Today, I'm chatting with with Raitis Sevelis on several topics in the WordPress landscape. Sevelis has an extensive background in UI/UX design and product management for prominent WordPress tools like WPBakery and Visual Composer, and he shares his insights into the inner workings of the platform and the community. We discuss the founding principles and unique features of IndyStack, Raitis' latest venture, which bridges the gap between developer needs and client usability in managed WordPress hosting. IndyStack introduces the capability for developers to work on a site for free and transfer ownership to their clients while maintaining developer access, a novel concept that I find quite intriguing for some agency workflows. Raitis also takes us behind the scenes of WP Racoon, his side project, which serves as a forum for discussing plugins, themes, and the business of WordPress, away from the constraints of corporate affiliations. The role of communities, the use of Facebook for engaging with users, and the strategic benefits and downsides of such platforms are also discussed. We round off the episode getting into the need for core developers and the community to collaborate in refreshing WordPress's ecosystem through improved onboarding, user interface, and by fostering educational content to power the platform's next phase of growth.
The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 6th November 2023.
This in the 15th episode of our "Thinking the Unthinkable" series. Today we are asking... is the WordPress community overrated? What have we done? This could be the end of this podcast! Let’s hope nobody thinks we are trying to speak for the community, or that we even have a clue what the community truly is! We explore the diverse perspectives surrounding the WordPress community. From debates on diversity and inclusion to the avoidance of political discussions, we navigate the complexities and challenges faced by this ever-growing community. We also touch on the recent issues surrounding the handling of diversity at the European WordCamp, causing tensions to rise among community members. We begin by examining the difficulties in defining and understanding the WordPress community, recognising its immense user base in America and the UK. We share our personal experiences and observations, shedding light on the ebb and flow of community engagement, facing issues of churn, and questioning whether WordPress will maintain its relevance in the future. We also discuss the impact of online confrontations and the perception of fragmentation within the community, analysing the role of media coverage in amplifying conflicts.
Today on the podcast we have Arnas Donauskas, who is a Product Owner at Hostinger. He's on the show to talk about something that I'm sure that we've all felt before… that feeling of not being sure that WordPress is the project that it once was, that the future is not what you'd like, and how you can move on and work on the web with something else. This is a tough subject for a podcast called WP Builds! The name implies that we're here come what may! I guess that the title is a little bit of clickbait, and perhaps a better title would be more like 'how do you get your WordPress mojo back?' WordPress site building and growth can be challenging, and quite often people lose their motivation to continue, and this is what we address… getting back your inspiration and desire to use WordPress and be a part of the community that surrounds it. Having said all of that, we cover a lot of ground about this topic and a whole bunch of other topics too.
This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 7th February 2022
This week's WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing Monday 1st March 2021
We all know that the WordCamps in 2020 got cancelled. This was a good idea because saving lives comes before attending online events, but I thought that it might be a good idea to get someone on the WP Builds podcast to have a chat with us about WordCamps nonetheless. Why, you might ask? Well, can you imagine what it would be like to be a part of a team who had worked extremely hard to get an event like WordCamp Asia, or WordCamp Europe up and running, only to have to cancel it with just a few days and weeks to go? I could not imagine that, and so I talked to someone who could. Someone who has firsthand experience working on a WordCamp and then having to pivot it into an online event. So find out what's involved in setting up a WordCamp on the podcast today...
This week's WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 11th January 2021
This is one of those warm and fuzzy episodes! It's all about Wendie and her journey with WordPress. There's no product here, no tutorial, just a good, old fashioned chat about WordPress with a thoroughly lovely person! Wendie and I have been chatting on and off for years. It all started back in the day that both of us were going through the WP Elevation program and we decided to be accountability partners. We chatted from time to time during that and drifted in and our of conversations online for many years. We met in person at WordCamp London in 2018 as well as WordCamp Europe in 2019. She's been working in the WordPress space for years and has a really interesting story to tell. So have a listen to the podcast to find out more...
Today is a little different from the episodes that we've been putting out of late. It's a story of one man and his journey with using WordPress. We talk today with David Decker. You might have seen him around the WP Builds Facebook Group from time to time, and if you haven't been in there you really should as he's one of the many friendly faces who are there offering helpful advice and expertise. I met David in on Facebook and was lucky enough to meet him in person at WordCamp Europe 2019 in Berlin. Was had a few chats and it became clear that an appearance on the podcast was going to happen...
This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 23rd September 2019
One of the best things about doing this podcast is getting to meet people that I might not otherwise have had the chance to talk to. Often those people are doing amazing things in the WordPress space. Dan Maby is one such person. He’s doing really amazing things, and I loved chatting with him. Dan appears to be on a mission to set up WordPress meetups all over the UK, and this is no trivial task. Dan however runs many of them, all over the UK. So what might have been a part-time job suddenly becomes multiple full-time jobs. I honestly don’t know where he gets all the energy and enthusiasm from.
This week we get to meet the man behind the Beaver Builder Facebook group - Dave Toomey. Many of you will know that there is a 8,000 strong group out there, but perhaps you didn’t know that it was not started by the folk over at Beaver Builder, but by a lone Irish fella called Dave Toomey. Turns out that running a large Facebook group involves quite a bit of work.
Today we rejoice! We have that nice Paul Lacey with us! We are in the WordPress Community! Let's hold hands and sing and dance around the podcasty campfire... Ah, no, no wait, that's too disturbing! In truth, this episode is about Paul's 10 plus year journey working with WordPress.
