This Week in WordPress #137

Nathan Wrigley: [00:00:00] Hello there. You're watching this week in WordPress episode, number 137, which was recorded on Monday. The 9th of November, 2020. This episode is entitled. Changes are coming and sucking in black Friday. I'm joined this week by Paul Lacey. It's just the two of us this week, young cock and Anthony Tran called in sick.
So it's just Paul and I, we chat about the new format. That the show is taking previously, it's been called the WP, builds a weekly WordPress news going forwards. We're going to play some more of an emphasis on the video element, as well as the audio element. And we'll talk about that. We'll also, we're going to be talking about some articles, which cropped up during this week was, there's a couple of things in WordPress core that we start out in the beginning.
Paul Lacey: [00:00:46] Then we get onto a couple of articles by pixel
Nathan Wrigley: [00:00:49] grade, all about them. Morality, if you like. Yeah. Of black Friday, whether you should be sucked in to the black Friday, few Rora that is about to take place, or whether, if you're a WordPress company owner, right. You just take a step back. We also get into a new festival, an online summit, if you like called word Fest, that's coming around and very, very soon.
And we also talk about a podcast theme, which has been released it's by automatic. So stay tuned. I hope you enjoy it. This episode this week in WordPress is brought to you this week by AB split test. Do you want to set up your AB split tests in record time? Like in a couple of minutes, use your existing pages and test anything against anything else.
Buttons, images, headers, rows, anything. And the best part is it works with element or Beaver builder and the WordPress block editor. Check it out and get a free [email protected].
Hello, it's just me and Paul. Paul Lacey and me just the two of us today. Um, we were supposed to have Yan Yan call and, uh, um, uh, he's not feeling very well combination of not feeling very well under a doctor's appointment, which he's had moved. So hope you're feeling better soon. Yeah. And also Anthony Tran from Beaver builder was supposed to join us and I'm not entirely sure what happened there, Paul, you know what?
He just
Paul Lacey: [00:02:15] looked like a bus.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:02:16] Yeah, we used boss to book the appointments and maybe there was some con curmudgeonly befuddlement, uh, that that's probably not even a sentence anyway. So it'll be me and you at, which is kind of cool in a way because Paul and I decided to have a bit of a chat at the end of last week to see if we can modify the way that this whole WP builds weekly WordPress news things happen.
And we came up with a few little ideas. Which, because there's nobody else to deal with. The fallout of that might be, it might be quite useful. Um,
Paul Lacey: [00:02:48] one of the ideas wasn't to get rid of all the panelists as well. Right.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:02:53] Just making you, there's a couple of things to say the first one is that, uh, well, I'll just put some comments up.
Uh, not comments, uh, partners. Should I say the first thing to say is we've moved. Our WP builds newsfeed shock horror. It's no longer on the WordPress. Um, and I'll explain more about that in just a moment, but if you want to follow along with this, go to WP. Well, that's news dot WP builds.com and we're going to be cherry picking certain articles.
Um, again, I'll get to that. In just a moment. The other thing to say is if you want to make a comment, the, the YouTube comment is somewhat broken at the moment. I'm not entirely sure what's happened, but you can't comment. And over on YouTube and us discover it, you'd have to actually go to youtube.com forward slash WP builds and actually on YouTube.
Most people I think are on our website, but if you want to do that and find this live over there, you can comment and I'll be fine. But otherwise go to the Facebook group. Um, and that's probably the best way to make comments. It looks like some people have kind of figured that out. Chris Hughes
Paul Lacey: [00:03:57] says, good afternoon.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:03:59] Hello, Chris. Nice to have you on board and a Facebook user, not sure who you are, but hello anyway. And. Hello Sabrina. Hi Paul. Hi Nathan. So, yeah, I'll try and fix whilst Paul's talking in. Maltra try and fix the YouTube comments over on my website, but I think they might be just broken for today's episode.
So go to the Facebook group. I'll just put that back in. There it is. Whoops. Excuse me. Um, WP belts.com. Forward slash Facebook, that's the way to get into the group. Okay. So, okay. Just a couple of few, few bits and pieces just before we begin, this is WP builds.com. The website that we are constantly banging on about, we produce quite a lot of WordPress content.
And this week we've got, uh, an app. Podcast episode number 204 author support versus community sport that was meeting David Walmsley, having a chat quite a nice episode. The next thing I want to say though, is we've got a black Friday deals page. The quickest way to get to it is to go to WP builds.com forward slash black.
Um, and it will take you to this page. It's a searchable filterable list. I keep getting, I've got about 30 emails to respond to because people click this bottom to add their deal. And then I'll try to get deals on to the page as, and when I've got some time, but some people have submitted their deals already.
Um, all of these companies have reached out and said, we've got a deal and you can filter them and search them using the spot in here. You know, how much as a percentage often. So on and so forth in which category do they fall in? So that's using Fossette w P which a great plugin really like it. So that's that?
So the archive you've now, like I said, lives [email protected] and we're on to issue number 130, 78, and then we're on a new arc hub. And this is, this is now what it looks like. I quite like it. What do you reckon, Paul? Do you prefer this or is it a
Paul Lacey: [00:05:55] step backwards? I think, um, especially with like the put, probably trying to thin out the amount of news items that we want to have in the list, but I think it works really well.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:06:07] It's um, it's a SAS app called curated and the reason it's a lot easier is because it comes with it. A Chrome extension, which allows me when I'm browsing the internet during the week, I can basically click a button and it, then, you know, and then it just drops into the news and I can then decide whether it is worthy or not and so on.
And it allows me to categorize things. Um, so that's what this is. This is our news item. We've got far too many things each week. And that was one of the things that Paul and I decided essentially we've got far too many items in each week. So what we've decided to do from now on. Whether there's guests additional to Paul and I, or not is we're going to just pick out, let's say a rough estimate about eight, six, seven, eight pieces that we think are worthy of mentioning.
So most of what you find on here, won't make the grade as well. Um, but some of it will, and it's not a question of it being worthy or not. It's just things that we think are of interest to an audience like yourselves. So that's the way it's going to go. From now on hi Leo. Um, few changes, foot Leo, hopefully you're approving, um, Yeah, Chris was one of the people that I think was instrumental in me using this platform because I noticed he bought it and I thought it looks really nice.
So yeah, it's working really well for me, Kristen, even quite a lot of time out, apologies to people who listened to the audio that's gone for the foreseeable future. I decided to, um, to stop doing the audio version, which comes out on a Monday. We're actually going to repurpose what we're doing now, this audio into a podcast episode, as well as a news episode.
So it's a few things going on there as well. Okay. Right. One quick, last thing, we're actually gonna put a little advertising slot in here as well. I hope that you understand, buddy. Kind of keeps the bills getting paid this week. It's to just give a shout out to AB split tests, you may or may not know, Tom Carlos is the producer of the AB split test plugin, and I'm helping him to, to promote it.
Look there I am in the little chapel where there's not, and I'm AB split just as a plugin, which enables you to do. Page builder split testing. So basically it works with element or Beaver builder and Guttenberg, and it allows you to simply sort of log in to things that you've already created. Let's say, for example, you've created this page and you want it to split test.
Whether this buttons colors working well, you've logged into Beaver builder, click on it. Duplicate it say that you want to create an AB split test or just a split test. And that's kind of how it works. So you can find more out about it. You can get a free trial. It's an AB split test.com and it's quite a nice website that Paul, what do you reckon?
Paul Lacey: [00:08:47] Oh yeah.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:08:50] Uh, Paul Paul and his team were responsible for this website with all the. All the nice circles on Walmart. So anyway, there you go. AB split test.com. If you want to split test your gluten bird builder or elemental based websites. Okay. Let's get stuck into it then. So Paul is going to take roughly half of the articles for this week.
Actually. Let's just put that on there. So it's be easier for us to see Paul's going to do about roughly half of the pieces that we've nominated this week. I haven't quite figured out yet. What's the best way to show you guys what it is that we're going to talk about other than just sharing the screen, I guess, um, maybe I'll put some banners up or something or future on a future version, but, um, but for now, what should we just launch into it?
Both. Yeah,
Paul Lacey: [00:09:36] we're going to try and make it less reliant on seeing a screenshot. So it does translate better to podcast audio, and it's saying, however, we don't really have. Any actual strategy for that? Try not to show the screen things.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:09:55] Well, that's quite a lot of models for this. So for example, I listened to lots and lots of podcasts, many of which are created in a format rather like this, um, you know, there's video and video.
Is is, uh, is the ideal way to consume it because in many cases, it's technology stuff. And you know, you, you might want to see what's going on, but, but the audio is really good. You know, when you listen to the audio, there's lots of commentary. And if they describe something on the screen well enough, you can kind of follow along, you know, so we'll try our best.
We'll try our best. We'll share the screen anyway. Um, do you want to share your screen for the first ones or shall I just, I've got the articles pre-prepared on my screen already,
Paul Lacey: [00:10:33] so yeah.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:10:35] Okay. All right. So, Paul, do you want to do your first few? I don't know if I've got these in the right order there in the order that we discussed.
So
Paul Lacey: [00:10:43] we were talking about WordPress core as usual first. And, um, I think this week, I think WordPress core always has like an update about the latest beater. So there is indeed a new beater it's WordPress 5.6 beta three. So if anyone is interested in checking out what is in the latest piece, so then. Go and have a look.
I've had to look at the list and as usual, I'm not that excited about anything in there, but the, the one thing that stood out for me really was just that they are including in the latest beta block patterns for, I think it was 2020. 20 2019 and 2018 theme. I think basically they're putting some blood panels in some of the, the old ones that fixed a couple of bugs here and there and stuff.
Um, but the main WordPress core news that we've got this week, I think there's, there's three items and they can all probably be summarized into. Um, WordPress also update controversy. Maybe you could, you could fight it out.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:11:38] Yes. We did have a bit of a controversy this week. Uh, they, it feels like that was a little while ago.
Are you talking about they update to the alpha instead of the, the, you know, the,
Paul Lacey: [00:11:47] yeah, yeah. There's two, there's two auto updates that seem to go wrong. Uh, I think, I don't know which order it was that they happened, but for sure, um, a lot of people who were. For instance, chronic stay on WordPress 5.5 0.2 got automatically updated to 5.5 0.3.
And apparently this was an error in the updates API, um, something to do with the preparations around the release of 5.5 0.3. Um, it's just something that happened. So it raises the question about the auto update API, which we'll come onto in a minute as well. So that happened that would have caused a couple of people problems if they were deliberately trying to keep on a particular version of WordPress.
I mean, we, in our agency, we probably manage. I don't know how many it is. It's something between 50 and a hundred sites and probably two or three of those are stuck on an old version of WordPress because their websites we inherited and they're using older plugins and we have to put a firewall in front of them so that they can stay using the old technology.
I'm not sure if this would have forced updates on, on a website that was deliberately trying to hold them back. So we use managed WP to lock in a aversion, but nevertheless, um, a few, some, some people were updated to 5.5 0.3. Alpha. Okay. Um, the other thing that happened as well, um, it was a similar kind of thing.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:13:20] Just interrupt that quickly. Um, I know it didn't affect me, nothing under my jurisdiction got, um, got updated erroneously to the wrong site and it would appear that, you know, it was really quiet at random because I know of a few people who did have one of their sites effected, but the rest. Being updated through exactly the same software, you know, managed WP or main WP or whatever it was all fine.
It was just a bit random. The, the blog posts that came out from automatic, you know, the kind of firefighting piece did say that the version that they were updated to the alpha version was in every respect, identical. To the correct version. So it was exactly the same core code, but obviously you don't want to be there.
It feels weird, especially to clients that might seem strange. Anyway, there was just that mitigation in theory, it wouldn't have mattered, um, to you, but you know, still.
Paul Lacey: [00:14:18] Yeah, absolutely. It was one of our mutual friends, I think who does that in one of our little personal Facebook groups. I think that something odd had happened.
Um, there is another article that talks about the same misfire. They call it on the API and there is somebody called, uh, what's his name? Think it's, who's got someone that's got a hundred websites, Rob. Someone called Rob Miguel's. And there's a couple of different people mentioned in this particular article who talk about that.
This happened to them and there's somebody who had hundred client websites happened to apparently. So for whatever reason, Rob Darden, Robert studied and reported a hundred sites, um, moved to this particular version. And the honest thing apart from the code is exactly the same. I think the, the thing that probably alarmed people who maybe witnessed this was that in their dashboard, when they logged in, they would have seen a message saying beta testers, which if you call clients, it's not, you can imagine they're going to be worried about what that means.
Um, it's a bit of a storm in a teacup in a certain extent, but it does, um, raise the question about the. Well, two updates again. Sorry. Yeah. Well, it's cool that we've got in. Cool is, um, some of the contributors are discussing a new feature that is in WordPress 5.6, which isn't an ability for users to be able to set the major version of WordPress to also update when it comes out.
So I imagine that would be for instance, 5.6, 5.7, 5.8, et cetera. And, um, The immediately that's that's I think probably because of what's happened, there is now a big discussion about whether or not that should be a feature. And should it be that that's a feature that you unlock or should it be a feature that is that, but you can add a PHP filter to hide that, hide that functionality.
And I think it comes down to, again, some of the discussions we had the other week about, because this is a console software. Who's. Who's pressing the button that makes the, makes the update happen. Yeah, me one liable. If something goes wrong and post a lot of money to a series of businesses or something like that.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:16:45] It's interesting. I was chatting, um, with, Oh my goodness. Me, the name has escaped me. If anybody's in the comments who can remember the Australian guy core contributor. Um, he has a, an icon of him holding some gloves as if he's in jail as if he's behind bars. Oh my goodness.
Paul Lacey: [00:17:05] He also something like that.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:17:07] No, the, the name escapes me.
I'm really sorry that the name has escaped me anyway. He has had several occasions where he has been the one pressing the buttons. So it does come down to an individual. Um, I think ultimately somebody commits it and says, yep, we're good to go. But there's a lot of, I'm guessing that, you know, from the, so let's say for example, well, the hundred sites that you've got or something along those lines and all the people that, you know, who've got similar amounts of sites.
It didn't, it didn't flare up to yeah. I attend sites. I had 50, so it does seem to have been a really. Um, edge case thing. And so I didn't read the article. I should say that we're looking on the screen at the minute. There's a WP Tavern, an article entitled WordPress, or to update your system misfires, updating live sites to an alpha release that was issued on the 30th of October, um, 2020.
And, um, and I, I didn't get a chance, the read rates to the bottom of that one. Did we get to the bottom of the piece of code, which was incorrect? Presumably it's now been fixed, but was there a. Was there a piece of code, which just needed to be amended DNA? No,
Paul Lacey: [00:18:13] but I think, I mean, it feels to me like someone pressed a button and then called the plug out.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:18:21] Yeah.
Paul Lacey: [00:18:23] Oh my gosh, what am I doing? In fact, just a few sites and not lower it's that doesn't make any sense to me unless the, unless there is a process, for instance, in how the updates run in terms of. Various kind of batches of cookies or something like that. For instance, whatever the software is that pushes the updates there's batches of 2000 at a time or something like that.
Which is that
Nathan Wrigley: [00:18:52] it's quite interesting. Cause in this, in the article, the in question, there's a guy called Robert Staton. Did you just mentioned him? Um, who'd gotten them hundred sites that were affected needs. It seems quite sanguine about the whole thing, you know? Cause there's a comment where he says I was very grateful for the extraordinarily fast response time to get the problem fixed.
As opposed to, I was really angry that this problem occurred in the first place. But so can you imagine the feeling you are that, that, that person who did commit it and then within an hour, it says further up in the article within an hour, hundreds of websites were being incorrectly, updated to the wrong version of it.
So, I mean, it was pretty immediate. So things are going wrong. Uh, I guess this is a, an illustration of why you wouldn't do it on Friday evening just before knocking off for the weekend. Things like that.
Paul Lacey: [00:19:36] Yeah. These things can happen at the worst of times. Can't
Nathan Wrigley: [00:19:39] yeah. Anyway, I'm going to take up in a sense.
Does raise questions as you've said, but, um, yeah, that was a good piece. Wasn't it? I enjoyed reading that. And to be honest with you, we need stuff to go wrong that we can sell that whilst there's no, there's no news. So, uh, it's quite nice in a sense when things go wrong, but I'm pleased that it was very
Paul Lacey: [00:19:58] much, right.
This is news about something that happened rather than something that's planned. It's just that as core news has something. Like this, I think
Nathan Wrigley: [00:20:07] it's usually just about what, what has been released, um, or what is going to be released. And it never a sort of like a calamity. Well, and in that respect, that's a good thing.
Right. We don't get this stuff often and I've not heard of a problem like this too often in the past. Okay. What's your next bit?
Paul Lacey: [00:20:24] Uh, well, well, do the, have one was just falling off from that the. Um, th the article about farm workers, frequent six, having the UI to innate. So you can turn on major update versions that in the same way that you can turn on updates for your themes and turn on updates for your plugins.
Um, I think there is probably a PHP filter already, as far as my, where does your. Smaller updates. So if you want it, if you want, you know, 5.6 0.1 5.6 0.25 and 600 feet, et cetera, I'm pretty sure there's a line of PHP codes. You can put in your conflict file that does that. But I don't think there's anything in the UI that till now 5.6, that allows you to press the button that, um, Turns all your auto updates on.
And I think the thing is, is that obviously if you go anywhere into articles about security in WordPress, you will always be told to keep everything up to date. Uh, that doesn't necessarily mean that you should have auto updates turned on, uh, for the major versions of WordPress. I think overall it seems like this is a future that's going to be in there.
It's just, this is really more of a story about. Again, some people in the comments are disagreeing with the concept of pushing these auto updates at all. Uh, do the people who have the UI know what they're choosing when they're saying yes or no, for instance. So it just comes, it comes back to that. And I think, um, there for such a, for such a major piece of software, but maybe there isn't quite enough education out there.
And I don't know, who's supposed to do this education out there for, for, um, the end users to know. They've got this website
Nathan Wrigley: [00:22:09] where you froze just for a brief moment there, literally one second, but you're back in the room. You're back in the room. Um, do you want to, do you want to take the next one or shall I do one of mine?
Because we've sort of divvied them up. I could do where mine, if you like next.
Paul Lacey: [00:22:22] One of the account notes word first.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:22:24] Yeah, let's do that. That's nice. Um, I don't know if you saw, but in the community section of the WP pills a week, we work press news where we're highlighting this, which is a, this is a project, um, wrong by what was WP or not.
This is now, um, big orange hearts. You may or may not notice they're a charity or a nonprofit working in the WordPress space, not just WordPress space, but it, WordPress seems to be a dominant area, uh, of their concern, trying to help people, no matter what problems you've got, you can kind of contact them.
And one of their initiatives. This year well running into next year is a WordPress festival. It's called word Fest, the festival of WordPress and associate enabling a global celebration of WordPress, bringing the community together in a safe environment whilst facilitating freedom of movement within a virtual event.
So, um, it's going to be wrong. Quite interestingly, over four regions. Now I haven't quite got my head around what that means we should get down on shouldn't we done maybe who, whose image we'll see in just a moment, but, um, they're obviously taking care to span over the course of a day and have things running, you know, suitably for different time zones.
So for example, um, Oceana, I guess, otherwise known as, you know, Australia and New Zealand and that part of the world, they're going to begin it. 10:00 AM their time going to 4:00 PM and then it kind of segues into Asia. Then it goes to E M E a. Can I just say Europe there? Is that what that
Paul Lacey: [00:23:57] I'm glad it's in.
Glittery knew. I didn't know.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:24:00] Th there is a actually, whilst we do this, what are you going? Do you mind going off and Googling what the acronym means? It is an acronym. Um, and then, then obviously, so it goes from. Australia to Asia, to Europe, and then finally ends up in America, finishing a 6:00 PM EST. It's a full day of events.
And at the moment they are, uh, they put together this lovely little video. I must speak to Donna about how they did that, because it's really nice. It's quite subtle. And you know, it's not whizzbang flush wallop. It's really nicely done. Uh, so here we are. Lead organizer is. The the well-known Dan, maybe a lead speaker, Michelle for chef.
How are our Bashir? I'm going to say, I apologize if I butchered the name is the sponsors lead and the marketing leaders, Kate, the rosier. And, um, obviously it being a charity. There is a, uh, element of this where they're trying to raise some funds. And so you can register as an attendee or a donor. There is also the option to, um, That's a call for speakers and a call for sponsors as well.
Um, let's click on the call for speakers one, cause I know you, Paul are quite interested in getting involved in this event and aren't you and I
Paul Lacey: [00:25:10] still haven't submitted anything yet, but
Nathan Wrigley: [00:25:13] no,
Paul Lacey: [00:25:14] it's really up my street.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:25:16] Yeah. So if you are interested in becoming part of this event, here is the, you know, the, the required form.
Um, you need to just decide which of these formats you fit best into standard talk panel, discussion, workshop, style, fireside chats, um, other, you need to obviously supply a talk and a title, your biography, headshot, and so on, then decide which of the, which of those regions. Uh, it's going to be most suitable for you that I guess means that everything's going to be live or perhaps it's not, I don't know.
Um, Leo is in the comments and I don't know if Leo is got an insight into that anyway, just a really nice event. Um, and in most cases, summits are, you know, that they've got a specific. Niche inside of WordPress, perhaps it might be agencies or in the case of this one that I just did the page builder summit.
That was all about page builders. The purpose of this is just much broader than that. It's just the WordPress community. And, uh, and again, Paul coming back to you, I know that this is something that you've, you've kind of figured out for yourself. And I have independent lever of all the things going on online really.
And truly WordPress just feels like the place where we most feel at home.
Paul Lacey: [00:26:27] Yeah. Yeah. It's this is interesting. Now I would like to know more about it then. And I would like to know if there is things like live chat rooms and stuff like that, because it does talk about community connecting with the different communities.
Um, I think it says that on the home page. Um, so, um, I'm interested to know how that connecting works and I'm very. Uh, by the way, the a E M E I is Europe, the middle East and
Nathan Wrigley: [00:26:54] Africa. Oh, thank you. There you go. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Doesn't it?
Paul Lacey: [00:27:00] Same ish time zone. Um, like you said before, at the moment, it's impossible to meet new people in the community in person.
And that is a big part of, uh, anyone who you find on podcasts and all this kind of stuff they'll likely have been to work camps. And that's where they've met each other. And that's where they've connected and decided to do creative things together. Like, is this correct? This is correct. So if isn't it, what would you answer today?
Stretch. I'd say we're doing a thing. Yeah, doing your thing. And one of the reasons that we and you are doing it is because we met at, we met in an online community and then we met in a real community in WordPress. So I'm really eager to get involved in this, even just, if it, if I'm just as an attendee, I'll be super happy just with that, because I just want to connect with more people.
And WordPress, because there is a very positive vibe in workers at the time, these things as well, I noticed that you can register as a donor, I assume that's where you pay this minimum $10 or whatever it is that you want to register bit that it's in the FAQ's. It says you can, you can actually register for free.
So there's no barrier. There's no, there's no money barrier to this event. Anyone can register, you just need to be able to log on and attend it. I'm pretty sure it's for the most part prerecorded stuff,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:28:26] actually, I'm going to, I'm going to interrupt you there because Leo has commented on that point. Um, Leo Mendell in the comments is not been finalized on the former in each region.
However, there will be a mix of law and some sessions recorded two times there. So it sounds like life is the predominant. Way that they're hoping to do it with a few, um, with a few of the pre-recorded ones. Uh, if you, if you don't, if you're not familiar with Dan and the team who do WP, uh, WP LDN, WordPress, London, that they're steeped in doing live things really well, they've build out a, um, a sort of Jitsi.
Installation, which enables them to do live events at scale. And they've been working each month improving the live experience. So yeah, you would imagine that they've got live covered, especially with Leo being so, you know, so technically minded and he's goes on to say they've been a huge number of speaker applications, but they're looking for more than just the standard PowerPoint slide approach.
Oh, okay. That's interesting. Um, Oh, right. Okay. So not just slide something a bit more interactive, perhaps you never know what this must be so many different things that you could. Do these days, getting people to submit surveys as you go through the speech or something like that. Anyway, it looks really nice events.
I should've said the, um, the URL it's word Fest dot lolly, word fest.live, and you'll know you've arrived in the right place because it's a beautiful site. I really liked the site. It looks really cool
Paul Lacey: [00:29:56] tomorrow. I love the brand as well.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:29:59] Yeah.
Paul Lacey: [00:30:00] Yeah, that's true. You know, um, even if you, um, anyone who's got a WordPress business of any sort though, to be honest, I recommend you registering.
Donate because there's the donors page. And I'm assuming this is what you get for $10. You end up on the stoners page. Can
Nathan Wrigley: [00:30:18] I, can you give me the URL for that? And I'll
Paul Lacey: [00:30:19] yeah, if you go to, uh, register the register part dropped down to,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:30:25] oops, sorry. I accidentally pressed the wrong button
Paul Lacey: [00:30:28] on the landing page now, so,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:30:31] okay.
Paul Lacey: [00:30:32] Okay. Checks and those URLs are, they're not no follow. So if you fancy. Potentially, if it film right about this, a pretty decent backlink from a WordPress website for $10, then registered and paid $10. And maybe you get your link on this page with no follow link, which I can promise you, because I know from our business sticky birth studio, we work for this agency and we've had loads of backlinks from podcasts, podcasts, and shows that I've been on and things that I've done.
And it's pushed us way up the search listing. So things that we've not even attempted to rank for. So
Nathan Wrigley: [00:31:11] that's cool. Yeah. There's an alternative reason to register for word fast. Last nice. Nice.
Paul Lacey: [00:31:18] Well, I, I met, uh, someone, someone we've we've both met a couple of WordCamps Nathan who, uh, sponsored, uh, the, of London.
I think it cost about 300, $400 or something like that. Fringe of 400 pounds maybe, or even less than that at the lower level. But you got to backlink for that as well.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:31:38] And
Paul Lacey: [00:31:39] he told me that. You know, the backlink was an absolute, no brainer to be linked up as a WordPress agency.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:31:46] I'm pretty sure I know who you mean, so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, yeah. Yeah. Just go and check it out. If you haven't heard of it already go and put it in the diary. Let's just confirm the dates again, January the 22nd, 2020 registered for free. Although there is a donation. Suggested when you register $10, but you can donate what you like or nothing. It's up to you.
But as Paul says, seems like a bit of a no-brainer to do that one.
Paul Lacey: [00:32:15] Um,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:32:16] what about this next one? Paul, do you want to, do you want to take the, the pixel great articles? We've got two of those that kind of interlinked this week. Um, I'll just read out the URL first. This is pixel gray.com forward slash upstairs.
That's quite interesting. I like. The category of upstairs forward slash make difference by product WordPress. Each word is hyphenated. Go for
it.
Paul Lacey: [00:32:38] So pixel grade, um, this company, I think that they've got a couple of WordPress team products, as far as I know. Um, but I certainly love the blog and their articles, but they're always, absolutely, you know, really thinking deeply much deeper than I think, which is really useful because when I read them, It pulls out thoughts that wouldn't have otherwise surfaced and this.
This this week, if they've got a couple of articles that they've done and they seem to be kind of in the same theme, because obviously we've got, um, black Friday coming up when it's black Friday,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:33:16] and that's, it's much, it's in about two and a half weeks time. I think it's not this Friday or the next one. I think it's the one after that.
Paul Lacey: [00:33:23] All right. It is Friday the 13th, so it's probably not normal. So yeah, it's the time of year where, you know, product owners, whether they want to, or not. Uh, feeling the pressure to put a deal out wherever it's 10% off, 20% off a lifetime deal with 50% off or something like that. Um, and they've done two articles.
One of them is called make a difference in WordPress with each product you buy. This is more like a follow-up to the F1 in a way. I'm not sure which order they did demand, but this, this particular article is really talking about when you buy a product. Try and think, especially in the WordPress, the WordPress space, which isn't absolutely full of money, the independent WordPress product shop, it is full of money at the top level with the automatics and the jetpacks and the hosting companies and those kinds of, but they small businesses, uh, small businesses at the end of the day, they've pitched up, they've got bills to pay.
And it's kind of saying that if you buy a WordPress product and this product is inviting you to get involved in the company as well, in some way, whether that's giving reviews or something like that, it's saying how much these companies value. When you do, if back opinions where you share things or you, you do whatever to support it, or you join the Facebook group, those kinds of different things.
So that's a nice little article and it feels like it's, um, it's talking, it's almost like the, uh, the small industries. Article, it's just, you know, the small industry thing where people choose to buy this coffee or that coffee. Yeah.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:35:08] Because if there's just some connection that they can't quite quantify, but if you get that connection, you are kind of connected sometimes for life.
Paul Lacey: [00:35:16] That's right. And it's, it's a, it's kind of like, it's not just about which ones, which products has got the most features and all that sort of stuff. It's which company buying a product from that shares your. Values or so I think that was a nice article, again, coming up to black Friday where people are going to be making decisions, but the other old school that are,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:35:36] can I just interject at that point because it is a really interesting thing.
You know, there's very, there's very little, we buy in the real world where we don't have some actual connection to it. You know, as an example, if I go into the supermarket or whatever, literally everything that I walk out the door with. Um, it's tactile, you know, I'm holding it. I can identify with the brand.
I like the packaging and, you know, the way it looks and it feels, or the, the, the flavor, you know, it goes even further. And, um, but with, with what WordPress plugins, there's just no tactile quality to it whatsoever. You are entirely basing it on recommendations from somebody else recommendations on the website, you know, and what, what I think the guys that pixel greatest saying is they also want you to take into account.
The backstory of the company and the posture of the company, the ethos of the company, the ethics of the company. So try to factor those things in, and I know that black Friday, I'm going to be guilty of it, right? There's no doubt of, obviously over the more recent years, I've been a little bit better and I've been more tight with the purse strings if you like.
But, um, they're trying to say, you know, Discounting isn't everything. It's maybe not the ultimate thing, in fact. Um, and just because something is cheap, doesn't mean it's going to be right for you and think about, you know, the company, you know, they've gone out of their way to write these two articles this week.
And if you just read them to get a flavor of why they're trying to persuade you, then it's worth it. Um, Yeah. Th they're not, they're certainly not going to be persuading you with discounts this year. They're going to try and persuade you with that, with that intellectual position and the way that their company is structured and the ethics that they've provided over there.
The last decade or so. Yeah. Sorry for the interruption for
Paul Lacey: [00:37:29] no, it's absolutely fine. They've got, um, they've got a community it's kind of their blog. It's called upstairs. And a lot of that is stories from product owners or agency owners or people within different communities. Giving their backstory that, um, a lot of stuff like we've seen, you know, elsewhere and podcasts and stuff like that, but we've absolutely no agenda really attached to it.
I think that when I've spoken to pixel grade, cause I have spoken to them a couple of times on Twitter and, uh, we've actually had, um, one of the chaps on, on this, this news panel before, um, they, they talk about it like a movement, like they're trying to push a movement forward of a more healthy. Why that we value the things that we buy.
I think that sort of nicely segues into that river article that when you've got up on the screen at the moment, God, I just can't, you just can't. We both lose. And this is again, coming up to black Friday, where we're all expecting to spend a bit of money on deals and everything. And the problem is the thing is that when you've got.
A ton of pressure, whether it's from affiliates or marketplaces or things like black Fridays or huge amounts of competition to discount your product, you get to the point where you go, right. I'm going to really support it. And I need to check the marketplace and see how much I can sell it for versus how much is this product worth to the people who.
Buy it, because what you're competing against is somebody who has a product that may be weighing inferior than your yours. So this goes to st for my agency as well. Um, there might be someone competing with you. That's got a way more inferior product or service, but they're marketing it as features and price versus a level of appropriateness and longterm fit and values.
And I think in the end, the bubble is starting to burst with the whole discounting thing. I mean, you have the websites, like AppSumo. But we, you know, in the past, but I've been probably addicted to it. Certain points, you know, spent way too much money on products. We just put on the shelf. So if we're doing that, what value are you actually given to any of these companies?
We're giving them $50 or something, and then we're putting their product on the shelf
Nathan Wrigley: [00:39:52] or abusing it over time and kind of, you know, they're riding on the coattails of the cheap day, which they can't sustain unless they continue to grow.
Paul Lacey: [00:40:01] That's right. So it's kind of. I did ask them about their nice, um, one, uh, one of the,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:40:10] one
Paul Lacey: [00:40:10] of, one of the, uh, directors I think of, of pixel grader said, you know, what about the companies who were just launching?
So what, what do they do? And so for instance, Nathan, Tom, and yourself have, uh, your, your split tests plugin. And I know you've told me before the, you, you launched a price, which feels. Probably too cheap for what it can really do for businesses. And a lot of the feedback that you get from it, from people who are probably used to price something, whether they need this product or not is, Oh, it's too expensive.
Yeah. And you think. How, how, how am I supposed to, you know,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:40:52] I mean, it is difficult, isn't it? Because if the marketplace has certain price points and WordPress plugins, I mean, I think we can all agree that there are certain numbers, which, which just pop out every time. You know, if you were to go to a hundred plugin websites and look at that one site license, it often ends in a seven and begins with a four or a nine or something like that, you know, 47, 97, but yet, and it just seems to be the way it's.
The the way that the model's done and, but some plugins do trifle of what other ones do you know? So as an example, something like, well, let's just say tool set or ACF or something like that. It just fiendishly clever plugin it's you couldn't really weigh that up against something, which I dunno, shortened links just to a short link or something like that.
You know, it's just not in the same ballpark of what you can achieve with it and so on. And so it is very difficult and. And pricing things I think is fabulously hard, especially when the push back. Now there's so much pushback to have things cheaper on discount, black Friday lifetime deal. I don't know if you've felt that the lifetime deal thing in the WordPress space.
I know that on the staff side with AppSumo, that's been going for ages, but it feels like in the WordPress space, that's, that's kind of now become a pretty normal way to launch. Your plugin was, would be to do a, I don't know, two weeks a month lifetime deal, and then move it into normal pricing after that.
It's really interesting. Anyway, pixel Greg, back to them, sorry.
Paul Lacey: [00:42:18] Yeah. You know, the, um, it's interesting you say about. The products that launch, and that is the default way. And in a lot of situations that products are sold almost like perishables. You know, this deal is only available for this amount of time.
You need to get it now, but it's not food. It doesn't go out
Nathan Wrigley: [00:42:38] and date. Yeah,
Paul Lacey: [00:42:40] you can, you can. It doesn't need to be sold right now kind of thing in the same way that food does and food is counted when it starts getting sort of worth a date where it's no longer viable to sell it safely. So you'll see a steak or something in the shop.
It will be however much dollars. It is $20 or something. And then on the last day of a $5. Does it the other way around, but, but it's a shame that we don't have, uh, that we haven't got Anthony and now yeah, on today, because this was, I felt this was really interesting from their perspective because you know, young as had produced a number of summits, um, as have you Nathan, and I'm sure on both of yourselves pages, In terms of all the extras that you get.
Okay. The price of the ticket is it's actually free, but there's like an upgrade it's like $50 or a hundred dollars or something, but you feel completely compelled to tell someone that this is worth $4,000. If you buy the $100 upgrade. And it's kind of like, why, how have we got to the point where we have to try and Mark it like that to make it seem like, well, I guess it was 4,000, I'll pay a hundred.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:43:56] It's really interesting the way this article starts out. Cause it goes by, and I can't purport to tell you whether there's truth in this. I'm just assuming that whoever wrote this, did their research and it's going back to like the beginnings of kind of print based advertising back in the 19th century, where essentially it was just a mechanism of st.
Just talking about the features, just kind of saying this is what it is, you know, here's an eye. I just think they remember that as a child. I remember like car lovers, just being like a set of what the car can do. You know, it's got power steering, it's got antilock brakes, it's got this, this and this.
Whereas now if you look at a car advert, it's almost, you could swap our car for like, Perfume or something, you know, they're just sort of selling, uh, something, a sort of lifestyle into it. Anyway, they make the point that, uh, advertising changed. Um, and it became something quite different in the early 20th century.
It became much more psychological in nature. You know, the aesthetic of it was far more important and then it sort of traces that through to like the whole WordPress thing. And it's just absolutely fascinating. Really interesting. And here we are.
Paul Lacey: [00:45:06] It's what you you're saying about, um, cars and features? Um, Peter, my business partner does a lot of work with Nissan, um, in user user experience, design and user testing.
Um, so some of your audience will just be after a deal. If that's, if that's what you're selling. No problem discount go for a deal. If you are a business feeling extremely uncomfortable about. This heavily discounting, then maybe you're looking at the wrong audience that you're trying to sell it to. I think that the article does go into some of that as well, back to the point about Nessa, um, different markets for the, even for the same product, different communities, different, um, people around the world have general different trends to how they approach these things.
So in the case of cars, uh, in Europe, It is all about the experience. So people who want to spend a lot of money on a car, they're interested in the experience, how will you feel if you drive this car or this kind of stuff, and, and, you know, w you will be taken care of, uh, if anything goes wrong with your car.
Whereas in, um, markets like Japan, the features, um, the megapixels, if it's the camera or the, you know, the, the fuel stuff, if it's the car is way more important. Interesting. Um, Then the, how you feel driving this car about yourself. So I think, um, pixel grade are really sort of, uh, putting their Mark on clearly who they want their customers to be.
And I know that there's a few people probably listening today, um, Mark from funnel packs, for instance. Um, I know he's very, very into his community. And, you know, making sure that his community is kind of aligned with his products and that kind of thing. And that's, he's, he's extremely, extremely kind of, um, interest in that kind of stuff.
But just, just to sum up one comment that I did speak to the writer of this article, I think it was the one who wrote the article, especially on Twitter. I did ask, you know, so this is a great picks go, didn't go for nine years. So that they're not exactly a huge company, but they've been going long enough to figure this stuff out.
We got some cash flow going, but what if you're an absolute brand new company launching a product for an individual or launching a service? Um, so as the question said in the past have discounted because they have discounted in the past. They're just not now. Uh, but you're fortunate enough to have success, to be able to have a more mature strategy.
Um, but what about the startups and the new products? How can they launch in this current. And I called it unhealthy, crazy discounted environment. Should they disrupt somehow? And I really liked the answer that she, she sent back. She said, focusing on developing relationships by putting your values at the forefront.
And then this is the bit I like the best. It's hard to change the entire environment. But it's liberating to make progress in your own playground. So start there. Yeah,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:48:18] I guess that that's, that's easier to say we with nine years on the ability that, you know, and the point you made about having making a start in this, in this environment, WordPress space must be really difficult, but also, um, the, the expectation of people now.
Is that, I mean, just to have interested, I don't mean to put you on the spot particularly, but are there other things that over the last couple of months you've held off buying because you think, yeah, it's going to be, there's definitely going to be a chance that that's going to go into some kind of black Friday pre-Christmas cyber Monday, Halloween type deal.
Cause I know I have, whether it's in the WordPress space or not, and that, that, you know, if you're a product center and every month, every month you've got to meet the bills, but two of those months nobody's buying anything because they're just waiting for black Friday. That makes it really helpful.
Paul Lacey: [00:49:08] No, this year imposter imposter has definitely, um, this year we, we did the numbers in our agency and checked where.
You know where we're leaking money and where money is being left on the table and saving, you know, a few dollars here and that it turned out isn't a big controversy at all. And I think that if you are a company, um, and you're looking at a product that is going to add genuine, genuine value to your, um, to your company or for your company or whatever it is that you're buying, you know, if it's adding good value, I think this article is kind of saying don't, don't be part of the problem, uh, help the help, the companies that are helping you.
And let's have a bit of more of a healthier ecosystem. So I'm not, I've not gone that way just because I, um, So amazing and everything that I, I think like this, I purely realize that it is actually a bit of a waste of time to try and say $50. Something that is, might be fairly mission critical for your business.
I think we should definitely be putting more food into the company. He had the kind of companies that we're buying from,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:50:24] you know, interesting. Cause we all love a tribe. Don't we, we all like to being connected to a gang or whatever it is, you know, we've got our little collection of things that we admire and we stick to and, and I've got those in the WordPress space and for reasons that I can't.
Well, I think probably given enough time, which we don't have now I could probably explain, but there are certain, there are certain companies within the WordPress space that I am drawn to. And in my case, I think the driver of that is, is reliability, ethics, and so on and so forth. I think it might be that that tribe is created by aggressive pricing for you.
I don't know, but it also might be the, you know, in the case of pixel grade, they write articles like that and it makes you think, boy, they seem like the right people. To deal with, you know, there's integrity. There, there's a, there's a definite moral position. Uh, anyway, I would say, go and read that article.
Just recap, the
Paul Lacey: [00:51:14] let's plug into the products beans as they sell products. Um, I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure they've got a theme, which is a restaurant thing, seems to be one of their really, um, super products. I think it's called what is the thing called?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:51:31] I'm looking at them on the page now we've got a whole bunch of them look, um,
Paul Lacey: [00:51:34] yeah, I recorded a whole bunch of them.
Their restaurant one is called Rosa too. I think that looks like something worth checking out. I F I feel like with pixel grade, I'd love that content so much that I just want to, I want to buy something from them and not just a place for them to be, but, but the fighting against the current to get into people like my, my head.
I mean, you're in, you have to go. If you could an app Siemens website. Look at one of the products that gets maybe a three star, sorry, a three taco review. Yeah. So three out of five, which basically means that people aren't living it. I go and look at the comments from the, the people who are looking to be a customer of that company.
Speaking directly often to the CEO and founder of product.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:52:24] It's only Nike, doesn't it?
Paul Lacey: [00:52:26] Uh, the it's assess pit. The the, the stuff and I bet they have to sensor half of the stuff as well. It's like YouTube comments. It's like usually comments or something. Yeah. I think people. If you, if you've got a product you can ask yourself, do you want that kind of, do you want that kind of customer?
Same because the agency do we want that kind of customer that is placed first and it's always pointing back at that expectations are high, high for the discount high for what you, what you're giving. It's not, it's not a healthy and sustainable place to be. I think it is tough at the moment. Cause we're.
You know, money is tight, everywhere, so there's a lot of pressure to discount. So if you bind something on, on black Friday, just, just think about who you're buying it from. If you do get an amazing deal, then there are other article is all about, um, giving something back to the organization. Who helped you out in some way?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:53:23] So just to recap, that's pixel gray.com forward slash upstairs forward slash discounts is the one that we've been talking about. It's called I discount. You've discovered both loops. That's the most recent one. Um, Paul and I, when we, when we whittled down the number of articles to eight clearly. Uh, I have no idea of the, uh, the amount of verbal diarrhea both of us are capable of.
Cause I think we've probably done about three and we've used up an hour, so shall I very quickly. And I I'll just pick out one or two of the things that I had mooted for myself to mention. Um, One of them was, let me see if I can find the right on. Yeah, this is quite interesting. I quite like this one.
This is just for people who make, uh, audio content like me. It's kind of fascinating to me that automatic over on the wordpress.com side. Uh, this is an article on. WP Tavern called automatic releases releases. Spear had a seedlet child theme aimed at podcasts and content creators. Um, so automatic have done just that.
They've created a theme with a bunch of options specifically for, um, audio content creators. So podcasts is that's called it that, and, um, it just feels to me like this is the direction of travel podcasts thing, although. It hasn't boomed in the way that people assumed it would during COVID times. It's, it's got this nice, steady ascent.
Most podcast audiences are going up. There's more podcasts, which makes it more and more difficult to get the, an audience and keep an audience. But clearly if you're in the, if you're in the theme space seems like a great idea to put a theme out over on the.com side. Um, all about podcasting. So you can see it's got, it's pretty simple.
You know, the
Paul Lacey: [00:55:05] layout is fairly straightforward. It's got
Nathan Wrigley: [00:55:08] almost what you discussed. I'm guessing this is the default kind of player inside Chrome or something like that. But, um, there's options for a dark mode, which I quite like. That's quite a novel thing. It poles the, the browser and the iOS, I think to see whether you've set things up over there and then it adjusts the theme automatically, uh, based upon what your preferences and then it's using blocks.
To great things like archives of podcasts and, um, under player and related posts and related podcasts links and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, just fascinating automatic gain in the podcasting space as you'd have expected them to
Paul Lacey: [00:55:44] remember what we spoke about this nation, about what we felt was coming next from here,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:55:49] which is
Paul Lacey: [00:55:50] great.
Um, well, this is clearly, um, what we're talking about automatically has got tons and tons of money and they're able to do things calmly. Uh, for the longterm, because they've got that backing, um, pixel periods article is kind of. Trying to sort of say that not everyone can, can do that. So support people, but, um, automatic obviously have their private jet pack.
They're releasing the free, um, child theme, no lifetime deal for this child theme that doesn't cost a hundred dollars, one $97 one-time price or anything like that. Um, but where I can see this going, is that the helping people get off the ground with podcasts, I would not be surprised at all to see.
Podcast, fall hosting, be an add-on for Jetpack Nope, or an automatic based service. And especially when you see the dark mode and light mode of this, I can see a complete package from automatic coming, where you get a progressive web app. So you can use the theme it's, they're using it to turn it into a web app.
The hosting is sorted by a Jetpack automatic, and that's a premium cost of a certain amount of money. And it'd be very difficult to compete with that, but
Nathan Wrigley: [00:57:05] I'll also,
Paul Lacey: [00:57:08] that's what I say going, and if they do do that credit to them, Uh, it seems like a smart thing to do with the resources that they've got.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:57:17] Yeah. So at the moment, those of you that aren't familiar with podcasting, essentially combination of often SAS apps. So there's organizing, you know, there's SAS services that will, um, that will allow you to do podcasting. There are, there are notable companies like castoffs, who, who combined the podcasting side, the audio hosting with the WordPress plug inside and make it.
Really seamless to, to do things on with WordPress. And that's, that's actually what we use optimally in PE builds. But you can, you can see that there's real money in this because people who want to take a pumped on podcasting. And it is interesting. If you only have to look very young, you have to scratch the surface a little bit to see how many people start a podcast and very quickly give up.
You know, they, they might get literally one episode in all three episodes or do six weeks or something and they find it hard to maintain that. Um, but in the process of getting to that one week, six weeks, they've spent a fairly decent amount of money often, you know, they've, they've paid for some hosting.
They paid for a website there. And when I say hosting, I mean, audio hosting on top of the WordPress hosting. And then of course there are the people who just keep going like me. And there is a, there is, there is absolutely money that needs to be spent to keep a podcast going and you know, why did Spotify get into it?
I'm sure they didn't get into it out of the goodness of their hearts. I'm guessing Spotify wants to be the audio for everything, the audio platform for everything. And so they got into it. Um, and it just seems to me, they would have been silly not to do this. I confess very happy over on the customer side.
That's where I'm going to stay. I can't see any compelling reason to move, but I, if I was in charge of automatic, I would have been doing this. Definitely. And like you say, if you can have a progressive web app so that somebody can. You know, put an icon on their, on their phone. Um, that's great. Really cool.
Paul Lacey: [00:59:12] I mean, if they, if they have a full package that is a software package, it means that they can, they've got the, the buying power to make deals with hardware companies as well. So for instance, if you, you know, you might buy a particular podcasting kids, USB mic or something like that, and get some kind of discount for automatic or jetpacks.
Um, this is totally, I'm just totally guessing here, but again, the other way round, it might be that if you sign up with automatics, podcasting, all in one service, you get a discount on some hardware or
Nathan Wrigley: [00:59:48] something. They often the two go together.
Paul Lacey: [00:59:50] Yeah. I can see that happening. And especially because if we segue into another article, which is partnership between WooCommerce and DHL, the shipping
Nathan Wrigley: [01:00:00] company,
Paul Lacey: [01:00:02] so.
I'm not sure exactly what this means. It doesn't mean anything to us too much in the UK. I don't think, but, um, I think it says the US-based businesses, thanks to a partnership between WooCommerce and VHL. Uh, thanks. Um, can get discount discounted DHL express labels, right from your WordPress dashboard. So if you use word, word commerce, rather than Shopify.
You might be able to get a discount on the shipping labels for the things that you need to deliver to people. That's a serious, that's a serious boardroom level type deal. As far as I can tell.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:00:45] Yeah.
Paul Lacey: [01:00:46] Two huge brands. I wonder,
Nathan Wrigley: [01:00:49] I wonder how this came about. I wonder if you know, uh, automatic, uh, who the, you know, the custodians of WooCommerce.
I wonder if they went out to all the players, you know, um, FedEx and all that, and just said, we want to, we want to get on board with one of you. Uh, just don't know how a deal like this camera. It was pretty cool. If you're a WooCommerce store owner. It is, US-based only to say at the top of the article, then
Paul Lacey: [01:01:14] us presenting, or it could have been that DHL reached out to
Nathan Wrigley: [01:01:17] WooCommerce.
Paul Lacey: [01:01:19] So he was interested in, you know, making the deal. You don't know how the deal happened as far as I know, but it's just very interesting that something like that can happen. And that's the thing when, you know, take away the small WordPress shops go up to the top level with these. Big powers in WordPress.
They're able to connect the dots so much easier. And, uh, it's very interesting to see because there's a lot of moves happening recently. There's lots of stuff happening and, you know, It'd be interesting to see where we are with in a year with things like WooCommerce and automatic and jet pack and see, see where they've connected things.
But honestly, I feel like Jetpack and automatic, you're just going to be taken over so much. They're disrupting. I'm just
Nathan Wrigley: [01:02:06] going to quote a couple of things from the page that we're looking at, which is on the woocommerce.com. Blog is called ship internationally with DHL and we've come a shipping. Uh, it says w with commerce shipping, you can, you can get discounted DHL express labels right in your dashboard.
That's really cool. The result is a smooth international shipping experience. And then it goes on to say with their channel WooCommerce, you get special discounted rates for DSO breasts labels up to 67% off. That's pretty huge free pickups from DHL. Oh, quick deliveries, blah, blah, blah. And then there's a couple of other things, but those two top ones that, I mean, I don't know enough about WooCommerce to say whether this stuff's available, if you go with a different, uh, carrier, but that's, that's great.
Isn't it? Everything just in your, in your world, commerce dashboard. Fabulous. Okay. Um, let's see if we've got time. I'll just put another couple of quick comments on because I've been avoiding it. Um, Matt said, thanks for your reply earlier, you mentioned Matt Davis and his funnel packs, and he was saying, thanks for, um, for mentioning it.
Um, pod love was something that max. Uh, sorry, that was Matt. Now I'm talking about max. Max had potluck, which I've never heard of is an open source, um, alternative, great plugin for podcasting and never heard of that. Thanks for that. I'll check that out afterwards. And then back to Matt saying that podcast costs ramp up quickly.
Yeah, they do, especially at the beginning when you need to buy the Mike and the bits and pieces software to get you, you know, audio editing and so unforced so forth, Don, um, and. Max was saying that maybe, maybe Spotify trying to get into the podcasting game to put on skippable adverts and dare. I can't imagine that that would infuriate you.
I know you're a podcast consumer, do you get annoyed by unskippable ads? I know we put ads in our podcast with the expectation that people can, if they wish just go through them. And that's
Paul Lacey: [01:04:04] yeah, I could say I can totally see that happening. I mean, I pay for premium YouTube. Yeah. Just to, because the ads just.
Became too much. I couldn't skip them and all that sort of thing. But think about, um, podcast is that they're still, you know, they're still plussed in the media as something very, um, authentic, you know, you can, um, It's it's uninterrupted speaking long form, especially this week. Uh, you and I talking, but here's some people kind of very concerned about the future of podcasts and podcasts going up in flames, just like the rest of the media, but pretty much has, um, He was talking.
I don't remember who it was, but he was talking about AI being able to stitch different bits of podcasts together because you know how now Google different stuff. I can listen to the podcast and then extract all the text.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:05:03] Yes.
Paul Lacey: [01:05:04] So you could find yourself on some kind of stitched up mix mega mix of this week.
Your favorite podcasts have a very specific narrative. Based on someone at the beginning of the podcast says this, and then it seemingly all of the little clips from your podcast back that up. So I think that's the problem with the ability to, um, audio, to be easily turned into texts now. And so this person, I forgot who it was.
It was system very concerned, but like the long form content that we like and see as very authentic these days could easily go up in flames. If we all start listening to a kind of. A stitch to give a highlights of different podcasts that seem to completely take things out of context and put it in a particular, what is the tell a particular story?
I would, I would urge
Nathan Wrigley: [01:05:59] people if, if things like that start so happened, you know, for example, Spotify do start to inject your podcast feed with adverts and you can't skip them. I mean, obviously, you know, there's the shows like Joe Rogan who have gone over to Spotify, that is to say his content. I don't know if it's already happened, but he's enormously popular content creation.
Machine will only be available on Spotify. Hence you can't skip the arts, but any other podcast that's not syndicated or bought by a one of those giant corporations, you can just download any podcast player of choice. You'd like I use one called pocket and it's perfectly good. There's Google podcasts.
There's presumably the Apple podcast app works in that way. You just download the actual audio file and skip the outset that way. Should you, should you choose to do it? Um, Yeah, Paul, we've gone an hour and 10 minutes. I know. You know, I've got, I've probably got a couple more that I could mention, but I don't think we should.
I think we should try and keep to the time
Paul Lacey: [01:07:02] and endurance international. Should we just quickly,
Nathan Wrigley: [01:07:05] this is gonna, this is gonna amaze everybody now. I could be completely wrong here. But when I saw this article, I should say, it's on marketwatch.com and it's an article entitled endurance international to be bought by clear Lake in a deal valued at $3 billion, including debt.
Now this, this, this, that company that goes around buying up all those other internet hosting companies and then seemingly destroying them. Because over the last few years you hear about companies, one of them. Well, I won't mention any names in case I just get it blatantly wrong, but, uh, uh, uh, a hosting company, which is reasonable gets bought out by this bigger international conglomerate.
And then within a few months, everybody is complaining that the service has gone to gone to them. It's a big mess. Um, and now it would appear that they themselves have been bought. So. Maybe it's a good time to get in and discover who is actually hosting your WordPress websites. And maybe it's a good opportunity to try and price people off cheap hosting and get them onto something after decent, instead of right.
Paul Lacey: [01:08:09] The money just baffles me
Nathan Wrigley: [01:08:11] 3 billion, uh, including debt, where somebody had buying my debt. That'd be great.
Paul Lacey: [01:08:17] Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:08:20] Lovely. Are we done Paul?
Paul Lacey: [01:08:22] I think so.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:08:23] Could you do, it was a failure if you've been listening to this or if at any point you've listened to it and you think that we've really messed up this format.
You'll probably have noticed that we've rather than trying to do everything. We've tried to do less and talk about certain things in much greater detail, which requires a little bit more prep on Paul's side and my side. But I feel that once we get the flow of this over, probably I'll probably take two or three weeks, maybe a couple of months.
I don't know. Once we get the flow going. We might have a bit more of a substantial show on our hands. That's what I'm hoping for. If we've missed it, missed the Mark. Totally let us know if you think we're on the right track, let us know. And, uh, as always, please share it wherever you see it fit. Not enough can in this new format.
No, I know. I do apologize. I just mentioned kids to the once while I have now twice. In fact, there you go. Right, Paul, thanks so much. Do you want to say farewell in some way, shape or form or? Sure.
Paul Lacey: [01:09:19] Well, what I'm looking forward to this week is a thing my new X-Box comes tomorrow. It's supposed to launch today.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:09:27] What's the difference. Forgive me for being an ignoramus. Yeah, but this is just a new shape.
Paul Lacey: [01:09:35] More things, more things, new shape, faster.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:09:39] Yeah,
Paul Lacey: [01:09:40] definitely faster. Definitely.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:09:43] Yeah. My son has an X-Box and I'm constantly, constantly amazed at what it can do. I mean, just, uh, you know, if you cast your mind back to when we were kids playing on, I don't know how old you are, but I was, it was a set expectations for me or, or the Xanax 81.
Um, you know, and pong was a thing and now completely real stuff on the screen. My children are so lucky.
Paul Lacey: [01:10:09] Yeah, I've got a personal Christmas tomorrow. Honestly, I ordered some, uh, some, a new jacket and some new shoes. And a few other t-shirts and stuff on assets, and it's all coming tomorrow. The X-Box is going when he jackets going really shoes, many t-shirts, it's all coming tomorrow.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:10:26] And I bet that the shorts t-shirt jeans, jacket, and all of that will stay in the box until you've had a virus. 24
Paul Lacey: [01:10:35] sizing, but that's the goal.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:10:37] You get dressed up in all the new gear and play on the X-Box you like there's no calming down from that. You're just going to feel
Paul Lacey: [01:10:43] free. That's what she's going to find.
Like how's, how's the house looking? Have you told you that this or that? I would just be that whole.
That's the great thing. She wants
Nathan Wrigley: [01:10:58] to be your lucky boy. Well, I'm going to be just doing ordinary work. That's my, my intention this week and praying that my, my children can manage to stay at that school, which touch and touch and go at the moment with all the things that are happening. Um, okay. Thank you for all your comments.
I'm sorry. We haven't been able to share them all. We'll be back next week. We'll have more to say about WordPress when we come back. Hopefully a whole new whole week's worth of news will have transpired between now and then. Thank you for joining us. Have a nice day, stay safe and bye-bye for now.