This Week in WordPress #148

Nathan Wrigley: [00:00:00] It's time for this week in WordPress episode, number 148 entitled what our contributor tools it was recorded on Monday. The 1st of February, 2021, my name's Nathan Wrigley, and I'll be joined as I am each and every week by Paul Lacey, my cohost, and this week I'll be joined by Michelle Frechette and Bernard granola.
As we talk about the WordPress news over the last seven days. There's plenty to talk about WordPress roadmap update. We've got full site editing and coming down the pipe that's mooted for June, 2021 in WordPress 5.8 Josepha Haden. Sean posi talks about the big picture goals for the project in 2021, automatic I've launched the new blank canvas WordPress theme, which will be very good if you're using launch landing pages.
And so on elemental 3.1 has also released find out what's in that. The plugin team have discovered that plugin authors are updating your auto update plugin settings. That's a mouthful, but it's been decided that has now got to stop. We've also got a new plugin, which is entitled launch with words. It's a plugin to help you create a shed jewel for your writing.
Over the coming year. WordPress 2020 have released their threat reports as well. And Apple takes a shot at tracking on iOS. It's all coming up on this weekend. WordPress, this weekend, WordPress is brought to you this week by AB split test. Do you want to set it stop 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 blog. Okay, Twitter, check it out and get a free [email protected] Hello there once again. Nice to have you with us. Very nice to see a couple of comment in right off the bat. It's this week in WordPress, one small I'm joined by three guests this week as always.
Bye. Hold Lacey down there. If you're listening to this on the audio, you won't have a clue, but it's a bit like celebrity squares back in the eighties on British television, on top of each other. Uh, we've also joined by Bernard granola. Who's over on that side, I nearly did that. Finger point slightly wrong.
And we're also in a new place for me. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine. We can move you around on the new streaming platform. I'm really getting it wrong. And over there, uh, to the bottom rights we have Michelle Frechette, um, very quick, uh, little elevator pitch from each of you, if you want to just introduce yourselves very quickly.
Um, so first we start with Paul.
Paul Lacey: [00:02:48] So yeah, so Paula is here. I'm a independent WordPress consultant. That
Nathan Wrigley: [00:02:53] was very pissy. Thank you, Paul. And I don't have a website yet
Berhard Gronau: [00:03:03] working on websites to hear and always educating about pups and possible use cases and stuff around it.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:03:11] We'll try and sneak some of that pod's goodness. And of course burn, it has a completely alternative life in the hot chocolate industry, which is just lovely. And because who doesn't like hot chocolate, raise your hand.
No hands go up. Um, and Michelle, tell us about,
Michelle Frechette: [00:03:29] yes, good morning here in Rochester, New York, it's snowing and I am the head of, uh, co head of customer success for give WP and a pretty strong advocate for the WordPress
Nathan Wrigley: [00:03:38] community. Thank you so much. All of you, we are. I'll just put a couple of things on the screen, but I'll explain them to anybody listening to this on the audio.
If you ever want to come and make comments, you've got to go to WP builds.com forward slash live. Now, strangely it happened this week. Apparently at some point during the last 48 hours, uh, Google are now no longer allowing you to embed. Uh, YouTube comments on third party sites. I don't know if that's a temporary glitch, but there's a bit of chatter in the community around a YouTube saying that it stopped.
So if you go to that page, you'll have to click the red button and it will open up a new tab where you can make those comments. And we appreciate anybody who makes the effort to do that. The other alternative is to go to WP builds.com forward slash Facebook. That's our Facebook group. You have to be a member.
So that's no good. If you are not currently a member, but you can make comments over there on the post, just search for this week in WordPress. Speaking of this week in WordPress, it comes from WP builds. I'll just very quickly tell you a little bit about that. WP builds. We started back in 2016. It was me and David Walmsley.
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You never know. It might be on here. If you click the big yellow, you can search and filter and so on. And so anyway, that's who we are. WP belts.com. But enough of that, So today we're here not to talk about WP bills. We're here to talk about WordPress's stuff and we've got well, potentially 10 things to go.
I feel 10 is probably, probably too many poll. I'm really sorry. I've had you entirely covered up this entire time. That's very rude of me, but I'm going to do one more covering the worst Fest news for the week commencing the 25th of January. And I'm so sorry. Sorry, Paul. I was elsewhere. My concentration was diverted in another sphere.
So, yeah. Sorry about that. We'll forgiven. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so Paul's going to lead on half of these, cause he's the co-host of the show and I'll lead for the first one on a bunch throughout. So this first piece, as we often do, we rely on WP Tavern for the news that we talk about. And this is a, an article by Sarah Gooding.
Entitled WordPress roadmap update full site editing targeted for 5.8 release in June, 2021. So a little over, what is that? Five months or so from now, we should have a release of the ability to do full site editing. You would kind of hope that that would be the end of this discussion and that would be it.
But the, the article goes on to sort of discuss the problems with actually figuring out what all this means. You know, what does it mean to have full site editing? What does it mean to say that it will be ready at those dates? And essentially if you read this article, you'll discover that it's, it's a sort of, it's a work in progress.
There are a bunch of things which still need to be achieved. If you go over to, um, track and have a look, it looks like some of them are getting ticked off. Which is quite nice, but we're not sure. Some of them are fairly crucial still. Um, and so, yeah, there's a, there's a bunch to go, but we are almost almost at the point where full site editing without a page builder, without anything apart from just WordPress vanilla core will be possible.
It's a very exciting development, I think.
Paul Lacey: [00:07:58] Well, the excitement is just amazing though. Isn't it? I mean, The reaction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it is, it is exciting actually. And, uh, we can probably move the link that if anyone's watching can see there's a link on the screen that says updated roadmap, which leads onto a second item, which is kind of the beginning, the same item as well.
But we actually last week had been poorly Hass. Is that correct? Pack Huck. Be a good. Poorly Huck on, uh, as a, as a guest who 100% changed my mindset a bit, 100% changed your mindset a bit if
Nathan Wrigley: [00:08:42] I like the way. Yeah. So 99%,
Paul Lacey: [00:08:46] my mindset a lot. I don't know. She definitely changed my mindset on the whole full site editing and the whole goody bag project.
So I'm still always looking at this with a kind of idea of constructive criticism. And always looking at it from my own user persona point of view, as a web designer, web developer type person, looking for those tools. But she did give me a good insight and everybody who is watching or listening a good insight into how some of these things work behind the scenes.
And as a result, like I say, I've got more of an open mind about this whole project now. I would like to say I'm still a little bit, um, holding out some criticism where needed, if, uh, if I feel that I can make some comments and the nice thing was, she introduced me to some of the people in the actual team who were working on full site editing, and I've got an opportunity to test it out properly and follow the testing guidelines, which I'm going to hopefully do this week.
So I'm talking to someone there. So I'll be able to have a really close look myself and see what's going on there. But the article that Nathan was reading out that leads on to. I'm a post on wordpress.org by Joe suffer. Uh, what is it? What is your full name?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:10:00] Hayden chomp posi.
Paul Lacey: [00:10:02] Uh huh. Okay. So just EFAs article here is called big-picture goals 2021.
And this is, this is the, um, uh, kind of summary of the roadmap for 2021. She, I think she's edited this post possibly from the beginning, because I know that she got a lot of pushback in the comments, because this is a controversial subject. Everybody's got an opinion about this. So she may have updated this a little bit, but she stated that the goals for 2021 are intentionally broad and they're intentionally incomplete.
There's three main things that she's identified on the big picture. Uh, I'll start with the one that I don't really understand called contributor tools. This is number three. Uh, contributes to those decrease the manual, overhead of maintenance work for teams through better tooling. I actually have no idea what that means by shame.
It's like some kind of internal goal to make the workflow better within the, um, the internal teams working on the Tableau project and WordPress in general. Uh, the second one is something we've mentioned before, which is learned WP, which is a really nice initiative to help people self learn the ins and outs of WordPress on all sorts of levels, whether it's third party tools, plugins, or core WordPress.
So that's, that's one of their big priorities for 2021, and they want to commit to keep putting resources on there, videos, lesson plans, all that kind of stuff. But obviously the one that, uh, is probably the. The, the talking point is the full site editing plan. Now the timeline, uh, that Nathan May have already mentioned is that they want to have, uh, an MVP, a minimum viable product of full site editing within the Gutenberg plugin by April, 2021.
Yup. Oh, sorry. And, and also, so a minimum viable products in the good, super clunky by April, 2021. And that. The actual full site editing capabilities to some extent. We'll be in the core of WordPress by version 5.8, which as I understand it, I think is scheduled in, through, around mid June to June. Yeah. Yep.
So it seems that what's happening here is that they've, they're obviously thinking ahead to when, uh, they will want to release a new version of a theme for instance, 20, 22 theme or something like that. And the way I see it is that they're looking ahead a year and saying, wouldn't it be great to have.
Full site editing to some extent in core in six months time. And then we've got another six months perhaps to get a full site, edited new theme to represent WordPress in a 20, 22 version of the theme. That's my guess on where these timelines have come from at a broad sense. Uh, she does say it's totally broad.
I'm sure it's going to change. But that appears to be the plan Gutenberg full site editing April full site editing and core WordPress. To some extent by June this year, say that is. Soon.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:12:57] Yeah, they, um, they, yeah. Thank you, Michelle. Appreciate that. There was somebody, I think grinding some coffee beans or something in your office.
Yeah. She's not like, thank you for muting. That's helpful. Um, the, I think the control one, not controversy, but the, the problem that got highlighted in the comments on this article was that people wanted more clarity on what the MVP. Aspect of this is, you know, they're aiming for an MVP, but there seem to be some, um, some misunderstanding of exactly what the MVP was talking about.
And so I guess, um, I guess only time will tell, but she she's hoping for that to, by April. 2021. And then hopefully in the core version of infer, press 5.8, but keep, keep your eyes better. I know that there was a pregnant pause when I said this is exciting, but I am really genuinely excited by this. I do really like the idea that you'll be able to download WordPress and you'll be able to do the whole thing.
And there'll be that enormous hurdle that you've got to overcome either to use the customizer in the theme that you've got, or to figure out some CSS way of doing it. Suddenly you'll be able to point click drag some things around user color picker and get something that you like probably within a couple of hours.
Um, right off the bat. And, you know, as we all know from page builders, it doesn't take too long until you're familiar with the UI and can, can manage those things trivially. And this is very exciting for me and good, good luck to the team for getting it going. So
Michelle Frechette: [00:14:32] we'll see if I can jump in here real quick.
Say that I stopped teaching local WordPress classes when Gutenberg came on, because every five minutes it seems like updates and new things. So it's because of that. Yeah. Right. So thank goodness they have the learn WP. Uh, at this learn WordPress at the same time, because like, at this point it's growing rapidly.
It's not my primary job to teach it. Of course. You know? And so like having that as a side business is no longer viable option for me because it's growing so quickly. But, um, providing the tools for other people to learn, I think has been good.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:15:06] Yeah. You've got to feel that if you were in the business of having one of those companies, like let's say WP one Oh one or.
Video user manuals or something you would feel like there's no point in producing those videos at the moment, because you know that the UI is going to become significantly different. Yeah, within a month or two months. And so I get, I get what you mean and I hopefully WordPress themselves will we'll make this learn WP initiative work.
Uh, I don't, I regret to say that I don't know who has just posted this comment. They are a Facebook user. If you want to click on the stream yard link, I know you. You may, it may be Chris Hughes because he often says Ronak Oh, is it? Hi Rona. He's making the point that he learned his lesson with Guttenberg.
Yes,
Paul Lacey: [00:15:49] that is Dave bloom from BeaverBuilder group fame. Huh?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:15:53] Thank you, Dave. Yeah, I'm guessing what he's meaning is he's um, he's gonna have a cautious approach. To anything to do with Guttenberg, you know, you've learned your lessons. Okay.
Paul Lacey: [00:16:04] Uh, I might actually have the same on that. I personally, I think I'm now more excited about it.
Having talked with bigot and understand the pace and that this is, it says even in the big picture goals article, right at the top, it says that there's so many far away North stars in this 10 year potential project. But this really is a potential slow burn. So I am excited. I know wondering if it's three or four years, we'll all be using this stuff and really happy with it and saying, I probably should have trusted in it, but I'd probably be giggling inside as I'm saying.
Um, but I'm excited. Yeah. But I'm not jumping in, in any commercial way just yet. That's for sure. I'm sticking, I'm sticking with, you know, what I'm using BeaverBuilder and a generate press and sticking with those things for the foreseeable. For sure. I don't need to create a new complication in my life at the moment.
Let's see where it goes from my perspective.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:17:04] So it sounds like,
Paul Lacey: [00:17:05] yeah,
Berhard Gronau: [00:17:05] that's, that's executive point. That's where it goes. I mean, we all know why it's there. Um, let's see how that works out. Um, uh, I think it, usually, it depends on the kind of sites you're building, how important it is for you, because, uh, could have done any patient PHB and we use a page builder instead of it.
So it's, it's a different use case just for me. And I think, especially for the, the mom and pops and people who are getting into it, it might make things far easier because they don't need to. Get to know how God works behind the scenes, which is kind of good and a bad thing.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:17:47] Yeah. Yeah. What was really interesting about having, um, big hit on last week was that she, she really did sort of drag us in didn't.
She, Paul, she took us in and sort of gave us a and we chatted after the episode had finished recording and she gave us an awful lot of help trying to figure out where all this lies. And I think one of the things that I drew out of that was. Just the messaging is so hard. You know, the WordPress community, you've actually got to go and find the information about the updates and what's happening and be interested.
Um, so that you're anticipating what the, what the forthcoming things are, so that the, the new menu item or the new bit that they put in the block editor, isn't a surprise, but that's hard. Um, you know, it's really, you've got to go and look, look at the, look at the articles like Joseph has put out, you're going to discover that all for yourself.
And that's a difficult proposition, you know? Um, I guess, uh, I don't know what the, what the authority WordPress have to go out mailing or. Putting things in the UI, not a lot. They tend to stay clear of all of that. Chris using the comments makes a lovely point. He says, it's a great recurring revenue for teaching though.
Learn something different every time.
Paul Lacey: [00:19:02] You could, you could have like, um, a weekly update, uh, for the new things you can learn in WordPress. You could even call it, I don't know, this week in WordPress or yeah.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:19:11] Yeah. What a good idea who should do that or Gothenburg times, you know, there's a whole podcast that bear gets involved in, and that is just the.
The narrow focus of what they do. It's just the Gothenburg stuff and it keeps them, keeps them busy and they put out a big fat newsletter each week. So, you know, there's a lot to say, I'm
Berhard Gronau: [00:19:30] going to start a
Michelle Frechette: [00:19:30] new podcast called obsolete and WordPress things you don't need to know anymore.
Berhard Gronau: [00:19:34] Yeah. Yeah. That's,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:19:35] that's good.
You're going to be busy. So, although
I guess that's good. If nobody's listening to you, you've achieved. The correct audience, then I've got a, I have a, an app that I use that uses tiny MCE as the editor and Paul will know what I'm talking about. And it's so, so immature compared, forgive me if you're involved in any way with the tiny MCE editor, just the ability of what Gutenberg, what I've become used to, especially moving things around and pasting in a link.
And it instantly. Is pasted into the correct, you know, your highlight, the text, click command V on the Mac, and it turns into a link and that'll pop up, comes up, asking you what you want to do with it. You want it to open in a new window and so on. It's just brilliant. And when all of this find when the jigsaw pieces all align and the Jigsaw's finished 84 years from now, we'll be looking at what, what are we worried about?
Berhard Gronau: [00:20:30] No, I'm not very that just, uh, it it's, it's the thing I'm missing is this, this, this, this, this. Minor use case, but it's a huge use case for me about structured content. And it's the reason I use pots. And that is a thing which is just put away on the side and decide to somewhere and not, I find it really easy to, to have stuff like that.
The Gutenberg yet, at least because you can't have all those main three informations are just somewhere in the crowded space on the side. It's great for writing content.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:21:04] It is. So is it really, is writing content? Anything else?
Berhard Gronau: [00:21:09] It feels like, kind of, I don't know. Sometimes they just want a few bucks. It's like a form you fill out.
Yeah. And that's, that's not in any way taken care of with
Nathan Wrigley: [00:21:19] Gutenberg. I'm guessing this is David again, perhaps, uh, forgive me, David. I haven't got Facebook open somebody who could be David in the comments saying, I think full site editing is going to be good for WP, but user experience wise, what Elementor and BeaverBuilder did is much better.
Uh, that way the content and design both actors separate layers right now. It feels they want to be more like Squarespace. Yeah, I guess the, I guess the problem is, is that Beaver, builder and elements are in those page builders. They can just build what they like. And they don't have to worry about people who are not using their product.
Whereas the WordPress. Crowd the WordPress core team have to worry about everything working, which must be a tall order. Lots of comments coming in. No, it wasn't David, but he says, no. No,
Paul Lacey: [00:22:03] thank you, Ronnie. We can see your name
Nathan Wrigley: [00:22:04] now. So that's okay. Again, I'll make the point that if you want, if you want us to know who you are, Uh, as David has now done, if you click on the link above the episode, there's a stream yard link and it enables, uh, Facebook to provide your name to us, which is helpful.
Okay. Um, are we done with that one? Should we
Paul Lacey: [00:22:22] move? I think so. Yeah, I think so. Um, we, we do segue, Dave, Dave bloom just, uh, mentioned Dave bloom. Um, he's got skin in the game here because you know, he's got a product called ginger soul and that product is. An add on for Beaver builder. So I'm sure that Dave is, you know, interested to see where this is going.
But my opinion anyway is that there's so many WordPress users, but obviously so huge that you have, you can say, what do you use? And someone will say Squarespace, or they say Wix, or they'll say element, or they say B Beaver better. Or they say WordPress, or they say the block editor WordPress itself has about 20 different sub.
Product ways of doing things within itself, wherever it's elemental will be reverted or something like that. I think in the coming years, when, uh, when I look at the things that they're retiring from, from core WordPress, you know, widgets and the customizer eventually, and those kinds of things, I think that most of the things that we're using, the, there aren't the core editor will still work because none of them rely on some of those old things.
So I, I, I honestly think that if we. If, if we, if we're a person that likes BeaverBuilder or we're personalized, or that mentor, we can probably carry on and not worry about it too much and see where those products go, at least for the next couple of years. That's that's my thoughts anyway, but yeah, we do segue
Nathan Wrigley: [00:23:47] on, can I just, can I just interrupt the segue I'm going to, because I want to work for give WP, because if you work for give WC somebody.
Comes up behind you and gives you coffee.
Michelle Frechette: [00:23:58] It was fresh ground too. I mean,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:24:02] that was so nice. It was so you just snuck in,
Berhard Gronau: [00:24:07] he
Michelle Frechette: [00:24:07] appreciates me so much. He actually microwaves the cream so that it doesn't make my coffee calls. So I really, I work with really, really good people. So,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:24:14] yeah. That's nice. Yeah. I'm sorry.
I completely interrupted the segue, Paul, but I'll, I'll return it to you in the hope that you can salvage something from it.
Paul Lacey: [00:24:24] Yeah, absolutely. You say that this, this, the segue was that we were talking about the block edits over, um, this, the next one is probably two articles, uh, starting with automatic is, uh, launches something called the blank canvas WordPress theme, which is for wordpress.com, not wordpress.org.
So wordpress.com is like the website as a surface. It's kind of, it's a little bit like lead pages or Wix or Squarespace. So you sign up to wordpress.com and you're. In that, um, environment. So this is interesting to me because this blank canvas, it has nothing in it really it's just completely blank apart from it ships with a bunch of, um, block patterns and the use case.
So you've got four, it is kind of small funnels, uh, single page signup pages, those kinds of pages that you have linked off your Instagram profile. That's got all your different links on. So it might be, um, Something that I see a lot of my clients using is tools like lead pages that they use for this, or even things like, uh, some of the email systems like, um, convert compact kit has these kinds of functionality as well, but they actually quite difficult to use.
And they cost a bit of money as well. So wordpress.com, you can buy an account with wordpress.com from three pound a month, right? So you can buy an account with three pound a month. You can install this theme. If you are, let's say a life coach or something like that. And you've got a little landing page that you want to do and you can create.
A very quick landing page, a thank you page, hook it up to something like MailChimp or some other free option. And you've got yourself a little funnel system there for three pounds or whatever it is in dollars, probably $3, $4 a month. You look at some of the alternatives to that, like lead pages, click funnels.
They cost a small fortune. Even if you look at someone like cloud system that is going to cost a lot more because really you're paying for all sorts of hosting there. So yeah. Well, they're not making a big deal about this launch, but it what's lacking here really is just. A really hardcore marketing campaign to aim at those people that do buy the single page websites because three pound a month, $4 a month
Nathan Wrigley: [00:26:42] and not making a big deal out of it.
Paul Lacey: [00:26:44] I think that they're not quite ready. In my opinion. I think that they're, they're creating all this, you know, that they're creating all this infrastructure automatic, they've got the block editor, you know, we're getting built for them on the, um, on the.org project. Um, but the, the only, I think the only cost automatic have is that they do employ a lot of people who work full-time on that project.
So they dedicate a lot of hours there. I think that. Putting all the pieces together slowly, you know, testing the waters. I mean, not only to work is the CEO obviously, of, um, of automatic. And, uh, it was Matt Madeira. I see every day who mentioned to us that if you check out , um, his Twitter profile Hmm. Let's see if we can find it here.
Here's a little snippet of text below. His name is I can think I can wait. I can fast. I think by fast it means like the eating type, but on a more psychological level. So I don't think they're in a rush. They've got tons of money. There's no need. There's no need to rush this stuff out. They've got tons of investment.
They've got all the time in the world to figure it out and get themselves in the right position. And then at some point I think automatic going to absolutely go for it in the next couple of years. And we're just going to see a real push against some of these commercial products like ClickFunnels and lead pages, because we're just going to use
Nathan Wrigley: [00:28:12] things.
The reason I ask is, cause you've got to think that another commercial company, if they produced a thing like this, they would just. You know, they spray out an email and make a big deal out of, and do a big marketing launch for something, you know, a revolutionary little side product. If you like. I just wonder if they, uh, they were feeling the heat from the last couple of weeks where they, you know, the, the website building service that we're offering for basically $5,000.
I wonder if the pushback from that as has made them reign in the marketing that is pure speculation. I have no idea
Paul Lacey: [00:28:44] perhaps. Um, okay. Do you have the other article, if anyone, has anyone got anything they want to mention on, on that at all? Nope. Um, so in a kind of contrasting, uh, related way, uh, element or 3.1, um, is launching, let me just check.
Is that a B2 or is that a full launch? Is that a beta launch? Ah, I can't
Nathan Wrigley: [00:29:08] remember this one. Not sure.
Paul Lacey: [00:29:10] Okay. So anyway, there's a new version of elemental coming out. It's trying to address some issues around accessibility and performance. Um, not to a great extent you read through the article, uh, which is on the element or.com log in, especially frequent one.
So they're, they're addressing a couple of small, um, things, low hanging fruit around, uh, Asset loading accessibility and Dom improvements as they say. But the interesting thing to me again, is the landing page builder that they've improving here. So they've now put a whole section within elemental called landing pages.
And it means that if you are just using Elementor or just to create something similar to what we were literally just talking about on wordpress.com that you've got your own kind of section now called landing pages, and the workflow is set up around the kind of people who are looking to create. One or two or three page flow of landing pages.
So. Again, they, we know that element or launching a cloud version. This landing page system seems to fit perfectly with that. So it does look like a lot of people. Uh, well, a lot of people has in two companies, uh, automatic and element, or both looking at those mom and pop companies and saying, these companies need quick, simple solutions to get their products online, get conversions.
And it looks like they're both going in the same direction. So. Elemental and automatic definitely are head to head. To some extent,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:30:42] I guessing that the, the element or option is a bit broader in terms of what you can do. Um, whereas the automatic one is just one. One theme and you can style it with the current blocks that are available.
Whereas hella mentor comes packed with a bunch of different rows and modules. And so I want to say, well, they've got
Paul Lacey: [00:31:00] opposing opposing problems. They start, they're both starting on from two different angles. Elemental has got a solution which does everything, but they've got accessibility problems and they've got performance problems and they've got stability problems.
Whenever you update, even in this article, it will say if you update the elemental plugin, now, update everything else. First take a backup. So now there is a new workflow. Officially advice from elemental, which is to update everything else apart from elemental first. Now, what if another plugin starts telling you to do that?
What do you do? It's fight. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. So, so they've got that problem, whereas. Automatically I've got that. Their stuff doesn't do much. You know, you can create this absolutely basic page, but Matt Mullenweg, you know, you can think you can wait and you can fast he's in no rush elemental venture capital investors need to make some money, need to make some money back on that investment.
So it's interesting to see which direction both, both these products will go and what we end up in each side. Mm.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:32:12] Yeah, that's a good point. Uh, Burnett Michelle, anything on that? Not
Berhard Gronau: [00:32:16] really. The only thing that always comes up to me, if you're talking about all those templates, I always think, okay, they're in English.
They're useless to me because it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not a huge pilot. Doesn't speak English, but there are so many communities, even, even very large, which have different languages, um, Most of the tablets are just English. There's no version, not translated version. No, whatever. Um, um, that's the thing, uh, it happens more often than not that the, the things are valid English.
Um, the rest is very, very poor and it's difficult. And I understand that. Uh, but I wonder when people start to, to niche down a little things, okay. We have pamphlets for our chairman speaking, French or Spanish or Chinese or whatever. There are enough languages which are on par with English. For for, for native speakers, at least.
So it's, it's interesting. It's it's well, that's, it's an issue in my eyes.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:33:27] Yeah, you've got to imagine that the, the workforce side of things we'll have to take that more seriously because of the constraints of what they've sort of signed up for. You know, accessibility is a fundamental part. There's a team dedicated just to that.
Okay, Michelle, should we move on or are you, have you got something you want
Michelle Frechette: [00:33:47] to pop in and say that. I I've been thinking a lot about the conversations around freelancing and that the easier that WordPress becomes, the less likely somebody will need a freelancer. But then I also remember that when I was freelancing, people would say, can you build this with Wix?
Can you build this with Weebly? Could you use. Squarespace to build this. And so the need for freelance, um, will always be there. It's just, it depends on how you market yourself in the freelance community and what your services are. Just because somebody can build a website. Doesn't mean they should, I probably could figure out how to nail things together and make a house, but I wouldn't want to live in it.
So
Nathan Wrigley: [00:34:25] that's a great example. And
Berhard Gronau: [00:34:27] one thing is for sure, even if it's possible, but has gotten. Very complex over the years because you have the customers and you flick jets and all they have gluten Baroque and you have, uh, um, much more needs and kind of accessibility. You need search optimization and you need security.
And there is a whole bunch of stuff. Stuff going on. Um, the it's a reasonably hosting companies now start to press as many features for you. And I think for people helping all the others.
Michelle Frechette: [00:35:06] A company, that's a, that's a feminist company and I volunteered to help them out. And if they had a new web questions, it turns out there are wicks and they had no clue how to use it.
I didn't know how to use it, but I have web experience. And so through my volunteering for them, I was able to set up their fundraising, their shop, their online store and things like that, because there will always be a need for people who understand these things better than the people who are doing them.
And when your core competency is being a painter. Then you want somebody else to build your website because you want to make money painting. So there's that.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:35:37] Good point. Yep. Okay. Right. Bit of a bit of a, well, we can't segue into the next one. Let's let's just go straight to it. This is no, no, never. This is another WP Tavern article.
This. Time. I think the last one might have been just notice Hara. Yeah. Anyway, where was Sarah Gooding? Again? Plugin team draws a line plugins must not change WordPress default, automatic update settings. Now possibly a bit of a storm in a teacup, but, um, I I'm going to read the, the verbatim piece, which comes off.
The, the WordPress plugin teams statement. And it says, unless your plugin has the purpose of managing updates, you must not change the default of WordPress update settings. You may offer a feature to auto update. But it has to honor the core settings. This means if someone has set their site to never update any of my plugins or themes, you are not to change those for them unless they opt in and request it.
So just to add some context, this is a fairly new feature in WordPress. It's a feature that because I've got a third party solution in my case, main WP that. I use to update everything I've left, everything switched off. In other words, don't auto update. I'll just do that myself, but quite a handy feature.
Now, if you go into the plugin settings, there's a column at the far, right. Which allows you to toggle on or off, uh, or to update. It strikes me as a really useful feature, especially if you're rarely in there. Um, you know, you don't open the admin much, but you'd like to make sure that it's as safe as possible.
Now it would appear. And I am going to be very careful to caveat or couch this a little bit in that we don't know, but Sarah is drawing a comparison. Shall we say with something that happened in December, 2020, where the all in one SEO plugin turned on automatic updates without notifying its users. And so there has been in the past an example of at least one company or plugin manufacturer, Flipping the switch in the opposite direction than the user set up.
So in other words, you say don't automatically update and yet somehow the update to the plugin creates the possibility for them to update themselves. Now. I don't know how serious this is. To me, it's a bit of a storm in a teacup, but nevertheless, if you don't want things or to updating for which there might be genuine bonafide reasons, then the rules are now clear.
If you're a plugin developer leave well alone, uh, you're straying into dangerous waters. Um, and so just, just honor. What the person has set up. If they want things auto updating, they can go and figure that out for themselves. Um, maybe there's a choice to offer that, but anyway, there we go. This is the state of play right now.
Seems like, uh, like I say, a bit of a storm in a teacup, but probably something that needed straightening out so that the opposite didn't happen. Things were, I don't know, turned off from automatic update as opposed to being turned on. I will open the floor to anybody that wants to comment.
And the floor is empty now. It's fair enough. It's not a, it's not a big, yeah, yeah. It was worth mentioning that. Okay. In which case we'll go to, um, company, which we mentioned fairly frequently, I'm handing this, the Baton over to Paul so that we can talk about tool set.
Paul Lacey: [00:38:57] Yep. Yeah. So I think I'm interested to hear what Bernard has to say about this one, as well as Bernard seeing as your, um, It's associated with pods and work with that.
So toolset blocks 1.4, I think toolset is now toolset blocks. Is that right? Nathan, as far as you know,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:39:16] no, I think it was that you could be right, but the logo just says tool [email protected] So I think tool set blocks is there that block initiative, if you know what I mean, but if anybody's watching from toolset AMEA, reach out, correct us.
Paul Lacey: [00:39:33] So anyway, w what you can do, um, this, this particular update on the toolset blog is talking about salsa blocks. 1.4 brings dynamic sources and inline fields to popular block plugins. So from what I understand, the core tool set blocks previously did allow you to connect for instance, live. Data to different fields.
So let's say you wanted to automatically pull in the date of a blog post or the title of a blog post or the content or something else or a custom field or something like that. You could do that. And I think what this article is mostly about is that they're now supporting a bunch of, of a block packs.
And I think the ones that they are mentioning are stackable Genesis blocks. Ultimate add-ons were good. Some Bergen also. The WordPress core blocks. And they're probably going to look at doing some other ones as well. So they're making the. They're a toolset product extend other people's products forever.
So that it's kind of better integrated. So for anyone who doesn't know what Tulsa is, it's a kind of framework where you can create custom fields, custom post types, custom taxonomies, and get that kind of relational. Database effect going on with your website. So you can use it for instance, to do things like develop, uh, directories or, um, search engine based websites and, uh, those kinds of things where you have more of a database query and returning archives and stuff like that kind of view.
It's extremely powerful plugin. Um, and I have to say. Singers, we're talking about locks are quite a lot these days, is that the way they've handled their integration with blocks and how they're using the blocks and, and loops of blocks to create grids and stuff like that is very impressive. And it is worth taking a look out for anyone who wants to see how the block editor could be done really well.
Um, we have also, uh, to talk about, um, we mentioned last week, uh, pods is launching its pods pro thing via S um, SKC dev I think is it, which has Scott Kingsley, Clark, uh, developer dev. And from what I understand, I know that the new versions of pods is also bringing in. Uh, some blocks that again, allow you to do this kind of thing, similar to what toolset does as far as I can tell.
So I don't have Bernard if you can, uh, confirm that or not. Is that right? That. Pods is starting to become more of a visual tool in the next series of updates.
Berhard Gronau: [00:42:13] I mean, it's not that easy. I mean, that's a whole lot of discussion. Yes. There is those two pro ad-ons, which would make things easier. It's similar.
Like we do it for people builder. So Scott is working on doing it for, for, uh, TV and others. Uh, and it's almost the same problem, which is. Tools are trying to solve too. And I solved it for Beaver builder using those feed connections or dynamic data because pops and tools and other more about structured data.
So for example, the asset book, or I don't know a car and you want to store more information about it and you know, it's always the same information. So we have, I don't know, we have the manufacturer of the car and we have the real size and you have the power of the motor. Um, then you have a table where all those information sits and then you want to output it all in the same way.
And the Gutenberg currently doesn't really half away to it. I mean, there are dynamic blocks for dealing with kind of the post loop, but you have a single for, you have to have the single card and you don't have those kinds of connections. Uh, people build the calls, them feed connections, uh, tools that calls them now, uh, dynamic connections, or I think.
Dynamic sources. I don't know how the mentor calls it, but it's always the same concept to kind of link a pamphlet like blueprint and to fill out like a, like a form. Uh, and tend to just print it out with post form information, to make it a little bit clearer for people who didn't Brook with that stuff.
Um, uh, that's kinda the idea behind it. Uh, we are working on integration with, uh, um, Broke too, but it's not in that state like that. Uh, because first we have to lay the ground work with 2.8, which is in a kind of alpha state who can kill out, check it out on the
There is. 2.8 release branch and many staff is ready to work. And it's like the new interface for creating fields. Uh, then we have not the groups for fields. So you can group your fields. Um, this has been in pots since many releases, but there was no user interface for it. Now you can have a using the phrase, just group your fields and say, if you want to decide bar or below it.
So stuff like that works already and others, and it lays the groundwork for repeating fields in the future. Like we have now relationships, which is, uh, uh, Pots was the first tool to really have relationships. So like you can have, I don't know, you have the manufacturer of the car and you have the car and they can say, okay, these cars are from this manufacturer and you can connect stuff.
Um, it's like, uh, taxonomies and stereo it's or I don't know, kind of, um, uh, we have no different ways to automate that stuff. Uh that's that's that's uh, will become even more powerful. Uh, for example, that's one of the things Scott is working with his pro Adams to store relationship information with the pot itself, but not in a separate database table to make exporting and importing easier or working on it or doing advanced stuff.
So it's, it's kinda the reason why he, he, he laid the groundwork for pots curl. To have fun and play crowds and to add stuff to it, um, motivate people to not to donate to pots itself. So if you're, because that was a question last week, I think how this works, right? So. Basically can you to pay Scott directly per year?
Um, he uses the manager to do the same stuff. Uh, oil continued to parts itself. And in yam you get benefits from him in the same amount, because you have to at least donate $60 per year. Then you to get his plugins discounted by $60. So it's just left the right bucket, but feel free to read more to pots.
Of course. Um, for existing users we've have supported pots before all that existed. Uh, you only have to have been doing a lifetime donation of $60. So everybody who donated up to $60 before, I think 1st of November, last year, You can't go, just get what's proper $50 per month, per year. Sorry. And a lifetime donation, because we wanted to, to give back to people who supported pots before it, without any.
Additional benefits.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:47:02] Yeah. Yeah. It's really nice. We did stray into the subject of how the pricing, where we thought it was quite an interesting model. The idea that you could, uh, you could sort of like get money back. It's like a payback for being a good, a good citizen in the pods universe at some point, just to clarify it.
Peter. Thank you. In the comments mentioned that tools tool set blocks, replaces tool set views views was that dynamic query tool and is still supported, but blocks is meant to be a, to make it much more easy. So basically I think you can build views within the block editor and it's called tool set block.
So when you add a tool sets view, In, you can construct it right there. You don't have to go off to a different UI. It's just interesting. Going back to the article, I just wonder because tools that are now supporting these blocks, um, packages. So they've begun with stackable Genesis blocks, ultimate add-ons for Guttenberg and obviously the WordPress core ones.
I wonder if we're about to enter a new era of fragmentation where, you know, you've you've, you've got all of these different rival block. Packs of which you can only imagine there's going to be more, um, and you know, if it doesn't cover in this case as yet, obviously there's things like cadence is not mentioned just as one example.
Uh, does that mean that tool set are now going to be forever running around trying to figure out which is the most successful or on the rise? Pack of blocks and trying to interview their field connectors with the blocks. If you watch this video, you'll get an idea of what we're on about because, uh, down here they show, um, exactly how it works.
And so they take a stackable block, which has already pre-configured to look really nice out of the block. And they just say, put the title of the post here, put the excerpt here, make this the background image. And it's, you don't have to think. But you don't get a great deal of customization. You get what stackable gives you and also the alter the fields accordingly.
So perhaps a new era of fragmentation. Yeah. And,
Berhard Gronau: [00:49:03] and I think that's, we'll get more Fregon because what if cadence or whatever to, to support it, updates their stuff. I mean, that's nothing new. We have integrations like. Pots into Beaver builder. It's the same because we integrated and take care of it. And that's one of the reasons why I'm always a little bit.
Have difficulties with Gutenberg because the field staff should have been solved before. Like give us a ground work, how to store data within WordPress. It is it's there it's the custom fields, but there is no API, no standardized way how to store that data. So every black in can access the data. Uh, because one stores, textile at ones is just a civilized, airy, whatever.
Um, uh, uh, if there would have been at least a basic understanding of how, how feeds are stored and could have exchanged some plaque in CDO, for example, which are pots with ECF or others, uh, just take care of th th th the minimum staffs. When part of it works. If you're talking about number fields or text fields, That's the easy stuff, but if they have added the fields API and Scott clack was working, working on a proposal to add a 50 page WordPress, uh, but it never went through and there were so many objections and stuff.
So he finally gave up on it. Went, broke more on parts itself. Uh, But if we have this groundwork, each block could define, I define, okay, I'm a feed connections, give me stuff. And then nobody would have to work around it. I didn't look, the details have tools that does it, but I can imagine it's a little bit of breakout stuff.
If you need to pass the field, they didn't check the stuff and whatever. Um, I don't know. I still help that stuff to make it more. Easy floor for not only block posts or new new style posts, because Gutenberg is very great for any, any, any, any news sites or just content, but not if you have a little bit more structured stuff
Nathan Wrigley: [00:51:17] in our, um, in our regular little chat that Paul and I have.
On a Friday where we talk about what we're going to talk about. Uh, I think, I think tools are doing great with all this stuff. I think they're really pushing a lot of boundaries here. Um, making a lot of this accessible to people who don't code in a really, really nice looking format, but also again, totally off to one side.
I like their website. I like that blog posts on it and the way they look, they're doing a great job with their PR. I like purple on white. That's the one, anything to out here, Michelle? Or should we let Paul take the next one? Yep.
Berhard Gronau: [00:51:57] Keep
Michelle Frechette: [00:51:57] moving on. I'll look and good. I
Berhard Gronau: [00:51:59] love the context.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:52:01] Okay, cool. Back to you.
Paul Lacey: [00:52:03] Yep. The next one we got is, um, a little plugin called launch with words. This is an article featured on WordPress Tavern by Justin Tagalog. And the article is called jumpstart. A year's worth of content via the launch with words, plugin, which I think is a great name for a plugin. For starters, this plugin is created by, um, or the person behind this plugin is Bridget Willard, who is somebody who a lot of.
A lot of us know in the community, super nice person. Um, this Bridget is a lot of fun and gives out a lot of content and a lot of, a lot of free advice via her channels. And from what I understand, she has an ebook of some sort. And what this ebook ebook is about is. How to start writing blog posts for the next 12 months.
So it's kind of like a, a framework or a blueprint for 12 months worth of blog posts. Apologies. I've got that wrong, but that's, that's what I've gathered from the plugin landing page. Now what happens with this plugin is you install the plugin and it pretty much just chucks into your WordPress post section 12.
Draft posts. And when you open up one of those pastes, let's say you open up the one called January. It will be a guide to what you could write about this month. Okay. So your January post is always going to be something about the new year and what your plans are and what your plans are for your customers or something like that.
So you open up the blog post, you delete the notes as you work through the, through the guide of how you write one blog post, and when you're done, you hit publish. And I think what is cool about this? Is that I feel this is quite a creative way to launch a plugin in that. Of course, this could be a blog post.
You could just read it and it could be a download or something like that, but she's going one step further and saying, install this, and we'll even put the drafts in WordPress for you. So if you are the person saying, Oh, you know what, I want to do some blogging, but, uh, you know, I'm not going to get around to it.
If you install that plugin, you've then got to make a decision to delete the draft posts that she more or less put on a plate for you. So you've got to have a really good excuse to, you know, or every time you're like, rather there's, there's, there's March deleted. Oh my gosh, I suck. But even I didn't do January, February.
I didn't do much. She's not looking for plugin installs here. Uh, she actually even recommend you may as well. Delete the plugin after you've installed it and it's added the blood paste, but I think it's a lovely way to get, um, whether it's your, for yourself or for your clients to get content into your blog that you can work through and then launch some content, which is on more or less.
Anyone's. List of a website owner. It does. She does always say it does also say that she's possibly planning some add-ons for niche types of content. So it may be the, um, trades person or something like that, or a mom and pops type business, something in different niches to help with those different blog posts.
So says she's going to evaluate British plugin.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:55:10] Just obliterated your head again, Paul. Sorry about that. There we go. Um, they, I should say for people listening to the audio, uh, the comments always cover up the face of the person at the bottom of the stack. And, uh, in this case it's Paul. So sorry about that, but, uh, yeah.
Thank you. Thank you, Beth. Nice to comment. The, you kind of feel that the value here is, is in the things that. She comes up with in the future. You know, I do like the idea of the 12 months of posting throughout the year, but you can sort of see, I don't know, um, somebody in a particular niche dropping their own content in and giving you the, giving you the kick up the backside, if you like, it creates the 12, 15, a hundred posts that you needed, um, gives you some framework and I'm not very good at.
Structuring my writing. So just having that structure to hang things on, you know, you go in right. The accompanying paragraph that accompanies what Bridget suggested and then delete her paragraph and move on to the next one and hopefully keep the momentum going that way. Yeah, just an interesting, an interesting little project.
I like that.
Paul Lacey: [00:56:16] That's fine. There is, there is, uh, you know, for anyone who hasn't written blog posts before, there is a way that if you follow it, it's not too difficult. You know, you start by telling, so you start with grab, you know, a nice title, and then you tell people what they're going to learn. You, you bust a myth or something like that.
And, and, um, Bridget is actually in the comments. That's Richard
Nathan Wrigley: [00:56:37] bridge. Bridget is one of those people that hasn't pressed the stream yard button. If you press the go to the top of the comments, Bridget, sorry, top of the thread, click the stream yard link, then we can see your name. But anyway, sorry.
Paul Lacey: [00:56:51] So yeah, so this reminds me of Calvin Doosan's, um, WEP WP,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:56:58] exactly what I was
Paul Lacey: [00:56:59] thinking.
Yeah, Andre Gagnon as well as also the co-creator of that plugin. Um, it reminds me of that because Dr. WP puts lists like to do lists inside your WordPress dashboard. So right. The, you know, the, the WordPress list to, to do your security setup or your, or something else, SEO or something. Yeah. Yeah, just I'll just remember to set these things up before you launch the website kind of thing.
So this, this feels like, uh, I could see at, uh, Bridget and Kyle and Andre doing a bit of collaboration here. That'd be kind of cool, but yeah. Yeah, it's good. It's just helping people create content and, um, holding, holding yourself to account if you install the plugin really? Yup.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:57:39] Yup. That's nice. Um, that there ought to be, uh, instead of the delete button, there should be a delete with shame button.
Just overwrite that feel, that feels slightly less compelled to a click it more like it's like, that's a nice piece. Okay. Now going from something positive to something possibly alarming, certainly not the kind of thing we want to talk about, but it's necessary to talk about this is the word fence 2020 WordPress threats report.
I mean, we really could dig into the weeds here and obviously Wordfence are one of the. The biggest companies in the WordPress space, dealing with hardening and securing and firewalling your WordPress website. And so that gives them a, a great insight in each year into what's going on. And frankly, the numbers are terrifying in some respects.
So the, the takeaways are now. I should say, I've no idea how much of this is automated bots. It doesn't really matter to me because you know, the effect could still be the same 90 billion malicious password login attempts. I mean, you literally can't even like, try to imagine what 90 billion of anything actually looks like it.
How many are second does that equate to, I don't know how many seconds there are in a year, but I'm sure it's not 90 billion. Um, so this is happening a lot and then it goes on. So it provides the problem and then they suggest to sort of take away and they they're basically saying for this one, get yourself some multifactor authentication.
Uh, process actually have Wordfence have a free tool in the WordPress repo just for that purpose. That's all the that's all the free plugin does is allows you to have a, a second step to authenticate yourself 4.3 billion vulnerability, exploits attempts, uh, sorry, 4.3 billion volume, vulnerability exploits attempts targeting WordPress.
So that's it. That is to say their firewall block, that many, which is. Coming from 9.7 unique LEP addresses. I mean, how big is the IP space? That must be cool. So bits of it, um, and, and it breaks up those attacks into five common vectors, directory, traversal attacks, SQL injections, malicious file uploads intended to achieve remote code execution, cross site scripting and authentication bypass.
And the takeaway is user firewall, obviously. You know, this is to some extent it's very helpful information. On the other hand, it's also providing a nice, a nice way to introduce you to their own service. Um, and there's a whole bunch of other stuff.
Michelle Frechette: [01:00:12] Yeah. But I just want to say, I just did a little bit of math and 90 billion seconds is over 2000 years.
So some finitely. Definitely more than a few, a second.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:00:22] Absolutely. If you've ever sat watching your wa your firewall logs as they're happening, and your site is under attack, I was watching a, I was watching one of my sites, the CloudFlare blocking the other day. And it was, it was probably 10,000, every 40, 50 seconds.
It was absolutely. Bonkers the numbers that we're going through, I really could barely take it in. Um,
Michelle Frechette: [01:00:48] I remember these numbers are just what word fence has caught so that doesn't take into account. Any other security plugins just work better.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:00:57] So triple, quadruple, dunno what the number is. But anyway, the point is they've thrown together this nice article.
This feels like the perfect hammer that you can use against your website. Care plan clients who are, who are, who are wavering, who were about to walk away. You can produce this at look at these scary numbers. Have you any idea how many 90 billion is? Well, that's coming down on you. If you don't sign up to our care plan or install this plugin and blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, just absolutely bonkers numbers. One slightly cool thing that happened this week. And I don't know where we're going to go with this. I don't know if we'll ever. Um, make any use of this, but during the course of this week Wordfence and we mentioned it last week, Wordfence decided that they would offer a free cleanup service for K-12.
Is that, is there a thing, is it K-12 Michelle? Is that how they call schools? And
Michelle Frechette: [01:01:50] yeah, that's what they call it kindergarten through
Nathan Wrigley: [01:01:52] high school? Yes. Okay. So we're friends, we're going to clean up. Is that right? Was it clean up? Yes, it was, it was clean up for free. And, uh, and so I don't, I don't know quite how it happened, but Kathy's aunt and I ended up having a conversation in which she said, um, we can do that in the UK as well, if you like.
So if you are in any way connected to a UK school, Um, maybe you're a governor or I doubt you're a teacher cause you probably should be doing something else rather than listening to this at this moment in time. Um, reach out, you can either reach out to me in the Facebook group or Kathy Zant at Wordfence.
And she said that offer the same thing. It was quite interesting. Cause Tim Nash in our Facebook group pointed out that. That might not be possible on the UK law. There might be some problem with, with allowing Wordfence access. So caveat emptor, I don't know if that's the case, but it was, uh, it was a nice thing for them to offer anyway, off the, off the bat of that.
So I was very pleased with that. So that's the scary stuff.
Berhard Gronau: [01:02:57] It isn't that scary. I mean, if you take a little bit of care, it's fairly easy to secure your work precise. Uh, It doesn't matter which solution using Wordfence was to Curry or letterbox or hold, they call them you'll sensible passwords and not one, two, three, four, five, six, or stuff like that.
And most of that, just adjust a little bit of file injection or something like that. Uh, and the scary thing is it's, it's Sweezy to do it or to try it out because just go to build work, forget the list of WordPress sites rather than script. Uh, we'll find it online. There are so many options and just run it.
Via your site and you have a, I don't know, a little bit of in protection or adapt to your plugins. Uh, and then it's, it's fairly easy to get in. Uh, but it's fairly easy to keep people out. Some people sometimes they'll tell you that it's like leaving your key at your door. It makes for sure. Yeah. For people to get in the door, shut it down and have the view becomes much more difficult to get into your house.
So it's not that scary, but it's. You need push to take care of it because if somebody wants to get in and has an idea what he's doing, uh Wordfence or others might not be sufficient because if the website of the Pentagon can be, can get back, it's, it's a measure of time and dedication to throw it aside and we'll find a way in I'm quite sure most of the time.
On any level from the server to your application tour to whatever. So, but nobody really fast that because your site is just, um, it's just the reverse it because they want to add some spam to your site and whatever, uh, and edit to their networks. So it's, if you can't get, if they can't get easy in, then you'll get active.
It's hard. You must have, for sure. Upset, upset someone with the right skills.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:05:10] Um, yeah. Yeah, you're right. Not that scary. Just make sure you're doing all the right things and take some backups, please. Everybody make sure you back it up. Then at least you've got somewhere to go. If the worst does happen, why would people spend their time doing this stage?
Really remarkable. Um, there's also, you know, you can just buy this stuff off the shelf as a SAS service if you want. Well, yeah. I don't know quite what the URLs are and I wouldn't tell you if I'd knew, but you can just buy a package of. Malware injection, um, our, a packet of package for infecting WordPress websites and taking them over good grief.
What a world we live in,
Paul Lacey: [01:05:48] um, security engineer. You need to know how these things work. I remember I was when I was university back when I graduated in 20. 220 actually, no, 2020 zero zero zero in 2000. I did the last part of my dissertation on web security and I bought a book called web security and it came with a CD rom on the back, which had more or less all the main hacking tools included on there.
This was just a regular book that you buy in the shops. I mean, it came with a kind of warning. Don't actually use these tools, put
Nathan Wrigley: [01:06:19] this in your computer,
Paul Lacey: [01:06:20] just look at here they are. Yeah, here they are. This is how they work. This is how you can see how they're going. I think, um, uh, talking about security and also, um, Nathan's, um, Scare mongering, selling tactics that you use this with his care plan clients to tell them, you know, how their websites are going to get hurt.
Good. It did remind me of a little bit of drama this last week with a jet pack. I don't know if any of you saw this and I Bridget saw it because I can see her in, uh, Twitter talking about it. Um, so. There was a, uh, I kind of noticed it was another controversial notice in the dashboard this time it was Jetpack.
You're obviously owned by automatic and the notice said Jetpack, adding plugins, going to expose your site to security risks, stay one step ahead of threats. We've automated malware scanning and one-click fixes. So then as I get Jetpack scan, which obviously when you click that. It's going to cost you some money to buy that particular service.
So there was a bit of, um, I call it drama because, you know, that's, it was kind of a, a kind of dramatic, um, thing that, uh, some people reacted to, I think is wrong. I don't think Jetpack should put. Scare tactics in and to be able to put those announcements in and have it funneling through to their paid services.
Um, but, uh, they were called out on it by a number of people. They changed the wording and they, they, they claimed it. You know, it wasn't a big thing. Uh, you know, it wasn't like trying to scare people into it, but yeah, it was another. Announcements in the dashboard drama. So I really hope there's announcements in the dashboard drama.
That's sorted out at some point in the core. That would be that I'd like to see that on the video
Nathan Wrigley: [01:08:12] coordinate roadmap. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Can we
Paul Lacey: [01:08:15] replace number three that I didn't understand with that one and that one that was okay.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:08:21] Yeah, the contributors. Get it. We just want to get rid of the admin next.
Yeah, I
Michelle Frechette: [01:08:28] was, I was doing a screen share with a customer the other day, and I was telling them that it would be at the top of the page. And then I realized that the top of the page was actually at the bottom of the screen because of all of the announcements showing on their dashboard, you know, things like the plugins being out of date and not connected to, you know, Things like that, but I was like, well, normally it's at the top.
Once you clear all those notifications,
Nathan Wrigley: [01:08:52] we don't make it easy for ourselves. Um, we got a couple more bits to go. I'm going to rush through this one because I want to get to, um, I want to get to the piece, which Michelle has brought along for the ride. Um, but first of all, I'm just going to mention this one.
If you're using Facebook ads, I'm sure we've mentioned this before. Uh, this is over on tech crunch. If you're using Facebook ads, it may be that things are about to get a lot harder because we've definitely mentioned this before. Apple are about to switch on. Maybe they've done it already. I don't know the date.
They're about to switch on, um, the fact that in iOS, which I'm guessing is in. Huge. You know, I'm imagining it's in the twenties or thirties percent of all internet traffic, if you, if you want to track some thing in iOS. So Facebook is the obvious example because it was a lot of advertising based around tracking and following you around from now, you will have to give consent for that.
So the, the popup will come up basically saying, do you want to be tracked? And, um, And I reckon in just about every case, I will say no. I can think of very few examples where my default is going to be. Yes, please track me. Um, and so as you'd imagine, this is a real, this is a real feather in the cap of Apple security model.
It positions them as, as a real difference, for example, between the carrier of an Android phone and the carrier on an Apple phone, but it puts them into conflict with a lot of people. Uh, in this case, we're looking at a picture of Tim cook, shouting and Mark Zuckerberg listening. And, um, and so Facebook are going to be really upset about this.
They're pivoting it and trying to sort of make out that the ad platform is used by millions of businesses to make that business successful. So rather than saying, it's going to hurt Facebook's bottom line, they're using the angle while it's going to hurt small business, which is an intriguing. Yes, that's probably true, but I'm not entirely sure that.
Facebook is all about small business. Um, I don't know. I should probably shut up now because their lawyers look at me.
Michelle Frechette: [01:10:59] Okay. Can I say about this photo though? Is that, is that, um, you know, Tim cook looks like he's yelling, get off my lawn and, and Zuckerberg is yelling back it's everybody's lawn. Yeah.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:11:11] Yeah.
I really don't know what to make of this because I see this as a positive, but I have that predilection. I don't have. My business invested in Facebook ads. If I were to have my business invested in Facebook ads, this would be really a big deal for me. Um, and I don't know if any of you guys do, um, I don't know if give WP, for example, use Facebook ads to, you know, surface ads on the Facebook platform.
And if so, have you looked into how you're going to manage when all of this kind of dries up a bit? Maybe we do use
Michelle Frechette: [01:11:43] Facebook ads. I'm not on the marketing team, so I'm not sure about all of that, but I'll make sure that they see this article.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:11:49] Yeah. Okay. Well, okay. I don't have an iOS phone anyway, so it's all moot.
Paul Lacey: [01:11:54] Well, I've, I've just ordered an IRS phone. It's coming tomorrow because my contract was up for renewal and they promised I could get a nice new phone. So I went, they were able to
Nathan Wrigley: [01:12:02] track the package as it arrives. Um,
Paul Lacey: [01:12:06] you have to take
Nathan Wrigley: [01:12:06] the calcs. To track. It was a joke. It was
Michelle Frechette: [01:12:15] probably the answer is
Paul Lacey: [01:12:16] yes. That was a funny joke. Wasn't it? Thank you. Thank you very much.
I think it's a good thing. I think, uh, I used to really hate all these cookie pop-ups because they caused the business owners lots of problems that they didn't really understand. The more time that goes on. Maybe I'm just getting old. Um, I, I start to feel more, um, passionate about data being protected, but I liked the idea that the device manufacturer is taken is taking the lead on this and going, I don't care what the complications in the laws are here.
We're going to make our users know what's going on. And I think the answer to this is if this gets annoying for users, then as an iPhone, is someone using an iPhone. For instance, I think the annoyance will not be directed at the iPhone. It will be directed at the people collecting your data. Right. And I think that that's the right place that the, the, the frustration should be directed at.
Whereas I think, um, what, what happens in, in. Opposite to that is that when you're not aware that your data's getting collected and it pops up in some other place than you'd, you're disconnected from who it was that followed you and told someone else that you were interested in buying an lawn mower.
Yeah. So I think this is good. And I'd like to see more of this. And quite honestly, this affected my decision to get an iPhone because. Like we said earlier, me and Nathan talk every Friday about the articles that we're going to cover. And we did have a chat about privacy and stuff like that on Friday.
And then my phone popped up and said, Hey, you can go to a new phone. Do you want to stick with Android or iOS? And I thought, do you know what? I am stuck with Google? I'm really in deep with Google, but at least I can stop one vector of attack back from the private plus it got a nice new phone. There was nothing to do.
Yeah.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:14:16] I was going to say, come on, suck it up. It's got nothing to do secure. So he's just wanting an iPhone. Yeah.
Berhard Gronau: [01:14:23] It's all of us a difficult deficient because tracking isn't bad per se. It's what happens with the data or it's like gunpowder can be used. For good stuff like blowing away, real blocks, blocking or old or whatever that can be used to shoot people. Uh, yeah,
Nathan Wrigley: [01:14:42] I mean, but I kind of think that in any scenario, apart from the digital space, if somebody was following you around,
there would be nothing acceptable about that. If there was a person that you didn't know who was, every time you turned your back, they were like 20 feet away. Just staring at you, watching and making little notes. Turn the corner, went left, went right. Pause for five seconds. You know, it's, what I think has happened is we've just allowed this to happen because there's been no oversight because nobody saw this stuff coming.
And now we're at the point where people are going, look, look what we've allowed to happen. We need to readdress this. And so it's now a big deal. If we'd have had the insight to think this, this is a potential problem, we should block this at the beginning. We wouldn't be freaking out. Most people would.
People
Berhard Gronau: [01:15:33] didn't realize it's an issue because often the discussion, well, I don't care. I have nothing to hide. Everybody can narrow it. Yep. Um, people willingly share stuff on Facebook, I think, Oh my God, I'm on the way. Oh, I can rap you. Or I dunno, I have found this shit or that chip. And on the other hand, they are complaining about Facebook collecting data.
It's very, very real well currently sometimes. Yeah, because the data can be used for good things. Like to find trends, to find problems, to find issues to, to, because sometimes you need a large data set, but then on the other hand, if you can nail it down to one people individually, we've got big issues and that's not about.
To know where you live, but it's about to what might your political opinions or, uh, if you know, a few years, uh, sometimes don't get a chop because all we have to not the, as a young guy or whatever, or because. We have a percentage of 60%, you might get cancer because you have a lifestyle and then a company doesn't offer your chops.
So it's a very, very difficult situation. And I have no idea how all those will play out in the long run because the data is already collected and stored somewhere because that nobody forgets in the internet.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:16:54] Yeah. Well, if you're like me and have an Android phone, you're doomed. And if you pull those here and you're getting yourself a nice new iPhone, you're fine.
You'll live in some utopia. Um, yeah, but you have
Berhard Gronau: [01:17:03] still a Mac or you have a PC or you have. Uh, uh, do you have, uh, I don't know, health insurance and they collect data. Um, it's, it's, doesn't stop with Facebook.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:17:16] This podcast is finished. I'm going to go in line a box with some lead and I'm just going to go and sit in it.
Yeah, I'm going to make, what's it called a Faraday cage. I'm just going to create a Faraday cage and sit in it and get food pass through it. Letterbox that that's my ambition for 20, 21 next
Paul Lacey: [01:17:36] week. So it's going to be brilliant,
Michelle Frechette: [01:17:38] like Skinner meets spirit day, get the skin area box, but it's lead lined.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:17:44] Honestly, 2021 was the year of the Faraday cage. This is the year we all stayed inside and did nothing. Um, right. We're going to go to more positive things. Uh, Michelle as always incredibly busy is always doing something in the, in the world of the internet and. Give WP got a couple of things happen in this week.
I confess, I don't know a lot about them. So Michelle, we're starting with the one on the screen and open invitation.
Michelle Frechette: [01:18:10] Yeah. So we have, uh, we're using, uh, a system called or an online. Event called gather. And so out of, if you can scroll down, you can, I can see, is
Nathan Wrigley: [01:18:19] this the eight bit thing?
Michelle Frechette: [01:18:22] Yeah. Yep. So we're having a a hundred thousand celebration.
We have over a hundred thousand active installs right now, give WP. Um, I've been with the company a little over three years now and, you know, really enjoy the work that I do with our customers. So seeing so many people raising money all over the world using give is very exciting to me. So over a hundred thousand active installs, that's the free plugin, lots of people, of course, using our add ons as well.
But what you're seeing right now on screen, if you, if you can't see it, I will tell you it's our San Diego office. So we've actually created recreated our offices. You won't see on screen right now, but we've also created the New York office, the one I'm sitting in. So you can see it. For real behind me right now, but you'll see it online.
If you join our hundred thousand celebration, it is free to join. Just go to give wp.com. There's a link right in the header. Um, we're growing giveaways, we're doing some fun things. Um, the sea shanty is very popular right now. I have written a sea shanty and, uh, several of us are tic talking it as a duet.
So we'll be able to actually, you'll be able to hear our sea shanty, uh, forgive WP as well as you can see, there's a lots of other plug-ins. Um, and people in the WordPress space that are giving away things for us as well. It's going to be quite the celebration. So it is this Friday. I'm going to give wp.com.
If you're interested in joining us, we would love to have you there.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:19:40] That's a cool initiative. And just for a bit of fun, I get it. This gather town thing is just so interesting. It's like a imagine going back to, I don't know, the late nineties or something, that'd be early nineties when you had a Xanax spectrum or a Commodore 64.
That that's, that's what it's like, but it's an online. Events platform based around moving these eight bit characters around. And when you, when you approach somebody, you start to hear their audio. So the closer you get to them, the louder their audio gets. And as you move further away, so you can literally back away from a conversation and it just sort of goes away and you're, it's very clever.
And also. Because it's a bit and it's not trying to be super duper 3d AI, sorry, augmented reality stuff. You just, you just sort of get stuck into it a bit more, you know, you enter rooms and leave rooms. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. And there was something else. What's this one.
Michelle Frechette: [01:20:30] Yeah. So we actually have a new free Adda.
And last year was the year of free ad-ons forgive WP. Uh, we launched lots of fun, little things. One of them was an element or add on so that you can use a give WP with elements are blocks. And now we have included Devi as well. So last week we launched. Um, donation modules for divvy. So if you are a DB user and we know there are hundreds of thousands of sites using Devi, you can now integrate giv very easily with our DB black.
So it just go to our website, as I said, give WP and all of our free ad-ons our course in the repository. So they'll, you'll find them there on wordpress.org as well. If you just search for give WP. And yeah, so it's pretty exciting. We've got some really exciting things happening at give and, uh, just super happy to be part of it.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:21:12] Thank you. I don't know why it is, but Devi, just, we never seem to give time to divvy this. I don't know why
Berhard Gronau: [01:21:20] it is,
Michelle Frechette: [01:21:21] you know, it's funny. I think that whatever page builder you use first tends to be the one that you then stick with, especially if you've invested any, any money in it. So I've been using DB for years.
I love TV. So it's exciting. I mean, I use the other ones too, of course, because I work with customers all over the world, but, um, but kind of Debbie kind of brings me home, you know? And so to see something, um, like Devi elementary are those patient elders and then that we're able to be responsive and help our customers that way.
It's pretty exciting.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:21:48] Very cool. So head over to, um, give WP and check out the various things going on. That's really, really nice. I, I feel like we've run out of things that we were going to talk about. I don't, there was one thing at the end, but I think I'm going to just drop that off. Cause we're approaching an hour and a half and really that's the, that's the cutoff point.
So, um, I'm just going to say what I'm doing this week. Not a lot. I'm just going to be working on a couple of, couple of different projects that I've got going on. What about you, Paul Bernard, Michelle, let's start with Paul something.
Paul Lacey: [01:22:17] Just trying to find spots in the house to work. Uh, everybody here in, in the four of us today.
So my little photo of I'm working at my daughter's makeup table. This is, this is, this is why I've got good lights today. Yeah, it's
Nathan Wrigley: [01:22:34] nice.
Paul Lacey: [01:22:37] When she wants to come back up, I'll be demoted too. The cupboard, Andres, Andre, Ghanians cupboard or something like Harry Potter.
Yeah.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:22:47] What you doing?
Berhard Gronau: [01:22:49] Oh, not really planned that much.
Uh, working on, well, it's always comes something. Come out. Kit comes up. Um, tomorrow I have some, some stuff to do in the city and Vienna. Um, yeah, playing around with new ties. Like we, we got end of last year, we got, uh, a solar roof, um, an electric vehicle. So it's, it's, it's funny getting new things and statistics.
Oh, we produce the, I don't know. 15 kilowatt hours in the winter. Um, I don't know how much kilowatt hours went to new cars. It's just funny to do something good. And to have a little bit of, I don't know why it's just
Nathan Wrigley: [01:23:32] interesting. Oh yeah. Oh no, totally agree. I completely agree. That's great. Um, yeah, don't, don't go out too much in the car.
Otherwise your heating would go off or something, you know, there'll be some trade off there. Yeah, the is ready to go, but we're freezing. Um, Pacer Ingersoll in the comments has said, he's, can't wait for your new website. Paul, you got some names at the
Paul Lacey: [01:23:54] moment.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:23:58] I got
Paul Lacey: [01:23:58] enough clients that I don't, I don't want to, I try not to attract any new ones at the moment.
Michelle Frechette: [01:24:07] You're like the complex children with no shoes. You're the web designer with no website.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:24:11] Yeah. Yeah. Pretty common heal myself. Um, Michelle,
Michelle Frechette: [01:24:16] well, in addition to all the stuff going on again, I'm also on the big orange heart volunteer team. And this week we are doing our, um, Our debriefing about word Fest and what went well and looking at the feedback that we've gotten as well as starting to plan the next one.
And I'm going to put in a little plug here. So if you haven't gone to big orange chart at all right now, you can get my book. There's my book, a good firm handshake. It's definitely was written pre COVID because nobody's shaking hands though. But for any donation that you make through a big orange heart right now, you'll get a PDF download of my book, which is all about ways to.
Um, move yourself forward in business. So, um, I'm not making any money off it. I donated it to be used for bigger in charge. Yeah. So, um, so yeah, so I'm not plugging it because it's my bucket. I'm plugging it because I think everybody, um, should promote big orange heart and the work that we do there for the remote work
Nathan Wrigley: [01:25:08] community.
I thoroughly agree. I wonder what we'd have called that book. If we'd have known maybe like a good elbow bump or something.
Michelle Frechette: [01:25:17] I, I, I'm starting to think about version two and like, maybe like in lieu of the handshake or like, And wave. I really haven't decided yet.
Nathan Wrigley: [01:25:26] What about a, a good firm? Well, sanitized, pithy to the point it's eminently readable.
Well, I'll just round up by saying thank you very much. Thank you to burn it. Thank you to Paul. Thank you to Michelle for joining us again this week, we'll be back 2:00 PM UK time next week during the, this weekend WordPress thing all over again until then. Bye bye for now. Thanks
Berhard Gronau: [01:25:50] for having
Michelle Frechette: [01:25:50] me.