This Week in WordPress #243

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 27th February 2023

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

  • WordPress 6.2 is just around the corner and we’ve got some important updates from an accessibility perspective as well as the ‘source of truth’ document.
  • Openverse is also coming into 6.2 making it easy to import images, but there was a hiccough in the implementation this week.
  • Is Mastodon still ‘all the hotness”, or are you back on Twitter?
  • What was WordCamp Asia like? Our guests on the show share their thoughts.
  • Essential Form is a super lightweight form plugin you might like to try.
  • And, the Block Protocol have launched their suite of plugins to make blocks interoperable across services outside of WordPress.

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

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This Week in WordPress #243 – “It’s always about Mark”

"It's always about Mark" - This Week in WordPress #243 - WP Builds

With Nathan Wrigley, Michelle Frechette and Andrew Palmer.

Recorded on Monday 6th March 2023.
If you ever want to join us live you can do that every Monday at 2pm UK time on the WP Builds LIVE page.


Want to get your product or service on our 'viewed quite a lot' Black Friday Page? Fill out the form...

WordPress Core

WordPress 6.2 Accessibility Improvements
Thank you to@joedolsonand@alexstinefor collaborating on this post. With WordPress 6.2 set to launch on March 28th, this post seeks to provide an overview of the many accessibility improvements…
WordPress 6.2 Accessibility Improvements
Thank you to@joedolsonand@alexstinefor collaborating on this post. With WordPress 6.2 set to launch on March 28th, this post seeks to provide an overview of the many accessibility improvements…
WordPress 6.2 Beta 4
WordPress 6.2 Beta 4 is here! Download and test now. This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress…
WordPress 6.2 Beta 4
WordPress 6.2 Beta 4 is here! Download and test now. This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress…
WordPress 6.2 Openverse Integration Hotlinks Images, Contributors Propose Uploading to Media Library as a Better Default
WordPress 6.2 is set to introduce an integration with Openverse that allows users to quickly insert free, openly-licensed media into their content. It was not readily apparent when the feature made its debut in version 15.1 of the Gutenberg plugin that the inserted images are hotlinked…
WordPress 6.2 Openverse Integration Hotlinks Images, Contributors Propose Uploading to Media Library as a Better Default
WordPress 6.2 is set to introduce an integration with Openverse that allows users to quickly insert free, openly-licensed media into their content. It was not readily apparent when the feature made its debut in version 15.1 of the Gutenberg plugin that the inserted images are hotlinked…
WordPress 6.2 Openverse Integration Updated to Upload Inserted Images
WordPress 6.2’s Openverse integration is getting some last minute changes after contributors expressed concerns about it hotlinking images by default. The new feature allows users to quickly insert free, openly-licensed media into their content…
WordPress 6.2 Openverse Integration Updated to Upload Inserted Images
WordPress 6.2’s Openverse integration is getting some last minute changes after contributors expressed concerns about it hotlinking images by default. The new feature allows users to quickly insert free, openly-licensed media into their content…
Gutenberg 15.2 Introduces Revisions for Template Editing
Gutenberg 15.2 is now available with support for revisions when editing templates and template parts. The Site Editor can be an intimidating place if you’re new to making changes there. A few clicks can make a drastic impact and some users won’t know how to return to where they started. Surfacing the revisions panel gives users a safety net…
Gutenberg 15.2 Introduces Revisions for Template Editing
Gutenberg 15.2 is now available with support for revisions when editing templates and template parts. The Site Editor can be an intimidating place if you’re new to making changes there. A few clicks can make a drastic impact and some users won’t know how to return to where they started. Surfacing the revisions panel gives users a safety net…
WordPress 6.2 Source of Truth
Since becoming a sponsored contributor in the wider WordPress community in 2020, I noticed the same problem repeating with each release: how can one get the most accurate information about the entirety of a release as quickly and painlessly as possible..?
WordPress 6.2 Source of Truth
Since becoming a sponsored contributor in the wider WordPress community in 2020, I noticed the same problem repeating with each release: how can one get the most accurate information about the entirety of a release as quickly and painlessly as possible..?

Community

Highlights of Matt’s Q&A At WordCamp Asia 2023
This is a brief overview and highlights of Matt Mullenweg’s presence (usually in the form of a Q&A at WordCamps, now that the annual State of the Word has been separate for a few years). Matt wasn’t able to be there in person…
Highlights of Matt’s Q&A At WordCamp Asia 2023
This is a brief overview and highlights of Matt Mullenweg’s presence (usually in the form of a Q&A at WordCamps, now that the annual State of the Word has been separate for a few years). Matt wasn’t able to be there in person…
WordPress Community on Mastodon Launches “Toot the Word” Survey
Last month’s Twitter outage gave Mastodon a boost, as the company also announced unpopular changes to its API access. People from the WordPress community continue to trickle into the fediverse, with many going so far as to shutter their Twitter accounts…
WordPress Community on Mastodon Launches “Toot the Word” Survey
Last month’s Twitter outage gave Mastodon a boost, as the company also announced unpopular changes to its API access. People from the WordPress community continue to trickle into the fediverse, with many going so far as to shutter their Twitter accounts…
Let’s Party: Organize your WP20 Celebration!
Join WordPress enthusiasts from across the globe on May 27, 2023, as they come together to celebrate its 20th anniversary…
Let’s Party: Organize your WP20 Celebration!
Join WordPress enthusiasts from across the globe on May 27, 2023, as they come together to celebrate its 20th anniversary…
GoDaddy joins the WordPress global community sponsorship program in 2023
Please join us in welcoming GoDaddy to the 2023 WordPress global community sponsorship program! GoDaddy’s pledge to sponsor all official WordPress community events (WordCamps, Meetups, and more) all around the world provides support and stability to our hardworking crew of volunteer event organizers…
GoDaddy joins the WordPress global community sponsorship program in 2023
Please join us in welcoming GoDaddy to the 2023 WordPress global community sponsorship program! GoDaddy’s pledge to sponsor all official WordPress community events (WordCamps, Meetups, and more) all around the world provides support and stability to our hardworking crew of volunteer event organizers…
WordPress helps me unwind – story of a part-time developer
Ajay D’Souza from London, UK, writes about how writing code for WordPress on the site helps him unwind and find peace outside his day job…
WordPress helps me unwind – story of a part-time developer
Ajay D’Souza from London, UK, writes about how writing code for WordPress on the site helps him unwind and find peace outside his day job…
Get your tickets for WordCamp Kerala 2023 on March 25th!
The southern state of Kerala in India is all set to host its first regional WordCamp – WordCamp Kerala 2023 on March 25, 2023 (Saturday) at IMA House, Kochi…
Get your tickets for WordCamp Kerala 2023 on March 25th!
The southern state of Kerala in India is all set to host its first regional WordCamp – WordCamp Kerala 2023 on March 25, 2023 (Saturday) at IMA House, Kochi…
#65 – Bob Dunn on Building a WooCommerce Community
On the podcast today, we have Bob Dunn. If you’ve been using WordPress for any length of time, and you’ve been consuming content in the ecosystem, it’s highly likely that you’ve heard of Bob…
#65 – Bob Dunn on Building a WooCommerce Community
On the podcast today, we have Bob Dunn. If you’ve been using WordPress for any length of time, and you’ve been consuming content in the ecosystem, it’s highly likely that you’ve heard of Bob…
Voting is Open for Plugin Madness 2023!
Help your favorite WordPress plugins advance to the finals during Torque’s eighth annual Plugin Madness competition…
Voting is Open for Plugin Madness 2023!
Help your favorite WordPress plugins advance to the finals during Torque’s eighth annual Plugin Madness competition…
WordCamp Asia. Energized, Graciousness and Empathy
WordCamp Asia in Bangkok was one of the most amazing events I have attended. Here is the BobWP recap of this years WCAsia…
WordCamp Asia. Energized, Graciousness and Empathy
WordCamp Asia in Bangkok was one of the most amazing events I have attended. Here is the BobWP recap of this years WCAsia…
Patchstack Weekly #61: Should you use WordPress As a Headless CMS?
This episode is about what a headless CMS is, how WordPress can be used as one, and the security concerns that go along with it…
Patchstack Weekly #61: Should you use WordPress As a Headless CMS?
This episode is about what a headless CMS is, how WordPress can be used as one, and the security concerns that go along with it…
Elementor or Gutenberg? Why Not the Best of Both?
Virtual Event – No need to choose between each design system when you can have your cake and eat it too…
Elementor or Gutenberg? Why Not the Best of Both?
Virtual Event – No need to choose between each design system when you can have your cake and eat it too…
WordPress without blog: a logical evolution for the CMS?
No, you’re not dreaming. This provocative questioning is very serious.Isn’t it time to remove the “blog” feature from the WordPress core..?
WordPress without blog: a logical evolution for the CMS?
No, you’re not dreaming. This provocative questioning is very serious.Isn’t it time to remove the “blog” feature from the WordPress core..?

Plugins / Themes / Blocks

MonetizeMore Acquires Advanced Ads Plugin
MonetizeMore, an ad revenue optimization company, has acquired the Advanced Ads plugin and will be hiring the team behind the products…
MonetizeMore Acquires Advanced Ads Plugin
MonetizeMore, an ad revenue optimization company, has acquired the Advanced Ads plugin and will be hiring the team behind the products…
Essential Form – The lightest plugin for contact forms, ultra lightweight and no spam
The lightest contact form for WordPress. It’s so essential you’ll either love it or hate it. Ultra lightweight and no spam…
Essential Form – The lightest plugin for contact forms, ultra lightweight and no spam
The lightest contact form for WordPress. It’s so essential you’ll either love it or hate it. Ultra lightweight and no spam…
PublishPress Future Pro is Now Available
PublishPress Future is one of the most popular plugins we develop. I’m delighted to say that there’s now a Pro version of PublishPress Future…
PublishPress Future Pro is Now Available
PublishPress Future is one of the most popular plugins we develop. I’m delighted to say that there’s now a Pro version of PublishPress Future…
Block Protocol
Access a growing collection of high-quality and powerful blocks with a one-time plugin install…
Block Protocol
Access a growing collection of high-quality and powerful blocks with a one-time plugin install…
Simple Download Counter
Simply counts the number of times your files are downloaded. Display download links and counts using shortcodes…
Simple Download Counter
Simply counts the number of times your files are downloaded. Display download links and counts using shortcodes…
Backup & Restore Your Child Sites from within the MainWP Dashboard
Today, I am thrilled to introduce one of the most exciting features, “API Backups” (Beta)…
Backup & Restore Your Child Sites from within the MainWP Dashboard
Today, I am thrilled to introduce one of the most exciting features, “API Backups” (Beta)…

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Deals

WordPress Deals for WP Builds readers / listeners
Find a deal in our searchable / filterable list. It’s like Black Friday, but every day of the year!
WordPress Deals for WP Builds readers / listeners
Find a deal in our searchable / filterable list. It’s like Black Friday, but every day of the year!

Security

WordPress Vulnerability Report – March 1, 2023
Each week, we report the latest vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins and themes. Vulnerable WordPress plugins and themes are the #1 reason WordPress sites get hacked…
WordPress Vulnerability Report – March 1, 2023
Each week, we report the latest vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins and themes. Vulnerable WordPress plugins and themes are the #1 reason WordPress sites get hacked…

WP Builds

316 – Kevin Geary talks about Automatic CSS
Some of us love working with CSS. It’s fun, pretty easy to learn, and gets the job done. Others… not so much. It’s boring, hard to master, and you end up in a mess. Enter Automatic CSS…
316 – Kevin Geary talks about Automatic CSS
Some of us love working with CSS. It’s fun, pretty easy to learn, and gets the job done. Others… not so much. It’s boring, hard to master, and you end up in a mess. Enter Automatic CSS…

Jobs

I’m Available for Hire – Jeff Chandler
My name is Jeff Chandler. I am the founder of WPTavern which I sold in 2013. I have been involved in the WordPress community since 2007. I’ve seen a lot, written about a lot, talked about a lot, and established a number of relationships over the years…
I’m Available for Hire – Jeff Chandler
My name is Jeff Chandler. I am the founder of WPTavern which I sold in 2013. I have been involved in the WordPress community since 2007. I’ve seen a lot, written about a lot, talked about a lot, and established a number of relationships over the years…
Post a job to WP Builds
Post a Job If you know of a job in the WordPress community, please feel free to post it here…
Post a job to WP Builds
Post a Job If you know of a job in the WordPress community, please feel free to post it here…

Not WordPress, but useful anyway…

umtv on TikTok
When#starwarstook on#soapboxraceRun 6 of 6#atatwalker #legendsofsoapboxracing #pov #fyp #soapboxderby #redbullsoapboxrace #london #imperialarmy
umtv on TikTok
When#starwarstook on#soapboxraceRun 6 of 6#atatwalker #legendsofsoapboxracing #pov #fyp #soapboxderby #redbullsoapboxrace #london #imperialarmy
Learn HTML  |  web.dev
This HTML course for web developers provides a solid overview for developers, from novice to expert level HTML…
Learn HTML  |  web.dev
This HTML course for web developers provides a solid overview for developers, from novice to expert level HTML…
Organize Your CSS with Stylelint
A few years ago I was on a new project at work as the frontend engineer. In code reviews I would recommend reordering of CSS properties, as many of us have a preferred order. One of my teammates pointed out that she would never remember my order and thus wouldn’t likely follow it, so I should find a way to automate it…
Organize Your CSS with Stylelint
A few years ago I was on a new project at work as the frontend engineer. In code reviews I would recommend reordering of CSS properties, as many of us have a preferred order. One of my teammates pointed out that she would never remember my order and thus wouldn’t likely follow it, so I should find a way to automate it…

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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 week in WordPress, episode number 243 entitled, it's always about Mark. It was recorded on Monday, the 6th of March, 2023. My name's Nathan Wrigley and I will be joined today by two special guests. Firstly, Michelle Frette and also Andrew Palmer. We were supposed to be joined by Hazel Kupo, but unfortunately she was unwell, but we carried on regardless and talked about WordPress lots and lots.

WordPress 6.2 is coming down the pike very soon, and there's lots of accessibility improvements. You can find out all about those. We also talk about the open verse integration and how there's been a bit of a furor about the way it's been implemented with hot links. You can now import your WordPress 6.2 open verse images just by clicking on the button.

It's a really nice update to WordPress. We also get into the 6.2 source of truth document, which Anne McCarthy has written. If you've got any questions about what's coming in 6.2, that is the way to get the answer. Master Don. Is it taking over Twitter? Have you lost interest? We talk about how I'm using it over at WP Builds, and then we get into a long conversation about Word Cam Asia.

Both Andrew and Michelle were there, and so they talk about their experience and how brilliant they thought it was. Should WordPress lose the blogging functionality by default? It's an interesting idea and in many cases it may be better for the cms. Tell us what you think and then towards the end, just a few silly bits and pieces. We talk about AI and we talk about at ATS on Wheels. It's all coming up next on this week in WordPress.

This episode of the WP Builds podcast is brought to you by GoDaddy Pro, the home of manage WordPress hosting that includes free domain SSL and 24 7 support. Bundle that with The Hub by GoDaddy Pro to unlock more free benefits to manage multiple sites in one place, invoice clients, and get 30% off new purchases. Find out more at go.me/WPBuilds.

Hello there. Hello. Hello. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are in the world. This is the, this week in WordPress show, episode number 200 and cranking 243. We talk every week about WordPress, whether you like it or not. , we're gonna be here nattering about WordPress and today.

True. That's, what's that, Michelle? So that's true. That's it. We're here every week. Today I'm joined, as you just heard. Not firstly by Michelle. How are you doing, Michelle?

[00:02:59] Michelle Frechette: I am okay getting over a cold that I apparently caught in my 30 hours of travel back from Bangkok .

[00:03:06] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, definitely get into all that.

The whole Word Camp Asia thing, that would be a lovely conversation. Have including the histrionics that everybody seemed to go through with the, in terms of the travel. But I'll do your proper intro if that's all right. Michelle. Michelle Frette. She's regular here. She's on very frequently.

But not only does she do this, she does a whole laundry list of other things and here they come. She's the director of community engagement for Stellar WP at Liquid Web. I guess that's the main thing, but here comes. All the other things. In addition to working at Stellar WP Michelle is the podcast [email protected].

Go and download it to your podcast player of choice. She's the co-founder of underrepresented in tech.com. Creator of wp career pages.com. The president of the board for big Orange heart.org, director of community relations and [email protected], author, business coach and frequent organizer and speaker at WordPress events.

Michelle lives just outside of Rochester, New York, where she's an avid nature photographer and should that not be sufficient, you can go and find more about her on her website. It's called Meet michelle.online. Actually, I seem to remember last time you were on, we came up with at least one more thing that we should have added into there, but I've forgotten what it was now.

[00:04:26] Michelle Frechette: Oh, I've got a couple more podcasts now.

[00:04:28] Nathan Wrigley: That's all . As always, an absolute pleasure to have you back and thank you. I'm glad that you got back safely. Also joining us, Andrew Palmer. Hi Andrew. Hello. Hello. You are in are you, have you painted the backdrop recently cuz it used to be all wooden paneled over there or is it just I've moved, I

[00:04:48] Andrew Palmer: moved house.

I oh yeah, I moved house. I'm still in this similar area. I'm in a place called Chechen in Buckinghamshire and I'm also getting over a cold that I caught on the plane or just maybe I caught it in at the end of word Camp Asia. But I'm. Breathing, which is good. ,

[00:05:09] Nathan Wrigley: he's still there.

He's still with us. Andrew's got a very nice long bio as well. And I'll just read it right out at you. Andrew is the co-founder of Bertha ai. You can find [email protected], which is an awesome opportunity for WordPress users to write where they work. He's in touch daily with the WordPress community.

He offers coaching, advocacy, and support for product makers, companies, and individuals who are aiming to be the very best. He currently is endorsing Grid Pain, which is a great company offering fantastic hosting management solutions to agencies to start, manage, and give great hosting services to their clients.

Is also the founder of WP Plugins plus a company based in London. Cole Kata, which I'm gonna say is Calcutta. And there they make plugins access support for various agencies and offer guided website design and build services. So a again, Hello to Occasionally we get guests with the one line, nah, no, not today.

I'm, I don't have a bo I should have a biography. I talk too much with be what I should

online.

[00:06:18] Nathan Wrigley: I'll write you one. Oh yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Keep it brief. But thank you for joining us. You too. Whoa. The comments have gone pretty beker. Very nice. If you would like to share this stream, I'd really appreciate that.

The more people that drop in and chat live the more interesting the show always ends up being, frankly. And with that in mind, the best place to go and do that is to go to WP Builds.com/live. That's where we've got the video embedded. It's YouTube. So if you go there and you're logged into a Google account, you can make comments.

Some people like to hang out in our Facebook group, and if you want to do that's fine as well. But you do have a little thing to go through. Facebook won't share your avatar or image or your name. In fact, unless you do this, you've gotta go to chat.restream.io/fb. And I think you just click a button saying authorize or something like that, and then we can see who you are.

So yeah, please feel free to go and share this link, WP Builds.com/live. Let's see if we can get some more people in the chat. But we've got a few, we've got a few new faces as well as some familiar people. We have. First stop, we have Web Squadron. Hello saying hi all. Thanks very much for joining us.

Tina Cook, she got the memo, Andrew. She read the email so it works.

[00:07:39] Andrew Palmer: It does work. Yeah. There's load Are people on our site currently cuz of that email, so that's good.

[00:07:44] Nathan Wrigley: Nice. Yeah, that, oh, that's great. You're checking out the analytics as you go. Good morning teams as Mark. Mark. We're gonna be talking about you later.

Really very quickly, only briefly, there's only so much you can say about It's always about him. It's always about Mark, isn't it? That's the title of this episode. It's always about Mark. I write it down . It's always about Mark. There we go. Unless something better crops up, that's gonna be the title.

Hope You All Had a Good Weekend, says Rob CAIRs, all the way from Toronto. Aaron Edwards saying, Hey, Ile three, three of my favorite people. Oh, that's nice. Andrew Palmer in the House. Various mentions of different people's names Hey Andrew, and things like that. And then, Thank goodness the universe can carry on as normal because Peter Ingersol has dropped his weekly weather report of the weather in Connecticut.

He does this every week. It's brilliant. It's 9:00 AM in Connecticut where it's getting close to our expected hive of seven degrees centigrade, 45 degrees Fahrenheit. He's even got the emojis. Thank you, Peter. Absolutely love it. Oh my goodness. Look. And then there's replies about the weather. Tina's saying it's 26 Celsius in South Africa, and it goes on and on.

, I suspect that comment about Mark is probably gonna be the backdrop to the entire episode. Now look, mark, it's chat, g p t talking about you. AI will be the thrust of so many things. I'm sure today we're gonna be talking about Bertha a little bit later, but let's just crack on, shall we? Let me share my screen.

Okay, this is the WP Builds website. You can see that we are kindly supported by GoDaddy Pro. They keep the lights on over here, so thank you so much to them. If you fancy subscribing, you know what to do. Put your email address in this little button this little text field, and then click subscribe.

We'll send you a couple of emails a week each time we produce new content. Nothing more, nothing less. I've got a couple of promo bits which I'll chuck in right at the start. The first one is to say that in a week's time, just over a week, eight days time, I'm gonna be chatting live with Pete Ne that is on the 14th of March.

We do our regular kind of monthly if we can fit it in. You are UX show and Peach's always on the lookout for some new websites. Something that you've built, half built are on the way to finishing or pushing live. She's a bit of an expert with all this kind of stuff, and she gives free advice on the show.

The r l for this is WP Builds.com/ui. and over there you can fill out a form and give us some various details like the website, url and so on and so forth. We're also interested in finding deceptive designs, a k a dark patterns, things on the website that really annoy you because they're deliberately done to trick you or catch you out, or you.

You agree to buy some insurance that you had no interest in cuz the button was bigger than the decline text, that kind of thing. So go and fill that out. That's WP Builds.com/ui and here he comes, mark Wesker. Then look at him. Look at him. So there headshot. Oh, he needs a new shot. Yeah. Make him figure there.

How's that look? Oh, dominates the show. Mark West and I and Bob Don, it's a full on trifecta. The three of us are gonna be going live the following day after pizza. It's gonna be on Wednesday, the 15th of March. And it's an opportunity really for Mark to demonstrate what Ws Forum can do. There's no sort of subscribe link.

It's gonna be at this same u r url, WP Builds.com/live. He's got some prizes lined up, I think he's given away, cut cardboard, cutouts of people's faces, that kind of thing. , you know

[00:11:33] Michelle Frechette: what they say though, right? ,

[00:11:35] Nathan Wrigley: there's only one available.

[00:11:37] Michelle Frechette: Beware the IDs of March . Yes, that is the, that's right, that is the IDs of March

But

[00:11:42] Nathan Wrigley: if you're in the, if you've ever played with a WordPress plugin form sorry, form plugin, and you haven't really settled on one WS form is a solid option, but you may be bamboozled by what's available in there. Mark's the person to answer it. So me, Bob, mark on the call taking the questions, we'll see how that goes.

And,

[00:12:04] Andrew Palmer: And you can try it light, the light version. It's on wp.org. So just search for WS form and you can try the light one, and then you'll see, you'll go, oh my God, I need this pro.

[00:12:16] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that's it. That's it. So yeah, it's really, it is am It is actually amazing. I just wanna make Mark's head big again. There we go.

Please don't. Disco move. Woo .

Oh my,

[00:12:32] Nathan Wrigley: my eyes. Make start coughing. . Let's get it back to normal. So there's this promotional bits, a couple of things coming up on the WP Build side of things. And I thank Mark for being such a good sport. I'm getting him back for. The word Camp Asia cardboard cutout that had of my head

So there we go. Let's get into some word pressy stuff. Charlie. So Anne McCarthy has released a, an article over on make.wordpress.org. It's called WordPress 6.2, accessibility I improvements. Do you know what? I'm really, there's so much in here, but it is just a list of items, but there's an absolute boatload of accessibility improvements that are coming in 6.2.

So if anything has been irritating you in prior versions of WordPress from an inaccessibility point of view, a lot of work has been done. Obviously this game never ends. There'll be at no point at which WordPress is a hundred percent accessible, cuz not only will the goal posts move, it's just not really possible to achieve that.

But a lot's been done and I would urge you to go and look at Anne's piece. It was published on the 2nd of March, I think. Andrew, you had a close read of this, whereas what,

[00:13:46] Andrew Palmer: just the example. Just an example of how much it actually has to go into this is just click the first link, which announced when the block is inserted in the navigation.

[00:13:56] Nathan Wrigley: This one here, this four. Oh, this one. Just click

[00:13:58] Andrew Palmer: that first link. So that's another tome basically of what's going on and all the conversations going on. What astounded me is that the reason for this is for people to know when a block has been initiated. So there's a, there's like a a noise.

It's a noise that gets announced because people with limited access, i e by, by not having great sight, are working on WordPress and building WordPress websites, and they're basically, Blind. So they need an announcement when they've actually put in a new block. But the problems with that is when that new block is put in, it gets announced every time you load that page.

So the, and throughout this discussion that says, how we get, how are we gonna get over that? And that's the key. When you look at the page by Anne and then you dive deeper into it, it is a minefield. Issues basically. Yeah. So you know how anybody, especially, this is all volunteers, let's not forget.

They're all trying to do their very best on this. And I think accessibility by abled body people is pretty much not ignored, but just not really thought about, because I can move my mouse around. I know when I've inserted the box I can see it. So this is really important.

And I'm getting definitely on the accessibility bandwagon here to, yeah, to, we've gotta really think about what we're doing. Accessibility wise, and I'm certainly putting that into all the plugins that I own and develop as well, trying to get them more accessible. It's really, it's hard, but it's gotta be done, really.

[00:15:43] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. And so if we go back to Anne's article the announcement of a block being inserted, as you say, with some kind of noise, just one little thread, and you can see at the end of each of these little lines. So for example, fix various off candor, append, or accessibility issues.

The beauty of the WordPress project is it's so well curated and people like Andrew a great job. You can see here's nope, not that one. Here we go. Another whole laundry list of things that have been considered just for that line item. And for each of those items, you'll notice there's a GitHub re.

Post as well, and there's just so much in here, but have a play. BTA four for WordPress came out I think it was probably about three or four days ago. I had, maybe it was the 1st of March, something like that. I had quite a long play with the site editor. I wasn't looking at it from an accessibility point of view, but there's so much that's coming in six point.

It is well worth having a little advanced look. If you wanna download it, you can do that from the WordPress website. But also there's a beta tester plugin that you can install, and if you check the right boxes, it will immediately overwrite your version of WordPress with a, the beta bleeding edge version as it's called.

Yeah. Thank you, Anne, for writing up that piece. , that was great. Anne, one big, sorry, Michelle, anything? Sorry.

[00:17:09] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, so a couple things. Number one, we worried about accessibility from a site visitor perspective for the longest time, right? Making sure that site visitors had accessibility without looking at the backend of WordPress to make sure that people who are blind or visually impaired were not being able to build websites as easily because the backend wasn't.

And WPC campus was one of the primary. Organizations, which really put a thrust forward to do accessibility audit of the backend of WordPress. And so I wanted to just acknowledge that first, and then this list is phenomenal. Of course, it's never gonna be quite enough, right? Cuz there's always more things we could do to make things accessible.

And so continuing to move forward on that is something that we need to continue to put that impetus on just as like we're starting to worry more about multilingual back ends of WordPress. Yeah. The second thing I wanted to point out though is at the top, if you look at the contributor, the collaborators on this article I wanted to point out Alex Stein.

So Alex Stein is somebody who's day job is not even in WordPress anymore, but Alex does a tremendous amount of work within the WordPress community to help do site audits, make sure that sites are accessible and teach about accessibility. He also, we're gonna talk a little bit later about the the foundation that has been created and he is one of the first recipients of.

The I can't think of a grant or a fellowship Through Fellowship. Yeah. Fellowship. Yep. So all of this kind of all ties together and just wanting to make sure that we also give props to Alex for all the work that he's doing in the WordPress

[00:18:44] Nathan Wrigley: community. Because that segue was so good. Let's just bump that right up to now, shall we?

So we were gonna move on to this toward the end. This came onto my radar because I did a podcast episode, which will be released on Wednesday with say, Reed and Courtney Robertson, both probably familiar names if you're in the WordPress community and, look on socials and things. And they were two people who were willing to come on and talk to me about the WP Community Collective.

I can paraphrase it, Michelle, but I feel like you are in a better position to do that probably. Do you wanna just say what this is? No, you're not.

[00:19:23] Michelle Frechette: It. I'm not I know as much as you do. You probably know more than I do having had that, so I'll let you go ahead.

[00:19:29] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. This is a fabulous, honestly I, we had some gremlins, right?

Doing the audio, which means that I had to listen say's internet just kept dropping and coming in and going out. So there was a lots of bits in the podcast where we cross talked and had to re-say things. And so I had to go back and edit it really carefully. So it really I learned a lot because I just kept hearing it over and over again, if so this is such a fabulous initiative, and it all comes back to this idea that, okay, what I'm about to say may not sit well with some people, but I'm gonna say it anyway. The idea is the people who can afford to contribute to WordPress are the people who can literally afford. to contribute to WordPress.

In other words, they're either in a, they're either in a position where they're, I don't know they're independently wealthy enough that they can take time out of their working week, or they've gotten to a point where they're sponsored by a company who's willing to give them, I don't know, 5%, 10% a day, in some cases, an entire, five days a week towards the WordPress project.

But that is I don't wanna use the word privilege, but you could understand looking at it from the outside looking in, you might be able to make the argument, wow, those people are in a fairly privileged position and now, Don't get me wrong, in most cases, I'm sure that's off the back of a lifetime of incredibly hard work.

But what about all those people who just don't have that capacity? They don't have enough money available to them to take time out. They don't have an employer who's willing to do that, but they have the skills, they have the desire, they have the commitment. Wouldn't it be nice if we could figure out a way to get them some money, essentially, and a roster of work for them to do and get them contributing in.

So the WP Collective is gonna reach out to businesses, organizations, corporations, and create fellowships with a specific remit. So the first one is coincidentally accessibility. And they're gonna put a body of work together and say we need 15, 25, whatever, thousand dollars. Please, can we get you companies over there?

Can you contribute to this? And then we can get the people who are gonna be good for this work, regardless of whether or not they've been able to afford it in the past. And we will give them that fellowship and off they go and they can do it. So it's WP Collective sits in the middle. There's the actual contributors on one side and on the other side you've got the businesses paying in and it just seems like this really great symbiotic relationship and I should breathe

[00:22:16] Andrew Palmer: But that sounds

for the fu isn't it? Five for the future, but with cash.

[00:22:22] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah I guess in a sense, yes and no. Yeah. Yes and no. The idea here though is that, let's say for example, you [email protected], but you've got no commitment into the WordPress com community. You just have loads of cash, but you want to contribute, but you don't know where to contribute or how to do that.

You can just give the WP Collective money. They are a 5 0 3 C or whatever the American Title, 5 0 1 Cun 3, 5 0 1 Cun three. Thank you. I have no idea. They're one of those, and so they just act as an intermediary. They'll look after the money and then make sure that it is spent correctly, and then there'll be an obligation of the people who do the work to create things like blog posts in a sense, to reflect back, this is what we did.

Look, your money was well spent. Let's have some more money, yeah, one, one of the things

[00:23:14] Michelle Frechette: too is to remember that isn't just, it isn't just the corporations that are gonna fund this. Hopefully we'll see some big infusions of cash from the big corporations, but it's also individuals. If you pull up Courtney's comment on the screen, you can see that as soon as I heard this, like I, I put somebody into this because it's definitely worthwhile.

I come from a place of privilege. I can afford to put a little bit of money into that. So I did, and I wish that other people would do the same and follow suit. But I also wanna commend this too, because there's an intersection between here and what happens with, organizations like Underrepresented in Tech, which is not a 5 0 1

And we don't ask for money, so we want you to put your money into the WP Community Collective, but it, but they both are actually helping move forward equality and equity in WordPress as well, by making it possible for people who don't have giant corporations, giving them paychecks to be able to contribute to WordPress.

And so I think it's, A wonderful initiative, and I really do hope more individuals will get involved in funding it. And also, of course, those corporate

[00:24:17] Nathan Wrigley: dollars. Andrew, did you have anything you wanted to add to this? Five

[00:24:21] Andrew Palmer: 13 Does that if a corporation an American corporation contributes to that, is that a tax deductible?

It is, yes. Okay. So how do UK businesses contribute and get that benefit of tax deductible as well?

[00:24:34] Michelle Frechette: Or they there's, they can't, it's, there's no, like if I, no, if I was to give to a UK charity, I don't get a tax benefit either. Sure. It's unfortunate, but that's

[00:24:42] Andrew Palmer: the But it's, it is an incentive. It is an incentive.

If someone's giving say 50 grand it's quite a big tax incentive for the US based companies, isn't it? To be able to contribute. Absolutely. .

[00:24:54] Nathan Wrigley: Sure. Yep. Do you know, I hadn't, I didn't even get into that. I didn't, that's why you are in business Andrew, and I'm not I didn't even get into that in the conversation.

It doesn't mean I do it very well, , the yeah. It just didn't even occur to me that side of things. So there's a, there's an upside just from a pure taxation point of view. It's a good thing to put money in if you're a US based business because there's a. , there's a little bit of a loss in the amount of tax that you'll be required to pay.

Yeah, it's fascinating. Courtney's in the comments, actually, this is great, this is perfect. She says, Alex will receive the f the funding, the fellowship funding from W P CCC when the goal is met. If you go to, I believe the URL is the open collective.com/wcc. I dunno if one of you guys can dig that out, but I'm pretty sure that's it.

I'll put it in the show notes as well. But the idea is that these fellowships, they demarcate a particular job. So it's an accessibility one or it might be an, I dunno, SEO one or a performance one, whatever has been decided. Then a funding goal is set for that. Fellowships are applied for by individuals and they marry the two up.

And once the funding is met, it's released to the. The individual who inverted commerce wins the fellowship the WP c Courtney says is available for individuals and organization organizations to collect resources sponsored, it'll be focused on the work of official WP Teams events, et cetera. Yes, I've forgotten that.

So it's official channels and Andrew, our fiscal host is Open Collective and they do work globally offhand, I dunno the answer, however we can dig in. Yeah, I remember. I, it was either Courtney or say in the podcast said that there is a benefit for them going through the Open Collective. It means that they don't have to do some kind of work in terms of taxation or I can't remember, but there, there was a reason that they did it that way.

Oh, great. Thank you. So the url, let me just create a little caption to show it. That'll do it. There we go. Is this go to open collective.com/the. W pcc, no underscores or anything like that. Open collective.com/the WP ccc. Yeah, that it did all tie well together, didn't it? We had Alex. Yeah. And then

[00:27:22] Michelle Frechette: the access, the accessibility fellowship is only funded at 8% right now, so absolutely.

Get on there, bring your dollars and help get this moving forward so that we can fund Alex's fellowship.

[00:27:35] Nathan Wrigley: Of course, one of the curious things about doing the podcast is I get to speak to a lot of plugin developers, and I feel like a lot of them would really love to do this, but they're in that position where, they're just trying to launch their career.

They're just trying to begin, and so money's tight. Putting food on the table is priority number one. But they've got the skills, they've got the initiative, they've got the, all that they need. They just don't have the finance. So yeah, go and check it out. This is a good little project. Okay. Whew. That was a good one.

Andrew, just before we move on, was there anything else you wanted to add to that or should we slide into No,

[00:28:13] Andrew Palmer: I think it's great and it should be supported. And it's a way to get funding to people that deserve it and also are very talented. Yeah. And can contribute in a meaningful way.

[00:28:25] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Thank you. That's great. Sound a bit corporate that, that's what I mean. No. I think that was about the tenor of it, wasn't it? Okay. Let's go on to talk about photographs. Why not the I dunno if you've heard of open verse again, Michelle. I feel that you are in a better position to tell people about open verse given your massive interest in photography and all of that kind of stuff.

Maybe not. Do you wanna tell us what open verse is or shall I do that? ,

[00:28:54] Michelle Frechette: you go ahead and I will, I'm gonna look in the WordPress photograph. You correct?

[00:28:59] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. You correct one yes. In a minute. Essentially open verse is a CCC zero. So it's l My understanding is that if you get a photograph of open verse, you are more or less guaranteed that it's usable by you anywhere.

You can amend it, you don't have to give attribution and all that, and there may be caveats around that. But the point is there's absolutely tons of images in open verse, which you are free to use. However, the way that things currently are is you've gotta go to open verse, probably download the image a bit like you might do or something like on Splash or something like that.

Download the image, upload it to your media library, and then get to work. Wouldn't it be better, given that the open verse is now under the auspices, I think of automatic. It might be some other. Branch of automatic, I don't know, but I think it's automatic. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have all of this built into the editing experience of WordPress, the block editor?

And the answer is yes. So that's coming in WordPress 6.2. There'll be an option to go to open verse. It'll open up a little panel. You can search within the posts and page editing experience. And then when you finally find an image, you just basically click on it and it goes da magic. Super cool experience.

However, there's a few questions raised this week. This article is on WP Tavern. It was Sarah Gooding. She was expressing the concern of some people that the, in the original implementation of this, it was being hotlinked from wherever that image was being hosted. Now, this is not ideal because for all sorts of reasons.

Number one, your servers having to, people receiving the website have gotta go to a whole. Bunch of different things. If you've got 10 images, you've got 10 different places to go to find those images. Maybe. Maybe there was some tracking of pixels in those images, I dunno, that kind of thing. So the question was, why are we doing this?

Why don't we just download it the moment that you use it, stick it in your media library. Then if that image ever goes away elsewhere where it was hotlink to, you've still got it. And lo and behold, the WordPress community being awesome didn't take too long for that to happen. And now that is the expected behavior that we're gonna get in WordPress 6.2.

So your clicker button image will be downloaded onto your media library. I just think this stuff is so cool. It's gonna make life. It is. Yeah. Just great. Yeah,

[00:31:22] Andrew Palmer: it actually I've actually built that kinda thing into Bertha, to be

[00:31:26] Nathan Wrigley: honest. Yeah. Is that how that works? So hang on. First of all, rewind. What does Bertha do around images?

[00:31:33] Andrew Palmer: So images, you can create images within Bertha, but also we've put search in Bertha and their CCO as well. So you can search if you go to Bertha and you're in the plugin or in the extension, you can actually go to images and then click search. Then you can search all your AI images and copy them, use them as you wish.

And if you're in WordPress, it, you can either resize the image and then upload it to your media file directly, or just upload it to your media file directory if you only want a small image.

[00:32:04] Nathan Wrigley: So just to give context to that is an AI generated image. So it's using stable diffusion or Stable diffusion, yeah.

1.5. Yeah. Okay. So it's using stable diffusion, so it creates the image shows you a thumbnail, you pick, and when you pick. , it downloads it into your media library. And it's yours, right? You've got it. Yes. You can do what you like with it. Okay,

[00:32:23] Andrew Palmer: got it. But also anyone else can share it. But also on the search facility, you can search for say, Yoda, and then you pick, bring up all the images of Yoda, and then if you want to use a particular one, you just click add to your media library.

[00:32:37] Nathan Wrigley: So that was the behavior that you came out of the gate with, right? You thought you, you want that image, you're just gonna press a button and it's immediately in. Yeah. Cuz that seems like you're not ever gonna want to hot link to anything, are you? It just seems like

[00:32:53] Andrew Palmer: No. We always thought why would you hot link to it?

Yeah. It's just because of the, of, you're using someone else's server. That server might go down, plus, images get deleted after a period of time. There's only a certain amount of time that people can hold millions of images on a server. And they will go through and maybe archive some and say, okay, only tw 10 people are using this.

I'll archive that. But that affects 10 people that are using it. All of a sudden, you just get a placeholder each. But the the search facility is actually through Lexi Carra, but that's built into Bertha. So you can just search it, download it, use it. It's all C O. So that means you don't, you've got a free license that anybody can use that image as well, but at least you can search thousands of images that have been pre-generated.

[00:33:39] Nathan Wrigley: If I search for something, does it look for, is it looking for text in the prompt that I gave it to create the image? So let's say,

[00:33:47] Andrew Palmer: Yeah, it's when you create an image on stable diffusion, it, it gives it a name and it gives it a reference or a tag. So if you search for instance, gothic restaurant, you'll find, it will come up with images with gothic restaurant in it and stuff like that.

Or coffee shop or whatever, you might wanna talk about nomad working. So you might wanna have images of coffee shops. You don't wanna look on any other stock photos or pay for them, let's be honest, and so you just search for a coffee shop and use the one out of the search of the AI images.

So it's similar to Open Verse, it's all free. And you can use them

[00:34:27] Nathan Wrigley: for anything. Nice. Yeah, that's cool. Michelle, you've dropped a comment into our little private chat, which only the three of us can see. What, what was, do you want me to raise that on the screen? What was that about?

It's up to you.

[00:34:39] Michelle Frechette: I just, we're talking about open Mers and of course the WordPress photo directory project, which I'm very fond of is part of that. And so I just stopped drop. I just did a quick in the site, just did a quick copy paste of what the photo directory looks like right now as far as the number of images, et cetera, which I thought is interesting, right?

So six,

[00:34:58] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. 6,393 , of which a fairly decent percentage belonged to you. Hundred should have taken

[00:35:07] Andrew Palmer: that outwards. The rejected ones. You've got rejected 802. What's the

[00:35:13] Nathan Wrigley: frontiers faces? ,

[00:35:15] Michelle Frechette: oh, it's any number of things. So it could be identifying information, so faces for sure. License plate numbers, things that are a, an absolute street address of a residential home, for example.

If it's, if the quality is too poor, if it's pixelated there's bl motion, blur motion. There's a lot of reflection off of windows. If you're taking it through window, for example. There's lots of reasons that we might reject a photo. My I never reject photos for this, but I want to all the time, if your horizon is crooked, please correct your horizons.

please correct your horizons before you submit a photo.

[00:35:51] Andrew Palmer: So you are actually one of the people that approves them. So will you will you eventually accept AI images or don't you accept AI generated images? What are your thoughts around.

[00:36:02] Michelle Frechette: That we are not accepting images, we are accepting photographs.

So it is a photograph, so an AI generated image is not a photograph. Gotcha.

[00:36:13] Andrew Palmer: Okay. So it's very clear. Very

[00:36:14] Nathan Wrigley: clear. Cool. I wonder how long that'll be the case though, that the, before it's now an impossible to tell a photograph from a, an AI generated image, which, Trying to look like a photograph.

We'll have to wait and see. I guess if you are, if you're an expert photographer, you'll probably know the difference. I'll test it out next week. See how it goes. ? Yeah, look, the sea's upside down, that's definitely fake. I will ,

[00:36:36] Michelle Frechette: I'll say that it is human beings that are moderating the photos and human beings can be tricked by certain things.

I would. Hate for that to actually be the intent of somebody submitting an image though. So Andrew, don't make me ban you

[00:36:49] Nathan Wrigley: from the fucking . The do you know what I always find, if I ever look at an, like a stable diffusion created image of a person, it's always the fingers, which give it away. There's like fingers,

[00:37:04] Michelle Frechette: hot dog

[00:37:04] Andrew Palmer: figures,

It was a great article in The Observer or the Independent or the other day. I wish I'd brought, I wish I'd put that in the link, but it was basically saying why, and it's because most photo, most photography. Doesn't show fingers. If you look at, yes, if you look at the stock photos and everything, it's people operating behind a computer or they're, they might be shaking hands or something at a distance, but it's because the reference points aren't enough so that they don't, AI basically doesn't know how to create fingers and they did a clasping hand and it was something outta a horror movie.

Yeah,

[00:37:43] Nathan Wrigley: it horrible. Something outta everything everywhere. All at once just is

[00:37:46] Andrew Palmer: giant. Exactly. Everything everywhere. All at once. Watch that film if you haven't watched

[00:37:51] Nathan Wrigley: it. Yeah, but if you look at us right now, there's no fingers. There's just, here's my fingers, I are. Yeah, but only for a brief moment. It's not an exactly.

Can I ask you a question just to stay on the AI thing just for a minute? Cuz we, we've often strayed into this subject. I know it's not specifically WordPress, but I'm curious, d did, does, how's the debate going in terms of recognition for let's stay with photos, right? How's the, how's that debate moving forward?

Because I know there's a lot of artists who take pictures and or have drawn things. There's an ongoing,

[00:38:25] Andrew Palmer: there's an ongoing court case, right? But I think, stability, AI has just got some more money as well, and they don't, let's not forget that stability AI are also open source. If you are using another service to, to produce stability, AI photographs like replicate or hugging face or something like that, that are using the open source from stability ai, then you are paying them and they've got their own terms and conditions of what you do with the images as well.

But you can actually build your own server. Using the open a open using stability AI's code, it's just expensive. So the debate is going on between photographers, Getty particularly are taking stability, AI to or stable diffusion to court saying, you scanned our images, your, you are replicating them, and we know that you're replicating them.

Because at the bottom of each image is Getty Images low code, or, yeah. messed up match that version of Getty Images. What AI people are saying is that, We're not copying your images per se. We are just, we've just seen those as an example. And that's how our machine learning has worked.

It's taking your images along with millions of other images and then collating all that information together to produce a and other image. And because, obviously we, we scanned your website and we scanned adobe stock.adobe.com and all, Unsplash and everything, we are gonna, there are gonna be some anomalies with your logos appearing, but I dunno, it's an ongoing court case and it will, these companies got hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and we know that the court cases in the US take years to fix.

If get, if anyone's gonna wanna win it, it's gonna be Getty and Getty is saying they don't want to win it. in per se. They want to just have an acknowledgement that licensing fees are due, which is what they are. They're, because they're known as the ambulance chasers of photographic libraries, right?

Yes. So you've all heard of the 200 by 200 pixel picture, and it's cost someone 20 grand, after three, they've left it on there for three years, and then all of a sudden one of a lawyer from get goes, you owes 12 grand. You go, oh,

[00:40:41] Nathan Wrigley: It's a really, it's a really interesting debate because obviously, you know something which is similar, but not the same is songwriting.

The Beatles can go after anybody now because there's four notes in a row, which give you the impression that it sounds a bit like yesterday or something like that. And so it's a tiny bit of a song, but it, but it, but, and they win those things, don't they? So if you they do, but

[00:41:07] Andrew Palmer: they're starting to lose them more, are they?

And more, and the judges are becoming, they're like, 12 notes, right? Or 12 chords or six, however many chords there are. Mozart said it doesn't, he? What? What do you want me to do with 12 chords? Of course it sound, yes, he , but it's it's and with writing, if you write an article on artificial intelligence and I write an article and Michelle writes an article on artificial intelligence, there's gonna be similarities.

One would hope. There's just gonna be similarities. Even if we didn't, I will use artificial intelligence to write it, but, if you don't, there's still gonna be similarities to the, to what we're doing. You've read books. There were two, they're films. There's films that come out at the same time that are about the same subject.

So how do you. How do you get there? You've got Star Trek. You've got Star Wars. Which one copied, which, all this kind of, stuff. It's just plagiarism is part of our life and we're just gonna have to live with it and yeah. It's not Yeah. We've taking people to court every day is not gonna, is just not gonna help

[00:42:09] Nathan Wrigley: the situation.

No. I do know what you mean. We've straight into this AI thing on so many occasions. I personally find it to be a really interesting subject and I'm slightly conflicted about what I think about it, not because I think there's anything weird about it. I just I'm just concerned at the pace of it and whether or not we've got enough guardrails for unexpected things that might happen in the, it's not going action as fast as it can.

Oh, that's, I'm pleased about that. That's good news. . It's just the hype. Don't, but it's also the incentives to me, it's whether or not the incentives for it are in line with what humanity. Needs, I forget it. Let's not get into that .

[00:42:53] Michelle Frechette: It's more that the uptake on it, right?

So more and more people are using it. That's what's going at breakneck speed right now. It's actually, yes, it's moving quickly, perhaps not as quickly as it could, which is probably a good thing as well. I don't drive my fast. My, I've never driven. Car as fast as it can go, which is also a good thing.

, but that doesn't stop people from driving cars, right? So I think more and more people are experimenting with using it. I'm going to use it to write Nathan's bio, so we'll see how that works. . Good

[00:43:26] Andrew Palmer: luck

with that.

[00:43:27] Andrew Palmer: I just needed to do a caveat there. I drove my car as fast as it could go on an autobar.

Oh yeah. Get that in

[00:43:34] Nathan Wrigley: quickly. That's completely legal. and I

[00:43:37] Andrew Palmer: blew it up. .

[00:43:38] Nathan Wrigley: Oh no. Oh no. This whole thing started not about ai. We were talking about open person, about the implementation in WordPress six point, which is a

[00:43:47] Andrew Palmer: great integration by the way. Yeah. It's not really

nice.

[00:43:51] Nathan Wrigley: Great. We've never had it in the cms so that you could just chuck an image in really without the need to go anywhere else. And now you totally will be able to do that. Do that as a plugin. Say

[00:44:04] Andrew Palmer: again.

[00:44:05] Nathan Wrigley: Didn't uncla un do it as a yes. Sorry, I don't mean that plugins couldn't have enabled it, but this'll just be core WordPress, sure. You'll just download it from wordpress.org and it'll have that capability built in. So for a lot

[00:44:16] Andrew Palmer: of it makes plugging more easier, which then discounts the. There's an article that we're gonna talk about not plugging.

[00:44:25] Nathan Wrigley: Do you know what we're doing? So many good segues today.

Let me try and find that one quickly. That one, it fits perfectly, doesn't it? WP Maite. Yeah. Yeah. This is an article on the WP Maite website, and it really I've no idea why this hit home so much, but it really did to me. The question posed by them is, what if WordPress moved on from blogging and just hold on a minute, right?

Let me explain what they're trying to say is basically, when you build websites, let's say that's for clients or for yourself, how many times out of a hundred websites is the blog functionality used now? For me, obviously with the podcast and all, that's a hundred percent of it. It's all blog posts basically.

But if I'm building a client website, let's say, I don't know, local plumbing company or something like that, you can sell them upon on the idea of a blog, and they'll probably go yeah, we'll commit to that. We'll do a blog post each week. You come back six months later, how many articles have they written?

Not one. And so WP R might be saying, wouldn't it be interesting if we added the functionality for blogs as a canonical plugin? As a plugin? So without it, without that plugin, Posts have gone categories for posts and all of that have gone and they show what the interface would potentially look like.

Let me just find it. Was that it there? Yeah. There you go. You basically have a dashboard which says pages, media appearance, plugins, users, and you could obviously put the blog back in, install the plugin. Everything that you've now got comes back, but most people don't need it. And I just thought to myself, do you know what, in, in many cases I think that's true.

Do I wanna fiddle with WordPress that much? Probably not. But in some subset of cases, would this be a good idea? Yes. And of course there is a plugin that you can download to get rid of the blog . So it is actually possible, but you've got to add a plugin as opposed to putting a plugin to put the blog back.

Can I give

[00:46:32] Andrew Palmer: My two sensors? I'd love to hear it. Yeah. A non-word press developer as well. Yeah. So I, don't kill me here. I develop Shopify sites, wick. Squarespace and everybody goes, oh, I'm totting, can I have a blog, please? , there you go. . Just like WordPress. So I They ever use it though? No.

It, I don't, I haven't got a, I've never had a customer say, I don't want a blog. Never. No.

[00:47:03] Nathan Wrigley: Interesting. No, it's just a,

[00:47:05] Andrew Palmer: it's just like a non, what they do say is that is, can you not, can we not have comments? So I always add no comment plugging, because running a blog, if you're gonna run a blog as an affiliate, that you need a blog, you need a blog platform because that's WordPress, that's word what WordPress is good for.

It's great for SEO and all that kind of stuff. And Google likes posts rather than pages. It's just weird. But you've got, Everybody I know, every client I've ever had, no matter what platform we've been on, Ruple, all of the platforms. Jum. Jula was a fantastic blogging platform, and so search engine friendly, it was unbelievable.

Then they do their iterations, which means you have to redesign every single site every time Jum has been updated. Yeah. Crazy. But the, that's what brings work. That's what makes WordPress brilliant. The backward compatibility. But the fact that people wouldn't want a blog is , it's alien to

[00:48:06] Nathan Wrigley: me.

It's completely alien ,

[00:48:09] Andrew Palmer: and I'm not old school. I'm forward thinking. I'm totally forward thinking, but I just think, why wouldn't you wanna blow?

[00:48:15] Michelle Frechette: So I've had the opposite, right? So I do a, I've done in the past, I'm actually working on one right now, a site for somebody that, it's basically a brochure site.

Yeah. So they are arborists, they take down trees, they remove stumps. They don't, there's not a lot of blogging that these people want to, or are able to do without hiring somebody outside to come in and write blog posts for them, which is not in their budget. So to them, having a blog is like a foreign thing, right?

So the most they might do is if we could turn maybe three or four articles, but we wouldn't call it a blog, we would just call it articles. Arbery or something like that. Yeah. So there's

[00:48:54] Andrew Palmer: a lot. Yeah.

[00:48:57] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. So like the thought of blogging for a lot of small businesses who are just looking to have a claim on the web where they can be found, people can get, they can get their Google listing, et cetera.

A blog doesn't make a lot of sense for a lot of those people. I get it. Just, I get it. Time wise or, money wise, even if. Even if there is enough material to put a blog out there. For

[00:49:19] Nathan Wrigley: sure. Yeah. That's interesting. I remember having quite a lot of conversations with people over the years and they genuinely couldn't get the difference between a post and a page.

They just couldn't. Okay. So posts, they're repeatable. You write them and then they go into, What, but that's the same mean. It looks the same. Everything's the same. I tend not

[00:49:35] Andrew Palmer: to bother to explain it to them. . Yeah just click post. I really, I skipped that bit, cause you, you just don't need to know.

Don't worry about it. We're your web developer. You go on making your pink widgets, you'll be good. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:49:47] Nathan Wrigley: I thought this was a fascinating piece. Anyway. Yeah. WP might have got it on there. It was an article inspired by Jack Kitter. Kitter. Hing Looks like Kitter Hing. And it's linked in the post.

I just thought it was curious. I honestly, I could see that in many cases this would be an interesting option, but I feel that like the journey that WordPress has been on, it would almost be sacri to strip out the blogging bit cuz that's its roots, right?

[00:50:14] Michelle Frechette: Also is it really that much of a bloat to just not use the blogging capability?

No, of course not. So there you go. Blog posts and pages are basically just different types of post types, right? So yeah. What is the

[00:50:27] Nathan Wrigley: difference really? We've done, we've gone full circle, haven't we? We want the blog keep the blog . What if I,

[00:50:34] Michelle Frechette: I have a lot of customers that don't use it, so what?

We just don't

[00:50:37] Nathan Wrigley: use it. That's all. Yeah, just, yeah. I guess you could even just hide the menu item, couldn't you? If you really were Yeah. Flossy about it. Anyway, that was that was an interesting, and we segued into it beautifully. So let's carry on where we were gonna get to. Who I just wanted who we're going next.

Yeah. There's no way I'm gonna be able to summarize this, except just meandering. Anne McCarthy has written the she's written a book. I dunno how to describe it. Look at this, right? I'm just gonna scroll right, and I'm gonna be scrolling pretty darn quickly. So this is Anne McCarthy's P Boy.

Look at it. Look at Anne's brilliant.

[00:51:15] Andrew Palmer: Now Anne ever gets any

[00:51:16] Nathan Wrigley: sleep. She's she's an ai that's the that is

She's written this piece 1st of March. I expect it's been a long time in the making. It's called WordPress 6.2 Source of Truth. And essentially she just wanted to put down one article where everything about 6.2 the release could be found. And that's exactly what she's done. I is a gigantic read, but if there's anything confusing you about 6.2, if you're worried about it, you are gonna have to explain a lot to your clients.

So this is the place to go. And you'll be able to find absolutely everything. And yeah, there you

[00:51:59] Andrew Palmer: go. Actually, can I just segue again into AI too? Good. And it's not my product. A guy called Aaron Edwards at Ugly Robot on on Twitter, who's developed WP Docs. Yes. So if you've got a question.

WordPress, just go to WP Docs. We

[00:52:18] Nathan Wrigley: actually tried this last week on the show. Now I wonder if I can find it. Is that WP docs.co? No. Advanced Probably isn't that. I probably don't want to click that. Do I?

[00:52:28] Andrew Palmer: Yeah, probably. Probably Google or

[00:52:31] Nathan Wrigley: something. Just No, it wasn't that. I, we had it on last week's show.

Maybe it's that WP Docs io. Io. Yeah, that would be the one. Oh, no, it's this one chat, wp. That one. Oh, is it

[00:52:41] Andrew Palmer: WP Doc Shoot. Yep. It's basically ask him anything about word WordPress. It's quite clever what he's doing and all. There's a lot of people out there. There's a guy that's just produced a.

Another AI plugin where you can upload all your documentation and it'll answer all questions and people are go thinking about using it for the first line support. But I think Aaron's the first one to really get it up and going. And this is probably part of the danger of working or working in public, cause Aaron is very much on Twitter telling people what he's developing and why he's doing it, and then somebody goes in and jumps in and I'm guilty of that as well. I thought I like that ik. He's very affable about it. And he's the actual CTO of Wpm U Dev, so he's a busy guy anyways.

Michelle, I just dunno how you all do these things. People say that I'm busy, right? But I'm just not, when you compare me to people like Michelle and and Darren, they just get on with it. But the key is that he does so much and he's done, he's doing this as, I think this was a test and now he's doing it as a a commercial thing for people to.

really up their game in using chatbots and the information that chatbots can give back to customers in first line support and also knowledge bases. It's crazy.

[00:53:58] Nathan Wrigley: Andrew, is this Aaron? We've got him in the comments, right? Yeah. Yeah. So Aaron, I tried this last week on the show, and I must admit, I, we, I think we plumbed in.

One or maybe two different things and we didn't get too much back that we were able to use. So if Aaron is still watching and he wants to drop in a couple of useful questions that would demo how it worked, I'd really appreciate that and we could show that live. That'd be really nice. Just going back two minutes or so back onto Anne.

And her amazingly long piece Courtney's in the comment, she said that the truth, the source of truth doc helps docs training, marketing teams and also the w p ecosystem like host plugins, s SaaS related businesses. She says, excuse me, we take the source of truth, write the docs training content. Then others pick up on it.

, just purely by random. It's apparently Happy birthday, happy birthday. Nobody wants him. But yeah, happy birthday. That's great. And then Ben Intel from Stackable. Hi, Ben says, teaching people the different parts. Oh, so now we're back onto the Doey. Strip out posts and pages and get rid of the blog teaching people.

The difference between posts and pages is up there with teaching the difference between.org and.com. Yeah, it's really obvious, isn't it, Ben? If you use WordPress, it's it's a blog post. It's gonna, it'll have a date attached to it and all that kind of stuff. And there'll be an archive and Yeah, but what, I don't get it. Okay. Right here we go. . Aaron's with us now. He says, sure. Click the little circle in the question box and Prefill example questions on chapter wp, click the little circle on the question box this right? Is that what he's saying? Oh,

[00:55:58] Andrew Palmer: Aaron, that's not clear, Aaron. Get that in the clip.

[00:56:05] Nathan Wrigley: the tips. My feedback. Like feedback. Okay, so this is make me a question. Oh, this is much better. Look at that. Okay, so let's go for one that we can actually understand. Okay, we all know the answer to this one. Let's see what happens. It says, so the, for those of you that are listening to this, we're in chat.

I'm telling

[00:56:24] Andrew Palmer: you, if this doesn't bring up Mike Little, there'd be a riot. If there's no, if Mike Little doesn't come up on this,

[00:56:29] Nathan Wrigley: it doesn't say r Co-founder does it. It says, who is the founder? Yes. Let's click and see what we get. And so we've clicked the question, who is the founder? Singular. Of WordPress the AI appears to be doing a little bit of thinking, so rather than the cursor typing up the words,

[00:56:45] Andrew Palmer: this is probably cost Aaron about.

Yeah. See, that is so wrong. So wrong. Yeah.

[00:56:51] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Mike

[00:56:51] Andrew Palmer: Little is the co-founder of WordPress. I am so annoyed that this doesn't happen all time. He's also in an underrepresented group. He's also one of the nicest guys in the world, and he lives in the United Kingdom. He lives and I'll ever bang this drum that he is being, history is being rewritten.

I'm I it drives me crazy. .

[00:57:16] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. That was literally the worst question

[00:57:19] Andrew Palmer: that we could have. Just drives me crazy.

[00:57:22] Nathan Wrigley: I'll. I'm gonna ask another one. So I've clicked the little recycle icon, so it's now three. So ask

[00:57:27] Andrew Palmer: who the co-founder of WordPress

[00:57:28] Nathan Wrigley: is because yeah, I'm sure that Aaron will be on that. Let's see if he's got a response to that.

So now we're asking the AI list, the default blocks in WordPress. So I'm sure that we've got a fair on here of what all of these are.

[00:57:42] Michelle Frechette: Aaron says we should ask it. Who? The co-founder is .

[00:57:44] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Let's do that. After this one I'll copy and paste that. We'll ask it that

[00:57:49] Andrew Palmer: exact question. It should say there are, it should say there are, there, there isn't one founder, there is a co-founder.

Yeah, sorry. Okay. To acknowledge co-founders, veto Peg is co-founder of of birth of ai. I've never, I'll never, whenever anybody who says, oh, it's a great idea. . I say, yeah this Veto's idea as well. Get on, get in there. It's important

[00:58:12] Nathan Wrigley: We have the answer to that question that looks right to me.

I'm sure there's some other ones, but anyway, there we go. Okay. Let's ask it that question. Who were the now is co-founder? Is that hyphenated or is it just one word? It should work it out. Okay. Let's do, let's hyphenate it. Who were the co-founders of WordPress? Who are,

[00:58:34] Andrew Palmer: they're

[00:58:34] Nathan Wrigley: still alive hopefully.

Who were, who are? Okay, let's go, let's ask it. Let's see what we get. Who, yes, who are That's true. Yeah. It doesn't really matter, does it? Let's see if we get the right answer. So it's spinning. It's spinning. The co-founders. Yes. Oh, there you go. There you go. There you go. Redemption small redemption.

It's got the question. Okay. So thank you for introducing that back to us, Andrew. That's perfect. If you've got a question about. WordPresses code base and things like that. And I'm just gonna go through, here's a few of the random questions which get generated. What are custom post types and how do I create one?

How do you list chron events with WP cli? Show an example.

[00:59:14] Andrew Palmer: Oh, that's quite a complex question. And answer that

[00:59:16] Nathan Wrigley: one. Yeah, I think that was the problem last week. We didn't really know what the scope was and so we asked it to create things like code and stuff like

[00:59:23] Andrew Palmer: that and it just, oh no, doesn't do that.

[00:59:26] Nathan Wrigley: No, do that. But there we go. Thank you Aaron for being a good sport about that and hopefully that's that's Scott us in the right direction. Ble heck, we can talk the three of us. Scott,

[00:59:36] Andrew Palmer: follow and follow. Follow at Ugly robot on Twitter cuz he. A leader. Yeah. In

[00:59:45] Nathan Wrigley: AI stuff they do a lot. They do a lot in the AI space.

Imagine. And

[00:59:50] Andrew Palmer: yeah, it's great. It does some

[00:59:52] Nathan Wrigley: great stuff. Yeah. Okay, so that was Anne's blog let's move on. Okay. This , in the same way that we always seem to talk about ai, we seem to get into this debate about Twitter dying and all of this kind of stuff. I just wanted to mention that there were five people on Masteron, all of whom have instances.

So it was Daniel from WP Tuts. There was Javier from WP Mastodon. There was Pretor, I'm not sure how you pronounced the name from WP Social. There was Simon from dwp and there was me from the WP Builds social and very nicely. Daniel put together a survey and the results will come out soon about, what do you want, what do you wanna see in terms of WordPress?

And master on, but I don't really want to get into that conversation cuz we haven't seen the results yet and the survey's now been closed. I wanted to get into the conversation of whether or not you've you've still got trust in Twitter, whether or not you still think it's the town hall and whether it's got any use for you in the future.

What did you say?

[01:01:01] Andrew Palmer: Did we ever have trust in Twitter? ?

[01:01:03] Nathan Wrigley: I was reading something on the bbc, I believe it was today, and it was literally today that it was published. And it was a piece all about the fact that Somebody on the team that was there until very recently had either been made redundant or had walked out and was saying that really the whole thing is now being held together with a skeleton crew of people who are just constantly fighting fires.

And it was on that basis really that I wondered whether or not the trust was eroding a little bit and whether or not you saw something like Master on as a good alternative. You can see from this piece that I've got on the screen that my skin has definitely moved. I never really understood Twitter anyway.

But I do like the idea of open source things. I like the idea of not being fed algorithmic content which might enrage me or at least might put things in my way, which are just gonna cause addiction, and Master On doesn't do any of those things. It felt to me like three months ago that the direction of travel was all in the direction of Master Dawn, but I'm not sure if that steady stream of people flowing out of Twitter is kept up or whether everybody's just forgotten not to, forgotten to leave Twitter and is hanging out there.

Michelle, I know you've got a big following over there and you really enjoy using it, don't you?

[01:02:25] Michelle Frechette: I do and I do still enjoy using it. There are definitely some changes that have happened that are not good changes . So for example, if I go to search somebody that I know and that I know that I'm following, just so that I can make sure I tag them correctly.

They're not showing up until I almost finish pushing, like typing their entire handle. So it's trying to feed me other people than who I am already following or who I'm trying to tag. But they, now, and I honestly can't remember this has always been the way it is or if it's recent. And my list of like my feed, I can click the for you, which is gonna feed me things that it, things I like.

In addition to I'm following or I can just click following. And then I'm only gonna see the people that I follow and what they're doing on Twitter. So there are some changes that have happened. I'm not gonna ever speak well of Elon Musky. I'm not a fan, but I do still use Twitter. I think that most of our customers.

are still on Twitter. And our customers are still on Twitter. , with what, the different things that I am behind there. So I don't know. I think it's hard to get a new social media to really pick up speed and really start to engage everybody. I think that there's enough of a learning curve in Mastodon still with all the different servers and how that works to be able to find somebody and follow them.

I think there's a enough of a learning curve there that's still a stumbling block for a lot of people. I am there. I don't really post there much. I'm constantly just following people back who follow me, but I, I'm, I don't know what the right answer is. I know that I used to be like this huge Facebook user, and now I'm a Facebook reactor.

I only use Instagram to post my own personal pictures so that I have a little album and know that's not the only place I put my photos. So if somebody says if it goes away, you lose all your photos. I still save them in other places as well. But it's a nice place to have a public album of the work that I'm doing those kinds of things.

But for me, Twitter is still relevant and whether it goes away and completely, crashes and all the scaffolding falls away, that's something that will remain to be seen. But at this point in time, it's still something that I'm spending time with.

[01:04:42] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Andrew, anything on that?

[01:04:46] Andrew Palmer: Yeah, I've never signed I've never signed up to Master and I've signed up to Tumblr again.

I had an old Tumblr account and then it was getting a bit nasty in there, so I thought, no, I'm not gonna go there anymore. But Matt seems to have cleaned it up. And it's also using Gutenberg, so that's interesting. When you're posting a

[01:05:03] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I saw that.

[01:05:04] Andrew Palmer: Yeah that's the kind of thing.

So I think if any Word Press people are gonna go anywhere. They should really, and I'm not dissing Master Dawn cause I don't use it, but really they should go to Tumblr because if they're gonna keep the faith, with our great leader, then go to Tumblr. But it's just

[01:05:19] Michelle Frechette: So I re I reinstated my Tumblr account that I've, that I had a long time ago and I have been followed by, in the last three weeks, probably 26 bot.

On Tumblr, every single one of them is some half dressed woman, like total bot account. So I'm not a hundred percent behind Tumblr at this point either. I think that if you put, yes, if I put more into it, I will get more out of it. And I do get followed by those same kind of bots in all of my different social accounts on Twitter that I follow, that I, even company accounts that I'm behind.

So the bots are gonna be there no matter where you are, but I'm not, I'm. I'm not investing a lot of time in Tumblr yet and I know that if I did I'd probably get more out of it, but it remains to be seen whether or not that's really a viable place to be marketing.

[01:06:06] Nathan Wrigley: This is I'm not trying to promote this and obviously there's no skin in the game for me promoting it cuz you know, it's a free service.

But this is the WP Builds.social install and you can see it broad similarities to Twister. It's got a real similar kind of look and feel to it, but the nice thing that I like about it is that I get to be the decider, or I could appoint moderators. We get to decide what that community looks like.

So in, in the example that you just described if we found 20 bots like that showing up, I can just block them, like literally make them go away. They will never be seen by anybody on this instance. They could go and, pollute other instances of masteron, but we could make them disappear. You can block things by in all sorts of ways and I like that.

I like the idea that there's that granular control, but the big thing for me is that there's no algorithm. Putting that feed together. So you know, this local feed, this is just the people who are on my instance. So we've got Brian, we've got Bob, we've got Anne, we've got Carrie Dills and a bunch of other people.

You can see it, oh, it's Robert Rolly from Patch Stack. You can see it's got like a, it's got a word press kind of vibe going on. These are people talking about WordPress. And so if you go there, you're not limited. You can go and follow anybody anywhere else, but if you click on the local timeline option, you are gonna just gonna get this word pressy stream.

And it's really nice. And there's no, doesn't it comes in chronologically,

[01:07:46] Michelle Frechette: doesn't it? Depend on what you're using social media for. So if I'm using social media for all of the different Stellar WP accounts, for example, I'm using it as a marketing device and an engagement device that way. Yeah, that's a good point.

It's not, Mastodon is not gonna help me there. or it's gonna help me minuscule. Yeah. By the followers that I have. Yeah. Over on Twitter and other places. So it really depends on what I'm looking for. And if I'm looking for that engagement around WordPress, I'm probably engaging within different slack channels, quite honestly.

Yeah. As opposed to just shouting out into the void to see who wants to interact with me, unless I'm doing that just for fun on Twitter. also something that I do.

[01:08:22] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I like it. I'm not here to sell it to anybody. It's working out for me. I like the look and the feel of it, but I do feel

[01:08:30] Michelle Frechette: I'm on your server.

Don't kick me off .

[01:08:32] Nathan Wrigley: Oh no. . I yeah, you are welcome. Everybody's welcome. Until it becomes financially unsustainable for me to yeah, you have to,

[01:08:42] Andrew Palmer: don't you have to kick it?

[01:08:43] Nathan Wrigley: I've gotta pay, so I just swallow that cost at the minute. It's just, it's not a lot, so I don't really worry about it.

But there is a, I believe I put a donate button somewhere. Not even a button, but a couple of people have found it and been very generous, so I appreciate that. But that's not what this is about. Anyway, so there was that survey and probably in the weeks and days to come, we'll follow up and we'll see what the master on community.

it to look like in terms of WordPress. Okay. We've got a limited time left available, but this is probably one of the most important bits. I didn't go, you both went to Word Camia. This is a piece by Bob wp. Oh, look at that. And he's basically giving a full appraisal of what he thought the event was like.

It boils down to great. He really had a good time. But I haven't spoken to anybody on the show, I don't believe about what their experiences were. So I'm just gonna hand it over to you. , whatever you wanna say, whatever the context. Tell us about Word Camp. Let's go with should we go Michelle first?

[01:09:44] Michelle Frechette: I did, I also did a writeup that was fairly extensive. I don't know why? Oh, I'm sorry. That's not on the show. Sorry. No, that's ok. , but it's, it, my writeup was on post status and it started with, I know you're all wondering and Yes, I showered because, oh, one of the , one of the things that was super important to me and I.

I just was I shouldn't have to be grateful that people take into account accessibility. But I am grateful when people actually take into account accessibility. From what I saw of the almost 2000 attendees, I was the only person using a mobility device. So whether, but I'm sure there were others who made me had difficulty walking or or whatever.

Or maybe I just didn't see it. Cuz there were a lot of people there? Oh,

[01:10:30] Andrew Palmer: there were. There were plenty. There were plenty. Yeah, there

[01:10:33] Michelle Frechette: was accessibility taken into consideration at almost every turn. The city itself was very accessible. There were very few things that I did not have the ability to access with my scooter and with my different limitations.

I found a way into almost every single place I needed to be, with the exception of a couple of parties that were given by different companies who booked on the 32nd floor. And the elevator only went up to 31. And I'm not faulting them. I just was not able to attend. And so I didn't, I went and did something else.

But the whole of the event I know there was one kosher meal that wasn't met, but I think the rest of them were. And so they really took into account some of the things that I, whether they read my article and took it from there, or whether they had it in place already, I don't know. But they did absolutely take into account the accessibility needs of people, not just myself as far as food and physical disability accommodations.

So I was super happy about that. No, nice. And then just the event itself was so well so well run. The signage was everywhere. The signage was easy to find things. The way that the food was distributed was super easy to access just everything in general and the people, holy cow. But the people in Thailand and the people at Work Camp Asia were just, it was phenomenal.

And to be able to see in-person, hug, wave, shake hands, whatever people were comfortable with, people I have been friends with, and not just acquaintances, but actual friends with online for five or more years, to be actually sitting in the same space and have a face-to-face conversation was just overwhelmingly amazing.

Nice.

[01:12:18] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Nice. Oh, that warms the heart, Andrew. It was awesome.

[01:12:25] Andrew Palmer: Ditto. Yeah, . No, it's difficult, isn't it? It's like coming on stage after a great comedian. I can't follow that. But basically, I sat with Michelle for a couple of minutes and she was with the, one of the organizers and, being very vocal about con, congratulating the audience the organizer on it as well.

I think what we've, what we miss when we say such a great event and because I'm more com I dunno, I'm just commercially minded, we've gotta give a shout out to Yos. Who were phenomenal with their parties were phenomenal with their stand. Elementor again, they had a couple of live events there as well.

They were very vocal freek. The parties that I went to were free Elementor and yo were basically every single party and put their hand in their pocket every time. Shout out to ti the the current CEO that, that, but GoDaddy as well. Massive stand as well.

Giving a nice little giveaways, bringing the party atmosphere into it and shouting out people and all that kind of stuff. And the smaller sponsors dare I say it, Ws, oh, not again. Dare I say it. Atri, I was on Team App Atari as well. We went to Pettet for a team building thing in for the week before.

And then we descended on with, half a dozen people standing on the Atri stand as well. I met Get Genie, which was great because they're a competitor and I went. Hi. They went . Hello. They gave me a t-shirt, which was great. So it shows that the cooption of the, Aaron is a comp is in, I'm in competition with, but the Cooption and the community of WordPress is just unbelievable.

And that's the thing with word camps. You get together, I had a lovely sit down coffee. I'm very honored and lucky to have a sit down coffee with people with Michelle. I wanted to have a longer chat with Annie Neons. I met her in the hallway and said, we must get together. But she was busier than whatever, couldn't get it.

I think I spotted I was talking to people and there was a load of people wearing masks and everything. I thought, I know you, but I don't. I literally haven't got time. Yeah. As you go to, meetings as well. We were, Lisa and I were inundated with people going, hi, how are you?

And all this kind of stuff. And the developers said, God, a lot of people. And he said actually, We're very lucky. They know us. And the same with Michelle. Michelle, I think Michelle drives around in her, but her little bike just so that she can run over people because she gets people that just go a descend upon her.

And it's very much like the people just wanna meet you and say hi to you. And it,

[01:15:24] Michelle Frechette: it helped that I was running a selfie challenge. So I ran Selfie

[01:15:28] Andrew Palmer: challenge. No, yeah, true enough. But, the small sponsors, let's not forget the, that's what I was saying about let's not forget the small sponsors.

Let's not forget that. CJ Powell was there. He's just been announced as a, as an investor in, in, joining Automatic as a, as an investor as well. I had a lovely hours chat with him over at Coffee. We had side Balki, there was WP Beginner, some big names in the WordPress stuff looking around, you can see the.

are they pou? Are they gonna pounce on people and say I wanna buy you and all that kind of stuff. And let's not forget the amount of actual business that gets done at Word Camp. There was a there's 100% we are gonna hear some mergers or purchases. I think WP Beginner just did an announcement.

They just bought somebody, I can't, they did last week. Haven't forgotten 1 0 1. That was done either at a Word, WordPress meetup or they'd met up, I know that Chris Leer and Sean Hek and Side are good, a good friend. So that's probably been going on for a long time.

But there is a lot of business done at Word Camps and that's a good thing. . And there's a lot of community building. Who is it? The WP Devs? Were there 75 of. , good grief. 75. Yeah. Huge party of them come over because it's closer to India and Pakistan. It's only four hours. It's not a big deal.

, we need, Taipei, we need a WC Asia, because it's a massive community. Leslie Sim absolutely fantastic. We all sat down, had it's so good to meet her. , Miriam, Schwab, all of the names that you can think of. , that, that were there.

And very accessible as well. Lovely chats with these people.

[01:17:17] Nathan Wrigley: Brilliant. Just browsing the the website and there is, there's picture, there we go. There you go. With Miriam by Porco. I, as you said, those

[01:17:24] Michelle Frechette: earlier, and Robert and Carol.

[01:17:27] Nathan Wrigley: And you. and me tucked in the basket there at the front in the, we talked about that last time.

[01:17:36] Michelle Frechette: can I also give a shout out? Two. Two. So I did this word. The selfie challenge, I gave $500. If I got a hundred selfies to big orange chart, which I got well over a hundred selfies. VCUs from Insta, WP said, I wanna match half of that, and he donated $250 from Insta wp. And then when I posted it on Twitter, Carl Hancock also gave $500 as a result of that.

Nice. So I just wanted to shout out to those gentlemen for also meeting that challenge and helping fund big Orange.

[01:18:07] Nathan Wrigley: Look, here's somebody who wanted to see you but didn't get a chance. Let just make sure I can get it on the screen. This is, so this is Ben again. Stackable. Got starstruck. wasn't able to take the selfie.

You could have had 101 or whatever your total was. Add one more. But Michelle, thank you for coding me and my wife to wear the venue was, that's nice. There

[01:18:27] Andrew Palmer: were a lot of couples there. Tell us, married couples coming there and everything. So it was like, and families and That's whole families. Yeah.

It was amazing. They provided everything they, the whole venue was in this shopping mall, which was amazing as well. But we, the only thing we suffered from was lift. Lift. A bit of lift anxiety.

[01:18:49] Nathan Wrigley: a, a cue

[01:18:49] Michelle Frechette: for the, a cue for the elevator. Yeah. Yeah. So O'Neil O'Neill has made a comment here.

O'Neil was one of the organizers specifically around speakers and holy cow was that run well. So this, the whole like getting speakers where they needed to be and lined up and all of that was done incredibly well. So thank you O'Neill and your team.

[01:19:08] Nathan Wrigley: This is not meant to come out the way it comes out.

And I'll go to O'Neil second comment in a moment, but did do you think this has raised the bar in some important way, does this event exceed the way that previous Word Camp Europes that you've attended, been or Word camp us or was it was it just like little incremental things?

You mentioned the accessibility thing there. Michelle, I just wondered if that was just one aspect that you thought was good and the rest of it was, as normal.

[01:19:40] Michelle Frechette: I haven't been to where Ken. Oh, yet. Okay. So

[01:19:43] Andrew Palmer: I can't speak to, that'll I'll speak for Europe. This was on a par with Berlin.

Nice. Porto was brilliant. The be the best word camp I've been to in Europe it's a dead heat with Serbia and Berlin. Berlin was a, was absolutely phenomenal. There, there were no, as far as I could see, there were no accessibility issues there. But I don't, I'm not a wheelchair user or a trolley user or, and, currently I'm not on crutches, cause normally I break my ankle once a year.

But, so there, there's no real accessibility issues. But the organization, the food, W C WC Asia got it right. Missed out one opportunity to have kosher, we forget how. People eat kosher, and that needs to be catered for, but that was corrected within a heartbeat. And I think that's the key, that when something is pointed out very politely and very appropriately, like Michelle points stuff out.

If you talk to Michelle and you have slightly crossed a line in something, Michelle is fantastic at telling you with kindness that you've crossed that line. It's amazing. The point is that they missed one thing, but it's a very important thing. So that's pointed out to them in a very nice way.

And then it's just corrected. . And I think that's maybe. What made a difference at W P Asia and also the size of the event, and also they had to deal with a massive cancellation, a couple of years ago. So they were probably very nervous. But the presentations I saw were awesome.

The massive screen, the great big stage. Michelle did a presentation on stage. You didn't have any accessibility issues of getting your car up there or whatever, and it was awesome. And coming down the stage as well. I didn't see you have any difficulty with that. None, it's very important that these things are catered for, even if there's only one person using a wheelchair type thing.

It's gotta be it's important. But the whole event, I think it's always as good as the, as your last one. So WCA Asia was Yes. The best work camp that I've been to because it was the last one. And they're all great. Athens. Athens has got some living up to do to it.

[01:22:15] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah. Few comments here from O'Neill.

Thank you for that though, Andrew. Michelle was everywhere. I'll be running around wrangling speakers for the next session. And there she was. She was everywhere all at once. And then a thank you from O'Neill directly to Michelle. Thank you, Michelle. All the praise from you is the best. And then one final.

regarding the food that Andrews just mentioned. The team made sure that there was the right selection of kosher, halal, et cetera, because it's important and necessary due to cultural and religious requirements. . So thank you O'Neill for showing up and adding those comments. I really appreciate that.

Just a couple of things before we go. We are first running out of time, so we'll probably just. Take a few things out of the list that we were gonna mention, but I have a couple of plugins that I just wanna mention. This one came across my radar. It's called Essential Form. It's on the wordpress.org repo.

I'll put a link in the show notes if you want. A, I've never, I haven't used it, so I can't really say, but if you want a lightweight. Contact form that does literally do just the simple basic, what's your name? What's your email address, what's your comment? Tick this box. This looks like a really interesting option.

It's by Jose Moro, and it comes in at about 14 k it says, and they go on to talk about the fact that it's got some nice nice security features in there to stop it being spammed. I can't say I've tried it. I wonder if it Interesting

[01:23:38] Michelle Frechette: though. I wonder if it saves things in the database so that you can go back and see.

I've used plugins before that only sent an email and if you missed that email, it ends up in your spam or something. Misfires, you never get that contact. So that's my only concern. Yeah.

[01:23:52] Nathan Wrigley: Light forms my, yeah, my guess is that it wouldn't do that. But if if Jose actually. Wind of this. It'd be interesting to know.

You can leave a comment at the bottom of the post that'll come out tomorrow. And of course, GDPR being what it is, most of us in Europe have to switch those kind of features off anyway. We expunge them either regularly or as soon as they've been sent. So anyway, really cool comment. Yeah. Yeah.

Really cool little plugin. That I wanted to mention. The other one was the block protocol plugin is now out. So if you've been following this initiative by Joel Spolsky and his team, the idea is, They've created a suite of blocks. They're the normal arrangement of blocks. I can't remember what they are, but it is like a text block of an image block and so on.

So nothing revolutionary. But the intention here is, and maybe Ben Intel can speak to this, that these blocks will become interoperable with other block protocol Im implementation. So let's say for example, you're in Google Docs, it may be that you can cross pollinate content. So if you update it on your website, the Google Docs version will get updated in real time in the background, these kind of things.

And this just feels like a really interesting initiative. So that's available to download. It feels like it's beater at the moment, but there's that. And then, given that we've got three minutes left, let's just go to this one to round it off and then we'll do Michelle's curious video. Bertha, back to Bertha this time about pricing, and I got an email today, Andrew, which was not only alerting people that you were gonna be coming on this show, but also saying you've.

You've amended your pricing. You've dropped your pricing.

[01:25:28] Andrew Palmer: We've dropped some of the pricing. Cause don't forget that we do image as well and there's whole we do chat. But what the, the main thing is that we are now G P T chat compatible and 3.5. We've upgraded the, to the latest open ai.

But I wanted to people not to be misled by the pricing that's on open AI currently. And it's interesting. While it's sold as 10 times lower the price than Da Vinci, the new chat option can be tricky for some users. It's now the prompt is also considered as billable tokens, so that every time you send a prompt back, it reads the backward prompt.

And that's another prompt. So five prompts equal 10 prompts, if yeah. Cub. But it might actually exponentially cost you a lot more money, even whatever you're doing. But the, what I've done is I've reduced, massively reduced the pay as you go option where you don't have to. I've always, in WordPress, people don't like WordPress.

People don't like doing a subscription. And I get it because they forget it's on there. And I didn't wanna really wanna do that. So we've always we added a pay as you go some months back, but I've reduced that. And you still get everything in Bertha as if you were a subscriber. You're paying slightly more.

Per word, but you are also getting every single facility in Bertha for the time that those words exist. So it's a, it's a, just a, an entry level, if you want to try it, you do it. And also you've got the, with powers you go, you don't get access to the Chrome browser.

But in the 20 $20 starter a month, you do get, there's a Chrome browser, there's a Chrome extension, which has got everything in the birther plugin has got. But then you can also have the birther plugin as well. It's pretty. .

[01:27:11] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you. That explained it. That's great.

[01:27:14] Andrew Palmer: And the crime extension means that you can use it on other websites

basically.

[01:27:17] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. Very finely. If you've got the all in one seo pack Von, there is a vulnerability. There has been over the last co last week it was identified, just to say, get that updated. It does look like it was impacting quite a lot of users Won't go into the details of that, but we are gonna end on a curious video that Michelle sent.

Oh no. Is this it is. Have I got it? Is this yeah. You got it. You got it. It's the heck I'll click play. And Michelle, describe why have you sent this?

[01:27:51] Michelle Frechette: It's just soapbox traces and I went down the rabbit hole of this entire account last night and picked the one that I thought you would laugh at the most.

Nathan , which is they make these soapbox derby cars, and so many of them actually arrive at the, at their final destination. But this one does not. And it's. It's a giant, what are those called at ats? It's an at star. Yeah. Yeah. It's an at . . And it just fails

[01:28:18] Nathan Wrigley: miserably. Absolutely.

Love stuff like that. I love it when humans, I knew it. Invest to so much time and energy in just some pointless enterprise. Like we call these go-karts and as a kid you'd make them and they would never work. But the idea of doing , look at it. It

[01:28:35] Michelle Frechette: just, these are un, these are unmotorized.

They're the only thrust is from the hill that they are speeding down and yeah, if just go down the rabbit hole of these and the, oh, they're

[01:28:48] Nathan Wrigley: hysterical. This

[01:28:49] Andrew Palmer: is great. What? We have a local one. It's amazing. We, where we can, but the key is that, , basically. They're badly made . Yes, of course.

Of course.

[01:28:59] Michelle Frechette: On purpose. On purpose,

[01:29:01] Nathan Wrigley: perhaps. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I was once in Australia, I was in Melbourne, and they have this annual competition on the river kil, I think it's the river kilda, it's called the Birdman. And all these people come with, they've invented. Homemade flying machines, basically. And there's a, there's like a diving board stretched out, out, away from the bridge and everybody's got to jump off and, the winner is the person that can get further furthest away from the bridge.

Literally a hundred percent of the contestants walk off the bridge home at falls straight into the water.

[01:29:34] Michelle Frechette: Homemade boat races are fun too, because they don't usually get very far from the dock before they

[01:29:38] Nathan Wrigley: sink, oh, absolutely. Oh, thank you. You've cheered me up. That's really cool. My pleasure.

we are over time, but but I appreciate you, we have to do the wave for the last few minutes. The, yeah. I'll do the wave in a moment just to say firstly thank you to Michelle, thank you to Andrew. And we were due to have Hazel Kupo on, but she sadly has lost her voice, so I hope that she gets better.

That's a nightmare for

[01:30:03] Andrew Palmer: a marketer. Yeah,

[01:30:04] Michelle Frechette: We'll get her rescheduled.

[01:30:06] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Thank you. And yeah, just before we go, thank you to all the people that have showed up and made a comment. It'll come out as a podcast episode tomorrow, so WP Builds.com/subscribe. Let's do it. We gotta do the wave, Andrew, there we go.

A hello everybody. Sounds now open. Ai stable diffusion. Now it knows how create. Let's do the, we're all good. That's perfect. Thank you. And we will see you again next week for another episode of this week in WordPress. Take it easy. See

[01:30:35] Andrew Palmer: ya. Thanks for having me.

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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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