This Week in WordPress #203

This week’s WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 28th March 2022

Another week, and we’re bringing you the latest WordPress news from the last seven days, including…

  • Should WordPress convert your images to WebP by default?
  • Full Site Editing ‘Call for Testing #13’ needs your help.
  • The WordPress Pattern Creator tool is now open for public use.
  • WordCamp Asia is back in 2023 and they need some volunteer organisers.
  • Snow Monkey is a great new plugin to help you style WordPress Core blocks.
  • Facebook is now likely to face a law suit about how it charges for ads on the platform.

There’s a whole lot more than this, as there is each and every week, and you can find all that by scrolling down and clicking on the links!

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This Week in WordPress #203 – Camer ‘on/off’

This Week in WordPress #203 - WP Builds

With Nathan Wrigley, Remkus de Vries, Ines van Dijk and Cameron Jones.

Recorded on Monday 4th April 2022.
If you ever want to join us live you can do that every Monday at 2pm UK time on the WP Builds LIVE page.


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WordPress Core

Performance Team Proposes Enabling WebP by Default in WordPress 6.0
WordPress’ Performance Team has published a feature proposal that would enable WebP images by default, expanding core support for the modern image format…
Performance Team Proposes Enabling WebP by Default in WordPress 6.0
WordPress’ Performance Team has published a feature proposal that would enable WebP images by default, expanding core support for the modern image format…
What’s new in Gutenberg 12.9? (30 March 2022)
Blocks and block themes continue to get more and more flexible and easy to work with. The Gutenberg 12.9 release brings over many features that enable both theme developers and website administrators more control over what is editable and presented to users…
What’s new in Gutenberg 12.9? (30 March 2022)
Blocks and block themes continue to get more and more flexible and easy to work with. The Gutenberg 12.9 release brings over many features that enable both theme developers and website administrators more control over what is editable and presented to users…
FSE Program Testing Call #13: Authoring an Author Template
This post is the thirteenth call for testing (lucky number 13!) as part of the Full Site Editing Outreach Program.Ahead of WordPress 6.0, new features and options are rapidly being added that expand upon the foundation 5.9 set. The result is this test that walks you through creating a template for your author pages, locking blocks to prevent removal or movement, new design options, a new No Results block, and more..
FSE Program Testing Call #13: Authoring an Author Template
This post is the thirteenth call for testing (lucky number 13!) as part of the Full Site Editing Outreach Program.Ahead of WordPress 6.0, new features and options are rapidly being added that expand upon the foundation 5.9 set. The result is this test that walks you through creating a template for your author pages, locking blocks to prevent removal or movement, new design options, a new No Results block, and more..
6.0 Product Walk-Through
This is a summary post to provide additional information regarding the forthcominglive stream preview/walkthrough of WordPress 6.0. The event will take place on Tuesday, 5 April 2022, [16:00] BST via Zoom..
6.0 Product Walk-Through
This is a summary post to provide additional information regarding the forthcominglive stream preview/walkthrough of WordPress 6.0. The event will take place on Tuesday, 5 April 2022, [16:00] BST via Zoom..
WordPress 5.9.3 RC 1
WordPress 5.9.3 Release Candidate 1 is available for testing..
WordPress 5.9.3 RC 1
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Community

The WordPress.org Pattern Creator Now Open to the Public
The WordPress pattern directory finally opened its gates to the entire community today. Anyone with a WordPress.org account can log in, go to the pattern creator, and start designing…
The WordPress.org Pattern Creator Now Open to the Public
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Proposal to remove spam/dormant Five for the Future pledges
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Represent Your Community: Join the WordCamp Asia 2023 Team
It’s hard to believe over 2 years have passed since we announced the cancellation of our first flagship WordCamp in the region, WordCamp Asia 2020. Now, I’m happy to announce the organising team is back together and ready to plan our event in February 2023! While the majority of the team is coming back, we are looking for some additional members to join us…
Represent Your Community: Join the WordCamp Asia 2023 Team
It’s hard to believe over 2 years have passed since we announced the cancellation of our first flagship WordCamp in the region, WordCamp Asia 2020. Now, I’m happy to announce the organising team is back together and ready to plan our event in February 2023! While the majority of the team is coming back, we are looking for some additional members to join us…
#20 – Oliver Sild on the State of WordPress Security
On the podcast today we have Oliver Sild from Patchstack. Patchstack is a product which is designed to help you identify plugin vulnerabilities in your WordPress sites. We talk about how, over the past couple of years, Patchstack has released an annual report concerning the state of WordPress security…
#20 – Oliver Sild on the State of WordPress Security
On the podcast today we have Oliver Sild from Patchstack. Patchstack is a product which is designed to help you identify plugin vulnerabilities in your WordPress sites. We talk about how, over the past couple of years, Patchstack has released an annual report concerning the state of WordPress security…
“Flawed” WordPress Proposal Causes Backlash
WordPress community offers negative response to proposed feature that could cause disk usage to rise by up to 70%…
“Flawed” WordPress Proposal Causes Backlash
WordPress community offers negative response to proposed feature that could cause disk usage to rise by up to 70%…
WordPress Block Patterns In-Depth: Why and How to Use Them
WordPress block patterns offer a convenient way to quickly create complex pages and designs. Learn what they are and how to use them here…
WordPress Block Patterns In-Depth: Why and How to Use Them
WordPress block patterns offer a convenient way to quickly create complex pages and designs. Learn what they are and how to use them here…
WP Migrate DB Rebrands to WP Migrate
WP Migrate DB, a popular WordPress site migration plugin by Delicious Brains, has rebranded to WP Migrate with its latest version 2.3 release. The original name was always a bit of a mouthful but also became a less accurate representation of the plugin’s full capabilities as they grew over time…
WP Migrate DB Rebrands to WP Migrate
WP Migrate DB, a popular WordPress site migration plugin by Delicious Brains, has rebranded to WP Migrate with its latest version 2.3 release. The original name was always a bit of a mouthful but also became a less accurate representation of the plugin’s full capabilities as they grew over time…

Plugins / Themes / Blocks

Text Selection Across Multiple Blocks Is Coming to WordPress
Yesterday, Ella van Durpe merged a long-awaited feature into the Gutenberg plugin that allows users to select and modify text across multiple Rich Text blocks. It should land in version 13.0 of the plugin and WordPress 6.0 in May…
Text Selection Across Multiple Blocks Is Coming to WordPress
Yesterday, Ella van Durpe merged a long-awaited feature into the Gutenberg plugin that allows users to select and modify text across multiple Rich Text blocks. It should land in version 13.0 of the plugin and WordPress 6.0 in May…
Snow Monkey Editor Plugin Adds Custom Styles to WordPress Core Blocks
As block themes generally include less custom CSS than traditional themes, some plugin developers are experimenting with applying interesting styles to WordPress’ core blocks. Snow Monkey Editor, created by developer Takashi Kitajima, is one such plugin that doesn’t include any custom blocks. Instead, it extends the block editor to give unique styles to core blocks, giving them the appearance of custom blocks…
Snow Monkey Editor Plugin Adds Custom Styles to WordPress Core Blocks
As block themes generally include less custom CSS than traditional themes, some plugin developers are experimenting with applying interesting styles to WordPress’ core blocks. Snow Monkey Editor, created by developer Takashi Kitajima, is one such plugin that doesn’t include any custom blocks. Instead, it extends the block editor to give unique styles to core blocks, giving them the appearance of custom blocks…
WebMan Design Launches Abs, Additional Styles for Native WordPress Blocks
WebMan Design owner Oliver Juhas released the first version of the Abs – Additional block styles plugin on Monday. Unlike many block-related extensions, it does not offer any blocks of its own. Instead, it registers custom styles to enhance those packaged with core WordPress…
WebMan Design Launches Abs, Additional Styles for Native WordPress Blocks
WebMan Design owner Oliver Juhas released the first version of the Abs – Additional block styles plugin on Monday. Unlike many block-related extensions, it does not offer any blocks of its own. Instead, it registers custom styles to enhance those packaged with core WordPress…

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Deals

Amelia booking plugin – back on Appsumo for $49
Book unlimited appointments and events with the help of a simple and robust WordPress plugin…
Amelia booking plugin – back on Appsumo for $49
Book unlimited appointments and events with the help of a simple and robust WordPress plugin…
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Security

Reflected XSS in Spam protection, AntiSpam, FireWall by CleanTalk
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Reflected XSS in Spam protection, AntiSpam, FireWall by CleanTalk
On February 15, 2022, the Wordfence Threat Intelligence team finished research on two separate vulnerabilities in Spam protection, AntiSpam, FireWall by CleanTalk, a WordPress plugin with over 100,000 installations…
WordPress Vulnerability Report – March 30, 2022
Vulnerable plugins and themes are the #1 reason WordPress websites get hacked. The weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report powered by WPScan covers recent WordPress plugin, theme, and core vulnerabilities, and what to do if you run one of the vulnerable plugins or themes on your website…
WordPress Vulnerability Report – March 30, 2022
Vulnerable plugins and themes are the #1 reason WordPress websites get hacked. The weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report powered by WPScan covers recent WordPress plugin, theme, and core vulnerabilities, and what to do if you run one of the vulnerable plugins or themes on your website…

WP Builds

272 – Sell digital products with Lemon Squeezy
On the podcast today we have JR Farr and Gilbert Pellegrom from a new platform called Lemon Squeezy. Lemon Squeezy is a SaaS based platform with a WordPress integration…
272 – Sell digital products with Lemon Squeezy
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Episode 212: Tips From The Legends of WordPress Podcasting
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Episode 212: Tips From The Legends of WordPress Podcasting
Rob Cairns sits down with Nathan Wrigley and Bob Dunn to talk podcasting. Bob, Nathan and Rob have all had shows that have hit episode 200 in the last month so enjoy the amazing conversation from these Podcast experts, well, 2 of the 3 anyway!
Winners! Episode #200 Giveaway
See if you’re one of the lucky winners! Big thanks to Yoast, Kadence WP and StellarWP for offering up such fantastic prizes!
Winners! Episode #200 Giveaway
See if you’re one of the lucky winners! Big thanks to Yoast, Kadence WP and StellarWP for offering up such fantastic prizes!

Jobs

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Not WordPress, but useful anyway…

TikTok Launches Search Ads Beta For Selected Partners
TikTok has quietly rolled out a search ads beta for specific partners. Learn about the new experience and some tips for using these ads…
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Facebook sued for overstating advertising reach
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Facebook sued for overstating advertising reach
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Transcript (if available)

These transcripts are created using software, so apologies if there are errors in them.

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[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: It's time for this weekend. WordPress episode number 203 entitled camer on off, it was recorded on Monday the 4th of April, 2022, my name's Nathan Wrigley. And this week I'm joined by three guests. I'm joined by Remkus de Vries. I'm joined by Ines van Dijk and we're joined by Cameron Jones, but there was a complete tech breakdown and he wasn't really able to stick around except in the comments.

But nevertheless, we plowed on, there was a whole load of stuff to talk about in the WordPress space this week. First stop. We talk about the team proposing, enabling in 6.0 WordPress 6.0, the fact that. P images will be created by default. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? The full site editing call for testing is on number 13.

And we talk about how you can get involved in that wordpress.org pattern creator is now open to the public so that you can create your own patterns. Also, we talk about the fact that word camp Asia is about to start again, it's happening in February next year. And they're looking to set up an organizing team, fabulous new plugin called snow monkey, which enables you to style beautifully core WordPress blocks.

And then we get into quite a lengthy conversation about Facebook and the fact that they are being sued for misrepresenting their ad revenue. There's a little bit of silliness towards the end as well, but I hope that you enjoy it. I am joined by three fabulous guests. We've got to REMCOs how you doing?

[00:01:43] Remkus de Vries: Excellent.

[00:01:46] Nathan Wrigley: You are excellent. REMCOs I have no biography written down for you. So I'm going to ask you to bio yourself.

[00:01:56] Remkus de Vries: There. There is one actually. Oh,

[00:02:00] Nathan Wrigley: Good possibly came, right? Will you bring it out?

[00:02:04] Remkus de Vries: I actually get it. I actually made a point of putting it in there.

[00:02:10] Nathan Wrigley: Will you read it out for me?

[00:02:12] Remkus de Vries: I I shell, so a head of people and partners it's circled and

Thank

[00:02:18] Nathan Wrigley: you so much.

I really appreciate it. REMCOs of course has been on the show times before he's he's got a lot of interesting opinions, so hopefully we'll share some of those. Today's quite a lot of WordPress's stuff to talk about. And we've got somebody new on the show today. We've never had Ines Vandyke before, but how are you?

How are you?

[00:02:38] Ines van Dijk: I'm good. Yeah, I'm sad that the weather is nasty where I'm at, but otherwise I'm good. Thanks.

[00:02:46] Nathan Wrigley: You,

You're in Holland, but I hope you'll forgive me for this. You

[00:02:51] Ines van Dijk: know

[00:02:53] Nathan Wrigley: what? You have a very English accent. Yeah.

[00:02:59] Ines van Dijk: Yeah. This is I've been dating someone who's a Brit for a year and a half now, and he's very pretty.

Oh, the fact that I know speak the Queen's English.

[00:03:14] Nathan Wrigley: You, you, yeah, you are indistinguishable from somebody who might live next door to me anyway. Very nice to meet you. I'll give you your bio interaction. Quality specialist is what in a store. She's got over a decade worth of experience in the WordPress environment.

So it's an absolute pleasure to have you on. Hopefully you'll enjoy it and come back several times since the future. And we also have and it's four in the morning or something over in Australia. Thank you for staying up. It's not that bad. It's about half 10. I think something like that.

Have you done Cameron? Yeah, it's help us stand here. How are you doing?

It is I think a bit laggy. Cameron was saying to me before the show began that he was suffering a bit of lag. So what we'll probably have to do for Cameron if you're unable to solve the light, just keep, maybe refresh or something, Cameron. And if that doesn't solve it, we'll just make sure to give you some breathing room so that we'll make sure that you're able to get your stuff in.

Even if it's not quite so tooling and fro-ing and Cameron, I don't know if it's you, I suspect it might be somebody is clicking their mouse and it's been picked up really loudly on the microphone. So if that is you, I don't know if you're able to mute your mic in between times, but that would be really useful.

Thank you so much. Cameron, hopefully you can hear us. Let's see how we go. Okay. Let's share the cameras. Get the screen up. This is WP builds. This is our websites. If you want to keep updated, you can click the subscribe link at the top of there. And on this website, we basically drone on about WordPress we're on episode 203 of this show and we're on episode.

Oh, I dunno. What are we on 272 of our main pod cast. And if you're interested in WordPress, we stop and get yourself subscribed. A couple of people drop it into the chat. Hello, Rob Cairns. Nice to have you with us. Really nice to see you once more. And also Peter Ingersoll. What is he saying? He say my clocks are finally aligned with Nathan's.

Yes, we had problems. Cause last week everything went out of kilter because the British to change. But hopefully this week we'll be fine. Okay. Let's crack on. Shall we? If you're like imaging. This'll be good news to you for the longest period of time. In fact, I would say since forever, since I've been using the internet, my stock thing has been to use a JPEG.

Whenever I've taken a photo on my camera or downloaded something from the internet, more or less all the time, it has been a JPEG. Maybe it was a PNG, which I believe is pronounced ping. But we've got some new image formats coming down the pipe, and one of them is called web P. Apparently it was created by Google.

Not that really matters, but according to Sarah Gooding on the WP Tavern website later, last week, she was saying that the WordPress team, I think in the inversion six, they might well put it in to core. So if you've dropped any kind of image particularly JPEGs, it will then on the backend.

Create a web P version for you. And you're probably thinking to yourself what's the point of that? The point of that is that it uses apparently according to this 30% less file size. So let's say you've got a one main JPEG. You might end up with us or six, 700 kilobyte web P, which is obviously going to speed things up.

And the intention would be you drop a JPEG into the media library and it creates a web P version. I cannot see the downside. So this, but some people in the comments are saying hang on a minute. Maybe it's going to make additional how this space, because we don't seem to have the clarity yet on what it's going to do.

If it's creating an additional image. Does that mean that instead of, I don't know, a thumb nail and a medium and a large and all of that, we're going to now have a web P and will they be thumbnail medium or large as well? So, Hey, I think this is really good. I know REM cuss, one of your big things is performance.

This is performance, right? It

[00:07:16] Remkus de Vries: is and the comments are not wrong. It will create more it leave most storage. Sure. But I think that's a non discussion. The performance gain is is 30% is pretty big. It there's no argument. The quality is the same. Do you are required to push less over the data?

So there's really no reason why you wouldn't be able to, you wouldn't want to do this. It makes it may start faster. We should all want this.

[00:07:56] Nathan Wrigley: Apparently, if you look at the, if you look at like a JPEG and you look at a webpage, there is you think you just indistinguishable you human. I just cannot see the difference.

[00:08:07] Remkus de Vries: No, I I've been using a wet P for a couple of years now. There's there is no difference. There's it's a built in feature from called fair. For instance, a CloudFlare can service your images as well as from a CDN perspective. And it's if you have a pro account at services the webpage format there's yeah there's no downside and storage is really not the thing you want to be using as the argument to not do that.

[00:08:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's a good point. If you're faster, you're going to get more discovers. Yeah, that's a good point. In S what do you make of this?

[00:08:47] Ines van Dijk: To be honest with you, this is a bit that I know very little about main, thing's always been supportive workers and assorted other plugins performance has never really been thing.

So it's got very little to say about

[00:09:08] Nathan Wrigley: this. Sorry. What'd you do, though. If you were loading product images, would you be telling clients and what have you, from now on use web P I'm just going to put a graphic up. Actually, we've got a link from here to the can I use website, which illustrates, I think a couple of years ago for using web P when Remco start to use it, there was probably patchy support for it.

Maybe some browsers didn't offer.

[00:09:33] Remkus de Vries: That's what I was, there was a fallback mechanism in place. Great. If not, here's the old dirty pack.

[00:09:43] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. But I think now basically that the time for that excuse has gone away would appear that, now you're going to be doing this on every single piece of software that I've got that creates images, be those product images for will commerce or what have you.

They have the option to create it as a web P image. So I don't know whether you'd be telling your clients yeah. Stop using JPEG start using.

[00:10:05] Ines van Dijk: If you look at some of the clients that will come as house they have very large inventory for their products. So they have massive.

Storage needs the imagery. And if you gain a 30% on performance, grandpa said that's massive. So yeah, I could definitely see that being recommended to to power users.

[00:10:39] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it says Sarah, and I'm going to quote a using web images, creates websites, stuff lighter and faster compared to JPEG images, web images generated by WordPress are almost always smaller, 30% plus or minus variation on average.

You won't even notice what's going on in WordPress. It looks like you'll just upload it. And that will all happen in the background. I think the concern isn't should people do this? I think the obvious answer to that is yes. It's just whether or not WordPress should do it to by default, if you upload a JPEG, should there be a toggle, some website?

No, leave my JPEGs alone. I want them, if you can

[00:11:15] Remkus de Vries: find one single argument that sticks.

[00:11:18] Nathan Wrigley: And go into the comments. And I'd say if you couldn't

we seem to have lost Cameron. Let's see if we can drag Cameron back in. I think, as we said at the top of the show,

[00:11:30] Remkus de Vries: yeah. I'm not about to jump into common sections for highly opinion. It's stuff that is not considering the actual benefit first. If whatever you're negative about it is, and you're not weighing in what it actually brings, then you're missing out there's.

[00:11:47] Ines van Dijk: Yeah. Are you saying that you're not in it for the WordPress drama around?

[00:11:53] Remkus de Vries: Oh, that would be a way to describe it.

I do not engage with this drama. That is correct. I've had my, I've had my what is it? 15 years. Opportunity a 15 year to do so, and I still don't see the benefit. So stay away, just

[00:12:17] Nathan Wrigley: move forward. I I genuinely don't have a clue what the technology is. Somebody was somebody actually in the comments is complaining that they were distrustful of anything, Google, and I really don't know.

Yeah, but I, this is a format they're not listening in. Yeah, precisely. So, it has been created by Google. I genuinely don't know what the difference is in terms of the technology and how they squash it to such a great extent, but my guess is that it won't be too long before something supersedes a webpage and we get something better.

So for now that seems to be the best that we've got and it's going to be potentially switched on in WordPress 6.0, if you are watching the show you will notice that Cameron keeps popping in and going away again. Cameron, I'm really sorry if it's not working out for you today. If you are frustrated and can't hear us, and this is all just too much of a drama for you fee or not, we'll have you back on another day, but I'm more than happy to keep dragging you back in.

If you wish to stay that it would be lovely to have your commentary. Can you, for example, Cameron, hear me at the moment

and. Tumbleweed. I think it illustrates that probably Cameron can't hear me. And if he can't hear me, I'll we'll keep him on the screen as long as he wants to be there. But if things improve, Cameron we'll have you in, but be sure to shout out at some point, if the stream returns to normal. Okay.

That was where P I'm quite excited about that. I'm going to start exporting them as my default from this point on the next one, though is more of a community story. We have AMA Cathy on. When did we have. A week ago or two weeks ago, I think it was. And we didn't get into this. We were talking about her museum of block art at that point, but last week, pretty much late last week, right at the end, she is of course in charge at the moment of the full site editing testing program it's called the full site editing outreach program to give it its proper name.

And she's on the lookout for some people to give her some feedback. The overview is that she wants testers to test some new bits and pieces, which are hopefully going to drop in six point, oh, if you're looking at the screen, you can see that I've I've highlighted the bits and pieces that that we're going to be talking about.

Let me find the right bit. So let me go right to the bottom where we've got the tests for instructions. So she basically wants you to sign up for the program create an author, add some structure. Are they no results block, which I find is a curious and new block. Coming around because with the query loop block, if there's no results currently, it doesn't really do very much, but there's now going to be a no results block, which you can use to display.

What like a placeholder basically, if there's nothing there and some styling, see what you make of it. And I dunno, I don't know if this is the kind of thing you guys get involved in. I confess much to my chagrin. I don't seem to find the time to do this, but this is called number 13. And you can find it, that piece is called Effie program called testing, call number 13, offering an author template.

Cause that's what it's all about. Ines got anything on this or REMCOs or indeed Cameron,

[00:15:47] Ines van Dijk: honestly, something that is spearheading, I've worked with for years I start lead left or somatic about a month ago and it was just fantastic. The hardest worker that I've ever met. So yeah, I'm just, I'm sad to not be working with her again.

But maybe this is a good opportunity to get back

[00:16:11] Nathan Wrigley: in it. I was I was saying that for the year 2021, I think she's the name that's come up more in my feed than almost anybody else in the WordPress space. She just seems it's relentless. I genuinely don't know when she gets a time to relax and rest, it seems phenomenal.

[00:16:32] Ines van Dijk: And that's just the stuff that is visible to everyone, but she does a lot within automatic as well. So yeah.

[00:16:41] Nathan Wrigley: You're going to be testing. Yeah. That says, no, doesn't that look on the face there.

[00:16:47] Remkus de Vries: What I yeah I'm not pulled into room.

[00:16:56] Nathan Wrigley: Now

[00:16:59] Remkus de Vries: it's the time. It's the I have there's a few architectural things now already with FSC that I go, why are we doing it like that?

So the place holder block for when your query results show nothing. Why not in the query block? There's, and there's loads of those things around. So I'm like, it's already a lost battle to me. So I'll just the outcome of it from there because.

[00:17:31] Nathan Wrigley: You're very much a part of the community and yeah, but they don't need

[00:17:35] Remkus de Vries: more, any more grumpy old men.

[00:17:38] Nathan Wrigley: But the thing is it's curious because the whole project is built upon this, isn't it? And despite the fact that the three of us, four of us if Cameron can hear us really into the project and want us to advance finding the time to actually do this meaningful stuff difficult. I really do struggle. And obviously if it was like a corporate entity and we were all getting paid and somebody said sit down here for an hour and test that would, that, would it be really easy for us to justify that, but me forging an hour or an hour and a half, I fi I find it that's a very difficult thing to do.

And although goes to great lengths to make it as easy as possible. It's still difficult. And I wonder how the how the project suffers as a result of that.

[00:18:28] Remkus de Vries: Yeah, it is difficult setting aside time for this.

[00:18:33] Nathan Wrigley: And it sounded like you were going to say something.

[00:18:35] Ines van Dijk: Yeah. I think this is an issue that you have throughout the community, right?

It's not just the testing. Basically everything. You have a number of larger companies who can afford supplying their people to do stuff within the WordPress community. And then you've got people like me who do freelance and it's this is time that I want to give to the project because I'm part of that ecosystem.

But it's very difficult to justify that against, but I'm also sending my hours. So I've always felt like there's a bit of an imbalance there. And on the one hand it's quite natural and on the other, it's something that, yeah, I'd love to see. Fixed, although I don't really have the solution

[00:19:30] Nathan Wrigley: for that.

Yeah. This is a perennial debate. This comes up all the time. Isn't it? About the ability of those people who can contribute being how to describe it. You probably need to be on very stable economic grounds to be able to afford to really get stuck into the weeds. But that's, I guess that's the way it goes at the moment.

Anyway, there it is. It is full site editing, call for testing. Number 13, go check it out. If you if you want to help, we're sticking with WP time. Now this, I think this is cool. I'm going to put another piece on the screen here. This is Ooh, went and it came and it went, this is Justin Tadlock over on the table.

It's heaven, the table. I like that. I'm going to rename that site. The WP tubble the wordpress.org pattern creator. Open to the public. So yeah, that's basically it there's this new ability to essentially there's a link on this page. It's called the patent creator. Let me just click and open it up.

You need a wordpress.org account, which I'm sure many of us will have. And if you do have one of those and you're logged in, you can click on the link. The link takes you to wordpress.org forward slash patterns forward slash

[00:20:44] Remkus de Vries: are we to conclude, are we to conclude nice that you don't have a

[00:20:48] Nathan Wrigley: wordpress.org?

I do have a WordPress to overcome, but in an incognito window, because there's so many websites that I'm logged into, like I'm logged into the WP Tavern website. And if I go to anything, it'll possibly show what plugins are installed and things like that. So I've got to be everything's on a, everything's on an incognito tab for this, but yes, I do.

Thank you. I I've had that one prepared, but yeah go over here and you can now actually start to create. The patterns all on your own. And prior to this, that's been a fairly tricky thing to do as with all these things, it's pretty minimal at the moment. There's a lot though that Justin thinks there is to like about it.

And I'll just quote, it says the pattern directory has the potential for an on-ramp for creators who want to contribute to the WordPress project, but do not know where to start. The barrier to entry is one of the lowest in the community. Sounds good. There is no requirement to write code or understand all the intricacies of theme design.

It is nowhere near as complex as plugin development. It's simply a visual builder that allows sharing art with the world. So basically go log-in tinker and you can save your patterns and then hopefully next time you log in they'll still be there and you can share them with the world. There are a few little glitches just then as always, I think he's quite good at, exploring and finding.

Pulling things apart, should we say in discovering where the problem is like, and he says, it's, it seems to be built on top of the 20, 21 theme. And as a result, it's not entirely agnostic. He would prefer it if it had been built on 2022, because there are certain little conflicts which occur.

However, just stick into the broad story. I just think this is really cool. DNO. Log-in completely independent of any website that you might have. So you don't need to put like some sort of testing site, or you just want a repository of little patterns that we created, little experiments trying something out.

You can share them. Other people can glance at them. And what have you. This is cool. And and with that, I'm going to open it up to you three to argue about what do you reckon? Do you like it?

[00:23:04] Remkus de Vries: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I wouldn't go. I won't go. As far as Justin saying that this is opening up people's parts submissions.

But there might be some of those who are being added pattern library. But I like the whole concept of it. There's the, I need to solve this particular layout. I've done it. And here you go, everybody else can use it. I think that's very much in, in line with creating and share.

And together making it better.

[00:23:35] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.

[00:23:36] Ines van Dijk: I'm really wondering though, how is quality verified? Because if anyone can just submit experiments, the risks that you have is that you very quickly have an overcrowded marketplace where you can't really find anything to liking. So I'm not really clear on how this is.

[00:24:00] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. So the there's a pattern directory, which is a different thing. So it's like the plugin directory and then there's this pattern creator. So this is really just like a launch pad for you and your ideas. And then if you wish to submit those to the partner directory, much like themes and plugins, there's a of an oversight of that.

So this is really, it's just like a blank canvas, go here, play around and experiment, and then save them away for a rainy day. If you come up with one or two that you really like. And I just think that's just such a really nice idea, especially for those people who I don't know for one reason, or that perhaps don't have a dedicated development environment or they, they're just new to WordPress and they want to figure out how these things work and they don't have a website stacked away.

[00:24:49] Ines van Dijk: The majority of people that I've spoken to over the past six years have gone a development site. What do you mean? What is

[00:24:55] Nathan Wrigley: that? The advent of page builders have changed things rather a lot, I think, in the WordPress space. And, I would imagine that a lot of people literally have no idea of what kind of thing is going on in the background when they put a page together.

And so Justin makes that point.

[00:25:15] Ines van Dijk: It's not just page builders though. It's it's the end users of WordPress. So people who are in need of having a website for whatever reason for their hobby or their business or whatever, they're not necessarily web people. So the end users. Have a clue about what it takes to put something together, decently beyond the basics is my experience.

There are a lot of people that I've run into have stumbled into WordPress because it's such a familiar name. And so many hosts offer it as like a pre-installed software doesn't mean that they necessarily understand, good maintenance principles or development principles. So I'm not sure if it's down to page builders per se.

It's I think it's more of a end user education thing.

[00:26:12] Nathan Wrigley: One of the one of the points that Justin makes, and I think this is a really nice feature is that the creator tool is integrated with I'm going to get the word. Cause I often say the wrong thing, the media library, the free open verse.

That's the one I'm after. So there's. Albeit very small not very small, but small compared to something like, I dunno, shutter stock or something like that, but this growing free source of images that is built in. So you could, for example, go and that you wished I didn't have Justin's example contains things.

It looks like fabric or something like that. Somebody who's obviously taken pictures of fabric. And so he's downloaded those and use them, and he's completely aware that it's for free and he doesn't have to leave the interface to drag all those things in. And as time goes on in that open verse library, it gets bigger and bigger than this whole creation process will get easier and easier.

I just think that's great. So a nice unexpected consequence. Yeah.

[00:27:16] Remkus de Vries: I think this is one of those things that when we see the milk into the future and two or three years ago, remember when that was introduced. That was cool. Yes. Quality is the thing. But I, I. I genuinely think having predefined they're not snippets, but patterns, snippets or whatever you want to call them.

They're solving a problem.

[00:27:45] Nathan Wrigley: I,

[00:27:46] Remkus de Vries: I have an uncle who really understands how to add stuff to his, but every single time when it comes to layout and sitting with the block editor and he, then I get the question. So this is the example I'm seeing. Can you make that for me? I, when you, once you've made it, I can understand how to copy it and create versions of it, but can you put it together for me?

And that's exactly what this assaulted.

[00:28:13] Nathan Wrigley: Yes. Many go on in a, sorry. No,

[00:28:17] Ines van Dijk: I just said completely agree.

[00:28:21] Nathan Wrigley: The, I guess the intention will be that at some point, there, there is like a curated set of this kind of stuff. And hopefully there'll be some sort of ranking system where if we've got 5,000 here, Patterns in the directory, there'll be some mechanism for filtering out the ones which are, I don't know, have a, have been made with more time and thought, shall we say?

But yeah really nice point. Rimkus yeah, it's great. Especially if non technical people can really get to grips with their website quickly. Okay. That's very cool. So one more time. That's wordpress.org forward slash patterns forward slash new pattern. You will need a wordpress.org account. I have not played with it, so I don't know how intuitive it is, but it looks as if it is the some menu items at the top we should need to be mindful of.

But apart from that, you should be off to the races. Okay. Sadly, a couple of years ago there was this really dreadful piece of news and it was right at the beginning of the whole COVID. In fact, I seem to remember that it dovetailed well perfectly is the exact wrong word. It was the opposite word com Asia came along and it was within days, I think probably a week or two weeks of happening.

And the COVID pandemic occurred and the decision which we'll get into with innocent a minute she got an interesting thought about this. The decision was made to pull the event and it hasn't been it hasn't been going since then, but it looks like it's back. The word comes central websites has an article asking all of our people who would like to become organizers.

So we're at that point, we're not. Speaker stage where at the point of organizing the organizers, and if you are in that part of the world or you wish to travel to that part of the world in 2023 and it's happening in February, then now is the time to get on with that. And let me just see if I can find the original post that article came from.

Here we go. It's Asia. Got word, camp.org. And it's the pieces called call for organizers. And it's the usual thing you go and tell them why you think you'd be an organizer and a good one. There's some criteria you have to be available during word capture. Yeah, that seems fairly sensible. You have to residency in Asia or active involvement in Asia, in the Asian WordPress community.

That's also up there can commit at least three hours per week for planning. This may increase right before the event. I'm sure that REMCOs can give us the number of hours that are involved in organizing a major WordCamp, be able to attend weekly bi-weekly meetings as needed and have diversity as a core belief.

So you've got basically just under a year if for this whole thing to be pulled together. First things first, REMCOs as one of the founders of WordCamp Europe. What was your thoughts on this one? It all got pulled and canceled. Must've been heartrending I would've thought lots of work just basically thrown away.

Yeah.

[00:31:35] Remkus de Vries: That's such a big event. So many people slated to come. In fact, there were, I think the flights have they already start filling up with people actually going there a week prior or two weeks prior. I'm pretty sure people started flying that way. Already planning a little trip ahead of it in such as I can't imagine the sadness and disappointment of having that event canceled right before it actually was going to happen for the very first time.

And it's quite unique that it actually came about. So, that the unification process happening there for all the communities involved. That's a huge impact that's and to see that just dissipate, like heart wrenching.

[00:32:34] Nathan Wrigley: As luck would have it, the interest seems still to be there.

And and so, yeah, this is really just me raising awareness as to the fact that you, if you are willing to be an organizer and fulfill those criteria, you can give us a little taste room because that those criteria obviously they're geographically bound, but there was a couple in there in terms of time, like three hours per week.

Obviously you speak for WordCamp Asia, but does it how much is going on in the background and what is the level of commitment or you would, if you were organizing this event, are you really after seriously committed people or can you drop in and drop out of it?

[00:33:16] Remkus de Vries: You can not do the ladder. No.

So the, just consider this, the amount of people coming and the care that the amount of people require does not grow in a linear grows a little bit exponential. So the larger you get the way more you need to have taken care of. And it also means more people on the ground, obviously. So involvement dropping in and out, for some roles, there's some fluidity, but in general, no.

And three hours is is fine for the first six months. I guess

[00:33:58] Nathan Wrigley: he goes north. He goes north. Yeah. You in us before we began, you had an interesting take because we were just throwing around the stories that we would probably talk about. And I mentioned this one and you you had something quite interesting to say about the way it was canceled last time.

[00:34:17] Ines van Dijk: No, I think that was coming, but I'm happy to rephrase what he said. No, it was the way that the decision was not made by the organizing team, but by Matt to yeah. I believe what Cameron said was that he felt the decision should have been on the organizing team rather than.

One person stepping in and saying I'm pulling the plug on this. Now, whether you'll, again, still for the decision itself, doesn't really matter. It's the organizing team should have had authority in that regard because exactly. And I understand that there was a need for making a quick decision two years on we, we know what the consequences of not having done that would have been.

But yeah, definitely the organizing team should have been the ones in place of authority that,

[00:35:37] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, I suppose the argument would be one of time wouldn't it would the fact that a decision needed to be made quickly because I don't really know what was tied up in all of that in terms of refunding things and preventing people from getting on planes.

Cause a delay of 12 hours might have seen another two or 300 people and bark and get themselves on a plane and then find out mid air. The whole event's been canceled that would have been greatly disappointing. So yeah, maybe it was just about timing and in order to forced all of that

[00:36:10] Remkus de Vries: re regardless that the message still should have not come the way it came.

[00:36:15] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yes. Cameron, as that was your point and not innocent MIS misspoke there. Are you able to, are you able to. Get your mic going now. And you camera go in and give her a response to that. I'll give you, I'll give a few seconds and see if you can chip in, but it sounds from the comments that you put in the private chat, it does sound like Cameron's getting a dreadful delay of sort of 30 seconds where he can't hear or some 30 seconds where he can.

So it might be that he can't even hear what I'm saying now. Just pause for a second. See if you can get in the conversation.

Like it? No. Okay. All right. We'll press on. Okay. That was word come Asia. Obviously at some point fairly soon once they got the organizing team sorted, they'll probably be looking for speakers and people to attend book market. What was the dates? I know it said ferry. There you go. 17th is the tentative date.

17th of February in the year 2023. Okay. That's my

[00:37:18] Ines van Dijk: birthday. Wouldn't be

[00:37:23] Nathan Wrigley: bad. I don't know

[00:37:24] Remkus de Vries: which one is your birthday.

[00:37:27] Ines van Dijk: The 19th.

[00:37:29] Nathan Wrigley: I think that's a great excuse to go to Thailand. That's where it is.

[00:37:33] Remkus de Vries: Yeah, but I can't because my daughter's birthday is the 18th, so,

[00:37:38] Nathan Wrigley: Cause we won't be gone. So she's going to send innocent in his stead. Yeah. Oh Cameron, I'm so sorry about that.

He says he's putting things in our little private chat as the, when you switched to the screen-share, the, it gets better for a minute or two Cameron, if this is totally not working out for you, what the last thing I want to do is have you just sitting here if it's frustrating and a bit awkward. So if you wish to just call it a day, I think everybody would understand, but if you want to stay, stick with us on the off chance that it repairs itself, that'd be, that would be lovely too.

Okay. Next one up. This is cool. I really like this. This is a new thing. Sarah Gooding in the Tavern talks about a new. I'm going to say plugin snow monkey editor plugin adds custom styles to WordPress core blocks. I think Cameron has now made the decision that he's going to head off.

So maybe we'll see him again later. Let's see centrally limited styling. If you've got one of these third party block packs, like I dunno, cadence or code blocks or stackable or something like that. They those plugin developers have gone to great lengths to pack in as many different styling options to their blocks.

So they might have a rival I dunno, heading block. And rather than it just being, you can change the age of other you, maybe you can underline things or add all sorts of wizardry to it. But with the core blocks, the styling is really limited. In most cases. Almost to the point where you find them a little bit on usable in certain situations.

If it's not just playing text you might well find yourself looking around for a third party solution. So somewhat ingeniously, and I'm surprised that this hasn't been done so far the developers over at snow monkey, which is a curious name of creative. An ability to download the plugin and then it brings along a load of styling options just to the core blocks.

So it's not like they've got their own blocks with styling options. This is just the core blocks. So for example, at the minute on the screen, we're looking at the paragraph option. And really there's nothing with the paragraph. You've just got the basic, italics bold on the line. That's more or less it, I think you can add a class in the sidebar and so on, but this has got a whole load of different visual options.

So there's color options. There's a drops cap option and various other different things. Just really.

That's cool. So that we're seeing a picture of a dog on the screen because where there's the image option and really very limited amount of options in the core block for images, you basically put it in and I think you can put rounded corners on it. And that's about, it seems like there's a bit of a meme going around the internet at the moment where you might want to, I don't even know what this effect is called, where make images egg shapes or puddle shit. They're just the regular with rounded corners. I'm sure there'll be a word for that. So you can do that. And it comes with, I can see six on the screen at the moment, but I'm sure there'd be more list items. Again. It's very basic. You can change a dot into a heroine and a couple of other things, but that's about it.

So different options for that and background colors and so on you, you basically invoke it by downloading the plugin and then they put this down. I don't know what to say about this. There's a blue little snow monkey icon, and I'm not all that keen on the blueness of the snow monkey icon. It's a bit like when you get a plugin in the WordPress admin area and it's got like the icon for that is like bright red or something.

It just it's like a monkey's face, a snow monkey it's got that kind of, it's got it's like where.

[00:41:46] Remkus de Vries: So I'm ha so I think in pictures and imagery and stuff, and I have trouble. Ah, okay. That makes

[00:41:54] Nathan Wrigley: sense. So the boots, this is it's yeah, it basically looks like a world war II bomb or something being dropped.

The you've got the eyes and you've got the little not smiley, it's the opposite. It's like a grumpy looking mask, but it's blue and that's to me like no,

[00:42:13] Remkus de Vries: you can see more in this than just that though, but

[00:42:17] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. Yeah. So you invoke that and then you've got apps that you boatload of things that you can do.

So, it brings up a whole load of options, tech scholar, letter, spacing, line, height formatting, remove formatting, font size badges, background, color, and actually on the example that we're using at the moment, which is just a plain paragraph block it spices it up so you know what it does.

Yeah. Isn't it nice. And for me the best. It's the fact that it's just with coal blocks, they haven't taken the approach of doing anything snazzy of their own. It's just, I do

[00:42:51] Remkus de Vries: wonder what they're all loading in the background. So if this is adding a whole bunch of style sheets for just a few options that you might use, that's a little bit of a waste.

So I'd be curious to know how they actually generate the CSS on how they loaded, but in terms of what it does. I like.

[00:43:09] Ines van Dijk: Yeah. So one of the things that I think I noticed is that it loads the edit block that you would have on the right on the sidebar within the block itself.

Is that right?

[00:43:26] Nathan Wrigley: What do you mean? I'll show the show. The one of the dog. Yup. Yeah. So

[00:43:30] Ines van Dijk: that would normally be full Heights in, on the right of your school.

[00:43:39] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think he's just got a Chinese screen. I think because at the top here, I can see the words block and page just here. I think that, yeah no, it's okay. It's easy to understand. Easy to misunderstand that, but yeah, I think just for the purposes of clarity he's was it Sarah?

That's done this. Yes. Sarah has just zoomed right in, in order to keep it. Yeah, I

[00:44:05] Ines van Dijk: thought you were the one highlighting the stuff that's for my

[00:44:09] Nathan Wrigley: mistake went. Yeah. Th there's a couple of other extras. It brings along for the ride, which I actually think make it even possibly even more valuable.

And that's the option to a particular block based upon screen size. So according to this, you've got tablet PC, it's using a media query. You can hide a particular block by a user role. So I don't know, you could almost use this membership content or something like that. If you've, if you have bought a particular.

I don't know if you've got a particular WooCommerce role or something like that, then show this or don't show that scroll animations. Yup. Okay. Publish date, time settings again. So rather than just being user roles, you can actually set a time for this particular block to expire. So I'm thinking, I dunno, black Friday sales block or something like that seems nice.

And you can also add a lock to the capacity to edit it based upon user roles, the administrator, according to Sarah's pieces, the only person that could set it. So if I'm the administrator and you are an editor, I could say, yes, you may fiddle with this block, but no, you subscriber. You may not. So there's got a lot more, it's almost like.

Slimmed down kind of membership style solution thrown in there as well. So I'm very excited about this.

[00:45:37] Remkus de Vries: I still think you need a membership, a dedicated thing, but this is nice. This is really nice in what it offers. I just hope they are also considering the performance side of things on the front end.

[00:45:49] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. They, it's very rare. I've got to say it's pretty rare that I see a block like this. I actually want to go. Download it usually I look at it and I think, ah, that seems curious, but it's a bit edge case for me, but I've run up against so many limitations of the standard WordPress core blocks.

And honestly, if I can get away with just using the core blocks, that's what I want to do. I don't really want to be loading in additional things. And so if this is lightweight and it does the job and maybe who knows, maybe somebody can give us a bit of an insight in that in the days and weeks to come, but those are

[00:46:30] Remkus de Vries: the nicest plugins, right?

The ones that you go, I want to install this one on every single site. I remember the last time I had that was with Coco analytics. 'cause you have so many people just, I need to see a little bit about who visits my site and this does this and does that. And cocoa analytics was a beautiful solution.

And all you have to do is install it, it was private. It was no there's no cookies and all of that, but people got a little bit of a dashboard, a little bit of an insight. Perfect. I did install that for all the sides of my family members and all that. One of those, and this sounds like exactly, one of those plugins, like this is really cool.

Yeah. This is, I know they're going to want to use this. Like my uncle, the one I mentioned he's going to love this one as he does this

[00:47:21] Nathan Wrigley: is what they do. We just leveraging what's already there, which is what I think is so ingenious because you don't, you're not going down the rabbit hole.

So presumably. I don't know, typically with these kinds of things, the free version comes out. Who knows maybe in the future, they'll add in some jam packet with like loads of extra options. Maybe there'll be a paid version. No idea, but you can it was March 30th. It was written WP Tavern. It's called snow monkey editor, plugin outs, custom styles to WordPress core blocks.

What was that one called again? Rimkus I'm going to write it down.

[00:47:56] Remkus de Vries: Coco analytics. Bye. That's it. Yeah, no kale.

[00:48:06] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. I think that, that is typically,

[00:48:10] Remkus de Vries: yep. That's a country of ours.

[00:48:15] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, okay. What was the name of Dan? Just to give him some props,

[00:48:19] Remkus de Vries: then eat from

[00:48:21] Nathan Wrigley: nice.

[00:48:25] Ines van Dijk: And he's the one behind the MailChimp for WordPress plugin.

[00:48:29] Remkus de Vries: That's been around before. And one of the founders of a fathom as well.

[00:48:34] Nathan Wrigley: That's also analytics, isn't it? Yep.

[00:48:39] Remkus de Vries: Yeah, but he he started

[00:48:44] Nathan Wrigley: a fathom.

[00:48:45] Ines van Dijk: No really simple CSS I believe is another one of his plugins. That's quite cool.

[00:48:51] Remkus de Vries: Possible. It has a few years of here. Some really neat plugins out there. There's the pop-up thingy. What is it called? Zilla box Sila.

[00:49:01] Ines van Dijk: Yeah, approximately. Yeah. It's a derivative of MailChimp for WordPress.

So I used to do support for Milsom for WordPress. So I know all of this.

[00:49:11] Nathan Wrigley: Oh yeah. We stumbled into a real little niche here. I'm going to go and check out the Coco analytics one though, because typically that's what I want. I want them the bare bones, basically. I want to know how many times that page got loaded and not a lot beyond that.

I don't really want to be delving into sort of, I don't know what age group they fit in. Maybe geographical location could be of some interest, but basically I want to know how many times the page was loaded. And I think things like Google analytics, there's just too much in there for me just way too overpowering.

And every time I log in, I am overwhelmed because I now no longer know where anything is. I don't go in maybe every six months to get some kind of report that I want every six months.

[00:50:00] Remkus de Vries: I was going to ask you in about once every

[00:50:02] Nathan Wrigley: six months. And then and then complete confusion where all the things, and also, I just don't understand the language.

So show me the number of visitors. All right. Coco analytics. I'm taking your right. Okay. Thank you. That's good. We should do that. We should have that as a section recommended blocks or recommended plugins each week, one of the guests should bring a, bring one of their little choices along. So yeah.

Okay. Right where we're running out of things here, which is good, because like I said, at the top, I've got to take my son to the dentist, but I thought this one was quite interesting. Do you know what, the more the, I forgive me if you are big Facebook lovers, but the more that. Here about Facebook and the more things that I learned about Facebook, the less inclined I am to have any love for them at all.

And I can't speak as to whether this next piece represents the truth or not, but I'll just pop it on the screen. It's on a website called gadgeteer dot co dot Zed, a and ah, Please it's called Facebook sued for overstating advertising reach. So we're straying away from WordPress. Now court expanded the pool of plaintiffs to include more than 2 million small ad buyers, the long and the short of it is apparently.

And again, I'm sure we will find out through due process. So I'm going to paraphrase everything because Facebook, I suspect have some quite good lawyers. I'm going to say the word allegedly for years, Facebook repeatedly confronted a choice between telling customers the truth or preserving its revenue.

And at every turn, Facebook chose its revenue lawyers, safe ad buyers. Basically the story goes like this. If you've been buying ads on the Facebook platform, which all, most everybody almost everybody in business will consider doing whether or not they actually part with any money. It will definitely be on the list of things to check out if you want to promote your business online.

Apparently Google, sorry, Facebook, Google. Maybe we could have the same exact conversation substitute, but apparently they've been just massaging the. So like fake profiles count as a view of your advert. Imagine any way in which something, which shouldn't be tracked as a, as an impression of your ad, that must be multitudes of things that Facebook know the metrics is that's not real, that never happened, that we shouldn't count that, but apparently they don't.

And what I, if I'd have spent a hundred thousand dollars, $200,000, a million dollars, whatever on the Facebook network, and this lawsuit manages to find that there is evidence of this art man alive, I would be so quite cross.

[00:53:15] Remkus de Vries: So you're absolutely right. You would be, but. The reason they're getting away with it because it's or happened.

Cause these suspicions have been have been there for quite awhile years. Yeah. So I think people are, I think they're good. They're getting away with it because they're still result.

[00:53:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. So if

[00:53:42] Remkus de Vries: you care, if your result percentage went from, I don't know, a 13.7% and it would then be reduced to 12.1.

Really like you're putting a hundred thousand in, but you're getting back. A substantial return on investment.

[00:54:03] Nathan Wrigley: I dunno. Cause I think you could make the same argument. Let's say that you go to a car dealership and you agree to pay 13,000 pounds for a new car and you show up and the guy says, I've just changed my mind.

It's going to be another hundred quid. It's only, it's like north point north. It's not 0.3%. Don't worry about it. Just give me the extra money. And

[00:54:23] Remkus de Vries: I'm not saying I agree with the statement. I'm saying I'm playing devil's advocate. There's if you found out, would it really change everything so much?

No, not really, but you'd never trust them again, but yeah, I'll take it one step further. I'm under the opinion. You should never trust Facebook. You should never trust

[00:54:44] Nathan Wrigley: Google period.

[00:54:51] Ines van Dijk: I think after all of these years of. Lawsuit after lawsuit, Facebook is, has proven themselves to be utterly unreliable. Very similar to Amazon. If you if you don't really have a need for it, maybe not use it,

[00:55:15] Nathan Wrigley: right? Yeah. That's makes a good point. And this speaks to what the problem really is right now, especially Beth Livingston says we used to get results with the new iOS stuff, which I'll explain in a minute it's way harder and way more expensive. So I think they're going to lose lots of folks and this lawsuit means more applicators.

So maybe that's the point. They are literally terrified of what has happened on the apple side. So just to paint the picture there, I think it was like Iowa. Update about six months ago, something along those lines, you now have to, you have to give permission to Facebook if they wish to track you. And the way that the language is worded, that permission option really suggests don't click.

Yes. It's something like, I agree to be tracked by Facebook and that word toxic, isn't it.

But I wish to be tracked. I've got two choices here. I'll go for the tracking. Yeah. Why not? So my, my estimation is that's just destroy each traffic. It

is,

[00:56:28] Remkus de Vries: it is the been numbers published somewhere. I think a couple of weeks ago about the the percentage of loss of income just by Facebook, not being able to track and they are.

Shitting themselves.

[00:56:46] Nathan Wrigley: So this is businesses who've been reliant upon Facebook. And to your point a minute ago, REMCOs there is no doubt. Historically there was, it was a complete no-brainer to spend money in certain areas with certain, with a certain level of knowledge of how to use that platform and retarget people.

It was brilliant and maybe it still is brilliant, but if your demographic are iPhone carriers and you are you're reading stuff like this, you are going to be, I would be predisposed now make Rob's point. Rob Cannes has just written this. He says, it's hard to get Facebook ads to convert.

It's almost not worth it. And I guess at some point that will become the default. You'll just be like I can't be bothered with that. I know that they're conning me anyway. So why bother? Let's go. Let's let's go for Google instead. Yay.

[00:57:48] Ines van Dijk: As you might know, there's a Facebook fool, commerce plugin.

That's fairly new. I think it's maybe two or three years old at this point. Was originally created by Facebook themselves, then it was transported to WooCommerce. And now it's, I'm not exactly sure what the status of it is right now. But the happiness engineers on the WooCommerce end had a lot of interaction with Facebook to get support going in some way.

And the experience that I personally have had with Facebook is that it's very similar to PayPal. If you have any experience. Professionally with people, what a bloody headache it is to work with our company, because they're all like tiny little independent products that all fall under the same name.

And Facebook is exactly the same. They have these small little teams that work on a specific thing. And then when it doesn't work, it just gets abundant. But there's like thousands of people using it and have this feels very similar.

[00:59:06] Remkus de Vries: I don't want to go all conspiracy, but that sounds like it's by design, right?

If you have small teams that are so independent of each other, you cannot collaborate. So nobody sees the real picture. And then we get, we have with the ads too much counted. I think it's

[00:59:27] Ines van Dijk: twofold on the one. And it allows you to Produce something very quickly. So if you have an independent team that doesn't have to go through, I don't know how many protocols in order to release something, you can get something up and running really quickly.

And then on the other hand is what you said is, there's not oversight. There's no collaboration between products and things just fall apart or get abandoned. I users don't get told, so things change and things look different. All of a sudden. And is that no, one's really responsible and support.

Doesn't really know where to go with this. So, whatever figured out

[01:00:15] Nathan Wrigley: I am so, so disinclined though to trust Facebook on almost every level now and things like this, just to give some complexion to this story, it does say that I actually didn't realize that this had been going on for so long.

So it would appear that. People have been pursuing this lawsuit for a long time. But the judge finally has said, look, this can now go forward. Because apparently to quote, there was a blunderbuss of objections, which I presume is like litany one after another, by Facebook, in order to essentially, I guess just prevaricate prevents get the lawyers to make things go away for a little bit.

And six months later, come up with some other way of making it go away, but it would appear that now they've run out of runway and now it's going to that. So we'll see. But to your point, REM, cause I guess if it is no 0.1 point. People are going to stick around because that's fine. But if we find out this is 10% or God help us, more than that, I think

[01:01:20] Remkus de Vries: where's

[01:01:20] Nathan Wrigley: your limit.

Yeah. About not 0.1% is my limits. If it's proven, if there's, if they've got data, which category, and it shows that we genuinely are finding it difficult to know where the boundary is between. Click real click and they can prove that then. Okay. I'm sure that's the case in all sorts of real world scenarios that, that, that would, but if it can be proven that they knew and just totally ignored it because Mani was I think I've read it all out.

Facebook was confronted with a choice between telling customers the truth or prefer preserving its revenue at every turn. Facebook chose its revenue. So that's the debate

[01:02:10] Ines van Dijk: overseeing the revenue is also a good way facing it to be announced.

[01:02:14] Nathan Wrigley: I

[01:02:16] Remkus de Vries: mean what is the Netflix documentary called,

[01:02:20] Nathan Wrigley: Of the social dilemma?

Yeah, I actually re watched the.

[01:02:26] Remkus de Vries: I have to just keep that in mind as you're processing these types of things.

[01:02:30] Nathan Wrigley: And have you seen that in this? Have you seen the social dilemma? Okay. I won't spoil it, but essentially it's a big hit piece on any sort of social

[01:02:40] Ines van Dijk: Emma

[01:02:41] Nathan Wrigley: Watson. No it's not a, it's not a drama.

It's more of a documentary and it's like insider

[01:02:50] Remkus de Vries: and the connection that Cambridge Analytica and that whole stressful,

[01:02:56] Nathan Wrigley: But it's beautifully dumb, isn't it? Because they come up with this idea of the they put people behind screens who were pretending to be Facebook's brain. So it's a brilliant conceit, a really clever little trick that they did where, so the Facebook is basically having an internal conversation.

That there's people actually talking about what they're going to do rather than it being an algorithm. The algorithm are human beings deciding, and it makes sense. Yeah. But really go and watch it. Yeah. Like I said, rim, cause I watched it again about, I don't know, two or three weeks ago. And I have to say the first time I found it like a bit shocking, the second time of what more percolated into my head.

And I found it more, even more shocking to be honest. And yeah. Yeah. I

[01:03:45] Ines van Dijk: think a lot of people still have the idea that the people in power and whether or not that's political power or power like Facebook corporations that they know what they're doing, that the people in charge actually have a good clue of what they're doing.

And a lot of people.

[01:04:09] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. The one that just basically humans at the end of the day, it's quite interesting here as well that Beth makes it Beth. Beth makes the point that maybe there's an opportunity for us because oh really? For the longest time people in my local community, they are totally avoided the point of having a website because the Facebook page genuinely did what they want.

So there's a, there's like a little row of shops, quite close to where I live, like half a mile away, 90% of that little row shops. They don't have a website. They have a Facebook page. And that seems to serve them. And it ranks, if you search for this particular shop, it comes up on Google. So it's been effective, but like you say, REMCOs, the world is

yeah. So anyway,

[01:04:58] Ines van Dijk: it doesn't help that Facebook now allows for things like making appointments and making payment through Facebook. So you don't even have to use the,

[01:05:11] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, I stopped feeding the beast. We're addicted and that's what comes out. The film is the, it's not so much how benign or aggressive the tech is.

It is literally that we have all become addicted and you have to notice that you are addicted and that little look at three o'clock in the morning is totally. Not something you ever should be doing because it just, it feeds you more and more anyway, from all of that mess to something a little bit more positive.

I'm glad to share this. This is nice. A few weeks ago, we ran a competition because we did 200 episodes. Yay. And we ran a competition and the kind people at Yoast offered us a couple of prizes. The kind people at Stella WP offered us a couple of prizes. And so. Also the kind of people at cadence WP.

I also in, just claim that you could win a cat to just basically try and boost the the interest in basically more or less everybody who entered this competition. That's right.

More or less

[01:06:27] Remkus de Vries: it's

[01:06:29] Nathan Wrigley: more or less everybody who entered this competition told me that they wanted to win the cat. Cause all you had to do was pick, you said, I want the gifts prize, the Stella WP prize, the Caden's prize or the cat prize or all four or whichever combination just about everybody said they wanted the cap.

Even though I went to great lengths to say, you can't win a cap. I said, you can't win a cap. This is there's no cap on offer. It's just a picture of a cat. Have you any idea how complex and cruel it would be to

[01:06:58] Remkus de Vries: feel like you've tried? I don't feel like you try it.

[01:07:01] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's right. We have some winners, needless to say, look, nobody won.

The cat is there in blue and white, but these following people are the winners of the competition, the Yost prizes. And I can't tell you which ones you've won. Cause I haven't got it on my screen, but Nana walkway, she is a winner. So it was Tina cook. Garath when Mohammed Yusuf you've all won something from Yoast.

The Stella WP prizes were taken by Peter Ingersoll, Craig Patterson, Meg Appleby Mike Martin, Michael calm now. And is Ebola presume, sorry, max, if I've butchered your name on it, he's often listening in the comments. So I apologize if I've done that. And Caden's WP prizes were taken by Rob Cairns, who is in the chat tows T O Z E Vasconcellos, Phillip Levine, Antonio Escudero, Richard need dish or needed oh, he's won twice.

I think that's a. And Henneger so you are the prize winners. Yay. Congratulations. I wish it had a bell sound or she'd got trumpet out at this point. What I've done is I've sent all of the details of the winners, because you did include your email address. I've sent your email address to the respective companies and ask them to reach out to you.

So if they don't reach out to you, it's completely their fault. I've got nothing. If they don't reach out to you, just email me admin at WP builds on. I'll make sure to hook you up with your price. But I have communicated and in the, in full disclosure I have now deleted. I've basically deleted all the places apart from the email that I sent your emails.

I've expunged them from the WordPress database. So hopefully we're still GDPR component. Are you seeing the chat Nathan? What's happening in the chat now

[01:09:03] Remkus de Vries: they're fighting over the captain.

[01:09:06] Nathan Wrigley: There is no. Okay. Let's get into this. This could be fun. Dah.

[01:09:15] Ines van Dijk: I know a company called Klaus QA Platform.

Maybe I can show you quickly the kind of socks that I'm wearing currently.

[01:09:28] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Let me make the screen once more. Do that again. Hang on.

[01:09:37] Remkus de Vries: Oh, no, it's a constellation price. Yeah,

[01:09:44] Ines van Dijk: Ask if if they have some swag,

[01:09:48] Nathan Wrigley: but nobody is allowed to win the cup, but you are the first person who showed their socks on this podcast. So you get an award for that. That's brilliant. So let's see what let's go to Michelle Frechette. So she's waiting for the cat.

Can I just reiterate? There is no cat. You can't win. It's because

[01:10:06] Remkus de Vries: there is no spoon

[01:10:06] Nathan Wrigley: thing. Is that what it is? Okay. This is ridiculous. Cameron Jones. Oh, camera. And I'm so sorry that you were forced to just dwell in the comments and look about, I will definitely get you back on. He's disappointed. He didn't win the cat.

Michelle's come back with deal. It gets worse. We're going to slice it into and okay. Rob can spot a prize that is fitting. Thank you, Rob. Yeah, you've got the, you got the cadence one. And Beth said, dang it. I would have loved the cadence coffee mug. Sorry about that. Yeah, Peter, you got a prize.

Cameron's talking about getting half a K E Courtney. That can't really talk a lot about what I need to do is purchase a fluffy cat, a small fluffy cat, which will easily go inside of a little box and post that we can attach a WP, builds a logo, and it can go from port to port. Yeah. Oh my goodness. The comments, just keep going.

I'm going to stop talking about the cat there's enough comments. Okay. Okay. One last one. Courtney is allergic to cats. She cannot accept an indoor cat. It's okay. Courtney you're in luck because there was never an account on offer. I am. So you're going to do a cat price next time. That's all I've gone.

Do you guys have anything? Have you got anything that you want to add to, did I miss some.

No, that's fine. In our show notes, we have the option to put a pick of the week. That kind of was my pick of the week.

[01:11:46] Remkus de Vries: I, I have a very selfish pick two here, so we're hiring a lot. Oh

[01:11:54] Nathan Wrigley: no, that's not selfish. That's brilliant. No, go on.

[01:11:57] Remkus de Vries: Tell her jobs that circle.com and we currently have nine positions open, which includes support for us.

And the whole bunch of more

[01:12:14] Nathan Wrigley: it's a.

Come on. It's

[01:12:16] Remkus de Vries: not comparable to a cat.

[01:12:18] Nathan Wrigley: No, come on. Everybody wants to count. Nobody really wants employment, duh customer service representative in the USA. It's on the screen at the minute jobs. Stop serve ball.com. Team lead, support USA, marketing specialists, cloud operations, engineered dev ops engineer.

These are all full-time by the way backend PA most of them. Yep. Oh really? Okay. That's cool to know. Back-end Python developer back end PHP, developer, business developer partners, and ahead of engineering plumbing. One of them has got a Oslo attached tag. So I'm guessing one of them needs to be not remote, correct arrest.

Yeah. For the

[01:12:57] Ines van Dijk: support positions, because you might want to post that in the support driven slack channel. If you know what that is.

[01:13:09] Remkus de Vries: I think I

[01:13:11] Ines van Dijk: do. There's a slack channel specifically for people in support. And if he posts it in there I'm really certain you're going to find something, someone sorry.

Very quickly. Yeah. That's

[01:13:25] Remkus de Vries: a that I knew of it. I forgot about it, but I think taco has mentioned it to me at one point.

[01:13:38] Nathan Wrigley: I am going to throw in another one. Oh. And by the way, rim just don't feel bad about that. I'm delighted, delighted that you've come on. The show is brilliant. And you mentioned in the fact that there's employment options, that your company is blooming. Excellent. Don't feel bad about that at all. I'm going to just mention another totally random thing.

And I cannot put this on the screen. This is where, we were banging on about Facebook and then we sort out a few little jabs that Google there's a new search engine in town, and it's not called doc.gov. It is called it is called Kagy K a G o.com. It's in beta and I've been told, and I don't know if this is true, that it's, it w it's been created by the guy that started managed WP.

And I've been using it for the last couple of weeks. No more. I've completely obliterated using.dot go and Google. His name again? I've forgotten his name, to be honest, I didn't find that information out. It was a friend of mine who was curious and then just went off looking and he said, oh, it's the guy that started managed WP, which I think they said,

[01:14:49] Remkus de Vries: yeah, he did.

And he moved to the us

[01:14:51] Nathan Wrigley: to California. I find it. Okay. And this is obviously what he was doing now. Here's the curious and twist, right? Whilst it's in beta. So you have to sign up for a beta list. You can use it for. When they're out of beta, you've got to pay. And I know this is gonna sound ridiculous and privileged.

I'm really into the idea of paying for search that is adulterated by any kind of corporate interest apart from that.

[01:15:21] Remkus de Vries: That's a good example. If a, if we're saying the ad stuff is a problem, which Facebook is confirming is it is the other way around is stop asking us to stop offering stuff for free and start asking for even nominal fees, but the sheer volume and then the quality connected to it.

Will I like, for instance Instagram offered and I I'm aware that Instagram is part of the Metta Facebook, but if Instagram offered a version, no ads, and they was a couple of bucks a month, I'd happily pay. Cause I got a lot of joy out of it. And the same goes for. Ads. I use brave search. I use stopped our go search.

I rarely use Google if it's not for work, I will use Google, but the rest I worked and I'll happily pay for it.

[01:16:13] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I think the muted or in better. Yeah. Yeah. That's from Rob. You pay in money or in data. I think the price that was mooted is $99 a year. And honestly, internet search is one of those things that it seems free, right?

It's totally, we've all been used to it being free, but at some point you are being, you're paying for it, but it's also one of those things that I have bitterly used every single day. And I would happily pay that amount of money for a search engine that delivered results so far. It's been epic, but there's not a single search that I've put in where I've got weird results or a lack of results.

It seems pretty decent. So it's, K a G R e.com. And I'm just throwing that in right at the very end.

[01:17:03] Ines van Dijk: Can I make a very quick self-promotional thing? Cause it might be very interesting for the people listening. So I'm writing a book currently. I've had 12 years of experience in the customer support field, specifically within WordPress.

I've worked with a ton of different developers and I'm writing customer support for WordPress developers and is going to be launching in the first half of this year. And if you go to my website, quality in support.com, you can sign up for lists that will notify you as soon as.

[01:17:38] Nathan Wrigley: Gets released. That's cool.

I want started writing a book once called how not to start stuff, but frustrated. I never got around to doing never finished. I never started. I thought that'd be actually a really good book. One day of producing a book called how not to start stuff. And it was basically blank paper. It was just like, it's like the perfect time-saving thing.

Here's how is the lesson on how not to do stuff? Anyway. There you go. Awesome. I don't know if you saw this REM Cosa, but Michelle is doing. Careers summit WP careers summit. So she's heavily involved with posters. So yeah, maybe share that link over there. Okay. I've got to take people to dentists and all that good stuff.

So I'm going to have to run away, but thank you so much. I apologize. Sincerely to Cameron, we had obviously some sort of tech malfunction, but I would dearly love you to come back. Thanks for sticking around in the comments. I'm

just right on the end. That's not one. And I was reading a book about gravity, but I couldn't put it down. I have to share that right again, come back on camera and I would love that. And Remco thanks for coming on again and in a sanctuary in this. Thanks for coming on as well. Can we do our little wavy thing?

I know that in us doesn't know about this, but we all have to do the little wavy thing at the end so that I can get the screen grab. That's it. We're done. We'll be back next week. Thank you so much for your comments. There's been loads today. Thanks a lot.

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Nathan Wrigley
Nathan Wrigley

Nathan writes posts and creates audio about WordPress on WP Builds and WP Tavern. He can also be found in the WP Builds Facebook group, and on Mastodon at wpbuilds.social. Feel free to donate to WP Builds to keep the lights on as well!

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