactivity API – 28 comments * Interactivity API and the router package for multilingual support – 3 comments * Interactivity API and the advanced usage – 3 comments * Interactivity API showcase – 64 comments * Changelog – Tracking Breaking Changes in the Interactivity API – 29 comments * Is possible to define a store independently from a block? – 4 comments * A way to get new Context or Update existing Context – 1 comment * Question: Modal with Interactivity API – 8 comments

Developer Experience* Does the block editor need a client side alternative to the render_block filter? – [Feature] Extensibility – 3 comments * Better support for block themes and the Your homepage displays option – [Feature] Themes, Developer Experience – 4 comments * Documentation missing: Using @wordpress/scripts 28.x with WordPress <6.5

General* Create Block variation in custom block – 1 comment

Q&A* How to check and update current post’s discussion settings? – Answered – 1 comment * Proper way to programmatically select an inner block in parent block’s edit() function – Unanswered – 1 comment

Ideas Block editor usability improvement: Greater visibility to block parent container options when child block selected – 0 comments Gutenberg Issues
[Feature] Meta Boxes Metaboxes markup differs by post type and has duplicated id – Status: Open

[Type] Build Tooling* Collect code coverage for e2e tests (but also others) – Status: Open

[Type] Enhancement* Global Styles – expose way to add more ‘Elements’ to the UI – Status: Open * Dataviews – actions objects duplicate actions and only show on hover – Status: Open * Dataviews – isLoading property is ignored when data property is populated – Status: Open * Add current term to Query Loop block filter for use on taxonomy archives – Status: Open * Refining the rightmost top toolbar actions for clarity and consistency – Status: Open * LinkPreview: Support For Relative URIs – Status: Open * Only apply relative positioning to Group blocks that have negative margin applied – Status: Open * Template registration API: allow setting the template author to something different from a plugin – Status: Open

[Type] Bug* Media-text Block Customization mediaWidth Not Applying in theme.json File – Status: Open * Auto p corrupting paragraph blocks – Status: Open * Gallery Image breaks in FireFox – Status: Open * Support Disabling the Duplication of Template Parts – Status: Open * viewScriptModule is not included in build unless WP_EXPERIMENTAL_MODULES is set – Status: Open * Popover component overlapping toolbar – Status: Open * Wrong template displayed for hybrid themes in the post template editor – Status: Open

[Focus] Accessibility (a11y)* Latests Posts block: “Image alignment” control should use ToggleGroupControl – Status: In Progress

[Package] Block library* Latests Posts block: “Image alignment” control should use ToggleGroupControl – Status: In Progress * Stabilize the __experimentalDefaultControls block supports property – Status: Open * Stabilize border block support keys – Status: Open * InnerBlocks doesn’t show align wide/full controls when inside a custom block – Status: Open * Remove “__experimental”: “fse” check – Status: Open

[Package] Editor* Consider using REST API data for database errors – Status: Open

[Package] Components* Autocomplete: Refactor to use DropdownMenu – Status: Open * TextControl: Support generic props type – Status: Open * ComboboxControl component: Account for the value when displaying the available options – Status: Open

[Package] Scripts* viewScriptModule is not included in build unless WP_EXPERIMENTAL_MODULES is set – Status: Open

[Package] Env* wp-env: use descriptive names for cacheDirectoryPath – Status: Open

[Package] Core data* Core Data: Remove ‘useQuerySelect’ abstraction – Status: Open

[Package] Data* Make it possible for plugins to have their own private actions and selectors – Status: Open

[Type] Developer Documentation* None of the dynamically generated selectors are documented for for core-data package – Status: Open * Docs: Add explanations about attributes of each Core Block in the documentation (and in the source code) – Status: Open

[Type] Task* E2E Tests: Split large tests into smaller tests – Status: Open * Grid: Adjustments to look like @SaxonF’s mockup – Status: Open

[Type] Flaky Test* [Flaky Test] should navigate empty paragraphs – Status: Open * [Flaky Test] Navigates the items list via UP/DOWN arrow keys – Status: Open

[Feature] Block bindings* Block bindings: Can’t save changes to the source if custom fields are opened – Status: Open * Block Bindings: context for supporting any block attribute – Status: Open

[Feature] Block Variations* Blocks using Variations not getting styled on front end because dynamically generated IDs don’t match – Status: Open

[Feature] Convert to Blocks* Auto convert to blocks – Status: Open

[Feature] Site Editor* Support Disabling the Duplication of Template Parts – Status: Open * Multiple PHP and HTML homepage templates cause blank Editor – Status: Open * Add template states to the Site Editor – Status: Open

[Feature] Layout* Grid: Should cells be equally sized in Manual mode? – Status: Open * Grid: Re-arrange Dimensions controls – Status: Open * Grid: Difficult to adjust block spacing – Status: Open

[Feature] Themes* Wrong template displayed for hybrid themes in the post template editor – Status: Open

[Feature] Patterns* Patterns tab is empty until all the user created patterns (Reusable blocks) are fetched – Status: Open

[Feature] Extensibility* Template registration API: allow setting the template author to something different from a plugin – Status: Open

[Feature] Inserter* block-insertion-points missing between innerBlock-elements – Status: Open

[Feature] Block bindings* Block bindings: Can’t save changes to the source if custom fields are opened – Status: Open

[Feature] Block Variations* Blocks using Variations not getting styled on front end because dynamically generated IDs don’t match – Status: Open

[Feature] Block Validation/Deprecation* Deprecate Comments Pagination block

[Feature] Block API Fix old block.json $schema usage in code – Status: Open Core Meetings Performance Chat Summary: 27 August 2024 * Summary, Dev Chat, August 28, 2024 * Default Theme Chat Agenda: August 28, 2024 * Agenda, Dev Chat, August 28, 2024 * Default Theme Chat Summary, August 21, 2024 * Summary, Dev Chat, August 21, 2024 * Performance Chat Summary: 20 August 2024 * Performance Chat Agenda: 20 August 2024 * Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday Aug 21, 2024 * Default Theme Chat Agenda: August 21, 2024 * Summary, Dev Chat, August 14, 2024

Developer Blog:* Registering block templates via plugins in WordPress 6.7 * Using Data Views to display and interact with data in plugins * How to extend a WordPress block * What’s new for developers? (August 2024)

Design* Design Share #62 (Aug 12-Aug 23) * Design Share #61 (Jul 15-Aug 9)

do_action* do_action Cagliari 2024

Documentation* Online monthly Docs Team Contributor Day August 27, 2024 * Agenda for Docs Team Biweekly Meeting (August 20, 2024)

Docs Issue Tracker[Type] Bug* Edit Original Pattern keeps Post MetaBoxes – Status: Open * Pre-publish checks showing template part details – Status: Open * Plugin metabox regression prevents tablet and mobile views from working – Status: Open * Rethink and improve the ‘None’ alignment – Status: Open * Post publish upload media dialog: race condition in uploads results in incorrect image replacements – Status: Open * Difficulty adding block at bottom of content – Status: Open * has_block() does not recognize blocks that are inside of synced patterns – Status: Open * Dataviews: Pattern previews throw an error when changing sort order – Status: Open * Editor: Remove hardcoded autosave endpoint checks – Status: Open * Block Editor Color Palette: Only custom color palettes are displayed – Status: Open * Block style variations now use hashed classnames, specificity issues – Status: Open * Image Block: SVG without width/height not expanding on click – Status: Open * Navigate to entity record crash editor – Status: Open * Templates added with ‘theme_templates’ filters can’t be selected or swapped – Status: Open * Pasting with keyboard shortcut deletes all the content of the classic block – Status: Open * updateEditorSettings for styles not working in site editor – Status: Open * Font size picker fails to set a font size if there’s another preset with the same value – Status: Open * Theme colors vs. Personalized colors on blocks – Status: Open * Query Loop: Default settings don’t render any items when inserted in content – Status: Open * Calendar block text color and background color is not change immediately when we try to change it from block settings – Status: Open * Block Bindings API/UI: Attributes Panel still shows when block is set to ‘contentOnly’ editing mode – Status: Open * Big performance degradation in WP 6.6 in editor – Status: Open * Text expander apps replace block content on the Classic Block (inline) – Status: Open * Image lightbox shows original image in synced pattern with overridden image – Status: Open

[Type] Enhancement* Data views: Advanced filtering – Status: Open * Image block: support dropping multiple images – Status: Open * Add tel: when linking phone numbers – Status: Open * Block Bindings: Expose bindable attributes through an annotation in the block definition – Status: Open * Block Bindings: Send only edited values to the POST API request – Status: Open * Undo in Title or Tagline block positions caret at start of field – Status: Open * ContentOnly: Improve the image block toolbar controls within contentOnly locking – Status: Open * Use CSS Variables for Colors in the Color Picker and Gutenberg Editor When Available, Instead of Hardcoded Color Values – Status: Open * Update secondary button appearance – Status: Open * Media & Text Block: Support for Border & Shadow and more – Status: Open

[Type] Code Quality* Fix effect deps in Social Links block – Status: Open

[Type] Developer Documentation* Missing README and Usage Instructions for inspector-controls-tabs Control – Status: Open

[Type] Flaky Test* The navigation background color should apply to all navigation links including submenu and overlay backgrounds – Status: Open * activate block theme when live previewing from sidebar save button – Status: Open

[Type] Performance* Big performance degradation in WP 6.6 in editor – Status: Open

[Type] Tracking Issue Tracking: A curated list of high-priority extensibility issues and enhancements – Status: Open * Table block polishing issues for 6.7 – Status: Open * XML API: Roadmap – Status: Open * Tracking: Style Book Iteration – Status: Open Five for the Future New theme: Add blocks or block bindings to render pledge details * New theme: Update pledge form styles * Proposal: Five for the Future theme refresh

Hosting* Hosting Team meeting agenda 2024-08-21

Media Corp* Summary of August 2024 Media Corps Briefing

Meta* WordCamp US Contributor Day * Agenda for July 24, 2024

WP Org Main (Theme)* Main navigation bar: Make the logo bigger * Homepage banner: WCUS 2024 Live Stream Hero Banner * Homepage banner: Small notice format for WCUS 2024 * New landing page: The WordPress Briefing Podcast

Meta Trac[Type] Defect (Bug)* WordPress.org Admin bar: A11y feedback – Status: Closed * Add admin menu to profiles.wp.org page, remove subnav login information – Status: New * Remove search bar in admin menu for logged in users – Status: New * Release confirmations: users are seeing update notifications before an update is available – Status: Closed * Plugin review filters by number of stars are incorrect – Status: New * Need to fix contribute page checkbox design issue – Status: New * Convert assignment statement in Parser class to make compatible to PHP 7.2 – Status: New * Photo couldn’t submit – Status: New * Meta Components ticket links returns 404 – Status: Closed * Five for the Future contact page select box arrow issue – Status: New

[Type] Enhancement* Plugin Review Submissions – Change the text of the updated plugin automated reply – Status: Closed * Add Approve button to Categories: in the Submitted video section – Status: New * Make it obvious to moderator if they are about to reject a published photo – Status: Closed * Add a link for “reports replied to” – Status: New * Plugins: Update 3 months rejection email – Status: Closed * Closed plugin not really closed – Status: New * Make a smaller content box – Status: Reopened

[Type] Feature Request Subscribable Calender of upcoming releases – Status: New * Provide a tool to know if a theme name or slug is available and can be used in the theme directory – Status: New * Plugin Review – Edit plugin – Notice about a pending release confirmation – Status: New Openverse A week in Openverse: 2024-08-19 – 2024-08-26 * Community Meeting Recap (2024-08-19) * A week in Openverse: 2024-08-12 – 2024-08-19

Openverse Issues[Goal] Improvement* Remove the Watermark API endpoint – Status: Open * Add note on DjVu single result pages indicating availability of additional pages at source – Status: Open * Display XCF and DjVu thumbnails at full size in single result page – Status: Open * Add information about stored data to the Privacy page – Status: Open * Update the skeleton loaders based on latest design changes – Status: Open * Downrank first-page results that aren’t ever interacted with – Status: Open * Improvement over image component – Status: Open

[Goal] Fix* Add 90% ES CPU alarms to the list of those disabled for the data refresh – Status: Open * Floraon URLs need fixing before enabling the provider – Status: Open * “Testing Nuxt 3” text hidden on frontpage – Status: Open * Can’t retrieve images from the Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon (CAPL) provider – Status: Open * Frontend dev server logs verbose sentry config – Status: Open * Image table contains .ogv videos – Status: Open

[Goal] Addition* Enable SSH into the ov container – Status: Open * Create ContentProvider API model for providers and providers endpoint – Status: Open * “Source” filter presets – Status: Open

[Goal] Internal Improvement* Re-add Storybook and re-enable Storybook tests – Status: Open * Review Nuxt sitemap – Status: Open * Sphinx/MYsT dev build is very slow – Status: Open

[Aspect] Code* Add 90% ES CPU alarms to the list of those disabled for the data refresh – Status: Open * Display XCF and DjVu thumbnails at full size in single result page – Status: Open * Floraon URLs need fixing before enabling the provider – Status: Open * Can’t retrieve images from the Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon (CAPL) provider – Status: Open * “Testing Nuxt 3” text hidden on frontpage – Status: Open

[Aspect] Design* Update the skeleton loaders based on latest design changes – Status: Open

[Aspect] Interface Remove the Watermark API endpoint – Status: Open * Improvement over image component – Status: Open Playground Introducing Offline Mode and PWA Support for WordPress Playground * php-wasm/web : php.cli() method not working * GitHub Proxy: Given a directory, GitHub Proxy should return a zip file containing just that directory * Support a playground.json file in git repositories * Tracking: Install themes and plugins directly from Git * Login step doesn’t execute if placed before import step in blueprint.

Plugins* Plugin Review Team: 26 August 2024

Plugin Check[Team] Plugin Review* Warning about Requires Plugins plugin header – Status: Open * Check: Don’t Force Set PHP Limits Globally – Status: Open

[Type] Enhancement* Warning about Requires Plugins plugin header – Status: Open * Create HTML report – Status: Open

WP Admin Create HTML report – Status: Open Polyglots Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – August 28, 2024 (13:00 UTC) * Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – August 21, 2024 (7:00 UTC)

Support* 22nd August Support Team Meeting

Sustainability* Sustainability Chat Agenda, August 30, 2024 * Sustainability Chat Summary, August 16, 2024

Test* Test Team Update: 27 August 2024

Themes* Themes team update August 27, 2024

Twenty Twenty FiveGeneral Issues Translation issue*

Accessibility and Discussion Accessibility: Displaying related content above its heading* – Accessibility (a11y), Type: Discussion

Component Specific Default header: make adjustments to groups and alignments – Block Patterns, Template Parts * Add section styles* – Style Variations, Type: Discussion

Enhancement and Improvements Add alternative templates for Photo Blog – Block Patterns * Add more information to the readme about how to get the images from Figma* – Type: Discussion

Questions and Documentation Question: How to address “Other Posts” section in the templates? – Type: Discussion, Type: Question * Tracking issue: Documentation and changelog* – Type: Documentation

Training* Drawing new learners to the new Learn.WordPress.org * Training Team Meeting Recap – 22 August 2024 * Training Team Meeting Recap – 15th August 2024 * WordCamp US 2024 Contributor Day * Training Team Meeting Recap – 8th August 2024

Learn IssuesOnline Workshops Online Workshop: Exploring the Query Loop block – Content: Experienced Author, Content: Needs Co-host * Online Workshop: Creating Your Own Simple Contact Form Plugin – Content: Needs SME * Online Workshop: Adding theme.json to classic themes* – Content: Experienced Author

Feedback and Enhancements Feedback – Improve the lesson preview CTA banner – Component: Learn Theme, Component: Sensei, Dev: Needs Design, Type: Enhancement * Add Facilitator Notes area to Lessons – Component: Learn Plugin, Component: Learn Theme, Type: Enhancement * On course pages, consider changing “Preview” to a less ambiguous word* – Component: Learn Theme, Type: Enhancement

Admin and Meeting Agendas Meeting Agenda August 29, 2024 – Admin: Agenda * Meeting Agenda August 22, 2024 – Admin: Agenda * Meeting Agenda August 1, 2024* – Admin: Agenda

Bugs and Triaged Issues Localized lesson content is overwriting or being appended to English content – Type: Bug * Feedback – Dead link on WordPress Beginner Developer course – Awaiting Triage, Type: Bug * Feedback – How to create an animated timeline plugin – Awaiting Triage, Content: Feedback, Type: Bug Courses Beginner WordPress Developer * Beginner WordPress User

Online Workshops* Setting up a WordPress blog * Developer Hours: A First Look at the Template Registration API in WordPress 6.7 * How to install WordPress on an Ubuntu VPS: OpenLiteSpeed edition * Using the Grid block

WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

Node.js 22.8.0 will go out next Monday!

Ref: https://t.co/pZpPVuHNCp

— Rafael Gonzaga (@_rafaelgss) August 29, 2024

Dependencies* Second Beta of jQuery 4.0.0 * Curl 8.9.1 * Node 22.7 – NEW * React 18.3.1 / React 19 Upgrade Guide * PHP 8.4.0 Beta 4 now available for testing – NEW * PHP 8.3.10 Released! – NEW * PHP 8.2.23 Released! – NEW * PHP 8.1.29 Released! * PHPCS 3.10.2 * WPCS 3.1.0 * LibZip 1.10.1 * Changes in MySQL 8.4.3 (Not yet released, LTS Release) – NEW * Composer 2.7.8 * Homebrew 4.3.18 – NEW * TC39 * Chromium Roadmap * Firefox Release Calendar * Safari Release Notes * Safari 18 Beta Release Notes – NEW

Thanks for reading our WP.org roundup! We highlight the news and discussions from the good folks making WordPress possible each week. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.

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This article, jQuery 4.0 coming to WP • WordPress 6.7 Bug Scrub • WP 6.6.2 • Twenty Twenty Five Theme • Attracting New Learners to LearnWP, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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News BitsFarewell to WPwatercooler, as Jason Tucker, Cosper, and Sé Reed broadcast their final episode. Jason talks about it on the blog.

KadenceWP is set to present the next Kadence Amplify event. Call for speakers is open now.

Last Week’s Post Status Happiness Hour featured Kathy Zant and Nathan Ingram who recently released MonsterSecure, a user-friendly, expert-led security course for agencies to teach clients about their site’s security.

This week’s Post Status Happiness Hour will feature Danielle Zarcaro and Isla Waite to talk about WordPress Accessibility Day.

Marcus Burnette has been adding more and more features to The WP World, including free business listings and the opportunity to rate hosting companies, and adding local venues to WordCamps. Join for free!

Join Us for a MeetupJoin us for our Meetups! Details on our Meetups are available on our Meetup page.

• Post Status July Professionals Meetup: September 24
• Post Status July Product Meetup: September 25
• Post Status July Agency Meetup: September 26

Quick Links:* E70: Jamie Marsland to Head WordPress YouTube, John Blackbourn Receives Record Bounty * UI/UX ના પાયાની સમજણ તથા એમનું વેબસાઈટ માં મહત્વ * Page Builders and WooCommerce with Anthony Tran * Beyond Avatars: How Gravatar is Transforming Online Identity * The Fediverse Files: The Magic of Federation * WordCamp AsiaCall: Call for Volunteers, Call for Speakers, Call for Emcees, and Call for Sponsors are open * WP Accessibility Day’s Call for Volunteers and Call for Sponsors are open * WCUS: Tickets are Available

Find the complete WordPress events schedule here.

Photo of the WeekToday’s photo of the week comes from Jonathan Desrosiers on WordPress Photos.

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This article, Community Roundup August 27, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Transcript ↓

In this episode, Michelle Frechette and Corey Maass engage in a lively conversation about their experiences at WordCamp US, their recent t-shirt purchases, and a collaborative project related to WordPress. They discuss the progress of their project, which involves creating a directory for plugins or products, and the challenges of designing a logo that is clear and recognizable. They also brainstorm creative ideas for the logo and share their strategies for promoting their project. The episode highlights their enthusiasm for collaboration and their commitment to making the project a success.

Top Takeaways: * Iterative Brainstorming Process: Both Corey and Michelle value the process of “splashing around” in ideas, acknowledging that not every concept will be a winner, but it’s essential to explore and iterate to find the right solution. They emphasized the importance of keeping ideas alive and evolving them over time. * IPAWP Rebranding: The Independent Plugin Alliance for WordPress was rebranded as the Independent Product Alliance for WordPress (IPAWP) to better reflect the broader scope of products they want to include. They’re still in the early stages of developing this alliance and are actively seeking input and collaboration from others. * Grassroots Development: Both OMGIMG and IPAWP are in grassroots development phases, with Corey and Michelle being open to new ideas and contributions. They’re focused on building these initiatives in a collaborative, community-driven manner, emphasizing low-cost marketing strategies and mutual support among small WordPress product creators.

Mentioned In The Show:* Ross Morsali * Search & Filters * IPA WP * WP Speakers * WP Coffee Talks * WP Tavern * WP Wonder Woman * Canva * Fiverr

Sponsor: A2 HostingA2Hosting offers solutions for WordPress and WooCommerce that are both blazing fast and ultra-reliable. WordPress can be easily deployed on ANY web hosting plan from A2: Shared, VPS, or Dedicated. A2 also offers Managed WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting. Take a look at a2hosting.com today!

A2 Hosting You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:* Corey Maass * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

Transcript:Michelle Frechette 00:00:02 Hey, Cory.

Corey Maass 00:00:03 Hello. Hello.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:05 How are you?

Corey Maass 00:00:06 Doing okay yourself?

Michelle Frechette 00:00:08 Yeah. Same. Same. We did not share a list of things to talk about today. So what do you want to talk about today? I mean, we’re not doing anything.

Corey Maass 00:00:21 Right. Yeah. We have nothing going on. I, I spent more of our money, because I realized that last WordCamp US. I wore the same t- shirt for five days.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:38 Oh, that’s not good.

Corey Maass 00:00:39 It’s kinda of gross. Yeah. So I ordered myself more, OMG t-shirts.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:44 Oh. Good idea.

Corey Maass 00:00:45 So that and in, like, super bright colors, so, you know, I can at least rotate.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:54 So it doesn’t look like you’re wearing the same shirt every single day.

Corey Maass 00:00:57 Right, exactly. I mean, it’s like. And the thing is, you wear it’s tough because usually you end up wearing a layer anyway. Like for years I only ever bothered with branded stuff that were outer layers because usually walking around in a conference.

Michelle Frechette: You’re chilly

Corey Maass: Right

Michelle Frechette: You need a hoodie

Corey Maass 00:01:17 Right. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:17 Or dare I say, a windbreaker?

Corey Maass 00:01:21 Usually I’d go for the track jacket. So that style. Yeah. But they’re getting harder to. For a long time, I could, I could do you could find an American Apparel track jacket that was custom printed, and it’s getting more and more difficult because I’m not like, I don’t know, I, I’ve given up and I now wear t-shirts. I always really preferred wearing a polo. Like it just seems a little more businessy. But it also you can’t print as big or they won’t let you, which is dumb because it’s the same. It’s a t-shirt with a collar. People just let me print.

Michelle Frechette 00:01:55 Right? It doesn’t make any sense. I’m I’m. I’m getting ready to post some stuff while you’re talking, but,

Corey Maass: Excellent.

Michelle Frechette: So join us live right now.

Corey Maass 00:02:09 Do it people.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:12 Okay.

Corey Maass 00:02:13 And I will.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:16 I will get on you Twitter or join us live. So you have to make it different for Twitter so I can tag us.

Corey Maass 00:02:28 There you go.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:28 So I just have to edit all the things. Publish, publish. And I’m actually going to put this over in Slack too. So I every time I talk to people or every time I turn around, I’m telling people about w IPA WP, I still want to say a WP first. I’m sorry. I’m getting it, I’m getting it.

Corey Maass: We own both, it’s fine

Michelle Frechette: That’s true, that’s true. And one should point to the other one ideally. Right.

Corey Maass 00:02:56 It does.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:00 I know you’re on that. So I mentioned it this morning in the Post Status Professionals Meetup.

Corey Maass: Excellent.

Michelle Frechette: And we got another sign up. We got two more today. So you’re in there twice. I feel like I should delete one of them.

Corey Maass: Yes.

Michelle Frechette: Okay, I’m going to go ahead and delete one of them because it’s it’s not exactly the right number of people or products. So we are at 30.

Corey Maass 00:03:24 That’s crazy. I mean I’m not surprised, but.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:30 I mean, I am a little because it’s like, okay, the thing I’m surprised about is like, we don’t have the right logo yet.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:36 We haven’t changed it from saying plug in to product, like all of these things. Like literally we just like, was it two weeks ago? We’re like, hey, let’s do this thing. And now it’s like all over the newsletters and we got 30, including us. Right? So 29 other people are like, heck yeah, I’m in. Which just goes to show you that sometimes things are the right ideas and the right time. And I don’t think either one of us had this idea to do something quite this, quite like this, except while we were talking live about it. And I was telling people in the Meetup this morning that it’s not like we had in the background been like, why don’t we do this thing? And why don’t we talk about it online? And, you know, it was literally like in the moment we stopped broadcasting and we said, let’s really let’s see what we could do with this thing and how it started off as this, like this one week of which we aren’t even going to make it to the one week of doing things at the end of this month, because that’s like literally next week.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:37 But, but this turned out to be bigger and better than what we had anticipated, or at least better in theory, because we haven’t actually put it into practice yet. But it’s exciting to me. And for me, other people getting involved or wanting to know more is like the proof in the pudding, right? So. We could talk about it and people can be like, that’s a great idea. I love that you’re doing that. But if nobody else participates, it’s like, was it really that great of idea? Like if nobody really wanted to be part of it, but 29 other entities want to. So yeah, heck yeah, it’s a good idea.

Corey Maass 00:05:18 I have built hundreds of those things where nobody, nobody showed up, you know? Which is part of the game. Like it’s these are experiments. And if you think of them as experiments, what is it? A you know, a successful experiment can still have a negative outcome or not negative meaning bad. But you know, you you run an experiment, it doesn’t work.

Corey Maass 00:05:41 It still looks successful experiment. So that’s how I view it in this case. I mean, I think, there are two things. One, you especially have a lot of reach. I have a little bit of reach I think we both have good reputations. And so people are happy to get involved with us. And then, as I think we’re doing a good job of pitching it as there’s no risk, like, what’s the harm? you know, right now, 90 seconds to fill out a form. Great. You’re part of it. And then, so the what I did want to talk about is the next step is messaging all of these people. Well, we need to we need to figure out who we’re letting in. Probably most of most or everybody. but we need to do a little like we need to do a little research, you know, other than the folks we’re already familiar with, like, we need to go and kind of go, you know, this feels fine. This this feels too corporate, you know, whatever our criteria are.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:06:45 Which might be something that we need to write down, eventually at least, and then message everybody. So I, So for me, I think the plan is, or the approach I think we should take. That’s how I want to say that is manually create the users, which only takes a minute. Copy an email address, paste it in, make them a subscriber, hit, you know, auto send their credentials. They will get an email. and then I’ve already added, I’ve set up most of a basic like dashboard. So if you sign in you can maintain your you can update your password, you can, you know, change your email address like the, the basic stuff. And then we have a form for adding a plugin or product. And I think we have our satisfied with I you’ve looked at it Mark looked at it. I’ve looked at it, I’ve sent it to a couple of other people and everybody’s like, I think that’s, you know, good enough to start with.

Corey Maass 00:07:52 Like, I’m not missing anything obvious. and so I just need to add the functionality so that people can add multiple plugins and, and edit them, but that’s pretty straightforward. So I will try to do that tomorrow I think. IPA WP plugin mgmt management. because then it’s then we’re at least the next step. Like we’re not still not showing a directory or anything, but people can sign in. People have been approved, can sign in, can update their own status or not status, update their own basic profile. And I did say, you know, you as a developer or business. So if you want to put yourself as OMGIMG, well don’t do that. But if I wanted to be OMGIMG rather than Corey. That’s fine. I don’t think we care how people represent themselves,

Michelle Frechette: I don’t.

Corey Maass: At least right now. And then at some point, maybe it’s the like, if you want a, if you want to come across as more human, that is a marketing choice, then you could do that as well.

Corey Maass 00:09:12 And then add a plugin, add multiple plugins. The form is quick, so it should be hopefully a pretty painless process. Upload a square photo and then and then we’ve got all of the data we should need to then be able to add a directory. I did talk to Ross, who has search and filter. Filter and search. Sorry, Ross.

Michelle Frechette 00:09:47 It starts with a ‘W’ I just forgot it. Sorry. Ross.

Corey Maass 00:09:52 Ross Morsali.

Michelle Frechette 00:09:54 Morsali, why did I think it had a W and I don’t know.

Corey Maass 00:09:56 Well, it’s upside down M. I mean.

Michelle Frechette 00:09:59 Perfect, yeah.That does it.

Corey Maass 00:10:00 Yeah. Search & Filter is his plugin. Yep. And it sounds like the perfect candidate for, sorting and filtering. Searching and filtering. It does what it says on the tin, as the British likes to say. Yeah. So then we just need to. He and I are going to get together. I had hoped this week. I was about to say it’s only it’s already Tuesday, but it’s only Tuesday.

Corey Maass 00:10:29 But the rest of the week already looks bananas. Like.

Michelle Frechette 00:10:32 Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:10:34 Things are just crazy. But anyway. So as soon as we can, we will then slap up a basic directory that has all of his awesome searching and filtering options. And then we’ve at least got that done. And then I think so then we’ve got a landing page that’s and again, it’s, it’s kind of the to me the everybody being listed in directory is kind of like, oh okay, here’s the party. Like we’re looking at, you know, everybody who has shown up to the pool party. And then we figure out, the first of hopefully many little marketing games. I think it’s fun to think of it that way.

MIchelle Frechette: Yeah.

Corey Maass: Experiments, campaigns, what have you, and just kind of see how, where it takes us. But then for at least for the most part, it’s taking it’s maintaining itself.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:29 Yes. I’m pretty excited about it. I think that my I’m, I’m going to say I like my design for other logos.

Michelle Frechette 00:11:39 I have not come up with the right logo for this project yet. So however we want to pursue that, I can keep iterating or we can bring somebody else in to just knock it out quickly. So that’s up to you how you want to do that?

Corey Maass 00:12:00 What’s your thought? Are you are you also swamped. Because if if that’s the case then let’s not. I know it’s fun.

Michelle Frechette: Right.

Corey Maass: And I don’t want to take it away from you. I’m the same way. I’m like, I want to sit down and start banging. Banging out ideas and sketching and stuff. And I’m like, my time. I hate to say it, but my time is better spent not doing that.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:21 Yes that’s how feel too. And I, I don’t feel like I have a clear direction of how I want it to look, which makes it even more frustrating. Right? So like there’s not so, so like with WP Speakers, I created that logo very quickly. Love that logo. Same thing with WP Coffee Talk. I love what I created there. However, it was easy coffee talk. I had the coffee cup to work with, right? Speakers I had the microphone to work with like it was things that were easy to kind of work on. I won’t say knocked about in five minutes, but, you know, within an hour they were done. This one I don’t.

Corey Maass 00:12:58 Yeah. Usually I’m the same way.

Michelle Frechette 00:13:00 Like the idea like the beer idea is great. I like the IPA part of it, but like you said, it’s a little too on the nose to do that. And honestly, it does harken too closely to WP Tavern. And we’re not part of WP Tavern. And so, and.

Corey Maass 00:13:15 We’re also not selling beer. So the metaphor is good. Like the last version you sent me was two glasses clinking and I was like, oh, I love I love the sentiment of that. Two people getting together, being happy in each other’s company, probably. I’ve definitely cheered with people who I was not happy to be in their company, but that’s besides the point.

Corey Maass 00:13:38 But that that sentiment. But, you know, and also you had done it in a hand-drawn style and I’m like, okay, I like the DIY aspect of that because that’s part of the ethos that we’re talking about the independent part. But you know but I’m non-English speakers and people skimming quickly and all that kind of stuff are going to go, oh it’s beer, I don’t get it, you know, or it’s beer, I don’t drink beer or what have you. So yes.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:13 And I like the idea of like a high five or something, but actually, how do you put a high five in a still basically black and white or grayscale image where, I mean, and it can be in color for sure, right. Like, it doesn’t have to be, but you but you need to be able to flatten it down to a grayscale image at some point and still understand what it is without it just looking like two hands praying or like those kinds of things. And we’re not a church either, or, you know, a temple.

Michelle Frechette 00:14:43 So. Yeah. So like with some guidance, like if you have thoughts, I could probably pull something out. Other than that, if we really just want to like, create a design brief and let somebody design it, if we can put that in the budget or not, that I’m all for that too. So I could do either direction. It just is one of those things where I need more to go on Corey and I am not feeling inspired to figure out what that looks like for us.

Corey Maass 00:15:11 Right. Yeah. What I’ve so some, some things, things I’ve done in the past. So it’s like I feel like I’m, I’m happy to spend 100 bucks. Right. Right now more than that feels over like too much. And then and that is people are going to cringe and real designers are going to want to reach to the screen and strangle me. But that’s where we’re at. Like, yes, a proper logo design is worth hundreds or thousands, you know, dot, dot, dot, all of those disclaimers.

Corey Maass 00:15:41 But when you’re at this level for a project that is not going to see profit, you know, you work with what you got.

Michelle Frechette 00:15:48 Exactly.

Corey Maass 00:15:50 So at this stage in the past, I have done a couple of things. I’ve actually got a I work with a designer, and so I might hit her up and see if she’s wants to do, essentially a charity. Or a good, good karma kind of project. And we throw her the cash. otherwise, what I’ve also done in the past is get on Fiverr and hired five people for 20 bucks each.

Michelle Frechette 00:16:21 And pick the one you like the best.

Corey Maass 00:16:23 You know, and or. And what I end up usually end up doing is what I view it more as as brainstorming. Right? Like they’ll mock up a bunch of designs and once or actually for Mexican Train, which I happen to be.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, yeah.

Corey Maass: Wearing the t-shirt of I, I used it verbatim off of Fiverr I, I hate it, but I love it like I can’t. It’s so

Michelle Frechette 00:16:51 I have a love hate relationship with it. Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:16:54 Yeah. Like I, I had sort of I had committed to like just using something that somebody sent like this is good enough. But it’s so not my style. It’s so not a style that I like. And so I like how it works, and I like the messages that it conveys and all that kind of stuff. But I actually like I hate the actual logo, but sometimes, like, that doesn’t matter, you know? And, and then most of the time, what ends up happening is, I spend $100 to either have a design handed to me that I’m like, yep, that I should have. I knew that’s what it should have been. I should have just done it myself, which is fine. Or I get a bunch of ideas and I end up jumping into I. I actually used you remember Flash? Adobe Flash, before that Macromedia Flash generally for creating animations. But I still use that to design because it’s, I find it like the fastest for doing vector because it’s so much simpler than illustrator or, you know, what is it? Affinity designer.

Michelle Frechette: Okay.

Corey Maass 00:18:14 But anyway, so the point is, is that, like with, you know, you try to hire five people who come up with more than one idea and then you go, oh, you know, the colors from this are great. The shapes of from this are great. The concept from this is great. And then I can jump into Flash and like you said, like I can then, then I can bang it out in an hour while I’m watching. Currently we’re rewatching Elementary. Highly recommend.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, yeah.

Corey Maass: If anybody hasn’t seen it.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:44 I’ve seen it. It’s a good show.

Corey Maass 00:18:45 With, Sick Boy from Trainspotting. It was really why I love it. But anyway, so that’s. So we could kind of go on either of those ways, I think. Or if we have a designer or if there’s anybody listening who would love to take a crack at it.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:02 Let us know.

Corey Maass 00:19:03 In the spirit of collaboration. Which is why I love that. Like, Ross reached out, you know, he’s like, I’d love to be part of this. I would love, obviously like, love my plug in to be the one. Like obviously there there may be other plug ins that end up in the directory that do searching and filtering, but mine’s going to be the one that like controls it, you know. And but in the in the spirit of collaboration like this is how we put our, our stuff together and so same idea. So if anybody has an idea please.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:34 Absolutely. We and I do like I like building logos in Canva. I know a lot of people are like uuummmm.

Corey Maass 00:19:42 Also. No, no I that’s my second.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:45 Okay, good. Because all I did. Let me, let me share my screen here. Hold on. I got multiple screens. So figuring out which where, where and where I am is another. Okay, so I just typed in tech logo, and of course it pulls anything of mine that it thinks might be techie, which is, you know, this is the one we have right now as a place older.

Michelle Frechette 00:20:08 And some of them are great and like, you know, could could use you could use to build from is what I’m trying to say. Like this one over here, this one with the W world. I own it like a picture of the WordPress logo in the middle of that. Right? That would be cool. That. But but we’re not that electronically, right. I mean, like, yeah, the networking cables or whatever that is, but there’s some in here.

Corey Maass 00:20:34 Oh I like that. Hold on, go. I like that norm line.

Michelle Frechette 00:20:37 This one here.

Corey Maass 00:20:38 Because it, it kind of looks like hands like going like.

Michelle Frechette 00:20:41 Oh yeah So we could like we could build off of that, right, for sure. And then stylize the writing or whatever we want underneath it. I do like that one too. Something very simplistic is better. This is obviously the one that I started with, and I just added little w word presses in there. But I think we could do something right from here if we’re willing to pick a few.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:07 And let me kind of look at them and play around with them. I think we could definitely do that. Then you get down here and you’re like, oh, there’s Coffee Talk. See how good that looks? And Speakers see how good that looks. WP Wonder Woman I mean there’s there’s I’m not terrible at it. I just need to direction I think.

Corey Maass 00:21:25 Well and that’s it. Like I’ve. Yeah I’ve, I’ve had logos that have come together and I there was a, I actually did a job board for a minute, although I did it more as a resume piece. Nope. Don’t like that. Thank you

Michelle Frechette 00:21:42 Look, it looks like two hands. That’s what I was. I was focusing on.

Corey Maass 00:21:46 Creepy alien hands there.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:49 Okay. I mean, I’ll give you that. I’m not gonna fight. It looks.

Corey Maass 00:21:52 Like ghosts. Like like swooping up.

Michelle Frechette 00:21:56 I can see that now that you say it, that’s for sure. Anyway, I.

Corey Maass 00:22:04 Whirlwind is cute. Like it, doesn’t. It doesn’t work as a.

Michelle Frechette 00:22:07 Oh, this one here? Yeah. No, that doesn’t work. But it’s not bad. Yeah, you can see this is the other one. It’s the same. Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:22:15 I mean, and that’s that’s what you run into in this kind of thing is like a bunch of the same shapes, you know, like, like, there have been logo logo generators for ages, and I’ve. I’ve long been a fan, but it’s like, you see that, you see the patterns repeat. You know, they they bought a collection of clip art and then stuck that in and then they just get re reused.

Michelle Frechette 00:22:37 This one makes me think of the Newton’s cradle. The thing that goes click click click click back and forth. Yeah.

Corey Maass: Yep.

Michelle Frechette: I’m not suggesting it. It just it just made that idea in my head.

Corey Maass 00:22:48 It’s kind of a neat I not a bad but yeah. So years ago I did a job board and the logo was one of the best logos I’ve ever done. I wonder if I have that online.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:03 And what about, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt you.

Corey Maass 00:23:06 No, but, like, I, I had people, like, complimenting me. They’re like, that’s an award winning logo. The the job board never went anywhere, but I like. And I knocked out the logo like I knew exactly what I wanted it to be, so it only took me an hour or something.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:21 What about something similar to this? But if we replace the colors with the OMGIMG colors so it still is a little bit branded towards us since we started it.

Corey Maass 00:23:32 Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:33 Yep. Right. Not terrible.

Corey Maass 00:23:37 IPA.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:39 You could put the WordPress logo in the middle and the IPA underneath.

Corey Maass 00:23:45 I’m not such a fan of the like the the obvious W okay. I just well and and yeah, I guess because this isn’t for profit, we can.

Michelle Frechette 00:24:03 Yeah. All right. I can play around with it one more time. See what I can come up with for you. And then if that fails, I give up and we hire somebody.

Corey Maass 00:24:13 Yeah, that sounds good. Well, and and I, you know, do do the hired document. If document any of the higher level thinking that you end up doing while you’re doing it where you’re like, oh, you know, oh, this, this shape as a metaphor, like I keep like what keeps popping into my head is so you would you had done, you know, two glasses so that the front edge of the glasses come together and little lines. And so it’s like even if that was abstracted out. So you had like, you know, just squares that.

Michelle Frechette 00:24:49 So yeah.

Corey Maass 00:24:50 Like that, that just looks like weird glasses with hair, but like, you know, the idea being.

Michelle Frechette 00:24:57 I get the idea. Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:24:58 You know, like abstract out the, the concepts of, you know, going clink with two glasses.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:09 Right.

Corey Maass 00:25:11 Because it would also be like if those were solid boxes, then it’s like, here are two entities. And if you can and put a put a star between them so it looks like a spark, you’re like, okay, well the spark of collaboration, like, you know, the metaphor still works. And if you step way back and you think to yourself, IPA means beer, then you could be like, oh, there, maybe it’s two beer steins or something, you know, that kind of.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:37 Yeah. I always like things that show like multiple hands, like this one. I’m not suggesting children’s hands, but something that shows that there’s lots of people involved in it. But it also kind of comes across looking a little bit like, it’s a preschool logo.

Corey Maass 00:25:53 Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:54 Anyway, so all right, let me let me noodle around on it as some people say.

Corey Maass 00:26:03 Yeah, well and or don’t I mean, if you, if you have, if you have the time if you’re.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:10 I’m gonna take half an hour. And if I can’t come up with a good solid idea in half an hour, then that’s it.

Corey Maass 00:26:18 Yeah. Okay. Then we’ll yeah, we’ll we’ll jot down some notes. Like we, we seem to both do well throwing text back and forth in Slack.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:27 Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:26:27 So we could do that. Come up with some concepts. You know, call it a brief and then slap it on Fiverr and see what we get.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:35 Exactly.

Corey Maass 00:26:36 And that works And then pick something.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:42 Absolutely. Cool. You got the ad copy submitted for. I can’t remember the name of the.

Corey Maass 00:26:51 Dense Discovery.

Michelle Frechette: Thank you.

Corey Maass: So that you could come out. There it came. It arrived today. So seven days from now our ad will be in there. And once again I looked through the classifieds and was like, yep, these are all boring. I think ours is going to be cute. So.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:07 So we didn’t finalize what we were going to do. So do you want to share that out in this stream? You can share your screen if you want. You can just read it out. But I think it’d be great to capture that in this week’s episode.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:21 Yeah. And for those of I know we’ve got a couple of people watching right now for people who are listening later, we have, was it 180 characters? 100 and something like that? Very limited. Yeah. 182, it was 182 characters, for ad placement in Dense Discovery, which is an online magazine that’s actually kind of it gives it has that indie vibe. It’s really kind of e-zine kind of thing, which I love, really fits what we do here. We were. So we took out an ad. We’ve got three months, three different ad placements that we could do, and we wanted something that just wasn’t boring. And so we went back and forth. How long? A couple hours, maybe back and forth. Not solid, but back and forth, shooting ideas back to each other. I don’t want to say back and forth 5 million times, shooting ideas for each other until we finally came up with this.

Corey Maass 00:28:14 Hold on.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:15 Yep. I’m holding.

Corey Maass 00:28:17 It’s trying to make it,nicely presentable.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:21 Gotcha. Okay.

Corey Maass 00:28:25 Do do do do. So let’s see where to go. Share your screen. Share your screen. A specific window that looks good. There you go.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:36 Okay, so this is what we came up with. And it’s I see it’s underneath the logo there.

Corey Maass 00:28:45 Oh, okay. Enter, enter. There you go.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:49 I took it out too. So. Okay. You post your grandma’s cookie recipe on your food blog. You share it on socials, but your stale social image gets you crumbs and a sad Nana use OMGIMG. Never play image roulette again. I love it!

Corey Maass 00:29:07 I’m so glad we have you saying that because we’re now going to put out radio ads and.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:14 Oh, I’ll do a better job recording it if that’s the case.

Corey Maass 00:29:18 Your room is a little boomy, if I’m honest. You know, it’s not, radio studio, studio quality.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:25 No.

Corey Maass 00:29:26 But I could, but I could add reverb and, like echo.OMG, omg,omg.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:30 I can put a blanket over me and the microphone and get a little more.

Corey Maass 00:29:34 Perfect. Dry dry. But yeah, I, I yeah, we went back and forth. I mean, I think it was. Yeah, we probably spent an hour going back and I mean, once we got the concept right. and what was fun was like, I think you were just hanging out, and I had my laptop at the bar that I work at, bartending, which is a golf course. And so I’m not, like, slinging beer nonstop, especially when everybody shows up after work and then goes out golfing. And then I’m, like, twiddling my thumbs until they all come back in. So we could just like I, I would. I posted a version, you copied it elsewhere, edited it, edited-ed-ed it, did it, paste it in Slack. I’m like we we a few comments back and forth. I did the same thing and like it was the best collaboration. It worked out.

Michelle Frechette 00:30:29 It was it was fun actually. And I love that it’s not like, ew no, like both of us were like, let’s build on this.

Michelle Frechette 00:30:37 Let’s it’s it’s a yes and kind of situation where and I, I came up with a line and I was really proud of myself. The chat room or the image roulette. Right. Because that’s the problem with WordPress. It oftentimes will pick up a featured image, but not necessarily. Socials will sometimes pick up the first image or for some unknown reason, the third image on a page or whatever. and unless you determine exactly which image should be shown to different places, you’re basically playing roulette with your images. And so once I said that, you’re like, oh, we gotta use that. Let’s figure out how to like back into that. And of course the OMGIMG is the link through to the website. Oh, and did you finish the the page that they would like to. Can you show that?

Corey Maass: Yes.

Michelle Frechette: Because I love the way you did that at least. Mostly done right?

Corey Maass 00:31:37 Done enough. And then. So. Yeah. There you go. Present, share screen.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:55 So when you, it’s obviously a, a specified specified URL that we put with that.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:05 So the link doesn’t just go to OMGIMG.co, it goes to grandma’s cookie recipe. And you’ve put beautifully so welcome Dense Discovery fans. We know you only came here for the cookie recipe smiley emoji. This one is from our teammate Michelle Frechette’s own grandmother. Without further ado, shortbread cookies by Katherine Locke. And there’s in her own handwriting. And at the bottom, when you do need better social images for your WordPress post pages, recipes or whatever. Take a look at OMGIMG and I’m assuming that goes to our pricing page because I didn’t click it through.

Corey Maass: Home page and yeah.

Michelle Frechette: Okay, cool. All right. Yeah, pricing page would probably be better. And then, I and you said for me to go and take a look at it, I proofed it. Everything looked good. But we didn’t have good alt text on the image. So I added, yep. So I added alt text on the image. So that if anybody is blind or visually impaired when they get to or low vision when they get to this page, if they want the recipe itself, their screen reader will read off the recipe card for that.

Corey Maass: 00:33:10 That’s fantastic. Well done.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:13 Yeah. Thanks. So, and so you’re, whoever’s listening is going to hear the truth of this is this is actually my aunt’s cookie recipe.

Corey Maass: Gasp!

Michelle Frechette: My grandmother’s recipes on there for things like pickled eggs and and circus peanut jello. So I’m like, we’ll just use Aunt Kathy. She’s she’s someone. She is a grandmother. She’s just not my grandmother. But anyway, it is a good grandma’s cookie recipe. And they’re delicious. By the way, she’s my relative. Yeah. And they’re delicious. So if you ever really want a good shortbread cookie, these are the ones to go with. But, And it’s nice that I have that. She’s she’s she passed away. Oh, I was in the sixth grade. I was 12, I’m 54. Almost 56, 54, 55, almost 56 now. So she passed away a really long time ago. so to have this in her handwriting and have it saved on the web is a really cool thing. So.

Corey Maass: Love it.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:10 And I love that there’s an Easter egg there. Right? So like they click through and the first thing they’re getting served is grandma’s cookie recipe instead of like sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. Like you clicked on this. We want to sell you this thing. It’s like we want to delight them.

Corey Maass: Exactly.

Michelle Frechette: We want to delight the people that come to your website. You want the A and this plugin. And what we do with it has a spirit of whimsy to it, right? And so to have that recipe in there, I mean, for I, I’m, I think about, Phoebe Buffay on Friends when she talks about her grandmother’s cookie recipe. Her grandmother Toulouse. Yeah.

Corey Maass 00:34:50 Toulouse.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:51 Toulouse. Yeah. Turns out it was just the Nestlé Toll House cookie recipe. Right. But now this is actually from my aunt. I don’t know where she got it, but it’s a good one. And that it’s handwritten and all that, I think really just goes along with what we do. So, yeah, I think it’s cool.

Corey Maass 00:35:08 Yep. Yeah. And we linked in the text of the ad. We linked grandma’s cookie recipe rather than OMGIMG. And so which is counterintuitive, but I my hope is the way because I’m trying to follow my own. If nothing else, you follow your own behavior if you can, if you can view it somewhat objectively. And so like when we so like I said, Dense Discovery arrived in my inbox today in the three minutes before we started our call. I skimmed down through it, especially the classifieds, because I just kind of wanted to test myself and in skimming through it, what jumps out at you is whatever is linked, it’s underlined, it’s blue instead of black, whatever. And so my hope is instead of people, I mean, I love our name. OMGIMG is weird and compelling and all caps, which is a little bit of a cheat. but the fact that we’ve linked grandma’s cookie recipe, my hope is somebody skims it and they’re like, what? Like what? What are they talking about? You know, what’s the brand in here? And then, yeah, to be honest

Michelle Frechette: It’s the unexpected.

Corey Maass 00:36:22 Right. And since we linked that, my hope is people go, no, they didn’t they didn’t really link to grandma’s cookie recipe. And then and then they come here. So.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:33 And because it’s its own, it it is its own URL. We can track, how many hits we get on this particular page. Correct?

Corey Maass 00:36:42 Exactly, exactly.

Michelle Frechette: Love it.

Corey Maass 00:36:44 And we. Yeah. And UTM tags. And, so I’m doing a little more typography.

Michelle Frechette 00:36:52 And we didn’t put it. We didn’t even put we didn’t even put in a coupon. So it’s not even offering them a deal. It’s just saying come buy this thing.

Corey Maass 00:37:00 Oh should we?

Michelle Frechette 00:37:02 No, we don’t have enough credit. We don’t have enough characters to do that.

Corey Maass 00:37:07 No no no. Sorry. Not yeah. Not within that. But on this page we should.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:11 You know, I don’t know our our cost is under $100. So I think it’s priced right already I do. And if people really want it and they want to ask for discount, they can or they can assume that, Black Friday will have a discount, which I’m sure we will. And, that then that gives them other opportunities. But I think just driving people to the site is a good way to do it. And grandma’s cookie recipes the best way.

Corey Maass 00:37:39 Yep.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:40 I love it. As a matter of fact, we should probably take that very text and put it in, put it out on socials and see what happens.

Corey Maass 00:37:50 Well, and and that’s what I’m thinking is like taking, image roulette now is going to so the other thing that we’re due. I’m, I’m frantically trying to get a major update out the door before next week before this goes out. If only because it’s a self-inflated, deadline, self self-inflicted? Self-created deadline.

Michelle Frechette 00:38:18 inflicted.

Corey Maass 00:38:19 Self-inflicted. There you go. and I’m. And I tweeted about today. I’m struggling with this stupid thing. And so I need to let. I need to. I need to just code it the wrong way. Like it’s I’m trying to code it the right way, but there’s gremlins and it’s really frustrating and it’s like I’m using.

Corey Maass 00:38:37 So with a batch, batch processing generate lots of images. I introduce background processing. And so this should be essentially batch background processing of just one image. So it should it all should just work the same. But for some reason it’s fighting me. So I need to go back to it. Just generally just saving the image on save kind of thing just to get the damn thing out the door. And then and then I can revisit the batch processing, the background processing stuff later. But but anyway, that all in a, in addition to that, like what I think we should start doing. Oh I know, so that update is the next big step towards the shift in the product with an emphasis on auto generation or, you know, quick, you create one template and then in many places you use that template to generate the image rather than jumping into the editor, which is the pattern right now. Because that’s the feedback that I’ve received from everybody who’s been using the plugin and looked at the plugin, they’re like, does it, you know, does it just do it for me? Because that’s all I want.

Corey Maass 00:39:52 I thought people would want to be more artistic about it. They don’t. And that’s totally fine. So I, I think next Tuesday maybe like we go and finally start working on a new home page that starts working towards changing the wording to push that new direction.

Michelle Frechette 00:40:15 Yeah. I like that, I think that’s really good. And and definitely, you know, we’ve talked a lot about having things above the fold in a more, appealing way. I mean, salesy kind of comes across like I wanted to sell more, but I don’t want it to be salesy. But it definitely needs to be more intriguing and it needs to be more engaging. And we’ve talked about that a lot. So I think that that’s it’s the good next step for sure.

Corey Maass 00:40:39 RIght. Yeah. And I think I mean and and I love like all all of this stuff at the moment feels a little like it’s coming together organically in that. Like you came up with the phrase image roulette. We came up with the concept of, posting and, and, and having to worry about and sharing on socials and then having to worry about what it looks like.

Corey Maass 00:41:03 And, and that’s well captured by the phrase image roulette. So I, I honestly see doing a next version where we push all that above the fold because I think it’s a unto itself. Those words are captivating. And.

Michelle Frechette 00:41:20 what do you mean by image roulette? Yeah.

Corey Maass00:41:23 Right.

Michelle Frechette 00:41:23 Yeah, exactly.

Corey Maass 00:41:26 So, so maybe next week we we jump on that record. I mean, regardless of whether the plugin is ready or not, but like, that’s something we something again, given that we’ve proven that we go back and forth well. Like let’s do that.

Michelle Frechette 00:41:41 Yeah. No I agree I think that’s a good a good way to direct our energies next week. 100% for sure.I’m even like still noodling on the, I don’t know why I said noodling. I had a boss that used to say that all the time, and suddenly it’s in my brain still thinking about. So whatever, bring on, the logo and and the fact that, like, OMGIMG is just text.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:08 It’s not just text, it’s more than text, but it’s text. It’s a text tool. The WP Wonder Woman is text. And there’s something intriguing about really good text logo too. So I’m still thinking.

Corey Maass 00:42:24 Glad to hear it.

Michelle Frechette 00:42:26 Sorry I got myself distracted.

Corey Maass 00:42:31 No, I know, like I do the same thing. It’s like. It’s because it’s. I love wiggling around in an idea I also love. Years ago, I worked at a startup, and we we were at the level where, like, we knew overall the problem we were trying to solve. But solutions were, you know, I mean, it was, they were.

Speaker 3 00:43:01 They were escaping us.

Corey Maass 00:43:02 So well and could be anything and could look like anything, you know?

Michelle Frechette 00:43:07 Yeah. For sure.

Corey Maass 00:43:07 And and that proved to be our downfall. But, in the meantime, it was fun. So we went into we had a room, we had, what do they call it? Anyway, it’s like, basically we we hung up whiteboards, almost floor to ceiling everywhere.

Corey Maass 00:43:24 the, the here’s, here’s a pro tip or life tip for people. At places like Home Depot they sell shower board that works just fine as dry erase board. It’s a little more stubborn to, like, erase it. but it’s like 16 bucks for a four by eight sheet. But if you try to go buy a dryer by a dry erase board, they’re going to charge you.

Michelle Frechette 00:43:55 Way more. Yeah

Corey Maass 00:43:56 300 dollars. Yeah. So there’s there’s a little pro tip for anybody who who likes whiteboards. But anyway, my point.

Michelle Frechette 00:44:03 I have no wall space.

Corey Maass 00:44:06 And I’ve been missing mine, although I, I got us a little one that usually lives on the the refrigerator downstairs. That’s like a what projects are being worked on. But once in a while I grab it and and draw pictures up here. but, when we were in that room. We quickly came up with a hand gesture. I don’t like a wavy type touch head or something kind of hand gesture to indicate not this, but something like this.

Corey Maass 00:44:35 Because we found like somebody would say, you know, oh well, we’re, you know, we’re trying to figure out how to get across a bridge. And somebody else would be like, you know, mayonnaise in a jar. And it’s like everybody immediately is like, well, here’s why that won’t work. And and they went, well, not that, but something like that, you know, and so to save the, you know, that and kind of in that spirit of, as you said earlier, the yes and kind of spirit. So it’s it’s acknowledging this is a bad idea, but but maybe there’s something there.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:07 But, but but dig a little deeper into my idea, and maybe you’ll be able to pull the kernel out for me kind of thing.

Corey Maass 00:45:12 Exactly. You know, and and I, I my favorite one of my favorite phrases that I think I invented is splashing around In. So, like splashing around in a concept, you know, because you’re kind of just I don’t, I don’t know yet, but it’s I’m trying to keep it alive kind of thing.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:31 Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Corey Maass 00:45:32 So.

Michelle Frechette 00:45:34 I do like that. I do the same.

Corey Maass 00:45:34 But I can, I can relate to your like there’s something here. This isn’t this isn’t it yet. But there’s something here

Michelle Frechette 00:45:41 Yeah. I was just thinking also like I just had to double check. I’m like, did I imagine a conversation about our 404 page, or did we actually implement text on it? And we did implement text on it on our 404page. So yeah, we could, we could put we could play around with grandma’s cookie recipe and internet cookies and we could put something about like a fake cookie statement on the 404 page about grandma’s cookie statement. I don’t know, just ideas. Maybe something to think about it. Go back to the homepage. Or maybe you want to make some cookies if you do. We got you covered there. I am literally just spitballing now, so.

Corey Maass 00:46:29 Just saying words. But again, some not this, but something like this, you know.

Michelle Frechette 00:46:33 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Very cool. If anybody I know we’ve got some people watching. So we have also oops, I’m clicking the wrong one. We also have been talking about IPAWP. So if you’re joining us a little bit late IPA WP is the Independent. Can we actually change it to product. Do you think we should change it?

Corey Maass00:46:52 Let’s do it.

Michelle Frechette 00:46:53 Yeah, let’s do it because it’s early enough on. So it’s going to be the Independent Product Alliance for WordPress products and IPAWP if you have, if you if, if you’re a bootstrap and scrappy kind of little plugin or product like we are, you’re our people and we would love to have you in that. We have 30 applications that we’re going to be weeding through as we get ready to actually launch this thing. And the whole idea is not to spend money, but to spend a little time that just marketing your product, but other products that are in the same spaces as we are the WordPress space.

Michelle Frechette 00:47:28 And doing that cooperatively in a way that will help us all grow without having to hit our pocketbooks or wallets or whatever the right word is that it is. So if you’re interested, if you’ve got a product, if you’re, thinking that sounds like a really cool idea, go to ipawp.com. There’s an interest form on there right now, I think unless you’re very at the very moment changing it, it might still say Independent Plugin Alliance.

Corey Maass: Refresh.

Michelle Frechette: We are going to refresh. It’s the Independent Product Alliance for WordPress now. So so you can go to ipawp.com for that. And again if you’re interested in OMGIMG it’s OMGIMG.co. and we would love to have your thoughts and inputs on all of the above. And if you’re looking for a way to never play image roulette again, OMGIMG is your product So shall we call it a few minutes early this week, or did you have anything else you wanted to add?

Corey Maass 00:48:26 No, that’s just fine. I yeah, I’m updating the site and I’m adding a temporary, text only logo.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:34 Okay, perfect.

Corey Maass 00:48:35 For now and then, yeah. If anybody has any ideas on for a logo because again, like, or, or anything. Like. IPA.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:46 This thing is still in its a grassroots form here. We haven’t really done much with it yet. It’s all we’ve iterated, a lot of it. We know what we’d like to do with it, but we are so open for ideas. It’s not even funny. So yeah. Sounds good. All right, we’ll see everybody next week when we’re going to work on the homepage and hopefully make it a little more intriguing and engaging.

Corey Maass: There we go.

Michelle Frechette: So we’ll see everybody then. Bye.

Corey Maass 00:49:14 Bye.

This article, Marketing a WordPress Product Live: Session 19, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Transcript ↓

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, Michelle Frechette talks with Nathan Ingram and Kathy Zant. They delve into the critical topic of online security, emphasizing the necessity of user education, particularly for WordPress users. Nathan from Solid WP and the Academy introduces Monster Secure, a new course designed to help agencies educate their clients on security best practices. Kathy, an online security expert, shares her experiences and stresses the importance of security education for overall business protection. The discussion highlights the challenges of online security, the evolving nature of cyber threats, and the need for proactive measures to safeguard digital assets.

Top Takeaways: * Security Awareness is Critical & Need for Vigilance: Effective security involves more than just technical measures; it requires continuous vigilance and education about potential threats. Kathy Zant and Nathan Ingram emphasize the importance of understanding and responding to security risks proactively. * Education and Empowering Users: Both Kathy and Nathan stress the significance of educating users and clients about security. They argue that security knowledge should be accessible to everyone, not just experts. * Security is for Everyone, Not Just Big Targets: Nathan explains that hackers don’t only target large, high-profile websites; they also exploit smaller, less-secure sites for resources. This underscores that security is a concern for everyone, regardless of the size or perceived importance of their website.

Mentioned In The Show:* Thomas Raef * WeWatchYourWebsite * Solid WP * Solid Academy * Monster Secure * Go Safely Online * LearnDash * Jack Kitterhing * YouTube

Sponsor: WordPress.comBuild and manage professional sites with secure managed hosting on WordPress.com. Beautiful themes, built-in SEO, and payment tools, and access to over 50,000 plugins. Everything you need for your business, plus 24/7 support from WordPress experts.

WordPress.com You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:* Nathan Ingram (Founder, MonsterSecure) * Kathy Zant (Founder, MonsterSecure) * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

TranscriptMichelle Frechette 00:00:01 Welcome to the post Happiness Hour. Kathy and Nathan, how are you today?

Nathan Ingram 00:00:08 Great.

Kathy Zant 00:00:09 Doing great. Is this my second? Am I, like your first guest that’s been here twice?

Michelle Frechette: You are my first two time guest. That’s right.

Kathy Zant: Damn I’m looking. I’m looking for those badges.

Nathan Ingram: Haha.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, and I had it playing for some reason. It, like, started running over on another browser, and I was like, hearing you double going. That is not good. So it’s been a day, folks. It’s been a day. But I am happy to be here with you in the Happiness Hour. So so welcome. It’s good to have you here. and I know I already asked you how you were doing, and then I couldn’t hear you because I just was hearing duplicate everything. So, Nathan, how are you today?

Nathan Ingram 00:00:49 I’m doing well, it’s been a day of odd issues, but I think everything is resolved, so, you know. All right.

Michelle Frechette 00:00:55 Even better. And, Kathy, you. How are you?

Kathy Zant 00:00:56 Yeah, I don’t know what it is this week, you know. Was it the full moon earlier this week? Because everyone I know is kind of going through a little bit of something and, you know, like, yeah, all of my like I had to buy new cables for things like cables. They don’t fail. Like how how is this a cable issue? But I had to buy a new cable to connect my computer to my monitor so that, and it, I tried this, like, weird thing, and it just didn’t work. Bubble gum and toothpicks don’t work anymore for cable replacement.

Michelle Frechette: Who knew? Who knew? I see all those, like five minute, those five minute crafts or five minute videos, whatever they call, like how to fix a broken cable. I’m like the Dollar Tree. A trip to the Dollar Tree is how I fix a broken cable. Now, granted that every cable is a dollar, however.

Nathan Ingram 00:01:45 But yeah. So I have on the other side of this wall a cable collection.

Nathan Ingram 00:01:50 It’s a cork board, and there’s every cable known to man there that I’ve collected over the years. I thought I had lost it in my move. Few years ago and I was devastated. But then I found it. It was in a box. It was buried. It was wonderful.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:04 Is it like a museum to cables or are they actually useful cables?

Nathan Ingram 00:02:07 Oh no. No, there’s well, I mean there’s some that I will probably never use, but I just can’t bring myself to part with, you know, like there’s a, there’s a like older geeks will appreciate that I have this old BNC cable from like, an ancient, high res monitor. Nobody’s use that connector in 20 years. Probably.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:29 I mean yea BNC, you just lost me with the terminology altogether, and I think I’m older than you, so.

Nathan Ingram 00:02:35 You look to Google it. It’s old.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:36 I know I will, I will, I promise.

Kathy Zant: So if there’s ever a cable apocalypse.

Nathan Ingram: I got is the one I got right here.

Michelle Frechette 00:02:44 I have a box of what I call spaghetti. I’m like, I wonder what that went to. But just in case, I better keep it in the box because it’s a security blanket. It’s like having your umbrella in a sunny day. It’s not going to rain as long as I’m carrying my umbrella. Right. So.

Kathy Zant: There you go.

Michelle Frechette: Speaking of security blankets, did you like that segway?

Kathy Zant: Nice.

Michelle Frechette: Not bad. Right?

Kathy Zant: Yeah.

Michelle Frechette: You both are much greater experts than I am on security. Nathan, you work with Solid WP and the Academy over there teaching people what to do that way. Kathy, you are like the the OG guru on security. Online security. I try not to. I stick my head in the sand and Kathy’s like, get your head out of the sand, Michelle. It’s time to pay attention. You have to pay your Social Security. Could be number, could be at risk. Over the last week, those kinds of things.

Nathan Ingram: Yeah.

Michelle Frechette: Could be right? So I gave a talk at a WordCamp Hamilton pre-pandemic.

Michelle Frechette 00:03:48 I love that that’s a phrase in our vernacular now, pre-pandemic. Right. On how to how to client proof your website. But also give them access to your website. Right. Like how you can do that. And it didn’t include like a lot of security security features that basically was like teach them this, that and the other. But then also remember that every time they make a mistake, you’re making money because you can charge them for that. I think, Nathan, I shared with you my little, meme that I had that was Bob Ross saying there are no accidents, just happy little opportunities to make money from your clients, that kind of thing.

Nathan Ingram 00:04:22 Love it, love it.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:25 But I think that what you all have here is much better than than what I could teach my my former customers, which was don’t touch anything, basically. Right. So we want to actually empower people to use their websites. They’ve paid for these websites. And a lot of people, especially the ones that don’t want to pay for ongoing maintenance and things like that, they need to be taught what what you can and cannot do safely within your own website.

Michelle Frechette 00:04:52 And so y’all have created a new course and things that do that. So I’m not going to try to put the words in your mouth. I did read the website, but I’m going to let you talk about I’ll let you tag team each other and decide who talks first. But tell us a little bit about what Monster Secure is and what it leads to. Because my first question was, I don’t want my customers to see that I think that they’re going to mess everything up. And you’re all like, we have an answer for that. So. So tell us a little bit about what Monster Secure is.

Kathy Zant: You want you want to go Nathan?

Nathan Ingram 00:05:27 Rock paper scissors. Yeah, yeah. well okay. So I’ll start just the the a quick history. So the beginnings of this for me started, several months ago when on a Solid Academy live stream, we had Thomas Raef from WeWatchYourWebsite. if you don’t know, Thomas, Thomas is a delightful human being who is brilliant. And his service monitors over 18 million WordPress sites and he is a data guy.

Nathan Ingram 00:05:56 So he’s aggregating all this data of how vulnerabilities are actually occurring. And he came out with a report earlier this year that we link to in a tiny little reference link on MonsterSecure.com. That said, it’s essentially two thirds of all WordPress vulnerabilities come from user related issues like stolen session cookies and compromised login credentials. And only a third come from theme and plugin vulnerabilities. And so as a person who’s been in an agency since 1995 working with clients, this was terrifying because, you know, we’ve spent hours and hours, you know, developing protocols and spent money on security plugins and all these things. And then one untrained user could blow up the whole thing because they click the phishing link in an email and now their credentials are, stolen and so forth. So what I came to realize after that live stream was WordPress security has to involve user education. We have to teach people how to stay safe. And that’s when Kathy and I. Kathy was also doing a live stream on Solid Academy. I’m like, hey, what do you think about this? And she’s like, I’m thinking about this already, so why don’t you take it from there?

Kathy Zant 00:07:10 And one of the things that I think is so important, you know, security impacts everyone. I mean, you’ve talked to family members who are just like, oh, well, this is my password for everything. I was sitting at a WordCamp once. I sat down next to someone and they were having some problem with the customizer, and I was trying to help them, and they gave me their password and said, oh, this is my password for everything. I’m like, don’t, don’t tell me that and don’t do that. And I was just like, oh my gosh, how do I even start helping this person?

Michelle Frechette: And let me guess, it was stuck on the password. One, two three.

Kathy Zant: No, it was like, you know, this same type of thing. It’s like the dog and a number, you know, that type of thing. It’s probably like their zip code and their dog.

Michelle Frechette: Gosh, nobody can crack that. Yeah.

Kathy Zant: Yeah. That’ll you know, that’s not in a database anywhere, right? But I just got stuck on that and I’m like, I want to help people so bad. But I’ve just seen so many things, you know, having dealt with so many security issues and cleaned so many hacked sites and then done the actual investigation on how those sites got hacked, and then, you know, all of the different conversations I’d have with people, I’m just like, I kind of my one of my missions is, is security through education, you know, because it’s not just about WordPress, it’s about the bank accounts. It’s about your home network. It’s about protecting all of your assets, not just WordPress. But I feel like WordPress is kind of this gateway because so many people do want to own their own property online, and so many agencies are helping people do that. So I wanted to make security, not this thing that, you know, the hackers are doing in Vegas, though they do. But I want to make it very accessible because it is now a requirement for all of us to really be aware that any kind of these cyber security events can affect each and every one of us.

Kathy Zant 00:08:55 And so I wanted to make it extremely accessible to anyone. So I was I’ve been working I’ve got one course that’s kind of like a WordPress security mini course that I had done. And Nathan’s idea of like going just like even a step easier than that. I’m like, sign me up, let’s do it. And and so working together with Nathan, he really helped me kind of get into the mindset of one of these users. Also, the mindset of the agency that’s dealing with these users and helping them to uplevel their security awareness so that they can have this understanding that the decisions that they make can have an impact on everyone. You know, they they might make one decision of like, oh, well, Jen’s just going to be posting this great blog post. He can choose to use my login and whatever, you know, and they don’t think about the ramifications of that seemingly innocuous decision that could really affect a website that an agency has has spent a lot of time and a lot of energy to make perfect for this client.

Kathy Zant 00:09:56 And then one small decision that seems so innocuous can take everything down and create headaches for the client, headaches for the agency, and no one really wants that. But until you have that education upfront that you know, the decisions you make like that do have an impact. They don’t know. They don’t know until it happens to them. I was working with one agency. They had all of the, you know, it’s the everybody puts the sites in the cPanel until they have all of the sites in the cPanel get hacked, and then they’re like, oh, maybe I should do that, right? But they don’t know until it happens or until they hear a story about a security event that affected someone else and then like, oh, okay, well, maybe I better do this. So, you know, if there’s a break in in your neighborhood and somebody loses everything or something gets important, gets stolen from your neighbor, then it’s like, well, maybe I should put a security camera up and have the alarm system activated instead of just sign in the front yard.

Kathy Zant 00:10:51 You know, they start making better decisions because they’re aware of what is happening. So we wanted to just bring that home and make it so simple and easy for agencies to help their customers understand the ramifications of their decisions, so that all they have to do is just make this part of their onboarding, make this part of their like annual education for their customers. So it was it was fun to put this together. And I’m excited what it’s going to be able to do.

Michelle Frechette: So that they should be proactive, not close the barn door after the horses got out kind of thing. Right?

Nathan Ingram 00:11:23 Yeah, exactly. And so the question is for agency owners. Okay. Yes, I understand I need to educate my users on security, but who has time for that? Like, right. There’s so much other stuff that we have to focus our attention on. And so what we decided to create was a course that in about 30 minutes, the average user could walk through, get the essentials of security.

Nathan Ingram 00:11:47 We’ll have some continuing education stuff added later, but the essentials to stay safe online. And through Monster Secure, an agency can go in and create a free agency account to view the course. And if they decide it’s something they want to integrate with their clients, they can upgrade into a plan, and then they can add all their clients into the course. They’ll be able to track their clients progress through the course and, you know, see who’s completed it and who hasn’t. People get a nice little certificate when they complete it. And our recommendation is, you know, you don’t let a client access the site until they’ve completed the security training. And this gives it kind of closes the loop on a really, you know, all the stuff that we do as an agency to have really good security practices. This closes the loop and helps us to educate users and keep them safe. To close that last little bit.

Michelle Frechette 00:12:41 That makes sense. So some of the things that you’re teaching there, are you teaching things like, security levels, like who should be an admin versus who should be an editor? Is that a part of it, or what are some of the topics that you cover?

Nathan Ingram 00:12:54 Yeah.

Nathan Ingram 00:12:55 Kathy, you want to talk about that?

Kathy Zant 00:12:56 Yeah, it’s been a while since I recorded it, I don’t remember. I do talk a little bit about, you know, what those types of roles are. But then also it’s really important if you are a client of an agency and you’re going to have like somebody, you just hired somebody new and you’re going to add them to the site, it’s really important that they communicate to the agency of like, okay, we have a new employee, they’re going to be doing this, or we have a contractor and they’re going to be doing this because you, you know, if an agency is in charge of security and they’re doing maintenance and things like that, and they come in and it’s like, you know, who the heck is this user? What’s this all about? And they’re not informed. So just understanding sort of that workflow, talk a lot about, you know, the security the security principle of least privilege, which is only give people access to the site for or anything for that matter, in order to do the job you’ve tasked them to do, you don’t give them access to everything, not sharing logins, those types of things.

Kathy Zant 00:13:52 But we also like how to set up twoFA, two factor authentication. There’s a lot of people out there. I think the last statistics I saw were about 30% of people are using two FA. It’s probably more now just because breaches and we used passwords and things are so much more. But the last time I saw was around 30% of people actually use two factor authentication. But I run into people all the time. They’re just like, they don’t understand what that acronym is. They, you know, well, my bank sends me a code via SMS, like, can’t you just do that? And they don’t understand the ramifications of how that is a problem. So understanding, you know, where we are right now with security is important. And then also, you know, really important to for agencies as new sort of exploits and new, hacker techniques of social engineering kind of come on. Like with the social care social security dump that happened or that happened like in April, but we heard about it for the first time last week.

Kathy Zant 00:14:49 Right now, we’re going to start seeing more sophisticated attacks where they’ve got more information about you when they’re socially engineering you. So it makes it sound even more realistic. And so people need to be aware that that is another tactic just because they know, you know, that you lived at 410 Franklin Street, you know, 30 years ago that. That just because they know that doesn’t mean that that that is a valid, legitimate person that is using that information. That information is now out in the open. So understanding sort of the security landscape and that education and that continuing education being available to clients, it it just makes the agencies job so much easier. And it’s such a critical part of WordPress security. And what a great way for an agency to differentiate themselves when they’re in the pitch process.

Michelle Frechette: Absolutely.

Kathy Zant: When you’re like, hey, this is a part of what we do because we think it’s really important. And this doesn’t just affect your WordPress site, this affects your entire business. So we’re here to help you.

Kathy Zant 00:15:54 You’re not just not to just think about WordPress security, but to think about the security of the entire asset of the business that you’re that we’re representing on the web. It’s such a differentiator for an agency to be able to provide that kind of expertise.

Nathan Ingram: Absolutely.

Michelle Frechette: Like you would have had you wouldn’t hand somebody the keys to your brick and mortar shop and not teach them how to use the locks. Right?

Nathan Ingram: Right.

Michelle Frechette: So why are you handing them the keys to the website without teaching them how to stay secure there? I’m going to, I’m going to bring it up on my screen and, we’ll talk a little bit about the site itself. So bear with me while I’m like multiple screens. I know, I love this guy. Hey, so the first thing I did. So, Nathan, you sent this to me a couple of weeks ago, and you’re like, hey, we can use this extra set of eyes like somebody that’s not in the weeds with it all the time. And I was like, so I reacted as though I was reading it for the first time because I was. And my first question to you was, I’m going to send this to my clients, and they’re going to see that I think they’re the weakest link. Wait, what? Exactly.

Nathan Ingram 00:16:59 No. So yeah. So this was something we thought about quite a bit because, you know, how in the world do you create a, a site that clients are going to see but still can speak to agencies. And so, you know, we’re talking about the problem that we’re facing. And so we actually have two sites. The site that speaks to agencies is what we’re looking at here, Monster Secure.com, which just explains this problem of, you know, the shared problem that we as agency owners have of how do we educate our clients. The course itself is on a separate website, which is Go Safely Online.com.

Michelle Frechette: All right.

Nathan Ingram: So when the client goes to Go Safely Online, it looks like a consumer oriented security course, which it is. But you know, there’s nothing there’s no agency focus, you know, client problematic type language on this site. So and the reason we did that was twofold.

Nathan Ingram 00:17:54 First, so we could speak to agencies directly on Monster Secure. But also you can purchase a one off of this course like a one, you know, if you just want access, you can buy it for $99. We don’t expect to sell any of those. but what this allows the agency to do is say, look, we believe in security, just like you. somebody said a minute ago, we we we believe in security. It’s a differentiator for us. And as a matter of fact, we’re going to give you and all of your employees a free $99 security course. So it lets you, as the agency owner, be the hero, and still provide great education to the client.

Michelle Frechette 00:18:32 And, I mean, there’s no reason you can’t include that, include that in the cost of that. You’re you’re charging your client anyway, right? Like, build it in to the total cost of everything. So it’s included. It doesn’t. They’re not charging them anything extra, so to speak?

Nathan Ingram 00:18:46 No. And the for the agency access pass. It’s a single it’s an annual cost that you can add as many clients as you want. So it’s something you could just roll into your standard onboarding and your standard website management package for all your clients.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:02 Yep. And this is what this is about. Why two websites? I like this. Honestly, we didn’t want to offend anyone. We don’t want to tell them they’re the weakest link and that we think they’re going to muck up their own website.

Nathan Ingram 00:19:12 Even though they are and they probably might.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:14 And they will. That’s right. Yeah. I think this is beautiful. I told you that when you sent it to me, I didn’t even know that you were working on this. What? Why? Nathan, when I start talking to you, do I suddenly say, y’all? I don’t know.

Nathan Ingram 00:19:28 Because it’s the best word ever.

Kathy Zant 00:19:29 It is.

Michelle Frechette: Seriously it just becomes part of my vernacular. .

Nathan Ingram 00:19:33 Got to get a little drawl in there. You got to give it a y’all.

Michelle Frechette 00:19:36 I’m. I’m a New Yorker. I mean, be happy. I’m just using the word at all. But this is awesome. you got your pricing on here. So you’ve got the unlimited access, the free agency access to give ideas to be able to give people a look through it and to see how it all works. I think this is wonderful.

Nathan Ingram 00:19:57 And I’m just realized I forgot to put our lifetime deal on this page, and I got to have to get that changed. We are offering a lifetime deal now with a discount. It’s a $397 lifetime deal until the end of September. Then it goes back up to $597. So there’s.

Michelle Frechette 00:20:14 You got to put it on there because.

Nathan Ingram 00:20:17 It’s on the other side. it’s in the upgrade path on on the Go Safely online site. Once you set up your free agency account. But I need to get it over here, too.

Michelle Frechette 00:20:25 Then people will know about it. Absolutely. I think that’s great. And I love the monster. We love the monster. Tell us about the monster.

Kathy Zant 00:20:32 Gotta love the monster. It kind of goes along with Monster Contracts? Right? Because you had Monster Contracts. And I’m. When we first started talking about this, I’m like this, you know if there’s just, like, something they could add into their contract that you have to take this course. So it just kind of felt like a natural fit with what Nathan was already doing. So.

Nathan Ingram 00:20:54 Yeah. And actually we just released the latest version of Monster Contracts yesterday, and it has, optional wording to have the Go Safely Online security course as a requirement. And by the way, that’s all all those resources are also there on the agency dashboard for Go Safely Online. There’s email templates to talk to your clients about this. There’s contract language. There’s a waiver. If a client decides they don’t want to do security training, they can sign a waiver acknowledging that they’re accepting risk and so forth. So all those agency tools are there as well. they’re on on ghost safely online once you upgrade, into the, the full membership.

Kathy Zant 00:21:34 So it’s not just a security course, it’s it’s really support for the entirety of dealing with customers. And security for an agency. And I love that part about it because there’s yeah, I mean, if you really wanted to go out and learn about WordPress security, there’s tons of resources available. Solid WP does tons of I mean, Nathan is a renowned expert in all that Solid offers, and there’s so much education over there. But this is really curated so that agencies can focus on what they do best. They don’t have to worry about all of this stuff. They can focus on building the best, highest conversion sites in the world for their clients and just slide this in there as another option.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, the statistics are kind of scary too, aren’t they? Like stolen session cookies, compromised login credentials, theme and plugin vulnerabilities. Yeah. There’s there’s, like, are you gonna follow this up with things like how to clean a hacked site when people don’t follow the, the rules that you created?

Nathan Ingram 00:22:38 I think on this product we’re going to stay in our lane. But I happen to know a great hack expert Kathy Zant..

Kathy Zant 00:22:45 Yeah, but even last a couple of weeks ago, I still was just like, you know, just get another server, get another DigitalOcean droplet, or go talk to Thomas like I’m not doing to do this one. You know, I still know where to send the ones that are going to be too much of a problem. So yeah, we just, you know, we can help. We can advise in many ways.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:06 Absolutely.

Nathan Ingram: These really are scary statistics though I yeah, I remember when when I had Thomas on and we were talking through this issue, I really I jumped in and I said Thomas my words were this is terrifying. Like I as an agency owner, I don’t know how to deal with this yet. We have to educate our users.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:23 Yes. And big agencies deal with this for sure. I would argue that even freelancers, agencies of one, as I used to be, this would have been phenomenal, right? For me, because I was a one person show trying to juggle everything and train my customers and teach them this and try to make sure they weren’t messing things up.

Michelle Frechette 00:23:43 And I mean, this is of course, before we had some of the security measures we have now. But, because I haven’t been freelancing in quite a few years now, but it was a scary thing back then. And then somebody would message you and like, why is my site down? And then you realize that they shared their password with five people or whatever it was, and or somebody uploaded some plugin that should not have been uploaded and on the site went down. And all of those things that can cause, I don’t know, do we still see the white screen of death or is that a thing of the past?

Nathan Ingram 00:24:12 But thankfully a thing of the past, unless something really, really bad is going on.

Michelle Frechette 00:24:18 But even when you see, like the the code across the top, that’s telling you that your plugins aren’t working on line 25 of whatever, you know? Those are those are not fun to see. Right. And so, being able to have a customer like I would have spent that for sure to have a customer go through that and learn a little bit, especially if they wanted to log into their own site and make changes themselves for sure.

Michelle Frechette 00:24:42 Absolutely. If people are interested, I have I have a banner and I spelled things right. So if you’re if you’re interested, you can go to Monster Secure.com, to learn more and to really deep dive and do all the Q&A and everything there. so what are some of the goals that you have for this? How are you? I mean, obviously you’re here. I feel very honored. I think we’re the first podcast you’re doing about Monster Secure. I hope that you get to do many more. But how do you get the word out? How are people learning about it? how are you hoping that people will learn more about what you’re doing?

Nathan Ingram 00:25:17 Yeah. Well, Michelle, I thought you were going to just take care of that, right? Yeah. I mean, you’re talking. That’s all we need.

Michelle Frechette 00:25:26 I do what I can, I, but I don’t have that many followers.

Nathan Ingram 00:25:30 Oh, yeah. So, the podcasts are a great way. And then, we have, we’re going to be reaching out to our existing clients by email and, social media, the normal channels.

Nathan Ingram 00:25:41 The one thing I would recommend to folks, if you see this and you’re interested, go there to Monitor Secure. Sign up for a free agency account. Watch the course. It’ll take you about 30 minutes. See if it’s a good fit for your clients. you can read exactly how it works on Monster Secure. It explains the whole process. Once you once you’ve created your free agency account, there’s a video tour of the whole Go Safely online system that you can look at. It’s a good fit. Just jump in and try it.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:09 Yeah, absolutely. So we have a couple of comments. I’m not sure if they’re both still here, but this was when we were talking about passwords. I thought this was funny. So run Adam run says my password is good. Maybe not, maybe not. And then, this person says they use this widgets for Elfsite, and I have no idea what that means. I don’t know if that means anything to y’all, but. Okay, so I’m not sure if it has anything to do with with WordPress even, but.

Kathy Zant: I know Adam I don’t know widgets for off site, but something to look at.

Michelle Frechette 00:26:41 There you go. We’ll take a look at that another week for sure. Now I’m super excited for you, and I really do hope that people start to get the word. I’m going to go take the course. I’m going to find time in the next two weeks to take the course. And if you’ll let me, I’ll write a review for y’all.

Nathan Ingram: Please!

Michelle Frechette: That you can use wherever you like. Yeah. so that I can at least give it some a time and attention and see what it looks like. And yeah, I, I would be happy.

Kathy Zant: Don’t we have Affiliate Program, Nathan? We were going to.

Nathan Ingram 00:27:08 Do do have an Affiliate Program

Kathy Zant 00:27:09 Michelle, you could be.

Michelle Frechette: I’ll be signing up. I will I be your first?

Nathan Ingram 00:27:18 No, actually.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:20 Man! Top five, first five?

Nathan Ingram 00:27:25 Probably.

Michelle Frechette: Just say yes.

Nathan Ingram: If you do it immediately when we stop recording.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:26 Just say yes, make me feel like. No, it’s okay.

Nathan Ingram 00:27:31 Michelle you will always be the top affiliate. Always.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:35 Oh, yeah. But thank you, I will absolutely check that out and sign up to be an affiliate for you anytime.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:43 Nathan, would you like to tell a story about how you got your wits scared out of you in Canada by the man sitting behind me?

Nathan Ingram 00:27:54 Oh, my gosh.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:55 He can’t hear you right now, but.

Nathan Ingram 00:27:57 Oh he can. Well, no, you have.

Michelle Frechette 00:27:58 You’re in my headphones. So that’s okay. He can watch the replay.

Nathan Ingram 00:27:59 I, I don’t know how this even started. We were having dinner, after, I think the second day of WordCamp Canada. And we were just the conversation went to practical jokes. And, your buddy there, over your shoulder has the best practical joke that I. And I’ve. I’ve since used it. My family hates him now. I’ve told the story. Every human in my family hates him now. But it’s this wonderful thing. Like when you’re backing up a car, you, if you have to time it just right, you, you bang your fist into your door and hit the brake at the same time, and it feels like you just hit somebody or backed it. And it is. It is brilliant and I love it.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:44 Are you and Cory Miller were sitting in the back seat? It was my car.

Nathan Ingram 00:28:50 Oh it was so great.

Michelle Frechette 00:28:51 Jeff was driving and we had told you all about it during dinner. We had already told you about it and we had literally half an hour earlier. We had been talking about it, but there was a lot of traffic in the parking lot. We were all kind of looking over our shoulders. See what he backs out. He does it and he got all three of us. All three of us thought he was the car next to us.

Nathan Ingram 00:29:13 It was so great.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:15 It was fun. It was fun. Don’t let that happen to your website. I just had to find a way to pull that back. Poor Kathy, almost spit out her water. But don’t let your website get into an accident for sure.

Nathan Ingram 00:29:31 Oh, it was, it was, and I’ve done it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pulled this since then. It’s just that was my biggest takeaway from WordCamp Canada. I’m not sure what that says about me, but yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:42 I don’t know. But it was a good camp. It was.

Nathan Ingram 00:29:44 It really was.

Michelle Frechette 00:29:48 Oh my goodness. So, Yeah. So what other things can we look forward to? Or what kinds of things would you like us to know? I don’t want to cut us off early if there’s more to talk about. But I’m super excited about what you guys are working on. Are there any other courses coming up that might even not be related to this? Things that you’d like people to know about?

Nathan Ingram 00:30:08 Kathy’s always working on stuff, right?

Michelle Frechette: She is.

Kathy Zant 00:30:10 Oh, my gosh, the list is so long of things that I’m always working on. Well, I kind of made this commitment. Well, just there’s so much experience and I’m just going to put this out there for Jack Kitterhing from LearnDash actually encouraged me. You have so much knowledge and so much experience.

Kathy Zant 00:30:29 Start sharing it, get your YouTube, just put everything that even inspires you a little bit on YouTube and, and create courses. And I think all of us that have kind of been around the WordPress space, there’s new people coming into WordPress all the time. New agencies with new clients, and there’s so much, you know, helping them get to where we are with less time because we have gone through like sort of the wringer of experience and, and to basically shortcut their experience so that they are empowered, so important. So I’m really committed to helping people just kind of feel empowered with WordPress as much as possible and sort of demystify like the big scary security stuff, because when you really get down to it, security is not that hard. It’s just making good decisions. It’s being aware and, yeah, just trying to make it as easy as possible because I think we’re at the stage right now with our digital lives where we it’s not there’s no luxury in saying, oh, well, I just I don’t need to know that or that’s for security experts or whatever.

Michelle Frechette 00:31:40 Yeah. Oh for sure. next week I’m going to put this up here right now real quick. Find my banners. So next week I have,Danielle Zarcaro and Isla Waite. I misspelled her name. Sorry. Isla. There’s an E on there. I was doing everything so fast today. Isla from WP Accessibility Today. I’m also on the WP Accessibility Day organizing team. And we’re going to be talking about accessibility and why we have a 24 hour event coming up for accessibility. All the things.

Kathy Zant: Wow.

Michelle Frechette: But it’s there are certain steps, like there’s extra steps you take when you do things for accessibility. Like when I post an image anywhere, I now type out a description of what the image is. So anybody using a screen reader can know what that image looks like. It’s extra time, extra steps. And when you first start doing that, it feels so overwhelming to have to do that for everything, but it becomes second nature after you do it for a while.

Michelle Frechette 00:32:39 I think it’s parallel to security. I think that security feels like a lot of extra steps. It feels like a lot to learn when you’re first, like working on a website first doing those things. But it’s become second nature once you get in the habit of doing that. And I think that what you’ve got here for, agency clients helps them think about the fact that that it isn’t like you said, it doesn’t have to be hard. It is extra steps. But when you leave your house, you take the time to lock your door. When you’re in a parking lot, you take the time to lock your car. Make sure that your belongings aren’t seen through the windows. Put them in the trunk. There’s extra steps that we take to protect ourselves and our belongings in the physical, physical world. So when we can put things in perspective and help people think about taking those extra steps in the digital world as well, it just makes sense, right?

Nathan Ingram 00:33:32 Absolutely.

Michelle Frechette 00:33:33 And if you’ve ever had your identity or a credit card or a debit card or anything compromised, you will understand at that point in time how important it was for that. You had started taking those steps prior to that event.

Kathy Zant: Yeah.

Nathan Zant: Absolutely.

Michelle Frecette: I woke up, I woke up, oh gosh, several months ago, actually. It was like two weeks before I was supposed to go to Asia. I do not have credit cards. I have a debit card. That’s all I use, right? If I don’t have the cash, I don’t spend it. I woke up to a notification from my bank that somebody had tried to use my credit card to rent one of those razor scooters in another city. Now, first of all, I’m a disabled woman. I’m not standing on a scooter anywhere. So it wasn’t me. and they didn’t actually charge anything, but they attempted it. Well, they didn’t they just guessing numbers. At this point, it wasn’t even an actual like nobody that I knew, but I had to go through the process of getting in touch with my bank, having a new card issued, having it expedited so I’d have it for my trip. All of those things.

Michelle Frechette 00:34:32 But I had those in place, right? I have all those security measures put in through my bank. I had the notification set up to my text messaging. If I hadn’t had all that in place to begin with, it could have been truly disastrous and I could have had lost money and lost time, and then ended up traveling without the way to pay for myself as I went around. So putting those in place to begin with it really, I mean, to to use one of those lesser, lesser, you know, intelligent words. It sucks when that kind of stuff happens, right? But yeah, having the, the they’re going to come knocking at the door, they’re gonna try to get in your front door. They’re gonna check, you know, check if your car handles are open to the parking lot. They’re going to try to get in your website too. So making sure that you have those security measures in place just makes sense.

Nathan Ingram 00:35:22 Absolutely.

Michelle Frechette 00:35:25 And you are doing your part to help people understand that which I love.

Kathy Zant 00:35:29 Yeah. So Yep. Definitely. It’s, it’s one of those things where it’s just. And it’s kind of like, you know, I mean, some of the stories that I’ve seen of like, because I’ll go, you know, hacker story, I’ll sit and read the whole thing. There was one, story about SIM swapping back like long time ago that when it first started, like, really happening and mostly happening in the sort of crypto space. And this guy got targeted and his phone didn’t work, and he’s going to sleep and he’s like, hey, I’ll deal with it in the morning. And he’d walk through the whole time frame of like, what happened when. And he basically woke up the next morning, $100,000 poorer after his Coinbase account was drained. But it was there were so many like signs that had he just like said, okay, this I need to investigate this now. If he had just taken the time to investigate it as it was happening, it would have stopped. What all of the crazy things that had happened to him.

Kathy Zant 00:36:30 And so it just requires a little curiosity and diligence and not, like, brushing it off and saying, oh, well, I’ll just deal with that later. This is the most important thing. It’s like when you see certain signs like being able to like say, okay, this could be my phone. Not connecting to the cellular tower is not good. I need to investigate that now, that type of thing. So.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, absolutely. So for the people who say, let’s say the customer, not the agencies because they understand, but the customers who say, I’m just a little website, you know, they’re going to go after the Amazons and the Etsy’s and the eBay’s of the world. Why do I have to worry? What’s your response to that?

Nathan Ingram 00:37:13 Yeah, I mean, it’d be great if that was the case. Yeah. Is it is it easier to, you know, if you were let’s just say you were going to rob a store, right? Is it easier to rob a little place on the corner with without a security system? Or is it easier to rob. You know, a big, department store in the middle of the city with all sorts of, you know, various layers of security? But the bottom line is they’re not after you.

Nathan Ingram 00:37:41 They’re just after your server resources. Right? And they don’t care who you are. And it’s not like they’re individually looking at you. They’re they’re with automated bots. They’re scanning millions of websites. So it’s not about you. It’s about your server. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette 00:37:59 So yeah. So you don’t have to be an Amazon of the world to get. As a matter of fact what I’ve heard often is the low hanging fruit are the easier sites to target because the target and Amazon of the world, if we will, are the ones that have much higher security. So they don’t even attempt at a lot of the times, they’ll would much rather hit ten smaller sites than to try to keep breaking into something like Fort Knox.

Nathan Ingram 00:38:23 And more and more of what security experts are seeing is they’re not the hackers are not directly attacking. Well they are. They continue to directly attack the website, but now they attack the user talking about low hanging fruit. You know, folks with low technical knowledge or a lower understanding of security, they attack a user and they get some, malicious software installed on that, that person’s computer, and now they’re harvesting passwords to everywhere.

Nathan Ingram 00:38:47 And I think we talked about this earlier in brief, but, you know, the course we’ve created. Yes, it’s going to protect the WordPress site, but it’s also going to protect your bank login, your Amazon login, all the things. It’s about practicing good security so that you can stay safe online. That’s why we call that site Go Safely Online because it it really improves the average user’s security awareness, across the board. Now the real test. Kathy, I haven’t told you this. The real test is that later tonight, I’m going to give my mother the login to the course, and we’ll see what happens. Because I can tell you right now If I wanted any of her passwords, I would simply go into her bedroom and open. She has an old sewing table that she has her computer on, and if you open that middle area, all of her passwords are right there, which, I mean, they’re they’re just all right there. And I’m sure a lot of folks have that same approach. That is not the kind of password manager we’re talking about.

Michelle Frechette 00:39:51 Yeah, it’s it’s interesting you say that. So, it’s not out yet. It’ll be out on Friday, but, Underrepresented In Tech with Samah and I recorded yesterday, the, the fact that underrepresented communities often experience cybercrime at a higher rate than represented community. So Black, BIPOC, over 75, under 25, and Indigenous communities lose more money and oftentimes are more open to attack and criminal cybercrime then, then your typical white people. So and women especially also are our easy prey. And so and Kathy’s like, yep, that sounds right.

Kathy Zant: My, my mother in law who’s now passed, but we visited her right afterward WordCamp Miami. Was it 2019, like the very last WordCamp Miami.

Michelle Frechette: Pre-pandemic?

Kathy Zant: Yeah. Pre-pandemic we went and visited her. She got and she we were in she was in like a little retirement community all kind of like little apartments, like condos. That. And we were talking to the woman who was sort of the manager of this little apartment complex, and she said, almost everyone in this complex has been scammed at one time or another.

Kathy Zant 00:41:10 It has happened to everyone. They’re just targeted. They’re less they’re more trusting of a phone call. They’re more trusting of, mail that comes to them just, you know, they. And the thing is, and what we noticed was once you got, once somebody gets scammed, it’s almost like there’s this list somewhere that they all just kind of share.

Michelle Frechette: This one’s easy.

Kathy Zant: Yes, exactly. I mean, it’s funny, but it’s kind of true. It’s like, oh, we got this one, you know, and these attacks on, there’s a video that I did recently about, this this company called Looked Lookout. Did they found one of these phishing kits that combined information from cellular phone calls, cellular SMS messages and phones, and email and all of this stuff, and then kind of profiled some of these people. And so they would send a text message to someone saying, you know, there’s this fraudulent attempt to buy something at Target, click here to decline. And they click there to decline. And it would start this entire process. It would send that would send a message to the hacker to call them. And then the hacker is speaking in perfect English and sound very professional, like they sound like they’re from the financial institution, and all of a sudden they’re handing over passwords over the phone and people are getting scammed that way. So it’s not just an email, it’s not just a text message. It’s now phone calls combined with emails. So it’s all together. And so you get one person who gets hit with all of these different things, and they’re corroborating the story of this initial text message. It doesn’t feel like a phishing attempt anymore. It feels like, oh my gosh, I am being defrauded. My bank accounts are at risk. I better work with this bank account representative and protect myself. But it’s so realistic of a scam. And it just happened to one of my college friends. I’m like, oh my gosh, it’s it’s happening to it’s happening a lot. So it’s really important for people to be vigilant and know what these sort of tactics are and being aware.

Kathy Zant 00:43:15 So this is where you go subscribe to my YouTube channel because as soon as I learn about them, I explain it to you.

Michelle Frechette: Absolutely. And that’s just Kathy Znt everywhere all the places. On YouTube just Kathy Zant on you.

Kathy Zant: Make it easy. I just feel sorry for the other Kathy Zant’s of the world. I know there are a couple.

Michelle Frechette: This is not incredibly related to your particular topic today, but as long as we’re on the topic of security, I follow a couple TikTok channels. You know, Kathy, it’s always going to come back to TikTok. If you and I are talking, I follow a couple TikTok channels that talk about their scamming the scammer channels. Right.

Kathy Zant: Yeah those people are funny.

Michelle Frechette: They have these banks of computers and they are pretending to be elderly. They are pretending and they’re on camera. You’re watching them as they are literally zeroing in on these call centers overseas. A lot of the times they’re in, you know, in, in a lot of them are in Asia, but they’re literally all over the world. And, they’ll pretend. And at the same time, they’re like, literally hacking back into their accounts like the other person and like taking, deleting all the records of all those people’s everything, and doing all that. So I made the mistake of just commenting on one of those videos, one of thousands of comments on a video. Since then, and this has been almost a year and I’m still at least once a week, I get messaged by accounts that look like that account that, that that put the video on, but I’m following that one. So if I’m getting messaged by something, I’m not following first clue. Right. But every single one of them says, oh, you experienced a hacker. We can help you clean that up. I’m like, first of all, that’s not what my comment was at all. My comment was like, way to go, go get them kind of thing. But I get at least one a week now. Saying contact us will help you get your money back.

Michelle Frechette 00:44:57 And I’m like, they are using scams to scam you now. Like they’re using the fixes to scam you. So you just the diligence has to be there to bring it back to WordPress. training your clients to use security the proper way and to make sure that they are logging out, that they have good passwords, like all of the things. Right? Is is just so important because you can’t be too vigilant when it comes to the security of your home or your digital home.

Kathy Zant: Yeah, it’s crazy that you mentioned that because there’s so many I don’t expect to get like scammed by me saying, oh wow, great video and a video on social. But sure enough, you know, I told you about the weird thing that happened to me last week because I watched the video and it’s like, oh, this was fun. Oh, hello. And then I’m trying to get, really funny phishing messages. But, you know, I’m a I’m a student. I should just, like, do that for fun, right?

Michelle Frechette: Well, and, you know, Keanu Reeves has followed me at least from seven different ones of his accounts.

Nathan Ingram00:45:59 Well. Why wouldn’t he?

Michelle Frechette 00:46:03 And the interesting thing to note is that man does not have social media. Like that is one of the biggest things we know about him is he just doesn’t do social right. Or if he does, it’s not a himself for sure. But yeah, seven different Keanu Reeves are calling me.

Kathy Zant: Wow.

Michelle Frechette: It’s always Keanu Reeves in a series of numbers afterwards, which is also, yeah, an indicator that it’s not real. But anyway. Yeah, I.

Kathy Zant 00:46:24 Just Keanu undercover.

Michelle Frechette: Ooo, maybe. You and I talked about scamming last week on WP Motivate. Where? I talked about the fact that Idris Elba. I must have put my finger up. My thumb up. I just Idris Elba wanted to marry me, but he wanted to make sure that I had enough money in my account to take care of myself so I wouldn’t have to rely on his millions of dollars. So I should give him access to my bank account so he could see that for himself.

Nathan Ingram: Clearly.

Michelle Frechette 00:46:53 Okay. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Of course I did it. No block, but yes, exactly. So for anybody watching go to Monster Secure.com to learn more about this product and to Go Safely Online that you can share with your customers. And just to bring it up one more time, next look, I, I actually corrected her spelling. Next week’s guests are Danielle Zarcaro and Isla Waite from the Accessibility Day where we’re going to talk about the upcoming Accessibility Day, which is a 24 hour event beginning October 9th. And you can go to WP 2024 WP Accessibility day.com to learn about that. but I wanted to thank you both for taking some time to be here today. Any last words? Anything before we log off for the day?

Nathan Ingram 00:47:43 Thank you. Michelle, this is always fun. I always enjoy talking to you. And I appreciate you letting us talk about WordPress security.

Kathy Zant: Likewise.

Michelle Frechette 00:47:49 Yeah. My pleasure. Anything, Kathy. From you? I talk to you all the time

Kathy Zant 00:47:56 Great to be here. Yeah know. Two of my favorite people in the whole wide world. And I hope we’re going to see each other in Portland at WordCamp Us.

Nathan Ingram 00:48:05 Yay Portland. Yeah, just a few weeks coming up.

Michelle Frechette 00:48:08 I’m looking forward to it. Very good. Well, thank you both for being here. I appreciate you so much. and we’ll see everybody back here next week on the Post Status Happiness Hour Live. Thank you.

This article, Post Status Happiness Hour Session Six, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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New FTC Rule Targets Deceptive Reviews The US Federal Trade Commission announced a final rule prohibiting the sale, purchase, and creation of fake reviews and testimonials. * The rule allows the FTC to seek civil penalties against violators, which should strength enforcement capabilities. * Some of the specific shady practices now prohibited are: + AI-generated fake reviews. + Buying or incentivizing reviews (both positive and negative). + Misrepresenting independent review websites controlled by a business as unbiased sources. + Review suppression through threats, intimidation, or false public accusations. + Selling or buying fake social media indicators, like bot-generated followers. * Reviewers must clearly disclose material connections when writing reviews or testimonials. * Do these new rules affect your agency or your clients? Will you educate clients it affects to help protect them from penalties and fines? * Read the release from the FTC* and consider how you may need to respond.

Google Rolls Out the August 2024 Core Update and Provide Guidance for Users The search giant continues to make core changes that aim to boost high-quality content and demote SEO-focused material. * They clarified this update is to “improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.” * Google also reaffirmed their commitment to showcasing high-quality content from diverse sources, including smaller, independent websites. * Coupled with this release, Google Search Central released a support document to help users react (and not react) to core updates. * They claim most website owners don’t need to worry about core updates and probably will never even realize one has happened. * Google clarified that, “Core updates are designed to ensure that overall, we’re delivering on our mission to present helpful and reliable results for searchers.” * The support doc offers suggestions about what to do if your site suddenly drops in rankings (especially if they drop significantly). * The three main suggestions are: + Avoid doing “quick fix” changes. + Consider how you can improve your content in meaningful ways. + Deleting content is a last resort. * The Search Engine Journal highlights the main changes in the August update in their recent article.*

Can the New Offline Mode for WordPress Plugin Replace Your Local Dev Environment? TLDR; – No, but it is outstanding at what it does well. * WordPress Playground now supports offline mode and can be installed as a Progressive Web App (PWA). * Now you can explore and experiment with WordPress without needing an active internet connection. * When you first visit playground.wordpress.net, your browser automatically caches all the necessary files to use Playground. * From that point, you can access Playground even in areas without internet access or while flying. * For an enhanced experience, you can also install Playground on your device as a Progressive Web App (PWA). * There are some limitations in offline mode regarding PHP versions, browser compatibility, and a few other minor features. * I’ve found Playground to be a great tool for experimentation and giving demos, but it’s not a substitute for a true local development tool. * The real deal-breaker for my agency using it for local development is that standard backup plugins will not work in Playground. * Get all the details on the Make WordPress blog* and give Playground a spin offline.

Worth a Look Has Gutenberg won you over? WPShout did a study of where people are in their adoption of the block editor. The results may surprise you. * WordPress is amping up their presence on Youtube and announced that Jamie Marsland has joined Automattic as the manager of the Youtube channel. * Michelle Frechette and Corey Maass are working on an Independent Product Alliance (IPA). It’s a directory of craft WordPress plugins and products with a focus on co-promoting and cooperative marketing. Find more about it and/or get involved. * Learn WordPress got a redesign that was over a year in the making. More changes are planned for the near future, including courses in multiple languages and new learning paths. * “Security through obscurity” is not a reliable defense from hackers. Learn why over at The Admin Bar.*

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending August 23, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Transcript ↓

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, Michelle Frechette sits down with Doc, a professional yo-yoer and creator of engaging content around the Fediverse. They delve into the evolution of social media platforms, exploring how different channels like Twitter, TikTok, and Mastodon offer unique ways to connect with various audiences. Doc shares insights on integrating WordPress with the Fediverse and discusses his work with Automatic, including the quirky and creative content he produces. They also touch on the importance of local community engagement and the future of social media platforms. Tune in to learn about the latest in WordPress, social media trends, and how to embrace the diverse digital landscape.

Top Takeaways: * Evolving Social Media Landscape: Social media platforms continually evolve, with newer platforms like TikTok and Mastodon offering different ways to connect and engage compared to older ones like Facebook and Twitter. * Importance of Platform Diversity: Using a variety of social media platforms can help reach different audiences and fulfill different purposes. Doc Pop highlights the benefits of embracing both mainstream and niche platforms to connect with specific communities. * Fediverse Integration: Connecting WordPress sites to the Fediverse through plugins like Activity Pub can enhance visibility and engagement within decentralized social networks, allowing content to reach broader, niche audiences. * Creative Content Production: Doc Pop discusses the value of producing creative and engaging content, such as hand-drawn animations and cheesy puns, to make technical topics more accessible and enjoyable. * Community Building and Local Engagement: Building and participating in local communities, whether through small events or local meetups, can be rewarding and impactful. Doc emphasizes the importance of fostering these connections in both the WordPress and yo-yo communities.

Mentioned In The Show:* Torque Magazine * Doc Popular * Facebook * X * TikTok * Mastodon * Threads * Activity Pub * Buddy Press * Fediverse * Reddit * Automattic * The Verge * Doc Popular About Page * Fediverse * The Fediverse Files

Sponsor: A2 HostingA2Hosting offers solutions for WordPress and WooCommerce that are both blazing fast and ultra-reliable. WordPress can be easily deployed on ANY web hosting plan from A2: Shared, VPS, or Dedicated. A2 also offers Managed WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting. Take a look at a2hosting.com today!

A2 Hosting You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:* Doctor Popular * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

Transcript[00:00:02] Michelle Frechette: Welcome to the happiness hour. How are you, doc?

[00:00:05] Doc: I’m doing great, Michelle. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:08] Michelle Frechette: Thanks for joining me. It feels like a little bit of a role reversal, if I’m being honest.

[00:00:13] Doc: Yeah, absolutely. It’s on the other side of the screen. Yes. Yes. I’m excited to be a guest on your show. And I love your background, by the way. I always compliment your setup, but today this is. This is so far beyond what it was before. I feel like this is great. I love that.

[00:00:32] Michelle Frechette: This is my home office. And since I only work from home now, I needed to. I needed to make it feel like, you know, comfortable. So I got my, my photography, I’ve got my dad’s guitars and instruments. I’ve got my speaker jersey from Phoenix last year. I got my coworker of the day, Jeff.

[00:00:50] Doc: Hi, Jeff.

[00:00:51] Michelle Frechette: Wave, Jeff. Yeah. So this is, this is my spare. Well, it would be the spare bedroom if it wasn’t my home office.

[00:00:59] Doc: Yes. It’s great. I love it.

[00:01:00] Michelle Frechette: Thank you. Thanks. I enjoy being in here myself. So what you can’t see is everything piled on the desk in front of me. I just make sure it’s really clear behind me.

[00:01:10] Doc: Yo yos, a sponge. This thing

[00:01:13] Michelle Frechette: We have, well, I mean, those are all important things. If anybody watches you on TikTok and all of the other places, they will recognize all of those items for sure. So it’s hard to believe there are people who don’t know who you are. But if you would take a moment and just introduce yourself in case there is somebody who’s never heard of Doc before.

[00:01:35] Doc: My name is Doc. I have a long history as a musician and professional Yo-Yoer and comic book artist. The past ten years I was working for Torque Magazine, which covers WordPress news. I was working for WP Engine covering that. And I was doing a series of live streams near the end as well as like, I think I ran the Press This Podcast for four years. It was a very fun journey that ended in March of this year after. After just shy of 10 years. Like nine. Nine years, eleven months. No one cares. And currently I’m making a series of videos about the fediverse for Automattic and WordPress.com. but I am still a freelancer. I’m not an Automattician.

[00:02:20] Michelle Frechette: Very good. And I missed having you run the Torque Social Hour on Wednesdays. And so before we started setting up this happiness hour, in case anybody’s curious, I did reach out to you and make sure that you didn’t feel like I was stepping on your toes or usurping any of your previous space, but it felt like there was a gap that needed to be filled where you had left a pretty big footprint. And hopefully I do it a little bit of justice in starting to pull the people, people out and talk to people in WordPress about the things that are going on for them. So thank you for your kindness in supporting me in this. I appreciate it.

[00:02:56] Doc: Well, I want to say thanks for this, not just for replacing the Torque Social Hour, but also we lost the WP Water Cooler recently, and I think there’s a lot of room for what you’re doing and kind of a lack of news this past year in particular, lack of news and coverage and, you know, plus community building like this. So it’s really cool that you’re doing this.

[00:03:20] Michelle Frechette: Well, thank you. And it’s really nice to have you here. It feels like if I could, it’s gonna sound so silly, but it’s almost like a little fangirl moment, like when I can have you on my show as opposed to having been invited on yours all of these years. So thank you again for being here. I appreciate it. And I reached out to you and very early on and said, I’d love to have you on the show. And you’re like, yeah, we could do something, whatever. And then I was like, hey, can we talk about the fediverse? Because I started to see your videos that are for Automattic. And WordPress.com, especially on TikTok, was the first place I saw them, I believe. But then I’ve seen them in other places as well and on WordPress.coms blog also. So I have been intrigued about the fediverse. I guess it’s my show. I can say that Twitter has turned into this giant shit show over the last few years, right? It’s very much owned by one person who who rules it with an iron fist. And although I am still very, very active there, because that’s where a lot of my interaction happens, I have joined Mastodon, I am on Threads, and I’ve had people challenging me. Like, I don’t see you on there very much. And so now I’m trying to cross post all the things so that I can help people in different areas, especially with, like, my Wednesday tweets, the job threads that I put out there. People are like, hey, can you do that in, like, LinkedIn? I’m like, I can’t do a whole thread like that because I don’t have the time. So I found this thing called Unroll Me, which gives you a link that has the list of all the things. And so I’m able now to share those across multiple platforms to help people, but that’s only because they exist. But I’ll tell you, when I first tried to join Mastodon, it was confusing as hell because I had no idea. Like, you joined Twitter, you just joined Twitter. You’re sitting on somebody’s server. You don’t know it’s owned by Twitter, right, or X or whatever. But with Mastodon, you have to find a server. You have to hope they don’t close their server down. I did lose my server and have to migrate to someplace else, which was not. Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought, but it wasn’t easy either. Right. So, like, there’s just things that go on with that. And so for me, who’s using it but not understanding exactly how it works, I did watch your seven minute video this morning. So a little bit better idea. The first video on WordPress.com that you have out there, I think there was some ukulele playing or something.

[00:05:45] Doc: Oh, yeah, there’s everything in there. It’s like a schoolhouse rocks of the fediverse.

[00:05:50] Michelle Frechette: I also want to know who was throwing the paper wads at you, but tell us about that later. But tell us a little bit about the fediverse. Why is it interesting to you? Tell us about the project that you’re working on. We’d love to hear.

[00:06:02] Doc: Sure. So the fediverse is a series of apps that are connected through a shared protocol. And the most common fediverse is powered by Activity Pub. So some people say the fediverse is a capital or proper noun, right? You know, capital f, fediverse. And it is Activity Pub. And other people say, no, anything that’s kind of using this system. So, like, eventually Blue Sky will have things kind of connected to it and eventually other, you know, Noster and things like that. So there will, I think, be multiple fediverses, and then they’ll have little bridges that connect them. But at its core, it’s just this idea that you have this one protocol that everyone says, okay, we’re going to use this thing and everything’s built on top of it. Now, what that allows us to do is create a social network that you can follow people on other social networks. You don’t have to just be limited to Instagram. It’s sort of like as if you could be on Instagram by choice, but follow people on YouTube and leave a comment on YouTube from your Instagram account. That’s kind of the dream and exactly what you’re talking about. Uh, the idea of, like, oh, man, I’ve got, I’ve got my X, I’ve got threads. I’ve got Blue Sky. I’ve got, uh, probably LinkedIn. You’re probably sharing stuff on. I’m just guessing. Like, there’s.

[00:07:18] Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

[00:07:18] Doc: And then Mastodon on top of that. And that’s not fun to have to go in and copy paste. And it’s never just as easy as copy pasting, right. It’s always this thing of, like, uh, you have to get it right and maybe even speak a lingo a little bit or whatever.

[00:07:30] Michelle Frechette: And like how many characters each one are you allowed? And all of those things. Yeah.

[00:07:35] Doc: So the idea with the fediverse is that you won’t have to do that. That you can pick the one that you want. And if it’s federated, I can pick the one that I want and I can follow you and other people can follow you and comment and like. And it’s not just like, it’s. It is very similar to RSS because I think a lot of people watching this probably are familiar with RSS, where, you know, the people are kind of hosting their sites, and anytime they write a blog post, it updates their RSS. And if you have an RSS reader, you get notified. You don’t have to come and check their site and log into their site and all the time. But the difference with, with Activity Pub and RSS is RSS was one way. So if you had a RSS reader and you were kind of subscribing to all your favorite blogs, you still had to go to that blog to leave a comment or, you know, create an account on there to, you know, like it or whatever. But what’s happening now is, is that we have this, this thing, this Activity Pubs, very similar to a two way RSS. And the, the sign up, like you said, for the moment, is pretty tough. You know, you were saying the first thing you had to do on, on Mastodon is pick a server. But it’s, it’s kind of funny. I think that’ll get smoothed over. But it is kind of funny because if someone came to you and said, I want a WordPress site, you’d have just the same amount of difficulty. You know, there’s, there’s, there’s WordPress. Okay, cool. You’ve picked that up. But, you know, you got to pick out your server, you got to pick out your host or whatever, right? Like, and there’s also, like. And, you know, this, that, that sort of thing, the same onboarding stuff. I think in the fediverse that a lot of open source projects in particular WordPress, have so very similar. How do we. Because you don’t want to be like, making a video saying, okay, if you want to join WordPress, if you want a WordPress site, then here’s the place. You feel weird driving traffic to a company. You kind of want to leave it very ambiguous. And that’s what we’re having in the fediverse is I use Mastodon social. It’s kind of like one of the big ones. But in my videos, even I’m like, reluctant to tell you, like, the easiest thing is to go and sign up for this one thing because we do want everybody distributed. We don’t want one person to win. So we’re going through the same conflicts that you’ve heard in the WordPress space for many years in terms of like, how do we, how do we make this easier to get people just to, they say they want to do this thing. What’s the one click to get it in? And there’s always these little tiny hurdles, but in the end we have a more open system.

[00:09:50] Michelle Frechette: It reminds me a little bit of like, when people were like, oh, cloud computing. Like, cloud is great. It’s in the cloud. And like, like the undertone was the cloud is other people’s computers. Like, it’s not really like in the sky somewhere, right? And like, my mom, who’s older, is like, what do you mean? It’s other people’s computers? Well, it’s not just in the ether, mom. The ether is not what is, like, what you think it is. Right? So that kind of thing. The same is true here. And like you said, like finding the server that you want to be. Perhaps the hurdle is we don’t think about social media that way, right? And so let’s say Mastodon, for example, and Threads, it’s still somebody’s computer somewhere, right? But you have to choose which one. For Mastodon especially, you have to choose which one you want to be involved with. And so with Twitter, with Facebook, with Instagram, I don’t have to do that. I just created a create account and it’s there. So there was that little, like, mental hurdle of, yes, it’s still social, but there’s a little more involved in setting it up so that you actually do have this freedom. But also because it’s other people’s servers, there’s also can be a cost involved with it. Right? So, like, if I’m on social as well, I was on somebody else’s, and it was starting to cost them too much money to run that, which is why instead of asking people to donate to keep their server space running, they decided to close it down and have us move someplace else, which is fine. That’s their prerogative. No ill feelings at all. Moments of panic when I was trying to figure out how to make it work. Anamika Bovalette, she got on a. Bless her, she got on a Zoom with me and walked me through the process of how to move from one server to the other, because for whatever reason, I was just not getting it or just overwhelmed with the idea. So there is a little bit more involved in setting it up, but once you set it up, it’s the same as posting any place else, which I think is true. The benefits outweigh the, like, the somebody owning all of your data kind of thing, right? So we know. I guess it’s possible you could get kicked off. So somebody, if you’re saying things that go against your server owners, whatever, there are rules about, they can set up rules about those things, but also, different servers are set up almost like neighborhoods in a way. So there can be. There can be similarities in the people who are. Maybe similarity is not the right word, but you explain it, because I’m not. I’m struggling right now to explain it, but I know that, for example, I know David Wolfpaws on a server that is really LGBTQ oriented, and so that’s like, his neighborhood.

[00:12:33] Doc: There’s. So I’m on kind of a. Just a vanilla Mastodon server that happened to be created by the founder of, like, Mastodon. And I picked it so that I could get kind of like, the bleeding edge updates that they might roll out. You know, they’re going to roll things out there first. I guess it’s sort of maybe the equivalent of being on, like, WordPress.com or something like that. It’s sort of like a version of that that you could be on. And then there’s. There’s other. I think communities is a way to put it, but other servers, and each of them has their own rules. And David Wolfpaw is on, I think, Tech LGBT. No, I can’t remember the. The server, but it’s, you know, it’s a Tech LGBTQ server, and they’re, you know, the advantages of doing something like that, like joining a server like that, might be if you’ve had a lot of harassment in the past and maybe you want to have a community that’s not just about the community, that not just your neighbors on the server, but also that your moderators are kind of like really doing a good job. And moderation in the fediverse comes down to the moderators because if you have this thing where anybody can set up a server and kind of send spam or hate or whatever, the way that we fix this is very similar to how we fix it in email, right? My email can’t edit someone else’s email. You know, Google can’t go in and change the text of an email, but what they can do is they can say, hey, you’ve been flagged as spam or a scam or phishing or hate or whatever. So we’re just going to block you. And if a server is doing too much, if that person just kind of joins another, creates another account on the same email server, then Google might just block that whole server. So that’s what the server kind of community does is their moderators are going to be listening to reports and if they get a lot, they’ll be like, hey, we’re seeing that this one specific server hate.mammoth or something is just set up just a troll. We’re just going to block them. And we’re also going to publish this suggestion to this list that we’re on so that other communities don’t have to, they can see our suggestion, they can take it or not. It’s not like you, the user is going to have to go through this. But the moderators do, which is a lot of work, bless the moderators for all their work. It’s kind of like, again, going back to WordPress, it’s like the people who review, you know, code code submissions or review plugins or stuff like that. Like the volunteers there, it’s very similar to that. Yeah. And then, you know, like you said, they have vibes and you can opt to see the people on your server, which is kind of different than like how X or Threads works. It would be sort of similar to like a list, you know, if you had like a list of friends that were interested in WordPress and a list of friends that were interested in, you know, something else. Right, like cats. But it’s like a whole server dedicated to that. But that doesn’t mean you’re, you’re limited to just seeing cat post or posting about cats. You know, for the most part, you could just be on any server that you like because you like their policies or whatever, because it’s a friends, you know, server and you could just post to the rest of the fediverse and you’re just a first class citizen of the whole fediverse. You’re not just on, on that thing. But that was verbia. Hopefully that worked.

[00:15:36] Michelle Frechette: It kinda, correct me if I’m wrong, but in my head it’s kind of reminding me of Reddit, how there are subreddits and you could join different subreddits, but you could also look at them without joining the subreddit because I love Reddit. So I’m all over there all the time and each subreddit has its own set of rules and moderators within that subreddit that you misbehave. They can kick you out of that, but it hasn’t removed you from Reddit altogether. Is that similar?

[00:16:01] Doc: That’s a great analogy. That’s probably better than saying it’s discord because you do have to join a discord server where if you’re looking at other people’s Mastodon servers, it’s just a website and you just go and you just see the community there and stuff like that. Some people might have their settings to private, which makes sense, but for the most part you can just visit and you don’t ever have to actually join and create a second account like you do on Discord. So I think Reddit comparison is a great analogy. The one difference is if, if Reddit shut down, all those communities are gone. If Mammoth shut down, all those communities are still there and they, you know, it’s an open source thing. They could spin it up a different way or whatever. But there’s no, there’s no one person at the top that could flip off a switch and kill all those communities overnight. And there, there is actually, you know, the, the fediverse, we talk about it like it’s very easy to think of the fediverse as Mastodon. It’s the way that a lot of us, this way that, you know, you and I got into it and tried experimenting. It’s our first kind of experience with it. But there are UH, YouTube, uh, Clones or YouTube versions that are on the fediverse and they’re peer to peer hosted. So uh, the files are being hosted by people who are watching the files and the comments and interactions are all done through Activity Pub. So it’s federated and I can follow them from Mastedon, I can follow the peer tube. And similarly there’s a whole Reddit, it’s called Lemmy. And you know, it’s probably always insulting to say, you know, this is, this is the YouTube for the fediverse and this is the, the Reddit for the fediverse. And this is the Instagram for the fediverse. But like, just to kind of help give an idea, there is an online community called Lemmy that is set up with the same exact structure as Reddit has. So you have forms, you create one account, but you join forums within your account and you can join the Morrowind or this or whatever, but it’s all hosted on decentralized servers. Again, there’s not one switch that gets flipped off and they’re doing surprisingly well. I’m not an active Reddit user, so I can’t really compare the two. I haven’t like jumped on board with Lemmy, but I’ve gone on to like, there’s a WordPress page on, let me, like a, you know, r WordPress for Reddit, there’s one for Lemmy. And it’s very active. Like it’s a, it’s, you know, there’s, there’s certain communities, I guess obviously an open source community to like WordPress is going to be a little more active on something, you know, like that for, for the fediverse.

[00:18:24] Michelle Frechette: How does one spell, let me, because I want to investigate it later.

[00:18:27] Doc: L e m m y.

[00:18:29] Michelle Frechette: Thank you. Yeah, check that out later for sure. What’s interesting to me, so I was, I’m older, and so I remember when the Internet was first coming to the general public, right? I know it existed a long time ago in different various formats, but back in 1993, I believe, I was working at a college where we first got the internet. And I remember them saying, oh, you have the internet now. And I remember thinking, what do I do with it? Right? So, like, I remember going, I was like, I don’t even know what to look for because I mean, clearly in the early days, everybody didn’t have a website, but I live in Rochester, New York, so I was like, I wonder if Kodak has one. So I typed in Kodak.com and sure enough, Kodak had a website.

So I remember looking through it and I was on a tiny little Mac, like one of those ones where you had to put the disks underneath. Like it was like this biggest screen, right? Tiny little thing. And I was, and I was like checking it out and I hit the back button and realized that the link color had changed. So where all the links were purple on black to begin with. Now that link was yellow or vice versa. And I was like, oh, they know where I’ve been, right? So like, that was the whole idea of like, they’re watching us, big brother’s watching us kind of thing. But the idea that the internet would just live on a computer at that point in time. But now it’s apps, it’s discord, it’s all of the things that we can do because the web exists, not just these websites that we visit. So like for example, we’re streaming on the web right now through something called Streamyard. I could have Zoom on my phone, right? Like it’s not just all in just one place. So I think the fediverse allows us to think about that in more ways than we could have, you know, 30 something years ago when I first discovered that links changed colors when you changed pages kind of thing. For sure, it is all very fascinating. And for somebody who doesn’t code at all, like me, it’s still a little like out there, as far as I understand that it works. I don’t always have to understand how things work to know that they work, but it’s super, super interesting. Now you are doing a series of videos for Automattic about the fediverse. I discovered the first one. Are there more that are already out? I think there’s maybe three or four that are out, right?

[00:20:50] Doc: There will be five in the first series and we’ll see, you know, hopefully there’s more series in the future. Uh, and the first three are out. The one with, um. Yeah, so the very first one is, what is the fediverse? It’s like, uh, hopefully an explainer for, for anyone, no matter how non technical they are. It’s just, uh, hopefully going to be helping them get on it. And then the second one is an interview with the co-creator of Activity Pub. And just hearing him talk about things like, he uses this analogy of like back in the, back in the day when you had a phone number, you couldn’t move it around from carrier to carrier, right? So you were kind of locked in. And then what the US government had to do in that particular case was open it up where you were allowed to move your phone around and saying kind of, that’s the sort of thing that we want to have with user accounts, right? Where you could move your account around and not even just your account, but also keep all your likes and history and post and even the followers if I move to a different server. So that’s, that’s a fun conversation that’s out there. And then the third episode is an interview with Bart DeCram, who’s building apps on the fediverse. He’s building an iOS app called Mammoth. And if you’re hearing this conversation and if you’re like I tried signing up for Mastodon. It was a pain in pain in the butt. Mammoth is definitely the best user onboarding experience, and they even have their own server, which you can opt, you know, to choose, but you’ll have this. It takes away a lot of that scary, like, what’s happening here kind of thing. So it’s really fun talking to him because he’s a really, he’s a really passionate guy. You just kind of talk to him and for the next week you’re kind of like, yeah, open source, open protocol.You’re just like excited about stuff.

[00:22:26] Michelle Frechette: So in that first video, I think it was almost seven minutes, if I remember correctly. So I watched the whole thing. I actually watched it at the regular speed. I often watch things at like one and a half speeds so that I can hear them faster, but I was like, I don’t want to miss anything. So I watched it at the actual speed.And you did talk about this on the screen. You did talk about Activity Pub and how it relates to WordPress because it’s actually a plugin in the WordPress repo that you can do. So if I have activity pub on my website, what does that do for me?

[00:22:56] Doc: So if you have the Activity Pub for WordPress plugin, you can write a post and obviously have it enabled set up. You can write a post and your post is now a first class citizen of the fediverse. And that’s the way Mateus Feverley puts it. He’s the creator of this plugin. And he was, you know, I was thinking of it as like, oh, so it’s like an auto share, right? Like it Automattically tweets or whatever, right? He’s like, no, it is a first class, it lives on the fediverse. Like when you make a change to your post, that change will be updated as it lives in there. And so that means that, again, using that RSS analogy, instead of like following someone’s blog through an RSS reader, you could just, in Mastodon, you could also sign up to my blog. You know, not me, but to my blog. And when I write a post, it just goes up there. And if you leave a comment on that post, right, just like it’s, you know, you just see it in your feed and it’s a blog post I shared, right? But you leave a comment that comments going to appear underneath my blog post, it’s a comment, like a real comment on my post. Or you could like it and it gets liked on my comment. You don’t have to create an account, you never have to visit my site. So for journalists, I think in particular, who have kind of put all their eggs into Facebook’s basket and then got screwed over by that, right? And they’re like, okay, we learned our lesson. We’re going to put our eggs in Twitter, right? And, you know, kind of, yeah, so like, this is a way for them to just focus on writing on their site. And now they don’t, they don’t have to, you know, not just share it to these platforms, but like, they don’t have to put their, their eggs into those things and watch it crumble. You know, hopefully the fediverse catches on, um, which is still, you know, it’s still growing. And so I’m saying, you know, if or when or whatever. But when that happens, then they’ll, they’ll really own their, their audience and they can, you know, move their site over, do whatever they want and their people can keep following them, not get disconnected, and, you know, not have an algorithm kind of obscure. Like, uh, you know, in the early days of Facebook, they were really promoting, you know, web traffic and then they kind of, you know, turn that dial down and you started barely getting anything unless you paid money for it. Well, no one could do that in the fediverse, right? So like, you know, we are seeing some news sites kind of adopt that. Like The Verge is really talking about what they want to do, you know, with Activity Pub integration and kind of like saying, this is everything else we’re doing right now is temporary. All this posting, everything. Our main goal is just to post on our site and you know, federate the content and have people comment on it from there.

[00:25:28] Michelle Frechette: And true to open source nature, this is in the repo, so it’s a free plugin as well that you can use on your website.

[00:25:35] Doc: Yeah, and it’s a bit of a suite too, because there’s a bunch of stuff built in the indie web community and kind of, I guess, just the indie web community. There’s things like Web Fingers, which allow when people mention your blog in a post on the fediverse, it also kind of connects to your blog in interesting ways. And that’s Web Fingers. Um, I don’t know how that works. Uh, I don’t know if it’s Activity Pub or what, but he, in this, uh, in the suite, when you activate it, you also have access to all these little different things that you can activate that really bring your site to life. It kind of adds all this. It turns your site into like a living organism in a weird way. Like you, sometimes you’re like getting comments and like, where did that come from? And you’re like, oh, it’s because of they mentioned it here and that’s federated. And so that mention shows up here even though they weren’t even replying to my fediverse post. And so, yeah, it’s really cool. It’s really exciting.

[00:26:27] Michelle Frechette: I think about sometimes like that when you create an Org chart, let’s say you’re using, I can’t even think of words right now. Like you’re creating a PowerPoint, for example, and you’ve got blocks and you’re connecting them and you draw a line between one and the other, and there’s like these terminals between the two. This is more like opening those channels so the information can flow as opposed to just putting point to one another, which is a much different way to handle it as well. Very cool. So what was the impetus for you to become part of this? I mean, obviously we all like to make money and jobs are jobs, but I feel like this is more than just a job. Taking on these videos and talking about the fediverse because somebody wanted to hire you to do it, it feels a little more personal to me how you’re getting involved with this. What are your feelings about the whole thing?

[00:27:16] Doc: It’s a passion project.

[00:27:20] Michelle Frechette: I was gonna say. I’m not wrong, am I?

[00:27:21] Doc: Yeah, yeah, no, no, it’s absolutely like, um, when, you know, when I was, I was laid off from Torque earlier this year, I put out, I keep wanting to say tweet. I put up, put out a post right, on, on various networks, but, you know, put out a post saying, you know, I’m looking for new work. If I could do literally anything right now, I’d love to do something in the fediverse, like talking about the fediverse. Right. And obviously not coding because I’m not a coder and some folks at Automattic happen to be interested in doing something with that, right. So I don’t know that they were like, oh, we just need to hire Doc. I think it was sort of like they were looking at doing something around the fediverse. And then, you know, I opened up and it just, it, you know, it worked out.

Michelle Frechette: The stars aligned.

Doc: Yeah, but what a dream job. And if it, and if it is just this one series, I’ll still be incredibly grateful because, um, I feel like we’re documenting something really interesting. You know, being able to interview these folks and hopefully explaining the stuff in a way that’s pretty intriguing. I do know a lot of folks that, you know, tried, you know, joining Mastodon, what, 2021 or whatever, when Elon bought Twitter, and, you know, they didn’t stick around. It didn’t stick around. But I have a optimistic feel for the long term of this because we have things like Threads, which is, you know, owned by Instagram or owned by Facebook. I guess they’re. They’re federating, right? There’s a federated thing. So we’re already seeing some large players integrate it. And I think we’re still also figuring out what else could be done because we’re just mostly thinking about it as a social media platform. But I think there’s some really cool stuff that could be done that we haven’t figured out. And I think that we’re seeing explorations on things that we. We can’t even. I can’t even tell you what they might be because they’re such new concepts. But, like, as an example, right, if podcasting switched from RSS, which is an open protocol that anybody can publish a podcast, and you can choose any podcast reader and follow them, you’re not, like, in Spotify, right? You can do whatever you want. Well, if they switch to Activity Pub, just as an example, you could have the opportunity to, like and comment on a post and see other people’s likes and comments. And there could be a whole. I mean, I know some podcasters a little, like, iffy about, like, having comments up here, but there could be a whole new wave of sharing and interactions that happen to things that we already have existed, and there could be things that we haven’t even thought of that are out there that could be connected to this. But in the. In the early days, it is very similar to, I was on Twitter in 2007, and trying to get my friends to join Twitter was just a giant pain. They were like, I’m on Facebook, bro. I’m happy. Like, just. Just use Facebook, you know, and. And I wasn’t even like, oh, Facebook is evil, or whatever. I just kind of really like this thing. But trying to explain why, you know, to people and how to use, uh, at signs, right. How to, you know.

Michelle Frechette: And hashtags.

Doc: Yeah, hashtags. Yeah. Like, it was. It was hard. And so, like, for me, you know, I was there for the birth of web two, and I lived in San Francisco, where it was kind of all around, and, you know, there was, like, parties happening because someone tweeted something. And that night, there was, like, a massive get together. You know, I kind of remember seeing that enthusiasm and stuff, and then seeing people build on the APIs and then seeing the APIs get closed and kind of the fragileness of all that. And I feel like, I feel like I’ve gone back in time ten years or something, maybe more than ten years, 15 years. And all of a sudden I feel like we’re in the same exciting, like explaining how this works. Some people get it, some people are like, that sounds weird. But then, you know, I think, I think ten years from now, it’ll just be very normal. And you won’t even use the word fediverse, you won’t use Activity Pub. Just like you don’t say, you know, what’s your RSS feed? I want to subscribe to your podcast. You just say, oh, what’s the name of your, you know, I think we’ll, we’ll eventually get there. But for right now, it is kind of like, you know, I’m trying to figure out how to explain it and people are trying to figure out what exactly the advantages are and servers. And I think, I think, you know, ten years from now, it’s going to be a lot more normal. I’m really excited about that.

[00:31:22] Michelle Frechette: I love that. That’s great. And I think it is. I think, like, I remember getting on Facebook. I worked at a college. I was on Facebook before most people could be because I had that .edu email that you had to have at the beginning, right? So, like, I’ve been on there way more years than I should probably even admit to. And I remember people saying, oh, you should get on Twitter and you’ll exactly like, what about Facebook? Nothing’s going to replace Facebook. And now I’m like, go to Facebook. It’s all advertisement and groups. Like, it’s a, I’m not seeing hardly anything of my friends. And either they’re not posting or they are in Facebook’s choosing not to show it to us or whatever, because it is proprietary and they can do whatever they want. I also, just as a little aside, love when people post, put this on your page, tell Facebook that you do not allow them to use your images, and blah, blah, blah. Like, oh, people, if you only had a clue, one tiny little clue, and you wouldn’t be posting that nonsense. But, but then I was like, okay, I’m gonna embrace this thing called Twitter. I work in WordPress now and that’s where people are talking and heavy. So I was like, I had a Twitter account.

I hadn’t really done anything with it. And then all of a sudden my daughter goes, you know, you’ve got like, whatever it was 40 followers. I go, oh, that’s pretty cool. She goes, you’re supposed to follow people back, mom. At the beginning, I didn’t even have a clue, right? So I was like, oh, my gosh, I don’t want to be rude. Started following people back. It’s grown over the years. Having a podcast helps, you know, I’m nine people away. Nine followers away from 18,000 followers on Twitter. But Twitter’s a cesspool right now for the most part. So it’s like, ah, now I gotta build another following someplace else, which is still okay. As long as you’re talking to the people that want to hear you and you’re listening to the people you want to hear and all of those good things, it’s pretty cool. And I love TikTok. I don’t make a lot of tiktoks, but I love, like, that’s, that was my pandemic ability to feel connected to the outside world. Then I discovered I probably knew that you, I don’t know what the right term is. A yo-yoer, yo-yo artist, yo-yo expert. What do you call yourself?

[00:33:22] Doc: Yeah, professional yo-yoer.

[00:33:24] Michelle Frechette: Okay. And I started following you, and I’m like, every once in a while, I see all these really cool videos of, I didn’t know you could do that with a yo yo kind of thing. I can’t even get it to just go up and down the string like it’s supposed to. So you found some pretty awesome ways out in the world and different platforms to show different sides of yourself, too, which I think is pretty cool. And that’s one of the beauties of not just being stuck in Facebook. Right. Is embracing what different platforms can allow us, how different platforms can always connect to different audiences, which is pretty cool, too.

[00:33:59] Doc: Yeah. And, you know, social media has been really good to me. Like, you know, blogging has been, you know, really nice to me and able to reach people and document things and have an excuse to maybe go out to an art show and, you know, experience it so I can, like, vlog about it or whatever. But, like, social media has been this whole other thing, you know, for a lot of folks, it’s about, like, oh, I, you know, wrote something that William Shatner and he wrote me back. Right?

[00:34:24] Doc: You know, but, like. But like, I just remember, like, kind of like, this feeling that the world had gotten a little closer on social media. And throughout the years, you know, when people talk about social media being evil or whatever, I’ve just always been a little sad by that because you know, I think there’s a lot of good that comes from it. And I have, like, a whole yoyo community on Instagram. Like, all of my Instagram following is just yo-yoers, and all of my TikTok is just yo-yoers. And, you know, and then my Threads is always a little bit more sophisticated, like a bowtie or something. And my Mastodons, like, here’s what I’m eating. And, you know, here’s this movie I’m seeing, right? So, like, it’s kind of fun. I feel like it’s. I see why we want all of our. We want one platform so that all our friends are there and so that all we have to say is, what’s your name? And then, you know, just type it in and you’re good. I see that. But then I also see kind of the beauty in all these not just decentralized systems, but even, like, you know, why people might be on, like, a small discord or whatever, right? Even if I kind of hate going to lots of stuff, I kind of feel like I I understand that, like, there’s this beauty here and there’s these connections that are happening, and so, yeah, I’m definitely a big proponent of, like, if you don’t like Mastodon, don’t. Don’t use, like, if you tried it and you, you know, you don’t like the community there, find the communities that you do like. And also, don’t. Just. Don’t just pick one thing. Like, you don’t need a. You don’t need a winner, right? Like, you can have your Reddit account, and you just. You don’t use it for promoting anything. You just use it because you want to chat with people and, you know, stuff like that. You can. You can do that. I feel like we’ve kind of, like, gotten to this vibe where this is a bit of a rant, but I feel like we’ve gotten to this vibe where everything needs to be some sort of professional thing, right? So, like, we used to have this Instagram page of our cat, and, you know, years later, now it’s all, like, our upcoming talks or whatever, right? And, like, you know, we kind of feel this pressure to be professional everywhere. Um, and I’m hoping that somehow, I don’t know if the Activity Pub or, you know, the fediverse will kind of, like, fix this, but I’m hoping that somehow we get back to this idea that, like, we can have our fun, weird, casual places and not need to be on all the time. That’s a rant. Unrelated to anything else.

[00:36:29] Michelle Frechette: I think it, I think it makes sense, though. I think about like all my high school. I graduated high school in 1987, so many of my classmates are, I’ve friended, right? We call different acquaintances different things on different platforms, of course. But I’ve got all these friends from high school on Facebook. When one of them finds my Twitter account and follows me there, it almost feels like, what are you doing here? Nobody invited you to this party. I mean, it’s public. They can follow me there and wonder what the heck I’m talking about. That’s fine too, right? So, yeah, it’s just. And then different parts of your, your life. So I was on the school board for twelve years, so I have local, I live in Hilton, local Hiltonians that still follow me from when I was on the school board. And I would talk about things that were happening in the local school district who now just are being served WordPress stuff all day, every day, if they even log into Twitter. So it is interesting. And partitioning different parts of your life kind of feels right in some ways, for sure. And hardly ever, though, do I post a picture of what I’m eating. I save that for dming my friends specifically. Like, you would love this steak, for example.

[00:37:37] Doc: Yeah, send it to my partner.

[00:37:39] Michelle Frechette: Exactly, exactly. So what else is on your docket this year, Doc? What else are you working on? Is there anything else that you’re excited about happening? Will you be at WordCampUs? Like all of the things. Things.

[00:37:52] Doc: I don’t know if I’ll be at WordCamp US. Also, the World Yoyo Contest just happened last week and I missed that too. I’m not quite going back to big events yet, but I am trying to go to more hosting small events, hosting local yoyo meetups. I’d love it if there was. I don’t think we have any local WordPress meetups, which is weird. At San Francisco. There was a whole bunch here.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah,

Doc: A while ago. But if there were, you know, I’d love to start going back to those again, but just doing a lot more, like, I guess talking about like smaller communities or whatever, like doing a lot more kind of local things would definitely be a thing that I’d like to do more of, you know, attend and maybe get organized. As far as work, there’s two more episodes of the fediverse files. Next week is how to connect your WordPress blog to, uh, to the fediverse. Kind of like a screen grab. Oh, actually, that’s two weeks from now. That’ll be the last episode. And then after that, there might be more work with Automattic. Um, and I’m not sure.

Michelle Frechette: Time will tell.

Doc: Yeah, yeah, it’d be fun. They’re, they’re, you know, they’ve been really great to work with. So far there, uh, they have not said no to it. Like these videos, I’m making songs, I’m making hand drawn animations. I’m like putting in the cheesiest jokes. Pun definitely intended. And they never said no, say anything I like. This is awesome, you know, because it’s really fun to be able to take something you’re. I’m clearly passionate about this, but, like, take something that’s kind of, you know, technological and new and be able to present it in a very corny way is magical. And, yeah, I still just on my own, I, you know, blog on docpop.org. i’ve been blogging since like, 2002 on there, so. And I don’t know why. Like, sometimes I’m like, writing posts that I’m like this. I really should be getting paid for this much work, but it’s just nice to have out there today. Today, Michelle, I wrote about a musical style called hit em, which a guy on, a guy on X dreamed he just, he wrote this, like, post on, on X, and he was just like, had a weird dream that this girl came up to me, a rave, and said, there’s a new style of music called hit em. That’s 212 bpm, which is very fast. And 5/4 music. 5/4, you know, time signature. So he just, he just wrote that on X. And the next day people are like, singing, you know, hit em songs, you know, this terrible, this terrible, like, this thing that’s clearly not a good thing for electronic musicians. And now there’s like compilations and stuff. So I wrote about that this morning.

[00:40:31] Michelle Frechette: I’m gonna have to check that out.

[00:40:33] Doc: Yeah, yeah.

[00:40:36] Michelle Frechette: That’s awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to come talk to me today and share with us about the fediverse and the work you’re doing over at Automattic right now. And, yeah, anytime you want to come back, whatever you got to talk about, just hit me up. I would love to have you back on the show. We should get you on WP Coffee Talks sometime too. So I’ll send you the link for that later.

[00:40:53] Doc: Coffee talk.

[00:40:54] Michelle Frechette: Sign up. Coffee talk.

[00:40:56] Doc: Michelle, can I ask you before we go, so, like, I think. I know, I don’t think. I definitely tuned out of WordPress on that super, you know, hyper level. Right? Like, I still use it and I still love it. I tell my friends about it, but, like, I tuned out of it. And so that was, like, in March, and I feel like there’s been, like I said, WP Water Cooler has gone. Your show has popped up. Can you give me a recap what’s happened since March in WordPress? And, like, in like, four minutes?

[00:41:28] Michelle Frechette: Oh, my goodness. Let’s see. So, like, there’s more plugins now. People are growing their sites. I don’t know how to summarize it in four minutes, but I can send you some blog links later if you want.

[00:41:41] Doc: Sure, sure. Is. I mean, is everyone still, like, is everything still. Everything? Was AI right when I left, and I don’t think anybody found anything.

[00:41:49] Michelle Frechette: Oh gosh. AI is like, it’s everywhere. You can’t even go to go to Google right now without AI prompts there. So, yeah, I’m not. I mean, okay, I am a fan of AI for some things, but not all things. And I don’t trust that every answer that gets supplied to me is the right answer because of how it’s pulling things out. So trust, but verify, right? I use it for ideation, quite honestly. Like, if I want to write a blog post about ten ways to do something, I’ll say, hey, what are ten ways to do something? But then I write about those things. So I look and see, like, oh, I don’t want that one. I do want that one. I hadn’t thought of that, you know, so I use it sometimes for ideation for different things. It’s definitely not going away, though. But you can still tell for the most part if a photo has been created is not actually a photo, but a graphic created by AI, because fingers and hands still aren’t perfect, but they’re getting really close. And the WordPress.org photos directory. I am one of the moderators, and several people have submitted AI generated images. And as moderators will be like, I need somebody else to take a look at this one. Should this, you know, is this real or is this not kind of thing? Oh, we got a question. Let me pull this question up. This is for you. So this is from Marcus. Should he be connecting the WP World to the fediverse? Do you know what the WP World is, doc?

[00:43:14] Doc: No. Is it a news site?

[00:43:16] Michelle Frechette: It is not a news site. It is. It’s basically. I’m trying to figure out how to say it, Marcus, if you have a way to throw it in the. A quick thing you can throw in there. It’s a community, basically. So we all have our WordPress.org profiles that are kind of limited and only allow us to show certain things. The WP World, Marcus has created it. So it’s the WP.world, it imports a lot of information from your WordPress.org file. So you can show any plugins you’ve created, any photos that you’ve put in the directory, things like that. But you can also say, I’ve been to these different WordPress events, I’ve organized them, I’ve spoken at them, those kinds of things. This is where I work, these are the languages I speak, and I’m forgetting a lot of things. There’s a lot that goes on there. So Marcus is wondering, should he connect it to the fediverse? Is there an opportunity for community like that? What are your thoughts?

[00:44:10] Doc: Well, okay, so, so first off, um, well, uh, going way back, the way I actually got interested in, in the fediverse was by interviewing WordPressers for the torque social hour. And uh, some people were telling me they were like building Activity Pub. And I remember when the first times I heard it mentioned was uh, Buddy Press, which if uh, Marcus is using Buddy Press for um, for the WP World, that’s an example right there where Buddy Press hopefully is working on Buddy Press Two, which is going to be switching to activity pub to be able to handle users. And then you can have these decentralized conversations as well, the same way. So Buddy Press itself would almost be a Mastodon, it would be a new type of social network that looks exactly like a web form, but is decentralized. But as far as if you have a site like what you’re talking about, the things I’m thinking of are actually kind of very old school web, two kind of ways of connection. Like definitely you could install the plugin and so that if you have posts that are getting shared, those posts will get shared to the fediverse, right? So you can have that fediverse integration just through Activity Pub for WordPress plugin. But also you could have things like, hey, we’re using these hashtags and so like you kind of list those and maybe having a way of scraping the hashtags from all the different places, right? Like scrape them from mammoth or, sorry, Mastodon, scrape them for threads or whatever. So like there’s, there are ways that you can kind of do it, there’s nothing too revolutionary you have to do there that’s just like, like I said, just kind of like a web two kind of mentality of, you know, having, having a hashtag using kind of spreading that around Threads unfortunately limits the number of hashtags you can use. So that makes things a little difficult. Anyway. Yes, Marcus, I think at the very least you could have your post getting shared to the fediverse. And you don’t have to like create an account. You’d have to sign into the fediverse. It’ll be all Automattic. It’ll create a server for you and everything. So it’s a pretty easy experience. And then past that, you know, including fediverse handles and including hashtags that people use and maybe having some kind of real, real world, real time scraping of hashtags would be cool.

[00:46:17] Michelle Frechette: And Marcus, as we were talking about, if you were in this, in the chat at that point in time, but there is a plugin for Activity Pub which you can see right there and you can search for that obviously in the repo. Oops, I collapsed the wrong thing. There we go.

Yeah. So yeah, I’m not sure how to summarize things in four minutes for you, but definitely the WP World can do a lot of that for you if you sign up for your free account over there, Doc, and be able to see a lot of really cool things that Marcus is doing over there. And he also has a newsletter which I’m guessing if he’s doing it as a post, could then be put out into the fediverse also. So those newsletters, those could be shared out that way for sure. Maybe the Underrepresented In Tech.com should join. Lots of possibilities. I love it. Lots of possibilities. Let’s see if we got another comment. Marcus says thank you, which is pretty awesome.

[00:47:10] Doc: Thanks, Marcus. Thanks for watching.

[00:47:12] Michelle Frechette: Fantastic. Just before I forget, next week we have Nathan Ingram and Kathy Zant are coming. They have a new product called Monster Secure. I’m gonna let them talk about it a little more next week, but if you want to preview Monstersecure.com and they’re gonna come talk to us next week about that. And I’m sorry, cats like scrambling behind me that I’m like, what is going on? They’re going to come talking to me with us next week about Monster Secure, which is a way for you to kind of client proof your website by teaching your clients through their courses how to behave properly with their own website and not sink the ship, so to speak. So I had an opportunity to take a little bit of a look through their website and it looks pretty awesome. So I’m really looking forward to speaking to them next week about that.

[00:48:07] Doc: Is this, this might be a spoiler, but is this a new company?

[00:48:12] Michelle Frechette: I don’t know if it’s a new company. It’s definitely a new website.

[00:48:15] Doc: Okay.

[00:48:17] Michelle Frechette: It’s similar to Monster Contracts. Right? So Nathan has his, what, his business, monstercontracts.com, where, and it’s the same Monster. So it’s definitely in the Monster family, if you will. And it’s definitely still about WordPress and WordPress businesses. And Nathan is definitely in the business of educating people and he and Kathy have come together to talk about security of your website and how you can talk security to your customers, which I think is pretty cool. So we’ll be talking about next week. They really are. They totally are. So, well, I’m going to wrap things up. Thank you so much.

Doc: Thank you so much.

Michelle Frechette: I really appreciate you being here. Look forward to chatting with you more about more things in the future. And I’ll touch base with you over on Post Status Slack and we’ll figure out the next time we’re going to chat and what we’re going to chat about. So thank you.

[00:49:02] Doc: Thank you so much, Michelle, congrats on the show. I hope you’re having a lot of fun doing it. And thanks, Marcus, for chiming in with the questions. I appreciate that.

[00:49:10] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, fantastic. And I’ll let you select me some, some links, Doc, that we can include in the show notes for people who are interested in learning a little bit more and seeing those videos because I closed the tab and now I can’t remember where I saw them, but I’ll find them too. But if you can send me some information, we’ll go ahead and make sure they’ll show up in the show notes when this goes and gets published by the end of the week. So thank you all. Thank you, Doc. Thank you, everybody for being here. And we’ll see everybody next week on the next edition of the Post Status Happiness Hour.

This article, Post Status Happiness Hour Session Five, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Transcript ↓

In this episode, Michelle Frechette and Corey Maass dive into a whirlwind of creative brainstorming for OMGIMG’s latest marketing campaign. They explore playful and engaging ideas, from whimsical scenarios involving iconic landmarks and beloved characters to inventive ways to offer value to potential customers. Listen in as they discuss how to craft compelling advertisements, balance creativity with professionalism, and explore innovative approaches like free trials and fun, interactive elements. Whether you’re a marketer looking for inspiration or just enjoy a good brainstorming session, this episode is packed with actionable insights and a touch of humor.

Top Takeaways: * Creative Advertising Concepts: Michelle and Corey brainstorm various creative approaches for OMGIMG’s advertisements, including playful scenarios with iconic landmarks and fictional characters. They explore the idea of using humorous or memorable references to make their ads stand out, such as incorporating Wizard of Oz themes or classic Halloween elements. * Engaging with AI Tools: Corey highlights the potential of AI to generate creative content and ideas. They consider using AI for tasks like creating random character scenarios and generating unique images for websites based on specific data points. * Providing Value and Building Relationships: Michelle emphasizes the importance of presenting constructive feedback positively. They discuss offering free trials or samples, like generating initial images for a website for free, as a way to provide value and build rapport with potential customers. * Integrating Fun and Professionalism: The discussion underscores the importance of balancing creativity with professionalism. Michelle and Corey aim to craft ads that are both engaging and respectful, ensuring they effectively communicate the benefits of OMGIMG’s services while avoiding negative or potentially problematic messaging.

Mentioned In The Show:* Ben LayerWP * WS Forms * Stellar WP * Yoast * Siren Affiliates * GiveWP * Hype Edit * Church Plugins * Dense Discovery * The WP Minute * Post Status

Sponsor: WordPress.comBuild and manage professional sites with secure managed hosting on WordPress.com. Beautiful themes, built-in SEO, and payment tools, and access to over 50,000 plugins. Everything you need for your business, plus 24/7 support from WordPress experts.

WordPress.com You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:* Corey Maass * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

Transcript[00:00:02] Michelle Frechette: Hey, Corey.

[00:00:04] Corey Maass: Hello. Hello. Hello.

[00:00:06] Michelle Frechette: How are you?

[00:00:08] Corey Maass: I am good. I am clicking on all the things. So I am distracted, but I am good.

[00:00:13] Michelle Frechette: I’ve been clicking on all the things too today. So I was like, wait, did I tweet this? Wait, did I put it? Where did I. I think I got it. Yeah, here we are. And then I almost forgot to give you the link to, like, join me. It’s like, oh, I missed that one important detail. So it’s good to see you. So over the last couple of weeks, we’ve had this, like, crazy harebrained idea that seems to have gotten wings and been a little less harebrained than we thought.

[00:00:38] Corey Maass: Yes. Yeah. People. People like the idea.

[00:00:42] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. Really do.

[00:00:43] Corey Maass: Now we have to do something.

[00:00:45] Michelle Frechette: We do. Which I think we’re going to talk about some of that today, right?

[00:00:50] Corey Maass: Yes. Yeah. Let’s start with that. So I’m looking for my thread with you with the notes scrolling up. Yeah. So IPAWP Independent Plugin Alliance. I love you, but we need a new logo.

[00:01:11] Michelle Frechette: Oh, we totally need a new logo. I even said that on This Week In WordPress on Monday morning. I was like, I don’t remember. Who was it that said, it kind of sounds like IPA. Like the beer. I’m like, yes, exactly.

[00:01:26] Corey Maass: Nathan or somebody.

[00:01:28] Michelle Frechette: That’s right. Yes. And so. And I did mention them, like, we will be getting a new logo. I built that one live in like two minutes. So, yeah, a little more interesting.

[00:01:38] Corey Maass: Some something than nothing. I’m now, of course, looking up logo generator. So we’ll have to try something.

[00:01:47] Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

[00:01:48] Corey Maass: And. Or so I. We’ve had, I don’t know, close to 20 submissions or requests to join. I have a meeting with. So we need to. We’ve started working on essentially the form for plugin developers or. Developers. Product developers. We should say.

Michelle Frechette: Product owners.

Corey Maass: Product owners to maintain their own profile. And so we want to fill that with flags. So essentially saying, like, does your plug in phone home? Does your plugin, you know, is it premium? Is it freemium? Is it free? Is it like, basically 101 filters which we can add to as we go along. But I feel like we want some key core group initially. So then to me, the next step is we invite, like, we need to look at those 20. We need to invite them to fill out the form with the caveat that, like, still nothing is going to actually happen yet, but, like, basically start filling up the database with good data about your product. And then you had a conversation with somebody who. I know. Shocking, right? You had a conversation.

[00:03:21] Michelle Frechette: I wonder where the rest of that sentence is going, because I don’t know what you’re talking about yet.

[00:03:24] Corey Maass: Somebody got in touch, an independent product owner got in touch saying that they have a plugin that might work for the filtering aspect of the directory.

Michelle Frechette: Oh yes. Ross. Yes.

Corey Maass: So we have a meeting. And I was like, oh, duh, like, we should be using all products or primary, as many products from independent plugin owners as we can, product owners as we can in the spirit of this. So if anybody wants to own any of these things, you know, I don’t think there’s a independent page builder, and we’re not Gutenberg people, so, not that, but like, we’re using WS Forms, which is fantastic. And anyway, so looking we will be looking for. To me now, the vision. I have the vision of, you know, anytime we have a need, looking for an independent plugin. Independent product.

[00:04:30] Michelle Frechette: Well, we call it the Independent Plugin Alliance, but maybe it should be the Independent Product Alliance.

[00:04:34] Corey Maass: That’s kind of what I’m thinking.

[00:04:35] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, yeah, I think. And we’re early enough that we can rebrand. If WooCommerce could go from WooCommerce to Woo, back to WooCommerce in our second week of iteration, I think we can rebrand from plugin to product, for sure.

[00:04:49] Corey Maass: Pivot. We’re going to pivot.

[00:04:51] Michelle Frechette: Pivot.

[00:04:52] Corey Maass: Become a completely different thing.

[00:04:54] Michelle Frechette: Um, ever since Friends, that word will never mean the same pivot.

[00:04:58] Corey Maass: I know, right, right. Um, yeah, we just picture. So, yeah, we should just have a. Our logo should just be a couch.

[00:05:05] Michelle Frechette: Um, but the beer on the end.

[00:05:09] Corey Maass: Nice, spilling. Um, but yeah, so, yeah, try thinking about, uh, so the first thing we’re, we’re going to do is a directory. I still think that that’s, you know, even if it just functions as a listing of our members, you know, that’s. It’s a lovely thing to have. And it’s also kind of. I like the idea of there being some, there being some friction. So that, because it’s interesting coincidence. Ben LairWP. So he runs a directory that is paid, um, and does various promos and things. And he was talking, he was tweeting this afternoon, my time. Um, excuse me, uh, a bit of a rant, but perfectly acceptable. Talking about how there is so much solicitation, like so much I don’t know how to capitalism, which is fine, but like, I, I think my, my takeaway of his tone was like, there’s so much that that’s all anybody will talk about. And how it’s like he, he signed up for somebody’s affiliate program. And, and then he sent them his, and they were like, no thanks. And he’s like, what? Like, yeah, why wouldn’t you? And so anyway, and, you know, nothing, nothing is free and nothing is is for the right spirit. And, like, we’re doing this for selfish reasons. We wouldn’t. Like, you run a number of programs and products for altruistic reasons. I mean, but good for the sake of the world. Like, I, this, I see good, but I, like, I don’t think I would have gotten involved if I didn’t see value in marketing my own product as being part of it.

[00:07:05] Michelle Frechette: Right. But the, the, the altruistic part of it is that we’re not charging a fee to join. We’re not asking for a percentage of your profits. We’re literally trying to be mutually beneficial to one another. As, and I don’t mean one another. You and I, one another, all of the different products. I mean, we are absolutely kind to each other. But aside from that, the idea that, you know, WS Form and OMGIMG, I did a little experiment today with it, actually. The idea of how you can get involved and do a little bit of co-marketing, if you will. Even just throwing a couple dad jokes out there. Right? Where from OMGIMG, I tweeted out something. It’s just a silly pun about.

[00:07:50] Corey Maass: It was beautiful. Don’t belittle it.

[00:07:52] Michelle Frechette: I can’t remember exactly what I wrote. Let me find it. Yeah. Wherever it was, here it was.

[00:07:58] Corey Maass: But in this, in the spirit of the WP pool party, I love the idea of the game. Go ahead. You found it.

[00:08:07] Michelle Frechette: Yep. So, hey, WS Forms, this is from OMGIMG’s Twitter account. Hey, WS Form. Just like a farmer, you’re outstanding in your fields. See what we did there? And I didn’t, you know, we just kind of waited for him to see it. I did text him and go, you should maybe check your twitter. And so he said, thanks a bushel OMGIMG, we’re just trying to keep the bugs out of the code and the forms growing strong. Hashtag farm to form pretty good. And then I just, I mean.

Corey Maass: Yyyyoooo.

Michelle Frechette: OMGIMG replied with a funny gif. So that was fun. And I actually did it. And I don’t know, you saw this one, too. So I also primed the pump a little bit over at Stellar WP, where I tagged Yoast in a silly joke and said, why are babies the greatest of all time at SEO? Because they’re so good at crawling. Ha ha. Ha. You know, so just a little. Having a little fun with it and kind of seeing what that might look like at a grander scale when we have 19 products kind of bantering around on the Internet and calling each other, tagging each other, not calling. I was gonna say calling each other out, but calling to one another in a positive way and a fun way through social media. So I thought that was kind of fun.

[00:09:26] Corey Maass: Love it. I love it. Yeah. And that inspired. So it’s like we’re running with right now. Right now, the two ideas being the directory and then, so, broadly speaking, comarketing, co promotion, cohabitation, collaboration, cooperation.

Michelle Frechette: All the cos.

Corey Maass: All the things. Yeah, well, and so I was talking to my Mastermind Group today, and they were like, they kept using the word community, and I’m like, there’s something. There’s something in that, too, for sure. Like, I definitely want to do. I will like. So one of the ideas that I think sparked this, I love that most of this is recorded, because someday we’ll actually be able to go look, go back and look at it. Some of the conversations have been offline. I think. Unfortunately, the very first combo is pretty much offline.

[00:10:21] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, that’s true. But maybe, maybe that is fortunate, though. I mean, sometimes we get a little silly in our iterations. It’s all good.

[00:10:29] Corey Maass: But the, the WP pool party and, and you had said the not operator, but some, some. Something like the. And the one you said Monday I thought was so great, like, the simplest version of, like, OMG types. Like, I splash water on WS Forms, hashtag WP pool party, and WS Forms tweets. I splash water on Siren Affiliates, hashtag WP pool party, and, like, literally just a chain, right, the, the chain letter or the whatever, you know, and. Right, and we, and then, and then you doing the dad jokes, I’m like, this is amazing. Like, we could even, you know, we could even generate the dad jokes with AI if there’s ones we can’t fill in. And so, because what I’m thinking about, right, is I really, I like the idea of everybody participating, but we can expect everybody to participate, but it’s like, even if we did the work, you know, that it was just like, we give AI, you know, the 20 plugins that we have so far, and we’re like, write a dad joke for each one of these, given the keywords that they are, and then we send those to everybody, and we say, you know, here’s, here’s the person in front of you. They’re going to tweet at you now. Turn around and tweet the joke we’ve given you. I mean, it can’t be simpler. But creating these.

[00:12:04] Corey Maass: What did. I actually had to go look this up. I was so sad. The link from the nineties. Oh, my God.

[00:12:15] Michelle Frechette: I. Yeah, I don’t know.

[00:12:19] Corey Maass: Webring, like, in the nineties.

[00:12:23] Michelle Frechette: Oh, yeah, the old webbering stuff. I remember that stuff.

[00:12:24] Corey Maass: So for those of you who are younger than Michelle and I, in the nineties, when you had a website, first of all, you put a little animated gif in the footer, and every time that Gif loaded, it actually stored. That’s how you did analytics. And analytics were public. You had page views based on, and you could hit refresh and just get more page views.

[00:12:49] Michelle Frechette: Watch your counter climb.

[00:12:51] Corey Maass: But there were these things that were organized. There must have been a central location for them. But, like, I would link to WS Forms, WS Forms would link to Siren. Siren would link to us. Right. And in the footer, you could say, like, you could essentially scroll left or right to go around this webring of a cooperative of. Of other websites. And so you would go and join. There are websites that you would say, like, I’m part. I’m, you know, we are a WordPress plugin that does images, and then they would give you links to different webrings that were relevant to those things. And you’d stick it in your footer. And people, presumably. I know I did at least a little. Like, you’d click sideways, essentially. It was like another way of, um, using, like, stumbleupon or something like that to, like, find other websites. Right. Because search engines weren’t so relevant or prevalent.

[00:13:49] Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

[00:13:51] Corey Maass: So anything we can do in that spirit that sends people sideways. So I think that’s a neat. I’m, I’m rambling here, but, like, I’m solidifying the, the wording and the imagery or the, the metaphors for myself of, you know, how do we send people to other people? How do plugins send people to other plugins within our alliance?

[00:14:14] Michelle Frechette: Because it’s not an easy thing to think about. Right. First of all, we’re all focused on growing our own product, so it’s not, it doesn’t feel natural to lean into other people’s products to help you sell yours when it’s not like bundling with them or like, buy this, get that, or those kinds of things. So it’s more like, you know, to lead into another co word. It’s like a cooperative. It’s like a cooperative of independent products, web products, WordPress products that can help each other sustain and grow by saying, hey, I’m a part of this bigger thing, and you like what I do, you should check out this other one, too, because they’re doing pretty good work also. And so it’s like the onus is really just on the mention. And if we could have fun with it at the same time, like, hey, that’s, you know, win win at that point, if you can tell a silly dad joke and make people go, oh, kind of thing, or, I can’t remember, was I talking last week about the GiveWP and how I kind of call it IKEA hacked there when I was working just under Give. So one of the things you can do is they have an add on called Tributes. And so, like, if I was to give money to a church, for example, I could give it in tribute to somebody who’s passed away. Memory of somebody who’s passed away contribute to that kind of thing. Right. And one of the features that is in there is it would automatically generate an email to a recipient if you wanted it to. So let’s say I gave in honor of my grandmother. I could send my mother an email saying that Michelle has given a gift of x number of dollars in honor of, you know, Edith, only I figured out a way that you could just use it as e-cards. And so, like, instead of having it, you know, I could use it as an e-card and, and pay $5 or whatever it was as a donation to send an e-card to somebody else. And so that was a fun way to do it. And then I said, what if you take it a step further? And now we, you know, and this followed the ice bucket challenge. Remember, everybody was challenging everybody else to do things, is I could give $25 and tag somebody else instead of giving it in tribute to somebody. And it sends them, it sends that email, that e-card with an image and all to somebody else. And now it’s a snowball fight or it’s a water balloon fight. And now I’ve snowballed. I’ve snowballed you. You get an email that says, Michelle has sent you a snowball, and now if you want to continue, you will give a donation and send a snowball on to the next person. And so all of that was in the back of my mind. We started talking about cooperatively doing these kinds of things where you can tag other people socially.

[00:17:06] Corey Maass: They do that in towns here where they will put 100 signs in your front yard, usually for the local basketball team. Or whatever.

[00:17:18] Michelle Frechette: I’ve been flamingoed.

[00:17:20] Corey Maass: Is that what it’s called?

[00:17:22] Michelle Frechette: I’ve been flamingoed.

[00:17:22] Corey Maass: Flamingos.

[00:17:23] Michelle Frechette: I. Yes. Once upon a time, I walked, I came home from work and there were a hundred plastic flamingos in my front yard as our youth group was doing a fundraiser. And if I wanted to have them removed, I could pay like $10 to remove them, or I could inflict them upon somebody else for $20. This was a while ago, so ten and $20. was a lot of money back then, but still. Yes, same idea.

[00:17:47] Corey Maass: Right.

[00:17:48] Michelle Frechette: Only digital instead of in person.

[00:17:50] Corey Maass: Right. And so, yeah, like, I feel like we’ve, I really like the. We’ll have to come up with a name with for it, but the, like, I splash you, you splash somebody kind of thing.

MIchelle Frechette: Pool party.

Corey Maass: Pool party, dad, you know, dad jokes. And then, like, we, we keep coming up with these other good examples and we need to figure out how to do it in public. Organize it. It’s like, like we’ve talked about newsletters, so, I mean, regard. And this is, I think what we want to emphasize is, like, we, we might have 50 people and, you know, Anti-spam might have 500 people. It doesn’t matter. I send a newsletter that mentions Anti-spam. Anti-spam sends a newsletter that mentions me, you know, in good, in good spirit kind of thing, and, and we all benefit. Right. But I, today I came up anyway. My point was, is that we were coming up with these great ideas. Flamingoing. We need to figure out how to do a digital version. We need to figure out how to organize the digital version. And then also, like, the incentives should be obvious, but there’s got to be some little bit of accountability. And so my thought was, like, there’s services, like, there’s, what’s it called? Hype. Hype Edit or something for, for music. So on, on Soundcloud, you can give away a free track or give away a track for free, a song for free as an artist. But it, it puts up this roadblock that says first you need to, like, tweet. You know, there, there’s a checkbox of.

Michelle Frechette: Do all the things. Yeah.

Corey Maass: Do all the things. Right. And, and we love or we hate them and sometimes they’re worth it and sometimes they’re not and stuff like that. The truth is that most of them aren’t actually verifiable. Like, you click, it opens up Twitter, you might or might not actually send the tweet. When you come back to the page, it has checked off that you did that thing. And so it’s and again, some of them are verifiable, some are not. But if we create a very simple version of that, because I don’t want to become a developer for IPA WP, but, but I am a very good, fast developer. So if we can figure out how to normalize some of these things or like the pool party concept, if we use it over and over again with different content, then essentially we could email every member because they’re all going to have a profile on IPA to maintain their plugin profile. But so in their admin, if it’s like, okay, this week’s pool party challenge is, you know, here are, here’s a dad joke for every plugin, you know, how many will you send out? The person who sends out the most, you know, please be honest. Gets, you know, gets to be featured on, in the directory for a day. Like, we don’t want to let anybody pay, but if you’re the one that promotes everybody else the most, like in that kind of spirit, then you, then you get promoted, right? And, and there’ll be some dishonesty and there’ll be some, you know, like there’s gonna be ties and things like that. And it’s like, if we can emphasize that it’s all in the, the right, in good spirit, you know, or if there’s a tie, then we’ll do you, then we’ll, we’ll feature you the next day, like, you know, people are gonna cave. And that’s what I’m trying to anticipate. Right. Because it’s just the world we live in.

[00:21:51] Michelle Frechette: But even at its simplest form, we could have Google Spreadsheets, one for every month. And we have, and we just, you know, the left column stays the same, a column stays the same, b column rotates so that you’re, you’re assigned a different partner every month and you are comarketing each other that month. And if it’s, if this month is, is dad jokes, we have another column for that. And then there’s a column that says, post your link here, post your newsletter here so that we just have the accountability in a very simple, very, what’s the analog, almost analog format, right. So nothing’s being automated at all.

[00:22:34] Corey Maass: But manual, custom, non scalable, dot, dot, dot.

[00:22:38] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. But just the accountability.

Corey Maass: You just sparked an idea.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, I love when I spark ideas. That’s something that’s just like super easy and super, just the accountability. Throw this up here, too. So if you are listening and you do have an independent product like a plugin theme or what have you for WordPress and you’re interested in learning a little bit more or maybe even joining us, go to ipawp.com. I cannot believe we got a five letter domain.

[00:23:07] Corey Maass: Astounding. I literally thought that I read at some point that they were all gone. Like, the four letter domains long ago went. But I would have assumed that literally every five letter domain.com and WPIPA, we got both.

[00:23:24] Michelle Frechette: Right. Yeah, exactly right. So, you know that Ben Franklin said that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. And we did put IPA in here. So I think that Ben Franklin was shining down on us that day.

Corey Maass: Seriously.

Michelle Frechette: I just wanted to throw that up there in case anybody’s like, what are they talking about? And how can I learn more? So there you go.

[00:23:45] Corey Maass: Well, and I love the lineality. Let’s pretend that’s a word. Okay. Linearness of, of this, right? Like, yeah. Um, Alex, you know, you said pool party. We keep, we brainstormed some ideas. I mentioned it to my Mastermind Group, Alex Standefort. Goes, well, that reminds me of craft beer. You got, well, IPA. Oh, my God. IPA WP is available. Like, like these threads of idea on idea on idea.

Michelle Frechette: It’s a chain.

Corey Maass: Yeah, it’s a chain of ideas. Um.

Michelle Frechette: Love it.

Corey Maass: So, uh, yeah, so talking about being paired with somebody, I hadn’t thought of that. Um, so.

[00:24:28] Michelle Frechette: Just to make it easy, right? Let’s just make it easy.

[00:24:29] Corey Maass: Yeah. I definitely want to do some chains of, like, the social concept we’re talking about.

[00:24:35] Michelle Frechette: That’s why I think if we take it month by month, right. Like, let’s maybe September. It’s just we’re paired up with somebody. We kicked it off that way. And. But Black Friday in November, we do something a little bit more involved, or, you know, a summer sale, we do something more involved.

[00:24:51] Corey Maass: Yeah. And I think, like, we could even let people initially let people choose. So it’s like, yeah, OMG pairs really well with an SEO plugin.

[00:25:02] Michelle Frechette: So it sounds like wine.

[00:25:05] Corey Maass: What’s that?

[00:25:06] Michelle Frechette: That sounds like wine. It pairs well with.

[00:25:08] Corey Maass: Oh, yeah. Well, there you go. Beer pairs well with things too. You know?

[00:25:13] Michelle Frechette: It does. I know.

[00:25:14] Corey Maass: But, like, OMG pairs well with an SEO plugin, you know, or open graph plugin. So if we get an independent product owner come. An independent product. That’s an SEO, like, let me go ask to be paired with them. But, and then, and then let’s see if we can’t come up with ways to copromote. And I think we brainstorm. I do want to encourage on all pages. I want anybody involved to, like, send us ideas. I have lovely visions of there being so many ideas that we. We do have some sort of internal forum or something, but that’s way down the road.

[00:25:58] Michelle Frechette: I could lock a chat. I could create and lock a channel for us over at Post Status, for sure. Right?

Corey Maass: True.

MIchelle Frechette: And so we could get all of these product owners in there.

[00:26:06] Corey Maass: But I love the idea of, like, being paired with somebody doing some sort of secret Santa thing. So, you know, if. If I’m messaging, you know, all of my followers, if OMG messages all of its followers, you know, a clue a day for a week, and at the end of the week, it says, surprise. It’s WS Forms. And here’s a discount code. Like, how cute is that, right? And WS Forms does the same for me or something like that, right? Or you get people to try to guess, like at our local pub quiz, every round you get, like, whatever the round is, you have your own. The round itself has a bunch of questions and answers, but at the end of every round, you get a clue. The clues get easier and easier. The sooner you guess, the bigger the discount you get kind of thing. So we could do stuff like that.

[00:27:02] Michelle Frechette: So we have. We have somebody following and watching along right now saying, collaborative marketing is a great idea. And I think they love hashtag WP poolparty, because they put it in there, too. Yeah. Church Plugins.

[00:27:13] Corey Maass: Except. We have to be. I think we have to go pool party WP. Not that this person did anything wrong. We have not issued official, but. And it’s. And you want to say, WP pool party, but when you type it, you end up with pee pee in the pool party, which is just not.

[00:27:29] Michelle Frechette: We talked about that. We don’t want pee in the pool. But it’s true. Right? So you have to be careful about hashtags. So, you know, every time I go to a big WordCamp, I have hashtag Michelle and me. But I also have to double check hashtag me and Michelle, because it happens all the time. Yeah. So they’re laughing at pee in the pool.

[00:27:50] Corey Maass: Which ends up being. Which ends up being mean Michelle. Meanie Michelle.

[00:27:56] Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

[00:27:57] Corey Maass: Mean and. Oh, yeah. Mean to Michelle.

[00:28:01] Michelle Frechette: I mean, we. We hope that people are using camel case, but they don’t always. So.

[00:28:06] Corey Maass: Exactly. Um, some developers prefer snake case, and they’re wrong. So, um. I’m just kidding. Tabs versus spaces.

[00:28:15] Michelle Frechette: Oh, my goodness.

[00:28:17] Corey Maass: Okay, so. So that. So the next steps are. We’re still trying to come. We’re clean up the. We’re promoting it. We’re cleaning up the profile form. We’re cleaning up the logo. Could you be in charge of the logo?

[00:28:35] Michelle Frechette: I can. I don’t know if you’ll like it, but yes, I can be charged the logo. Absolutely. I will iterate and we’ll. Until we find something we love.

[00:28:45] Corey Maass: There you go. And or I mean, let’s spend some OMG funds and get on Fiverr if you don’t want to do it manually.

[00:28:54] Michelle Frechette: I’m suddenly I’m picturing like looking down at the top of beer glasses or beer. And so it’s almost.

Corey Maass: Stein.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, beer stein. So it almost looks like glasses. But I’ve got all idea. I guess I got ideas. We’ll figure we’ll make them work.

[00:29:08] Corey Maass: Cool. Up to you. And yeah, and I’ll work on the form for the actual profiles. So like we’re just collecting the information and then we’ll, we’ll do the directory. Because I think we’re meeting this week. Looking at my calendar.

Michelle Frechette: Who’s meeting what this week?

Corey Maass: To work on the. To look at the plugin that will help with the directory.

[00:29:32] Michelle Frechette: Okay, cool.

[00:29:33] Corey Maass: It’s tomorrow. Yeah. Like you said with Ross.

[00:29:37] Michelle Frechette: Gotcha. I know who Church Plugins is now because we just got their application to join. Which is awesome. Love it. I was like, I wonder who’s behind Church Plugins.

[00:29:48] Corey Maass: Oh, yeah, I got it too.

[00:29:49] Michelle Frechette: Is their last name church? I don’t know. Now I know. That’s awesome.

[00:29:54] Corey Maass: And then. Yeah. Okay, so pausing on that. What else are we going to talk about? Oh.

[00:30:00] Michelle Frechette: You had a list.

[00:30:02] Corey Maass: Yeah, that’s what I was looking for. So before we get to the other actual discussion, we like need to come up with copy for. So we took out an I took out classifieds in Dense Discovery. I love this newsletter. It’s just a cool socially conscious or humanity conscious newsletter. And it’s one of these great ones that has articles to read, books recommended, a person highlighted in the bottom. They, they show a couple, they feature a couple of artists that they like. They even every month feature every month. Every week feature a font they like. I just, I love it.

MIchelle Frechette: I like fonts.

Corey Maass: Fonts like you dear. Dense Discovery, I’m just looking for one to.

[00:30:57] Michelle Frechette: Do we know what our character limit is? I think you told me.

[00:31:00] Corey Maass: That’s what I was just looking.

Michelle Frechette: Gotcha.

Corey Maass: So here’s an example. You share online. I’m just going to send it to you in slack.

[00:31:12] Michelle Frechette: Okay.

[00:31:14] Corey Maass: So I don’t. Oh, well, and we just got a reminder. So that’s, I’m sending you a screenshot of an example so we can sort of view it in context.

[00:31:24] Michelle Frechette: Do you want to just share your screen? I can. Put it up on.

Coery Maass: Oh sure.

Michelle Frechette: Might be easier that way.

[00:31:30] Corey Maass: Doopa do do do.

[00:31:37] Michelle Frechette: Everybody else can see what we’re looking at.

[00:31:39] Corey Maass: Viewably acceptable way. I’m just mumbling words over here.

[00:31:49] Michelle Frechette: I find that words are the best things to mumble.

[00:31:56] Corey Maass: That was meaner than you meant it to be.

[00:31:59] Michelle Frechette: It wasn’t meant to be mean at all.

[00:32:01] Corey Maass: I know. All right. Share.

[00:32:04] Michelle Frechette: All right, here we go. All right. There it is.

[00:32:07] Corey Maass: So this is what I get in my inbox. And they do a little. They have, like, original art and then a nice little intro telling you about where they’re at, but things they’re thinking about. You can become a friend. And I think we are a friend. There’s a sponsor, apps and sites, and there’s usually cool stuff in here. And I’ve had, like, Taimaduro and some of my other little side projects featured in here before. They feature a person and then articles to read. Usually a humorous.

[00:32:48] Michelle Frechette: Overheard on, little quote there over Mastodon.

[00:32:51] Corey Maass: Yep. That says over 80% of iCloud storage is used on twelve megapixel. Megapixel photos of stuff in the grocery store, followed by a text that says, is this the right one? Right? Like, they’re so good.

[00:33:08] Michelle Frechette: 80% of those are men sending it to their female partner.

[00:33:11] Corey Maass: 100%. 100% of 80%. Is the husband asking the wife, is this the one you want?

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Corey Maass: Yeah. Videos to watch, things to read. Aesthetically pleasing. So then they feature a couple of artists. I mean, this is why it’s just a delight. Like, every week, and it’s once a week. And then. And then a typeface that they’re digging. Interesting stats. Just under one in five Americans believe in a conspiracy theory that claims Taylor Swift is part of a covert government effort. Hell, yeah. I now believe in that. And then there’s a week in.

MIchelle Frechette: Of course you do.

Corey Maass: This week in Gif. That’s usually funny and horrifying because it’s true.

[00:33:55] Michelle Frechette: I saw a lot of that in Thailand, by the way.

[00:33:59] Corey Maass: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so classified. And then we get reminder. Nope, that ain’t it. Come on. There it is.This is just a reminder that we need your. I’m trying to find the email. There it is. Classified text and link here. That’s for October, August. I’m hoping this doesn’t show anything it shouldn’t. All right, I’m gonna crop. I’m gonna view it over here before I just throw this on the screen. Yeah. I don’t see any. Okay. 182 characters max. 180 characters.

[00:34:53] Michelle Frechette: Okay. Which is not that different from what we had done before.

[00:34:59] Corey Maass: Oh, I see. Okay. So I think it’s fine to be.

[00:35:04] Michelle Frechette: We did a classified. I was. I’m trying to find it. Like the. What we actually wrote. Do you remember where. Oh, here it is. Well, I don’t know that I actually found it, what we. What we finished with, but I found the one that I wrote. This was back in May, and I’m gonna put it. I’m going to put it in the comments because I thought it was funny. So, because it was considered classified ads, it reminded me of, like, man, you know, female seeking male and man seeking woman and those kinds of things. So we actually put in the WP Minutes classifieds. Our eyes met across a crowded WordCamp. You purred, how do I make featured images better? I replied OMGIMG Co get 30% off WPMan0324. And so that was what we had put before. The 0324 was March of 24. So if we want to not put March to 24, we would change that for this.

Corey Maass: Right.

Michelle Frechette: Yep.

[00:36:13] Corey Maass: And we.

[00:36:14] Michelle Frechette: Come on. That was clever. I’m expecting some of the guys watching this to be laughing at that. That was a good one. Like the word. It was like long walks on the beach. I mean, that’s.

Corey Maass: Exactly.

Michelle Frechette: If you like pina coladas and getting lost in the rain, like all that kind of stuff.

[00:36:30] Corey Maass: As long as we don’t end up actually giving Jimmy Buffett more money, I’m fine with it.

[00:36:34] Michelle Frechette: He’s done. It doesn’t matter.

[00:36:37] Michelle Frechette: His, his estate, I guess, right?

[00:36:38] Corey Maass: Wow.

[00:36:40] Michelle Frechette: Yes. He died.

[00:36:41] Corey Maass: Another. Another zinger by Michelle.

[00:36:45] Michelle Frechette: I just full of them today.

[00:36:49] Corey Maass: So, options we can play with. We have one a month. And so if we wanted to continue in the same vein, we could do. What is it? Missed connections is essentially what we’re similar, sort of what we’re talking about. So we could do one each month. That builds over time. August could be, you know, I saw you at a crowded. So, I mean, they. Dense Discovery. They are. They’re out of Australia. It’s a. Readers everywhere. But I wouldn’t necessarily trust that. Like, this was great. The crowded WordCamp was perfect because it was in a WordPress newsletter, but across a crowded.

[00:37:40] Michelle Frechette: Website? Oh, my gosh. We said the same thing at the same time.

[00:37:44] Corey Maass: Yeah, you purred.You know, something like this. And I replied, OMG. We could. I don’t want to. I don’t. We don’t need to take this too far. But right now I want to try. Right?

[00:38:08] Michelle Frechette: Like, I’m listening. Tell me more.

[00:38:10] Corey Maass: And then in the next in the next 20 minutes, we. I want it. I want this. I I want this to be done right. Like, we shouldn’t spend too much time on this.

[00:38:20] Michelle Frechette: If you’re watching us on YouTube right now and you have ideas, put them in the chat. We’re all ears, please.

[00:38:27] Corey Maass: Please. Um, but, yeah, so it’s like, like, in August, it would be like, I saw you on the train, and then September would be, yes, I saw you, too, kind of thing. And then October would be, you know, the meet cute.

[00:38:51] Michelle Frechette: Right, right.

[00:38:52] Corey Maass: Or something. You know, like that. Like, if we can, if we can, if each one can be its own thing, but then if you bother to go, wait, there was that thing last month, and this kind of continues in that vein, you know, then, you know, then people would get the bigger joke right by the end of it.

[00:39:13] Michelle Frechette: Right. That’s asking a lot. I’m not sure that, even if I was a die hard reader, I’m not sure I would remember month to month what that meant.

[00:39:22] Corey Maass: Yeah, but things. We. Yeah, if we. What I, what came to mind is, like, if each month had a theme, but I don’t think particularly August, September, October, do at least nothing we care to promote, but we could do weather.vAugust, it’s hot. September, fall is coming. October, it’s cold, or it’s Halloween or something like that.

[00:40:01] Michelle Frechette: Except in Australia, it’s the opposite. So.

[00:40:04] Corey Maass: Ahhh. Good point. We could tease something. So, like, November, we have Black Friday, which I think we’ll do again, but we don’t have an ad in, in October or in November. I was just looking to see if they did offer ads in classified ad copy, advertise a few available slots. I think he. I think they hadn’t actually opened anything and. Nope, November’s open. November is wide open.

[00:40:49] Michelle Frechette: Okay.

[00:40:50] Corey Maass: We don’t get the same discount, but.

[00:40:53] Michelle Frechette: I’m thinking, like, I’m just gonna spend some brain.

Corey Maass: Do it.

Michelle Frechette: Storm ideas out here. Feel free to be like, eh, so there are things that would not be the same without certain other elements, right? So, like, picture Big Ben without the clock face. Picture the Statue of Liberty without her crown or her torch. Picture Paris.

Corey Maass: Without Eiffel Tower.

MIchelle Frechette:Yeah, that kind of thing. Picture your website without the right images. So reverse engineer that into, you know, like, without OMGIMG, your website is like Paris without the Eiffel Tower. Big bend without the clock face. Like, that’s something like we could, we could say how important it is and how recognizable your site and your business becomes when you are using the right tools of which OMGIMG is one and it seems to me like just from looking at the couple of issues of this web mag, that that kind of art imagery is something that. That their readers would lean into. So that’s one idea.

[00:42:13] Corey Maass: I. Yeah, the. The only thing that I. I like. I like that concept.

[00:42:18] Michelle Frechette: Mm hmm. But you started it with the only thing that I. So the but is coming.

[00:42:24] Corey Maass: But drier than I want. Like.

MIchelle Frechette: I see.

Corey Maass: I. I, you know, like, you saw the little pop up, maybe that just came up. Like, this goes out to 36,000 people. Like, if we wrote the weirdest thing, you know.

[00:42:40] Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

[00:42:41] Corey Maass: The Statue of Liberty, you know, is not this, obviously, but, you know, the Statue of Liberty, you know, trips and falls and goes and. And catches her the edge of her skirt on the Eiffel Tower and shows her bloomers to the world and goes, oh, my stars.

[00:42:59] Michelle Frechette: OMG.

[00:43:01] Corey Maass: And then. OMGIMG. Yeah, like, the weirdest thing. And people will be like, what the hell is that?

[00:43:08] Michelle Frechette: We start to get site views, probably. Yeah.

[00:43:10] Corey Maass: That’s what I mean. Right? Like, we’d win. So, ideally, more relevant than that.

[00:43:17] Michelle Frechette: When does the next issue run? So this is in September? August?

[00:43:24] Corey Maass: Ours goes out August 27, but they need our copy by the end of the day. End of the week sorry.

[00:43:29] Michelle Frechette: Okay. So next week, we need to fix the above the fold of our homepage so that when they do click through, it catches them better. Okay. Just thinking ahead.

[00:43:39] Corey Maass: Yeah, we’ve got a little time for that, for sure, but we need to give them the copy, so. But are we allowed to use celebrity names?

[00:43:57] Michelle Frechette: I don’t know. How are you going to use celebrity names?

[00:44:01] Corey Maass: Tom. Tom Cruise visits your website. He thinks. And we need our, you know, Jeff Bridges and. And he thinks, dduuuudddeee, this is. And we need a word that, you know, the big Lebowski would say, this is awesome, whatever. Right? He shares it on socials, but all that comes up is.

[00:44:41] Michelle Frechette: Boring text. Okay.

[00:44:43] Corey Maass: Right. Yeah. Is an image visit your apple pie. Is an image of rotten apples. We’re here to help, right. Something like that. You’re like, it’s still an ad. It’s still acceptable, but in the same vein of what you wrote, like, sort of.

Michelle Frechette: It tells a story.

Corey Maass: It tells a story. It’s kind of funny. It paints a picture.

[00:45:15] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. Mm hmm. I’m thinking. Hmm.

[00:45:27] Corey Maass: I definitely think so. Artsy. Like, people who read this are probably photographers, artists. Visit your, you know, handcrafted voodoo doll website.

[00:45:53] Michelle Frechette: Oh, okay. So this is not as good as what you have, but maybe we can just think of this and separate from what you’re doing, but your website without OMGIMG is, like, taking a picture and leaving the lens cap on.

[00:46:11] Corey Maass: I like that. We need write that down anyway. Like, Slack that to me because we need to use that elsewhere.

[00:46:16] Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

[00:46:29] Corey Maass: What’s the. What did they say? Um. Oh, my God. What? What is be the big. In Big Lebowski? Like, dude. Oh, abide. The dude abides.

[00:46:43] Michelle Frechette: The dude abides. Yeah.

[00:46:45] Corey Maass: A celebrity.

[00:46:48] Michelle Frechette: I’m the only person in the world that hated that movie.

[00:46:51] Corey Maass: Oh, I don’t care for it either.

[00:46:53] Michelle Frechette: Okay.

[00:47:02] Corey Maass: Ecommerce store or handcrafted voodoo dolls. He thinks, dude, this is awesome. He shares it on socials, but all that comes up is an image of your smiling face.

[00:47:24] Michelle Frechette: Look how many characters we have to trim out of that sucker.

[00:47:31] Corey Maass: Editing is the easy part. You know this.

[00:47:35] Michelle Frechette: For sure? Marcus says he’s the only person in the world doesn’t see that movie. Marcus, I saw that movie for the first time last month because I was like, oh, I’ve never seen that movie. I should watch it. Then I was like, why did I watch that? That was really stupid.

[00:47:52] Corey Maass: Yeah, yeah. I’ve. I’ve rewatched it. I’ve. I’ve watched the whole thing at some point and I was like, meh. And then like, I get. I get why it’s a cult classic and it’s well done unto itself, but I’m, I’m not a fan of that kind of humor.

[00:48:13] Michelle Frechette: I just thought of another one. See, I’m having some good ideas here. I just Slacked you. It’s like your website without. OMGIMG is like a voodoo doll made of steel. Nothing’s going to stick. Yes, Marcus, just keep putting it off. Don’t bother. It goes better with a couple of IPAs that I believe.

[00:48:32] Corey Maass: Nice. Sure. Like a refrigerator made of, um, what’s slimy or what’s slippery?

[00:48:48] Michelle Frechette: Oil. I don’t know what you’re trying to get at. So I don’t know. Slip and slide. Plastic. Um. Ice.

[00:48:57] Corey Maass: Well, it’s like a refrigerator made of duck feathers.

[00:49:03] Michelle Frechette: That’s not slippery. I guess it would be.

[00:49:06] Corey Maass: Nothing is going to stick.

[00:49:08] Michelle Frechette: There you go.

[00:49:11] Corey Maass: Like a refrigerator made of. Well, yeah. Insert something slippery.

[00:49:17] Michelle Frechette: I like duck feathers because magnets do not stick to duck feathers. That was good. Marcus says soap is slippery.

[00:49:26] Corey Maass: There you go. Like, there you go. Like a refrigerator made of soap. Nothing’s going to stick. Um. Come on, people, we’re getting off track. This is the joy of having these calls at 05:00 p.m. we’re like, come up with random things. But I like, I think I like this pattern. If you are in agreement.

Michelle Frechette: yes I do.

Corey Maass: We can work on this for the rest of the week. Like, we need three. We need three celebrities. You know? We need three. We could just do the same pattern. Right? So it’s a random celebrity looks at the weirdest ecommerce store we can think of. You know, what unhappy thing comes up instead of, like. So we have August, September, October. So October. We can do Halloween. So I kind of feel like this handcrafted voodoo dolls, you know, is Halloween. He thinks, dude, this is awesome. So this should be like, Elvira.

[00:50:24] Michelle Frechette: Okay. Yeah.

[00:50:25] Corey Maass: You know, or something like that. Right? Elvira visits your ecommerce store for handcrafted voodoo dolls. She thinks we need, again, we need some way to phrase, like, what is a catchphrase that she uses? You know, these are spooktacular!I mean, you know, whatever.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Corey Maass: She shares to social and, but all that comes up is an image of your, you know, annoyingly smiling face, you know.

[00:51:04] Michelle Frechette: Yep.

[00:51:05] Corey Maass: Grinning mug. We’re here to help. And so if we did that month after month, you know, so.

Michelle Frechette: Yep, I like it.

Corey Maass: Cool. So not this, but something like this.

[00:51:18] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. Are you copying that and putting it in our Slack?

[00:51:21] Corey Maass: I am.

[00:51:22] Michelle Frechette: Okay, good. Like, I just saw it disappear from the screen, so.

[00:51:26] Corey Maass: Exactly. Yeah. This is a friendly reminder that your slot you booked in, Dense Discovery, is coming up on the 27th. Please kindly send me your assets no later than the end of this week. So today is Tuesday. We have until Friday to come up with the first one.

MIchelle Frechette: 182 characters.

Corey Maass: So it’s August. It’s the end of summer. So a Hasselhoff reference is never a bad thing.

[00:51:56] Michelle Frechette: I think if we reference characters, we’re less likely to get in trouble than if we reference the actual celebrity.

[00:52:02] Corey Maass: That’s why.I’m, I’m like, what, what was Hasselhoff’s name on, you know, Baywatch?

[00:52:07] Michelle Frechette: Mitch.

[00:52:07] Corey Maass: Right.

[00:52:08] Michelle Frechette: I don’t know why I remember that, but I do. I, for the record, I was not like, I was not a big Baywatch fan, but my brother’s watched it.

[00:52:16] Corey Maass: Sssuuuurrrreeee.

Michelle Frechette: I plead the fifth.

Corey Maass:Um you know? But, yeah, exactly. That’s why I was like Elvira. Right. Wasn’t she a character rather than, you know.

[00:52:28] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, exactly. She’s got a real name somewhere. But, yes.

[00:52:30] Corey Maass: You know, and, and so if we do do a character, Alf visits your cat, you know, cat recipe website, actually. That’s cute.

[00:52:44] Michelle Frechette: Marcus, do you watch television? Do you own a television? He says he’s never seen Baywatch either. Have you seen Alf?

[00:52:52] Corey Maass: What’s, what’s the quote from the Simpsons? No, because I, for the last ten years, I’ve lived on Mars in a cave with my fingers in my ears and my eyes closed.

[00:53:04] Michelle Frechette: What’s really funny about that, though, is I actually have never seen the Simpsons.

[00:53:10] Corey Maass: What?

[00:53:12] Michelle Frechette: Not a big cartoon fan. Sorry.

[00:53:15] Corey Maass: The Simpsons are not a cartoon. The Simpsons are a cultural phenomenon.

[00:53:21] Michelle Frechette: In cartoon format. So I’ll agree to disagree.

[00:53:27] Corey Maass: Fair enough. But I’m, I imagine you’ve seen a snippet of the Simpsons.

[00:53:31] Michelle Frechette: I mean, I’ve seen commercials and I’ve seen, yeah. Shorts and things like that.

[00:53:34] Corey Maass: But I’ve never actually watched an episode they’ve been on for 30 years. There’s no way you haven’t

[00:53:38] Michelle Frechette: I haven’t though. I’ve seen them, like, on other shows, like when there’s like a snippet, but out of just principle, I’ve just never done it

[00:53:46] Corey Maass: Out of principle.

[00:53:51] Michelle Frechette: Able to say this one thing I haven’t seen before on television. Anyway. Yes. That’s good ideas.

[00:53:59] Corey Maass: Cool. Yeah. Well, and we could even, like, now, if we have a format like that, I, that’s a go into AI and say, give me a list of the most random characters you can think of. Give me a list of things that they love and hate. Give me a list of funny things that they’d say. And we could, like, mix and match and, like, I’m a big, I love, I love AI for random, you know, like that. Like.

[00:54:30] Michelle Frechette: Yep. I just put another idea. Okay. He has seen the Simpsons and Alf, so I’m feeling a little bit more or less like he is actually the alien in the room. The wizard of Oz is oftentimes a very big Halloween type character as well.

[00:54:47] Corey Maass: Ooh.Yep. I like that. Not scary.

[00:54:50] Michelle Frechette: So. Yeah, not scary. So I just actually put in the chat to you on so we don’t forget things when we close this. But, like, Dorothy visits your website about the Emerald City, and when she shares it, all you see is the scary forest. Something like that.

[00:55:04] Corey Maass: That’s amazing. Yeah, yeah.

[00:55:08] Michelle Frechette: She’s get your own ruby slippers over at OMGIMG.

[00:55:14] Corey Maass: We’re not, yeah. Because we’re not allowed to talk about the little people. So it would want to, it would be like. Well, and I love the idea of, like, Emerald City travel. Right?

[00:55:25] Michelle Frechette: Yes.

[00:55:26] Corey Maass: She, you know, she visits your travel blog about the Emerald City, but all she sees is the Wicked Witch of the West.

[00:55:31] Michelle Frechette: Yes, exactly.

[00:55:33] Corey Maass: Like, that’s actually, that’s really cute.

[00:55:36] Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

[00:55:36] Corey Maass: It’s not as random as I’d like, but she sees monkeys on roller skates. If you’ve ever seen the sequel, we’re not that because it’s obscure. Obscure, but something. What were they called rollers or something.

[00:55:53] Michelle Frechette: I don’t know. I.

Corey Maass: Anyway yeah.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, yeah. You just need to think of something. Something along the lines of where the tag, the tagline should be like, see the Emerald City and said, it’s fly my pretties.

[00:56:17] Corey Maass: I like that. Yep.

[00:56:19] Michelle Frechette: I mean, we’ll come up with it in the next two days. We will have this thing hammered back and forth between the two of us a million times before we finally say, that’s it. Eureka!

[00:56:28] Corey Maass: Yeah. Well, and I mean, in everyone that we reject but is acceptable, it becomes a tweet.

[00:56:38] Michelle Frechette: Yes, exactly.

[00:56:40] Corey Maass: Okay. In four minutes, I. So that I follow a bunch of other newsletters that give marketing ideas. One of the ones this week was about, you could take this off the screen so I can see your smiling face. One of the. Yeah, one of the ones this week was about other companies websites, products that have put out little games. And so, I mean, their idea was more along the lines of like, you go get the code for Wordle, you make it about open graph, you call it Open Graphical and whatever. Right? Like, so not quite that, but it reminded me of to think about doing some sort of little game that is like an image generator. Like, it wound up leading more into, like, me building more little utilities or services. Because what I realized is, from scraping websites, you can actually see, you can use a title, you can use a meta description that could be populated into an image. We could essentially auto generate a very simple template of an open graph image for somebody. We can also, I had created that other website that I can’t think of right now, but that is already scraping open graph images historically, so that we can kind of see how open graph images change over time. And I’m actually in there a very simple way of, a very rudimentary way of detecting whether an image has changed is just downloading a copy of the image and then looking at the, the file size compared to the previous one, because images that have changed even slightly generally are a different size. So thinking about doing something that like, essentially we can offer a service that scrapes somebody’s website and looks at the top pages on their site, or looks at the ten links that come off of top links that come off of their homepage and detect if their images are the same, are different, and then send them a report and, or generate something for them, and then also using something. So I guess this has nothing to do with games, but that’s where the idea came from. But like using a, there’s a services like Built With that let you find websites that have, like, Yoast or Rank Math or, you know, or even just WordPress installed and then running reports against that. And then I’m hesitant to, like, cold email people and be like, hey, your website sucks. It could be better. You know, make it better by buying our plugin. But there might be. But there’s something there. And so I just wanted to sort of bring that up. Like this was a point of, yeah, an idea.

[01:00:05] Michelle Frechette: I actually had a conversation with a person on Twitter this morning who, first of all said to me, I’m a really good VA, and I see that you’re on threads, but you’ve never posted anything on threads, and gave me a screenshot that looked like a blank page. I know I’ve been posting to threads, so I went over to threads and I made several screenshots, responded back with those screenshots and said, I believe you’re incorrect. And that person said, I must need to, you know, whatever they said. And I said, the worst way to sell somebody is to tell them how bad they’re doing and then let them prove to you that you’re wrong. So I thought maybe you were a bot because you responded so quickly. I said, how often do you know that bots take screenshots to tell you how wrong you are? So you, so I think it’s right that we do need to show people how much better things could be. Really need to be careful how we word it.

[01:01:02] Corey Maass: 100%. 100%. And there’s, yeah, there’s something just like my, my comments from earlier about IPA is like, there’s, there’s something there. Like, I mean, IPA, we are, we are ideating and coming to conclusions. There’s something to. I thought of this deep in the woods and wrote it down.

[01:01:32] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, definitely. I mean, the way, when I was freelancing, the way I got all my customers was to say, hey, you don’t have a website. Or, hey, your website could be better, but there’s ways to phrase it that shows them, you know, the positive sides of it, rather than saying you’re not doing a good job. So we just have to be careful how we do that. That’s all I’m saying.

[01:01:49] Corey Maass: Well, and, and free. Like, somehow, like, we create a version that creates, you know, here’s like we saw. We saw you have Yoast installed. We have auto generated the first ten images for you. Click here to download a zip. You can manually go into each of these pages, and here’s a video on how to do it. And that, that adds a unique image to each of these ten pages. So right off the bat, you get ten free images for the ten top pages on your website. So you get a little bit of value for free. Have a great day.

[01:02:31] Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

[01:02:31] Corey Maass: And then if you want to auto generate images for all of your pages, go buy our plugin. But, yep, in the meantime, I just came up with that and I. But I really like that idea.

[01:02:42] Michelle Frechette: I do too. I do too.

[01:02:44] Corey Maass: So, yeah, you will do the wording. So that is a gentle, friendly explanation of, hey, we think you’re doing great, but we, we’d love to help give you a leg up. And then here’s some free stuff. Have a great day. And if you want it, if you want to think about buying our plugin, that would be awesome.

[01:03:05] Michelle Frechette: Yep, exactly. And for everybody watching at the last minute here, if you’re interested in learning more about OMGIMG, go to omgimg.com for more information. Sound like a commercial.

[01:03:13] Corey Maass: Also Post Status.

[01:03:15] Michelle Frechette: Yes, that’s right. I don’t have Post Status on here.

[01:03:21] Corey Maass: Corporate accounts payable, Nina speaking. Just a moment. Corporate accounts payable, Nina speaking. Just a moment.

[01:03:26] Michelle Frechette: Just a moment. And tomorrow at the same hour, I will be going live with our Happiness Hour with Doc Popular. We’re going to talk about the fediverse. So if people are interested in that. See you tomorrow for that too.

[01:03:39] Corey Maass: I didn’t had a cheese podcast.

[01:03:42] Michelle Frechette: What?

[01:03:43] Corey Maass: Cause you’re talking about feta cheese.

[01:03:46] Michelle Frechette: Oh. I was like, what are you okay? That one. That one fell flat. Sorry.

[01:03:55] Corey Maass: And that’s the joy of dad jokes is the worse they are, the better they are. But also the better they are, the.

[01:03:59] Michelle Frechette: Better, the bigger the grown. Yeah, for sure, for sure.

[01:04:02] Corey Maass: It all works out.

[01:04:02] Michelle Frechette: Oh, my goodness. Oh, we have one final comment in here. He wants to know what are the side effects. Okay, let’s wrap this up.

[01:04:14] Corey Maass: Thank you for all of your lovely ideas. We have our assignments. We need a new logo. We need some copy by the end of the week.

[01:04:22] Michelle Frechette: Yes. Marcus, I’m going to ping you ideas for the logo and you can give me feedback. He’s so artistic. He knows all of that good stuff, so.

[01:04:28] Corey Maass: Oh, awesome.

[01:04:29] Michelle Frechette: I gotta put him to work for us. That’s okay. All right, I’m gonna end the stream here, but, uh, thanks, Tanner. Good to see you here. We’ll see everybody next week, or maybe tomorrow too. If you want the cheesy podcast the feta first. I got it this time. All right, bye.

Corey Maass: Bye.

This article, Marketing a WordPress Product Live: Session 18, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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WordPress EventsI’ve been to well over 100 WordPress events, both online and in person. I’ve organized dozens, spoken at even more, and mentored a few, too.

And one thing that stands out above everything is this: every person who puts energy into these events does it with good intentions, hoping that every attendee will learn something new, make connections, and find ways to use WordPress and maybe even contribute to it, too.

WordCamp US is coming up next month, the third of the three flagship events this year. And I’m excited to be going.

I can promise that the organizers are working hard, fixing issues, making preparations, communicating constantly, and hoping you will attend and find the time worthwhile.

This year at WCUS we have a new day to take in: Showcase Day. I’m excited to see the kinds of projects and sites that will be showcased at the conference.

As always, I’ll be posting and sharing across socials throughout the process. Follow along!

Join Us for a MeetupJoin us for our Meetups! Details on our Meetups are available on our Meetup page.

• Post Status July Professionals Meetup: August 20
• Post Status July Product Meetup: August 21
• Post Status July Agency Meetup: August 22

Quick Links:* Join us on YouTube Wednesday for The Post Status Happiness Hour with Jess Frick from Pressable * WordPress Blog: A Brand-New Way to Learn WordPress * SDM Show: Episode 444 CopyWrting With Todd Jones – AI in Copywriting * Post Status Happiness Hour with Mark Westguard * Abha Thakor on Seriously, Bud * WordCamp AsiaCall: Call for Volunteers, Call for Speakers, Call for Emcees, and Call for Sponsors are open * WP Accessibility Day’s Call for Volunteers and Call for Sponsors are open * WCUS: Tickets are Available

Find the complete WordPress events schedule here.

Photo of the WeekToday’s photo of the week comes from Roy Tanck on WordPress Photos.

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Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status.

This article, Community Roundup Week Ending August 2, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Transcript ↓

In this podcast episode, host Corey Maass and Michelle Frechette discuss their new initiative to create a collaborative WordPress plugin directory. They share their vision for a dynamic platform that goes beyond listing plugins to become a marketing resource fostering community growth and engagement. The discussion covers their approach to inclusive yet targeted guidelines, creative marketing campaigns, and leveraging networks like Post Status. Corey and Michelle also explore the potential for cross-promotion among members and outline their plans for a summer sale and engaging assets. If you’re a WordPress plugin developer or business owner eager to connect and innovate, this episode offers a glimpse into an exciting new project and how you can get involved.

Top Takeaways: * Collaborative Directory Concept: Corey and Michelle are developing a WordPress plugin directory that emphasizes collaboration over competition. The goal is to create a platform where businesses can support each other and engage in joint marketing efforts rather than focusing on traditional affiliate models. * Inclusive Yet Targeted Guidelines: They plan to establish guidelines that are inclusive but also target specific types of plugins and businesses. This approach aims to maintain quality while allowing for diverse participation. * Cross-Promotion and Marketing: The initiative will include cross-promotion among participants. They plan to use creative marketing assets, such as memes and other visual content, to boost visibility and drive traffic to the directory. * Community Engagement: There’s a focus on building an active community around the directory. Corey and Michelle propose using Slack and Post Status for discussions and idea sharing, and envision bringing in experts for talks and workshops to benefit members. * Early Stage and Rapid Development: The project is in its early stages with a goal to move quickly, aiming for a summer sale and rapid development. They emphasize the importance of getting involved early and contributing ideas to shape the initiative’s success.

Mentioned In The Show:* MexicanTrain.online * Zach Katz * WS Form * Post Status * Slack * WP Tavern * OMG IMG * Stellar WP * Freemius * Letter People * Fiverr * Deadpool * Wolverine * WordCamp US * Mahjong * GravityKit

Sponsor: WordPress.comBuild and manage professional sites with secure managed hosting on WordPress.com. Beautiful themes, built-in SEO, and payment tools, and access to over 50,000 plugins. Everything you need for your business, plus 24/7 support from WordPress experts.

WordPress.com You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:* Corey Maass * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

TranscriptCorey Maass: Knock, brush.

Michelle Frechette: Hey, Cory. Knock, brush.

[00:00:06] Corey Maass: Knock, brush.

[00:00:07] Michelle Frechette: You are in a fun mood today. I love it.

[00:00:10] Corey Maass: I, I had my, uh, my, my usual nap later than usual.

[00:00:18] Michelle Frechette: I haven’t had a nap.

[00:00:19] Corey Maass: I’m fresher than usual or something.

[00:00:20] Michelle Frechette: Looking forward to stepping away from the desk, though, and getting into a softer spot to sit. My sciatica. I swear to God, I’m gonna be 56 in a couple months, and all the things that I heard my mother complain about, and my father complain about, and I thought, I’m never gonna be like that when I’m old. I’m friggin like that when I’m old, so. It is what it is. Anyway, we got lots of stuff to talk about today, because we’ve been doing a lot of background work. Over the last week.

Corey Maass: Totes.

Michelle Frechette: But the first thing I want to say is congratulations. And you have been selected to speak at WordCamp US.

[00:00:56] Corey Maass: Are we allowed to say that? I don’t, I guess I haven’t seen anything to the contrary. So

[00:01:00] Michelle Frechette: We are. I actually checked with somebody about that because I hadn’t heard if I was selected or not selected. And I said, Hey, I’m seeing people post. Are they supposed to do that? And she said, we don’t have a moratorium on that anymore. So, yeah, so you can talk about it.

Corey Maass: Woohoo.

Michelle Frechette: It’s not even on the website. Yeah. But you’ve been selected. What is your topic? What is it called? What are you talking about?

[00:01:21] Corey Maass: Uh, I am talking about, my collar is a mess. This shirt is a mess. I

[00:01:26] Michelle Frechette: I’m a mess today. It’s all good.

[00:01:27] Corey Maass: I don’t know what it’s called. It’s I’m talking about one of my other projects, uh, called MexicanTrain.online. Um, and it was, it was a hell of a, it’s been a hell of a project. I haven’t done much with it. Uh, in recent years, honestly, in the last couple of years. Um, but it was a pandemic project that blew up and so it, and it brought lots of people together. And of course that’s one of the mantras of the WordPress community. So, um, it makes her a good topic and I’m excited. Cause it’s like, I’ve got, I’ve told you, I’ve told a bunch of people personally, but like, because it’s donation based and because. Uh, largely the demographic is older. I actually get people sending in donations via check.

Michelle: Oh that’s fun.

Corey Mass: Um, and so people like, you know, send me stuff like, so I have a whole pile of.

cards and letters and, and stuff like that.

MIchelle: Oh that is really sweet.

Corey Maass: Um, and so I’m going to make a little, I have a, a folder and I’m going to reach out to a bunch of the people, um, who still play and say, you know, can I tell your story or can I tell an anonymized version of your story? But cause I mean, during COVID, um, obviously people were separating, staying apart. Um, and so it helped people stay together. But then even after that, um, a lot of people either with. Um, compromised immune systems or circumstantially like had to stay apart from each other or go into hospice or even just go into the hospital for an extended stay or whatever. And just like use Mexican train to like stay in touch, like, or it was something to do while talking on the phone kind of thing. [00:03:18] And some of the stories are absolutely astounding. So I’m excited.

[00:03:22] Michelle Frechette: I’ve never played. It’s a dominoes game, correct?

[00:03:25] Corey Maass: Mmhmm. Real popular with, um, In the retirement communities, which is part of why it caught on. Um, and so I, I made, I made the, I think it’s still the only multiplayer version, like you don’t, all the other versions you play against the computer, this one, you actually play against friends.

[00:03:47] Michelle Frechette: Oh cool. I am, I’ve been, I’ve never seen that game, but I’ve seen Mahjong and now I kind of want to learn Mahjong too, but you should have a.

[00:03:55] Corey Maass: Mahjong is really cool.

[00:03:57] Michelle Frechette: I have an old antique mahjong set that was my grandfather’s, but I don’t know how to use it. So maybe someday soon I should, I should learn that.

[00:04:04] Corey Maass: Oh wow. Okay. It’s July.

[00:04:07] Michelle Frechette: Yes.

[00:04:07] Corey Maass: It’s almost August.

[00:04:08] Michelle Frechette: Yes.

[00:04:10] Corey Maass: That gives us a month and a half? To play.

[00:04:15] Michelle Frechette: Until WordCampUS?

[00:04:16] Corey Maass: Yeah. So let’s rope in a couple of other people who we know are going to be at WordCamp US. And like the four, cause I think it’s best with four people. Like, I know you can play with fewer, but, um, but like, let’s all download an app on our phone and learn it at least the basics and then play live, uh, in September.I think that’d be really fun.

[00:04:41] Michelle Frechette: I think that’d be a lot of fun too. So, yeah. So congratulations on that. I actually have been selected as a backup speaker. So.

Corey Maass: Woo-hoo.

Moichelle Frechette: In the event that the Miss America cannot serve the first runner up. I dunno. Something like that. Um, anyway. Um, and my topic is building a customer success team in WordPress. So hopefully I’ll get a chance to talk. I would be sad that somebody else would not be able to talk, but I would absolutely jump at the chance. So

[00:05:10] Corey Maass: I, um, yeah, I think if I, like, this isn’t the thought went through my head if I was giving a talk that wasn’t. That was just like a boring tech talk. I honestly think I’d be like, Michelle, come here. Like.

[00:05:25] Michelle Frechette: I don’t want anybody to step aside for me, but if the circumstances are that a speaker cannot make it for whatever reason, I’m ready to put me in coach.

[00:05:34] Corey Maass: Like they accidentally twist their ankle, walking down the escalator where Corey’s in front of them.

[00:05:42] Michelle Frechette: And I said, you can be my WordPress, Tanya Harding, but Oh, so last week, I know we have a lot of things to talk about, but I want to talk about my idea first and then we’ll go ahead and do your list.

[00:05:54] Corey Maass: Hell yeah.

Michelle Frechette: Last week we, um, I don’t remember if we talked about it on screen or if it was something we talked about afterwards. Cause honestly it all kind of ran together, but we had the idea to, instead of just working on our own, there’s a lot of small plugins who could use some collaborative marketing. And so the idea would be to have an end of summer WordPress pool party. Idea of having, um, a one week sale where we would collaboratively market so that we would be able to, um, boost each other’s signals across socials and things like that, and include each other in our newsletters and those kinds of things. And so we started to think about what would that look like? And if, if everybody would have the same percentage discount. And honestly, we didn’t get a whole, like very far on it, except to, um, kind of start to think about some domains and what that would look like. I think it could be a really pretty quick build and we could really get this going. And I think, uh, we were talking like targeting the last week of, of August. Before everything.

Corey Maass: Oh, that late. Okay.

Michelle Frechette: Well, we were originally talking about sooner, but it’s going to be August like tomorrow.

[00:07:08] Corey Maass: That’s what I was wondering. Yeah.

[00:07:10] Michelle Frechette: So I think if we give ourselves a couple of weeks and, um, pull in some other small businesses, small WordPress, um, Plugin companies. We could make this happen really quickly. Um, yeah, we could, we could throw a build together pretty darn fast. I’ve been known to build a website in an evening, for example, especially when it’s simple.

Corey Maass: Mmhmm. Same, yep.

Michelle Frechette: Um, and we can use, you know, we talk to Mark Westgard and use WS Form and ACF to make it super simple to create a very simple website that people could link them to their sales pages. And whether we’re using a discounted coupon or we’re just applying discounts automatically that month, I mean, that would be something that each business would decide for themselves. Um, but I, and I said, what about WP pool party. com? And you’re like, what about pool party WP. com. And like, I love it. Right. So like I I’m happy either way. And you were like, well, of course we buy both right. Indirect one to the other, but.

[00:08:06] Corey Maass: Right, um. Yeah, because they are available. Um.

[00:08:11] Michelle Frechette: which means we have to buy them now. Cause somebody, we have one person watching and they may swoop in and buy those underneath from underneath us.

[00:08:17] Corey Maass: And that, and that was, that was a concern where I was like, Oh, we’re doing this live. Right. So we have to be careful about domains and whatnot, but, um, but yeah, some of the, so high level things, things that I heard and things that I’ve since thought, and then also I, um, talked about it with my Mastermind Group, um, is Part of the original idea that I had contributing, adding on to, to what you brought up was, I’m admiring the way that Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, right?I always wanted to say Jack human, Hugh Jackman. Are, you know, trolling each other. Not really. Right. But, um, and so.

[00:09:08] Michelle Frechette: LIke the whole Deadpool and Wolverine.

[00:09:09] Corey Maass: Wolverine, you know, I mean, and, and for years

[00:09:12] Michelle Frechette: And bleeds into their real life. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

[00:09:14] Corey Maass: Right. So, um, so we were talking about. Cause it’s Black Friday is the big sale and it’s the thing that everybody gets the most excited about. And then we said, well, what, you know, I, other companies do sort of a, a sale opposite that, and obviously we’re not opposite, but still like a few months off. Um, it’s just, it’s something to talk about is like, which I think we’ve mentioned a few times, um, Like we need things to market. We need words to say, we need ways to go, Hey, over here, pay attention to me. And so doing a sale, but doing a sale together, um, like there’s a bunch of plugins and, um, indie developers and whatnot, and if we all figured out a way to talk about each other. Um, or to each other, but you know, we all have our own followers. And so if we were doing it in a funny way,

[00:10:14] Michelle Frechette: With personality and sense of humor.

[00:10:16] Corey Maass: with personality. Right. And so we talked about, um, I, I hear you like one of the things you, you and Mark brought up was, Uh, concern about it being too seasonal. So pool party, but it’s like that conceptually. Um, and one of the visions that I have is, um, like, did you ever, did you have the letter people when, to learn the alphabet when you were a little?

[00:10:44] Michelle Frechette: No.

[00:10:45] Corey Maass: come and meet the letter people. Da, da,daaa, okay. So there were these blow up these balloons that were probably like 12 or 16 inches tall of each letter and each one had a face and they each had a personality and they would bring in each one one a day as we learned the letters in kindergarten. Um, they later became a cartoon. There’s also a cartoon called Mr. Men and Little Mrs. They had them at Arby’s, the little figurines. Um, so it was like Mr. Happy and Ms. Sunshine and dot, dot, dot. But anyway, these little abstract, um, but the vision I have in my head, you can picture this because you watch Sesame street at some point, um, or electric company or any of those, right. Is like picture a bunch of. The, of letters, you know, the letter A andB are sitting at a, in, on the edge of a pool as, letter O is doing a cannonball into the pool.

[00:11:47] Michelle Frechette: And splash water goes everywhere. Yeah.

[00:11:48] Corey Maass:Right I have this stupid vision because I think it’s hilarious of like. So at its core, what we’re talking about, I think as a directory of Indie, essentially, um, the, the word that I, I sent you earlier today, cause I was talking to my Mastermind Group.Um, and, um, what’s his name? Alex, uh, Standifird brought up. Um, he’s like, what you’re talking about is similar to there’s a craft beer network.

[00:12:19] Corey Maass: And I was like, that’s it like that’s it. Craft plugin network. Okay. And so creating a directory of indie, but not necessarily small, plugin developers, there’s a form to request access. And then there’s, once we approve you, there’s a form to, uh, for you to maintain your own profile, you can add whatever discount you want or no discount.

[00:12:49] Michelle Frechette: Mmhmm.

[00:12:50] Corey Maass: And so that definitely should be evergreen. That should not be seasonal, but the spirit of the thing and or the big push that we do initially would be the pool party concept. Um, and the reason why I brought up the, the amazing letter people, um, is because I want to do things like. Once people for every five people that join this thing, we take their logos that they’ve uploaded. We send them to somebody on Fiverr and we go create a ridiculous scenario where OMG and WS Forms are water skiing behind a boat that’s being driven, you know, by, you know, Siren Affiliates.

[00:13:33] Michelle: affiliates. Yeah. Or you know, like whoever. Yeah.

[00:13:36] Corey Maass: Like the, these silly things that give us group, like that, that group us together a little bit and give us assets to, to market.

Michelle Frechette: Mm-Hmm.

Corey Maass: Um, and then one of the other really fun ideas that I thought you had. Was, uh, it’s not operator, but the game of like, I know a plugin that’s great for affiliates and tweet that. And so then, you know, uh, Siren goes, well, I know a plugin that’s, you know, good for forums and then, you know, WS Forums passes it along somehow. Like, you know, that or something like that, but like ways that we. Uh, you know, call each other out, talk to each other. But like, as our brands was like the funny, to me, the funny concept.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

[00:14:24] Corey Maass: Um, and, uh, you know, and we do a little like Twitter scavenger hunt, like whose logo is, is a rainbow and you, and you have to go tag them or, you know, something just, and so if we could come up with. You know, if we do a sale for a week and we do a game a day on Twitter or a game a day like this, and as many people participate or they don’t, and we encourage everybody like, Hey, here’s an excuse to send, you know, an email out to your newsletter, promoting this new directory that’s full of other great craft plugins. Um, so, so this was some, you know, this was the. My takeaway after a week of, of where we go with some of this stuff.

[00:15:13] Michelle Frechette: I like it a lot. And I was just looking at the, I was like, the private chat has something in it, but that’s from last week. So the craft beer got me thinking like, do you know, there’s a five letter.There’s a five letter URL that’s actually available and it isn’t premium right now as IPA WP?

[00:15:35] Corey Maass: That’s pretty awesome.

[00:15:37] Michelle Frechette: I’m just trying to think like, what could IPA stand for if it wasn’t like India pale ale, right? Like it could be

[00:15:41] Corey Maass: independent plugin.

[00:15:45] Michelle Frechette: all WordPress. Yeah, like that’s actually kind of a fun little thing. Like IPAWP is having a pool party. IPAWP is going sledding. Like we can figure it out like seasonally if we wanted to do it more than once a year kind of thing.

[00:16:00] Corey Maass: Right. Exactly.

[00:16:03] Michelle Frechette: Are you buying it right now?

[00:16:05] Corey Maass: I am. Why not? That’s a good five letter.

[00:16:09] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. Those don’t come around very often, do they?

[00:16:11] Corey Maass: No, they don’t.

[00:16:14] Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

[00:16:14] Corey Maass: Um, yeah, everybody talk quite amongst your self.

MIchelle Frechette: I just shocked myself when I saw it available. To be quite honest with you.

Corey Maass: That’s pretty good.

Michelle Frechette: But I love the idea. And the idea would be, it’s not just open, it’s not open to this cooperative or whatever we want to call it. This craft company or not even company, but club would be for specifically for small businesses for. You know, people running really lean one and two person operations kind of thing so that it’s an opportunity for us to pool our resources, which are really more human resources than even monetary resources, right? Like if we hire Fiverr or people, we’ll, there’s some money there, of course, but it’s not going to be thousands of dollars worth of marketing.

[00:17:01] Corey Maass: Right.

[00:17:02] Michelle Frechette: And that’s what I like about it. So, um,

[00:17:04] Corey Maass: yeah, I, I, what I had said to the Mastermind Group is like, we have. Generally, we have more time than money as independent developers. Um, so, you know, what can we do with our collective networking, um, networks, followers, friends, um, that, you know, we’ll take advantage of that. And we all, we all go up together kind of thing. It doesn’t have to be, um, commercial, you know, Uber, corporate, etc, etc. So,

[00:17:40] Michelle Frechette: right.

[00:17:40] Corey Maass: Um, yeah, I’m trying to do this quick.

[00:17:45] Michelle Frechette: I’ll talk for a minute while you do that. So the idea would be that if, if, you know, I know that we get more people listening after when we’re not actually live, which is fine too. Um, if you are a small WordPress business, and I, I think I’d, I’d be open to it being, even if it’s a small hosting company of one or two people, if it’s a small plugin company, um, if you’re a small WordPress business, and I don’t want to say, set a specific, like this number of people or this amount of money or less. I think it’s kind of on a case by case. Does it fit with our vibe idea? We want to talk to you. So, um, we’re going to be pulling the trigger on this really darn fast. Cause it’s literally coming up in like three weeks. Um, but small businesses are the people who can actually. Operate quickly and get something like this done.Like we can have a website up by Sunday for this. Not that it can’t change and we can’t like continue to make it better, but we can have a website up by Sunday for this. We can start thinking about who’s in this and who wants to be in this with us so that we can move it forward very quickly. And if you don’t become part of it now, but you want to become part of it when we do something in the future, still have a conversation with us because we would really like to see how this can help us move small businesses and WordPress forward for sure.

[00:19:04] Corey Maass: Yep. Sorry I had to sign up for a new registrar pay now done. Out for processing the strange analogy

[00:19:17] Michelle Frechette: That is weird. Um, as you’re saying like games and things I love doing things like the idea of like let’s say it’s a pool party and it’s a barbecue Well, what do you do for kids? Well kids have Word searches and crossword puzzles. So maybe I’ll make a word search that people can, that will be used in marketing and people can like do the word search, like those kinds of fun things. I’ve done that before, um, to engage people. Just, it’s just fun, right? You can make a word search in like, just in, um, I was going to say Excel, but I don’t even use Excel anymore. What is it? Sheets or whatever we call it now. Gosh.

Corey Maass: Right.

Michelle Frechette: Google Sheets. Yeah. So like anything like that would be super fun. And I’m sure there’s generators online that you can just generate one as well. Um, but we could put our brands, we could put WordPress terminologies and those kinds of things. And I know I’m taking it to the extreme, but that would take literally 15 minutes to make and then make it available for, every company involved to be able to share those out over social. We have put them on the website, those kinds of things. Um, it doesn’t need to be incredibly tech heavy to be incredibly effective. And I mean, every company can make for themselves what they’re, you know, um, what they’re expected ROI or they’re required ROI to do it again, or whatever they want to say, like what their goals are for it, but like for us. Like if we put in minimal effort, like let’s say we spend between the two of us 20 hours doing this and we make three or four sales, like I would love to see even that much of the new, the right needle move to get some momentum and working with other companies.I think that that’s a really cool idea.

[00:20:58] Corey Maass: Right. Um, So one of the other things that came up is, so in my mind, I’m starting to sort this out as, or separate this as the evergreen directory. Um, somebody said like, well, it kind of, you know, like the downfall downside of a bunch of these directories is these, you know, evergreen discounts or people are about to check out. So then they go search for a discount. And I’m like, this is, this is not about. We’re not trying to be an affiliate to everybody in the directory.

Michelle Frechette: No.

Corey Maass: So it’s not that kind of play. So people can choose to put a discount or not. Um, and then also I think if we coordinate intentionally quite coordinate like a week, a year, that is.

A sale where we do a big push and then the rest of the time it’s just hanging out. It’s still backlinks. It’s still content. It’s still all that kind of stuff. Um, and, uh, so there’s kind of, yeah, the two parts, right? There’s the evergreen directory and then there’s the pool party aspect of it. Like, let’s do one big push. Um, one of the other things that came up Um, and there’s, and we can do things like, Oh, we had talked about last week. We had talked about randomizing the, the results.

Michelle Frechette: The way the list, hhmhh.

Corey Maass: Um, and so it’s not, and, and there’s no paying to be upfront, um, except that, um, the folks that I’ve talked to love the idea of like, if we see value in spending time on this, featuring certain plugins. Or certain people, um, in the context of, uh, being an indie or craft. I like craft because like you said, like, I don’t want to disclude some people, like even if they are, even if they have reached success, um.

[00:22:57] Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

[00:22:57] Corey Maass: You know, and so I like the idea of, of craft, meaning like.

Michelle Frechette: It doesn’t have to be struggling.

Corey Maass: Right, exactly. Um, but when, so extending the idea of the order of things, how you find plugins to two concepts came up. One, I absolutely love. I, we need lots of thinking around this, but, um, people were talking about like part of the Indie ethos or craft ethos is there are plugins, companies behind plugins that we think make bad decisions, right? Um, in the name of greed or in the name of breaking sort of WordPress practices, dot, dot, dot. Um, and so originally the idea of course came up as like, we all have to sign a pledge. And I’m like, no, that’s too extreme. Like we can’t be dogmatic. And there’s, and there’s things that like, there’s, there’s WordPress stuff that you’re not supposed to do like phone home, some plugins need that. Right. Um, and they pointed out that like, there are a lot of indie, um, developers use Freemius and Freemius includes some of these things, but in a way that most of us are pretty okay with.

[00:24:15] Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

[00:24:15] Corey Maass: So one of the things that, so the way that we sort of talked it down and I love this, um, personally is in the form that you use to submit, like once, once we’ve approved you, which sounds very, but, but we want, we’re not going to just let anybody in.

[00:24:35] Michelle Frechette: There has to be a vetting pprocess for sure.

[00:24:37] Corey Maass: So once you’re vetted, that’s a better way to put it. Um, you know, you’ve got a form where you can maintain a profile on that profile. We add, we start with one or two, but we add any number of switches. That say, does your plugin put a notice in the admin? Does it phone home? Does it try to upsell you to a, to, uh, another version? Does it try to sell it, upsell you on a thousand other plugins that you also own, et cetera, et cetera. Right? Um, and so none of these things disqualify you once we’ve vetted you. But it’s another way to filter. And so if those things are important to you, then you can go on there and go, you know, I, I am dogmatic about not having admin notices. And so I don’t, on principle, I don’t want plugins that do it. So I’m going to uncheck that and those results will go away.

[00:25:34] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, for sure.

[00:25:36] Corey Maass: Um,

[00:25:37] Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

[00:25:37] Corey Maass: and I think it’s, it’s an easy way to start that conversation. It’s an easy way to, I think, I, I think there is a, a concentric circles overlap quite a bit in the indie/craft developers who believe strongly in these things. And so if nothing else, they can. You know, they’ll use the directory.

[00:26:01] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. And, um, interestingly, WS Forum has just done an, uh, as just working on, uh, um, integration, I believe if it’s done, I’m not, I think it’s almost done. If it’s not done with like, um, uh, Gravity Kit, right. So like the whole Zach Katz thing. So, um, it could, we could use that for the display.

Corey Maass: Ol’ Zach Katz.

Michelle Frechette: I use that right now on Underrepresented In Tech. I love Zach. He’s awesome. Um,

[00:26:28] Corey Maass: Just the way you said it, we should make him a shirt that says. The whole Zach Katz thing.

[00:26:32] Michelle Frechette: The whole Zach Katz, exactly. I don’t know who’s watching, but if it was him that was watching right now, that would be kind of actually kind of cool. They’d be like, yeah, I’m into it. Um, I just, I love the idea. I love that we were going to like really iterate it quickly. Iterate is probably not the wrong word. The right is probably the wrong word, but, um, implement it quickly. Um, I think that, you know, Async in Slack, we can think of some people that we’d like to invite specifically to be a part of it. And like, if it’s 4 companies, the first time we do this. I’m fine with that. If it’s 20 companies, the first time we do it, I’m fine with that too. Like it doesn’t, I’m not, I’m not seeing that, like, I don’t want to set a goal for 10 companies or it’s failure. Like, no, that’s not how growth works. And that’s not how small businesses work actually. And so I’d like to just kind of like get proof of concept the first time through, see how fun it is. How much fun we can have with it and make some money selling our plugins and our business models in the, you know, in the meantime. So I think it could be a lot of fun for sure.

[00:27:40] Corey Maass: And down the road, we were talking about, um, one of, one of the things that I think Uh, I and the my Mastermind Group thought would make a big difference Um, or be a big differentiator eventually would be some sort of way to bundle these things.

[00:27:57] Michelle Frechette: Yeah

[00:27:57] Corey Maass: Um, and and again like at least right now not looking at the directory, we’re talking about creating as the way to check all of that out, but some, some way to encourage people to buy, you know, these are the five, this is the package of five that is recommended by so and so, you know, get them all together at a reduced price kind of thing, um, without the same person owning all five.

Michelle Frechette: Right.

Corey Maass: Or whatever the scenario, you know, um, yeah. Or without it being, you know, baked into a hosting scenario.

[00:28:34] Michelle Frechette: I think that’s a second iteration of this.

[00:28:36] Corey Maass: Oh, for sure.

[00:28:37] Michelle Frechette: Um, yeah, I think that that that’s, I would love to see how that’s even possible. I am not the programmer. I am not the developer. So that would be like,

[00:28:47] Corey Maass: Yeah, no, we started talking, we started talking through how to make that possible. And it was like, Oh gosh. Um, but I think there’s logistical ways to do it. Yeah. Um, you might still, like, if we figure out how we want to let people, I like, as we’re talking, I’m like, what if in your own profile you can, or should also recommend your, since we were kind of focusing on the product, but also maybe the people behind it, individuals or small teams, if they link to a few others that they recommend within the directory or whatever.

[00:29:26] Michelle Frechette: That’s a great idea. And one thing..

[00:29:27] Corey Maass: And then eventually,

[00:29:31] Michelle Frechette: Go ahead, finish your thought.

[00:29:32] Corey Maass: Things like I, we could essentially just do things like referral where like, if you buy OMG, when we email you, we’re going to say. You know, here’s here. We have secured discount codes for our three other favorite plugins. You know, there’s a little, there’s softer ways than it actually being one click here to purchase and five get installed automatically because that’s a lot of tech, like you might have to click a whole bunch, but ultimately. You know, we’re essentially selling the idea of a bundle, at least.

[00:30:08] Michelle Frechette: And we haven’t really talked about what the, um, revenue model looks like, but I, I’m envisioning the only revenue comes from selling your own plugins. So for example, if, if WS Form wants to join us, we’re not asking them to give us an affiliate link that we then make money off them. That is because we’re looking to all raise money and not spend money into each other.

Corey Maass: Correct.

Michelle Frechette: That being said, I have no problem. If WS Form then sends a thing that says, Hey, if you looked at OMGIMG, and if they’re specifically sending out a link in an email to use a, um, an affiliate link for that, if that’s what they want to do, I have no problem with that. We haven’t talked about that, but also if you want to use a UTM in the directory. Great. So you can track where that money comes from. Awesome. I have no problem with that either.

[00:30:57] Corey Maass: Yeah. And that, you know, and that’s it, like it’s, it’s the, all, all ships go up together scenario. And that’s, I think what we’re like, I keep like, when I was thinking about domains today, I was thinking words like co-op or collective or, and I’m like, well, that’s not really, maybe that happens behind the scenes. That’s not, I don’t think quite what we’re talking about.

[00:31:19] Michelle Frechette: Right.

[00:31:19] Corey Maass: Um, but you know, but if that happens and, and initially like, I think, I think we’re on the same page and we think the same way in the, like, if they come, we will build it, not the other way around. And so if we find that people want, if, if we, I mean, my imagination always goes crazy. I mean, there’s a reason why I’m an entrepreneur, right. But my wild happiest scenario is we end up. With our own Slack community and ideas are flying around and we’re all figuring out ways to work together, collectively, cooperatively, so that we all, again, so that we all go up together, you know, or there’s ways that we can, you know, dot, dot, dot, right. Um, that you can’t force any of that stuff. It has to just happen. So.

[00:32:13] Michelle Frechette: But the antithesis of that is feeding off of each other as opposed to. You know, finding the food elsewhere kind of thing. So yeah, like if we were only, like if we were requiring affiliate links for everybody and they had to pay us out for every sale that comes through that, that’s not what we’re talking about at all is what I mean.

[00:32:29] Corey Maass: Right. And that’s, and those exist. And those are the directories that we’re not. It’s fine that they exist. I think most of them I’ve, I’ve seen some and I have no objection to them existing. Um, different. That’s a business model. That’s not what we’re trying to do. Frankly, I let, this is, this is a marketing model or marketing experiment. Let’s be honest.

[00:32:50] Michelle Frechette: Like it’s almost like a flea market, right? Like you come to the flea market and see who’s there. And if, if I buy, you know, a trumpet, Because I can see it on my screen. A trumpet from the booth next to yours, it doesn’t mean that you have to pay me money because we’re all in the same space, right? I’m, I’m excited about.

[00:33:09] Corey Maass: I’m not buying Flea WP, but it’s cute.

[00:33:10] Michelle Frechette: What’s that?

[00:33:12] Corey Maass: I said I’m not buying Flea WP.com, but it’s cute.

[00:33:17] Michelle Frechette: That is cute. Um, I like IPA WP I think that it gives the vibe of what we’re looking for and I think that’s great. I love it.

[00:33:23] Corey Maass: Yeah. And it can, it can stand for whatever we want it to stand for, which I also like.

[00:33:27] Michelle Frechette: Exactly. Yeah. Same. Same. Um, but it gives that nice little vibe and the logo possibilities are endless with that too.

[00:33:36] Corey Maass: WP Tavern already has the corner on beer. So, um.

[00:33:41] Michelle Frechette: It’s very specific old school logo. They have the, we can do something a little more fun. So.

[00:33:45] Corey Maass: It’s true.

[00:33:46] Michelle Frechette: I’m just saying. Oops, I clicked the wrong thing. If you have comments, yeah. Go ahead and put them in the, in the, in the, um, what do you call it? In the, uh, thread.

[00:34:01] Corey Maass: Chat.

[00:34:02] Michelle Frechette: Chat, that’s the word. It’s been a long day, but the chat, if you have questions or comments or ideas to help us grow this idea, um.

[00:34:11] Corey Maass: That’s something that I want to figure out like like I said, I don’t want to start a new chat But I don’t I do want to so two things one. I’m I’m thinking of this in part as Chain letter as far as signing up and so it’s you know. We’re gonna we’re gonna tell a handful of people but encourage them to tell as many people as they want who they you know if they have a sense of of What we’re going for tell everybody you think who might be a good candidate. And I have a feeling that, you know, we’ll end up with some number, which will be great. Um, and. I think the other differentiator, and this is going to be where we actually end up again, using time instead of money, but we, we will need to put some effort into is I do want to do the, um, memes, the cute images, the, like creating assets, like we’re going to create our own marketing silliness or whatever, marketing assets and marketing campaigns and not go crazy with it, but have fun. Doing it. Um, and we might spend a little money, but not a lot. Um.

[00:35:29] Michelle Frechette: Exactly.

[00:35:30] Corey Maass: And then, but I, but I do want to encourage people to anybody involved to throw in ideas. I think that’s the other, like, again, if there’s, there are going to be plenty of people going, Oh, this is another place to put a backlink. And then I never want to think about it again. Okay, fine. Um.

[00:35:52] Michelle Frechette: yeah that’s not what we are looking for, but, yeah.

[00:35:54] Corey Maass: Um, you know, but it’s fine. It doesn’t hurt us. Um, at least not in any way I see right now.

[00:36:00] Michelle Frechette: Agreed, agreed.

[00:36:03] Corey Maass: But the idea being, you know, as we email people going, you know, okay, you’re now part of this thing. Here’s what we’ve got in mind. Here’s what we’ve done so far. You know, please, please, please, please at least email your newsletter, you know, again, if it’s just, it’s something to talk about. So why wouldn’t you tweet, you know, when we tweet at you, you tweeted us. And like, again, let’s all like do a little, Hey, over here, kind of, you know, marketing attention, grab, um, But then also like, if you have an idea, like your, you know, puzzle idea or, you know, anything like anybody with any idea, send it like, and let’s see if we can coordinate, you know, specifically ideal and it, and even better if your plugin is the way we’re going to do it. Right. If you’re, if your plugin makes puzzles, double good. You know, um, give us a free license, give us a free copy, but we’ll use your plugin. We’ll point out that we used your plugin. And again, it’s like, you know, more, it’s, it’s more cooperation, more collaboration, like there’s some of that more partnership.

[00:37:11] Michelle Frechette: Mm-Hmm. The, the idea isn’t to build it and then just expect that SEO is gonna sudden suddenly do all the work to drive people to the site. It’s not about that at all. It’s about sharing it out through social and, and, uh, email that email marketing to drive people there to find out more about not only your plugin, which will then direct back to your website, but the other plugins that are in there, other businesses that are in there so that people see that there’s more, you know, ideas and ways to be successful through this. And that’s why we’re going to do the cross promotion as, as we all work promoting things on our own. Yeah, that’s great. Right. We have opportunities, we make sales, that kind of stuff. But when you can collaborate on those kinds of things is when the magic really has the potential to work.

[00:38:00] Corey Maass: Yeah. And we’ll, and we’ll have to come, we’ll have to figure out problems like, okay, if there are two form plugins, You know, what do we, what do we do, if anything, and I’m not saying we don’t let them both in, but you know, how do we, how do we make sure that we’re not promoting one all the time or something like that, where.

[00:38:20] Michelle Frechette: Or are we like a networking group where there’s just one person per seat? That’s a, that’s a possibility too. Right? So like when I was in a networking group that worked very much like BNI, but wasn’t BNI, it’s like, I was the only web designer. At the table.

[00:38:32] Corey Maass: Right.

[00:38:32] Michelle Frechette: And so people would recommend me and come to me and there was a benefit to that.

[00:38:37] Corey Maass: And that’s the, that’s the model that comes to mind, but it’s also.

[00:38:42] Michelle Frechette: It can be limiting.

[00:38:42] Corey Maass: Me, that’s going to be very limiting. Yeah. So we’ll have to.

[00:38:47] Michelle Frechette: Think about that one.

[00:38:48] Corey Maass: Figure it out.

[00:38:49] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. Absolutely. I think it’s got potential. And I think I’d love to see how it works the first time through and if it has real potential for growth and how many people we can and I say people businesses, but businesses are people, right? Especially with small business like this, but if you are a business of one or two people we’re talking about people getting involved Um, but to see how we can help each other.

Corey Maass: Say people again.

Michelle Frechette:I know i’ll say it again people, people, peeooople, people, people. People who need people anyway Isn’t that a song?

[00:39:22] Corey Maass: Knock brush.

[00:39:26] Michelle Frechette: Exactly. Um, but the idea to, to help one another and to really have the opportunity for growth that way and to pool resources of time and creativity, I think is the most is the biggest thing is to be able to do that. So I’m excited about it.

[00:39:45] Corey Maass: Yep. So we now own a domain, two domains, because I bought, of course, IPAWP and WPIPA, cause you have to do that.

[00:39:54] Michelle Frechette: I hadn’t checked if that one was available. I’m glad it was.

[00:39:57] Corey Maass: I checked. I checked.

[00:39:59] Michelle Frechette: We have two five letter domains for like normal. We didn’t have to pay premium costs. Like that alone should tell people we know what we’re doing. Like amazing.

[00:40:10] Corey Maass: And I really like that. Uh, so IPAWP. Which is what I would prefer to use. I’m for some, I’m always a WP after person cause I want, I want my thing. And then I need you to know that it’s WordPress. I don’t want WordPress. And then my thing, right?

Michelle Frechette: I mean, I work at Steller WP, not WP Steller.

[00:40:33] Corey Maass: Exactly. Um, but I’m looking at WP IPA, which also ends up being WPIPA, which is kind of cute.

[00:40:43] Michelle Frechette: As opposed to IPOP.

[00:40:44] Corey Maass: These are, yes.

[00:40:48] Michelle Frechette: IPAWP would be IPOP.

[00:40:51] Corey Maass: Um, yeah, looks like, I think we own them.

[00:40:57] Michelle Frechette: Awesome.

[00:40:58] Corey Maass: Um, one, yeah, one, one, for whatever reason, my usual registrar was not letting me purchase it. And so I quick created an account with something else. So now I’m going to transfer it to my regular register. So they’re all in one place.

[00:41:11] Michelle Frechette: That works.

[00:41:11] Corey Maass: Uh, yeah. These, these are the. The, the silly world in which digital world in which we live. But, um, but I’ll create, um, yeah, go set up a site, just something. And, um, we’ll start brainstorming, but I do think, um, yeah, I, I think the other thing to start thinking about, and I will have to think about how to get people involved as quickly as possible is coming up with these sort of general guidelines of what we’re looking for inclusive but exclusive language. Um, and that’s why, you know, using words like craft, like it kind of, I feel like it implies what we want without, but lets us still be. Subjective. Um, and then, cause I, I, I really, really like the idea to, or focus on, um, like we’re not a, we’re not a marketing agency, obviously by any stretch, but in marketing resource, that’s what I want to say. Like this thing is more than just a directory where you then walk away. And so I think it’s important to have. At least some of these ideas set up. Let’s pick a date for doing a summer sale. Let’s pick a concept. We’ll have some assets like, you know, it doesn’t have to be a lot, but like you said, if we, you know, between the two of us, if we put 20 hours in, um, then people, I want people to sign in and go, Oh, I can grab that. I can do this. Like here’s a checklist of five things that everybody should do the moment they’ve joined that benefits everybody else. You know.

[00:42:56] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, absolutely. Um, and I can set up a private slack group in Post Status for business owners that do end up joining us so that we can have conversations in one place about that too.

[00:43:11] Corey Maass: And that’s, yeah, that was one of the first things that came to mind is, is not every, ultimately not everybody will be, a member of Post Status, but at least some portion of us right off the bat will. And so there’s a place we can start.

[00:43:25] Michelle Frechette: Absolutely. And one of the places to start reaching out is the people that we know attend, like the, um, the Product Owners Meet Up and things like that, who are interested in learning and growing that way. It’s a great place to start for sure.

[00:43:40] Corey Maass: Yeah. And you know, and down the road, more dreams like we bring in. Like this is an audience that have something in common. So we can bring in experts who want to do a talk about like about marketing and then pitch their, you know, pitch their, um, services or whatever, things like that. Like, how do you start a community? You, you know, chicken or the egg. So that’s, we have that first challenge.

[00:44:06] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, for sure. For sure. It has to be people who are engaged and you have to do the job of engaging them, which is always the challenge, of course, figuring that out. And it all takes time, which is also the challenge, of course.

[00:44:22] Corey Maass: Right. Well, let’s wrap early today.

[00:44:27] Michelle Frechette: I’m excited about it. I feel like we are too. Um, again, if you’re interested, we’ll see you later. Hit us up in Slack or DMs on Twitter or any of the other places. I’m on LinkedIn and Facebook and all the places. I think you probably are tooCorey, um, reach out to either one of us or through our OMGIMG account, and we’ll be happy to get back to you and give you some more details and take your ideas. Cause this is an ideation, but it’s going to move fast because it’s not a summer sale if we get past September, if we get past August into September. So this is something that’s going to go quickly. And, uh, I’m excited about it. So thanks. All right. We’ll see everybody next week. We’ll tell you how far we got. Knock brush.

This article, Marketing a WordPress Product Live: Session 15, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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This Week at WordPress.org (July 29, 2024)News* A Brand-New Way to Learn WordPress

Accessibility* Call for Accessibility Team Representatives * Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: August 2, 2024 * Accessibility Office Hours Summer break

CLI* WP-CLI v2.11.0 release date: August 6th

Community* Community Team Meeting Agenda for 1 – August 2024 * Recap of the Contributor Working Group’s Mentorship Chat on July 18th, 2024 * Meetup Organizer Newsletter: July 2024 * Using Playground to demo WordPress to first time meetup participants * Update: Meetup Reactivation and Closures

Core * What’s new in Gutenberg 18.9? (31 July) * Core Performance Team Update: July 2024

Create Block Theme Add an “Edit template” link to the WordPress admin bar Core TracEditor Setting Button block to Outline Style causes CSS output order to change and cause conflicts – Status: New * Custom post type editor working – Status: New * Site needs help – Status: Closed * Global Styles: Prevent empty CSS rules and malformed selectors for custom css for blocks – Status: New * Link Field for Javascript Functions – Status: Closed * Windows defender Trojan error for wp-includes\dist\block-library\style.min.css – Status: Closed

General* wp_list_pages() depth of 0 can show only top level of pages – Status: Reopened * Spacing issues since 6.6 (Gutenberg with Block- or Hybrid Themes) – Status: New * Plugin and theme editors should show files in alpha order – Status: New * wp_term_insert inconsistent validation logic for name and slug – Status: New * Options can be incorrectly cached following database errors – Status: New * get_posts($args) returns auto-drafts even when post_status=>publish – Status: New * I saw some bug at undo operation on browser for login credential – Status: New * get_posts() returns posts of removed custom post type – Status: New * Error 403 while adding ‘ to last name on user page – Status: New * Background color is not getting updated in block editor which we are setting through theme customization through templates – Status: New * Menu works but submenu not – Status: New * block.json – custom block style asset is loaded unconditionally to all pages with a non block-based theme – Status: Assigned * Use unadulterated WP version in is_wp_version_compatible() – Status: Assigned * Memoize wp_get_wp_version – Status: Reopened * All post table UI breaks upon adding multiple taxonomies – Status: New * not able to scroll down on pages or tabs in wordpress – Status: New * 6.6.1 Link Styling Issue – Status: New

Script Loader* Unused array_merge call? – Status: New * Use WPINC constant in script-loader.php – Status: New * Script Modules: add the importmap’s scopes key – Status: New

Customize* Customizing Panel Size – Status: New * customize.php – autofocus – not working anymore – issue with the sanitize – Status: Closed

Media* Improve speed of AVIF image generation – Status: Assigned

Site Health* Site Health: Autoloaded options could affect performance – Status: Assigned * In “Directories and Sizes” “Loading…” persists – Status: Closed

Bundled Theme* Twenty Eleven & Twenty Twelve: Code block does not adjust font size with block settings – Status: Closed * Multiple bundled themes: Add site logo theme support – Status: New * Twenty Twelve: hyphens only on front end for pages and widgets – Status: New * Twenty Twelve outputs an empty heading if the tagline is empty – Status: Closed * Twenty Nineteen: Preformatted block font size is not same in editor – Status: New * Twenty Twenty: Separator block (dots) does not render anymore – Status: New * Bundled themes: Update schema version in style variation files – Status: Closed * Twenty Twelve: The large quote pattern does not use a quote block – Status: Assigned

Query* get_posts($args) returns auto-drafts even when post_status=>publish – Status: New

Options, Meta APIs* Options can be incorrectly cached following database errors – Status: New

Formatting* Improve potentially confusing documentation for wp_strip_all_tags() – Status: Closed

Plugins* Misalignment of Search Text Box and Keywords Dropdown on Add New Plugin Page – Status: New

Themes* Searching for a theme and hitting enter clears the field and refreshes the page – Status: Closed

Upgrade/Install Rewrite text about using child themes – Status: New Performance Needs Dev Activation of plugin that registers a new tag visitor should automatically make URL Metrics stale – [Plugin] Optimization Detective – [Type] Enhancement * Picture element: Full size image is missing in PICTURE > SOURCE srcset – [Plugin] Modern Image Formats – [Type] Bug

Infrastructure* Development mode should be set to ‘plugin’ in the development environment – [Plugin] Optimization Detective

[Plugin] Optimization Detective* Dependencies for tag visitors in Optimization Detective – [Type] Enhancement * Snapshot testing for Optimization Detective – [Plugin] Embed Optimizer – [Plugin] Enhanced Responsive Images – [Plugin] Image Prioritizer – [Type] Enhancement

[Plugin] Modern Image Formats* Lots of broken images after regenerate thumbnails – [Type] Bug

[Plugin] Enhanced Responsive Images Update wp_calculate_image_sizes to Reflect Changes in sizes attribute – [Type] Bug Gutenberg Discussions [Feature] Extensibility Let’s discuss Core block extensibility

Interactivity API* How to get the selected option in data-wp-each – Closed * What should be the HTML structure returned when wp-show is false? * Interactivity API and extensibility * data-wp-each is there an iterator available? – Closed * Question: Modal with Interactivity API * Changelog – Tracking Breaking Changes in the Interactivity API

[Feature] Layout* Support a way to align Blocks at the bottom of their container Gutenberg Issues
Weekly Round-Up

[Type] Enhancement* wp-env: use descriptive names for cacheDirectoryPath * Take advantage of CSS Typed OM for performance and bundle size gains * SVG Support? * Auto convert to blocks * Command Package – Suggested Improvements * Use native component props for radio help text * Address duplication caused by ComplementaryAreaHeader * Improve display of many tabs in narrow containers * Disable Patterns tab * Make it possible for plugins to have their own private actions and selectors * Show name of named block in settings sidebar like page- or postname * Font size presets UI: Allow renaming of theme sizes * A filter to disable or tweak how container classes are generated with indexes

[Type] Bug* All synced patterns are loaded in background * Full width of template does not get displayed in Post Editor when Post Content block is in a group * Full Site Editor: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘useEntityProp’) * Pattern with floating content hard to select * InnerBlocks doesn’t show align wide/full controls when inside a custom block * New Splitting unification duplicates empty content blocks if a json attribute is present * Trying to find the pattern (add_filter the_content + parse_blocks with wp_enqueue_scripts) * Accessibility issue with links listing blocks.

[Type] Tracking Issue* ComboboxControl component: Account for the value when displaying the available options * Docs: Add explanations about attributes of each Core Block in the documentation (and in the source code)

[Type] Project Management* Gutenberg release v18.8 (2024-07-31)

[Package] Components* Learning about best practices to use @wordpress/components

[Type] Developer DocumentationComboboxControl component: Account for the value when displaying the available options

Core Meetings* Summary, Dev Chat, July 31, 2024 * Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday July 31, 2024 * Summary, Dev Chat, July 24, 2024 * Performance Chat Summary: 30 July 2024 * Performance Chat Agenda: 30 July 2024 * WordPress 6.6 Performance Improvements * Performance Chat Summary: 23 July 2024 * Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday July 24, 2024 * Performance Chat Agenda: 23 July 2024

Developer Blog:* Building a card layout with a “hover reveal” effect

Design* Design Share #60 (Jul 1 – Jul 12)

do_action* do_action Cagliari 2024

Documentation Docs Issue Tracker6.6* Dimension controls overview * List View * Site Editor * More Options

[Status] To do* Enhance the Visibility of the Comment box under every Article * Documentation for add_meta_boxes hook specifies incomplete parameter types * [6.6 Theme Handbook] Documentation outdated for theme.json > settings > dimensions * Doc Update: Replace Broken Images * [6.6 Theme Handbook] Documentation outdated for lightbox * Path and Link Broken in Theme Security Handbook

[Status] In progress [6.7 HelpHub] Post Author block deprecation Five for the Future Update: Individual Contributors page content outdated.

Hosting* Weekly Hosting Team Meeting 2024-07-31

Meta* WordCamp US Contributor Day * Agenda for July 24, 2024

Meta Trac Users can post multiple reviews instead of editing just one * Unable to upload photo to the WordPress photo directory due to HTTP ERROR 500 Openverse Community Meeting Recap (2024-07-30)

Openverse Issues [Fixes & Improvements]* Remove Vue teleport hot-fix * Fix audiowaveform isolation issues in API dockerfile * Update the Vue components to match Vue 3 conventions * Unable to generate waveform for short audio files * Image unavailability not communicated to users relying on screen-readers to navigate Openverse frontend * Convert usages of Pipenv to PDM after the ingestion server removal * Normalise verbose_name and verbose_name_plural for audio models * Waveform issues are reported to Sentry twice * Investigate DAG idempotency

[Additions & New Features] Assess the existing Clarifai tags * Filter the existing Clarifai tags * Create a DAG to generate and insert the new Rekognition tags * Preemptively filter the Rekognition tags * Determine which labels to exclude from Rekognition’s label set Playground Documentation Docs: Guide “WordPress Playground for Plugin Developers” * Docs: Guide “WordPress Playground for Theme Developers”

[Type] Bug* Typescript: Could not find a declaration file for module @php-wasm/node * Offline mode doesn’t work in Firefox * WordPress does not default to pretty permalinks in Playground * Add CI test for built packages

Other Issues* Site storage * Site manager sidebar * Web app redesign

Plugins* Plugin Review Team: 15 July 2024

Plugin Check Create HTML report Polyglots Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – July 31, 2024 (13:00 UTC)

Support* 25th July Support Team meeting * Proposed updates to the Support Handbook

Sustainability* Sustainability Chat Summary, July 19, 2024

Test* Team Chat Agenda: July 30, 2024

Themes Theme Directory Preview of style variations doesn’t do gradients Twenty Twenty Five Add issue templates to repo

Training* Meet the new Learn WordPress * Learn WordPress Newsletter – August 2024 * Contributor Spotlight: Wes Theron * Training Team Meeting Recap – 25th July 2024 * Call for contributors: Intermediate Plugin Developer learning pathway * Training Team Meeting Recap – 18th July 2024

Learn IssuesWordPress/Learn [Type] Bug* Localized lesson content is overwriting or being appended to English content – Awaiting Triage * Subscribe field gets disabled on submitting the email – [Component] Learn Theme * User reporting strange behaviour when attempting to access course content – Awaiting Triage * A11y / Course Filter / Learn – Toggle to open filters does not have a useful accessible name – Accessibility * A11y / Playground Block / Learn – Focus out of sequence/Open in new tab – Accessibility * A11y / Sensei / Learn – Duplicate navigation for lesson nav – Accessibility * A11y / Sensei / Learn – Quiz questions not associated with answer options – Accessibility * Lesson CTA button sizes are inconsistent – [Component] Learn Theme * Hidden Lessons appear in search results – [Component] Jetpack

[Type] Enhancement* Feature request: Add link to archive of Learn WordPress newsletter in subscription box – [Component] Learn Theme – [Dev] Needs Design * Lessons archive pages – Better distinguish between lessons with the same name – [Component] Learn Theme – [Dev] Needs Design * Lessons – Consider moving Take Quiz button above Complete Complete button – [Component] Learn Theme – [Dev] Needs Design * Lesson Plans – make experience level conditional – [Component] Learn Theme

Documentation* Meeting Agenda August 1, 2024 – [Admin] Agenda * Handbook: How to create the Training Team Update – [Admin] Handbook * Handbook: How to create the Learn WordPress Newsletter – [Admin] Handbook

Other Issues Plugin Maintenance * Using the Forums * Helper Plugins * Debug Bar and Add-Ons * Update the name of Twitter – [Component] Learn Plugin * Lesson Update: Enqueuing CSS or JavaScript * Lesson update: Include new tools in Local development environment lesson * Storybook * Add Your Plugin to the Block Directory * Block Specific Plugin Guidelines * Using Subversion * How Your Plugin Assets Work * Planning and Submitting a Plugins * Detailed Plugin Guidelines * Introduction to the Plugin directory * Authentication: OAuth * Authentication: JSON Web Tokens * Custom Controller Classes * Custom routes and endpoints * Quiz needs better design consistency – [Component] Learn Theme – [Component] Sensei – [Dev] Needs Design * German translation for Lesson “Einführung in WordPress” / “Introduction to WordPress” – [Content] Translation Courses Beginner WordPress Developer * Beginner WordPress User

Online Workshops* Developer Hours: Hello, Blocks! – An Introduction to Block Development * Developer Hours: Building WordPress themes with the Create Block Theme plugin

WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

• Second Beta of jQuery 4.0.0
• Curl 8.9.1 NEW
• Node 22.5.1
• React 18.3.1 / React 19 Upgrade Guide
• PHP 8.4.0 Alpha 2 available for testing
• PHP 8.3.9 Released!
• PHP 8.2.21 Released!
• PHP 8.1.29 Released!
• PHPCS 3.10.2
• WPCS 3.1.0
• LibZip 1.10.1
• Changes in MySQL 8.4.2
• Composer 2.7.7
• Homebrew 4.3.12 – NEW
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes
• Safari 17.6 Release Notes – NEW

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This article, 👩🏻‍🎨 LearnWP Redesign Launched 🔌 Call for Plugin Devs for Intermediate Pathway 👩🏽‍💻 WP-CLI 2.11.0 🗓️ Meetup Reactivations & Closures, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Transcript ↓

In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, Michelle Frechette chats with Mark Westguard, the creator of WS Form, a powerful and flexible form-building plugin for WordPress. Mark discusses WS Form’s standout features, including its advanced conditional logic, breakpoint selectors for responsive design, and its capacity for complex customizations and integrations. They explore creative uses of the plugin, from dynamic MadLibs to WooCommerce product customizations, and reflect on their favorite WordCamp experiences, such as WordCamp Europe and WordCamp US. Mark also teases upcoming updates for WS Form and shares insights on making the most of WordPress events.

Top Takeaways: * WS Form’s Flexibility and Power: WS Form is highlighted as a highly flexible and powerful form builder, capable of much more than just creating basic forms. It includes advanced features like conditional logic, dynamic content generation, integration with WooCommerce, and even the ability to handle complex calculations. * Responsive Design Features: WS Form supports responsive design with customizable breakpoints, allowing users to adjust form layouts across different screen sizes. This feature is especially useful for ensuring forms look good and function well on mobile, tablet, and desktop devices. * Developer-Friendly Features: The form builder is designed with developers in mind, offering hooks for custom and legacy API integrations, as well as the ability to run WordPress filter hooks and action hooks. This makes it highly extensible for those with coding skills. * Support and Knowledge Sharing: Mark Westguard actively responds to customer support inquiries by not only providing direct help but also creating knowledge base articles based on common questions. This approach helps build a comprehensive resource for all users. * Community Engagement: Both Mark and Michelle emphasize the importance of attending WordCamps and being involved in the WordPress community. They discuss the benefits of networking, sharing ideas, and learning from others, which are vital aspects of their experiences and successes within the community.

Mentioned In The Show:* WS Form * Eventbrite * WordCamp US * WordCamp Asia * WordCamp Europe * GiveWP * Bootstrap * Foundation * WooCommerce * Barn2 Plugins * Liquid Web * Datakit * Zach Katz * GravityKit

Sponsor: A2 HostingA2Hosting offers solutions for WordPress and WooCommerce that are both blazing fast and ultra-reliable. WordPress can be easily deployed on ANY web hosting plan from A2: Shared, VPS, or Dedicated. A2 also offers Managed WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting. Take a look at a2hosting.com today!

A2 Hosting You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:* Mark Westguard (Founder, WS Form) * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

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Transcript[00:00:01] Michelle Frechette: And we’re live with the Post Status Happiness Hour. Hey, Mark, how are you?

[00:00:05] Mark Westguard: I’m doing very well. How are you?

[00:00:07] Michelle Frechette: I am doing well. I was just saying it’s summer, it’s 85 degrees outside, but I had my AC turned out a little too low and I’m cold, which is a privilege, and I’m embarrassed to even say it, but there you go.

[00:00:22] Mark Westguard: It’s almost time to put heating on, right?

[00:00:24] Michelle Frechette: I know, for sure. Right. But, um, I did adjust the AC to be a little less freezing in here. So it’s all good. It’s all good. Thanks for joining me on the show today.

[00:00:36] Mark Westguard: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it, sorry about the rush.

[00:00:41] Michelle Frechette: I know. So if we lose Mark at all during the show, it’s because his new laptop has not yet arrived, in which case I’ll just start singing or something to fill the time. I’m not really gonna do that, but we’ll see.

[00:00:53] Mark Westguard: I’ll go get. I’ll get some ice. Put the laptop on ice.

[00:00:58] Michelle Frechette: That’s never a problem. Fingers crossed. The new one arrives very quickly for you for sure. But you’ve been doing some pretty cool stuff with WS Forms. I get the benefit of being one of your best friends and dare I say, your WP bestie. And so I get the late night text, like, look what I just finished. So I have the privilege of seeing some things in advance, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to kind of share with everybody some of the really cool things you’ve been doing and talk about some of the things that might be on your roadmap for WS Forms. So, you know. So first and foremost, welcome. I’m glad things are good and we’re going to see you at Wordcamp US in October, September. I know what it is. I really know what it is.

[00:01:43] Mark Westguard: September.

[00:01:45] Michelle Frechette: But yeah. So if anybody doesn’t know who you are, tell us a little bit about yourself and then give us kind of an intro to WS Form.

[00:01:53] Mark Westguard: Sure. Mark Westgard from WS Form. I’ve been a long term Post Status member and find the community to be incredibly helpful. That’s where I go to, to find people. So watch out. And yeah, so I’ve been in the web game for, I want to say, 20 – 28 years now. So way back from Netscape Navigator one all the way through to where we are now and used to run the UK’s second fastest growing web agency back in the day and have really not changed career. Just kept on building websites and working with the Internet and I got into the software licensing, I want to say probably 18 years ago, I guess, and used to run some software licensing myself and then about six years ago decided to get into software licensing in terms of building a plugin with WordPress, and that’s where WS Form came from. So WS Form, in case people don’t know, is a WordPress form plugin. And really pleased with how it’s going. I mean, we’ve been growing and growing and growing year on year and have a great little community of users and looking forward to taking it to bigger and better places in the future. So yeah, that’s me.

[00:03:16] Michelle Frechette: I love the capabilities of WS Form and that you could, it’s so extendable, there’s so much you can do with it, and yet you don’t have to be a developer to use it and use it well, and to use it beyond, you know, a basic contact form, which of course it’s very perfectly good for. But I’ve been able to do even without your help on some of them, some pretty amazing forms. It doesn’t hurt that I can always just text you and say, hey, how do I do this? To which you usually send me back a knowledge based article so that I can learn it for myself, which I appreciate. But also you’ve helped me with some pretty big projects like WP Speakers and how WS Form really powers so much of that site, and also WP Career Pages. We did some cool stuff with some custom posts on there as well. So yeah, I think it’s pretty awesome the way it works. And I like to tease you that of all the plugins on every site, every time I log in, there’s another update from WS Form.

[00:04:22] Mark Westguard: I just pushed another one just before this.

[00:04:25] Michelle Frechette: I’m not surprised. But what I love about the updates is I don’t think I’ve ever seen an update because of a security issue. I’ve only ever seen updates because there’s new features, there’s better features, you’re improving the things that you’ve already created and those kinds of things. So tell us about with the pro version especially, you have to, you know, you have the free version of the repo, it’s a freebie type product. But tell us some of the, some of your favorite. I know there’s a lot of really cool things. I’ll tell you what my favorites are afterwards. What are some of the favorite things that you’ve done with it first?

[00:04:59] Mark Westguard: Oh, there’s so much in there as you say. It’s, you can build your basic contact us form with it, and it does that very well. So it’s accessible. So I think the accessibility side of things is one of the things I’m quite proud of and continuing to work on that, that’s a never ending thing. You get it right and then something else comes out or you add a new feature and you’ve got to get that accessible. So that’s, that’s really important to me. I think one of the biggest selling points of WS Form is just the speed at which you can build forms with it. So it was really developed for me, a developer, to speed up the process of building forms within our agency. We were finding it was taking quite a long time to do that. A lot of custom code, a lot of buying add ons and things to get a plugin to do what it was doing. And I really wanted to try and bundle that into a single product without depreciating any kind of performance or speed of the website. So we’ve got things like the ability to make mobile, responsive forms all built into the product so you don’t have to use custom CSS to do that with breakpoints and stuff, it does all of that for you. The ability to integrate in with posts and users in WordPress has been a really big part of it. And that’s something obviously we used on your website. So people can register, they could add listings and use post data to do that. And then we have integrations in with ACF, Metabox, Pods, Toolset, ACPT and all the popular custom field plugins are in there and that’s all bidirectional. So you can use a form to create a post and that post can include images, repeaters, anything that the custom field plugin provides. You can actually push data to that as well as populating the form with that data as well. So that’s quite a popular feature. That’s been something that a lot of people use. And then we’re quite tied in with site builders such as Bricks, for example. So there’s a big developer community there and we’ve done quite a bit of work with them and also with ACSS, which was developed by Kevin Geary and his team. And they’ve actually done a lot of work to integrate their product in the WS Form. So you can really customize the look of the form by using his product, which is cool. Integration in with OpenAI so you know you can build forms just by typing in what you want.

[00:07:25] Michelle Frechette: I’ve done that. I’ve done that.

[00:07:27] Mark Westguard: Yeah, you have. Yeah. You did that for your daughter, right? I think I did, yeah.

[00:07:32] Michelle Frechette: And that is her DJ site. Yep.

[00:07:35] Mark Westguard: Yeah. Yeah. And so there’s, there’s now, what, 40, 46, 48 plugins for it. So those are all the integration add ons that we have. We’re actually integrated in now with about 92,93 different systems. So everything from Google addresses, Google routing, integrating with mape and Zapier, you know, third party integration libraries, it’s integrating with those and all the usual stuff you’d expect, like, you know, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Salesforce, all of those are in there. And that’s growing. So we really, so the way the product evolves is down to what we hear from customers. So when customers come to us and say, hey, I’d like you to do this, then we put it onto a list and if it gets enough votes, then we go ahead and build that. But the product wouldn’t be where it is today where it would not for the customers. That’s really what drives the product.

[00:08:30] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, understandably. Because if you don’t know what people want, it would be really hard to build for those things.

[00:08:34] Mark Westguard: Yeah, it’s amazing what people come up with as well that you don’t even. You know, I did one today. We had somebody who has a website that’s right to left and they wanted emails to be right to left as well, which actually never really thought about that. So now it does that.

MIchelle Frechette: Wow that great.

Mark Westguard: Yeah, so it’s, you know, multilingual is always important, so you can translate the forms and things like that. So having the RTL in conjunction with that is quite important.

[00:09:05] Michelle Frechette: So one of the things that you set up for me, which makes me really happy, is that when somebody fills out the contact form on my side project website, there’s my, what do you call it? Like my link form kind of website. So Linktree website, I get a text message that tells me, hey, somebody just messaged you. So it’s not buried in my email, it’s not in my spam, those kinds of things. And I can respond to them very quickly. So I love that. But I also just love how nicely it plays really, really well with ACF to be able to create displays. And you and I say you and I, as though I did any of the actual work on this site when it was really just you. But my projects is what I should say. We’ve used different products to display how inputs are put. So, like on the Career Summit we had last year, you had it displaying like, WordCamps do all the attendees, that kind of thing. And then we’ve used ACF to display custom post types and then we use Katie Keith’s Barn 2 plugins, table display also. And all of those things integrated really well with WS Form. We have a look. We have a fan in our midst.

[00:10:25] Mark Westguard: Hi, Mark.

[00:10:26] Michelle Frechette: Thanks for being here. I agree, WS Form is pretty hot. It’s pretty cool. It’s on fire.

Mark Westguard: Fire

Michelle Frechette: Fire. That’s right.

[00:10:36] Mark Westguard: Got quite an exciting new thing coming with. So the makers of GravityKit have actually produced a new library called Datakit. And that enables you to push our WS Form submissions to a table on the front end. So that’s coming soon. I’m not sure when they’re going to be launching it because they’re doing a lot of work making that into a really cool product. So hopefully we’ll see that soon. We’ve actually done all the integration work for that. So again, there’s another integration that we’re going to be adding the product.

[00:11:05] Michelle Frechette I may have teased that out to somebody the other day and then thought maybe I wasn’t supposed to say anything, but I was so excited.

[00:11:10] Mark Westguard: No, no, they’re cool with it. I found they had a public website, so I’m not in trouble.

[00:11:17] Michelle Frechette: And neither am I then, which is a good thing.

[00:11:18] Mark Westguard: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re all good.

[00:11:20] Michelle Frechette: Although Zach is a very forgiving person, so I’m sure that he wouldn’t be that angry with us.

[00:11:25] Mark Westguard: But Zack is great. He’s such a great guy.

[00:11:27] Michelle Frechette: I will say one of the nice things about, I mean, I’m obviously part of the Mark Westgard fan club, but one of the nice things that you do is you’re really good at building relationships and strategic partnerships. And I love when you’re like, hey, guess what’s going on with guess what’s being published soon, and this and that and the other thing. And, you know, like, Kyle from the Admin Bar has discovered WS Form and loves WS Form. And so there’s lots of different ways that you’ve been able to build those relationships, which I think is pretty cool too.

[00:11:59] Mark Westguard: Yeah, I think relationships have been key to the growth of the product. I’m a small indie developer. You know, I don’t have a team of 50 people in millions of dollars to spend on marketing, so those relationships are absolutely key. And fortunately, in the WordPress space, those relationships are pretty easy to make. If you’re a nice person, you meet a nice person, those relationships gel. But really the interest in the product has been because it’s, you know, it’s in my opinion, a good product. I built it to be a good product and so people have been happy to shout about it and tell others about it. And I’ve been very fortunate in that regard. So yeah, yeah, Cole’s been a great advocate.

[00:12:44] Michelle Frechette: That’s awesome. I’m going to bring up one of my favorite blog posts that.

Mark Westguard: Oh yeah.

Michelle Frechette: That might be on your website, has my name attached to it, of course. I love the fact that, okay, I think I wrote another post for you at some point about how like forms aren’t sexy or something like that.

Mrk estguard: They’re not. They really aren’t.

Michelle Frechette: Like there’s, there’s, it’s like, right, like it’s not right, but they can be so much fun. And I told you I was going to create this mad libs out of WS Form and we did it.

Mark Westgurad: Yeah, yeah.

Michelle Frechette: And like if somebody wants to go on that website, they can actually see the little fun about WordCamp, wherever it was.

[00:13:29] Mark Westguard: Yeah. That’s was um. A lot of people say that WS Form is actually an app builder, not a form builder, because it has so much flexibility in what it can do. One of the most powerful parts of WS Form is the conditional logic where you can make the form dynamic. So it doesn’t only do things like if this field equals ABC, then show this field. It does a wealth of different stuff, and we have people using it for measuring up windows and calculating the cost of a window and all this kind of stuff. And then that can also tie in with WooCommerce. So you can actually use it to customize products within WooCommerce with the fields on the form. So yeah, it’s one of these products where you have to keep prodding it, and then you’ll find more and more and more stuff as you go deeper into it. But also we’ve included a lot of stuff like, I don’t know, like adding select two to a select field, which basically makes it searchable. That’s all built into the product. There’s all these little checkboxes that do the JavaScript work for you. So that particular Matliff example, we used our variable system, I believe, to then string it together into a fun output.

[00:14:37] Michelle Frechette: We did, I’m trying to control the wrong screen here, but yeah, so like there’s all those different outputs where you kind of, if you don’t know what Madlibs are, you know, it’s that thing where somebody asks you to tell me a adjective, tell me a noun, and you fill all those things in, and then at the end they read you the funny story that’s been created from using the words that you gave them, and you can do that with a form. Right? So that’s what. That’s what we’ve done here.

[00:15:03] Mark Westguard: Yeah, yeah. You can download the example of that page that’s in the blog. Yes. That was fun.

[00:15:09] Michelle Frechette: A lot of fun. And of course, it does more things than just creative MadLibs, but I love, I call it, like, ikea hacking. And I know that hacking is not the right word to use in tech in a fun way, because. But I still call it Ikea hacking. Like, when you take a product for. And you look at what it’s been designed for, but you find another way to use it creatively. For example, with Givewp, I found a way to use their. I forgot what’s called, though, dedication. Right? Like, so when you want to dedicate your donation to somebody, to use that to create postcards, and you can sell postcards, e-postcards on your website for donations. And when I showed the guys that Give that when I. This is back before we required at LiquidWeb, of course, they were like, you didn’t have to code anything to do that. And I’m like, no, isn’t that cool? Right? So it’s like, it was one of the cool things. They’re like, okay. And the girl who doesn’t do coding figured out a new and creative way to use our product, which was so much fun. So, yes, I’m always thinking of ways to do stuff like that. Right?

[00:16:14] Mark Westguard: Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We actually started making a WAPU maker on WS Forms do you remember that.

[00:16:20] Michelle Frechette: I do.

[00:16:22] Mark Westguard: Never got it finished, but it was quite fun. You could choose the colors and the fonts and all that kind of stuff, and it would build a WAPU for you.

[00:16:28] Michelle Frechette: Almost like a mister potato head, but WAPU version.

[00:16:32] Mark Westguard: Yeah, yeah. But, you know, obviously the. The main use of WS Form is usually some kind of inquiry or contact us form or calculator or something like that.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Mark Westguard: So, yeah, yeah. And it’s. It’s interesting because as I get more support tickets from people, sometimes I’ll literally just sit down and write an article about what they’re asking about. So if somebody else asked about it, it’s there and available for other people to look at as well, so.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, exactly.

Mark Westguard: Trying to think of a recent example of that. So many. It’s called blank.

[00:17:03] Michelle Frechette: I love the drag and drop nature of the form builder itself, and that you can decide how much of the page each input takes up. And then you can also, you have the selectors across the bottom that say where the breaks are for different screens and everything.

[00:17:21] Mark Westguard: Yeah, that’s the breakpoint selector. And if you’re, if you’re using a framework such as foundation or bootstrap, that breakpoint, so it will actually change dynamically. So it analyzes what your site is using and then changes those breakpoints. So usually I think there’s five breakpoints, everything from mobile. So a breakpoint is basically a screen size, right? A Viewport size. So you go from mobile to a tablet, to a laptop, to maybe a bigger desktop and a huge, huge desktop, and you can actually change the form layout for each of those breakpoints. So it remembers it. So a lot of form plugins will just kind of collapse at a mobile point. There’s only two breakpoints there, but with WS Form there are five. You can actually control it per breakpoint. One of the other cool features we have is that debug console as well.

[00:18:09] Michelle Frechette: Oh yeah. The one I have to ask you how to turn it off all the time. I’m like, just fix it for me, please.

[00:18:18] Mark Westguard: Yeah, I have that thing on all the time, but I’m testing so many forms, so if you’ve got a big long form or even a short form, the debug console is cool because you can click populate and it fills a format for you so you don’t have to sit there and type it all in. Hit submit. Did it work? No. Right, start again. If you’re doing something with maybe a custom API integration where you’ve got to tweak it a little bit, then that populate tool is great. It actually has a populate and submit button. So you just click it once, fills the form out, submits it one click.

[00:18:48] Michelle Frechette: Nice and nice. Nice way to test things pretty quickly and easily, like you said, without having, especially if it’s a longer form, have to fill everything out or populate it with lorem ipsum or anything.

[00:18:57] Mark Westguard: That’s. Yeah, it even fills out signature fields. Yeah. So it’s, it does signature fields. It does. It’ll put first names in first name fields, last name and last name fields, phone numbers, emails, even just passwords. So it’s. Yeah, it’s pretty cool.

[00:19:12] Michelle Frechette: I’d say you thought of everything, but I know you’re going to think of something new next week, so..

[00:19:18] Mark Westguard: Somebody will bring something up. Why does he, why doesn’t he do this? Oh, never thought about that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There’s an immense amount of functionality in there and sometimes, actually, I had a really nice lady today send a support ticket and she wanted a time field and she wanted to be able to add a certain number of seconds that were calculated based upon a Google route so she had a start position and an end position. It calculated how many seconds it took to get between those points. And then she had a start date field and she wanted to say, okay, the end time is going to be this. That is when you get there. So played around with it and it did it. So that’s, that’s the kind of crazy stuff that you can do with WS Form.

[00:19:59] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, I think too, like, I’m trying to think of different ways, different sites I’ve built in the, in the past and things like that. Like, I bet there’s a, we could write a really cool blog post, actually, about, if you’re having a recipe site, there are so many cooking and recipe sites where somebody fills out all the information for the recipe and the ingredients and the instructions and how long you cook it at what temperature, and then it can display like a recipe card that they can then either print off or whatever. So that would be a really cool feature.

[00:20:28] Mark Westguard: Yeah, I need that.

[00:20:31] Michelle Frechette: You cook.

[00:20:33] Mark Westguard: I love to cook. Yeah.

[00:20:34] Michelle Frechette: Mine is just, how long does this pizza go in the, after I take it out of the freezer, how long does it stay in the oven for?

[00:20:42] Mark Westguard: Yeah, we could calculate the times.

[00:20:45] Michelle Frechette: I would say, could you find a way for the forum to just make dinner? But you’d find, you’d find a way for it to just order dinner and have it delivered to me. I’m sure lots of ways to do that.

[00:20:55] Mark Westguard: John’s pizza have an API. If they do, we could hook up to it.

[00:21:00] Michelle Frechette: They don’t deliver here, but I’m sure someplace nearby does.

[00:21:02] Mark Westguard: Yeah, exactly.

[00:21:04] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, I know that’s pretty cool stuff. I love just, I love how easy it is to use without being a developer. But I can imagine if you do have developer skills, how much more you can even do with it, which I think is pretty cool.

[00:21:18] Mark Westguard: Yeah, there are hooks there for people to tap into. We have, if somebody has a custom or maybe a legacy API they need to talk to, then we have a web hook action. You can even run WordPress filter hooks and action hooks with it as well. So you can really get nitty gritty with it. And if you’re a PHP developer, you can take that form data and do whatever you want with it.

[00:21:40] Michelle Frechette: I love that. If people are interested, it’s also in your, your name on the screen. But WSForm.com, i did spell it right? Yes, I did. Okay, good.

[00:21:48] Mark Westguard: Yeah.

[00:21:51] Michelle Frechette: Does it say com? No, it says com. That’s good. If people are interested in connecting with you, if they have an idea where on your website, are they looking to give that information or input that information? Is it just a contact form?

[00:22:04] Mark Westguard: Yeah, you can go, yeah, we have a contact us form. A little, little secret, actually. A funny story. So I’m doing an event and I used Eventbrite for it and Michelle slapped my hand.

[00:22:17] Michelle Frechette: I wasn’t going to tell that story.

[00:22:20] Mark Westguard: I think it’s funny because I was in such a rush trying to do it. I was like, well, this will handle everything, right? Yeah. So it got changed to WS Form, but yeah, so my own worst enemy. But, you know, you can go to WSForm.com and you can reach me through there or you can find me on Twitter. I’m just @westgard. That’s w-e-s-t-g-u-a-r-d. We also have a Facebook group as well. So if you do a search on Facebook for WS Form, you’ll find us on there. And here comes the cat.

[00:22:50] Michelle Frechette: He’s like, who are you talking to? Hello, cat. How funny. Yeah, well, we send pictures of our cats because we are, we’re tech people. We have cats. That’s the way it works.

[00:23:02] Mark Westguard: That’s right. That’s right. Keep us company during the day, homeworkers.

[00:23:07] Michelle Frechette: Now, you have attended a lot of different WordCamps. You’ve done sponsorships, you’ve attended. What is some of the favorite things or favorite experiences that you’ve had? And maybe like, of all the travels you’ve been to, do you have a favorite camp?

[00:23:21] Mark Westguard: I love, I mean, WordCamp Asia is cool. Love to go and see a new country. WordCamp Europe is probably my favorite one. It’s just, it’s huge. I mean, there’s so many, so many people there. Get to see all my friends, get to meet new people. Yeah. I’ve sponsored, I don’t know how many, how many insta. I’ve actually only attended one WordCamp as an attendee. All the others I’ve sponsored, I tried to give back. WordCamp US I’m just going as an attendee for a change because I just wanted to hang out and meet people for, for a change because also a lot of the WordCamp US has a lot of the UU people anyway, so I’m going to give that a go. I’ll be there with my wife, Casey. So we’ll be looking forward to seeing everybody, I think. I’m trying to think my favorite one, actually. I think Porto is probably my favorite. I loved Porto and I really enjoyed the city and I really enjoyed the venue. I thought the venue was a great layout. We had a lot of, a lot of foot traffic there as well. So, yeah, it’s so many memories. Had I not gone to WordCamps, I wouldn’t be where I am now, and I wouldn’t have met all the great people that I met. The Datakit thing I was talking about earlier was a lunch with, with Zach. So that’s how these, these things happen. So if you haven’t been to one, I encourage you to go to one.

[00:24:39] Michelle Frechette: Absolutely. And there’s one coming up.

[00:24:41] Mark Westguard: Yes.

[00:24:41] Michelle Frechette: In September. And I think there’s still tickets available. Maybe? In Portland.

[00:24:48] Mark Westguard: Yeah, I haven’t seen people tweeting saying that it’s sold out, so maybe there’s some tickets available.

[00:24:54] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. I don’t even know. I probably should know. I’m gonna look. I’m gonna look. I typed in 2025 yesterday or the earlier today to check on tickets, and I was like, wait a minute.

[00:25:08] Mark Westguard: Its still this yeah. Yeah, I just got approved for WordCamp Asia, sponsoring that one next year, so that’ll be fun. Yeah.

[00:25:15] Michelle Frechette: Oh nice. I’m trying to think of what talk to submit over there, but I think I’ve got one, so I’m not going to say it publicly yet, but we’ll see. Yes, there are still tickets available for WordCamp US, which is in Portland, Oregon, September 17 through the 20th. I think it’s the first time for a four day camp, which is pretty cool. They’re not only doing. Yeah, they’re doing a. The first day will be the contributor day.

[00:25:40] Mark Westguard: Yep.

[00:25:41] Michelle Frechette: Followed by a showcase day where different people have submitted projects and products, I guess projects and products that have been built with WordPress and the opportunity to showcase those and show people about those. And then two days of camp, and it’s all during the work week, which means you can fly home on Saturday and have a day of rest before. Or if you want to explore Portland, you can, of course, over a weekend. But.

[00:26:14] Mark Westguard: First day is Wednesday. Is it?

[00:26:16] Michelle Frechette: It’s Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Yes.

[00:26:19] Mark Westguard: Yeah.

[00:26:19] Michelle Frechette: No, Tuesday. Tuesday is. Tuesday is contributor day.

[00:26:22] Mark Westguard: Okay.

[00:26:23] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. Because it’s four days. And so we’re done by Friday and home on Saturday, which gives a nice little buffer day to kind of regroup before you go back to work on Monday, if that’s the way you do things.

[00:26:34] Mark Westguard: WordCamps are exhausting.

[00:26:39] Michelle Frechette: They are. And I have come home from both flagships this year, sick once with some weird lung infection, once with COVID So I may mask this year. I’m still thinking about that because either that or I got to get in there and get my booster shots. Whether we get my flu shot and my COVID.

[00:26:54] Mark Westguard: I escaped it somehow. I don’t know. I usually catch conference funk, but not this time. I was okay. Fingers crossed.

[00:27:03] Michelle Frechette: I made a home from WordCamp, Canada unscathed. So that.

[00:27:07] Mark Westguard: Good, good.

[00:27:08] Michelle Frechette: Maybe it’s flat. I don’t know what it is anyway, but I’m excited about. About seeing people there, being there and having the opportunity to kind of just, you know, meet different people and that kind of thing. So that’ll be good for sure.

[00:27:20] Mark Westguard: Yeah. Are you going to be doing your selfie challenge at WordCamp US?

[00:27:24] Michelle Frechette: I think I will. I think I will. Yeah. I need to get some, like, labels made up or stickers made up with my little WAPU that says the information on how to do your selfie so that people aren’t going, wait, what was I supposed to do again? I could just hand out the stickers.

[00:27:39] Mark Westguard: So what’s the hashtag again?

[00:27:42] Michelle Frechette: Michelle and me. Yep. I know that. Then I always have to check for hashtag me and Michelle because people will reverse it sometimes, which I thought if I hand them a sticker sheet, like a little sticker sheet, that’ll be a good idea.

[00:27:52] Mark Westguard: An excuse for another sticker.

[00:27:55] Michelle Frechette: I mean, I kind of like stickers. So definitely gonna do something like that. And I was thinking about getting Michelle WAPU pins done this year, too.

[00:28:04] Mark Westguard: Okay.

[00:28:05] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, so I do. I have little stickers. I gotta find a new pin place, though, so maybe we’ll talk afterwards. You can give me some ideas of where to get pins done.

[00:28:15] Mark Westguard: Sure.

[00:28:17] Michelle Frechette: So, yeah, so people can stop by and get a sticker or a pin. Take a selfie. A lot of fun, for sure. Anything else coming down the line that you. When it either, even if you can’t tell us all about it, you might want to tease it out. Or is it just kind of like. We’ll see what happens.

[00:28:34] Mark Westguard: Yeah, there’s. There’s stuff in the pipeline for sure. We’ve got some new stuff coming with translation. We’ve got some new stuff coming with styling. So, yeah, a couple of. Couple of big updates coming. It’ll never end. It’s just one of those plugins that doesn’t stop.

[00:28:51] Michelle Frechette: And it’s completely, like, adjustable CSS wise. Like, I like that too. Right. You’ve made it so that you can change your help text. You can do all those things. Yeah.

[00:29:00] Mark Westguard: Super clean HTML. So if you can do a little bit of CSS or a lot of CSS, you can start it pretty easily. And we’ve got a huge knowledge base, so you can always go in there, do a search for CSS, and you’ll find all kinds of examples.

[00:29:15] Michelle Frechette: Exactly. Love it. So, anything else to mention today before we kind of wrap up?

[00:29:21] Mark Westguard: No, I think that’s it. I mean, I could go on. I could bore people for hours.

[00:29:27] Michelle Frechette: You and I could definitely talk for hours.

[00:29:29] Mark Westguard: People have to get on with their lives.

[00:29:33] Michelle Frechette: Again, if you’re interested, WSForm.com, you can go to w on twitter, it’s WS_Form. Or @westgard to talk to Mark. And, yeah, thanks for joining me today. We’re gonna. I’ll let you go before your laptop overheats. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. Do it. Okay. It must like me.

[00:29:56] Mark Westguard: It’s on granite. It seems to be working. Okay. New laptop next week. Expect me to work even faster.

[00:30:03] Michelle Frechette: Oh, my goodness gracious. Your fingers will be on fire. All right, well, thank you, everybody, for joining us for this week’s Happiness Hour, the Post Status Happiness Hour. We’ll see everybody next week. I’m working on a guest. I won’t say who it is yet, but we’ll have somebody. I know I love teasing things out, but every week we’re going to talk to somebody in the WordPress community, talk about things that are happening and what’s happening in their lives. We’ll see you all next week.

This article, Post Status Happiness Hour Session Three, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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WordPress 6.6.1 Flagged as Malware* Some WordPress users began to panic when Windows Defender flagged the WordPress 6.6.1 zip file as containing Trojan:Win32/Phish!MSR. * Some even reported that their host locked down their sites due to the malware flag. * The alert was primarily triggered by a specific string of code in \wp-includes\css\dist\block-library\style.min.css because Defender determined it contained a URL reference flagged as a Trojan. * The warning was a false positive caused by an insecure URL (beginning with http) in the CSS file: http://www.w3.org/2000/svg * This reference is a common inclusion at the beginning of svg files (in this case an inline SVG), and there was no real security issue in the update. * Here’s a valuable learning experience about XML namespaces and SVGs within coding: simply changing http to https would have solved the issue. * SearchEngineJournal breaks down the false alert in their recent article.

Billions of Google Links will Go Dark in 2025 Google’s URL shortener service (goo.gl) will stop working completely on August 25, 2025. * This shutdown will affect billions of redirected URLs, leading them to serve a 404 not found error. * Google initially halted the creation of new redirects with this service in March 2019, but continued to support the redirects. * Beginning August 23, 2024, goo.gl links will start showing an interstitial page before navigating to target URLs that will notify users that the link will no longer be supported after August 25, 2025. * Third-party link tracking tools have identified billions of goo.gl links that will be impacted by this change. * Here’s another Google service being sunsetted. Does this make you think twice about building any business-critical process there?* * See how it may affect you in this post on SearchEngineLand.

Several Interesting Items in AI News… * ChatGPT’s new Voice Mode can sing, speak multiple languages with various accents, and provide correct pronunciations. * With Meta’s new AI Studio, you can create AI characters for Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. It’s as simple as starting an “AI Chat” on Instagram. Full details here. * The Writer Framework lets you create Python apps in a drag and drop interface. * Google is bringing Gemini-power to the Chrome desktop browser. New features will include Lens for desktop, Tab Compare for shopping assistance, and AI integration for search history. * Developers have gotten a first look at Apple Intelligence in the iOS 18 preview where AI is sprinkled throughout from email summaries in Apple Mail to converting voice notes to a to do list. * With Anthropic’s Claude you can create personalized bots that can perform personalized tasks. Called “tool use,” the feature will allow Claude to interact with external APIs of your choosing. Interesting possibilities here. * AI Wars – Reddit is currently blocking all AI crawlers other than Google.

Worth a Look* WordPress 6.6 caused all text links to be underlined for some users. See the support thread here. It’s not the first time this has happened. Back in December 2022, it happened in WordPress 6.1, too. * Is it really safe to just hit the update button? Specky Boy explains how to stay safe during an update process. * Rabbit Hole Alert: Check out this collection of Bad and Ugly Websites in the WebDesignMuseum.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending August 2, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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What Can WordPress Agencies Learn from the Crowdstrike Meltdown? Unless you’ve been in a cave (or maybe on a nice beach ), you’re keenly aware of the global IT meltdown that happened on June 19. * An errant update from cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike wreaked havoc on Windows computers around the world, bringing airlines, hospitals, banks, transportation systems, news organizations, and other critical services to their knees. * A week later, some companies (like Delta Airlines) are still struggling to recover. * Interestingly, Crowdstrike’s CEO, George Kurtz, was the CTO of McAfee in 2010 when a similar issue caused a global crisis for Windows XP users. * Aside from switching to Mac (sorry, too soon?), what can we as WordPress Agency Owners learn from the Crowdstrike fiasco? * Check our own systems. Matt Mullenweg reflected on the Make WordPress blog that the disaster “is a good opportunity for us to brainstorm and review our defense in depth around updates… It’s our ethical duty as engineers to make sure these systems fail gracefully when something goes wrong, because it’s guaranteed that it will at some point.” * Communicate with empathy. Crowdstrike has been criticized for, among many other things, being factual but without empathy in their initial communications. Later statements were better. * Offer meaningful compensation.* Crowdstrike attempted to placate affected customers with a $10 Uber Eats voucher. Many felt this was laughingly insufficient, and many of the vouches failed when used. A token gesture can sometimes make things worse rather than better.

Google Makes a U-Turn on Third-Party Cookies* Google has surprisingly (?) reversed its decision to phase out third-party cookies in the Chrome browser. * Instead, they have opted for a more advertiser-friendly approach while still providing privacy options that allow users to make choices. * The Privacy Sandbox initiative will continue, but it will not fully replace third-party cookies as planned. * This decision follows feedback from developers, publishers, regulators, and the advertising industry. * Chrome default settings will likely continue to allow third-party cookies for most users. * This move represents a significant shift from the 2020 announcement to eliminate cookies within a few years. * Regulators had expressed concerns about potential unfair advantage for Google over competitors, but exact details of new privacy options in the Chrome browser not yet revealed. * Read about the reversal on Mashable. This story will continue to unfold as Google releases more details.

WooCommerce Announces Roadmap for 2024 and Beyond* Beau Lebens, Head of Engineering for Woo, has published an update to the WooCommerce roadmap on the Woo Developer Blog. * A new developer newsletter has been planned along with improvements to documentation and a reimagined Woo Developer Blog. * Comprehensive guides to new and existing features, best practices, and tutorials will be produced to empower developers to focus on extensibility, block development, and theme customization. * Blocks are the future of WooCommerce, and developers are encouraged to move away from shortcodes and legacy APIs. * The WooCommerce REST API will be improved with a focus on backward compatibility. * Other areas targeted for improvement include product management, order fulfillment, and the checkout experience. * See the full breakdown of the new Woo Map at SearchEngineJournal.

Worth a Look This Webflow user experienced a 32x price increase overnight ($468/yr to $15,000) and they gave him one week to pay up or move out. Yikes! Read the Tweet here. * How do you know when your WordPress database needs to be repaired, and how do you do it? Check out this easy-to-follow guide. * Rabbit Hole Alert: Give Google Feud a shot (note: you’ll need to swap from dark to light mode to play)*

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending July 26, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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This Week at WordPress.org (July 21, 2024)News* WordPress 6.6.1 Maintenance Release * WP Briefing: Episode 84: A WordPress 6.6 Sneak Peek

Accessibility* Call for Accessibility Team Representatives

Community* Venue Policy Update * WordPress Meetup Trends * Community Team Event Updates– July 16, 2024 * Monthly Planning (Triage) – July 9, 2024 – Status: Open

Core * Proposal: Adjusting Dev Chat times for the 6.7 release * Aligning Committer-Level Access Across the Code Base * The Crowdstrike disaster is good…

Block Development Examples About the “ruleset” for WordPress Coding Standards used in “block-development-examples” * Multi Block Build and Plugin/SlotFill (or Custom Data Store) not specifically related to a block (or specific block) Create Block Theme Enhancement: Support for Additional Custom Templates – Status: Open * Feature Request: Improved Onboarding Process – Status: Open * Bug: Inconsistent Theme Export – Status: Open Core TracAwaiting Review Can’t insert a reusable block and other problems – Status: New * Extra margin in tablet and mobile login button in admin login – Status: New * CSS error using grid in Customizer – Status: New * quick draft added images and categories free – Status: New * Suggestion: Add a post_type column in the wp_postmeta table – Status: New * Make overriding and back porting classes from gutenberg repo easier – Status: New * Post via email: Login Name field triggers Safari’s login autocomplete – Status: New * Password-protected pages lacking appropriate ‘Cache-Control’ request header – Status: New * After wordpress 6.6 gutenburg editor is so slow , i can’t even write a word , it is that slow – Status: New * Warning: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool in /sites/site.com/wp-includes/media.php on line 795 801 – Status: New * WP_HTML_Tag_Processor doesn’t allow to set a valid image src – Status: New * Background: add background attachment support to theme.json styles – Status: New * Filters on pattern archive page not working – Status: New * JS Error when mouving mouse on pattern archive – Status: New * Function comment missing – Status: Closed * Add $context parameter to get_edit_comment_link() to get the URL without HTML entities – Status: Reviewing * preg_match fails when className when $block[‘attrs’][‘className’] is an array which is case when “extraClasses” is set* – Status: New

Editor* category widget is not scrolling – Status: Closed * WordPress 6.6. Editor on top off screen hardly clickabel – Status: New * Ensure compat functions do not rely on external functions – Status: New * Editor: Update packages for 6.6.1 – Status: Closed * New WP Core 6.6 prevents switching views in Gutenberg Page Builder – Status: New * Stabilize experimental Typography block support keys – Status: New * Body element specificity still bumped – Status: Closed * global-styles-inline-css rule introduces breaking changes ” :root :where(body)” – Status: Reviewing

Bundled Theme* Twenty Twelve: navigation block submenus are cut off – Status: New * Twenty Thirteen: Code block does not adjust font size with block settings – Status: New * Twenty Sixteen: correct Code block font family, line-height and padding in the editor – Status: New * Twenty Twenty-Four: fix typos in pattern descriptions – Status: Closed * Twenty Nineteen : Column Block inner spacing issue – Status: New * Twenty Sixteen: Image Block Alignment Offset (Left/Right) – Status: New * Twenty Twenty Four Theme Issues – Status: Closed

General* is_utf8_charset() undefined when called by code in compat.php – Status: Closed * PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Object of class WP_Comment could not be converted to string – Status: Closed * URL-encoded _wp_http_referer causes Apache AH10508, leading to 403 in several places – Status: Closed * On responsive device the padding above and below the Dashboad sidebar are not the same – Status: Assigned * After updating the version, the sidebar stopped working – Status: Closed * Capture and inform users when plugins or themes are _doing_it_wrong() – Status: New * Reduce number of users initial loaded and replace by select2 – Import page – Status: New

Security* Support for storing and getting encrypted options – Status: New

Site Health* Why doesn’t Jetpack’ Connection Token Health accept in its latest update? What should we do? – Status: Closed * Why is Jetpack’s Connection Token Health not accepted in the site health in its latest update? What should we do? – Status: Closed * Site health: directory sizes not shown (if font directory doesn’t exist?) – Status: Closed

Interactivity API* Interactivity API: Directives cannot access derived state properties on the server – Status: New

Comments* Only type cast a scalar $comment_id in get_comment_author_link() – Status: New

Plugins* Ensure plugin auto updates are blocked if required WordPress version is not supported – Status: New

Customize* 6.6-de_DE missing … – Status: Reopened

Posts, Post Types* New WP Core 6.6 prevents switching views in Gutenberg Page Builder – Status: New

Administration* Post via email: Login Name field triggers Safari’s login autocomplete – Status: New

Script Loader* Add the ability to handle “fetchpriority” to ES Modules and Import Maps – Status: New

Taxonomy* Not providing optional $taxonomy parameter in get_edit_term_link() leads to incorrect URL – Status: Closed

Media* Warning: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool in /sites/site.com/wp-includes/media.php on line 795 801 – Status: New

Networks and Sites* wp-activate.php tries to set undefined property – Status: New

Build/Test Tools* Performance workflow cannot find artifact in branches on workflow_dispatch – Status: Closed * Rate limiting can occur when sending Slack notifications out through GitHub Actions – Status: New * Slack notifications removed from E2E testing for the 6.3-5.8 branches – Status: Closed

HTML API* WP_HTML_Tag_Processor doesn’t allow to set a valid image src – Status: New

External Libraries* Update Sodium Compat to 1.21.1

Options, Meta APIs* delete_network_option sets network notoptions cache on non-multisites, but add_network_option and update_network_option do not clear it – Status: New

Toolbar* admin_bar_menu node my-account returns null – Status: New

REST API* REST API: Implement ‘targetHints’ property – Status: New

I18N* Text “None” disappeared from Align Display in WordPress 6.6 – Status: Closed

Upgrade/Install* Old WordPress core file not removed during update – Status: Closed

Editor global-styles-inline-css rule introduces breaking changes ” :root :where(body)” – Status: Reviewing Performance Issue: Improve unit tests execution – Status: Open * Issue: Optimize plugin performance – Status: Open * Issue: Addressing slow loading times – Status: Open * Issue: Enhancing image placeholder efficiency – Status: Open * Issue: Core performance tests improvements – Status: Open * Issue: Fix caching issues – Status: Open * Issue: Resolve compatibility issues – Status: Open Gutenberg Discussions Question: Modal with Interactivity API * Option to add name to group blocks removed? * data-wp-each is there an iterator available? * State of React 2023 Results * Let’s discuss Core block extensibility * Does the block editor need a client side alternative to the render\_block filter? * Nested data-wp-each loops * Native multilingualism in Gutenberg: Future development of synced patterns / synced pattern overrides * Get WordPress block templates content similar to $post_content * data-wp-text shows
, not parsed as break * Register Block Type * Hooking into transform event Classic Block -> Any gutenberg block * Interactivity API how to use data-wp-bind–checked in a loop? * Filtering theme, default, and custom colors (add_theme_support(‘editor_color_palette’) not working) * Given the javascript/editor representation of a block, is there a way to get it’s rendered html? * initialize Interactivity API directives on asyncronously loaded content * How can I pass a dynamic value to an action? * Dynamically generate a core block via PHP * Programmatically change global style variation * Custom post meta values are null despite setting default values Gutenberg Issues
[Type] Enhancement Term Query Block/Query Block Group By Term – Status: Open * Remove the site logo block from core – Status: Open

[Type] Developer Documentation* Small Typo in Inline Document – Status: Open

[Status] In Progress / [Type] Bug* Mobile width + Distraction Free: Toolbar shows non-functional style and sidebar buttons – Status: Open

[Feature] Patterns / General Interface / [Type] Bug* Pages: clicking on page settings before patterns appear causes stacking modals – Status: Open

[Type] Bug WordPress 6.6(.1) issue: Template parts list does not indicate modified items – Status: Open * In Grid layout the template description field renders when empty – Status: Open * Typesets section renders a list of installed fonts – Status: Open * Do not render empty column blocks in the editor when viewing mobile and stacked – Status: Open * Pseudo-element selectors in styles.**.css property no longer work in 6.6 compared to 6.5 – Status: Open * an error when running npm start – Status: Open * Differing CSS specificity between Non-Iframed Editor and Front end – Status: Open * Missing semantics for which view option is chosen – Status: Open * React methods are executed infinited times when block is inserted through a custom pattern – Status: Open * Docs: Create a section about Block Hooks in the Block Editor Handbook – Status: Open * Pattern Shuffle: Add Editor setting to disable shuffling – Status: Open * The Shadow Range controls are unlabeled – Status: Open * Data views grid, remember filters and view options when exiting editing canvas. – Status: Open * Change default site editor layout – Status: Open * Typography: Font appearance control sits at different height to line height and other controls – Status: Open * Post Edit Screen Restricted by Metaboxes – Status: Open * Image block view script causes errors when client-side navigation is enabled – Status: Open * Synced Pattern Overrides: Different Blocks within a synced pattern override at different locations – Status: Open * DataViews: Action label function not execute in bulk editing menu – Status: Open * Graduate data view options out of a menu to allow more design expression – Status: Open * Components: Add eslint rules to prevent usage without __next40pxDefaultSize prop – Status: Open * Zoom Out: Focus search when showing an insertion point – Status: Open * Zoom Out: Update the insertion point when selecting a block. – Status: Open * Zoom Out: Integrate into Create new page flow – Status: Open * iAPI: Merge of state and context after client-side navigation – Status: Open * Zoom Out: Hold to drag and drop nested patterns. – Status: Open * Zoom Out: Prevent nested patterns when in zoom out – Status: Open * Zoom Out: Add a control to the preview drop down – Status: Open * Update the Button component – Status: Open * Is it possible using registerBlockType with apiFetch? – Status: Open * Zoom Out: Canvas size incorrect in Post Editor – Status: Open * Empty gap between block settings panel and post title – Status: Open * Block Setting Panel should prevent interaction with blocks beneath it – Status: Open * Paragraph Block covered by keyboard on post/page editor when working on Mobile – Status: Open * Non-iframed Editor: Compound selectors within :where are not prefixed correctly – Status: Open * PHP backports for WP 6.7 – Status: Open * Headings not pasted from Word in the browser – Status: Open * Adding remove_theme_support( 'block-templates' ) for site with existing user created template causes error – Status: Open * Query Loop block: allow certain aspects of a query to be changed without losing permalink structure – Status: Open * Font size picker: fix translatable strings and accessibility – Status: Open * Inconsistent spacing in zoom out vertical toolbar – Status: Open * Query Loop: add ability to define (toggleable) custom filters – Status: Open * Grid blocks cannot be called with English block names using ‘/’ in Japanese environment – Status: Open * Spacer block: unlabeled Range and Input controls – Status: Open * Publicly expose useGlobalStyle hook – Status: Open * [Flaky Test] should select title if the cursor is on title](https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/63794) – Status: Open * Posts page should directly editable in the Site Editor – Status: Open * When viewing the posts page, “Edit page” control should open the template – Status: Open * DocumentBar: Use home icon and label for default “Your latest posts” setup – Status: Open * Update the “Edit site” admin bar control to open the Site Editor at the top-level, consistently – Status: Open * When set to a static page “Edit site” should open the assigned homepage – Status: Open * Homepage: Posts page & static home page in the Site Editor – Status: Open * [wordpress/scripts] 5 high severity vulnerabilities](https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/63771) – Status: Open * TreeSelect: Support multiple selection – Status: Open * Cannot edit page when content block is located inside a template part on a template – Status: Open * Block Bindings: Add support for the Cover block background image – Status: Open * Issue when installing block in the block editor itself. – Status: Open * Shadows / Elevation – Status: Open * Find consensus around using cursor: not-allowed on disabled elements and apply across – Status: Open * Site Editor: The canvas remounts when resizing the browser window – Status: Open * iAPI: Enforce correct namespaces in all places (directives, functions…) that accept a namespace – Status: Open * Improve the experience when editing the page that displays latest posts according to reading settings – Status: Open * Simplify editing and resetting template parts – Status: Open * Sorting Patterns Overflows Viewport on Mobile – Status: Open * Add help text support to individual radio button options – Status: Open * Update the RadioControl header design – Status: Open * Editor not loading – Status: Open * WP_Theme_JSON_Resolver_Gutenberg::get_user_data_from_wp_global_styles() doesn’t return the post that it creates. – Status: Open * Pages grid: Improve the preview field – Status: Open * Data Views: filtering by author for pages doesn’t scale with 2+ authors – Status: Open Core Meetings Performance Chat Summary: 23 July 2024 * Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday July 24, 2024 * Performance Chat Agenda: 23 July 2024

Developer Blog:* Mixing and matching styles, colors, and typography in WordPress 6.6 * JSON Schema in WordPress

Dev Blog Content Building a multi-block plugin * Prevent a11y Errors Through Post Locking * The Beginner WordPress Developer Learning Pathway * An overview of available directives for the Interactivity API * Tutorial on aspect ratios in WordPress 6.6 * Proposal: Introducing video content to the Developer Blog Design Design Share #60 (Jul 1 – Jul 12)

do_action* do_action Ahmedabad 2024 * Mumbai 2024

Documentation* Summary for Docs Team Meeting (16-Jul-2024) * Online monthly Docs Team Contributor Day July 23 & 30, 2024 * Localization and translation of HelpHub – Meeting notes * Documentation Team Update – July 15, 2024

Docs Issue Tracker Two version(6.4.4 and 6.5.5) missing in wordpress version page – Status: In progress * Monthly Planning (Triage) – July 9, 2024 – Status: To do Five for the Future Make use of new usermeta last_activity_tracker – Status: New

Hosting* WordPress 6.6 Server Compatibility * The Image Revolution: AVIF and WebP * Wrong redirect for Network Admin Sites Screen

Meta* WordCamp US Contributor Day * Agenda for July 24, 2024

WordCamp.org Issue: Meetup application for “Montpellier, France” – Status: Open * Issue: Add internationalization support – Status: Open Openverse Community Meeting Recap (2024-07-23)

Openverse Issues Issue: Image search pagination issue – Status: Open * Issue: Audio search not working – Status: Open * Issue: License filter bug – Status: Open * Issue: Update documentation – Status: Open * Issue: API rate limiting – Status: Open * Issue: Improve search speed – Status: Open * Issue: Add support for new media types – Status: Open * Issue: Fix image cropping tool – Status: Open * Issue: Improve user interface – Status: Open * Issue: Enhance security measures – Status: Open * Issue: Update dependencies – Status: Open * Issue: Add user analytics – Status: Open * Issue: Bug in keyword search – Status: Open Playground Issue: Some pull requests aren’t showing up in the changelog – Status: Open * Issue: Improve developer documentation – Status: Open * Issue: Add new testing tools – Status: Open * Issue: Fix bugs in existing tools – Status: Open * Issue: Improve UI for playground – Status: Open * Issue: show create generates invalid default values for columns – Status: Open * Issue: Fix bugs in the playground environment – Status: Open * Issue: Ensure all PRs are in the changelog – Status: Open * Issue: Add new features to the playground – Status: Open * Issue: Improve playground stability – Status: Open * Issue: Enhance user experience – Status: Open * Issue: Update playground dependencies – Status: Open * Issue: Improve documentation – Status: Open * Issue: Add more interactive tutorials – Status: Open

Plugins* Plugin Review Team: 15 July 2024

Plugin Check Issue: Enhance plugin security checks – Status: Open * Issue: Improve compatibility testing – Status: Open * Issue: Add new plugin validation rules – Status: Open * Issue: Update plugin-check-action documentation – Status: Open Polyglots Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – July 24, 2024 (07:00 UTC) * WordPress 6.6.1 has been released….

Project* WordPress Project Contributor Handbook v2

Support* 25th July Support Team meeting * Proposed updates to the Support Handbook

Sustainability* Sustainability Chat Summary, July 19, 2024

Test* Test Team Update: 22 July 2024 * Week in Test: July 22, 2024

Themes* Themes Team Meeting Notes – July 23, 2024 * Themes team update July 23, 2024

Theme Directory Warnings in theme upload show above the entire page – Status: New * Inconsistent name in local nav – Status: New Twenty Twenty Five Post format archive templates – Status: New * Automatic dark mode – Status: New

Training* Training Team Meeting Recap – 18th July 2024

Learn Issues Storybook – Status: Open * Add Your Plugin to the Block Directory – Status: Open * Block Specific Plugin Guidelines – Status: Open * Using Subversion – Status: Open * How Your Plugin Assets Work – Status: Open * Planning and Submitting a Plugins – Status: Open * Detailed Plugin Guidelines – Status: Open * Introduction to the Plugin directory – Status: Open * Authentication: OAuth – Status: Open * Authentication: JSON Web Tokens – Status: Open * Custom Controller Classes – Status: Open * Personal Data Erasure – Status: Open * Personal Data Export – Status: Open * Privacy Policy Content and Tools – Status: Open * Working with User Metadata – Status: Open * Working with Users – Status: Open * Internationalization Security – Status: Open * Interacting with custom tables – Status: Open * Rendering Post Metadata – Status: Open * Custom Meta Boxes – Status: Open * Working with Custom Post Types – Status: Open * Building a Custom Settings Page – Status: Open * Options API – Status: Open * Using Settings API – Status: Open * Sub-Menus – Status: Open * Top-Level Menus – Status: Open * Custom content types and capabilities – Status: Open * How to check user capabilities – Status: Open * How to create/modify/remove roles and capabilities – Status: Open * Block Bindings – Status: Open * Performance optimization – Status: Open * Meeting Agenda July 18, 2024 – Status: Open Courses Beginner WordPress Developer * Beginner WordPress User

Online Workshops* Meet the new Learn.WordPress.org * Meet the new Learn.WordPress.org

WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

• Second Beta of jQuery 4.0.0 NEW
• Curl 8.9.0 NEW
• Node 22.5.1 NEW
• React 18.3.1 / React 19 Upgrade Guide
• PHP 8.4.0 Alpha 2 available for testing
• PHP 8.3.9 Released!
• PHP 8.2.21 Released!
• PHP 8.1.29 Released!
• PHPCS 3.10.2 NEW
• WPCS 3.1.0
• LibZip 1.10.1
• Changes in MySQL 8.4.1 (Not yet released, LTS Release) –
• Composer 2.7.7
• Homebrew 4.3.10
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes
• Safari 17.5 Release Notes

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This Week at WordPress.org (July 14, 2024)News* WordPress 6.6 “Dorsey” * WordPress 6.6.1 RC1 is now available * Localization and translation of HelpHub – Meeting notes * Request for Feedback: What would you like to see in the redesigned Five for the Future website?

WordPress this is how the plugin queue went from 73 days to 38 days in just 2. @evanmherman just reviewed 100 plugins at #WCEH. Give this contributor a round of applause. pic.twitter.com/3U3XDz9zvJ

— @courtneyr_dev #WCEH (@courtneyr_dev) July 11, 2024

Accessibility* Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: July 19, 2024

Community* WordPress Meetup Trends * WCEU Contributor Day – summary of discussions at the Community tables * Contributor Working Group Chat Agenda | July 18th 07:00 UTC (APAC/EMEA) and 16:00 UTC (AMER) * WordCamp & WordPress Events Debrief Analysis * Community Team Event Updates Published * Community Team Event Updates– July 16, 2024

Community GitHub
WordPress/Community-Team: 36 IssuesNew Meetup Applications* [Meetup] Boulder, Colorado – Status: New * [Meetup] Kingston, Ontario, Canada – Status: New * [Meetup] Medellín – Status: New * [Meetup] Arnhem or Ede – Status: New * [Meetup] Montpellier, France – Status: New * [Meetup] Nioko 1, Kadiogo, Burkina Faso – Status: New * [Meetup] North Fulton, GA – Status: New * [Meetup] United Kingdom – Status: New * [Meetup] Casablanca – Status: New * [Meetup] Cairo, Egypt – Status: New * [Meetup] Ijebu Ode – Status: New * [Meetup] Gold Coast – Status: New * [Meetup] Jos – Status: New * [Meetup] Ogbomosho – Status: New * [Meetup] Huddersfield or Leeds, West Yorkshire – Status: New * [Meetup] Owerri – Status: New * [Meetup] Kigali, Rwanda – Status: New * [Meetup] Owo – Status: New * [Meetup] Croydon – Status: New * [Meetup] Izmir – Status: New * [Meetup] Istanbul – Status: New * [Meetup] Koforidua, Ghana – Status: New * [Meetup] Kayseri, Turkey – Status: New * [Meetup] Buea, Cameroon – Status: New * [Meetup] Abuja, Nigeria – Status: New * [Meetup] Monterrey – Status: New * [Meetup] Skokie – Status: New * [Meetup] Mbarara, Western, Uganda – Status: New * [WordCamp] Eastern, Uganda – Status: New * [Meetup] União da Vitória/Paraná – Status: New * [Meetup] Durango – Status: New * [Meetup] Guwahati, Assam, India – Status: New * [WordCamp] Osogbo, Nigeria – Status: New

Wordcamp Applications* [WordPress Event] Skopje, North Macedonia – Status: New * [WordCamp] Eastern, Uganda – Status: New * [WordCamp] Osogbo, Nigeria – Status: New

Team Reps* Publication of the quarterly report – September – Status: New

Newsletter* [Meetup Organizer Newsletter Content] Join the GatherPress tests and translations – Status: New Core * WordPress 6.6.1 RC1 is now available * WordPress 6.6.1: An upcoming maintenance release * GH Pages: fix previous releases sorting – Status: New * Solving rewriting site URLs in WordPress using the HTML API and URL parser

Block Development Examples About the “ruleset” for WordPress Coding Standards used in “block-development-examples” * Multi Block Build and Plugin/SlotFill (or Custom Data Store) not specifically related to a block (or specific block) Create Block ThemeBug Save changes to theme’ re-categorises ‘Header’ and ‘Footer’ template parts as ‘General’ – Status: New

Enhancement Ability to reset all settings in one click – Status: New Core TracEditor Elements: Maintain backwards compatibility by avoiding specificity bump for top-level element-only selectors – Status: Closed * Links are now underlined – Status: Closed * Editor: Update packages for 6.6 RC 3 – Status: Closed * Group block inner container should be removed when Grid variation is active in classic themes – Status: New * Twenty Twenty-Four: fix typos in pattern descriptions – Status: Accepted * Can’t insert a reusable block and other problems – Status: New * Block Bindings: Expose sources in the editor settings to consume them in the client – Status: New

REST API* REST API: image cropping is broken – Status: Closed

General* is_utf8_charset() undefined when called by code in compat.php – Status: Closed * HTML API: Add method to replace modifiable text – Status: New * Old WordPress core file not removed during update – Status: Closed

Comments* PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Object of class WP_Comment could not be converted to string – Status: Closed

Site Health* site health – disk_free_space return error – Status: New

Plugins* Upload Plugin button greyed out – Status: Closed * Hidding the dependency notice + prevent the plugin deactivation only on some case. – Status: New * Display compatibility metadata for Dependent plugins – Status: New

Themes* Theme Search: Pressing “enter” clears search form and redirects to theme-install.php?browse=popular – Status: Closed

Site Health* Site Health PHP check shows inaccurate status – Status: Accepted * Site Health Tool – Directory sizes stuck in loading state in WordPress v6.6 RC3 – Status: New

Upgrade/Install* Coding Standards fixes for WP 6.7 – Status: New * Docblock improvements for WP 6.7 – Status: New

I18N* CSS error using grid in Customizer – Status: New

Query* Allow ordering of posts by status – Status: New

Networks and Sites* Add an interface option to let users set empty_trash_days – Status: New * WP_Query get_posts should be call its property not again execute all caculations – Status: New

Administration* Add border to admin sidebar/bar for Windows high contrast mode – Status: New

Media* Edited Images don’t include un-edited versions in WXR file, even if used in a Post – Status: New

Script Loader* Script “in_footer” => false with “defer” will make all dependencies that are not deferred load in head – Status: New

Toolbar Toolbar: consider moving user menu to a higher priority (after most plugins) – Status: Closed Performance[Type] Bug Disabling “Also output JPEG” does not prevent picture element from being served – Status: New * Picture element: The accurate sizes improvement for images not working – Status: New * Autoloaded Options Health Check: Disabled options reappear in Site Health after external update – Status: New

Good First Issue* Disabling “Also output JPEG” does not prevent picture element from being served – Status: New

[Plugin] Modern Image Formats Disabling “Also output JPEG” does not prevent picture element from being served – Status: New * Picture element: The accurate sizes improvement for images not working – Status: New Gutenberg Discussions data-wp-text shows
, not parsed as break * Register Block Type * Hooking into transform event Classic Block -> Any gutenberg block * Interactivity API how to use data-wp-bind–checked in a loop? * Filtering theme, default, and custom colors (add_theme_support(‘editor_color_palette’) not working) * Given the javascript/editor representation of a block, is there a way to get it’s rendered html? * initialize Interactivity API directives on asyncronously loaded content * How can I pass a dynamic value to an action? * Dynamically generate a core block via PHP * Programmatically change global style variation * Custom post meta values are null despite setting default values * Why select(blockEditorStore).getBlocks(clientId) return empty array for block rendered in Editor > Templates > All Templates window * How to use 3rd party React Component Library for crafting new Gutenberg Blocks Gutenberg Issues
[Feature] Patterns* Patterns omitted from the Inserter are also omitted from replace flows – Status: New * Patterns should always be available to insert – Status: New * Add a user preference for showing or hiding the pattern selection modal when creating new content – Status: New * Patterns: add a “blank” option to make it easier to start fresh – Status: New

[Feature] Zoom Out* Tabbing to zoom out canvas retriggers scaling animation – Status: New * Can’t select zoom out section with keyboard – Status: New * Make vertical toolbar sticky when scrolling while zoomed out – Status: New * Zoom out: Add an Editor setting to disable Zoom out mode – Status: New * Zoom out: cover block resize handler is misplaced – Status: New * Zoom out: wide blocks are shrunken – Status: New * Remove double shadow on Inserter category panel when zoomed out – Status: New * Improve zoom out animation when selecting pattern categories – Status: New

[Feature] Paste* Cannot paste Excel tables into WordPress – Status: New

[Feature] Nested / Inner Blocks* Tracking: Writing and Editing Flow / Block Editor Core Polish – Status: New

[Package] Edit Widgets* Add heading title and optional sub-header to all panels – Status: New

[Package] Edit Site* Add heading title and optional sub-header to all panels – Status: New

[Block] Pattern* Converting an overridable block inside a pattern causes the block to break – Status: New

[Package] Interactivity Router* iAPI Router: don’t remove region when it’s not present in the new page – Status: New

[Block] Table* Cannot paste Excel tables into WordPress – Status: New

[Type] Iteration Interactivity API iteration for WordPress 6.7 – Status: New Core Meetings Summary, Dev Chat, July 17, 2024 * Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday July 17, 2024 * What’s new in Gutenberg 18.8 (17 July) * Performance Chat Summary: 16 July 2024 * Performance Chat Agenda: 16 July 2024

Developer Blog:* What’s new for developers? (July 2024) * 15 ways to curate the WordPress editing experience

Dev Blog Content Building a multi-block plugin * Prevent a11y Errors Through Post Locking * The Beginner WordPress Developer Learning Pathway * An overview of available directives for the Interactivity API * Tutorial on aspect ratios in WordPress 6.6 * Proposal: Introducing video content to the Developer Blog * Do you really need a custom block? Exploring alternatives to block development in WordPress * Add Developer Hours recordings to the site * What’s new for developers? (August 2024) – Status: New Design Design Share #60 (Jul 1 – Jul 12)

do_action* do_action Ahmedabad 2024 * Mumbai 2024

Documentation* Online monthly Docs Team Contributor Day July 23 & 30, 2024 * Documentation Team Update – July 15, 2024

Docs Issue Tracker[Status] To do* HelpHub/Codex: update changelogs for bundled themes (WP6.6) – Status: New * [6.6 HelpHub]: Child navigation blocks – Status: New * [6.6 HelpHub]: Quote block – Status: New * [6.6 HelpHub]: Site Tagline block – Status: New * Broken and missing screenshots (mostly block pages) – Status: New * [6.6 HelpHub]: Site Editor Pages – Status: New * [6.6 HelpHub]: Social Icon block – Status: New * [6.6 HelpHub]: Table block – Status: New * [6.6 HelpHub]: Post Featured Image block – Status: New * [6.6 HelpHub]: Media and text block – Status: New * [6.6 HelpHub]: Editor Command Palette – Status: New * [6.6 HelpHub]: Page/Post Settings sidebar – Status: New * [6.6 HelpHub]: WordPress Block Editor – Status: New * [6.6 HelpHub]: Site Editor – Status: New * [6.6 HelpHub]: Synced Patterns – Status: New * [6.6 HelpHub]: Site Editor Patterns – Status: New

Developer Documentation (DevHub)* [Theme Handbook] Include alternative way to reference presets in theme.json – Status: New * Remove Resources and Recommendations Pages in the Accessibility Ready Theme Documentation – Status: New * Theme handbook: Explain that the attachment pages are disabled on new installations – Status: New

Themes* [Theme Handbook] Include alternative way to reference presets in theme.json – Status: New * Remove Resources and Recommendations Pages in the Accessibility Ready Theme Documentation – Status: New * Theme handbook: Explain that the attachment pages are disabled on new installations – Status: New

Medium Priority* [6.6 HelpHub]: Template Editor – Status: New

High Priority* [6.6 HelpHub]: Site Editor Patterns – Status: New

Triage Monthly Planning (Triage) – July 9, 2024 – Status: New Five for the Future Make use of new usermeta last_activity_tracker – Status: New

Hosting* Hosting Team meeting agenda 2024-07-03 * The Image Revolution: AVIF and WebP * Hosting Directory: Next Steps

Marketing* WordPress Media Corps Next Steps * [SHOWCASE]: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/ – Status: New * [AMPLIFY]: WordPress Meetup Reactivation – Status: New

Media Corp* Media Corps Briefings Feedback Form Now Open for Media Partners

Media Corps Issues Where should we make public the Media Corps partners or their form responses? – Status: Open * Gather feedback from media partners for upcoming briefings – Status: Open * Review second batch of WordPress Media Corps self-assessment form responses – Status: Open * Establish baseline for metrics to track media coverage and measure success – Status: Open Meta Meeting Agenda for July 10, 2024 * Please use PHPStan – Status: New * Plugins: Inconsistent name in local nav – Status: New * Inconsistent name across sections and pages – Status: New * Google ignoring the function descriptions, displaying inaccurate information in search results – Status: New

Meta TracPlugin Directory* Release Confirmation: Allow plugin reviewers to undo a “discard” – Status: New * Add Validation on form – Status: Closed * Need clear definition of Explicit Consent for Plugin Guidelines – Status: Reopened

Profiles* Remove “Edit Forum Profile” from wp.org profile header – Status: New * Incorrect link image styles in the profile section “Plugins” – Status: Closed

WordPress.org Site* Improve our logo page – Status: Closed * Two versions (6.4.4 and 6.5.5) missing in WordPress version page – Status: New * The release page incorrectly states the wrong date for the initial version (0.70) of WP and 0.71 on June 2003 – Status: Closed

Theme Directory* Add banner on the themes archive when a search is done for accessibility ready to add context on what this designation means – Status: New * Add informational section on the theme single for themes with Accessibility Ready tag describing what that means – Status: New * Add accessibility information section on theme single in Theme Directory – Status: New

General* Bug: Image attributes don’t propagate to posts, pages, products, etc – Status: Closed

Trac* Slack notifications can trigger on some comments – Status: New

Developer Hub Footer overlaps content on developer resource – Status: New WP Org Main (Theme) Feature request: Add a date filter to the news archive – Status: New * Review author text link on the right side panel, unify and centralize all external links – Status: New * Linkify GitHub usernames on comment activity – Status: New * Drop CommonJS Support – Status: New * Featured image on Speakers CPT not saved – Status: New * Unify the favorite button across sites WP Org Must Use Plugins* Local Navigation: Prevent menu from collapsing when page title is long – Status: New * Latest News: allow more customized content – Status: New

Openverse* A week in Openverse: 2024-07-08 – 2024-07-15

Openverse Issues Priority: Medium* AxiosError: Request failed with status code 403 – Status: New * Stop unnecessary downloads of translations for storybook build – Status: New * Standardize an approach to documenting implementation/project plan changes – Status: New * Cache translations from GlotPress for 24 hours in CI instead of pulling on every single CI run – Status: New

Goal: Fix* AxiosError: Request failed with status code 403 – Status: New

Aspect: Interface* AxiosError: Request failed with status code 403 – Status: New

Tech: Vue* AxiosError: Request failed with status code 403 – Status: New

Tooling: Sentry* AxiosError: Request failed with status code 403 – Status: New

Stack: Frontend AxiosError: Request failed with status code 403 – Status: New * Stop unnecessary downloads of translations for storybook build – Status: New Playground Remove unused files from the website build – Status: New * Remove unused files from the website build – Status: New * Incorrect user capabilities result in unexpected 401 responses from the REST API – Status: New * Intermittent SQLite Database Disconnects – Status: New * Suppress unavoidable Deprecated notices – Networking – Status: New * Playground Block as a sandbox for blocks, plugins, and even site edits – Status: New * Playground Block as a sandbox for blocks, plugins, and even site edits – Status: New * Intermittent SQLite Database Disconnects – Status: New * Drop CommonJS Support – Status: New

Plugins* Plugin Review Team: 15 July 2024

Plugin Check[Type] Enhancement* Evaluate using proper loopback requests for runtime checks – Status: New

Checks* Evaluate using proper loopback requests for runtime checks – Status: New

[Team] Plugin Review Check: Generic function/class/define/option prefix names – Status: New Polyglots Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – July 17, 2024 (13:00 UTC)

Project* WordPress Project Contributor Handbook v2

Support* Proposed updates to the Support Handbook

Sustainability* Addressing Overlapping Initiatives and Improving Collaboration Across Teams * Sustainability Chat Agenda, July 19, 2024

Test* Team Chat Agenda: July 16, 2024 * Test Team Update: 15 July 2024

Themes* Themes Team Meeting Notes – July 09, 2024 * Themes team update July 16, 2024 * Themes team update July 09, 2024 * For testing: Group block variations – Status: New

Theme Directory Warnings in theme upload show above the entire page – Status: New * Inconsistent name in local nav – Status: New Twenty Twenty Five Post format archive templates – Status: New * Automatic dark mode – Status: New

Training* Training Team Meeting Recap – 11th July 2024 * Brainstorm & Table Lead – WordCamp US 2024 Contributor Day

Learn Issues[Type] Bug* Lessons & Courses archive – Provide a way to clear search to view all lessons/courses again – Status: New * Feedback – Final Lesson has ‘Continue to next lesson’ Button that Doesn’t Open – Status: New * Feedback – Quizzes with ‘Awaiting Teacher Grade’ has a ‘Pending teacher grade’ button that doesn’t open – Status: New * Bug: Some lessons don’t display automatic excerpts – Status: New * Feedback – Exit Course link on lesson leads to 404 when parent course is unpublished – Status: New * Feedback – Sticky header position incorrect on iOS safari – Status: New

[Component] Learn Theme* Lessons & Courses archive – Provide a way to clear search to view all lessons/courses again – Status: New * Learning Pathways launch – Status: New * Feedback – Quizzes with ‘Awaiting Teacher Grade’ has a ‘Pending teacher grade’ button that doesn’t open – Status: New * New Theme: 404 page, links too dark – Status: New * Bug: Some lessons don’t display automatic excerpts – Status: New * Performance optimization – Status: New

[Admin] Agenda* Meeting Agenda July 18, 2024 – Status: New

Awaiting Triage* Idea for plugin development – Status: New * New Theme – Online Workshop team is a meetup.com link – Status: New * Feedback – Community team event mentor training course – the first quiz uses text areas for the answers. It likely should be checkboxes or radio buttons. – Status: New * Feedback – Community team event mentor training course – Quiz says you passed even if you got 0% – Status: New * Feedback – Quiz for “Meeting Structure: Running, Closing and Follow-up” does not show corrections when someone submits wrong answers – Status: New * Feedback – Create Account Lesson Plan out of date – Status: New * Some freestanding lesson doesn’t show the correct breadcrumbs – Status: New

[Content] Needs SME* Idea for plugin development – Status: New

[Content] Faculty Author* Course: Common WordPress APIs – Status: New

[Content] Translation LANGUAGE translation for “Saving a Search as an RSS Feed” – Status: New Courses Beginner WordPress Developer * Beginner WordPress User

Online Workshops* How to install WordPress on an Ubuntu VPS: Nginx edition

WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

• Second Beta of jQuery 4.0.0 NEW
• Curl 8.8.0
• Node 22.5.0 NEW
• React 18.3.1 / React 19 Upgrade Guide
• PHP 8.4.0 Alpha 2 available for testing NEW
• PHP 8.3.9 Released!
• PHP 8.2.21 Released!
• PHP 8.1.29 Released!
• PHPCS 3.10.1
• WPCS 3.1.0
• LibZip 1.10.1
• Changes in MySQL 8.4.1 (Not yet released, LTS Release) –
• Composer 2.7.7
• Homebrew 4.3.10 – NEW
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes
• Safari 17.5 Release Notes

Thanks for reading our WP.org roundup! We highlight the news and discussions from the good folks making WordPress possible each week. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.

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This article, 🌟 WordPress 6.6.1 RC1 🧩 jQuery 4 Beta 2 📊 Meetup Trends 🌘 Automatic Dark Mode 🌍 Localization and Translation, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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What makes something “WordPress?”I don’t mean software. I mean all the other “stuff.” I have what I call “gap-filling” projects that are gifts to the WordPress community, but owned and managed by me. Would you consider those “WordPress?”

Marcus Burnett curates TheWP.World. It it “WordPress?” Javi Guembe has WPTalkLink. Is it “WordPress?”

What makes the WordPress community a community?

My friend, Christine, belongs to a Facebook group Jeep club. The group gets together with a few Jeeps (or with many) and does drives, cookouts, and other things together. A few years ago (2020) I got to tag along as her club joined dozens of others to do a few laps around the Watkins Glen Raceway. We waited our turn for our 10 Jeeps to take the course. We followed a pace car. It wasn’t a race. It was just fun! And it wasn’t officially part of any larger organization. But it was still “Jeep.”

Does a project or a group or a meetup have to be “official” to be part of the community, part of WordPress? As we grow and as we continue to build community, this is an important question to ask ourselves. It’s an important way to address how we include or exclude, how we welcome, or how we turn away.

Join Us for a MeetupJoin us for our Meetups! Details on our Meetups are available on our Meetup page.

• Post Status July Professionals Meetup: July 23
• Post Status July Product Meetup: July 24
• Post Status July APAC Meetup: July 24/25 (depending on time zone)
• Post Status July Agency Meetup: July 25

Quick Links:* Join us on YouTube Wednesday for our first Happiness Hour – a livestream where every week we’ll talk to someone else in the community. * StellarWP is hosting Stellar Spark Friday, July 19 (Schedule is available) * Underrepresented in Tech covered WordPress, Religion, and Events in the latest podcast episode * WPCampus 2024 is July 31-August 2 * Human Made will hold a WordPress in Higher Education Event July 18 * Matt Mullenweg was on WP Product Talk * WordSesh is coming up July 30. * WordCamp Asia’s Call for Volunteers is open * WP Accessibility Day’s Call for Volunteers and Call for Sponsors are open * WCUS: Tickets are Available

Find the complete WordPress events schedule here.

Photo of the WeekToday’s photo of the week comes from werkform on WordPress Photos.

You — and your whole team — can Join Post Status.

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status.

This article, Community Roundup Week Ending July 12, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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10 Billion Reasons to Strengthen Your Agency’s Security Practices On July 4, a file containing almost 10 billion stolen passwords was leaked on a popular hacking forum. * Called RockYou2024.txt, the file includes credentials from old and new data breaches of over 4,000 databases. * The sheer number of passwords involved will certainly contribute to a cascade of data breaches, financial frauds, and identity thefts. * Cybernews has created a free RockYou2024 Leaked Password Checker to verify whether your passwords have been exposed. * Users should immediately reset their most important passwords, enable multi-factor authentication, and utilize password manager software. * You’re already using complex, unique passwords stored in a secure password manager and implementing 2FA, right? * Are your clients?*

Generative AI is Transforming the Web… and Draining Resources In my agency, we use a few different AI tools routinely as part of our processes. We love AI for many reasons. * But there’s a hidden downside to all that AI power: Power. * AI systems require significantly more computing resources than traditional online services, consuming 100-1000 times more energy. * For instance, Google’s total energy consumption doubled between 2019 and 2023, partly due to their use of AI. * Data centers for AI also consume millions of gallons of water through evaporation, usage that will only grow as AI adoption increases. * Some fear that AI data centers could eventually compete with local communities for power. * Since it’s becoming nearly impossible to avoid interacting with AI tools online, companies need to develop a strategy to economize power consumption. * Learn how AI is straining local resources in ways you might not expect and some possible solutions in Wired’s recent article.*

Preparing for the New Era of Web Accessibility in Europe The European Accessibility Act is EU that aims to standardize accessibility laws in EU member countries. * The directive took effect in April 2019 but becomes enforceable in June of 2025. * It impacts web development agencies, emphasizing the need for accessible design practices and ongoing monitoring to ensure compliance and reach a broader audience. * E-commerce is one of a handful of areas specifically noted in the Act in which accessibility is mandatory. * Accessibility statements will also be required on European websites, demonstrating compliance efforts. * In a recent episode of WP Tavern’s Jukebox Podcast, host Nathan Wrigley interviewed Rian Rietveld, a web accessibility specialist from the Netherlands. This one is definitely worth a listen.*

Worth a Look* BuddyBoss Is Joining The Awesome Motive Family. Find out about this acquisition and how it will affect BuddyBoss customers. * Google is expanding cybersecurity protection by offering its Dark Web monitoring tool free to all users. Learn how the Dark Web Report works, and how to set up a monitoring profile. * WordPress wants to help you get inactive Meetups going again. Join the discussion now. * Ever wonder why Google Search Console reports a page “crawled by not indexed?” Google explains why this happens on SearchEngineJournal.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending July 12, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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This Week at WordPress.org (July 8, 2024)News* WordPress 6.6 RC3 * WP Briefing: Episode 83: Learning Pathways * Announcing the 2024 Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship Recipient: Cynthia Norman * Announcing the Shortlisted Projects for Uganda Website Projects Competition 2024

WordPress 6.6 Dev Notes* WordPress 6.6 Release Candidate Phase * Editing custom fields from connected blocks * Updates to the Interactivity API in 6.6 * WordPress 6.6 Field Guide * Miscellaneous developer changes in WordPress 6.6 * Updates to the HTML API in 6.6 * Introducing the Token Map * Proposal: Block Variation Aliases * Miscellaneous Editor changes in WordPress 6.6 * Internationalization improvements in 6.6 * Section Styles * WordPress 6.6 CSS Specificity * Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition) * Site-wide background images in WordPress 6.6 * Theme.json version 3 * Social Links block changes in WordPress 6.6 * Options API: Disabling autoload for large options * Improvements to active block variation detection * Grid layout type * Preparation for React 19 Upgrade * JSX in WordPress 6.6 * WordPress 6.6 release squad ready * Bug Scrub Schedule for WordPress 6.6

Accessibility* Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: July 5, 2024

Community* Community Team July Meeting Recap * Notes from the discussion on (global) sponsorships during WCEU 2024 * First-Time Attendees: A Key Metric of Success for WordPress Events * Community Team Meeting Agenda for 4 July 2024 * Recap of the Contributor Working Group’s Mentorship Chat on June 20th 2024 * Reactivating Inactive Meetup Groups * Across Teams * Proposal to integrate Slack workspaces from local WP Communities into Slack Enterprise Grid

Community GitHub* Meetup Durango – Status: Open * Meetup Guwahati, Assam, India – Status: Open * Meetup Edmonton, Alberta (Canada) – Status: Open * WordCamp Osogbo, Nigeria – Status: Open * WordCamp Bhopal, India – Status: Open * Team Meeting Recap – December – Status: Open * Team Meeting Recap – November – Status: Open * Team Meeting Recap – October – Status: Open * Team Meeting Recap – September – Status: Open * Team Meeting Recap – August – Status: Open * Team Meeting Host – December session #2 – Status: Open * Team Meeting Host – November session #2 – Status: Open * Team Meeting Host – October session #2 – Status: Open * Team Meeting Host – September session #2 – Status: Open * Team Meeting Host – August session #2 – Status: Open Core * Hallway Hangout: Let’s chat about what’s next in Gutenberg (August 2024) * What would you like to see in the next default WordPress theme? * WordPress 6.7 Planning Proposal & Call for Volunteers * What’s new in Gutenberg 18.7? (03 July) * Hallway Hangout: Section styles and other block style variation updates * Recap Hallway Hangout: Exploring Grid Layouts * GH Pages: fix previous releases sorting – Status: Open * Test Reporter RaiolaNetworks.com – Status: Open * Prepare PL 3.3.0 release – Status: Open

Create Block Theme Ability to reset all settings in one click – Status: Open * Add support for Section Styles – Status: Open * HTML inside text blocks renders as text – Status: Open Core Trac Weekly Round-Up * Enhancement * Prime notoptions within delete_option(), delete_network_option(). – Status: Assigned, Owner: pbearne, Milestone: 6.7, Component: Options, Meta APIs * Refactor Etag-based cache busting for styles and scripts solution and add tests – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Script Loader * Script Modules: Allow scripts to depend on modules – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Script Loader * KSES Allow more custom data attributes to align with browsers – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: General * Improve wp_count_posts() query performance for users without read_private_posts capabilities – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Posts, Post Types * Add support for positioning child blocks inside a Grid block – Status: New, Milestone: 6.7, Component: Editor * Use empty_trash_days to show how many days deleted posts will be kept for in the trash – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Administration * Interactivity API: Use Script Module filter to pass data to the client – Status: Assigned, Owner: jonsurrell, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Interactivity API * Switch locale to admin locale when sending admin notifications – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: I18N * HTML API: Audit class name methods for consistency and correctness – Status: Assigned, Milestone: Future Release, Component: HTML API * HTML API: Performance Improvements for 6.7 – Status: New, Milestone: 6.7, Component: HTML API * Modify Events and News Widget to Show Global Events Separate from Local Events + Improve Accessibility of the Widget – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Administration * Theme.json: enable block-level background image styles – Status: New, Milestone: 6.7, Component: Themes * Make wp_delete_file return to be compliant both with PHP and WPCS – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Filesystem API * Defect (bug) * 6.5.5 Makes Theme Files Inaccessible – Status: Reopened, Owner: jorbin, Milestone: 6.5.6, Component: Filesystem API * Hook parent_file – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Administration * Attention points in Pentest – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: General * wp_audio_shortcode() outputs invalid HTML – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Media * New swap template feature make website not repond – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Editor * Plugins page keeps making HTTP requests for plugin dependencies which are not in the WordPress Plugin Directory – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Plugins * Test tool and unit test improvements for 6.7 – Status: New, Milestone: 6.7, Component: Build/Test Tools * HTML API: Fragment parser should not add context node to stack of open elements – Status: New, Milestone: 6.7, Component: HTML API * autofocus query string parameter in customizer url is broken in WP6.6-RC2 – Status: New, Milestone: 6.6.1, Component: Customize * Twenty Twenty-One Theme: Latest post block does not appear selected text color on editor & front end sides – Status: New, Milestone: Future Release, Component: Bundled Theme * HTML API: Improved spec support in 6.7 – Status: New, Milestone: 6.7, Component: HTML API * health check count display bug – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: General * Issue with search functionality in installed themes section – Status: Accepted, Owner: joedolson, Milestone: 6.6.1, Component: Themes * WordPress 6.6 RC2 Issues report – with Customizer Redirect Sections in WordPress RC2 – Status: New, Milestone: 6.6.1, Component: Customize * WP_REST_Templates_Controller::get_wp_templates_author_text_field() doesn’t always return value – Status: New, Milestone: 6.7, Component: REST API * Cannot Insert Images in WordPress 6.5.5 – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: General * Multiple bundled themes: block editor style is added incorrectly – Status: New, Milestone: Future Release, Component: Bundled Theme * 6.6-RC2 Editing/Inserting Synced pattern (reusable block) with server side rendering broken – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Editor * Unused variables in wp-includes/rest-api/.php files – Status: Reviewing, Owner: SergeyBiryukov, Milestone: 6.7, Component: REST API * Twenty Thirteen: Search block button background does not reflect block setting of solid color – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Bundled Theme * Hyphenation problem in Dutch language – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Formatting * Resized images larger in filesize than original, when setting jpeg_quality to 100 – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Media * Task (blessed) * Test tool and unit test improvements for 6.7 – Status: New, Milestone: 6.7, Component: Build/Test Tools * GitHub Actions updates and improvements for 6.7 – Status: New, Milestone: 6.7, Component: Build/Test Tools * Tests: Reduce usage of assertEquals for 6.7 – Status: New, Milestone: 6.7, Component: Build/Test Tools * Feature Request * Conditional that checks whether WordPress is currently performing updates – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: General * Feature Request * Easily upload mu-plugins – Status: New, Milestone: Awaiting Review, Component: Plugins Gutenberg Discussions Responsive Spacer Block with the Interactivity API template Newton-Adams started 2 days ago in Interactivity API · Closed 2 * Missing Gutenberg Ad block in blocks inserter list and search realthemes asked last week in Q&A · Unanswered 0 * Differentiating between suffixes and unique-ids in the directive names luisherranz started last week in Interactivity API 9 * Conflict of two Query Loop Variation blocks on the same page. realthemes asked last week in Q&A · Closed · Answered 4 * Incorporating CSS Encapsulation in create-block Plugin Setup ZoomREI asked 2 weeks ago in Q&A · Unanswered 0 * Optimistic updates for region based navigation fabiankaegy started 2 weeks ago in Interactivity API Gutenberg Issues
Weekly Round-Up [Package] Components* Tabs: “With Tab Icons” story has duplicated focus styles – Status: Closed

[Package] Editor* Popovers with form controls for settings should use Cancel and Save buttons – Status: Open

[Package] Edit Site* Add heading title and optional sub-header to all panels – Status: Open

[Package] Edit Widgets* Add heading title and optional sub-header to all panels – Status: Open

[Package] Interactivity Router* iAPI Router: don’t remove region when it’s not present in the new page – Status: Open

[Package] Block editor* URLPopover: improve vertical alignment of the Apply and Link settings buttons – Status: In Progress

[Type] Bug* Image block can be resized beyond the bounds of the column that it’s in – Status: Open * No ability to edit Inline Image alternative text in context – Status: Open * Inspector: Template descriptions should not be elided – Status: Closed * Grid Block layout issues with Twenty Twenty-One – Status: Open * theme.json schema only allows version 3 – Status: Closed * Grid resizers not working well when resizing an embed block down – Status: Open * Post Editor: 40vh padding applied to the bottom is overwritten with zero – Status: Closed * URLPopover: improve vertical alignment of the Apply and Link settings buttons – Status: Open * Converting an overridable block inside a pattern causes the block to break – Status: Open

[Type] Enhancement Post Date Block: Offer relative date option – Status: Open * Shape Divider Block – Status: Open * Section Styles: Enable default block styles to be defined using styles/.json files – Status: Open * Drag and Drop: allow dragging image/full text/multi selection directly – Status: Open

[Type] Project Management* Gutenberg plugin v18.8, stable release July 17, 2024 – Status: Open

[Type] Developer Documentation* Tabs: “With Tab Icons” story has duplicated focus styles – Status: Closed

[Type] Tracking Issue* Tracking: Writing and Editing Flow / Block Editor Core Polish – Status: Open

[Feature] Data Views* Data Views: better distinguish templates provided by theme, plugin, or user rather than grouping all under “author” – Status: Open * Data Views: Enable List View for Patterns – Status: Open * Data Views: Items per page, sort by filters, and fields preferences should be persistent – Status: Closed * De-emphasise bulk actions on Grid layout – Status: Open

[Feature] Layout* Grid resizers not working well when resizing an embed block down – Status: Open * Grid: resizer/visualizer popover appears over the list view/block tools sidebars in mobile mode – Status: Open

[Feature] Site Editor* Page editor: Double-click to edit template part – Status: Open

[Feature] Writing Flow* Cmd+A (select all) does not work when all text is formatted – Status: Open

[Feature] Block Multi Selection* Multi selection: Shift+Arrow stops working after selection becomes full – Status: Open

[Feature] Inserter* In-between Inserter: can’t scroll over it – Status: Open

[Block] Image* Image block can be resized beyond the bounds of the column that it’s in – Status: Open * Site Logo: editing aspect ratio isn’t respected when selecting square option – Status: Closed

[Block] Site Logo* Site Logo: editing aspect ratio isn’t respected when selecting square option – Status: Closed

[Block] Pattern* Converting an overridable block inside a pattern causes the block to break – Status: Open

[Block] Group* Grid Block layout issues with Twenty Twenty-One – Status: Open

[Block] Pattern* Converting an overridable block inside a pattern causes the block to break – Status: Open

[Block] Block Style Variations* Bring “section style” JSON partials to feature parity with WP_Block_Styles_Registry::register – Status: Open

[Feature] Themes* Post Editor: 40vh padding applied to the bottom is overwritten with zero – Status: Closed

[Feature] Data Views* Data Views: better distinguish templates provided by theme, plugin, or user rather than grouping all under “author” – Status: Open * Data Views: Enable List View for Patterns – Status: Open * Data Views: Items per page, sort by filters, and fields preferences should be persistent – Status: Closed * De-emphasise bulk actions on Grid layout – Status: Open

[Package] Block editor* URLPopover: improve vertical alignment of the Apply and Link settings buttons – Status: Open

[Package] Components* Tabs: “With Tab Icons” story has duplicated focus styles – Status: Closed

[Feature] Site Editor Page editor: Double-click to edit template part – Status: Open Core Meetings Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday July 10, 2024 * Performance Chat Summary: 9 July 2024 * Developer Blog editorial meeting summary 4 July 2024 * Summary, Dev Chat, July 3, 2024 * Performance Chat Summary: 2 July 2024 * Summary, Dev Chat, June 26, 2024 * Performance Chat Summary: 25 June 2024

Developer Blog:* Styling sections, nested elements, and more with Block Style Variations in WordPress 6.6

Dev Blog Content Tutorial on aspect ratios in WordPress 6.6 – Status: Open * Do you really need a custom block? Exploring alternatives to block development in WordPress – Status: Open * Color and typography variations/options in WP 6.6 – Status: Open Design Design Share 59 (Jun 17-Jun 28)

do_action* do_action Ahmedabad 2024 * Mumbai 2024

Documentation* Summary for Docs Team Meeting (02-Jul-2024) * Documentation Team Update – July 8, 2024

Docs Issue Tracker Theme handbook: Explain that the attachment pages are disabled on new installations – Status: Open * Monthly Planning (Triage) – July 9, 2024 – Status: Open Five for the Future Visual inconsistency for one of the link present on 5FTF handbook page * accessible issue on https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/manage-pledge/ page * Tweak Sustainability badge

Hosting* Hosting Team meeting agenda 2024-07-03 * The Image Revolution: AVIF and WebP * Hosting Directory: Next Steps

Marketing* WordPress Media Corps Next Steps

Media Corp* Media Corps Briefings Feedback Form Now Open for Media Partners

Media Corps Issues Where should we make public the Media Corps partners or their form responses? – Status: Open * Gather feedback from media partners for upcoming briefings – Status: Open * Review second batch of WordPress Media Corps self-assessment form responses – Status: Open * Establish baseline for metrics to track media coverage and measure success – Status: Open Meta Meeting Agenda for July 10, 2024

WP Org Main (Theme)* Iteration: 6.6 Microsite * Conditionally hide blocks based on date/time

Showcase Allow exporting of user feedback Openverse A week in Openverse: 2024-07-01 – 2024-07-08 * Openverse.org embeds are not functioning – Status: Open * DAG for running and storing results of long queries – Status: Open

Playground* Drop CommonJS Support – Status: Open * php-wasm/node : 2 high severity vulnerabilities – Status: Open * “Create a new PR” doesn’t target the correct specified GitHub repo – Status: Open * PHP: Revisit the default umask, consider 022 – Status: Open * Update Inbox project board title – Status: Open

Plugins* Password Reset Required for Plugin Authors * Keeping Your Plugin Committer Accounts Secure * Hide “View in code editor” link for uneditable files – Status: Open

Plugin Check Allow static checks to be run against an arbitrary path – Status: Open * Add support for external dependencies – Status: Open * Fix typo in documentation – Status: Open Polyglots WP 6.6 Release Page on WordPress.org * Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – July 3, 2024 (13:00 UTC) * Translate WP 6.6 Administration return 403 * WordPress 6.6 ready to be translated

Project* WordPress Project Contributor Handbook v2

Security* WordPress 6.6 is coming!

Support* 20th June Support Team meeting

Sustainability* Addressing Overlapping Initiatives and Improving Collaboration Across Teams * Sustainability Chat Summary, July 5, 2024

Test* Test Team Update: 8 July 2024 * Week in Test: July 8, 2024

Themes* Themes team update July 09, 2024 * Themes team meeting agenda for July 09, 2024

Pattern Directory My friend created new pattern and he is not able to edit – Status: Open * Patterns: Remove ids from the copied pattern code – Status: Open Training Training Team Update – July 2024 * Let’s start testing Learn.WordPress.org * Project Thread: Retiring the Faculty Program * Recap: The second Learn WordPress course cohort * Project Thread: Content Maintenance Process Update Phase 1

Learn Issues LANGUAGE translation for “Saving a Search as an RSS Feed” – Status: Open * Feedback – Create Account Lesson Plan out of date – Status: Open Courses Beginner WordPress Developer * Beginner WordPress User

Online Workshops* What’s new in WordPress 6.6? * Developer Hours: Do you really need a custom block? Let’s explore alternatives * Exploring WordPress 6.6 * Developer Hours: Editor unification and extensibility in WordPress 6.6

Twenty Twenty Five* Explore designs with negative margins – Status: Open * More granular size options than previous themes – Status: Open * Having a workable Forms block included in a contact page – Status: Open * Using a default theme as a showcase and explaining how specific things can be created – Status: Open * Supporting block hooks – Status: Open * Add block bindings for copyright date and privacy policy link – Status: Open * Solving the focus outline style – Status: Open * Add linters for PHP and CSS – Status: Open * Should this repository use the same utilities as the community themes? – Status: Open

WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

• Upgrading jQuery: Working Towards a Healthy Web – jQuery 4.0.0 BETA
• Curl 8.8.0
• Node 22.4.1 NEW
• React 18.3.1 / React 19 Upgrade Guide
• PHP 8.4.0 Alpha 1 available for testing
• PHP 8.3.9 Released! NEW
• PHP 8.2.21 Released! NEW
• PHP 8.1.29 Released!
• PHPCS 3.10.1
• WPCS 3.1.0
• Requests 2.0.11
• PHPMailer 6.9.1
• LibZip 1.10.1
• Changes in MySQL 8.4.1 (Not yet released, LTS Release) –
• Composer 2.7.7 –
• Homebrew 4.3.9 – NEW
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes
• Safari 17.5 Release Notes

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Polyfill Supply Chain Attack Rattles WordPress Security* You’ve likely heard how Polyfill.js, a popular JavaScript library, was hijacked by bad actors in a recent supply chain attack. * After the polyfill.io domain was acquired by a company based in China, malicious code was injected into the Polyfill library which could lead to vulnerabilities and data theft. * Polyfills are essentially workarounds that allow modern javascript to run in older browsers. The library is often used by developers as an easy way to offer backward compatibility. * Analysis of the WordPress repository revealed plugins and themes that were embedding Polyfill scripts from affected domains. * The current impact is minimal as most affected domains have been taken down, but risk remains if the domains become active again. * Many agencies received emails from Google indicating that the Polyfill issue impacted their implementation of the Google Maps API (likely from plugins that integrate Polyfill). * Cloudflare made adjustments to mitigate the issue soon after it was discovered. * If you need more drama in your life, you can read the back and forth between Polyfill and Cloudflare here and here. * Patchstack has been an excellent resource for the WordPress community throughout this threat, and they encourage developers to join their mVDP program. * Patchstack has the details of the attack, including a list of affected plugins.

Cloudflare Fights Back: New Tool Targets Evasive AI Scrapers* Cloudflare has launched a free tool to prevent AI bots from scraping websites for training data, particularly those that ignore standard bot exclusion rules (like robots.txt) to gain competitive advantages. * The tool aims to address growing concerns about AI companies scraping website content without permission or compensation. * Cloudflare analyzed AI bot traffic to fine-tune automatic bot detection models that consider factors like bots mimicking human browsing behavior to avoid restrictions. * About 26% of top websites have blocked OpenAI’s bot, and over 600 news publishers have blocked it. * Before you implement a blocker like Cloudflare’s, it’s important to realize that doing so could risk losing referral traffic from AI tools like Google’s AI Overviews. * The Cloudflare Blog explains the details, and this Techcrunch article can help you decide if this new tool is right for you and your clients.

Mastering the Changing SEO Landscape * Google’s recent algorithm changes are forcing businesses to reevaluate SEO strategies (again). * Organic SEO requires a new playbook that measures ROI differently, focussing on building authority and trustworthiness rather than just direct traffic and rankings. * Content marketing should be focused on creating valuable information for end users that aligns with their search intent, not content that is simply focused on the algorithm. * Authentic articles that showcase expertise and offer original insights will stand out in the age of AI-generated content. * Smaller players with real-world experience can outperform larger companies by creating relevant, helpful content. * TLDR; Focus on users and readers, not the algorithm. * Get the details from this insightful post on the Freemius blog.

Worth a Look* Do you have tons of disorganized files with messy file names? This clever AI tool can help you sort out your world. * WordPress wants to help you get inactive Meetups going again. Join the discussion now. * There’s a new kid in town, and it’s one you want to be friends with: OSO. It stands for organic search optimization, and with the Search Generative Experience rolling out, this acronym is one you should pay attention to.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending July 5, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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A Final Goodbye from Universal Analytics In case you missed the 824 emails they’ve sent about this, Google Universal Analytics will cease to exist in all forms on July 1, 2024. * You’ve probably dealt with this already, but if you haven’t, there are still a few days left. * This change affects UA tracking codes, GTM integrations, any use of the API in other Google or 3rd-party products, advertising integrations. Everything. * If you haven’t migrated to GA4 properties, here’s a simple guide. * You can download all the data you want for historical purposes, but the export(s) must be completed July 1, 2024. * If you are a BigQuery user and intend to export data for use in GA360, you should do it now. Exports must* be completed before July 1. Already exported data will remain available in BigQuery – but the actual export has to be completed. * This Google Support article gives all the details about all the things.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet AI Raises the Bar for Intelligence and Speed Anthropic launches Claude 3.5 Sonnet, outperforming competitors and previous models across evaluations, offering frontier intelligence at twice the speed of Claude 3 Opus. * Claude 3.5 Sonnet excels in reasoning, knowledge, and coding, with improved understanding of nuance, humor, and complex instructions. * It also offers state-of-the-art vision capabilities, surpassing Claude 3 Opus. * Anthropic is also exploring new features like Memory for more personalized user experiences (like those already available in OpenAI models). * Claude has become my favorite AI tool for content ideation and generation. Have you tried it yet?* * Learn more about the latest release and give it a spin.

Google Dials Back AI Search Overviews Following Poor Feedback Google has reduced the frequency of showing AI Overviews, likely due to criticism about incorrect and misleading answers. * AI Overviews now appear for about 7.6% of searches, down from around 64% previously. * Reddit is no longer among the top 10 most cited domains in AI Overviews. * The top 5 most referenced domains are now more reliable offerings, including runnersworld.com, healthline.com, linkedin.com, runrepeat.com, and en.wikipedia.org. * When AI Overviews do appear, they link to at least one domain also in the top 10 organic results. * The majority of Ads still appear with AI Overviews (almost 90% of the time). * AI Overviews appear most often for Relationships, Food and Beverage, and Technology queries. * For me, AI Overviews are still an obstacle to “real” search results and I usually scroll right by them. How about you?* * SearchEngineLand has all the numbers in their recent article.

Worth a Look Polyfill.io, a widely used JavaScript service, is reportedly now compromised and spreading malware to over 100,000 websites. You should immediately remove any polyfill.io code to protect your sites and users. * CSS Media Queries are now a lot simpler! Why hasn’t it always been like this? See examples and compatibility here. * Shocker!* Not everyone who claims to be an expert actually is. Learn some helpful ways to differentiate between experts and imitators.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending June 28, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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This Week at WordPress.org (June 21, 2024)News* WordPress 6.6 RC1 * WordPress 6.5.5 * WP Briefing: Episode 82: WCEU Hallway Track

WordPress 6.6 Dev Notes* WordPress 6.6 Release Candidate Phase * WordPress 6.6 Field Guide * Miscellaneous developer changes in WordPress 6.6 * Updates to the HTML API in 6.6 * Introducing the Token Map * Proposal: Block Variation Aliases * Miscellaneous Editor changes in WordPress 6.6 * Internationalization improvements in 6.6 * Section Styles * WordPress 6.6 CSS Specificity * Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition) * Site-wide background images in WordPress 6.6 * Theme.json version 3 * Social Links block changes in WordPress 6.6 * Options API: Disabling autoload for large options * Improvements to active block variation detection * Grid layout type * Preparation for React 19 Upgrade * JSX in WordPress 6.6 * WordPress 6.6 release squad ready * Bug Scrub Schedule for WordPress 6.6

Accessibility* WordCamp Europe 2024 Contributor Day Summary

Community* Meetup Organizer Newsletter: June 2024 * Community Team June Meeting Recap * Proposal for a Unified Sponsorship Initiative

Community GitHub* Organize new contributor workshops – Status: Open * Update community team handbook – Status: Open * Plan next WordCamp event – Status: Open * Improve diversity in community team – Status: Open Core * WordPress 6.6 Release Candidate Phase * Recap Hallway Hangout: Theme Building with Playground, Create-block-theme plugin, and GitHub * Data Liberation and WordPress Migrations * Remove woff npm package and use ttf font downloads to generate previews – Status: Open

Performance Improve database query performance – Status: Open * Optimize image loading – Status: Open * Reduce CSS file size – Status: Open * Improve caching strategy – Status: Open * Minimize JavaScript payload – Status: Open * Enhance server-side rendering performance – Status: Open * Optimize HTML structure – Status: Open * Implement lazy loading for videos – Status: Open * Improve performance monitoring tools – Status: Open Core TracBlock Editor Revert using regex in block bindings HTML replacement logic – Status: Closed * Ability to control editor preview breakpoints – Status: New * Add block bindings support for a __default attribute for pattern overrides – Status: Closed * block_editor_rest_api_preload function is restoring $wp_scripts and styles enqueued by wp_enqueue_media are lost – Status: New * Background colour is not working in Calendar block – Status: Closed * Blocks: Efficiently find and traverse blocks in a document – Status: New

Themes* Twenty Seventeen: Comment Block Alignment is not working properly on frontend – Status: Closed * Twenty Seventeen: Comments Form Block’s Button Border Radius is different in editor and frontend – Status: Closed * Twenty Fifteen: Verse block font family is different in back-end & Front-end – Status: New * Twenty Seventeen: add border-style for custom Pullquote block borders – Status: Closed * Twenty Seventeen: Search Block Clear text button not showing on frontend – Status: Closed * Twenty Twenty: Login/out block font family is different in the editor when added to a post – Status: New * Twenty Fourteen: List block font size is smaller in the editor than on the front end – Status: Closed * Twenty Twenty: The Media & Text block paragraph text not align properly when change media size – Status: New * Twenty Nineteen: Media & Text Block text color and font size issue on editor side – Status: New * Twenty Nineteen: Button block Appearance setting (font-weight) is not working – Status: New * Twenty Twenty-Two: Latest comments block left alignment makes the comment next to it – Status: New * Twenty Fourteen: post content links are not underlined in the editor – Status: Closed

REST API* REST API: If Super Admin does not exist in subsite, retrieving users is rejected – Status: New * Move content processing in get_the_block_template_html() to filters – Status: Assigned * Immediate post Update revision is not available for restoring – Status: Assigned

General* React: Upgrade to the new JSX transform – Status: Closed * Woocommerce order list page showing warning – Status: Closed * Pin highest supported PHP version in .env for 6.5 branch – Status: Closed * Plugin Dependencies: Refresh plugin-install.php instead of redirecting on activation – Status: New * Plugins: Revert 6.5.3 changes for showing an admin notice on successful activation – Status: Closed * Post via email – Password field default value trips Google Chrome warning – Status: New * Admin Menu: The admin submenu gets hidden behind the “Theme Details” modal – Status: Closed * Tests: Cached data in WP_Theme_JSON_Resolver causes cross pollution in unit tests – Status: Closed * wpdb::prepare function null value convert to empty String – Status: New * Editor: update packages to latest version – Status: Closed * Pin macos-13 for the 6.3 branch and earlier – Status: Reopened * Improve caching in get_calendar function – Status: New * On mobile devices, the first element of the Navigation block is focused by default – Status: Reopened * Dashicons are not available in Tablet and Mobile view in the Block editor – Status: Closed * Swapping templates hangs site – Status: New * HTML API: Report real and virtual nodes in the HTML Processor – Status: Closed * Slideshare embeds returning a 404 error – Status: Closed * Composer slow – add script to skip install – Status: Closed * Simplify the block bindings HTML replacement logic – Status: Closed * PHP deprecation warning in /wp-includes/general-template.php – Status: New * WordPress Playground POST request issue – Status: Closed * Dodavanje dotataka – Status: Closed * Help! – Status: Closed * Add $is_module as an extra strategy argument when enqueueing js script – Status: New * View Theme Version Details – Status: New * Add Support to HTTP 2 in WP_Http Class – Status: New * No Opener – Status: Closed * Backport: Output post classes in the editor – Status: Closed * Improve description on image upload error – Status: Assigned * warnings appearing in log – php 8.3 related deprecations? – Status: New * wp_enqueue_script() was called incorrectly. “wp-editor” script should not be enqueued together with the new widgets editor (wp-edit-widgets or wp-customize-widgets) – Status: New * Editor: Introduce XML Tag Processor and XML Processor – Status: New * A password change should not destroy a user’s session data – Status: New * Long Site Titles Cause Layout Issues on wp-admin Login Page – Status: New * Continuous issue to access due to maintenance – Status: New * Refactor fixture replacements for the “class_list” REST API field – Status: Closed * Global styles code quality refactoring – Status: Closed * Improve class WP_Theme_JSON tests – Status: Closed * Error message: Maximum execution time of 60 seconds exceeded – Status: Closed * HTML Processor: ::create_fragment returns self when subclassed – Status: Closed * PHP 8.1: Implicit conversion error make it impossible to crop image – Status: Closed * Improve performance of WP_Theme_JSON_Gutenberg::compute_style_properties – Status: Closed * Feature Request: Add a filter for the secure flag for authentication cookies – Status: Closed * Error message: There has been a critical error on this website – Status: Closed * White screen when trying to create a new post or edit an existing one – Status: Closed * Date/Time attribute validation is incorrect for old date format – Status: Closed * WordPress 6.5 Beta 4 Color Scheme Bug – Status: New * Allow adding custom css class – Status: Closed * Remove unnecessary .htaccess files – Status: Closed * Improper DocBlock defination structure for blocks apply_block_hooks_to_content() function – Status: Closed * Add Cara and Bluesky Icons – Status: New * Fix custom CSS output for block style variations – Status: Closed * Allow to disable plugin dependencies feature – Status: New * Fix inconsistency of block style variation names causing duplicate UI options – Status: Closed * Improve performance of block style variation registration and retrieval – Status: Closed * Bulk actions are not working in the editor – Status: New

Performance* Disable zstd decompression support in curl for better compatibility – Status: Closed * Reading Settings Section not load properly – Status: Reopened * Improve caching in get_calendar function – Status: New

Media* Error uploading media – Status: Closed * Image upload failure due to user roles – Status: Closed * Media items fail to save changes – Status: Closed * Missing src attribute on tag prevents m4a audio files playing in safari – Status: Accepted

Users* A password change should not destroy a user’s session data – Status: New * Add a ‘pre_delete_user’ filter to allows some checks to potentially prevent user deletion – Status: New

Plugin Dependencies* Plugin Dependencies: Refresh plugin-install.php instead of redirecting on activation – Status: New * Plugins: Revert 6.5.3 changes for showing an admin notice on successful activation – Status: Closed * allow to disable plugin dependencies feature – Status: New * Plugins: Remove unassigned sprintf from wp_get_plugin_action_button() – Status: Closed

Script & Style* Dashicons are not available in Tablet and Mobile view in the Block editor – Status: Closed * wp_enqueue_script() was called incorrectly. “wp-editor” script should not be enqueued together with the new widgets editor (wp-edit-widgets or wp-customize-widgets) – Status: New * Add $is_module as an extra strategy argument when enqueueing js script – Status: New

Site Health* PHP 8.1: Implicit conversion error make it impossible to crop image – Status: Closed * Add Support to HTTP 2 in WP_Http Class – Status: New * Warnings appearing in log – php 8.3 related deprecations? – Status: New * Reading Settings Section not load properly – Status: Reopened * error in select all box for updates – Status: Closed * UI Glitch on Themes install page – Status: Closed * PHP 8: Too few arguments to function WP_Widget::__construct() – Status: Closed * WordPress 6.6 Beta 2 Font Library Issue – Status: Closed * Fix inconsistency of block style variation names causing duplicate UI options – Status: Closed

Security* remove Content-Security-Policy headers: ‘unsafe-inline’, ‘unsafe-eval’ – Status: Closed

CLI* wp-cli scaffold tests does not add .distignore – Status: Closed

Interactivity registerBlockVariation not holding the blockName param – Status: New * Upload Fonts: Invalid parameter(s): font_family_settings – Status: New * Inconsistent image scaling error – Status: Accepted Gutenberg Discussions Responsive Spacer Block with the Interactivity API template Newton-Adams started 2 days ago in Interactivity API · Closed 2 * Missing Gutenberg Ad block in blocks inserter list and search realthemes asked last week in Q&A · Unanswered 0 * Differentiating between suffixes and unique-ids in the directive names luisherranz started last week in Interactivity API 9 * Conflict of two Query Loop Variation blocks on the same page. realthemes asked last week in Q&A · Closed · Answered 4 * Incorporating CSS Encapsulation in create-block Plugin Setup ZoomREI asked 2 weeks ago in Q&A · Unanswered 0 * Optimistic updates for region based navigation fabiankaegy started 2 weeks ago in Interactivity API Gutenberg Issues
[Type] Code Quality* react import should not be restricted – Status: Open * Types: Add missing type information for @types/react – Status: Open * Add missing annotations for @types/react-dom – Status: Open

[Type] Bug* Responsive Grid: Some blocks ignore min-height values in responsive contexts – Status: Open * Cover block: Text within the cover block does not always scale correctly – Status: Open * Cover block: Video within the cover block does not always play correctly – Status: Open * @wordpress/scripts error “Cannot find module ‘ajv/dist/compile/codegen'” – Status: Open * Sticky blocks are overlapped by blocks with left/right alignment – Status: Open

[Feature] UX* Navigation: Implement better handling for focus management – Status: Open * Navigation: Improve the accessibility of the navigation block – Status: Open

[Type] Feature Request* Grid: Add more control over responsive behavior – Status: Open * Grid: Allow custom breakpoints – Status: Open

[Feature] Grid* Grid: Aspect ratio controls are disabled on Image blocks in Grids – Status: Open * Grid: Drag handles can become quite unintuitive and lead to unexpected results – Status: Open

[Feature] Synced Pattern Overrides* Synced Pattern Overrides: Image metadata like data-permalink, data-image-title, keeps original image data – Status: Open

[Type] UI* Navigational dead end on smaller viewports – Status: Open * Make usage of the settings icon more consistent and meaningful – Status: Open

[Type] RC* WP 6.6 RC 1: Image cropping fails in the block editor – Status: Open

[Type] Bug Report* Version 6.6 (nightly) Front-page.html template causes unexpected error on Editor main view. – Status: Open

[Type] Enhancement* Improve Lock modal description and options naming – Status: Open

[Type] Design* Improve the readability of the external icon – Status: Open * Latest Post Block having padding/space issue when we changed its background color. – Status: Open

[Type] Error* @wordpress/scripts error “Cannot find module ‘ajv/dist/compile/codegen'” – Status: Open

[Type] Accessibility* Allow width settings inside full-width blocks – Status: Open

[Type] Schema* Version 6.5 block.json schema missing the viewScriptModule field – Status: Open

[Feature] Grid* Design tools exploration: Contextual color controls and new panels for Background, and Elements – Status: Open

[Feature] Data Views* Site view: Resize handle should resize both frame and data view – Status: Open * Site view: Resize handle does not allow scaling up to snap to fullscreen editor – Status: Open

[Block] Search* Search Block: Reflect Color Setting on Input Field When Search Button is Disabled – Status: Open

[Type] Build Tooling* De-register WP Core filters when running the Gutenberg Plugin – Status: Open

[Feature] Zoom Out* Zoom out: zoom in is triggered when changing categories if a section is selected – Status: Open

[Feature] Extensibility* Introduce a UI for setting allowedBlocks in blocks that support it – Status: Open

Needs Dev* Allow text orientation by default on any block that has a typography panel – Status: Open

[Feature] Typography* Allow text orientation by default on any block that has a typography panel – Status: Open

[Block] Navigation* Navigation Block: block wrapper class name applied to both outer element and its child element – Status: Open

[Block] Page List* In the many different theme the “Page List” block not displaying text underline on editor, front-end, or both sides. – Status: Open

[Type] Iteration Feedback on building a block theme – Status: Open Core Meetings Summary, Dev Chat, June 26, 2024 * Performance Chat Summary: 25 June 2024 * Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday June 26, 2024 * Performance Chat Agenda: 25 June 2024 * Summary, Dev Chat, June 19, 2024

Developer Blog:* Styling sections, nested elements, and more with Block Style Variations in WordPress 6.6

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging* Contributor Day Recap at WordCamp Europe 2024

Design* Design Share #58 (Jun 3-Jun 14)

do_action* do_action Ahmedabad 2024 * Mumbai 2024

Documentation* Summary for Docs Team Discussion Meeting (18-Jun-2024) * Documentation Team Update – June 24, 2024

Five for the Future* Visual inconsistency for one of the link present on 5FTF handbook page * accessible issue on https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/manage-pledge/ page * Tweak Sustainability badge

Hosting* Hosting Team meeting agenda 2024-06-26 * The Image Revolution: AVIF and WebP * Hosting Directory: Next Steps

Marketing* WordPress Media Corps Next Steps

Media Corp* First Media Corps Briefing: WordPress 6.6 with Anne McCarthy * Update on the Media Corps Process and Open Call for Participation

Meta* Meeting Agenda for June 26, 2024 * The Theme Directory gets a refresh and is now powered by blocks * Unify the favorite button across sites

Meta TracAPI* Update Credits for WordPress 6.5.4 – Status: Closed

Handbooks* Broken link to VVV howto – Status: New

International Forums* Switch international support sites to new theme – Status: New

Make (Get Involved) / P2* underline the link for “contributor wizard” message – Status: Closed * Allow assigning badges manually to sustainability team members and contributors – Status: Closed

Photo Directory* Photos: Add the ability for folks to share how they used a photo and to have that sent to the photo contributor – Status: New

Profiles* Request for a badge for the sustainability team – Status: Closed

Support Forums* Alter sensitive data replacement mechanism – Status: New * Change help link in editor – Status: Closed

Trac* New Trac text line-height hinders readability – Status: Closed

Version Control* core release process: Verify ZIP recreation is intended – Status: New

WordPress.org Site* Permanently deleted media files are still on the server – Status: Closed * Lang guess: Support learn.wordpress.org – Status: Closed * Bump recommended MariaDB version to 10.5 – Status: Closed

WordPress.tv WordPress.tv comments – list not formatted properly – Status: Closed Theme Directory Theme star rating different between theme view and review forum view – Status: Open * Update theme preview images – Status: Open WP Org Main (Theme)* Iteration: 6.6 Microsite * Conditionally hide blocks based on date/time

Showcase Allow exporting of user feedback Openverse A week in Openverse: 2024-06-17 – 2024-06-24

Openverse GitHubType: Bug* Fix music browse test overflow in search bar – Status: Open * Audio endpoint should fetch filtered tracks from catalog – Status: Open * Remove elasticsearch duplicate entry query hack – Status: Open * Consider removing the renovate validator from local pre-commit linting – Status: Open * Add parent comments to json entries when generating pot files – Status: Open

priority: low* Consider removing the renovate validator from local pre-commit linting – Status: Open

aspect: dx* Consider removing the renovate validator from local pre-commit linting – Status: Open * Add parent comments to json entries when generating pot files – Status: Open

goal: improvement* Consider removing the renovate validator from local pre-commit linting – Status: Open * Add parent comments to json entries when generating pot files – Status: Open

stack: mgmt Consider removing the renovate validator from local pre-commit linting – Status: Open Playground An old blueprint.json fails to load, no error * (Meetup use case) Add interface-based solution for saving / re-using the result of the session * (Meetup use case) Create a ‘filtered’ version for use in Meetups * Playground window size lags relative to page resize * WP.org site feedback: Why aren’t Playground docs hosted on WP.org? * WP.org site feedback: SEO improvement suggestions * WP.org site feedback: WP-for-native-iOS-apps page looks outdated * Improve and explain migration of media from standard WP install to playground * Provide unit and e2e test instructions in the top-level README * Improving the learning journey of WordPress Playground in the Docs

Plugins* Keeping Your Plugin Committer Accounts Secure * How should we shape the future of the Plugin Review team? * Plugin Review Team: 24 June 2024

Plugin Check Allow static checks to be run against an arbitrary path – Status: Open * Add support for external dependencies – Status: Open * Fix typo in documentation – Status: Open Polyglots Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – June 26, 2024 (7:00 UTC) * Internationalization improvements in 6.6 * WordPress 6.5.5 has been released…. * Transitioning All Rosetta Sites to the New WP.org Theme

Project* WordPress Project Contributor Handbook v2

Security* WordPress 6.6 is coming!

Support* 20th June Support Team meeting

Sustainability* Sustainability Chat Summary, June 21, 2024 * The Sustainability Team at WCEU 2024

Test* Week in Test: June 24, 2024 * Test Team Update: 24 June 2024

Themes* Themes team update June 25, 2024 * Themes Team Meeting Notes – June 25, 2024 * Theme.json version 3

Training* Training team testing GatherPress * Training Team Meeting Recap – 20th June 2024 * WordCamp Europe 2024 presentation recap

Learn Issues Add new courses on WordPress security – Status: Open * Create tutorial for using the block editor – Status: Open * Update existing lessons with new screenshots – Status: Open * Translate lessons into Spanish – Status: Open * Fix broken links in lessons – Status: Open * Add quizzes to the end of each lesson – Status: Open * Improve lesson accessibility – Status: Open * Create video tutorials for lessons – Status: Open * Update lesson plans for WordPress 6.0 – Status: Open * Add lessons on theme development – Status: Open * Create interactive exercises for lessons – Status: Open * Translate quizzes into multiple languages – Status: Open * Fix typos in lesson content – Status: Open * Update lesson images for retina displays – Status: Open * Add new lesson on plugin development – Status: Open Courses Beginner WordPress Developer * Beginner WordPress User

Online Workshops* Developer Hours: Do you really need a custom block? Let’s explore alternatives * Exploring WordPress 6.6 * Developer Hours: Editor unification and extensibility in WordPress 6.6 * Shape the Future: Your Role in WordPress Open Source Contribution * Let’s build LIVE series: A beginner’s guide to block themes & the Site Editor-3 * Let’s build LIVE series: A beginner’s guide to block themes & the Site Editor-2 * Let’s build LIVE series: A beginner’s guide to block themes & the Site Editor-1 * Thumbnail-a-thon: Let’s make graphics together for the new Learn.WordPress.org!

WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

• Upgrading jQuery: Working Towards a Healthy Web – jQuery 4.0.0 BETA
• Curl 8.8.0
• Node 22.3.0
• React 18.3.1 / React 19 Upgrade Guide
• PHP 8.3.8 Released!
• PHP 8.2.20 Released!
• PHP 8.1.29 Released!
• PHPCS 3.10.1
• WPCS 3.1.0
• Requests 2.0.11
• PHPMailer 6.9.1
• LibZip 1.10.1
• Changes in MySQL 8.4.1 (Not yet released, LTS Release) –
• Composer 2.7.7 – NEW
• Homebrew 4.3.7– NEW
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes
• Safari 17.5 Release Notes

Thanks for reading our WP.org roundup! We highlight the news and discussions from the good folks making WordPress possible each week. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.

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This article, WordPress 6.6 Field Guide, RC1 🔐 6.5.5 Security 📆 GatherPress Trial in LearnWP 👩🏻‍🏫 Beginner WP Dev Course, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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The BargeThere’s a barge perched not far from the precipice of Niagara Falls. I guess it’s a scow, actually. It’s in the middle of Horseshoe Falls – the Canadian side. It’s been there over 100 years – since August 1918, to be precise.

That rusty barge has withstood deluges of rain, billions of gallons of water rushing over and past it, ice, snow, and whatever nature could throw at it.

And though it persists in its stuckness, it won’t be there forever.

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=671741I was at Lake Ontario and saw piles of sand. And thinking of how millions of years of water have eroded hard rock to soft sand. And I thought about how that ~~barge~~ scow is rusting away, and there will be generations for whom it’s a story without evidence other than photos.

Problems are like that scow. Sometimes you’re on the thing that’s stuck, and water and weather are racing around you and it’s hard to see how to get unstuck without going over the falls.

I watched a video this week about this massive street somewhere in the world – in a major city. There were cars, motorcycles, bicycles, trucks, etc., careening through a HUGE intersection with several corners and multiple lanes of traffic.

The voiceover said to watch how the pedestrians move with purpose and avoid getting hit. But if they hesitate so that a motorist can no longer predict their movement, then they are in danger of being hit.

If you’re dealing with a problem and you feel like you’re on the scow, instead look ahead to where you believe the solution is, and move with purpose toward it. You may just find a solution without becoming collateral damage.

Join Us for a MeetupJoin us for our Meetups! Details on our Meetups are available on our Meetup page.

• Post Status July Professionals Meetup: July 23
• Post Status July Product Meetup: July 24
• Post Status July APAC Meetup: July 24/25 (depending on time zone)
• Post Status July Agency Meetup: July 25

Quick Links:* The WP Campus Conference Schedule is Live * Rae Morey on Seriously, Bud * Turning Layoffs Into A Hopeful Workspace * Join Convesio on Tuesday, July 9, 2024, at 12pm EST for an exclusive webinar with experts Tom Fanelli and April Wier. They’ll demystify HIPAA compliance and provide you with the tools you need to protect patient data for your clients. * Check out the Newsletter for WordPress Women by WordPress Women, WPWonderWomen * Share Your Pride with the WordPress Photo Directory through June 30 * WP Accessibility Call for Speakers is Extended (through July 1) * WCUS: Tickets are Available

Find the complete WordPress events schedule here.

Photo of the WeekToday’s photo of the week comes from Aaron Jorbin on WordPress Photos.

You — and your whole team — can Join Post Status.

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status.

This article, Community Roundup Week Ending June 21, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Accessibility Clarity at Last! What the New DOJ Regulations Mean for You The U.S. Department of Justice announced in July 2022 its intent to write new regulations in 2023 about making state and local government websites and apps accessible. * The final rule became official in June 2024, applying to government websites, mobile apps, public schools, and public higher education. * The ADA applies to these websites and apps even without the new regulation, as evidenced by DOJ findings against counties in Texas for inaccessible voting websites. * The National Federation of the Blind filed comments with the DOJ about the proposed regulations, expressing concerns about exceptions that could be unfair to disabled people. * The DOJ tried to adopt similar regulations more than 12 years ago but did not, leading to skepticism about whether the new regulations would ever come to fruition. * It looks like it is finally happening, which is great news! * What does it mean for you and your clients?* + Read the original 2022 article with all of its updates. + Read the “Final Rule”. + DOJ Fact Sheet from the ADA.

Adobe Sued for Hidden Fees & Subscription Practices* The US Justice Department is suing Adobe for hiding fees and complicating subscription cancellations. * The lawsuit claims Adobe enrolls users in expensive subscription plans without clear disclosure – seemingly “hiding” the terms of its paid plans in fine print and behind hyperlinks. * The early termination fees for canceling subscriptions can amount to hundreds of dollars. * Adobe’s cancellation process involves navigating multiple pages and pop-ups. * Customers face similar obstacles when canceling subscriptions via phone or chat. * The lawsuit alleges Adobe’s practices break consumer protection laws. * Adobe executives are also targeted for directing these practices. * Read more over at The Verge.

Google is Crawling My Site a LOT! That’s Good, Right? Maybe (probably) Not. Google’s Gary Illyes warns that sudden spikes in crawling activity on your site could be a bad sign, indicating potential issues. * Two common problems that can cause crawling spikes are infinite spaces (like calendars and product filters) and website hacks. * Infinite spaces can generate unlimited potential URLs, exciting crawlers to crawl excessively. Use robots.txt to block these areas.* * Hackers may inject spam onto reputable sites, triggering a crawling frenzy as Google initially interprets it as new content before realizing it’s malicious. * Treat unexpected sharp increases in crawling as a symptom of an issue until proven otherwise, rather than assuming it’s positive. * For hacked sites, identify and fix the vulnerability, clean the hacked content, harden security, and request a review from Google to remove warnings or blacklists. * Use Google’s URL removal tool to quickly deindex hacked pages, and focus on improving overall site quality beyond just removing hacked content. * Lingering SEO impacts from hacks may persist for months until the site recovers Google’s trust. * SearchEngineJournal spells out what a crawling frenzy may mean and what you should do about it.

Worth a Look Woo issued a Developer Advisory about an XSS Vulnerability in WooCommerce 8.8.0 and later. Read more about it and update your Woos now (if you haven’t already). * WCEU was a huge success. Read about the highlights on Make.WordPress.org. * Seize the daytime nap!* Learn how to take the perfect nap. Did you know that 1 in 5 people take a nap at work? Find out why and learn how to leverage a few winks.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending June 21, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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This Week at WordPress.org (June 16, 2024)News* WordPress 6.6 Beta 3 * Highlights from WordCamp Europe 2024 * WordPress 6.6 Beta 2

55 contributors successfully graduated from the WordPress Mentorship Program cohorts, reporting their familiarity with contributing increased by 25%. Learn more about this program and express your interest in joining the next cohort: https://t.co/nY0vJ5SSkN #WCEU pic.twitter.com/3Xp37IBCtW

— WordPress (@WordPress) June 15, 2024

Accessibility* Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: June 21, 2024 * WordCamp Europe 2024 Contributor Day Summary

Community* Contributor Working Group Chat Agenda | June 20th 07:00 UTC (APAC/EMEA) and 16:00 UTC (AMER) * WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program Q4 2024: Call for Interest * WCEU2024 Contributor Day: Community Team Agenda

Core * Site-wide background images in WordPress 6.6 * Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition) * What’s new in Gutenberg 18.6 * Theme.json version 3 * Social Links block changes in WordPress 6.6 * Hallway Hangout: Exploring Grid Layouts * Options API: Disabling autoload for large options * Improvements to active block variation detection * Grid layout type * Editor: Unified Extensibility APIs in 6.6 * Data Views Update – June 2024 * What is new in Gutenberg 18.5 (05 Jun)

WordPress 6.6 Site-wide background images in WordPress 6.6 * Theme.json version 3 * Social Links block changes in WordPress 6.6 * Options API: Disabling autoload for large options * Improvements to active block variation detection * Grid layout type * Preparation for React 19 Upgrade * JSX in WordPress 6.6 * WordPress 6.6 release squad ready * Bug Scrub Schedule for WordPress 6.6 Performance Enhance performance tools – Status: open * Fix bug in performance metrics – Status: closed * Improve performance tracking – Status: open * Optimize performance analysis – Status: closed * Add support for new performance features – Status: open * Fix issue with performance reports – Status: closed * Enhance performance documentation – Status: open * Improve performance security – Status: closed * Optimize performance settings – Status: open * Fix bug in performance options – Status: closed * Enhance performance design – Status: open * Improve performance accessibility – Status: closed * Add new performance templates – Status: open * Fix issue with performance compatibility – Status: closed * Enhance performance support – Status: open * Optimize performance framework – Status: closed * Improve performance deployment – Status: open Core TracAdministration* Escape Output in Storage Count List Item Class – Status: New * problems with classic editor and password protected pages – Status: Closed

Bundled Theme* Twenty Seventeen: Search Block Clear text button not showing on frontend – Status: Closed * Twenty Twenty: Login/out block font family is different in the editor when added to a post – Status: New * Twenty Nineteen: Media & Text Block text color and font size issue on editor side – Status: New * Twenty Twenty-Two: Latest comments block left alignment makes the comment next to it – Status: New * Twenty Fourteen: List block font size is smaller in the editor than on the front end – Status: Closed * UI Glitch on Themes install page – Status: Closed * Twenty Twenty-Four: Current screenshot has visible drop shadow, replace screenshot – Status: Closed

Cache API* Inconsistent cache handling for network (site) meta – Status: New

Comments* Exipre comment author cookies after 1 year (rather than 0.95129375951 of a year) – Status: Closed * DivisionByZero issue for comments on PHP8.0+ – Status: New

Cron API* The recovery_mode_clean_expired_keys cron event is orphaned after converting to Multisite – Status: New

Editor* Improve class WP_Theme_JSON tests – Status: Closed * Site editor template description displays encoded characters – Status: New * Color for search block does not reflect – Status: New * Editor: update all npm packages for WP 6.6 Beta 2 – Status: Closed * Editor: update packages for 6.6 Beta 3 – Status: Closed * Blocks: Efficiently find and traverse blocks in a document – Status: New * Move content processing in get_the_block_template_html() to filters – Status: Assigned * Fix root padding for children of alignfull flow layouts – Status: Closed * registerBlockVariation not holding the blockName param – Status: New * Fix custom CSS output for block style variations – Status: Closed * Twenty Fourteen: post content links are not underlined in the editor – Status: New * Theme JSON: Add missing i18n for variation titles in theme.json – Status: Closed * Prevent redundant block style variation CSS – Status: Closed * Improve performance of block style variation registration and retrieval – Status: New

General* ACF field not supporting in spectra plugin – Status: Closed * Can’t log into your account – Status: Closed * Remove unnecessary space – Status: Closed * Improper docblock definition structure for blocks apply_block_hooks_to_content() function – Status: Closed * Remove Extra spaces – Status: Closed * Add missing full stop in wp-includes/class-wp-duotone.php file – Status: Closed * Fix inconsistency of block style variation names causing duplicate UI options – Status: Closed * Reading Settings Section not load properly – Status: Reopened * Error message: Maximum execution time of 60 seconds exceeded – Status: Closed * 403 error on all my published posts – Status: New * Bulk actions are not working in the editor – Status: Closed * Remove Content-Security-Policy headers: ‘unsafe-inline’, ‘unsafe-eval’ – Status: Closed * The pagination results in the Popular Plugins screen is broken – Status: New * The “is_ssl()” function fails to get the correct protocol when WordPress is deployed on an upstream server – Status: Closed * 5 WordPress sites suddenly stopped working – Status: Closed * error in select all box for updates – Status: Closed * Block fails to register with wp-scripts v28.0.0 – Status: Closed * Residual of block found in get_blocks_metadata even when block is unregistered using unregister_block_type() – Status: New * Consistent use of placement of button and link to continue installer or login – Status: New * Display name doesn’t update correctly when first and last name fields are cleared – Status: New * Add new filter to attachment_url_to_postid() for short circuit – Status: New * Interactivity API: not working in classic theme – Status: Closed * Updating to 6.5.4 makes access to the admin plugin page impossible – Status: Closed * Synced patterns can not be used on site if pages are copied – Status: New

HTML API* Revert using regex in block bindings HTML replacement logic – Status: Closed * HTML Processor: ::create_fragment returns self when subclassed – Status: Closed * HTML API: Add type annotations – Status: Assigned

Interactivity API* Adding escaping function in wp_interactivity_data_wp_context PHPDoc – Status: Accepted

Media* PHP 8.1: Implicit conversion error make it impossible to crop image – Status: Closed * Inconsistent image scaling error – Status: New * Featured Image not showing in v6.5.4 – Status: New * Missing src attribute on

Networks and Sites* 403 error on all my published posts – Status: New

Permalinks* Trailing Slash Issue in Category Pagination URLs with the_posts_pagination() – Status: New

Plugins* Bulk update plugins no longer working when 1 Plugin failed to update – Status: New * allow to disable plugin dependencies feature – Status: New * New plugins list item breaks if WP version is incompatible – Status: New

Post Thumbnails* Featured Image not showing in v6.5.4 – Status: New

Quick/Bulk Edit* JQMIGRATE warnings for bulk edit – Status: New

REST API* REST API: If Super Admin does not exist in subsite, retrieving users is rejected – Status: New

Script Loader* Style dependencies are not inlined – Status: New

Security* remove Content-Security-Policy headers: ‘unsafe-inline’, ‘unsafe-eval’ – Status: Closed

Taxonomy* Duplicate terms with names in non-ASCII characters in different cases – Status: New * Taxonomy: Unused variable in wp_set_object_terms() – Status: Closed

Themes* WordPress 6.6 Beta 1 search box in add themes is misaligned – Status: Closed * Site logo returns image attachment when no logo is defined – Status: Closed

Upgrade/Install* Disable maintenance mode when core auto-update fails – Status: Closed * Delay automatic updates after installation – Status: Closed * Maintenance Error on Login After Setting Up WordPress 6.6 Beta 1 on Localhost – Status: Reopened

Users* Add a ‘pre_delete_user’ filter to allows some checks to potentially prevent user deletion – Status: New

Widgets Add Cara and Bluesky Icons – Status: New * Calendar Bug – Status: Closed * Twenty Nineteen: Button block Appearance setting (font-weight) is not working – Status: New Gutenberg Discussions Conflict of two Query Loop Variation blocks on the same page. * Incorporating CSS Encapsulation in create-block Plugin Setup * Optimistic updates for region based navigation * @wordpress create-block doesn’t work out of the box for me * [Suggestion] Post Modified Date block – Fallback to published date * Core/query-loop help with global $wp-query * Changing the save function without deprecation * Disable block controls in a block template * Possible to use Dataviews on admin page? * A data-wp-input directive for two-way data binding * [FEATURE REQUEST] options page api for block development Gutenberg IssuesAccessibility* Bug – Media & Text block – Link doesn’t work when a media item is added – Status: Open * Accessibility issue with column resizing – Status: Open * Screen reader issue with image block – Status: Open

Block Editor* Block Editor not loading in some themes – Status: Open * Custom CSS not applying to block editor – Status: Open * Block editor freezing on large pages – Status: Open * Issues with reusable blocks – Status: Open

Block Library* Feature request – New block for social media icons – Status: Open * Bug – Gallery block layout issues – Status: Open * Block library – Enhancements needed for the audio block – Status: Open * New feature – Add custom attributes to block library – Status: Open

Core* Core updates causing issues with older plugins – Status: Open * Bug – Core functions not working as expected – Status: Open * Core – Feature request for improved REST API – Status: Open

Design Tools* Design tools – Need better color picker options – Status: Open * Bug – Design tools not saving changes – Status: Open * New feature – Add gradient background options – Status: Open

Documentation* Documentation updates needed for new features – Status: Open * Documentation error in block registration – Status: Open * Need better examples in documentation – Status: Open

General* General performance improvements – Status: Open * General bug – Intermittent issues with save function – Status: Open * General feature request – Better support for RTL languages – Status: Open

Global Styles* Global styles – Add more typography options – Status: Open * Bug – Global styles not applying correctly – Status: Open * Feature request – Global styles for custom post types – Status: Open

Gutenberg Plugin* Gutenberg plugin – Compatibility issues with other plugins – Status: Open * Bug – Gutenberg plugin causing site to crash – Status: Open * Feature request – Add more block options in Gutenberg plugin – Status: Open

Mobile* Mobile – Issues with block alignment on mobile – Status: Open * Bug – Mobile editor not saving changes – Status: Open * Feature request – Better mobile previews – Status: Open

Performance* Performance issues with large number of blocks – Status: Open * Performance – Slow loading times in block editor – Status: Open * Feature request – Performance improvements for media blocks – Status: Open

REST API* REST API – Add support for new block types – Status: Open * Bug – REST API not returning correct data – Status: Open * Feature request – Extend REST API for better integration – Status: Open

Security* Security issue with file uploads – Status: Open * Bug – Security settings not applying correctly – Status: Open * Feature request – Enhanced security for block editor – Status: Open

Themes* Themes – Issues with theme compatibility – Status: Open * Bug – Theme styles not loading in editor – Status: Open * Feature request – Better theme support in block editor – Status: Open

UI/UX* UI/UX – Improvements needed for block inserter – Status: Open * Bug – UI/UX issues with block settings – Status: Open * Feature request – Enhanced UI/UX for mobile editor – Status: Open

Widgets Widgets – Issues with custom widgets – Status: Open * Bug – Widgets not saving changes – Status: Open * Feature request – Add more widget options – Status: Open WPCS Rules for space indentation instead of tabs, specifically in multiline arrays * The “previous” exception object can not be escaped Core Meetings* Summary, Dev Chat, June 19, 2024 * Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday June 19, 2024 * Summary, Dev Chat, June 12, 2024 * Performance Chat Summary: 18 June 2024 * Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday June 12, 2024 * Performance Chat Agenda: 18 June 2024 * Performance Chat Summary: 11 June 2024 * Performance Chat Agenda: 11 June 2024

Developer Blog:* An introduction to overrides in Synced Patterns * How to create an animated timeline plugin * An introduction to the Transients API

WordPress Developer Blog Content Discussions Add Developer Hours recordings to the site * Color and typography variations/options in WP 6.6 * Tutorial on using block style variations in WordPress 6.6 * An introduction to overrides in synced patterns * Creating a low-code block theme development workflow with WordPress Playground and the Create Block Theme plugin * The WordPress Developer Survey * Curating the Editor Experience: Tips & Tricks * How JSON schema versioning works and how it’s different from the theme.json version * Customizing and extending the Formatting Toolbar * Classic themes: tutorial on moving away from widgets to template parts * Performance best practices * Tutorial on how to create custom components * Bad coding practices with Block Themes * Version Control Considerations and Workflows in a Site Editing paradigm * How to use WordPress Playground for handovers * WP-CLI for site owners and admins * Timeline block with animated line (Interactivity API) * Using Data Views in your plugin/preparing for the future * A real-world use case: custom meta + block bindings + variations + usage in templates * Share change in process for agencies building sites with the site editor * How to register block variations with PHP in WP 6.5 * Case Study: How Pew Research Center is using the interactivity api to use blocks as interactive components * Patterns – tips and tricks for developers * Box Shadow – a sneak peek * Tutorial on how to create a custom font collection * Tutorial on WP 6.5’s Block Bindings API and connecting custom fields * What you can and cannot do with PHP in patterns * Learnings from two Site Migrations * Updates from the Developer Blog: January 10, 2024 * Migrate classic sidebars and widgets to block for themers * React best practices and pitfalls * Tutorial on building a “hover reveal” pattern * Overview of “block theme” stuff you can do with classic/hybrid themes * First Editorial Group meeting in 2024 * How to build a theme demo with WP Playground blueprints * Why you might not need a child theme * Building dynamic attachment templates in block themes * Tutorial on using create-block scaffolding to write a multi-block plugin * How to add a template via a plugin (podcast, woo, LMS) * Pitfalls working with @wordpress/data, useSelect and useDispatch and how to avoid those. * Introduction on using Gutenberg components for plugin pages * Tutorial: Creating a mega menu with the block system * Adding a “screen reader text” block option via themes * Tutorial: Adding Starter Page and Template Patterns * Dev Blog: 2023 Year in Review * A walk-through tutorial on using the Create Block Theme plugin * Proposal: An update to the Field Guide * An overview of the “Block hooks” feature * Creating a custom External Template for the @wordpress/create-block package * Overview of the coding standards tooling available to WordPress developers * New developer focused workflow article about how the login and registration works in WordPress. * How to add commands to the command palette * A tutorial on how to create block variations * Periodic video round-ups * A first look at the Interactivity API * Working with custom slotfills * How to disable specific blocks in WordPress * Attributes: what do the source and selector properties do? * A tutorial about the highlights of the browser and focus modes of the Navigation Block * 10 things that all WordPress plugin developers should avoid * Exploring the future of web development with WebAssembly and PHP * Taking advantage of settings.custom in theme.json * When Block Styles Are Not Enough: Extending Blocks in Themes * Using CSS custom properties in a block. * Examples using the _fields and _embed parameters * Migrate custom post type with classic metaboxes to the Gutenberg UI * Nicer UX with custom template part areas * Summary Editorial Meeting May 4th, 2023 * Why you need a multisite and how to build one * WordPress architecture from foundation to skyscrapers * Tutorial on building block-based templates in classic themes * How to manage block governance * Share post announcing removal of some APIs * Adding custom color options for blocks * How to create block plugin using WordPress core blocks * Tutorial on building patterns and block styles with Details/Summary block * Tutorial on style variations in theme.json * How to add starter content to WordPress themes * Make your site’s typography make a statement. * Performance benefits of creating your site with WordPress in 2023 * Navigating the Block Editor Handbook * Using the Grid layout type for theme creators * theme.json custom CSS tutorial * A Deep-dive Tutorial on the New Style Book * Tutorial on how to use theme.json filters DevHub Block Examples Multi Block Build and Plugin/SlotFill (or Custom Data Store) not specifically related to a block (or specific block) * Which example would you like to see in this repository? * Welcome to gutenberg-examples Discussions! Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging* Contributor Day Recap at WordCamp Europe 2024

Design* Design Share #58 (Jun 3-Jun 14)

do_action* do_action Ahmedabad 2024 * Mumbai 2024

Documentation* Summary for Docs Team Discussion Meeting (18-Jun-2024) * Agenda for Docs Team Biweekly Meeting (18-Jun-2024) * Localization and translation of HelpHub during WCEU 2024 * Documentation Team Update – June 17, 2024

Documentation-Issue-Tracker
Component: Plugin Handbook* Page images on wporg are not displaying – Status: open * Update page “In-line Documentation Standards” – Status: open

Component: Developer Hub* WordPress Theme Handbook: Clearer distinction for Plugin Authors and Plugin Developers – Status: closed * How to set a proper schema for sub resource integrity? – Status: closed

Component: Core Handbook* Update Code of Conduct in WordPress Core Handbook – Status: open * Missing “safe_redirect” function in the Codex – Status: closed

Component: HelpHub* Incorrect link in an article – Status: closed * Create anchor links on the “WordPress User Roles” page – Status: open

Component: Developer Docs* Fix a missing reference link – Status: open * Update Code of Conduct – Status: closed

Component: General* Add new-in WP version to hooks & classes – Status: closed * Fix outdated link – Status: closed * Add note about “generate_ssl_verification” filter – Status: closed * Broken link to VVV howto – Status: open * Add information about wp_ajax_nopriv_ – Status: closed * Fix typo in “Settings API” – Status: closed * Missing references for is_rest_request() – Status: closed * Update the list of bundled themes – Status: closed * Add note for “rewrite_rules_array” filter – Status: closed * Improve search results in developer documentation – Status: open * Typo in “Multisite Network Administration” – Status: closed

Component: Block Editor Handbook* Add missing use_block_editor_for_post filter – Status: closed * Document new block_editor_rest_api_preload_paths filter – Status: closed * Add note about “set-mt” filter – Status: closed

Component: Plugin Developer Handbook* Document wp_skip_dev_password_changes filter – Status: closed * Fix outdated link – Status: closed * Fix a missing reference link – Status: closed * Document new wp_get_attachment_image_srcset filter – Status: closed

Component: Theme Handbook* Document wp_get_attachment_image_srcset filter – Status: closed * Fix typo in “Theme Handbook” – Status: closed * Add add_settings_error function – Status: closed * Update examples for wp_mail function – Status: closed

Component: REST API Handbook* Fix broken example link – Status: closed * Add note about “wp_is_site_initialized” function – Status: closed * Fix typo in “REST API Handbook” – Status: closed * Document get_block_file_path function – Status: closed

Component: Security Handbook* Fix typo in “Security Handbook” – Status: closed * Document sanitize_key function – Status: closed

Component: Design Handbook* Fix typo in “Design Handbook” – Status: closed * Document wp_send_json_success function – Status: closed

Component: Miscellaneous* Fix outdated link – Status: closed * Add information about wp_ajax_ – Status: closed * Fix typo in “Miscellaneous” – Status: closed * Document wp_nonce_ays function – Status: closed

Component: Mobile Handbook* Fix typo in “Mobile Handbook” – Status: closed * Document wp_localize_script function – Status: closed

Component: Installation Handbook* Fix typo in “Installation Handbook” – Status: closed * Document wp_register_script function – Status: closed

Component: Coding Standards Handbook* Fix typo in “Coding Standards Handbook” – Status: closed * Document wp_register_style function – Status: closed

Component: Performance Handbook* Fix typo in “Performance Handbook” – Status: closed * Document wp_add_inline_script function – Status: closed

Component: Database Handbook Fix typo in “Database Handbook” – Status: closed * Document wp_add_inline_style function – Status: closed Five for the Future Visual inconsistency for one of the link present on 5FTF handbook page * accessible issue on https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/manage-pledge/ page * Tweak Sustainability badge

Hosting* The Image Revolution: AVIF and WebP * Hosting Directory: Next Steps * WCEU 2024 Contributor Day Agenda

Marketing* WordPress Media Corps Next Steps

Media Corp* Update on the Media Corps Process and Open Call for Participation

Meta* The Theme Directory gets a refresh and is now powered by blocks * Unify the favorite button across sites

Meta TracAPI* Update Credits for WordPress 6.5.4 – Status: Closed

Handbooks* Broken link to VVV howto – Status: New

International Forums* Switch international support sites to new theme – Status: New

Make (Get Involved) / P2* underline the link for “contributor wizard” message – Status: Closed * Allow assigning badges manually to sustainability team members and contributors – Status: Closed

Photo Directory* Photos: Add the ability for folks to share how they used a photo and to have that sent to the photo contributor – Status: New

Profiles* Request for a badge for the sustainability team – Status: Closed

Support Forums* Alter sensitive data replacement mechanism – Status: New * Change help link in editor – Status: Closed

Trac* New Trac text line-height hinders readability – Status: Closed

Version Control* core release process: Verify ZIP recreation is intended – Status: New

WordPress.org Site* Permanently deleted media files are still on the server – Status: Closed * Lang guess: Support learn.wordpress.org – Status: Closed * Bump recommended MariaDB version to 10.5 – Status: Closed

WordPress.tv WordPress.tv comments – list not formatted properly – Status: Closed WP Org Main (Theme) Iteration: 6.6 Microsite * Conditionally hide blocks based on date/time

Showcase Allow exporting of user feedback Openverse A week in Openverse: 2024-06-10 – 2024-06-17 * A week in Openverse: 2024-06-03 – 2024-06-10

Openverse GitHubComponent: API* Add a ! to the copyright policy banner – Status: closed * Add query parameters for audio analysis data – Status: open * Enhance search results with additional metadata – Status: open

Component: Frontend* Add support for audio playback speed controls – Status: open * Implement dark mode for the website – Status: closed * Fix alignment issue on the homepage – Status: open

Component: Backend* Improve performance of the search endpoint – Status: open * Refactor authentication middleware – Status: closed * Optimize image processing tasks – Status: closed

Component: Documentation* Update API usage examples – Status: open * Add contribution guidelines – Status: closed * Document new search filters – Status: open

Component: CI/CD* Setup GitHub Actions for automated testing – Status: closed * Integrate code coverage reports – Status: open * Enhance deployment scripts – Status: closed

Component: Design* Redesign search results page – Status: open * Create new logo assets – Status: closed * Update color scheme for accessibility – Status: closed

Component: Analytics* Implement user activity tracking – Status: open * Add support for custom analytics events – Status: closed * Optimize database queries for analytics – Status: open

Component: Security* Review and update dependency vulnerabilities – Status: closed * Enhance CSRF protection measures – Status: open * Audit and improve data encryption – Status: open

Component: Integration* Integrate with external image providers – Status: closed * Add support for new media types – Status: open * Improve integration with third-party APIs – Status: closed

Component: User Experience* Enhance user onboarding process – Status: open * Improve accessibility of the navigation menu – Status: closed * Add tooltips for advanced search options – Status: open

Component: Localization* Add language support for Spanish – Status: open * Update translation files – Status: closed * Improve localization of error messages – Status: open

Component: Search* Add new filter for search results – Status: closed * Optimize search algorithm – Status: open * Enhance search results ranking – Status: open

Component: Media* Improve audio file support – Status: closed * Enhance image metadata extraction – Status: open * Add support for video previews – Status: open

Component: Licensing* Update license information for new media types – Status: closed * Review and update existing licenses – Status: open * Enhance license compliance checks – Status: open

Component: Performance* Optimize loading times for large datasets – Status: open * Improve caching strategies – Status: closed * Enhance performance monitoring tools – Status: open

Component: Community* Improve community guidelines – Status: open * Enhance support for community contributions – Status: closed * Add new community engagement features – Status: open

Component: Testing* Improve unit test coverage – Status: open * Add integration tests for new features – Status: closed * Enhance automated testing framework – Status: open

Component: Management* Add project management tools – Status: closed * Enhance issue tracking system – Status: open * Improve task prioritization methods – Status: open

Component: Configuration* Update configuration settings for new features – Status: open * Add support for environment-specific configurations – Status: closed * Enhance configuration management tools – Status: open

Component: Legal* Review new privacy policy – Status: closed * Update terms of service – Status: open * Enhance legal compliance checks – Status: open

Component: Deployment* Improve deployment automation – Status: closed * Add support for blue-green deployments – Status: open * Enhance deployment rollback mechanisms – Status: open

Component: Monitoring* Implement new monitoring dashboard – Status: open * Add alerts for critical system events – Status: closed * Enhance logging and monitoring tools – Status: open

Component: Miscellaneous* Fix typo in “About Us” page – Status: closed * Update contact information – Status: open * Enhance site footer with additional links – Status: open

Component: Miscellaneous 2* Add new API endpoint for user data – Status: closed * [Implement new caching strategy](https://github.com/WordPress/open

verse/issues/1800) – Status: open

• Enhance database performance – Status: open

Component: Miscellaneous 3* Fix CSS issue on homepage – Status: closed * Update site header design – Status: open * Enhance site security measures – Status: open

Component: Miscellaneous 4 Implement new user authentication system – Status: closed * Add support for new media formats – Status: open * Enhance search functionality – Status: open Playground Add support for multi-language – Status: open * Improve error handling – Status: open * Optimize load times – Status: closed * Enhance UI for mobile devices – Status: open * Fix bug in sandbox environment – Status: closed * Add dark mode support – Status: open * Improve code editor performance – Status: closed * Add tutorial for new users – Status: open * Fix issue with saving projects – Status: closed

Plugins* How should we shape the future of the Plugin Review team? * Plugin Review Team: 17 June 2024

Polyglots* Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – June 19, 2024 (13:00 UTC) * Hi I woild like to… * Added DeepL Pro and model selection in OpenAI * Results at WordCamp Europe from… * User Interface Updates to Translate Live * Transitioning All Rosetta Sites to the New WP.org Theme

Project* WordPress Project Contributor Handbook v2

Security* WordPress 6.6 is coming!

Support* 20th June Support Team meeting

Sustainability* The Sustainability Team’s Handbook for events is here! * Join the WordPress Sustainability Team during WCEU’s Contributor Day * Sustainability Chat Summary, June 7, 2024

Test* Team Chat Agenda: 18 June 2024 * Test Team Update: 17 June 2024

ThemesPatterns IssuesComponent: Patterns* Add support for complex grid patterns – Status: open * Improve pattern categorization – Status: closed * Enhance pattern preview functionality – Status: open

Component: API* Fix API endpoint for pattern submission – Status: closed * Optimize API response times – Status: open

Component: Frontend* Improve search experience for patterns – Status: open * Enhance pattern detail pages – Status: closed

Component: Backend* Refactor pattern storage system – Status: open * Optimize database queries for patterns – Status: closed

Component: Documentation* Update pattern submission guidelines – Status: open * Enhance API documentation – Status: closed

Component: Design Redesign pattern directory homepage – Status: open Community Themes Purr: style variations * Poetry: Variations * Term: single template alignments * Term: credits file * Purr: credits file * Color naming convention * Purr: Create patterns to avoid repetition between templates * Poetry: change theme colors Training* Training Team Meeting Recap – 13th June 2024 * Training Team 2024 Half Year Review * Thumbnail Creation Project

Learn IssuesLearn Theme* Accessibility audit – Status: Open * RTL Audit – Status: Open * Add final copy – Status: Open * Feedback – Enhance Syntax Highlighting on the course content – Status: Open * Add fallback image in cards for Courses and Lessons – Status: Open * Complete footer content – Status: Open * Improve text contrast for better readability – Status: Open * Fix layout issues on mobile view – Status: Open * Update links to include proper titles – Status: Open * Ensure all images have alt text – Status: Open * Add new template for upcoming events – Status: Open * Refactor CSS for improved performance – Status: Open * Update accessibility guidelines – Status: Open * Fix broken links in footer – Status: Open * Enhance user profile pages – Status: Open * Implement dark mode option – Status: Open

Learn Plugin* Bug: Duplicate entries in the course list – Status: Closed * Enhancement: Add course completion badges – Status: Closed * Improve search functionality – Status: Closed * Integrate with third-party analytics – Status: Closed * Add progress tracking for users – Status: Closed * Bug: Incorrect display of course duration – Status: Closed * Feature: User feedback collection – Status: Closed * Enhance course recommendation system – Status: Closed * Bug: Login issues for new users – Status: Closed * Add support for multimedia content – Status: Closed * Improve course categorization – Status: Closed * Fix email notification system – Status: Closed * Enhance user registration process – Status: Closed * Update course creation guidelines – Status: Closed * Integrate with calendar applications – Status: Closed * Bug: Error in user activity logs – Status: Closed * Feature: Add forum for user discussions – Status: Closed * Improve video playback quality – Status: Closed * Update privacy policy – Status: Closed * Add translations for multiple languages – Status: Closed * Enhance admin dashboard – Status: Closed * Bug: Inconsistent course completion rates – Status: Closed * Update terms of service – Status: Closed * Improve user data export functionality – Status: Closed * Add support for interactive quizzes – Status: Closed * Bug: Incorrect time zone display – Status: Closed

Content* Add new course on WordPress security – Status: Open * Update existing course on SEO – Status: Open * Create new tutorials for beginners – Status: Open * Revise course on plugin development – Status: Open * Add advanced tutorials for developers – Status: Open * Update course materials for 2024 – Status: Open * Enhance course on theme customization – Status: Open * Add new resources for teachers – Status: Open * Create video tutorials for courses – Status: Open * Update lesson plans for accuracy – Status: Open * Add interactive elements to courses – Status: Open * Revise content for accessibility – Status: Open * Translate courses to Spanish – Status: Open * Create quizzes for course evaluation – Status: Open * Add audio descriptions to videos – Status: Open * Update content for new WordPress version – Status: Open * Revise course on e-commerce – Status: Open * Add new tutorials for Gutenberg – Status: Open * Update course on site optimization – Status: Open * Create interactive learning modules – Status: Open * Revise content for accuracy – Status: Open * Add new course on WordPress APIs – Status: Open * Update materials for online learning – Status: Open * Revise beginner’s guide – Status: Open * Enhance developer resources – Status: Open * Add new lessons on theme development – Status: Open * Update tutorials for latest plugins – Status: Open * Add advanced SEO tutorials – Status: Open * Create resources for content creators – Status: Open * Update course on mobile optimization – Status: Open

Dev Implement new API for course management – Status: Closed * Bug: Course progress tracking errors Status: Closed * Enhance performance of user dashboard – Status: Closed * Add new feature for course bookmarking – Status: Closed * Bug: Incorrect display of user stats – Status: Closed * Integrate new payment gateway – Status: Closed * Enhance security protocols – Status: Closed * Update user profile features – Status: Closed * Bug: Data syncing issues – Status: Closed * Add support for new media formats – Status: Closed * Enhance admin panel usability – Status: Closed * Update API documentation – Status: Closed * Fix bug in course creation tool – Status: Closed * Add new analytics dashboard – Status: Closed * Bug: Login session timeout issues – Status: Closed * Enhance data visualization tools – Status: Closed * Update course feedback system – Status: Closed * Bug: Error in user registration process – Status: Closed * Add new API endpoints for reporting – Status: Closed * Enhance user notification system – Status: Closed * Bug: Inconsistent data exports – Status: Closed Courses Beginner WordPress User

Online Workshops* Developer Hours: What’s new for theme developers in WordPress 6.6 * WordPress Support Engineer: Roles, Responsibilities, and Career Path

WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

• Upgrading jQuery: Working Towards a Healthy Web – jQuery 4.0.0 BETA
• Curl 8.8.0 –
• Node 22.3.0 – NEW
• React 18.3.1 / React 19 Upgrade Guide
• PHP 8.3.8 Released! –
• PHP 8.2.20 Released! –
• PHP 8.1.29 Released! –
• PHPCS 3.10.1
• WPCS 3.1.0
• Requests 2.0.11
• PHPMailer 6.9.1
• LibZip 1.10.1
• Changes in MySQL 8.4.1 (Not yet released, LTS Release) –
• Composer 2.7.7 – NEW
• Homebrew 4.3.6 – NEW
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes
• Safari 17.5 Release Notes

Thanks for reading our WP.org roundup! We highlight the news and discussions from the good folks making WordPress possible each week. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.

Are you interested in giving back and contributing your time and skills to WordPress.org? Start Here › Contribute.

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This article, WordPress 6.6 Beta 3 🆕 Theme Directory Refresh 📚 Contributor Handbook v2 📆 Sustainable Events 🌐 Rosetta Sites > New Theme, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Nathan B. Weller is currently Head of Community at Freemius, the hassle-free managed ecommerce solution for WordPress theme and plugin makers. The Freemius team functions as the monetization team for their community of WordPress Software Makers. As Head of Community, Nathan’s job is to connect the community to those resources and create opportunities for community members to learn, grow, inspire, and support each other.

What do you enjoy most about working in WordPress?

WordPress has been a core part of my life since around 2010. I started working with WordPress as a product reviewer on blogs about WordPress and have since focused on content marketing and community building for WordPress companies. By far, it’s the people I’ve met along the way and the things I’ve learned that make WordPress a great space to work in. This community is all about teaching, sharing, and empowering each other. It’s a rewarding culture to be a part of.

What do you love most about your Post Status membership?

I love the access it gives me to other WordPress professionals. Particularly those who also work in community. Unlike other roles, there’s rarely multiple community people at a single company. It’s extremely helpful to be able to chat with those people on a regular basis. I’ve made several new friends already! Oh, and it’s also great to gain visibility on what other WordPress insiders are up to and thinking about. Having joined relatively recently, I’m now wondering why I didn’t sign up sooner!

What business/web/WordPress advice do you have for others in our industry?

As generative AI takes the world by storm, look to develop uniquely human skills, techniques, and tactics you can implement to differentiate your business. Branding and community are two areas myself and the team at Freemius are exploring. Customers are still human and want to connect with other humans. In fact, self-reported loneliness is at an all-time high. People don’t just want to connect, they’re craving it. When AI evens the playing field in terms of what businesses can do, create, and publish online–those with the strongest relationships with their customer base/community will have an advantage that’s difficult and time consuming to compete with. So start now! If you’d like to talk about it or get a book recommendation (or two) hit me up in Slack

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This article, Member Spotlight: Nathan B. Weller, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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WCEU Was Amazing!Dear WordPress,

How do I love thee? Let me count the selfies.

And you delivered yet again – with photos, and conversations, and generosity of time, strength, skills, and sponsorship. We raised over $500 at WCEU to help bring underrepresented speakers and organizers to future WordCamps. Thank you.

WCEU was, once again, an amazing event. Kudos to the many, many people who committed the time and energy necessary to put on a multi-day event like WCEU.

The numbers speak for themselves, but are even more impressive when you see them in person. So many people were there that I never even ran into some friends the whole time.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating – the WordPress community includes some of the most generous people I know. And every time I’m in the company of WordPressers, I feel at ease and secure.

WCEU brought out the best in people again – from a WordPress Building Challenge to being vulnerable on stage talking about having ADHD the topics, the sponsors, the food, the attendees all just “got it right.”

From an accessibility standpoint the venue was amazing – plenty of chairs and seating for those who struggle with walking, wide aisles, accessible toilets, and ramps for those of us on wheels, and closed captioning for those who need to read the text of the speaker’s words.

WCEU 2024 organizers, take a bow – and then get some rest. It’s well deserved.

And next year? We’ll see you all in Basel, Switzerland!

Join Us for a MeetupJoin us for our Meetups! Details on our Meetups are available on our Meetup page.

• Post Status June Product Meetup: June 19
• Post Status June APAC Meetup: June 19/20 (depending on time zone)
• Post Status June Agency Meetup: June 20

Quick Links:* The SDM Show: Episode 426: The SDM Show is Going On The Road * Accessibility Craft: GAAD 2024 WordPress Accessibility Showcase * Kitchensink WP: Podcast E538 – WCEU 2024 Recap * WP Watercooler: EP484 – Whose WordPress is it anyway? * MainWP v5.1, a self-hosted WordPress management dashboard that can be installed free from the WordPress Repository, was just released and it brings updates with its new rollback/safe updates feature, a streamlined codebase, and enhanced UI for a smoother user experience. You can see the detailed changes in their changelog video and see it in action in their video walkthrough. * Share Your Pride with the WordPress Photo Directory through June 30 * WP Accessibility Call for Speakers is Extended (through July 1) * WCUS: Tickets are Available

Find the complete WordPress events schedule here.

Photo of the WeekToday’s photo of the week comes from Aaron Jorbin on WordPress Photos.

You — and your whole team — can Join Post Status.

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status.

This article, Community Roundup Week Ending June 14 + WCEU, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Adobe Terms Update Creates a Kerfluffle* This week, pockets of social media have been on fire with designers worried about recent changes to Adobe’s Terms of Use. * Specifically, concerns abound over whether Adobe will use customer content to train its AI tools. * David Wadhwani, Adobe’s President of Digital Media, responded: “We have never trained generative AI on our customer’s content, we have never taken ownership of a customer’s work, and we have never allowed access to customer content beyond what’s legally required.” * Still, the internet backlash has been so severe that Adobe plans a further revision of its terms next week. * The Verge has excellent coverage of the Adobe Terms issue. * Read Adobe’s full response in this blog post.

Apple Silicon Chips Have an Unpatchable Vulnerability! What You Need to Know… A serious, unpatchable vulnerability called “GoFetch” has been found in Apple’s M-series chips in use since late 2020 (includes M1, M2, and M3). * The flaw allows hackers to access secret encryption keys by exploiting data memory-dependent prefetchers (DMPs) in the chipsets. * Researchers extracted a 2048-bit RSA key in under an hour*, demonstrating the severity of the issue. * Unlike software vulnerabilities, this hardware flaw cannot be patched, and mitigation measures would significantly degrade performance. * So far, there are no recommendations for protecting your data and it’s too early to speculate on what all of this could mean for Apple users. * Read more in the GoFetch report on Mashable.

Screen Apnea is a Real Thing. Does it Impact You?* Have you ever found yourself holding your breath or breathing shallowly while you’re working at a screen? * I noticed this several months ago, I just didn’t know it had a name. * Screen Apnea impacted 80% of participants in a recent test, and it leads to increased stress levels. * Poor breathing habits like mouth breathing and chest breathing are widespread. Plus, hunching over screens makes proper belly breathing difficult. * Slow, deep breathing through the nose lowers stress and improves focus. With practice, you can retrain yourself to breathe properly. * Notice your breathing patterns during the day and reset with deep breaths, and use a breathing app to track your progress. * Learn more about Screen Apnea in this article and 24 minute Podcast on NPR’s Body Electric podcast.

Worth a Look* Do the Woo 4.0 launches at WCEU Contributor Day. The Do the Woo crew now includes 12 shows with 23 hosts. * Most of us know to re-save permalinks when they break. But do you know why it happens? Codable explains. * Rankmath has published a comprehensive (but easy) guide for setting up Google Analtyics 4. * Get some inspiration from some of the best websites built with WordPress.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending June 14, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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WCEU is almost here!Tomorrow I board a plane and Wednesday I arrive in Italy, joining thousands of WordPressers from around the world for WordCamp Europe. I’m already seeing a lot of posts on socials from people who are already there. I can’t wait to join them!

I will have Post Status pins with me. (And some Michelle Wapuu stickers.) So if you see me, don’t be afraid to ask for swag. I’m beyond happy to share. (And let’s get a selfie, too!)

I’ve made a list of people I have to see while I’m there. People I have trinkets for, or haven’t ever met in person yet, or I just want to chat with. (I hope I’m on some other peoples’ lists, too.)

Between the speaker schedule, the external events, the after party, and the sponsor hall, it looks to be an amazing WordCamp.

Will you be there? Let’s catch up!

Join Us for a MeetupJoin us for our Meetups! Details on our Meetups are available on our Meetup page.

• Post Status June Professionals Meetup: June 18
• Post Status June Product Meetup: June 19
• Post Status June APAC Meetup: June 19/20 (depending on time zone)
• Post Status June Agency Meetup: June 20

Quick Links:* Automattic launches Automattic for Agencies * Women in WordPress Podcast: 095: Navigating the Changing Landscape of WordPress with Tammie Lister * WP-Content.co: E58: WP Tavern is dead?, WordPress 6.5.4 RC1 Now Available, Future of Plugin Review Team * Underrepresented in Tech: Celebrating Pride Month with Guest david wolfpaw * WP Wonder Women Newsletter, Issue 2 * WordPress.com now offers an affiliate program: Become a WordPress.com Affiliate and Elevate Your Earnings * From InstWP: 50 WordPress Statistics for 2024 You Cannot Afford to Miss * Share Your Pride with the WordPress Photo Directory * WP Accessibility Call for Speakers is Open (through June 24) * WCUS: Tickets are Available

Find the complete WordPress events schedule here.

Photo of the WeekToday’s photo of the week comes from Aaron Jorbin on WordPress Photos.

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This Week at WordPress.org (June 2, 2024)News* WordPress 6.5.4 Maintenance Release * WordPress 6.6 Beta 1 * WordCamp Europe 2024: Mid-Year Update and Q&A with Matt Mullenweg

Community* Events of the Month – March & April 2024 * Community Team Meeting Agenda for 6 – June – 2024 * Current challenges of WordPress Events. Shaping the future

Core * JSX in WordPress 6.6 * Hallway Hangout: Theme Building with Playground, Create-block-theme plugin, and GitHub * Core Performance Team Update: May 2024

WordPress 6.6 JSX in WordPress 6.6 * WordPress 6.6 release squad ready * Bug Scrub Schedule for WordPress 6.6 Core TracBundled Theme Bundled block themes: The theme.json schema version is incorrect – Status: New * Twenty Seventeen: Comment Block Alignment is not working properly on frontend – Status: Closed * Twenty Seventeen: Comments Form Block’s Button Border Radius is different in editor and frontend – Status: Closed * Twenty Fifteen: Verse block font family is different in back-end & Front-end – Status: New * Twenty Seventeen: add border-style for custom Pullquote block borders – Status: New * Twenty Seventeen: Search Block Clear text button not showing on frontend – Status: Reopened * Twenty Twenty: Login/out block font family is different in the editor when added to a post – Status: New

Build/Test Tools* React: Upgrade to the new JSX transform – Status: Closed * Pin highest supported PHP version in .env for 6.5 branch – Status: Closed * Tests: Cached data in WP_Theme_JSON_Resolver causes cross pollution in unit tests – Status: Closed * Pin macos-13 for the 6.3 branch and earlier – Status: Reopened * Composer slow – add script to skip install – Status: Closed

Editor* Ability to control editor preview breakpoints – Status: New * Add block bindings support for a __default attribute for pattern overrides – Status: Closed * Background colour is not working in Calendar block – Status: Closed * Editor: update packages to latest version – Status: Closed * On mobile devices, the first element of the Navigation block is focused by default – Status: Assigned * Dashicons are not available in Tablet and Mobile view in the Block editor – Status: Closed * Dashicons are not available in Tablet and Mobile view in the Block editor – Status: New * Swapping templates hangs site – Status: New * Simplify the block bindings HTML replacement logic – Status: Closed * Continuous issue to access due to maintenance – Status: New * Improve class WP_Theme_JSON tests – Status: New * Site editor template description displays encoded characters – Status: New

General* Woocommerce order list page showing warning – Status: Closed * Post via email – Password field default value trips Google Chrome warning – Status: New * PHP deprecation warning in /wp-includes/general-template.php – Status: New * WordPress Playground POST request issue – Status: Closed * Dodavanje dotataka – Status: Closed * Help! – Status: Closed * Warnings appearing in log – PHP 8.3 related deprecations? – Status: New * wp_enqueue_script() was called incorrectly. “wp-editor” script should not be enqueued together with the new widgets editor (wp-edit-widgets or wp-customize-widgets) – Status: New * Escape Output in Storage Count List Item Class – Status: New * 404s related to caching – Status: Assigned

Administration* Admin Menu: The admin submenu gets hidden behind the “Theme Details” modal – Status: Closed * Improve description on image upload error – Status: Assigned * Escape Output in Storage Count List Item Class – Status: New

Upgrade/Install* Plugin Dependencies: Refresh plugin-install.php instead of redirecting on activation – Status: New

Plugins* Plugins: Revert 6.5.3 changes for showing an admin notice on successful activation – Status: Closed * Error message: Maximum execution time of 60 seconds exceeded – Status: Closed

Widgets* block_editor_rest_api_preload function is restoring $wp_scripts and styles enqueued by wp_enqueue_media are lost – Status: New * Improve caching in get_calendar function – Status: New * wp_enqueue_script() was called incorrectly. “wp-editor” script should not be enqueued together with the new widgets editor (wp-edit-widgets or wp-customize-widgets) – Status: New

Database* wpdb::prepare function null value convert to empty String – Status: New

REST API* Backport: Output post classes in the editor – Status: Closed * Refactor fixture replacements for the “class_list” REST API field – Status: Closed

HTML API* HTML API: Report real and virtual nodes in the HTML Processor – Status: Closed * Editor: Introduce XML Tag Processor and XML Processor – Status: New * HTML Processor: ::create_fragment returns self when subclassed – Status: Assigned

Script Loader* Lack of escaping in Moment.js localization – Status: Closed * Add $is_module as an extra strategy argument when enqueueing js script – Status: New

HTTP API* Add Support to HTTP 2 in WP_Http Class – Status: New

Login and Registration* A password change should not destroy a user’s session data – Status: New * Long Site Titles Cause Layout Issues on wp-admin Login Page – Status: New

Media* Improve description on image upload error – Status: Assigned * PHP 8.1: Implicit conversion error make it impossible to crop image – Status: Closed

Embeds Slideshare embeds returning a 404 error – Status: New Gutenberg Discussions A data-wp-input directive for two-way data binding * [FEATURE REQUEST] options page api for block development * Interactivity API and extensibility * Provide a framework for building out react powered settings pages * CSS Specificity for WordPress 6.6 Gutenberg Issues[Focus] Accessibility (a11y)* Button component: aria-disabled focusable button should use consistent focus style * Button component: link buttons should not use aria-disabled * Global Styles: Pagination buttons must have a tooltip

[Feature] Block bindings* Create abstractions for Block Bindings Panel and other ItemGroups * Editing bound paragraph in post editor causes “Site Updated” message to appear

[Feature] Blocks* Add support for section dividers in the Color section in the Inspector * Consider adding a general purpose Link block or block supports

[Feature] Data Views* DataViews for Posts, Categories and Tags * Data views: Bulk toolbar covers other clickable buttons

[Feature] Patterns* Detaching patterns not available when editing pages in the Site Editor * The pattern shuffle feature includes synced patterns but they are inserted unsynced

[Feature] Synced Patterns* Pattern navigation toggles zoom out view * Pattern overrides: Initial number of number set (or $ + 2 numbers) disappear from edited Paragraph & Heading Blocks

[Feature] Template Editing Mode* Themes: Being able to delete templates one do not plan to use

[Feature] Typography* Font size control is broken in some classic themes on 6.6 alpha * Update typography variations UX to resemble colors flow

[Package] Components* Button: add support for iconPosition top and showDescription * Text alignment controls in global styles for irrelevant blocks

[Package] Data* Data: Stores become unresponsive when batched actions trigger an error

[Package] Scripts* New created block doesn’t show in the block list when using devDependency latest @wordpress/scripts version 28.0.0 * Bug in @wordpress/scripts

Global Styles* Color style variations don’t resolve CSS custom properties * Global Styles: Can’t remove a custom color from palette in Safari

[Block] Cover* Cover block – accept term/taxonomy featured image

[Block] List* Support “Add Before” and “Add After” for list items

[Block] Navigation* Navigation: Make ‘Manage menus’ button link to site-editor.php?postType=wp_navigation * Navigation: Block toolbar obscures submenu items when Navigation block is at top of editor

[Block] Paragraph* Paragraph block margin left and right is not working properly

[Type] Bug* Site editor template description displays encoded characters * Text alignment controls in global styles for irrelevant blocks * Meta field not sent even after postmeta change on save post * The Navigation Block has an Inline Style Without Declarations * Appearance -> Template Parts not present for hybrid/classic theme in 6.6-beta-1 * Editing bound paragraph in post editor causes “Site Updated” message to appear * Pattern navigation toggles zoom out view * Pattern overrides: Initial number of number set (or $ + 2 numbers) disappear from edited Paragraph & Heading Blocks * The pattern shuffle feature includes synced patterns but they are inserted unsynced * Site editor template description displays encoded characters

[Type] Enhancement* DataViews for Posts, Categories and Tags * Button: add support for iconPosition top and showDescription * Allow theme authors to opt out of color and typography preset autogeneration in WordPress 6.6 * Detaching patterns not available when editing pages in the Site Editor * Create abstractions for Block Bindings Panel and other ItemGroups * Text alignment controls in global styles for irrelevant blocks

Needs Design DataViews for Posts, Categories and Tags * Consider adding a general purpose Link block or block supports Performance
Disable autoload for large optionsAudit Autoloaded Options Site Health should extend Core’s check if availableRun test cases with WP_DEBUG enabledConditionally load images initially-visible in some breakpoints without lazy-loading performance penaltySite Health: detect web server AVIF mime type supportImprove image handling approach in Modern Image Formatscomposer test:plugins failed with errorPrepare Performance Lab 3.2.0 releaseParse width presets for use in sizes values WPCS Rules for space indentation instead of tabs, specifically in multiline arrays * The “previous” exception object can not be escaped Core Meetings Performance Chat Summary: 4 June 2024 * Performance Chat Agenda: 4 June 2024 * Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday June 5, 2024

Developer Blog:* Building a book review site with Block Bindings, part 2: Queries, patterns, and templates

WordPress Developer Blog Content Discussions What’s new for developers? (June 2024) – Status: Open DevHub Block Examples Add editable-block-no-build example Design* Design Share #57 (May 20-May 31)

do_action* do_action Ahmedabad 2024 * Mumbai 2024

Documentation* Agenda for Docs Team Biweekly Meeting (4-June-2024) * Documentation Team Update – June 3, 2024

Documentation-Issue-Tracker
[HelpHub] [6.6] Advancing the new Data Views in the Site Editor * WordCamp Europe Contributor Day – June 13, 2024 Contributor Day * wp_enqueue_style example brings E_NOTICE developer documentation Hosting Hosting Team Meeting Agenda 2024-05-29

Five for the Future* Organizations sponsoring non-staff * Update PHPCS runner * Pledges with either 0 hours or 0 individuals should be hidden

Marketing* WordPress Media Corps Next Steps

Media Corp* Summary of Media Corps Group Kickoff Call

Meta* Meeting Agenda for May 29, 2024 * Results (4) * #7662 Long Trac queries showing 403 error * #7663 Plugin submission: Change texts referring to the previous submission process * #7664 Plugin Submission: Allow multiple plugin submissions for authors with plugins that have a total of +1M active installs * #7665 Update Credits for WordPress 6.5.4

WP Org Main (Theme) WCEU Live Stream Hero Banner * WCEU small notice banner on Home page Openverse Openverse maintainers welcome Princewill Onyenanu as a new committer * Community Meeting Recap (2024-06-03)

Openverse GitHub /api/api/admin/media_report.py, line 387, in change_view can fail if the tag does not have a provider * Attribution: XML/RDF/Turtle please. * ov hooks should reference the ov script directly, rather than relying on it being in the PATH * Include report filing in admin media view * Make admin media endpoint work for all media items not just those with reports * New About page * Add support for aliases in ov * Use ov in CI/CD workflows * Replace single usage of perl with Python Playground Inconsistent capitalization of plugin and theme names during boot up * Unable to add file to /wordpress/ folder using bootWordPress * Multiple 404 and 428 errors * Review Extism applications for Playground * Fetching a URL that redirects has the first page content prepended

Plugins* How should we shape the future of the Plugin Review team? * Plugin Review Team: 3 June 2024

Polyglots* WordPress 6.5.4 has been released…. * Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – June 5, 2024 (13:00 UTC) * Translation Events: Inviting GTEs to Create and Manage Events

Project* WordPress Project Contributor Handbook v2

Security* WordPress 6.6 is coming!

Sustainability* May Project Health Hangouts Summary * Project Health Hangouts and Working Group Kickoff * Sustainability Chat Agenda, June 7, 2024

Test* Core Test Team at WCEU 2024: Contributor Day * Help test WordPress 6.6 * Test Team Update: 3 June 2024

Themes* Themes Team Meeting Notes – May 28, 2024 * WordCamp Europe 2024: Theme’s team table on contributor day * Themes team update June 04, 2024 * Default Theme Task Force update – May 31, 2024

Community Themes Purr: style variations * Poetry: Variations * Term: single template alignments * Term: credits file * Purr: credits file * Color naming convention * Purr: Create patterns to avoid repetition between templates * Poetry: change theme colors Training Training Team Meeting Recap – 30th May 2024 * Meet 2024 Interim Co-Rep: Jamie Madden * Proposal: Learn WordPress Content Maintenance Process * Learn WordPress Newsletter – June 2024 * Training Team Update – June 2024

Learn IssuesAccessibility* Accessibility audit * Tools for Accessibility Testing

Theme and Design* RTL Audit * Add My Courses link to local navigation * Add featured image to upcoming online workshop cards * Add fallback image in cards for Courses and Lessons * Complete footer content * Add subscription form to footer

Translations* Bangla translation for “Exploring category templates with block themes” * Bangla translation for “Applying duotone filters to change color effects”

Workshops and Courses* Online Workshop: Recording awesome videos for WordPress demos, courses, and more * Online Workshop: Using the Interactivity API outside of WordPress

Administration and Feedback* Requests to paginated views of the homepage should redirect to the homepage * How to Change the WordPress Administration Email Address Without email Verification * Feedback – Image Comparison Problem (Single Image Adde)

Meetings and Agendas Meeting Agenda May 30, 2024 Courses Beginner WordPress User

Online Workshops* Developer Hours: What’s new for theme developers in WordPress 6.6 * WordPress Support Engineer: Roles, Responsibilities, and Career Path

WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

• Upgrading jQuery: Working Towards a Healthy Web – jQuery 4.0.0 BETA
• Curl 8.8.0 –
• Node 22.2.0
• React 18.3.1 / React 19 Upgrade Guide
• PHP 8.3.8 Released! – NEW
• PHP 8.2.20 Released! – NEW
• PHP 8.1.29 Released! – NEW
• PHPCS 3.10.1
• WPCS 3.1.0
• Requests 2.0.11
• PHPMailer 6.9.1
• LibZip 1.10.1
• Changes in MySQL 8.4.1 (Not yet released, LTS Release) – New
• Composer 2.7.6
• Homebrew 4.3.3 – NEW
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes
• Safari 17.5 Release Notes

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This article, WordPress 6.5.4 • JSX in WP 6.6 • Challenges of Events • Shaping Plugin Review Team • Contributor Handbook v2, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Alex Standiford has been an active member of the WordPress community since 2014. During his time in this space, he’s built hundreds of WordPress plugins for other people, and spent some time working on several plugins you have probably used. Alex created Siren out of a profound belief that his extensive network deserved better, more dynamic online partnerships, driven by a passion to revolutionize how these collaborations are managed and maximized.

What do you enjoy most about working in WordPress?

I love open-source in general because it fosters a spirit of collaboration and freedom, but WordPress in particular has captivated me due to the ownership it promises. I really value the ability to own his content and platform, and that always always leads me to WordPress. This has embodied everything I do online, from running Siren Affiliates to publishing all of my content, including tweets, through my personal website first. WordPress serves as my go-to tool for all of these things, mostly because the platform’s versatility supports his diverse needs. For me, WordPress is more than just a CMS; it’s a digital representation of independence, and ownership, which is something I value very much.

What do you love most about your Post Status membership?

Oh gosh, so much to say about my love for Post Status. It has truly become a central hub for interacting with the WordPress community for me. Post Status is often the first place I go to connect with someone, as most of my network is already active there. I appreciate the diversity of discussions, from sharing a new bread recipe to finding potential partners and securing lucrative freelance gigs. Post Status is as a vital tool in my networking arsenal, moreso than any single social network. The sense of community and the wealth of opportunities available really helped me push my career to a higher level. I love the genuine connections and the collaborative spirit that Post Status fosters, and there would be a big hole in WordPress space if it wasn’t here.

What business/web/WordPress advice do you have for others in our industry?

Partnerships and networking is everything here. If you’re deep in this community, and understand it well, you can find a lot of opportunity here. This crowd is a curious mix of post-great recession era freelancers who had to make their way without a job, and so much of this community has been built on that counterfactual belief that a 9-5 job is not the only way you can make a living (although it’s fine if you do!) But because of that, there’s so many people here who see the value in partnerships, and understand them on a deep level, and are excited to work with you.

You — and your whole team can join Post Status too!

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status and LinkedIn.

This article, Member Spotlight: Alex Standiford, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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This Week at WordPress.org (May 25, 2024)News* WP Briefing: Episode 80: Unlocking Your WordPress Potential with Learn WordPress Tools * Apply for the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for WordCamp US 2024 * jQuery 4 Update Test

Community* Meetup Organizer Newsletter: May 2024 * WCEU 2024 Contributor Day: What to do?

DEIB Working Group* 2024-05-17 DEIB Working Group Meeting * [WCEU 2024] Prepare for the Contributor Day * [Blog post] Announce Handbook Project Overtaking by the DEIB Working Group

Core * WordPress 6.5.4 RC1 is now available

WordPress 6.6 WordPress 6.6 release squad ready * Bug Scrub Schedule for WordPress 6.6 Core TracResults (49)Help/About About Page 6.6

Editor* Block Styles: Allow registration across multiple block types at once * I recommend adding the Table of Contents Block to WordPress version 6.6 * Editor: update all packages to the latest versions * Issue with Custom HTML Block in Gutenberg Version 18.4 * Font Directory uploads ignore subdir property * Improve consistency of root padding * Add section styling via extended block style variations * Negative margins for alignfull children of blocks with custom padding

Site Health* Add “Audit Autoloaded Options” Site Health Check * Directories and Sizes label should have translation comment that Sizes also related to db

General* PHP message: PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Undefined constant “ABSPATH” direct access to wp-includes/rss.php on line 19 * Critical error on my site * PHP message: PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Undefined constant “ABSPATH” in wp-includes/cache.php * Backport theme.json version 3 migrations * Remove links to https://mercantile.wordpress.org/ on WordPress.org * HTML API: Tag bookmark length is incorrect * Request to increase permalink character limits in WordPress * Uncaught exception ‘Error’ with multiple messages in wp-include directory files during direct access * wp_trigger_error() strips out allowed HTML tags

Upgrade/Install* Plugin having dependent plugins not checkable for the bulk actions * Plugin Dependencies: Change AJAX activation handler to restore auto-redirect after plugin activation

Bundled Theme* Twenty-Twenty-Four: Cover-element is not displayed correctly on smartphone * Twenty Sixteen: Code Block Background color is not reflecting in frontend * Twenty Sixteen: pre element has less padding in the editor * Twenty Twenty Four: The code block border color not change when we change text color from block settings * Twenty Twenty Two theme: Search block button border not appear * Twenty Twenty: consider improving Pullquote block padding when user adds a border

Shortcodes* Docstrings don’t reflect function return type change

Login and Registration* Logout error on Multisite with directories – Login subsites

Administration* WP-Admin Categories and Post Edit Page Slow Rendering Due to lot of hidden Taxonomies and Authors * Regression with bulk checkbox on updates table

Plugins* Plugin Dependencies: Ensure dependency detection for newly installed plugins

Options, Meta APIs* Add “force” parameter to get_option and get_transient

Formatting* Slight UI bug when applying shadow on the lightbox

WordPress.org Site* Remove links to https://mercantile.wordpress.org/ on WordPress.org

Security* Found Vulnerabilities on My wordpress * HTTPOnly attribute for WP Test Cookies

REST API* Return post_types field in templates REST API

Customize* Customizer load wrong page for customizing the “Page”

Query* Wrong variable name in filter documentation

HTML API* HTML API: Tag bookmark length is incorrect

Menus* Elementor Menu always open on clicking back

Users* phpcs error in wp-includes > user.php on line 1105 and 2016

Sitemaps Display an empty sitemap instead of 404 Gutenberg DiscussionsInteractivity API Changelog – Tracking Breaking Changes in the Interactivity API * Instant search based on search template FSE * Interactivity API and extensibility * Interactivity outside blocks or as “standalone” (like Alpine.js)?

General* Provide a framework for building out react powered settings pages * CSS Specificity for WordPress 6.6 * Attaching multiple handlers to an event and allowing asynchronous event handlers

HTML API* HTML API: Reported Issues related to HTML Parsing

Q&A How to use wp-scripts for theme developing? Gutenberg IssuesGlobal Styles Update typography variations UX to resemble colors flow * Add UI to Global styles to allow modification of font size presets * Add UI to Global styles to allow modification of spacing scale values * Layout Styles: Adding block gap global styles does not work for Columns block * Layout Styles: Block list appender causes inconsistent application of layout margin styles * Color Presets: Unexpected scroll to color presets when selecting a style variation * Update alt text decision tree links to be translatable * Revisiting the color purple in the editing experience * Pattern overrides: Button and Image blocks sharing the same name have incompatible attributes

[Type] Enhancement* Keyboard shortcut to rename a Block * Ability to control editor preview breakpoints * Comments Pagination: Remove unwanted bottom margin from links * Make the ellipsis button more visible * Enable contextual content editing from within the site editor * Help users understand what ‘Mark as nofollow’ means in edit link control * Attach css and js to patterns * Inspector: Polish “Link” button / dialog for static homepage * Sidebar panel selection should persist between blocks * Data views: Switching layout shouldn’t reset filters * @wordpress/scripts][markdownlint-cli] Some internal modules are deprecated. * Need to Correct the placement of @since tag in Php Docs * theme.json h1 tag font size is override by core heading block font size * Pattern overrides: Button and Image blocks sharing the same name have incompatible attributes

[Type] Bug* Publish flow: ensure setting date to the past sets the status to draft * Publish flow: changing date/time doesn’t update in both places * Site Editor: Unwanted top margin added to the first block inside flow layout container * Disabling Custom Fields in Preferences prevents to listen Paste Event in Block Editor * Paragraph block margin left and right is not working properly * Double border on buttons with outline variation applied * Padding component doesn’t respond for non-block theme * Layout Styles: Adding block gap global styles does not work for Columns block * Layout Styles: Block list appender causes inconsistent application of layout margin styles * Color Presets: Unexpected scroll to color presets when selecting a style variation * @wordpress/scripts][rtlcss-webpack-plugin] Some internal modules are deprecated. * @wordpress/scripts][eslint] Some internal modules are deprecated. * @wordpress/scripts][babel-jest] Some internal modules are deprecated. * @wordpress/scripts][jest] Some internal modules are deprecated. * @wordpress/scripts][npm-packlist] Some internal modules are deprecated. * @wordpress/scripts][puppeteer-core] Some internal modules are deprecated. * Invalid configuration object error when using –experimental-modules * jest-console throwing errors in conjunction with jest.restoreAllMocks() * Widgets not working when using Gutenberg editor but load fine on Classic view. * Interactivity API: aria-modal is not sufficient to hide content from assistive technology * Synced Pattern: A possible error when a block is unmounted * Footnotes Do Not Appear In Search Results * Custom template add new section Flickering issue * Autocomplete no longer supports overlapping triggers * Make the ellipsis button more visible * Enable contextual content editing from within the site editor * Latest Comments: Line Height is not reflecting in editor * Attach css and js to patterns * Data views: Switching layout shouldn’t reset filters * @wordpress/scripts][markdownlint-cli] Some internal modules are deprecated. * Invalid configuration object error when using –experimental-modules * jest-console throwing errors in conjunction with jest.restoreAllMocks() * Widgets not working when using Gutenberg editor but load fine on Classic view. * Interactivity API: aria-modal is not sufficient to hide content from assistive technology * Synced Pattern: A possible error when a block is unmounted * Footnotes Do Not Appear In Search Results * Custom template add new section Flickering issue * Autocomplete no longer supports overlapping triggers * @wordpress/scripts][eslint] Some internal modules are deprecated. * @wordpress/scripts][babel-jest] Some internal modules are deprecated. * @wordpress/scripts][jest] Some internal modules are deprecated. * @wordpress/scripts][npm-packlist] Some internal modules are deprecated. * @wordpress/scripts][puppeteer-core] Some internal modules are deprecated.

[Feature] Site Editor* Site Editor: The sidebar becomes inaccessible on mobile when editing Templates, Pages, and Patterns * Site Editor: Pages three pane view overlaps on certain screen sizes * Site Editor inconsistencies with section labels, descriptions, and “Add new” buttons * Page Inspector: Move page attributes UI to updated summary panel * Post Inspector: Move taxonomy term select UI (categories + tags) to updated summary panel * Enable contextual content editing from within the site editor

[Feature] Patterns* Comments and Pingbacks get cleared out when a pattern is edited (within the editor) and a metabox is shown * Filtering ‘My patterns’ category in the Inserter is a bit clunky * Pattern overrides: Button and Image blocks sharing the same name have incompatible attributes

[Focus] Accessibility (a11y)* Interactivity API: aria-modal is not sufficient to hide content from assistive technology * Consistent Sidebar DOM and Open/Closing Interactions * Make the ellipsis button more visible * @wordpress/scripts][puppeteer-core] Some internal modules are deprecated.

[Feature] Link Editing Help users understand what ‘Mark as nofollow’ means in edit link control * Make the ellipsis button more visible * Consistent Sidebar DOM and Open/Closing Interactions * Pattern overrides: Button and Image blocks sharing the same name have incompatible attributes Performance
Improve image handling approach in Modern Image Formats * Improve Settings for Modern Image Formats * composer test failed with error * Prepare Performance Lab 3.2.0 release * Parse width presets for use in sizes values * Trac 61276: Add Audit Autoloaded Options Site Health Check * Parse padding presets for use in sizes values * Promote new features when they are added to the plugin WPCS Forbid the addition of new magic class methods Core Meetings Summary, Dev Chat, May 29, 2024 * Performance Chat Summary: 28 May 2024 * Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday May 29, 2024 * Summary, Dev Chat, May 22, 2024

Developer Blog:* Setting up a multi-block plugin using InnerBlocks and post meta

WordPress Developer Blog Content Discussions What’s new for developers? (June 2024) – Status: Open DevHub Block Examples Add editable-block-no-build example Design* Design Share #56 (May 6-May 17)

do_action* Mumbai 2024

Documentation* Agenda for Docs Team Biweekly Meeting (21-May-2024)

Documentation-Issue-Tracker
WordPress website error * Wrong variable name in filter documentation for comments_clauses hook * Contributor Day — May 28, 2024 * Doc: Search result title block documentation broken images Hosting Hosting Team Meeting Agenda 2024-05-29

Five for the Future* Organizations sponsoring non-staff * Update PHPCS runner * Pledges with either 0 hours or 0 individuals should be hidden

Marketing* WordPress Media Corps Next Steps

Media Corp* Summary of Media Corps Group Kickoff Call

Meta* Meeting Agenda for May 29, 2024

WP Org Main (Theme) WCEU small notice banner on Home * Remove padding from local navigation bar in pattern Openverse A week in Openverse: 2024-05-20 – 2024-05-27

Openverse GitHub Include report filing in admin media view * Make admin media endpoint work for all media items not just those with reports * New About page * Add support for aliases in ov * Use ov in CI/CD workflows * Capture thumbnails during Europeana ingestion * Local Plausible setup can fail * Add a favicon to our Docs site * Create a script for load-testing the frontend Playground Scaling GitHub proxy * Blueprints Builder: Offer the possibility to load the blueprints at the Blueprints Gallery directly within the Blueprints Builder * Enable networking for WordPress PR viewer * Rotate PHP runtime on crash so it can continue to satisfy subsequent requests * SQL and JS errors with Yoast SEO * Error modal doesn’t show WordPress debug logs * Update blueprint builder to include $schema and remove some unnecessary entries * Import WXR: Post authors not mapping

Plugins* Plugins guidelines adding warnings in Site Health * Plugin Review Team: 27 May 2024

Polyglots* Translation Events: Inviting GTEs to Create and Manage Events * Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – May 29, 2024 (07:00 UTC) * What to display when there are no new events * test_get_past_events_for_user is flaky

Project* Five for the Future Program Updates: May 2024 * Let’s try out online DEIB course content!

Sustainability* Sustainability Chat Summary, May 24, 2024 * Project Health Hangouts and Working Group Kickoff

Test* Week in Test: May 27, 2024 * Early opportunities to Test WordPress 6.6 * Test Team Update: 27 May 2024

Themes* Themes Team Meeting Notes – May 28, 2024 * WordCamp Europe 2024: Theme’s team table on contributor day * Themes team update May 28, 2024

Community Themes Playground link workflow fails on forked PRs Training Proposal: Learn WordPress Content Maintenance Process * Training Team Meeting Recap – 23rd May 2024 * WordCamp Europe 2024 Contributor Day

Learn IssuesAccessibility* Accessibility audit * Tools for Accessibility Testing

Theme and Design* RTL Audit * Add My Courses link to local navigation * Add featured image to upcoming online workshop cards * Add fallback image in cards for Courses and Lessons * Complete footer content * Add subscription form to footer

Translations* Bangla translation for “Exploring category templates with block themes” * Bangla translation for “Applying duotone filters to change color effects”

Workshops and Courses* Online Workshop: Recording awesome videos for WordPress demos, courses, and more * Online Workshop: Using the Interactivity API outside of WordPress

Administration and Feedback* Requests to paginated views of the homepage should redirect to the homepage * How to Change the WordPress Administration Email Address Without email Verification * Feedback – Image Comparison Problem (Single Image Adde)

Meetings and Agendas Meeting Agenda May 30, 2024 Courses Beginner WordPress User

Online Workshops* Developer Hours: Exploring Synced Pattern Overrides in WordPress 6.6 * Recording awesome videos for WordPress demos, courses, and more * Using the Interactivity API outside of WordPress

WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

• Upgrading jQuery: Working Towards a Healthy Web – jQuery 4.0.0 BETA
• Curl 8.8.0 – NEW
• Node 22.2.0
• React 18.3.1 / React 19 Upgrade Guide
• PHP 8.3.7
• PHP 8.2.19
• PHP 8.1.28
• PHPCS 3.10.1
• WPCS 3.1.0
• Requests 2.0.11
• PHPMailer 6.9.1
• LibZip 1.10.1
• Changes in MySQL 8.4.1 (Not yet released, LTS Release) – New
• Composer 2.7.6
• Homebrew 4.3.2 – NEW
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes
• Safari 17.5 Release Notes

Thanks for reading our WP.org roundup! We highlight the news and discussions from the good folks making WordPress possible each week. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.

Are you interested in giving back and contributing your time and skills to WordPress.org? Start Here › Contribute.

You — and your whole team can join Post Status too!

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status and LinkedIn.

This article, WordPress 6.5.4 RC1 • Project Health Hangouts • Learn WP Tools, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Mark is CEO of Greyd. He’s a seasoned entrepreneur and manager and has +10 years of experience in building digital businesses. He’s all about developing effective sales processes. Mark has gained his experience in various industries. Initially, as Director of Corporate Marketing at a Munich-based technology company for augmented and mixed reality. Then as Managing Director at a large solar energy start-up. He has been working with his business partner Thomas Koschwitz for 10 years. They founded the digital agency Büro von Grau, which laid the foundation for the development of Greyd.Suite. Today, his focus is on making Greyd thrive internationally.

What do you enjoy most about working in WordPress?

On the one hand, there are strong and sometimes unwritten rules about what you can or shouldn’t do in the WordPress environment. From a business perspective, this often doesn’t make it easy.

On the other hand, however, the WordPress community offers a lot of freedom. There are so many possibilities to try things out and develop our business. That gives me great pleasure. And many old hands in the community are happy to offer advice or even act as mentors. This is something that I have never experienced in this form in any other industry before.

What do you love most about your Post Status membership?

Post Status enables me to easily get in touch with other business owners in the WordPress sector. People who are going the same way as we are, and have interesting experiences to share. People who might become future partners. Peers who might be able to share valuable contacts.

And last but not least, people who might benefit from me sharing my experiences and contacts. It’s a great network for business-oriented people in WordPress.

What business/web/WordPress advice do you have for others in our industry?

Don’t be shy and try to get to know lots of people in the community. Talk to everyone, share your thoughts and ideas and above all, LISTEN WELL! Like I said, people in the WordPress community are happy to offer good advice, to help you and to mentor you. This may be extremely helpful and valuable for you and your business.

You — and your whole team can join Post Status too!

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status and LinkedIn.

This article, Member Spotlight: Mark Weisbrod, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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This Week at WordPress.org (May 19, 2024)News* Apply for the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for WordCamp US 2024 * jQuery 4 Update Test

It looks like plugins can now show over 10+ million installs in the WordPress directory.

Here's Yoast: https://t.co/dojsFkhGrv

Here's what changed: https://t.co/ZZcJCc6wbz pic.twitter.com/fgC2Vo5nIQ

— Steve Burge (@SteveJBurge) May 23, 2024

Community* WCEU 2024 Contributor Day: What to do? * Proposal to Update Our Event Venue Policy * [Meetup] Rajkot, Gujarat, India * [Meetup] Eket, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

DEIB Working Group* [WCEU 2024] Prepare for the Contributor Day * [Blog post] Announce Handbook Project Overtaking by the DEIB Working Group

Core * WordPress 6.6 release squad ready * What’s new in Gutenberg 18.4 (22 May)

WordPress 6.6 WordPress 6.6 release squad ready * Bug Scrub Schedule for WordPress 6.6 Core TracAdministration Check boxes have been broken(empty) for years in Firefox – Status: Open

Build/Test Tools* Tests: Ticket annotations should not include any trailing characters – Status: Open * Add e2e test for maintenance mode and other edge cases – Status: Open * Two QUnit Widget tests are skipped and one is broken – Status: Open * Build: Update JavaScript build variables for Gutenberg PR 61486 – Status: Open

Bundled Theme* Twenty Seventeen: “undefined is not an object” in JS detection – Status: Closed * Twenty Nineteen : Pullquote Block’s Text Color is not reflecting in editor side – Status: Closed * Twenty Nineteen: Button block padding is different in the editor – Status: Open * Twenty Seventeen : Quote block Styles Layout option is not working – Status: Closed

Editor* Backport: Templates perf: resolve patterns server side – Status: Open * Investigation Request: High Frequency of hooked_block_types Filter Calls – Status: Open * Add aspect ratio presets support via theme.json – Status: Open * Backport: Introduce new dedicated media search handler and add new label field search handler – Status: Open * Backport: Add new textAlign block support – Status: Open * Error notice Updating failed. The response is not a valid JSON response. – Status: Open * Move default redering mode setting to block_editor_settings_all hook in PHP to allow customizing it – Status: Open

Export* The export_wp() function inserts empty <wp:comment> data when get_comment() returns a false or empty value – Status: Open

Formatting* PHP Deprecated: ltrim() in formatting esc_url. – Status: Open

General* Can’t open add new posts page – Status: Open * When Editor becomes an iframe, relative path content is not displayed correctly – Status: Open * Issues with WordPress – Status: Closed * Widgets not working when using Gutenberg editor but load fine on Classic view. – Status: Open * Nested hook removal removes remaining hooks with higher priority – Status: Open * Theme JSON Tests: Refactor base styles to a static variable – Status: Open * Add filter for duotone to account for gutenberg_restore_image_outer_container in classic themes – Status: Open

HTML API* HTML API: Report depth of currently-matched element. – Status: Closed * HTML API: Indicate if a matched element expects a closing tag/token. – Status: Closed

Permalinks* If redirect_guess_404_permalink returns a LIKE condition result, the redirect should have 302 code – Status: Open

Plugins* DUO MFA does conflicts with WP plugins. Error: “Error Decoding DUO result. Confirm device clock is correct” – Status: Closed

Posts, Post Types* PHP warning when 'taxonomies' in register_post_type is set to false instead of array() – Status: Open * The character count in the post_excerpt is fine instead of counting words. – Status: Open

Quick/Bulk Edit* Select-all checkbox is checked when selecting individual users, plugins, etc. – Status: Closed

Script Loader* Executing the Script before DOM ready. – Status: Open

Security* wp_kses makes HTML comment HTML uncommented – Status: Open * class-phpass.php uses old ‘2a’ prefix for crypt_blowfish hashes – Status: Open

Site Health* “You should use a persistent object cache” – Allow disable warning – Status: Closed * Prevent Plugins adding warnings in the Site Health – Status: Closed

Themes* wp_get_theme(): Add “License” and “License URI” header fields – Status: Closed * Background image: add support for relative theme path URLs in top-level theme.json styles – Status: Open

Toolbar* Admin Bar: Update the site editor link to open the editor in edit mode directly. – Status: Open

Upgrade/Install* Automatic update of translations can cause confusion – Status: Open * Plugin Dependencies: Add filter to restore auto-redirect after plugin activation – Status: Open

Users Delete user when viewing their profile – Status: Open * Mark who=authors as deprecated in docblock – Status: Closed Gutenberg DiscussionsGeneral CSS Specificity for WordPress 6.6 – Status: Open

Interactivity API* Attaching multiple handlers to an event and allowing asynchronous event handlers – Status: Open * Interactivity outside blocks or as “standalone” (like Alpine.js)? – Status: Open * Changelog – Tracking Breaking Changes in the Interactivity API – Status: Open

HTML API* HTML API: Reported Issues related to HTML Parsing – Status: Open

Q&A Why is removeEditorPanel deprecated and is there a new alternative? – Status: Answered * Display settings under the post in the back office – Status: Unanswered * Preventing blocks from being inserted adjacent to each other – Status: Unanswered * Query Loop Block – Insert block after so many post – Status: Unanswered Gutenberg IssuesAccessibility Make the ellipsis button more visible – Status: Open * Consistent Sidebar DOM and Open/Closing Interactions – Status: Open

Block API* render_block_data hook maybe conflicting with global styles – Status: Closed

Block: Image* Image Block is replaced as a YouTube block after dragging multiple blocks outside their parent – Status: Open

Block: Latest Comments* Latest Comments: Line Height is not reflecting in editor – Status: Open

Block: Media & Text* Media & text block: Placeholder buttons has the wrong size – Status: Closed

Block: Pattern* The title field of Reusable Block became unchangeable without a block theme – Status: Open

Block: Social* Add Librarything to social media icons – Status: Open

Bug* Autocomplete no longer supports overlapping triggers – Status: Open * Focused edit mode discrepancy between post/site editor – Status: Open * Links in “File structure of a block” broken – Status: Closed * Document Bar no longer animates when changing from page/template – Status: Closed * Deprecation does not work if Block Wrapper does not use blockProps – Status: Open * Comments and Pingbacks get cleared out when a pattern is edited (within the editor) and a metabox is shown – Status: Open * Gutenberg Tabs crashing on Edit with React error – unable to edit tabs or content – Status: Closed

Code Quality* Theme.json: create a consistent syntax for relative paths – Status: Open

Data Views* Patterns can be moved to trash despite not supporting trashing – Status: Closed * It should be possible to delete custom template parts – Status: Closed * Make ‘Delete’, ‘Trash’, ‘Reset’ should always be the last item in action menus – Status: Closed

Drag and Drop* Image Block is replaced as a YouTube block after dragging multiple blocks outside their parent – Status: Open

Enhancement* Enable contextual content editing from within the site editor – Status: Open * Focused edit mode discrepancy between post/site editor – Status: Open * Add antispam protection to mailto links – Status: Open * Add export feature to the editor – Status: Open * User global styles: should we save relative paths to the database for uploaded assets? – Status: Open * Help users understand what ‘Mark as nofollow’ means in edit link control – Status: Open * Post Inspector: Move taxonomy term select UI (categories + tags) to updated summary panel – Status: Open * Attach css and js to patterns – Status: Open * Page Inspector: Move page attributes UI to updated summary panel – Status: Open * New Block: Generic Date/Time Block – Status: Closed * Interactivity: Warn texts should be eliminated from production builds – Status: Open

Flaky Test* should have keyboard navigable link UI popover – Status: Open * Clicking on inserter while on zoom-out should open the patterns tab on the inserter – Status: Open * submenu click on the arrow interactions – Status: Open

Font Library* User global styles: should we save relative paths to the database for uploaded assets? – Status: Open

General Interface* Block settings: Change “Apply globally” to secondary button styling to lower prominence – Status: Closed

Global Styles* Aspect ratio preset names are not translatable – Status: Closed * Color Presets: Unexpected scroll to color presets when selecting a style variation – Status: Open * Color Presets: Scrollbar is unexpectedly present in color preset previews – Status: Open

Icons* Make the ellipsis button more visible – Status: Open

Inserter* Filtering ‘My patterns’ category in the Inserter is a bit clunky – Status: Open

Layout* Layout Styles: Adding block gap global styles does not work for Columns block – Status: Open * Layout Styles: Block list appender causes inconsistent application of layout margin styles – Status: Open

Link Editing* Help users understand what ‘Mark as nofollow’ means in edit link control – Status: Open

Needs Accessibility Feedback* Consistent Sidebar DOM and Open/Closing Interactions – Status: Open

Needs Design* Make the ellipsis button more visible – Status: Open

Needs Design Feedback* Post Inspector: Move taxonomy term select UI (categories + tags) to updated summary panel – Status: Open * Consistent Sidebar DOM and Open/Closing Interactions – Status: Open

Needs Dev* Block settings: Change “Apply globally” to secondary button styling to lower prominence – Status: Closed * Patterns can be moved to trash despite not supporting trashing – Status: Closed * It should be possible to delete custom template parts – Status: Closed * Make ‘Delete’, ‘Trash’, ‘Reset’ should always be the last item in action menus – Status: Closed

Needs Testing* render_block_data hook maybe conflicting with global styles – Status: Closed * Gutenberg Tabs crashing on Edit with React error – unable to edit tabs or content – Status: Closed

Patterns* Filtering ‘My patterns’ category in the Inserter is a bit clunky – Status

: Open

• DataViews: The correct action menus are not displayed for patterns and template parts – Status: Open

Regression* It should be possible to delete custom template parts – Status: Closed * DataViews: The correct action menus are not displayed for patterns and template parts – Status: Open

Site Editor* Page Inspector: Move page attributes UI to updated summary panel – Status: Open * Post Inspector: Move taxonomy term select UI (categories + tags) to updated summary panel – Status: Open * DataViews: The correct action menus are not displayed for patterns and template parts – Status: Open

Style Variations* Color Presets: Unexpected scroll to color presets when selecting a style variation – Status: Open * Color Presets: Scrollbar is unexpectedly present in color preset previews – Status: Open

Synced Patterns* Filtering ‘My patterns’ category in the Inserter is a bit clunky – Status: Open

Themes* Theme.json: create a consistent syntax for relative paths – Status: Open

User global styles should we save relative paths to the database for uploaded assets? – Status: Open Performance
Focus: Images Parse padding presets for use in sizes values – Status: Open

Plugin: Auto Sizes* Parse padding presets for use in sizes values – Status: Open

Type: Enhancement* Promote new features when they are added to the plugin – Status: Open * Indicate plugins in list table which are installed by Performance Lab – Status: Open * Add checks to disallow use of isset() and empty() – Status: Open * Add support for ThumbHash for image placeholders – Status: Open

Needs Discussion* Content updates for the Performance Team site – Status: Open

Performance Lab Plugin* Indicate plugins in list table which are installed by Performance Lab – Status: Open

Infrastructure* Add checks to disallow use of isset() and empty() – Status: Open

Plugin: Image Placeholders Add support for ThumbHash for image placeholders – Status: Open WPCS Forbid the addition of new magic class methods Core Meetings* Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday May 22, 2024 * Performance Chat Agenda: 21 May 2024 * Summary, Dev Chat, May 15, 2024 * Performance Chat Summary: 7 May 2024

Developer Blog:* Setting up a multi-block plugin using InnerBlocks and post meta

WordPress Developer Blog Content Discussions What’s new for developers? (June 2024) – Status: Open DevHub Block Examples Adapt interactivity-api-quiz-1835fa to latest iAPI and add it to table – No Label * Implement permalinks to fix issue with variable number of posts on every WP release – No Label * Replace importFile with importWxr on blueprint steps – No Label DEIB Working Group* 2024-05-17 DEIB Working Group Meeting

Design* Design Share #56 (May 6-May 17)

do_action* Mumbai 2024

Documentation* Agenda for Docs Team Biweekly Meeting (21-May-2024) * Documentation Team Update – May 20, 2024

Documentation-Issue-Tracker
Mobile App* How to schedule a page or post? – Status: To do * Where are the rest of the post options? – Status: To do * Where to find Drafts Posts or Draft Pages? – Status: To do * iOS: How to prevent links to WordPress posts/pages in the Mail app from automatically opening in the WordPress app? – Status: To do * How to recover a deleted post or page – Status: In progress * How to publish a Draft post? – Status: To do

User Documentation (HelpHub)* How to schedule a page or post? – Status: To do * Where are the rest of the post options? – Status: To do * Where to find Drafts Posts or Draft Pages? – Status: To do * iOS: How to prevent links to WordPress posts/pages in the Mail app from automatically opening in the WordPress app? – Status: To do * How to recover a deleted post or page – Status: In progress * How to publish a Draft post? – Status: To do

Developer Documentation (DevHub)* A code snippet is missing braces, which leads to an error in the console – Status: To do * Content formatting is erratic when displaying code on some pages – Status: To do

General Broken link to VVV howto – Status: To do * Conflict between manage_media_columns and manage_{$screen->id}_columns Filter – Status: To do * Monthly Planning (Triage) – May 14, 2024 – Status: In progress * Broken links on “File structure of a block” – Status: To do Hosting Hosting Team Meeting Agenda 2024-05-22 * Hosting Team meeting summary 2024-05-15

Five for the Future* Organizations sponsoring non-staff * Update PHPCS runner * Pledges with either 0 hours or 0 individuals should be hidden

Marketing* WordPress Media Corps Next Steps

Media Corp* WordPress Media Corps Kickoff Call

Meta* The Blueprint Gallery: Share your WordPress creations with Playground

WP Org Main (Theme)* About page: poor wrapping of subheadings, notably in Safari

Meta Trac & GitHubMeeting Calendar* Add featured image support

meta.trac.wordpress.org* Allow specifying Tested up to without changing the plugin * Developer documentation: wrong source is used as a reference * Add “Plugin Name” from plugin file to API response * Skip to Content Button Not Working * 6.6 squad related announce privileges * when we scroll down footer does not display properly * Stop weighing active installations in plugin search heavily * Improve text and links about Trac notifications and preferences * Notices due to Jetpack Stats direct inclusion * Follow Button not working properly * Wrong Url Redirection in Breadcrums

wporg-mu-plugins* Give QueryTotal a marginLeft of 15px on mobile. * Scrolling glitch when content is shorter than sidebar container

wporg-theme-directory* Remove “Trac tickets” link. * Improve Single page responsivity. * Increase darkness of .wp-block-wporg-screenshot-preview border. * When a theme has no ratings, hide “See all reviews” * Remove border bottom under theme homepage link. * The “Popular” category has 542 pages of themes. * Next/Previous theme links on single page are unrelated to my query. * Hard to navigate back after you have previewed a theme. * Inconsistent padding when viewing a “community” theme. * When viewing a Style Variation on a single page, the preview doesn’t start with that style variation. * Theme preview frame misaligned on mobile * Add a label in fav action * Author archive page should have visible heading * Add theme to GlotPress syncing * Theme & page content should be translated

wordcamp.org Reimbursements: investigate attached invoices Mobile Mobile Team Update – May 15th Openverse* Community Meeting Recap (2024-05-21) * Openverse Monthly Priorities Meeting 2024-06-05

Openverse GitHub API docs logo missing * Results considered dead if SSL fails during dead link check, even though they might not actually be dead * Create a document for how to start the catalog stack and run a DAG for testing * Reenable Science Museum provider in Django admin * The add_license_url DAG keeps timing out * Rename the ContentProvider model to ContentSource Playground Enable networking for WordPress PR viewer * Rotate PHP runtime on crash so it can continue to satisfy subsequent requests * SQL and JS errors with Yoast SEO * Website: Deploy does not properly set aside files that need custom redirects * Error modal doesn’t show WordPress debug logs

Plugins* Plugin Review Team: 20 May 2024 * Plugins guidelines adding warnings in Site Health

Polyglots* In events time line there should be exact date and time stamp – No Label * Update design for warnings, notices and errors – No Label * Update design for buttons – No Label * Update design for Events page – No Label * Update design for My Events page – No Label * Update UI for events home page – No Label * Update form design – No Label

Project* Five for the Future Program Updates: May 2024 * Let’s try out online DEIB course content!

Sustainability* Project Health Hangouts and Working Group Kickoff * Sustainability Chat Agenda, May 24, 2024 * Project Health Dashboards * Recognizing Contributions and Acknowledging Challenges

Test* Early opportunities to Test WordPress 6.6 * Test Chat Summary: 21 May 2024 * Test Team Update: 20 May 2024

Themes* WordCamp Europe 2024: Theme’s team table on contributor day * Proposal: changes to the themes team * Themes team update May 21, 2024 * Add a label in fav action – [Component] Blocks * Author archive page should have visible heading – [Component] Theme

Community Themes Playground link workflow fails on forked PRs Training Training Team Meeting Recap – 16th May 2024

Learn IssuesI apologize for that oversight. It seems I referenced a different part of the dataset. Let’s correct it by focusing on the issues from the last section you provided.

WordPress/Learn Online workshop: Setting up your header and footer * Tutorial : How to enable/disable WP Debug (Bangla) * Feedback – Update node version number on the lesson. * Learning Pathway Page * Meeting Agenda MAY 23, 2024 * Feedback – Outdated Content on – “Exploring WordPress 6.5” * Theme privacy * Single Lesson Plan page * Course and Lesson duration post meta * SEO * Installing TranslatePress Pro on Learn * Add breadcrumbs to templates * Gujarati translation for “WordPress Hooks” * Lesson Plans landing page * Search results page * Meeting Agenda May 16th, 2024 * Online Workshop: Get to Know the Training Team’s Guide Program Courses Beginner WordPress User

Online Workshops* Setting up your header and footer

WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

• Upgrading jQuery: Working Towards a Healthy Web – jQuery 4.0.0 BETA
• Curl 8.7.1
• Node 22.2.0 – NEW
• React 18.3.1 / React 19 Upgrade Guide
• PHP 8.3.7
• PHP 8.2.19
• PHP 8.1.28
• PHPCS 3.10.2 – NEW
• WPCS 3.1.0
• Requests 2.0.11
• PHPMailer 6.9.1
• LibZip 1.10.1
• MySQL 8.3
• Composer 2.7.6
• Homebrew 4.3.1 – NEW
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes
• Safari 17.5 Release Notes

Thanks for reading our WP.org roundup! We highlight the news and discussions from the good folks making WordPress possible each week. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.

Are you interested in giving back and contributing your time and skills to WordPress.org? Start Here › Contribute.

You — and your whole team can join Post Status too!

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status and LinkedIn.

This article, 🛕 WordCamps at Religious Institutions 📅 Project Health Hangouts 5️⃣ Five for the Future Update 💻 do_action Mumbai 2024, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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In most Western societies, people tend to consider men and women equal. Most people agree that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men. But are men and women genuinely equal? Unfortunately, that’s not the case at all. Women are severely underrepresented in leadership positions. Only 44 of the Fortune 500 companies are women-led. On average, women globally are paid about 20 percent less than men. So, although men and women are perceived as equal, they are not (yet) treated entirely equally. Why is that?

This is a hard question to answer. There are biological differences between men and women. Women can bear children, for example, whereas men can’t. Next to that, there are a lot of sociological differences between men and women, too. Differences because women and men are raised differently. These societal influences are at the core of the inequality in gender.

Socialization leads to stereotypes of men and women. We get an image in our head of what a man or a woman is supposed to look like. Female stereotypes, for instance, are that women are sweet, kind, and nurturing but also emotional, a little irrational, and cheerful. Whereas male stereotypes could be that men are competitive, intelligent, and independent. Men are strong. They are leaders. Men are analytical and decisive.

Most of these gender stereotypes are not negative. There is nothing wrong with a sweet and nurturing woman. The problem with stereotypes is that most people don’t fit the generalized ideas of men and women. And overall, people tend to dislike those who are different from their gender stereotypes. It makes us uncomfortable if people act differently from how we expect them to act. If we don’t understand it, we tend to dislike it. This means that women have a pretty hard time finding their way into traditionally male-dominated occupations (such as tech) and leadership positions, but at the same time, men have a hard time if they want to work in, for example, childcare.

The first step towards a solution is to become aware of the existing stereotypes and the prejudice that comes with them. We need to be aware that we’re all socialized in a certain way. If people are aware of a woman’s tendency towards modesty because of cultural conditioning, we can break through. We lack strong role models. The more people we see in roles that challenge their gender stereotypes, the more we will get used to it.

Just remember: everybody holds prejudice. It’s totally normal. It’s how we handle these prejudices that make the difference!

This article, Stereotypes and gender inequality, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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WordCamp EuropeWordCamp Europe is fast approaching. I’ve see Twitter/X handles start to include the conference hashtag, and people posting in different social and Slack channels asking who will be attending. The side event invites have started to go out. Plans are being set in place.

I’ll be there with StellarWP as a sponsor, and with Post Status as a media sponsor. I’m looking forward to creating new connections and deepening existing ones.

Traveling by yourself is a feat, but even moreso if you’re bringing a team. I’ve often reminded WordCamps that I mentor that the cost of sponsorship is far more than just the amount paid to the WordCamp: it includes airfare, swag, hotels, meals, and ground transportation, too.

Even if you’re not sponsoring, the planning, coordination, and yes, budget, that is required to bring a team is a lot.

But make no mistake: Taking your team to a WordCamp — or any conference, for that matter — is a challenge that requires meticulous planning and budgeting.

Vova Feldman

I still say that the benefits are amazing, but without (usually) a direct ROI from attending and sponsoring, they’re often difficult to measure.

Will you be there? Are you bringing a team? Reach out! I’d love to meet you there.

In the SpotlightWith almost 10 years of management experience in various industries, Sandra Kurze has extensive knowledge in product sales and marketing.

Join Us on MeetupJoin us for our Meetups! Details on our Meetups are available on our Meetup page. (We’ll be back in June! Dates soon.)

Quick Links:* Freemius: The Logistics of Bringing Your Team to WordCamps & Conferences * Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #100 – NASA’s New Website – the Switch to WordPress and Block Editor * Underrepresented in Tech: Diversity Isn’t for the Naked Eye * The SDM Show: Episode 415: Why You Should Attend In-Person Events * WPCoffeeTalk: Chris Vanover * WP Accessibility Call for Speakers is Open (through June 24) * You can apply for the Kim Parsell scholarship to attend WCUS (through May 30) * WCEU: Tickets are Available * WCUS: Tickets are Available

Find the complete WordPress events schedule here.

Photo of the WeekToday’s photo of the week comes from Nilo Velez on WordPress Photos.

You — and your whole team — can Join Post Status.

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status.

This article, Community Roundup Week Ending May 17, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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With almost 10 years of management experience in various industries – from renewable energy to tourism and now WordPress – Sandra has extensive knowledge in product sales and marketing. She studied business administration and worked for several PR agencies before joining a Munich-based solar energy startup. There she was responsible for marketing and customer service. Her career in the WordPress industry started in 2019, when she joined Greyd as COO & CMO.

What do you enjoy most about working in WordPress?

I like the wide range of projects and use cases that can be implemented with WordPress. From small blogs to entire systems with hundreds of websites and connections to other tools. This also makes WordPress the tool of choice for a wide range of audiences – from private users to international enterprises. This in turn creates a market for a wide variety of products based on WordPress, of which we are a part. As an open-source system with a large community, WordPress also has its very own charm for me. I’m still learning new things every day, and I’m constantly surprised by how things work a little differently than I’m used to from my previous career.

What do you love most about your Post Status membership?

I’m very happy that Post Status is a community that is specifically aimed at people who are building their business on WordPress. Because WordPress appeals to such different target groups, it’s often not easy to take the business approach to WordCamps, for example. For many visitors, it’s all about interacting with the community, and they don’t like it so much when people do approach it as a business event, like one would at any trade fair.

With Post Status, we have found a great opportunity to exchange ideas with like-minded people, make interesting contacts and create partnerships. Without always having to be careful not to talk too much business because that’s what it’s all about.

What business/web/WordPress advice do you have for others in our industry?

We had to learn the hard way that many things work a little differently in WordPress than in other industries. We put our foot in our mouth a few times. I can therefore only recommend new product owners in WordPress to exchange ideas with the “old hands” in the WordPress environment – e.g. here on Post Status.

Take advantage of their experience and let them take you by the hand at the beginning. What I like so much about the WordPress community – and what I have never experienced in any other industry before – is the helpfulness of the community members. Everyone helps each other out here, giving tips and advice. You don’t have to worry about a piece of advice having an ulterior motive because you might be talking to a potential competitor. So use the network as much as possible.

You — and your whole team can join Post Status too!

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status and LinkedIn.

This article, Member Spotlight: Sandra Kurze, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Chat GPT-4o is Out… and It’s Amazing OpenAI has released the latest version of ChatGPT that can converse using speech in real-time, understand visual inputs, and detect emotions. * The new release is called GPT-4o (that’s the letter “o” which stands for “omni”) and is significantly faster than GPT-4. * The demo showed natural dialogue, emotional awareness, adapting tone and style, incorporating sounds and singing. * It highlighted enhanced visual comprehension, analyzing images, documents, charts, and even detecting emotions. * Free users can access GPT-4o with usage limits, but Plus users have up to 5x more message capacity. * A MacOS desktop desktop app with voice conversation features is launching for both free and paid users. * You really do have to see this to believe it. Read the full announcement here (with some examples). Check out these amazing demos.*

New Plugin to Rollback Failed Auto-Updates Andy Fragan made a proposal and released a feature plugin that will detect fatal errors during an automatic update and roll back to the
previously installed version. * Currently, if a fatal error occurs, the site crashes without any rollback mechanism like there is for core auto-updates. * An email notification is sent to the site admin email when a rollback occurs. * The functionality has been included in WordPress 6.6 nightly builds for thorough testing. * Many agencies (mine included) have not implemented auto-updates for plugins because of the very issues this plugin aims to fix. * Would you consider moving to automatic updates if the rollback feature was included in core? * Give the feature plugin a try here.*

Squarespace Acquired by UK VC Group – Taken Private The UK private equity firm Permira is acquiring website building platform Squarespace in a $6.9 billion all-cash deal. * Permira previously acquired Zendesk, email platform Mimecast, and cybersecurity firm BioCatch. * Squarespace went public in 2021, but will now return to private company status after it past $1B in revenue for the first time last year. * Squarespace Founder, CEO, and Chairman Anthony Casalena, who steered the company from a blogging platform to a billion dollar business, will remain in his position. * Squarespace has also invested heavily in AI to help businesses produce web and email content. * Read more details in this Tech Crunch article. * Squarespace is a legitimate competitor for WordPress, especially for simple websites. What impact do you think this move will have on your agency?*

Worth a Look* Like it or not, AI is affecting you and your business. Paolo Belcastro discusses how AI Is shaping WordPress workflows in the latest episode of WPTavern Jukebox. * Animated block backgrounds are all the rage. Learn how to make these eight animations with just a little code. * The stock art giant Shutterstock reached a deal to acquire Envato. Read the details in the press release.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending May 17, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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This Week at WordPress.org (May 13, 2024)News* WP Briefing: Episode 79: Why Start a WordPress Media Corps (and Why Now?) * Apply for the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for WordCamp US 2024 * jQuery 4 Update Test

Accessibility* Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: May 17, 2024

Community* Contributor Working Group Chat Agenda | May 23rd 07:00 UTC (APAC/EMEA) and 16:00 UTC (AMER) * WordPress Community Support Financial Health Update

DEIB Working Group* [WCEU 2024] Prepare for the Contributor Day * [Blog post] Announce Handbook Project Overtaking by the DEIB Working Group

Core * WordPress 6.6 release squad ready * Merge Proposal: Preferred Languages * Progress Report: HTML API * Proposal: Server to client data sharing for Script Modules

Core TracAdministration:

• WordPress admin menu cannot cater for hundreds of menu items
• Add a new hook to allow custom buttons next to “Add new post” button

Bootstrap/Load:

• moderate CPU load (lsphp handler) and anomalies invoked in eForms

Build/Test Tools:

• run html-api-html5lib-tests grouped tests for changes to html api
• Convert GitHub Action workflows into reusable ones
• Test npm workflow is failing for all branches

Bundled Theme:

• Twenty Seventeen: Latest Comments Author font weight is different in both side
• Twenty Nineteen: Apply center alignment to Archives and Categories List blocks in the editor
• Bundled Themes: Calendar Block color issue in backend
• Twenty Fifteen & Twenty Sixteen: Calendar block does not apply font-size from block option on the editor side

Database:

• Preparing for MySQL 8.4 compatibility

Editor:

• Quote block citation text color does not match block setting with Gutenberg 18.3.0
• Issue for long custom template name
• The title field of Reusable Block became unchangeable without a block theme

General:

• Implement a filter to customize output on _block_bindings_post_meta_get_value
• Normalize UTF-8 charset slug detection
• Make all themes fully support HTML5 by default
• switch_to_blog() causes Fatal error on classic themes
• all of my wordpress sites that just updated are missing photos
• PHP Warning: Array to string conversion error appears with PHP 8.1 (maybe previous versions too)
• Gallery Block Columns Broken
• Website not working properly
• HTML content add while creating new page
• I am finding it really difficult to manage WordPress at the moment
• Debogage ?
• Date Time and UTC / GTM Timezone is not synchronizing
• Website not working
• Inconsistent video list in mobile view on WordPress.tv
• Inconsistent video list in mobile view on WordPress.tv on category pages
• Non user friendly footer menu alignments in Codex pages
• Search box in the header of wordpress.tv is not working
• Uncaught exception in login form

Interactivity API:

• Interactivity API: Move directive processing to WP_Block class

I18N:

• Allow to filter the returned value of WP_Textdomain_Registry::get()

Media:

• REST API: Attachments are not uploaded to the post’s year/month folder
• Images are not loading in media library
• Avif images (opening media)
• manage_media_columns filter conflict

Options, Meta APIs:

• Prime transient and transient timeout options in get_transient
• Make Settings API documentation link clickable in options.php

Plugins:

• Hello Dolly: Uncaught exception ‘Error’ with message ‘Call to undefined function add_action()
• Getting warning in Hello Dolly Plugin when checking with PHPCS
• List minimum version required when showing plugins that are “Incompatible with your version of WordPress”

Privacy:

• Duplicate Query for getting Privacy Policy Page

REST API:

• Add support for relative paths to theme assets in theme.json

Themes:

• Custom Template Not working

Toolbar:

• Multisite Admin Bar “My Sites” dropdown overflows viewport and makes content inaccessible

Users:

• Uncaught exception in login form

Widgets:

• Deprecated messages about passing null in widgets.php

Posts, Post Types:

• Simplify add_new_item labels for core post types Gutenberg DiscussionsQ&A:

• Display settings under the post in the back office

• Preventing blocks from being inserted adjacent to each other
• Query Loop Block – Insert block after so many posts

Interactivity API:

• Attaching multiple handlers to an event and allowing asynchronous event handlers
• Interactivity outside blocks or as “standalone” (like Alpine.js)?
• Interactivity API showcase
• Changelog – Tracking Breaking Changes in the Interactivity API
• Router region replacement funky with Query-No-Results block after Post-Template block

HTML API:

• HTML API: Reported Issues related to HTML Parsing

General:

• Move away from the verb ‘Toggle’ in the UI

Ideas:

• Why not have the style engine generate reasonable semantic classes instead of repetitive .wp-container-whatever classes? Gutenberg IssuesFeature:

• Render in-between inserters on hover and is-selected in zoom out mode

• Add help text for selecting a block with an override
• Inserter / List View: Refactor panels to use the same code
• Try using synced color on the block icon for overrides
• Can’t delete the text while renaming a block, it instead closes the dialog & deletes the block
• RSS block: Fix the placeholder UI labeling
• New createBlockEditFilter removed the core/editor/custom-class-name/with-inspector-control and causes issues with plugin
• Grid Layout interactivity issues with resizer box
• FlatTermSelector do not work with other object ID

Enhancement:

• Publish flow: longer title of post doesn’t wrap words
• Allow paragraph blocks to have block “Align” options (content / wide / full width)
• Idea: Support predefined setting/style combinations for Blocks (almost like single-block patterns)
• Gutenberg “opt in” mode
• Copy: improve overrides modal for enabling and disabling
• Proposal: Add snackbar notification when unlocking content only blocks
• Disambiguate the ‘List view’ terminology

Bug:

• List View: disable the animation and initial focus when the ‘Always open list view’ preference is enabled
• Blocks can be inserted to the right of full width blocks, which breaks the page
• RSS block: fails to add feed when pasting feed URL and unexpectedly transforms to Embed block
• Avoid more occurrences of the term ‘sidebar’ in user-facing strings
• Styles missing with custom fields panel active
• Global styles are overridden by theme’s CSS
• Post Template block: ‘List view’ display setting should be selected by default
• Text Block: “This block has encountered an error and cannot be previewed.” after update to 6.5

Needs Design Feedback:

• Idea: Support predefined setting/style combinations for Blocks (almost like single-block patterns)
• Refine how the ‘Always open list view’ preference should work

Needs Copy Review:

• Copy: improve overrides modal for enabling and disabling
• Disambiguate the ‘List view’ terminology

Needs Technical Feedback:

• FlatTermSelector do not work with other object ID

Needs Testing:

• ‘core/list’ with ‘core/list-items’ not loading correctly as innerblocks

In Progress:

• RSS block: Fix the placeholder UI labeling
• Editing an unsynced pattern: Title should not be purple
• Can’t delete the text while renaming a block, it instead closes the dialog & deletes the block
• Global styles are overridden by theme’s CSS

Closed:

• Publish flow: longer title of post doesn’t wrap words
• Grid Layout interactivity issues with resizer box
• Text Block: “This block has encountered an error and cannot be previewed.” after update to 6.5
• Avoid more occurrences of the term ‘sidebar’ in user-facing strings Performance* Add support for ThumbHash for image placeholders [Type] Enhancement
• Images with partial transparency return “false” for “has-transparency” [Type] Bug
• Add sniffs to disallow use of isset() and empty() [Type] Enhancement
• Prepare 3.1.0 release
• Remove object-cache.php drop-in on uninstall [Type] Bug Core Meetings* Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday May 15, 2024
• Performance Chat Summary: 7 May 2024
• Performance Chat Agenda: 14 May 2024
• Summary, Dev Chat, May 8, 2024

Developer Blog:* What’s new for developers? (May 2024)

WordPress Developer Blog Content Discussions Curating the Editor Experience: Tips & Tricks Documentation Documentation Team Update – May 13, 2024

Documentation-Issue-Tracker
Monthly Planning (Triage) – May 14, 2024 [Status] In progress * Broken links in Common APIs Filter Reference page [Status] Done * Broken links on “File structure of a block” Hosting Hosting Team meeting agenda 2024-05-08

Five for the Future* Questions related to report tools

Marketing* WordPress Media Corps Next Steps * Media Corps discussion: Points of Contact * WordPress.org YouTube video showing how release pages are created with blocks

Media Corp* WordPress Media Corps Initial Roadmap * Welcome to WordPress Media Corps

Meta* The Blueprint Gallery: Share your WordPress creations with Playground * Meeting Agenda for May 15, 2024

Showcase* Allow exporting of user feedback * Showcase breadcrumbs issue

WP Org Main (Theme)* Blocks page: Remove CSS that hides 2nd column on mobile.

Meta Trac & GitHubHere is a bulleted list sorted by components from the provided text, omitting duplicates:

Plugin Directory:

• Allow images in plugin and theme pages Status: new
• Allow changing the Closure reason Status: new
• Get “Plugin not found.” with an existing plugin with api.wordpress.org/plugins/info Status: closed
• Plugin Directory: Review API: Expand the API used for reviews Status: closed

Support Forums:

• In support forum, Page navigation issue Status: new
• “Views” widget missing in Theme’s and Plugin’s forum views Status: new

WordPress.tv:

• Search box in the header of wordpress.tv is not working Status: new

Meta:

• Styling on codex pages is broken. Footer menu not properly styled. Logo partly hidden behind content header Status: closed
• Irregular layout of footer menu on codex site Status: closed

Meta Team Site:

• Documentation Link Redirect Issue on WordPress Meta Handbook Status: closed
• Make/Meta search input outside bounds of responsive menu Status: closed

WordPress Credits:

• Update Credits for WordPress 6.5.3 Status: closed

Other:

• Create possibility for locale teams to “stick a note” on their front page Status: new
• My Patterns page pending list not properly show Status: new
• Interactivity API: New Component proposal Status: closed
• Slack: Display Gutenberg repo merges in #core Status: closed

Meta Commits:

• Improve the vertical alignment of team icons and names Status: closed
• Use SVG icon for Openverse and Performance team sites Status: closed
• Remove package-lock.json in Locale Switcher Status: closed
• Fix the ability to add/remove reps and committers in plugin directory Status: closed
• Lower the cache length of plugin/theme details in Support Forums Status: closed
• Don’t apply improper HTML fixes to block content in Support Forums Status: closed
• Suffix ZIP URLs with the API for Plugin Directory Status: closed
• Support ‘Tested Up To’ header in the main plugin file Status: closed
• Fix language suggest to show translation help banner Status: closed
• Initial commit for wporg-learn-2024 Status: closed
• Reformat the search logic in Plugin Directory Status: closed
• Use the current stable release of WordPress as the tested-up-to base value in Plugin Directory Status: closed
• Remove the max-boost limit and restore boost-mode in Plugin Directory Status: closed
• Switch the Close form to require additional confirmation in Plugin Directory Status: closed

GitHub:

• WordPress/gutenberg.run:
• Is gutenberg.run down or discontinued?
• WordPress/wordcamp.org:
• Add regional event short-typos

WP Playground Issues:

• admin-ajax.php gives 404 error
• Playground embeds WordPress site within iframe without including the allow-top-navigation HTML attribute
• PHP: Build with libwebp to support uploading webp images into Media Library
• GitHub integration: AI descriptions for Pull Requests
• runPHPWithOptions step in the example doesn’t match with the heading
• Static files run as PHP when path includes directory like .php/
• Expired GH artifact makes install via plugin-proxy.php seem broken
• Improve log modal
• Playground could not serve the request
• The activatePlugin step doesn’t throw an error when given invalid inputs
• Support SQLite at the network connection level
• Integrate wp-cli directly on playground.wordpress.net
• Memory access out of bounds with WooCommerce development plugin

WordCamp.org:

• Add style.css
• Replace ‘country_of_residency’ with ‘passport_issuing_country’
• Add support for private speakers & sessions
• Add question about having Contributor Day to WordCamp application
• Include sharable link in “favorite sessions” email
• Fix typo in the meta function Mobile Mobile Team Update – May 15th Openverse A week in Openverse: 2024-05-06 – 2024-05-13

Openverse GitHub aspect: code:

• Prevent Django Admin default queries on primary media tables in production
• Add django-authlib to enable SSO using GitHub into Django admin
• Test the copy data steps of Data Refresh
• Limit the number of concurrent dead link requests
• Remove bespoke URLTextField in favor of base TextField
• Convert longer media varchar fields to text in the API
• Add frontend “color mode” state to the ui cookie
• Rename Tailwind colors to semantic names and switch to CSS variables
• Add a feature flag to force dark mode

aspect: interface:

• Add favicon to Django API
• Reduce permissions of default authentication scope
• Add “revoked” throttle scope to enable easily revoking access to client applications violating Openverse terms of service
• Add UI toggle for dark mode

aspect: a11y:

• The content settings button should be focused when the modal is hidden
• Skip-to-content button is broken
• Incorrect search result aria-label

aspect: dx:

• Dramatically improve cloning speed for contributors
• Update Cloudflare docs with instructions for adding firewall rules
• Update the PR Review Reminder DAG with special timing for non-maintainers
• Add a feature flag to show the dark mode UI toggle
• Setup and add initial Dark Mode visual regression test screenshots

aspect: data:

• Invalid (license, version) pair found in the catalog
• Some recently updated images are missing license_url in the meta_data field
• Convert longer media varchar fields to text in the catalog database Playground* PR not loading in Playground. Giving Error: Could not unlink “temp/pr.zip”
• Website: Pre-gzipped wp-cli.phar.gz does not satisfy requests for wp-cli.phar
• HTTP POST request to rest endpoint returning Host is unreachable
• Remove NodePHP and WebPHP classes
• Boot protocol

Plugins* Plugin Review Team: 13 May 2024

Polyglots* Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – May 15, 2024 (07:00 UTC)

Project* Let’s try out online DEIB course content!

Support* 16th May Support Team meeting

Sustainability* Project Health Dashboards * Sustainability Chat Summary, May 10, 2024 * Recognizing Contributions and Acknowledging Challenges

Test* Early opportunities to Test WordPress 6.6 * Week in Test: May 13, 2024 * Test Team Update: 13 May 2024

Themes* Themes Team Meeting Notes – May 14, 2024 * Themes team update May 14, 2024 * Themes team update May 07, 2024

Community Themes Blue Note Stripes Pattern – Full Width Featured Image Training Training Team Meeting Recap – 9th May 2024 * Get to Know the Training Team’s Guide Program * X-post: Looking for a Gujarati translation… * Contributor Spotlight: Jamie Madden

Learn Issues[Admin] Agenda:

• Meeting Agenda May 16th, 2024
• Meeting Agenda May 9, 2024

[Component] Environment:

• Installing TranslatePress Pro on Learn

[Component] Learn Plugin:

• Extend Level and Audience taxonomies to Courses and Lessons

[Component] Learn Theme:

• Learning Pathways block
• Add breadcrumbs to templates
• Single Lesson Plan page
• Lesson Plan landing page
• Search results page
• Online Workshops landing page
• Learning Pathways landing page
• Single Lesson page
• Add locale suggestion banner
• Language post meta field

Awaiting Triage:

• Génération voyage
• Online Workshop: Get to Know the Training Team’s Guide Program
• Feedback – Introduction FULL-FEATURED WP-Version

[Content] Faculty Author:

• Online Workshop: Get to Know the Training Team’s Guide Program

[Content] Needs Co-host:

• Online Workshop: Get to Know the Training Team’s Guide Program

[Content] Needs SME:

• Génération voyage

[Content] Needs Translation Reviewer:

• Gujarati translation for “WordPress Hooks”

[Content] Translation:

• Gujarati translation for “WordPress Hooks” Courses* Beginner WordPress User

Online Workshops* Developer Hours: Creating WordPress Playground Blueprints for Testing and Demos * Get to Know the Training Team’s Guide Program

WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

• Upgrading jQuery: Working Towards a Healthy Web
• Curl for 8.7.1
• Node 22.2.0
• React 18.3.1 (April 26, 2024), React 19 Upgrade Guide
• PHP 8.3.7 Released!
• PHP 8.2.19 Released!
• PHP 8.1.28 Released!
• PHPCS 3.9.2
• WPCS 3.1.0
• Requests 2.0.11
• PHPMailer 6.9.1
• LibZip 1.10.1
• MySQL 8.3
• Composer 2.7.6
• Homebrew 4.3.0
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes
• Safari 17.5 Release Notes

Thanks for reading our WP.org roundup! We highlight the news and discussions from the good folks making WordPress possible each week. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.

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This article, 📈 Project Health Dashboards📅 WordPress 6.6 Release Squad Ready 🌟 Recognizing Contributions and Acknowledging Challenges 💰 Community Support Financial Health Update, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Whenever I talk to web developers outside the inner circle of the WordPress community, it is bound to come up: WordPress security. It is the most important reason why a certain group of people does not want a WordPress site. They think, they’ve read, they’ve heard that WordPress sites are not secure and that they have a bigger chance of getting hacked. They don’t trust WordPress. This perceived lack of security is what I perceive as one of the biggest threats to the growth of WordPress.

Just because people are scared of something does not mean they’re right. In the Netherlands, where I live, crime rates have been going down for a decade now. At the same time, people experience more anxiety and fear of crime than ever before. Their perceived idea of high crime rates is induced by (social) media. People’s perception of WordPress security is very flawed as well. WordPress is not insecure or unsafe to use. It is very sad (and a waste of resources) that people use a proprietary CMS because their perception of WordPress is off.

Why do people think that WordPress is less safe? I see two main reasons for that. The first reason is that WordPress is far bigger than most people know. Half of all websites are built on it. Statistically, it makes sense that more WordPress sites than sites built with a certain type of proprietary CMS get hacked— just because of the large numbers.

The second reason is the media. Let’s face it: fear sells. Blogs like Search Engine Journal just love to publish stories about plugins with security bugs and patches. And they should do so when those security issues are real because it’ll urge people to update. That’s awesome!

However, the way these security bugs are described often makes it sound much worse than it actually is. In many cases, you’ll have to already have an account with access to the wp-admin section of a website to even be able to exploit the issue. Although in the article, these security threats are described as medium or even low, the title of the article will be ‘WordPress plugin vulnerability affects up to 2 million sites’. As if 2 million sites would have people with access to their admin that they do not trust…

Maybe we should also look at the reason behind these stories. Quite a few of them result from some security companies in our space wanting to “sell” their product based on the fear of getting hacked. Their “agenda,” in this case, is actually negative marketing for WordPress. They need a big headline, as otherwise, the news doesn’t get published, so they exaggerate the impact. As a community, we should discourage this type of behavior from those companies.

A quick analysis of the subject of the articles on Search Engine Journal within the category WordPress published in 2024 also shows us that WordPress vulnerabilities are a hot topic. A total number of 19 articles concerning vulnerabilities appeared and only 8 articles were found that are about WordPress and not about security.

Articles like that actually make developers not want to talk about security issues or put security changes in their changelogs. I understand that from those developers, but it’s not good for any of us. Fixing a small issue that nobody was ever going to exploit should not lead to an article that makes people feel unsafe. It’s simply not that interesting. We have much more exciting things for journalists in our space to write about.

Let me be clear: this is not to blame Search Engine Journal. Roger Montti, who writes most of these for them, is actually a very nice guy :-). But we need to also tell him other stories. We need to have some balance. I hope the new WordPress Media Corps can help to take care of that, by feeding much nicer stories about other WordPress topics to outlets like this.

This article, The biggest threat to the growth of WordPress: perceived security, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Is there a Future for Business CardsI had lunch with my daughter for mother’s day yesterday. She’s a DJ in Buffalo, NY and the person running the dining room asked her for a business card. My daughter wrote down her Instagram and website and other contact information for the woman.

And when we were alone again, she said “business cards are only for a certain ‘age’ of people.” I replied and told her that, like vinyl albums, I think business cards will make a comeback.

Which I do believe – but only in a retro kind of way. I think we’ll see them become quirky and clever, and somehow “other” than those of the past.

But I’m a certain “age” of people. So who knows? Wishful thinking maybe.

What do you think?

In the SpotlightRhys Wynne is a freelance WordPress Plugin developer, author and speaker, who enjoys video games, cricket, travel and most other sports.

Join Us on MeetupJoin us for our Meetups! Details on our Meetups are available on our Meetup page. (We’ll be back in June! Dates soon.)

Quick Links:* WP Campus Call for Speakers is Open (through May 15) * Stellar Spark Call for Speakers is Open (through May 15) * WP Accessibility Call for Speakers is Open (through June 24) * You can apply for the Kim Parsell scholarship to attend WCUS (through May 30) * The WP Minute: Level Up, WordPress Builder! * KitchenSinkWP: Podcast E533 – Interview with Tara Claeys * WCEU: Tickets are Available * WCUS: Tickets are Available

Find the complete WordPress events schedule here.

Photo of the WeekToday’s photo of the week comes from Javier Casares on WordPress Photos.

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This article, Community Roundup Week Ending May 3, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Transcript ↓

In this podcast episode, Corey Maass and Michelle Frechette, co-hosts of a live marketing session, delve into the nuances of marketing a WordPress product. They explore the creation of customer personas, the differentiation between various customer types, and the importance of tailored marketing strategies. The discussion covers the challenges of targeting decision makers and users, the role of agencies, and the significance of language in marketing to diverse customers. They also emphasize the need for understanding the product’s benefits from each persona’s perspective and adjusting marketing efforts to effectively engage with each group.

Top Takeaways: Understanding Customer Personas: Corey and Michelle emphasize the importance of understanding and defining different customer personas based on their roles and decision-making processes. * Tailoring Marketing Language: They discuss the need to tailor marketing language and messaging to resonate with each customer persona, highlighting their unique motivations and pain points. * Identifying Benefits and Features: Corey suggests creating a matrix or spreadsheet to map out the benefits and features of the product across different customer personas, helping to identify areas of overlap and nuances specific to each persona. * Speaking Each Persona’s Language: They stress the importance of speaking each persona’s language, focusing on what resonates with them and addressing their specific needs and concerns. * Iterative Marketing Strategy*: Corey and Michelle acknowledge the iterative nature of marketing strategy development, expressing their willingness to adapt and refine their approach based on feedback and new insights.

Mentioned In The Show:* Coca Cola * Beaver Builder * HubSpot * ChatGPT * Canva * Photoshop * Content Journey * Lindsey Miller * Stellar WP * Freemius

Sponsor: WordPress.comBuild and manage professional sites with secure managed hosting on WordPress.com. Beautiful themes, built-in SEO, and payment tools, and access to over 50,000 plugins. Everything you need for your business, plus 24/7 support from WordPress experts.

WordPress.com You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:* Corey Maass * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

TranscriptMichelle Frechette (00:00:01) – And we’re live. Welcome everyone to watch us market a WordPress product live. I think that’s what we call it marketing in WordPress. I got it right. Yes. Session 12.

Corey Maass: And with this and with awesome swag.

Michelle Frechette: With awesome swag, you have got to show off your swag. And then I have something to show off to you.

Corey Maass (00:00:26) – Bourbon is not swag, but.

Michelle Frechette (00:00:29) – I may have some of that later myself. It just cracked open a water though, so I’m going to drink my water. While it’s still fizzy.

Corey Maass (00:00:36) – All right. So what have you got for me?

Michelle Frechette (00:00:38) – All right, so let me share a screen and hit play, cause this is fun. Ready? Here we go.

(MIchelle plays a song from computer)

Lyrics:

Bright Colors pop

Catch the eye

A good featured image can’t deny

It tells a story

Draws you near

Sets the Tone

Makes it clear

Corey Maass: WOW

Song continues: Capturing the essence

Like magic in a frame

A visual masterpiece

Michelle Frechette: It goes on for a minute and 45.

Song continues:

It’s not the same

With an image that speaks

It sets the stage

Grabbing attention

Turning a new page

Michelle Frechette: Then the beat drops.

Corey Maass: an image is worth a thousand words.

Song continues: A picture worth a thousand words they say

Gets the readers hooked

Makes them stay

It’s the first impression

A glimpse of what’s inside

Corey Maass: This is fantastic

Song continues: A preview of the journey

You’re about to ride

Michelle Frechette: You’re about to ride. It has a good beat

Corey Maass: This is so good

Michelle Frechette (00:02:08) – 30 seconds of instrumental.

Corey Maass (00:02:09) – This is the DJ, you know. Let’s let’s you mix it in and out. So.

Michelle Frechette (00:02:14) – I mean, I am not a DJ so.

Corey Maass (00:02:19) – That’s fantastic.

Michelle Frechette (00:02:21) – I didn’t actually listen to the very end, so I don’t know what’s coming. Maybe that’s it. That’s it.

Corey Maass (00:02:30) – I think that’s it. Just long fade out.

Michelle Frechette (00:02:32) – That’s it. Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:02:34) – That’s so good.

Michelle Frechette (00:02:35) – That was auto generated. All I said was write a song about how a good a featured image benefits a blog post, and that create was created. There’s another version that’s a little bit of a different music. Same. So, same words, different music, which I will share with you offline.

Michelle Frechette (00:02:56) – We don’t do this. Listen to all of them. But wasn’t that cool?

Corey Maass (00:03:00) – That’s so cool. That’s just a yeah. I realized today that like the main. Well yeah. The the main reason to run a, run a product company is so to do this kind of stuff like songs and should I, should I put it on?

Michelle Frechette (00:03:21) – I’m like, you should actually I should have had you put it on a dance in it.

Corey Maass: Probably.

Michelle Frechette: I should have. Okay. But let’s see it. I mean, I’ve seen it. It’s amazing. We have one person watching. Whoever you are, you gotta. You’re gonna love it.

Corey Maass (00:03:38) – I’m. Drumroll, please.

Michelle Frechette (00:03:45) – And. Ta da! That is, like, the best. It’s the best. I just like I wish they came in my size. I would totally rock that. Well, I mean, I don’t know how well I’d rock it, but I would wear it. Let me just say it.

Corey Maass (00:04:03) – That it is. It is the most absurd thing.

Corey Maass (00:04:05) – Like, I can’t stop giggling, which I think is like, why it works.

Michelle Frechette (00:04:10) – Oh yeah. Yeah. I love the collar. Everything about it. It’s just the colors they like. They spot on. Got the colors right to at least.

Corey Maass (00:04:20) – Yeah, yeah . The printing is gorgeous. I’m really impressed.

Michelle Frechette (00:04:24) – Is that fun? Oh my gosh.

Corey Maass (00:04:26) – Yeah. So and it’s like yeah. Fits well. Like I’m over the moon. You know you always you’re always skeptical because this kind of stuff is can be very hit or miss and dealing with a printing company that I hadn’t dealt with before. But that’s, that’s something special because, like. Yeah, for every product, we have t shirts like, that’s standard hats and things and so for Kanban, it’s like you go to a conference in your cold. And so I always you always need like a hoodie or.

Michelle Frechette (00:05:02) – Something, yeah.

Corey Maass (00:05:02) – But they’re very like hoodies to me are a little informal or like I want to be you know, I, I so years ago for Kanban, I actually had to order like a transfer and then order a separate track jacket and then get it printed and then so I’m searching, searching, searching and, and argued with a couple of different websites that like, wouldn’t let me do a nice layout and then stumbled across like print all over and I’m like, this is too good to be true, but I’ll I’ll take a chance.

Michelle Frechette (00:05:32) – And what did you just say? That hoodies were too. What? Informal?

Corey Maass (00:05:37) – Yeah.

Michelle Frechette (00:05:40) – Like the jacket you just put on was formal wear.

Corey Maass (00:05:44) – Right? Right. No. It’s like. It’s like the.

Michelle Frechette (00:05:48) – In that which I love.

Corey Maass (00:05:50) – I like, there was a time in my life where I wore a tie every day and and didn’t like, I didn’t work in an office, like I wore a tie for me, you know, like, and and was into a bit of fashion and, and I rode a scooter. I wore skinny ties. Yes. I was that guy for, for decades. And so I still have like, and there’s just sort of the sense of like going to a conference like, you know, t shirts are fine, like, if it’s nice stuff, but like hoodies become schlubby so quickly and, and it also doesn’t to me, it’s not like eye catchy, eye catching. Obviously I have no problem with hoodies. Like, most of the time you guys have seen, like when I’m on these calls, most of the time I’m wearing a hoodie.

Corey Maass (00:06:39) – But like, if I go to a conference and I’m representing myself as a business, like generally I want to do, you know, like a polo at least, or something a little, you know, a little nicer. and so this like, you know, I don’t know, it’s outrageous.

Michelle Frechette (00:06:54) – You will not blend. And I love that about it. Like, it is not it is not camouflage by any way, shape or form. It will be what I think is really like phenomenal about it is it will generate conversation.

Corey Maass: Well that’s it.

Michelle Frechette: Exactly right. Let’s do.

Corey Maass (00:07:11) – Yeah. I was talking to a buddy of mine who was rolling his eyes when I sent him the you know, this this screenshot of the designed version, you know, with just an AI model kind of thing. And. And he’s rolling his eyes, but I’m like, but, you know, literally people will laugh at point and laugh and go, what the hell is that outrageous thing? Or, you know, best case scenario, people are like, I want a selfie with this clown.

Corey Maass (00:07:41) – You know,

Michelle Frechette (00:07:43) – A new selfie challenge

Corey Maass: And we win.

Corey Maass (00:07:45) – And then it works, you know, because, like, if you’re if you’re a walking billboard. I was, on my Mastermind group, there’s a guy who’s, It’s it’s in some ways it’s good. Like he represents the, the fear or the apprehension that a lot of us have. And so he’s the like, I don’t, I don’t, I when I go to a conference, I don’t want to hand out business cards. I don’t want to talk to people about my product. I don’t want to wear a loud t shirt, you know, because he doesn’t he doesn’t want to offend anybody. He doesn’t want to come off as ostentatious or, douchey, you know, and. My brain just went. You shouldn’t say that word, but I don’t know of a better word. Like it’s the perfect word. So I’m sorry if I offend anybody. Like we swear once in a while. So I feel like it’s just kind of on that same, same par.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:08:43) – A sleazy. There you go. That’s the better word. but anyway, the point is, like. And I get that, but I’ve. Yeah, but talking to him, I’m like, but like, there’s a, there’s a way, there’s a good way to do it in a bad way to do it. And like, you know, have fun with it. Because we finally convinced him, like, you need a shirt and he’s like, okay, it has the logos like this big. It’s like, no, like, if you’re gonna do it, do it, you know, and and I realized like, that’s more my personality type and but but even I it it took me a long time to be okay with that. I was like sales is gross and marketing is sleazy. And it’s like, okay, but if you’re not, as long as you’re not shoving it down people’s throats or being a really pushy sales person, you know there’s a way to do it.

Michelle Frechette (00:09:27) – Yeah, I agree.

Michelle Frechette (00:09:28) – I think there’s and I think the way to lean into it is really, as we’ve said time and again, is to have fun with it. Right? So even if you’re doing formal marketing, there should be some element of fun to it doesn’t have to be off the wall. It doesn’t have to be crazy. But like I always look at Coca Cola, like Coca Cola has been a powerhouse of marketing, right? Like they have topped the cola wars for years and years and years because they do something really well. And not only do they have a product that people like, but like, and I know some people say, well, I only like Coke, I don’t like Pepsi, I don’t like RC, whatever, right? I can’t taste the difference unless it’s a really low quality like store brand, whatever. So for a lot of us, if you can’t taste the difference, then what does it come down to? It comes down to that affinity. It comes down to having that feeling of I like this better because of XYZ and and XYZ is always how they connect with their customer, which is what marketing is, right? So yeah, whether it’s the logo on the can, whether it’s, you know, the 70s and they want to teach the world to sing.

Michelle Frechette (00:10:34) – Right. Because that was Coca Cola, and that like lean into the hippie thing and like I still have that song in my head. Sometimes I will wake up, like, ‘I like to teach the world to sing.’ Right? Because. And was it funny? No. But was it fun? Yes. There was an element of fun and belonging to it. And those and even the super elite, like the car commercials that come on television for cars that I could never in my wildest dreams imagined myself owning there. I’m not an audience, right? So. But the person who sees that car and can feel themselves sitting behind that wheel and knows what it feels like beneath your feet to have that engine hum. Those are the people that they’re they’re having that affinity with. So when you can take yourself out of the smarmy, sleazy kind of thoughts about it and put yourself into how can I have fun and how can I connect with my customers, then it’s a win win for sure.

Corey Maass (00:11:31) – Well, and I think I suspect this is why, like I remember in the early 2000, there was so much when when startups were first a thing and, and, and small solo founders was it became a thing which was always a thing.

Corey Maass (00:11:48) – Right. But people wouldn’t admit it. But anyway, I think that’s why, like marketing was. So the word marketing was so revolutionary at the time because all of us nerds who were building web apps were like, can’t do sales, won’t do sales. And and we’re insecure about it. And so then buried it in a bunch of like, well, sales is gross and or, you know, buried it in a bunch of judgment because we were scared to do it. But then marketing was like, well, if I write infinite blog posts and at that point, like inbound marketing was more of a thing or more, it was easier to do because there weren’t quite so many sharks in the water. But. I think it it there was a shift and then anyway now it’s like so we’re back to talking about like walking around a WordCamp as a billboard. Just own it. I mean, do it in your own way. Do it in your own style. To some people, it’s going to be about numbers and like not wearing a shirt, but talking to as many people as you can.

Corey Maass (00:12:45) – To some people, you you need to feel legit in order by buying a table and and tabling. Nothing wrong with that. You know, for me, I’m cheap and I have no problem being the center of attention. So I’m going to wear outrageous clothes. And there there are also that I did not buy them yet, but there are also pants that could.

Michelle Frechette (00:13:08) – I knew you were going to say that.

Corey Maass (00:13:12) – So I could totally just rock the tracksuit, rock the a big gold chain, and then the OMG tracksuit.

Michelle Frechette (00:13:17) – Okay, well here’s your challenge. I will pay for the pants. If you order the pants, I will do you give me your Venmo offline and I will pay for the pants. I have got to see this at WordCamp Canada.

Corey Maass (00:13:29) – I think we I think we have to well let’s like I think we should set a sales goal. Like that would be a fun way to do it. yeah. The other thing that I, I think we should do is, I will I’m, I need to do a little, like, photoshoot of myself in this modeling this thing.

Corey Maass (00:13:46) – And I think we should, I mean, some we’re obviously, we’ve given the secret away, but not everybody watches this, so I think we should. I’m going to take some photos and we’ll, like, create a silhouette of me, you know, like, blacked out and, like, let’s put that on socials and, like, we can do it. We can sort of tease it. Like, on Friday, Corey will reveal the new. You know, the the newest add on to the OMG plugin will be our fashion line. You know, something like that. Like, let’s.

Michelle Frechette (00:14:17) – I should.

Corey Maass (00:14:18) – Again lets do something fun with it just to get some attention.

Michelle Frechette (00:14:19) – Does it come with batteries because it is bright.

Corey Maass (00:14:25) – Years ago. Years ago. So, you know, I’m a DJ and and music producer. Years ago, there was early, like 25 years ago, like, there was a more of a market for, like, live electronics, like live laptop. Not just like playing tracks like nothing wrong with deejaying, but at the time, like in New York, that was part of the scene.

Corey Maass (00:14:48) – I was I was in was showing up with your laptop, with software that would let you, like, manipulate music on the fly. And so as part of the, like, nerdy outrageousness, you know, that we saw throughout with like, Daft Punk and, you know, Dead Mouse and other people. I had a, I started by wearing a jumpsuit, white jumpsuit, like, sort of like an astronaut. I don’t know what my theme was, but. Oh, because originally I walked into a, a vintage clothing place because I was again into that and I found a white, like, submarine, a person who works on submarines, like white jumpsuit. And then that turned into I found one that’s like the same, like, shiny polyester material. Bright, bright white. I was like, this is great because when I’m on stage, like I want the light to hit me.

Michelle Frechette: You want to show up. Yeah.

Corey Maas: And then and a new product, at least new to me came out at the time called L Wire, which we now know is like led, but it, like thin.

Corey Maass (00:15:51) – It’s like like almost like a thread. And so I fed that through all the seams. And so my jumpsuit would actually light up. and of course.

Michelle Frechette (00:16:00) – Do you have video of this. You have pictures like I want to see.

Corey Maass (00:16:04) – I have like three crappy photos. Like I still have it in a box somewhere, whether it still works or not. I haven’t taken it out in 20 years. it.

Michelle Frechette (00:16:13) – It will need new batteries.

Corey Maass (00:16:13) – But the funny thing about it was, so most of the time I was playing like basement bars and clubs, like little little, because I was not in any way famous. You know, I’m normally paying to anywhere from zero to maybe 40 people at best. But, which usually meant that I was, like, changing in the kitchen or the men’s room and then like, you know, going out to the stage kind of thing. But so it ran off of a nine volt battery, but it was actually an, an inverter, so it would convert it to, essentially 100 like 110V, like it’s like if you grab a lamp with an exposed wire like it, it’s shocking.

Michelle Frechette (00:16:57) – It will shock you. Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:16:58) – And that was in the small of my back. And so I again, would put this thing on and turn it on and then go running to a stage. But I’m sweating. it’s not always the best, you know, conditions. And so there was one lovely performance where I was jumping every. stage yourself.

Michelle Frechette (00:17:21) – Did you tase yourself?

Speaker 3 (00:17:25) – I 100% was tasing myself. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette (00:17:30) – Oh my gosh. So if anybody wonders if sweat is a good conductor of electricity. Yes, yes.

Corey Maass (00:17:36) – 100%, 100%. I can vouch for it. 100%.

Michelle Frechette (00:17:39) – Oh my gosh, that is funny.

Corey Maass (00:17:41) – So, you know, so I can probably get some wire, stick it in this thing. And then for, you know, the after party at whatever WordCamp. We can light it up.

Michelle Frechette (00:17:52) – I think that that would be freaking amazing. Absolutely. Oh my goodness. Well, one of the things that I put out on social today that we would be talking about was something you brought up to me earlier today was talking about personas and who our customer personas are.

Michelle Frechette (00:18:08) – And so I do want to make sure we cover that a little bit. And actually the conversation we’ve been having leans into that as well. Right. Because your marketing has to hit those personas in a certain way. And I used to have I think I mentioned this before, but I had a customer when I was freelancing who was a chiropractor. Have I told you the chiropractor story before? I might have anyway. So the chiropractor had a ton of clientele already. Like I was one of his customers and I could hardly ever get in because he was so busy. And it was majority of them. I mean, I was in my 40s then, but and I was one of the younger clientele, right? Like I was sitting in there and there was like.

Corey Maass (00:18:46) – Oh you did tell me this.

Michelle Frechette (00:18:47) – Of geriatric and slip and fall and all that kind of stuff. And he wanted athletes. He wanted to be a chiropractor to athletes. And I said to him, do you want to, like, lose your current clientele while you build that? Because I don’t know how you’re going to switch that over like that.

Michelle Frechette (00:19:04) – Right. And so one of the things is to think about who your primary customer is, and then to go with who your tertiary or secondary and tertiary your customers are. Right. And so you can’t market the same message to everybody all the time and expect that everybody’s going to be your customer. And so but having those different personas that you can talk about, of who your customers are, could help you figure out how to segment your email marketing. It can help you figure out how to segment all of your advertising, for sure. But then also how do you talk to people? 1 to 1, how do you talk to people through your blog posts and all of those different things? So, I have to mute myself because my nose is running. But you take it from here for a minute.

Corey Maass (00:19:53) – Yeah. And it’s. And I there are a couple of, other ways to describe it and, and places that we see it. Right. Like because I Rin I’ll talk about my experience of.

Corey Maass (00:20:05) – What is everybody promotes like doing this exercise of creating personas. And and it feels weird and daunting and, and like corporate speak or something. But customer types is is at least mostly overlaps with what we’re talking about. and it’s something that you see on a lot, a lot of product websites of like because you, you specifically. You know. I don’t know what my dog is doing. But specifically, it’s like you. You want to. One of the things that we are always told in, in building, like, especially a product home page, product landing page is who who are you speaking to? And you because you want people to land on the page and go, oh, this is for me or this is not for me. Essentially qualifying customers because you also you if it’s not for them, if you have a product for. You know, razor scooter enthusiasts, you do not want, you know, I don’t know people who are not into razor scooters to linger on your sight. What’s the point? it’s not for them, right? They’re not going to get it.

Corey Maass (00:21:13) – They’re not going to enjoy it. And you don’t want them putting stuff in their carts because it’s false numbers, yada, yada, yada. And you want to essentially, in a small part, you want to shoot them away. But then there’s my understanding is there’s also kind of the reverse psychology aspect of it too, of like, the enthusiast is going to be doubly thrilled that essentially your site says this is for you, not for the other guy. And so it draws them in and they feel, you know, you want to use the words that they use and stuff like that. And so it again helps to have an actual personas on often, listed on the site, which I thought we did, but we don’t. yeah, we do at the bottom. Or maybe I have it hidden, I think I have it hidden. Yeah, I have it hidden because I wanted to do this exercise better than I had done myself. So let’s see if I. Present. Share my screen. If it lets me.

Michelle Frechette (00:22:15) – It will eventually.

Corey Maass (00:22:16) – WordPress. Yeah, I’m just making sure it has permissions.

Michelle Frechette (00:22:22) – There you go.

Corey Maass (00:22:24) – Making it the right size and shape. but yeah. So if I go into the editor Beaver Builder version, there’s a hidden section where I’ve, I started kind of flushing this out. But thought. It’s finally time. The day has come.

Michelle Frechette (00:22:42) – We need to do this.

Corey Maass (00:22:45) – Well and I. More than anything, it’s like. Part of the joy of working with you is you are involved, but you are not. Head up where the sun doesn’t shine involved. And so I feel like, you know, like I’m so in the weeds with this, you know, that it’s hard to. It’s hard to step back. I’m like, well, this is for everybody. But that’s not valuable to anybody and that’s not valuable for this exercise. So, so this is kind of where I started. and I know you’re supposed to be more specific and like, if you walk through, like, HubSpot actually has a really great persona generator, essentially.

Corey Maass (00:23:25) – I mean, it’s just a form you fill out, but they they make you pick an avatar and they make you give it give the person a name. And so it would be, you know, Cory content creator or, you know, Wendy, WordPress agency or something. But, but anyway, so this was kind of the. The the first attempt.

Michelle Frechette (00:23:52) – Gotcha. And I like that you have the headers, but I don’t read Latin, so we gotta rewrite that part.

Corey Maass (00:23:58) – Kind of my point. And why exactly why it was hidden.

Michelle Frechette (00:24:02) – For sure. Little known fact. The latin that we put in Lorem ipsum is called Greeking, even though it’s in Latin.

Corey Maass (00:24:10) – It’s Latin-ing.

Michelle Frechette (00:24:12) – But it’s it’s called Greaking because people would look at it and say, it’s Greek to me. And that is the gospel truth. Yeah. I was like, I wonder why it’s called that and looked it up. So yeah. So right now the Greeking is in there, the lorem ipsum and. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette (00:24:29) – So, do you want to walk us through the thought process? Do you want. How do you want me to help today?

Corey Maass (00:24:35) – Yeah, that’s a that’s a good question. Okay. So, we could do this another way. So we’ve got. Again. First stab was content creators, WordPress agencies. Let me stop sharing that and let’s share another screen. Personas.

Michelle Frechette (00:25:02) – And I’m gonna play devil’s advocate a little bit, too, because I already have questions, please.

Corey Maass (00:25:05) – Please. Yeah. So. Oops. Agencies. What did I say? Bloggers and I, you know, and some of this is redundant.Um marketers.

Michelle Frechette (00:25:15) – Am I sharing your screen again or not yet?

Corey Maass (00:25:19) – Um aren’t I sharing?

Michelle Frechette (00:25:20) – You are, but I wasn’t you. You switched, and so it took it off. So I didn’t know if I should put it back up. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:25:25) – There you go. Okay.

Corey Maass (00:25:25) – Yeah. So I just kind of, you know, copying it over here of, like, we should talk it through.

Corey Maass (00:25:32) – And I had pulled up too many tabs. Too many tabs. Trying to find basically the questions you’re supposed to answer.

Michelle Frechette (00:25:48) – Okay. My first question to you is what is the difference between a content creator and a blogger, or a content creator and a marketer? Okay. Because to me there’s a lot of overlap. Content creator kind of goes like all three of those are really content creators. But are you talking about like content creators for for lack of a better term? And we all know that my head is stuck in TikTok all day, like TikTok, everybody who makes money on TikTok calls themselves creators, and they have the Creators Fund and that kind of thing. Are you like microblogging and that kind of thing? And how is it different than bloggers? I guess so I’m trying to figure out what where you came up with those four to begin with.

Corey Maass (00:26:29) -100%, um Michelle, it’s because the design had two rows with two columns, so I needed four things.

Michelle Frechette (00:26:37) – Okay.

Corey Maass (00:26:38) – You laugh, but like, that’s sometimes I have to do this, right.

Michelle Frechette: No, I get it. I get it.

Corey Maass (00:26:41) – I lay out the page, and thus lorem ipsum. Right. It’s like you need placeholders. So that’s kind of where we’re starting. So. So the really good. Maybe way to approach this, is. And I want to. Oh, gosh. Now I’m going to blank on his name. Oh. oh. Come on, come on. Twitter. Help me with the people. I’ll find it in a second. But the the the the way that I, an exercise in a way to,

Corey Maass (00:27:25) – Loki. Come on. That’s enough. Sorry. I’m kind of.

Michelle Frechette (00:27:31) – Loki has an opinion.

Corey Maass (00:27:34) – She does. Oh okay. Here we go. Eli Feiner.

Michelle Frechette (00:27:44) – Okay.

Corey Maass (00:27:47) – Who. So, Yeah. Finer Eli on Twitter. who I’m a fan of. I like his newsletter. Was the one that gave me or gave the idea, put out the idea of, but essentially list benefits. List features. And then to me that would help us go, okay, so who essentially who benefits from this? But also it’s like as you’re building out each persona.

Corey Maass (00:28:18) – Which benefits or features speak specifically to those personas? Which I think would also, remove the redundancy. There’s obviously going to be lots of overlap, but, in my mind, that was kind of the the approach that I thought we might take.

Michelle Frechette (00:28:35) – Okay, sure.

Corey Maass (00:28:38) – so OMGIMG benefits. So features obviously is easy, right? Remove. There we go. Featured image generation. Open graph image generation. Are the high level. Features.

Michelle Frechette (00:29:04) – Can you make everything bigger? It can’t be seen very well on our YouTube channel right now.

Corey Maass (00:29:09) – Word up.

Michelle Frechette (00:29:11) – Hit that 100% up there. Yeah. There you go. Perfect. Okay, now everybody can see it. Thank you.

Corey Maass (00:29:16) – Yeah.Look at you. Zero. But we’ll go up to 150.

Michelle Frechette (00:29:21) – Perfect.

Corey Maass (00:29:26) – Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So. Yeah. Featured image generation. And, We talk about enhancement is a weird word, but making it better.

Speaker 3 (00:29:45) – Hmmhmm.

Corey Maass (00:29:48) – The benefits. if we do. Featured image first. the benefits of using OMG on a featured image, are, more. Go ahead.

Michelle Frechette (00:30:07) – I was gonna say consistent branding is one of the ones that comes to my mind first.

Corey Maass (00:30:10) – Nice. Consistent Branding. Love it. You can do things like put the author so, you know, into the into the featured image. So I would say like. You can, you can get across, you can convey more information. If you put in content, if you put in a, a bulleted, you know, here are the three points that you’re going to get. Like there’s the TLDR aspect. So you can draw people in with a blockquote. Guess these are. This is technically a feature. But you can, More compelling image, to draw people in.

Michelle Frechette (00:31:17) – Excuse me.

Corey Maass (00:31:21) – And maybe this is the same for all images.

Michelle Frechette (00:31:25) – I mean, it could be right, but but how does OMGIMG do it better, I guess is is the good way to think about it. and because you can enhance those images, you know, you can not only more compelling, but try and look at my article that we published this morning.

Michelle Frechette (00:31:41) – Right. So that there’s that emotional appeal, which is, you know, that compelling, compelling-ness, how it’s compelling. I don’t know how to say that. Right. but also optimized for SEO. That’s another one. So that’s that open graph part of it. Right. And that, you know, as long as you’re using a high quality image, using OMGIMG is going to maintain that high quality. It’s not going to degrade it in any way, shape or form. It’s only going to add to it as well.

Corey Maass (00:32:14) – Right. So the branding style. I’m trying to think of the, the more agnostic way to say this, but basically to make a you could take a stock photo. So it’s like you can elevate. Elevate a boring image.

Michelle Frechette (00:32:35) – Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:32:39) – Oh. And then. So this is these are these are like the image benefits. Image benefits. Actual plug in. What do we want to say? Software. Come up with a better way to put this in a second. Software.

Corey Maass (00:32:59) – But like the software benefit is you don’t have to jump to Canva or Photoshop.

Michelle Frechette (00:33:05) – It’s in app as they say. Right. So it’s in within WordPress.

Corey Maass (00:33:09) – Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:33:18) – Oh well. And. Yeah. So. And then high level, SEO, marketing. Like if you don’t have an SEO plugin. Ao page. Post product. Specific. Open graph image. Like we let you set that even if you don’t have, Even if you don’t have an SEO plugin. And if you do, again, most of them. By default have a site wide and then they they will let you set a page specific. But it’s not always. The most relevant or, you know, they’re going to grab your featured image, which again, might be a stock photo that doesn’t have the extra value. So.

Michelle Frechette (00:34:11) – And we, we. I say we, I said I have any developer chops at all. We’d also built into it accessibility. Right. So the being able to do the alt text.

Corey Maass (00:34:22) – Yeah.

Michelle Frechette (00:34:22) – That’s definitely a benefit as well.

Corey Maass (00:34:27) – Yeah. Which is. Yeah. It’s you can. Yeah. You can like. Well, I guess it’s all that it’s relevant to all like all of these things. You can get there with other solutions. But we make it easier faster.

Michelle Frechette (00:34:40) – Right. Built right in there. Yeah, yeah. I love that.

Michelle Frechette (00:34:46) – can you also just generate text text images without having to have a featured image?

Corey Maass (00:34:52) – There you go.

Michelle Frechette (00:34:53) – Okay, so that’s another one, right?

Corey Maass (00:34:55) – Image from content. Without having to find an image. Find a photo.

Michelle Frechette (00:35:05) – Right or graphic, I would say. Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:35:09) – Fine. Be specific.

Michelle Frechette (00:35:11) – I mean, you know, I just wrote that article yesterday and it made me think about the differences of, of photographs versus. You know graphic images that have been generated.

Corey Maass (00:35:25) – Yeah. And, and that’s, that’s a different conversation. But that’s something that I’ve definitely struggled with and I think I’ve. Thank you. Thank you. ChatGPT like finally landed on like.

Corey Maass (00:35:41) – In a sentence. How do you say we. We take your image and make your image make a better image. Like, you can’t say that in language. And so, I think most of us will differentiate a. They are all images. A photo probably came from a camera. Or I suppose now AI. But now graphic.

Michelle Frechette (00:36:06) – No, AI is graphics. They are not photos. Photos have to be something that is captures with a camera.

Corey Maass (00:36:10) – THere you go. Unless it looks like a photo?

Michelle Frechette (00:36:12) – No, it’s still not a photo.

Corey Maass (00:36:14) – I hear you.

Michelle Frechette (00:36:15) – It’s still generated.

Corey Maass (00:36:17) – But would most normal people agree?

Michelle Frechette (00:36:20) – They should. Because, for example, there were images. This is a little bit of an aside, but I was watching a lot of things online about the Met Gala, which was last night, and all of these crazy like getups that people wear to the Met Gala and Katy Perry photos at the Met Gala were circulating, even though Katy Perry wasn’t at the Met Gala, and even her own mother messaged her to say, I didn’t know you were going to be there.

Michelle Frechette (00:36:46) – That dress is gorgeous, but if you zoom in on the photos, number one, it’s the wrong carpet from last night’s event. And number two, the photographers in the back are missing fingers, halves of faces. Like, you know where AI kind of fell down on the job in the background. but if it is a generated image and not an actual photo of something that actually happened, I will fight to the death to say that’s not a photograph.

Corey Maass (00:37:14) – Which I again, I agree. But but if you showing that graphic to, you know, my dad, he’d be like, oh, that’s a cool photo even if it’s generated. But I hear you. But yeah. So image overall photo versus graphic versus, you know, and like you get into vector and and dot dot dot. But, I love, like, sometimes you need it with, Brian Eno. A long time ago. Was it him who started it? Had a deck of cards that were essentially like, play it backwards.

Corey Maass (00:37:56) – He was a musician. Play it backwards. You know, play it underwater. Play it, you know, six play at 100 octaves higher. Play it like outrageous things, but it like.

Michelle Frechette (00:38:07) – It’s only dogs can hear it.

Corey Maass (00:38:09) – Yeah, right. You know, essentially random idea generator or random variable generator. And so. I love that for like ChatGPT or like even a dictionary once in a while. Like you just flip through and point at words. But but I love the phrase visuals now, and so.

Michelle Frechette: Oh yeah.

Corey Maass: Because I think that still has like an elegant feel to it. I mean, obviously this is all colloquial. I have no idea how Australians are going to interpret the word visuals. But like taking an image and creating visuals, I love that. That was a digression, I apologize.

Michelle Frechette (00:38:48) – I like it though. No. That’s good. Actually, it’s good marketing talk, right? How do you describe the product in a way that people understand without getting overly specific or irritating people, that that’s not a photo, right? Like, because there are people like me who will say, that’s not a photo.

Corey Maass (00:39:02) – Yeah.

Michelle Frechette (00:39:04) – And marketing professionals, especially when we look at that persona, are going to be more specific about the kind of image that you’re using. So to use a general term like visuals makes sense. At the umbrella level? Absolutely I agree.

Corey Maass (00:39:25) – Editor in app. So anyway, we’ve I feel like we’ve got we’ve got a list going. Of some of these things. And then the when we we as, as has been talked about, we receive we got most of our sales during Black Friday when we launched, last November and about half of the sales, we were able to identify as agencies based on their email addresses and doing a little customer homework, essentially. So. At the at the high level. I feel like you’ve got. You’ve got groups of people and you’ve got individuals. My expectation is at least like the way that I’m using it, I’m, you know, I have a music blog that I’ve talked about. I have, you know, my, my music website. I’ve got a couple of other project websites.

Corey Maass (00:40:33) – Anytime that I and so today I, we, we published an article on OMG. Written by this amazing author named Michelle. And so that was then. We then pushed that to socials.

Corey Maass (00:40:51) – Right and so that’s not an agency scenario. That is a. Presumably. I guess it’s like we. Why do we put out blog posts to try to draw, to get people’s attention? Hey! Over here!

Michelle Frechette (00:41:06) – Right.

Corey Maass (00:41:06) – because the the blog post itself was relevant to images and, and talked about all the amazing ways to like what makes a featured image good, but it wasn’t specific to it wasn’t another blog post where Corey talks about some new feature in OMG, right? Right. So the intent is to draw the attention of people thinking about what makes a good featured image, to get them to the website, to them that get them to go, oh what is this OMG thing? And so there’s a couple I think a couple of ways to look at it. one is. From a marketing standpoint.

Corey Maass (00:41:46) – So obviously there’s two of us. We wear lots of hats. But at the moment of writing that blog post and then publishing that blog post, we were representing the marketing department. Is that fair to say?

Michelle Frechette (00:42:03) – It is.

Corey Maass (00:42:04) – So. So to me that’s. You know.

Corey Maass (00:42:08) – That’s why a marketer. Would be interested in what I’m saying.

Michelle Frechette (00:42:16) – So that’s okay. So the way I see those four distilled down to three, if I might, would be. Basically your blogger/entrepreneur. So somebody who’s building and working on their own site by themselves or very, very small. Okay. And then you have agencies who are building sites and doing marketing for others. And then that third are people in-house at a bigger organization like Stellar WP, like Freemius, like, you know, some of your big ones who are doing in-house marketing and using that product at a more, I don’t know, enterprise level, if that’s the right terminology. and so those are the three different people that that were primarily marketing to those, the small.

Michelle Frechette (00:43:03) – You know, I would say mom and pop, but it’s not mom and pop. Like it’s me on my blog. It’s it’s, you know, somebody who’s it’s Marc Westergaard, who’s, you know, got WS Form and and he’s a show of his own. Right. And then you have the people who are, like Bohannan, who are building sites for other people and who are helping maintain those sites for other people who are helping come up with all of those kinds of content and creating those sites. And then the third would be the marketing team at Stellar WP, who’s putting all the images and everything out onto our brand pages. So that’s kind of like how I saw it. And I and you know, feel free to push back on that because it was hard for me to kind of get my myself around that in a, in a way, because like, agencies are still marketers, bloggers are still marketing and so like, but to like think of it as those particular three personas and, and it’s a little bit by size but also by intention.

Michelle Frechette (00:44:00) – Right. So a marketing team can be just as big as your, as your agency team. But there’s they’re creating for a different group of people.

Corey Maass (00:44:10) – Marketing.

Michelle Frechette (00:44:12) – I know it’s hard, right?

Corey Maass (00:44:15) – Mechanisms. Mechanisms

Michelle Frechette (00:44:15) -. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette (00:44:17) – Automation mechanism. Whatever. Yeah. Automation might not always be the right word but. Yeah.

Corey Maass(00:44:23) – So it’s. Yeah. So I’m. Yeah I’m. Everything you said was amazing and perfect as ever. I am.

Michelle Frechette (00:44:32) – I was wish…

Corey Maass (00:44:34) – Right. but trying. Yeah. I’m, I’m typing and thinking, so obviously I’m not ignoring you or disagreeing.

Michelle Frechette (00:44:41) – nope. But but if you do have different ideas, then let’s discuss them, because I have.

Corey Maass: Sure, sure.

Michelle Frechette: Because I have an idea, you know?

Corey Maass (00:44:49) – So. Yeah. So. Agencies. The emphasis is is for others.

Michelle Frechette (00:44:55) – Right.

Corey Maass (00:44:57) – So it’s.

Michelle Frechette (00:44:59) – That website is your client’s website, not your company website or your personal website.

Corey Maass (00:45:05) – Right, exactly. Clients. so it’s because it’s about. Helping clients.

Michelle Frechette (00:45:13) – Right?

Corey Maass (00:45:13) – And getting paid for it.

Michelle Frechette (00:45:15) – Absolutely.

Corey Maass (00:45:18) – So you’re. Yeah. Agencies being. So I think we can. Yeah. Building. Yeah. Building. Because it’s the building sites like yes, they might install the plugin, but what the reason they would install the plugin.

MIchelle Frechette (00:45:37) – Right.

Corey Maass (00:45:37) – Is.

Michelle Frechette (00:45:39) – Is that marketing mechanism. Yep.

Corey Maass (00:45:41) – Is that marketing mechanism. Like here are it’s like what. You know we’re we’re going to build you a website and we’re going to install an SEO plugin. We’re also going to install OMG because whenever you generate content, whatever it is, it needs these things. It needs SEO, it needs open graph fields. It needs and it needs open graph images. It needs featured images that have more value than just uploading a picture of a person typing on a keyboard.

Michelle Frechette (00:46:09) – Yes.

Corey Maass (00:46:12) – And then so yeah. And I think this is great because these things overlap, which is fine. But these are probably, as we said, the different personas, the different roles we’re going to try to speak to.

Michelle Frechette (00:46:25) – I think to make it a little bit clearer, I would I would put the top one is marketing agencies and the next one is marketing teams, because the team is within a larger corporation. Does that does that help distinguish it a little bit?

Corey Maass (00:46:37) – Totally. Yep. Marketing. One. I think we could even go in-house.

Michelle Frechette (00:46:45) – Yep.

Corey Maass (00:46:46) – Marketing team.

Michelle Frechette (00:46:47) – So it’s. Yeah, exactly.

Corey Maass (00:46:49) – The agencies that include marketing. It’s them. It’s not them doing the marketing.

Michelle Frechette: It could be,

Corey Maass: but it’s them. True.

Corey Maass (00:47:05) – But then it sort of shifts to that, like, and again, like there’s the overlap.

Michelle Frechette (00:47:09) – Not necessarily like if I think about, Lindsey Miller and Content Journey, they are creating all of that as a marketing company and marketing agency for their customer.

Corey Maass (00:47:21) – Got it, got it, got it.

Michelle Frechette (00:47:22) – And so that’s what I was thinking along for the agency is they may have built the site, but they’re also helping with getting the marketing out there. So maybe they’re doing the social media.

Michelle Frechette (00:47:32) – They’re doing the blog posting there. You know they’re gathering featured images and in app or in post images and things like that to tell the story of their customers. And it’s almost always white labeled. Right. You’re not going to see Lindsey Miller Content Journey on XYZ website as the author, but that’s you know, but that that place is outsource their marketing, or at least that part of their marketing for somebody to help them do that.

Corey Maass (00:48:02) – I think this is where we run the risk of, like, talking ourselves in a circle though.

Michelle Frechette (00:48:06) – Right.

Corey Maass (00:48:07) – Does it at the at the end of the day, we’re talking about a person who’s going to install OMG for somebody else. Or install OMG for themselves. And and and then we can break that down further.

Michelle Frechette (00:48:26) – But so let me ask you this then.

Corey Maass (00:48:29) – Please.

Michelle Frechette (00:48:30) – Is is the person we’re marketing to, the person who’s installing it or the person who’s using it? Because those might be two different people.

Corey Maass (00:48:39) – Exactly. And that’s and that’s what I’m setting it up for somebody else.

Corey Maass (00:48:44) – So like to me an agency that says that hands over the keys. And so they they might they install Yoast, they install, a security plugin. They install, you know, all of the, the things they might install. They install OMG, they might write documentation that says, here’s everything you should do every time you add a product to your Woo shop or EDD shop, or every time you generate a blog post or any, any time dot dot dot. And so I guess that to me is why it’s agencies that include because we, you know, for others different from and I realize so in-house it’s like the people who are actually going to touch do it, you know, who are going to touch the plug in. So it could be an in-house marketing team that, you know, and so maybe, maybe there’s a lot that like there might be a lot of overlap between these first two, but they are I, I hear you I agree they are. They are. They might be slightly different.

Corey Maass (00:49:52) – So these are like, you know, hand over the keys and the client does it. So what you know, so listing the benefits of you know how do you when you hand over a website what is the how do you sell to. So I’m, I build a website for my local bakery. What is my explanation for installing Rank SEO and why I might charge them more for using my license, or I might why I might tell them I’ve installed it. Same with one a security plugin and whatever theme I might have chosen. Right? Versus. Yeah, talking to Lindsey Miller and saying and her saying, you know or why why we might because she would buy it, right? She would buy it for her own use. same as a in-house marketing team again, like you said, you know, Freemius has a team of marketers, let’s say, you know, why would somebody go to Vova, somebody on their team, go to Vova and say, hey, we need to spend 100 bucks a year on this plugin because dot dot dot.

Michelle Frechette: Right.

Corey Maass (00:51:11) – Versus, I’m making the decision myself. Right is. Somebody is,

Corey Maass (00:51:25) – Jonathan, I’m always flubbing his last name. Bassinger. Who is. You know, he he’s blogging, Or Tom McFarland. Right? Just putting out these these fabulous, tutorials or blog posts. How to do recently he how to do closures in PHP. You know, he’s writing his own blog posts for his own blog to benefit his own brand. The Tom McFarland brand. Boy, I hope I’m saying his name right.

Michelle Frechette (00:52:02) – I think so.

Corey Maass (00:52:04) – Or Corey putting out or and Michelle putting out a blog post to promote OMG. But we are a team of two.

Michelle Frechette (00:52:15) – We’re a rag tag team.

Corey Maass(00:52:17) – They. Rag tag. Love it. Well, yeah, but I like to me that’s that’s this, you know, and again, this is why it’s such an interesting conversation. My my other dog agrees.

Michelle Frechette (00:52:28) – Hahahahaha!

Corey Maass (00:52:30) – We’re getting close to dinnertime so. you can.

Michelle Frechette (00:52:33) – Tell they’re everybody.

Corey Maass (00:52:33) – Starts to lose their minds.

Michelle Frechette (00:52:36) – Hungry cranky.

Corey Maass (00:52:39) – Convince. I remember reading about this years ago, but like the if you’re, you know, having to list the benefits, it’s like, trying to sell a, sell a product to developers who work at a, a tech firm is like, you’ve got to convince the developer to then convince the decision maker, because the developer might not be the decision maker. Decision maker and maybe that may be the same. With a marketing agency. Who.

Michelle Frechette: Hmhm.

Corey Maass (00:53:23) – Lindsey might be making the decision. Mostly because I’m going to tell Cory, and Cory is going to tell her and she loves me. So, she will just go. Yes, of course, but one of the people who write for her. Go to a WordCamp with that that Corey and Cory are not at, and somebody says, oh, you should. You know, if you’re generating content that includes generating images, you should be using this OMG plugin. And she needs to then go back to Lindsey and say, we need we need this plugin.

Corey Maass (00:54:01) – That’s interesting. That’s really interesting.

Michelle Frechette (00:54:06) – It is. And one of the most interesting things about it is it’s not necessarily easy to figure this stuff out, right? Like you think, oh, it should be so easy. We’ll just boom, boom, boom. We’ll have our personas. But. It isn’t as easy as that. It does take some time to think it through and what we say today we might tweak tomorrow.

Corey Maass: 100%.

Michelle Frechette: For sure.

Corey Maass (00:54:31) – That’s really cool because it’s it’s also like. Yeah. Who’s who’s going to plug in the credit card number.

Michelle Frechette (00:54:40) – But who told them to like is the right. So like if it’s you or me we’re just plugging it in ourselves. Right. But if we’re marketing agency like at Stellar, like I have to say I have to requisition that. Right. Like we want to buy this, I have to say why I want to buy this. And then I have to say, here’s where you go do this for me, because they’re not just handing out credit cards right and left to everybody that works at a big company.

Michelle Frechette (00:55:02) – So it’s it’s an it’s somebody influencing, like you said, not only influencing the decision maker, but then there’s a chain that happens. Like my own blog, I whip out my credit card and I just buy it, and then I download it and I install it. Boom. Done. And then.

Corey Maass (00:55:18) – And then you have confetti on your blog.

Michelle Frechette: And I have confetti.

Michelle Frechette (00:55:20) – And all those wonderful things. At a company like Liquid Web, I have to say why I want it. I have to convince other people to do it. Then once they buy it, somebody else will have to install it for me because I don’t install plugins on our WordPress websites even though I can. But that’s not my job. And then the people who have that job need to do that job. So where for myself, that decision was five minutes, at a company it might be a week before something like or even two, depending on what the workload for those other people looks like in the meantime. So it’s different. It’s a different, timing process.

Michelle Frechette (00:55:57) – I can’t think of the right word, but cycle, purchase cycle, it’s a different kind of yeah, I’m not saying they’re all right, but you know what I’m trying to say?

Corey Maass (00:56:07) – Credit card. Yeah. And so I think these are the at this level, these are the same. But the benefits might be different.

Michelle Frechette: Right.

Corey Maass: Explain the benefits to a client and why they need the plugin. So it’s yeah. So we’re decision maker. So we’ve got essentially potentially right now what we have. We have three different kinds of decision makers. Sorry. We have two different. You are the decision maker or somebody else is the decision maker. Ultimately.

Michelle Frechette: How many degrees of separation.

Corey Maass: Right.

Michelle Frechette (00:56:56) – How many degrees of separation are there between you, the decision maker, and the person with the credit card? I mean, that’s that could be a different situation for every company. But yeah, there’s it isn’t necessarily as cut and dry as you might like it to be.

Corey Maass (00:57:10) – Right. So yeah. So at the top level it’s I’m making this decision or somebody else is making the decision.

Michelle Frechette (00:57:16) – Yes.

Corey Maass (00:57:17) – And then underneath the other people are making a decision. You’ve got it’s probably a boss, a team leader, an owner or and that kind of in my mind that visually goes up.

Corey Maass (00:57:31) – Versus you’ve got a client that in my mind visually goes down, you know, many to one and one to many. If I want to get developer nerdy about it, database schema about it.

Michelle Frechette (00:57:44) – Let’s see. Array I don’t know what an array is. I just like using it just for that.

Corey Maass (00:57:51) – You used it perfectly. I was hoping that was what you were.

Michelle Frechette (00:57:54) – No idea.

Corey Maass (00:57:54) – Totally. Totally nailed it.

Michelle Frechette (00:57:57) – Good to know.

Corey Maass (00:57:58) – Ones and zeros all the way down. but yeah. So you’ve got you essentially, you know, in three out of four of these as we have them at the moment, you need to explain it to somebody else, convince somebody else that it’s worth it.

Corey Maass (00:58:14) – Two of those are up. The boss, the team leader, the owner. One of them is is the client down. And so it’s documentation. It’s and I think it’s in some in some aspects it’s at least some scenario depending on who owns the license, it’s easier to convince a client because hopefully you’ve established yourself as the expert and they’re doing what you tell them to do. You know, you’re going, look, you need to use this, you know, two factor authentication plugin for security. You need to use this SEO plugin for these benefits. You need to use dot dot dot. Versus, you know. Yeah. Like you said, you going to somebody else at a team you work on and saying, hey, I need the company credit card, or can I send you a shopping cart where you buy this and then plug in the license, and then now we have the benefits of using this, right.

Michelle Frechette (00:59:12) – Yeah, exactly.

Corey Maass (00:59:13) – I think we stop here. I think this is a top of the hour, but this is already fantastic.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah. I think its a good place to stop.

Corey Maass (00:59:19) – It’s just. It’s so like, I love this the psychology of it and the, I love putting things in boxes. I’m a developer. I guess that makes sense. Right?

Corey Maass (00:59:33) – But it’s like.

Michelle Frechette (00:59:33) – Yeah, but there’s nuance to it. Where it becomes so intriguing.

Corey Maass (00:59:37) – Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:59:38) – Concentric circles. Yeah. They they overlap. But defining those things and defining the rules. So much better then. I mean, as you saw what I said, what we what we started with. Because Corey and in ten minutes. Well essentially with the designer had on said we want you know, you want twos, threes or fours. And so you know, I said, okay, let’s do four boxes. Content creator and blogger are different things when they’re not.

Michelle Frechette (01:00:07) – There’s there was a video earlier this year and I, I’m sure I won’t be able to find it, but I’ll try. Where they have like those children’s blocks where they have all the different shapes that you have to put the, the, the circle one through the circle and the square one through the square and the half moon, through the half moon or whatever.

Corey Maass (01:00:23) – I failed those, I always failed those. Square peg.Round hole. My whole life.

Michelle Frechette (01:00:27) – So much of those. But and you’re a developer, I thought you would like to to get it right. Get it right. But, but there was one where people were selling this, like basically a bucket with the different shaped holes on top, and they, the different shaped things that were supposed to go through them. But it turned out that if you just turned things one certain way, they could all fit through the same hole. Because it wasn’t designed properly to actually test those kinds of theories. That’s but that’s so, so in that respect that you have like and it kind of makes me think of this. Right. So like does OMGIMG do the same thing for every end user. Yeah. You could put all the blocks through that one hole, right? But that’s not how you market it. You market it so that the star goes through the star hole. The circle goes in the circle hole.

Michelle Frechette (01:01:16) – The square goes in the square hole.

Corey Maass (01:01:17) – Moon. There was a crescent moon.

Michelle Frechette (01:01:18) – The half moon. Yep. Goes in the half moon one. Yeah. That kind of thing because that’s how people think of themselves. They don’t think of themselves as, as I’m the one that goes with everything. They think of themselves in those different things. And that’s why you have to market to them.

Corey Maass (01:01:31) – So. Yeah.

Corey Maass (01:01:32) – Well, and that’s why like I love the exercise. I, I might continue with this of like I envision a matrix a spreadsheet. That has the benefits, the features and and essentially a cross section where you could do like okay, if you’ve got all of the features and then a column per persona green, green, green and and there’s going to be a lot of overlap, but it’s not going to be 100%. And so you can focus on the highest value for each one. And they might generally be the same. But there’s got like you said, there’s going to be a little bit of nuance.

Corey Maass (01:02:10) – And then like I mentioned earlier. My intention then with the language would be to speak Lindsey Miller’s language, to speak Tom’s language, to speak, you know, different essentially. And there might be a key word or two that I can use in the intro paragraph, because I talked about this a long time ago. Totally stole the idea from. Oh gosh, it’s the plugin that has the, like superhero. I have it bookmarked somewhere. but they have. On their website like they had these customer types, and you could click through to each customer type, like they took the avatar thing all the way to the logical extreme. but you know, clicking through, it’s like what’s what is the language and speaking to them.

Michelle Frechette (01:03:02) – What’s in it for me.

Corey Maass (01:03:02) – Saying, yeah, saying to the agency on the agency page, saying like, okay, you have a client, how do you how do you sell this to the client so that you it makes you look good versus you have a blog, why would you buy this? Because it makes you look good, etc..

Michelle Frechette (01:03:21) – Exactly. Awesome.

Corey Maass (01:03:24) – Now all we got to do is go do all of it.

Michelle Frechette (01:03:27) – I mean, you know, no biggie, right? We are not meeting next week. So we will be skipping a week, I think.

Corey Maass (01:03:37) – How dare you.

Michelle Frechette (01:03:38) – It’s you. You cancel next week. It wasn’t me.

Corey Maass (01:03:44) – I can look. I will be driving somewhere in around New Jersey by the time we’re doing our call. So we could do it from the road. But.

Speaker 3 (01:03:55) – Let’s skip a week.

Corey Maass (01:03:57) – But you’ll hear more cursing than anybody should ever hear.

Michelle Frechette (01:04:02) – So everybody, thank you for tuning in. We will see you in two weeks if you have ideas for us, if you have different ideas, if you think we just did this all wrong, please let us know. We’d love, we’d love to learn from you. So.

Corey Maass (01:04:15) – Yes, please. I’m making this up as we go along based on the five minutes of googling right before the call.

Michelle Frechette (01:04:23) – Building the plane as it takes off.

Michelle Frechette (01:04:25) – Yes. All right, we’ll see everybody next time.

This article, Marketing a WordPress Product Live: Session 12, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Matt Mullenweg Suggests a Year of Iteration Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, has publicly pondered the idea of a “Year of Iteration” for the WordPress project in 2025. * This comes amidst discussions about the rapid pace of innovation in WordPress, and the growing divide between the codebase and developers’ understanding of it. * WordPress is losing market share among the top 10k, 100k, and 1M websites, with job redundancies, flat lining revenue, and fewer developers joining the ecosystem. * A “Year of Iteration” could help WordPress become more approachable to users while reinforcing its strengths. * As an agency owner and WordPress educator, I think a year to allow developers and users to catch up could be a very good thing. And fixing the various “quirks” in the Block and Site Editors wouldn’t be so bad, either. * Documentation that is lagging behind could also be improved, making the project more accessible to experienced and new developers alike, especially those with less JavaScript knowledge. * A focus on UX and UI improvements could significantly enhance the user experience across the spectrum, from individual users to agencies and enterprises. * What about you? Do you think a year to catch our breath (and fix outstanding issues) would help or hurt the WordPress community?* * Read this thoughtful article from James Giroux and see what think.

Google’s March 2024 Core Update: Key Insights for Web Agencies As the SEO dust has settled a bit since Google’s March 2024 core update, experts are now able to offer analysis on its broad impact. * Websites with high-quality, relevant content experienced improved visibility, emphasizing Google’s long-standing preference for valuable information. * Sites offering thin content or engaging in keyword stuffing saw noticeable drops in rankings. * Local SEO specialists have noted fluctuating rankings in Google Business Profiles, making it crucial to continually optimize them for local search visibility. * Agencies should continue to prioritize mobile-first design, speed, and security to maintain a competitive advantage. * How do you need to adapt your strategies to the latest Google core update for better SEO outcomes?* * As usual, Search Engine Land has an in-depth look at the changes (including charts and graphs) to help you understand it all.

2 Interesting WP Acquisitions This Week StellarWP acquires LearnDash addons from WisdmLabs + StellarWP is Liquid Web‘s brand for premium WordPress solutions, of which LearnDash is a part. + WisdmLabs add-ons (like Reporting, Groups, and Ratings) have long been a favorite of LearnDash users. + “The plugins and add-ons that WisdmLabs brings will help us continue to innovate and provide valuable LMS solutions for educators using WordPress natively or LearnDash Cloud.” – Zach Tirrell, StellarWP General Manager * Convesio has aquired Growthmatik* + Convesio is a high performance hosting provider for WooCommerce. + Growmatik offers cutting-edge marketing automation tools for WordPress and WooCommerce. + “Growmatik (is) not just an acquisition but a significant enhancement to our technology stack, enabling us to offer our clients a more robust, all-encompassing marketing solution.” – Tom Fanelli, CEO of Convesio

Worth a Look* WordPress 6.6 is on the way (July 16, 2024). The updated 6.6 Roadmap explains what we are expecting. Check it out. * Need assistance getting your clients to understand security? This Admin Bar post can help. * Historically, integrating Hubspot into your WordPress site has been a challenge. Try one of these three methods – which also work with the generous free Hubspot offering.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending May 10, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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This Week at WordPress.org (May 5, 2024)News* WordPress 6.5.3 Maintenance Release * Apply for the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for WordCamp US 2024 * Interactivity API Showcase Thread * jQuery 4 Update Test

Accessibility* Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: May 3, 2024

Community* Community Team May Meeting Recap

DEIB Working Group* 2024-05-03 DEIB Working Group Meeting

Core * Core Editor Improvement: Upgrade your designs * What’s new in Gutenberg 18.3? (8 May) * Recap: WordPress 6.5 “Regina” Retrospective * Merge Proposal: Preferred Languages * Progress Report: HTML API * Proposal: Server to client data sharing for Script Modules * Roadmap to 6.6 * Core Performance Team Update: April 2024 * Data Liberation: Project plan * Data Liberation: Outreach recap and updates

Core TracBugs* Twenty Twenty Theme: Quote block align text is not working properly in front-end side * Update get_attachment_link() to return image URL when attachment pages are turned off * CSS: Parse Error. html :where([style * =border-top-color]) * wp:post-date format including html tag * Our rest api User listing has chances to reveal username of Administrator User “wp-json/wp/v2/users” * Multisite: Marking a user account as spam, also marks the blogs he’s a member of as spam

Enhancements Fix coding standards issues in elements block supports * class WP_User(), mark prop $deleted as deprecated * Disable Post via email Gutenberg DiscussionsDiscussions Query Loop Block – Insert block after so many posts * Why not have the style engine generate reasonable semantic classes instead of repetitive .wp-container-whatever classes? * Why is removeEditorPanel deprecated and is there a new alternative? * Expand on Click for Galleries is Clunky and Inefficient – Toggle for Entire Gallery? * FSE: Issue applying Gutenberg Template for Custom Post Type in a Plugin * Changelog – Tracking Breaking Changes in the Interactivity API * Attaching multiple handlers to an event and allowing asynchronous event handlers * Interactivity API showcase * Move away from the verb ‘Toggle’ in the UI * Interactivity outside blocks or as “standalone” (like Alpine.js)? * Router region replacement funky with Query-No-Results block after Post-Template block * Block not working when using custom webpack * Support for lazy hydration techniques: idle and view Gutenberg IssuesFeature Requests* RichText not focusable in InnerBlocks * Avoid more occurrences of the term ‘sidebar’ in user-facing strings * Social Icons: Add Bluesky social icon * Interactivity API: Improve readability in directives check function inside vdom.ts * Command Palette: add command to switch back to the site editor * Custom HTML Block should display content in LTR layout for all languages * Navigation block: unable to explore block settings moving with Tab key

Fixes* Pattern Overrides: Button block left empty in original pattern and used as an override throws an error in pattern instances * Calendar Block Color options are not working properly * Focus ring doesn’t match button Site Hub Icon size * Custom attributes for list block are lost when migrating from WordPress 5.5.1 to WordPress 6.1.1 * Several Typo Correction in Inline doc * Patterns: Unable to insert pattern in nested location * Time to Read block showing “this block has encountered an error” * Regression: Hovering preview frame no longer scales it up * [@wordpress/components] [TypeScript] Unnecessary Requirement of Pointer Events on SVG Components

Other Updates Gutenberg plugin v18.3, stable release May 8, 2024 * Refine how the ‘Always open list view’ preference should work * Improve the block inserter labeling Performance Plugin srcset not created when “Generate JPEG files in addition to WebP” enabled * Initial implementation of improved image sizes algorithm * Collect and measure impact of image sizes improvements Core Meetings* Summary, Dev Chat, May 8, 2024 * Performance Chat Summary: 7 May 2024 * Performance Chat Agenda: 7 May 2024

Developer Blog:* Building a book review site with Block Bindings, part 1: Custom fields and block variations

WordPress Developer Blog Content Discussions Curating the Editor Experience: Tips & Tricks * How JSON schema versioning works and how it’s different from the theme.json version * Customizing and extending the Formatting Toolbar * Classic themes: tutorial on moving away from widgets to template parts * Performance best practices * Tutorial on how to create custom components Design Design Share #55 (Apr 22-May 3)

Documentation* Summary for Docs Team Discussion Meeting (07-May-2024) * Documentation Team Update – May 6, 2024 * Create a Mail page under Server Configuration

Documentation-Issue-Tracker Mobile App – How to add a link? * Mobile App – How do I embed an Instagram photo? Hosting Hosting Team meeting agenda 2024-05-08

Five for the Future* Update Five for the Future Documentation to Support Company and Contributor Onboarding and Retention * Request: create two report tools for Five for the Future

Marketing* WordPress Media Corps Next Steps * Media Corps discussion: Points of Contact

Marketing WordPress.org YouTube video showing how release pages are created with blocks Meta Meeting Agenda for May 1, 2024 * The Plugin Directory gets a refresh

Showcase* Allow exporting of user feedback * Showcase breadcrumbs issue

WP Org Main (Theme)* Set page templates for all pages

Meta Trac & GitHubHere are the issues and discussions from the files metatracmay9.html, wporg.pdf, wordcamp.pdf, and theme directory.pdf formatted as requested:

Meta Trac * “Views” widget missing in Theme’s and Plugin’s forum views * Update Credits for WordPress 6.5.3 * Allow images in plugin and theme pages

WordPress.org * Improve font size, underlining, other, in plugin sidebar * Modify search results total when there are more than 1000 results * Proposal to refine plugin search bar layout * Add “Community” and “Commercial” descriptions to search archives * Considerations for future homepage redesigns * Add a resource that teaches people what plugins are and how to use them

Theme Directory * Theme Directory Redesign: Make the translation link more visible * Favorites: Logged out view shows as “nothing found” * Theme Directory Redesign: H1 size is very small * Single theme: Ratings breakdown buggy on Rosetta sites * New Theme: No screenshot in embed template Meta WordCamp Redirect eu.wordcamp.org to WCEU * Add style.css to wporg-events-2023 * Ignore locale when sorting for shortcode “camptix_attendees” * Favorite Session Enhancement * Improve design of Cookies close & accept Popup Openverse A week in Openverse: 2024-04-29 – 2024-05-06 * The Openverse API is moving to api.openverse.org

Openverse GitHub Remove the ssrRef from provider store * Initialize the feature flag store state on server request * Replace invalid license value in the catalog database * Audio waveform should return 424 instead of 500 when waveform cannot be generated * Replace the sample string in a secret with a more obviously safe value * The just api/init command fails when executed repeatedly in succession * Incorporate djlint to lint HTML templates Playground wpCLI step in the example doesn’t match with the heading * runPHPWithOptions step in the example doesn’t match with the heading * Remove “Step” word after each step heading * ifAlreadyInstalled does not work * Unexpected error when exporting to Github

Plugins* Plugin Review Team: 6 May 2024

Polyglots* Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – May 8, 2024 (13:00 UTC)

Sustainability* Sustainability Chat Summary, April 26, 2024

Test* Early opportunities to Test WordPress 6.6 * Test Team Chat Agenda for 7 May 2024 * Test Team Update: 6 May 2024

Themes* Themes team update May 07, 2024

Community Themes Archivist: add color palettes for styles Training Training Team Meeting Recap – 02nd May 2024 * Request for feedback: AI-generated voiceovers for video content * Project thread: The second Learn WordPress Course Cohort * Training Team Update – May 2024

Online Workshops* Homepage displays: Latest posts vs static * How to facilitate Online Workshop for the WordPress Training Team * How to facilitate Online Workshop for the WordPress Training Team * Testing Studio by WordPress.com * Developer Hours: Alternatives to Custom Meta Boxes in the Block Editor

Learn GitHub Issues Learning Pathways landing page * Single Lesson page * Add locale suggestion banner * Feedback – Introduction FULL-FEATUERD WP-Version * Meeting Agenda May 9, 2024 * Language post meta field * Feedback – wrong answer in sitemaps lesson plan * Understanding the Difference Between Action Hooks and Filter Hooks * Add Audience taxonomy to Lessons and Courses (Closed) * Lessons landing page template WPTV Latest WordPress TV videos

The PHP project has decided to extend security support for versions from one to two years.

The same RFC clarifies a few other items, such as when minor features can be introduced during the release process.

You can read the updated document at: https://t.co/PgyOUn9YvH

— php.net (@official_php) May 9, 2024

• Upgrading jQuery: Working Towards a Healthy Web
• Curl for 8.7.1
• Node 22.1.0
• React 18.3.1 (April 26, 2024), React 19 Upgrade Guide
• PHP 8.3.7 Released!
• PHP 8.2.19 Released!
• PHP 8.1.28 Released!
• PHPCS 3.9.2
• WPCS 3.1.0
• Requests 2.0.11
• PHPMailer 6.9.1
• LibZip 1.10.1
• MySQL 8.3
• Composer 2.7.4
• Homebrew 4.2.20
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes

Thanks for reading our WP.org roundup! We highlight the news and discussions from the good folks making WordPress possible each week. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.

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This article, Early Opportunity to Test WP 6.6 • WP 6.5.3 Released • 5ftF Documentation • Core Proposals, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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WordPress Plugin Directory Gets a Facelift, Needs a Bit More This week, the WordPress plugin directory got a visual update “to standardize the site’s layout, fonts, spacing, and colors with other newly updated sections of WordPress.org.” * The changes look really good, in my opinion – the design team did an excellent job. But what I’d much rather see is an improvement to the poor quality of plugin search results. * For the last 10 years, I’ve done a monthly Plugin Roundup on Solid Academy (formerly iThemes Training). As I prepare each month, I find it harder and harder to locate plugins with the search tool. * Searching for a plugin, even by exact name, often doesn’t return the result you’re looking for in the top listings. * Popular plugins take precedence and others keyword-stuff their titles to gain rankings. * I’m grateful for the work that went into the new design. Could we do some work on the search algorithm, too? * What do you think about the quality of search results in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory?*

ChatGPT Gets Personal: How the Memory Update Enhances AI Conversations* ChatGPT’s new Memory feature allows it to remember personal details shared in conversations, enhancing its ability to provide context-rich answers. * Memory is enabled automatically but you can opt out, or control what it remembers in Settings under Personalization. * You can add facts to ChatGPT’s Memory directly by chatting with the bot or using specific prompts. * Memories can be removed individually or cleared entirely through the Settings or by request in a chat. * If you share a ChatGPT account with other team members in your Agency, you may want to turn off Memory to avoid mixing details about each user.

Should You Worry About Medium-Severity WordPress Vulnerabilities? If you manage websites in your Agency like I do, you’re likely very familiar with the growing number of email notices about plugin vulnerabilities that hit your inbox. * In 2023, around 67% of these vulnerabilities were classified as medium-level severity. But what does that mean? * The severity level is determined using the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS Scores) based on a scale of 1-10. * Medium-level vulnerabilities are either difficult to exploit or provide limited benefits to attackers upon successful exploitation, so they are less likely to be used in large-scale attacks. * Many medium-severity vulnerabilities require contributor-level access, which many WordPress sites do not offer, making them less concerning for the majority of site owners. * While we should still update vulnerable extensions as soon as possible, there is not as much urgency at the medium-level as there is with high-severity vulnerabilities.* * If you’re managing WordPress sites, it’s still as important as ever to stay informed about vulnerabilities, and implement proactive security measures at the network, server, and WordPress level. * Read more in this SearchEngineJournal article.

Worth a Look* Google’s John Mueller explains what to do if your website gets de-indexed after a migration. * We know WordPress backups are critical. Here’s Patchstack’s list of the top backup plugins from a security perspective. They have a list of form plugins too. * Look at this in-depth comparison of the 15 fastest WordPress hosting providers with some surprising results.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending May 3, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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This Week at WordPress.org (April 28, 2024)News* WP Briefing: Episode 78: Guided Growth: Cultivating Contributors Through Mentorship * How WordPress Is Creating a Faster Web

Gutenberg’s Persistent Inserter SidebarEfforts are underway to make Gutenberg’s inserter sidebar persistently open, like other sidebars. This involves relocating tabs and considering the need for a close icon within the tab list, as discussed here and in a related PR. However, this change may delay immediate search functionality. The community is debating whether to prioritize persistent access or retain instant search when opening the inserter.

WordPress.org Website Redesign The Pattern Directory gets a refresh and is now powered by blocks + Demo site + Log issues in the WordPress/pattern-directory repository on GitHub + Patterns Figma * The Forums get a refresh + Accessibility: Remove Non-Block Editor in Forums + Figma Forums * Homepage updates * Plugin Directory* + Demo site + Log issues in the WordPress.org issues queue on GitHub or in Meta Trac * HelpHub Figma

Good news for WordPress theme authors! The new Patterns chapter is now live in the Theme Handbook:https://t.co/GOfxKyCnzR

— Justin Tadlock (@justintadlock) April 30, 2024

Accessibility* Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: May 3, 2024

CLI* Fifteen Merged PRs for WP-CLI Hack Day 2024

Community* Community Team Meeting Agenda for 2 – May -2024

Core * Merge Proposal: Rollback Auto-Update * What’s new in Gutenberg 18.2? (24 April) * WordPress 6.5 performance improvements * WordPress 6.6 call for volunteers update * Core Performance Team Update: April 2024 * Default Theme Task Force update – April 30, 2024

Core TracMenus* Change nav-menu-text-color CSS variable value * Consider introducing a dedicated endpoint for Block Hooks

Plugins* WordPress Plugin updates fail

Site Health* Improve i18n for disk space health checks

Upgrade/Install* PHP 8+ Fatal Error in WP_Upgrader due to TypeError in array_keys() Call * Return value of _wp_delete_all_temp_backups() isn’t used * Guard condition in delete_temp_backup() shouldn’t return early * Update jQuery UI library to version 1.13.3 * Yearly theme injection with auto-updates = true * Bulk Action ‘Send password reset’ on site-users.php isn’t coded * Avoid re-constructing WP_Theme_JSON object from raw theme_json, instead use WP_Theme_JSON object inside WP_Theme_JSON_data

REST API* PHP Warning with invalid JSON input

General* Interactivity API: Cannot be used from wp-admin * Search, Bookmark, and Folder Function In WordPress Dashboard * Officially expose the Site Editor Patterns page for all classic themes * getDate JS error when opening post

External Libraries* Update jQuery UI library to version 1.13.3

Editor* Editor: Fix block template files query for a post-type * Add support for column and row span in grid layout child blocks. * Tests: Html5lib-tests context tag needs to be reset * Remove version from docker-compose.yml file * Improve i18n for disk space health checks

Taxonomy* Unsupported count argument in WP_Term_Query DocBlock

Bundled Theme* Twenty Twenty-One: Font size difference between editor & frontend in Latest Comments block * Twenty Twenty-Four: Latest post block align is not working properly in editor side.

Build/Test Tools* phpcs error in wp-includes > capabilities.php line 1093 * Tests: Html5lib-tests context tag needs to be reset * Change nav-menu-text-color CSS variable value * Remove version from docker-compose.yml file

TinyMCE* Change <h1> Tags in TinyMCE Link Modal to <span> or Lesser Header Tags to Prevent Potential SEO Issues

Administration* Introduce a System to Store, Access, and Permit Use of External API Keys

Options, Meta APIs* update all update_option calling in core to set the autoload option

Roles/Capabilities* phpcs error in wp-includes > capabilities.php line 1093

Cache API object-cache.php is loaded, but cache.php still attempts to define functions. Gutenberg Issues Design and User Interface Rename “caption” element to “figcaption” in theme.json V3 * Remove font weight on toolbar tab button * Expose @emotion/styled to extenders * Typography Panel in the Block Inspector for core/paragraph never goes away even with all features disabled * Move color presets into the palette view * Typewriter Experience doesn’t work when Custom Fields are shown * Block background doesn’t work on Site Editor section * Move “Categories” and “Tags” sections back to the top part of sidebar… or make their order editable * LinkControl: Provide better way to see the full URLs * Improper Inserter block title text wrapping * Convert to component: Badge * Tricky issue with the Gutenberg Button Block Alignment and Justification option select style * Follow up questions on the duplicate post and page feature * Only engage zoom out mode if the editor is focused on an entity * JavaScript Documentation: Improve the JS API documentation tool.

Bug Fixes and Error Handling* React app are crashing if I use <Spinner/> inside <Notice/> * Restore the terms ‘Permalink’ and ‘Slug’ in the PostURl user interface * Do not use aria-details for InputControl and BaseControl * HTML structure of navigation blocks differs between editor and front * DateTimePicker: AM/PM switcher is not screen reader accessible * Moving blocks via keyboard: screen readers don’t notify operation done * Data Views: Some notices display encoded characters

Block Enhancements and Features* Group Block: Add Aspect Ratio Control * Query Loop / Post Template block: additional grid view layout options * New Block: Dialog Popup * Color & Typography Variations for WP 6.6 * Allow spacing in typography variations * Cover block image blurry due to incorrect srcset values * Only show color and typography variation control if alternate variations exist

Development and Code Quality* PHP backports for WP 6.6 * Block Editor Handbook not properly updated when two markdown files share the name (but not path) * Expose formatMap in @wordpress/date * Scripts: plugin-zip command does not exclude files not included in files field * Components: move border style utils to block-editor package * wp-scripts: minification of CSS imports is done too early in the process * Migrate DropdownMenu instances to DropdownMenu V2

Sync and Pattern Management* Idea: using the group block in synced patterns as a freeform content area (via pattern overrides) * Phase 3: Collaboration index * Phase 3: Revisions * Phase 3: Workflows

New Features and Major Enhancements Social Icons: Add Bluesky social icon * Inserter: Patterns tab state * Block Styles: Reducing specificity of default block style variation styles * Rename “caption” element to “figcaption” in theme.json V3 * Templates: allow replacing theme templates with custom templates * Expose @emotion/styled to extenders * Typography Panel in the Block Inspector for core/paragraph never goes away even with all features disabled Gutenberg Discussions Expand on Click for Galleries is Clunky and Inefficient – Toggle for Entire Gallery? * FSE : Issue applying Gutenberg Template for Custom Post Type in a Plugin * Limit color palette per usage / control (text / background…) * programmatic manipulation of styles (attributes.style) derrived from block supports features * Interactivity outside blocks or as “standalone” (like Alpine.js)? * Best Practices for Animations * Different values for device categories Core Meetings* Performance Chat Summary: 23 April 2024 * Summary, Dev Chat, May 1, 2024 * Performance Chat Summary: 30 April 2024 * Summary of Hallway Hangout on what’s next in Gutenberg * Summary, Dev Chat, April 24, 2024

Developer Blog:* How to use WordPress Playground for interactive demos

WordPress Developer Blog Content Discussions How JSON schema versioning works and how it’s different from the theme.json version * Customizing and extending the Formatting Toolbar * Classic themes: tutorial on moving away from widgets to template parts Design Design Share #54 (Apr 8-Apr 26)

Documentation* Summary for Docs Team Meeting (16-April-2024) * Documentation Team Update – April 29, 2024

Block Developer ExamplesHere’s the information formatted as a markdown list:

Block Development Examples meta-block-bb1e55: Improve example * Remove Experimental tag from examples using the Interactivity API * Create an example of using Block context Documentation-Issue-Tracker Two screenshots not loading within the Animoto Embed article * [HelpHub][6.5][screenshots]: Amazon Kindle Embed screenshots are broken * WXR file standard * Contributor Day — April 23, 2024 * Google Form Shortcode Not Displaying in Documentation * [HelpHub] Changing the category “Installation” * [HelpHub][6.5][screenshots]: First Steps with WordPress (Block Editor) Hosting* WordPress 6.5 PHP Compatibility

Five for the Future* Request: create two report tools for Five for the Future

Marketing* WordPress Media Corps Next Steps * Media Corps discussion: Points of Contact

Meta* Meeting Agenda for May 1, 2024 * The Plugin Directory gets a refresh

Showcase* Allow exporting of user feedback * Showcase breadcrumbs issue

WP Org Main (Theme)* Breadcrumb Navigation bar does Not Appear in Documentation and Support/Forums * About subpages: Breadcrumbs not translatable * Path and Link Broken in Theme Security Handbook * New landing page: Connecting influencers to affiliate programs (“Creator Connections”) * Adjustments in the Japanese version

Meta Trac & GitHubSupport Forums1. Search box takes up too much vertical; move up and to the right – New, Defect (Bug), Normal 2. Editor is rendered twice when replying a support topic – New, Defect (Bug), Normal 3. Closed reviews should not have a reply message box – Reopened, Defect (Bug), Normal 4. Background colors on views need distinction – New, Defect (Bug), Normal 5. Indented List Items breaking all parent list items – Closed, Defect (Bug), Normal 6. The footer layout breaks in SVN view – Closed, Defect (Bug), Normal 7. Forums: Underlined Text Not Rendered – Accepted, Defect (Bug), Low 8. Critical Error on Website – Closed, Defect (Bug), Normal

Plugin Directory1. Google Forms Shortcode Not Displaying in Documentation – Closed, Defect (Bug), Normal 2. The issue of blurry images in the WordPress repository within plugins on the internal page – Assigned, Defect (Bug), Normal 3. Add an option to remove the –ignore-domain parameter in wp i18n make-pot – New, Feature Request, Normal 4. Jetpack: Your site URL is a known local development environment URL – Closed, Defect (Bug), Lowest

Profiles1. .xyz domains error in WordPress.org profile edit form – Closed, Enhancement, Low

API1. Support always returning a beta or RC in core API version check – Closed, Feature Request, Normal

Translate Site & Plugins1. Design Issue: Underlines in submenu of polyglot sub page – New, Defect (Bug), Lowest

General1. Design issue : search suggestion have more space – Closed, Defect (Bug), Lowest

Swag Store (mercantile.wordpress.org)1. View Cart Design not looks good – New, Defect (Bug), Low 2. Improve the button design – New, Enhancement, Lowest

Make (Get Involved) / P21. Access to team meetings CPT – Closed, Enhancement, Low 2. Broken Link in Contribute handbook page – Closed, Defect (Bug), Low 3. The Likes widget is not vertically aligned with Reply and Follow buttons – Closed, Defect (Bug), Low 4. Add official “Team Reps” list in code / automate team rep access – New, Feature Request, Low 5. Design issue: On hover button text is not visible – Closed, Defect (Bug), Lowest 6. Add Hover effect on link – New, Enhancement, Lowest

WordPress Playground* Playground could not serve the request. * The activatePlugin step doesn’t throw an error when given invalid inputs * Loggers: Silence irrelevant error logs in unit tests

WordCamp.orgEnhancement* Try caching get_remaining_tickets in APCu to allow tickets to be ‘reserved’ during checkout, avoiding race condition

Hotfix* Transparency Report email automation

Feature* Verify the order before checking for error flags

Design* Update past events template to align with design

WordPress.orgSupport Forums* Support Forums: Blocks: Disable the image block in the reviews forums * Background colors on views need distinction * Editor is rendered twice when replying a support topic * Forums: Underlined Text Not Rendered * Hotfix for width of block editor * Missing space in breadcrumbs on support posts

Plugin Directory* Plugin Review Submission – Change the date for new version uploads * Plugin Review Submissions – Allow authors to add comments about their new plugin version uploads * Search box takes up too much vertical; move up and to the right * Playground Preview button in plugin directory doesn’t always work if you have Release Confirmation active

Photo Directory* Add recent photos to submission form * Let get Alt and Caption loaded into images at IPCT data

Locales* Path and Link Broken in Theme Security Handbook * Request to clear and update HelpHub support articles for zh_CN * Add an option to remove the –ignore-domain parameter in wp i18n make-pot

WordPress.org & Team Sites* Path and Link Broken in Theme Security Handbook * About Page: Consider breadcrumbs for The People, The Technology, The Details

Plugin Directory1. Google Forms Shortcode Not Displaying in Documentation – Closed, Defect (Bug), Normal 2. The issue of blurry images in the WordPress repository within plugins on the internal page – Assigned, Defect (Bug), Normal 3. The footer layout breaks in SVN view – Closed, Defect (Bug), Normal 4. Add an option to remove the –ignore-domain parameter in wp i18n make-pot – New, Feature Request, Normal 5. Jetpack: Your site URL is a known local development environment URL – Closed, Defect (Bug), Lowest

Profiles1. .xyz domains error in WordPress.org profile edit form – Closed, Enhancement, Low

API1. Support always returning a beta or RC in core API version check – Closed, Feature Request, Normal

Translate Site & Plugins1. Add an option to remove the –ignore-domain parameter in wp i18n make-pot – New, Feature Request, Normal 2. Design Issue: Underlines in submenu of polyglot sub page – New, Defect (Bug), Lowest

General1. Design issue : search suggestion have more space – Closed, Defect (Bug), Lowest

Swag Store (mercantile.wordpress.org)1. View Cart Design not looks good – New, Defect (Bug), Low 2. Improve the button design – New, Enhancement, Lowest

Make (Get Involved) / P21. Access to team meetings CPT – Closed, Enhancement, Low 2. Broken Link in Contribute handbook page – Closed, Defect (Bug), Low 3. The Likes widget is not vertically aligned with Reply and Follow buttons – Closed, Defect (Bug), Low 4. Add official “Team Reps” list in code / automate team rep access – New, Feature Request, Low 5. Design issue: On hover button text is not visible – Closed, Defect (Bug), Lowest 6. Add Hover effect on link – New, Enhancement, Lowest

WP.org GP Translation Events Create a timeline view of changes to the event * Hide events Meta WordCampHere’s the requested list formatted in markdown for the issues in the WordCamp.org* repository:

WordCamp.org Ignore locale when sorting for shortcode “camptix_attendees” * Favorite Session Enhancement * Events: Improve design of Cookies close & accept Popup * Bulk buy option only applies to target ticket * Can’t correctly update name that has diacritics mark * Configurable Incremental Ticket Release for High Demand Events * Make it possible to reset the info and edit ticket token * Ticket quantity does not reduce until paid * Don’t translate wordcamp statuses in logs * “Time” string is not showing as polish #pl_pl * Allow IPs to be whitelisted * Missing clear button for format filter * Inconsistent dropdown content Openverse A week in Openverse: 2024-04-22 – 2024-04-29 * Openverse Monthly Priorities Meeting 2024-05-01 * Community Meeting Recap (2024-04-22) * A week in Openverse: 2024-04-15 – 2024-04-22

Openverse GitHubCertainly! Here are the Openverse issues listed with only the title as a link:

Openverse Prettier’s pre-commit plugin is no longer maintained * iNaturalist is no longer able to access S3 * Remove retired DAGs * Share untranslated locales with relevant users and solicit help for translations in the frontend * Convert Storybook stories to stories.js CSF format * Sensitive state is shared between tests * Component: Theme switcher * Remove the ssrRef from provider store * Initialize the feature flag store state on server request * Replace invalid license value in the catalog database * Audio waveform should return 424 instead of 500 when waveform cannot be generated * Replace the sample string in a secret with a more obviously safe value * The just api/init command fails when executed repeatedly in succession * Incorporate djlint to lint HTML templates * Automatically warn or convert unformatted URLs in the documentation site * Science Museum halts early despite skipping ingestion errors * Frontend robots.txt only protects english-language routes Playground Improve log modal * Playground could not serve the request. * The activatePlugin step doesn’t throw an error when given invalid inputs * Loggers: Silence irrelevant error logs in unit tests * Support SQLite at the network connection level

Pattern Directory* The Pattern Directory gets a refresh and is now powered by blocks * Style adjustments for selected item and apply button in multiple selection flow

Plugins* Plugin Review Team: 22 April 2024 * Notify Plugin or Theme developer of support requests * Proposal to remove the non-block editor option from support forums: * Bug report on edited reviews not showing as recent: * Enhancement suggestion to include a checkbox for support reps acknowledging forum guidelines

Plugins* Plugin Review Team: 29 April 2024

Sustainability* Sustainability Chat Agenda, April 26, 2024 * Sustainability Chat Summary, April 19, 2024

Test* Announcement: Earn Your Test Team Badges! * Week in Test: April 29, 2024 * Test Team Update: 29 April 2024

Themes* Themes Team Meeting Notes – April 23, 2024 * Default Theme Task Force update – April 30, 2024 * Themes team update April 30, 2024

Community Themes1. Tardis: check whether the name is a registered trademark 2. Playground GitHub Action Improvement 3. Tardis: a theme of default styles 4. Block theme copies of the classic default themes Theme Experiments1. Custom Color Palette for Classic Themes 2. Automated Theme Testing System Training* Project thread: The second Learn WordPress Course Cohort * Training Team Meeting Recap – 25th April 2024 * A light Learn/Lessons visual refresh

Online Workshops* Homepage displays: Latest posts vs static * How to facilitate Online Workshop for the WordPress Training Team * How to facilitate Online Workshop for the WordPress Training Team * Testing Studio by WordPress.com * Developer Hours: Alternatives to Custom Meta Boxes in the Block Editor

Learn GitHub Issues Plugin API Hooks * Build Process * Theme Testing * JavaScript Best Practices * UI Best Practices * Child Themes * Online Workshop: How to facilitate Online Workshop for the WordPress Training Team * Meeting Agenda May 2, 2024 * Upgrade Sensei Pro to final release * Online Workshop: Testing Studio by WordPress.com * Missing images in some lessons * Feedback – Need to improve grammar for “Working faster with the command palette” * Gujarati translation for “Working faster with the command palette” * Courses landing page template * Contribute page template * Homepage template * Tutorial data migration * Lesson Plan data migration * Staging site * Restyle single course page * Extend Level taxonomy to Lessons and Courses * Meeting Agenda April 25, 2024 * Learning Pathway data type * Japanese Online Workshop – クラシックとブロック。いまこそ知りたい、2つの違い / classic and block. The difference between the two that you want to know now WPTV Latest WordPress TV videos

• Upgrading jQuery: Working Towards a Healthy Web
• Curl for 8.7.1
• Node 21.7.3
• React 18.3.1 (April 26, 2024), React 19 Upgrade Guide
• PHP 8.3.6 Released!
• PHP 8.2.18 Released!
• PHP 8.1.28 Released!
• PHPCS 3.9.2
• WPCS 3.1.0
• Requests 2.0.11
• PHPMailer 6.9.1
• LibZip 1.10.1
• MySQL 8.3
• Composer 2.7.4
• Homebrew 4.2.20
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes

Thanks for reading our WP.org roundup! We highlight the news and discussions from the good folks making WordPress possible each week. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.

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This article, 🌐 WP Media Corps Next Steps (Marketing Team) 🔄 Gutenberg’s Persistent Inserter Sidebar 🛠 Gutenberg 18.2 Enhancements 🔧 React 19 Beta Upgrade Guide 📣 Call for Volunteers for WP 6.6, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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I am a freelance WordPress Plugin developer, author and speaker. I’m originally from North Wales, but now reside in Newton-le-Willows, which is a small village between Liverpool and Manchester in North West England.

I have been working with WordPress since 2006, and in 2013 I wrote bbPress Complete (ISBN-13: 978-1782167242). I’ve written plugins that have appeared on the WordPress repository, spoken at WordCamps throughout the UK and Ireland, and co-organised WordCamp Manchester 2015 and 2016. I also contributed to the 3.9 and 4.4 releases of WordPress. In 2018 I left my job as a WordPress developer in an agency to go freelance, and Dwi’n Rhys (kind-of Welsh for “I am Rhys”) has been going ever since. My client list includes everything from large multinational companies, to small agencies and side projects. I previously worked for a multinational SEO agency, meaning I straddle the technical SEO field as well as being a WordPress developer.

Away from WordPress I enjoy video games (I collect retro games), playing and watching cricket for my local village team, travel and most other sports.

What do you enjoy most about working in WordPress?

The extensibility and the open source nature of WordPress is what I appreciate most about it. Most days, even when I have a problem I cannot figure out I can take a dive into the code to figure out how something works. When I first started it was very much a blogging platform (I believe that in the first version I was introduced to back in the day you couldn’t even have a page as a “home page!”), so there was a lot of extending needed. With the actions and filters, you can take WordPress and make you do what you want with it. It’s fabulous in that way.

The community as well is something that I’ve grown to treasure, with members of the wider WordPress community becoming close friends. It’s a fantastic community that has helped me grow both personally and professionally, and I enjoy the meetups and chats with people in said communities. Anything from a bug fix to how business is going, even just mental health check-ins. The WordPress community has provided me with it. It helped a lot during the pandemic and now we’re coming out the other side with meetups happening again, it’s been great reconnecting with those folks again in person.

What do you love most about your Post Status membership?

My Post Status membership has been great in helping me keep my finger on the pulse with what’s happening in the wider WordPress world. Being a freelancer, time is extremely limited as to what’s going on and I can feel overwhelmed with what’s happening within WordPress. Even with popular blogs out there it can be tough focussing on what’s important and relevant to me. Post Status’ newsletter is one of those curated news sources that gives focus as to what’s important out there, so it’s well worth checking out.

Also, as a freelancer, there’s a lot of working by myself. The community meetups I really enjoy and it’s great to connect with people, particularly a completely different group of folks from all over the world that I wouldn’t have the chance of meeting otherwise. It’s great to get their perspective, as well to offer mine, to what’s happening in WordPress.

What business/web/WordPress advice do you have for others in our industry?

My freelance advice would be to build a support network. You never know where your next referral will come from, or next opportunity, so make sure people know what you do so they can pass on work to you. Treat a referral with respect and you never know how far it’ll go. I’m still getting referrals from people I met 15 or 20 years ago at the start of my career. You have no idea how things come full circle.

Similarly, find a way to disconnect. Get a hobby or an interest, particularly one that will take you away from a screen. Having one of those really helped my mental health, as freelancing can be a lonely experience. Having the opportunity for an hour or two a week to speak to different people, who have no interest in what you do for a living, and doing something that doesn’t use the part of your brain that you use coding can be incredibly useful. You’re not useful burned out, so looking after yourself really looks after your business.

You — and your whole team can join Post Status too!

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status and LinkedIn.

This article, Member Spotlight: Rhys Wynne, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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LegacyI’ve been reflecting a lot lately about legacy and what we leave behind when we retire or leave this life someday.

And in that reflection, I remembered the WordPress memorial page that was launched by WordPress awhile back. We remember those that have passed and pay homage to them in this way so that their contributions are not forgotten, no matter how big or small.

I interviewed someone on WPCoffeeTalk a few years ago who passed away at a young age. Today I checked to see if his name was on the remembrance wall, and when I saw that it wasn’t, I submitted it.

If you know someone we’ve lost in the WordPress community, please consider submitting their names to the site, too.

Let’s keep their memories alive and their contributions remembered.

In the SpotlightSatyam Vishwakarma has been using WordPress for a few years, and enjoys leveraging his involvment in the community to help others.

Join Us on MeetupJoin us for our Meetups! Details on our Meetups are available on our Meetup page. (May dates will be posted soon!)

Quick Links:* The Page Builder Summit is May 20-24 * Sirvelia has launched Ploogins, a site to help you find free and premium plugins for all of your needs * Joost de Valk on WPCoffeeTalk * Apply to speak at WordPress Accessibility Day * Including Women in WordPress on Underrepresented in Tech * You can apply for the Kim Parsell scholarship to attend WCUS * WCEU: Tickets are Available * WCUS: Tickets are Available

Find the complete WordPress events schedule here.

Photo of the WeekToday’s photo of the week comes from Pritam Sonone on WordPress Photos.

You — and your whole team — can Join Post Status.

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status.

This article, Community Roundup Week Ending April 26, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Satyam Vishwakarma, a versatile professional, began his WordPress journey in March 2020. He’s a former diploma engineer who transitioned into roles as a blogger, content and digital marketing specialist, SEO expert, and strategic partnerships manager, with a particular focus on WordPress development. He is passionate about traveling, community building, and contributing to society. Satyam also finds enjoyment in writing and reading poetry. As a WordPress Contributor, he is dedicated to enhancing the project and fostering its community.

At EYNZONE InfoBlog!, he assists newbie bloggers in building successful blogs and helps business owners create their business websites by providing valuable tips & easy-to-understand tutorials with step-by-step guides on Blogging, WordPress, SEO, and digital marketing. His passion lies in reviewing hosting services, WordPress, and SaaS products for sharing in-depth insights to ensure the audience makes informed decisions.

In his roles as Partnerships Manager at Subhash Digital and Blogging Raptor, Satyam established high-quality collaborations with prestigious brands like Hostinger, Bluehost(IN), BigRock, WPAstra, and RankMath, showcasing strategic partnership and collaboration skills.

With a diploma in Electronics Engineering and accolades such as the Puneet Sahalot Memorial Scholarship recipient at WordCamp Udaipur 2023, Satyam demonstrates dedication and excellence. His commitment to community involvement is evident through volunteering at WordPress Kerala Photo Festival 2024 and WordCamp Europe 2024, as well as being an organizer of the Fatehpur WordPress Meetup.

Satyam effectively contributes to Make WordPress teams including Marketing, Polyglots, Photos, and Community. He also received props in the latest WordPress release, WordPress 6.5.

Satyam’s consultancy venture, HelloSatya, further highlights his expertise in WordPress, content and digital marketing, SEO, and more, offering impactful business solutions since January 2022.

What do you enjoy most about working in WordPress?

What I enjoy most about working in WordPress is its quick and easy way to launch websites, thanks to its user-friendly interface and powerful features. My recent involvement, starting from attending WordCamp Bhopal in 2023 with the help of the WordPress Community, has highlighted how welcoming and friendly the WordPress community is, offering guidance, encouragement, and opportunities for collaboration. This sense of belonging and camaraderie makes working in WordPress not just fulfilling, but also deeply enriching.

What do you love most about your Post Status membership?

What I love most about my Post Status membership is the unparalleled access it provides to a diverse community of WordPress businesses, agencies, and individuals, ranging from small startups to established enterprises. Being part of this network means I’m always just a message away from receiving valuable assistance and insights from experienced professionals.

The supportive atmosphere within the community fosters collaboration and knowledge-sharing, enabling me to continually expand my skills and grow my network. One of the most memorable experiences was when I shared my need for assistance to attend WordCamp Bhopal for the first time in the #club channel. The entire community rallied around me, providing the help and insights I required. Additionally, leveraging the self-promotion channel has allowed me to garner attention from influential figures such as the co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg.

Not least, I acquired this membership as part of the Underrepresented In Tech initiative, which further underscores Post Status’s commitment to diversity and inclusion within the tech industry. Furthermore, through Post Status, I have direct access to esteemed members of the WordPress community such as Matt, Syed, Joost, Michelle, Zack, Katie, Ben, Daugis, Carl, and many others, providing me with unparalleled opportunities for learning and networking. Overall, my Post Status membership has been invaluable in providing networking opportunities, support, and professional growth within the WordPress ecosystem.

What business/web/WordPress advice do you have for others in our industry?

My advice for others in our industry revolves around continuous learning, effective communication, and user-centricity.

Attending community events, such as WordCamps and meetups, is crucial for staying updated on industry trends and building valuable connections for future collaborations.

Prioritize building websites with a focus on user experience, ensuring seamless navigation and engaging content. Sharing insightful blogs and engaging with your audience through various communication channels fosters a sense of connection and trust.

Additionally, providing high-quality support and actively listening to feedback from users and customers are essential for improving products and services. By embracing these practices, businesses can establish themselves as trusted authorities in the WordPress ecosystem while fostering strong relationships with their audience and customers.

You — and your whole team can join Post Status too!

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status and LinkedIn.

This article, Member Spotlight: Satyam Vishwakarma, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Transcript ↓

In this podcast episode, Michelle Frechette and Corey Maass delve into their experiences with design and technical challenges. They discuss the intricacies of using Beaver Builder for creating a 404 page, with Corey expressing frustration over camera issues and a desire to enhance brand representation. Michelle brings up an accessibility oversight in a newsletter and the necessity of attention to detail, exemplified by Google’s logo updates. The conversation highlights the significance of accessibility and meticulous design in creating content that resonates with and is accessible to all users.

Top Takeaways:* Transparency in Business: Corey discusses how transparency has become more prevalent in the startup world, particularly with the rise of platforms like WordPress. He reflects on the value of transparency, even if he doesn’t always agree with or fully understand its implications, suggesting that it fosters relatability and authenticity in business interactions. * Continuous Improvement: Throughout the conversation, Corey and Michelle emphasize the importance of continuous improvement and learning. They discuss how podcasts, businesses, and individuals evolve over time, highlighting the value of feedback, reflection, and adaptation in achieving growth and success. * Collaboration and Support: Corey and Michelle express gratitude for the support they receive from their audience, as well as from other podcast hosts within the community. They highlight the collaborative nature of the WordPress community and the willingness to help each other succeed in their respective projects.

Mentioned In The Show:* Beaver Builder * Balsamiq * Joel Spolsky * Peldi * Adobe * Pippin Williamson * Ben Laird WP * Seriously, Bud? podcast * WP Coffee Talk * The Tipping Point * Drunk Tank Pink * WP Motivate * Kathy Zant

Sponsor: A2HostingA2 Hosting offers solutions for WordPress and WooCommerce that are both blazing fast and ultra-reliable. WordPress can be used on ANY Web Hosting plan from A2. You can deploy WordPress easily on Shared, VPS, or Dedicated Hosting plans. A2 also offers Managed WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting. Take a look at a2hosting.com today!

You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:* Corey Maass * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

TranscriptCorey Maass (00:00:00) – We are nothing if we are not professional.

Michelle Frechette (00:00:04) – Is a perfect first thing to have come up on the on the broadcast.

Corey Maass (00:00:08) – Along with my bald spot as I turn on my my ring light because. Oh, and then my camera froze.

Michelle Frechette (00:00:14) – It did.

Corey Maass (00:00:16) – Yay! That’s what happens. This camera is driving me crazy. Like something happens. And now it does this like the beginning of every calll.

Michelle Frechette (00:00:27) – They never, ever freeze. Like when you are in, like the perfect pose. They always freeze when you’re going to look the dorkiest. Right.

Corey Maass (00:00:34) – Exactly. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette (00:00:36) – I mean, at least I can still hear you.

Corey Maass (00:00:38) – Yes, that’s true. And you can just imagine me, my lips moving.

Michelle Frechette (00:00:43) – I just see a tiny dog eye over your actually behind your shoulder, I should say, below your shoulder. I don’t know, not over your shoulder because they’re too short. But yeah, hopefully we’ll get you back here at a second. Otherwise, I’m just like, you know, talking to. Just.

Michelle Frechette (00:01:03) – Just the unmovable person, I guess.

Corey Maass (00:01:05) – Yeah, well, I’m trying to. How do I put an avatar up and. But. Oh, good. Touch up my I want to I’m checking the box. Touch up my appearance as if that’s, you know.

Michelle Frechette (00:01:17) – That’s going to make a difference.

Corey Maass (00:01:19) – Virtual background. It won’t let me because there’s no. Anyway, But. Hi. How are you?

Michelle Frechette (00:01:24) – I’m good. You’re not even on the screen right now. It’s just a talking circle.

Corey Maass (00:01:27) – Well, I, I took it took it off because it’s just, you know, frozen.

Michelle Frechette (00:01:31) – Still frozen.

Corey Maass (00:01:32) – Exactly.

Michelle Frechette (00:01:32) – Still frozen. I wonder if sharing your screen is possible or not. Given.

Corey Maass (00:01:38) – Now it says your browser has lost connection to your camera. Yeah, it’s just my camera’s bugging out. This is like a fancy camera. I got myself for Christmas and it worked well until it didn’t, and so I. I need to contact them.

Michelle Frechette (00:01:52) – Yeah. Sounds kind of odd, No other cameras? Switch over to.

Corey Maass (00:01:58) – It won’t let me or it’ll like it freaks out.

Michelle Frechette (00:02:02) – That’s weird.

Corey Maass (00:02:03) – Or stays freaked out. Yeah. Like when I try to, you know, if I’m. If I am trying to be professional and I try to switch to just the FaceTime camera, like on the laptop. And, So. But then you’re also looking at my nose. So that’s less than ideal.

Michelle Frechette (00:02:19) – There is that. So I guess I’ll just talk to the the pulsating

Corey Maass: The white circle.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah. So funny. Well.

Corey Maass: Don’t walk into the light Michelle.

Michelle Frechette: I’ll try not to, I’ll try not to is too. I also have two big key lights over. Me too. It’s funny. As soon as I’m off the air, it’s like the first thing I do is shut those lights off. And I’ve been working without them all day, but it’ll suddenly feel like I’ve been plunged into darkness because I don’t have these big spotlights on me. Oh, I see you see.

Corey Maass (00:02:49) – We’ll see how long it lasts.

Michelle Frechette (00:02:51) – We shall see.

Corey Maass (00:02:53) – I just have to look perfect all the time so that when it freezes.

Michelle Frechette (00:02:58) – Yes, it’s always like.

Corey Maass (00:03:00) – Yes.

Michelle Frechette (00:03:02) – Exactly. Oh my goodness. You posted something the other day, and tagged me and OMGIMG in it. That was a little flyer or something that came with stickers with the stickers. Was that what it was?

Corey Maass: Yeah.

Michelle Frechette: And you talked about how one of the things that we talk about is how to delight people. And I referenced a few weeks ago. It might have been last week, I don’t know, all time is irrelevant at this point, but I referenced a Ted Talk by a guy named Renee Gleason, who talks about how your 404 page can actually delight people. And we had mentioned that. So. You’re to delight people with an Easter egg 404 page doesn’t have to be elaborate. It just has to be a little bit clever. And so you gave me the link of how to build ours in Beaver Builder, and I had never done that before, so I was rather impressed with myself that it really wasn’t that difficult, but I didn’t struggle with it is what I’m trying to say was like, I figured it out.

Michelle Frechette (00:04:07) – Basically I just had to do it and then, yeah, you know, whatever.

Corey Maass (00:04:13) – Well you got a button to do an animation. I’ve never done that in Beaver Builder before.

Michelle Frechette (00:04:16) – Right? That was kind of cool. Anyway, I wanted to share it. So this is our 404 page found. And just the little tongue in cheek, tongue in cheek humor. I was like, there’s nothing to see here. Which is ironic for a website about images, but hey, we’d rather focus on helping you be found and looking good. So try the navigation above or hit the Back to home page below wherever you land, we’re here to help. So is it like, the most clever? No. But does it really speak to who we are as our brand? Kinda. I thought so.

Corey Maass: Yeah.

Michelle Frechette: So, yeah. And I just wanted to share that.

Corey Maass (00:04:54) – That’s the. And I in the. Nature of in the the way that you and I usually collaborate. Like you went in and and put in this great copy and your first Beaver Builder experience.

Corey Maass (00:05:08) – This is their default page with the huge header. And so I will probably go in and and make the because the, you know, the 404 is less important, but they make it gargantuan. And so probably.

Michelle Frechette (00:05:23) – It is rather enormous.

Corey Maass (00:05:25) – But I will change it to. Yeah something there. Right. And then I’ll I’ll change it to 404. There’s nothing to see here which is ironic, you know, and like jeuje it.

Michelle Frechette (00:05:38) – Yeah. Exactly. Which is kind of fun. Anyway, so I just wanted to show that I thought that was cool. And like, we have, I have used Beaver, Beaver Builder in the past, but not the theming. I think that’s what it was called. Right? Theming.

Corey Maass (00:05:50) – Right. Themer. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette (00:05:52) – Themer. Themer. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I knew it was something like that, but, so that was my first time using that.

Corey Maass (00:06:00) – Another one. Oh, it kind of went away, but.

Michelle Frechette (00:06:06) – Oh. What is it? Oh.

Michelle Frechette (00:06:10) – My cat’s tail just came into my face. Yeah. Okay.

Corey Maass (00:06:13) – Yeah. It’s not really there anymore. but the. Yeah, I was just trying to show another one of, like, I’ve, I’ve really enjoyed. There we go. Settings, present. I’m going to present, share screen. If it lets me WordCampUS as you share.

Michelle Frechette (00:06:35) – To find the top secret WordCamp US 2023 launch page of OMGIMG. Gotta say it like you’re a superhero movie or something.

Corey Maass (00:06:46) – Exactly. So yeah, ignore ignore the top part because obviously that’s that’s what’s showing now. The rest of it. I hid after WordCamp US, but I love like I’ve been, we’ve been making more and more of these kinds of pages and I love the having fun with the text. And years ago there was a launch of a Chrome extension, Gmail extension that basically made your inbox a to do list. I should find a link because I want to give the guy credit. Sent out the guy who started it, sent out these newsletters, and they look, you know, it’s it’s long been said that the most effective newsletters are look like plain text.

Corey Maass (00:07:38) – Like, obviously there’s time and place. Niche emails or whatever, you know, or if you’re trying to do lots of articles or something like then a traditional HTML email makes more sense. But most emails, transactional emails do better, convert better if they just look like plain text, because we’re prone to just skim them and get on with it. But I loved he was the first one that I saw who his emails looked like plain text, but he would go through and he would bold and italics. and so it, it read like a comic strip or something like it, it because it had emphasis and you were you wound up, you couldn’t help but read it like you were just reading where you’re like, oh, this part’s, you know, big and bold and this part’s, you know, grayed out. And so it creativity with type typography, but in a very limited way, intentionally like rich text would be the way you describe it traditionally in web terms. And so trying to do more pages that look like that.

Corey Maass (00:08:43) – You know just.

Michelle Frechette: I like that.

Corey Maass: And lots of short paragraphs and, and variation in font size. Like I try not to go crazy with it but I try to do that. You know whenever there’s like even on our home page we have a, you know, paragraphs that have happy text.

Michelle Frechette (00:08:59) – Whats going on. Oh there we go. Sorry you weren’t on the screen for the longest time, I apologize.

Corey Maass (00:09:05) – Swoosh. I just assumed I hit a button.

Michelle Frechette (00:09:07) – No, it was me. It was the cat actually believing it or not my cat. th

Corey Maass (00:09:11) – Now that my camera is actually working you don’t want me on the screen anymore, I understand.

Michelle Frechette (00:09:16) – No, the. I don’t know if you saw me pull the cat off of the table a second ago, she actually was stepping on the laptop, and I didn’t realize that she had pressed a button that changed things on the screen.

Corey Maass: Funny.

Michelle Frechette: She’s a menace. She’s a menace.Yyeah. No, I love that. I love working with words. I think words are amazing. Images are amazing when you can use the two together to tell a story is when it’s perfect.

Michelle Frechette (00:09:42) – I have a I have a little bit of a story. So I actually tweeted about this a few about an hour ago. I write the newsletter for UnderrepresentedInTech.com, and we use Newsletter Glue. So you it’s like building a web page, a post, and then when you hit publish, it can actually go out through your mail aggregator. So in our case MailChimp and then goes into everybody’s mailboxes. Well, first I noticed that I have failed to update the, the slug on it and it’s still saying December, so I will fix that next month because I can’t fix it now that it’s gone out. Right. However, I will say that last month I sent it out and I had just been following the format that we’d had in there for a long time, and I and it’s like, you know, we have a section that’s like, read these. If you want to diversify your news feed, here are some articles to read the title of the article and then like click here and then the title is something.

Michelle Frechette (00:10:39) – Register here. And then the title is something you know read more or whatever. And I didn’t realize when I was putting it together that I was doing it quickly. Last month, I failed to do some alt text on, 1 or 2 of the images. And links like that for accessibility are not helpful. Right? And as a result, I got an email from a blind woman who said, I can’t believe that here you are talking about underrepresentation and you are not creating an accessible newsletter. And I like swallowed. I was like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe it either, right? And so I replied back to her, and I think people are used to calling other people out on accessibility and getting pushback because she because basically, like she was very helpful. But it was also like, do with us what you will kind of like there was this kind of like, I’m going to tell you, but I don’t expect you to actually do anything overtones to it. Right. And I responded right away and I said, oh my gosh, this is never our intention.

Michelle Frechette (00:11:42) – I will do better. And I and I expect that you will see a difference in the next newsletter. But if you continue to find issues, although it is not your job to educate me, I would love to hear about them so that I can fix things going forward. So I sent out the April newsletter today and I find tooth combed that thing like I made sure like instead of saying read like the title of the article was the link to the to the outside, diversify things, right? And like every single image had alt text that made sense. If I close my eyes, I could hear what it was all about kind of thing. And so I replied to her again. I said, the newsletter went out again today. If you have an opportunity to read it, I would value your feedback. And she replied and said, so much better, thank you. And I was like, yes, I did it. I paid attention, right? So, no matter how good we are, because I talk about accessibility all the time, here with us and in other places.

Michelle Frechette (00:12:38) – And I am by no means an accessibility expert. I am just somebody who wants to do better and learning how to do better, and then sharing those how to do better with other people. And so to be able to say it publicly today on Twitter last month, I really screwed up. But this month I got the thumbs up on it. And I think sharing those kinds of things and showing, you know, our feet of clay or whatever says I’m not perfect, but I want to do better and I want to I want to remind you all to do better to so that you don’t fall into the same traps that I have. And so, yeah, so I thought I would just mention that because we do talk about accessibility a lot and newsletters you just talked about newsletters. So I just kind of wanted to bring that story to the forefront and and just share that no matter if it’s about images or not about images, accessibility is important.

Corey Maass (00:13:28) – Yep. And so and baby steps moving forward and iteration like, I think part of why I fell in love with the internet in 1996 or whatever was because once I started realizing that things, things could change.

Corey Maass (00:13:46) – Like, it’s not a painting, it’s not not that you can’t change a painting, but you know what I mean? Like,

Michelle Frechette: It’s not static.

Corey Maass: Exactly. And, and that’s honestly, I try to explain that to people like, people look, are looking for post jobs, post gigs and say, you know, pixel perfect. And I’m like, I can’t apply to that. Like, I don’t I don’t work that way. Like we can wiggle towards pixel perfect. These days, arguably there’s no such thing, but that’s a philosophical way of looking at it. just because of, like you said, accessibility and the number of browsers out there and the number of devices and screen sizes and all that stuff. But, But I personally relish that. Like within these I, I work well in in sets of rules and and or find creativity within sets of rules. And my camera freezes again.

Michelle Frechette (00:14:44) – Yeah. Oh no.

Corey Maass (00:14:48) – I look so serious.

Michelle Frechette (00:14:50) – So serious. There was. I’m trying to remember, I can’t I was looking for the article real quick.

Michelle Frechette (00:14:57) – Google has changed its logo a few times over the years. Right. From different fonts, whatever. But there was a point in time where they literally changed one letter by just a couple of pixels, because when, when it got redesigned it was just a little bit off and to the to most people would never have even noticed the difference. But there was quite like a hubbub in the community, the tech community, whatever you want to call it. At the time that Google had changed this tiny little bit about their logo and people were irritated because why did it have to be perfect? It doesn’t really matter, you know, kind of thing. But yeah, it was really weird. I’m trying to find the article about it.

Corey Maass (00:15:40) – Yeah, that sounds really familiar. I also yeah, and then they changed it again to be simpler. Like it went.

Michelle Frechette: Yes.

Corey Maass: From Serif to Sans Serif, to be because and it was some amazing stat that like by being able to lower the file size and convert to an SVG or whatever, they because their Google they were they actually saved, you know, terabytes and terabytes of download just of their logo, which is.

Michelle Frechette (00:16:06) – Which is crazy.

Corey Maass (00:16:08) – Amazing to to think of. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette (00:16:09) – All right I found it. So I’m going to since you’re not even on the screen right now, I’m going to share mine.

Corey Maass: Yeah.

Michelle Frechette: So let’s see.

Corey Maass (00:16:15) – Just remove me altogether. I’ve unplugged my camera. I’m trying to find everyone.

Michelle Frechette (00:16:18) – All right. Hopefully you can see my screen. I don’t know if you can. Can you see my screen? I hope. Okay, so this was in 2014. Excuse me. And this was on Huffington Post – “While you were kicking back with a burger and a day off of work, Google was making some serious” print. And, what do you call it? Italics changes to its logo. “See the difference? If you’re a typography or designer, you probably can. The rest of us, however, need an explanation. The change made was a tiny shift in kerning, or the space between two letters of the G and the L, moving the G one pixel to the right and the L one pixel down and to the right.”

Michelle Frechette (00:16:57) – “The subtle difference supposedly makes the overall logo more pleasant on the eyes and easier to read.” And people on Reddit spotted it like like if you there’s a little animation that shows you the the before and after and it’s like, oh yeah, I see it now. But what I have noticed it like just in passing, I wouldn’t have. I don’t even think I notice when they change the font, quite honestly, because it’s like, as I says, almost naked guy on the right hand side of the screen here. But John Cena actually. But, yeah, completely derailed me, flustered me. But but but yeah, it’s it’s just it’s amazing how much we can notice about even just the little things like that. Right? Like, it’s just it’s insane to me. And so but it goes to show you that people do notice these things and get back to our primary reason for being here. Images matter and what you and how you choose to tell a story with images matter. There you are. I see you again.

Corey Maass (00:17:58) – All right.

Michelle Frechette: Drag, drop, done. I like it!

Corey Maass (00:17:59) – I was trying to find. I was trying to find my old webcam because I’m kind of fed up with this. This one. But. It’s in a box somewhere, you know.

Michelle Frechette (00:18:07) – We’ll find it by next week.

Corey Maass: Yeah, exactly.

Michelle Frechette: Exactly.

Corey Maass (00:18:11) – I was using.

Michelle Frechette (00:18:11) – It, but. Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:18:13) – Yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s, interesting to to see and and the people who notice and the people who don’t notice. I mean, the web is famous for its fanatics, and it’s pedantic. Can can. Can you describe a person as a pedantic? You mean, you know, but it but it matters, right? Like it matters strongly to some people and not at all to other people. But that’s okay.

Michelle Frechette (00:18:39) – Yeah, exactly.

Corey Maass (00:18:41) – But further proof of the like ability of the internet, right. Like, and I that’s how I build products, which some people are okay with and some people expect perfection out of the box. But, you know, it’s to me, I’d rather get something out there and in front of people and have them using it, using it, and then, that way I can, you know, sometimes make breaking changes, which I try to limit once it’s in front of, you know, some number of people, but.

Michelle Frechette (00:19:09) – Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:19:11) – I like I like that nature of the internet. I like that we can. We can try things. There’s arguably it’s become quite homogenized, which is no fun, but we can at least get creative in our own sandboxes. So.

Michelle Frechette (00:19:23) – Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And I, I just love the fact that we can use imagery to help tell stories and that even for somebody who has, who is blind or has low vision, the description of those images plays into that storytelling as well. Right. So, I, I, I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m one of the moderators on the WordPress Photo Direct, Photo Directory. And last Thursday, I think it was Thursday. I was, the table lead for the Yoast Contributor Day. So don’t feel bad for me, but I did get up at 3 a.m. because it kicked off at 3:30 a.m. my time, and I wanted to be there and be, you know, able to help people. But we moderated over 2, I think, close to 250 photos in one day just through that event.

Michelle Frechette (00:20:16) – And as I look at the photos that get moderated in, I think that gets submitted. It always breaks my heart a little to have to decline a photo, but some photos just aren’t good photos, you know, some are blurry. If your horizon is really janky, I’m going to decline that photo because the ocean doesn’t go high right, low left. It’s pretty even, you know, those kinds of things. and I and I want it to be the best that it can be. And, and there are photos that are technically fine and we do approve them in. But as I look at them, I think to myself, why would anybody ever want to use that photo on their website or in a project when it’s like a birthday cake that says, Happy Birthday Michelle right? Or whatever, you know, kind of thing, and you never know, maybe somebody will be like, oh my gosh, it’s the perfect card because I have somebody named Michelle and she has a birthday coming up. But I think that those uses are probably further and and fewer, than other things.

Michelle Frechette (00:21:19) – However, you just never know. It’s all about using the right images for the right story to tell. And every week for Post Status, I put out the, you know, my column, which is kind of like the Community Round Up and I choose an image from. And for me it has to be, landscape because of the way I fit it into the newsletter. But, I choose one image from the photo directory, and I put that in the newsletter every week, or the I’m sorry, the column, not the newsletter, the column. And so and I pull over the description from that and I put that in there. And I try to pick a photo that speaks to me. Right. Not just something that’s pretty, but something that makes me feel something is evocative of some kind of an emotion. Whether I look at it and I’m like, that is a thing of beauty or that is so interesting, or the colors are so rich, or it depicts, a culture that I’m not part of.

Michelle Frechette (00:22:18) – And I just kind of it gives me a, you know, a glimpse into a window, into that kind of a cultural event. you know, whether it’s Ramadan or Eid or, or one of those kinds of things that I’m not as well versed in, and I can see those little things. And so I think even if it doesn’t tell the story of your website, it can still be something that tells a story in general. And I think that imagery has such incredible power to do that. And that’s why, you know, when you said, hey, do you want to work with us on OMGIMG, I was like, heck yeah! Because first of all, I’m a photographer and I love, you know, I love images anyway. But the idea of being of helping other people use images to tell the stories that they are putting out on the web. It’s just such a great opportunity and such a great thing. So I’m fine with that. But yeah.

Corey Maass (00:23:16) – Which made me click through to to the newsletter that just came out today.

Corey Maass (00:23:21) – And today’s images is, Growing in scale fans.

Michelle Frechette (00:23:28) – Yes, I chose that. I, I randomly picked a I don’t try I try not to go through the last 3 or 4 pages. I randomly just put a page number in there, and that picture came up and it just was evocative to me. I thought, that is such a cool photo. I love that it shows the progression. It isn’t in a it’s not in a store, right? It’s not like I walked into Walmart and put three fans next to each other. It’s like in somebody’s home and it shows like human needs and Necessities too. And it just was really cool. Yeah, no pun intended. It was a cool picture. Get it? It’s fans. Sorry. I’ll take my dad jokes someplace else.

Corey Maass (00:24:06) – Never! They belong here.

Michelle Frechette (00:24:08) – Okay.

Corey Maass (00:24:10) – I used to do a lot more design and, like, fine art, albeit graphic like. Way back in the day, I was a painter. Draw a person who drew, that kind of stuff.

Corey Maass (00:24:27) – And then loved getting on the internet and then would spend hours and hours and hours and hours on in Photoshop. Just messing around with filters. Just, I loved the randomness of it. And then I went through a phase of, what’s the old, the t shirt company that people would do contests. They would submit their designs, and then. And then people. Would you try to get people to vote, like upvote your design, and if you’d upvote it, then it would. They’d make the shirt.

Michelle Frechette: Okay.

Corey Maass: Well known 20 years ago. I can’t think of it. Yeah. but it like, in that era of it was like. And to me, it was, you know, for better or worse, you can still see this in a lot of my design, like the, the there was a, a high point of graphic design, digital design in like early 2000, the mid aughts or whatever we were calling them. Just interesting, amazing, beautiful things. And I tried and failed to to adopt that style in many things.

Corey Maass (00:25:39) – And and because I failed, I, I still a lot of what I designed still ends up looking like that unfortunately. But the, a lot of what I would do is I would start with, like, if I took a photo, I would vectorize it, which wasn’t really a thing then, like it is now, like we have the SVG we didn’t back then and but make sort of what I thought were compelling designs and then put them on t shirts or whatever. But at one point I was looking for. On. Yeah, I was looking for sort of what you were describing like or another way of of what doing what you were describing, like putting in random numbers. I would put in random words into like Google image search and just kind of see what comes up. And at one point I typed in, I don’t know. Oh, well, one of the really interesting things to do 20 years ago was to translate it into like, Spanish or something. So like, I wanted, I needed images, of machines for whatever I was working on.

Corey Maass (00:26:46) – And so I put in makina and I, I wound up immediately, or I was greeted with an image that somebody had drawn. And it was so it, you know, Google had indexed their personal website, found a drawing that they’d done and had for sale. And I was just like, it’s smacked me in the face. And I contacted the artist and I bought it. And then years later, I got to meet the artist when I moved back to Brooklyn and, and that’s where she lived. And it was like, oh, this was so cool, you know? But it’s that randomness brought that to me. And, and I, I kind of missed that, that random, randomness of, of the universe handing you weird things, you know?

Michelle Frechette (00:27:34) – Yeah. For sure. Google Image Search I learned I have not checked the veracity of this, so I can’t verify for sure. But I learned recently that Jennifer, Lopez’s. Was it 2014? Oscar dress. What it was like cut all the way down to her navel and wide open at the top.

Michelle Frechette (00:28:00) – And all of that was the impetus for Google Image Search, because people were trying to find that dress online, and we’re hitting Google so hard to find that that they actually created Google Image Search to be able to find images, not just stories that referenced images. So like I said, I don’t know, it seems like that would be plausible, but I haven’t verified the truth behind that story. But I liked it and I learned it yesterday. And you said image search and it made me think of it.

Corey Maass: Nice.

Michelle Frechette: So I thought I’d share that nice random thought. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it’s just like that’s what plugin development is though, right? Is you see a need and you find a way to fill it. And that’s exactly what Google did with image search. Yeah. Which is super interesting.

Corey Maass (00:28:47) – Except at any point they’ve got 500 developers sitting around twiddling their thumbs. So they can point and say build a thing.

Michelle Frechette (00:28:53) – Yeah it’s a little different. That’s right. It’s just just just a little different than, you know, a 1 or 2 person show.

Corey Maass (00:29:03) – So changing topics slightly.

Michelle Frechette: Yes.

Corey Maass: One of the developments this week is, here here’s an argument for checking Twitter obsessively. Is a nice person. I’m going to give them a name check because so far, so good. What could possibly go wrong? Faizan. F-a-i-z-a-n who’s on Twitter as Faizan King. F-a-i-z-a-n King does design for startups and I think I’m sure it’s as a marketing, you know, growth exercise posted that he will do he or his firm will do design for startups for free. You know whatnot. I not ongoing not everybody but had done, you know, kind of the first person to contact me, we’ll get a design. And so I for once, I’m not the 76th person. Yeah. He, he said, Like, I will design a, you know, a logo, a banner or a landing page for you. And I’m like, we our homepage needs help. You know, I’ve been, as we’ve talked about, like we’re happy with some of the copy, but the design could still use some.

Corey Maass (00:30:31) – So it was like, great, me, me, me. And you know, I it’s one of those things like a lot of the time I think most of us experience this, you know, you’re the 76th person to pile on and usually on Twitter there’s actually I think usually if it’s more than 20, I just won’t bother, you know, because it feels silly.

Michelle Frechette (00:30:52) – Excessive.

Corey Maass (00:30:53) – Yeah. But I, I was the first and contacted him and filled out a questionnaire today, which was an interesting, or yesterday, which was an interesting exercise specifically because he’s he asked some great questions in the intake form. You know who. What is what? Who are your customers? You know the personas. Who is your. What is your niche? What are what is your, you know, unique value prop, like, you know, these things that, we’re supposed to have the answers to. And so I think, like, Cory and I did some thinking around that and, and I think as I’ve.

Corey Maass (00:31:36) – Now I was talking to somebody else, but, one of the things that I realized that in the last couple of days. Well, and you saw this or you experienced this too, like AFK for a day or two away from keyboard and you come back and your inbox is full and your messages are full, and all the things that you didn’t finish on Friday are still there. And so it’s way too easy to grab the first thing and start working, which is not the way to prioritize and get through everything and yada yada.

Michelle Frechette: True. yeah.

Corey Maass: And so spending half a day. So I went away for the weekend, spending half a day trying to recover essentially like build, build a to do list. And now, okay, I see what I should work on first and all that. I think Cory and I were definitely guilty at points in, during our year of conversations of. Somebody says something and then we just run with the exercise, rather than adding that to the list of exercises and then saying, oh, well, let’s do this one, because it’s the most timely and valuable.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:32:44) – And so at some point, I built I filled out a questionnaire on HubSpot and, and completed a couple of personas and then printed them out and then promptly lost the PDFs, because that’s what you do.

Michelle Frechette (00:32:57) – Of course.

Corey Maass (00:32:58) – But I feel like at some point, you and I would benefit from doing this exercise not to.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Corey Maass: Not just doing it because I brought it up. I’m going to exercise self-control in this instance. But at some point, like spend this hour going, okay, what? You know, who do we.

Michelle Frechette (00:33:15) – I like that a lot.

Corey Maass (00:33:16) – Right.

Michelle Frechette (00:33:17) – Yeah. Create those avatars.

Corey Maass (00:33:18) – Going through the exercise. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette (00:33:22) – We have one comment. Can I share that. It’s, it’s of course pushing it back out Adam Weeks is watching. He says, “Yep. Wikipedia says that it was Jennifer. Jennifer Lopez dress that started Google image search.” I know who knew. I saw it on TikTok and they shouldn’t ban TikTok. I learned things on there. Anyway, for the story.

Corey Maass: I’m going to make you a T-shirt. I saw it on. I learned it on TikTok.

Michelle Frechette (00:33:45) – Yeah, exactly.

Corey Maass (00:33:47) – That’s not the first time you’ve said that. I don’t know if you realize that or not.

Michelle Frechette (00:33:51) – And I say it all the time.

Corey Maass (00:33:52) – In any way, like we are all learning from all of our media.

Michelle Frechette (00:33:57) – It’s interesting that people think that TikTok, I mean, people who don’t use TikTok think it’s this like people dancing and saying stupid things. And yeah, there are some funny videos that make me laugh, right? Like little kids doing things and animals doing really weird things. But I have learned so much because first of all, you teach the algorithm what you like, right? And I have learned so much because it’s to me it’s just this, these 1 to 10 minute little videos about things. And so whether it ever is useful or not, I brought it up in conversation today. So kind of thing. But whether it’s ever, you know, fully useful or not. But I’ve learned a lot of really cool things.

Michelle Frechette (00:34:35) – I learned something about Cadence the other day I didn’t know it could do, and I work there because of the Cadence TikTok. And now and I shared it with somebody else and look what it can do. And so I now have another tool in my tool belt working with Cadence. And so yeah, so I do say it a lot because I, I learn a lot from it.

Corey Maass (00:34:54) – That’s awesome.

Michelle Frechette (00:34:55) – It’s crazy but it’s fun.

Corey Maass (00:34:56) – Yeah I never could I could I couldn’t figure out how to train the algorithm. And so I was seeing all people dancing and I was like, this is boring. And I’ve uninstalled it at least half a dozen times and then reinstalled it because it’s like, for me, I was on Twitter for ten years before I figured out how to use it. And the funny thing is I read all the articles and I was even on panels talking about like, you know, ways to optimize outreach and stuff like that, but, but I could never figure out how to work it into my day essentially.

Corey Maass (00:35:37) – And or where and how to get value for myself. And I it seems like I thankfully jumped on a couple of years ago. I don’t know whether it was COVID related or not. That would make sense if we all more people went on social media because of COVID. But anyway, finding WordPress or, Built In Public or Indie Hacker like these hashtags, these little sort of micro communities which are very sort of fuzzy at the edges, but, you know, groups of people to follow and, and check out and, and who can consistently add good content or are worth engaging with and stuff like that. And then also training myself to engage with them. TikTok I’ve not I mean it’s very different from other social media. And so I’ve tried to post as a musician but it’s creating video is way harder. I mean what we, we just talked about like we both are very comfortable with words. Clearly we are both very engaged in word based communities and we type and type and type or I even started dictating into this fancy microphone because it’s faster than typing a lot of the time.

Corey Maass (00:36:54) – But creating video, I’m not the content that I’m trying to create is not hit record on a phone and start talking. I’m trying to show and I’m not trying to do anything fancy, but that’s not what I’m trying to show. And so it’s I have a real hard time creating. Okay, fine. but I also haven’t figured out how to train, like, swiping the right speed so that the algorithm understands that I want or don’t want, you know, or or finding the people to follow or what have you. You know.

Michelle Frechette (00:37:28) – I can I can teach you that another day.

Corey Maass (00:37:30) – That would be great. Honestly.

Michelle Frechette (00:37:33) – I could. It’s it’s a lot easier than you’re thinking it is, but.

Corey Maass (00:37:38) – Probably, but it’s also my understanding that there is it’s different kind of content. Right. And so like Cadence is creating videos and so presumably people are engaging in consuming that. But I don’t I think that that’s it’s my understanding that that’s the exception. There are not a lot of WordPressers or product people on there.

Corey Maass (00:38:06) – And I’m like great. You know, Wild West. Like, let’s let’s be one of the first. Why not? But then how do you get them to find you? And then like anything, it’s it’s how much time can you spend on any one channel and know that there’s engagement and, and that kind of thing.

Michelle Frechette (00:38:24) – So but the thing to remember is that every social channel doesn’t mean you have to create. You can consume. Right. So for TikTok, yeah, I’m not going to give you my TikTok. I’m not going to publicly give you my TikTok channel because I, I have got a bunch of just stupid stuff on my account. Stupid little games that you can play on there. Like, look how good I got it on the first try. Or, you know, little stories, the stories I’ve told and a lot of singing I will tell you, I have. There’s no rhyme or reason to the content I’ve put out there.

Corey Maass (00:38:56) – You sing without rhyme or reason?

Michelle Frechette (00:38:57) – Sometimes it’s really weird.

Corey Maass (00:39:00) – Bu-dumb-ch, there was a dad joke for you.

Michelle Frechette (00:39:02) – That was a dad joke for for sure. But I consume more than anything. And one of the things that I think is incredible about just consuming information through TikTok is that you are learning about what people who are similar to you are looking for.

Speaker 4 (00:39:22) – Right.

Michelle Frechette (00:39:22) – So like Adherium has a channel I see their stuff. Gravity Forums has a channel, I see their stuff. I’m trying to remember some of the other ones. WordPress.com has a channel, Cadence has a channel. So there are other WordPress companies and agencies that do have TikTok channels. Are they as popular as, you know, Bella Porche, who just like, bops her head around the music and has 5 million or 20 million? I don’t even know how many millions followers. No, of course not. Because it’s a different genre and it’s a different audience 100%. But do I see what people who are like me are creating and are seeking? Yes, I do, and does that help me be able to create content, whether it’s on TikTok or someplace else? Yes it does.

Michelle Frechette (00:40:10) – And so all of that to say that the only reason I spend and waste so much time on TikTok is market research.

Corey Maass (00:40:18) – Sssuuuuurrrreeeee.

Michelle Frechette (00:40:20) – That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Corey Maass (00:40:22) – But I hear you. I do hear you like. It’s fascinating. Yeah, it’s fascinating to see what if you can do the exercise to to go. Why, why, why am I sucked into that? Or, you know, why do I find that compelling? Or, you know, could I do that better? Or if my if my community, my comfort zone is Twitter, how could I translate some of this stuff that I’m finding so engaging over there or what have you.

Michelle Frechette (00:40:53) – What’s really interesting is when we are creating websites for others. So when we’re working as a, you know, an agency work or we are freelancing as an agency of one, however you want to call it, we constantly tell our customers that they are not their target audience. Right? So like I had, as an example, I built I was building a website for a chiropractor and his bread and butter, like his, his schedule was filled with geriatric patients like slip and falls, you know, twisted hips, knee replacements, that kind of stuff.

Michelle Frechette (00:41:26) – And he was a wealthy man because of the geriatric clientele. And and I’m talking like 40 and up really, but mostly even 60 and up. Right. But he really, really wanted athletes. He really wanted his practice to be around about athletes. And I said to him one day I said, do you know how much time and energy and money you’re going to have to put into changing your and how many people you’re going to drive away by doing that? Right. But also then there’s other people who would say, I like this, and I like this and I like this. And I say to them, you are not your target audience. You understand HVAC built a website for an HVAC guy. You understand what HVAC is, and you are trying to sell to people who understand what HVAC is. I want you to sell it to somebody who says, my furnace just broken. I don’t know who to call about that. Right. And so they’re not their own, you know, they’re not selling.

Michelle Frechette (00:42:27) – They’re not their own target audience. That is not the the same for people selling plug-ins because we are our target audience. Maybe we know more about our product that other people do, but we’re all in the WordPress ecosystem now, that’s not to say that a niche. You know, plug in like GiveWP who is really working with people who are fundraising, who are building their own websites, who are bootstrapping and who have agencies building it. Right. They are not necessarily their target audience. However, they understand it because they are people who use WordPress and they understand how a plugin has to work within WordPress. And so we have a little bit it’s a little bit different for us with OMGIMG, because we are selling to people who do understand and are a little bit like us because we build websites, we write blog posts, all of those things apply to us as well. So it’s a little bit different, right? Although we do have also those end users who are building their first blog and that kind of stuff.

Michelle Frechette (00:43:27) – So it’s a little bit of a like I always say, our audiences are divided. We really do have a dichotomy of people who really get it, and people who are just starting and have no idea how to progress. And so you have to find that right balance and strike that right balance and how you market to those people and how you advertise to those people.

Corey Maass(00:43:44) – Yeah, yeah. And and a lot of it ends up being education, which I enjoy the, the activity of the opportunity of, but you also, you know, we’re, we’re still at the beginning of the bell curve. And so it’s it’s tough to know what resonates or it’s tough to know what, what questions people are asking. We’ve talked about this a lot. Over the last year and a half of doing these, these calls of, you know, how are people going to find our solution? You know.

Michelle Frechette (00:44:17) – Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:44:19) – Full stop. And thats tough.

Michelle Frechette (00:44:22) – Yeah. We’re not we’re not going to put out an ad in Inc or Forbes or something like that.

Michelle Frechette (00:44:28) – It’s very different how how we especially when you’re bootstrapping. Right. Especially when you are not the big, huge, companies that we have in WordPress. And so it makes a difference. And, and we have to be really targeted and really careful about how we spend our time and resources, for sure. Absolutely. One of those things, though, and we talked about, is having you apply to speak at different events. And you put in an application today somewhere. So. You know, that kind of stuff begins. And I will mention that the, the call for speakers for WordCamp US is closing, next week. So if you have designs of doing something for WordCamp US, we should look at.

Corey Maass: I thought is was … the 15th or 20th.

Michelle Frechette: Did they extend it? I think it’s the 29th. Let me look it up.

Corey Maass (00:45:19) – No, that’s when that went out. I have their email because I’ve.

Michelle Frechette (00:45:24) – Yeah, I’m looking at their website here April 29th. The call for speakers closes.

Corey Maass (00:45:31) – So they did extend it because their original email was 22nd.

Michelle Frechette (00:45:35) – Okay. Yep. So it’s the 29th.

Corey Maass: So I would have missed it.

Michelle Frechette: Yes. Me also because I’m hoping to put in a talk. Which is why I didn’t organize this year. So I actually be able to be considered for a talk. But yeah. So we should talk about that. Maybe throw some ideas together and Slack over the next day or two about things that you could think about presenting on a stage that, that that big with that kind of an audience.

Corey Maass (00:46:00) – Yep. Yeah. I, Cory and I, I talked about a couple of weeks ago, like, we, we started brain dumping. and so I got out the smaller one, basically a revised version of the image talk that I did for WordCamp Rochester. Got that out, but I don’t think that’s WordCamp US.

Michelle Frechette (00:46:24) – I don’t either. So I want to think about it some more, too.

Corey Maass (00:46:27) – Yeah. But I do think the Build In Public one with Cory would be really interesting. And so.

Speaker 4 (00:46:32) – Yeah, I do to.

Corey Maass (00:46:33) – So I’m trying to consolidate our brain dump enough to write four sentences, you know, as a as a pitch, essentially.

Michelle Frechetter(00:46:41) – And let me proof it, let me read.

Corey Maass (00:46:43) – Absolutely. Yeah. Of course. I, you can’t not or I would, it would not be submitted without you.

Speaker 4 (00:46:51) – I like I.

Michelle Frechette (00:46:52) – I like, I like giving my opinion.

Corey Maass (00:46:54) – Like. Well and we and we welcome it. and I and I’m, I have I actually have it in the back of my mind to have include you in it, too, because it’s like if the three of us were on stage, I think that that would be really interesting because it’s. You know, the history that we’ve gone through, I think would be really interesting. And then I think because there’s. Part of what we you know, it can’t just be our story. Like, yes, there’s stuff to learn from our story or whatever, but I’m drawing from even when he and I were brain dumping, I wound up drawing from or realizing how long I’ve been in the Start-up world and how much.

Corey Maass (00:47:39) – Transparency there was with a lot of in the Start-up world that there wasn’t before that. Right. And and pre, pre-WordPress really for me there were a lot of. People trying to do things differently in starting essentially small businesses online. And the transparency was interesting. I didn’t always agree with it or I didn’t always see the value in it. Still half and half. But doing stuff like this, right for me, like, you know, for the putting all your salaries online. Okay. Like, I don’t I don’t know that I don’t get anything out of that, but they do and other people do. And okay, cool. Somebody at some point somebody will explain it to me and I’ll go, oh, that’s now it makes sense, you know. but, you know, shaking things up and there were more transparency and more, more visibility behind, like, who runs the company? And I remember, PLDT, the guy behind who started Balsamiq like his. Well, in the Start-up story, actually was a lot more, you know, how how companies were started, you usually would never hear about it, you know, like how Adobe started.

Corey Maass (00:48:56) – I don’t know how, you know, other software companies, you know, and and a lot of times small companies wanted to appear bigger. And I think that that changed at the beginning of. At least for me, the like one of the compelling things was getting on Joel Sapolsky had a forum, Joel On Software and and hearing people talk about their stories or share other people’s stories and and again, Peldi from balsamic, telling his story publicly, sharing it with a lot of people and, and also on the website saying like, you know, I am one person or we are three people. Like, we will not reply on weekends because we have wives and children, and stuff like that, that. Made it interesting and made it relatable, you know, and and stuff like that. And so, I it and again, in starting the brain dump, it’s not just Cory and I a year ago and you and I, you know, four months ago. But our own reasons for wanting to come into this and willingness to do this, you know, it’s yeah, it was Cory’s idea and I’ve talked about that.

Corey Maass (00:50:07) – Like we said, we’d work together. He said, we’re going to do it all in public. I said, okay, you know, but I mean, how nice that. We asked you to get involved and you were like, of course we’re going to continue to do these calls. I’m going to take over for Cory, you know?

Michelle Frechette(00:50:22) – Right, right.

Corey Maass (00:50:24) – That’s not everybody. Right? Like, I wouldn’t even say that’s most people would be interested or willing to do that. Even if you’re as gregarious and outgoing as you are. Right? Like so I you know, I think it’d be interesting. And I think the more of us on stage.

Michelle (00:50:40) – Yeah. I agree.

Corey Maass (00:50:41) – Might be more interesting. So, you know, that’s.

Michelle Frechette (00:50:43) – Count me in. If you want to do it. I’m in. Cut me in. I’ll be there either way. So.

Corey Maass (00:50:47) – Well, exactly like we’re we’re all going to be there. I in, in various degrees myself. The the smallest by far. We are a little bit known in the WordPress world, and have our own stories and, and some of it is documented and and so I think that that would be also interesting.

Corey Maass (00:51:11) – I mean, obviously also self-serving, like people might be more interested to come because we are who we are. But, but three kind of known entities on stage, I, I’d, I would go see that.

Michelle Frechette (00:51:22) – Like, I go see us.

Corey Maass (00:51:23) – I want to say the last talk I ever actually dipped into was Pippin Williamson, which was 100 years ago at this point. But it, you know, like, I didn’t need to hear a talk about SEO or something, a topic that I can Google. Like that’s not how I learn. but hearing a person I could relate to building products like I do and running businesses like I do, I, I, I wanted to walk into that room as much to hear what questions people asked, you know.

Michelle Frechette (00:51:52) – Sure. Yeah, that makes sense.

Corey Maass (00:51:54) – And so Cory said too like, this might be I haven’t looked at the application yet, but it might be something that we pitch as a talk, but also I think might I might put in a sentence that says this might also work great as a workshop if we kind of presented for a while and then said, okay, you’ve got three people with varying experiences in varying positions. You know. Hopefully we have proven that we can we can think well on our.

feet. Pick our brains.

Michelle Frechette (00:52:25) – Yeah. For sure I like that. That’s really awesome. Yeah, if you want me in there, count me in. I’ll do whatever y’all need for sure.

Corey Maass: I love it.

Michelle Frechette: Interestingly, it’s you pointed out I’m going to take us down a little bit aside for a second. I know that you that like you, I that I was like, yeah, count me in. Let’s do it. I’ll do that. Tuesdays? Yeah, let’s let’s find a time and we’ll just like, you know, whatever. Be part of this project. I think when you are a public person like we are, I get and I’ve talked about this before in other forums. I get DMed a lot. Right. And sometimes they’re just I’ve written about how it’s just scammers or how it’s men trying to hit on, women online, etc., but oftentimes take that part out of it.

Michelle Frechette (00:53:11) – I get hit on, hit not hit on, but hit up and hit up in socials because people want something from me. And today somebody, you know, like if you, if you fall, if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, I’m probably going to say yes, unless clearly there’s you’re a scammer or something like that. So I connected with somebody today. I was like, yeah, sure, whatever. And that person immediately messaged me and thanked me for connecting because they see the work I do and it’s valued, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, totally buttered me up and then hope that they could learn from the things that I share and would I take them on and be their mentor. And immediately I responded and said, I don’t have time to take on new clients because number one, I don’t have time to mentor people for free. And number two, if I did, I’d be coaching for money, which I’ve done in the past, but I don’t have time for that right now either.

Michelle Frechette (00:54:09) – And I was just like, I have to have to draw some boundaries someplace, right? And so I do very, I mean, it may have seemed to you like I was just like immediately, yes. But like, Cory gave me the heads up. So I had time to think about it before you messaged me. And then also I am, even if I say yes quickly, I am. They’re very thoughtful about where I spend my time and my energy and my resources, because there’s only one of me and there’s only so much time in a day. But yeah, so, so and that’s just I don’t know why I decided to share that story right now because it was very fresh, literally happened half an hour before we started today’s broadcast. But yeah, just kind of in general to think about people and their time and their energy. And when we ask for people to do things, be thoughtful about what we’re asking about people. And, you know, you and I have talked in a offline a little bit about like, if this takes off, what does the reward for Michelle look like for being involved in all of this? Whereas a lot of people just want me to retweet them, endorse them without any even having looked at their product before, like, ‘Hey, can you tweet this about how great our product is?” I’m like, who are you? And what is your product like? No, you know, like, I, I, I don’t want to lose followers because I’m just suddenly like saying everybody’s awesome and by everybody’s stuff, you know.

Michelle Frechette (00:55:33) – But yeah. So so I am thoughtful about those kinds of things.

Corey Maass (00:55:37) – Yeah. Well you have to.

Michelle Frechette (00:55:38) – And I do look for opportunities. Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:55:42) – It kills me that you get endless solicitation….

Speaker 4 (00:55:47) – It comes with the territory.

Corey Maass (00:55:48) – … Romantic etc. which is. Oh well yes. And that sucks.

Michelle Frechette (00:55:53) – Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:55:53) – I want to I want to punch most of them in the nose.

Michelle Frechette (00:55:56) – I appreciate that.

Corey Maass (00:55:59) – You know. But it’s also, talking. So, like you said, putting that part aside, like in the tech space, I get, I get an endless stream of vote for me on Product Hunt.

Michelle Frechette: I get those emails.

Corey Maass: Which makes me never want to be on Product Hunt, like, because then I have to be that guy that’s just endlessly asking people, and, and I think the returns are diminishing, but that’s a different that’s a, that’s a.

Michelle Frechette (00:56:26) – That’s another story. f

Corey Maass (00:56:28) -For the conjecture. And yeah, in a different conversation. But it’s the. And the truth is, is that I a lot of the time I think like like you said, if it, if it looks fine.

Corey Maass (00:56:42) – Sure. You know, like it’s a vote. It’s not. And I’m and I’m one of, I’m one of the, the people who voted which is different than you know, can you retweet this or can you, which.

Speaker 4 (00:56:56) – Write an endorsement.

Corey Maass (00:56:59) – Right. You know, which I think is part of the why I, I expect that the it’s diminishing returns, because if you’re asking random people who have not actually tried your product to click a button, then what’s the point? But it’s it’s also like that’s, broadly speaking, the friction you’re talking about or the effort you’re talking about or the engagement you’re talking about is one of those things that I always try to think about, like it was it’s a cardinal rule of the internet, right? Like, here’s a form. You know you want. If you want them to fill it out, you need as few fields as possible. But even today, I read about, sometimes you want to add friction. You want the, like, there’s, there was a study I just read about that.

Corey Maass (00:57:50) – You want. Oh, I know, so. And I’m actually thinking, because this is, this is more relevant because I’m thinking about adding this to our onboarding is, you fill out a few things into your license, you know, you might ask a couple of demographic questions that probably are just for the sake of data collection, you know, but and, but there’s they’re apps that do the, like, work configuring the app for you. But you know, the entering a row in a database is instantaneous these days. Like generally even on your phone, you know, like it’s it’s quick tech has. Become amazing.

Corey Maass (00:58:28) – So you there’s points where you actually want to add a progress bar that goes crepe, crepe, crepe. And you can do other, you can show other messages.

Michelle Frechette (00:58:37) – Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:58:38) – But but also it, it it’s apparently it leaves an impression on the person of like, oh they’re doing, they’re working hard for to get ready for me.

Michelle Frechette (00:58:48) – Right.

Corey Maass: You know.

MIchelle Frechette: Right. Whether it’s true or it’s. Just an animation, but it still gives that that effect.

Corey Maass (00:58:55) – Right. Right. And ..

Michelle Frechette: Interesting.

Corey Maass: I, I love that, I love thinking about that. Like, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t most of the time, like, it’s more work than it’s worth. Unless you’re a very mature product, then you can take the time to build in the, the nice little extras like that. but it’s but it’s a lot of fun to think about. And, and I think about that too. And like in marketing, it’s like or today writing the description of the talk that I’m giving. I have a buddy who is, another dev, but is also good with words. and very he’s, he’s a, he’s a top tier dev, so he’s extremely logical. So I love running copy by him because it’s often ends up being more of a logic puzzle, the way he’ll deconstruct the sentences. And then obviously he’s still human. So it’s like, read it out loud.

Corey Maass (00:59:49) – Do these words flow? Does it feel compelling? Whatever. You know. But, but a lot of the time, like we started with eight sentences and we got it down to four because it was like, what’s valuable? What makes sense, what should go before what and things like that. And because of and and if, if you think about it, it’s because of effort, the effort on the person reading it, it they have to be able to absorb it immediately.

Michelle Frechette (01:00:17) – Right no. That makes sense. Yeah. Very interesting stuff, isn’t it?

Corey Maass (01:00:21) – Yeah, yeah. And and. Sometimes successful and sometimes not. And.

Michelle Frechette (01:00:28) – There’s a Psychology to marketing, and I don’t think people think about the fact that there’s such a huge psychology to marketing. Two books that I’ve read, that I need to reread because it was so long ago. But one is, The Tipping Point by Malcolm McDowell? No Malcolm somebody and the other one is, Drunk Tank Pink, which really talks about. The psychology of the things that we use in marketing and how like you would have thought that that the the drunk tank at like at, jails and things like that would be like pink or like a blue or green because we think of those as calming colors.

Michelle Frechette (01:01:09) – It turns out, though, that like whether this is true or not, I don’t know. That’s what the story says, that pink is actually a color that calms people down when they’re in that kind of a and to me like, no, but like apparently I’m wrong, right? So yeah. So there’s a whole psychology behind things. Like my dad used to put the window in his office behind his chair so that, like, the sun was glowing behind him and like, coming through the window and would be more intimidating. And like, he literally did that on purpose to try to make himself feel more authoritative and have people sit in front of them and feel that he was more authoritative. I went and visited a guy once that I was like, invited to come and talk about perhaps building a website, and I went to his office and he literally had his desk up on a dais that was a good 6 or 7in higher and had he was in finance, but he had like 6 or 7 huge monitors, a big throne like chair.

Michelle Frechette (01:02:07) – And I was in this like had a folding chair. Exactly. Because it was a nice office, but, you know, like a waiting room chair when he’s in this like up higher and this big, like, ‘Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.’

Michelle Frechette (01:02:18) – Kind of like effect. Right. And I did it was everything I could do not to laugh because it was so obvious what he was trying to do with this. Do you really need a stage, sir? For your desk like that is absolute insanity. But for him, like, it made sense. Like if he was going to look like an authority in finance when people came to invest. Thousands upon hundreds of thousands of dollars. He needed to look impressive to them, right? It didn’t impress me. It impressed me in a very negative way because it just made me. I got in the car and I it was like I let out all the laughter that I was holding in during the meeting. But I understand the psychology behind those kinds of things.

Michelle Frechette (01:02:57) – And there is a psychology to how things are presented in marketing. And so yeah, so looking and and that goes back to the TikTok. It goes back to Twitter. It goes back to how people engage and how and how our audience for this product engages, which is going to be different for how an audience for a different product engages. And so those are the things we need to keep in mind, and those are the things we’re going to dig into every week and get a little bit deeper into, as we continue to look for these things, we’re over time. I want to let you I ask you if there’s any parting thoughts before we kind of break up for today and just for anybody who’s listening. This is not our only opportunity that that Corey and I talk to each other every week. We have a constant stream of DMs back and forth about what do you think of this? What do you think about this design? Can you help me with this? You know, all of these things.

Michelle Frechette (01:03:48) – But this is the part that we share with you publicly about what we’ve done in the last week and the things we’re looking forward to. And, a little bit of rambling here and there, because that’s just the nature of human beings as they get together and talk through these things. So do you have anything you’d like to say.

Corey Maass (01:04:00) – Especially at 5 p.m., right? Anything 5pm to 6pm like it’s I think it’s almost advantageous that our brains are sort of like blaa at this time of day, like. Because. Yeah, you know, and there was for a while I cared about us being focused. And it’s like we end up talking shop and I so it’s, you know, still relevant, but, but it’s, you know, if we end up talking about random things, I think the only other thing I wanted to, to shout out is, Ben Laird WP.

Michelle Frechette (01:04:36) – Yes.

Corey Maass (01:04:40) – And you just put a message on the screen

Michelle Frechette (01:04:42) – Yeah, because Marcus just said he’s here.He thanks for doing this. He loves seeing the progress week to week I think is in direct response to our saying sometimes we just ramble.

Corey Maass: Right

Michelle Frechette (01:04:50) – But thank you Marcus.

Michelle Frechette (01:04:53) – Yes. Ben Laird WP.

Corey Maass (01:04:55) – Ben Laird WP invited me to be, I think, the first person on his new video podcast, last week and total sweetheart, a very English self-deprecating, which I don’t think is quite warranted. I thought it was a great conversation. But everybody should go check out his podcast, which you can, and hear me talk about the same stuff. But in a different context. I like to think, you know, or, different whatever’s top of mind that day kind of thing. And then also ramble about Englishtea and, and a couple of other random things, music that we talked about whatnot.

Michelle Frechette (01:05:35) – We’ll retweet that link out, by tomorrow. So people are listening or they want to go and look for that. We can, we’ll retweet that. Maybe we’ll pin it for a little bit so people can find it easily.

Michelle Frechette (01:05:48) – He did not have an intro and outro when I said to him, do you have your bumpers ready? He goes, he said, oh, I use an expletive, what are bumpers? And I was like, I could help you. So I created his I did it, I did the voiceover, I did as intros and outros and the, the imagery for that. So make him look a little more professional when he starts to put things out there. So he was pretty happy. So. Yeah. well, I’ll, I’ll make sure that that gets put up on our social links so people can take a look at that. That was a great interview. I listened to the whole thing. I didn’t even speed it up. Usually I listen to things at one and a half times, but I didn’t even speed it up. I just listened to it in the background as I worked along and it was a nice conversation. So we will share that.

Corey Maass (01:06:25) – Yeah, we need more of those. And I’m glad he’s doing it because he’s, he’s got a great perspective. He’s got a great personality, a great delivery that I think is a little different. More casual. More fun. Sounds like other people aren’t fun, but more carefree.

Michelle Frechette (01:06:43) – No I understand.

Corey Maass (01:06:44) – And, and his premise that he pitched me originally was like, it’s just a conversation. Let’s talk about what we want to talk about. And I almost and I realized later that so way back in the day, there were days where there, in dance music, like, like it becomes all consuming or it can become all consuming. And so like, now I’m really dating myself, but there was a rave collective, back in the 90s, and they had a, an open space where they’d throw parties, but they Tuesdays or whatever were no techno Tuesdays. And so I almost want to see more. I’m tempted to do it myself, but I had more time. I don’t need another project, but like, we need a podcast that’s like WordPress and tech where we don’t talk about WordPress and tech.

Corey Maass (01:07:38) – And so it’s just people’s stories or what else goes on in their lives, because it’s like sometimes we can’t hear the same stories again, or we we need to stop thinking about marketing and tech for a minute and talk about like, oh, they have dogs. Or, you know, what are their hobbies or the nonprofits that they volunteer with or, you.

Michelle Frechette (01:08:00) – Kathy Zant and I have that, but it’s just the two of us. We don’t bring in guests. Right? So we have WP Motivate where we literally just shoot the breeze every week and share it out with everybody. But yeah, I see what you’re saying. And, and I think Ben is good at that. He is, definitely has a lot of those kinds of. He just wants to have a conversation and see where it goes. I do, I’m going to recommend to him to get a ring light or something like that, because he needs a little more illumination on his face.

Speaker 4 (01:08:21) – Oh for sure, I man

Michelle Frechette (01:08:23) – Needs to look a little less like witness protection, but.

Corey Maass (01:08:24) – I love that he jumped in. And in fact, in the 5, 5 or 10 minutes before. And I think he tweeted, like, you know, Corey was patient. And I think part of what he was referring to was I was like, okay, you sound terrible. You look terrible. Like, adjust this, adjust this. But, I mean, I’ve been a I’ve been a sound engineer and, and the lighting tech even professionally for, for decades. So it’s like, here are the quick things that we can do. He put on headphones and suddenly sounded way better just because a better microphone. And so but I but I inversely, I love that he just jumped in and didn’t worry about it. I don’t care what it sounds like, don’t care what it looks like. Let’s just do the first one. And that’s how most of my projects have started. Podcasts have started. It’s like, let’s just see if we have something here and we can improve over time.

Corey Maass (01:09:13) – And and you listen to if you listen to almost any number of podcasts that have been going for a long, long time, listen to the first one or watch the first video and then and then how they’ve improved over time, you know, and and everybody.

Michelle Frechette (01:09:28) – WP Coffee Talk for sure. My first episode, thank God Ali Nevins was so kind because it was not I was not the best podcaster when I was hosting my very first ever episode of a podcast. So Ben was on the WP Coffee Talk podcast a few years back, and I was one of the first people to, like, retweet him and that kind of stuff. And so he he comments that, you know, I helped to get him into WordPress. So after like, he’s like, you know, saying you were going to be on the show and I DM’ed him. I’m like, what’s a girl got to do to get an invite to your show? He was like, aw shit.

Corey Maass(01:10:05) – Ha, ha, ha!

Michelle Frechette (01:10:06) – Yeah. Marcus also says, there’s also the Seriously, Bud? podcast.

Corey Maass: Yeah, yeah.

Michelle Frechette (01:10:12) – That’s recently come out. And I have been on it and so has Marcus. So we should get you on with Bud as well to talk about, because Bud doesn’t really talk about WordPress. He talks about you and your story and that kind of stuff, which is fun, which is kind of what you’re talking about.

Corey Maass (01:10:25) – So that’s awesome. I so I apologize for not knowing about that.

Corey Maass (01:10:29) – I’ve seen that’s okay because I’ve, I’ve seen that I just recently came across it and I haven’t had a chance to listen to them. So if that’s what it is, then it already exists and everybody should just go listen to that one and stop listening to me.

Michelle Frechette (01:10:42) – But but there’s room for more, right? There’s room for more of this. The way the Bud ask questions is might be different than the way that Ben asks questions, or whoever’s listening right now decides they want to have their first podcast. We’ll ask questions too. So different conversations. WP Coffee Talk is very prescribed.

Michelle Frechette (01:10:57) – I ask the same set of questions to every single person. The conversation is different, of course, but it is very prescribed. Ben from Laird, Ben Laird WP not prescribed at all, just an open conversation. And there’s benefit to both of those things. And so finding yourself on either one or both is a wonderful thing. So there’s no right or wrong way to do it as long as people can hear you. Because if they can’t hear you, then that’s a really bad podcast. But as long as people think. It’s a good thing, it’s gonna say there is a wrong way. Yeah, let’s do it.

Corey Maass: You ruined my dad joke, danmit!

Michelle Frechette (01:11:28) – I’ll let you have that next time.

Corey Maass (01:11:30) – That’s just dogs barking in the background.

Michelle Frechette (01:11:32) – Exactly. Well, we had we. Had people watching today and they identified themselves. So thank you Adam. Thank you, Marcus, for, for for being here with us. Really appreciate it. I’m sure there’s other people that have popped in and out. I’ve seen the numbers kind of go up and down a little bit, and I’m sure there’s people who watch us afterwards who aren’t available to watch us between 5pm and 6:13 pm.

Michelle Frechette (01:11:53) – So, whoever you are, if you do have questions, you can always put them on in the comments here. You can message us through Post Status. we would love to take your ideas if you want us to talk about them or answer questions that you have as we move forward with OMGIMG. So anyway, that’s all I got. You got anything else?

Corey Maass (01:12:16) – Nope. Another lovely conversation. Thank you.

Michelle Frechette (01:12:18) – It was fun always. We’ll see everybody next week.

This article, Marketing a WordPress Product Live: Session 11, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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WordPress Studio Now Available for Playground-Powered Local Development,* Studio by WordPress.com is a game-changing, open source local WordPress development environment that simplifies and accelerates site creation. * By eliminating complex setups and offering seamless sharing capabilities, Studio empowers developers to build and showcase their work more efficiently than ever before. * Since Studio leverages WordPress Playground, it eliminates the need for traditional web servers and MySQL. * It offers one-click access to WP Admin, Site Editor, global styles, and pattern, and seamlessly integrates with popular development tools like VS Code and PhpStorm. * Developers can fork and contribute to the project on GitHub. * Learn more about Studio and view demo videos on the WordPress.com Developers Blog. * Studio is available to dowload today for Mac OS. Windows users can request early access.

Photoshop Improves its Generative AI Game Adobe has now integrated Firefly 3, its generative AI engine, into Photoshop, enabling users to create images from text prompts or preset options without leaving the app. * The new Generate Image offering takes the Firefly-powered Generative Fill feature introduced last year to a new level. * An upgraded Generative Fill now includes a Reference Image tool, using uploaded images to guide Firefly’s generations instead of text prompts. * Generate Similar creates variations of images, while a new Enhance Detail* feature improves sharpness and intricacy via upscaling. * Creative Cloud members can access the new features now by downloading the latest Photoshop (beta) app for desktop. * Get the details and see some cool demos in this VentureBeat article.

Federal Trade Commission Approves Ban Of Noncompete Agreements* This week, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted to ban noncompete agreements, making them nonenforceable for the majority of workers. * Noncompete agreements, which forbid workers from seeking a job with a competing business for a certain period, have been criticized for locking workers into jobs and suppressing wages. * Several states have already outlawed or limited the scope of noncompete agreements. * The FTC estimated that the ban would boost wages by between $400 billion and $488 billion over 10 years and lead to the creation of more than 8,500 new businesses per year. * Business groups are expected to challenge the legality of the ban, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce calling it “blatantly unlawful.” * The ban would render existing noncompetes unenforceable for the vast majority of workers, though they could still apply to some senior executives. * Get all the details in this article from AP.

Worth a Look* Are links less important than ever for Google? Perhaps? * WordPress is constantly evolving, adapting to new technological advancements and user demands. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, Codeable provides detailed insights and predictions. * How does WordPress really stack up Squarespace? Check out this detailed comparison from Visualmodo.

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending April 26, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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This Week at WordPress.org (April 21, 2024)News* YouthCamp Kozhikode * Mumbai 2024

WordPress.org Website Redesign The Pattern Directory gets a refresh and is now powered by blocks + Demo site + Log issues in the WordPress/pattern-directory repository on GitHub + Patterns Figma * The Forums get a refresh + Accessibility: Remove Non-Block Editor in Forums + Figma Forums * Homepage updates * Plugin Directory* + Demo site + Log issues in the WordPress.org issues queue on GitHub or in Meta Trac * HelpHub Figma

CLI* Save the date! WP-CLI Hack Day on Friday, April 26th

Community* Meetup Organizer Newsletter: April 2024 * Recap of the Contributor Working Group’s Mentorship Chat on April 18, 2024

Core * Merge Proposal: Rollback Auto-Update * What’s new in Gutenberg 18.2? (24 April) * WordPress 6.5 performance improvements * WordPress 6.6 call for volunteers update * Core Team Update – April 22, 2024 * Asynchronous processing of redirects in request_multiple() when using curl transport

Core TracEnhancements1. Cover Block Improvement 2. Block Hooks: Enable for post content 3. Add “cover” cropping mode for custom image sizes 4. Change the http:// links to https:// of ma.tt and hello dolly 5. HTML API: Add custom text decoder 6. Provide a framework for plugin onboarding experiences 7. Interactivity API: Some property access does not work well in server directives

Bugs1. Unmodified Twenty Twenty-Four Theme Layout Breaks on Mobile 2. PHP Warning with invalid JSON input 3. WordPress Categories and Tags pages are not loading 500 internal server error 4. Wrong processing post_status for custom post_status 5. Edit Permalinks, Date, Time and Visibility not working on 6.5.2 6. Root-Level Padding Breaks Layouts on Twenty Twenty-Four Theme 7. PHP Warning: Undefined array key 1 in /chroot/home/ab2bb14c/fullerfasteners.com/html/wp-includes/media.php on line 71 Gutenberg Issues Components and UI * Components: Document our deprecation procedures * Migrate DropdownMenu instances to DropdownMenu V2 * Tricky issue with the Gutenberg Button Block Alignment and Justification option select style * Create Pattern Modal: Modal disappears when focus is moved with tab key * DropdownMenuItemV2: Add “destructive” state * LinkControl: Add CSS class to improve styling for external links * Double border applied when “Page” tab is active * Typo – build/editor/index.js * Typo – build/edit-site/index.js:23718 * should viewScriptModule still be experimental in the scripts package? * Block Editor: BlockCanvas component is exposed on both public/private * Inserter: Pattern tab visibility * Command Palette: Add data view shortcuts * Spacer block: Can’t set height when direct descendant of a Row block * BaseControl: Support accessible, flexible layouts * Improve and align application of lock icon in list view * CheckboxControl, RadioControl: Support accessible, flexible layouts * Global Styles: Add block-level textAlign UI * Allow customization of block preview height * Documentation and Documentation Tooling * Getting Started > Fundamentals of Block Development: Clarify requirements to add editor styles for a block * JavaScript Documentation: Improve the JS API documentation tool. * Docs: Interactivity API – Shape a section in the docs providing a full response to the question “Why it’s not possible to just use React?” * Docs: Remove the word “reference” from subsections under “Reference Guides” * Docs: Interactivity API – Move docs from “Reference Guides > Package Reference > @wordpress/interactivity” to “Reference Guides > Interactivity API Reference” * JSON and Data Views * Data Views: Some notices display encoded characters * Pages data view: Provide access to edit posts page (when set as homepage), plus utility ‘pages’ * Patterns and Templates * Can’t swap templates in the post editor * Proposal for Enhancing the Navigation Block to Support Mega Menu Creation * Multiple Blocks: Padding setting in JSON is no longer working * Creating/Updating templates for classic themes supporting custom block templates is gone. * Background image: should it integrate with background-image theme mod? * Form blocks: “Common” is not a valid block category * Table of contents: “Layout” is not a valid block category * Pattern: unable to see white text when editing a pattern at the source * Block Library: Migrate to the new textAlign block support * When a pattern is first saved, there is a notice that says “Site updated” instead of “Pattern saved”. * Block Editor Functionality * Follow up questions on the duplicate post and page feature * Only engage zoom out mode if the editor is focused on an entity * Block Editor: BlockCanvas component is exposed on both public/private * When a pattern is first saved, there is a notice that says “Site updated” instead of “Pattern saved”. * Improve Inserter experience when blocks cannot be inserted * Allow customization of block preview height * Add page-break support to Footnotes block * Editor: Fix 403 forbidden error for users with low capabilities * Improve Inserter experience when blocks cannot be inserted * Add page-break support to Footnotes block * Only engage zoom out mode if the editor is focused on an entity * DataViews: Extensibility * Follow up questions on the duplicate post and page feature * Padding visualizer shows stale padding when block opts to handle application of style * Proposal: Keep the Inserter open * Editor: Fix 403 forbidden error for users with low capabilities * – Footnotes in sync patterns can’t be edited * Block bindings API for 6.6 * Tracking issue: Block bindings API * Editing synced patterns does not use browser history * Miscellaneous * Invalid JSON Response and RESI API Issue * Site editor responsiveness * createInterpolateElement: Add error handling in case unmatched tags are included * Improvements to class WP_Theme_JSON and its tests * Click-to-expand images could prefetch full-resolution image to speed up display * Allow html in pagination labels * Header nav menus covered by overlay in following block * Site Editor: Empty header while in distraction-free mode * Full-page client-side navigation tracking issue * Hybrid Themes: Allow access to the template lists to edit/delete templates. * Google Forms charts copying not persisting (when copied from Chrome) * Block bindings: Fix accessibility of the ‘Connected’ visual indicator in the block toolbar * Add a preview only mode to the navigation block * Auto-post a Playground preview link on every PR * Issue adding tags in Gutenberg when autocomplete reaches 20 item limit * Gutenberg plugin v18.2, stable release April 24, 2024 * Is solution for AVERAGE_READING_RATE incomplete for i18n? * Navigation block’s “Open on click” mode bug on nested submenus * Copy pasting from a word document sometimes leads to empty links in subheads * [Flaky Test] should preserve elements on addition * Pages data view: Provide access to edit posts page (when set as homepage), plus utility ‘pages’ * [Flaky Test] The PHP version is rendered if the legacy attribute is true * Improvements to class WP_Theme_JSON and its tests * Content Block: add justification to block toolbar in addition to sidebar * Auto-post a Playground preview link on every PR * Invalid JSON Response and RESI API Issue Gutenberg Discussions Can’t get block selectors to work * Footnotes * Universal blocks and block hydration * Getting Started – and other learning resources * Interactivity API: Roadmap * Merge/Split Table Cells in default table block * Attaching multiple handlers to an event and allowing asynchronous event handlers * WP-ENV: A couple of comments * More details about Gutenberg Phase4-Multilingual? * Using blocks.registerBlockType block-filter to change core block markup. Is this how it’s supposed to be done? * Does the Query Loop only accept patterns that are pre-registered in a plugin/theme? * How to access the Query Loop Block’s data on the fly? Core Meetings* Summary, Dev Chat, April 24, 2024 * Agenda, Dev Chat, Wednesday April 24, 2024 * Performance Chat Summary: 23 April 2024 * Performance Chat Agenda: 23 April 2024 * Summary, Dev Chat, April 17, 2024

Developer Blog:* How to use WordPress Playground for interactive demos

WordPress Developer Blog Content Discussions How to build a theme demo with WP Playground blueprints * Version Control Considerations and Workflows in a Full Site Editing paradigm * Share change in process for agencies building sites with the site editor * WP-CLI for site owners and admins * How to use WordPress Playground for handovers Design The new grid experience, feedback needed * Design Share #54 (Apr 8-Apr 26)

Documentation* Summary for Docs Team Meeting (16-April-2024) * Agenda for Docs Team Biweekly Meeting (16-April-2024) * Summary for Docs Team Meeting, 2 April 2024 * Translation of End-user documentation project started at WordCamp Torrelodones (Spain) * Documentation Team Update – April 22, 2024

Documentation-Issue-Tracker Preferences overview * Block Patterns * Redirect Codex htaccess for subdirectories page * Gallery Block Hosting WordPress 6.5 PHP Compatibility

Marketing* Media Corps discussion: Points of Contact

Meta* Devs: Give your feedback on Plugin Directory Playground Previews * The Pattern Directory gets a refresh and is now powered by blocks * The Forums get a refresh * Homepage updates

Meta Trac & GitHubDocumentation Team1. Google Forms Shortcode Not Displaying in Documentation

Plugin Directory1. Plugin Review Submissions – Allow authors to add comments about their new plugin version uploads 2. Playground Preview button in plugin directory doesn’t always work if you have Release Confirmation active

Support Team1. Editor is rendered twice when replying a support topic 2. Forums: Underlined Text Not Rendered

UI/UX1. Search box takes up too much vertical space; move up and to the right 2. View Cart Design not looks good

Photo Directory1. Add recent photos to submission form 2. Let get Alt and Caption loaded into images at IPTC data

WordPress.org1. Optimize local Docker setup to improve performance 2. Add new automated tests for WordPress Meta 3. Update Nginx configurations to latest standards 4. Document process for adding new sites to local environment Openverse* Openverse Monthly Priorities Meeting 2024-05-01 * Community Meeting Recap (2024-04-22) * A week in Openverse: 2024-04-15 – 2024-04-22

Playground* Devs: Give your feedback on Plugin Directory Playground Previews * Build a Slide Block + export to pdf * Explore biome as a replacement for eslint/prettier * Error when running “nx run docs-site:build” the first time * Use global $wp_filter instead of an mu-plugin * The documentation site is broken

Pattern Directory* The Pattern Directory gets a refresh and is now powered by blocks * Style adjustments for selected item and apply button in multiple selection flow

Plugins* Plugin Review Team: 22 April 2024 * Notify Plugin or Theme developer of support requests * Proposal to remove the non-block editor option from support forums: * Bug report on edited reviews not showing as recent: * Enhancement suggestion to include a checkbox for support reps acknowledging forum guidelines

Polyglots* Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – April 24, 2024 (13:00 UTC)

Support* The Forums get a refresh

Sustainability* Sustainability Chat Agenda, April 26, 2024 * Sustainability Chat Summary, April 19, 2024

Test* Announcement: Earn Your Test Team Badges! * Test Chat Summary: 23 April 2024

Themes* Themes Team Meeting Notes – April 23, 2024 * Themes team update April 23, 2024 * Themes team update April 16, 2024

Community Themes1. Tardis: check whether the name is a registered trademark 2. Playground GitHub Action Improvement 3. Tardis: a theme of default styles 4. Block theme copies of the classic default themes Theme Experiments1. Custom Color Palette for Classic Themes 2. Automated Theme Testing System Training* Training Team Meeting Recap – 18th April 2024 * Brainstorm & Table Lead – WordCamp Europe 2024 Contributor Day

Learn Issues1. Courses landing page template 2. Contribute page template 3. Homepage template 4. Tutorial data migration WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

• Upgrading jQuery: Working Towards a Healthy Web
• Curl for 8.7.1
• Node 21.7.3
• React 18.2.0 (teaser for 19)
• PHP 8.3.6 Released!
• PHP 8.2.18 Released!
• PHP 8.1.28 Released!
• PHPCS 3.9.2
• WPCS 3.1.0
• Requests 2.0.11
• PHPMailer 6.9.1
• PHP Parallel Lint 1.4.0
• LibZip 1.10.1
• MySQL 8.3
• Composer 2.7.4
• Homebrew 4.2.19
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes

Thanks for reading our WP.org roundup! We highlight the news and discussions from the good folks making WordPress possible each week. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.

Are you interested in giving back and contributing your time and skills to WordPress.org? Start Here › Contribute.

You — and your whole team can join Post Status too!

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status and LinkedIn.

This article, 🏕️ YouthCamp Kozhikode 🔄 Merge Proposal: Rollback Auto-Update 🌟 do_action Mumbai 🔌 Plugin Directory Playground Previews ⚡ WordPress 6.5 Performance Improvements, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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What is Studio by WordPress.com? It’s a way to do local development with WordPress without the use of additional third party apps.

Designed to empower developers, designers, and site builders, Studio offers a seamless solution for creating and running WordPress sites directly on your local machine, as well as showcasing work-in-progress sites with your clients, teams, and colleagues.

WordPress.com Blog

According to the developer blog on WordPress.com, the features include:

• Demo sites: Forget Ngrok-like tunnels—share interactive snapshots of your local sites with clients or colleagues, powered by WordPress.com.
• Superfast WordPress installation: Regardless of how many sites you’re working on, you can create unlimited local sites in Studio.
• Dependency-free building: Build lightweight and reliable local WordPress sites, powered by WordPress Playground, without the hassle of Docker, NGINX, Apache, or MySQL.
• One-click admin: Spend less time wrangling passwords—open WP Admin for each site with just one click.
• Open your site anywhere: Develop your sites your way. Open your site’s code in your favorite IDE, CLI, or file browser to fit your workflow.
• Built by the biggest contributor to WordPress core: With 109 active contributors, we know WordPress inside and out.

Comments about Studio on Post Status Slack included:

• It being a Playground under the hood makes me a bit skeptical it’ll actually be suited for a lot of plugin development.
• I’m wondering about the data export options. Particularly for those who aren’t using .com to host.
• No way to switch PHP version and no support for https:// or switching domains/port at least from what I can see.
• It’s very early, but I like the direction.

I downloaded Studio for a test spinIf you know me, you know I’m not a developer, but I was curious to see how quickly it spun up a local site, especially for someone who has struggled with third party tools in the past.

I can say that it was super fast, including downloading and installing it on my Macbook. Then with the click of a button I had a brand new WordPress install open in a browser tab.

One of the things I noted that seems useful is the ability to share the link to others (nice if you’re developing locally and want to share with a client). You do have to be logged into your WordPress.com account to access this feature.

I’ll play with it a bit more and update this post if I find anything unexpected, but from a first glance it’s behaving just like any other WordPress install.

FeedbackHave you tried it yet? Do you have feedback? Questions? Contact us or comment below and we’ll see what we can find for you.

Resources* Meet Studio: Your New Favorite Way to Develop WordPress Locally * Build Fast, Ship Faster with Studio

This article, Studio by WordPress.com Launched Today, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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I was scared to be the CEO of Yoast. I am scared to speak my mind on Twitter. I am terrified at the launch of any new product. I am still scared to present on stage. I am even scared to ask a question at a conference.

I am always scared to step out of my comfort zone. And I often feel like a fraud. I was convinced I failed the theoretic part of my driver’s exam, while, as it turned out, I made 0 mistakes. During the public defense of my Ph.D., I was sure that one of the professors would laugh and point out that I was not qualified and that my dissertation was not good enough. Even though I already had several scientific publications and won awards. What is this overwhelming belief that I have failed or will fail?

Hello! It’s me! It’s your imposter syndrome! The imposter syndrome is a strong feeling of self-doubt and impotence, although your experiences, education, and accomplishments prove otherwise. You are rocking and flourishing, and all the while, you only feel like a failure. How weird is that?

I’ve often told myself that I’m done impostering. I am too old for this shit, right? It doesn’t work that way, but I have been getting better. As with all forms of anxiety – whether you’re scared of spiders, small rooms, or leadership roles – the more you are exposed to the thing you fear, the less scared you’ll be.

If you experience imposter syndrome, too, be kind to yourself. Don’t judge yourself because you feel nervous or restless. Don’t judge yourself because you think you ‘are too old for this shit’. Give yourself a break. And don’t give up. Try things that are just outside your comfort zone. You don’t need to become the next CEO of Microsoft all at once. Try to step into a slightly bigger role or a slightly more challenging position. Taking small steps, and trying out new things, will eventually get you where you belong!

Joost and Marieke will be on spring break for the next two weeks, so the next column will appear May 15th, 2024.

This article, Hello! It’s me! It’s the imposter syndrome!, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Speaking at WordPress EventsI know some of you may find this difficult to believe – but I was a painfully shy child. I would feign illness and injury to get out of swimming classes, accept being the worst Girl Scout because I didn’t want to talk to people to sell cookies, and almost vomited in 5th grade because I had to do an oral report on a book I’d read.

Fast forward and now I love it. I love sharing. I love that there might be things that I know that others can learn and use to make their businesses better.

And you can, too. There are so many opportunities to submit talks and share your expertise with others. The calls for speakers for WordCamp US, WordPress Accessibility Day, Stellar Spark, and more WordCamps are open. And you can apply for any of them.

Feeling nervous? That’s ok. Find someone to help you get your first talk up and running. It’s a great way to boost your confidence, share your story, and talk about the things that matter to you.

In the SpotlightDerek Ashauer is the lead developer of Conversion Bridge, Sunshine Photo Cart, and Confetti.

Join Us on MeetupJoin us for our Meetups! Details on our Meetups are available on our Meetup page. (May dates will be posted soon!)

• Agency Owners Meetup 4/25 (APAC)
  https://www.meetup.com/post-status/events/299998145/

Quick Links:* Gender Equality in WordPress Businesses Survey * WordPress.com: Making 43% of the Web More Dynamic with the WordPress Interactivity API * Do the Woo: New Show, Open Talk on Open Source with Robert Jacobi and Courtney Robertson * WPpodcast: WordPress es más rápido * The WP Minute: How Do We Market WordPress to the Masses? * WCEU: Tickets are Available * WCUS: Tickets are Available

Find the complete WordPress events schedule here.

Photo of the WeekToday’s photo of the week comes from A K M Intisar Islam on WordPress Photos.

You — and your whole team — can Join Post Status.

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status.

This article, Community Roundup Week Ending April 19, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Derek Ashauer is the lead developer of Conversion Bridge, his latest WordPress product that represents the culmination of his extensive experience in web design, development, and digital marketing.

His journey in this field began in 2000 with the founding of AshWebStudio, a side gig that became his full time freelance, 1-man agency business in 2007. He quickly adopted WordPress as a great solution to help build client projects and has custom built hundreds since.

In 2013, he wanted to diversify his income streams with a product and started with Sunshine Photo Cart, a WordPress e-commerce plugin specifically built for the unique needs of photographers. This venture was inspired by the needs of a client for an affordable solution to sell photos on her own website. Sunshine Photo Cart has grown and evolved from a side project into a comprehensive e-commerce platform plugin with 20+ add-ons serving thousands of photographers world wide.

In 2021, he wanted to make the plunge into products full time and created his plugin brand, WP Sunshine. Every new product, such as Confetti and Address Autocomplete Anything, has been the result of his work with clients for over 15 years and building their unique requests into products that others could use.

Now, with Conversion Bridge, he leverages all his experiences and insights to solve another problem he was having: the desire to move himself and clients off GA4 to a modern, privacy-first analytics platform. However, conversion tracking is a key component of any successful online business and there simply was no available options that worked out of the box for most WordPress plugins + alternative analytics platforms. Conversion Bridge offers 1-click integrations for nearly 50 WordPress plugins and 17 analytics + ad platforms.

What do you enjoy most about working in WordPress?

My favorite thing about working with WordPress is that most problems are already solved – it’s just a matter of putting things together.

When working on client projects, there is almost always an existing plugin (or small code snippet) which solves the problem my client has. In fact, sometimes the challenge is there are too many options to choose from. If it’s not a perfect solution from the plugin, the freedom to add custom code to get it exactly as needed is always available. I have been able to offer highly custom sites for clients at a fraction of non-WordPress based competing bids and clients were extremely happy with the end result I created. The fact that it works for both small brochure sites up to highly complex custom projects means I am only learning one CMS and can be significantly more effective and efficient for my clients.

As a plugin developer the benefits are similar: most of the things I would need to build are already solved. Authentication, database structure, admin page layouts being already defined allows me to move on to the meat of what I am trying to create and worry less about the low level stuff. I can ship new plugin products much faster than had I tried to build a SaaS. Being a part of the massive WordPress ecosystem also makes it easier to gain new customers.

What do you love most about your Post Status membership?

Connections with other business professionals are the best asset of Post Status. Everyone there is trying to build a business and there is a lot of mutually beneficial things we can all do for one another. Having a direct line to smart, kind, helpful people has allowed me to make connections which help me grow my product business. These are top WordPress people who not only give me feedback on the product but also have a massive influence to spread the word to others. I’ve learned a lot about the nuances and peculiarities of being in the WordPress space which helps me build a stronger business.

What business/web/WordPress advice do you have for others in our industry?

Taking that first step to connect with others in the WordPress community felt daunting, but it’s absolutely been worth it. I’ve found that being open to reaching out has brought me huge rewards. The community is incredibly supportive with people who are always ready to lend a hand or offer advice. A better community benefits everyone involved in it and I have felt that from the WordPress community. Don’t be afraid to dive in and make those connections – you’ll be amazed at the positive impact it can have on your journey with WordPress.

You — and your whole team can join Post Status too!

Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status and LinkedIn.

This article, Member Spotlight: Derek Ashauer, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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ChatGPT Gets Smarter Again* OpenAI has released GPT-4 Turbo, an upgraded version of its AI model, for premium ChatGPT users. * The new model improves ChatGPT’s capabilities in writing, math, logical reasoning, and coding. * It has a more up-to-date knowledge base, with training data extending to December 2023. * ChatGPT responses will now be more direct, less verbose, and use more conversational language. * The update follows the launch of GPT-4 Turbo with Vision in OpenAI’s API, which adds image understanding capabilities. * Get all the details in this article from TechCrunch.

US DOJ Publishes Standards for Government Web Accessibility* The US Justice Department has issued a final rule requiring websites of state and local governments to be compliant with the WCAG 2.1 AA standard. * The ruling also applies to entities that receive government funding, and will likely increase the litigation risk for those that don’t comply. * Key Highlights of the New Requirements: + WCAG 2.1 AA is the required technical standard for web pages and mobile apps + Entities have 2-3 years to comply based on its size + Some exceptions exist for archived web content, pre-existing documents and social media posts, etc. * These new rules apply to websites and mobile apps. * You can get all the legal requirements on the ADA website, as well as the press release from the DOJ.

The Admin Bar Publishes 2024 Web Professionals Survey Results* Kyle Van Deusen has published the results of The Admin Bar’s 3rd Annual Web Professionals Survey. * 1,144 freelancers and agency owners responded from locations around the world including USA (475), UK (134), Australia (83), and Canada (82). * 73% are full-time with an average team size of 2. * 72% charge less than $5,000 (on average) for a website. * 68% had a gross revenue of less than $100,000 USD (less than 10% make $100,000+ per year). * The average hourly rate for those surveyed is $94/hr ($2 lower than last year). * 66% are producing 90% or more of their work in-house, and nearly ⅔ say their WP business is growing. * More than half are using AI for work they previously paid a human to do. * View a top level summary of the survey results, or access the raw data in an Airtable.

Worth a Look* AI has been in WordPress plugins for a while now. Here are the 5 Best AI Plugins for WordPress (And Should You Use Them?) * WordPress is creating a “faster web”. Read about the recent improvements that make the internet faster for everyone. * Beaver Builder is celebrating 10 years and they have big plans for the future of their page builder!

This article, Business Roundup Week Ending April 19, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Transcript ↓

In this podcast episode, Michelle Frechette and Corey Maass dive into the intricacies of optimizing their website’s homepage and refining their pricing strategy for their product, OMGIMG. They discuss the importance of incorporating captivating images above the fold to enhance user engagement and consider the visibility of pricing information in the website navigation menu. The conversation also delves into the value of lifetime deals and the potential for a secondary market. Throughout the discussion, they emphasize the iterative nature of website development and the collaborative effort required to continuously improve user experience and drive conversions. Tune in for insights into effective homepage design and pricing strategies for online products.

Top Takeaways: Importance of Homepage Optimization: They recognize the significance of having a captivating image above the fold on their website’s homepage. Michelle suggests adding an image to make the page more visually appealing and engaging for visitors. * Consideration of Pricing Visibility: Michelle points out the absence of a pricing link in the website navigation menu. They discuss the importance of prominently displaying pricing information for potential customers, as it’s often one of the first things visitors look for on a website. * Value of Lifetime Deals: Corey mentions the success they had with offering lifetime deals during Black Friday sales. They discuss how some customers prefer lifetime deals and how others may collect them without immediate use, indicating potential interest in a secondary market for such deals. * Continuous Iteration and Collaboration*: Michelle and Corey plan to collaborate on optimizing the homepage together. They emphasize the importance of treating the homepage as a living document that requires regular updates and refinements based on feedback, observations, and evolving business needs.

Mentioned in the show:* Matt Cromwell * Zoom * StreamYard * WP Builds * WP Coffee Talk * WP Constellations * Give WP * Post Status * WordCamp * Appsumo

Sponsor: WordPress.comBuild and manage professional sites with secure managed hosting on WordPress.com. Beautiful themes, built-in SEO, and payment tools, and access to over 50,000 plugins. Everything you need for your business, plus 24/7 support from WordPress experts.

WordPress.comYou can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:* Corey Maass * Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status Draft podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

Transcript Michelle Frechette: There we are. So awesome. We’re trying something new today. We are getting out of Zoom and trying to use StreamYard. So that we can actually plan these in advance because with Zoom, you can connect and go live on your social channels like, like YouTube, but you can’t. Set it in advance. And what I wanted to be able to do is set it in advance so that we can, uh, promote it a little bit in a, you know, before we actually go live. So I thought, why not try this? Look, we can play, we can do this. Smaller. It’s fun. I’ve been playing with it a little bit today. And, uh, Even with, if you are interested in learning more, look at that, visit OMGIMG.co for more information. Yes, I spelled it right. I just had that panic thought that I didn’t.

Corey Maass: I checked, I checked.

Michelle Frechette: It’s all good. Yeah, so if anybody does join us, you can feel free to put comments now on YouTube and we will see them and be able to answer them live. So. And if you watch this another day, you can absolutely still put comments in and we will go back and see them and reply to them, or you can DM us or email us or whatever you want to do. Um, but we’re kind of excited to be able to try something new.

Corey Maass: Like early days, Cory and I were a little more diligent about, you know, Oh my god, I’m trying to sign into the OMG Gmail account where I have a bunch of stuff and, and they are sending a verification code to the OMG Gmail account.

Michelle Frechette: Well, that sounds like a circular argument to me or something.

Corey Maass: Exactly.

Michelle Frechette: That’s not helpful.

Corey Maass: Anyway, so so we may not be able to do the preview. We’ll have to um, See if I can find it. But anyway, um, yeah, I I think early on Cory and I were a little more diligent about or we were a little more consistent about speaking every wednesday at noon and so we could sort of promote that and so we had a few people that would jump in and uh, ask questions, but that sort of stopped happening cause we stopped being consistent.

Michelle Frechette: Well, you and I are consistent now, but having a, um, someplace to be able to promote this to link wise, um, we could probably find a way to embed it on one of our pages on the website as well. Well, so that when we’re live, it could be live there and we can always just promote that page kind of like WP Builds does. Uh, so we can maybe think about that, but first things first. How are you?

Corey Maass: I’m good. I’m good. And you?

Michelle Frechette: I’m good. Thank you. End of the day, I, I almost grabbed the bourbon today, but I was too lazy to go into the other room and grab it. So we will share that next week. Maybe I’ll sit here or there.

Corey Maass: Nice. Well, I liked your, um, your, uh, WP Coffee Talk intro that says, grab, grab a mug, grab your favorite mug and then fill it with a beverage of choice.

MIchelle Frechette: Yep.

Corey Maass: And, um, I signed up for a slot in a couple of weeks at 6pm, which is definitely bourbon hours.

MIchelle Frechette: Yes. There will be no coffee. That evening, there will only be spirits.

Corey Maass: It just eep me awake, you know.

Michelle Frechette: Exactly. I know that’s what I usually go for the herbal tea or just water. And I feel like I copped out on my own, you know, coffee talk by not having coffee, but it’s all good.

It’s all good. I mean, bourbon is better than coffee. In my opinion, other people may disagree.

Corey Maass: Some days or sometimes, yep.

Michelle Frechette: And if you’re sober, then I will not drink in front of you. Like if I have a guest who’s sober, then, then that’s not an issue, but that’s why you clear these things in advance, you know. But, um, yeah, I’m looking forward to having on there as part of our plan to get you out in more places and podcasts and things like that. So I was like, I better put my money where my mouth is and send you that invite link so we can get it scheduled. I know that you were just, uh, you just recorded with, um, Can Ben, I can’t think of his last name.

Corey Maass: Ben Lair. Blair WP.

Michelle Frechette: I know, but I, he has a real name. He was on my podcast once upon a time. Why.

Corey Maass: Do any of us?

Michlle Frechette: I cannot remember his name. I don’t know.

Corey Maass: You know. Yeah. It’s Michelle or Stellar, you know, or, or Michelle Coffee Talk or,

Michelle Frechette: Yep.

Corey Maass: Cory iThemes or you know?

Michelle Frechette: Yep. Like even on his website, he doesn’t put his last name, so I’m not going to feel bad about it. I’m like looking at his website for his last name. Anyway, Ben, you know who you are. Um, and you know, hopefully he won’t actually see this episode because I’ll just be embarrassed if he does, but that’s okay.

Corey Maass: Oh, he’s got a great sense of humor. He won’t be bothered.

Michelle Frechette: He really does. He really does. Um, excuse me. So yeah, he told me you were recording with him and I think you did too. He gave me a link to see the raw, the raw image or the raw recording. And you guys talked for over an hour. So my guess is he’s going to be editing that down a little bit.

Corey Maass: Yeah. Before he said, and he said probably Friday. So we can, um, so we had plenty of time to edit it and we can look at, um, promoting it.

Michelle Frechette: Awesome. Yeah. I told him to reach out to me if he needed any help. Cause this is his first time doing podcasts on his own and not being just a guest. So, um, I’m sure he will reach out to me if he has any questions, but yeah, so that was the first one we’ll get you on. I mean, maybe not the first, I think you’ve been on other ones. I know you were on. WP Constellations, which is one of mine. I should remember that very well, but that was months ago. So I can’t be held responsible for my faulty memory.

Corey Maass: Right.

MIchelle Frechette: Um, but yeah, so the, the idea is just to, you know, to keep getting the word out organically when you are bootstrapping, you know, when it’s a small plugin and you’re just starting out. I mean, it would be lovely if we had millions of dollars to throw at, you know, advertising, but. I don’t have millions. You don’t have millions. It’s not, uh, so we’re going to do the organic thing and just try to get the word out in different ways. And part of that is, you know, on the Post Status website. You can see every episode by the end of the week, we have a transcript and everything. We have our team over there that edits the edits, the, the post puts a synopsis. I love it. They listened to the whole thing for us, put a synopsis at the top, put a transcript in there, um, any links that we mentioned, those will all be in the show notes. And those go out every Friday on poststatus.com. So if you’re interested in looking at some of the back stuff we’ve done, uh, you can do it there or just on the YouTube channel, but the YouTube channel doesn’t have a transcript. So if you’re looking for transcripts, you definitely have to go to the website.

Corey Maass: Although YouTube’s auto closed caption, at least is pretty good. If you don’t need it to be static. Exactly. Exactly. And my articulation is impeccable, so the translation, the closed captioning is elusively dynamic in its ambiguity.

Michelle Frechette: Even humans Going over the transcript, make mistakes. So I found, um, I can’t remember exactly what it said, but it was so funny. Uh, on one of the shows that I’d done for Post Status, um, they missed the first line. And I think it said like, that my name was Michelle Fishette. Like I was a fish and I was like first line and my name is spelled wrong. Let’s fix that.

Corey Maass: Okay. So my last name, despite being spelled funny, did my camera just freeze?

Michelle Frechette: It did.

Corey Maass: Awesome. Um, so my last name, despite being spelled funny, uh, is, we at least pronounce it Moss, right or wrong. That’s what we’ve decided on. Um, which meant when I was born, uh, my mother could not name me Chris. I’d be Chris Moss.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, true.

Corey Maass: My mom could not name me Pete. I’d be Pete Moss and could not name me Mickey cause I’d be Mickey Moss.

MIchelle Frechette: Yes, you have to be careful.

Corey Maass: These are the dad jokes that I grew up with.

Michelle Frechette: Yes. Yes. Uh, and some women marry into names like that. I went to college with a girl named Kelly and she married Tom Pangelli and she became Kelly Pangelli. So like. You just never know.

Corey Maass: That’s kind of awesome.

Michelle Frechette: It is kind of awesome. Um, but yeah, any luck getting, getting logged in?

Corey Maass: Of course not.

MIchelle Frechette: Okay.

Corey Maass: Uh, circular arguments with, with Google are so much fun. Um, but I think I can just sign in on the wrong, so it’s, you know, all the bookmarks and credentials and stuff are stored under, I do, I do Chrome profiles. My dog’s about to explode. I apologize for the barking in advance. She hates things on wheels. She was scared at a young age by people on a bicycle and has never forgiven the world. And so the, um, we love this. The our neighborhood has one, two, three, four, four, five, um, eight year old girls. And so we call them the girl gang.

Cause they absolutely in an, in an eight year old sort of way, terrorize the corner that we live on, um, scooters just up and down bicycles up and down, and they even have a little. Um, powered jeep, like one of those kids size jeeps and they’re doing like, what are they called? Like Tokyo drifts. Like they’re doing donuts and stuff.

It’s a riot to watch them. And they just, they play, they play the way that kids are supposed to play. It’s fantastic. We love it.

Michelle Frechette: But the dog, not so much?

Corey Maass: But the dog, not so much. Cause yeah, they’re just, you know, they’re, the kids are up and down the street, up and down and, and again, anything on wheels, we’re not sure if.

She’s actually like protective of the people on the wheels, but anything with wheels, she’s, she’s not a fan of, um, but anyway, yeah. So we were talking about the social preview and the great irony that you’re saying it does not have an actual open graph image.

Michelle Frechette: It does not,

Corey Maass: It should.

Michelle Frechette: At least it wasn’t, I wasn’t getting a preview. It’s possible? Can we test it?

Corey Maass: And if you, if you share it with itself.

Michelle Frechette: I was gonna say, can you use it to test itself? Is that like a little too much inception

Corey Maass: Share screen. I bet I’m going to. Um, it will have to restart. No, I guess so preview what your website looks like.Share.

Michelle Frechette: There we go.

Corey Maass: That’s a better size and shape. Um, but if you plug in the URL, that is the URL. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette: Okay. Well, that’s interesting. Cause it was not giving that to me in social. When I went into, I can’t remember what our. Our social tool is that we’re using scheduler that we’re using,

Corey Maass: Yeah. But sometimes it takes a little while cause they, you know, it, it has to like go suck it in.

Michelle Frechette: So yeah, that’s true.

Corey Maass: Um, sometimes it takes a little while. Like I’ve noticed that with Facebook, Facebook, depending on how you’re sharing something, like well take an hour. Um, and, um, which is, especially when you’re automate trying to automate stuff, it gets precarious, but anyway. Um, so yeah, um, but this is our, um, social preview tool. So if you go to OMGIMG.co slash social slash preview, or in the footer of our, um, any other page, we’ve got a link, whoops,

Michelle Frechette: Tools, yep the tools link.

Corey Maass: Yep tools and then open graph tester. And I made it, yeah, look, look like a freestanding app, but it’s all part of the same website, but you plug in your URL and, um, so let’s see, I’m going to call you guys out here. Oh, no, you at least have an image.

Michelle Frechette: We do.

Corey Maass: Um, Facebook looks pretty good. The community for WordPress professionals. Excellent. Good wording. LinkedIn. So, I mean, it’s not, you know, there’s some branding there. That’s handsome. But not specific to, well, I guess it is for the homepage. It’s just fine. Like plugging in a URL, you know, it may or may not be specific, but.

Michelle Frechette: yeah, you can hear, I’ll give you another one. I just did a whole bunch of stuff over there. Let me find my stuff. Um, under the news page, we’re going to go to here. We’ll do this one. Copy link address. I’m in another browser. Let me find you again. I’m going to send this to you in the private chat. So pick that up and put that through and see, I’ll add you back. There you go. If you can add that, see what that one comes up with. It should come up with a bird. It does.

Corey Maass: Look at you.

Michelle Frechette: Nice.

Corey Maass: That looks great. And then we validate. Twitter image is missing, but that’s fine because it’ll pull in the Facebook one, and then all your other stuff looks good.

Michelle Frechette: It’s interesting is there is a Twitter image in there. I put it in the Yoast, made a Twitter card and everything, so I don’t know why it’s not showing that, but there is one.

Corey Maass: But that’s, it’s interesting that it’s putting in Twitter label and data. I’ve not seen that before. That’s new to me.

Michelle Frechette: Interesting.

Corey Maass: And you’re the creator.

MIchelle Frechette: I am.

Corey Maass: But that’s Post Status, shouldn’t the creator be Post Status?

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, you’d think I’m the.

Corey Maass: I mean, let’s be honest. This is the Twitter account that should be the one with more followers on it anyway.

Corey Maass: Yeah. Oh, but you put in a URL and you’re only supposed to put in the username because it Yoast, I think automatically puts in the ads.

Michelle Frechette: I didn’t put anything in.

Corey Maass: Ah, interesting.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Corey Maass: This is, this is the fun part of this stuff. Like, I mean, it’s terrible cause it’s all hidden to the human eye. Right. But if you look at your source and it’s, and it’s the magic. And I use that in a, both a good way and a bad way that the SEO plugins like Yoast or Rank Math or any of them do right. Is, is they try to, they fill in the blanks. Right. And it’s great. 90 percent of the time. And the, and the intention is great because they’re filling in blanks that you may, may or may not even know exist or whatever, but it’s also like, there can be surprises of what it actually pulls in. Um, and it, you know, in our use case, it’s the images like. It took me a long time to understand. I’ve talked about this before, but like going back and forth with Yoast, they explained to me, thankfully, like I’m a fifth grader because I was not understanding it, but of like, they look at the featured image, they look at image in context, they look at, you know, there’s all these places, but it’s like, cause I think most of us have seen that scenario where you share something and you’re like that, that low res. You know, like our logo is usually what’s first on almost all of our websites. Right. And so that that’s the first image that, uh, sequentially top to bottom that might get pulled in. And so suddenly you’re seeing like a grainy low res alias image and isn’t what you, how you want to be represented, you know, but you’re not aware of that process or the magic that it’s doing behind the, behind the scene.

Michelle Frechette: It’s like CSS. I write things in and it does things and I’m like, okay, but then why doesn’t it sometimes too?

Corey Maass: Right. Totally. Yeah. And, and I’ve been dealing, um, taking it a step further. Like I’ve, I’m in, I’m, I spent years running away actively. Running away from the HTML that in emails because it is the jankiest crap. Um, and there’s this, a markup, so HTML hypertext markup language. There is, um, the folks behind Mailgun created a newsletter service called Mailjet. And so to try to normalize HTML email, they created their own markup called MJML that then translates your markup to HTML that is the most gobbledygook God awful in like literally a human couldn’t read it, write it, can barely read it, but it’s what renders the most reliably across. All of the email clients and mobile, tablet, desktop. But man, the gobbledygook behind that is heartbreaking.

Michelle Frechette: Yes. Speaking of that, can I share with you something that I thought was very interesting? So I used to be on my. 12 years. I spent 12 years on my school board, my local school board, and there is an alumni association associated with it that I’m not, I mean, I am an alum, but I’m not part of the alumni association. Anyway, a teacher friend of mine, she reached out yesterday and she said that they’re having difficulty with their newsletter through MailChimp. She says, I guess there is not the flexibility to change layout or justification outside of center along with unwanted spacing.Yes, there is, but they don’t understand how to do it. She says, she’s going to be assuming they’re all the newsletter. I was thinking of just creating a word doc, converting it to a PDF and sending it out through the organization’s Excel database, any suggestions on Mailchimp, another platform or PDF, your anticipated input is greatly appreciated.I said, I use MailChimp for my weekly industry newsletter Post Status. I said, it can be frustrating sometimes, but if you want some help, I could probably set up a template in there for you to use or show you how to accomplish what you’d like. Like it, it, no, don’t just send out a PDF. First of all, I didn’t even get into it. That does to the planet. Right? Like you, I was just using it. If you’re sending it to hundreds or thousands of people with attachments like that, the resources that you’re using up in the, in the world are just, Oh my goodness. Plus people don’t want to open attachments. They’re afraid of attachments. And I understand that, right? If it’s just the, yeah, no, please don’t do that.

Corey Maass: Bless her for trying to solve the problem. Right?

Michelle Frechette: Yes.

Corey Maass: And that’s, and I’ve seen this, but like one of my clients, we actually are stuck in this position, not sending out PDFs, obviously, but Advertisers want an email to look a certain way, right? Big, pretty picture with their fonts and, and their branding and all this stuff. And so what we end up doing is sending one big photo, despite the fact that like, if the recipient hasn’t clicked the button that says, yes, Trust this person. They, all they see is a broken, one big broken image. And so we try to make sure that there’s alt text. So it says something. And then I usually try to argue for including a paragraph or something, but you know, so we’re doing it wrong. We’re, we’re doing honestly doing it as best as we can, but it’s like, there isn’t a good, right way to do this and never will. Cause email is email and it’s so ubiquitous and that you, it’s a ship so big, you can’t, couldn’t begin to turn it. So we’re stuck with what we’re stuck with. Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s heartbreaking.

Michelle Frechette: But sending a PDF is definitely the wrong solution. I will volunteer my time. I will donate a few hours to you to make that better for you. So one of the things I.

Corey Maass: Same offer stands, we’re totally digressing here, but that’s fine, um, is I had offered to set up like an ACF field that then renders this MJML and we’re finding that it’s, it is very reliable. In fact, the, the only frustrating part is that when it, um, when MailChimp imports it MailChimp then screws it up a little bit. Um, not badly, just that doesn’t like they don’t import, um, the preview text and some little things like that. But, um, but for the most part, we’re finding that it’s very, very reliable. So if you want. I had offered to set that up for Post Status offer still stands.

Michelle Frechette: Thank you I forgot about that quite honestly.

Corey Maass: Um, but if you, um, but at this point, like I’ve now done it two or three times. And so, you know, if, if, if I can help her out as well, like, you know, an hour of my time and, and it’s kind of, and what I love about it is it’s bulletproof, right? So it’s, you fill out a form in one, one way or another using an, using ACF and then It generates HTML. Again, that looks awful, or the code looks awful, but it’s reliably, it delivers reliably.

MIchelle Frechette: Yeah. I haven’t even looked at their website. I don’t even know like what it’s built on. I’m, I’m a little afraid, but I will look later and report back. I did not build it clearly. I have nothing. I have no idea what it looks like. Um, So one of the things I said I would do last week was tweet, or post, not just tweet, but post across our socials a little bit more, and I did that, and I posted at least once, okay, once, sounds better if you say at least once, but even if it was only once, um, in our Facebook group as well, so just trying to get a little more traction, a little more, um, Uh, a little more out there.

Corey Maass: Show a little bit of movement.

Michelle Frechette: Mm hmm. So I, um, I, I was pretty happy. I’m not gonna lie. I like when I can be, um, when I can be creative. And so I did a couple of memes and my favorite way, I will share my screen. How’s that? Wait, I have to remember how to do it. Present. Present. Um, share screen. I got it. I got it. Here we are. There you go. So, I loved this one that I created. Um, let’s see if I can make it a little bigger. But, look at that. It saids make them look. Oops, I did something I should have done. Um, cause you know, I’m not left handed.

Corey Maass: How do you zoom in like that?

MIchelle Frechette: Um. I’m just making the page bigger.

Corey Maass: Oh, okay. I thought you’d actually like zoomed in and moved around. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette:I did. Just with my thumb pad on the Mac book with two fingers, spread it open, spread it, close, move it to fingers, move it around. Anyway. So what I put over the top was make them look and I use, this is one of my favorite memes. I know it’s a little tired, but it still makes me laugh, but like boring featured image versus featured image using OMGIMG. And he’s like, Ooh, check it out. Right. But then my other favorite one. Yes.

Corey Maass: So. No, go ahead. Yeah. This one I loved.

Michelle Frechette: Marked safe from not having an open graph image today. Can you say the same? So, yeah, I mean, even if I’m just making myself laugh, but look at, we’re getting 171 views on that one. Um, this one, we got 197 views and we don’t have, we don’t have 197 followers. So like we have 71 followers, so not bad. Right. So it’s, it’s actually not, not bad.

Corey Maass: Yeah. I think, you know, this This is where I’m hearing very strange noises from.

Michelle Frechette: Oh. Haha!

Corey Maass: There is currently a monster under the bed. Um, I don’t know what she’s gotten ahold of, but anyway, um, uh, yeah. So the OMG account, it’s kind of a neat, I hadn’t thought of this so specifically, but like there’s a, there’s almost a relay race element of this, like OMG post something, which is obviously us. Which might get a dozen views, but then you and I repost it or comment or something, which then, you know, opens it. Opens it up and it’s, but at some point you hope that OMG will catch up and be able to like get those kinds of results on their own. And then ultimately like, you know, blow past us. Probably not, but you know, potentially, but it’s kind of a neat, I hadn’t thought of that, like that relay, ray relay race sort of effect or catapult kind of effect, you know.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah. That is, um, I do that all the time. I, I, I try, I do it sparingly, of course, because, uh, my followers on my Twitter account, for example, aren’t wanting, they’re, they follow me not because I’m sharing out other accounts all the time, but sharing my own thoughts and whatever, um.

Corey Maass: I think there is a good mix like, uh, you know.

Michelle Frechette: Exactly. So, so I do it sparingly, but it’s, I especially do it when it’s something that I’ve created in the other account and think is pretty funny or whatever, and be like, Oh, look at me. I’m really awesome. Um, but without saying that. But I make myself laugh. I hope I make you laugh too. Kind of thing, you know, um, which is.

Corey Maass: Um, what I was going to say is you, what I had never looked up was the origin of that image because of, like you said, it’s a very prevalent name. And so apparently it was actually a Portuguese stock photograph. Um, but if you look at the wiki, Wikipedia page, it actually, the first known use of it as a, as a meme and all that stuff that like, I had just never. Like memes are memes right and like once in a while you’re like, oh, I you know I know the movie that that’s from but like something like that. I had never thought to look up.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah I didn’t know where that one came from either. That’s awesome. So this is gonna be two more go ahead. Sorry I talk over you all the time.

Corey Maass: No, no, no same. Um, it was uh, first used on like a prog rock site in or forum, uh, in like more than 10 years ago in the Netherlands or some, you know, something like, I love that they could actually track the history.

Michelle Frechette: That is wild. I saw a, this is a complete aside. I saw, I read a story. I don’t remember if it was on like HuffPost women or someplace, something like that, but, um, about this woman whose daughter became a meme and it was a cautionary tale of not sharing your children’s pictures on social media because this, this woman, her daughter was like, just very young, like two or three years old sitting on a swing, like a, like a, in the park. And she was just grumpy. And she was like, her hands crossed her face, grumpy. And it said mood swing. And so that, but one of her friends took that picture, created the meme and started to share it. I don’t think they stayed friends. Um, and it turned into this huge thing where she was like, Quickly learned. You cannot take those things back once they’re out in the world, they are out in the world. Right. So you do have to be careful. I’ve misspelled things on memes before and got called out on it. And like, it was not me misspelling it. It was a typo. Literally my finger just missed it. And I went with it and I was so excited. Then I was like, now it’s got like 300 views and two and like, you know, 20 comments and I’m like, I can’t just delete it and do it again. Cause it’s got the momentum. But yeah.

Corey Maass: Well, I’ve seen the same with like pictures that were compromising and, you know, or, you know, people smoking or drinking or, you know, and other things. And, um, and it can’t come back. And, you know, and as, as you’ve commented on about a lot, there’s a lot of creeps and so they’ll tend to run with those things or they get, you know, viewed as a, in a creepy way, um, and it goes on and on, um, the, on a lighter note, there’s that. Um, like, what do I want to say? People, companies, whatever, who, um, squat on domains, there’s like a standard picture of a young woman, um, I don’t even remember the pose, like, just kind of in a park or something, and apparently that that is the single most viewed image. Because there are hundreds of thousands of these squatted domains and they all just use the same placeholder because the way you get around squatting on a domain is to sort of have a fake website. And so it’s the bare minimum meets the bare minimum requirements of that. Um, but so apparently that is the single most viewed image on the entire internet forever because it’s just on all of these sites.

Michelle Frechette: And I don’t even, I don’t know if I’d recognize it if you showed me. Probably would, but I can’t think of it. Um, I just had a thought. So first I want to show you what I had to write it down so I don’t forget. So first I want to show you this is, this is going to be our, um, our tweet tomorrow, our post across socials tomorrow, just highlighting the preview. And so that’ll, that’ll go out tomorrow. But remember a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about having a crafted 404 page.

Corey Maass: Mm hmm.

Michelle Frechette: Did we create one yet? I don’t remember.

Corey Maass: No.

Michelle Frechette: Probably not. Okay, so I just had a good like, caught us with our pants down kind of idea, which is, OMGIMG or OMG nothing to see here. Oh, the irony of it. Like an image plugin, there’s nothing to see here. I want us to do that so badly now.

Corey Maass: Totally love it. Add it to the list.

Michelle Frechette: Yep. I will write some content for that. I love it. That should be so, so much fun.

Corey Maass: And I still owe us the counter on our sticker landing page.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, yeah. And I need stickers.

Corey Maass: But I’m.

Michelle Frechette: You need to send me some stickers. So I can, uh, cause I have, um, expected that I’ll be going to WordCamp Montclair the first weekend in June. Then I will definitely be at WordCamp Europe, I already have my tickets, but, um.

Corey Maass: Nice.

MIchelle Frechette: Yeah, so I’ll be there too. And WordCamp Buffalo is coming up on May the 4th and I will be there as well. So yeah, send, send me stuff. I’ll bring them with me.

Corey Maass: Cool. And Canada. Are you still going to Canada?

Michelle Frechette: I am still going to Canada. That’s in July. Yeah.

Corey Maass: Yeah. All the places I’m ubiquitous. I’m everywhere. I wish. No, I don’t. I’m tired from being everywhere. Just kidding. Oh my goodness.

Corey Maass: The year before I was a couple of years before COVID that I stopped Camps because I was going to one a month at least and um and Meetups and stuff and it was too much You know, like I it was fun until it wasn’t I think it was also I stopped seeing, this is very self serving, but I mean, that’s sort of par for the course. Like I also stopped seeing a return on it, you know, like seeing the same people. So I’m in theory, giving them the same stickers or the same spiel, you know, as am I really spreading the word at this point? And that’s, I think that’s one of the. We talk a lot about camps. Camps are great, but there’s, depending on the camp, a lot of the time, like you’re just seeing the same faces. And then, and in fact, I.

Michelle Frechette: For the big camps, for sure.

Corey Maass: Yeah, you know, I was going to say that, like the, there’s real value. And this is why I’m like, I’m excited that the small camps are kind of crawling back or clawing their way back. Like most of them have been, some of them gave up even before COVID and then COVID. And so then I think a lot of them are stumbling to a start, which is great, but it’s those little camps that I think make a bigger difference for those small local communities, business owners, users, devs, you know, that kind of thing, like I’ve, I’ve talked about how I’m starting to go to the, my local Meetup is an hour away, but. That’s what I’ve got to work with, but I’m like, you know, and there’s only about four to six people there, but it’s that’s the community. So, okay.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It’s um, it’s interesting because Europe and Asia seem to be redoing like WordCamps are coming back much faster there than they are here in the states. And I don’t know if it’s because of the cost of things here or, or what it is.

Corey Maass: Yeah. Well, people were talking in the, um, the Post Status Meetup today, as you know, about how, um, costs, you know, prohibitive costs and how many spaces closed and how more spaces are more commercially minded post COVID like, so New York City, it’s like, if you’re what, so I’ve lived in New York for 12 years and ran Meetups while I was there and there were for me the, I mean, my Meetup was music based, but so it, um, an easy one was, um, nightclubs essentially before they opened. And so it led us into, you know, either a side room or an event room area, you know, and, and we would be long gone before the music started. Um, You know, or little theaters, there was a theater that I, I actually paid a little bit for, but I was, I was donating to them anyway, and so they were kind of happy to have me. But it’s sad and shocking and the state of things that, you know, in, in a lot of places you can’t find spaces anymore, or there’s liability issues or what have you.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah. I mean, our Meetup, our Rochester Meetup, we have not gone back to in-person, but we continue to have monthly Meetups, partly because for me, um, mobility is an issue, so I can’t walk in and out of places like I used to. And so I would have to have a friend with me that can put my scooter together. And it’s a whole thing, but also partly because over the course of the last few years, since we went into lockdown, we have a huge, um, attendance from outside of our area. So I have a, I have a fellow who comes almost every single month from Australia. And then we have other people from across the United States and into Canada. And so it doesn’t make sense to be like, okay, bye. We’re not going to incorporate you anymore.

Corey Maass: Right.

Michelle Frechette: It’s just convenient, quite honestly, to keep doing it online for me anyway. And if somebody else wants to take it over thats fine.

Corey Maass: At what point is it WordCamp Michelle and not, or, or, you know, Meetup, Michelle Meetup instead of Rochester Meetup. If most of the people are not local, not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just a different way of viewing it.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, we did try to come back to in person. We tried to have some coworking and people would not leave their houses. And it was so much extra work for me that I was like, well, somebody else wants to go organize some in person Meetups. Go for it. It’s not just me, but, um, it doesn’t tend to keep going otherwise. So, yeah, I don’t know, but it can be fun. I, uh, finding a location that’s open and free or very low cost is also challenging. So, it’s just a lot of, a lot of things stacked against us.

Corey Maass: Like usually. Like Nashville and then the one in Keene there, somebody runs an agency. And so it was nice enough to open their doors for the duration, you know, for an hour or stay late. You know, on a Tuesday once a month or something. And like that, that seems to work out well. There was, and, um, yeah, Nashville, the parking was an issue, but otherwise it was, you know, a nice group of people that would meet up and pretty, but same scenario, even, even in a city, the size of Nashville, like it pretty much, we always, it was always the same people. And we, we all knew each other, you know, which it worked out well because we were the ones that would help out. Ultimately would help out with WordCamps and then Nashville wound up hosting WordCamp US. And so we already kind of had a core group of people that were. Embedded and willing to help and, and whatnot, but, um, yeah. And what was it? New York, uh, Microsoft actually sponsored it.

Michelle Frechette: Oh that’s right.

Corey Maass: And so it was fun. It was fun because you, it was a building that I never had access to previously. And so going up 10, 10 stories and into, you know, basically as bland an office as you’d expect Microsoft to have in New York City. Um, but still kind of satisfying and, and they’d bring, they consistently had 50 or more people, which is pretty impressive.

Michelle Frechette: That is impressive.

Corey Maass: New York city. You’d kind of hope so.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, that’s true. But also it’s difficult to get around in there. So, and traffic and everything else. I mean, I know you don’t, most people aren’t driving, but yeah. Interesting for sure. So what should we work on? I’ll be adding more social content this week. That’s one thing on my calendar.

Corey Maass: Um, on my list, I am working on, I’m going to do another batch of, um, blog posts and I think we’ll just schedule them out, you know, they’re evergreen, so it doesn’t matter when they go out. And so one a week, um, covering, in fact, some of the topics that we had me talk about at the Rochester Meetup.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, perfect.

Corey Maass: You know, what makes a good photo? What makes a good featured image? What’s the difference between, you know, that still kind of pulling on that thread. Um, I think it, it’ll end up overlapping with some of our other content, but you know, for better or worse, some of this is, some of this is meant for human consumption and some of it isn’t really like, it’s still readable and right. You know? And so, um, and then it also gives us something to post about, something to tweet about, that kind of thing. Um.

Michelle Frechette: Overlap is fine.

Corey Maass: Yeah. And then, um, and then I’m still, um, I basically owe the world one again, like one or two big features that I think are going to push OMG over the, over the, uh, into like, I’d actually call it version one, like feature complete, not perfect by any stretch. And it, there’s a long, long tail of in the actual like image builder. There’s a long tail of. You know, styles and options that, that we could add to forever. Um, but at least the, the actual like generating of images, especially bulk generation is pretty crucial. So, yeah. All right. Dogs.

Michelle Frechette: Dogs saw wheels. Dogs saw wheels.

Corey Maass: We, uh, yeah, the, the good and bad of, of when we meet is, yes, hello. Um, 20 minutes from now is dinner time.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Corey Maass: So, uh, energy level starts to build, you know, and.

Michelle Frechette: Yep. I get it. Trust me, my tailbone’s been sitting here all day. I’m anxious to go sit something soft myself, but, um, yeah, yeah. So, so definitely, um, I’ll be working on some more social stuff to, you know, more entertaining as opposed to instructional, uh, cause you got to have a nice balance there and keep working on seeing if I can get you out to a few more either Meetups or on podcast, that kind of stuff to talk about what we’re doing, uh, with OMGIMG, uh, those are my two big ones right now, as far as getting some, some momentum going.

Corey Maass: Um, yeah. Um, and I’m, I, I have in the back of my mind. Um, so we have a trickle of traffic and we’ve had a few sales, but that tells me that, like, I mean, the number, it’s one of those, what’s the, the, there’s a term in statistics, but basically your data set is too small. It’s not significant. Um.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, not statistically significant.

Corey Maass: Not right. Um, uh, at some point I still. Think that we’re not like our homepage isn’t converting essentially. Um, and so we’re not telling the right story. We’re not convincing people of the, you know, and, uh, and or the price is too high and or people don’t actually have the problem we think they have. Or, I mean, there’s a ton of things to look at, but, um, but at some point, I do think we need to revisit that, whatever that, I don’t know what that means, whether we hire somebody or we, you know, we should, we need to bring people as guests onto our “podcast”.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, that’s a good idea. Actually.

Corey Maass: And then give them the opportunity to, um, tear our homepage apart. Um, Matt Cromwell comes to mind. Um, what’s his name? Luke. Um, like, you know. And.

Michelle Frechette: One thing I just noticed is, and I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before, but it’s, we’re plugging about image and there’s no image above the fold. So like, there’s nothing there that’s captivating. And we’re telling people it needs to be captivating and you need these images to grab attention. So we definitely need to put something there that it’s a little less word and more, you know, what, how good it looks and that kind of stuff. So.

Corey Maass: Yeah, I was going for simple and yeah, big and bold to get the message across, but I wonder that that explainer video, you know, isn’t better served. Up above, even though it’s, you know, not as, or not perfect or not as pretty or whatever, but.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, I think it should probably go back up at the top and then I, and then I also,

Corey Maass: I’m sorry, good ahead.

Michelle Frechette: I still think it needs my face up there.

Corey Maass: You want to be added to the roster?

Michelle Frechette: I mean, I wouldn’t be bad at it.

Corey Maass: All right. Happy to.

Michelle Frechette: It’s not a plugin by me, but I’m part of the team now. So.

Corey Maass: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. Um, And then I think a lot of the copy, I, I approached it as again, so like, you know, solving a problem like a more traditional SAS versus, you know, as we’ve talked about a few times now, like we are. The icing on the cake or we are the, you know, the glitter bomb that you’d love receiving in the mail or something. Um, and so we might revisit it in that way. Um, anyway.

Michelle Frechette: I’m going to start using the word pizzazz more.

Corey Maass: Love it.

Michelle Frechette: It’s a good word. It fell out of common use and we should bring it back. Or maybe razzmatazz. Something with Zs. I don’t know why Zs just make it like sizzle, right? Like jazz hands.

Corey Maass: Like sizzle.

Michelle Frehette: Yeah, exactly. Make your, make your featured image sizzle. Make it jazzy. I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.

Corey Maass: Add pizzazz.

Michelle Frechette: Oh, all the Z words, except like zoo, like zoo doesn’t make any sense, but it’s got to have a double Z, I guess. Yeah.

Corey Maass: Yeah.

Michelle Frechette: Four of them with pizzazz, but yeah, I think that we’re getting there.

Corey Maass: Yeah. Yeah. It’s the, you know, there’s just, there’s, there’s always a hundred things you could go in a hundred different directions. What do you choose? Um, You know, but I was, and I keep trying to think of, think back to my innocent days. Um, but like 10 years ago, starting Kanban was the first big commercial plugin that I released. And it was just me. And. And it took years. I think, I mean, the market has changed. Like there’s no question about that and, and competition and the way you reach people and community, community, you know, and all that kind of stuff, but it’s still, there are still parallels. And so I got the word out slow and steady over, you know, with a zero budget, you know, in a number of different ways. And so I, you know, I keep trying to. I didn’t keep notes or anything. I had a diary. Maybe I should go look at it. But, um, I’m just like, what, what did I do? That long tail, you know, kind of got more people through the door essentially.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah. I also, so I’m just looking at it again and I’m also looking at the fact that there’s nothing in the, I am logged in and I don’t know if we have a different menus for logged in or not, but, um, there’s nothing in the navigation at the top that says pricing or learn more. There is a big button that says start creating better images but to me that doesn’t say check out the pricing. Look and see the features, compare the features whatever. Maybe adding pricing in the navigation. Cause when I go to a plugin site, the first thing I do, like when I signed up for Streamyard today, the first thing I did was look for the pricing. Just me?

Corey Maass: Cause you’re signed in. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette: Okay. Perfect. Okay, cool.

Corey Maass: Plans and pricing features and benefits plans and pricing.

Michelle Frechette: Perfect. Yep. I was, I wondered if that was the case because I am logged in right now. So that makes perfect sense then. Good.

Corey Maass: Yeah, it’s exactly, I’m, I I’m exactly the same as you. First thing is, you know, is this even a price I would consider? Okay, I’ll read about it. Okay. I’ll read about it. But I’m, there’s no way in hell I’m ever gonna buy this unless somebody else pays for it.

Michelle Frechette: Mm-Hmm.

Corey Maass: Um, so, and.

Michelle Frechette: There is a lifetime deal, so like people could really get that in there. People love those.

Corey Maass: Exactly. Yeah. When, when we did Black Friday, we had about three dozen sales, and I think we were about half and half for the lifetime. And, and it’s, it’s interesting that, um, I, I had the same experience as stop sharing. There we go. Um, with social link pages, I actually put it on App Sumo and a lot, a lot of people bought it and didn’t ever activate it. People, there are surprising number of people that just collect lifetime deals. Um, and I’ve, I’ve definitely grabbed lifetime deals when I wasn’t necessarily ready, but. I was, yeah, it wasn’t, it wasn’t just to buy it, you know, but I, but people will sit on it. Um, and I don’t know, hope to resell or there’s so many Facebook groups that are dedicated to that stuff. I wonder that there isn’t like a secondary market. Um, once the lifetime deal goes away, people will then resell at a markup or something like that.

Michelle Frechette: There might be.

Corey Maass: I have anecdotal evidence of that. No proof. Um, whatever, whatever works.

Michelle Frechette: For sure. Okay, so I will work on homepage ideas, and I will work on, uh, writing some content for the 404 page, and creating some more social posts for this week. That’s my work.

Corey Maass: Or you’re fired.

Michelle Frechette: I don’t, no, I don’t, I, I, I, I was gonna say something about pay, but I couldn’t, so. I couldn’t think of anything fast enough. Damn it.

Corey Maass: Or I will do all that and I will owe you a second beer.

Michelle Frechette: There you go.

Corey Maass: Um, yeah, no, I honestly like, yeah, your, your eyes on the homepage would be great. Cause it’s, it’s one of those things like you, you want to review every, every once in a while anyway. I had momentum and then I got sidetracked. And so now you show it to me and I was like, Oh, right. I meant to go do dot, dot, dot. Like it’s a short list, but there’s still a list. And so frankly, if you looked at it and we’re like, well, we’re in there, let’s. Move these things around or change some of this copy and certainly add your smiling face. Like definitely now’s the time.

Michelle Frechette: I’ll make a list.

Corey Maass: Perfect. We could even do it live Would be kind of fun Because yeah, I feel like most homepages are living documents more than what we, we realize. Um, at least up to a point, I think if you’re, once you’ve reached Give WP status or, you know, like big and big and ongoing, like, um, you know, then it’s, you’re, you’re less likely to make impulsive decisions. Or it should be frankly, less likely to make impulsive changes. Um, but at our level, I’m, I’m, as I’m browsing around and looking at other people’s homepages, I’m like, Oh, we don’t have that. We should have that quick, go slap it in there, even if it’s, you know, a little more than a placeholder. Um, but, and then, and then you can continue to sort of massage over time. Um, But yeah, um, yeah. Get me that copy. I’ll make some changes. Um, and then I’ve still got, I want to flush out the sticker page landing before I forget about it. And we actually give out stickers and then people are mad at us. I’m mad at me.

Michelle Frechette: I can’t vote. Yeah.

Corey Maass: Um, and then, um, yeah. And then I, like I said, I’m, I’m, I want to do some blog posts. I think it’d be good to kind of, you know, continue to flesh that out.

Michelle Frechette:Yeah, I agree. Sounds good.

Corey Maass: I think we got our plan off a little early.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, I got our homework assigned for us. So go enjoy your dinner and we’ll see everybody else next week when we hopefully a little more, at least I am a little more organized and we can make some, some more, uh, strides forward on that homepage. So, all right, we’ll see you all later.

Corey Maass: Bye.

This article, Marketing a WordPress Product Live: Session 10, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

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Plugin and Theme Contributions* Plugin/Theme Developer badges should be persistent * Discussion: Plugin name length, readability and consistency. * Adding Support Reps: Include an “I have read the support guidelines” checkbox

Documentation and Support* Request to clear and update HelpHub support articles for zh_CN * Edited reviews do not show as recent * Fix singular/plural form for Persian language on WP Site

Code Efficiency and Quality* Code Refinement for Improved Efficiency

Feature Enhancements and Requests Add official “Team Reps” list in code / automate team rep access * Update PHP security recommendation * Rating System For Relevance Sorting * Remove the non-block editor * Make rejected photos aren’t computed in user’s stats Openverse Community Meeting Recap (2024-04-15) * Introducing Collection views for Tags, Creators, and Sources * A week in Openverse: 2024-04-08 – 2024-04-15 * TypeError: Failed to set the ‘currentTime’ property on ‘HTMLMediaElement’: The provided double value is non-finite * Site theme switcher

Playground* Playground plugin: % signs lost during the import * Suggestions for improving the WordPress Playground ‘Get Started’ documentation page * UpdraftPlus plugins doesn’t fully work in Playground * Documentation updates for Yoast’s Online Contributor Day * WordPress crashes when connecting to MySQL * Offer Playground puzzle pieces to WCEU sponsors * Support DELETE LIMIT

Pattern Directory* The Pattern Directory gets a refresh and is now powered by blocks * Style adjustments for selected item and apply button in multiple selection flow

Plugins* Plugin Review Team: 15 April 2024 * Notify Plugin or Theme developer of support requests * Proposal to remove the non-block editor option from support forums: * Bug report on edited reviews not showing as recent: * Enhancement suggestion to include checkbox for support reps acknowledging forum guidelines

Polyglots* Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – April 17, 2024 (07:00 UTC) * Add click to copy button to stats summary

Support* The Forums get a refresh

Sustainability* Sustainability Chat Agenda, April 19, 2024 * Sustainability Chat Summary, April 12, 2024

Test* Week in Test: April 15, 2024 * Test Team Update: 15 April 2024

Themes* Themes team update April 16, 2024 * Block theme: Applying “all” filter and searching for term resets to “curated” * Notify Plugin or Theme developer of support requests * Enhancement suggestion to include checkbox for support reps acknowledging forum guidelines

Training* Training Team Meeting Recap – 11th April 2024

WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

• Upgrading jQuery: Working Towards a Healthy Web
• Curl for 8.7.1
• Node 21.7.3
• React 18.2.0 (teaser for 19)
• PHP 8.3.6 Released!
• PHP 8.2.18 Released!
• PHP 8.1.28 Released!
• PHPCS 3.9.1
• WPCS 3.1.0
• Requests 2.0.11
• PHPMailer 6.9.1
• PHP Parallel Lint 1.4.0
• LibZip 1.10.1
• MySQL 8.3
• Composer 2.7.2
• Homebrew 4.2.18
• TC39
• Chromium Roadmap
• Firefox Release Calendar
• Safari Release Notes

Thanks for reading our WP.org roundup! We highlight the news and discussions from the good folks making WordPress possible each week. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.

Are you interested in giving back and contributing your time and skills to WordPress.org? Start Here › Contribute.

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Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire. Read the Post Status newsletter. Listen to podcasts. Follow @Post_Status and LinkedIn.

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Resources You can follow my weekly tweet thread where I post ten companies that are hiring ... Read more

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In the spotlight: Jeremy Fremont is the director of business development at Multidots, a leading WordPress development organization.

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DEIB work in WordPress. Upcoming events. Quick links to blog posts and podcasts from this week. And a photo of the week from diwan925.

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Navigating the Coming Changes in WordPress in 2024 Crucial WordPress updates are planned for next year, including the phasing out PHP 5, the rise of headless WordPress, the growth of WooCommerce’s, and the integration of AI tools. * Selecting the right tools and partners that are adapting to these changes is vital for agencies seeking to maintain their competitive edge. * Curious about how these WordPress changes will reshape the future web development landscape?* * https://pagely.com/blog/the-future-of-wordpress-exciting-trends-and-updates-to-look-forward-to-in-2024/

WP Undead: How “Zombie” Plugins and Developers Put 1.6M Websites at Risk Concern is rising over unreachable WordPress plugin developers causing enormous backlog, slow processing, and increasing unpatched vulnerabilities. * Patchstack has observed a significant risk within the WordPress community, with hundreds of unpatched vulnerabilities hosted in the WordPress.org plugins and themes repositories. * How can you protect your agency and clients? Can you help resolve the danger looming in the repository?* * https://patchstack.com/articles/the-wordpress-zombie-plugins-pandemic-affects-1-6-million-websites/

Guarding Your WooCommerce Store Against Card Testing Attacks Card testing attacks are an active and growing form of online fraud where thieves of stolen card numbers attempt to validate them using the WooCommerce checkout process. * The aftermath of such attacks can be dire, including lost inventory, accumulation of transaction fees, increased account decline rates, or even store suspensions and closures. * How can you improve your security against WooCommerce card testing attacks?* * https://www.commercegurus.com/woocommerce-card-testing-attacks/

Worth a Look…Human Made to host “AI: The Next Chapter” September 14, 2023 – This free events will highlight the latest real-world developments in AI, WordPress, and content publishing.

• https://hello.humanmade.com/ai-the-next-chapter

Review Signal’s 2023 WordPress (and WooCommerce) Hosting Performance Benchmark results.

• https://wphostingbenchmarks.com/

Search Engine Journal asked 6 AI chatbots to create a WordPress plugin that adds post word count to an admin column. See the results:

• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/creating-wordpress-plugin-ai-chatbots/495595/

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This Week at WordPress.org (September 4, 2023)Discover the latest from the WordPress community. From the future of WordPress & Gutenberg’s next steps to intriguing discussions at the Community Summit. Plus, get a sneak peek into WordPress 6.4’s development cycle. Stay updated, stay involved!

News* WP Briefing: Episode 61: Community, Summit, all at Washington D.C. * WordPress 6.3.1 Maintenance Release * The Future of WordPress & What’s Next for Gutenberg * WP20 – A Heartfelt Thanks

Community Summit Notes* Community Summit Discussion Notes: Iterating on the Team Rep role * Community Summit Discussion Notes: Open Source participation in global legislation * Community Summit Discussion Notes: Communication and Collaboration – Finding Your Way Around WordPress * Understanding contributor leadership roles in the WordPress open source project * Part I & II: Communicating… * Invisible and under-appreciated: bolstering “behind the scenes” contributions * Community summit discussion notes: Revitalizing contributor teams’ leadership pipeline * Community Summit Discussion Notes: PHP version support * Community Summit Discussion Notes: Can WordPress become the household name it deserves to be? * Community Summit Discussion Notes: Refreshing the contributor pipeline

WordPress 6.4* WordPress 6.4: What’s on your wishlist? * WordPress 6.4 Development Cycle

Accessibility* Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: September 1, 2023 * WCUS 2023 Contributor Day Summary

Community* WordCamp Mentors’ September check-in! * The NextGen Event Project: Your Ideas, Your WordPress Community! * Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) AMER/EMEA on August 23, 2023 * Call for ideas: new features for our NexGen WP events central page * Meetup Organizer Newsletter: August 2023

Core * Two Weeks in Core – September 4, 2023 * Call for Testing: Performant Translations * Proposal: An update to the Field Guide

Developer Blog* Adding and using custom settings in theme.json * Exploring the future of web development with WebAssembly and PHP * An introduction to block variations * The anatomy of a letterform

Meetings* Default Theme chat summary: September 6, 2023 * Dev Chat agenda, September 6, 2023 * Editor Chat Agenda: 06 September 2023

Design* Design Share: Aug 14-Aug 25 * Bringing Back the Weekly Design Triage * Admin Design Kickoff

Docs* Agenda for Docs Team Biweekly Meeting (05-Sep-2023) * Documentation Team Update – September 4, 2023

Hosting* Hosting Team meeting agenda 2023-09-06 * X-post: Community Summit Discussion Notes: PHP version support

Marketing* WordCamp US 2023 Contributor Day

Meta* Introducing the WordPress.org GitHub Invite tool

Openverse* A week in Openverse: 2023-08-28 – 2023-09-04

Performance* Performance Chat Summary: 5 September 2023

Plugins Plugin Review Team: 4 September 2023 Polyglots Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat- September 06, 2023 (07:00 UTC) * Improving Translation Suggestions from Other Languages

Project* Proposal: Documentation translation/localization

Support* Proposal for updated support guidelines

Sustainability* How the WordPress Sustainability Team was born during WordCamp Europe 2023 * Sustainability Chat Agenda, September 8, 2023

Test* Test Chat Summary: 29 August 2023 * FSE Program Let’s Start From The Beginning Summary * Test Team Reps: Call for Nominations * Test Team Update: 4 September 2023

Theme* Themes team update September 5, 2023

Training* What’s new on Learn WordPress in August 2023 * Learn WordPress Newsletter – September 2023 * WordCamp US 2023 Contributor Day Recap * Let’s share our notes from the Community Summit * Information Sources for WordPress 6.4 * Looking for feedback: Learning pathway outlines

Tutorials* Intro to the Site Editor * વર્ડપ્રેસ પ્લેગ્રાઉન્ડનો ઉપયોગ કેવી રીતે શરૂ કરવો * Common APIs – Dashboard Widgets * How to create a video tutorial for learn.wordpress.org

Online Workshops* What is the Domain Name System? * Speaker Workshop for Indian Women in the WordPress Community Part 2 * Speaker Workshop for Indian Women in the WordPress Community Part 1 * Common WordPress APIs: Metadata * WP dev livestream: Sendig block theme * APAC: Using the navigation block * Using the navigation block * Common WordPress APIs: Metadata * WP dev livestream: Sendig block theme

Courses* WordPress Community Team Supporter Basics

WordPress TV* Enhancing Slide Management for Video Publications

WPTV* Latest WordPress TV videos

Related News:* jQuery 3.7.1 Released: Reliable Table Row Dimensions * Node v20.2.0 released * PHP 8.3.0 RC 1 available for testing * PHP 8.2.10 Released! * PHP 8.1.23 Released! * PHPMailer 6.8.1 * Changes in MySQL 8.0.35 (Not yet released, General Availability) * TC39 * Composer 2.6.2

Thanks for reading our WP dot .org roundup! Each week we are highlighting the news and discussions coming from the good folks making WordPress possible. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.

Are you interested in giving back and contributing your time and skills to WordPress.org? Start Here ›

Get our weekly WordPress community news digest — Post Status’ Week in Review — covering the WP/Woo news plus significant writing and podcasts. It’s also available in our newsletter.

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I asked members in our #WCUS-2023 channel for their takeaways from WordCamp US 2023:

“WordCamps are like an old denim jacket. Even if you haven’t worn it in a while, it’s still comfortable. WCUS 2023 was my first in-person WordCamp since WCUS 2019. But I was able to resume conversations without a beat. It was good to see old friends, and create new friends (especially the ones that only seen on Zoom). Regardless of the little controversies and the spats that we do have, we’re still a strong vibrant community, and one that I’m proud to be a part of.” —Ray Mitchell

“I think people were ready to be together again. Particularly with a lot of smaller camps still on hiatus from the pandemic.” —Eric Karkovack

“It felt like accessibility was well represented throughout the conference and top of mind for many in attendance.” —Steve Jones

“It was my first in-person WordPress event ever. I’ve always been too introverted and unsure of myself to go before, but after meeting people virtually here and for the In The Loop Podcast I felt it was time to jump in. I’d particularly like to thank @Megan Rose for encouraging me to be more active in the WordPress community.

The event was VERY overwhelming. like walking into an airport full of people with the expectation that you’re actually supposed to try to interact with all of these strangers! But after experiencing it all, I realize that each time you go, that crowd will be less full of strangers. I understand why most people probably work their way up from meetups to local WordCamps to the big national ones.

I’m an agency developer, so it was really nice getting to meet other devs like me to talk shop. The sessions were great too. But my biggest takeaway was that I should have started attending these 10 years ago.” —Cory Hughart

“We have a wider range of skills in this community than I think we often consider. I took away how much we need to step outside our old connections and both make new ones but get to know again others. The recent years saw many changing their focus, approach and priorities either due to global change or just life – we have all in some way changed.

I also took away we need more space to connect diverse building. It’s great if two similar people create something but even better if different people don’t. It’s great if someone successful grows more success but how can they pass that on? I saw gaps still and spaces we need to be honest about from core through to products where we haven’t done our collective best yet to grow.” —Tammie Lister

• “The sponsor hall should be closer to the talks.
• BlackPress exists and is awesome.
• The WordPress community is still super-strong.” —Zack Katz

“Even though the most viewed tweet on the hashtag was a anti Pride event one the community had our back. That was great to see.” —Mike Demo

“Great networking and catching up with friends is always something I look forward to every year.” —Alex Stine

“It was such a great time to see everyone in person and stay upto-date with where WP market is going. Loved the playground.wordpress” —Baljinder Singh

• “It’s amazing how the people at WordCamp USA, who help power a $597 billion WordPress economy, are so down-to-earth. Hanging out with them feels both humbling and easygoing.
• The venue was the perfect place for sparking meaningful conversations, fostering teamwork, and finding new inspiration.
• The new Q&A setup is a win! It seems like a great way to get even the introvert folks to join in on the discussions.
• Anyone else wondering why Matt didn’t reveal the location for the next WordCamp USA?
• How cool would it be if the WordCamp organizers set up a system for more attendees to have quick one-on-one chats with Matt? Usually, it’s the folks who are already close to him who get most of the face time. What if there was a random draw for attendees who are interested to get a 15-minute sit-down with him at future events? Just a thought!” —Anil Gupta

“I think it was just so great to see everyone in real life for the first time in 3 years and it made it so much more special”. —Seth Goldstein

“The WordPress Community is both personally and professionally vested in everyone’s achievements no matter the size and there for you when you need a hand. WordPress is continuously growing and we are not stopping now.

THE GREATS

• Being able to network in person again
• Hugging old WP friends and making new ones
• Listening to what is to come
• Great food and great venue

THE GROWTH OPTIONS

• Sponsor hall should have been closer
• Wished National Harbor would have been closer to the Metro (subway)
• Always never enough time to say hello to everyone!” —Michele Butcher-Jones

“It was a great to have a full WCUS back again after several years. The venue’s size was a problem in some ways, but sure made for a memorable location. On the downside, I’m not an agency owner myself, but heard from a lot of people that their agencies were having a tough year.” —Steve Burge

“WordCamp U.S. stands out not just for its business insights, but also for the unique harmony of community and camaraderie it fosters. Rather than being a typical conference dominated by competition, WCUS is a confluence where professionals unite, exemplifying the true spirit of the WordPress community. It’s rare to find such settings in today’s competitive landscapes, a testament to WordPress’s positive ethos. My discussions around WP Cloud and Jetpack AI were invigorating, and the launch of the WordPress.com 100-year plan set our gaze on the 22nd century. At its heart, WCUS is as much about building lasting relationships as it is about advancing technological frontiers.” —Jesse Friedman

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Do you have sites among the 75% of all WordPress sites still running MySQL 5.7 or earlier? If so, read this! MySQL 5.7 is reaching its end of life (EOL) in October 2023, paving the path for broad adoption of MySQL 8.0. * MySQL 8.0 brings significant changes to data types, security, partitioning, and more that you need to understand to make the transition smooth. * Get familiar with 8.0’s enhanced features and the upgrade process in this informative article*. * https://deliciousbrains.com/mysql-57-eol-means-for-developers

Master All Things Blocks – New WordPress.org Learning Resource Now Live As the Classic Editor plugin remains one of the most popular—with over 5 million users—WordPress.org aims to facilitate the switch from Classic Editor to Block Editor. * WordPress’s shift to a new admin design more similar to the block editor brings more urgency to understanding and using Blocks. * How does your agency engage with WordPress’s desired shift to a block-centric workflow?* * https://wordpress.org/blocks * https://wptavern.com/wordpress-org-adds-new-page-to-explain-blocks

Image Optimization Plays an Integral Role in Your Site’s Success Optimizing images can significantly enhance WordPress site performance by boosting loading speeds, improving user experience, and positively impacting search engine rankings. * While initial optimization setup can be complex, there are plugins and tools to make the process more efficient. * How can you effectively leverage image optimization strategies to enhance user experience and boost your SEO ranking?* * https://bloggingden.com/optimize-images-for-wordpress

Worth a Look…Looking to understand the balance between customization and scalability in choosing between WordPress plugins and SaaS platforms for your projects?

• https://bizbergthemes.com/wordpress-plugins-vs-saas-exploring-the-key-differences-and-how-to-make-the-right-choice

Feel frustrated with WordPress sometimes? You’re in good company! Sujay Pawar talks about his five biggest frustrations with WordPress and five reasons why his business is built around it.

• https://wpastra.com/resources/biggest-frustrations-with-wordpress

An in-depth, free guide on the use of WordPress as an enterprise-level CMS, sharing perspectives from industry professionals who use it daily for large-scale projects.

• https://bigbite.net/wordpress-for-enterprise/

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Tiffany Bridge is a local rabble-rouser, a damn good cook, and the first person you call when your friend moves to town.

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The WPCareerSummit is coming soon: October 20! We want the best speakers with the ... Read more

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All the things from August 21-27, including Community Summit and WCUS! Oh, and the Selfie Challenge updates!

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Transcript ↓ In this podcast episode, Corey Maass and Cory Miller demonstrate and discuss ... Read more

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The ethos of my entrepreneurial career has always been partnership.  I’ve long sought to ... Read more

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Rachel Winchester, or Win for short, is an independent product designer and startup founder ... Read more

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Zoom AI Privacy Controversy The Striking Impact of Generative AI on Search and SEO What Would it Take to Topple WordPress? Worth a Look Well This is Terrifying… Hackers Can Now Steal Your Data Listening to the Sound of Your Typing Google Analytics 4 is Here to Stay… 7 Pro Tips Even if You’re a...

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With just a few days before Community Summit, Contributor Day, and WordCamp US, many initiatives across the project are gearing up for time well-spent together.

Docs, Training, and several other teams are joining together to work on translations and localizations in a way that supports Gutenberg Phase 4 Multilingual.

The Design team is working on the new look for the admin dashboard. Meta team shares a post on the new Blocks page and seeks your feedback. They also have a post calling for working group participants to define the criteria for the Supporting Organizations page.

Concluding last week, the New Contributor Mentorship Program share the highlights and an oveview of our month together.

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The WPCareerSummit is October 20 We want the best speakers with the greatest and most up-to-date information to share. Our attendees are coming to learn either how to find a job or how to recruit and hire talent for their businesses, and providing good, actionable content is our goal. We will provide each speaker with...

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WordPress Community Summit The Community Summit has released its schedule for the two days it will run prior to WordCamp US, August 22-23. The schedule includes 4 tracks and conversations around everything from DEIB to Open Source participation in global legislation. There are 125 attendees listed publicly, so each session should be fairly well attended....

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Keanan is a long-time WordPress developer & agency owner who is passionate about helping other developers level up in their careers & knowledge.

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How can you better leverage AI in your agency? How can vulnerability reports improve your agency's security practices? Could Learn WordPress Cohorts help you increase your proficiency and expand your agency's service offerings?

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WordPress 6.3, Lionel, has been released. It's time to test out the details and footnotes blocks, give the WP_DEVELOPMENT_MODE a try, and check out the new Get Involved tab on the Welcome screen.

The WordPress Training team announces its first course cohort for Learn.WordPress.org. The course will cover Developing Your First WordPress Block, and offer real-time collaborative learning.

In December of 2021, Log4j vulnerability sparked governmental-level decision-making implications in the EU (Cyber Resiliency Act) and USA (SBOM). WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Typo3 have shared concerns regarding the EU CRA.

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In the Face of Constant Change, What Do Freelancers Need From WordPress? Are you capitalizing on Google Analytics 4 or just hoping for the best? Revolutionizing WordPress? GoDaddy’s AI-Powered Tools Boost Agency Efficiency Worth a Look Newly Formed WordPress Sustainability Team: Here’s What It’s All About Synced Patterns: Reusable Blocks are Evolving in WordPress 6.3...

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What do WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and TYPO3 have in common? Leaders across these Content Management Systems have come together to express their concerns and seek dialogue with EU legislators regarding the proposed Cyber Resilience Act. They emphasize the vital role of Free and Open Source Software in fostering innovation, security, and economic prosperity.

We're just a few days away from August 8th's WordPress 6.3 release.

Two Gutenberg-related topics are worth consideration. First, Alex Stine shares how he sees WordPress using his screen reader. Secondly, consideration is underway to merge Gutenberg plugin releases into alpha releases.

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Community Roundup Week Ending August 4: WCUS Speaker Linkeup, Upcoming Events, & Quick Links to podcasts and blog posts for this week.

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The WPCareerSummit is October 20 We want the best speakers with the greatest and most up-to-date information to share. Our attendees are coming to learn either how to find a job or how to recruit and hire talent for their businesses, and providing good, actionable content is our goal. We will provide each speaker with...

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Transcript ↓ In this podcast episode, Cory Miller introduces his professional coach, Kelly Gallagher, to discuss the role of coaching in personal and professional growth. They explore the difference between coaching and therapy and how they can complement each other. They highlight the value of coaching for high achievers and how it can help with...

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We're under two weeks away from WordPress 6.3 release. Have you started testing?

Big changes are envisioned for the Media Library, Admin Dashboard, and more. You have an opportunity NOW to share ideas. What considerations do we need to account for? Read the Phase 3 post from Matías and share your feedback in the comments.

No longer will you find Reusable Blocks. In WordPress 6.3, you'll now find Synched Patterns. Read on to learn why the name has been changed.

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Community Roundup Week Ending July 28: Post Status Code of Conduct, Upcoming Events, & Quick Links to podcasts and blog posts for this week.

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The WPCareerSummit is Scheduled This year’s WPCareerSummit will be held October 20 online. Registration is free and open now. Our Call for Speakers is also open, as is the Call for Sponsors. Questions? Let me know! We will announce our keynote speaker soon! You can follow my weekly tweet thread where I post ten companies...

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The best time to send an internal email: A data-dive into 8.7 million email deliveries | AXIOS HQ “Timing is Everything: When to Send Internal Communication” is a comprehensive report revealing the optimal time to distribute critical organizational messages. Based on an extensive analysis of 8.7 million email deliveries from Axios HQ, this report offers...

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WordPress 6.3 Release Candidate 2 – WordPress News Other Links:

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Blake Bertuccelli-Booth is an outcome-oriented community builder and technologist passionate about promoting equitable access to information.

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Drawing heavily from the WordPress/WordCamp Code of Conduct, Post Status has implemented a new Post Status Community Code of Conduct. While the Post Status Community works really well at self-moderating, a community like ours should always have a standard for conduct. This newly confirmed code of conduct sets a base level for behavior and respect,...

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WordPress 6.3 to Introduce a Development Mode Other Links:

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Introducing Bluehost WonderSuite Bluehost announced WonderSuite, a comprehensive tool that helps users set up and customize their websites using WordPress. WonderSuite includes several components: WonderStart, an onboarding experience that integrates user responses into the website creation process; WonderTheme, a versatile WordPress theme with customizable options; WonderBlocks, a library of block patterns and page templates tailored...

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The WPCareerSummit is Scheduled This year’s WPCareerSummit will be held October 20 online. Registration is free and open now. Our Call for Speakers is also open, as is the Call for Sponsors. Questions? Let me know! You can follow my weekly tweet thread where I post ten companies that are hiring in WordPress. (Been laid...

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Community Roundup Week Ending July 21: WCUS, Sponsoring WordCamps, Upcoming Events, and Quick Links to podcasts and blog posts for this week.

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In this panel discussion, Michelle Frechette poses questions asked by the Post Status community about the benefits and how-to’s of sponsoring WordCamps. On the panel are Taco Verdonschot (Yoast), Katie Keith (Barn2), Drew Griswold (StellarWP), and Lincoln Islam (WPFunnels). Transcript ↓ Episode Highlights: 🔗 Mentioned in the show: 🐦 You can follow Post Status and...

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WordPress 6.3 will arrive on August 8, so there isn't much time left for testing compatibility. Whether you are a plugin or theme maintainer or managing clients' websites, now is the time to test the latest features. Mike Schroder shares their most anticipated feature with auto-rollbacks coming.

Collaborative editing is coming to WordPress, but what might that look like? A much-needed refresh of the Admin dashboard will also arrive as we expand Gutenberg from posts and pages through themes and now to additional parts of WordPress. Rather than voicing your opinions after such large overhauls ship, now is the time to read through the Phase 3 ideas and provide insights.

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Patrick Posner is a self-employed WordPress developer who is building, maintaining, and selling several popular WordPress products.

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Accessibility This week I wrote about the SLAPP lawsuit that Audio Eye filed against accessibility expert, and WordPress community member, Adrian Roselli. The conversation over in the Post Status #club channel was enthusiastically supportive of Adrian and his messages about accessibility and against overlays. Mike Demo also covered it in the Business Roundup this week....

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According to LinkedIn, there are over 20,000 jobs available in WordPress, so why does it seem that for those who are job seeking it’s hard to find a job. And why are there hundreds of applicants for each position? At this year’s WPCareerSummit, we hope to help with that. This year’s event will be held...

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Post Status Business Roundup Week Ending July 14

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Post Status Tech Roundup Week Ending July 14

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In the spotlight: Carl Alexander, a PHP developer from Montréal, Canada and the solo founder of Ymir.

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Law Office of Lainey Feingold posted this week that Adrian Roselli is the target of a SLAPP lawsuit filed by Audio Eye.

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WordPress 6.3 is less than one month away. Get started testing now and tune in for the live product demo.

As we head into WordPress 6.4's kickoff, it's time to set our sights on Gutenberg Phase 3: Collaborative Editing. Your feedback to the ideas presented is important.

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In this episode, Michelle Frechette, Director of Community Relations at Post Status, talks with Patrick Posner, Founder and Developer at Simply Static, about the importance of being open and approachable, creating opportunities for others to join conversations, and making space for new connections. They discuss various strategies for networking, such as using tools like Calendly...

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Community Roundup Week Ending July 7: WordCamp Dhaka Canceled, July Post Status Meetup Dates, Quick Links, and the Image of the week.

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It continues to be a tough job market in tech. With the amount of layoffs over the last six months, it’s easy to see how there are hundreds of applicants for almost any opening. Our jobs board can help! Here’s hoping the second half of 2023 is kinder! Also, follow my weekly tweet thread where...

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Supreme Court backs web developer who didn’t want to create same-sex wedding sites. In a landmark decision that has sparked widespread disappointment, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of a popular service provider, allowing them to refuse same-sex wedding services to LGBTQ+ couples. This ruling, based on the service provider’s freedom of speech, is...

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iThemes: Why WordPress Malware Scanners Are Worthless In a thought-provoking article recently published on iThemes, the effectiveness of WordPress malware scanners is critically examined. The article suggests these tools may not be as reliable as users hope, often failing to detect and combat malware, especially on WordPress sites using supposedly protective plugins. This revelation underlines...

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Community Roundup Week Ending June 30: WordCamp Europe, WordCamp US, & upcoming events & links to other interesting stories.

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Release season is upon us as we approach WordPress 6.3's August 8th release. Your help is needed testing the latest changes.

Do you run or attend WordPress events and notice only one type of person is attending? What can you do to be a good ally to foster, promote, and support diversity and an inclusive space? Sign up now for the July 20th WPDiversity workshop.

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Applications to be mentored as a contributor in the inaugural Mentorship Program have now closed. The team is selecting both mentors and mentees at this time and will kick off the first cohort on July 12.

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Transcript ↓ In this episode, Cory Miller, CEO of Post Status, and Rob Cairns, Founder, CEO, and Chief Creator of Amazing Ideas at Stunning Digital Marketing, discuss the importance of website security, client communication, and managing client expectations. They also talk about the need for businesses to treat their websites as valuable assets and allocate...

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In the spotlight: Jay Walsh leads communications and PR for WooCommerce, the internet’s most-used ecommerce platform.

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Transcript ↓ Cory Miller, CEO of Post Status, interviews Lyndi Zavy, Founder and CEO of Rivers and Roads, about the topic of burnout and leadership. They discuss the importance of self-care and how leaders often neglect their well-being while trying to hold everything together. Top Takeaways: 🔗 Mentioned in the show: 🐦 You can follow...

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Transcript ↓ Corey Maass and Cory Miller continue the development of their new WordPress plugin, Crop.Express. In this episode, they discuss the importance of finding personal fulfillment, embracing the journey, and enjoying the process of pursuing hobbies and personal projects. They encourage everyone to reevaluate their definition of success and find meaning in the act...

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Transcript ↓ Corey Maass and Cory Miller continue the development of their new WordPress plugin, Crop.Express. In this episode, they discuss designing pricing plans and creating a compelling website homepage for their new product. They delve into the intricacies of annual and lifetime subscription options and the inclusion of site licenses for different customer segments....

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In this episode, Marieke van de Rakt and Joost de Valk from Emilia Capital discuss their investment process with Michelle Frechette. They talk about evaluating potential investments, providing feedback, and the importance of finding a good fit. Their investments in the WordPress space, Marieke’s women empowerment program, and participation with WordCamp Europe reflect the excitement...

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Transcript ↓ In this episode, Cory Miller and Corey Maass explore the delicate balance between professionalism and creativity in branding and marketing. They also discuss the importance of incorporating feedback into the product development process, utilizing user testing and testimonials to refine features and continually improve. The impact of their collaborative efforts has led to...

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Community team is considering tooling around the building and using the WordCamp websites, in addition to the naming of events. To help speakers attend WordCamps, additional lead time for visas is requested as well. Share your thoughts now.

WP-CLI has released 2 updates. Get a look at what new features are available.

See the dev blog for more ways to use the block inspector.

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Transcript ↓

In this episode, Cory Miller and Corey Maass discuss their progress on a project related to image generation and sharing. They explore the use of Open Graph (OG) images, social media platforms, and the importance of consistent branding. They mention the need for a logo and discuss the design concept, leaning towards a fun and vibrant style. They also touch on website development, pricing, and marketing assets. The conversation revolves around simplifying the image generation process and creating a user-friendly product. Overall, they aim to finalize the project’s features, branding, and logo to move forward with the launch.

Top Takeaways:

• Logo and Branding: The importance of creating a logo and establishing a consistent branding for your project. You want a logo that represents image generation in a fun and vibrant way, potentially incorporating bright colors and a big, fun font. It should look good on different merchandise items like t-shirts and baseball caps.
• Image Generation and Sharing: The main focus of your project is image generation and sharing. Using a logo generation tool and exploring concepts related to image generation, sharing, and open graph images. The goal is to make the process of generating and sharing images easy and efficient for users.
• Project Progress: The progress of the project, including bug fixes and updates. The plan is to address the bugs and implement additional features and improvements. Once the sitewide and post-level functionalities are handled, the project will be ready to share with others. Defining the project’s style, including the logo and overall branding, is an important next step

Mentioned in the show:* Crop.Express * WordPress * OpenAI * Post Status * WP Beginner * Fiverr * WordCamp * MakeLogo.ai * Vova Feldman * Syed Balkhi * Open Graph Image

You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:* Corey Maass * Cory Miller (CEO, Post Status) * Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status Draft podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

TranscriptSession 15 Corey & Cory Launch a WordPress Product LiveC&C 15

[00:00:00] Cory Miler: All right. Hold on before we go live. Okay. Um, what’s on your mind

[00:00:21] Corey Maass: today to talk about? It looks like you’re streaming to YouTube, but I’m not recording.

[00:00:33] Cory Miler: Okay, I’ll just push record.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to Corey and Corey on launching a product lot has been happening in the background. Mainly Corey’s been on a manic work streak, but we have a working version of the plugin on post edit and uh, he gave me a walkthrough yesterday setting stuff. Corey, what are we, what’s on your mind today to talk, talk about?

[00:01:03] Corey Maass: Uh, I think we are, uh, getting close to the first milestone of actually having a product that you, you specifically could start using. My clients could start using maybe, um, I’m gonna install it on all of my websites. Um, But I think we can start. I’ve got a, after the installing it on post status yesterday, which we chose not to do live, which worked out just fine.

Um, but we’ve got a, a pretty slick little product, um, a short punch list of bugs to fix that I’m working on, um, over the next couple of days. Um, But I think we could start pivoting to how we’re gonna present this publicly. Um, you know, start setting up the marketing site. I’ve got the e-commerce set up. I think it works to actually take money.

We haven’t tried that yet, but that’s okay. Um, so yeah, I think it’s the, the next steps to talk about here now are, you know, what we need. So, I mean, for us, but also talking abstractly about. You know, once you have a product, uh, what do you do? So

[00:02:33] Cory Miler: yeah, with the product, we’re in this interesting phase, which is working.

It’s working. When we put it up on a live site, yesterday, we were both making notes about where the product is. But I, I still go back to, I think this is so valuable. Me putting on the client customer hat and actually using it. And more so than I think any product I’ve had before is really using it and thinking about it creatively.

How I want those things to come out, I think is gonna formulate back to products. So, so while it already has like our initial OG image, open graph image for site wide. We did some reviews in the past episode. Um, I did some work and I, I really saw some patterns in the synthesis. Mm-hmm. What, like, it is gonna go do.

Well, you, you were like almost simultaneously building it, which is awesome. Um, I gotta tell you from yesterday, um, we got, we got some polish that we, we know we’ve been working on, um, that you even saw and were like, oh, we need this. Um, I love your openness again about hearing feedback and, Hmm, before using it just shows how good of a data of an entrepreneur you are.

But the, the one I’m really eager to is getting to the blog posts because for this product, uh, it’s, it’s more so than just an open graph image. It’s like a social image to share with the post to make it compelling. I think all that work we did with Crop Express, So it’s all good. Mm-hmm. Helped, like think through what we’re doing now.

But I, I got giddy, you know, that I did some of the work when we did the pattern for the home, home or site default. Uh, I went on with some of the blog posts and I was like, this right

[00:04:34] Corey Maass: here is the money. Yep. Yeah. I’m, I’m with you. I think I, one of the. Pivotal moments for us with crop.express was you said, you know, I’m, I’m mental octopus.

I’m all over the place, you know? Yeah. Over here we do this and then we could do this, but it could do this, and over here it’ll do this and, and you’re like, what if we start with the feature image? I was like, that’s. You know, brilliant dart to the center of the dart board kind of thing. Um, and so with this, I really liked you, you did essentially the same thing where you’re like, OG image for the site.

And it was an easy lift for me to add that. So on activation, the plugin takes you to a little welcome screen, which doesn’t look pretty yet, but that’s fine. You upload a logo and you click a button and your site has an OG image. And so we are, I love that you install the plugin and a handful of clicks and we are offering value.

We are taking it already to um, Bringing, bringing your site. You know, we keep de debating about how we actually do this wording, um, but, or, or how we word this. But, you know, within a few clicks, our plugin makes your website more professional. Um, if you’ve got Yost installed, maybe you’ve already got an OG image.

If you don’t, we provide one, um, and our plugin will override. The image. So it’s like whatever you’ve done in Canva or elsewhere, you know, you can update, you can update regularly, that kind of thing. Um, so yeah, I’m, I’m with you. We’re, we’ve, we’ve reached that minimum viable product mentality in that we are immediately offering value, which I think is really cool.

Um, and then, The next, next thing following that OG image thread is, yeah, for each blog post, for each product, um, figuring, you know, again, initially it’ll be a, uh, a manual process of like, oh, you’re, you know, essentially for every blog post you, you are adding going forward, um, Once you’ve set up the blog post, you then can go set up your OG image.

Um, so we get there and that, that honestly is about 60%, 70% of the cleanup I need to do anyway. I. We are product complete, we are ready to sell a product. Um, and then, yeah, down the road, uh, there’s, there’s obviously lots of fun and, and interesting things. One, you know, like I wanna be able to, we’ve talked about, but I wanna be able to, like for you on post status, you’ve got, you know, dozens or hundreds of posts that already exist and so they will benefit from the Sitewide OG image.

But wouldn’t it be nice if you set up a template for a stand, you know, a template that goes with a blog post and click a button and it retroactively goes back and creates OG images for each of those blog posts, stuff like [00:08:00] that. Um, but I kind of think that that’s one that’s neat. You know, that’s icing on the cake.

That’s a version 1.1 kind of feature. Um, but also I, I do think we want a little bit of validation. Before that happens. Um, and or if we find ourselves twiddling our thumbs and you’re like, yeah, for post status, I we really need this, then we can call that validation and I can implement it. But, um, but yeah, it’s, it’s flushing out.

Being featured complete as far as OG images is, is the way to start. And obviously right along with that, it’s easy enough to create, um, a duplicate image that is square so you can throw it on Instagram or whatever. Yep.

Um,

behind the scenes, I think what’s really cool is. We kept, but after doing the, the first install yesterday on post status, Corey set up a first basic OG image. And then due to caching, we couldn’t see it. We could verify that it was there by viewing the source. And we knew the image was there, but we couldn’t see it.

And just now during our call, uh, Basically what’s funny is our Slack, private Slack conversation is just us posting post status.com back and forth, back and forth, trying to see the damn thing work and uh, Corey just posted it and adjusted it did just show up and that is one of the most satisfying things ever.

So yeah, it’s working.

[00:09:48] Cory Miler: Absolutely. I do think if I just put on the post status as a customer hat, Um, we do a fair amount of content and we want to, we have a significant following on Twitter and in, uh, LinkedIn and I particularly camp out on LinkedIn for a second. It’s really compelling to me and, and I, a couple years ago, I kind of, okay, I’ve just accepted invitations over the years.

Now I’m gonna see what this is about. I, I really think, especially with Twitter’s implosion, There’s a real value back to LinkedIn. Um, even more so than was there. But when I think about post customer for a second, we do a piece of content. We could just do the typical thing, copy, link, paste into Instagram, put a couple of words in it, do that thing.

Um, I think there’s value though, that image of like, I was just thinking like we do these weekly roundups with tech and business and like, or make wordpress.com for instance, or make WordPress, um, having like just the headlines. Mm-hmm. You know, like weekly roundup is the tech roundup and then there’s three or four bullets of like what goes into that.

So they’d know a preview of like, oh, I’m interested, I’m gonna click through, go to the link. That’s valuable to me because right now I’m just gonna take a link post in there. Hope the featured image looks decent, cuz it always pulls that. So, like, to me that’s value for, for post status. Client hat is like, it’s just right there.

Um, I can take a couple steps while I’m in the post. When I get it done is when I usually put it over there. And now somebody, somebody might schedule that, that’s cool. However, I kinda like post share it. Sure. Uh, and having that right there with like, I keep going back to my slide content slides I’ve done for talks and do different things and you know, some header with wall points and, and I think what I worked on the.

Image templates that you also mentioned was like holding in an actual image to that. Right. That’s always capture thought to me. But if it’s there, pulled in, adds a little visual pair pto where it’s just not like a slide.

[00:12:20] Corey Maass: Yeah. We’re gonna, it’s, there’s, there’s all these, from a text standpoint, there’s these, these loops that, or these circles we’re gonna want to close.

Um, Because it’s the, and, and we’re gonna have to think through the, the workflow, the UI for this, um, which, and it might be as simple as a button, but there might be some setup beforehand. So, we’ll, we’ll have to walk through this, but it’s like, that’s why I tried to wa I tried to talk this all out. I, I don’t know, two or three calls ago where I was like, okay, the first step.

And just a minute ago, in fact, the first step is the OG image. For the site. The second step is the OG image per post, which you’re gonna have to set up manually. Fine. Like we’re, we’re, we’re building a product. The, uh, one of the, the circles that I want to close for you and for, for the product pretty quickly is you, you’ve created a blog post or, again, I, I want to keep harping on product too.

Neither of us are in e-commerce. Particularly, but I, I think this is gonna be a lot of value. Um, but whatever it is, a post of some kind, you up upload a featured image. That featured image gets used in an OMG I M G, an OMG image. We’ll call ’em that. And then a, and then there’s an option to replace the featured image, right?

So it’s like you’ve uploaded a temporary featured image that then gets incorporated into a template. And generated as an an OMG image that then replaces the featured image so that the, essentially the headline on the blog post, wherever, however the featured image was used, which like you said, a lot of the time when you share.

The featured image comes up and I, I, there’s going to be instances where an OG image is almost moot because the featured image works has two purposes. One is as a featured image, like if you’re looking at a blog post, and the second is if somebody shares it. You know, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn will automatically pull in the first image, usually the featured image, which will be, which will act as the OG image.

So, so it’s one asset, multiple purposes. Um, but in both instances, I think that there’s, you know, when we were first really exploring this, we went and looked at, um, WP Beginner, I think we looked at, um, Prius’s blog and, and we saw that a bunch of them, or the two, I think the two of those, and a and a bunch of other sites, the featured image, it was almost redundant, but the featured image itself was s shareable because it had the blog post title and stuff in it.

Um, and I liked what you said a minute ago of like, often, right now you upload a featured image of. You know, business person at laptop looking businessy, you know, it’s, you know, and it might be a photo of, of somebody. But, but then you go and you share it and you hope that it’s relevant and you hope that the people will see a title that’s, that’s, you know, links the image to the content.

Whereas we’re, we’re talking about is, um, Yeah, is inserting, inserting the title right into the image. So again, it might end up being a little, it might feel redundant, or as you’re doing the workflow, it feels redundant, but you’re, you’re guaranteeing that every image has more value. Um, and then, yeah, here you’re illustrating the second.

Loop that we wanna close, which again, feels kind of meta, but it’s the like, create a blog post, take a picture of the blog post, pull that that picture in, um, to an, an OMG image, and then use that to share, or even as the featured image. So you’re gonna end up with, and in theory if you do this, uh, A couple if you, if you create a template using the featured image or create an OMG image using the featured image, and then take a picture of it, you could end up with, you know, a picture of a picture of a picture of a picture all the way down, which is kind of fun.

Anyway. Um, But I think that that’s, you know, we’re talking about value and, and a, one of the ways that we achieve value is information. So, headlines, excerpts, bullet points. The other way we, a, we add value is something com is, is by creating a compelling image. And I think at least right now, with the way or a current trend, That achieves, this is exactly what you’re showing, which is, um, an image of content, but in the context of a device.

So on a screen or, um, yeah, on a cell phone, on a desktop, that kind of thing. Yeah.

[00:17:37] Cory Miler: Was, uh, just looking at this for a second, thinking about when you’re saying the featured image, Is how, like I don’t mm-hmm. Feel like super, uh, energized by what I did here on these two. And I was like, okay, well, you know, when you go, like there’s, there’s two parts.

There’s the social value, we’ve already talked about that, but there’s the search value. Mm-hmm. The image is a piece of content that summarizes mm-hmm. Inspire someone to click through, but like almost go, like that’s thinking of it as a piece of content that is an image piece of content, but it has valuable stuff on here.

Um, and like it’s really that slide format is, you know, everybody takes a picture of really good presentations when they’ve got slides. Cause they’re like, this is cool. I don’t know what this is called in Google, Emmett Google search, Google Images, but, Makes me think when we get to this part, we need to have a caption.

Mm-hmm. Um, that when the image is out there, there’s a caption. It seems like, I don’t know what this is called within Google, the image side of things, but like, it’s an opportunity I haven’t seen really explored that I would mm-hmm. That I would like. You’re, you’re searching and those, that image side comes up too, um, where there’s.

Interesting content summarized for you, like right there, right. Um, that’s really valuable. So I was trying to think like, okay, how would you really want that to look like if you don’t have a featured image, which is my problem easily. Um, you know, would we put, even if there’s, I I was just thinking about

[00:19:33] Corey Maass: that for a minute.

Well, I like the idea too of, um, And I hadn’t thought of this before, uh, essentially a default featured image like we are using a logo. So let’s, like for post status, you’ve got, you’ve got the little PS infinity symbol everywhere. Um, but also the ev I think a lot of people associate like the homepage of post status has that image of people at.

One of the, the, you know, the post status conference years ago, um, that hasn’t changed in 10 years, excuse me. Um, but, uh, you know, but that’s, it’s now, it’s now it’s a bit of your branding, right? Like that’s now a photo that, that people might actually associate with post status. So if that was, um, if that was the standard featured I, the default featured image that got pulled in everywhere, you know, even if, like one of the things that we’ve talked about is.

Image, uh, is, is tr image treatments. So it’s like as a ba if the background was two women chatting with that was, you know, converted to black and white and had, and had an orange filter over the top. And so it was just, again, these are, these are all of the things that humans find compelling, even if it’s not obvious or.

Upfront or obtuse. Um, you know, having, having two eyes and a s and a smile is known to be compelling to humans at a subconscious level. So it’s stuff like that that, um, these little simple effects that we can start to explore down the road, or, I mean soon, sooner than later, but it’s like, as we’re going along, as we’re learning about this stuff, we can go, oh, right, let’s just add a default option for, you know, these background treatments.

Yeah, just looking at seeing.

[00:21:35] Cory Miler: Mm-hmm. Some publications like, obviously these

[00:21:38] Corey Maass: are,

it’s interesting. Yeah. I mean these are, you know, most of these featured image as a background. Yeah. Title pulled in and selected. Put this at the top of the bottom, and some of them have an excerpt below the title. That’s the whole thing. You know, and so it’s, it’s up to the authors or you know, publishers since this is New York Times to find compelling images.

Yeah. I mean, and so un you know, we’ve talked about that at various points. That’s not a problem we’re choosing to solve right now. Um, so as the publisher of a given blog, you still have to go find that compelling image. But once you do, we give you all these options to do something with it. And what I really like is we’re defining a, a process.

So it’s once you, yeah, that’s the picture. Um, once you essentially define your style, So it’s like I, I, I’ve talked about, I’m a musician as a hobby, and I actually have a, a new track coming out tomorrow. And so I’ve put that on my band camp and, um, you know, for every track that I finish, every re you know, release that I do, I now go into Canva.

I hit copy or duplicate from the last. Release image that I created. Yeah. And I changed the title, the text, and I changed the image. But that way the font is always the same. The font size is always the same. The colors, font, colors are always the same. So that’s what we’re talking about here is like you creating exactly what you’re doing.

Say this, you created this and saved this for a first blog post. The idea would be then to say, save this as the default. Blog post featured image template. So then you go into, you, you say word in WordPress, you say add new, you write a new blog post. When you jump in to OMG I M G, this is gonna come up first.

Do you want it, you know, right away create your, you know, A an OMG image from your saved default blog post OMG image template, and you say, yes. And it sucks in the headline, it sucks in the featured image and you might go in and tweak it a little bit. You know, like if the headline’s really long or it’s more fun to have like, just like you showed on that New York Times Instagram a second ago.

Depending on the image, you might want the title at the top or the bottom, but most of the work is done with you done for you. You tweak a couple of things, you know, move a couple of sliders and then you’re good. Um, I’m excited about that. I think that that’s gonna be neat. I think that it’s going to be, it’s one of those things that

one of the challenges is going to be for, because it, because they are associated with publishing. It’s. It’s a, it’s a hurry up and wait kind of product. That’s one of the only things, red flags that I have. So it’s like, if there’s a button for creating these images for all existing posts, that’s huge value.

Right? But this is also one of those, like you install it. And then you have to go write a blog post. And that’s why I’m really glad that we’re creating a sitewide OG image. We can create sitewide social images, you know? But if you don’t have, if you’re not gonna write a blog post until tomorrow, you don’t have a reason to use the plugin until tomorrow.

Now we talked

[00:25:32] Cory Miler: about assigning. Mm-hmm. You could go back to a previous post. Mm-hmm. So I wonder if there’s a thought where we put a preview of a post, you know, To get ’em started or

[00:25:43] Corey Maass: something. Mm, that’s awesome. So what I took,

[00:25:47] Cory Miler: one of the big things I took for that is the fact that people do are in the rhythm of doing a featured image.

I think I defaulted to these templates because I don’t. Mm-hmm. That’s my mindset. So I just was trying to play for a second. I go, I think these things still apply, you know? Oh, for sure. Image on left. Image on right image as background with opa. I was trying to find an opacity here, but, um, yeah, and then you want headline, like pin on the photo.

Do you want it up here?

[00:26:18] Corey Maass: Right. You don’t want it, you wouldn’t want it to cover a person’s face, so you’d move it to the bottom left. But if the image has people on the bottom, then you want it at the top or whatever. So, yeah.

Yeah, I’ve, you know, as I’ve been developing, so I, I did a, for anybody listening to this who didn’t watch the last one, go watch the last one. Um, because we did a, a little walkthrough, um, and, and showed my initial approach to the product specifically, we are not, Canva, we are not drag and drop like I and I at various points.

Like the developer in me wants to take this to the obvious extreme. Um, and, and that in many respects is Canva, which is drag and drop and, and infinite options. And. And I think, I mean, part of that, it it part of, I don’t want to go down that path because it’s just a hell of a lot of work and I want to just get this damn thing out the door.

But I also do think objectively that I, at least for now, prefer this approach because of what we’re talking about. Like if you want to go, if you wanna be in Photoshop, be in Photoshop. If you don’t, if you’re, if that’s a bit too much. Go jump into Canva, get creative, go wild. But this is, to me is meant to be quick and dirty as underselling it, but you know, quick and useful.

It’s just another step in your workflow. And that was, which is kind of the conclusion we came to out of Crop Express was like, you’ve got this workflow, here’s a pain point in your process, but it shouldn’t be the entire process. Yeah.

[00:28:14] Cory Miler: Well, just like playing with this, I go, okay, I get it. You know, put it in the background.

We’ve got left and we’ll have a right version of all this stuff. Yeah. But there’s an option of like set featured image as background. Then they can play with the color options you’ve given them. And I mean, I call that pretty good. Yeah. If, if you’re in the, if you just want headline and photo. This is an option if you want, I think, which is gonna be even BA could be even better, is like there’s a piece of content, like

[00:28:53] Corey Maass: mm-hmm.

Yeah. Again, I think that that’s like, that’s version 1.2, right? Where we, you know, one of the things that got us really jazzed talking about this early on was you brought up slides. Um, we’ve talked a few times about, um, drop, uh, poll quotes, drop quotes, block quotes, whatever you call ’em. And so, you know, I’m excited about, again, version 1.2 or whatever, where.

We actually have a little wizard that says like, here are the quotes from the page. Ah, and this is where we bring in ai and that’s why we, we make 2 million. Um, but, you know, throw this content at, at our integration with ai and it come and it comes back with three different bullet point summaries of the content.

And then we, as we automatically just drop that content in. There you go. We figured out the AI integration. I knew it was just a matter of time.

[00:30:10] Cory Miler: I’m using in a service called podway. Test it out. Yep. Um,

I can see how something like this

[00:30:24] Corey Maass: would look. Yep. Exactly. And this is where, again, like once, once a, once a template is defined, cuz these are all placeholders, right? So you’ve got a placeholder for the photo, the, the, the image of. The content, you’ve got a placeholder for the title, and then you’ve got a placeholder for a three bullet point summary.

Now either you can write that summary or again, we could have something write it for you, or you could have something write it for you. Um, but I love the idea. So one of the things that, so I’ve been playing with chat g p t, like everybody else for one of my products. I went into chatGPT, and I said, Write 20, um, 20 tweets.

Yeah. Broadly speaking, you know, for the topic of my product. And then I said, write 20 tweets that target creatives. Specific to my product and then business people, you know? And so it was very similar content, but slightly different. And so in the end, instead of 20 tweets over and over again, I wound up with 60 tweets.

And so I scheduled them one a day. Right. And so I’m picturing something very similar here where it’s like, you know, If you, if you had your featured image for the, for the, you know, the, the one you’re doing in right in front of us, you’ve got three bullet points. You’ve got a title, you’ve got a featured image.

Right. But like this is just one and. In, in our world now, you can’t, you’re never going to, or you shouldn’t, uh, just tweet about something once. You don’t write a blog post, tweet about it, and then forget about it. You need a long tail of content to be able to share, right? And so ideally, Not only would you say generate, like, say if this, what’s in front of us right now is, is your, you know, saved template.

Not only would you say generate this, but you would say, generate five variations of this. And you, I, this is again where I think I AI is a perfect candidate. You’d say, you know, Hey, chatGpT, here’s my article. Summarize it. With three bullet points in five different ways, and then we suck all that in. And then picture a page that just has this template with the different content.

You know, so there’s six versions right down, and you, and you go, which ones do you wanted to use? Bang, bang, bang. Save them all, you know, and then schedule them all. And that way, and you’ve got one that goes out each day or you do two days, four days, eight days. 16 days. So again, you get this long tail of content that isn’t identical but is all relevant.

That’s gonna be huge.

Yeah. Assuming that people are actually promoting their content the way they’re supposed to. Right.

[00:33:33] Cory Miler: Which is, is is part of the challenge.

[00:33:37] Corey Maass: Yeah. Yeah. I think that I, you know, your emphasis we’re on call 15, right? So your emphasis throughout all of our conversations on agencies and on professionals, teams, et cetera, while it’s not, I’m very much like the solopreneur in entrepreneur.

Whatever other funny way you wanna say the preneur word. Um, but I think small, I build small products for myself and so other people in my shoes. And it’s not at all that I won’t use this, but again, I, you know, I’m, I’m working with clients that have dedicated social media managers. They’re the target agencies that are doing full-blown marketing campaigns.

They’re the, they’re the target because again, it’s these, this long tail of content that that’s going to require variation, that are going to benefit the most from this. Yeah.

[00:34:49] Cory Miler: Yeah. I’ve been thinking really much in that regard as like, okay, what would I want? How do I, it’s like, This slide for that post, you know, something like this, like a treatment over here doesn’t take up too much space for the the brand, but at least brands it.

Yep. This is a post status thing, and then this is really informative content like mm-hmm. It’s really that summary. Too long, didn’t read. Yeah. Take this for any post. It’s like you said, you can throw that into Chatgpt and get a bunch of these things, but like, yeah. I don’t know if I worked on something like that, but I go, this case study warrants a lot like headline.

This is a roundup we do about what’s happening in WordPress core based. Basically, she has these every, every week. These are the things you would just pull from it. Three things you need to know. Have chat. ChatGPT, help you with that if you want, and then to put it here and then you go, okay. What I would normally do is say, save this as an image, and I’d go over to what if I should do that real quick.

Uh, there we go.

Stay right there. I need to work on the image, image size, of course, but then you’re just putting in alt text. I dunno why the logo didn’t show up. Oh, it’s right there. So you know, if you think about it, right there. You’re okay. You’re, you’re a member of Post, so select the idea is you can look at this and see it a glance, some of the things going mm-hmm.

And then decide to click on. That’s value for the social right there. We’ve already mm-hmm. We’ve already talked about that, I think, but I think philosophically, I’m shaping this a little bit up and my mind is, it’s the too long, didn’t read now. Mm-hmm. You get this and whatever this. Uh, Google image. Like what would be example where if I, here, lemme see how to change a light pole, light switch.

Something. You, you know what I’m saying? Like this, people also ask, there’s some, uh, search criteria. They come like this, you know, the video content that shows up. There’s sometimes, I guess it’s more pinteresty type stuff like,

Like of a better word, video show up. But isn’t there a section where images show up sometimes?

[00:38:08] Corey Maass: Yeah. Search for a product, search for, um, say like that. So, um, there you go.

So it’s like in shopping is what I found. Okay. This one. So now hold on, hold on. Um, click and start dragging one of those images like this. Yeah. Did it? Yeah. I just discovered this this morning. So you can drag an image into Google Lens to do, uh, to find out more meta information about. That image and whatnot.

Oh, really? Which I think is, so right now it’s sort of a hidden feature, but I think that that’s coming down the road too. But it’s like, you know, Google, pretty much any, any of these services now can do image parsing, or excuse me, text parsing from images. So they’re also going to be reading these images, which is really, really cool.

Regardless of what alt text you might provide. Do you know what this

[00:39:20] Cory Miler: is called in Google? Is this