th the actual content.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:40:30] Nathan Wrigley: It feels at the moment as if, whilst it&#8217;s a lot of fun, you are also saying, it&#8217;s a lot of fun for somebody like me. In the sense that, you know, you&#8217;re a developer, you can overcome these problems. Given all of that, is there still right at this point in time, is there still a benefit do you think, in just throwing on the plugins that are freely available at the moment and going for it, and just working with the limitations?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because, again I think if I cast my mind back to the beginning of Twitter. Twitter was nothing like what it is now. It took years and years and years for people to figure out what Twitter would be. For Twitter to figure out what Twitter would be. Facebook the same. It went through this iterative process.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I remember the Twitter fail whale. It was just a hot mess. 50% of the time, everything I tried to do just died. And so maybe it needs to be viewed with that approach. Yes, you may wish to be a part of the Fediverse, but we&#8217;re at the beginning of the evolution. We haven&#8217;t fully conceived of what that might be. And in the year 2023, 2024, that will become a little bit more solidified. But jump in, have a go with what&#8217;s available right now, developer or no.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:41:36] Alex Standiford: Yeah, I think so. If for no other reason than this. I always told myself that I didn&#8217;t care about the content I was posting on Twitter. Like I didn&#8217;t care a lot about it. I was just posting it because it was easy to post things there. I cared about being a part of a conversation. I treated it like a Slack chat, right? Where it&#8217;s, truly this thing that&#8217;s just going to go away. I don&#8217;t really care if I never see it again, that&#8217;s fine. But Twitter&#8217;s not that, it&#8217;s not. Content never goes away as we&#8217;ve seen, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, I found that I was, this became especially true whenever we started traveling in the camper because, I was posting all these cool things. These cool like little moments that would happen. Like, I&#8217;ll give you an example. I had a, I was in Taos last summer, and it was like three in the morning, and these donkeys woke us up. And we&#8217;re at my door, and I was like, what are these donkeys doing here? It&#8217;s three in the morning. And I whipped out my phone. I recorded a video. I published a tweet. Didn&#8217;t think anything of it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, of course that tweet became something that I was linking back to and referencing all the dang time. I didn&#8217;t think anything of that at the time. It didn&#8217;t matter. But then I decided I didn&#8217;t want to be on Twitter and I wanted to leave, and all of a sudden I&#8217;m deciding I&#8217;m deleting all my tweets. And I&#8217;m losing all that. Right, I gave up all that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now I have all that stuff and I hope to someday maybe be able to put it back on my site. But the point is, I wasn&#8217;t owning my content. I wasn&#8217;t doing it right. I wasn&#8217;t doing it well enough. I thought I was, because I was saving the super shiny, amazing blog posts, but I wasn&#8217;t sharing my most authentic self on my site. I wasn&#8217;t even sharing all of my content that I clearly cared about, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because I thought I didn&#8217;t care about it because I thought that Twitter was just a place for me to chat with people. But it proved to be very much not the case. So now, if nothing else, even if you&#8217;re manually, I mean, for weeks I was manually publishing on WordPress and then turning around and posting it on Mastodon.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was doing this manually, and if you literally just hide, you could add a filter onto a theme that doesn&#8217;t support it, and just hide all of the posts that aren&#8217;t, like your aside post type. So, if it&#8217;s a micro post, maybe it literally just doesn&#8217;t show up on your site today. You could still do it, and it would just look funny because it wouldn&#8217;t have a title, but some themes it might look fine. You never know, maybe a couple CSS tweaks and it looks great. But, I think it&#8217;s worth it for no other reason other than owning your content and being true to that fact, right? And truly believing and knowing that you have your stuff and it&#8217;s yours, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, my family doesn&#8217;t follow me on Twitter, right? So I had this really cool moment the other day where I shared a personal update about my son and, my site is set up to where my WordPress site happens to also be set up to where it&#8217;s a single WordPress website, but it&#8217;s actually. three different websites that are on the front end. So it&#8217;s actually managing, casualweirdness.life, alexstandiford.com and eventually it&#8217;ll also be managing, WP Dev Academy. So all three of these sites are running through this single site, and it&#8217;s just querying the data based on what site it needs to be.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So with that, I&#8217;m actually able to not only publish content across the Fediverse, but I&#8217;m also able to publish this personal update. And since it&#8217;s a personal update and it&#8217;s detected that it is, because it&#8217;s using a specific tag, it also automatically just shows up on the feed on casual awareness&#8217; site too, which is a more personal lifestyle blog of my family and me, compared to alexstandiford.com, which is a more holistic look.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it was really cool because I had this post, right, I published it, and I was able to send it and just share from alexstandiford.com, this is a post from me about me, that I want to share with you and it&#8217;s got a video on it. I know that seems silly, but there was just something really cool about being able to just share something on a personal level with my family, because I&#8217;ve never done that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s always been the blog is the business, right? The blog is buttoned up. I&#8217;m not sharing this content with my family because nobody gives a crap about WordPress until they suddenly decide they want to start a business. So, to be able to just use my site beyond networking needs, and be able to just share it, something like that with my family was really cool. It was this like first moment where I really felt that my site was like an intimate, personal thing, not just a tool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:45:48] Nathan Wrigley: You really have gone into the weeds of this, haven&#8217;t you? It&#8217;s fascinating listening to all of this, and all of the different ways you&#8217;ve got of consuming the content from three different websites and I would encourage anybody who likes UI and UX, to go and click the little clock icon on the top right of Alex&#8217;s website. You&#8217;re in for a surprise.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:46:05] Alex Standiford: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:46:07] Nathan Wrigley: That is something else, bravo. That&#8217;s fun.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:46:09] Alex Standiford: Thank you. Thank you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:46:11] Nathan Wrigley: One of the things that I suppose people get onto social media for, is for reach. And for that content that they&#8217;re producing to be seen by a bunch of people. How do we feel that&#8217;s going on the Fediverse? For my part, the graph just keeps going up. The user base keeps growing up. Is it logarithmic? No. It&#8217;s more of a linear growth, but it&#8217;s growth nevertheless. What&#8217;s your feeling on that? Because I feel that some people think, well, I can&#8217;t let go of Twitter because I have this business. I&#8217;ve built up a reputation there. I don&#8217;t want to lose all of that. Do you see people moving over slowly? Is that a trend?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:46:43] Alex Standiford: So to answer your question first off, I see more. I see a lot more. Honestly, I saw a lot more in December. It was just almost instantaneous. And maybe it&#8217;s because I found the right server and the right people when I was talking about the right subjects. I&#8217;m not sure.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It could also just be simply because I joined right at the same time as everybody, a lot of other people who were joining, who were excited about it, and we were all talking about it together. But even now, now that things have calmed down, relatively speaking. I don&#8217;t even notice a difference in terms of engagement, but I can tell you that for a while, I was cross-posting both on Mastodon and Twitter at the same time for a few weeks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And every post on Mastodon was consistently getting more engagement than it was on Twitter. And I have half the followers on Mastodon as I do on Twitter. So it&#8217;s definitely more for me. I have like 1800 followers on Twitter, and I think last time I checked I had somewhere around 700 on Mastodon. And it was still, two to three times as much engagement.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:47:37] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that&#8217;s amazing. It definitely seems to be growing. We&#8217;ll have to see how this whole Fediverse thing pans out, but it&#8217;s, for the moment at least, it&#8217;s very, very exciting. I do like the idea of creating some system where WordPress sits at the center of all of that, and the ability to create content over there and see it, see the impact of it inside of your WordPress website. Even though the impact, the commentary or whatever, was happening elsewhere.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If people are interested in this, Alex, and they want to reach out to you because it can be confusing. There&#8217;s a lot of strange pitfalls along the way. What are the best places to reach out to you? Don&#8217;t say Twitter.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:48:16] Alex Standiford: alexstandiford.com of course, is my personal site. So, I&#8217;ve got several blog posts I&#8217;ve written. You&#8217;re invited to ask questions as a comment on there. You can also just reach out to me on the Fediverse on Mastadon. I am @alexstandiford@fosstodon.org. That&#8217;s, you know, a perfectly fine spot to message me to. I check that pretty often. Of course, I&#8217;m on Slack on several different channels like Post Status, so I&#8217;m on Make WordPress as well. You can just message me directly on there too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:48:42] Nathan Wrigley: Alex, I hope that we&#8217;ll be able to say when 2024 rolls around that this has taken off. Let&#8217;s see how it all lies in a year&#8217;s time. Thank you so much for chatting to us about the Fediverse today. I really appreciate it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:48:55] Alex Standiford: Yeah, no problem. I appreciate your time. Thanks.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>On the podcast today we have <a href=\"https://alexstandiford.com/\">Alex Standiford</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He’s a web developer originally from Dover, Ohio, and has been tinkering with web technologies for years, but started his career as a web developer in 2015. He’s a digital nomad, living in a camper with his family for the last three years.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Alex has built WordPress plugins, websites, and web applications, and is an active contributor to the WordPress community, making updates to documentation errors, and participating in the organisation of WordCamps.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you are a user of social media, it’s likely that at some point you’ve signed up for platforms like Twitter, Facebook and possibly one of the many other options out there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>These platforms enable you to post content and have it seen by people all over the world. In effect, this is what your WordPress website does, but we all know that social media has managed to replace the traditional blog for many people. The notion of writing a blog post can seem like a lengthy enterprise, whereas a social media post is often quicker to write and gets pushed to the platform&#8217;s users automatically.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the podcast Alex explains how he’s noticed this shift over time in his own content creation. He’s put less effort into his WordPress site and has posted most of his ideas on social platforms. This however is something that Alex has decided to stop doing. For a variety of reasons he wants to take back control of his own content and make his website the centrepiece of his endeavours.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Recently Alex stumbled upon the Mastodon. It’s an open source platform which is built on top of the ActivityPub protocol. ActivityPub allows anyone to create their own social networking software which can interact with any other software using ActivityPub. This is what Mastodon is, but as you’ll hear, it’s not the only software; there’s many flavours of ActivityPub which can all communicate with one another, and this ecosystem is broadly called the Fediverse.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Alex talks about why he decided to delete many of his old social media accounts in favour of open solutions, and how he’s using plugins and his own coding skills to make it possible for cross posting of posts and comments between Mastodon and his WordPress site.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It’s a really interesting conversation about the recent surge in popularity of these distributed social networks and how WordPress can become a first class citizen in your digital life; so much more than just a website.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Useful links.</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/\">ActivityPub protocol</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://joinmastodon.org/\">Mastodon</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://pixelfed.org/\">Pixelfed</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://joinpeertube.org/\">PeerTube</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/\">ActivityPub WordPress plugin</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/share-on-mastodon/\">Share on Mastodon WordPress plugin</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>Alex&#8217;s <a href=\"https://casualweirdness.life/\">Casual Weirdness website</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>Alex&#8217;s <a href=\"https://alexstandiford.com/\">personal website</a></p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 17 May 2023 14:00:00 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:14:\"Nathan Wrigley\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:12;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:87:\"HeroPress: Exploring the Essence of Community – Explorando la esencia de la comunidad\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:56:\"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=5535\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:142:\"https://heropress.com/essays/exploring-the-essence-of-community/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=exploring-the-essence-of-community\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:19351:\"<img width=\"1024\" height=\"512\" src=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/051623-min.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt=\"Pullquote: This journey through WordPress continues to grow, making me stronger and filling my heart with joy. - En definitiva, mi viaje en WordPress sigue en constante evolución, haciéndome cada vez más fuerte y llenando mi corazón de alegría.\" /><p><a href=\"https://heropress.com/feed/#espanol\">Este ensayo también está disponible en español.</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hi, I&#8217;m Ericka Barboza, I&#8217;m a computer engineer, I was born in Costa Rica and it&#8217;s been my home since always. I love nature, plants and bird watching. I enjoy hiking and love going to the beach.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I look back and realize that 7 years have passed since I started this journey with WordPress and its community. I realize that time is fleeting.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_4ec00a-62 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\"><strong>How I found the WordPress Community</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I discovered WordPress in 2006, when I was working as a Web Developer for a digital production services company in Costa Rica. At that time, I created my first blog and as part of my job I had to make modifications to websites made with WordPress. I found it very easy to use.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, life took me in a different direction and I followed another career path. I started working in other companies, I worked for a bank and a consulting company, both jobs were not related to WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2014, I made the decision to become a freelance worker as a web developer in the area of web development and design. I have always been passionate about this field, so I decided to leave my stable job to follow my dream. I wanted to have a better quality of life and more free time to enjoy the days, away from the four walls of an office.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In that same year, I started working on projects in Drupal, which is another CMS. I also got to know this lovely community and began participating as a volunteer in Drupal Camps. </p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>I loved the idea of belonging to a community of people with common interests and a desire to help others.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2016, I heard that the first WordCamp San Jose Costa Rica was going to be held. So, I approached the group of organizers to offer my help. I felt that I had the experience to contribute to the organization of the event because I had already participated as a volunteer in Drupal Camps, and I thought it was a great idea to collaborate with this amazing community as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that&#8217;s how my journey in the WordPress Community began. I have been an organizer of 4 WordCamps in my country, Costa Rica (2016-2017-2018-2019) in different roles, including Lead Organizer in 2018. And this year, 2023, I joined the organizing team again and I am very excited about it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Being an organizer of a WordCamp was one of the most beautiful experiences I have ever had. It&#8217;s a job where you not only volunteer your time to make sure everything goes well, also you put all your heart into the community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once I joined the WordPress Community, there was no turning back. I became more and more involved, and as I learned more, I realized that I wanted to know even more. Being a volunteer in this beautiful community has been one of the best things that has happened to me in my professional journey.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_9f961b-2e wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\"><strong>What I love most about WordPress – Community</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I always tell people that what I love the most about WordPress is its community. From day one, I have found friendly and helpful people who are always willing to share their knowledge and experience. Being part of this community has allowed me to learn new things and tips, and I feel a great sense of belonging to a group of like-minded people with common interests and goals.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since 2016, I have not only been an organizer, but also an enthusiastic volunteer in the WordPress Community. As a result, I have had the privilege of volunteering at some international WordCamps.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>I have to admit, one of my favorite things about WordCamps is the afterparties.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s that moment when we all come together to network, relax, and even sing karaoke. During the pandemic, I missed the hugs and connections with both old and new friends I made at these events. I am so happy that they are coming back!</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2017, I attended my first WordCamp abroad, WordCamp Managua in Nicaragua. I had never been to Nicaragua before and I thought it would be a great opportunity to explore its natural beauty while attending the event. There, I met friendly members of the Nicaragua WordPress Community. I still keep in touch with them and I deeply admire.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The following year, in 2018, I had a dream of traveling to another WordCamp, but this time even further away from my home country and in a different language. I wanted to experience the global WordPress Community and see for myself how it operated. That&#8217;s why I decided to purchase a ticket and travel to WordCamp Miami 2018. It quickly became one of my favorite camps and holds a special place in my heart.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>WordCamp Miami showed me the other side of the WordPress Community, one that extended far beyond my country&#8217;s borders. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I learned that there were many more people around the world who were doing wonderful work for the community, and that they possessed great talents and expertise to share. There is a whole world out there waiting to be explored.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>During WordCamp Miami, I also had the opportunity to meet companies that sponsored the event, and that&#8217;s where I met GreenGeeks Web Hosting. I now work for them as part of the marketing team. Thanks to my job, I have been able to attend many WordCamps around the world, not only as a sponsor, but also as a volunteer and speaker.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am also passionate about being a volunteer at KidsCamp, which is like a camp just for kids that takes place as part of WordCamps. In 2019, I participated as an organizer for the KidsCamp at WordCamp San Jose Costa Rica.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was a wonderful experience seeing all those smiling faces of the kids, and I was able to bring my own nephews to participate, which is something I will never forget and will always treasure in my heart.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before everything fell apart with the pandemic in 2020, I had the opportunity to attend WordCamp Miami 2020 as a KidsCamp volunteer and Team Leader. I loved the opportunity to volunteer in another country and learned so much from the kids. It was the last thing that the WordPress community gave me before entering the pandemic, and I would do it all over again.</p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/image.png\"><img /></a><em>KidsCamp – WordCamp San Jose Costa Rica 2019</em>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_a4150f-8f wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\"><strong>I keep growing with WordPress</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I am grateful to WordPress and the community for all the professional growth I have acquired in almost 7 years and still counting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>My job at GreenGeeks has allowed me to travel to different WordCamps around the world, which has given me the opportunity to meet wonderful people and discover new opportunities.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If it weren&#8217;t for my active involvement in the community and my attendance at events outside of my country, I wouldn&#8217;t have had the opportunity to know this great company, which also shares the love for WordPress and its community. I am excited to continue growing alongside this community and see what new challenges and opportunities arise in the future.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the last few years, since 2020, I&#8217;ve been dedicated to running workshops for underrepresented groups in the WordPress community. Together with Jill Binder, Leader of the Diverse Speaker Training group and #WPDiversity, we have run workshops in Latin America specifically for women in the WordPress Community.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>This initiative has been incredibly motivating for me, as my goal is to support more women becoming speakers at WordCamps and becoming visible in the world of WordPress and technology as a whole.&nbsp;</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>It drives me even more to reach women in other communities in different countries and languages, and thanks to the translation of documentation into Spanish, we&#8217;ve taken an important step forward. Working alongside Jill on this project has been one of the best things I&#8217;ve found in this wonderful community.</p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/image-1.png\"><img /></a><em>WordPress Speaker Workshop for Women Voices in Latin America – Costa Rica 2022</em>\n\n\n\n<p>This journey through WordPress continues to grow, making me stronger and filling my heart with joy.<br /><br />I would like to express my gratitude to Topher for giving me the opportunity to share my story. Writing this has allowed me to relive&nbsp; many moments and I appreciate all those who took the time to read it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Until next time!</p>\n\n\n\n<h1 id=\"espanol\" class=\"kt-adv-heading_00d1d6-2d wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\"><strong>Explorando la esencia de la comunidad</strong></h1>\n\n\n\n<p>¡Hola! Soy Ericka Barboza y soy Ingeniera Informática. Nací en Costa Rica, y este ha sido mi hogar desde siempre. Me apasiona la naturaleza, especialmente las plantas y observar las aves. Disfruto mucho caminar por la montaña y me encanta ir a la playa.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cuando miro atrás y caigo en cuenta que han pasado 7 años desde que comencé este viaje por WordPress y su comunidad, me hace consciente de lo fugaz que puede ser el tiempo.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_4b6b6d-73 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\"><strong>Cómo encontré a la Comunidad de WordPress</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Descubrí WordPress en el año 2006 cuando trabajaba como Desarrolladora Web para una empresa de servicios de producción digital en Costa Rica, en ese entonces, creé mi primer blog y como parte de mi trabajo tenía que hacer modificaciones a sitios web hechos con WordPress, me pareció muy fácil de usar.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Luego, por cosas de la vida, seguí otro camino profesional y comencé a trabajar como Analista en Sistemas en otras empresas, trabajé para un banco y en una empresa de consultoría, en las cuales ninguna tenía nada ver con WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>En el año 2014, tomé la decisión de convertirme en trabajador independiente como Web Developer en el área de desarrollo y diseño web, siempre me ha apasionado este mundo, por lo que decidí dejar mi empleo estable para seguir mi sueño. </p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Quería tener una mejor calidad de vida y más tiempo libre para disfrutar de los días, lejos de las cuatro paredes de una oficina.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>En ese mismo año, comencé a realizar proyectos en Drupal, otro CMS. Tuve la oportunidad de conocer su bonita comunidad. Comencé a participar en los Drupal Camp como voluntaria y me gustó mucho la idea de pertenecer a una comunidad con personas con intereses en común y deseos de ayudar a los demás.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Para el año 2016, escuché que se iba a realizar el WordCamp San Jose Costa Rica por primera vez, y fue donde me acerqué al grupo de organizadores para ofrecerles mi ayuda, sentía que tenía la experiencia para contribuir con la organización del evento porque ya había participado como voluntaria en los Drupal Camp, y pensé que era muy buena idea también colaborar con esta gran comunidad.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fue así como comenzó mi viaje por la comunidad de WordPress. He sido organizadora de 4 WordCamps en mi país Costa Rica (2016-2017-2018-2019) en distintos roles, en el año 2018 como Lead Organizer. Y este año, 2023, me volví a unir al equipo de organización y estoy muy emocionada.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ser organizadora de un WordCamp, ha sido una de las experiencias más bonitas que he vivido, es un trabajo en el cual no solo pones tu tiempo de forma voluntaria para que todo salga de maravilla, sino que también le pones todo tu corazón hacia la comunidad.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Una vez que entré a la comunidad de WordPress, ya no pude dar vuelta atrás, cada vez me involucraba más, estaba enamorada y entre más conocía me daba cuenta que quería saber más. Ser voluntaria en esta bella comunidad ha sido una de las mejores cosas que me ha pasado en mi camino profesional.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_ca697c-7d wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\"><strong>Lo que más amo de WordPress – Comunidad</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Todo el tiempo le digo a las personas que lo que más me gusta de WordPress, es su comunidad, siempre encuentras personas amigables con deseos de ayudarte, aprendes cosas nuevas y tips del mundo de WordPress, me encanta el significado de comunidad, el sentido de pertenencia a un grupo con intereses y propósitos en común.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Desde el año 2016, además de ser organizadora siempre he amado contribuir como voluntaria y es por eso que también he tenido el privilegio de ser voluntaria en varios WordCamp internacionales.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Debo confesar que también me gustan mucho los afterparty de los WordCamp, ese momento donde todos hacemos networking, nos relajamos y hasta cantamos Karaoke, esa es una de las partes que más extrañaba con la pandemia, los abrazos, la conexión con los viejos y los nuevos amigos que haces en estos eventos, ¡me alegra mucho que regresarán!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Mi primer WordCamp en el exterior fue el WordCamp Managua 2017, que se realizó en Nicaragua, nunca había estado en Nicaragua, a pesar de ser nuestro país vecino, así que me dije, porque no ir y conocer de paso ese país con su gran belleza natural.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Conocí a amigables personas de la comunidad de WordPress Nicaragua, con los cuales conservo la comunicación y a los cuales les tengo también mucha admiración.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>En el año 2018, mi sueño era poder viajar a otro WordCamp pero más lejos todavía de mi país y en otro idioma, quería vivir esa experiencia, quería ver cómo era la comunidad global de WordPress, y por eso decidí comprar mi boleto e ir rumbo al WordCamp Miami 2018.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Sin duda, WordCamp Miami es por mucho de mis camps preferidos y al cual le tengo un cariño muy especial, porque fue el camp que me mostró la otra cara de la comunidad de WordPress, la de saber que esa comunidad no solo existe en mi país, sino que hay muchas más personas alrededor del mundo que hacen un trabajo maravilloso por la comunidad, esas personas con gran talento y capacidad para transmitir mucho de su conocimiento, hay todo un mundo allá fuera esperando ser explorado.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>En ese camp, también tuve la oportunidad de conocer a empresas que patrocinaban el &nbsp; evento y fue ahí donde conocí a GreenGeeks Web Hosting, la empresa para la cual trabajo como parte del equipo de Marketing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gracias a mi trabajo en GreenGeeks he podido asistir a muchos WordCamp alrededor del mundo, no solo como patrocinadora en los eventos, sino también he podido coloborar como voluntaria y expositora también.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Otra de las cosas que me apasiona es ser voluntaria del KidsCamp, que es como un campamento solo para niños que se realiza dentro de los WordCamp. En el 2019 participé como organizadora del KidsCamp en el WordCamp de San José Costa Rica, fue una experiencia maravillosa, ver las caras sonrientes de todos esos niños es algo que te llena el corazón y también pude llevar a mis sobrinos a participar y es algo que nunca olvidaré, lo atesoraré en mi corazón.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>En el año 2020, antes de que todo se derrumbara con la pandemia, tuve la oportunidad de asistir al WordCamp Miami 2020, como voluntaria del KidsCamp, como líder de equipo, amé la oportunidad de ser voluntaria en otro país, aprendí muchísimo de los niños y lo volvería a hacer, fue lo último que me dejó la comunidad antes de entrar en pandemia.</p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/image-2.png\"><img /></a><em>KidsCamp – WordCamp San Jose Costa Rica 2019</em>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_a4b68c-f6 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\"><strong>Continúo creciendo con WordPress</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Agradezco a WordPress y a la Comunidad por todo el crecimiento profesional y espiritual que he adquirido en estos 7 años y sigo contando.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gracias a WordPress y su comunidad, mi vida profesional y personal ha mejorado significativamente en estos 7 años. Mi trabajo en GreenGeeks me ha permitido viajar a diferentes WordCamps alrededor del mundo, lo que me ha dado la oportunidad de conocer personas maravillosas y descubrir nuevas oportunidades.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Si no hubiera sido por mi participación activa en la comunidad y mi asistencia a eventos fuera de mi país, no habría tenido la oportunidad de conocer esta gran compañía, que también comparte el amor por WordPress y su comunidad. Estoy emocionada por seguir creciendo junto a esta comunidad y ver qué nuevos retos y oportunidades se presentan en el futuro.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>En los últimos años, desde el 2020 en adelante, me he comprometido en la realización de talleres para grupos poco representados en la comunidad de WordPress. Junto con Jill Binder, líder del Grupo de Formación de Oradores Diversos y #WPDiversity.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Hemos llevado a cabo varios talleres en Latinoamérica, específicamente para mujeres de la comunidad de WordPress. Esta iniciativa me ha motivado muchísimo, ya que mi objetivo es apoyar a que más mujeres sean expositoras en los WordCamp y Meetups de la comunidad y que se visibilicen en el mundo de WordPress y la tecnología en general.&nbsp;</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Me impulsa aún más poder alcanzar a mujeres en otras comunidades de diferentes países e idiomas, y gracias a la traducción de la documentación a español, hemos dado un paso importante. Trabajar junto a Jill en este proyecto ha sido una de las mejores cosas que he encontrado en esta maravillosa comunidad.</p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/image-1.png\"><img /></a>WordPress Speaker Workshop for Women Voices in Latin America – Costa Rica 2022\n\n\n\n<p>En definitiva, mi viaje en WordPress sigue en constante evolución, haciéndome cada vez más fuerte y llenando mi corazón de alegría.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Quiero expresar mi agradecimiento a Topher por brindarme la oportunidad de compartir mi historia, ya que me ha permitido revivir muchos momentos al escribirla. También, agradezco a todos aquellos que han tomado el tiempo para leerla.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>¡Nos vemos!</p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://heropress.com/essays/exploring-the-essence-of-community/\">Exploring the Essence of Community &#8211; Explorando la esencia de la comunidad</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://heropress.com\">HeroPress</a>.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 17 May 2023 12:25:46 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:14:\"Ericka Barboza\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:13;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:76:\"WPTavern: WordPress 6.2.1 Released with Fixes for 5 Security Vulnerabilities\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=145117\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:87:\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-2-1-released-with-fixes-for-5-security-vulnerabilities\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1195:\"<p><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/05/wordpress-6-2-1-maintenance-security-release/\">WordPress 6.2.1</a> was released today. Those with automatic background updates enabled should see a notice in their email, as updates rolled out earlier today.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a maintenance and security release that includes important fixes for five security vulnerabilities outlined by core contributor and release co-lead Jb Audras: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Block themes parsing shortcodes in user generated data</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A CSRF issue updating attachment thumbnails</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A flaw allowing XSS via open embed auto discovery</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Bypassing of KSES sanitization in block attributes for low privileged users</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A path traversal issue via translation files</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The patches were backported to WordPress 4.1. Now that these vulnerabilities are public, it&#8217;s recommended that users update immediately. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress 6.2.1 also includes 20 core bug fixes and 10 fixes for the block editor, all detailed with ticket numbers in the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/09/wordpress-6-2-1-rc1-is-now-available/\">release candidate post</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p> </p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 17 May 2023 03:07:17 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:14;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:64:\"Post Status: Launching a WordPress Product in Public: Session 13\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:32:\"https://poststatus.com/?p=149345\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:74:\"https://poststatus.com/launching-a-wordpress-product-in-public-session-13/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30042:\"<p><a href=\"https://poststatus.com/planet/feed/#h-transcript\">Transcript</a> ↓</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this episode, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/corymiller303\">Cory Miller</a> and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/coreymaass\">Corey Maass</a> discuss the importance of OG (Open Graph) images for social media sharing and branding in WordPress. They highlight the benefits of using OG image templates to create visually appealing and professional content. They also emphasize the need for WordPress professionals to offer variety and customization options to cater to different client needs. Cory and Corey suggest considering pricing models and beta-testing strategies to determine market value and gather feedback. This episode provides valuable insights for WordPress professionals seeking to enhance their services and deliver impactful OG image solutions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Top Takeaways:</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Explore OG image templates:</strong> OG (Open Graph) images are essential for social media sharing and branding. WordPress professionals should consider incorporating OG image templates into their projects to enhance their content&#8217;s visual appeal and professionalism. This could involve adding a logo, screenshots, or other relevant images within browser frames or mobile device mockups. Professionals can easily create engaging OG images that align with their clients&#8217; branding and marketing strategies by utilizing templates.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Embrace variety and customization:</strong> With the availability of different OG image templates and design options, WordPress professionals should strive to offer their clients a diverse range of choices. By understanding common patterns and elements used in OG images, professionals can create customized templates that cater to various needs, such as showcasing logos, headlines, taglines, or even incorporating screenshots of website pages. The ability to provide personalized options and adapt to different social media platforms will greatly enhance the value of their services.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Consider pricing and beta testing: </strong>As WordPress professionals develop their OG image solutions, it&#8217;s crucial to think about pricing models and beta testing strategies. Offering a base product with well-defined features and functionality can serve as an entry point for clients. Professionals should assess the market value and determine appropriate pricing that reflects the benefits and customization options provided. Beta testing can be a valuable step to gather feedback, refine the product, and generate initial user testimonials or case studies. These efforts contribute to building credibility and attracting future customers.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper\" id=\"h-mentioned-in-the-show\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f517.png\" alt=\"🔗\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> Mentioned in the show:</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://crop.express/\">Crop.Express</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.canva.com/\">Canva</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://chat.openai.com/\">Chat GPT</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://slack.com/\">Slack</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper\" id=\"h-you-can-follow-post-status-and-our-guests-on-twitter\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png\" alt=\"🐦\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"eplus-wrapper\">\n<li><a href=\"http://twitter.com/coreymaass\">Corey Maass</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/corymiller303\">Cory Miller</a> (CEO, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status\">Post Status</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/lemonadecode\">Olivia Bisset</a> (Intern, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status\">Post Status</a>)</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"eplus-wrapper has-background\">The <strong>Post Status Draft</strong> podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4dd.png\" alt=\"📝\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /><br /><br /><a href=\"https://poststatus.com/category/post-status-podcasts/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Browse our archives</a>, and don’t forget to subscribe via <a href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/post-status-draft-wordpress/id976403008\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">iTunes</a>, <a href=\"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8ySkU5c2M4UA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/c/PostStatus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">YouTube</a>, <a href=\"http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/krogsgard/post-status-draft-wordpress-podcast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Stitcher</a>, <a href=\"https://wordpress-post-status-draft-podcast.simplecast.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Simplecast</a>, or <a href=\"https://feeds.simplecast.com/2JE9sc8P\">RSS</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f3a7.png\" alt=\"🎧\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper\" id=\"h-transcript\">Transcript</h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Session 13 Corey &amp; Cory Launch a WordPress Product Live</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> It&#8217;s just so much work. I was like, it doesn&#8217;t have to be&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:06] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> initial stuff. I&#8217;ve been doing this so long, to fine tune some stuff, get your workflow,&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:11] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> but it&#8217;s just so much work. I was like, it doesn&#8217;t have, but now I&#8217;m like, I prefer this. Yeah. Yeah. There&#8217;s stuff that I want to be very polished and professional, but then there&#8217;s also turn it on and go.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;re turning on and go. We&#8217;re on now. Like specifically. I gotta turn my lights on. I just realized&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:34] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Corey&#8217;s doing that. Hey everybody, welcome back. This is session 13, I think. Corey and Corey launched the WordPress product live. We&#8217;ve got some cool updates. We&#8217;ve been working on some stuff and when I say working on some stuff, Corey, you&#8217;ve been like on this huge manic state of getting stuff done and yep,&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:53] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> I&#8217;m pumped about it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I I built a hundred feet of fencing. Yeah I, last [00:01:00] week my client, main clients were outta town for a week, so I was like, all right, I&#8217;m gonna take a couple of days off and. Take advantage of the weather, finally getting nice and so built big, beautiful fences which has prompted the promise of an O M G I M G hackathon where Corey is gonna fly me out to his house and I&#8217;m gonna help him build a fence.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it also meant that I was. Hacking at our plug-in new product for a couple of hours every morning and every night. And over the weekend. So yeah, the, I just this morning zipped up. I have a little script that I used to zip all my plug-ins for distribution and uploaded it to a testing website and it broke.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But then a couple minutes later it worked. So pretty amazing. Yeah, we&#8217;ve now got a plugin that installs. It&#8217;s[00:02:00] tied into e d D. Oh, good idea. Thank you. Yes. We should stand for this proud moment. But yeah I got as far as incorporating the licensing with e D D. So that&#8217;s now tied into the OMG img.co website.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That has a, just a placeholder logo on it. We need to put the signup form coming soon on that website. I keep forgetting. But it&#8217;s got the basics. The plugin itself has the basics of, so you can install it, it takes you to a welcome screen. You add a logo and it creates your first image, which is the logo on the left and the title of the site on the right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like we talked about, in, in a few clicks and in a few seconds you&#8217;ve got at least the most basic OG image and I found what I needed to. If you don&#8217;t have Yost or something else [00:03:00] Installed. Then this will show as the OG image. We need to test that a bit more, but is working on my WordPress installs.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then I also found the hook for Yost. So if Yost is installed regardless of the OG image you have, Plugged into Yost hours will show if you&#8217;ve selected one. And then, and so that&#8217;s Sitewide. And then we have most of the functionality for host specific images as well. And so right now you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Associated with a post, you can create images and you can set those as a featured image, and that works. What I haven&#8217;t finished yet is setting an individual OG image per post. So if you share your homepage, it&#8217;ll show the sitewide [00:04:00] OG image, but if you share a specific post, it should show the OG image for that post.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And if there isn&#8217;t one specified then should show the sitewide one. So we need to test that, but all the functionality is there. And then the only other, I mean there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s a few little bugs and things here and there and we need to do a lot of testing on different browsers and stuff like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the, so the OG image per post is the one big thing missing. And. Yeah. And then I think we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re pretty close. We need better templates, which you&#8217;ve been working on. And yeah, again there&#8217;s, I&#8217;m to the point where the, the framework works. We need to pick a couple of templates and just start messing around with them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so it&#8217;s the like as we&#8217;re going, oh, we really need this over here. And I&#8217;ll go, oh, it doesn&#8217;t support that yet. Let me quick go at it. We&#8217;ll get into that development loop. But that&#8217;s where we&#8217;re at. We&#8217;re pretty far along.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:59] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> That&#8217;s [00:05:00] awesome to hear. Awesome news. Oh, keep building fences cause.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Focus two, you got your physical outlet and then you got your mental digital outlet. That&#8217;s all great news. I think my biggest question is when do you think by end of day our part like beta client site is post has by end of day our, we should be switched over to our new hosting environment.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And things should be a lot better for the website that have been lingering.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:34] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Congrats&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:37] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> by tomorrow. It should be ready to available, I should say to install the plugin if you wanted to. Great. Okay, that&#8217;s all good news. And on that note for, to recap for others that haven&#8217;t seen previous episodes, where we&#8217;re at now is.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You just heard Corey&#8217;s product update, great progress on what we had talked about [00:06:00] the past couple of weeks, about an easy way to show your website professionally on the web through open graph. So posts being our kind of default list lists. Not just iron out the dev kinks, but also how we want that to look cuz that&#8217;s very important.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both of us have interest in design. So on that note, using that post as the test, I started working in Canva. I also, my update to you would be also, as I mentioned in Slack I submitted the design request for the templates posts to start to flush out how we want this to look. I do know we do have the nuts and bolts of what we need for just templates.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I still need to do more of that work. But I wanted to show you this. Along that kind of research and work from my side, I found this og [00:07:00] image gallery, og image com. Oh, nice. Yep. Wow. This is what I needed. Yeah. I love some of these things. So I took, and I&#8217;m not a professional designer, I&#8217;m just a hobby designer.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. But I was like, this is really inspiring for the general. Default website, business card. So just looking through here there&#8217;s just such good stuff. So I was like riffed on something like this with that, and I&#8217;ll have to get this to our designer. But all of that, just thinking about how to offer a really good template option and what is in there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I was like, okay. I got the dimensions like we had talked about and just started like going, okay, what were the business cards? Funny going in Chem Camba. When I put in the ratio, I pulled up a business card template. I was like, that was cool to see some of those. And I just started like riffing something that I could at least.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Flesh out my thoughts a little bit to get [00:08:00] back to the designer based on some of these other gallery options. So that&#8217;s what I was working on when I didn&#8217;t realize you were here and I was still working. But just for the general website, the thoughts we had were logo, some treatment.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What I liked about these images over here is like you have a big title. Yep. A small logo. I like how Mix Panel threw in some kind of graphic that linked what Mix panel. Mix panel is.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:31] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> So the technology we&#8217;re using is still technically a screenshot. And so seeing this version one, 1.1 or whatever so in my mind, the first.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>OG image template that we want is logo on the left, title on the right, dead simple, a background, color, whatever. But there&#8217;s [00:09:00] no reason. And, and as the rabbit hole you started going down on our last call that I poked fun at you for was that you kept moving the logo from the left to the center, left, to the right, to the center.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it&#8217;s we don&#8217;t, the beauty of this is we don&#8217;t have to choose. We can if it, we can, there are two things we can do. One is. I can offer an option that says, do you want the logo on the left or center? The other thing is we can have multi, almost infinite templates.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I don&#8217;t think we want to have too many. Templates that are too similar, but, looking at that, that gallery you were just looking at, like a lot of these have, you look at the patterns, right? So you&#8217;ve got a logo top left for a lot of them, or you&#8217;ve, and an image on the right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or you&#8217;ve got a logo top and then a text underneath or the one you were just showing me, which is what made me start, made me interrupt you. The mix panel, right? Is. Again, version [00:10:00] 1.1. I wonder that our best template isn&#8217;t actually going to be we can we could actually take a screenshot of their homepage and then automatically suck it in to a template.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And with one click, like we would go take, essentially take a picture of the homepage and then put it in a template. They&#8217;ve uploaded a logo, we have the title, and we&#8217;ve essentially recreated that mix panel template in one go. I hadn&#8217;t thought of that cuz we&#8217;re talk, it&#8217;s the what&#8217;s the movie Inception we&#8217;ve got.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Screenshots of screenshots, but but we can certainly do that. We can say, I hadn&#8217;t thought of this before, like talking about creating a template for each blog post, pulling in the title, pulling in the featured image. We could actually take a screenshot of the blog post and then inject it at, in lieu of a [00:11:00] featured image into.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>An OG image, so you&#8217;ve got an actual picture of the website in that, that mix panel style. That&#8217;s really cool. I hadn&#8217;t thought of that. That&#8217;s&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:13] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> so good. I&#8217;m trying to record some of these as we see &#8217;em. Yeah. So I can direct them. But I know what you&#8217;re doing with them too is you see this and go, okay, that means centered left.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This one is in the middle. There&#8217;s another le you&#8217;re right, top left. Seems like I love that idea though of the screenshot cuz like I was having a hard time with the post status one. Just showing my workflow. I was like, okay, trying to create this, what would I want? And I like the examples where they have some image something there and I was like, oh man, here it, so I found a camera like this little browser&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:53] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> frame.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yep. That&#8217;s what I was the, it tickled my brain when you showed me this. I&#8217;m like, go take [00:12:00] a screenshot of the post status homepage at, at these proportions and then drag that in here. And that&#8217;s, in l in lieu of that, fake browser, a placeholder. You could actually have a picture of the website cuz that&#8217;s it, that kind of.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>True. And with a drop shadow. And so it&#8217;s like all of these things we can do, but it&#8217;s also, it&#8217;s that kind of thing that adds a little more legitimacy. It&#8217;s the, just as you brought up, I think last time, the, those generators of, books, book cover, so it or fake software, so it looks like.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s like when people were writing eBooks or, have downloadable software. There were these templates you&#8217;d upload the cover and it would spit out an image, a 3D generated image that looked like the box that you&#8217;d see on the shelf at Staples. That&#8217;s what we were talking about a couple of weeks ago.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Doing similar here, where it&#8217;s okay, either upload a screenshot or we can take a screenshot of the actual blog post. So [00:13:00] you&#8217;re, you&#8217;ve got a picture of the website, it&#8217;s gonna lend this sense of legitimacy even more than, a stylized title or whatever. That&#8217;s really slick. But</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the, I&#8217;m not hearing you. Something happened to your audio. Oh, that screenshot.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:13:18] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Oh, there we go. Okay. That screenshot thing, I was just trying to make sure I got it down. Yep. Just trying to make sure I had that&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:13:26] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> vision of what we&#8217;re talking about, but I wonder that we don&#8217;t, either. We basically, we need to start a Pinterest board of all of the great ones we find you&#8217;ve got, you&#8217;ve found this gallery that gives us a head start and I feel like we, at some point, you or we should spend 10 minutes just going through a bunch of them recog, noticing some of these patterns okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>20% of them have a little logo in a screenshot. 20% of [00:14:00] them are, 50 50, 20% of them are logo top title bottom and just call those our first three templates or something like that. Incorporating, like you said, with post status being our testing, ground first, testing ground When the designer comes back with your new template, let&#8217;s make sure that&#8217;s accounted for.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then those are like the first four that we go live with. Because that&#8217;ll, again if we&#8217;ve, if we identify these sort of, not 80 20, but 20, 20 20, 20 20, people are gonna wanna do wild, crazy things. And like I said I&#8217;ve built the plugin in a way that people can pretty easily create their own.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They&#8217;re gonna need to be developers, but, Can still, add their own treatments and stuff like that. But if we&#8217;ve covered most of the bases, at least for OG images, then, when we publish, cuz again, EDDs all set up, I&#8217;ve added Stripe and all that kind of stuff. Like, all we&#8217;ve gotta do is [00:15:00] Go live, essentially.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, and obviously we want to do that with actual templates that work and after some testing. But, we&#8217;re pretty close. We just need to offer the, a actual, it&#8217;s like we&#8217;ve worked out the engine, we&#8217;ve worked out the wheels. We just now need the what is it, the. The Civic, the Acura, the, s u v and the truck or whatever, but the underlying stuff is all is, has all worked out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:15:27] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Love it. Just trying to get, capture this for, got it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, because like up here we talked about doing some of these things, but like pulling in a little screenshot, I think that&#8217;d be really awesome. Okay, so here&#8217;s my big question. I&#8217;m scared to ask. Can this be a fr framed in like a browser button? That browser thing, Nick? Oh, for sure. Wherever it was.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:15:56] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Okay. Yeah. Like things we need to work, all stuff [00:16:00] to work out. But absolutely the easy one is, yep. The easy one is just adding a drop shadow. The one that we just need to find essentially the right yeah, the right size, basically either P and g or there are. Browsers or mobile phones, all done in css, which means they will, stretch, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we could actually take screenshots. There&#8217;s one on your screen. Bottom right? Like that phone yeah, the, on the right. Yep. That one. We could essentially recreate that. Go take a screenshot of your homepage, stick it in a phone. And then take a picture of the og, put, create an OG image out of that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it&#8217;s if you are a mobile app or something, like we could do that kind of thing. And then we this totally might be a pipe dream, but we can start looking into actually like. Doing skewing type of stuff, meaning we can like some of those OG [00:17:00] images to make it more dynamic.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They&#8217;ve, instead of just a flat screenshot, they&#8217;ve tilted it on its side. We can start looking into that kind of stuff too. I&#8217;m not, I don&#8217;t know yet if we can do it or not, but it&#8217;s not, it&#8217;s certainly not hard to test it. Let&#8217;s see.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:17:16] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Just thinking about frames for it like that I think is really cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;d want that on Post stuff. Yep. But just a way to frame it in any way. Yeah. The image that you&#8217;re doing I think is interesting. Okay. So I&#8217;m looking at these templates, like that&#8217;s gonna give me another thought for the post status one. Seeing what they come back. I bet you&#8217;ll get something by tomorrow on that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Great.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Get that in here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Product. Yep.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Magazine would be in there. Magazine. Oh&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:17:49] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> yeah. That&#8217;s one of your clients? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay. [00:18:00]&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:18:01] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah. I really like that because for the screenshot for the post it just shows like this is the blog post and there&#8217;s some rendering of it that goes, when I click through, this is what I&#8217;m gonna get and expect to get.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:18:15] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s, yeah, I think that&#8217;s, that takes it to a, to another level, like not there. And it&#8217;s there&#8217;s different times and places too. It&#8217;s some, if you share on Facebook, you get, you get the full image like this, right? But if you share on Twitter, it&#8217;s like this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or if you share in Slack, it&#8217;s like this. And so there&#8217;s time we can&#8217;t. I don&#8217;t think we can control which version gets delivered where, but depending on your preferred, if you&#8217;re mostly promoting to Facebook, then having an image that has a lot of detail, meaning a screenshot, totally works.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whereas if you are sharing look, in the you that [00:19:00] wise one, if you scroll down if you&#8217;re sharing somewhere that it always shows up small, you&#8217;re like all we want is the name of our website as big as possible Then, and so essentially we&#8217;re giving you lots of options.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The one just kitty Corner down memory. That one? Yeah, there&#8217;s your screenshot right there. So it&#8217;s, a fake browser frame around a screenshot of something. And again at an angle, I know we can do rotate. I&#8217;ve already done rotate him in one of my test templates. So that&#8217;s the, that&#8217;s something we could emulate pretty readily.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But this is the</p>\n\n\n\n<p>trap, the loop that I&#8217;m stuck in right, is I&#8217;m. I ha I have a tool and I don&#8217;t, I have a solution, but I don&#8217;t have the problem yet. And so I&#8217;ve just been testing like crazy, all the different neat things we can do. But I haven&#8217;t actually sat down and said, okay, let me try to recreate one of these OG [00:20:00] images with our new system, or let me call this template number one.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And here&#8217;s the elements that it needs. So this is great. I think, like you said if you get back the new ones for post status in the next couple of days and we pick a couple of these based on the list you just created, then you know, we&#8217;re good to go.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay. Yeah. There&#8217;s&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:20:24] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> a lot of, yeah. Logo, left image, which is what we got here. Logo, top head logo, smaller headline here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Same.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:20:38] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, I&#8217;m seeing a lot of patterns and so again, I think we just pick a few.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And of course you have our entire marketing strategy done already, right? Yeah. Me and my&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:20:50] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> buddy Chap, G P t.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Plus he&#8217;s at while I have &#8217;em. So when I ask the designer to work on some of those, cuz I&#8217;d probably take a lot of these. And say [00:21:00] do this for post status is our test case. Yep. The podcast is gonna be a little tricky I think.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cuz you want to host probably, but what if you have two hosts? Yep. What if, and you always have a guest I always have a guest. But we&#8217;ll cross that bridge later on. Okay. Logo only. I like that. Logo is screenshot of homepage. See logo and tagline only.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:21:30] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> So I, I think you should using that og, that image gallery, like for each of these go take, go find one that&#8217;s close to what you want and just like you did a minute ago. Yeah. Like that slide number five, capture one of each. So that it&#8217;s okay, this is, just one big logo that&#8217;s wise, logo and tagline.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s, one of those other ones. And it&#8217;s if we have all of those [00:22:00] captured here forever then that&#8217;s what we start with. And we, and we have a designer actually figure out the proportions, make it look proper. But then we&#8217;ve, we&#8217;re. Like you said we&#8217;re covering the bases.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Can do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. We&#8217;re close. I&#8217;m excited. And I&#8217;ve set up, like I said, I&#8217;ve set up most of the basics we need just to get it out the door. At some point we need to have a conversation about pricing. And a logo, but I&#8217;m very, I&#8217;m excited that we are very close to having something that we can, you can be using on post status.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I can ha put on my client websites. And essentially we&#8217;re, we might even maybe in post status Slack let&#8217;s see if we can put together a beta. Beta list, beta testers, 10, 50, a hundred, and roll it out to some people, because with e d.[00:23:00] So for anybody who&#8217;s not familiar, that&#8217;s the shopping cart checkout mechanism that has, that&#8217;s really specifically good for selling software licenses.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so we can essentially give a, give away a free version of the plugin. And it doesn&#8217;t and anybody we give it to won&#8217;t, can&#8217;t update. As we release updates unless they buy or unless we give them a copy. Cuz in WordPress that&#8217;s really what you&#8217;re selling is access to the next version. Cuz everything is open sourced.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But so we, I, it makes it very easy to distribute something like this. Like I have no problem giving away the first version to, generally you, trusted colleagues kind of thing. But if it gets leaked, I don&#8217;t care because, we&#8217;re gonna be cranking out new versions, daily, weekly early on as new features and bugs and stuff like that get un get added, fixed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:00] And it&#8217;s, people will have an early beta, but will want to buy in order to get those updates. Okay. I think in,&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:09] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> so I&#8217;ve got pricing logo templates, pricing logo,&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:14] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> beta testers. Yeah, that seems like we&#8217;re. We&#8217;re ready for all that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:22] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I wanted going with templates so we could have something to like really inform what we&#8217;re doing. Yep. But after we get the first round, I&#8217;ll submit another request for the logo. Yep. And then pricing. I think we&#8217;ll get a I&#8217;ll for our part, get a better view of it when we get it in action.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Show it going. And then, but I think some of the rough pricing talks we had were right on par. Get something, a base product that does something well.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:51] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Yeah. That helps people look better.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:53] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> And then yeah, when we&#8217;re ready for&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:55] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> beta test, which we&#8217;ll just ask you had a hard stop at [00:25:00] the top of the hour.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So let&#8217;s wrap up today. Sorry about being late. No worries. And yeah, we&#8217;ll reconvene soon. I feel like things are starting to speed up. This is great.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:10] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> That&#8217;s awesome. Yeah,&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:12] <strong>Corey Maass:</strong> I&#8217;ll&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:12] <strong>Cory Miller:</strong> try to keep up with you.</p>\n<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Tue, 16 May 2023 23:15:27 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:11:\"Cory Miller\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:15;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:69:\"WPTavern: New Proposal Looks to Retire Older WordPress Default Themes\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=145067\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:80:\"https://wptavern.com/new-proposal-looks-to-retire-older-wordpress-default-themes\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4259:\"<p>WordPress is approaching its 20th anniversary, and for the majority of those years, contributors have cranked out a new default theme. Even though the structure and supported features of default themes have drastically changed over the years, contributors are still actively maintaining all 13 of the &#8220;Twenty&#8221; themes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A new <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/16/proposal-retiring-older-default-themes/\">proposal</a> on WordPress.org recommends winding down active maintenance on older themes and implementing a new system of requirements for retiring them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The level of effort to support 13 themes is not insignificant, especially in the times of the rapidly evolving block editor,&#8221; Bluehost-sponsored core contributor Jonathan Desrosiers said. &#8220;The burden of maintaining these themes has historically fallen on the Core team to ensure they continue to receive any needed updates.&#8221; These tasks include things like ensuring compatibility with newer PHP versions, fixing bugs, updates and deprecations of dependencies, security updates, and much more.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Because there are so many, it’s not uncommon for it to take several months before older default themes properly support newer features added in WordPress Core,&#8221; Desrosiers said. &#8220;Additionally, themes created prior to the existence of certain APIs are often unable to fully take advantage of these new features (global styles, block patterns, etc.).&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Desrosiers contends that reducing the support burden on contributors will allow them to focus on ensuring the most modern block-based themes deliver the best experience.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;It also helps clear the path for work on new block theme-focused experiments and initiatives (such as the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/03/03/hallway-hangout-community-themes-initiative/\">Community Themes Initiative</a>) attempting to refine the role that themes will have in the block editor era,&#8221; he said.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Themes released through the WordPress.org account via the Community Themes Initiative, like the <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-themes-team-releases-stacks-a-community-theme-for-building-slide-decks\">recent Stacks slide deck theme</a>, will be officially supported, adding to the load. These themes, however, have the benefit of working with the Site Editor and all the latest features WordPress offers. When dealing with limited volunteer resources, supporting older default themes doesn&#8217;t have as much upside as spending these efforts the more modern themes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress bundles the three most recent default themes in the latest download. This proposal seeks to retire older themes after a minimum of five years of support and when usage falls to less than 1% of all WordPress sites as determined by WordPress.org data. Using this criteria the default themes Twenty Ten through Twenty Sixteen would be retired and only receive security updates. Desrosiers suggests a yearly assessment of usage data to determine which themes would be retired.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The three most recent WordPress default themes would be actively maintained and contributors would continue maintaining the following themes with bug fixes, compatibility updates, and security fixes:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Twenty Seventeen</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Twenty Nineteen</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Twenty Twenty</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The proposal has multiple benefits, in addition to reducing the number of actively supported themes from 13 to 6, but also has the drawback of affecting an estimated 730,000 users who will no longer receive maintenance on their themes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>General reception to the proposal has been positive, as those using very old themes are usually looking for as few changes to their website as possible. With security updates still available to retired themes, these users would not be forced to update to a newer theme.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The proposal was developed based on feedback and recommendations from a group of contributors. It is now awaiting feedback from the larger community. Unless the proposal needs to be significantly modified, contributors will soon move on to the practical tasks associated with retiring themes.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Tue, 16 May 2023 20:56:36 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:16;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:70:\"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 6.2.1 Maintenance &amp; Security Release\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:35:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=14955\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:80:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/05/wordpress-6-2-1-maintenance-security-release/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:7530:\"<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">WordPress 6.2.1 is now available!</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This minor release features <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?milestone=6.2.1&group=component&col=id&col=summary&col=status&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&col=milestone&order=priority\">20 bug fixes in Core</a> and <a href=\"https://github.com/orgs/WordPress/projects/88\">10 bug fixes for the block editor</a>. You can review a summary of the maintenance updates in this release by reading the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/09/wordpress-6-2-1-rc1-is-now-available/\">Release Candidate announcement</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This release also features several security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 4.1 have also been updated.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress 6.2.1 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-3/\">version 6.3</a> planned for August 2023.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.2.1.zip\">download WordPress 6.2.1 from WordPress.org</a>, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For more information on this release, please <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/support/wordpress-version/version-6-2-1\">visit the HelpHub site</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Security updates included in this release</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The security team would like to thank the following people for responsibly reporting vulnerabilities, and allowing them to be fixed in this release.</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Block themes parsing shortcodes in user generated data; thanks to Liam Gladdy of <a href=\"https://wpengine.com/\">WP Engine</a> for reporting this issue</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A CSRF issue updating attachment thumbnails; reported by <a href=\"https://johnblackbourn.com/\">John Blackbourn</a> of the WordPress security team</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A flaw allowing XSS via open embed auto discovery; reported independently by Jakub Żoczek of <a href=\"https://research.securitum.com/\">Securitum</a> and during a third party security audit</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Bypassing of KSES sanitization in block attributes for low privileged users; discovered during a third party security audit.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A path traversal issue via translation files; reported independently by Ramuel Gall and during a third party security audit.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Thank you to these WordPress contributors</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This release was led by <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb\">Jb Audras</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/mamaduka/\">George Mamadashvili</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/SergeyBiryukov\">Sergey Biryukov</a> and <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/peterwilsoncc\">Peter Wilson</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress 6.2.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance and security fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"is-style-wporg-props-long\"><a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/adamsilverstein/\">Adam Silverstein</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/wildworks/\">Aki Hamano</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/amin7/\">amin</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/azaozz/\">Andrew Ozz</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/andrewserong/\">Andrew Serong</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/oandregal/\">André</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/aristath/\">Ari Stathopoulos</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/bph/\">Birgit Pauli-Haack</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/chiragrathod103/\">Chirag Rathod</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/costdev/\">Colin Stewart</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/talldanwp/\">Daniel Richards</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidbaumwald/\">David Baumwald</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidbinda/\">David Biňovec</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/dmsnell/\">Dennis Snell</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/shagors/\">devshagor</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/dhrumilk/\">Dhrumil Kumbhani</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/ocean90/\">Dominik Schilling</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/ellatrix/\">Ella</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/mamaduka/\">George Mamadashvili</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/isabel_brison/\">Isabel Brison</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb/\">Jb Audras</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/joedolson/\">Joe Dolson</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/joen/\">Joen A.</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/johnbillion/\">John Blackbourn</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/\">Jonathan Desrosiers</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/juanmaguitar/\">JuanMa Garrido</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/jrf/\">Juliette Reinders Folmer</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/kevin940726/\">Kai Hao</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/trepmal/\">Kailey (trepmal)</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/mdxfr/\">Marc</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/marineevain/\">Marine EVAIN</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/mattwiebe/\">Matt Wiebe</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/mukesh27/\">Mukesh Panchal</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/nendeb55/\">nendeb</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/ndiego/\">Nick Diego</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/nickpap/\">nickpap</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/ntsekouras/\">Nik Tsekouras</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/pavanpatil1/\">Pavan Patil</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/peterwilsoncc/\">Peter Wilson</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/pouicpouic/\">pouicpouic</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/youknowriad/\">Riad Benguella</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/welcher/\">Ryan Welcher</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/coffee2code/\">Scott Reilly</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/sergeybiryukov/\">Sergey Biryukov</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/sabernhardt/\">Stephen Bernhardt</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/tmatsuur/\">tmatsuur</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/tobiasbg/\">TobiasBg</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/hellofromtonya/\">Tonya Mork</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/ugyensupport/\">Ugyen Dorji</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter/\">Weston Ruter</a>, and <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/zieladam/\">zieladam</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to contribute</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/6\">pick a ticket</a>, and join the conversation in the <a href=\"https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBWTW\">#core</a> and <a href=\"https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C051Z1SKBDZ\">#6-3-release-leads channels</a>. Need help? Check out the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/\">Core Contributor Handbook</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><em>Thanks to <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/sergeybiryukov/\" class=\"mention\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>sergeybiryukov</a> for proofreading.</em></p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Tue, 16 May 2023 18:32:21 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:9:\"Jb Audras\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:17;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:59:\"Do The Woo Community: 20 Years of Hosting with Bryan Muthig\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:28:\"https://dothewoo.io/?p=75142\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:58:\"https://dothewoo.io/20-years-of-hosting-with-bryan-muthig/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:395:\"<p>Bryan finds A2 Hosting celebrating their 20th alongside WordPress. And that is 20 years of hosting stories and experience. </p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io/20-years-of-hosting-with-bryan-muthig/\">20 Years of Hosting with Bryan Muthig</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io\">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Tue, 16 May 2023 11:25:33 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:18;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:117:\"WPTavern: ACF Plugin’s Reflected XSS Vulnerability Attracts Exploit Attempts Within 24 Hours of Public Announcement\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=145031\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:125:\"https://wptavern.com/acf-plugins-reflected-xss-vulnerability-attracts-exploit-attempts-within-24-hours-of-public-announcement\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:3091:\"<p>On May 5, Patchstack published a security advisory about a high severity <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/advanced-custom-fields-plugin-patches-reflected-xss-vulnerability\">reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in ACF</a> (Advanced Custom Fields), potentially affecting more than 4.5 million users. WP Engine patched the vulnerability on May 4, but the Akamai Security Intelligence Group (SIG)  is <a href=\"https://www.akamai.com/blog/security-research/attackers-leverage-sample-exploit-wordpress-plugin\">reporting</a> that attackers began attempting to exploit it within 24 hours of Patchstack&#8217;s publication.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Once exploit vector details are publicly released, scanning and exploitation attempts rapidly increase,&#8221; Akamai Principal Security Researcher Ryan Barnett said. &#8220;It is common for security researchers, hobbyists, and companies searching for their risk profile to examine new vulnerabilities upon release. However, the volume is increasing, and the amount of time between release and said growth is drastically decreasing. The Akamai SIG analyzed XSS attack data and identified <em><strong>attacks starting within 24 hours of the exploit PoC being made public.</strong></em></p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;What is particularly interesting about this is the query itself: The threat actor copied and used the Patchstack sample code from the write-up<strong>.</strong>&#8220;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Patchstack&#8217;s security <a href=\"https://patchstack.com/articles/reflected-xss-in-advanced-custom-fields-plugins-affecting-2-million-sites/\">advisory</a> includes a breakdown of the vulnerability, sample payload, and details of the patch. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although the vulnerability, assigned <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2023-30777\" target=\"_blank\">CVE-2023-30777</a>, was promptly patched, and WP Engine <a href=\"https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/blog/acf-6-1-6/\">alerted</a> its users the same day, site owners have been slow to update to the latest, patched version of the plugin (6.1.6). Only 31.5% of the plugin&#8217;s user base are running version 6.1+, leaving a significant portion still vulnerable unless they are protected by additional security measures like virtual patches.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Exploitation of this leads to a reflected XSS attack in which a threat actor can inject malicious scripts, redirects, ads, and other forms of URL manipulation into a victim site,&#8221; Barnett said. &#8220;This would, in turn, push those illegitimate scripts to visitors of that affected site. This manipulation is essentially blind to the site owner, making these threats even more dangerous.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Barnett noted that attackers using the sample code from Patchstack indicates these are not sophisticated attempts, but the comprehensive security advisory makes vulnerable sites easy to target.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;This highlights that the response time for attackers is rapidly decreasing, increasing the need for vigorous and prompt patch management,&#8221; Barnett said.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Tue, 16 May 2023 02:40:13 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:19;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:49:\"BuddyPress: BuddyPress 11.2.0 Maintenance Release\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:32:\"https://buddypress.org/?p=329610\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:69:\"https://buddypress.org/2023/05/buddypress-11-2-0-maintenance-release/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1104:\"<p>Immediately available is&nbsp;<a href=\"https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.11.2.0.zip\">BuddyPress 11.2.0</a>. This maintenance release fixes 6 bugs. For details on the changes, please read the&nbsp;<a href=\"https://codex.buddypress.org/releases/version-11-2-0/\">11.2.0 release notes</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Update to BuddyPress 11.2.0 today in your WordPress Dashboard, or by&nbsp;<a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress/\">downloading from the WordPress.org plugin repository</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"many-thanks-to-11-1-0-contributors\">Many thanks to 11.2.0 contributors&nbsp;<span class=\"dashicons dashicons-heart\"></span></h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/mystichrome\">mystichrome</a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/davepullig\">dave.pullig</a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/r-a-y\">r-a-y</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/armaanfromatg\">armaanfromatg</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/boonebgorges\">boonebgorges</a>&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/imath/\">imath</a>.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 15 May 2023 20:32:36 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:12:\"Mathieu Viet\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:20;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:104:\"Gutenberg Times: WordCamp Europe 2023 – Block editor talks, meet &amp; greet, Contributor Day and more\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:35:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=24102\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:103:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordcamp-europe-2023-block-editor-talks-meet-greet-contributor-day-and-more/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:9143:\"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<img /></div>\n\n\n<p>WordCamp Europe is less than four weeks away, the speakers and sessions have been announced, and it&#8217;s time to make plans. Below you&#8217;ll find a list of the sessions and workshops that focus around the Block Editor, Block themes, and adoption. Not all sessions and speakers were announced, I&#8217;ll update the post if necessary. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Updated May 20th, 2023</strong>: Added the WPConnect sessions.  <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/wp-connect/\">The full list of sessions is available here</a>, I also added a Table of contents, rearranged things a bit and added subheaders. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Updated May 19th, 2023:</strong> Michael Burridge&#8217;s workshop is now officially announced. <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/schedule/\">The schedule is published</a>. Now we&#8217;ll know when those great talks will take place in-person or on the Livestream. Ponder this for a moment, too: 60 speakers were announced. Ratio: 68.3% male, 31.7% female, 11.6% non-white. The diversity is not quite balanced. Representation matters. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Updated May 18th, 2023:</strong> I  added the talks with Jonathan Bossenger, Luigi Teschio and Pedro Crespo </p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Updated on May 15, 2023:</strong>  I added the From Shortcode to Block workshop and Niels Lange to the WooCommerce Talk</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container\">\n<p><strong>Table of. Contents</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost\"><ul><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-lets-connect\">Let&#8217;s connect</a></li><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-contributer-day\">Contributor Day</a></li><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#list-of-gutenberg-talks-and-workshops-at-wordcamp-europe\">List of Gutenberg Talks and Workshops at WordCamp Europe</a><ul><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#site-editor-and-block-themes\">Site editor and block themes</a></li><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#building-blocks\">Building blocks</a></li><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#workshops\">Workshops</a></li></ul></li><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#6-p\">Pre-WordCamp event</a></li><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#wpconnect\">WPConnect</a></li></ul></div>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"0-lets-connect\">Let&#8217;s connect</h2>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<img /></div>\n\n\n<p>If you want to <strong>meet with me</strong> at WordCamp Europe, <a href=\"https://calendly.com/pauli-haack/wordcamp-europe?month=2023-06\">feel free to pick a time slot from my public calendar.</a> I would love to meet you and discuss WordPress, products and strategies around Gutenberg. Or just meet more readers of the Gutenberg Times. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>If the calendar thingy is too formal for your taste, feel free to <a href=\"https://twitter.com/bph\">DM me on Twitter</a> or <a href=\"mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com\">email me</a> to coordinate a chance encounter 🙃</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"1-contributer-day\">Contributor Day</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>June 8th is Contributor Day</strong>. Will you be there? You&#8217;ll probably find me at the Documentation table again or at the table for the Test team. <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/contributor-day/\">If you haven&#8217;t registered yet, do it now. </a></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"list-of-gutenberg-talks-and-workshops-at-wordcamp-europe\">List of Gutenberg Talks and Workshops at WordCamp Europe</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/session/gutenberg-collaborative-editing-experience-why-how-and-when/\">Gutenberg collaborative editing experience. Why, how and when?</a> </strong>with <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/speaker/dawid-urbanski/\">Dawid Urbański</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/session/how-can-any-website-benefit-from-wordpresss-editing-experience-thanks-to-gutenberg/\">How can any website benefit from WordPress’s editing experience thanks to Gutenberg?</a></strong> with <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/speaker/ivan-popov/\">Ivan Popov</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"site-editor-and-block-themes\">Site editor and block themes</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/session/fresh-off-the-block-transform-wordpress-with-templates/\"><strong>Fresh Off The Block: Transform WordPress With Templates</strong></a> with <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/speaker/maestro-stevens/\">Maestro Stevens</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/session/create-a-theme-using-the-site-editor-without-coding/\"><strong>Create a theme using the site editor – without coding!</strong></a> with <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/speaker/carolina-nymark/\">Carolina Nymark</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/session/how-the-site-editor-can-transform-your-ecommerce-experience/\"><strong>How the Site Editor can transform your ecommerce experience</strong></a> with <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/speaker/luigi-teschio/\">Luigi Teschio</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"building-blocks\">Building blocks</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/session/code-techniques-for-handling-dynamic-data-in-the-newish-world-of-blocks/\">Code Techniques for Handling Dynamic Data in the New(ish) World of Blocks</a> </strong>with <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/speaker/robert-richardson/\">Robert Richardson</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/session/build-a-not-at-home-shipping-extension-in-the-woocommerce-checkout-block/\"><strong>Build a “not at home” shipping extension in the WooCommerce Checkout Block</strong></a> with <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/speaker/thomas-roberts/\">Thomas Roberts</a> and Niels Lange</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/session/building-interactive-blocks-a-step-by-step-workshop/\"><strong>Building Interactive Blocks: a step-by-step workshop</strong></a> with <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/speaker/luis-herranz/\">Luis Herranz</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/session/developing-wordpress-blocks-using-plain-javascript/\"><strong>Developing WordPress Blocks using plain JavaScript</strong></a> with Jonathan Bossenger</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/session/learn-how-to-create-gutenberg-blocks-from-scratch/\"><strong>Learn how to create Gutenberg blocks from scratch</strong></a> with Pedro Crespo</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So far, the list of talks. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"workshops\">Workshops</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Through the grapevine, I heard there will be a workshop on <strong>From Shortcode to Block</strong> on Friday June 9th, 2023, at 14:00 in Workshop room 2. &#8211; &#8220;A workshop on converting a shortcodes based plugin to a custom block. Participants will learn how to create a dynamic block that renders the same content that the Shortcode does.&#8221; </p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"wpconnect\">WPConnect</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>WPConnect</strong> is the new name of the WPCafe, an informal gathering of people to discuss the assigned topic away from presentation and livestreams. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Saturday&#8217;s morning session are of great interest to me and I will most likely attend: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>10:00-10:45 – Open discussion: <br /><strong>Developer Relations / Developer Advocacy in Open Source hosted by </strong><a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/mburridge/\"><strong>Michael Burridge</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>11:00-11:45 – Demo: <br /><strong>WordPress</strong> <strong>Playground hosted by </strong><a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/zieladam/\"><strong>Adam Zieliński</strong></a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"6-p\">Pre-WordCamp event</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>If you are already in town on <strong>June 7th, 2023</strong> you might be interested in The <a href=\"https://xwp.co/wordpress-enterprise-gap-wceu-2023/\"><strong>WordPress Enterprise Gap Meetup at WordCamp Europe 2023</strong></a> world. The event is organized by XWP in collaboration with HumanMade, Ipsyde, Crowd Favorite, and The CodeCo. There will be lightning talks, panel discussions, and some incredible speakers who are making waves in the enterprise WordPress world. Afterward there will be networking opportunities, too. It will take place from 18:00 to 21.30 local time, at <a href=\"https://goo.gl/maps/P4fs8hCBxuzTwtvf7\">The Cube</a>, in Athens. <a href=\"https://lu.ma/ahmqxw1e\"><strong>You can registered via Luma</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>There will be other events happening around the meeting, mostly sponsor parties and get together. The content team at WordCamp Europe is always very good at publishing a list of those events, closer to the event. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>So stay tuned. I am excited to meeting every one in Athens! </p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Sun, 14 May 2023 15:38:52 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:18:\"Birgit Pauli-Haack\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:21;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:60:\"WPTavern: Themeum Acquires Kirki Customizer Framework Plugin\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=144951\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:71:\"https://wptavern.com/themeum-acquires-kirki-customizer-framework-plugin\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:3573:\"<p><a href=\"https://www.themeum.com/\">Themeum</a>, a WordPress theme and plugin company founded in 2013, has acquired the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/kirki/\">Kirki Customizer Framework</a> plugin from its former developer, David Vongries. In April 2023, Vongries <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/kirki-plugin-up-for-sale-development-discontinued\">announced he was sunsetting the product</a> and discontinuing development. He put the plugin up for sale for $30K and sold it for just under the asking price.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I met the Themeum team at WordCamp Europe in 2019 and have fond memories of our encounter,&#8221; Vongries said. &#8220;They reached out to me immediately after the blog post was published on the Tavern, where I expressed my search for a new home for Kirki.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Themeum is a major player in the WordPress world and I truly believe they&#8217;ll be a fantastic fit for Kirki. They have the resources to take the plugin to the next level and give it the attention it deserves.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rayhan Arif, Assistant Vice President of Business Development at Themeum, is expecting the Kirki plugin to come under <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/themeum/\" target=\"_blank\">the profile of Themeum on WordPress org</a> shortly. Themeum is the company behind <a href=\"https://www.themeum.com/product/tutor-lms/\">Tutor LMS</a>, <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/qubely/\">Qubely &#8211; Advanced Gutenberg Blocks</a>, and nearly a dozen other smaller plugins.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Since 2012, we have been deeply involved in creating a similar product on another platform,&#8221; Arif said. &#8220;Our past experiences have equipped us with the necessary skills and knowledge that we believe will greatly enhance the value of this plugin. With this improvement, developers will find it easier to add customization options to their WordPress themes. In a sense, this feels like a homecoming product for us.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Vongries reported that support on the plugin was &#8220;basically zero,&#8221; despite there being more than 600,000 active installs. This makes sense as it is a framework geared towards developers. The majority of the plugin&#8217;s users have installed the free version from WordPress.org.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;There are only a hand full of Kirki PRO customers,&#8221; Vongries said, although some had grown <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/kirki-plugin-up-for-sale-development-discontinued#comment-438934\">unhappy with Kirki&#8217;s lack of development</a> before the acquisition.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Themeum does not have any block-based theme products at this time, so this Customizer-dependent plugin fits in with the company&#8217;s catalog.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Our initial focus will be on enhancing the plugin, after which we will undoubtedly proceed with integrating it into our themes,&#8221; Arif said.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We are considering making certain adjustments to our pricing or business model, all with the intention of benefiting both existing and future customers. For example, we might substantially decrease the price.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Existing users may be concerned about the product changing hands, but Arif said it&#8217;s unlikely they will experience significant changes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The acquisition is unlikely to bring about any negative implications for users,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The only perceptible change will be that product maintenance will now be handled by a professional team, well-versed in technology and carrying a wealth of experience.&#8221;</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Sat, 13 May 2023 00:48:13 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:22;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:40:\"WPTavern: ACF Launches New Annual Survey\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=144955\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:51:\"https://wptavern.com/acf-launches-new-annual-survey\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:2828:\"<p>WP Engine has launched an <a href=\"https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/annual-survey/\">annual survey</a> for Advanced Custom Fields (<a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/\">ACF</a>), one of the plugins it <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/wp-engine-acquires-5-plugins-from-delicious-brains\">acquired from Delicious Brains</a> in 2022. ACF reports more than 4.5 million active users, including PRO site installs, and WP Engine Product Manager Iain Poulson reports that the plugin is &#8220;growing in every way since the acquisition.&#8221; ACF has added more users, features, and releases, along with community building efforts like <a href=\"https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/blog/tag/acf-chat-fridays/\">bi-weekly office hours</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the first time ACF has surveyed its user base about how they are building sites with WordPress and what can be improved. The survey starts with questions about the contexts in which professionals are using ACF and the volume and types of sites they are building. Respondents are asked about how they edit their sites, the type of license they are using, how often the reach for ACF in their toolbox, and which ACF features they use most often (i.e. REST API, ACF Blocks, Options pages, ACF Forms, Post Types Registration, etc.).</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The survey is on the lengthier side with an estimated 15 minutes to complete. As ACF is a critical and indispensable part of many WordPress developers&#8217; workflow, helping to shape its future development may be worth the time. WP Engine has also added a few questions that may only be tangentially related to ACF, such as where users are hosting their WordPress sites and what they use for local development. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s our primary method for gathering insights and feedback from the WP community on what they would like to see in ACF,&#8221; WP Engine Product Marketing Manager Rob Stinson said. He also related the importance of previous customer feedback that helped ACF&#8217;s team plan and implement features like registering CPTs and Taxonomies (v6.1).</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;In the near term, we’re working on bringing a UI to register Options Pages which is a PRO plugin feature, some long requested features like bi-directional relationship fields and improvements to conditional logic rules for taxonomy fields,&#8221; Poulson said. &#8220;We will also be focussing a release on more ACF Blocks features and improvements. The survey won’t likely change those planned features, and the initial results are validating our planned work on ACF Blocks.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <a href=\"https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/annual-survey/\">survey</a> ends May 19, 2023, and WP Engine plans to publish an aggregated and anonymized version of the results soon after the data is collected.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Fri, 12 May 2023 20:38:12 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:23;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:83:\"Post Status: The WP Agency Journey with Bet Hannon of AccessiCart-Post Status Draft\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:32:\"https://poststatus.com/?p=149300\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:94:\"https://poststatus.com/the-wp-agency-journey-with-bet-hannon-of-accessicart-post-status-draft/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:50834:\"<p><a href=\"https://poststatus.com/planet/feed/#h-transcript\">Transcript</a> ↓</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">This episode features <a href=\"https://twitter.com/bethannon?lang=en\">Bet Hannon</a>, agency owner of <a href=\"https://accessicart.com/\">AccessiCart</a>, which specializes in accessibility for websites, particularly e-commerce sites. Bet talks with <a href=\"https://twitter.com/corymiller303\">Cory Miller</a> about the significance of accessibility, the agency&#8217;s focus and niche, and tips for starting a business. Bet shares their journey in starting their business and how they became interested in accessibility. This interview emphasizes the importance of considering accessibility as a crucial aspect of user experience optimization and the benefits of providing transcripts for videos and podcasts. AccessiCart is currently experimenting with productized services for accessibility and remediation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><strong>Top Takeaways:</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul type=\"video\" class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<li><strong>Embrace Accessibility: </strong>Accessibility is crucial in web design and development. Prioritizing making websites accessible to all users, including those with disabilities, is critical. It&#8217;s important to consider different user personas and their needs and continuously work on improving the accessibility of websites.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Continuously Evolve and Optimize: </strong>The field of e-commerce and web development is constantly evolving. As WordPress professionals, we should be willing to adapt, experiment, and continuously optimize our websites and services. This includes staying informed about new tools, technologies, and strategies for improving user experience, conversion rates, and accessibility. Continuous learning and professional development are key to providing high-quality services and staying competitive in the industry.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>User Experience Optimization:</strong> Accessibility and user experience go hand in hand. We should focus on optimizing the user experience of websites by considering factors like intuitive navigation, clear content presentation, fast loading times, and mobile responsiveness. A seamless and enjoyable user experience leads to better engagement, higher conversions, and increased customer satisfaction.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background is-layout-flex wp-container-6\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow\">\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png\" alt=\"🙏\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> Sponsor: <a href=\"https://poststat.us/a2-hosting\">A2 Hosting</a></h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>A2Hosting 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!</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow\">\n<img width=\"752\" height=\"470\" src=\"https://poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/imageedit_1_6433774706-752x470.png\" alt=\"A2 Hosting\" class=\"wp-image-104073\" />A2 Hosting\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper\" id=\"h-mentioned-in-the-show\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f517.png\" alt=\"🔗\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> Mentioned in the show<strong>:</strong></h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://ithemes.com/\">iThemes</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/nathaningram?lang=en\">Nathan Ingram</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"http://www.artisteer.com/\">Artisteer</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/benjaminbradley?lang=en\">Benjamin Bradley&nbsp;</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://ithemes.com/backupbuddy/\">BackupBuddy</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://accessicart.com/\">AccessiCart</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper\" id=\"h-you-can-follow-post-status-and-our-guests-on-twitter\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png\" alt=\"🐦\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"eplus-wrapper\">\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/bethannon?lang=en\">Bet Hannon</a> (CEO of <a href=\"https://twitter.com/AccessiCart\">AccessiCart</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/corymiller303\">Cory Miller</a> (CEO, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status\">Post Status</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/lemonadecode\">Olivia Bisset</a> (Intern, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status\">Post Status</a>)</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"eplus-wrapper has-background\">The <strong>Post Status Draft</strong> podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4dd.png\" alt=\"📝\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /><br /><br /><a href=\"https://poststatus.com/category/post-status-podcasts/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Browse our archives</a>, and don’t forget to subscribe via <a href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/post-status-draft-wordpress/id976403008\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">iTunes</a>, <a href=\"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8ySkU5c2M4UA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/c/PostStatus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">YouTube</a>, <a href=\"http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/krogsgard/post-status-draft-wordpress-podcast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Stitcher</a>, <a href=\"https://wordpress-post-status-draft-podcast.simplecast.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Simplecast</a>, or <a href=\"https://feeds.simplecast.com/2JE9sc8P\">RSS</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f3a7.png\" alt=\"🎧\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper\" id=\"h-transcript\">Transcript</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:01:33) &#8211; Hey everybody, this is post status draft, and this is another interview in our series on agency owners at post status. And I&#8217;ve got a long time friend here Bet Hannon. And I&#8217;m gonna let her share a little bit more about what you, uh, do in our world called WordPress bet. But I&#8217;m excited about this interview because bet&#8217;s very active in the WordPress community overall, very passionate about this key subject called accessibility and runs a great agency. So bet. Would you share a little bit about who you are, what your, what your agency does today?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:02:06) &#8211; Yep. So our agency is Accessi Cart, and we&#8217;re focused around accessibility, as you mentioned, and in particular, um, trying to do a little nicheing toward, um, e-commerce. Uh, e e-commerce, uh, sites tend to be the most, um, frequently sued around a d a in the United States, and then there are increasing regulations in other places in the world too. So we&#8217;re, um, we&#8217;re trying to do that. It&#8217;s, uh, focus on more high interaction sites, so not necessarily just e-commerce, but membership or, uh, so, you know, um, l m s sites, those kinds of things. Anything that has a checkout form. So that&#8217;s what we work on.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:02:45) &#8211; Absolutely. Key one is, um, as we talked here before on the podcast, one is like accessibility is doing the right thing, um, by all people. Uh, but also I think there&#8217;s a, we don&#8217;t need anything past that, but if we did, we&#8217;d say there&#8217;s a huge part of the population that can&#8217;t access websites like a lot of us. And being able to do those things on your website, potentially, if you just need a business reason for a second, it&#8217;s like, that&#8217;s a whole big crowd there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:03:14) &#8211; 25%, 2020 to 25% of all adults around the world need some accommodation. So that includes everybody. I mean, when you, when, when I think when people think about that, they&#8217;re surprised by that number because they don&#8217;t think it, they think it&#8217;s, uh, this very tiny little percentage, right? So, um, but it includes, uh, people who are, uh, blind or have vision impairments, people who have mobility impairments, and not just that they&#8217;re paralyzed, but that maybe they have a palsy and they can&#8217;t quite hit your tiny buttons, um, to things like people who are colorblind, people who have reading disabilities. So when you start e even we work on some things around, um, um, being sure you&#8217;re, um, around anxiety and depression as a kind of a fact, a user, uh, scenario. Because if you&#8217;re sign up or checkout processes super long and complicated, people just give up, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:04:09) &#8211; So when you start optimizing and making things accessible, you can increase your audience by, you know, potentially 25%, which is huge. I mean, most, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s probably the biggest, um, optimization rate that you can get. Uh, you know, conversion rate optimizations and those kinds of things are aiming at, you know, 2% would be awesome, right? Mm-hmm. , you could, that you could really blow it up by 25% would be amazing, right? And people sometimes say, well, people, people who are blind don&#8217;t come to my site. And I was like, you know, , you would be surprised, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:04:45) &#8211; They might be trying but not going because that&#8217;s not ready for &#8217;em. Exactly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:04:49) &#8211; And why wouldn&#8217;t you want that competitive advantage? Right? Exactly. If your side is accessible and your competitors isn&#8217;t, then you get those people, right? So</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:04:58) &#8211; By doing the right thing, you also get that. Yeah, exactly. You have to say, we&#8217;re doing the right thing. Um, and I don&#8217;t know, a business leader or owner, if you said you can increase your market share, there&#8217;s 25% sitting out there, wouldn&#8217;t get, wouldn&#8217;t drool wouldn&#8217;t go, whoa, tell me more. And it&#8217;s sitting right here in plain sight,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:05:14) &#8211; 485 billion in, uh, in million in, um, I&#8217;m sorry, 485 million in, uh, disposable income. Mm-hmm. Right? That you&#8217;re just leaving on the table, right? Yeah. So, I mean, it&#8217;s, that sounds kind of, uh, you know, like you, they&#8217;re, they&#8217;re out there to be sort of, uh,&nbsp; to, but, you know, when you serve, uh, this is the great part about what we get to do as an agency, right? We get to help make online shopping l m s membership sites better for people with disabilities, but then we also get to make that, you know, he help business owners, uh, reach out to those communities more effectively. And, and, um, yeah, yeah, it&#8217;s a win-win all around. That&#8217;s, I love what we do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:05:57) &#8211; And I think just like any other community with particular passions and needs, it&#8217;s gonna talk about that too. So if you&#8217;re, it&#8217;s a way to really stand out and get great raving fans doing the right thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:06:09) &#8211; Yeah, exactly. Exactly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:06:11) &#8211; Okay. So thank you for that. Uh, and let me digress a little bit into accessibility and thinking of it as conversion rate too. And market size is very compelling. I mean, one right thing second that, but tell me, tell me about your team now. Um, what else about you that&#8217;s your focus and what you all do, uh, in WordPress, but</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:06:29) &#8211; Yeah, so we&#8217;re intentionally fairly small. Um, we have, um, three of us full-time, a couple part-time, and then, you know, contractors around the edges for specializations as needed, um, or pulling folks in when we need some extra help. Um, so, um, I really like having us not be super hu I mean, lots of peace that you get to choose as the agency owner, right? You know, uh, you know, there are people that just really wanna grow and scale it and have it be 30 or 40 or 80 people or more, but that&#8217;s not me. Uh, I prefer to work in a smaller group. And so that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re doing. That&#8217;s a piece of why we ended up, um, kind of nicheing around accessibility and e-commerce or, or sites, is that in terms of accessibility work, um, you know, a lot of the contracts, uh, over the last 10 years have gone to, um, higher education or government. And those two folks really want bigger, bigger agencies with a deeper bench to do the fulfillment pieces. And so we don&#8217;t get to be a player for those kind of audiences. Um, and at the same time, you know, we can make a, we can have an outsized impact in terms of folks in their e-commerce work. So,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:07:42) &#8211; Absolutely. So what type of clients does that typically shake out to? Um, what, who do you all work best with?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:07:50) &#8211; Yeah. Um, so we&#8217;re, uh, well it&#8217;s, uh, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s kind of interesting cuz you know, I thought when we went back a bit, when we said, okay, we&#8217;re gonna focus on accessibility, that that was gonna be the, the niche. And then, you know, the further you get, the more you realize, oh, okay, accessibility and e-commerce. And then it&#8217;s like, oh, okay. And now you gotta think more, even more. You can kind of keep refining that a little bit. Um, I would say, um, we still do, um, development and re you know, testing and, and stuff for stuff that&#8217;s not e-commerce, but folks that need to have accessibility. So we&#8217;ve done, um, you know, we&#8217;re finishing up projects now for sites that are, um, you know, large nonprofits that are wanting, needing, wanting, needing to be accessible. Um, we&#8217;re starting a thing, uh, marketing site for a bank, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:08:43) &#8211; So they have to be accessible. Um, so, so we&#8217;re still doing some of that. Um, I, I would say the, the places where we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re, we kind of do a couple different things. And so at different levels, right? So if it&#8217;s a s a relatively smaller e-commerce site in terms of not, well if it&#8217;s, if it&#8217;s too small, they can&#8217;t really afford to probably make this work. But, but if they&#8217;re not, if they don&#8217;t have their own in-house development team, for example, they&#8217;re in WooCommerce, but they&#8217;re comfortable having us go in and do some of those, um, remediations for them working with them, there&#8217;s a level of that work that we do. And then at, at, uh, larger sites or larger merchants that where they are, um, they might be in WooCommerce, but they might also be in Shopify or Magenta, um, the testing that we can do, the auditing and uh, testing for them is on the front end of the site.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:09:39) &#8211; So we don&#8217;t have to be experts in Shopify to be able to say to them, you have a problem here. This needs to get fixed. Right? And so we&#8217;re doing that level of consulting back and forth, and I&#8217;ve tried, and I, I, I think maybe we&#8217;re just a little early on it, um, in terms of trying to find, um, working with other agencies to have them just contract us with us for, you know, a bucket of hours where we&#8217;re gonna just, they&#8217;ll just line up some testing pieces for us. I think it&#8217;s more effective when we can work around a particular site and then produce documentation for them, for them to do the fulfillment. So we, um, we, in some of the work that we&#8217;ve done, we&#8217;re averaging like three to five hours of billable label for that agency when they have us do an hour of testing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:10:34) &#8211; So as we&#8217;re putting that all together and doing the documentation and handing that off to them to get the approval from the client to do the remediation, you know, that, that, uh, we can have a win-win. Uh, as a, as a part of that, we just haven&#8217;t gotten very much track. And that sounds really good. And agency owners are, are interested, but we just haven&#8217;t gotten much traction yet. And I think it&#8217;s because the client, you know, the, the site owners just haven&#8217;t quite gotten to the point where they&#8217;re feeling the urgency about accessibility. And that may come, there&#8217;s some big changes in the EU coming up in another year or two year and a half or so. And, um, so we&#8217;ll see if that moves us.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:11:15) &#8211; Yeah. Whether, um, you want it or not, it&#8217;s coming. And, um, you know, so the need is gonna be pressed. Those that aren&#8217;t up to speed as they should be, are gonna be forced to be up to speed very quickly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:11:29) &#8211; Yeah. You, you&#8217;re going to pay for accessibility one way or another, you know, and the que and the question is, uh, you, you know, e either you get suit or fined or you take it, you know, you, you invest in making accessible mm-hmm. . And the question is, do you wanna do it on your own terms at your own speed or do you wanna be kind of compelled to do it by some external authority? So</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:11:52) &#8211; Well said, . Well, okay. Thank you for all that. So that&#8217;s where you are today. Um, I&#8217;m really curious to know how you got here, you know, how did you get started with one, you know, web, web development, um, WordPress, how your agency grew to where it is today? So can you walk me back there on the journey that you&#8217;ve taken? Yeah. Cuz</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:12:14) &#8211; You&#8217;re a part of that journey. Um, so I had, my first career was in nonprofit management and um, I was doing near the end of that more and more technical things. So we were doing drag and drop websites, we were doing email newsletters, we were doing, um, social media wasn&#8217;t there yet, but we were doing that. So in 2008 at the very beginning of the financial crisis, then my organization terminated my position, just kind of downsized my position. And I kind of stumbled into freelancing a little bit. I had no idea that people would pay you to do, you know, uh, email newsletters and&nbsp; websites and stuff. It just had never occurred to me. I don&#8217;t know why, but it just never had. Um, and I stumbled into doing that and I was, um, I told a friend of mine who&#8217;s an iOS app developer, uh, what I was doing, and he said, oh, you should be doing those work, those sites in WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:13:12) &#8211; And I said, I have no idea what you&#8217;re talking about. And um, so we went, uh, he lived in the Bay Area, I lived in Fresno and we went home and the next week we got this like, you know, before you could do Zoom set, we both got on the phone and then we both logged into the backend of his WordPress website. And he walked me through what it was like, and it was sort of like my mind was blown. I was like, oh my gosh, this would be amazing. And so I started building sites for people. Uh, and then as we needed to do more customization, I started doing, um, initially for a few sites, I used, uh, a theme generator called Artist Steer. Maybe people remember that I do, to get, to get the customizations, you had to start learning a little bit of css.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:13:53) &#8211; So I was there, but pretty quickly I found iThemes Builder and um, we went there and the support team at Ithe was awesome in terms of not just telling you how to fix. When I, when you had a question about how to customize something, they would not just tell you how to do it, but they would point you through it, walk you through it in such a way that I was learning. I was like, oh, CS, I see that CSS too. I see what that&#8217;s doing. And, and I started learning more and more and more, um, C s s and H T M L and P H P and uh, and then I, them started offering the, the courses, the classes and, uh, Benjamin Bradley and Nathan Ingram and some of those other folks were doing courses, not just on the technical pieces, but on some of the business stuff as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:14:41) &#8211; And, um, along that way I had picked up, uh, part-time folks to kind of start helping out with things. And, um, we grew, um, yeah, just kind of grew quite a bit cuz we were offering, you know, one of the things I&#8217;d learned in those workshops was, you know, figuring out the mailbox money. I think that was, that was, that was Benjamin the mailbox. Yeah, yeah, the Benjamin and, uh, the mailbox money and figuring out offering managed hosting. And uh, you know, at one time we had grown, we probably were offering managed hosting to about 175 cl um, sites. Um, initially, uh, did that in multi-site cuz that was the only way to manage the, all the updates. And then of course we figured out how to do that and how to spin them all apart with, uh, with backup buddy eventually. And, uh, you know, it was, uh, I had fun learning all of that stuff.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:15:30) &#8211; And, uh, and then, uh, we had a client in, uh, that came to us in about 2016 who is, uh, and they&#8217;re still a client today. They&#8217;re a large agricultural water district in California. So they don&#8217;t give water to consumers. They&#8217;re delivering to farmers and they&#8217;re a part of the, they&#8217;re a kind of a special district or a part of the state of California system. So they became aware in 2016 that they had to become accessible. So we, um, we said, well, let&#8217;s, let&#8217;s call, let, let&#8217;s refer you to somebody. And they said, well, that&#8217;s all fine, but we want you all to be the people that are gonna help us manage this day to day. Which was a huge investment in our team. And we got involved, we got, you know, we had heard a little bit about accessibility, I guess at Word camps and, but not much.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:16:18) &#8211; And when we dived in and caught a vision of what, how, how, how broad accessibility is, it&#8217;s not just about making something work for people who are blind, but this whole much broader kind of, um, in being inclusive and the difference that it can make for people in terms of being able to access things and, uh, and almost all of us on the team have somebody in our lives that it would, would benefit from making a website accessible. And it, it was just really this sort of aha moment for us. And we, we kind of began to do more and more and more with, with accessibility. Um, I, I think, uh, we&#8217;ve been spinning down and, and as we did, you know, that all of that managed hosting that we were offering at a very low rate, you know, those folks, um, yeah, we just couldn&#8217;t keep doing that business wise.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:17:17) &#8211; And so, so some of my evolution has really been kind of figuring out, oh, that&#8217;s, I&#8217;m really not making money , you know, I&#8217;m not really, uh, making a living for all of us doing that. And so we began to, I think, uh, three years ago, strategically churn some of those folks in terms of raising our pricing, um, up, um, quite a bit. And, uh, and then began to, especially as our experience level, just sort of went through the roof in terms of what we can do, what we can can offer, um, charge charging more for the work that we do. And, um, feeling like we&#8217;re, um, you know, we&#8217;re still in process. Cuz once you kind of get 170, you know, we&#8217;re down to under a hun around a hundred now I think. But, you know, um, even then, I, I don&#8217;t think all those people will stick with us in the long run, but we have served them well I think.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:18:11) &#8211; And so, uh, and we&#8217;re sending them, you know, handing them off in ways that are, I think gonna be helpful for them too. It&#8217;s just not a good fit anymore. But, um, yeah, we&#8217;ve been, um, and then I would say we started to do more and more with accessibility and then over the last, um, it was about a year ago we realized, hey, you know, the opportunity we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re missing those government and higher ed opportunities cuz we&#8217;re not big enough and we need to find a way to communicate. Um, we had been using, um, my name in the agency and I began over time, began to realize that was problematic cuz it really didn&#8217;t convey what our focus was and it didn&#8217;t help people. Um, it helped people think that we were small, they thought I was freelancing mm-hmm. . And so kind of a, a confluence of those factors led us to rebrand as Accessi Cartt about a year ago. Um, and it took, you know, doing re it takes a while to do all of that, right? It took, it was not until summer last year that we really kind of got all that together. And, uh, and we&#8217;ve had a great response to that. And that&#8217;s been, yeah, been awesome. So</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:19:21) &#8211; I always enjoy these stories because it&#8217;s very serendipitous. You use the word stumble and I go same, same stumbling. I really did stumble and walk back into WordPress. Um, and thank you for sharing the connection too. I knew you had been an ithe customer, but I didn&#8217;t know at at what depth. And so I appreciate that and that&#8217;s exciting. It&#8217;s fulfilling to know that we had a, we had a help in what you&#8217;re doing. Um, but like how Okay, you know, downsizing from the nonprofit spurred the start of you this great agency that you now run and then a client approaching you about the need for accessibility. And it&#8217;s funny because what I know of you today is a huge champion for accessibility, particularly in WordPress Yeah. For all the things you do. And I don&#8217;t even know all the things you do, but I I know you are a continued to keep the conversation around accessibility within the WordPress community, and it&#8217;s so beneficial to have passionate people, but to see where the start and now you live and breathe it, uh, is really exciting. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:20:25) &#8211; And I&#8217;m not even the most technical person about accessibility on our team. Right? I, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m, I I I, I, I know conceptually how important it is. I&#8217;m super passionate about it, but, but those like nitty gritty technical details of implementing this thing or that thing, um, are, are really not my wheelhouse. That, which is why we have great people on our team for that sort of stuff, right? Yeah. Um, I can be the, um, more of the, in, in terms of the agency, more of the, the advocate, the out front, the per the cheerleader, the, uh, the lead swinging along, but . But every once in a while I&#8217;ll be somewhere someone will ask this highly technical question and I&#8217;m like, uh, yeah, you I gotta call in. That&#8217;s why you</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:21:06) &#8211; Have a great team. That&#8217;s</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:21:07) &#8211; Exactly right. That&#8217;s exactly right. And I don&#8217;t feel bad about that. It&#8217;s, uh, and, and I&#8217;m super upfront about that because I think, um, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s probably true no matter what your specialization is, right? Mm-hmm.&nbsp; at a certain level. I mean, you have enough commitment and you understand, uh, and you understand what that commitment entails so that you&#8217;re, you don&#8217;t, but you don&#8217;t have to be in the deep down trenches of it so much that you, um, you know what I mean? It&#8217;s kind of like, um, in fact, the more you spend there, the less you&#8217;re spending time on the business. And so we actually continue to have that piece where I wear so many hats where I&#8217;m still, there&#8217;s still some technical things that only I do, only I&#8217;m the one that deals with all the D Ns stuff, right? So that&#8217;s like, so we&#8217;re still, because we&#8217;re still small, we all wear those hats, but figuring out how we can, um, continue to manage that, you know, the growth and those, those projects and pieces mm-hmm.&nbsp; where, um, we still have time for me to work on the business and not just in the business. Right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:22:18) &#8211; Exactly. And I think this is such a technical subject too that is always evolving, always to be remiss. And I love the authenticity and openness of, like, I don&#8217;t, that&#8217;s why I have these specialists that know these things, because that&#8217;s one thing I have learned about accessibility is there is so much nuance to it that it is constantly evolving. Like even knowing that there&#8217;s an EU thing coming out in the next year and a half, I mean, there&#8217;s so much new nuance to this, and that&#8217;s why having great agency partners like Access card is key because you&#8217;re managing those details. Your team is keeping up with those things. And I, and I love that. Yeah. I was talking to one of our fellow agency owners that, you know, and the, the, the evolving significance of the website in any organization has really evolved from back in the days we&#8217;re talking about. It was kind of an afterthought, you know? And now it&#8217;s like, especially through pandemic, have seen the value of the website, and then you go, there&#8217;s a, there&#8217;s nuances here that you need to pay attention to, like accessibility. So. Yep.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:23:24) &#8211; Absolutely. And even then, you know, the more we&#8217;ve gotten involved in doing stuff around e-commerce, there are, you know, I, I think you&#8217;re right. I think, you know, like when we were first starting out, it was really sort of an afterthought digital brochure Yep. For the most part. Yep. Yep. And then folks grasped, uh, and we did a ton of coaching with folks about how to use the blog functionality for all your dated content so that you&#8217;re simple. Like you&#8217;re simplifying some of that management of piece. People did get a bigger idea during the pandemic, but you know, when you start diving into e-commerce, I if, if an e e-commerce or even an l m s site or a big membership site, if they&#8217;re, if they&#8217;re really paying attention and really working on these things, they&#8217;re starting to deal with levels of detail around conversion rate optimizations, and how do you place things on the page to, uh, you know, help help, um, you know, convince the reluctant customer to try your product, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:24:24) &#8211; Or, uh, uh, try a trial membership or whatever those kind of pieces are. But that level, uh, getting down into that level of beginning to think about, it&#8217;s not just throwing stuff up on the page and trusting that people will read this wall of content or what, you know, you have to be thoughtful about how you&#8217;re putting things all together. And I think people are coming partway. I think accessibility will be an increasing part of that for folks, is really figuring out. They, and, and I find as I talk to agency owners and other folks in the WordPress space, the agency folks know it&#8217;s there. They, they, uh, I think in some cases they think their folks have a handle on it, when maybe they have a kind of a, you know, a, a, a very, um, base level understanding. And that&#8217;s okay. But, um, just understand.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:25:19) &#8211; And a lot of folks I think are just scared mm-hmm. , and they don&#8217;t feel like there&#8217;s, um, they, they&#8217;re, they may not, fearful is the right word, but they&#8217;re reluctant to get involved with accessibility until they start hearing from clients that the clients want it. Mm-hmm. , they don&#8217;t feel like, because they feel like it might be just the latest new thing. I get that. Right. And so how do they begin to, you know, is it, is it gonna be really worthwhile to invest some time and energy and people in, um, and I, I&#8217;d say I think this is a little different than some of the other fads that may have come across. And so,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:25:57) &#8211; Well, I wanna switch gears for a moment. Um, we&#8217;ve talked about accessibility, but the work you do with e-commerce and l m s, meaning courses mm-hmm. , the ability to create courses. And curious what you&#8217;re seeing in those two, those the broader e-commerce space. Um, we&#8217;ve talked about the, you know, we, we had the digital brochure days, now it&#8217;s realizing, oh, I can grow my business online and through WordPress, particularly as the best tool that I know of for sure to do all that. But I&#8217;m curious what you&#8217;re seeing, like, it seems like there&#8217;s signals of, like, when you get into L m s, this is a specialized part of the e-commerce broad brand. Um, what are you seeing in, in those, the bigger e-commerce and then the l m s space in regards to clients and how they think and are using websites and e-commerce and l m s to power and grow their organizations?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:26:51) &#8211; Um, well, I think, um, you know, there&#8217;s, there certainly are folks that are doing that. And I think there are folks that a, at least have an inkling that there is more, that they could always be kind of tweaking a little bit more. And one of the, uh, advantages that people are discovering is that there are communities out there of folks where they can connect and learn from one another. So, um, you know, you can get involved in, um, you know, e e-commerce communities, uh, that are maybe some of them even platform agnostic that can begin to talk about, well, what are some of the third party integrations that you might wanna look at? What are the, what are some of the strategies for having your own site and site content, but also doing Amazon or also doing Walmart or other, some of these other platform pieces, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:27:41) &#8211; So, and what are, what are the strategies for pulling those all together? Um, so just kind of finding ways to, uh, you know, and WordPress has always been really great about that sense of community and, and helping one another. And that&#8217;s what post status really is in a way, right? As kind of a, a community of folks where we can kind of bounce ideas off one another, can learn from one another, um, um, get those ideas going. And so I, I think I see, I do see that happening and I see that happening around accessibility. Some as well as just more generally about how do we begin to, um, how do we begin to keep, keep raising the bar a little bit, right? You know, as you start your site and you, you, you get it going and, and there&#8217;s a kind of, there you gotta pay attention to all those really super base level kinds of things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:28:30) &#8211; And then when you get, uh, I think a lot, a lot of times people starting out think, oh, I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll have it made when I get, you know mm-hmm. , these, this little list of things done. And then, you know, you realize, oh, no, there&#8217;s some more things I need to do, or now I need to tackle this next thing. And that it&#8217;s always gonna be that way. It&#8217;s kind of like, it&#8217;s always gonna be a little bit more that you need to do in terms of optimizing it. And I think business owners are starting to realize that even just about their non eCommerce sites, that, that ideally there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s, you can&#8217;t make it the focus of everything, right. But that it&#8217;s not something, it&#8217;s not, uh, you know, we still work with clients once in a while. Like, I just need a website. And then it&#8217;s just like, when it&#8217;s done, it&#8217;s done, and it&#8217;s gonna sit over there for another five years and then I&#8217;ll come back to it. And that&#8217;s just not the way websites work, um, anymore. For sure. So,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:29:21) &#8211; Yeah. Well, if you&#8217;re only thinking about that, you&#8217;re thinking very small and leaving a lot of opportunity on the table, right? Where you nowadays, if you have a business or organization like a nonprofit, you got to, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s par for the course. But I love that you have background and still work with nonprofits too. Mm-hmm. , I mean, that&#8217;s a different type of e-commerce, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:29:43) &#8211; Oh my gosh, yes. And, um, we just finished and launched a couple weeks ago, uh, a site for, uh,&nbsp; the, uh, and, and when they first came to us, I mean, this is part as an agency under two, it&#8217;s was, uh, uh, one thing that I had learned along the way was like, sometimes you get approached and the, you know, based on the name or the, what the organization does, you think, oh, that&#8217;s a small budget group, , they&#8217;re, they&#8217;re looking for a $500 website, right? Um, so when we were first approached by the, uh, can I, can I say clients? Yeah,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:30:15) &#8211; Absolutely. You</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:30:16) &#8211; Can. When I was first approached by the transgender law sender, I thought, oh yeah, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s gonna be fairly small. Oh no, they have a $5 million a year budget. I don&#8217;t know, there&#8217;s some funding piece. And they are very sophisticated in all this fundraising that they do, and they&#8217;re using all these different like, enterprise level fundraising tools. And what they, they approached us was about, because they have a significant outreach to people with disabilities, and they had become aware that their own website was not accessible. And so they, uh, pursued actually a pretty, uh, one, one of the larger projects that we&#8217;ve done in terms of, it was, uh, a 13 year old WordPress website and had had dozens and dozens of content creators over the years. And so part of what we did was clean a lot of that up, but do lots of accessibility improvements and things like, you know, we discovered hundreds of PDFs that were not accessible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:31:12) &#8211; And so we came in, you have to take the content out of the pdf, put it on the page, and then say, well, you can download this here, but here&#8217;s the accessible content that&#8217;s on the page surface. Mm-hmm. . And we did, you know, we had multiple, multiple people working on all of that for a long time. But Yeah. And, and made it, uh, you know, I think they were a little afraid, you know, there&#8217;s this stereotype that if it&#8217;s accessible, it&#8217;s ugly. And, uh, you know, we went to , uh, you should look at it cuz we, uh, we created a really stunning, I think our fo not me, uh, not, they don&#8217;t let me near the design tools, but the, the design people created just this amazing site that is, you know, that with a vastly improved accessibility. No site is a hundred percent accessible, but, you know, the improvements here were quite significant. And, and it was nice to work with clients that their, their motivation was not avoiding getting sued. Their motivation was, we have people in our organization who can&#8217;t access this stuff. So, uh, it was great. It was great to work with them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:32:22) &#8211; So let me sidebar a second. You said no side is a hundred percent accessible. Great. Tell me more.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:32:29) &#8211; So I think that is also a misconception a lot of times that if we just go to the, you know, the website content accessibility guidelines, if we just make everything according to the guidelines, then we&#8217;re kind of bulletproof and there&#8217;s no such thing, right? Because a lot, first of all, a lot of accessibility is contextual. So it depends on what you&#8217;re trying to do with a particular image, with a particular layout, um, what the flow of the content is. A lot of that contextual stuff is important. Um, so it&#8217;s not like, it&#8217;s not like accessibility stuff is hard and fast rules, right? And so, um, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s more an art than a science in some, in some ways, right? Hmm. Um, so that&#8217;s one and two accessibility, um, strategies are changing a lot. And you really, I think it&#8217;s more effective to think about accessibility as a form of user experience optimization.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:33:24) &#8211; Mm-hmm. . So you&#8217;re not, you&#8217;re, you&#8217;re really just broadening the user personas and thinking about user experience mm-hmm. . And so it doesn&#8217;t make any sense to say your site is a hundred percent on user experience, something, you know, it, that, that doesn&#8217;t make any sense at all. But you can certainly, I mean, certainly there&#8217;s a lot of low hanging fruit that you&#8217;re gonna do, just like for user experience, right? And in terms of making, improving that. And so rather than talk about, you know, sort of being accessible, you wanna say working on accessibility or improving accessibility, right? And, and, um, it&#8217;s kind of like SEO in that way, right, too, right? Yep. You know, it&#8217;s, there&#8217;s a lot of basic best practices that everybody should do. There are some things definitely you can do that are shooting yourself in the foot with SEO or, or accessibility. But, you know, once you deal with those base level pieces, then it&#8217;s really about continuing to think about that experience to listen to your users when they give you feedback about something that isn&#8217;t accessible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:34:28) &#8211; Oh, that&#8217;s good. Absolutely. From the user experience, if you think about that, that you reset us there, or me, I go absolutely. It&#8217;s another avatar to persona to be thinking about as you want people to come to your site and float through and take an action. Yeah. But</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:34:43) &#8211; It&#8217;s not one, one avatar though. But it&#8217;s</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:34:45) &#8211; Exactly many, many</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:34:47) &#8211; Avatars, right? So the colorblind person, the person mm-hmm.&nbsp; own vision, the person who&#8217;s completely blind, the person who has no, uh, can&#8217;t use a mouse, right? So you get all of these various avatars and there are, I would say, you know, there, there&#8217;s certainly a person who&#8217;s deaf, right? So you get, you get some avatars that are there that you begin to work with, and then, you know, it, it&#8217;s just sort of human nature. We say, oh, we&#8217;ve completely forgot about the person with reading disabilities, right? So now we gotta come back and, uh, begin to think about, uh, did we, did we take that into account? So</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:35:22) &#8211; Here&#8217;s a quick sidebar cuz you mentioned death. And I go, I, in the initial list I was waiting for you to say, um, hearing impaired or, or deaf. And I go, I, I, six years ago got hearing aids and um, it&#8217;s amazing they&#8217;re Bluetooth enabled, but it&#8217;s, yep. This is maybe a nuance off the, off the trail of a second, but they&#8217;re Bluetooth to my phone. Yep. And so I&#8217;ll be looking at the web, and all of a sudden, I can always tell when a site has something, um, like there&#8217;s no audio video on the page necessarily, but my Bluetooth kicks in for my hearing aids. And I go, now this is the skeptical, you know, hat and me going, wh why are they accessing my microphone in some way? It&#8217;s really interesting, but I pay attention to the fact that now I need these, I rely on them every day, you know? Absolutely. And so how important that is to, to me, and I can just see those that I do have hearing without hearing aids, however significantly enhance with hearing aids, like I can actually, I don&#8217;t know, function. Um Yep. It, it brings that more empathetic to me to know, oh, can I, could you even imagine someone with ocular, for instance, implants and like that the, the need for ex accessibility just kind of even becomes more aware to me. Yep,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:36:42) &#8211; Yep. And you know, the, the, the number of people that bring disabilities with them as their, their users increases with age. Right? We all right? Yep. Uh, things, things like hearing like you and, you know, I got hearing aids within the last year too, and so, uh, congrats. But also thank you. Um, also things like color perception changes as you age, right? Mm-hmm. , so, so some of those as the lens of your eye yellows, right? So, uh, there&#8217;s kind of a, a biological piece, right? But, but it&#8217;s also, you know, any of us, any of us are just one illness or accident away from a disability, right? And so, um, there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s that piece of, you know, making it, uh, thinking about including accessibility that kind of sensitizes you to that. But when you think about you&#8217;re improving, you&#8217;re improving the user experience of people with disabilities, when you do that, you actually improve the user experience for everybody. And so I usually say it&#8217;s kind of like those curb cuts in the sidewalk, right? They&#8217;re made for wheelchairs, but like, when I&#8217;m dragging my luggage, I&#8217;m really grateful for those, right? So, yep. Uh, it&#8217;s, all of those kinds of improvements will help the user experience across the board for everyone. Mm-hmm. .</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:38:00) &#8211; Yeah. You watch</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:38:01) &#8211; Stuff with captions on</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:38:02) &#8211; All the time. I have for probably 10 years.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:38:06) &#8211; I started doing it, yeah. About 10 years ago when we were watching British crime shows and I couldn&#8217;t understand people&#8217;s accents sometimes. And we watch it with all the time with stuff now. And, um, they say that, um, uh, on social media, people who are watching videos with the sound off of those people, 80% of them have no hearing impairment.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:38:33) &#8211; I, so, well, I obviously needed hearing aids, but I did it because I read much faster than I can follow. Absolutely. This, in fact, zoom has the feature with ca closed captioning. Sometimes if it&#8217;s a heavier accent, I&#8217;ll do it there too, but I&#8217;m like, I find myself going, I&#8217;m not watching, I&#8217;m reading , you know, so often that that&#8217;s how I get the story. But yeah. And I don&#8217;t like to have my volume on social media, so I&#8217;m really glad that accessibility is a thing, um, because I&#8217;m like, I don&#8217;t wanna listen to it. I wanna read it, you know? Yep, yep. Um, I actually get offput sometimes when everything is video. Cause I go, even though I&#8217;m doing video now, it&#8217;s because I wanna read read the Captains. So,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:39:15) &#8211; Yeah. But you know, there&#8217;s, um, if you put the, like if people are doing a piece like this and then you can get it, there are services to get it automatically converted to a transcript mm-hmm. , but when you provide the transcript in addition to the closed captions, right? If you provide the transcript, then I can remember, oh, Corey and I talked about this one thing, and I&#8217;m gonna go back to that. Now I can search through the transcript Yeah. And find it and not have to listen to the whole thing. People do that a lot. People tell us all the time that they do that. So</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:39:43) &#8211; I do, I&#8217;m glad YouTube now has that part of it, um, because I wanna get the content, but I wanna scan down and read. And sometimes I&#8217;ll play it and just watch the transcript scroll, you know, so, and then we do transcripts, everything we do here, um, yeah,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:39:57) &#8211; Yeah,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:39:58) &#8211; Probably one for my own, like, I, I like to do that, but also to make him available in different formats, so yeah. Awesome. Well bet. Thank you for this. Um, what, uh, I&#8217;m curious, what exciting things do you have going now? What are you doing that you&#8217;re excited about? Um, next steps, anything you&#8217;re focusing on that you wanna share with our audience?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:40:20) &#8211; Yeah, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve been trying to, to, you know, part of, part of uh, part of running an agency is being a bit of an entrepreneur, right? And you&#8217;re always tr uh, at least for me, I&#8217;m always trying things and pu focusing on things or just, you know, trying experiments. Sometimes they&#8217;re just thought experiments and sometimes, you know, you&#8217;re actually kind of build &#8217;em out a little bit and see if they stick. It&#8217;s kinda like, you know, throw throwing the proverbial pasta against the wall to see if it sticks. So I&#8217;ve been playing with, um, would having productized services be an interesting thing for accessibility and remediation? So I&#8217;ve cut it out there. I&#8217;m kind of trying to, you know, talking with people who do these things or, and they look at what we&#8217;ve got up there and oh, it&#8217;s a little confusing. How do you pick a package? Oh, okay. Yeah. So figuring out some of those, so that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m playing with right now is kind of like, um, does that really make sense? It makes more sense for a site owner. Um, maybe not it for an agency, but um, although they could contract it out I suppose. But yeah, just trying to sort through that and play a little bit more with some productized services around accessibility and remediation, auditing and remediation stuff.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:41:35) &#8211; Yeah. That&#8217;s awesome. Well bet. Tell us where we can find more about yourself and your agency.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:41:42) &#8211; Yeah, so our website is accessi cart.com and uh, you can contact me there. I&#8217;m still on Twitter some, although it just feels a more and more like a ghost town there. Um, and we&#8217;re on LinkedIn, of course, uh, excessive cart and then also Bet Hannon. So love to, and I&#8217;m in the slack for post status, so that&#8217;s a great place to reach me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller (00:42:04) &#8211; Fantastic bet, Hannon, thanks so much for sharing your journey and what your agency is doing in our world, particularly with the e-commerce and accessibility. Keep doing what you&#8217;re doing. But thank you for being on today for post status draft.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bet Hannon (00:42:18) &#8211; Thank you, Ebra fun. Great time.</p>\n<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Fri, 12 May 2023 17:11:17 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:11:\"Cory Miller\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:24;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:60:\"Do The Woo Community: Do the Woo Friday Show with Adam Weeks\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:28:\"https://dothewoo.io/?p=75114\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:59:\"https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-friday-show-with-adam-weeks/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:456:\"<p>In this show we talk about the challenges of finding a good resource to help you choose a hosting company and Adam\'s new venture that will help support the WordPress media ecosystem.</p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-friday-show-with-adam-weeks/\">Do the Woo Friday Show with Adam Weeks</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io\">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Fri, 12 May 2023 12:48:47 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:25;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:92:\"WPTavern: Essential Addons for Elementor Patches Critical Privilege Escalation Vulnerability\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=144929\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:103:\"https://wptavern.com/essential-addons-for-elementor-patches-critical-privilege-escalation-vulnerability\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1942:\"<p><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/essential-addons-for-elementor-lite/\">Essential Addons for Elementor</a>, a plugin with more than a million active installs,  has patched an unauthenticated privilege escalation vulnerability in version 5.7.2. The vulnerability was discovered on May 8, 2023, and reported by Patchstack researcher Rafie Muhammad. It was given a 9.8 (Critical severity) CVSS 3.1 score and is not yet known to have been exploited.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Muhammad outlined the vulnerability in a <a href=\"https://patchstack.com/articles/critical-privilege-escalation-in-essential-addons-for-elementor-plugin-affecting-1-million-sites/\">security advisory</a> published today:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>This plugin suffers from an unauthenticated privilege escalation vulnerability and allows any unauthenticated user to escalate their privilege to that of any user on the WordPress site.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is possible to reset the password of any user as long as we know their username thus being able to reset the password of the administrator and login on their account. This vulnerability occurs because this password reset function does not validate a password reset key and instead directly changes the password of the given user.&nbsp;</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The plugin&#8217;s authors published the patch today, on May 11, with the following note in the changelog:</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>5.7.2 – 11/05/2023<br />Improved: EA Login/Register Form for Security Enhancement<br />Few minor bug fixes &amp; improvements</em></p>\n\n\n\n<p>The vulnerability affects sites using versions 5.4.0 to 5.7.1 of Essential Addons for Elementor. Users are advised to update to the latest version 5.7.2 immediately now that Patchstack has <a href=\"https://patchstack.com/articles/critical-privilege-escalation-in-essential-addons-for-elementor-plugin-affecting-1-million-sites/\">published</a> the proof of concept for exploiting it.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Fri, 12 May 2023 00:34:09 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:26;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:115:\"WPTavern: MasterWP Launches 2023 WordCamp US Travel Program with $10K in Grants for Underrepresented Speaker Groups\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=144909\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:125:\"https://wptavern.com/masterwp-launches-2023-wordcamp-us-travel-program-with-10k-in-grants-for-underrepresented-speaker-groups\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4590:\"<p>WordCamp US 2023, which is being held <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2023/\" target=\"_blank\">August 23-25 in National Harbor</a>, has opened its <a href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2023/apply-to-speak-at-wordcamp-us-2023/\">call for speaker applications</a>. If financial considerations are preventing anyone from applying, there are scholarships and grants available to help cover travel expenses. WCUS is now accepting applications for the <a href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2023/apply-now-for-the-kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship/\">Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship</a> for travel. This particular scholarship applies to anyone who is a WordPress contributor, identifies as a women, has never attended WCUS, and requires financial assistance to attend.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the interest of promoting a more diverse pool of speakers, MasterWP has launched its travel grant program for WCUS that will support a larger number of applicants. The program will provide more than $10,000 in grants for members of underrepresented groups who are accepted to speak at the event. Those who are selected will receive at least $1,000 towards their travel expenses.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2022, the program paid for seven speakers and organizers from underrepresented groups attending WCUS in San Diego. This year MasterWP is aiming to support more speakers and has already received contributions from AccessiCart, Nexcess, Paid Memberships Pro, The WP Minute, and UnlimitedWP towards the fund. They are still <a href=\"https://masterwp.com/travel-grants-for-wordcamp-us-2023/#companies\">accepting corporate grant partners</a> and 100% of funds contributed go directly to the grant recipients.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In recent years, flagship WordCamps have stepped up their work towards diversifying their speaker lineups, as the community has held organizers&#8217; feet to the fire when events failed to recruit a diverse selection.  WordCamp Europe has come under scrutiny once again this year for its response to <a href=\"https://twitter.com/michelleames/status/1655970579248193536\">criticism about the lack of diversity</a> in its early speaker announcements. The event has a <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/speaker-support-program/\">speaker support program</a> that connects speakers to companies for financial support but is not involved in the selection process.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">So far only 25% of the speakers announced for <a href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/WCEU?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#WCEU</a> are women (by name/photo), and only three appear to be non-white. Hoping to see some more inclusion in the next few rounds of announcements.</p>&mdash; Michelle Frechette (@michelleames) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/michelleames/status/1655970579248193536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 9, 2023</a></blockquote>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;If we want to build WordPress for the next generation, we need to be inclusive,&#8221; StellarWP director of community engagement and <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/new-wp-speakers-website-helps-event-organizers-find-speakers\">WP Speakers</a> project creator Michelle Frechette <a href=\"https://twitter.com/michelleames/status/1656027661632765955\">said</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The next generation is already demanding it. Inclusion is the future. Without it we are irrelevant.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>MasterWP&#8217;s travel grant program was created as an independent initiative and is not affiliated with WordCamp or The WordPress Foundation. A growing dissatisfaction with speaker diversity at WordCamps has led WordPress companies to create their own means of supporting the diversity they hope to see at events.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;My conversations with leaders at several major companies led me to believe that many well-meaning, friendly and progressive people simply do not understand that some people cannot afford to participate in the career-growth opportunity of attending a major WordCamp – a similar dynamic to <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2022/03/21/unpaid-internships-are-unethical-and-wrong/\" target=\"_blank\">the unfairness of unpaid internships</a>,&#8221; MasterWP publisher Rob Howard said in a <a href=\"https://masterwp.com/our-wordcamp-travel-program-stats-recap-and-the-future/\">recap of the 2022 program</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Since diversity is fundamentally an economic issue, improving it requires economic change. The travel sponsorship is a small economic change that has already made a big impact.&#8221; </p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 11 May 2023 21:29:41 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:27;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:77:\"Post Status: WP 6.2.1 RC1 • Annual Survey Results • WCUS Scholarship Fund\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:32:\"https://poststatus.com/?p=149286\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:80:\"https://poststatus.com/wp-6-2-1-rc1-annual-survey-results-wcus-scholarship-fund/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:19386:\"<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-this-week-at-wordpress-org-april-3-2023\">This Week at WordPress.org (May 8, 2023)</h2>\n\n\n<div class=\"has-background has-theme-palette-8-background-color wp-block-post-excerpt\"><p class=\"wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt\">WordPress 6.2.1 RC1 is now available for testing, and planning is underway for the 6.3 AND 6.4 release squad members. Head over to the Core team website for more information. <br /><br />Each year the WordPress community has an opportunity to participate in the annual survey. The results from 2022 are now available. <br /><br />Contributors that are a self-identifying female, have a financial need and have never attended WordCamp US are encouraged to apply by June 12, 2023, 11:00 pm Eastern time </p></div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-kadence-infobox kt-info-box_94d1bd-77\"><div class=\"kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap kt-blocks-info-box-media-align-left kt-info-halign-left\"><div class=\"kt-blocks-info-box-media-container\"><div class=\"kt-blocks-info-box-media kt-info-media-animate-none\"><div class=\"kadence-info-box-icon-container kt-info-icon-animate-none\"><div class=\"kadence-info-box-icon-inner-container\"><span class=\"kb-svg-icon-wrap kb-svg-icon-fas_rocket kt-info-svg-icon\"></span></div></div></div></div><div class=\"kt-infobox-textcontent\"><h2 class=\"kt-blocks-info-box-title\">WP 6.2.1, Survey Results, WCUS Scholarship</h2><p class=\"kt-blocks-info-box-text\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f680.png\" alt=\"🚀\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/09/wordpress-6-2-1-rc1-is-now-available/\">WordPress 6.2.1 RC1 is now available</a><br /><br /><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f50e.png\" alt=\"🔎\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/05/2022-annual-survey-results-next-steps/\">2022 Annual Survey Results &amp; Next Steps</a><br /><br /><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4b5.png\" alt=\"💵\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://wordpressfoundation.org/news/2023/kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship-for-wordcamp-us-2023/\">Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for WordCamp US 2023</a></p></div></div></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-_b57166-6e\"><div class=\"kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center\"><hr class=\"kt-divider\" /></div></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-news\"><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news\">News</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/05/episode-55-happy-anniversary-wordpress/\">WP Briefing: Episode 55: Happy Anniversary, WordPress!</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/05/2022-annual-survey-results-next-steps/\">2022 Annual Survey Results &amp; Next Steps</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/05/the-month-in-wordpress-april-2023/\">The Month in WordPress – April 2023</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpressfoundation.org/news/2023/kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship-for-wordcamp-us-2023/\">Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for WordCamp US 2023</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-_8f6276-eb\"><div class=\"kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center\"><hr class=\"kt-divider\" /></div></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-9\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow\">\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-community\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community\">Community</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/05/10/kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship-for-wordcamp-us-2023/\">Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for WordCamp US 2023</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/05/08/the-next-generation-of-wordcamps/\">The Next Generation of WordCamps</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/05/03/community-team-training-8-boosting-wordpress-meetup-engagement-with-meetup-com/\">Community Team Training #8: Boosting WordPress Meetup engagement with Meetup.com</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-core\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core\">Core</a> </h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/09/wordpress-6-2-1-rc1-is-now-available/\">WordPress&nbsp;6.2.1&nbsp;RC1 is now available</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/09/a-week-in-core-may-8-2023/\">A Week in Core – May 8, 2023</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-7-03-may/\">What’s new in Gutenberg 15.7? (03 May)</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/03/wordpress-6-2-1-planning/\">WordPress 6.2.1 Planning</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-developer-blog\"><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/\">Developer Blog</a></h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/05/whats-new-for-developers-may-2023/\">What’s new for developers? (May 2023)</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-meetings\">Meetings</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/11/developer-blog-meeting-summary-may-4-2023/\">Developer blog meeting summary: May 4, 2023</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/09/dev-chat-agenda-may-10-2023/\">Dev Chat agenda, May 10, 2023</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Design</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/05/08/design-share-apr-24-may-5/\">Design Share: Apr 24–May 5</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-docs\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/docs\">Docs</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/05/08/documentation-team-update-may-8-2023/\">Documentation Team Update – May 8, 2023</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-hosting\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/hosting\">Hosting</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2023/05/10/hosting-team-meeting-agenda-2023-05-10/\">Hosting Team meeting agenda 2023-05-10</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-marketing\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing\">Marketing</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/05/10/day-3-wp20-from-blogs-to-blocks/\">Day 3: #WP20 From Blogs to Blocks</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/05/09/day-2-wp20-from-blogs-to-blocks/\">Day 2: #WP20 From Blogs to Blocks</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/05/08/day-1-wp20-from-blogs-to-blocks/\">Day 1: #WP20 From Blogs to Blocks</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/05/08/faq-for-the-wp20-from-blogs-to-blocks-campaign/\">FAQ for the #WP20 From Blogs to Blocks Campaign</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/05/02/20-days-to-celebrate-20-years-of-wordpress-from-blogs-to-blocks/\">20 Days to Celebrate 20 Years of WordPress, From Blogs to Blocks</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-meta\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/meta\">Meta</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/05/04/matrix-chat-summary-may-4-2023/\">Matrix chat Summary – May 4, 2023</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-mobile\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/mobile\">Mobile</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2023/04/11/contribute-to-the-future-of-the-wordpress-app/\">Contribute to the Future of the WordPress App</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/05/04/mobile-team-update-may-3rd-3/\">Mobile Team Update – May 3rd</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-openverse\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/openverse\">Openverse</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/05/08/last-week-openverse-2023-05-01-2023-05-08/\">A week in Openverse: 2023-05-01 – 2023-05-08</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/05/03/priorities-meeting-recap-2023-05-03/\">Priorities Meeting Recap 2023-05-03</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-performance\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/performance/\">Performance</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/10/performance-chat-summary-09-may-2023/\">Performance Chat Summary: 9 May 2023</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-plugins\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/plugins\">Plugins</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2023/03/21/use-of-code-generators-must-remain-gpl-compatible/\">Use of Code Generators Must Remain GPL Compatible</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2023/03/10/advance-notice-of-retirement/\">Advance Notice of Retirement</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/05/09/plugin-review-team-update-8-may-2023/\">Plugin Review Team Update: 8 May 2023</a></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow\">\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-polyglots\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots\">Polyglots</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/05/10/polyglots-monthly-newsletter-may-2023/\">Polyglots Monthly Newsletter: May 2023</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/04/24/defining-the-polyglots-contributor-ladder/\">Defining the Polyglots contributor ladder</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/04/13/idea-translate-wordpress-org-tour/\">Idea: translate.wordpress.org tour</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-project\">Project</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/04/13/wordpress-at-20-in-print/\">Building Blocks: The Evolution of WordPress 2013-2023</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/04/19/showcase-content-moderation/\">Revitalizing the Showcase</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-support\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/support\">Support</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/support/2023/05/agenda-for-may-11th-support-meeting-2/\">Agenda for May 11th Support Meeting</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/support/2023/04/request-for-input-support-stats/\">Request for input: Support Stats</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-test\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test\">Test</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/05/04/fse-program-build-a-block-theme-summary/\">FSE Program Build a Block Theme Summary</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/04/17/fse-program-testing-call-21-front-page-fun/\">FSE Program Testing Call #21: Front Page Fun</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-theme\">Theme</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/05/08/themes-team-meeting-agenda-for-may-09-2023/\">Themes team meeting agenda for May 09, 2023</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/05/04/stacks-the-first-community-theme/\">Stacks: The first community theme</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/05/09/themes-team-update-may-09-2023/\">Themes team update May 09, 2023</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-training\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training\">Training</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/05/09/brainstorm-wordcamp-europe-2023-contributor-day/\">Brainstorm – WordCamp Europe 2023 Contributor Day</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/05/09/training-team-meeting-recap-for-may-2nd-2023/\">Training Team Meeting Recap for May 2nd, 2023</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/05/05/proposal-creating-github-project-boards-for-smes-and-translators/\">Proposal: Creating GitHub project boards for SMEs and&nbsp;Translators</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/05/04/training-team-meeting-recap-for-april-25th-2023/\">Training Team Meeting Recap for April 25th 2023</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/learn-wordpress-may-2023-newsletter/\">Learn WordPress May 2023 Newsletter</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plans\">Lesson Plans</a></h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plan/it-choosing-and-installing-plugins/\">Scegliere e installare i plugin</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plan/fr-setting-a-static-page-as-your-homepage/\">Définir une page statique comme page d’accueil</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-tutorials\"><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorials\">Tutorials</a></h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/wordpress-editor-modes-for-streamlining-content-creation/\">WordPress editor modes for streamlining content creation</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/exploring-category-templates-with-block-themes/\">Exploring category templates with block themes</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/the-wordpress-request-lifecycle/\">The WordPress request lifecycle</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-online-workshops\">Online Workshops</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=working-with-version-control\">Working with Version Control</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-to-translate-content-for-learn-wordpress-org\">How to translate content for Learn.WordPress.org</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=%E3%82%AD%E3%83%A3%E3%83%83%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A5%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6%E7%9F%A5%E3%82%8D%E3%81%86%EF%BC%81-wordpress-%E3%82%B5%E3%82%A4%E3%83%88%E3%81%AE-cache-%E8%A8%AD%E5%AE%9A-2\">キャッシュについて知ろう！ ~ WordPress サイトの Cache 設定 ~</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=%E3%82%AD%E3%83%A3%E3%83%83%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A5%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6%E7%9F%A5%E3%82%8D%E3%81%86%EF%BC%81-wordpress-%E3%82%B5%E3%82%A4%E3%83%88%E3%81%AE-cache-%E8%A8%AD%E5%AE%9A\">キャッシュについて知ろう！ ~ WordPress サイトの Cache 設定 ~</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=lets-set-up-a-new-header-and-footer-block-theme\">Let’s set up a new header and footer (block theme)</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=testing-plugins-for-php-8\">Testing plugins for PHP 8</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=wp-dev-livestream-sendig-block-theme\">WP dev livestream: Sendig block theme</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=create-a-four-page-wordpress-website-4-design-templates\">Create a four page WordPress website #4: Design templates</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=series-create-a-four-page-wordpress-website-3-creating-effective-pages\">[Series] Create a four page WordPress website #3: Creating effective pages</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=series-create-a-four-page-wordpress-website-2-themes-fonts-styles\">[Series] Create a four page WordPress website #2: Headers &amp; footers</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=series-create-a-four-page-wordpress-website-1-themes-fonts-styles\">[Series] Create a four page WordPress website #1: Themes, fonts, &amp; styles</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-courses\"><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/courses\">Courses</a></h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/course/converting-a-shortcode-to-a-block/\">Converting a Shortcode to a Block</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-wp-cli\">WP-CLI</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/cli/2023/04/05/wp-cli-v2-8-0-release-date/\">WP-CLI v2.8.0 release date</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-wptv\">WPTV</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/category/year/2022/\">Latest WordPress TV videos</a></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-related-news\">Related News:</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-04-13-1\">PHP 8.2.5 Released!</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-04-13-2\">PHP 8.1.18 Released!</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://262.ecma-international.org/13.0/\">TC39</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/composer/composer/releases/tag/2.5.5\">Composer 2.5.5</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-theme-palette-7-background-color has-background\">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. <br /><br /><strong>Are you interested in giving back and contributing your time and skills to WordPress.org?</strong> <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png\" alt=\"🙏\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/support/article/contributing-to-wordpress/\">Start Here ›</a><br /><br /><strong>Get our weekly WordPress community news digest</strong> — Post Status&#8217; <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/news/week-in-review/\">Week in Review</a> — covering the WP/Woo news plus significant writing and podcasts. It&#8217;s also available in <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/newsletter\">our newsletter</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f48c.png\" alt=\"💌\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /></p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile has-background\"><a href=\"https://poststatus.com/\"><img src=\"https://poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/vertical-post-status-logo-250.png\" alt=\"Post Status\" class=\"wp-image-85823 size-full\" /></a><div class=\"wp-block-media-text__content\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left has-normal-font-size\" id=\"h-get-ready-for-remote-work\">You — and <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/#Agency\">your whole team</a> can <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/#choose-membership\">Join Post Status</a> too!</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left has-small-font-size\"><strong>Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire.</strong> Read the <strong>Post Status</strong> <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/newsletter/\">newsletter</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2709.png\" alt=\"✉\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> Listen to <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/podcasts/\">podcasts</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f399.png\" alt=\"🎙\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> Follow <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status/\">@Post_Status</a> <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png\" alt=\"🐦\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> and <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/company/post-status-llc/\">LinkedIn</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4bc.png\" alt=\"💼\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /></p>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 11 May 2023 15:51:27 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:18:\"Courtney Robertson\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:28;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:85:\"Do The Woo Community: Woo DevChat, Building Products with James Kemp and Ross Morsali\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:28:\"https://dothewoo.io/?p=75100\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:83:\"https://dothewoo.io/woo-devchat-building-products-with-james-kemp-and-ross-morsali/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:455:\"<p>Our guest hosts James and Ross dive into what they are working on, the products they have built, and some other great dev insights. </p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io/woo-devchat-building-products-with-james-kemp-and-ross-morsali/\">Woo DevChat, Building Products with James Kemp and Ross Morsali</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io\">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 11 May 2023 11:37:33 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:29;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:75:\"WPTavern: WP Engine Releases Frost, A Free Block Theme for Website Builders\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=144600\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:85:\"https://wptavern.com/wp-engine-releases-frost-a-free-block-theme-for-website-builders\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:3635:\"<p>The WordPress Themes Directory is now hosting more than <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/tags/full-site-editing/\">300 block themes</a>, a milestone for the dedicated theme developers who have persevered through the growing pains and evolution of block theming. WP Engine is one of the newest theme authors who helped put the directory over the 300 mark with its submission of <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/frost/\">Frost</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>With its clean, minimal design, 36 patterns, and impeccable attention to detail on block styles, Frost is positioned to quickly become another blockbuster multipurpose theme. It already has more than 1,000 users as it has been in testing for awhile before landing in the official directory.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>Frost&#8217;s typography features <a href=\"https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Outfit/about\">Outfit</a>, a geometric sans-serif font, for both header and paragraph text.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The default color scheme is black and white with a vibrant blue accent color but Frost comes with eight different style variations. Frost designer Brian Gardner showcases a few in the tweet below, with Gutenberg&#8217;s full-screen previews for styles.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Feast your eyes on the latest Style Variations setting in the Site Editor, now with full-screen previews. It\'s currently in Gutenberg and will likely make its grand entrance in <a href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordPress?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#WordPress</a> 6.3! <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f680.png\" alt=\"🚀\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2728.png\" alt=\"✨\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://t.co/r7r20GjcdS\">pic.twitter.com/r7r20GjcdS</a></p>&mdash; Brian Gardner (@bgardner) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/bgardner/status/1654472586619658242?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 5, 2023</a></blockquote>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>When first installing the theme on a new WordPress site, clicking Customize takes the user to the Site Editor with the homepage template pre-filled so there&#8217;s no guesswork involved. Users can immediately start customizing any of the included templates. Frost packages all the usual ones &#8211; 404, archive, home, index, page, search, and single, but also includes a blank template and a &#8220;no title&#8221; template to help users with content that works better without the requirement of a title.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>Frost includes 36 patterns for building everything from pricing tables to portfolios, calls-to-action, testimonials, a grid of team members, various heroes, feature boxes, and more. Many of them have dark and light variations. </p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>There are also four full-page layouts that users can insert to build pages and launch websites faster, including About, Pricing, Home, and Links pages. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Frost could easily be used for building agency websites, portfolios, business sites, and more. It&#8217;s easy to see developers using it as a starter for multiple projects given its minimal design. If website builders are looking for an even more minimalist starting point, Gardner&#8217;s <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/powder/\">Powder</a> theme is a stripped down fork of Frost.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Check out the Frost theme on its own website at <a href=\"https://frostwp.com/\">frostwp.com</a>, which includes examples of all the patterns, layouts, styles, documentation, and more. <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/frost/\">Frost</a> is available to download for free from WordPress.org. </p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 11 May 2023 02:30:22 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:30;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:69:\"WPTavern: WooCommerce 7.7.0 Brings Multichannel Marketing Out of Beta\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=144860\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:80:\"https://wptavern.com/woocommerce-7-7-0-brings-multichannel-marketing-out-of-beta\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:2356:\"<p><a href=\"https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/05/10/woocommerce-7-7-released/\">WooCommerce 7.7.0</a> was released this week with Multichannel Marketing now out of beta. This is the first thing store owners see when they visit the Marketing page in the dashboard. It allows users to connect additional sales channels, such as Google, Amazon, and eBay, and automatically manage inventory across storefronts. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>This addition makes WooCommerce more competitive with platforms like Shopify Plus. Merchants can connect different channels to the store by installing plugins. WooCommerce has <a href=\"https://woocommerce.com/document/multichannel-for-woocommerce-google-amazon-ebay-walmart-integration/\">documentation</a>, including a quick start guide, for configuring Multichannel Marketing. </p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>Version 7.7.0 also introduces updated shopper notices with new, more consistent styles for <a href=\"https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-blocks/blob/313a259798a665a7329fd02e25cd129778e8fd4f/assets/js/base/components/snackbar-list/README.md\">Snackbar lists</a> and <a href=\"https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-blocks/pull/8659#:~:text=and%20new%20styles.-,Docs,-SnackbarList\">Notice banners</a>. More details on targeting the new CSS selectors is in the release post.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A few other highlights in this release include the following:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Expanded styling options for<em>Product SKU</em>, <em>Product Price</em>, and <em>Product Image</em></li>\n\n\n\n<li>New Product Reviews block that can be inserted on the Single Product template</li>\n\n\n\n<li>More customization options for Add to Cart button</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Expanded Mini Cart block customization options</li>\n\n\n\n<li>New option to “Upgrade to Blockified Single Product template” from a classic template</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Check out the <a href=\"https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/05/10/woocommerce-7-7-released/\">7.7.0 release post</a> to see all the new filters and template changes. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>WooCommerce is also running its <a href=\"https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/05/08/developer-survey-2023-help-us-make-woo-better/\">2023 twice yearly Developer Survey</a>. The survey was designed to capture confidential feedback from developers who build on the WooCommerce platform in order to better understand their needs and make improvements.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 10 May 2023 20:31:10 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:31;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:89:\"WPTavern: #75 – Mark Westguard on Launching a Plugin Into an Already Competitive Market\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:48:\"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=144812\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:103:\"https://wptavern.com/podcast/75-mark-westguard-on-launching-a-plugin-into-an-already-competitive-market\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:54725:\"Transcript<div>\n<p>[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case launching a plugin into an already competitive market.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice. Or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m very keen to hear from you, and hopefully you get you or your idea featured on the show. Head to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox and use the form there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So on the podcast today we have Mark Westguard. Mark is an agency owner and developer behind the WS Form plugin. And he&#8217;s on the podcast to chart his journey in the WordPress space, and the different ways he&#8217;s explored to grow the reach of the plugin.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>First up, we talk about why mark started to use WordPress. As you&#8217;ll hear he already had a successful agency, but he could see that the path to profitability was becoming harder each year. WordPress plugins offered the chance of recurring revenue, which was appealing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Users of WordPress will know that there are many form solutions. Both free and paid plugins are available, and can handle almost any scenario you might imagine.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We get into what made Mark pick this as an area to invest in. Surely it would have been easier to work on something brand new? Mark does not think so. He could see gaps in the market and built his solution to cater to those. This involved plenty of market research and analysis of where to put his development efforts.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We then move onto the subject of turning a well-developed plugin into a viable business. It&#8217;s one thing to build a product, but if you&#8217;re going to make it commercial, much of the work will revolve around ensuring that the world knows about it. Marketing is a relentless enterprise, and one that you should not ignore or underestimate.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This might mean getting yourself out into the community to meet with other WordPressers, appearing on podcasts, or sponsoring WordPress events. There&#8217;s no perfect answer. Just run with what works and try out new things all the time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>After that comes support. Mark&#8217;s pretty clear your product will succeed or fail based on how you handle support requests. He thinks that the development of a plugin inevitably leads to support tickets, and this needs to be factored in right from the start.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also get into the subject of pricing, and what Mark feels was the right price to pitch his plugin. Is the WordPress ecosystem guilty of expecting a lot from plugins at prices which are realistic? How much of the functionality, if any, should be given away in a free version? And how did he decide which features to charge for?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Towards the end of the podcast we stray into the plugins use of AI, and how Mark was an early mover in this area. What can be done with forms and AI, and does he see AI as a technology which is going to grow in the future?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Mark Westguard.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Mark Westguard. Hello, Mark.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:34] Mark Westguard: Hey Nathan, how are you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:35] Nathan Wrigley: Very good, thank you. Mark is joining us today. We&#8217;re going to have a chat all about, well, I guess building plugins in what is a competitive marketplace. Marketing, launching, creating, having an idea for what plugin you&#8217;re going to decide to create. But before we do that Mark, I wonder if you wouldn&#8217;t mind spending just a few minutes, give us a potted history of yourself. Who you are. How come you&#8217;ve ended up developing on top of WordPress. All of that good stuff.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:04] Mark Westguard: Yeah. About 26, 27 years ago out of university, I decided I was going to start a web agency. Back when we had to teach companies what the web was. Nowadays everybody knows what the internet is. Back then, we were trying to convince companies that they needed a website. And started an agency. We were quite successful. We were the UK&#8217;s second fastest growing web agency at the time. And went through the whole dot com boom and bust, and have been in the web industry ever since.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And about, I want to say about 14 years ago, I actually got into the licensing game. I was marrying my wife and, I&#8217;m not a US citizen, my wife is. So we had a bit of an international wedding and we needed to RSVP guests from both countries. So I built an RSVP system, and I thought, oh, other people may want to use this. And I actually licensed it and ended up licensing that to a company called Condé Nast, which people may be familiar with.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They produced Vanity Fair Magazine and also Brides Magazine. I White labeled it to them. And that was kind of my entry into the licensing world. And that company went on for about six, seven years. I had that company for about six, seven years. And then I got back into the web agency game again, and that&#8217;s when I started using WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that was around about, I want to say, probably about 10 years ago now. We were back in the agency game, building websites and sat down one day with my wife and I said, look, I&#8217;m building all these wonderful things for people, great websites, but also software development and apps and things like that. And decided I want to get back into the licensing game and building a plugin seemed to be a good way of doing that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And sat down with my team at the time and said, look, what do you not like about WordPress? What is, you know, a challenge for you when we&#8217;re building websites. And forms came up, and we thought, okay, let&#8217;s try and tackle the form problem. And that&#8217;s basically what started WS Form, and where I am now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So really it came from a lot of experience in the web industry, just trying to tackle an issue that we come across personally as a company and wanted to improve on. And that&#8217;s where WS Form was born.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:15] Nathan Wrigley: Do you have a relationship with WordPress going back years and years? Or in your case, did you pick WordPress because you knew you wanted to create some sort of solution that you could sell into the market, and WordPress at the time was the dominant force, so that&#8217;s where you ended up? Or have you been building websites with it for many, many years?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:34] Mark Westguard: We had been building websites with it, yeah, for quite a long time. I was not the one that introduced my company to it. It was actually one of my employees who went to a WordCamp. Really liked the WordPress product, was very keen about it. It took me, I&#8217;ll be honest, it took me a while to warm up to it because we were originally building websites from scratch. Literally from scratch, and building the admin things for them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the idea of having a pre-built content management system was quite new to me at the time. So, it&#8217;s something that we&#8217;ve been using for at least 10 years. We&#8217;re not by any means like some other companies that have been there for the full 20 years. But yeah, 10 years of building websites, and then more recently getting very much more involved in the community and building plugins.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:17] Nathan Wrigley: So the desire was to build a plugin, to sell something into the marketplace, give away a free version as well. And you&#8217;re casting around and you&#8217;re thinking, okay, what thing could we build?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:29] Mark Westguard: Right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:29] Nathan Wrigley: Why forms? Of all the things it feels that in the last 10 years even, or more, there have been some incumbent players. I mean, some players have come, some players have gone. But there&#8217;s been some solid competition, some rivals in that space. What on earth were you thinking there? Launching into a marketplace which you could have already described as possibly saturated.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:54] Mark Westguard: Partially madness I think. I think that we saw a genuine gap in the market there. There were some frustrations that we had and that other people had as well. You&#8217;re right, it was a very saturated area. It&#8217;s a very well established part of WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Every website needs a form. We don&#8217;t particularly like building them. Without a form, you&#8217;re not going to get any feedback from your customers or from potential customers or whoever&#8217;s using your website. We saw that there were better ways that we could do certain things that were lacking in some of these form plugins.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, mobile responsiveness, actually being able to build a fully responsive form with break points. We weren&#8217;t very happy with the number of plugins you had to add to get a form plugin to do what we wanted it to do. There were performance issues. There were styling issues. So all these things were things that we could improve upon. And so we embarked on that journey.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We thought it was going to take, five, six months and four years later we&#8217;re still here building more and more for it. So it&#8217;s certainly been a big challenge. So basically we just saw a genuine need there and thought we&#8217;d go ahead and tackle it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:10:03] Nathan Wrigley: I wonder if you&#8217;d, if you had done any market research in the WordPress space, aside from forms? You know, whether you&#8217;d thought about building, oh, I don&#8217;t know, a page builder or a caching plugin. You know, all these other things where there&#8217;s lots of scope, there&#8217;s a lot of ways to differentiate yourself and so on.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the question really is, what kind of market research did you do inside the WordPress space, if any, to figure actually forms is it? You mentioned that you found a need and you described all of the different things that you felt were lacking. I wondered if you&#8217;d ruled out other types of plugins?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:10:36] Mark Westguard: We did, we looked at other plugins in the space that we were using as well. I think the thing that attracted me to it personally is probably my programming background and my desire to integrate one thing with the other. Which has been a big part of WS Form. Before I had my agency, I was working for a company called Sequin, who are now owned by IBM and I worked in their communications team, and I worked on networking.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we would integrate one machine with another. The challenge of making that integration process easy with WS Form was something that attracted me as well. One very simple example, a lot of form plugins you have to go off, get an API key or set an app up. It was a very long process just to get your website connected to a third party platform. And I saw that a lot of these platforms we&#8217;re now using OAuth, which is a very simple way for users to be able to connect their platform well from one platform to another.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so I wanted to incorporate that into WS Form, which is one of the things that we&#8217;ve done. I think it was looking around at where we saw that there was a gap in the market. Granted, a small gap in the market because it was a saturated area. But also just a desire to build something that would interest me as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:46] Nathan Wrigley: I&#8217;m wondering if there were people listening to this podcast who have a desire to get into WordPress plugin development. Let&#8217;s stick with plugins, particularly. I know there&#8217;s a whole range of different marketplaces, themes and so on. But if we just stick with plugins, I wonder what your opinion is of the marketplace. Whether or not the growth of WordPress, which inexorably seems to go up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s the low forties at the moment. I don&#8217;t know where it&#8217;ll be the next time we hear that figure. But it does seem to just sort of keep edging up. So the audience is growing, but equally the number of players getting in, developing plugins, it feels like there&#8217;s not just a plugin for that, but there&#8217;s often multiple plugins for that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so speaking to people who are considering this as a career, do you have any pearls of wisdom? Any advice for people in that space? Is WordPress still a land of bounty, or is it more, as you might imagine everywhere else, a story of hard work, trial and error, occasional failure and so on?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:12:55] Mark Westguard: I think that there are two distinct types of developers in the WordPress space. You&#8217;ve got people that just genuinely just want to build a bit of software that&#8217;s open source, and want to support the community that way. And they&#8217;re not necessarily interested in monetizing it. Those that do want to monetize it, you&#8217;ve really got to run that business like any other bricks and mortar business. Don&#8217;t think that you can just write a plugin, put it in the repo, and suddenly start making huge amounts of money from it, because it just doesn&#8217;t work that way.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You&#8217;ve really got to market it properly. You&#8217;ve got to be, in my opinion, if you want to be successful in the WordPress space, you&#8217;ve got to be part of the community. And that means giving back. If you want to be successful, but also respected in the industry, you&#8217;ve got to give back in the community and be part of it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In terms of other advice I would give would be, and we can talk about this later, but marketing. And different things that I&#8217;ve tried with marketing that have worked and haven&#8217;t worked. It&#8217;s very easy to pump a lot of money into marketing and get nowhere with it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve found that the whole WordPress ecosystem is a very different way of marketing. There&#8217;s a lot of established brands there. Be it people like yourself, Nathan, with podcasts. Or people in the hosting industry that they&#8217;ve got a big customer base there and you need to be in with those people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But you know, you don&#8217;t just approach them and say, hey, here&#8217;s my product. You&#8217;ve got to build genuine relationships with people. The WordPress community is just a wonderful group of people that all want to help each other and all want to respect each other. And you&#8217;ve got to be part of that. You&#8217;ve got to be respectful and you&#8217;ve got to be friendly and get on with these people and build genuine friendships and relationships with them in order to grow.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:33] Nathan Wrigley: Let me just rewind a little bit, but I will come back to marketing that we&#8217;ve just mentioned, but you mentioned the community and how you thought being involved in the community was a good way to figure out the path that you want to take, but also to get some, I&#8217;ll use the word credibility in the WordPress space.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What do you mean? What things have you done in the community which you feel have either given back, so that&#8217;s in one direction, but also have benefited you, so that&#8217;s other direction. What things have you undertaken? What events have you been to? Things have you sponsored, whatever it may be.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:15:08] Mark Westguard: Yeah, I think in terms of relationships with people, that can certainly help you get exposure of a product. So maybe contributing to a podcast or something. It&#8217;s only small amounts The thing that I&#8217;ve found is there&#8217;s no single channel in the WordPress space where you can say, hey, here&#8217;s my product, and expect thousands of people to learn about it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a very distributed community of lots of small channels. And you need to be involved with all those different channels to get a bigger voice. So, yeah, contributing to say podcasts. Just getting people using the product that enjoy using the product and those people can become almost brand advocates naturally because they like using the product.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean, obviously you&#8217;ve got to have a good product in the first place. And that&#8217;s someone we can talk about. What product do you decide that you want to build in the first place? I think that, going back and then I&#8217;ll come back to your point, is there&#8217;s a lot of plugins out there that can be done better. There&#8217;s plenty of scope out there for improvement. You don&#8217;t have to become the next big thing that no one&#8217;s thought about. So I think that&#8217;s an important thing to consider.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, WordPress has like five for the future, for example. And I know that&#8217;s not very well defined at the moment. They&#8217;re still trying to work out other ways to say, hey, you know, you&#8217;ve done that. We&#8217;d like to recognize that as part of that five for the future. But doing WordCamps is one of the biggest things I spend money on.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Primarily it&#8217;s to meet new customers. Demo the product. But it&#8217;s also building genuine relationships at these events, which has been really great for me. So, meeting people in all walks of life form hosting companies to other plugin companies. I&#8217;ve met people at other plugin companies at WordPress events, like WordCamp, and we&#8217;ve built an integration between us and then you&#8217;ve got co-marketing going on there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So anywhere where you can identify a business that has an existing customer base that you could potentially plug into by developing something that will genuinely help those customers is a good way of increasing your of sphere of influence.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it&#8217;s also just doing things like giving back to things like Big Orange Heart, for example. And we&#8217;re also doing something right now with GiveWP where they&#8217;re going to be giving away three websites to three nonprofits. And we try to donate licenses wherever we can to help out with that. That in turn, WS Form will appear on something, and it may only be seen by a handful of people, but the more and more you do of that, the more brand awareness you get.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I&#8217;m about doing that type of community work rather than trying to pump money into Google AdWords or a Facebook ad or you know, an Instagram ad or whatever it may be. Really you are pushing your product in people&#8217;s faces. I find that if people are recommending your product, you&#8217;ve got a much higher conversion rate, and really word of mouth business is the best business you can get.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:18:04] Nathan Wrigley: You mentioned that you&#8217;ve been in different lines of work in the past, and I don&#8217;t know if in those lines of work you were customer facing. In other words, if you were selling directly into that market. So you may able to answer this question. But, in the round, broadly speaking, how easy or difficult has it been, in your estimation, to get a product to the point where it&#8217;s self sustaining. It justifies itself.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s no longer a pet project. Something you do at the weekends and in the evenings. It&#8217;s now your actual core business. I wonder how easy that&#8217;s been or if it&#8217;s been surprisingly difficult. If there&#8217;s any challenges come your way and you&#8217;ve thrown your arms in the air and said, oh, wish I&#8217;d never got into this in the first place.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:18:45] Mark Westguard: Yeah, it&#8217;s been a big challenge. And it&#8217;s been very different from a business model that I&#8217;ve been used to. I used to be a web development agency where I would get in the car, go to a meeting, meet a company and sell a website to them. Or I would join an RFP process, you know, and pitch myself against two or three other companies and hopefully win the business.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>With this, it&#8217;s been very, very difficult. I&#8217;m sure there are some plugins out there that come out that people have jumped on and have been very successful. But building a sustainable subscription-based business is a challenge. We are selling high volume, low price products. Our base price is $59, which doesn&#8217;t go a long way to pay the bills. So you need a lot of those in order to start building a sustainable business.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The nice thing about it is when you get to the point where you&#8217;ve got that critical mass and you&#8217;ve got enough people renewing their licenses, and fortunately we have a very good license renewal rate, it starts to become a sustainable business and it starts to, in effect, snowball.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it&#8217;s taken us a good, I&#8217;d say three, four years to get to where I&#8217;d say that we&#8217;re in the clear, we&#8217;re profitable, we&#8217;re doing great. I actually went to a Post Status event, in Oklahoma a few years ago, and I met some other plugin developers there. It&#8217;s actually one of the first times I&#8217;d sat down and had the chance to have a beer with somebody about their WordPress business.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it was really interesting sitting and talking to them. And gauging from them where they are in their business. They were saying after year two, three, if you&#8217;re starting to make good profit then, then you&#8217;re on the right path. So it certainly wasn&#8217;t an overnight success, and I wasn&#8217;t expecting that. I expected this to be a much more long slog to get to where we are.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And really, I guess it depends on your business model. There are other people in the industry, you know, take for example Newsletter Glue, a newsletter plugin for WordPress. They changed their business model from lots of small customers to much bigger customers and less of them. Which I think is really interesting and quite brave of them to do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that seems to be working well for them. I guess it just depends on what plugin you&#8217;re developing and what your price point is and as to how long it&#8217;s going to take. But it&#8217;s certainly taken a lot longer than I expected it to.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:20:57] Nathan Wrigley: But I guess you, having had those chats in the past, you were prepared for that. Let&#8217;s say two year slog. Where it wasn&#8217;t necessarily going to be a case of, okay, I&#8217;ll just toss this into the marketplace and by this time next year it&#8217;ll all be ticking over. There was hard work. Support to be done. We&#8217;ll get to that, but all of these things, continual development and so on.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A takeaway from that would be, yeah, don&#8217;t expect riches quickly. Address the problem of the next couple of years, and I guess in your case, you had other work, other lines of work which you could rely on and develop this at the same time?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:21:34] Mark Westguard: Yeah. This was very much a career change for me because I was in the agency space building websites. Which I love doing, but the web development space has changed significantly in the past five, six years. And that&#8217;s something I recognized early on. Another reason I wanted to get back into licensing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We had the likes of Wix. We had the likes of Squarespace, and to an extent now even WordPress making websites so easy to build. I mean, I&#8217;ve actually built a website for a friend yesterday. I used Kadence and I had something whipped up in an hour. 10 years ago that would&#8217;ve taken us three weeks and a team of five people to do it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, my industry was dwindling in terms of the revenue that I could create from it, and that&#8217;s why I, you know, I moved to this space. But I think, going back to your point, there&#8217;s a lot of hurdles with building a plugin. You&#8217;ve got to find the good plugin that you want to build. You&#8217;ve got a development period to actually build that product, which can be a considerable investment.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then you&#8217;ve got a period of time where you&#8217;ve got to build that customer base up. Where you&#8217;ve not got the income coming in. So for me, I was looking at three, four years before I was breaking even. And I was very fortunate that I had my agency to fall back on. So I was running those in parallel. For some people that may be a need to get some investment. A loan or whatever to get through that period, and actually build the product.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:22:53] Nathan Wrigley: Let&#8217;s get to the pricing piece before we return to the marketing, because I always think this is a curious conversation. On the one hand, you&#8217;ve got a really interesting crowd of people in the free open source software space. A large amount of things which are literally free as in beer. You don&#8217;t pay anything. You can use it how you like.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, then you&#8217;ve got obviously people like yourself who are developers and need secure an income and so, there&#8217;s this tension, this conflict between price high to ensure that you can survive and you don&#8217;t need to go through thousands of users in a year. You can do it with a modest amount of sales.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then there&#8217;s this constant pressure to drive down prices and make licensing as cheap as possible. A, because everybody likes things that are as cheap as possible, but also you&#8217;re in competition with other people and that slightly skewed marketplace, which free open source software, like WordPress, has. There&#8217;s definitely a little bit of tension in pricing created there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>How did you decide on the pricing? You know, did you have that pang of, okay, I&#8217;ve got to go in low because that&#8217;s what the market can take. I&#8217;ve got price against what all of these other plugins are doing. I&#8217;m curious about how you make those decisions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:11] Mark Westguard: Looking at competitors in the space was a big part of that. Looking at what they were pricing themselves at. Because at the end of the day, somebody looking for a form plugin is maybe going to shop around at the, maybe the top four or five that they find online, right? And if my price was way over the others, they would&#8217;ve just chosen one of the other companies.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Back then, it was harder for me to differentiate myself against those other plugin companies. That&#8217;s changed over time. I&#8217;ve really found a niche more in the kind of enterprise, developer level, form development. That price sensitivity, I saw it in Facebook groups, in even tweets and things like that. People saying, well, this is, you know, even $10 more than the other customer.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it&#8217;s a very price sensitive area, in all of the plugins that are out there. You&#8217;ll find that they&#8217;re very, they all have very similar prices. I am told constantly that I am too cheap, and that I should put my prices up. But I feel like I found a sweet spot and I&#8217;m happy with it right now. So I don&#8217;t really want to rock that boat and change things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other thing to consider is what is your pricing model? There&#8217;s a lot of talk around lifetime deals and annual subscriptions, and I have stuck adamantly with annual subscriptions because I wanted to build a sustainable business. And I&#8217;ve seen far too many plugins, some of them fail, because of offering lifetime deals.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They&#8217;ve got a critical mass of lifetime deal customers, and then there&#8217;s no additional income coming in. They&#8217;ve got to constantly find new customers to stay alive. Whereas having the annual subscription, that enables me to reinvest that money in the business. Enables me to continue providing good support to those customers on an ongoing basis. And it builds a firmer business. You&#8217;ve got that annual recurring payments coming in, which helps keep the business afloat.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, yeah, it was a combination of getting the pricing right, and also getting the actual business model correct. And also the products that you offer. So we have three different versions. We have a personal, which is $59, all the way up to an agency, which gives you everything for 249 currently. And getting those prices right across those different product levels was important too. But I think we&#8217;ve got a pretty good sweet spot now, and I&#8217;ve got no plans to rock the boat.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:25] Nathan Wrigley: But it was a journey. You&#8217;ve arrived at this model over time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:30] Mark Westguard: Yeah, even the naming of the product types was a challenge as well. You know, what do we called it? And we decided with agency in the end, that seemed to fit quite nicely with the customers that we were working with.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:42] Nathan Wrigley: Given the market that you&#8217;re selling into, and we talked about it just moments ago in terms of the pricing and, I don&#8217;t really know how to describe this, but the community that gathers around open source software, I think there is a slight difference to that community. And obviously WordPress is just dominated by that flavour</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Coming from commercial, enterprise clients, that kind of thing. I&#8217;m just wondering if your marketing had to shift. If there&#8217;s any sort of subtle difference or advice that you would give to anybody? Do you go in for the hard sell? Do you go big on Black Friday? Do you modify your language in a certain way that seems to be appealing to the WordPress community? It&#8217;s hard to encapsulate what that question means, but I hope you&#8217;re getting a flavour of what I&#8217;m trying to say.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:27:24] Mark Westguard: It was interesting when we did our first WordCamp that in order to be at WordCamp, we weren&#8217;t allowed to say that we were the best form plugin out there, or that we were the ultimate form plugin out there. There&#8217;s always a tendency with businesses to say that isn&#8217;t there? To say, yeah, we&#8217;re the best.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I usually, if I ever see that, I&#8217;m like, okay, well then you&#8217;re not the best. But, that was interesting to me. We actually changed our slogan to just say, build better forms, rather than the best form plugin out there. That started me on a journey with WordPress in terms of being very careful about what we said as a product.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it also started me on the journey, obviously with WordCamps, about being very respectful of the WordPress industry. Being very respectful of the WordPress community, and finding out very soon on that they don&#8217;t like being told that you are the best product. They want to hear that from respected names in the industry.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They want to hear that from other users that are in the community, or people that they work with. So I found that the best way for us to grow was genuinely to do two things. Build a good product, that worked well and did better than other products. And secondly, offering exceptional support. And that&#8217;s something that we&#8217;ve really, really focused on.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, support for us is our number one focus. And good support results in good word of mouth about your product. It results in good reviews. And it results in people wanting to talk about your product, and spreading the word about the product in the WordPress community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That in itself has made the process of getting the name of WS Form out there, a much longer process. But I feel that at the end of it, we&#8217;ve got a stronger brand name out there and we&#8217;ve got a stronger product.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:29:14] Nathan Wrigley: You mentioned there good support, and obviously if I&#8217;m a purchaser of a plugin, nobody thinks that&#8217;s a bad idea. So on my side, customer, good support, great. On your side, supplier, good support, well, presumably that is a lot of hard work. It would be interesting to explore that message for people who may be wanting to launch a plugin.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Is support a question of, you know, occasionally logging into your email and dispatching a few emails once or twice a week. Or is it more than that? I&#8217;m guessing that support is essentially, well, I&#8217;m going to make up a figure. Half time might be spent on it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:29:52] Mark Westguard: If you are building any type of plugin, any kind of significant plugin in WordPress. Know that in about two, three years, you&#8217;re going to be running a support business. That&#8217;s a very big primary function of what you&#8217;re doing. So I think you&#8217;re right. We&#8217;re probably about half the time developing the product, and probably half of the resources goes towards supporting the product.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you are not providing good support, I personally believe we provide exceptional support. We bend over backwards for customers to really try and help them out. We very much steer our products based upon the support that we&#8217;ve received from people and feedback that we get from customers. It&#8217;s a critical part of the business and, yes, ongoing development is a very important part of that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Every time you develop something else for your product, it&#8217;s something else you&#8217;ve got to support. So you&#8217;re constantly improving the product and causing more support for yourself.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think it&#8217;s important as a plugin developer to ensure that you provide as much front end content as possible to cut down those support requests, and make it easier for the customer to find what they want. So, for example, we have an extensive knowledge base. We also analyze what people type in when they&#8217;re making a support request to us, and we will fire back suggested articles back to them, to help them get to the information they want without having to raise a support ticket and wait for us to reply.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So yeah, support is a critical part of the business, and will be a large part of what you do if you are in a similar space to what we are.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:31:21] Nathan Wrigley: I suppose in a sense, if you are running a subscription business, an annual subscription business, where you are hoping that people when the renewal for the license comes up, you&#8217;re hoping that they happily walk through that process and, sign up for another year. So the support in a sense is about just maintaining that, isn&#8217;t it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you secure the initial sale and then the support is lousy. You really are not giving yourself a fighting chance on next year&#8217;s set of scheduled payments.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:31:51] Mark Westguard: Yeah. I always remember when I was at university and I did a year out in industry, and they had something written on the wall, and it&#8217;s always stuck with me. And it just said, easy to do business with, was one of their terms that they&#8217;d like to use with their staff.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that stuck with me. And I think if you are easy to do business with, which means providing good support, providing a good product. These people will renew, and they will continue to use you. I can say hand on heart, when we lose a customer, it is usually because, maybe an agency is no longer working with a customer anymore. Or they&#8217;ve had a website redesign or something like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We don&#8217;t have people saying, don&#8217;t like the product, don&#8217;t like your support. And that is testament to the hard work that we&#8217;ve put in to building the product. And, you know, having the passion to provide that good customer service. So I think yeah, you know, in answer to your point, having that good customer service will absolutely bring people back, and keep them using your product.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:32:44] Nathan Wrigley: Developing the plugin itself, that&#8217;s on your schedule, isn&#8217;t it? You can decide, right, I&#8217;m going to allocate this amount of time. But the support stuff, that just comes in when it comes in. You&#8217;ve got no control over that. I am genuinely curious what that does to your work-life balance.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve got a support team, or if you handle all of that yourself. But how that is for you. Because it sounds like a large part of this podcast is really trying to speak to people who may be wanting to go into this, and this seems like a good rabbit hole to go down. It sounds like that&#8217;s a big burden, right? And you&#8217;ve got to be available during holiday time, weekends, all sorts.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:33:21] Mark Westguard: Yeah, I think my personality doesn&#8217;t help either. If I see a support ticket, I want to help that person as quickly as I can. It&#8217;s weird, some days you can maybe get two support tickets. Other days there could be a huge flurry of 20, 30 tickets. There&#8217;s no average that happens every day.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And when you get that big flurry, I like to clear our support queue every day. And that can sometimes mean late nights to get that. And being a small business, that&#8217;s what you do. You&#8217;ll have those late nights of helping people out with stuff, particularly if something maybe is a bug in the software that you really want to get fixed and make sure that that doesn&#8217;t affect anybody else.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, yeah, some days can be quiet. It&#8217;s funny because I have a lot of European customers. By the time I wake up in the US I can usually gauge how busy the day&#8217;s going to be, based upon the number of support tickets that I&#8217;ve got. But fortunately the vast majority of the tickets that we get are, how do I do this? And I can point them in the direction of a knowledge base article that we have. So those are easy to fix.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If I find that we are getting one or two of the same question, I will write a knowledge base article and refer them to that, in the hope that that will then cut down that particular question in the future as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, support and building knowledge bases or help documentation is a massive undertaking. It&#8217;s taken a lot of time to get all that content put together and built. And that&#8217;s another thing that plugin developers should certainly take into account is, as well as building your product you&#8217;ve got to document it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even on the small plugin, you know, some of these. WS Forms are huge plugin. It is tens of thousands of lines of code. There are much simpler plugins out there. But even though smaller plugins need maybe a good page documentation to make sure people understand how to use it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:35:05] Nathan Wrigley: You have got a lite version in the WordPress repository. So just to be clear, for anybody who&#8217;s listening to this podcast. There&#8217;s a paid version. You can go to Mark&#8217;s website, we&#8217;ll link in the show notes, but you can also go and download a free version. I&#8217;m always curious as to how you make the decision of what to, well, I&#8217;m going to say strip out. Maybe that&#8217;s completely the wrong way around.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe it&#8217;s more, okay, this is what we&#8217;re going to build for the repository and then we&#8217;ll add on other things. But forgive my language there. How do you come to decide that, okay, this is free. This is not free. What is the process that&#8217;s going on there? Because obviously you want to, in some way entice people. But you don&#8217;t want to make free version utterly useless otherwise, well, nobody&#8217;s ever going to dream of heading in the pro direction.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:35:56] Mark Westguard: Yeah, and some plugin developers do make their plugins almost useless, so that you have to pay for the pro edition. We actually wanted to provide a lite edition that was fully usable. So for example, there are some plugins out there that won&#8217;t actually store the submissions so that you can view them in the WordPress admin.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I thought, well, that&#8217;s a bit mean. It&#8217;s a form plugin. You need to be able to see your submissions and have them as a backup in the database. So we gave a little bit back. We gave back a little bit more than maybe some of the other form plugins do, really to contribute again to the community. To enable people to use the product for free.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And you can build a perfectly usable contact us form, or inquiry form, using our lite edition. And then it was really more of the technical, more advanced features, that we cut out. So things like conditional logic, e-commerce. Some of the field types that were a little bit more advanced, like Google address and things like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Obviously we want people to upgrade to the pro edition because that&#8217;s how we pay the bills. But we wanted the lite edition to be usable and useful to a lot of people that just want to use a free product. So, you know, that&#8217;s another contribution that we give back. We don&#8217;t throw up huge admin notices that say, hey, upgrade.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;ve got very, very subtle things in the product that encourage people to upgrade. So we&#8217;ve tried not to be, you know, there&#8217;s a lot of plugins out there, a little bit over the top on the notifications on the admin panel. So we&#8217;ve tried to cut that down and be a bit more reasonable. We hope that people enjoy using the lite edition for that reason.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:37:27] Nathan Wrigley: Although this isn&#8217;t directly related to the plugin necessarily. AI at the minute is all the hotness. And I did notice that you had taken the time to build an integration with OpenAI for your form plugin. And I&#8217;m curious, what was the thinking there? Because when I approach a form, I&#8217;m always thinking, okay, there&#8217;s blank fields. I just them out and click return, and obviously wait for a response to come back and so on. What thing does OpenAI or AI in general bring to a form?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:37:59] Mark Westguard: Two things for us. So, first of all, from a purely commercial side of it, we like to integrate in with new systems because it opens up a new audience for us. And also OpenAI had a lot of marketing going on in the industry. People were very interested in it. I was as well, I was curious about it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I researched OpenAI and I found out that they have a moderation endpoint in their API, which means I can send it some content and it will tell me whether or not that content has bad language in it or bad words, or is it violent content or whatever. And I thought, hey, wouldn&#8217;t that be great for WordPress spam protection?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I looked into it more and I was able to integrate in that moderation piece, so that when a form is submitted, it analyzes what the person&#8217;s typed in. If there&#8217;s anything to do with violence or whatever in there, it will then reject that form submission. Then I looked at the other endpoints such as the image generator. So people may be familiar with that, with DALL-E. Where you can type in, you know, make a boat floating on the moon, or whatever crazy thing you want to create an image about.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I was able to pull that into a file upload field, and I thought, well, that&#8217;ll be great for creating an avatar for a new user or an image for a blog. So that got incorporated. And then I thought, well look, all these other endpoints that OpenAI offer or actually have a use case, on a form. So we use the, what they call a completion, which is where you type in a question and it will then give you a response.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That has actually been very useful for our customers that have a supporting environment. You can actually tell OpenAI what your business is, where your support page is, et cetera, and it will actually respond almost as if they&#8217;re an employee of the company. And we&#8217;ve had some people using that application. So, after researching it, found it had quite a lot of application in the form industry.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that&#8217;s why we had the OpenAI integration. And we&#8217;ve just launched it with GPT-4. Which at the time is the latest model that they&#8217;ve released. So, it&#8217;s actually been a very popular feature. And that add-on incidentally is free of charge whilst OpenAI is still effectively in beta. We&#8217;ve got that add-on free of charge.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:40:12] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it&#8217;s really curious. I&#8217;m fascinated by the whole AI debate. This is not necessarily related to the whole AI debate, but ever since the web came around, essentially we&#8217;ve been presenting pictures and words to people, and the only way to really respond to that is through some kind of form interface. That&#8217;s what you&#8217;ve got.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But a few years ago, along come these devices which sit in the home, which you can talk to. And I just wondered what, it&#8217;s a really bizarre question. A bit of a random question. I wondered what your thoughts are about that kind of technology. Getting into the whole, speaking to the internet instead of filling out forms and, perhaps even putting on goggles and all of that kind of stuff. Whether or not you feel that this is something that you need to be mindful of. Do you have any sense that the world is moving more towards voice?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I feel that, certainly from my perspective, I found that to be an interesting technology for a period of time, and now the interest in that has completely waned and those voice devices in my home really only get used for starting and stopping songs, that kind of thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:41:19] Mark Westguard: It&#8217;s funny isn&#8217;t it? Because computers, as we know it, have been around for, what, 50, 60 years now. A keyboard and a computer. And I&#8217;ve still got a keyboard in front of me. I still like typing on a keyboard. I don&#8217;t like talking to computers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>My children are very different. They like talking to computers. I think it&#8217;s a generation thing to a certain degree. To your point about keeping up with this technology. That&#8217;s very much another reason why we had the OpenAI add-on. I wanted to be familiar with that technology. It is changing the way that we are doing things. People are writing code with it now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They&#8217;re generating images with it. Like it or hate it, it&#8217;s changing the way that we&#8217;re doing things. It&#8217;s being incorporated into products. We are actually working on another AI integration into WS Form, which would almost enable you to develop a form based upon what you type in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They have a code model for OpenAI, and we&#8217;ve been able to take a prompt and actually build a form from what you&#8217;ve typed in. So you can say, build me a form for a doctor&#8217;s office for booking an appointment, and it will build a form for you. So something that we&#8217;ve got to be on top of and we&#8217;ve got to adapt and work around it and take advantage of it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:42:39] Nathan Wrigley: That&#8217;s so fascinating because in a way it doesn&#8217;t in any way cut out the need for a form solution. It merely creates that templating system. So I know that your form solution, for example, when you create a form, you&#8217;ve got loads of different templates for different scenarios, and you can click on a button and so that job&#8217;s done.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this case, you would be able to fill that out by just writing in plain text. So, I would like a form with three fields. It&#8217;s for my kid&#8217;s birthday party. And it&#8217;s highly unlikely that you&#8217;ll have got a template for whatever scenario I can contrive. But this potentially purports to do that and create a custom form based upon what you tell it. That&#8217;s fascinating.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:43:19] Mark Westguard: At least a foundation for that. And then on the other side of it, the OpenAI add-on that we have can turn your form into an interactive component where they get an immediate response. And that&#8217;s done through prompt engineering with OpenAI. So prompt engineering is where behind the scenes you are giving OpenAI a little bit more context about the question, and then incorporating the question from the user into that particular prompt that you&#8217;re sending to them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that kind of comes back to that customer support aspect I was talking about earlier on. So I can configure it, and if they ask a question, it can be asked as if it&#8217;s your company. So just for an a very quick example, you could say, hey, I am hosting company X, and then the customer may ask, please tell me what your hosting packages are.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>OpenAI will then use its knowledge of your business to respond to that and give you a list of the packages they have, directly in that form. Rather than them having to submit the form and wait for a response from a human. It can be used very much to compliment existing forms that you&#8217;ve got on your website, to make them more user friendly, and to give customers a quicker response. And if we didn&#8217;t have that OpenAI component, we would not be on that bandwagon. So I&#8217;m glad that we have that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:44:34] Nathan Wrigley: So it&#8217;s almost like a chatbot creation. Whereas at the moment chatbots are very much the realms of SaaS, you are saying that some of this technology can be pulled in. So obviously there is a SaaS side if you like, and it&#8217;s OpenAI. But you can bind that to a form and the form can then become much more interactive than it currently could ever be.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:44:55] Mark Westguard: Correct. Yeah. It&#8217;s funny because people have said to us, can we use your form for a chat interface? This opens that up. This enables it to be a chat. Granted it&#8217;s an AI response, but tuned properly it can be very effective. It&#8217;s quite scary what you can get back from it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:45:12] Nathan Wrigley: The future is either bright or scary, depending on which side of the fence you sit there. Mark, we&#8217;ve probably used up the time that we&#8217;ve got available, so just before we pass it over to the audience. I&#8217;d like you to, to tell us where you can be found. That could be a social media platform or your website address. Whatever you like. Just tell us where we can find you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:45:32] Mark Westguard: Yeah, so the main website is wsform.com. You can find me on Twitter. I am at Westguard, that&#8217;s w e s t g u a r d. And for WS Form, it is w s _ f o r m.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:45:46] Nathan Wrigley: Somebody had WS Form. Did they?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:45:48] Mark Westguard: They did and they&#8217;ve done nothing with it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:45:51] Nathan Wrigley: Well, Mark an absolute pleasure chatting to you. Thanks for talking to us about your plugin development journey, and growing your business, and forms in general. I really appreciate it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:46:00] Mark Westguard: Yeah. Well, thank you for having me on the show. I appreciate it.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>On the podcast today we have <a href=\"https://twitter.com/westguard\">Mark Westguard</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mark is an agency owner and the developer behind the WS Form plugin, and he’s on the podcast to chart his journey in the WordPress space and the different ways he’s explored to grow the reach of the plugin.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>First up, we talk about why Mark started to use WordPress. As you’ll hear, he already had a successful agency, but he could see that the path to profitability was becoming harder each year. WordPress plugins offered the chance of recurring revenue, which was appealing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Users of WordPress will know that there are many form solutions. Both free and paid plugins are available and can handle almost any scenario you might imagine. We get into what made Mark pick this as an area to invest in. Surely it would have been easier to work on something brand new? Mark does not think so. He could see gaps in the market, and built his solution to cater to those. This involved plenty of market research and analysis of where to put his development efforts.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We then move onto the subject of turning a well-developed plugin into a viable business. It’s one thing to build a product, but if you’re going to make it commercial, much of the work will revolve around ensuring that the world knows about it. Marketing is a relentless enterprise and one that you should not ignore or underestimate. This might mean getting yourself out into the community to meet with other WordPressers, appearing on podcasts, or sponsoring WordPress events. There’s no perfect answer. Just run with what works and try out new things all the time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>After that comes support. Mark’s pretty clear, your product will succeed or fail based upon how you handle support requests. He thinks that the development of a plugin inevitably leads to support tickets, and this needs to be factored in right from the start.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also get into the subject of pricing, and what Mark felt was the right place to pitch his plugin. Is the WordPress ecosystem guilty of expecting a lot from plugins at prices which are realistic? How much of the functionality, if any, should be given away in a free version, and how did he decide which features to charge for?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Towards the end of the podcast, we stray into the plugin’s use of AI, and how Mark was an early mover in this area. What can be done with forms and AI, and does he see AI as a technology which is going to grow in the future?</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Useful links.</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/ws-form/\">WS Form LITE</a> on the WordPress repo</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://wsform.com\">WS Form</a> website</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://oauth.net\">OAuth</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.bigorangeheart.org\">Big Orange Heart</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://givewp.com\">GiveWP</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://newsletterglue.com\">Newsletter Glue</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.kadencewp.com\">KadenceWP</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://openai.com\">OpenAI</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://openai.com/research/dall-e\">DALL-E</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://openai.com/product/gpt-4\">GPT-4</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/ws_form\">WS Form Twitter</a></p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 10 May 2023 14:00:00 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:14:\"Nathan Wrigley\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:32;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:122:\"WPTavern: WordPress Community Team Evolves WordCamp Format to Promote Adoption, Training, and Networking for Professionals\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=144827\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:131:\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-community-team-evolves-wordcamp-format-to-promote-adoption-training-and-networking-for-professionals\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:6127:\"<p>WordPress&#8217; Community Team hailed a new era of WordCamps in its recent <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/05/08/the-next-generation-of-wordcamps/\">announcement</a> outlining a significant shift in the purpose for the events. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the past, WordCamps have had a mostly predictable format of presenting inspirational talks on exciting things people are doing with WordPress, business topics, and the latest trends, with short networking opportunities and a contributor day appended to the event. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Connection, inspiration, and contribution are undeniably important to WordPressers,&#8221; Automattic-sponsored WordPress community organizer Angela Jin said. &#8220;However, as events have returned, communities see that people are much more selective about what events they attend and want to know what they will gain by participating.&#8221; </p>\n\n\n\n<p>After the pandemic, the number of WordCamps dwindled to a fraction of what they had been, as different areas of the world grappled with their own unique public health situations. The Community Team had loosened some of the requirements for WordCamps in order to foster a more welcoming environment for people to want to host in-person events.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In an effort to modernize these gatherings moving forward, the team has proposed the following update to the purpose of WordPress events:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>WordPress events spark innovation and adoption by way of accessible training and networking for users, builders, designers, and extenders. We celebrate community by accelerating 21st-century skills, professional opportunities, and partnerships for WordPressers of today and tomorrow.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Jin said she hopes a &#8220;period of innovation and experimentation will follow this critical shift in the purpose of our events&#8221; where events will be curated for more narrow audiences and have a focus on a specific type of content or topic. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>This shift also opens the door for more varied event formats, such as workshops, unconferences, job fairs, and pure networking events &#8211; which would have definitively been outside the traditional WordCamps of old and not officially supported by the project.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jin emphasized that WordPress will continue encouraging local meetups. Currently planned WordCamps (there are currently 14 on the <a href=\"https://central.wordcamp.org/schedule/\">schedule</a> for 2023) can continue as before but new WordCamp applicants will be encouraged to experiment with new formats.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Flagships (<a href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2023/\">WordCamp US</a>, <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/\">WordCamp Europe</a>, <a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/\">WordCamp Asia</a>): These will remain our largest, broadest event that fully capitalizes on the energy of a large crowd,&#8221; Jin said. &#8220;They will be the place to highlight the latest, greatest, and coolest in WordPress and where we are going.&#8221; </p>\n\n\n\n<p> Reactions to the change in the purpose of WordCamp have been mostly positive but the community has some questions about how it will work. David Bisset, who helped run WordCamp Miami for over a decade, asks how this will impact smaller communities:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>I certainly would love to see more formats being tried, more standout content, etc. However, I’m trying to view this from a local and smaller WordCamp organizer mindset – what if I have a varied community and therefore a varied audience? Will having a particular audience in mind in setting content and promoting local WordCamps unknowingly not attract a more diverse audience? Many people come to conferences and WordCamps for certain talks and speakers and stay around for the rest.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress plugin developer David McCan <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/05/08/the-next-generation-of-wordcamps/#comment-30874\">commented</a> that the new purpose statement reads more like educating and preparing a workforce in contrast to how WordCamps previously leaned towards empowering volunteers. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Participants in the discussion are heavily in favor of giving more freedom to event organizers, but many have had irreplaceable experiences at WordCamps in their current format that they are reluctant to see it go. WordPress developer and contributor Ross Wintle commented that he hoped the change in purpose would not diminish the diversity at WordCamps.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;While I think there’s some value in focussing on an audience, please don’t throw out the current WordCamps,&#8221; Wintle said. &#8220;I genuinely believe that one of the best things about these events is that I get to experience the diversity of the WordPress community and see the many, many different ways that WordPress is used, extended and developed for, and I get to meet the many, many talented people from across the spectrum of contribution who possess ideas, skills and experiences that I do not.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I’ve met so many amazing people who have different roles in WordPress, and I think the value of this is far higher than sitting in my bubble with the people that do the same things as me.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Marketing contributor Sé Reed asked Jin what team meeting, GitHub issue, or other documented discussion was available to follow the decision-making process for this major change to WordCamps, as no discussions were linked in the announcement. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;To my mind, this kind of change (affecting the entire WordPress community and apparently effective immediately) is something that would make sense to discuss at the Community Summit,&#8221; Reed said. &#8220;As that ship has sailed, I’d like to at least see the discussion that led to it.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jin has not yet responded to these questions but said in the announcement that as event organizers experiment with different formats for WordCamps, &#8220;the community team can reevaluate our full events program and how events coexist happily.&#8221;</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 10 May 2023 01:55:21 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:33;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:75:\"WordPress Foundation: Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for WordCamp US 2023\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:41:\"https://wordpressfoundation.org/?p=456908\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:96:\"https://wordpressfoundation.org/news/2023/kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship-for-wordcamp-us-2023/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1530:\"<p>The WordPress Foundation will once again offer the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for travel to <a href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2023/\">WordCamp US 2023</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>At each in-person WordCamp US, the WordPress Foundation honors Kim’s commitment and valuable contributions to the WordPress open source project. The Foundation’s goal is to further the efforts of contributors who demonstrate Kim’s spirit, by helping to ease the financial burden of travel to WordCamp US.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>This scholarship is awarded to someone who:</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Identifies as a woman</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Is a WordPress contributor</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Has never attended WordCamp US before</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Requires financial assistance to attend</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>This scholarship provides financial assistance so that the recipient can attend WordCamp US, including travel from the recipient’s home city, hotel stay for the duration of the event, and a ticket to WordCamp US.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you meet these requirements and would like to be considered, please <strong>apply no later than Monday, June 12, 2023</strong> at 11:00 pm Eastern Time. All applicants will be notified by June 29, 2023.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For more details, please visit the WordPress Foundation’s <a href=\"https://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship/\">About the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship</a> page.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://wordcampcentral.survey.fm/wcus-2023-kim-parsell-scholarship-application\">Apply for the scholarship today.</a></p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 10 May 2023 00:17:53 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:12:\"Julia Golomb\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:34;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:68:\"Do The Woo Community: Innovations in AI and WordPress with Joe Hoyle\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:28:\"https://dothewoo.io/?p=75086\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:67:\"https://dothewoo.io/innovations-in-ai-and-wordpress-with-joe-hoyle/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:441:\"<p>Joe has been building some very interesting prototypes in WordPress and AI, digging into several tools and wrapping his brain around the possibilities.</p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io/innovations-in-ai-and-wordpress-with-joe-hoyle/\">Innovations in AI and WordPress with Joe Hoyle</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io\">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Tue, 09 May 2023 12:22:30 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:35;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:81:\"WPTavern: WordPress Contributors Discuss How Core Can Better Enable AI Innovation\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=144642\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:92:\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-contributors-discuss-how-core-can-better-enable-ai-innovation\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:6668:\"<p>As AI-powered technology is rapidly evolving to exponentially extend human capabilities, WordPress contributors do not want the platform to get left behind. AI-powered website creation could even become a threat to its existence, more than a competing CMS, if WordPress doesn&#8217;t ensure the platform is easily pluggable for AI-powered extensions. A new <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/02/lets-talk-wordpress-core-artificial-intelligence/\">discussion</a> on the Core developer&#8217;s blog asks what WordPress can do to better enable AI innovation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;WordPress Core always seeks to provide a stable foundation for folks to build upon directly and extend as they see fit,&#8221; Automattic-sponsored core contributor Anne McCarthy said. &#8220;Even if a new technology is not actually included in Core, the project aims to enable innovation and progress through extension (plugins, themes, etc.) wherever possible and sensible.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>McCarthy shared a video of what it might look like to have AI integrated into Gutenberg&#8217;s experimental command center to build out pages based on AI-suggested designs. She asked three questions of contributors: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>How would you want to see Core updated so it can be extended in ways accessible to AI technologies?</li>\n\n\n\n<li>For those&nbsp; building, or trying to build, with AI today, how does Core currently enable or hinder this effort?</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Are there any concerns that you think the community should be aware of as this space is explored?</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg is optimistic about the prospect of further integrating AI into open source development.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;In 2015 I told you to learn Javascript deeply,&#8221; Mullenweg <a href=\"https://poststatus.slack.com/archives/CHNM7Q7T8/p1680473547032499\">said</a> last month in the Post Status Slack. &#8220;I don&#8217;t have a catchy phrase yet, but my message for 2023 will be to spend as much time leveraging AI as possible. The boosts to productivity and capability are <em>amazing</em>. This is not a web3/crypto/widgets hype cycle. It&#8217;s real.&#8221; </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mullenweg also encouraged WordPress professionals to consider how AI and open source can work together.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Open source and AI are the two mega-trends of the next 30 years,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They complement each other, and you should think deeply about how. ChatGPT can&#8217;t ready Shopify&#8217;s code.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>StellarWP-sponsored contributor Matt Cromwell <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/02/lets-talk-wordpress-core-artificial-intelligence/#comment-44809\">commented</a> on the latest core discussion, suggesting that AI innovation is better left to plugin developers. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;All AI options currently require integration with a 3rd party system, some sort of pricing and authentication, this feels to me to clearly be plugin territory,&#8221; Cromwell said.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The other concern here is that the current Core roadmap is very full. At what cost would the project chase an AI integration? At the expense of multi-editing collaboration features? At the expense of multi-lingual features? I find it hard to imagine pursuing the current roadmap with excellence and stability AND adding a huge AI integration as well.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bluehost-sponsored contributor Jonathan Desrosiers, one of the reviewers of the post, clarified that the intention was to &#8220;fuel discussion around what AI looks like in the WordPress ecosystem and how that may be blocked currently.&#8221; </p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;As you said, the roadmap is definitely full and adding new things should not be done unless there are extremely compelling reasons,&#8221; Desrosiers said. &#8220;But, if there are small “paper cut” changes that can be made in Core (new filter or action hooks, etc.) to allow plugins to better experiment and flesh out AI integrations in the WordPress world, I think that we certainly should consider these.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cromwell suggested WordPress could add a settings panel for integrating various API&#8217;s, such as payment gateways and OpenAI API keys, to prevent conflicts and streamline API usage across multiple plugins.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rob Glidden proposed that contributors consider the possibility of having AI chatbots as a user type for the future collaboration workflow inside WordPress:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>I would suggest looking at AI chatbots as (“just another”) user type in the upcoming Phase 3 of collaboration/workflow.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I for one want an AI chatbot on my multiuser collaboration team in a phase 3 WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the multiuser collaborative workflows already described in “<a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/24/phase-3-collaboration/\">Phase 3 Collaboration</a>” it seems like basically the same infrastructure should work for both human users and AI “users”.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, it is not a huge stretch in reading that document to think of “users”, “collaborators”, and “creators” as also being bot-ish users, assigned and performing tasks within a workflow.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>CodeWP-sponsored contributor James LePage echoed Cromwell&#8217;s concerns that focusing too much on integrating AI might make WordPress less competitive on the features that have already been identified for Gutenberg&#8217;s Phase 3 roadmap:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>As some others said here, as a WP&nbsp;<em>user</em>, I’d much prefer a really strong focus on the existing Phase 3 roadmap items as I think it would make our CMS a lot more valuable and competitive to other tools out there, as opposed to integrating AI somehow.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>One other thing is that there aren’t really any standards here. There are large players, but they keep changing the way their AI works, and probably will continue to do so. We’d be trying to hit a moving target.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>As much as WordPress contributors are spread thin across the project&#8217;s current Gutenberg roadmap of goals and improvements, you don&#8217;t get to choose when new technology is bearing down on your industry, forcing you to act or become obsolete. The WordPress community has built a robust plugin ecosystem, but leaving it all to third-party integrations may not be enough to keep the software relevant in the coming years. Ensuring that WordPress is compatible with the future of AI-powered innovation is critical if contributors want the platform to continue to be the best CMS and website builder available on the web.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 08 May 2023 21:52:07 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:36;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:74:\"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 55: Happy Anniversary, WordPress!\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:53:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=14949\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:74:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/05/episode-55-happy-anniversary-wordpress/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:15023:\"<p>Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy in the 55th episode of the WordPress Briefing as she looks back at the 20 years of WordPress and how the open source community made WordPress what it is today.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><strong>Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to&nbsp;<a href=\"mailto:wpbriefing@wordpress.org\">wpbriefing@wordpress.org</a>, either written or as a voice recording.</strong></em></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Credits</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Editor:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/\">Dustin Hartzler</a><br />Logo:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/javiarce/\">Javier Arce</a><br />Production:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/bjmcsherry/\">Brett McSherry</a><br />Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Show Notes</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/25/the-benefits-of-prioritizing-and-measuring-performance-in-wordpress-6-2/\">The benefits of prioritizing and measuring performance in WordPress 6.2</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/14/wordpress-6-3-planning-proposal-call-for-volunteers/\">WordPress 6.3 Planning Proposal &amp; Call for Volunteers</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/07/preparing-for-the-next-women-nonbinary-release-squad/\">Preparing for the Next Women &amp; Nonbinary Release Squad</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>WordCamp Europe: \n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-volunteers/\">Call for volunteers</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/04/24/table-leads-needed-for-wceu-2023-contributor-day/\">Table Leads Needed for WCEU 2023 Contributor Day</a></li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/04/24/defining-the-polyglots-contributor-ladder/\">Defining the Polyglots contributor ladder</a><br /></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Transcript</h2>\n\n\n\n<span id=\"more-14949\"></span>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress Open Source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a smallest of big things coming up in the next two weeks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40]&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In case you hadn&#8217;t heard yet. WordPress is celebrating its 20th anniversary on May 27th.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are a lot of celebrations and parties happening all across the world, hopefully with cake, because we all know that a party without cake is just a meeting and no one wants a year-long meeting about how old you are.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:59]&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But if you&#8217;ve not yet joined the celebrations, there&#8217;s still time to share your favorite WordPress merch, your favorite WordCamp memory, host a whole dang party if you want to, or share a video to post on wp20.wordpress.net. I&#8217;ve got links to everything you need in the show notes. So if you haven&#8217;t done it yet, you can do that while you listen to today&#8217;s episode.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:14]&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve got links to everything you need in the show notes. So if you haven&#8217;t done it yet, you can do that while you listen to today&#8217;s episode.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:22]&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today, WordPress is the leading CMS in the market. And according to W3Tech&#8217;s it powers 43% of the web. And that&#8217;s like 35% of the top 10,000 sites that are built using this software. And sometimes, that&#8217;s as a website, sometimes as a framework, but always as a way for people and businesses to find a space on the web to call their own.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:45]&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2021. The first-ever study on the WordPress ecosystem gave us an idea of just how large our ecosystem is. We already kind of had a sense that millions of people make a living through WordPress because we know that we are supporting small business owners and freelancers all the way out to agencies and content creators.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:06]&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But according to that study, WordPress at the time was powering 82 million websites and enabled an estimated economy of $597 billion. The success of an economy like this and various other alternative economies hinges on the success of invisible open source software that powers the web, just like WordPress, that has a tonne of growth and a lot of wins since that first Cafe Log fork way back in 2003.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:37]&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And WordPress could just say pencils down, everybody. Good job, team, and just kind of watch what comes next. But I&#8217;ve never met a word processor, emboldened as we are by our belief in open source freedoms, who stepped away from a challenge worth facing the recognition that everyone should have those freedoms whether they know they exist or not. Because I know that no one cares as much about open source freedoms as open source maintainers. But the recognition that everyone has the right to them anyway is built into the foundations of what WordPress is and who WordPress is.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:13]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are big plans for WordPress future, many of which are grounded in the promise of a new block editor within WordPress that aims to lower the barriers to entry for people at any point in their learning curve. So let&#8217;s take a look at what this means for WordPress, the software, and follow up about what it means for the WordPress community.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:31]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Firstly, the software right at the end of 2018, the Gutenberg editor was merged into WordPress Core. And it&#8217;s subverted the way that people had always managed their content. It brought with it this new concept of site building that focused on blocks as the primary mode of creation. It was modular and required very little code knowledge.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:53]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Arguably also very little skill with design. Although if you&#8217;ve ever seen me tried to design something with blocks, you will know it takes some skill. But still, the ultimate goal was to make those fundamental user interactions of managing the block and apply them in any place you could manage your site using WordPress.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:53]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And if you think about the possibility to create media-rich content without having to work with shortcode, without having to know HTML workarounds, it opens the opportunity for many of us in the WordPress community to own our digital presence. In case it wasn&#8217;t already clear, this, my friends, is an audacious project, and it&#8217;s even more so if you remember that we have this existing and massive ecosystem that is enabled and empowered by our software.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:42]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And as we look forward to the third phase of the Gutenberg Project, collaborative editing inside a WordPress installation will soon be a reality, which if you are like me and you never work on a website alone, you&#8217;re probably just dying to have. I say all this not to toot the horn have WordPress or belabor our success but rather to emphasize the importance of what I&#8217;m going to say next, which is how this CMS got to where it is, namely through the work of the community.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:12]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress has survived, and I would dare to say thrived through decades of constant economic, cultural, and technological shifts. And I believe that the thing that keeps us innovating fast enough to stay relevant but slow enough to be ethical, is how the community actively engages with the open source project.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:32]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We know that our strength is directly tied to the resilience of our contributors. And we know that the software we ship is shaped by the people who are willing to tell us what they love, what they hate, and what they hope to see. When the WordPress project started, we mainly had code contributions as a way to give back, but over time, the project has grown to include contributions to learning, community building, and translations, among other things, but all of that exists alongside the CMS-focused contributions.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:03]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because WordPress as an organization understands that it is an integral part of an ecosystem of 1000s of global companies and millions of individual people who are building careers, starting businesses, learning new skills, and becoming part of something meaningful. I know that I talk just all the time about the greatness of WordPress as a software and community, which makes sense.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:29]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I really do love the work I do with you all. But I am equally in awe of this open-hearted journey of disruption that WordPress represents as an open source project. WordPress and its community is part of a long line of disruptors; blogs made publishing available to everyone, which maybe doesn&#8217;t sound like a big deal right now because you&#8217;ve been around blogging forever.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:51]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You&#8217;ve been able to just put your thoughts on the internet with almost no effort for as long as you have known the internet existed, but WordPress, at the time, was and honestly remains the low code open source CMS of choice. It has been for years. And so, let me backtrack you through the 10,000-foot milestones of our journey here.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:14]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gutenberg has been around since 2013. It&#8217;s 10 years. I know, don&#8217;t get scared, we&#8217;re celebrating 20 years. So it&#8217;s been around for half of our time as a concept. Open source as a concept was formalized in the 1980s. Though it definitely has been around longer than that as a concept and a way of working.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:34]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And this low-code, no-code movement that we hear about from time to time that has been around since the 1970s, and just because we first became aware of it in the 1970s doesn&#8217;t mean that that&#8217;s when it actually first was discussed or thought about or used. Which means that you are in this moment, decades deep into projects that changed our entire understanding of the web.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:59]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So grab a slice of cake, and raise a glass to 20 great years of WordPress, and I am going to raise a glass to 20 more years of continuing our journey together.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:17]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which brings us effervescently to the small list of big things. Yeah, I said effervescently.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:24]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So there are a lot of things happening in the WordPress project over the next couple of weeks. There is a lot of testing going on. There are a lot of releases that are getting underway. There are events and things. So here&#8217;s my rundown of stuff you should take a look at.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:38]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So firstly, there is a post out about performance improvements from 6.2. That is just inviting an open discussion so that we can get more of those improvements in better shape to get into the 6.3 release. And speaking of the 6.3 release that is coming, just last week, we announced the release squad that we have.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:58]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is an extra heavy release squad because we also are working toward the 6.4 release just at the same time. So there&#8217;s the folks who are running the 6.3 release, and they have committed to working openly and in public channels as much as possible so that the 6.4 folks have a chance to really take a look at what goes into a release, the questions that we ask, the philosophies we believe in, and then that 6.4 release oil pick up probably, my guess is August-ish, mid-August or so.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:32]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That 6.4 release is specifically going to be made up entirely of diverse genders. People that we historically see are underrepresented in technology, but as always, we accept contributions from everyone for all releases.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:48]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The third thing is that we have WordCamp Europe coming up, that is June 8 and 10th. So a little bit past the two-week mark.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:54]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, there is a final call for volunteers for anyone who wants to be able to help at the event. I personally have always enjoyed doing that kind of volunteer work. It helps you get to know your community even a bit better. And I don&#8217;t know; I&#8217;m just kind of an extroverted people person. So, of course, I always want to volunteer, but that call is still open. And they&#8217;re in the last phases of that.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:17]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is also a team or two that needs some help with getting leads for the contributor day that happens leading up to WordCamp. Europe, I know that the testing team needs a lead for the table, and so if you enjoy the process of triaging or testing or helping people get their environment set up, that is a great opportunity.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:37]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the final thing on my small, my big small list of big things is that we have a kind of a review of the currently defined contributor ladder for the Polyglots team. There are a number of posts over the years where we talk about the ways that people move through being a contributor.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:57]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the things that we know about almost all contributor ladders is that there&#8217;s no time requirement between the steps, but in general, it functions like a ladder. So you do have to have, like, rung one. And then, rung two, if you try to skip from rung one to rung three, you will have a lot of difficulty.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:11:17]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not impossible, but it&#8217;s harder than going 1, 2, 3 In the normal sequential order. And so that&#8217;s a whole discussion that&#8217;s happening over there. There&#8217;s a link to all of these things in the show notes.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:11:28]</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy,  and I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 08 May 2023 14:00:00 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:14:\"Brett McSherry\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:37;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:100:\"Do The Woo Community: What Will Be the Biggest Impact on WordPress and WooCommerce Builders with AI?\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:28:\"https://dothewoo.io/?p=75067\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:73:\"https://dothewoo.io/what-will-be-the-biggest-impact-on-ecommerce-with-ai/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:434:\"<p>As a member of the WordPress and WooCommerce builder community, share your insights on AI and it\'s impact.</p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io/what-will-be-the-biggest-impact-on-ecommerce-with-ai/\">What Will Be the Biggest Impact on WordPress and WooCommerce Builders with AI?</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io\">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 08 May 2023 09:00:11 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:38;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:102:\"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg 15.7, WooCommerce Blocks 10.1, and 299 block themes –Weekend Edition #253\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:35:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=24060\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:107:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/gutenberg-15-7-woocommerce-blocks-10-1-and-299-block-themes-weekend-edition-253/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:20968:\"<p>Howdy, </p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was a short week for me, yet fully packed with updates. After assembling a loaner sleeper sofa bed, my husband and I spent our first night in the new apartment. We called it the <em>MUC-Life Achievement #2</em>. If you are interested, <em>MUC-Life Achievement #1</em> was getting the Internet into the place and the router to work. Apart from the sofa bed, we took out a loan from friends and family for two chairs, two tables, a small set of plates, silverware, and kitchen tools. Now we are ready to camp out at our apartment until our furniture arrives from the US. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the meantime, planning for WordPress 6.3 and 6.4 is in full swing. I expect to read more about both release cycles in the coming days. A new Gutenberg plugin version is now available and new block themes were released. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>That and more you&#8217;ll find below in the round-up of news. Don&#8217;t consume it all in one sitting, the next Weekend edition won&#8217;t arrive until May 20th, 2023, due to my travel schedule. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Be well and enjoy. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container\">\n<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost\"><ul><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-word-press-release-information\">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a></li><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-p\">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled\">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press\">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </a></li></ul></div>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"0-word-press-release-information\">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/\"><strong>Gutenberg 15.7</strong></a> is now available via the WordPress plugins repository. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can read more about the highlights in the release post <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-7-03-may/\">What’s new in Gutenberg 15.7? (03 May)</a>.  &#8220;For the latest release of the Gutenberg&nbsp;plugin, contributors continued improvements to existing&nbsp;UI&nbsp;and&nbsp;UX&nbsp;for content creators, site owners working on their own site, or theme developers creating new themes. Users will find small changes for streamlined workflows, fixed bugs, and refined responsiveness, just to name a few.&nbsp;&#8221; </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-7-03-may/#site-logo-replacement-via-the-sidebar\">Site Logo replacement via the sidebar</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-7-03-may/#duotone-filter-controls-in-block-sidebar\">Duotone filter controls in block sidebar</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-7-03-may/#fluid-typography-scales-giant-fonts-to-small-screens\">Fluid Typography scales giant fonts to small screens</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>For the WPTavern, <strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> reported on additional features in <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-15-7-adds-site-logo-upload-to-inspector-controls\"><strong>Gutenberg 15.7 Adds Site Logo Upload to Inspector Controls</strong></a>. </p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container\">\n<p><strong>🎙️ </strong> New episode:  <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-82-gutenberg-15-6-and-proposed-schedule-for-wordpress-6-3/\">Gutenberg Changelog #82 – Gutenberg 15.6 and proposed schedule for WordPress 6.3</a> with Birgit Pauli-Haack and special guest Nick Diego</p>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://twitter.com/raemoreywrites\">Rae Morey</a></strong> of The Repository reported: The <strong>WordPress Marketing Team</strong> this week launched <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/05/02/20-days-to-celebrate-20-years-of-wordpress-from-blogs-to-blocks/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>From Blogs to Blocks</strong></a>, an initiative designed to encourage folks to reflect and act on their personal connection to WordPress in the lead up to its 20th anniversary on May 27.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> has the details:  <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-marketing-team-launches-from-blogs-to-blocks-campaign-ahead-of-20th-anniversary\"><strong>WordPress Marketing Team Launches “From Blogs to Blocks” Campaign Ahead of 20th Anniversary</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> published the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/05/04/fse-program-build-a-block-theme-summary/\"><strong>Summary of Build a Block Theme exploration</strong></a>, The high-level conclusions by McCarthy are: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Using the Site Editor alongside the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/create-block-theme/\">Create Block Theme plugin </a>supercharges the experience, mainly by filling in gaps around font management and offering more nuanced creating/exporting options. </li>\n\n\n\n<li>With these added features, the Site Editor is both left to shine as a theme building tool and the current known pain points impacting regular site building come to the surface, like needing more clarity around where layers of styles are coming from.&nbsp; </li>\n\n\n\n<li>This all underscores how addressing key points of current feedback about the base experience of the Site Editor, including on mobile, will cascade to improve broader use cases, like using it as a theme building tool. </li>\n\n\n\n<li>Basic options for mobile, like undo/redo or top toolbar options, remain painful and made up the majority of bugs found.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"0-p\">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The first theme from the Community Theme Project was released. <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/stacks/\">Stacks</a> can be used for creating slide decks and is available in the WordPress theme directory. The description reads: &#8220;Stack your story. This theme is designed specifically to create slide decks that can be used as a presentation. The &#8220;Stacks&#8221; pattern can be included on any page or post.&#8221; </p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> gave it a swirl and posted her review on the WPTavern: <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-themes-team-releases-stacks-a-community-theme-for-building-slide-decks\"><strong>WordPress Themes Team Releases Stacks: A Community Theme for Building Slide Decks</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Community Themes project began on March 10, 2023, with over 20 members of the theming community joining <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/03/10/summary-community-themes-project-kickoff/\">the kickoff meeting</a>. The goal of the gathering was to gauge interest in creating block-based themes under the official WordPress.org banner, much like the default themes that ship with core.</em> </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>For the latest edition of the Torque Social Hour, <strong>Doc Pop</strong> invites <strong>Brian Gardner</strong> to talk about <a href=\"https://torquemag.io/2023/04/torque-social-hour-frost-theme-comes-to-the-wordpress-repository/\"><strong>Frost Theme Comes To The WordPress Repository</strong></a>. On the heals of former WPEngine engineer, <a href=\"https://olliewp.com/introducing-the-ollie-wordpress-block-theme/\">Mike McAlister&#8217;s OllieWP beta release,</a> Brian Gardner published <strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/frost/\">Frost Theme</a>, </strong>and it became the 299th block theme. The <a href=\"https://frostwp.com/\">separate website</a> demos all the additional features, like patterns, layouts, styles and variations that come with the theme.  It&#8217;s certainly more than a simple theme and could be a base theme to build expressive sites on top of it.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>The theme and design team at <strong>Automattic</strong> also three new block themes: </p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/storia/\"><strong>Storia,</strong></a> helps creators to tell a visual story with 6 style variations, which mostly change the background color, and three patterns. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/hey/\">Hey,</a></strong> is a minimalist, personal blog theme, in two style variations and five equally minimalistic patterns. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/paimio/\">Paimio</a></strong> is a minimal blogging theme inspired by architects and designers <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvar_Aalto\">Alvar</a>, <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aino_Aalto\">Aino</a> and <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elissa_Aalto\">Elissa Aalto</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>In his post, <strong>Munir Kamal</strong> gives you an <a href=\"https://gutenberghub.com/overview-of-wordpress-group-block/\">Overview of WordPress Group Block</a>. He explains the two powerful variations, Stack and Row blocks, and the various features available in the Block Toolbar as well as the sidebar. Especially the Layout options and Positions are fairly new additions to the Group block and if you haven&#8217;t worked with them, this is a great introduction to learning more about it. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://twitter.com/bfintal\">Benjamin Intal</a></strong>, the founder of the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/stackable-ultimate-gutenberg-blocks/\"><em>Stackable plugin</em></a>, launched the new site: <a href=\"https://wpblocktips.com/\">WPBlockTips</a> where he and Alex Yap post WordPress Tips in general and abouot the block editor specifically. They also invite the community to submit their tips as well. The articles are mostly short and sweet answering common user questions like: <a href=\"https://wpblocktips.com/tip/how-to-switch-between-visual-and-code-editor/\">How to Switch Between Visual and Code Editor</a> or <a href=\"https://wpblocktips.com/tip/how-to-create-a-custom-post-template/\">How to Create a Custom Post Template</a>. Check it out. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>WooCommerce Blocks released a new version. In the <a href=\"https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/04/26/woocommerce-blocks-10-1-0-release-notes/\"><strong>WooCommerce Blocks 10.1.0 Release Notes</strong></a>, Alexandre Lara, JavaScript wrangler at Automattic, highlighted: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Theme-level Global styles for Cart and Checkout&nbsp;blocks, </li>\n\n\n\n<li>the product counter filters revamped, </li>\n\n\n\n<li>the new patterns, </li>\n\n\n\n<li>Global Styles support for Product Stock Indicator, and </li>\n\n\n\n<li>more customizations for Mini Cart</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Check it out.  The full changelog for the release is also available in the post. </p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled\">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/jon_bossenger\"><strong>Jonathan Bossenger</strong></a>, developer educator and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/eatpaintchic\"><strong>Emily Rapport</strong></a>, designer and agency owner from Chicago, collaborated on the designs for a new block theme, called <strong>Sendig</strong>. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bossenger will start on <strong>May 9th, 2023 at noon UTC</strong>, to build the theme matching the designs on his <a href=\"https://www.twitch.tv/jonathanbossenger\">weekly live stream on Twitch.</a> Starting next week, Bossenger will also <a href=\"https://github.com/jonathanbossenger/sendig\">share his code on GitHub</a> and should you miss an episode, you can always catch it on the rerun on his <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/@jon_bossenger/videos\">YouTube Channel</a>. You can learn more about the Genesis of this collaboration and project via the post: <strong><a href=\"https://jonathanbossenger.com/2023/05/06/introducing-sendig-a-new-wordpress-block-theme/\">Introducing Sendig – a new WordPress block theme</a></strong></p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tammie Lister</strong>, early design lead of Gutenberg, published post called <strong><a href=\"http://nownextlab.com/2023/04/30/the-future-of-the-term-theme/\">The future of the term theme</a>. </strong>&#8220;There are many sources for styling beyond just the theme. You can draw from a full site editing setting, a pattern, a custom block style, a copied-in style, or a generated pattern. The theme is the bundler, the package – the wrapper that all this great stuff gets put in to share and activate. That is what ‘the theme as the package’ means, it is the method to carry everything, and it’s almost a de-escalation of the term.&#8221; she wrote. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Later in the post, Lister also raises the issue of confusing terms and that there should be more distinct, more granular filters than just the one called &#8220;block themes&#8221;. It suggests that all block themes are the same, yet, not all themes come with patterns or style variations or many block styles. Maybe now with almost 300 block themes in the repository, adding additional feature filters might need to contemplate. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sarah Snow</strong> published a short video tutorial on <a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/importing-widget-areas-from-a-classic-theme-to-a-block-theme/\"><strong>Importing widget areas from a classic theme to a block theme</strong></a>. The 6.2 WordPress release brought an exciting new feature that allows you to import widget areas from a classic theme into a block theme with a few clicks of a button. Find out how in this tutorial!</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>Are you a theme developer on a quest <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/block-themes/converting-a-classic-theme-to-a-block-theme/\"><strong>Converting a classic theme to a block theme</strong></a>? Contributors updated the documentation page with the same name. You can read on how to enable block features. Specifically: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/block-themes/converting-a-classic-theme-to-a-block-theme/#adding-theme-json-in-classic-themes\">Adding theme.json in classic themes</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/block-themes/converting-a-classic-theme-to-a-block-theme/#adding-block-patterns-in-classic-themes\">Adding block patterns in classic themes</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/block-themes/converting-a-classic-theme-to-a-block-theme/#enabling-template-editor\">Enabling template editor</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/block-themes/converting-a-classic-theme-to-a-block-theme/#disabling-template-editor\">Disabling template editor</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/block-themes/converting-a-classic-theme-to-a-block-theme/#adding-block-template-parts-in-classic-themes\">Adding block template parts in classic themes</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/block-themes/converting-a-classic-theme-to-a-block-theme/#customizer-options\">Customizer options</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The additional resources list assists you with deciding on your the next steps. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Doc Pop</strong> discussed <strong><a href=\"https://torquemag.io/2023/04/press-this-wordpress-62/\">what&#8217;s new in WordPress 6.2</a></strong> with Automattic-sponsored contributor <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> on the latest episode of the Press This podcast, and touched on what&#8217;s coming up in the next collaboration phase of the Gutenberg project. They discuss the improvements to the Site editor, the new Stylebook, Custom CSS for blocks and Global Styles. </p>\n\n\n\n\n<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2022&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. Updated by yours truly.  <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/\"><em>The index 2020 is here</em></a></p>\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press\">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brian Coords</strong> introduced the <a href=\"https://wphelpers.dev/icons\"><strong>WordPress Icons Library</strong></a>, as a searchable guide to the complete icon library from the block editor. He <a href=\"https://twitter.com/briancoords/status/1654479220167573504\">tweeted</a>: &#8220;The WordPress Block Editor comes with an SVG icon set that replaces the old Dashicons icon font (sorry, no palm tree). You can use these icons when building custom blocks or extending the functionality in the block editor.&#8221; Coords aimed at a simple reference site, including a &#8220;click to copy&#8221; feature, so developers can quickly grab the icons they need. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> updated his YouTube Channel with the recording of his latest Twitch Streams.</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN0GU2yC1xQ\"><strong>Reviewing Gutenberg 15.5 Features | Bring Me Your Issues #4! </strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2LBSQVL80Y\"><strong>Bring Me Your Issues #5!</strong></a> </li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/\">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><img alt=\"GitHub all releases\" src=\"https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge\" /></p>\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right has-small-font-size\"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href=\"mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com\">them via email</a> or send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right has-small-font-size\">For questions to be answered on the <a href=\"http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast\">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, send them to <a href=\"mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n\n<p>Featured Image: Chicago River South Branch from the Cityscape Bar by Chris Smith &#8211; found on Openverse.org</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>\n\n\n\n<form class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait\" action=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/\" method=\"post\"><div class=\"ngl-form-container\"><div class=\"ngl-form-field\"><label class=\"ngl-form-label\" for=\"ngl_email\"><br />Type in your Email address to subscribe.</label><div class=\"ngl-form-input\"><input type=\"email\" class=\"ngl-form-input-text\" name=\"ngl_email\" id=\"ngl_email\" /></div></div><button type=\"submit\" class=\"ngl-form-button\">Subscribe</button><p class=\"ngl-form-text\">We hate spam, too and won&#8217;t give your email address to anyone except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition</p></div><div class=\"ngl-message-overlay\"><div class=\"ngl-message-svg-wrap\"></div><div class=\"ngl-message-overlay-text\">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"ngl_list_id\" id=\"ngl_list_id\" value=\"26f81bd8ae\" /><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"ngl_double_optin\" id=\"ngl_double_optin\" value=\"yes\" /></form>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide\" />\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Sat, 06 May 2023 19:00:29 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:18:\"Birgit Pauli-Haack\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:39;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:75:\"WPTavern: Advanced Custom Fields Plugin Patches Reflected XSS Vulnerability\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=144739\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:86:\"https://wptavern.com/advanced-custom-fields-plugin-patches-reflected-xss-vulnerability\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1128:\"<p>Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) has patched a reflected XSS vulnerability that affects versions 6.1.5 and below of ACF and ACF Pro, potentially impacting more than 2+ million users. It was discovered by Patchstack researcher Rafie Muhammad in May 2, 2023, and patched by ACF developers in version 6.1.6 on May 4, 2023.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Patchstack <a href=\"https://patchstack.com/articles/reflected-xss-in-advanced-custom-fields-plugins-affecting-2-million-sites/\">published a security bulletin</a> and Muhammad described the vulnerability as follows:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>This vulnerability allows any unauthenticated user to steal sensitive information for, in this case, privilege escalation on the WordPress site by tricking a privileged user to visit the crafted URL path.&nbsp;</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The vulnerability was given a high severity CVSS score of 3.1. Muhammad outlined a proof of concept in the security bulletin. At this time, the vulnerability is not known to have been exploited. ACF free and ACF Pro users should update to the latest 6.1.6 version of the plugin as soon as possible.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Sat, 06 May 2023 03:51:23 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:40;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:68:\"WPTavern: Gutenberg 15.7 Adds Site Logo Upload to Inspector Controls\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=144692\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:79:\"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-15-7-adds-site-logo-upload-to-inspector-controls\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:3841:\"<p>Gutenberg 15.7 was released this week, <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/49992\">adding Site Logo upload and replacement</a> from the inspector controls sidebar. This feature is still available in the block toolbar but it feels like a natural addition to the inspector, as it was previously available in a similar fashion in the Customizer. Here users can easily adjust the logo width and set whether the image links to home, opens in a new tab, and more.</p>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>Version 15.7 changed the behavior of the top toolbar fixed setting to address a few issues <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/40450\">outlined</a> by Gutenberg lead architect Matias Ventura. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The top toolbar has stagnated a bit while the feature set of the editor has evolved,&#8221; Ventura said. He identified the two most important issues this design change solves &#8211; the lack of a parent selector for nested blocks and the overall increase in the editor&#8217;s UI footprint. The toolbar has been updated in the following ways: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>updates on desktop sized viewports the position of the fixed toolbar</li>\n\n\n\n<li>updates the z-index of the interface header to be lower to that block toolbar shows up on top</li>\n\n\n\n<li>implements a toggle expanded/collapsed for block contextual toolbar</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<img />Image Source: <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/49634#issuecomment-1501597370\">PR updating Top Toolbar fixed setting</a>\n\n\n\n<p>This change will require feedback from Gutenberg plugin users, as feedback among contributors has been mixed so far. WordPress core committer and accessibility contributor Andrea Fercia weighed in on the PR, suggesting it requires more testing:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>A11y-wise there are more issues with this implementation at the point that I wouldn&#8217;t know where to start. Some quick testing with the keyboard surfaces only some of the most evident ones. I&#8217;d encourage everyone to test this new UI with the keyboard first to get an idea of the main issues so that we can continue the conversation with some more context.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>On top of keyboard navigation, there are other issues related to the&nbsp;<code>NavigableToolbar</code>&nbsp;ARIA toolbar usage, placement of elements in the DOM, usage of the icons, etc.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have been following the progress on the experimental Command Center, <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-15-6-introduces-experimental-details-block-and-command-center-for-site-editor\">introduced in version 15.6</a> as a quick search for jumping to other pages or templates, the <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/49681\">design has been updated</a> to match new mockups. Users will notice subtle differences, like tweaks to the radius and borders, icons for each command, and results only available when the input is not empty.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />image source: <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/49681\">PR #49681</a>\n\n\n\n<p>A few other highlights from version 15.7 include the following:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Duotone filter controls added to block sidebar (Prior to this change, the only place to edit the duotone filters was on a block level.)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Fluid typography updated to scale large fonts down for smaller screens using a logarithmic scale factor to calculate a minimum font size</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Image placeholders now show custom borders</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Template pattern suggestion modal now uses a masonry layout</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Check out the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-7-03-may/\">Gutenberg 15.7 release post</a> and changelog for more details on all the changes in tooling, code quality, performance, accessibility, documentation, and more.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Fri, 05 May 2023 19:13:39 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:41;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:64:\"Post Status: Launching a WordPress Product in Public: Session 12\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:32:\"https://poststatus.com/?p=149236\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:74:\"https://poststatus.com/launching-a-wordpress-product-in-public-session-12/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:58061:\"<p><a href=\"https://poststatus.com/planet/feed/#h-transcript\">Transcript</a> ↓</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this episode, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/corymiller303\">Cory Miller</a> and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/coreymaass\">Corey Maass</a> discuss their experiences and opinions on the current state of WordPress. They delve into topics such as WordPress&#8217; evolution over the years, its strengths and weaknesses, its place in the market compared to other website builders, and its potential future. Learn from their insights and advice for WordPress professionals on how to stay relevant and successful in the industry.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Top Takeaways:</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Adapt and Upskill.</strong> The WordPress ecosystem is vast and constantly evolving. This growth brings challenges, such as increased competition and the need for WordPress professionals to continuously adapt and upskill to stay relevant in the industry. Keeping up with the latest trends and technologies in the WordPress ecosystem is critical. This includes learning new programming languages and frameworks, as well as staying up-to-date on design trends and best practices.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Engage the Community. </strong>The WordPress community is a supportive and collaborative group of individuals and organizations. WordPress professionals can benefit greatly from participating in the community, whether that&#8217;s by attending local WordPress meetups, contributing to open-source projects, or joining online communities like the WordPress subreddit or the WordPress Slack channel. By building a strong community around your WordPress website or business, you can establish yourself as a trusted authority in the WordPress space and create long-term relationships with your audience.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Content is STILL King.</strong> When it comes to building a successful WordPress website, you need excellent, engaging content. To stand out in the crowded online marketplace, WordPress professionals need to create valuable, high-quality content that resonates with their audience.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Security Should Be a Top Priority.</strong> Since WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world, it&#8217;s also a popular target for hackers. Ensuring you take all necessary security measures to protect your websites and your clients&#8217; websites is essential.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper\" id=\"h-mentioned-in-the-show\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f517.png\" alt=\"🔗\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> Mentioned in the show:</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://crop.express/\">Crop.Express</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://ithemes.com/\">iThemes</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.liquidweb.com/\">Liquid Web</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wpengine.com/\">WP Engine</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.godaddy.com/en-ca\">GoDaddy</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://automattic.com/\">Automattic</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.gravityforms.com/\">Gravity Forms</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://zapier.com/\">Zapier</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://slack.com/\">Slack</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://stripe.com/\">Stripe</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://woocommerce.com/\">WooCommerce</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/chrislema\">Chris Lema</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/photomatt\">Matt Mullenweg</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/asmartbear\">Jason Cohen</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/andrewnorcross?lang=en\">Andrew Norcross</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/rebeccagill\">Rebecca Gill</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/bradt?lang=en\">Brad Touesnard</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/pippinsplugins?lang=en\">Pippin Williamson</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/syedbalkhi\">Syed Balkhi</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/carlhancock\">Carl Hancock</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/jeffr0?lang=en\">Jeff Chandler</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/Krogsgard\">Brian Krogsgard</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/matt_medeiros?lang=en\">Matt Medeiros</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/chriscoyier?lang=en\">Chris Coyier</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/koriashton?lang=en\">Kori Ashton</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/nathaningram?lang=en\">Nathan Ingram</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/jenniferbourn?lang=en\">Jennifer Bourn</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/troydean?lang=en\">Troy Dean</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/wpmodder?lang=en\">Adam Warner</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper\" id=\"h-you-can-follow-post-status-and-our-guests-on-twitter\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png\" alt=\"🐦\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"eplus-wrapper\">\n<li><a href=\"http://twitter.com/coreymaass\">Corey Maass</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/corymiller303\">Cory Miller</a> (CEO, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status\">Post Status</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/lemonadecode\">Olivia Bisset</a> (Intern, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status\">Post Status</a>)</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"eplus-wrapper has-background\">The <strong>Post Status Draft</strong> podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4dd.png\" alt=\"📝\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /><br /><br /><a href=\"https://poststatus.com/category/post-status-podcasts/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Browse our archives</a>, and don’t forget to subscribe via <a href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/post-status-draft-wordpress/id976403008\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">iTunes</a>, <a href=\"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8ySkU5c2M4UA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/c/PostStatus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">YouTube</a>, <a href=\"http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/krogsgard/post-status-draft-wordpress-podcast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Stitcher</a>, <a href=\"https://wordpress-post-status-draft-podcast.simplecast.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Simplecast</a>, or <a href=\"https://feeds.simplecast.com/2JE9sc8P\">RSS</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f3a7.png\" alt=\"🎧\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper\" id=\"h-transcript\">Transcript</h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Session 12 Corey &amp; Cory Launch a WordPress Product Live</h2>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">Corey Maass: [00:00:00] Or at least that\'s what it looks like behind you. Yeah, there you go. It gets weather, it gets windy in Switzerland.\n\nOr at least that\'s what it looks like behind you. Yeah. \n\nCory Miller: Well that\'s a good effect. \n\nCorey Maass: This is our backyard gets, weather gets windy in Switzerland. Yeah. \n\nCory Miller: When I get you back out here, we\'ll, uh, you\'ll see the, \n\nCorey Maass: that\'d be amazing. You have lots of echo. This is our back hair against wind Indian Switzer.\n\nOkay. \n\nCory Miller: Always fun going live. Uh, well, hey, it is, uh, session 12. We\'re talking about corn Corey on WordPress products. So Corey, forgive me for letting this slip off my calendar, but we\'re live, I\'m outside enjoying the weather while the wind cooperates. If it gets too windy or [00:01:00] something, \n\nCorey Maass: I\'ll go inside. All right.\n\nMakes sense. I should be outside. It\'s beautiful. But it is also windy here too. The dogs are starting to enjoy it anyway. \n\nCory Miller: Well, um, you\'ve been busy, man, working on the new product. \n\nCorey Maass: Yeah, so, uh, omg, I m G is coming along very well. Um, I, at this point we\'ve got almost a working plugin. I think I\'m down to, as we had talked about, um, the.\n\nThe goal for a first version is to be able to create an image and then save it as the open graph image for a site. Um, I\'d already marched pretty far down the trail for making images for posts, and so using that as a starting point. [00:02:00] Uh, at this point you can edit images for posts, save them as the featured image, and then, um, I\'m close to being able to save as the open graph image.\n\nAnd then I, because the code is basically gonna be the same for if you\'re editing posts or like, it\'s, it\'s kind of like signing into Canva, which I think is our, um, analog, um, the, you sign in, you see projects, you click on a project, you edit a project, meaning an image, and then do something with it.\n\nDownload it. Save it as a featured image, save it as an open graph image. Um, so I abstracted that out so that there\'s basically an instance of, of the app, um, attached to a post or attached to the overall site. Um, and so now it\'s just a matter of like connecting the last, basically the last few wires to save an [00:03:00] image as the open graph image for a site, um, without, and initially without, uh, any assumptions about having Yost or all in one s e o or any of those installed.\n\nUm, and then I will, uh, look into, like Yost has a, a really nice filter that makes it easy to overwrite the, their open graph image for the site. Um, and, and I, I\'m hoping that the other s e o plugins do too. So at that point we\'re, we\'re off and running. Um, I also, uh, I don\'t remember why, um, but I, I think just cuz I needed something different to do but wanted to feel productive, I installed e D D on O M G I M G and so that\'s kind of, that\'s the basics are set up.\n\nOh cuz I wanted to [00:04:00] plug in, um, a bank account and stripe and stuff like that. So that\'s all ready to go. Um, there\'s nothing, I haven\'t, I haven\'t actually set up the plugin to, to use a license key yet, but that\'s, e d d makes it pretty easy. Um, they\'ve got a class that just gets abstracted, so, um, so yeah, probably another week of hacking.\n\nAnd, um, I mean we do need, we need a logo. I. We need, um, some decisions to, uh, we, I think we\'ve, we\'ve both sort of in the context of discussion, not decision. We both sort of have said that we, with this will in INI at least initially, will forego a free version in the repo. Um, and just, I always wanna say and just punt, but I\'ve been told that that\'s an, uh, improper use of the, the sports analogy.\n\nBut anyway, we\'ll kick it down the road. Um, or we\'ll [00:05:00] just, we\'ll just go whatever. \n\nCory Miller: Yeah, no punt works for me. Um, okay. So let me, let me get back and make sure I\'m clear on what you said regarding where the work that you\'ve done. Yes. So the site default open graph image is ready. Close. Close. And then you started working on the per post.\n\nCorey Maass: Work. Uh, I mean, the other way around really the, because I, I had already gone down the trail of per post. Um, that one\'s actually more flushed out, but it was great because it was, it\'s easy, it\'s actually easier to attach images to a post than to attach images to a site, right? Because yeah, posts have featured images, sites don\'t, and so it\'s, it\'s a little more abstract.\n\nUm, so yeah, posts. [00:06:00] Um, but then, uh, so the, so posts can now, so you can make an image and attach it to a post as a featured image, and then, uh, and then I\'m looping back to essentially set the open graph image for either a single post or for an entire site. And that\'s what I think we can launch with.\n\nBecause the idea, the idea is like, you know, for most blogs, most WordPress websites, the homepage is a page. It might be an archive page, it might be a page page. Um, but there\'s no, there\'s no featured image attached. Uh, well, I guess there is sometimes for a page, but, um, you know, that\'s what, um, but you want an open graph image, right?\n\nLike if I share the post status homepage, you know, that image has to come from somewhere. Um, but then if [00:07:00] you go into a blog post on post status and you share it, By default, it should be the same open graph image as the entire site. But you might, you might want to create a individual open graph image for that post.\n\nSo it\'s like, if you go to the post status homepage and share it, you see post status is awesome. But if you go to a blog post a, where you\'ve interviewed Corey, this awesome developer, you want, and you share it, you want it to say, post status is awesome. Read about Corey. Yeah. Okay. \n\nCory Miller: So I think I understand where you\'re at with all that.\n\nUm, regarding the decisions, last thing you said there, what does, what do we need to make? So, sorry, I think I\'m, I\'m getting this, but for launch, I think what you\'re saying is for launch we\'ll have default site and host option.\n\nCorey Maass: [00:08:00] Okay. Yeah. I think cuz it\'s, you know, we, we essentially, we have a builder. That.\n\nOkay. You, you see a dashboard full of projects. You create a project where you say you select a channel, I\'m calling it a channel. We\'ll have to come up with something better. Um, but a channel being like an Instagram host, so 10 80 by 10 80 or an open graph image, which is like 1300 by 60, 6 30 or something like that.\n\nUm, and then we\'ve got right now just a couple of templates, um, which is a layout. And so you\'ve got a, you know, I showed you a couple of weeks ago, uh, a featured image background and a title in a footer. Um, or for the open graph, kind of what you\'d mocked up on the on slides was a logo on the left and a title on the right.\n\nUm, and so, you [00:09:00] know, using those as simple prototypes, like we will, we will spend the rest of eternity cranking out templates and refining templates, but I\'m making it so that it\'s really easy for us to make templates and then also for, um, potential customers to make their own templates, which I think is really, I think a lot of developers are going to want to do that.\n\nUm, you know. Yep. So anyway, so that\'s, that\'s all set up. Yep. Okay. Awesome. And we will, so sorry to finish the thread, we\'ve, so we\'ve, you\'ve got a screen, so it\'s like from, um, you\'re editing a blog post. There\'s a button somewhere that says, you know, OG O O M G I M G, and you open it up and there\'s all the images that you can make or will make.\n\nAssociated with that post. Um, I\'ve also added it as a link [00:10:00] in the, when you see the list of posts, you know, edit, delete, there\'s now a little om, G I m G link there for the sake of simplicity where you j it just throws you straight to the builder. Um, and then that\'s excellent. \n\nCory Miller: Just wanna say that\'s a hundred thousand percent awesome.\n\nThank you. Uh, because for those people that have a lot of content to go back and create those easily, that\'s excellent. \n\nCorey Maass: Yep. Um, and then, uh, under media, in the WordPress admin, there\'s now a new, so it\'s, you know, media library add new, and there\'s now under there there\'s a menu item that\'s om G i mg, which is, you know, site media basically.\n\nUm, and it, and again, when you click on it, it looks the same. So we may, we may wanna. Like it says Sitewide images versus the, the name of the post when you\'re in the, you know, our, our app. Um, [00:11:00] but it, it essentially looks the same. So we\'ll have to differentiate that a little bit somehow, but Okay. Um, but you go in and you say create, you know, create a new project, a new image, um, and then once you\'ve made it look the way you want, you say save as OG image.\n\nUm, and, and it\'s set. And somehow we\'ll, we\'ll denote that, that, you know, this project that you\'re looking at is currently set as the OG image, um, for your site. Thank you. Okay. \n\nCory Miller: When we get this, I was trying to look at your screenshot Slack too. Um, when we get it where you\'re ready, I\'d love to take a look and give comments there.\n\nIt\'s, I\'m, yeah. Following along I think conceptually, and then when we see all that, um, when I get to see it, I think I\'ll have better. Better help on that. Yeah. Uh, okay. Because I, if I put my post status hot hat on as a customer, [00:12:00] easily create that o OG site image that displays by default and all those things, platforms.\n\nAnd then as I\'m creating the post, I can go in and create an OG image for that post that, that nails that basic value prop for me, right. Was my post dose. \n\nCorey Maass: Yeah. And, and to me it\'s, um, I mean as much because it was the easy, easier first option. Um, like you can save as featured image, but it\'s, to me, that\'s the, that was the first problem we identified, which was, um, you know, for every blog post you want, you want, you need a featured image, but you are in the co when you\'re looking at a blog post, the featured image is, you know, a bunch of people in a [00:13:00] boardroom or a handsome person typing on a laptop.\n\nBut when you share that, you see a person typing on a laptop and it has no context to, um, you know, to the blog post. Um, so that\'s where we said, okay, you know, we want, we want, if you share it, there\'s your OG image. But also, wouldn\'t it be nice if, frankly, if the featured image had more value, As well. So, you know, so you can, you can create one image and save, set it as the featured image, which might get pulled in as the OG image.\n\nYou can set it distinctly explicitly as the OG image. They could be two different things. Um, you know, and then down the road we will have things like copy, you know, so it\'s like you create an OG image that is just the title of the blog post, but you\'ll say copy, save it at, you know, save this one as the o as the featured image, and that one has the bullet points or whatever.\n\nSo you can, [00:14:00] you know, mix and match. Again, sort of following the, I, I don\'t want to keep saying Canva, but um, you know, where it\'s like easy to go in and, and create a new image and edit and create a new image and tweak it. And um, the other thing that I just added yesterday, which is pretty slick, is you can, um, Change channels.\n\nRight? So, and this is where the responsiveness comes in that we\'ve talked about. So it\'s like if you have an image that\'s, you know, wide 16, nine or something good for a featured image, good for an OG image, excuse me, changing it to Instagram, it makes it square, you know, and it might not be perfect, but it, you know, the left and right, stay on the left and right.\n\nOr if you go to a mobile view, they go to top and bottom, um, in the same way that a website does. And all this seems to work. So. Okay, cool. \n\nCory Miller: So I think when you get it, [00:15:00] um, beta ready, I want to put it on post-test and start using it, and I think that\'ll be really good data back. Just a note on that real quick is we\'re trying to switch, we\'ve.\n\nSwitch your platform over and, um, I think by the time this is ready, I\'ll be able to put it on our new environment and, uh, and then give a lot of feedback and notes from, from using it. Uh, a lot of this I keep asking your you how this works because I think I put on this a piece of content. It\'s like, what is open graph and why should I care?\n\nMm-hmm. The marketing side, um, I, I tend to, in any project, try to embody the customer, but I am the customer here. Sure. Um, and so even as versus people might think I am on the web, I still have a ton of questions and I think that\'s gonna, so I, I\'m writing some notes as we go about some of that content stuff [00:16:00] to say, you know, um, to help people understand and make, connect the dots to ogm and Gs.\n\nThis it\'s Scraper Oak Graph plus. Just want a nice image done fast for a piece of content. We got you. \n\nCorey Maass: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I mean, you, you asking these questions like I, I, we\'ve talked a little bit about how I am a very intuitive product developer. Um, like things just occur to me as I\'m ba bashing at my keyboard.\n\nAnd so I\'m, I\'m adding things and I try to be a little disciplined about adding features and whatnot, but it\'s at, at the end of the day, You and also me, um, have to go forth and sell this and, you know, and, and as we\'ve talked about early on, like I\'m relying on you down the road to take the, the reins for setting up the marketing site and uh, marketing copy and all that kind of stuff.\n\nSo, you know, you asking questions. I mean, any, any good [00:17:00] salesman needs to know how it works, even if they\'re not, you know, explaining a, um, internal combustion engine to the, the, you know, the person trying to buy a car. They still, it helps to know how it works and be able to answer those questions because it also, it\'s gonna float to the top all of the actual value props that ultimately we\'re gonna talk about.\n\nI mean, it\'s cuz we\'re, we\'re building a really neat image builder. Okay? And, and I think people are gonna go, wow, you know, whizbang, but at the end of the day, we\'re selling it. We\'re selling value, just like anything. And so that value needs to be clear. And if people don\'t know that how important it is for when sites get shared and that, how that relates to this thing called an open graph image.\n\nAnd that\'s also part of why like, I think, um, you know, setting a good, creating a, a more valuable featured image, [00:18:00] which is something we had talked about early on too. Like, you know, just adding the title to a featured image. People don\'t realize how amazingly valuable that is because that usually is the image that gets sucked in as the default OG image if there isn\'t one explicitly set.\n\nSo, and all of these things I think are, these are, these to me are patterns. Thank you. You reminded me. I need to stand up. Um, I think all of these are patterns that we will unearth as we, as it gets used, right? Like, we\'re gonna find that a lot of people. Are setting images or are not setting images or don\'t know what, that these images should be set, you know?\n\nAnd so we, there\'s gonna be some education, but it\'s also like we, we need to just speak their language. If, if they\'re not thinking about it this way. But they are all, I mean, anybody who\'s promoting a site is in fact concerned about shareability and that kind of thing. Like, we need to understand what language they\'re using.\n\nOkay. \n\nCory Miller: [00:19:00] Um, okay, so put, I\'m gonna put on the post back, on the post set for a second. I\'m the customer and for V1 launch, um, I go AMA post hit OG image to create the, the image. Um, then from that point, I\'ve created that image. Yeah. And then I go to sh share on social. How does that work for me as customer? How, how do you it the nuts and bolts of like, Do I download image, go over to Facebook, whatever, my social platform.\n\nCorey Maass: Okay. No, not at all. And that\'s, I mean, that\'s the nice thing about this. And, but also it\'s, it, it\'s the nice thing. Technically it\'s the bad thing humanly. Um, because it, it, it\'s one of those things that just works. It\'s like, you know, people logs have r s s feeds, right? Like there is this Yeah, this big, [00:20:00] there\'s a, a file of code, it\'s plain text and it\'s just gobbledy g to your average person.\n\nUm, but that\'s how, uh, you know, an r s s feed used to be really popular for sharing blog posts, right? And that\'s still the backbone. I was, this is in my head, which is why I bring it up because I was setting up a podcast for a client this morning. Like that\'s still how podcasts work. But to most people, it\'s just magic, right?\n\nLike, You know, but you can\'t, um, you don\'t just put a piece of audio on the internet and, and it\'s a podcast. Like there\'s these, you know, this magic tech stuff that happens behind the scenes. Um, offloaded. \n\nCory Miller: Okay. So I\'ve created my post, created my OG image publish. I take that link \n\nCorey Maass: and go. I\'m sorry. So No, you do nothing.\n\nYou do nothing. So, um, if you, sorry, I was, I was talking analogously. [00:21:00] Um, in you, you know, if you look at any, if you look at the source of any website, um, then wait, \n\nCory Miller: wait, sorry. I think I know where you\'re going there. Let me pause for just one second. So my, my workflow would be we create a post on post status, um, and then we want to go out and share it.\n\nI would just do my normal thing and OG image is gonna display in Correct. Those social networks. Yeah. Okay. It\'s just, that\'s great news because I w I thought at some point, um, I was gonna have to download, go over here to, uh, tweet deck, whatever it is, or the social channel itself. Upload, put post link, get my update ready on my social post.\n\nBut that\'s all baked in. So like I just do my normal scheduling OG image is gonna appear naturally. \n\nCorey Maass: Yeah, it\'s, it, it\'s the same as if you, if you share a URL on Twitter, on Facebook, anywhere. Yeah. [00:22:00] And, and a, and a URL might or might not have any information in it, right? Like there\'s a, it\'s possible that a, you share a u r url that that is, yeah.\n\nYou know, post status.com/ 1 23. Yeah. Which means nothing to anybody. Yeah. But, um, but Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, everybody will, what they actually do behind the scenes is that, is that the computer goes and visits the website Yeah. And pulls metadata. The title tag, the metatags. So there\'s a description, there\'s a, and um, and if there isn\'t, and this is what, why the O OG images were created and all the O OG tags, open graph tags was Yeah.\n\nUh, by default. So it\'s like if you shared a U R L on Facebook, it would automatically suck in the first image it found. Well, a lot of the time, the first image it, um, it finds is a logo. Okay, fine. But if you\'re on a blog post and you wanna share the featured image, [00:23:00] you\'d have to manually go inject that.\n\nAnd so what you can do instead is you can explicitly set the open graph image, which is the image that, you know, when you paste a URL URL into Slack or into Twitter or any of it, that little preview comes up. It\'s sucking in that, that open graph info. Okay. Um, except for now, Twitter. Twitter sucks in a Twitter card info, but it\'s hidden to the average user.\n\nCory Miller: So for this part, you don\'t have to explain the plumbing necessarily, but workflow as a customer, I go, okay, I\'ve installed O M G I M G, I probably go Okay, create my default, what I think of as like my website, business card, kind of online business card. Yep. Yep. And then behind the scenes doing all that awesome magic.\n\nSo then I\'ve just helped got the previews, so like professional and visible and the search engines and all these other channels. Then post, it\'s doing that magic for me. I just go worry about [00:24:00] scheduling my link and content updates on the social platforms and these appear. So I would think as a customer, so post using Postes is our customer for a second.\n\nUm, we do Twitter and LinkedIn. Those are our two primary channels. So probably somewhere we\'re setting OG images for all the networks, but you know for sure our output for those blog posts. When I do the schedule workflow, what I do, what we do, uh, we probably wanna make sure those, that builder section is okay, create your LinkedIn version, create or tweak whatever your Twitter version.\n\nYep. And then when I go to do my normal content promotion side on the socials, it\'s all displayed magically right there. Corey, you made it effortless for me. To do that as a customer. And I mean, there we go. Cuz I was writing some messaging on that, but I just wanted to con confirm that customer workflow, so like you\'re doing [00:25:00] all the magic behind the scenes with OG stuff, but for the user it\'s like you\'ve just taken out huge amount of time, an effort that takes to go over to a canvas or fire up, Photoshop, whatever you\'re doing, and it\'s appropriately sized for each of your major channels.\n\nCorey Maass: Yep. So, uh, like I said, I mean the, the most, most channels use the same, um, you know, same image. Right. Twitter now is, uh, is a little different, but yeah, the what\'s nice and it\'s, and, and from a, from a user workflow, there\'s sort of a, a trickle down, right? Like Yeah. The first thing we\'ll have you do is we\'ll set up a Sitewide OG image, a business card like you said.\n\nSo right there, no matter what, if your site, any a any page on your site is shared, there\'s at least something better showing, or at least something predictable and something you know, truly marketable showing. [00:26:00] And then you can, and then you can get better, right? Where you can go into specific pages or posts, create images that are specific to that page.\n\nSo then you are, you know, you\'re adding icing on top of icing. And then you can go even, even further where you are, um, copying the OG image. But, um, Or a specific post or something, but then you\'re, you\'re creating a version for Instagram, because Instagram doesn\'t pull in OG images, you have to upload an image.\n\nBut we just, what we just took a co uh, an image that you know you like that\'s shaped like this and, and Z made a square out of it with, with one click. And now you\'ve, at again, you\'ve at least got a basic image to share on Instagram that, you know, will be the right size and shape and has your, your marketing assets.\n\nYou might need to tweak the logo a little bit or something, but, um, \n\nCory Miller: so if I put my mindset back in post status, we create, you know, weekly content, [00:27:00] um, and then we share on the socials. Um, I want to think for a second before I get access to the product. Um, I would want like LinkedIn and Twitter. Those are our two biggest channels.\n\nUh, I get your, you\'ve set up the response on this, which is awesome. Yeah. Um, but what would I want? I\'m, I\'m asking myself as a post customer, what would I want a display there? So I\'m really, I think I told you I\'m leaning into LinkedIn and like when I was doing that with my ma, I showed you and thank you for your helping that.\n\nCause I was like, oh, this is a great use case right here. Um, so LinkedIn, I\'d go to myself, like the, the default, some of the images that come up take way too much screen space in LinkedIn. Mm-hmm. Yep. Um, so I\'d want to say, I\'m gonna guess some kind of image featured image [00:28:00] that it\'s thematic to the content that I\'ve pulled from other source.\n\nUm, headline\n\nmaybe. Maybe that\'s it. \n\nCorey Maass: Like, well, and this is, this is what you decide, right? Like you Yeah. You know, when, when you and I were look, doing a bit of research on this, like we went and looked at WP Beginner, uh, we looked at Free\'s blog. We looked at just kind of let you know, let\'s Google some random things and see what comes up.\n\nUm, and one of the ones that we liked, um, had, you know, essentially what was their featured image on the left and the title on the right, but the whole thing was an image. And so when you shared the story, that\'s the graphic that got used. It was a, an image that was relevant, but put in context because it included the title.\n\nUm, and this is where again, like I\'m trying to build this picture of, [00:29:00] um, Hmm, I don\'t know what you call it, but how, the way that users grow with a product, right? Like the first time you buy Photoshop, you open it and you, you know, take out the power lines and you\'re like, okay, great, I\'m done. But you know, six months later you\'re adding layers and you\'re adding some text and then six months later you are, you know, tweaking the alpha channels and I\'m trying to think of what other, using masks and embedded objects and all this stuff.\n\nLike you, you grow with a product. And so for us, The immediate value people are gonna install this thing. We\'re gonna walk you through ba building a business card for your website and, and right there if nothing else, you know your, your website\'s gonna be represented better anytime that it\'s shared. And then you can, and then you can build business cards for specific posts and pages.\n\nSo it\'s getting more and more relevant and, and more and more valuable to be shared. And then past that you\'re going, okay, well I actually, every time I create a blog post, [00:30:00] I wanna, you know, I can, I can share this on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and it\'ll suck in that OG image, but I can\'t do that on Instagram.\n\nI need a dedicated image. Yeah. So you\'d say click copy, you know, change it from og, change the channel from OG Image to Instagram. Whoop, it\'s square. You download and you upload. Cuz you have to do it, you have to manually do it with Instagram. So, you know, but we\'ve, we\'ve, you are now, every time you create a post, There\'s a default OG image, then there\'s an OG image relevant to the post.\n\nAnd then it\'s with a couple of clicks. You\'ve got images that are specifically sized for other channels like Instagram. And then down the road you\'re like, like we talked about, we\'re like, oh, we want, you know, if I\'m really pushing hard on a blog post, I want slides, I want numerous different images cuz I\'m gonna tweet about this every day for a week.\n\nAnd I don\'t want to keep using the same image. So I\'m gonna copy, paste, copy or, or copy, copy, copy. And I\'m gonna say, use these [00:31:00] three bullets on Monday. Use this pull quote on Tuesday, da, da, da. And download all of those five images. And so now it\'s like, again, as you grow with the product, you\'re gonna just bang, bang, bang, you\'re with any piece of content you create, like your blog post, you\'re gonna have five images, 10 images that all have specific purposes.\n\nUm, and if you are just a site owner, if you\'re just one person, You do the basic, you do what you\'ve got time for. But if you\'re like one of my clients that has a dedicated social media manager, they\'re going to own this tool. They\'re gonna become a pro with this tool, and they\'re gonna be generating a dozen images for every post because they\'re wheeling and dealing.\n\nCory Miller: And that part is what I was just trying to think, ask myself, okay, uh, I want this to show up. I\'ve now, I\'ve got an easy way to do it. And I was just trying to do a little bit of thought about what would be valuable to me when I am, I\'ve done all this work, and now I want it to be an [00:32:00] image that kind of entices someone to come back to the content.\n\nUm, at a base, I\'d want to say, you know, there\'s an image, kind of some of those templates we saw, middle part logo, maybe the featured images in the background are like top five accessibility firms and WordPress, you know, and, um, with, with the brand. On this, on that image, I think would be the minimum things I\'d want for any post that we did like.\n\nSo we do just kinda right side of this when we get to this for the template phases. Um, so we have two columns, basically three I guess business, tech and community. And you know, we do a tech every week and it\'s like, that\'s probably not a good example here, but, uh, something interesting in tech, I\'ll say it like this, maybe this is a good example.\n\nWe do a make word WordPress column every week that [00:33:00] summarizes links off to things happening on the project. So she always does a title on there. So it\'d probably be series name this this week at Make WordPress. And her title, and it would just be like 6.2 campaign release, Gutenberg project updates or something actionable.\n\nYep. But it\'s branded as that this week column idea. I hadn\'t thought about that with this product, but I go, that\'s probably good. Like this week in pro, these three happens. And right there with the title, they\'re kind of going, okay, I ne I\'ve already got value. I\'m gonna click through and see what is in that post.\n\nAnd then Michelle does a, a column me tweak. So, you know, might be whatever her column title is. Um, trying to think once you did last podcast, sequels community or something like that. So it\'d be title, [00:34:00] category, title, this, it\'s her, her community section, whatever we call it. Then whatever her headline is, So they know like, click here.\n\nThis is the magic package to get more. So I think that\'s probably, I think that works. I was trying to test it out and just say, what would my minimum request be from, from you when you\'re building it. \n\nCorey Maass: Sure. So, you know, we haven\'t introduced, I haven\'t introduced like saving templates yet, but you\'d, you\'d, another way to approach this is you\'d create a template that has the post status logo on the left and some piece of text on the right, right.\n\nYeah. And then you\'d save that, um, for, as a, as an overall template. And so Michelle goes in and creates a community [00:35:00] post, let\'s say. Yeah. And so she says, use the standard template post status logo automatically on the left. It sucks in the title of her. Her post that week on the right. Okay. Corey, who\'s in charge of the tech at this point?\n\nYou, uh, yeah, me, I guess. Me. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, Corey goes in and creates a tech column this week. You know, use the standard, the standard, uh, template, post status image on the left, you know, this week in tech on the right. Um, now if you, uh, take this further, right, you could, um, automatically, you know, or, or Michelle creates a sort of a sub template that, so it says post status image, it says community, and then her title.\n\nAnd week over week, the, the logo stays the same. The word community stays the same, but the title changes. You know, week, [00:36:00] the week of April 12th. In, in commu in WordPress community, the week of April 5th, WordPress community. The other one over here says Post status logo tech, and then your title, right? Um, so that\'s one per column.\n\nYou also put out a newsletter if that newsletter is a post. Essentially, it doesn\'t matter if you\'re putting out a newsletter. The newsletter has a make section, a text section, a community section. So every time you create a newsletter, you would create three images, you know, taking that original saved template and just say, copy paste, copy paste, copy paste, hashtag community, hashtag make hashtag tech.\n\nPut in a few, you know, bullet points and then you download that as the okay. This week we put out our newsletter and then we also have three shareable images. And so as the newsletter comes out on Friday, on Monday you, [00:37:00] you tweet about the tech one and you use the tech image, you tweet about the, the, the make one and you use the make image.\n\nAnd so it\'s just automat, you know, makes it very easy to over and over and over create a whole bunch of images that are used in whatever way makes sense for you. Yeah, okay.\n\nCory Miller: So I was trying to use that to think it through and I think it broadened it out a little bit. So I would want maybe like a series category thing.\n\nI was trying to think this, cause I was like, next step I want to do some actual templates to mock this up a little bit. Mm-hmm. That\'d be great. So up here that sets up like a top here. Lemme do this.\n\nSo if this is the card, I\'d probably [00:38:00] want\n\ndo the make work, press something conceptually up here that\'s like, Hey, this is the category content. Like we have just like your magazine client has numerous topics, uh, categories. We would have something like that. Okay. And then headline. Um, I think an option to go.\n\nWhich might be the excerpt.[00:39:00] \n\nYeah, I was thinking like, let me actually pull this. God. Oh my God. Okay, so you get it? Yeah.\n\nWhile we\'re moving our hosting environment. This, come on. Okay. Anyway, so where am I at?\n\nJust wanna work this through, cause I think this is, uh, So Gutenberg 6.2 candidates, uh, feedback needed. Trying to put it in an actual thing. I\'m gonna remember. Okay. So series up here, like they\'re kind of having this expectation. This is a category, topical content. We could even create [00:40:00] different backgrounds like we do in our newsletter, different sections.\n\nTech has blue. I can\'t remember the colors offhand. Um, and then we\'d probably want some kind of logo, branded logo. Yep.\n\nI just put here Freeflow just because like maybe a lot of this is only the headline make it mm-hmm. Peeling to the headline. But if they wanted something like, you know,\n\nPutting my content hat on here. Um, that would just give a free flow area join, you know? \n\nCorey Maass: Yeah. Join the conversation. Feedback needed. Join the conversation. And this is, and this is where, so you might create a template that says, um, that, that has, [00:41:00] has a hard coded title in the left serious title Make WP never gonna change, right?\n\nSo when you created this template, you\'d go in and type that in. But in the middle is a variable, right? Is a placeholder. And so when any, anytime you created a new newsletter or a new whatever, you\'d say, copy that template. And that placeholder automatically sucks in the name of the blog post and your free flowing text.\n\nIt might automatically suck in the excerpt from the blog post. Now you can then go in and, and edit it, overwrite it, change it, you know. But, but at, at the, the minimum, if you\'ve created a template and then said, um, it\'s kind of like a page builder, right? Like, I use Beaver Builder, so I have a, I have page templates like use a, this, you know, header and content template [00:42:00] for any page that I create.\n\nAnd so I create a new page and right away it has a header up here and the content down here. But then I say, well, I really want this two, this one page. I really want it two columns, or I want to add a form. Then I go in and I tweak it, you know, to be specific to that page. But when I\'ve initially created the page, that template gets applied.\n\nIt sucks in the header, it sucks in the content. And right away I\'ve got a branded page. You know, with no effort. I\'ve, I\'ve created that template once and now creating every subsequent page, just, it\'s just formatted the way I want it to be. Yeah. \n\nCory Miller: I, I\'m doing this not necessarily for marketing, but for more the template functionality, like, cause what I want to do is get these little things here.\n\nMm-hmm. Put in enough. Uh, sample content and have someone do a treatment, you know, create our templates because I know if this is [00:43:00] attractive, it\'s gonna like, in an impactful and useful, it\'s gonna be really different. But I could be like, okay, so designer for the template, you know, think of the background option.\n\nWe\'ve already done some of this. Like we\'d want to say, you know, tagline for us would be,\n\num, or something like that. We\'d want the logo here to kind of brand that image. But primary thing is like, this happened, we connected to some topic that\'s of interest to our users. And like in that social update and LinkedIn, up here in the text copy is, you know, a summary. But right there they\'re like Gutenberg something that hits that category.\n\nThey see it\'s branded. We get some brand awareness with the logo, the business we\'re doing this for. Um,\n\nyep, man, I like that. [00:44:00] Um, so that was for me more for the template side of things and just playing around this cuz I, if we nail this, um, people are gonna be like, how\'d you do it? \n\nCorey Maass: I love that you\'re, you can\'t stop tweaking. You\'re like, logo on the left, no logo on the right. No logo on the center tagline.\n\nYeah, because I \n\nCory Miller: know if we can get this looking really nice, people are gonna, how\'d you do that? Well, it\'s this plugin called \n\nCorey Maass: Om, G I M G. Um, um, yeah, I mean, I think I, I, I think the, you know, the, these little mockups that you keep doing are great. I think you, instead of like, Instead of logo on the left, and then you move it, I think you duplicate the page and move the logo.\n\nAnd then these are all templates that we will create, or, you know, we will, if, if most of them are similar or if, you know, three of them are similar, but you\'ve got logo left, right, center, [00:45:00] then uh, you know, then I make that a little toggle that says, do you want your logo in the, you know, which corner do you want your logo in?\n\nOr, or that kind of thing. Um, so we do need, do you have, do you have a designer that you work with? \n\nCory Miller: Yeah. \n\nCorey Maass: Um, maybe. Sort of. Kinda. I do, I do. Um, well, just so we need, I mean, right now we find ourselves needing two things. One, we need a logo for this plugin overall. Um, and then, you know, so if, and then it would be great to have somebody, like you said, like if we give them essentially what you\'re doing as wire frames, um, and say, You know, here\'s what we need.\n\nDo some, do some designs. And then I go and I actually h t mli HT mli them, you know, make them actual templates. Then, you know, and we start with three that are very distinct. You know, the dark theme, the [00:46:00] light theme, and the rainbow theme or whatever, um, you know, that use different fonts and different treatments.\n\nAnd one is, you know, emphasizes the title and one emphasizes the logo and one emphasizes, you know, the business card or whatever. Then those could be the first three templates that we, we start with. Yeah. So that\'s kind of what I\'m thinking. Yeah. \n\nCory Miller: I like using this sample. Like we def I think we need something up above, whether it\'s centered, whatever, you know, the toggle button.\n\nYep. I kind of like, this is the topic. Um, See, I, I can give this right now to the designer. Like this is the headline. Yep. Um, freeflow. Yeah.[00:47:00] \n\nYeah. See that\'s really big. See that? We got that. So we need something there like an upper. Mm-hmm. Can\'t remember what they called it in the newspapers, but it\'s the category name or just a generic text area \n\nCorey Maass: here. Right. The section of the newspaper. You\'re in news, you\'re in auto, you\'re in classifieds, you\'re in, I don\'t remember what it\'s called.\n\nYeah.\n\nCory Miller: Yeah. See, this is good too because, you know, they clipped that stuff and you do too much text. So like \n\nCorey Maass: Right. But they don\'t clip images, so that if that image had your, your headline, you know, and, and I mean, it\'s exactly what we\'re talking about. Like, you\'ve got the image, you\'ve got an image treatment. And so again, like if you create that once in om G I M G, which by the way, abbreviates to OI or ooi, [00:48:00] which I like, um, so, uh, in ooi, uh, or oi, um, nice.\n\nInstead of ai, we are oi. Um, okay. But, uh, you know, there\'s that background image, right? That black and white faded into the back background image. So you know, that could automatically be your featured image. So every time you create a blog post, a featured image appears in the black, in the background in black and white.\n\nYou know, with, with a mostly black layer over the top of it. So you\'ve got a text, essentially a textured background automatically generated, but from the featured image of every post. And then it has the headline in orange or white over the top and your logo in the top left done, essentially auto-generated for every blog post you create.\n\nSo, \n\nCory Miller: like\n\nI was trying to flesh this out for the design and whoever we hand this off [00:49:00] to. So this right here is an OG image, I guess, cuz it\'s pulling in this text. \n\nCorey Maass: Not necessarily The text is pulled in from, you know, either, either a meta description or an OG description tag cuz there\'s, you know, in, in old school html, there was a bunch of meta tags.\n\nThere\'s title description, there was a tags tag, so you used to put in keywords and you know, but people would, would abuse that. And so they took that out. And so again, now OG Open Graph has the similar tags where you\'ve got author description image, so this, so here they, they could be pulled in from a couple of different things.\n\nAnd then that image again is coming from, it\'s either the featured image or, yeah, it\'s the, it\'s the OG image. \n\nCory Miller: Okay, so I get this, we got that. We\'re creating that with OMG here [00:50:00] though it just made me think like, what if we wanted, you know, Yost has its own SEO compliance stuff. This just made me think is like, I wonder, this could be downstream roadmap wise, but I\'ll let them tweak what the open graph is.\n\nThis text. \n\nCorey Maass: At that point we say install Yost. Like I don\'t, I, to me we wanna be a image generating plugin. Not an SEO plugin,\n\nCory Miller: but like when she posts whoever did this Yep. When she posts this link, um, here, it pulled in the image, cuz I know this is a created image. Yep. It\'s the featured image of the post. And this comes from Yost. Cause that\'s what we got on the site. \n\nCorey Maass: [00:51:00] Yep.\n\nSo at least to tweak that if she wanted to update it is in Yost. \n\nCory Miller: So, okay. When we do the design, Templates. We need to factor in that. Like mo like LinkedIn for instance. I\'m sure the others are gonna pull in this data. Yeah. That like really I need to tell the designer. Remember like LinkedIn, however else it shows, there\'s gonna be this pulled in.\n\nSo there might not be like I was doing tagline and everything, uh, on the image. Maybe it\'s just the logo. Like, like mm-hmm. She\'s got here. Um, and we don\'t worry about all that tagline stuff cuz like it\'s right here. Right.\n\nOkay.[00:52:00] \n\nRight. Because I\'m getting, I\'m thinking, uh, I know how to clear that now.\n\nCorey Maass: Um. \n\nCory Miller: Okay, so for design we need the logo.\n\nWe need some basic, we need a single post. And then I\'m just trying to flesh out what to get the designer so they know the elements they have to work with.\n\nLike they just need to know that\'s the frame. [00:53:00] Yep.\n\nSo does Designwise, do you. Do you have somebody you wanna work with? I have somebody we can work with that I think would give us good start, give us a lot of variations. Mm-hmm. Options. Yeah. \n\nCorey Maass: I mean, I think, I don\'t have anybody offhand. Um, we can, you know, and, and I\'ve created now two templates that are dead simple.\n\nUm, but, you know, I, I\'m conflicted. We d we need a logo. Um, and if that sets us up, like if we\'ve got somebody that, that can, can, can get us one, great. Um, you know, I have no problem jumping on fiber. I\'ve done that before many times. Um, and then ideally, yeah, we\'ve got a. A relationship that we start to build because it\'s like we want, you [00:54:00] know, one or two templates to start with.\n\nWe could even start with like the post status template essentially, so that you\'re using it and then, and then you\'re like, well, we really, it would be great if we had a different version that was, you know, totally different. And it\'s like, okay, well then, you know, that\'s two. Um, but if somebody, if we\'re working with a designer who\'s got a sense of what can be done and what we\'re looking for, um, you know, then they can just start cranking them out.\n\nLike once we\'re ready to do that, you know, cuz it\'s like, we want, we want 10 and then we want a hundred, and then we want, you know, different ones specifically for different channels, you know? Yeah. Instagram, square, whatever. Um, some are gonna be, you know, really only relevant to a sitewide and some are really only gonna be relevant to a specific post.\n\nUm, You know, and then also along the way, like, we\'re I what I, what\'s that? [00:55:00] I was coughing, sorry. Oh, sorry. Um, what I\'d benefit from is, um, somebody saying, basically showing me a bunch of different treatments by creating a number of different templates. And I\'m gonna be like, oh, right, like a gradient, you know, coming up from the bottom that\'s black to transparent, so that when the text is on the bottom, it stands out more.\n\nOr, um, you know, we add a little gradient builder and so people can design their own gradients to use as backgrounds or if we want, um, you know, if people want text that has, you\'ve seen text that\'s like, uh, changes color, you know, like as a rainbow across the text. It\'s like, oh, right. I, you know, like, let\'s figure out how to do that treatment.\n\nAnd so it\'s like we will benefit not only from very specific designs, but also just conceptually like, oh, here\'s a, a treatment that we can add to text or we can add to images that we hadn\'t thought of before. Let\'s look at ad, you [00:56:00] know, adding those as options.\n\nCory Miller: Okay, let me take Post Status as our base. And I think \n\nCorey Maass: that\'s the way to start.\n\nYeah. Work with \n\nCory Miller: this stuff to, uh, with a designer to create some, show \'em back. You let them kind of like have a little bit of wildness just a little bit and then you go, okay, I need this better. I need that. What, what\'s this? Like, you know, you put us back in the container of what can be done. Mm-hmm. I think I have everything you need that I can do with post TEUs.\n\nUh, this comment here is just Emily\'s creating those in Canvas. So I want to just touch base with her before I talk to the designer. Like, Hey, as you create these, like she\'s, she does that all the time for content journey. Um, so let me take that and let me start on that. Work with designer. Um, give you those options back and you tell me n I need that, what about this?\n\nAnd then I can go back and I [00:57:00] really think that\'s gonna be great. Where, cuz if we, like you said, if we do it for posts, why I kind of put this hat on, like really embodying, um, I want this to show up professional in some of the things you\'ve seen. I\'ve been trying to, in the next brand version of post test, make it a different, uh, design a little bit more lighter.\n\nAnd so I just wanna connect those dots too. And then, um, I\'ll get those as soon as I can over to you to give feedback back what you need better. Oh, wrong proportions. Something like, whatever that is. Yeah, that\'s perfect. Thanks for letting me do that. Cause that was helping me flesh out what I need to go ask for.\n\nCorey Maass: Yep. Yep. And I think if we start with yours, like there\'s no reason that that can\'t be, you know, at the end of the day, it\'s, it\'s not, it\'s unique because of the image treatment of, because of the orange on black. But if it was green on yellow, then that\'s somebody else\'s brand, and so it\'s still [00:58:00] all reusable.\n\nCory Miller: Okay. Last thing I didn\'t ask is ratios. \n\nCorey Maass: Yep. We need do, do, do, do, do. Where is it? How badly did I break this thing? Doesn\'t matter.\n\n1200 by six 30.\n\nIs that the default OG image? That\'s the default OG image. And it\'s, it\'s technically, it\'s not 16, nine. It\'s. 1.91 to one, but that doesn\'t matter. Just do 1200 by six 30. That\'s, that\'s the image we want.\n\nPerfect.[00:59:00] \n\nCory Miller: Okay. That\'s great. We\'ll walk on that.\n\nCorey Maass: Um, now how many, how many thousands of dollars are we gonna charge for this? Is that one of the decisions you want? 10,000, a hundred thousand? Yep. Um, no, but I do think, I think we should start thinking about it. Um, we, you had been tasked with doing some, um, competitive analysis and so, um, I think start thinking about, we can either talk about it, um, we should probably wrap up here shortly, but you know, next call next week or another call in between, but start making those kinds of decisions.\n\nCuz I think if we are deciding that we are launching with a pro version, like I wanna already start plugging some of that stuff in. Um, it\'s just things I can get ahead of while we\'re, um, [01:00:00] you know, waiting on graphics or if I\'m, um, stuck on something else, you know, because I\'ll plug in Ed D\'s class that manages licensing and then, and all that stuff and just get that set up prior to that.\n\nSo. Okay. Sorry I didn\'t discussion to a discussion to have a discussion. \n\nCory Miller: Yeah, I didn\'t do the pricing cuz I was probably thinking to myself that\'s the faster conversation. But let me, let me go back and do that cause I\'ll try to hit you with that. I think we discussed some of that in Slack. So I\'ll, I\'ll review that and just kind of look at some of these other competitors.\n\nUm, I\'ll get working on the post status templates. Um,\n\nCorey Maass: cool. Yeah, I, I, I appreciate you talking all this stuff through. I know I\'m throwing a lot of abstraction at you. [01:01:00] I\'m, I\'m, of course living in it, and, and then I\'m dropping you into, in, into the barrel with me and, and going, you know, okay, here\'s how everything works. And, and you haven\'t actually really seen much yet.\n\nSo my expectation is, yeah, within the next week or something, you\'ve actually got buttons to click on, you know, screens to look at, and, um, and it\'ll, I think it\'ll immediately become clear what\'s, what\'s missing, what\'s needed, what\'s gonna work, and what isn\'t. Okay. \n\nCory Miller: And now vice versa. Uh, and I took some notes here.\n\nUm, from my perspective, it\'s always user flow and messaging. Um, but today I really, the user flow was good for me to know. Now I understand what I need to go make at post at this. So I, I\'ll see Emily probably in the next hour anyway, and I\'ll, I\'ll talk her, I\'ll talk through this with her. Like [01:02:00] she\'s creating these all day, every day.\n\nShe can probably share some templates and then I\'ll reengage the designer. I\'m thinking for this, that would give us some options. \n\nCorey Maass: That\'d be great. And pricing. \n\nCory Miller: Roger that, dude. Awesome. \n\nCorey Maass: I love it. This is awesome. Yeah. I\'m, I\'m psyched. Like the, the deeper I dig into this and the more I play with it, the more I\'m like, you know, I\'m still, uh, I\'m still very much in the laboratory, but, you know, seeing, seeing, laying the groundwork, seeing how it\'s all wired together and seeing the potential for how we can build it out, I, and I\'m really excited.\n\nI think there\'s, there\'s a lot of amazing things we can do here. Cool. \n\nCory Miller: I\'ll let you know how that session goes. I\'m gonna co-work with them, the peop that my marketing assistant and content training that does all this type of work. So I get some intel back for us and, uh, rock on.</pre>\n<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Fri, 05 May 2023 13:28:15 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:11:\"Cory Miller\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:42;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:60:\"Do The Woo Community: Do the Woo Friday Show with Rob Cairns\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:28:\"https://dothewoo.io/?p=75047\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:59:\"https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-friday-show-with-rob-cairns/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:427:\"<p>Rob joins me today and wants to chat about how you should still make money building products and services even if you are using a free open source tool. </p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-friday-show-with-rob-cairns/\">Do the Woo Friday Show with Rob Cairns</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io\">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Fri, 05 May 2023 09:22:54 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"BobWP\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:43;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:87:\"Post Status: WordPress Products in the Enterprise with Crowd Favorite-Post Status Draft\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:32:\"https://poststatus.com/?p=149232\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:98:\"https://poststatus.com/wordpress-products-in-the-enterprise-with-crowd-favorite-post-status-draft/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:61108:\"<p><a href=\"https://poststatus.com/planet/feed/#h-transcript\">Transcript</a> ↓</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><a href=\"https://twitter.com/corymiller303\">Cory Miller</a> is joined by <a href=\"https://twitter.com/karimmarucchi?lang=en\">Karim Marucchi,</a> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/pat_ramsey/\">Pat Ramsey</a>, and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/_al_esc\">Alex Nitu</a> of <a href=\"https://twitter.com/crowdfavorite\">Crowd Favorite</a> to discuss the evolution of WordPress, its growing importance in the enterprise space, and the challenges faced by WordPress professionals. They also talk about the future of WordPress and the impact of emerging technologies on the platform. Overall, the speakers highlight the need for continuous learning and adaptation in the rapidly changing world of WordPress development.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><strong>Top Takeaways:</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul type=\"video\" class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<li><strong>Freedom for Growth. </strong>One of the benefits of WordPress at the enterprise level is its customization and flexibility. It allows enterprises to build a site that is tailored to their specific needs and requirements. Another important aspect of WordPress at the enterprise level is its ability to integrate with other enterprise tools and systems. This can include tools for content management, customer relationship management, analytics, and more. By integrating with these tools, enterprises can streamline their workflows and improve their overall efficiency to maximize growth.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Connection is the WordPress Way. </strong>WordPress has a large and active community of users, developers, and designers. Networking with other professionals and participating in the community can help you learn from others, stay informed about industry trends, and build valuable relationships. As a WordPress professional, building and maintaining strong relationships with your clients is key. This involves not only delivering quality work but also communicating effectively, being responsive, and understanding their needs and goals. By doing so, you can build a loyal client base and generate repeat business.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Mindset Matters. </strong>By practicing mindfulness, you can learn to observe your thoughts and emotions without judgment, which can help you develop greater self-awareness and emotional resilience. Cultivating a growth mindset can help you overcome challenges and achieve your goals. By focusing on learning and development rather than fixed abilities, you can approach challenges with a sense of curiosity and a willingness to learn, which can help you persevere through difficult times and ultimately achieve success.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background is-layout-flex wp-container-12\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow\">\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png\" alt=\"🙏\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> Sponsor: <a href=\"https://poststat.us/a2-hosting\">A2 Hosting</a></h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>A2Hosting 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!</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow\">\n<img width=\"752\" height=\"470\" src=\"https://poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/imageedit_1_6433774706-752x470.png\" alt=\"A2 Hosting\" class=\"wp-image-104073\" />A2 Hosting\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper\" id=\"h-mentioned-in-the-show\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f517.png\" alt=\"🔗\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> Mentioned in the show<strong>:</strong></h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://crowdfavorite.com/\">Crowd Favorite</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://automattic.com/\">Automattic</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.gravityforms.com/\">Gravity Forms</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://ninjaforms.com/\">Ninja Forms</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com/\">Beaver Builder</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.liquidweb.com/\">Liquid Web</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://pagely.com/\">Pagely</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wpengine.com/\">WP Engine</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.godaddy.com/en-ca\">GoDaddy</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://getflywheel.com/\">Flywheel</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://kinsta.com/\">Kinsta</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.wpbeginner.com/\">WPBeginner</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.elegantthemes.com/\">Elegant Themes</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wpmudev.com/\">WPMU Dev</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://ithemes.com/\">iThemes</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://theeventscalendar.com/\">The Events Calendar</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://gravityflow.io/\">Gravity Flow</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://formidableforms.com/\">Formidable Forms</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wpforms.com/\">WPForms</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/photomatt\">Matt Mullenweg</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/taylorotwell\">Taylor Otwell</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/pippinsplugins?lang=en\">Pippin Williamson</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/bgardner\">Brian Gardner</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/syedbalkhi\">Syed Balkhi</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/chrislema\">Chris Lema</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/funnybrad\">Brad Williams</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/helenhousandi\">Helen Hou-Sandí</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/nacin?lang=en\">Andrew Nacin</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/perezbox\">Tony Perez</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/miriamschwab?lang=en\">Miriam Schwab</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/wpbuilds\">Nathan Wrigley</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/BobWP\">BobWP</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/danmaby?lang=en\">Dan Maby</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/josephhhoward?lang=en\">Joe Howard</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/ChristyChirinos\">Christie Chirinos</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/richard_tabor\">Rich Tabor</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper\" id=\"h-you-can-follow-post-status-and-our-guests-on-twitter\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png\" alt=\"🐦\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"eplus-wrapper\">\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/karimmarucchi?lang=en\">Karim Marucchi</a> (CEO of <a href=\"https://twitter.com/crowdfavorite\">Crowd Favorite</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/pat_ramsey/\">Pat Ramsey</a> (Director of Technology at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/crowdfavorite\">Crowd Favorite</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/_al_esc\">Alex Nitu</a> (Project Manager at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/crowdfavorite\">Crowd Favorite</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/corymiller303\">Cory Miller</a> (CEO, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status\">Post Status</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/lemonadecode\">Olivia Bisset</a> (Intern, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status\">Post Status</a>)</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"eplus-wrapper has-background\">The <strong>Post Status Draft</strong> podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4dd.png\" alt=\"📝\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /><br /><br /><a href=\"https://poststatus.com/category/post-status-podcasts/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Browse our archives</a>, and don’t forget to subscribe via <a href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/post-status-draft-wordpress/id976403008\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">iTunes</a>, <a href=\"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8ySkU5c2M4UA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/c/PostStatus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">YouTube</a>, <a href=\"http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/krogsgard/post-status-draft-wordpress-podcast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Stitcher</a>, <a href=\"https://wordpress-post-status-draft-podcast.simplecast.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Simplecast</a>, or <a href=\"https://feeds.simplecast.com/2JE9sc8P\">RSS</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f3a7.png\" alt=\"🎧\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper\" id=\"h-transcript\">Transcript</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to Post Status Draft . This is gonna be a<br />great conversation. One I&#8217;ve been wanting to have as I&#8217;ve learned and explored more about<br />WordPress on the enterprise. And so this is under our agency, kind of both agency series and<br />product. Cuz it, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s both because of what our, uh, the three people that are here today do,<br />uh, full-time for crowd favorite.<br />Um, but so we&#8217;re gonna be talking about WordPress enterprise products. I spent, uh, my career<br />in WordPress building. Products, not me personally, but leading a team that built products. But it<br />was different from the enterprise base as I told these gentlemen, they know very well. Um, that&#8217;s<br />whole different set of, um, Product uses and customers and needs, frankly.<br />So we had a product that had, was on the repo and had a million installs. That&#8217;s way different<br />product than what we&#8217;re talking about today, which is why I wanted to have this conversation. I<br />want to have more of [00:01:00] these WordPress on the enterprise conversations because I<br />think it&#8217;s so critical to WordPress overall.<br />Um, for years. Friends like Kreme, who I&#8217;ll introduce in just a second. Um, Have done this cool<br />work and I get to, and members of post status get to brag about my friends that do these cool<br />sites, that everybody knows what they are and I go, that&#8217;s about as much as I know. I know they<br />use WordPress. I know these are awesome people building for it.<br />And these are brand names that you know. So anyway, I&#8217;m excited for this conversation. Um, so<br />I have my dear friends, Karim and Pat, who I&#8217;ve known for, I don&#8217;t know, 10 plus years, and my<br />newest friend Alex, who I get to meet all from Crowd favorite. Uh, but I&#8217;m gonna let you all<br />introduce yourself. Um, Karim, I know your background go is vast.<br />Even before WordPress, you were doing some cool things in business that you took over when<br />you started, um, your agency, way back in the day before, it was called Craft Favorite. But I&#8217;m<br />gonna let you introduce yourself. All that to say it&#8217;s gonna be a fun [00:02:00] conversation<br />today.<br />Karim Marucchi: Corey, thank you so much.<br />It&#8217;s an absolute pleasure to be here. Uh, I love hanging out with you and having these<br />conversations with you because they&#8217;re amazing. Um, You mentioned I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve been around<br />since before WordPress. Yeah. Uh, at the end of this year, I&#8217;ll be, I&#8217;ll be celebrating my 30th year<br />of delivering c m s solutions for the enterprise.<br />That&#8217;s been way too long.<br />Uh, I&#8217;ve only been in the WordPress space for about 13 years. I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;ve found open source like<br />you find religion and I love it. Um, it&#8217;s been the best thing for our enterprise clients. So I&#8217;m CEO<br />of Crowd Favorite. Um, just for those of you who don&#8217;t have a, a deep WordPress history.<br />Crowd favorite was founded by Alex King. Um, one of the first contributors to the WordPress<br />project after, uh, Matt and Mike, um, and crowd favorite, uh, under the leadership of Alex King,<br />really did some of the [00:03:00] first big scaling publishing sites, um, in the WordPress world.<br />So we are proud to carry that name forward today.<br />Cory Miller: You know, you mentioned Alex and when I was a, just using WordPress in 2006,<br />when you install it, this is how far Alex and Cry favorite go back to is. You know, you install<br />WordPress, you get a blog roll by default. There&#8217;d be a bunch of names. You&#8217;re like, oh, who&#8217;s<br />all these names? Yeah. But there&#8217;s always Alex on there and, uh, I got to meet Alex in 2010 and<br />then I was excited when you all joined forces.<br />And became crowd favorite cuz what you&#8217;re doing in the space too. I think I met you right about<br />2011 maybe Karim. I mean, it was pretty early. Yeah. And I was like, who&#8217;s this guy who is, is,<br />uh, knows his stuff and quite charming And, uh, that led to, I don&#8217;t know, gosh, has it been like<br />hundreds of times we&#8217;ve had dinner together and, uh, Stopped by during Covid and got to hang<br />out on the back porch as you&#8217;re [00:04:00] going across the country.<br />Uh, and then, and of course, right on the tails of Karim is Pat, who I&#8217;ve known just as long so,<br />and excited when Pat was a part of Crowd favorite as well. But Pat, uh, could you introduce<br />yourself?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pat Ramsey: Yeah, uh, Pat Ramsey, uh, director of Technology here at Crowd Favorite. Um,<br />I&#8217;ve been here a little over eight years, but, um, I was scratching my brain there because I think<br />it was Word Camp Dallas 2009 when I met you and your team Corey, um, back in the day there<br />at, uh, I think it was UT Dallas at that conference center that was there.<br />That&#8217;s right. Yeah. Yeah. And you were showing, you know, you guys were, you guys were doing<br />all of the theme work on the back end where it was all user configurable. Uh, and, uh, I had a<br />very, uh, it was a short but intense conversation with one of your devs about the pros and cons<br />of doing that and allowing that on the back end versus not.<br />Um, here we are now still, so it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s fantastic. [00:05:00] Um, you mentioned that, uh, Alex King<br />showing up on the blog roll. It was 2005 or 6 . And, uh, he answered one of my support<br />questions on WordPress back then. Um, and I remember seeing him in that, uh, I think it was<br />that, that old green blocky looking default theme, uh mm-hmm.<br />And being in that sidebar. So that was, uh, that was fun.<br />Cory Miller: Gosh, I, so Karim Pat predates our friendship.<br />Karim Marucchi: It does, it does. Pat is one of the, the OG WordPress people in the<br />community.<br />Cory Miller: Absolutely. That was a good time. I do remember that. That was historic time for us<br />too, because we were doing Ithe builder at the time, I think is what you&#8217;re talking about.<br />Yep. That was Then if you&#8217;ll remember real quick piece of nostalgia, Alex and everybody else,<br />um, uh, that Deb, you&#8217;re talking about Christine, who, who&#8217;s now automatic. Came to me and he<br />goes, Hey, I just met this 16 year old kid doing some incredible stuff, like mind blowing. I was<br />like, Chris, you&#8217;re one of [00:06:00] the smartest people I know, so you&#8217;re telling me somebody I<br />gotta go meet this person.<br />It was Clay Griffiths of Headway themes. So that was a historic one for us too, in your<br />friendship. All right, thanks Pat. Alex.<br />Alex Nitu: The new kid bringing up their year.<br />Cory Miller: My newest friend. Yes.<br />Alex Nitu: Yeah. So I&#8217;m Alex Nitu . I&#8217;m a product manager at Crowd Favorite. Um, I&#8217;m always<br />been a techie ever since I was a little. That millennial, millennial generation that just grew up<br />with, uh, computers and the internet developing as I did.<br />Um, and so yeah, I bounced around between startups, government agencies, uh, boutique<br />agencies until I finally found God favorite. And that was really, uh, a kismet moment that I&#8217;ve, I<br />felt like I found my tribe. I&#8217;m like, yep. These are the, the guys that I&#8217;m gonna build great things<br />with. Uh, and so yeah, now I&#8217;m super passionate about open source and, uh, what, uh, what<br />we&#8217;re building, uh, [00:07:00] at our favorite.<br />I think it&#8217;s, uh, very interesting and can&#8217;t wait to share it with you and everybody else.<br />Cory Miller: Absolutely. Well, I got to meet Alex last week and he showed me the product<br />they&#8217;re working on and I was really impressed and particularly his passion and vision for what,<br />what he&#8217;s doing with the product. So, nice.<br />Okay. Thanks for sharing a little bit about yourselves. Let&#8217;s dive right into the topic, which is<br />WordPress Enterprise Products. Um, like I say, Karim, this is compelling to me because I&#8217;ve<br />always been proud of. An envious of my friends that operate in the enterprise space, but I just<br />go, I don&#8217;t even know what it&#8217;s like to work like with some of the huge companies I know you all<br />work with.<br />Mm-hmm. Um, but I know your passion for open source, the open web, and down to Word<br />Press, paired with vast experience working with these huge companies. So when we&#8217;re talking<br />about WordPress products in the enterprise, what comes to your mind? Why are we even<br />talking about this? I think I know what I&#8217;m, why we&#8217;re talking about it, but I&#8217;m curious to know<br />your [00:08:00] perspective on this.<br />Karim Marucchi: Yeah, so the biggest, the biggest difference when I talk to folks who&#8217;ve come<br />over from the, from the comer world, is less than 10% of enterprise software products. I&#8217;m not<br />talking about SaaS, I&#8217;m talking about software products. Less than 10% of software products for<br />the enterprise are turnkey. You install them, you hand over an interface and they just use it.<br />Most are what we call an 80% solution. Um, a great example of this was even, um, in, in the<br />early days of Crowd favorite, um, Alex King released a product called ramp, which was for<br />moving content from one complex environment to another, and they could never get that last<br />interface right, because in the enterprise, everybody&#8217;s workflow is so different.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, that you have to customize that last 20% on every install. [00:09:00] So even though this<br />sounds crazy, in the comer world, we&#8217;re building products that we are just doing 80% of the<br />product, and then we may install it 3, 4, 5 times, not 5,000 or 6,000, but those three, four or five<br />times, it&#8217;s a custom installation each time.<br />It&#8217;s a custom process. That&#8217;s the best.<br />Cory Miller: So, Yeah. And, and I know from talking to you in the past about that, that I, you<br />know, the comer type products we released, you go, okay, it&#8217;s mostly one s fits all, you know?<br />Mm-hmm. There&#8217;s edge cases that&#8217;s not gonna work. But on the enterprise presents a whole<br />different set of, um, challenges I&#8217;m sure.<br />So I get that too. And where the needs are just really vastly different and need that kind of<br />customization. You mentioned something that&#8217;s interesting to me. You said software product<br />versus SaaS. Mm-hmm. So te tell me that distinction because there&#8217;s one I just picked up on. I<br />go, okay. I need to dig into that one [00:10:00] because that&#8217;s different.<br />I, I, I understand software versus SaaS, but on the enterprise perspective.<br />Karim Marucchi: Well, on the enterprise perspective, you absolutely have SAS products that<br />are ready to go, uh, more likely than not, though. Even large software implementations that you<br />expect to be sas. If you&#8217;re an enterprise that has enough money, you&#8217;re getting your own custom<br />version of even that SaaS product.<br />But you know, there&#8217;s Salesforce, there&#8217;s uh, HubSpot, there&#8217;s a lot of products out there that<br />they, they promote the fact that they have an enterprise product that&#8217;s just, you log in and you<br />go. But reality of the top tier of enterprise is that they want whatever product they&#8217;re using to be<br />adapted to their workflow.<br />Yes, so that&#8217;s why we make a distinction. Sometimes there are plug and place SAS for the<br />enterprise, and then there&#8217;s also just the traditional sort of software architecture where you have<br />to do this last 20%. [00:11:00] And then there&#8217;s what Alex and our team is playing with right now.<br />We&#8217;ve been working on, uh, personalization products for about six years now for our clients<br />directly, and each time they&#8217;re different.<br />But we started playing around with progressive profiling and, uh, conditional content, all these<br />types of concepts. So we started releasing in a public, uh, in a, in a, uh, plugin on the repository,<br />just some of the codes to play with. First it was on GitHub, then we moved to repository, and<br />now lately we&#8217;ve been trying to see what does it look like to actually hook up some of these APIs<br />to third parties.<br />And actually try to create a little bit more of a standardized product. But still we&#8217;re finding that<br />the customers who are enterprise clients will download our um, D X P toolkit product, the free<br />version from the repository. Then they&#8217;ll contact us and they&#8217;ll say, we need X, Y, Z<br />customizations, and it ends up being something that [00:12:00] is completely custom for that<br />client.<br />Cory Miller: See, I&#8217;ll hold this question, but that, that presents a whole different, it feels like<br />pricing monitor from b2c, which is, Hey, buy this. Good to go. Um, but I&#8217;ll save that for later on in<br />the conversation. Um, but I&#8217;m curious, I know you&#8217;ve told me too, this is the next frontier. Or<br />WordPress. Mm-hmm. Um, in the enterprise specifically, but you&#8217;re seeing things and, and even<br />if you&#8217;ve been working on these things for six years, I know you&#8217;ve been talking about it since<br />we&#8217;ve met.<br />Right. Uh, because we, we tried to figure out, okay, you know, this space, we do products. How<br />do, how do we do this? You&#8217;ve been thinking, working on these things for a long time, but you&#8217;re<br />obviously seeing things. What are you seeing out there, the opportunities, uh, I&#8217;m sure through<br />your actual enterprise clients.<br />Karim Marucchi: So the, the largest opportunity we&#8217;re seeing is clients pushing the limits of<br />what their expectations are with SaaS products. [00:13:00] Or with installed versions of CMSs,<br />whether it&#8217;s WordPress or something else. Because, you know, in the WordPress world, we&#8217;re<br />used to looking at the the, the uh, dot org repository, and we have 65 to 70,000 plugins in there<br />now.<br />And what ends up happening is, Um, we&#8217;re thinking about that as our world, but in the<br />enterprise, um, I think that over the last 12 years, it&#8217;s gone from something like 1200 SaaS<br />products to over 10,000 SaaS products and. The enterprise is going, I want to try these<br />innovations. How do I try these innovations?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And they&#8217;re stuck with like, how do I churn away from one SaaS to another? What do I do? Yes.<br />So there&#8217;s this opportunity at the moment, right now, if you think of the concept of a bicycle<br />wheel, we can use the WordPress project and open source as a hub to use spokes to [00:14:00]<br />connect out. To any number of sass,<br />but keep the experience in the roadmap of where you want to go within the WordPress project<br />and what you&#8217;re doing in WordPress.<br />And then if you wanna move from one CRM package to the next CRM package, as long as you.<br />Connecting in the right way and having the right data policies. You can detach and reattach, you<br />can do all sorts of things. It&#8217;s a little bit more complicated than I&#8217;m making it sound, but the<br />bottom line is that the enterprise clients have the opportunity to try things and maintain their<br />roadmap.<br />So this is a giant opportunity for the WordPress project to say, we&#8217;re gonna be a Swiss Army<br />knife, we&#8217;re gonna be a hub. So that way.<br />Enterprise customers can connect to one thing, try the next, try the next, and still maintain their<br />own vision of what their roadmap is. Does that make sense?<br />Cory Miller: Yeah, it does.<br />Um, [00:15:00] Alex, you came off mute. Do y&#8217;all two have have a comment on that?<br />Alex Nitu: Oh, I could talk for days, uh, on this, uh, that&#8217;s a loaded question. Uh, yeah. Yeah, I<br />like going a lot, uh, a lot of what you guys are saying. Uh, cuz really it&#8217;s about, um, breaking<br />that, that tip of the iceberg and democratizing all of these, uh, uh, these solutions that don&#8217;t<br />necessarily are, are necessarily easy to, to implement, be it by cost of ownerships, by, uh,<br />difficulty of implementation, by, uh, by, in a, by a case by case manner where.<br />Your infrastructure or your your needs need to be, uh, uh, solved in a, in a bespoke manner. Uh,<br />so that&#8217;s really about, uh, finding that middle ground where, uh, you don&#8217;t need all that resources<br />or you are able to own your data or own your infrastructure and, uh, and your digital, uh, digital<br />[00:16:00] presence.<br />Cory Miller: I, I love what you said too, Karim.<br />Um, and we&#8217;re gonna have a conversation in a couple weeks about. More, uh, broader topic in<br />WordPress and the enterprise, and I really appreciate your leadership in, in our community, uh,<br />for WordPress and the enterprise, making sure the concerns, the needs, the challenges are<br />heard. And then at Crown Favorite, I love what you&#8217;re doing and providing some solutions to<br />meet those needs you seen on, um, the enterprise.<br />Karim Marucchi: But if I may, there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s a specific opportunity for everybody out there<br />who&#8217;s looking at what products they could come up with to not only think about how do I make a<br />product that I&#8217;m gonna make for an end user, but you can make a customizable product. There&#8217;s<br />lots of examples out there these days, but you can make a customizable product where you<br />could be solving a deep problem rather than a wide problem.<br />Mm-hmm. And you&#8217;re not, you&#8217;re not charging the comer level prices. There&#8217;s so much<br />[00:17:00] opportunity for, for connecting to other SAEs, to other, uh, solutions that are next to<br />WordPress and outside of WordPress that just haven&#8217;t even been tapped. The plugin community<br />in WordPress has traditionally stayed within.<br />How do I help the self-service? Um, the self-service web designer manager, uh,<br />Admin, right. Um, there&#8217;s so many more things that can be done.<br />It&#8217;s just a matter of seeing deep rather than wide. I think that&#8217;s where I start that conversation.<br />Yeah. I know Pat views on this too, so I&#8217;m gonna shut up.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah, no, I like that deep, that that&#8217;s a perspective shift for a lot of, uh, developers<br />as you know, Karim in the space.<br />Um, pat, I&#8217;m curious, you&#8217;re taking all this, um, yeah. What you&#8217;re seeing too.<br />Pat Ramsey: Well, I think, uh, Karim said it earlier. You know, we&#8217;re seeing people push the<br />boundaries with these things and the explosion in sass, [00:18:00] especially since 2020. And<br />everybody going home and staying outta the office and deciding to build everything online.<br />Uh, you just saw this, this exponential explosion in, uh, services that are out there, data<br />services, data, you know, services for moving data services for transforming data services for<br />connecting to this, uh, drop ship place service for calculating something. It, it&#8217;s not even, you<br />know, it, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s very minuscule.<br />You know, uh, unit tasker type things that are out there now that you just didn&#8217;t see before. Um,<br />and so there&#8217;s 20 million of them, uh, and everybody wants to connect to &#8217;em and do this and do</p>\n\n\n\n<p>that, and do, you know, do the other thing with it. Um, I think, you know, one of the, one of the<br />biggest challenges is, uh, you know, wading through all of those that are out there and finding<br />what that set is that your, your customer needs.<br />So that makes productization a little bit difficult. You can&#8217;t just. Oh, install this and it&#8217;s gonna<br />magically [00:19:00] connect. Um, you know, one of the, the phrases that I&#8217;ve, I sort of hate<br />these days is this no code. The idea of no code. Somebody wrote code for no code to work. Uh,<br />it&#8217;s just, you know, uh, uh, I, I said this to the guys earlier, you know, even the Rosetta Stone,<br />which translated, you know, three or four of the world&#8217;s foremost languages.<br />Somebody had to sit there and carve all those things in the rock. So you gotta write code to<br />make these things work. And that&#8217;s where a lot of the work that we do in this space comes into<br />play is you&#8217;ve got sass that are out there and you&#8217;ve got your c m s and Andre&#8217;s exactly right.<br />WordPress is uniquely positioned to be that central connecting piece through its API and<br />through its open architecture to connect to X, Y, and Z and bring it together, uh, for, for your<br />customers to be able to do the things they need to do.<br />And so, uh, it, it is a really rich space. It is a different space than what you see in 95% of the<br />product [00:20:00] conversations that have happened in, in, you know, since the days of, of, of,<br />you know, the first page Lee, uh, you know, over a decade. It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s, uh, been a challenge to hit<br />that explosion in the enterprise space for products as it as it has been for mass market, simply<br />because the requirements are far more complex.<br />Cory Miller: Hmm. It&#8217;s like Karim said, they want to try things. That&#8217;s really compelling to me.<br />They want to try the things they&#8217;re seen out there and, and then, but to have this massive, I can&#8217;t<br />even imagine the roadmap. You all, you, particularly Pat, I know, manage those teams and<br />services and how they could try it.<br />Something they see out there, want to try it, but it&#8217;s big, massive thing they&#8217;ve got going in their<br />roadmap that they&#8217;ve, they&#8217;re want to try out and figure that out. Um,<br />Pat Ramsey: And They&#8217;ll push the limits on &#8217;em too. You know, like said, they&#8217;ll push the limits.<br />You know, they&#8217;ll, they&#8217;ll find a way to break, uh, to break a server, you know, because of just,<br />you know, the sheer amounts [00:21:00] of, of data that they have to deal with.<br />They&#8217;ll find a way to push an API to time out simply because there&#8217;s just too much that has to<br />happen. You know, there, there will be a business case in there somewhere that prevents. 90%<br />of the answers that you read about in any tech site on how to fix the problem, you can&#8217;t because<br />of a business case that exists.<br />So you&#8217;ve got to sit there and figure out another way around it. And it, it might sound, you know,<br />bubblegum and rubber bands, but, uh, you know, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s the world that you, you know,<br />that, that you live in, in this space. You can&#8217;t just say, oh, well, you know, you just have to do<br />this. No, you can&#8217;t. There&#8217;s a security policy, there&#8217;s a, there&#8217;s a business requirement, there&#8217;s a,<br />you know, a, a absolute critical system that can never be turned off or, or, you know, shut down<br />or something like that.<br />So you have to, you have to sit there and stand on your head, you know, lay upside down,<br />whatever it is, to, to try to figure out how do we go from here to here? Cause it&#8217;s not the path<br />that<br />Cory Miller: everybody else is [00:22:00] taking. And it seems like that when they wanna try,<br />like Karim was saying something, some department within an organization goes, we wanna do<br />this.<br />We like this, we want to do this. They need a safe environment and a safe place to be able to do<br />those things. It doesn&#8217;t disrupt all those other things. Yeah.<br />Karim Marucchi: Um, one of the things that I. Alex can speak for himself, but I&#8217;m sure, um,<br />what I hear him say is that he loves the fact that he&#8217;s solving problems one at a time for clients.<br />He gets to go deep so that he&#8217;s constantly trying to figure out whether it&#8217;s our service clients or<br />how to productize what we&#8217;ve done for one client and install over 3, 4, 5, 6 other clients like<br />trying to solve that problem deeply for clients. Is is something that&#8217;s a different world than comer,<br />but it&#8217;s not harder, it&#8217;s just different.<br />You can&#8217;t charge the lower rates that you would [00:23:00] charge for a comer product, but you<br />can solve that problem on a large scale.<br />Cory Miller: Right. It&#8217;s, it seems like it&#8217;s product with service. I mean, dependent on some of<br />those service-based customizations you need to do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Alex Nitu: I feel as though, uh, it&#8217;s, uh, it&#8217;s absolutely right.<br />There&#8217;s two completely different, uh, roadmaps for a, a general comer product and an enterprise<br />focused, uh, product. And, uh, with our favorite, I think we are fortuitous enough to, um, be able<br />to have this data set where, uh, we can, uh, Uh, drive a roadmap that is lean and it is, uh, spec<br />particularly focused for, uh, the enterprise needs and use that to, to provide that, uh, that white<br />glove, uh, enterprise, uh, uh, service and, uh, and experience, um, with, uh, with the product to<br />match that, um, gives you that flexibility for innovation, for, um, for testing and for, uh, [00:24:00]<br />Um, of, uh, essentially volatility and, uh, and ease of expansion.<br />Cory Miller: It&#8217;s almost like they want to go to Everest and you&#8217;re helicoptering in to base camp.<br />That&#8217;s, that&#8217;s the product. And then, Hey, this is how we want to climb Everest. And, uh, you all<br />are, are the people that help them get there. So Alex, that&#8217;s certain, yeah. So Alex, I, I&#8217;m curious,<br />now we&#8217;ve heard from Pat and Karim, now when we get down to the level of like, Karim&#8217;s<br />highlighted the general topic personalization, but as the product manager for Crowd favorite<br />building a product, tell us what that is and what are those problems you&#8217;re solving for?<br />Alex Nitu: Sure. So, um, it&#8217;s really, um, it&#8217;s an integral part of a dxp, a digital, uh, a digital<br />experience platform. Um, and if you break it down into its, uh, into its, uh, founding, uh,<br />[00:25:00] parts personalization is, uh, is quite a large piece of that pie. Um, and what<br />personalization really is, it&#8217;s really just dynamic content displayed, um, For a, for a, uh, custom<br />tailored, uh, user, right?<br />So that, uh, is your user segments. And all of that starts from, uh, from your dataset. And this,<br />uh, feeds back into the idea of, uh, data ownership and, um, being able to, as a company to, to<br />fully own your data. Um, so that, uh, encompasses a lot more than just having access to it or<br />being able to, to view it or, um, or export it.<br />Uh, so going from that, you. As if you know your user base and you know your user personas<br />and the the target audience that you&#8217;re, that you&#8217;re, uh, mainly interested in and focused on, uh,<br />it&#8217;s that much easier to, to provide, uh, a tailored than, uh, bespoke, uh, a bespoke experience<br />to, to each of those, uh, of those, uh, user types.<br />Uh, and then, uh, After that, it&#8217;s really, [00:26:00] uh, all about the, the content, the editorial<br />experience. Um, so with, uh, with our personalization product, um, we, we, uh, do our best to,<br />um, not add additional steps to your workflow or, um, Impact your, your day-to-day, uh, your<br />day-to-day, um, uh, job. Um, and it&#8217;s meant to expand on it.<br />To improve on it, and to, uh, to make it that much, um, that much more, uh, beautiful and, and<br />captivating, um, uh, that much more engaging really. Um, and then that&#8217;s, uh, that&#8217;s reflected in<br />the, um, the, the products interface as well as the, uh, general user experience for it. So,<br />whereas with, uh, different set services, and don&#8217;t get me wrong, I absolutely, uh, likes us, uh,<br />so solutions and, uh, I absolutely believe there are, uh, time and a place for them.<br />But with this type of enterprise focused, bespoke product, [00:27:00] you get to keep your<br />workflow. You don&#8217;t have to have that long onboarding experience where you need to<br />completely revamp your methodology. Uh, you get to maintain your, uh, your own, uh, your own<br />set of, uh, steps to accomplish and then, and then just, um, amplify them or augment them.<br />Uh, it&#8217;s still part of your, uh, your same workflow. So that&#8217;s what I believe we&#8217;ve, we&#8217;ve managed<br />to accomplish with, uh, with the XP toolkit.<br />Cory Miller: What are a couple of the things that you&#8217;re excited about with this particular<br />product that you&#8217;re working on or, or have done with it?<br />Alex Nitu: Sure, sure. So, uh, again, it feeds back into, into owning your data, right?<br />So if you think about it, where can you best, uh, identify these, uh, these user personas? Well,<br />that comes from your analytics engines, that comes from your CRMs, that comes from all these<br />types of, of, uh, customer experience or. Or, um, uh, management, uh, uh, platforms. So what<br />we [00:28:00] did was, um, again, focusing and using the dataset that we have access to, we&#8217;ve<br />identified all of these, uh, major, uh, integration components and, uh, and tackle them one by<br />one.<br />So we are now able to fully integrate with, uh, your analytic services with Salesforce, with all of<br />these types of CRMs and platforms that are data driven, driven. To then use all of that, all of<br />those data points to effectively personalize your content and display it for a particular use case<br />or user persona.<br />Thank you. What I feel is, is most exciting, having all of those user segments and all of that data<br />already existing and reporting and to your liking, and then just, uh, as simple as a, with a click of</p>\n\n\n\n<p>a button, being able to, um, Personalized content for that particular, uh, subgroup of, of visitors<br />or users.<br />Karim Marucchi: So Alex just went deep on something that I think needs to be called out<br />because it&#8217;s second nature. [00:29:00] Some of us sometimes are dealing with our clients, but<br />folks might not realize it on the comer side. Um, when I said earlier about solving a problem<br />deeply, Alex just gave a great example. Um, We work on a lot of personalization and, um, the<br />progressive profiling for clients and we actually use the plugin we have on the WordPress<br />repository, um, as a sort of a sandbox, a place to play around with certain aspects.<br />We package the things there that we can package and our sort of, you can install it and use it,<br />but you&#8217;ll notice that we&#8217;re trying to solve a problem even in that deeply, so we&#8217;re not building<br />our own little analytics piece within the personalization. We&#8217;re saying this is gonna do content<br />rules. If you wanna see what&#8217;s coming out of the content shifts you&#8217;re making on your website<br />when you&#8217;re customizing page A or page B.<br />[00:30:00] Or, you know, block A or block B, um, go check out your mamo installation because<br />we plug into that. Go check out your GA four because we plug into that. In the comer world<br />there&#8217;s a lot of, um, plugin and application bloat because developers tend to try and create more<br />and more and more features, again, wide rather than deep.<br />Do what you&#8217;re doing best, solve your problem well and in a performant fashion, and then<br />connect to a best of breed solution for analytics. So Alex said that very quickly, so the<br />developers on this conversation pick that up. But for, for the folks who are talking about creating<br />products, you know, think that way.<br />There&#8217;s a way to go deep. Yeah Pat .<br />Pat Ramsey: Well, there, there, there is. Exactly. But I think you, you&#8217;re illustrating perfectly that<br />difference between mass market audiences and the enterprise, uh, audiences. Uh, you know,<br />there&#8217;s absolutely nothing [00:31:00] wrong with something like, uh, like a jet pack stats that&#8217;s<br />out there for your, your mass market audience.<br />There&#8217;s nothing wrong with that at all. The WP Analytics, uh, some of the little analytics plugins<br />that have been out there, that have built that bring analytics into your site because, You know,<br />you, you need that, that&#8217;s that democratization of the ability so that anybody who can get that<br />code and install it can get it up and running and have a, have a website with those tools there.<br />We don&#8217;t see that in the enterprise space though, because in the enterprise space, they&#8217;re<br />gonna be, they&#8217;re gonna look at, they&#8217;re gonna look at that and go, no, we&#8217;ve got 12 years in an<br />Adobe analytics system that we&#8217;re not getting rid of. We&#8217;ve got a decade in Google Analytics.<br />You know, we&#8217;ve got our own install of p WIC before it became me tomo.<br />And we cannot get rid of that data. You can argue whether or not some of that needs to go or<br />stay. That&#8217;s different conversation. But the point is they&#8217;re not going to change. To a turnkey little<br />solution that that sort of one size fits all type of things that [00:32:00] works in the mass market<br />space. That&#8217;s, that&#8217;s the perfect example of that paradigm shift that we have to deal with.<br />So our approach has been, we&#8217;re not gonna tell you to use this c r m or that C R m or this<br />analytics tool, or that analytics tool or, or what have you. This mail&#8217;s platform versus this mail<br />platform. Does it have an a p I. Do the endpoints exist that are, are gonna get that data that we<br />need. Let&#8217;s build all that up and get that connected in here so that now you&#8217;re as a marketing<br />team, not so much the tech team, but over here to your marketing team, you can be creating<br />content and reading the results and the impact and the reach and the effectiveness of all of that.<br />And based on that, do do content, do different journeys, do different things. So it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s bridging<br />the data, the analytics and everything together in your cms.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah, I love that. Doing the one thing, um, because I can [00:33:00] also just kind<br />of, Predict or look, see that when you can&#8217;t bloat with some of these sites we&#8217;re talking about,<br />you can&#8217;t bloat, you don&#8217;t want to bloat.<br />It&#8217;s going to have performance issues as Karim mentioned. Um, before we get to the money<br />question, here&#8217;s the thing I want to ask because I&#8217;ve heard this a couple times. Um, this, I love<br />that you&#8217;re doing personalization cuz that really triggers my marketing side. I go, oh, I love<br />WordPress. One of the.<br />Awesome benefits of WordPress is you can put your things online, you can test ideas, you can<br />test new marketing things. And many of our, um, agency members who serve the enterprise talk</p>\n\n\n\n<p>a lot about what I hear is they love WordPress on the enterprise cuz of two things. It&#8217;s faster and<br />it&#8217;s probably cheaper.<br />And I don&#8217;t mean that to, to downgrade. It&#8217;s like they can deli, get the products they want faster<br />and more affordably than they can from proprietary. And the third thing, when. You said this,<br />[00:34:00] and I keep coming back to it. When you hear, when you say the word try, I think<br />marketing, I wanna be able to try this new concept, try this new idea, try this new strategy or<br />tactic.<br />Um, and so it seems like under personalization, you&#8217;re camping out with what I think is a<br />strength of WordPress overall, but especially in enterprises marketing. People love WordPress<br />on the enterprise because of these things. Mm-hmm. Right,<br />Karim Marucchi: right. Yeah, that&#8217;s exactly the case. We&#8217;re able, we&#8217;re able to create a feature<br />for a client that is sometimes a third of the cost of an enterprise product or SaaS platform out<br />there.<br />I won&#8217;t name any names to piss people off. Um, but then when you said cheap, it&#8217;s not about<br />cheap because if they&#8217;re saving 30, 40, 50, 60, 70%. Because they&#8217;re using WordPress. It&#8217;s not<br />that they&#8217;re being cheap. They&#8217;re actually putting that money back into trying [00:35:00]<br />something new. Just like you said, they can put that money back into marketing.<br />They can put that money back into, well, there&#8217;s a new email solution out there that does<br />something different. Let&#8217;s try that. There&#8217;s a new thing<br />that&#8217;s out there. How do we hook up to that?<br />So the cheap conversation goes away and it becomes of. How am I spending my money if I&#8217;m<br />saving money because I&#8217;m using an open source framework, because that&#8217;s how we describe<br />WordPress in the enterprise.<br />An open source framework. If I&#8217;m gonna save money by using an open source framework, how<br />can I make the money, give me a better return on investment in my marketing? It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s a no<br />brain, no brainer sale.<br />Cory Miller: One more thing before we talk about money. Um, actually two things. One, another<br />phrase you said was, own your data.<br />And that seems to be extremely powerful, especially in the age, increasingly more and more,<br />um, privacy. Uh, issues coming on. You know, GDPR was a big, it was a big [00:36:00] wave<br />and I think it was a good wave, but it was a big wave for a lot of us to do online work. Um, but y<br />you know, Alex, could you speak to a second?<br />There&#8217;s two, two avatars. You&#8217;re kind of two people groups. You&#8217;re kind of hitting with this, and I<br />wanna give you a second to speak to that. It seems like there&#8217;s the developer on team at the<br />company. That you&#8217;ve like, Hey, we&#8217;re not gonna blow. Like Pat said, we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re gonna get in,<br />do our job. We&#8217;re not gonna try to recreate Google Analytics for you.<br />Like, no, you just need this bridge. You need, we&#8217;re gonna do our job, do a fast, slim, secure,<br />um, not bloated. And then the other side is these is marketers sitting there going, please give<br />me these tools so I can do these things and try these things to, to grow our company. Would you<br />speak to a second from a product perspective to those two avatars, what you&#8217;re trying to do?<br />Alex Nitu: Absolutely. Yeah. So, uh, from my P o V, um, it&#8217;s really a completely different<br />[00:37:00] value proposition when you&#8217;re talking about, uh, enterprise. Um, and from, uh, what I<br />found, it&#8217;s, uh, it&#8217;s all about, um, The cost of onboarding and the cost of ownership, that<br />particular solution. Right. Um, and the advantage with these, um, open source composable, um,<br />um, uh, products is that you do, uh, have, um, a minimal footprint on what it means to, to, um,<br />Onboard, offboard, move around, experiment and um, um, confirm and, and do reiterate.<br />Right? Um, and then in the case of, of personalization with, uh, with these two main, again, user<br />personas, uh, speaking back in the personalization terms, um, we need to, uh, to identify what.<br />Really are the, the, the pain points or the the costs of, of, um, building or, uh, creating content<br />that is personalized with the exp toolkit.<br />Um, and from the one end is the actual usage [00:38:00] and uh, um, the creation of that<br />content. So that&#8217;s where the marketer comes in. Where you don&#8217;t need to have a technical<br />background to be, just be able to create content and, and effectively target that content to your<br />desired user base. Um, so, uh, this, uh, um, ties back into what I was saying about that, uh, that<br />intuitive and fluent user experience.<br />Where it doesn&#8217;t detract from your, uh, your current workflow or current methodology of, of<br />building up that content and publishing it. Um, and that&#8217;s, uh, where, um, our, uh, page builder</p>\n\n\n\n<p>integration come in, come in where, uh, we are natively integrating with, uh, Gutenberg Beaver<br />Builder and our mentor. So, uh, you get your pick of the letter for, uh, For how you want to<br />create your content.<br />And that&#8217;s just the, the out of the box solutions, obviously. That&#8217;s, uh, it&#8217;s, uh, the whole<br />architecture is built to, to allow for that, uh, uh, customizability and extensibility. Uh, and that<br />moves over [00:39:00] into the section, the second part of, of the cost of, of owning, uh,<br />composable solution like this. Um, and that&#8217;s managing it.<br />Uh, and that&#8217;s where developers come in. So you need to be able to provide a, uh, reach, um,<br />exhaustive this, uh, uh, documentation there and have all the, the checks in place and the, the,<br />the hooks in place to, to be able to accurately and, and efficiently extended or modified it to your<br />particular needs. And with DB toolkit that&#8217;s built into it, and it&#8217;s, uh, One of the, the main, uh, the<br />main concepts that, uh, that we&#8217;ve identified when, uh, in, uh, first architecture in this, uh, uh,<br />this product that it should, um, allow for, uh, for customizability for that, uh, white glove service<br />where, um, you are able to, um, extend it or modify to suit your, your actual needs.<br />Um, that comes into play with code standards as well, with the architecture itself, with, uh,<br />performance of. And, [00:40:00] uh, all the other, uh, bits and pieces that make for a, a great<br />software product.<br />Karim Marucchi: But you, Corey, you mentioned, um, data ownership and Pat can explain it<br />more than I can, but business-wise, we have seen more and more of our clients say, yes, we&#8217;re<br />now connecting to all these things.<br />We&#8217;re now using these APIs. We wanna own that data. We don&#8217;t want it to sit out on the SaaS<br />or we wanna make sure that we have real time replication and so forth and so on. So Pat, if you<br />want to describe that for a minute, this is like the cutting edge of where some of our most<br />interesting clients are, are trying to see where they can interact in a new way.<br />Pat Ramsey: It&#8217;s about first party data. I&#8217;m a business, I engage with my customers. Um, there&#8217;s<br />a lot of concerns around privacy and data [00:41:00] ownership, uh, when your data gets sold<br />and resold and reused. So one of the flip sides to the advantage of having all these SaaS<br />services out there is you&#8217;re potentially spreading customer data around to.<br />30, 40, 50, 60, you know, whoever, all these different people who then turn around and<br />repurpose it, repackage it, you know, what have you. Um, you know, you load a script on your<br />site to, uh, to bring in, uh, uh, uh, tags of some kind. And you sit there and watch the network<br />site, the network connection in your browser, and, you know, there&#8217;s all these remote<br />connections being made.<br />Because of the relationships that they have with these other services, which are then getting<br />into your content. And so you, you know, your user data is going everywhere. So this idea of first<br />party data is, is, is big. Um, it&#8217;s one of the things that, uh, is attractive about and own your data<br />stance. So me as a, uh, me as a business [00:42:00] owner, setting up my website and<br />engaging with my customers, the more I can keep the data just between us.<br />My customers and myself the better.<br />So that, that&#8217;s, I mean, that&#8217;s kind of a, a, a,<br />Cory Miller: yeah, in nutshell that&#8217;s get<br />Pat Ramsey: wrapped around that. It makes it way more, it makes this open source approach<br />of using WordPress as this hub, which has a privacy API that you can hook into, which, you<br />know, you can retain the data there within, within your system. And if you don&#8217;t have to send it<br />out to a third party service, you know, don&#8217;t.<br />Cory Miller: And see that&#8217;s the perspective I was missing and I appreciate that too, is like that&#8217;s<br />your, that&#8217;s priceless. That&#8217;s a customer being able to pull a customer in a paying customer,<br />keep a paying customer, that&#8217;s enormous. So that side of that, I wasn&#8217;t seeing that initially. I was<br />seeing the privacy side of like, okay, well with Judy, Judy per PR and the emphasis for good<br />reason on privacy and your data is out there, [00:43:00] Google and others have.<br />I&#8217;ve been talking about this for a while and I&#8217;ve kind of been watching with the smile going, I<br />wonder how they&#8217;re gonna figure this out. Because more and more people are gonna say, I want<br />control of the data. And so it makes sense to me from that side is from a business perspective<br />that you do own it because then you control it.<br />Okay, so here&#8217;s the burning question and uh, we&#8217;re we&#8217;ll wrap up. But, um, I&#8217;m really curious<br />from being a product guy doing products more on the comer level. How does a product like this<br />make money on the enterprise, and how do you support that? Um, so who wants to take it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Karim Marucchi: I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll take the first stab at it, I guess, but, uh, I, I know, I know there&#8217;s<br />opinions here.<br />Um, so the bottom line here is, um, you&#8217;re not selling a volume of licenses. You&#8217;re selling very<br />few licenses, so they&#8217;re expensive. And you&#8217;re not necessarily even selling it based on a<br />[00:44:00] license. You&#8217;re selling it based on the install process that might actually have coltancy<br />in it. It might have, um, support on the tail end of installing it.<br />And you&#8217;re also getting paid basically for that support. So you can say there&#8217;s an install cost and<br />then there&#8217;s a maintenance cost that is like the yearly license you have, um, with a comer<br />product. But literally add a few zeros.<br />And even if you&#8217;re selling relatively few licenses a year, different numbers for different products,<br />um, you adapt the pricing to make sure that you&#8217;re making money, uh, as long as you&#8217;re solving<br />a problem that an enterprise client needs deeply and well.<br />And you&#8217;ve followed some of the things that have been talked about today. Um, It&#8217;s just a matter<br />of doing that, but you have to know your market. There&#8217;s, what we didn&#8217;t touch on today is really<br />knowing what you&#8217;re solving and knowing that there&#8217;s a market there, but [00:45:00] financially,<br />honestly, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s just about making sure that you understand what you&#8217;re, the value you&#8217;re<br />bringing to your customer and charging appropriately.<br />It&#8217;s not about one off licenses .<br />Cory Miller: Well, from a business perspective, I see too. It&#8217;s not just, you know, we could. Kind<br />of amortize development costs and support costs because it was okay if 10,000 people buy this,<br />it&#8217;s $80, whatever it might be, you know? But this with the scenario of like the Mount Everest,<br />like there&#8217;s the hel, there&#8217;s one part that&#8217;s a helicopter flying to base camp, and then there&#8217;s a<br />team, Alex Pat others on their teams helping you get to where you&#8217;re going, which means.<br />It&#8217;s not a one size fits all route to that. Uh, and then we haven&#8217;t even touched on the<br />maintenance side of it. Like it&#8217;s not just delivering that path, it&#8217;s maintaining that path when all<br />these things flying in that could potentially break or cause issues. Well, thanks you three for<br />talking about WordPress products on [00:46:00] the enterprise.<br />Um, I&#8217;m very compelled. I&#8217;m so glad companies like cloud. Crowd favor to doing this because,<br />um, as WordPress grows and more and more people go, we want WordPress solutions,<br />especially on the enterprise. That just helps the whole entire ecosystem. And as we&#8217;re serving<br />those clients, users, customers better, that bodes well for all of us.<br />And as you mentioned, like there&#8217;s so many of these SaaS solutions that have come into that<br />space. But there&#8217;s unique needs you&#8217;ve identified from running your data, first party data thing<br />that Karim was saying, um, that need for customization when they want to try something out. I<br />think that&#8217;s pretty compelling.<br />But anything left that you all wanted to share as we run this down?<br />Karim Marucchi: Well, I, I&#8217;ll get in trouble with, um, Alex if I don&#8217;t mention this upfront to the<br />wider WordPress community out there. Um, take a look at the DXP toolkit that we have up on<br />the repository. If you have ideas on [00:47:00] how to make connections to other products and<br />other things, we&#8217;d love to collaborate.<br />Um, let us know. Give us a call.<br />Cory Miller: Awesome. So go find DXP toolkit on the repo. And then also Alex, where, where do<br />they find more information about the product that you&#8217;re building?<br />Alex Nitu: Dxptoolkit.com. That&#8217;s the first place you, you can look at. Uh, we also have a lot of<br />content available on crawford.com as well.<br />Um, talking about HP Toolkit and all the cool things it&#8217;s able to do. Um, it&#8217;s, uh, all this<br />conversation has really reminded me of, uh, The first time I joined the crowd favorite. And, uh,<br />the research I did, like, let&#8217;s see, what&#8217;s, uh, what&#8217;s all the, the buzz about this, uh, this company<br />I&#8217;m applying for, uh, and the two things that, that really, uh, uh, that I&#8217;ve re-identified was their,<br />uh, uh, enterprise expertise and, um, that white glove, uh, very, uh, highly sought after, um, um,<br />client experience.<br />And [00:48:00] that&#8217;s absolutely, um, echoed into, into the, the products as well. Where, um, you<br />are able to, to help inform and drive, uh, the products roadmap. And the user experience doesn&#8217;t<br />just start and end at, uh, the plugin installation. It goes from the website all the way until the,<br />until the very end where, uh, you do get the option for, uh, or you do get the advantage of<br />having that, uh, that very, uh, specific and very, uh, personalized, uh, customer support.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Uh, so yeah, thanks for taking the time and, uh, I really enjoyed the talking, uh, products with<br />you.<br />Cory Miller: You too. Just a side note, so Alex and I got to meet last week, I think I mentioned,<br />got a private demo and we&#8217;ll be deploying this on Post Status in a month or two and uh, I&#8217;m<br />really looking forward to that because I want to try these type of things even when we&#8217;re not at<br />the enterprise level, but I look forward to that.<br />Thanks, Alex. Pat and Karim as always, appreciate you all and what you do in WordPress<br />[00:49:00] on the enterprise. Thanks everybody else for tuning in today and we&#8217;ll talk to you next<br />time.<br />Alex Nitu: Thank you, Corey. Thank you. Bye. Have a great day. See?</p>\n<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Fri, 05 May 2023 01:55:45 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:11:\"Cory Miller\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:44;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:44:\"WPTavern: Caseproof Acquires WishList Member\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=144645\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:55:\"https://wptavern.com/caseproof-acquires-wishlist-member\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:2093:\"<p>Caseproof, makers of MemberPress, has <a href=\"https://wishlistmember.com/wishlist-is-joining-the-caseproof-family-of-products/\">acquired WishList Products</a>, the parent company of WishList Member and CourseCure. The Wishlist team, with the exception of co-founder Tracy Childers, will continue supporting and developing the products under the leadership of Caseproof founder Blair Williams.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://wishlistmember.com/\">WishList Member</a> is one of the longest running WordPress membership plugins with a 14-year history. The plugin has been downloaded and activated on more than 119,275 membership and community sites since 2008. Pricing currently ranges from $149.50/year to $249.50/year.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;WishList Member was a pioneer,&#8221; Williams said. &#8220;It was the first membership plugin I ever used, and it really inspired me to get more involved with WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;It showed me that a plugin could be a powerful catalyst, capable of transforming WordPress into a highly sophisticated membership platform.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Ever since then (and all the while growing my own membership plugin, MemberPress), I’ve had a soft spot for WishList Member – <em>and </em>its founders.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Caseproof has been scooping up smaller WordPress membership plugins lately, <a href=\"https://memberpress.com/blog/membermouse-joins-caseproof/\">adding MemberMouse</a> to its products earlier this year.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;To be 100% clear, as with MemberMouse and MemberPress, our goal is <strong><em>not</em></strong> to discontinue WishList, or to combine it with another membership plugin,&#8221; Williams said. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>The most significant change coming to WishList Member as part of the acquisition is that the CourseCure LMS features will be rolled into the plugin. Those who purchase WishList Member now will get access to CourseCure for free. Childers said once the plugins are combined the price will go up. The company plans to deliver the same level of support and is not planning to change prices for existing customers.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 04 May 2023 21:45:09 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:45;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:57:\"BuddyPress: Let’s better organize the BuddyPress plugin\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:32:\"https://buddypress.org/?p=329390\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:74:\"https://buddypress.org/2023/05/lets-better-organize-the-buddypress-plugin/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:9280:\"<p>Hi, here‘s the second post of our series about the new direction we plan to take regarding plugin maintenance and evolutions. In our <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://buddypress.org/2023/04/buddypress-has-a-new-purpose/\" target=\"_blank\">first post</a> we shared with you our new purpose « Get together safely, <strong>in your own way</strong>, in WordPress », let’s see how the feedback you shared with us <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://buddypress.org/support/topic/what-is-the-most-important-thing-buddypress-is-missing/\" target=\"_blank\">here</a> &amp; <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://wptavern.com/buddypress-plugin-usage-declining-remaining-contributors-discuss-path-forward\" target=\"_blank\">there</a> helped shape the new way, I believe, we should use to reorganize and simplify BuddyPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<span id=\"more-329390\"></span>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Key feedback about the BuddyPress plugin’s organization</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>« Ultimately the easier it is to use BuddyPress the more vibrant the ecosystem around it becomes »</li>\n\n\n\n<li>« I would replace BuddyPress’ systems while building new things and break backwards compatibility on purpose, <strong>start on a new plugin</strong> »</li>\n\n\n\n<li>« I’ve always heard/read was that those features were better off served by plugins. Whereas <strong>users would be more likely to expect them inside the core plugin</strong> »</li>\n\n\n\n<li>« I may only want to use certain aspects of BuddyPress and <strong>NOT the whole pack</strong> »</li>\n\n\n\n<li>« It would be neat though to have a <strong>BP-lite</strong> »</li>\n\n\n\n<li>« A “<strong>BuddyPress</strong><strong> lite</strong>” plugin if you’re talking about “restarting from another plugin” might be worth some discussion. »</li>\n\n\n\n<li>« We are into the WordPress Official Plugins directory, we should really use this advantage and <strong>split BuddyPress into smaller parts</strong> »</li>\n\n\n\n<li>« BuddyPress plugins directory ».</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I believe we need an important change about the way we package features <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4e6.png\" alt=\"📦\" class=\"wp-smiley\" />. I’m convinced the <strong>BuddyPress « lite » idea</strong> is the right direction to take. Although as a developer we might not see a difference from the modularity of BuddyPress’s current code base (optional components can be activated or not), I can understand some users’ point of view: « why am I downloading code I will never use? ».</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since 10.0, we now have the « <strong>BuddyPress Add-ons</strong> » tab <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2795.png\" alt=\"➕\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> inside the « <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/plugins-add-new-screen/\" target=\"_blank\">Add Plugins</a> » Administration screen. This tab is listing the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/buddypress/\" target=\"_blank\">plugins BuddyPress favorited</a> inside the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/\" target=\"_blank\">WordPress.org plugins directory</a>. So far we are only favoriting the ones the BuddyPress development team is maintaining. We can use this space to progressively move optional components into it. Of course, we would then also improve &amp; <strong>ease</strong> as much as possible the install process putting together a step where we’re asking what BuddyPress Add-ons site owners wish to download, install and activate.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Progressively turning optional components into BuddyPress Add-ons would benefit end-users and third party plugin authors. The latter would be able to build alternatives to our optional components to challenge the BuddyPress development team and give end-users more choices to get the features meeting their needs. Of course they would keep the ability to simply extend Core or optional features.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another benefit about packaging each optional component as an add-on is: we&#8217;d then be able to have <strong>usage statistics</strong> about them and <strong>prioritize our work according to their popularity</strong>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This tab (in other words the plugins favorited by the BuddyPress team) could welcome third party plugins to progressively build a « <strong>safe</strong> » BuddyPress plugins/add-ons directory. Bringing this safety to our end-users would be the result of <strong>third party plugin authors engagement</strong> to:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>define their dependency to BuddyPress in their <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https://github.com/buddypress/bp-attachments/blob/trunk/class-bp-attachments.php#L24\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">plugin’s main file header</a> to get ready for a potential « <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-plugin-dependencies/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Plugin dependencies</a> » merge into WordPress core.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>maintain their plugins in the long term, and eventually invite new maintainers to take over their work when they feel they cannot do it anymore.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>bring <strong>free</strong> support to their users,</li>\n\n\n\n<li>embrace the WordPress etiquette, code formatting, i18n &amp; security best practices,</li>\n\n\n\n<li>test <strong>every</strong> new BuddyPress beta versions and report issues when needed.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Stay updated</strong> by reading important <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https://bpdevel.wordpress.com/category/development-notes/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">developer notes</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Make sure their plugin is <strong>fully compatible with latest BuddyPress</strong> version.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https://codex.buddypress.org/participate-and-contribute/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Get involved</strong></a> at least twice a year into contributing to one or more of these areas: BuddyPress support, documentation, translation, events or code.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I’m convinced that end-users care more about <strong>features being actively maintained</strong> <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/26a1.png\" alt=\"⚡\" class=\"wp-smiley\" />than all of the features being included in one large plugin.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The first concrete step</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>A first version of the long awaited <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/bp-attachments/\" target=\"_blank\">Media component</a> was released as a BuddyPress Add-on <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f5bc.png\" alt=\"🖼\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> on March 25 <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f382.png\" alt=\"🎂\" class=\"wp-smiley\" />. There’s still a lot of work to do but I believe it has a solid foundation: it uses ReactJS, blocks, the BP REST API and something I would name a « BuddyPress » way of storing media data.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-6\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow\"></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\"><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/bp-attachments/\">BP Attachments</a></blockquote>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow\"></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>One month after its release usage statistics is very low (fewer than 10 active installs). As it so far hasn’t gained much traction in an area that is served by existing third-party plugins, it’s suggesting to us that end-users do not consider the “Made/Maintained by BuddyPress” to be a sufficient advantage in and of itself. That’s a good thing: it’s challenging us to improve the plugin and to better communicate about it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moreover, BP Attachments is an interesting playground for us to use to find the best way for plugin developers to carry on being backward compatible with BuddyPress versions below and upper 12.0.0.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>To conclude with this feedback category, yes <strong>we need to reboot</strong>. But let’s do it gently to onboard &amp; keep on board as much as possible the members of our community:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>shrinking one step at a time BuddyPress to its Core features,</li>\n\n\n\n<li>moving optional components or new ones into external Add-ons,</li>\n\n\n\n<li>and putting backward compatibility inside another plugin (<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https://github.com/buddypress/bp-classic\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">BP</a><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https://github.com/buddypress/bp-classic\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"> Classic</a>).</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>It should leave end-users the time to get used to a simplified &amp; reorganized BuddyPress and to plugin developers to upgrade their works.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our next post of this series will talk about some other BuddyPress « features » we are thinking of considering the feedback you gave us.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Props</strong>: many thanks to <a href=\"https://buddypress.org/members/dcavins/\">@dcavins</a> for his review <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f60d.png\" alt=\"😍\" class=\"wp-smiley\" />.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 04 May 2023 18:58:46 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:12:\"Mathieu Viet\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:91:\"WPTavern: WordPress Themes Team Releases Stacks: A Community Theme for Building Slide Decks\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=144665\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:101:\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-themes-team-releases-stacks-a-community-theme-for-building-slide-decks\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:2471:\"<p>WordPress&#8217; Themes Team has <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/05/04/stacks-the-first-community-theme/\">released</a> a new block theme called <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/stacks/\">Stacks</a> as part of the <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-themes-team-proposes-community-themes-initiative\">Community Themes initiative</a> proposed earlier this year. The goal is to bring together representatives of the team to build block themes year round, the same way that default themes are built and officially supported.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stacks was designed for one purpose &#8211; to create slide decks that can be used for a presentation. It was designed and built by Saxon Fletcher with help from Automattic-sponsored contributor Ben Dwyer. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>The theme includes a simple setup flow. After installing Stacks and clicking &#8216;Customize,&#8217; the user is taken to the Site Editor where a set of five slides is already pre-filled on the home page in a warm and inviting color palette.</p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Slides can also be created on any post or page using the &#8220;Stacks&#8221; pattern. After creating a new page, the user is presented with the option to start the page by inserting the Stacks pattern. This loads the same five sample slides that are included on the home page by default. They can be easily edited so that any page or post contains its own unique slide deck.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>The Stacks theme looks just as good on mobile as it does on desktop, making it easy to follow along from different devices.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The theme was built for a small niche use case &#8211; people who want to host their own slides &#8211; and is not likely to be widely adopted but presents an interesting use of the block editor for creating slides. Some users may find this to be more user friendly than working with a third-party application to build their presentations.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since a different deck can be hosted on each page or post, someone who wants to create a website devoted entirely to hosting their own slide presentations could easily save them all in the same place, share links to the different decks, and avoid having to use a hosted service that may not be around forever. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stacks is <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/stacks/\">available for free on WordPress.org</a> and users can expect these Community Themes to have some level of support as they are being hosted by the official WordPress.org account.</p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 04 May 2023 17:09:13 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:63:\"WordPress.org blog: 2022 Annual Survey Results &amp; Next Steps\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:35:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=14923\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:73:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/05/2022-annual-survey-results-next-steps/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4918:\"<p>Each year, members of the WordPress community (users, site builders, extenders, and contributors) provide valuable feedback through an annual survey. For 2022, the survey received a comprehensive update, the first in six years. The total number of questions was reduced to 29 from nearly 100, socio-economic questions were mostly removed, and the Likert scale was introduced. These updates were intended to increase the completion rate of the survey, enable a more efficient and structured analysis of these data, and position the survey to best gauge the topics that matter most to the WordPress community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>My goal is that the input received via the survey helps inform initiatives and focus areas for WordPress in the near term, along with other signals, such as conversations in the community, the Making WordPress blogs, and events. Such data play a key role in shaping the direction and strategy of the project and measuring progress in focus areas.</p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">2022 Highlights</h1>\n\n\n\n<p>The 2022 edition of the survey experienced a 26% increase in completion rate, however, submissions decreased by 56% to roughly 3400, including about 800 contributors. For the 2023 survey, promotion will be increased, hopefully counteracting the declining submissions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here are some key takeaways:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>The survey shows an increased usage of blocks and the new site editor (versus the classic editor), which shouldn’t come as a surprise since the default theme is now a block theme.&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>22% of respondents have only used WordPress for a year or less. Those responding to the survey are also getting a bit older, with fewer responses from those under 40 than in prior years.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>1 in 5 respondents learned about WordPress from a coworker, and about the same percentage from using a search engine.&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>In 2022, WordPressers continued to learn about WordPress (68%), taught others about WP (48%), and built sites for others (55%).</li>\n\n\n\n<li>WordPressers choose the CMS platform because it’s open source (62%), flexible (47%), low risk (45%), cost-effective (45%), and has a positive reputation (41%).</li>\n\n\n\n<li>57% of survey participants obtained news and training directly from <a href=\"http://wordpress.org\">WordPress.org</a>. While that is the primary source, other sites remain very important: search engines (46%), YouTube (40%), other WordPress communities (35%), and social media (30%)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>The overwhelming majority of respondents don’t regularly use other CMS platforms, and 21% of respondents use none of the top 20 WordPress plugins.&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Respondents continue to state that “WordPress is as good as or better than other CMS platforms,” with 68% agreeing. Elements that respondents feel are the best aspects of WordPress include “ease of use,” “flexibility,” and/or “plugin options,” all about 30% each. When asked about the most frustrating elements of WordPress, 1 in 5 said, “nothing,” while approximately 30% referenced difficulties with site editing / Gutenberg.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>The overall contributor experience remains positive and something I continue to care about deeply. 64% shared they had a positive experience, and 24% viewed their experience as “neutral.” Contributors also feel welcome at the same percentages (64% agree and 24% are neutral).</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What’s Planned for 2023</h1>\n\n\n\n<p>In the next iteration of the survey, the plan is to improve the language options for completing the survey and continue investing in refining the questions and how they are asked. It is important to be mindful that completing a survey takes time, so we want to make sure community members are being asked questions that help WordPress the most.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The tentative plan is to launch the 2023 edition in August. This will set up an opportunity for the 2023 results and, most importantly, your input to inform planning for 2024’s key initiatives and focus areas. The community’s feedback is vitally important to the success and direction of the project. Moving the survey to earlier in the year can positively affect planning and dialogue.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/files/2023/05/2022-Annual-Survey-Final.pdf\">View the 2022 Slide Deck</a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\n<p><em>Big thank you to <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/dansoschin/\" class=\"mention\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>dansoschin</a> for the analysis and editorial support. Thanks also to <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/angelasjin/\" class=\"mention\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>angelasjin</a>, and <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/cbringmann/\" class=\"mention\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>cbringmann</a> for their reviews and final edits.</em></p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 04 May 2023 16:00:00 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:7:\"Josepha\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:48;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:57:\"WordPress.org blog: The Month in WordPress – April 2023\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:35:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=14926\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:69:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/05/the-month-in-wordpress-april-2023/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:14295:\"<p>With preparations for the next major releases already underway, the community is gearing up to celebrate WordPress’ 20th anniversary, which is just around the corner. This month has also seen some major highlights, such as WordPress 6.2’s performance wins and the launch of WP Translation Playground. Read on to find out what&#8217;s new.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Forthcoming WordPress releases</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Following the successful release of <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/dolphy/\">WordPress 6.2</a> “Dolphy,” which has garnered over <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/download/counter/\">31 million downloads</a> (and counting), contributors across all teams are already planning future major releases, including versions 6.3 and 6.4.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>While WordPress 6.3 will focus on refinements to the site editing experience, <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/07/preparing-for-the-next-women-nonbinary-release-squad/\"><strong>6.4 will reprise the underrepresented gender release initiative</strong></a> introduced in WordPress 5.6 &#8220;Simone.&#8221; If you&#8217;re interested in contributing, now is the perfect time to get involved.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote has-extra-large-font-size\">\n<p><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/14/wordpress-6-3-planning-proposal-call-for-volunteers/\">Check out the WordPress 6.3 proposed schedule and call for volunteers</a>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">WP20 is just around the corner</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mark your calendars for May 27 and join the community for a day filled with exciting parties and activities!</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p>With a refreshed look, the WP20 website offers a <a href=\"https://wp20.wordpress.net/\">list of events to join</a>, <a href=\"https://mercantile.wordpress.org/product-category/wp20/\">swag to show your WordPress pride</a>, and <a href=\"https://wp20.wordpress.net/download-selfie-props-for-wp20-meetup-celebrations/\">downloadable “selfie props”</a> to add fun to your celebrations.</p>\n\n\n\n<img width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/05/WP20-Tokyo-3.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1\" alt=\"Cake decorated with WordPress anniversary-themed motifs shared at a recent meetup in Tokyo, Japan.\" class=\"wp-image-14927\" /><em>Cake decorated with WordPress anniversary-themed motifs shared at a recent meetup in Japan.</em>\n\n\n\n<p>The Marketing Team has also launched <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/05/02/20-days-to-celebrate-20-years-of-wordpress-from-blogs-to-blocks/\">#WP20 From Blogs to Blocks</a>, a community-focused initiative that encourages you to take a small daily WordPress-focused action for 20 days leading up to the anniversary date.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the other hand, details are being finalized for the 20th anniversary commemorative book, <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/04/13/wordpress-at-20-in-print/\">Building Blocks: The Evolution of WordPress 2013-2023</a>. This volume will span the history and most meaningful moments of the last decade of WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote has-extra-large-font-size\">\n<p><a href=\"https://wp20.wordpress.net/share-your-favorite-wordpress-swag-youve-collected-over-the-years/\">What’s your favorite WordPress swag</a>? Do you have a <a href=\"https://wp20.wordpress.net/whats-your-favorite-wordpress-moment/\">special memory from a WordCamp or meetup</a>? Share them with the community and join the #WP20 fun on social media.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">WordPress 6.2 performance</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress 6.2 reiterates the platform&#8217;s commitment to optimizing website performance with <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/05/wordpress-6-2-performance-improvements-for-all-themes/\">significant improvements</a>. <strong>Load times are 14 to 18% faster for block themes and 2 to 5% for classic themes</strong>. Server-side performance is also seeing a big boost, with an increase of 17 to 23% for block themes and 3 to 5% for classic themes.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote has-extra-large-font-size\">\n<p><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/01/core-editor-improvement-strengthening-style-options/\"></a><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/25/the-benefits-of-prioritizing-and-measuring-performance-in-wordpress-6-2/\">Learn more about the performance wins in 6.2</a>, including a retrospective from the Performance Core Team on the efforts that made it happen.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">New in the Gutenberg plugin</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Two new versions of the Gutenberg plugin have shipped in the last month:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/05/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-5-05-april/\"><strong>Gutenberg 15.5</strong></a><strong> </strong>shipped on April 5, 2023, with many user-facing features to improve the creation experience. Enhancements include caption style customization, theme-defined template patterns when adding a new template, and experimental support for grid layouts in the Group block.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-6-19-april/\"><strong>Gutenberg 15.6</strong></a> is available for download as of April 19, 2023. This version introduces an experimental Details block to expand and toggle the visibility of hidden content, and more presets for core block spacing and border controls, among other highlights.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote has-extra-large-font-size\">\n<p><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/01/core-editor-improvement-strengthening-style-options/\"></a>Follow the “<a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/gutenberg-new/\">What’s new in Gutenberg</a>” posts to stay on top of the latest enhancements.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Team updates: WP Translation Playground, WordPress.org redesign next steps, and more </h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>The Polyglots Team launched <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/04/19/wp-translation-playground/\">WP Translation Playground</a>, an innovative tool that combines Local GlotPress with WordPress Playground to translate plugins and themes in context—without having to set up anything.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Wondering what’s next in the WordPress.org redesign project? <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/04/10/wordpress-org-redesign-update-2/\">Learn about the latest updates and how to get involved</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>This Community Team post discusses ways to <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/04/19/cultivating-more-effective-contributing-on-contributor-days/\">make WordCamp Contributor Days more effective</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Explore <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/05/01/whats-new-on-learn-wordpress-in-april-2023/\">what&#8217;s new on Learn WordPress in April 2023</a>, including the latest content on the platform and the projects the Training Team has been working on.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/\">WordPress Playground</a> was used in a hackathon to prototype different ways to build plugins with minimal setup, right in the browser. <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/13/in-browser-wordpress-tech-demos-wordpress-development-with-wordpress-playground/\">See it in action in these tech demos</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Members of the Marketing Team suggested improvements to submission guidelines to <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/04/19/showcase-submission-guidelines/\">revitalize the WordPress.org Showcase</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Most of the work to refocus the WordPress mobile app on core features is complete. <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2023/04/11/contribute-to-the-future-of-the-wordpress-app/\">Find out how to help shape its future</a> with contributions opportunities for developers, writers, translators, and more.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Keep up with the latest enhancements and development updates you need to build on top of WordPress in last month&#8217;s edition of <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/04/whats-new-for-developers-april-2023/\">What’s new for developers?</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>The latest issue of the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/04/20/meetup-organizer-newsletter-april-2023/\">Meetup Organizer Newsletter</a> shares tips and inspiring ideas to help you plan successful community events.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Find out how WordPress and its global community of contributors positively impacted Monika Rao&#8217;s web career in <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/04/people-of-wordpress-monika-rao/\">April&#8217;s edition of People of WordPress</a>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote has-extra-large-font-size\">\n<p>Join Josepha Haden Chomphosy in <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/04/episode-54-open-webs-bill-of-rights/\">Episode 54 of WP Briefing</a> as she explores the concept of the four freedoms of open source and their likeness to today’s Bill of Rights for the open web.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Feedback &amp; testing requests</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>The latest <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/04/17/fse-program-testing-call-21-front-page-fun/\">Full Site Editing (FSE) Outreach Program testing opportunity</a> invites feedback on the features included in WordPress 6.2 and those remaining in Gutenberg Phase 2. Share your thoughts by May 8, 2023.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>This <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/25/wp-feature-notifications-2023-status-update/\">update on the WP Feature Notifications project</a> explains the progress towards a modern WordPress user notification system and how you can get involved.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Help test the latest version of the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/03/preferred-languages-help-test-the-latest-version/\">Preferred Languages feature plugin</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/04/19/mobile-team-update-april-19th-2/\">Version 22.2</a> of the WordPress mobile app for iOS and Android is ready for testing.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote has-extra-large-font-size\">\n<p><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/02/lets-talk-wordpress-core-artificial-intelligence/\">This discussion post</a> welcomes ideas and questions about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be integrated into the WordPress experience.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">WordPress events updates</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>WordCamp Europe 2023 is fast approaching! The organizing team introduced the <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/introducing-our-first-group-of-speakers/\">first confirmed speakers</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>WordCamp US 2023 announced <a href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2023/wordcamp-us-2023-programming-team-announcement/\">updates on the programming</a> for the upcoming event, for which <a href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2023/tickets-on-sale/\">tickets are now on sale</a>. Organizers are also <a href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-sponsors/\">calling for sponsors</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>The 2023 Community Summit will provide a valuable opportunity for in-person discussions across contributor teams. <a href=\"https://communitysummit.wordcamp.org/2023/topics/\">Submit your topics</a> if you haven’t yet.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Don’t miss these upcoming WordCamps:\n<ul>\n<li><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f1ea-1f1f8.png\" alt=\"🇪🇸\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://barcelona.wordcamp.org/2023/\">WordCamp Barcelona</a>, Spain on May 5-6, 2023</li>\n\n\n\n<li><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f1fa-1f1f8.png\" alt=\"🇺🇸\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://buffalo.wordcamp.org/2023/\">WordCamp Buffalo</a>, NY, USA on May 6, 2023</li>\n\n\n\n<li><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f1f5-1f1f1.png\" alt=\"🇵🇱\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://gliwice.wordcamp.org/2023/\">WordCamp Gliwice</a>, Poland on May 12-14, 2023</li>\n\n\n\n<li><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f1e7-1f1e9.png\" alt=\"🇧🇩\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://sylhet.wordcamp.org/2023/\">WordCamp Sylhet</a>, Bangladesh on May 19-20, 2023</li>\n\n\n\n<li><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f1f5-1f1f9.png\" alt=\"🇵🇹\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://lisboa.wordcamp.org/2023/\">WordCamp Lisboa</a>, Portugal on May 19-20, 2023</li>\n\n\n\n<li><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f1f7-1f1f8.png\" alt=\"🇷🇸\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://apatin.wordcamp.org/2023/\">WordCamp Apatin</a>, Serbia on May 27-28, 2023</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote has-extra-large-font-size\">\n<p>Join #WPDiversity with a free online workshop on <a href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/organizing-diverse-inclusive-wordpress-events-apac-tickets-618469688487\">Organizing Diverse &amp; Inclusive WordPress Events APAC</a> on May 13, 2023.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-light-grey-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-light-grey-background-color has-background\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em><strong><em><strong><em>Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? <strong><em>Fill out </em></strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/month-in-wordpress-submissions/\"><strong><em>this quick form</em></strong></a><strong><em> to let us know.</em></strong></em></strong></em></strong></em></strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The following folks contributed to this Month in WordPress: <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/sereedmedia/\" class=\"mention\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>sereedmedia</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/ninianepress/\" class=\"mention\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>ninianepress</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/rmartinezduque/\" class=\"mention\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>rmartinezduque</a>.</em></p>\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 04 May 2023 10:08:35 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:15:\"Reyes Martínez\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:49;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:105:\"WPTavern: WordPress Marketing Team Launches “From Blogs to Blocks” Campaign Ahead of 20th Anniversary\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=144625\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:110:\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-marketing-team-launches-from-blogs-to-blocks-campaign-ahead-of-20th-anniversary\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:2143:\"<p>WordPress&#8217; Marketing team has launched a new campaign called &#8220;<a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/05/02/20-days-to-celebrate-20-years-of-wordpress-from-blogs-to-blocks/\">From Blogs to Blocks</a>&#8221; in anticipation of the project&#8217;s upcoming 20th anniversary. The WordPress community is <a href=\"https://wp20.wordpress.net/\">celebrating this major milestone</a> through various <a href=\"https://wp20.wordpress.net/news/\">activities</a> and local meetups that are being held around the world throughout the month of May.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;From Blogs to Blocks<strong> </strong>creates intentional moments for the WordPress community to reflect on the journey we’ve gone on so far and to dream of what’s to come,&#8221; Marketing team contributor Sé Reed said.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Each daily action symbolizes the millions of individual actions that have come together to make WordPress what it is today.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The new campaign will feature 20 days of WordPress-related prompts for users to engage in different actions designed to start conversations and stir memories. Daily prompts will be published for different ways of participating through blogging, developing, designing, photography, and community. 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