This Week in WordPress #286

[00:00:04] Nathan Wrigley: It's time for this week in WordPress episode number 286 entitled. Mucho technical gremlins. It was recorded on Monday, the 12th of fab. 2024, my name's Nathan Wrigley and I'll be joined by three fabulous guests. I'm joined by Mark West scarred. Bye Tim Nash and Piccia Neri. It's a WordPress podcast.

So guess what? We're going to talk all about WordPress. The first thing we're going to talk about is the roadmap 2024 for core performance. What's coming up in this year to make your WordPress websites faster. We talk about the resurrection of the WP Tavern and the fact that there are people now being onboarded. To go into some kind of competition to compete, to see who's going to get the two jobs there that are available. We talk about the schedule for WordCamp Asia, the photo directory.

We talk about that and how many photos have been added and the fact that it really does look like a project that's taking off in recent times. There's a few things going on in the WordPress space that we mentioned in terms of developer hours and tutorials that are taking place online. Tim Nash mentioned something that he's doing you can book onto in the near future. We also talk about eight tweets thread, which Brian Jackson sent to mark complimenting him on his product, doubled us form the core blocks directory.

What should be in there? We get into a bit of a discussion about that. And then we spend a bit of time at the end. Showing you some very, silly websites, but right at the start of the podcast, everything goes wrong. My whole system seems to collapse. And I hope that you can cope with it. It's all coming up next. On this week. In WordPress.

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Hello? Hi. Hi there. Everybody, like we didn't speak moments ago. Hi. hi everybody. Seriously, thank you for joining us on this weekend, WordPress episode number 286. it's Monday, the 12th of February. In case you didn't know where have you been all my life. We're gonna have a chat about WordPress. I'm joined by three fabulous people.

I'm joined by, regular. I'm gonna call him the co-host. He's down there. He's called Mr. Westco. You can do that one. Yeah. Okay, let's try and talk, let's try and line them up. Gone. Just, let's see what happens there. I can't do that. Oh, no. Oh, that's, no, I'm gonna, I'm giving up. No. for those of you listening, that must have been fun.

We tried to line up fingers. we're gonna, we are honestly gonna talk about, WordPress in a little bit. But before then, let's do the proper bio. as I've said, there's Mark West Guard. He guards the west, but he does other things as well. he has a WordPress plugin called WS Form.

And he's frozen. And in the introduction, that section,

so I dunno, if oh something it's not me is frozen. It really him. It's him. Maybe I'm frozen. Yeah, you, yeah, it was you because also you've gone blue. Do you notice it's got this blue in to his camera? I think so. Maybe you'll have to restart. Yeah. Something's gone really weird, hasn't it? Yeah. Might be if I can.

Oh yeah, welcome. Awesome.

I not live me, but I dunno if I froze to you. What happened there? That was you. You definitely froze. Yeah. Yeah. And. You've, yeah. Okay, now we can try the finger thing. So for those, of you Tim N's, no, put it your fingers away. I was gonna introduce Mark properly. I dunno if I got frozen just prior to that, but, mark is the founder of WS form, on the introduction thing here, it just says to follow.

So I don't dunno if he's, you want, that's all you get. That's all I get. Do you wanna introduce yourself properly? that's about you. You just turn the camera off to, to get rid of me. I know, what you're doing. Okay. Okay. yeah. No, that's about it. Ws form. Ws form. Go check it out. Ws form.com.

I come on this show occasionally. We're gonna, we're gonna talk a little bit about some glowing endorsements of your product in a little while, but before we get to that, let's introduce some of the panelists. firstly up there, Piccia Neri. How are you doing? Piccia?

[00:04:58] Piccia Neri: I'm very well, thank you very much. My feet are boiling 'cause I, 'cause the sun is out.

and I do, UX and also ui. Remember some people frown at the. U accent ui, but I do both. Is he frozen? Again? Can,

he's gonna be fun.

[00:05:20] Tim Nash: Welcome to

[00:05:21] Nathan Wrigley: the Tim Show.

[00:05:23] Piccia Neri: Was your co-host Mark. That's it. He's putting you to the test. That's

[00:05:27] Mark Westguard: what he's testing me. Yeah.

[00:05:28] Tim Nash: That's it. Yeah. Did anybody actually pay attention to what the links were for this week?

[00:05:36] Piccia Neri: I, did actually. We've got the show notes. We can do it. It's fine. We keep, can

[00:05:39] Mark Westguard: keep going through.

Yeah. I'm not And we've also got Tim Nash. Tim Nash. We're a security consultant. Tell us about yourself, Tim.

[00:05:47] Tim Nash: I'm Tim Nash. I think I, my bio says something like, professional doom speaker. Oh, he is back.

[00:05:53] Nathan Wrigley: Back for a second. I don't, I honestly don't hold out too much hope for this because I don't think it's ever let me down as, so we're using a platform, as you'd imagine it's in the browser and we all connect.

And it's been, we've had a few little hiccups with the audio and stuff, but it's never, ever let me down. it's often let our panelists down, they couldn't connect their audio or something like that. But today it's, let me down catastrophically twice and we're like a minute and a half in.

So what I'll say to you guys is if it, cocks up again, just flee because I think if it repeatedly cocks off, there's just no point in trying to battle against broken technology. And we might just talk about you for an hour. Nice. Yeah.

[00:06:39] Piccia Neri: Didn't interrupt, did it?

[00:06:42] Nathan Wrigley: no. so that, that is one of the nice things about this particular platform is it will keep going, even if you have, a catastrophic failure.

The platform will keep running in the background, and I turn that box on every time. Typically, if I didn't turn that on, it would've already killed the feed twice over. in other words, the show would've stopped. But I, deliberately turned that off. But we seem to be okay so far. I always re reboot my Mac before we start, so hopefully, things will continue.

But seriously, if it goes wrong, again, just, say goodbye. yeah, Screw it. We'll have to wait before we go. Yeah, We can, we should maybe do that, this stuff. did you all get a chance to introduce yourself? I heard you introduce Tim there. Yeah, I

[00:07:27] Mark Westguard: think we've, I think we're good to, okay.

Yeah,

[00:07:29] Nathan Wrigley: we're covered. All right. Okay. In which case, I will just crack on with sharing my screen and hopefully getting on with the show. I do apologize sometimes you gotta roll with the punches, as the famous Rick Mickey wrought once said. You've just gotta roll the potato. He actually did say that, even though did he?

Yeah, but it makes no sense. There was an article when I was at university, which did the rounds in the halls and it was famous things that Mickey R said and that was the one which made me spit my coffee out. 'cause it just makes no sense. This is us WP Builds.com. If you fancy knowing about what we're doing, put your email address into this little box and click this little button.

If you wanna know what we're doing on a more sort of granular level, you can go to our schedule page, WP Builds.com/schedule. It's a little calendar. and on that calendar we've got a bunch of events which are coming up during the next week or so. I confess I put a quite a lot of these in and then I got a bit ill last week and so I failed to maintain it.

But one of the endeavors for this week is to catch up on that and get everything in there. Anyways, pleased to see that you

[00:08:32] Piccia Neri: did not put our episode in even though it's gonna happen.

[00:08:36] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, No, it will. We'll get to that. We will get to that. No, I, honestly, if you'd have seen me last week, you'd have understood.

I was basically dying, Peter. I know. I'll forgive you. Yeah. but thank you for joining us, you three. I really appreciate it. We've got a few comments that have come in on the chat. I appreciate that as well. First one is from Maya saying, hello. That's very nice for you to join us. Michelle Ette is joining us.

She got in with the weather commentary early on. she's coming from Rochester where it's 34 degrees Fahrenheit, one degree centigrade. we've got Rick, who I don't think we've seen before. It says, hi. I've been listening in the car for years to your podcast. That sounds like torture. you should get out the car occasionally.

That's, that's a lot of time in the car. First time I catch you lads on a live stream. Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. James Kemp, I, it's, I'd say it's probably your internet. Yeah, it is. Except I've got a speed test running and my internet is rock solid. so yeah, it could be hopefully just a bit.

We'll see. See how it goes. James, but I caught site one of your products, James, this week. That was it. Yours, James, that thing, which reminds you in a fairly aggressive way about appointments coming up that looked cool. did a great job to go back to bed. Nathan, they did a great job to go back to bed.

I don't get that. Can anybody tell me what Andrew's mean?

[00:09:57] Piccia Neri: They, we, that basically we were all right when you were off. The screen, everything was fine. Oh, so who, you know basically who, who needs you?

[00:10:05] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Thank you so much. I'm joke. It's a joke. Its, it's a joke. No, My mother used to say the same thing on a daily basis.

I learn to accept it. And they also were joined by Babs, as well. Hello Babs. Yay. And Courtney Bab Babs is coming from Ely and Courtney says she liked, I, like that Tim has taken in the top left seat. I dunno if he is in the top left anymore. Maybe he is. I dunno. but yeah, there he is. Oh, and you've been to.

You've been to Word Camp Phoenix, Courtney? Yeah. How did that go? I saw some social media posts over the last 24 hours. Jealous. I wanted to go to

[00:10:44] Mark Westguard: that. Did you? Yes. It's my son's birthday,

[00:10:47] Nathan Wrigley: so Oh, yeah, That, wouldn't go down so well. Would it, taking him to a Word camp? No. Have your cake over there in the, in the, hallway track.

Young boy. Can I have enjoyed it. Yeah, Oh, that's good. Okay. Let's get on with the WordPress stuff. So the first thing to mention, is this, it's over on Make wordpress.org. It's the roadmap for the core performance team. I've highlighted a bunch of stuff, but really what I'm trying to do is just draw attention to the fact that the Core performance team have been really busy during the year 2023.

I think it's fair to say that prior to their, stepping up and doing all this stuff, WordPress probably wasn't as optimal as it could be, and then the team was put together and then rapidly changed an awful lot. getting a little bit into the weeds of it. In the year 2024, they, first of all make the point that this, this roadmap is completely intentionally broad and intentionally incomplete.

In other words, it's just, it's a working document, they're gonna iterate on it. But the, core performance team's primary focus, the big picture. Is, interactive performance. So it says here, I'll just quote it, many WordPress sites, especially among the more popular ones, struggle with slow reactivity or delays when users interact with the site.

This performance aspect can be measured via the interaction to next paint. You'll hear about this a lot in. The future INP and INP is gonna become one of those acronyms bundled into core web vitals in March. we're also, they're also gonna be focusing on WordPress load time performance, continuing, over the efforts in 2023 ecosystem activation.

That sounds a bit strange. So again, I'll read providing better guardrails, documentation and implementing tooling. Sorry, implementing tooling for plugin and theme developers to follow performance best practices. And then finally, performance measurement. so obviously the ability to measure those kind of things.

I've highlighted a bunch of stuff further down. there's a lot of things about the interactivity, API and various other things, but in all honesty, I don't think we've got time to go through all of that. But I just wanted to raise my hat and say thank you to the core performance team

doing great work and, with ideas, even if they don't Yeah, even. And if they don't turn out to be the right, the ones that they will actually follow. So I'm gonna to you three and see if anybody wants to chip in. I'll chip in and you've frozen again. Oh my Lord. But it doesn't matter.

[00:13:22] Mark Westguard: No.

[00:13:22] Piccia Neri: when you think we've frozen Nathan, rest assured to you.

Not us. Okay.

[00:13:26] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So that's good. So what I'll do in the future then? No, that's good to know. so if, that happens, I'll just hang tight. yeah. 'cause it does

[00:13:36] Piccia Neri: appear Yeah. Hang tight because you've come back in the meantime. We'll, hold the fort. Yeah, won't we?

[00:13:42] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah,

[00:13:42] Mark Westguard: absolutely. yeah, I, okay.

There's a, lot in this list. and it's, a good brain dump of things need to happen. I think it's quite, quite ambitious to get all this done in 2024. There's reference to removing jQuery and stuff like that, which I, I did a quick search last night and there was an awful lot of jQuery in amongst WordPress.

But the, Interaction to ne next paint thing is definitely worth, looking at. that's, I think that's, I think that's coming live in March. I think Google's gonna start using that. it's quite interesting how that works as well. It's very different from one of the other core vitals that they're, replacing it with.

So that's definitely worth having a look at. But essentially, and I, may be wrong on this, but I think it's looking at how long it takes for things to react, on event handlers. So whenever you click on something on the page, how you know what the duration is before something happens for the user, there's some on the link there.

there's some examples of how that works, but, but yeah, I'm, pleased that they're focusing on this. It's, something that, that's vital in my opinion. I. I've been using Gutenberg on a client project. I don't do an awful lot of client work, but I've been using, Gutenberg on a, project, and I like the HTML output from it.

There's, it's very clean, and I think there's gonna be a lot of emphasis on other theme developers and plugin developers, so to make sure that they adhere to this. the, layout editor, the Gutenberg itself does a pretty good job already of, being fairly responsive and clean. So I think we've all got a responsibility to take on this big picture

[00:15:22] Tim Nash: as well.

I think that's the key com ence, is that this is for effectively WordPress core. And while they're offering some sort of bits of recommendations to plugin developers and being developers, anybody who thinks, oh, if they do all these things, and if they had completed their roadmap, which as you say is hugely ambitious But if they managed to complete the roadmap. For many sites, unfortunately, it's not gonna make that huge amount of difference because they're gonna be installing that plugin or that have that theme from 10 years ago. You're saying get rid of jQuery. It's embedded into WordPress core, but just imagine how many plugins and feed use it.

It just, it's the idea of removing it and I just don't think is actually Yeah. Feasible. Sadly.

[00:16:11] Mark Westguard: Yeah. I think they've got this list in the, in a good priority order, because some of those other things are just immense, but there's a lot on here that, is, gonna help out from, day one, but yeah, it's, a lot of work to get this, stuff done.

but I, they've got all the right stuff in there, so I think, hats off to 'em. they're focusing in the right place.

[00:16:34] Tim Nash: as, Nathan's not here. Andrew Palmer has written as one of the comments. I can't bring it up on the screen 'cause I dunno how, but the interactivity API is really important and it's a whole new

[00:16:45] Nathan Wrigley: thing.

I have no idea what you've been talking about. I haven't heard a single word.

[00:16:52] Tim Nash: Excellent. You can carry on now that

[00:16:54] Mark Westguard: Nathan Wrigley. I

[00:16:55] Nathan Wrigley: tell he's well. So, what's happened now? I'll just give you a quick update 'cause this is quite exciting from my end, as you can imagine. 'cause it's I, me running the show and I've decided to be crap at running the show.

So I went downstairs and I literally shook my router a bit. Oh yeah. That works sometimes. 'cause I figured like nothing has changed in the environment, but I was, out with the Hoover earlier and I hit the desk that the routers on and I thought, I wonder if the little aerials have gone. So I just rejigged the aerials and now we seem to be back, which is isn't that weird?

That's the only thing that I've done. That's different. But we need, you

[00:17:35] Mark Westguard: don't have to put the roo in there. A box of rice or something. Yeah.

[00:17:40] Nathan Wrigley: Try it off. Yeah. did you all get a chance to talk about that though? We, is that one done? Do you have any feedback on that picture?

[00:17:50] Piccia Neri: I, no, I don't actually.

[00:17:52] Nathan Wrigley: Not your bag.

[00:17:52] Piccia Neri: I don't, no, I just, I can, all I can say is that, the, actually I have a small contribution to make. I, performance is a way bigger part of UX than some people, and by that me and until a while ago think it is, really important. And, I've also recently found out that, as we, you get older, you feel like time goes faster.

And that's why we wanna wait even less for slow websites. It's a fact. It's a, apparently it's absolutely true that the longer the, older you get, the quicker time, flies past. And therefore, good web performance is essential for, older people. Here we are.

[00:18:44] Nathan Wrigley: It brings to mind the,

[00:18:45] Piccia Neri: so that's my, so that's my, so I very much appreciate this.

If it means that a WordPress is more performant, I think it's great for everybody

[00:18:53] Nathan Wrigley: involved. I, there was a, there's a comedian called Steven Wright, and he made the funniest joke about time. He said, he put some instant coffee in the microwave and it went back in time, which I just thought was, which was really great.

I, know what you mean. Piccia about time. Ev everything seems to be slightly distorted than when I was a kid. thank you for the comments about that and thank you for sticking with us. I realize that, the technical gremlins have really made it slightly problematic. firstly thank you to you three for just keeping the whole ship going.

That's great. Andrew Palmer's made quite a few comments. He says the interactivity on a roll. Yeah. Is he? Yeah. Yeah. The interactivity, API is really important. It's a whole new thing. Yeah, I didn't get into that, but there is quite a lot in there. I dunno what it's. About the interactivity API we could get into that, but I feel we haven't got enough time.

It could, it would probably take a day or more, to explain. Can you, just,

[00:19:46] Piccia Neri: can you, if you were to just, give it an elevator pitch, how would you

[00:19:50] Nathan Wrigley: describe it? Yeah, so it's the, it's an API, which allows you to do thi okay. A perfect example would be the shopping cart in WooCommerce and the idea that you click the button to add to the cart and the little cart icon now says one next to it instead of nom next to it.

Okay. Yeah. So you've done something on one part of the page and something has happened in the background magically to make something else update somewhere else. Okay. Yeah. So that's a really simple, that's a good example. Okay. Thank you. I've got the feeling that people are gonna run with it once it's up and running and do pretty incredible, things with it.

As developers, Tim and Mark might have more to. Say about the interactivity API than that, I

[00:20:30] Mark Westguard: dunno a lot about it. No. So I'll have to dig into that and

[00:20:33] Nathan Wrigley: learn about it. Yeah. Okay. there's that piece. Let's hope my, let's hope my router stays where it is. So this is just, this is great news for me.

hopefully for the rest of you as well. The, thing that I've looked at for the longest period of time really to, bolster out this show, is the WP Tavern because Justin Tadlock, since I have been doing the show, Justin Tadlock and Sarah Gooding have been, had been writing and then, oh, I dunno, probably a year and a half, two years ago, Justin, excuse me, stepped down to, to go to Automatic and then Sarah stepped away to work no longer in WordPress, but elsewhere.

And as of, I think it was November, early November, the, tavern has remained dormant except for podcast episodes, which I've been putting up. And actually, if you do wanna see any of those, if you just click on this podcast link, you get to them all. I've been sticking those up every week. but the writing side of it has gone away.

And Matt Mullenweg said that he would, explore opportunities for new talent to come along and being the busy person that he is, that hasn't happened until now. We now have a new, idea of what's going on. I dunno what you make of the, format that Matt's chosen, it seems o on the face of it, it's, it, maybe it's slightly adversarial.

I don't know. not adversarial, but Let me explain what's happening. So he's. He's received some feedback from people who want to write for the tavern. more than seven is all I can say 'cause I don't know anything about it because he's picked seven and he says, sorry for the ones that didn't make the cop.

So we know there was more. and what he's gonna do for the next two weeks, or for a period of two weeks, they're gonna be put on a trial of $25 an hour. Then depending on some criteria, I dunno what that criteria will be. They, two of them will be selected. So five will be, it sounds like a reality TV show, doesn't it?

you are fired kind of thing. what's that called? The Apprentice. The Apprentice, yeah. Yeah. So is it, sorry. no. It's okay. I'll, yeah, I'll just finish off. And then after that two week period, two people will be picked and become full-time, Audrey Capital employees. and the reason that they're Audrey Capital, now I'm re, I don't actually know this for certain, I think it's to put some separation between them as journalists and the WordPress project so that they can act independently.

and so that, you can't. You can't immediately draw the line between wordpress.com or Automatic and the WP Tavern. So there we go. That's it. Piccia. Sorry, I interrupted.

[00:23:20] Piccia Neri: No, I, interrupted. So are this No,

[00:23:24] Nathan Wrigley: I interrupted. Isn't that,

[00:23:28] Piccia Neri: are we gonna, is it gonna be a is that what we're doing then?

Yeah. Okay. let's play. Use the better interrupter I can. I would win this one, Nathan. I'm warning it, it works anyway. isn't it in a way the, I, get it. And it does feel like that a bit. but isn't it the way ev. Interviews work all the time. There's, this usually happens in the background, and at least it's a paid trial.

it's not obvi, I hope that's not the full pay for it, but it's a paid trial. 'cause I'm completely against any kind of trial that isn't paid. This is paid. And, it's, I wonder what the criteria will be. I, reckon that they might find themselves in a really difficult situa, it is not gonna be an easy choice, but also it feels like two weeks is a long enough time that you can actually judge someone on it.

I don't know how they're gonna do it if they've got a full-time job. I guess they, you ha you'd have to take a holiday from it if you already have a job. but yeah, I can get why it feels like hunger gaming. Not that I've ever watched the Hunger Games, but, Yeah. But at the same time, it is also a not bad way of.

Finding out

[00:24:50] Nathan Wrigley: there, there was the previous post, and it's tough. The previous post that Matt put up was, actually on the 18th of November. So yeah, a little bit, sooner than I thought. there was some reference, I'm trying to find it at the minute, but I think it was to do with engagement. I think there was gonna be some metric of, like how many comments that were, received and things like that.

But also, I guess somebody's gonna actually read them and, see if there's intellectual curiosity was one of the thing. And so the candidates have got to have, it says here, impeccable integrity, relentless curiosity, a bloggers hustle, passion for news and technology ability, technical ability to tinker within WordPress plugins and themes.

And then there was definitely something about what the process would be in terms of, how they would judge who those people were. but I can't find it, right now. Okay, yeah. Yeah. Peter, what you were saying about a job application, typically, I guess the difference there is you don't normally do it in public, do you?

You, would normally do that whole thing in private and then, but I, I guess you're signing up for that, aren't you? And if you don't want to be part of that process of seven, if that's too much, I guess you can pull out still at this point, mark support

[00:26:01] Piccia Neri: it. Maybe they had so many high quality applications that they had to, that they couldn't, the maximum or they could whittle it down to was seven, which is a good thing.

Yeah. I don't think, I don't envy it. Them, it's a, it's not gonna be an easy choice.

[00:26:15] Nathan Wrigley: I suppose there's gonna be a slight problem potentially over the next two weeks in that, you may, I guess there's an opportunity for stories to overlap. 'cause there's only, with the best world in the world, there's, there's only so many stories in the WordPress space.

And then occasionally a big story comes along and you'd imagine that all seven of them would want to prob possibly jump on that simultaneously, which would be weird. Maybe there's, I need

[00:26:37] Mark Westguard: some, collaborative editing. That's what they need. Oh, now there's a thought mark. There you go. They're gonna work some, maybe they'll write a, an article about this episode.

[00:26:46] Nathan Wrigley: Internet drops and it'll just simply be called failure. One word.

[00:26:51] Piccia Neri: and they're going to, so two people will be employed Yes.

[00:26:55] Nathan Wrigley: At the end.

[00:26:56] Piccia Neri: Yeah. And which makes you think, was Sarah doing two people's

[00:27:00] Nathan Wrigley: job? Yeah, she kind, I think, it's fair to say she, It's yeah. I think that's fair to say, toward the end there for the last, period of time.

I think she really was. yeah, of course it was. Justin left as well. Yeah, Justin left. But she was very good. these people have got, big shoes to fill. I, think, obviously everybody's got their opinions, but I thought she was incredible actually, like a real dynamo. And in the farewell piece that she wrote, I think she'd been doing it for a decade.

And in the farewell piece that she wrote on the tavern, she did make the point that when she began, she really didn't have this capacity to sit down and write on a daily basis, but then it became part of her. Mojo part of her existence to the point where she now craves to write every day. It just has become part of who she is and what have you.

So anyway, I'm looking forward to that. Tim or Mark Dunno if you wanna develop on that anymore.

[00:27:57] Mark Westguard: I'm just delighted it's gonna keep going. Yep. it was, quiet for a while, so I'm glad Matt's had the time to get that in place and looking forward to seeing it come alive again. Always refer to wpt.

I know you do a lot in the show as well. Yeah. Nathan, so

[00:28:12] Nathan Wrigley: that's great. Yeah. Tim, anything on

[00:28:14] Tim Nash: that? I look forward to meeting the new, new writers. Yeah. I think, yeah, it'd be interesting to see who they are. If they're not

[00:28:23] Nathan Wrigley: well, Michelle makes the same point. She says, I'm excited to see he'll be writing there.

and Andrew, we were talking about Audrey Capital earlier and the sort of degree of separation possibly. And, Andrew says, even though Audrey is owned by Matt, that is true. but what I can tell you, Andrew, and this is no word of a lie, when I was asked to do the podcast, there was no.

Strings of any nature, attached. I wasn't instructed to do one thing or not do another thing. It was very much an open, experience. And so I've been led by myself. so hopefully the same sort of no strings attached will come through as well. Alright. Let's move on. We're gonna talk about an event, I dunno, of the three of you, which ones of you are going, but coming up very soon.

Wow. Wow. Like literally, four weeks away. Is Word Camp Asia. From March the seventh to the ninth, 2024, it's been held in Taiwan, Taipei. Now we've talked about this a lot, but why are we talking about it again? because the schedule has been released and so it's time to, dig out whatever note taking app you use to decide what it is that you're gonna attend.

and so here we are. You can see there are, essentially there's four tracks. there, there's four tracks, labeled tracks plus there's a, workshop room, it's called. 2 0 3 A. but there's four main tracks. and one thing that I'm slightly confused about is that when I scan through this, and again, forgive me dear listener, if you're listening to this, you won't be able to see it.

But if you go to asia dot word camp.org, you can find this easily enough. It's slash 2024 slash schedule. there's a lot of space still, and I don't know. Where they've used the word closed, whether that means they were just never intending to fill that up, or if it means we haven't decided yet, because occasionally it says closed, and then in other spaces it says TBD, which I'm imagining means to be decided.

so it's not like it looks blank or anything, and to be honest with you, four or five tracks is, more than enough there. But there is definitely something going on, all the time. You can see there's a few familiar faces, familiar names up here, including, look, there's, Michelle, who's in the yeah's in the chat.

She's doing one called What does underrepresentation mean? What is Allyship and Why does it matter? But really it's all there for you to go and check out. pizza. Tim, mark, are you, any of you? The guys going? Yep, I'm

[00:30:58] Mark Westguard: going. I'm sponsoring, so I'm looking forward to, it's my second, Asia sponsorship. I did the first one last year, Delighted to be going back. I'm looking forward to it. I'm not sure what to expect really, as in, in terms of the size of it. it seemed early on that there was, a much lower number of sponsors than there were the year before. But it seems to have picked up again. yeah, I'm looking, forward to go.

You are going as well, Nathan.

[00:31:25] Nathan Wrigley: I'm gonna be there. I'm gonna go a few days before and then spend a couple of days afterwards, just recovering from the jet lag, but I'm, genuinely excited. I didn't manage to make the, one in, Bangkok and I was, I really did wish to go to that and it sounds like that was a pretty amazing event and I can't really get my hands on why everybody that went, thought it was so different and unique, but that without a shadow of a doubt, everybody that I've spoken to says it was a little bit special.

[00:31:56] Mark Westguard: Bangkok was special. it was a, great event. There

[00:32:00] Nathan Wrigley: was what, though? what was it that caught your attention because you think it was a conference for how, for

[00:32:06] Mark Westguard: me? Yeah. for me it was primarily the people were just lovely that were, there. The, the people in Bangkok, but also the people that attended it was a very different crowd from US and Europe.

there was a lot of people from India there, for example. A lot of development groups were there and it was great to meet them and they would, come up and, say, Hey, I've been using your product and, we love it. And a lot of them were using the, free light edition of my product, which was nice to hear.

oh, Okay. But it, was, I was there with a friend and he was just constantly bringing me water because I was talking solid for two days and it, there was so many people coming past the foot. Traffic was incredible. so yeah, I, I don't go there to. Make an ROI, I don't go there to make sales.

I go there to network and meet people and it, was, it was a really great event and it was nicely laid out as well the way they did it. 'cause everything was on one floor. it wasn't disjointed like some work camps can be. So they did quite a nice job with a, layout.

Nice. and for the smaller businesses, they did a wonderful job with the small booth that we had. So I think they did a great job. So yeah. Looking forward to

[00:33:20] Nathan Wrigley: this one as well. the sponsorship seem to have been selling reasonably well. Yeah. there don't seem to be any shortage of them. Yeah, it's definitely increased, which is great.

Where are you? Which, package? Oh, more is at the

[00:33:31] Mark Westguard: bottom. I'm always at the bottom. Oh, okay. Got it. Yeah, on my lonesome.

[00:33:35] Nathan Wrigley: Look at that. Oh yeah, You're, you literally.

[00:33:38] Piccia Neri: Yeah, right there. You know what, one thing that happened last year that we cur, I'm not going this year, but I, did go last year. I was speaking and I agree it was, this particularly, all work are great, but I think there was a lot of excitement.

Because it was a, because the first, it did because it was, canceled the first time. So I think that there was a lot of goodwill and happiness and excitement about that. 'cause the team had been waiting three years to finally get it done. So I think there was a lot of that. And also, personally, I love Bangkok.

don't ask me why. 'cause it's, you could say the opposites of what I say and I'd still agree with you, but it was just so great to feel like you're, in inside Blade Runner. And, but more than any other work, I'm, I've been to the hallway track was the, liveliest. I went at. Because the main, track was huge and, often it was not empty, but you would've expected much more, many more people in the audience.

And, in fact, it was better to be in a, speaking in a smaller room. So there was the hallway track was the liveliest that I've ever seen it, and normally is really lively. So it was a very interesting, event. And yes, Andrew is adding that. It was well organized, lots of international, it was all, great.

The sponsor parties. I loved it. The, what's not to like about partying on a boat, honestly, Yeah. yeah, it was, amazing. And I'm sure that, the, final party, wow, I had so much fun and because the only alcohol was beer. I don't drink beer. So I was completely sober.

[00:35:28] Nathan Wrigley: You actually remembered it anyway.

Great. And

[00:35:29] Piccia Neri: I hope that, I'm sure that, this one will be just as great riding on the wave of such. I'm

[00:35:37] Nathan Wrigley: looking forward to it. Yeah. What about you, Tim? Are you heading over there at all?

[00:35:42] Tim Nash: No, sadly not though. Word Camp Asia is possibly the, one of the large word camps that I would want to go to. I think over, I generally, I, don't think I like larger word camps.

but yeah, word Camp Asia, I would like to just do so I could tick it off, but also, 'cause it's completely, different to Word camps in Europe, so it would be very cool to go to.

[00:36:05] Nathan Wrigley: like I said, if you are interested, you can now find the schedule. I'll put the link in the show notes as I always do, but there's plenty of different stuff in there.

There's absolutely loads of talks and, some familiar faces for me at least, but also quite a lot of new names that I've not come across. And so that's exciting as well. and I always enjoy the hallway track, so I just,

[00:36:27] Mark Westguard: I'm be right next to Bob Wp, so beware.

[00:36:30] Nathan Wrigley: Yes. You've got a sponsor stall next to him.

I am so gonna come over and. Have fun. Yeah. Whatever that means. I don't know. It's gonna be fun. I think I've got this two dimensional representation of your face mark. And I'm going to be careful 'cause I've got your two dimension face right now. I it right there. no. Not tempting fate. I feel unwell enough.

I, it is. I some sort of apparition of myself over in the United States. So Andrew Palmer, I raised it on the screen and I'm gonna say it. He said it was really well organized. Lots of international presence, great networking opportunities and sponsor parties were great. Plus, the auditoriums were close to the sponsor decks two, which I suppose if you're a sponsor.

Is actually super important. I've heard tell of word camps where the two were, the sponsor area and the actual area where the presentations were going on. Were almost in separate buildings and you feel that it's not really gonna be great value for money from a sponsor point of view, But like you say, it's not about the, return on investment always, but nevertheless, so there we go. That's WordCamp Asia. similar community feel to it, but not quite the same. This is something, Marcus Burnett, he's been on the show several times. He has put this website together, which I think is quite nice.

The, the WordPress photo directory, was announced on December the 14th, 2021, and the idea is that you would submit your photos, which would be freely available. To everybody inside their WordPress website. And Marcus has put together this nice little, live updated website, which shows you the contributions going.

And if you're watching this, it'll be fairly easy to understand, but I'll try to explain it. Essentially, it's a, it's not a straight line. It's more of an upward curve. if we go back to 2021, obviously there were no photographs by a year later. So Decem December, 2022, there was about 5,000, just over 5,000.

December, 2023, there was somewhere in the region of, I don't know, 11 and a half thousand. And as we stand at the moment, February, 2024. We're slightly over 13,000. So these are all photos which have been freely given, for you to use. And it does look like certainly since, oh, I dunno, about July last year, something like that.

It seems to have, not caught fire. It's not like it's an exponential thing, but it looks like the beginning of a bell curve, if It's just started to go up a little bit more each month, buy a little bit more, if So as of now, you've got, roughly, faster, probably about 14,000 pictures as of this moment.

Oh, it says there, it says 15,011. So that's obviously been updated. I forgot to mention that. Anyway, I thought that was a nice community project. Free photos available for you and you can contribute them. There are some caveats around that, like no faces, obviously, Decorum, whatever that means, but you get the point.

Nothing weird or seedy. and you can submit those for free. It's a fairly simple process. I think you can do five at a time. and then the WordPress people will be able to use them for free on their WordPress websites. Anything you wanna say about that? Oh, it's gone up, says Michelle. Look, it's gone up by two in the, time that I've had that page live.

So 15,013, she says, anybody wanna contribute on that nice endeavor or shall I move on? I would just say

[00:39:57] Mark Westguard: please be patient with the moderators. as with everything we've, WordPress, plugin directory, et cetera, et cetera, they're all humans. They're all doing it on their own time. So please be patient.

There's, been a lot of photos submitted recently 'cause there's a, competition going on.

[00:40:13] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, that's right. The Carol one. yeah.

[00:40:15] Mark Westguard: And there was a little bit of heat in the WordPress photos, slack channel with people saying, why are my photos being. reviewed, but just, be patient.

They're doing a great job.

[00:40:28] Nathan Wrigley: She, Michelle, who is one of those moderators, is right back at you. She says every photo is moderated by a human volunteer. And obviously they're fitting in their spare time, and there's quite, there's probably quite a few check boxes. In fact, when you upload the image, there are about, oh, I don't know, I'm gonna guess there's probably about 15 or 20 check boxes that you've got to go through, with all the sort of caveats.

you're excl, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing this. It isn't this, it isn't that. And so on. Michelle, what make the data just one You have to add go. Sorry, P sorry. Carry on.

[00:41:02] Piccia Neri: I told you I'm better than you interrupting. I'm just wondering because I used to, I used to upload it to take photos for stock photography sites, and, you had to always add as I, it was in your interest to add as much metadata as possible.

For it to be found. So do you do that because obviously then it's easier to find a relevant

[00:41:24] Nathan Wrigley: image. I've submitted a few, and I can't exact, I can't remember now, where you go to submit them and I, haven't really got the capacity to Google it at the moment, but there, there is, my memory is that there was definitely some, metadata, so I had to describe the picture.

I guess that's for alt text and things, screen readers and what have you. But also there were just loads and loads of check boxes so that you could, so that you were definitively saying it doesn't have a human face and so on and so forth. Just whilst you're there, Michelle, I've just thought about this.

Michelle, if it's not there already. It would be a really nice idea to have a box to tick all the boxes on that submission form. 'cause when I did it, you had to do them all one at a time and trying to tick 15 boxes when you know it's your photo and it's completely benign and you know you're gonna end up ticking them all would be quite a nice idea.

yeah, there we go. So you need to include a description that can be used as old text. So yeah, picture upload, go for it. Why not? it's, nice for posterity as much as anything else. I bought myself a camera for Christmas. It's right there. And and I intend to get busy over the summer when the weather's improved and take as many pictures as I can and I'll be bringing it to Asia, oh no, they won't count.

They'll probably have faces in them. Does my flat 2D face count. Because that's not a face. If we took a picture. That's a good question. Yeah. Maybe I'm breaking laws. Yeah, I'll say laws of decorum. the, there is, once you've submitted 30. Oh, okay. I dunno, I'm dunno what she means about that.

If there's a way of, getting rid of those check boxes. I don't know Tim, anything about that.

[00:43:11] Tim Nash: I was just gonna say, Michelle saying that if you've, if you, after you've submitted 30 photos, you're deemed to be a, a more responsible person and can have the skip all the checks,

[00:43:21] Nathan Wrigley: check boxes. Ah, I see.

Yeah, that makes sense. You haven't submitted enough

[00:43:24] Tim Nash: Nathan, is what she's saying.

[00:43:25] Nathan Wrigley: Do you know what I, screwed something up as well. 'cause I submitted five and they all got through and then I submitted five more and, for some reason, maybe it's a computer fault that I have, they, it looked like they'd all submitted and then I got an email shortly afterwards to say that they'd all.

They'd all failed, which was interesting. And I, shut the computer down. Can't take pictures of your breakfast. I know. And I'd shut the computer down at that point and never went back. So I need to make more of an effort. Okay. In that case, so this is a complete aside, but it's just a nice little graphic to show that project is definitely going in the right direction.

Okay. So this is just a couple of things which I just wanted to mention, unless any of you have got something you want to add, I'll just press on through them. the developer hours, sequence of events. There's one coming up tomorrow, from four to five UTC. and it's, Nick Diego and Ryan Welcher.

They're doing one all about JavaScript for modern WordPress development. You can find it in the show notes, which I'll put out tomorrow, or it's on me top.com. look, search for WordPress developer hours. So there's that. this next one is, this is an episode of the, I'm gonna call it Rob Cairns podcast, 'cause I, it's Stu stunning digital marketing show.

And, this week, Rob Cairns, who's very, often on the show. So I want to give him a, a tip of the hat. he had some chap called, Tim Nash on, and and they presumably talked about security. Do you, wanna add anything to that? Did you, do you wanna say something about it? We did indeed talk about

[00:45:08] Tim Nash: security.

Yeah, you should definitely go and listen to

[00:45:10] Nathan Wrigley: it. Yeah, I haven't had a chance yet. but I will, I'll make an effort. but there it is. So that's a podcast episode number three. Blum in it. Rob 392, published on the 2nd of February. Stick it in your podcast. Player of choice. Anybody wanna add anything to that before I move on?

No, Okay. So this, listen to it. Oh, you have, or you are going to. I read it last night when I was in Did you good? I did, yeah.

[00:45:40] Mark Westguard: You read it? Yeah. He's actually read this, the transcript. Good

[00:45:43] Nathan Wrigley: man. Look at that. He's got that. The transcripts are

[00:45:46] Piccia Neri: so

[00:45:46] Nathan Wrigley: useful. Yeah, they really are. Well done. Wow. Wow, You must be able to read quickly.

I can't. It took me a long time. That's pretty amazing. so this is a weird one. Weird for a number of reasons. Number one, I'm not entirely sure that I understand the purpose of it. Number two, I don't understand why they don't have a website, but we'll get onto it. What is it? This is something called the charter of the Open Website Alliance and you've probably not heard of them because it's brand new.

This is document version 1.0 and the, the intention is, I'll read you the first paragraph and depending, I might keep going. The Alliance is founded. To facilitate collaboration between content management, open source projects, so WordPress, this is just so on message, but imagine LER Drupal and a bunch of others.

in order to further ed, in order to further education about and advocacy of open source benefits and principles, the alliances members seek to promote and defend the rights of open source projects, and ultimately aspire to create a better web. The alliances members commit to jointly encouraged per.

Prospective website owners and developers to always choose open source software over proprietary systems. Bravo. And to educate why this decision is the first and most important one in a website project. Through this advocacy, we are expanding opportunities for all open source CMS projects. And then it goes on to talk about members, and it goes on to talk about how the leadership will be structured and how meetings will be held in the, voting and all that.

In other words, it's, they're setting themselves up, they're sticking their flag in the ground and saying, this is what we're doing. But I just wonder why isn't that a website? Why is it a PDF document? sorry, I'm being fairly, facetious there, but they've issued this as a PDF, which just, I wouldn't

[00:47:46] Piccia Neri: be, because A PDF is inherently not accessible unless it's been done accessibly, and I think Mark had the perfect solution,

[00:47:55] Mark Westguard: didn't you?

Yeah, build it out of raw HTML.

[00:48:00] Nathan Wrigley: Just put it out there as HTML. So that was my first thing. The, first like cognitive dissonance was, hang on, why not just use, okay, so I can imagine they didn't choose a CMS like WordPress or Joomla or read any CMS for fear of upsetting the air quotes opposition, if you lose WordPress, maybe it would've offended the Jummah folks and so on and so forth.

But nevertheless, it does seem a peculiar thing to release that. But I don't wanna bang on that gong particularly 'cause I think the project has laudable aims, but I dunno. Do we need, another thing like blowing this horn? I, dunno, over to you. Discuss.

[00:48:46] Tim Nash: I think it's worth emphasizing that the ch this is the charter.

It's a big document that's designed that they would no doubt, did some sort of collaborative element editing on in Google Docs. And this is what they edited out. This is not the fight, what's gonna be at the end. This is something that they've put out to get people to talk. It's also not really designed for any of the four people on this call.

this is very much talking leadership teams of the open CMSs and in, in very much in a information governance parlance. Everything in there is in legalese when it doesn't need to be, but they want to make themselves sound impressive. And this is a document that they want to shove in front of people who goes, yes, I very much see that this works well. And rubber stamp things. This isn't a document about the open web. This isn't a document about getting developers to be more. Into open source. This is a document about, talking at like government level and, into larger organizations and finding the language that they can use to spread open source concepts into those locations.

So I wouldn't, worry too much about it being a PDF. Do we need it at the moment? We are, we do have scenarios where often, not so much with Drupal and WordPress, but Drupal, let's say Drupal, WordPress, and Jula sometimes are trying to send the same message. a good example is when they were talking to the European Union about, information security and the idea of, and there was, the CMSs made representations and they all said the same thing, but they all said it slightly differently.

And so it looked like there was a fracturing. so I, think speaking with one voice on certain things isn't a bad thing.

[00:50:44] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, that's a good point. I think it really

[00:50:46] Tim Nash: isn't for us.

[00:50:47] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Okay. I'm warming to it more from what you've said and, I get the, sort of positioning of it now. So if it's more of a, approaching government or something like that, maybe it's not, for your, I don't know, your, butcher website, your, local, bricks and mortar shop or anything like that.

It's more about p procuring the bigger contracts and having some sort of place where you can point to, to say, look, it's impartial, but there's some data about why open source is a good idea for you and your data. Okay. That makes sense. I get it. it's not even the,

[00:51:22] Tim Nash: go, government. There's things like, in Germany, the, there is a lot of legislation around the need to use open source, but there's always groups saying, why?

And there, there needs to be advocacy to keep that in place. So

[00:51:40] Nathan Wrigley: yeah,

[00:51:40] Tim Nash: this is this, is one group. Now, whether they're replicating already existing groups is a different matter. There are already open source advocacy groups that work at that sort of government level. Could they join? I believe that some, of the communities are already involved in that.

So

[00:52:02] Mark Westguard: do you remember this full line at the bottom of this document? Nathan, I think shows the. Source of this document.

[00:52:08] Nathan Wrigley: this one

here,

[00:52:09] Mark Westguard: you mean? Yeah. This manifesto is based on the Drupal Association original Open Web Manifesto. Oh

[00:52:14] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. It on failed to see that. Okay. Yeah. So it's off a, it's off a template that's already been done before.

Yeah, I do wonder, coming at it from a WordPress point of view, we're in the privilege position to be the, the leader, let's put it that way, in terms of numbers of installs. WordPress is the leader. you may disagree with all sorts of other, definitions of that, but in terms of numbers of installs, it is the leader.

So it feels I wonder if we need this. But I guess from the other project's point of view, it would be quite nice. But also to Tim's point, do you remember Tim, when the, when there was that security, the log four J. Problem. And I remember is it Log four J? Yeah. The, and I remember reading articles in the mainstream press and the arms of government were, keen to just pick up the bat phone and say, fix it.

And, but there wasn't a bat phone because the person that was in charge of that bit of that project just was like, no, I'm, I, can't remember what was going on there, but he was just doing all the stuff and he didn't wanna fix it. And I remember reading several articles couched in terms of open sources, dangerous.

because you can't fix things arbitrarily in one place and just propagate them everywhere. And you can't pick up the phone at three in the morning and impel somebody to, to take that course of action. And I remember thinking, this is an interesting inflection point. Will the, nature of open source win out here?

And then that kind of went away and we all forgot about it. But I do wonder if, at, certainly at government level and major business level, if they do have concerns around this and maybe an organiz organization like this can, put together some compelling case for, why open source.

It's really trying to rack my

[00:54:03] Tim Nash: brain for the, but there was a story not that long ago, and I'm trying to remember what the context of the story was, but ultimately there was a thing in US Congress where they had decided that open source was dangerous because contributors could come from any country.

Yeah. We, and obviously for some people in the US Congress, that meant that there were countries that they didn't want people, and they were, they basically, the headlines that then got converted from that by a press who was desperate for headlines was, X countries hackers, are, in all of our critical systems.

And the answer of course was reality is no. Some open source software was being used in critical systems, and in the list of contributors was somebody with a foreign sounding name. and consequently that must be, this was a national security issue. things like that. Can easily blow up and, blow ups probably the wrong word to use there, isn't it?

And could easily be, misinterpreted. And, so having an advocacy group that's really focused and saying, no, this is what open source is, this is the benefits of open source. This is why you want open source. This is why your developers want to use open source and provide the education to developers and project managers so that they can go through the chain saying, this is good, all the way.

Makes

[00:55:29] Nathan Wrigley: a lot of sense. Do you know I'm warming to this now? You've talked me into it. I was fairly skeptical Really? Because I'm completely skeptical. You talk. That's great. don't you know Tim well

[00:55:40] Piccia Neri: enough

[00:55:41] Nathan Wrigley: yet, Nathan? That's right. He says he's a professional doom speaker. There you go. he's doomed spoken himself, but he's managed to, to, lift the, no, I think, there's a lot of legs on that, especially at the, at the, level where government get involved or where, I don't know.

Let's say for example, major Blue Chip Corporation or something where they've gotta have this due diligence because they cover international boundaries. Having some organization that can pedal the virtues of open source CMSs in particular. So maybe that's where this differs. It's just about CMSs is interesting.

Andrew Palmer is likening it to an OSS Union. Yeah, I guess a little bit. anything on that? Apart from that. Okay. I still stand. It should be an HTML. Please make it an html. mark paid somebody this week to, to create a Twitter stream. he didn't actually pay somebody, but I just want, I thought this was cool, right?

I, and I knew you were coming on the show, so I thought I'd mention it. mark, he is. Ws form. and there's a chap called Brian Jackson. Used to work for Kinter, now does a load of different projects. Got, a social, a per perform. Let's go for that one. perf Matters is probably the most notable one that people know him for.

And, over the last few weeks, he's obviously been testing out your platform, mark your plugin, and, made the switch. And what I thought was nice about this was that he didn't just make the switch and say I'll switch to, switch to WS form. But he, did it with a full on analysis on Twitter, including screenshots and bits and pieces that he loved.

And I, just thought, that's cool when people like him do things like that. You must feel pretty great.

[00:57:32] Mark Westguard: Yeah, it was completely out of the blue. I woke up and saw he had written it and it was so nice of him to do that. Brian and I did some work together with Perf Matters and WS form, just to make sure they worked well together.

he has a lot of, Code within his plugin that checks to see if other plugins are installed to make sure his product works well with well. and then the next thing I know he had, actually purchased a license and he is now using it. So I was, very, grateful for, him doing that.

And, thank you for showing that. I appreciate it.

[00:58:05] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, no, I just thought that was really nice. So he goes through, I think he's probably got about eight tweets, one after another where he talks about the, oh no, nine. There you go. Nine the nine things that made him switch from his current, form plugin, which he doesn't, he, he's not starting a flame war.

He makes the point that he doesn't really have an ax to grind, but he, there's just a variety of things, which you did, including things like your turnstile implementation and Yeah. And he continues

[00:58:28] Mark Westguard: to recommend other form plugins for different applications, so he's, very honest about what he does.

But yeah. Thank you, Brian. I

[00:58:35] Nathan Wrigley: appreciate it. I'd be fascinated though, because Brian to me is somebody that I've been looking at for a, really long time. when he was with Kinter, I was making content in the WordPress space, and then he, he's got all these other plugins. I'd be really interested if some little tweet like that.

If you can spot an uptick in your sales or visits to your website, I'd be absolutely fascinated with the power of somebody like, like Brian to To make your, revenue go up.

[00:59:05] Mark Westguard: If my Google Analytics work, then yeah, maybe I'll,

[00:59:09] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. We'll find out. anyway, there was that. So bravo, well done.

The, the next one is Michelle, she's on the call. I just wanted to mention the fact that she did a, an episode with Matt Mullenweg this week. Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress. He's actually on sabbatical. Michelle, did you record this when you were on sabbatical? I'm not entirely sure, but you've got two options.

You can consume it as an audio podcast. It's roughly, 40 minutes long. You can see I got 30 minutes in and then have to stop for this show. or you can watch it as a video, but the, my guess would be that it's exactly the same content. But if you wanna, hear Matt Mullenweg chatting to Michelle Yeah.

About all sorts of things. This is on the stellar. wp.com website. And if you just Google special episode with Matt Mullenweg, it was released on the 9th of February.

[01:00:02] Mark Westguard: Yeah. Michelle did record that during his sabbatical, by the way. Oh,

[01:00:05] Nathan Wrigley: nice. Yeah. Yeah. I got the impression just from looking and hearing, he seemed very relaxed.

Yeah. not to say that he doesn't ever sound any, he is very calm individual. Isn't, he? But he did seem significantly relaxed and I thought, yeah, it was a good

[01:00:21] Mark Westguard: interview and, I'm hoping that sabbatical's doing him good, he deserves

[01:00:25] Nathan Wrigley: a good rest. Yeah. I think he's got three months off.

He actually, coincidentally, he released a, it wasn't him, he was at a, a conference or something about 10 days ago where he was talking about sabbaticals and the decision to give everybody a automatic, I think they get it every five years. I. So if you're an aian, I think you get three months every five years.

And he talked about why he thought as a company that was a good idea and he released the number of employees. Last time I heard, which was not that long ago. Automatic had 1500 and something. But in this thing the other day he said it's now it was 1,925, I think it was. Anyway, it was 1900 and something.

And just think, boy, that company doesn't slow down. And being in charge of 1900 people is quite a responsibility. So having a bit of time off to, to recuperate is good. Peter, Tim, anything on that? Or shall we crack on? I'm

[01:01:20] Tim Nash: just gonna say you haven't heard the last nine minutes, you're saying it's all chilled.

[01:01:24] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. And then the came out is that Yes, it all goes off. Started throwing things at each other. There was cursing and all sorts. Yeah. Okay. I'll go, I, will promise you to listen to the last nine minutes and check that out. That would be hysterical if that was true. Okay. I read this incredibly briefly, so I tried to get my head round it and if I have messed this up panel, please just interject if I do this wrong.

But this is, a GitHub, thread. it was started five days ago. It's from Mathias Ventura, and it's called Proposal for Core Blocks in Directory. It's the thread 5 8, 7, 7. Three. So you can go and find it yourself. and I'll quote, there is a growing subset of blocks that we may contemplate creating that are either more niche or for various reasons, not necessarily an immediate fit for bun, for the bundled library.

In core, this would include blocks that have not enough DI appeal demand, and are offering an endorsed implementation, which can significantly help both creators and viewers best. given best practices can be aser ascertained. Further, he says, I propose we look at a mechanism where such blocks can be designed, developed, published, and maintained by core contributors in this repository.

but for them to be published as standalone blocks in the directory instead of bundled in the default library. These blocks, and I guess this is the important bit, these blocks would show up as authored by wordpress.org. It would allow themes and patterns in the directory to leverage them with certainty.

So what I'm hearing is that I. There's too many blocks in core at the minute, or maybe there's a roadmap, and that roadmap is maybe believed to have too many blocks in core. So it read to me like, wouldn't it be a good idea if we, took some of these under the purview of wordpress.org, we make sure that they are kept up to date, that they're, I, guess they've gotta, they've gotta be accessible, they've gotta be, secure, they've gotta be maintained in line with core WordPress and all of that, but they don't fit that 80 20 rule.

So you'd have to go and find them one at a time and then download them from this directory. And that made me quickly go and look at a default version of WordPress. And then I opened up the blocks inserter. And man, there's a lot in there. There's a lot in there that I don't suppose the majority of us will use.

For me, I'm all about paragraphs, list items and headings and images. That really is where I'm at. But there's a lot in there, like the Vimeo block, which, Yeah. Okay. Maybe somebody needs the Vimeo block, but does it need to be bundled in core? I dunno. Do you, am I reading that? Is that what you got from it when you saw that you guys Yeah, that's, what I

[01:04:21] Mark Westguard: got.

Okay. I guess my concern would be making sure people are, aware or make it easily to easy to find where these other blocks are rather, than having to go through the plugin directory to find them. So

[01:04:37] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, sorry, Some plugins

[01:04:38] Mark Westguard: will have like a checkbox grid where you can enable which blocks you want to use.

I think maybe Cadence does that, I'm not sure. so yeah. I don't know. I dunno, I like having everything in one place where I can just search and find it immediately and not have to go and install yet another plugin. yeah, them being in core and I, I don't know whether there's any performance indications of having them as a, plugin versus being in work.

We are very, I wouldn't say it was a huge difference, but, I don't know. I'm torn on this one.

[01:05:16] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it,

[01:05:17] Tim Nash: I think there's

[01:05:18] Nathan Wrigley: certainly been, oh, sorry, David. No, Please. You carry on. Tim. I'll, no, I was gonna say,

[01:05:22] Tim Nash: I think there's, there, there's plenty of history for this. If you think about it, the, classic editor, for example, is maintained as a plugin in call by the core team in the WordPress repo.

hello Dolly is maintained in the repo. so there's lot, there's lots of examples where, there, where wordpress.org is managing it. the two FA plugin. Technically is under WordPress contributors, but is effectively managed by wordpress.org team. So it's not unusual for them to have things inside.

And I think if anything doing this, they're immediately gonna go, okay, now we probably need to work on discoverability of these things. Which has to then benefit anybody else who's building blocks. So I think by making, by splitting this out and putting them into the di, into the directory that's going to.

it's gonna have to force and change the way, what you can find and discover new blocks, which has gotta be a positive for other developers, I think as long as they're differentiated. And it's clear that you can see. Oh, this one is from the wordpress.org team, rather than from Joe Blocks, who also has my dodgy grid block,

[01:06:40] Nathan Wrigley: which in fact, that's ingeniously titled my Dodgy Grid Block.

I love it. That's, that's, somebody should do it. So I've just used the Voodoo that is playground, to stick up a, very quick site. Let's have a look. Let's see what's in there. So, if you go to playground wordpress.net. and by the way, now if you append, I think it's query equals multi-site, you can use multi-site as well.

If we have a look at what's in here. So here's the stuff that most people use, right? The quotes and the code and the details, and verse really, I dunno, maybe. and then, there's all the ways of laying out media and design, blocks and columns, sorry, rose columns, buttons, and so on.

access to legacy stuff, widgets and what have you. And then there's a bunch of theme stuff here, query loop, all very interesting. And then, when will we get here? I'm just losing, I'm just losing the will of a little bit. Really. SoundCloud, we need that. Do we flicker? An I what Animoto is in there of all things.

These are just the old embeds. The design. Yeah. No, I know, but the point is it's all there, right? And if that whole menu was, it was stripped of all the stuff that wasn't needed and it had to be Wolfram, look at that. I don't know. I'm, I think it's a good idea. I think basically anything that Mattia says is likely to be a good idea.

But, but yeah, I guess discoverability as Mark said, yeah. Is gonna be of a bit of a problem if it's not there. Maybe the, how would you know?

[01:08:17] Mark Westguard: Yeah. Make, I know on the plugin homepage there is a, block, plugins that include blocks. So maybe it's time to expand that out and turn it into a, blocks directory.

[01:08:28] Tim Nash: there's a search button at the top there. If you type it into the search and it comes up with a little thing that indicates that it's not currently installed, oh, site admins will love that. I've

[01:08:40] Nathan Wrigley: just typed in dodgy widget and it doesn't, now imagine

[01:08:42] Tim Nash: if it came up, say with the option to install it, and you'd be there.

Go, oh, brilliant. And then you don't have, obviously have permission, so then you get to send a message to the person who can install plugins. How fun that would be.

[01:08:54] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. But anyway, it's a, neat idea, I think on first view that it made sense to me. I think there's a lot of utility in that. I think, sorry, go on.

[01:09:04] Piccia Neri: Yeah, no, sorry. so I'm a bit conflicted about this one because I'll confess now that I don't really use Gutenberg that much because I tend to not build, I design, so I will use this on my sites, and so it's not, I don't use it enough probably. But in terms of pure UX. There are two sides to this.

So on, on one side it is absolutely overwhelming the choice, as you were rightly saying. On the other hand though, just because I personally don't use, smug mug, doesn't mean that it would be incredibly, doesn't mean that if you take it out, yeah, there'll be somewhere in the world going, ah, you took it out.

Or, that's the only reason why I was there. and I don't believe, I think it's the fallacy of democracies that minorities are screwed usually. So I wouldn't, if you vote anything out, chances are you really ruin ruining the experience for someone who used to count on that. So I think that I, dunno the solution, but it, I also completely understand one why one would say that.

But what did the discussion say? Was there

[01:10:20] Nathan Wrigley: a discussion about, so yeah, the discussion that carried on after that, let me just see if I can get back. Was broadly, not broadly. I read very quickly most of them, and almost everybody said something akin to, I love the idea, I. so for example, here's Nick Diego, who we mentioned earlier.

I love the idea, I know of a little. Yeah, he's mentioning a little icon block that he's got. There would be a good candidate to for this. he's a link off to block directory there. Yeah. Joe Dolson says, I think it's a good, so Joe Jolson, he's got his accessibility, I would imagine. I think it's a good way of providing some stable blocks for features that are desirable but don't meet the 80 20 rule.

So that was more or less what I was saying, I thought, I just want to make sure that the blocks end up in the directory. Still meet the accessibility standards for accessibility. great idea. So somebody else would these blocks be given preference in the block directory search results? Oh, that's interesting.

Would they meet some sort of like super block category? because they're endorsed by wordpress.org. Would they, find themselves to the top? and then bigot mentions a bunch of things which, the people that she works with often say that they miss. So table of contents, breadcrumbs, mega menus, that kind of thing.

so it's broadly positive. And then, Carolina NY Mark chips in at the end and says, how would WordPress ensure that all single block plugins are kept up to date? from a security point of view, I'm not quoting directly, I'm just paraphrasing, speaking from experience that contributors have not been able to keep the default themes updated.

I'm just saying it might be an easy promise to keep and expectation to live up to. Is this something you would expect the plugins team to manage? How would WordPress manage retiring the single block plugins in case it was decided that the feature should be in core after all? good point. and I don't agree that single block plugins should be in the repository.

It could create more confusion about what Gutenberg is, so broadly positivity. and then a few, I think, very reasonable points from Carolina at the end there. Can

[01:12:32] Tim Nash: I just point out one thing right at the beginning? If you scroll right the way up. Yep. It's not talk, you were talking about removing plug it, blocks.

This explicitly doesn't, it says it's not about removing blocks, it's about going forward that there is a growing subset of blocks that we may contemplate.

[01:12:49] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, great. Thank you for clarifying that. Okay. So my initial, impression then was totally wrong. So that, whole panel that we see, that's, gonna stay there.

This is about things which get, added in the future. Okay. That's a very different question. Now whether

[01:13:03] Tim Nash: or not that changes, but as it was, as it's written there, it implies. Future flocks that they're thinking, oh, we might wanna put this in. Yeah. Talking about, yeah, they're not talking about things that already exist.

So I'm afraid as much as you hate Vimeo and I don't

[01:13:19] Nathan Wrigley: understand what Yeah. That was the only one I can think of. they will be staying. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. the, interesting idea, I, I like, Mark's idea, like in, in suites, stackable and cadence, there's a, there's one panel isn't there, and you can just go in and say, yeah, I'm gonna make use of that.

I'm gonna make use of that. I'm gonna make, but not that, that, that, And you just turn on the ones that you like. So that's an interesting idea as well. So thank you for, clarifying that. Tim, that's much better. So this is just the ones going forward. Stop it being, filled up with things that we don't want in the future.

Okay. So let's see where that goes. Courtney wants the, the dodgy block. it'll go great over, it'll go nicely on her dodgy website, she says. And, Paul Halfpenny. I'm late to the party, but Nathan, oh. Nathan's voice is very gravely. I have one word for you. It starts with CO and ends in vid and you can make of that what you will.

Kid dokey. Where did we get to? We got to there. So let's crack on. We don't have long, so I'm just gonna race through a few things. I just want a quick hat tip. This is editor tips.com. This is Tammy Lister's project where she's serving up, I guess their animated gifts, one at a time of how to achieve a thing inside the block editor.

It's the perfect place to drop into when you've got a few moments and you just wanna learn a new thing. It, if you're an experienced WordPress hand, I imagine some of this will be, obvious to you already, but it's fun. It's a nice little project. So hat tip to that editor.

tips.com and I'm on the slash archive page. And so it's things like how to manage block visibility, how to get the document outline to work site view, sorry, view site from the editor, how to do editor breadcrumbs, copy a color on link to set, to on link to set one side and just a whole bunch of other things that you may not have thought of.

So thank you Tammy. appreciate that. Oh, by the way, on the schedule page, I'm doing a webinar with Tammy at some point in the near future and I'm also doing one with pizza. And I haven't added that, and I feel bad. Sorry Piccia. I will, it's better. I will be better. this is an article by Justin Tadlock all about adding grid support to WordPress themes.

We haven't got time to go into it, but it's a, nice, implementa, a simple, let's say implementation of CSS grid, I believe inside the group block. But, anyway, I love the stuff that he does. This is by Tim. Tim there, our Tim, the Tim on the show. Tell us about this, Tim, what were you doing here?

This is your piece to called confidently cleaner hacked WordPress site workshop. Yeah. When is it? How do we get involved and all that?

[01:16:06] Tim Nash: it's a workshop on the 21st of March and, at 1:00 PM in the GMT. And it is a 90 minutes, workshop where I go through how to clean up a hack site. A few years ago I did a, like a two day.

Version of like course on how to clean the hack site, which was lots and it very intense. And what I thought was, I can do the whole thing in 90 minutes. Just really and everybody all, no. So what I took, I, but I took a lot of from that and I basically have distilled this down into this 90 minute session, which basically goes step by step through how to identify a hack site and how to clean it up successfully so that the hack doesn't come back.

It is a paid for workshop. and yeah the details are on there. It's at tim lash dot Go gave slash workshop. don't you

[01:17:00] Piccia Neri: tell us more details 'cause it's a super useful workshop that most people should, would benefit from and it's quite affordable. Hey,

[01:17:10] Tim Nash: thank you. Yeah, you said basically the workshop is on the 21st March.

That's the live session. there is a 90 minutes of workshop. There's a 30 minute q and a session afterwards. then you get access to all the recordings. Plus I've basically got this step-by-step guide, which is the same guide that I use. It's literally, I'm basically make taking the, notes that I have in obsidian and I am going to make them look pretty and give people out those notes.

But they are the guide for do this step, Cleaning up a site at the end. yeah, it's, tickets are available now, for a individual. It's 49 90 $5, and if you are a company with, up to 10 people in it, it's 4, 9 5 for your team to come along and your entire team can come along for that and join the workshops in all the bits and pieces.

[01:18:04] Nathan Wrigley: so just to get the dates right again, it is 1:00 PM so it's GMT, UK time on the 21st of March. You've got plenty of time to think about it, sorry. And the place to go is Tim nash.co uk slash workshop and, 90 minutes long. with Tim's Failproof. He says, fail proof process for restoring a hacked WordPress site and keeping bad actors at bay.

Tim's been on the show a few times before. if you don't know Tim, Tim's actually pretty good at this. so you

[01:18:42] Piccia Neri: don't need to be a developer to join, do you, Tim? No.

[01:18:47] Tim Nash: you do need to know what WordPress is and be in a position where you might have to clean up a hack site. they're the sort of the prerequisites if you are a developer or a system administrator.

there's some more advanced bits in there. So things about, basically I go through the process without W-P-C-L-I, and then we go through the process with W-P-C-L-I, which is a command line tool and showing the differences. This version will take you about an hour. This version will take you about five minutes.

but you don't have to be a developer. You don't have to do that. But, there's something there for pretty much everyone. Yeah,

[01:19:21] Nathan Wrigley: so you're gonna get access to the 90 minute workshop at the time that we just mentioned. Plus there's a q and a afterwards, and then you get access to all the materials. for life, as I just said.

Yeah.

[01:19:33] Mark Westguard: And check out Tim's other services as well. 'cause he does a lot more than this.

[01:19:39] Nathan Wrigley: National Code at uk. Yeah, we, should just spend the rest of this episode looking at Tim's website. Yeah. Hey, check it out there. He's Woo. I scare people. I it, I love it. I scare pe it, I, sorry. For those of you not seeing it, we're just looking at his homepage.

Tim National Code at uk. It says, hi, I'm Tim Nash. I like to scare people at conferences. Oh, that's brilliant. Lovely. So go and check out Tim's website and you can see all of the different bits and pieces that he does. That's great. Tim, also raise this one. We're gonna have to be fairly quick. Tim, if you wanna go for it now or save it for another day.

What you, what do you want? Very

[01:20:15] Tim Nash: quickly, this is very much one, two, if you can get to the show notes and have a look through, it's just an article about somebody who really likes playing chess. And playing chess online. And so played chess [email protected] and then started playing around behind the scenes, and it's basically showing how you can escalate one, vulnerability after another.

And it's a really fun story. It's really well written. It is quite technical in places, but you don't need to be too technical to follow along with just the, oh, and then this happened. Oh, and then this happened, and then this happened. it's, a good story. It's, written really well. I love it when people bring, security and make it accessible.

And in many ways this was a really, even though it's, there's a lot of technical knowledge in there, it's a really accessible read. So I, oh,

[01:21:09] Nathan Wrigley: nice. Have a check through. Okay. I will. Do you by any chance, Tim, do you listen to, it's, if Memory serves the Dark Net Diaries podcast. Jack Reider. Yeah. Oh, you do.

'cause I've got that one and it's one of those ones where I dip into it. Maybe every three months I'll listen to one of the episodes and it's so good. It's so interesting. Just get, getting under the hood of some like monstrous thing that happened online and unpicking, what happened? The, my favorite one was the one where they, they, figured out how to rig the lottery in some South American country, which was just, just bizarre.

Absolutely brilliant. Anyway, the article will be in the show notes, but very quickly it's ski dev with two is ski dev slash rook, two xss, all hyphenated. I was gonna mention a couple of things, from The Guardian, but I don't think we've got time for that. So did I miss one of the websites that you wanted to show us either of YouTube?

No, I don't think there was anything from YouTube Was there. However, go on. Mark, what were you gonna say? Oh, no, that was it. I,

[01:22:17] Mark Westguard: yeah, I was ready to look at your pug.

[01:22:19] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. what the heck, how, does it, how do you improve on this end?

[01:22:27] Piccia Neri: so yeah. No, you can't. So this is the classical thing that, no, I completely, I say, let me just say that I totally appreciate this.

I think it's fantastic. I think if you wear a, a flying kitten, it would be even better. But however, I appreciate it, intali, and yet this is the typical thing that has, because I have a vestibular disorder. I can't watch without feeling sick, so I'd have to turn away from it. Oh,

[01:22:53] Nathan Wrigley: okay. I'm so

[01:22:54] Piccia Neri: sorry.

It's No, Please don't apologize, but just to, I'm raising awareness at the same time. Okay, there you go. So, who would've thought that this can

[01:23:04] Nathan Wrigley: be, mark? Yeah, mark. Just before the show began, mark sent me a link to some, website and, and it was a website that I'd seen before and it's absolutely blooming.

Excellent. I'm gonna Google it while I'm not, I'm gonna Doc do go it, it's called pointer pointer.com and it's so great. Watch this, right? So you put, your mouse somewhere and leave it. You have to leave your mouse there. A picture, appears pointing directly where your mouse has ended up.

So you just move. I hope nothing offensive comes up. Just leave it. It's so go right into, in the bottom corner. I love it. Isn't that great? Oh, there's some offensive ones. That point was excellent. Okay, let's hope that there's nothing too. I'm gonna do a couple more and then quickly, anyway, that got me set on.

Oh, so sweet. That got me on a journey of, what fun can we end this show on? And I ended up here, the useless web.com. And essentially you click this button and it takes you to a useless website that does one thing. And the pug that you just saw, is one of them. And this one says, you been honor, you've been honoring this pug for 10,923 seconds.

And I am on an SST honor of pug, so that's great. But, I think you should all look at this one. This one is called, this one's called cat bounce.com. and it does exactly what you'd imagine. So you go to cat bound.com and just a load of cat fold. But wait, The joy doesn't end there. 'cause you can grab them and just fling them.

Just call cats. This is crazy. Just woo. Just chuck the cat's out of it. This is why the internet was Tim's. Tim's looking what the heck have I got myself into? Did you,

[01:25:04] Mark Westguard: find the cow one yet? The

[01:25:06] Nathan Wrigley: cow? No.

[01:25:07] Mark Westguard: What's the cow one? we won't bother looking for it, but there's very quickly there's one called Find the cow.

you have to just randomly click on the screen to try and find where the cow is. But as you get closer to where the cow is, there's just a guy in the background just constantly saying, cow.

[01:25:23] Nathan Wrigley: As you get closer to it, it gets louder and louder. Absolutely ridiculous. Anyway, this website is brilliant, the useless web.com.

If you've got, honestly, I could spend the rest of my life clicking this button and be entirely happy. so let's, just do it. I don't even know what's gonna happen. I've ended up here. It's cure cursor effects. Oh, nice. Nice. And then what? Oh, I can fling around emojis now emoji. Click it again.

Oh, look at that. Your classic started JavaScript. That's okay. Okay, let's go back and click it again. See what we get. this is some kind of puzzle. I don't wanna be bothered with that. I'm not doing that. I refuse, I dunno what this is gonna do. You can't hear it, but it's playing me. Could you hear that? It was playing me music.

You probably couldn't hear that. I'll just do one more before we end the show. Oh, this is great. This is redirecting me to a different domain.

Oh and every.com. And then after two seconds it redirects me to ho.com and it just does that forever. Anyway, that's about as exciting as my life gets. the useless web.com is your best new friend and it's gonna honestly, you're gonna sink Absolutely. Hours. My favorite,

[01:26:48] Mark Westguard: oh, we were about to

[01:26:50] Nathan Wrigley: hear his favorite one.

Audio. You're back, Nathan. No you're not. You gone. He was going so well. He needs to go and move his again. He's move

[01:27:02] Piccia Neri: the antennas again.

[01:27:03] Tim Nash: Nathan, the what? Nathan, would you like to know why your internet's not been working the entire time?

[01:27:10] Nathan Wrigley: Would

[01:27:10] Tim Nash: you like to know? Close down all those useless websites. Ava, in the background, we're making endless network connections, probably mining Bitcoin

[01:27:20] Nathan Wrigley: on your behalf.

I actually, have closed them all down now and we're all good. Yeah, everything's back to normal. this is another good one. Quickly just before we go, this one's great. this one's called Always Judge Your book by its cover and you should go. And it's a variety of fictional books. The first one's called how to Talk to Your Cat about gun safety.

There's a picture of a cat, just a little kitten, gently approaching like a hand gun on a desk. outwitting squirrels. One. A hundred, one, a hundred, one useful stratums. Toilet paper. Origami. What your poo is telling you. how to survive a garden. No attack. Eating people is wrong. That's my favorite. and 50 shades of chicken.

It's getting a bit, spicy now. I think that's the moment to, to knock it on the head. Okay. That was it. That was it. We managed to get through number 286 of this week in WordPress. Lots of technical gremlins at the beginning. I do apologize that, however, I have the, cure. I just go around and.

Push the router around a bit and that seems to fix it. And switch your cats off. Switch the cats off, yeah. And push the router around a bit. Yeah. One, yeah, there was all sorts. I was gonna say then, and I'm not gonna amalgamate the two, right? Okay. So I'm gonna raise my hands. I'm gonna ask you to do the same pizza, maybe doesn't know about this, but Piccia, if you are able, I do know

[01:28:42] Piccia Neri: about this.

How would I not know

[01:28:44] Nathan Wrigley: about this? Oh, no. Piccia's frozen for me. Is she frozen for you? No, we're all good. Okay. In which case I'm, gonna, I'm gonna assume that Piccia has raised her hands on. It will be in the copy. That's perfect. Thank you so much. So technical gremlins is probably gonna be the title of this one.

I don't know, but thank you first of all to Mark West Guard. Thank you to Piccia Neri, and thank you to Tim Nash. We'll be back next week with another panel of experts. I will probably have done nothing but look at pointless websites. hopefully the, gremlins will have gone by then.

So we'll see you next time. Thanks so much for joining me. See ya. Bye bye bye.