This Week in WordPress #320

[00:00:03] Nathan Wrigley: It's time for This Week in WordPress, episode number 320. Entitled singing, weirdness, and the week when nothing happened.

It was recorded on Monday the 13th of January, 2025. My name is Nathan Wrigley and I'll be joined by three fabulous people. The first one is my co-host for this week. It's Michelle Frechette, but we're also joined by Tim Nash and Corey Maass. What are we going to talk about?

firstly, Tim gets me to sing it's most humiliating. I would scam forward in this episode to avoid that. If I were you.

Then we get into a whole load of other things about New Year's resolutions and whether we make them or not.

Then we're on to the WordPress news, and there's a lot of it. Some of it fairly difficult to cover. We talk about Automattic and it raining in it's sponsoring and contributions to wordpress.org.

We talk about the shutdown of the Sustainability Team.

The fact that Patchstack have been rejected for their sponsorship of WordCamp Europe this year.

And then we talk a little bit about accessibility and weird designs out there in the WordPress ecosystem.

The WP Community Collective announces its formal non-profit incorporation.

We talk about the hosting and theme teams, as well as the team who are going to be leading 6.8 in the days and weeks to come.

Wordpress.com now has sync with Studio.

There's a block theme development course by Elliot Richmond.

There's a new plugin called Edge Images.

And Progress planner has a new pro version as well.

There's a whole lot more at the end about security. And all of the data breaches that happen towards the end of 2024. And 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% of new purchases. Find out more at go.me/wpuilds.

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Hello, Happy New Year. It is well into almost the second week of the new year, but we haven't done it this week in WordPress since 2025 arrived. So happy New Year. it is episode number 320 of this week in WordPress. And, nothing has happened since we were last, on the air.

There's literally nothing to talk about, so thank yous boring. Yeah, we'll see you next week on this week in WordPress. Bye-bye. no, there's plenty to talk about. and as always joined by a very fine panel. Firstly, let's go through the, go round the houses. Firstly over there. Michelle Frechette is co-hosting today.

How are you doing, Michelle?

[00:03:57] Michelle Frechette: I'm good. How are you?

[00:03:58] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, good. Yeah, Corey, it's not as easy as you think, is it? Yeah, just well, we've discovered the mirror that away. Yeah. You got it easy, Tim. You got it easy. you, I'm good. Thank you. How are you? How was your new year? Christmas-y things.

[00:04:13] Michelle Frechette: Yeah, everything was great.

I've put together probably six Lego sets.

[00:04:18] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, is that a thing? Yeah. Every year, Lego. Okay.

[00:04:21] Michelle Frechette: only because people have discovered I like it, so I received quite a few gifts. Yes.

[00:04:25] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, we, there's always gifts which come out, and Lego was one of them until my children finally said, can we stop with the Lego?

A couple of years ago? And, sad, a tear in my eye. We no longer do the Lego, but anyway, here we go. Lets, nothing

[00:04:40] Michelle Frechette: stopping you, Nathan. Yeah,

[00:04:41] Nathan Wrigley: I know. Let's do, Michelle's bio. Here we go. Michelle Frechette is the Director of Community Engagement for Stellar WP at Liquid Web. In addition to the work there, Michelle is the podcast barista at WP Coffee Talk, co-founder of Underrepresented in Tech.

Also the creator of WP Speakers, WP Career Pages, the executive director of Post Status, and she also co-host the WP Motivate Podcast. She's also an author, frequent organizer and speaker at WordPress events and lives outside Rochester, New York, where she is keen to take. Photographs of nature. If you want to sum it all up, you can go to this website, meet Michelle online and you can find out everything there.

Thank you. Very. Adding

[00:05:22] Michelle Frechette: one more thing, but we're gonna talk about that a little bit later. Oh

[00:05:25] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. Okay. Yeah. We'll chuck that in as well. and let's go. Let's go clockwise. I think that was clockwise. That's anti, I don't know. Anyway, that way we're gonna go to Tim next. Tim,

[00:05:36] Michelle Frechette: I can do that one easy too.

[00:05:38] Nathan Wrigley: yeah.

Cory's got it. Corey has got the memo now. I had to think about it though. Yeah. Point the wrong way. Yeah. What I tend to do is I just point the finger a tiny bit and then the other way

[00:05:48] Corey Maass: I came, up real flow in Tara of

[00:05:51] Tim Nash: Michelle's. I was there going. Now if I could just put like that's

[00:05:57] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, look at that.

Tim is joined joining us from a snowy West Yorkshire. It's lovely out there. That's very nice.

[00:06:06] Tim Nash: it was, obviously, we've been snowed in for the last, week. So on the plus side it's very beautiful. On the downside, you know that point where the Christmas break is over and you're like, right Child, you are going to school today.

Oh, thank God. You're not,

[00:06:26] Nathan Wrigley: oh, you're snowed in Dear Canadians. When the UK people get snowed in, it's because there is snow. Like the mere hint of snow is all it takes. I was gonna

[00:06:37] Michelle Frechette: ask, so for this that live in the northern United States like me and Cory, how much snow does it take to snow you in?

Because here it's about four, four feet of snow and get

[00:06:47] Tim Nash: it's not, how about three and a half come down over the last, okay. Over the period, our feet are

[00:06:52] Michelle Frechette: inches.

[00:06:54] Tim Nash: feet.

[00:06:55] Michelle Frechette: Oh, that's a lot. Okay.

[00:06:56] Tim Nash: but, to be fair, it's not been that, the gen lots of snow is dead easy. lots of snow snowplows.

Yeah. Easy solution. it's the, been a combination of snow plus ice plus idiots.

[00:07:09] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. Yeah. That's,

[00:07:10] Tim Nash: this combination is what keeps it, has kept traction. I don't think that's sum really well.

[00:07:15] Michelle Frechette: The, is the Isis is the bar is the hard part. The idiots makes it just the cream on the tops. Yeah. Snow

[00:07:20] Nathan Wrigley: plus ice plus idiots.

That

[00:07:21] Tim Nash: could be the only, the, and obviously you've gotta go slightly up the hill. Spend on the hill and come slightly down. So where did the person park their car? on the edge coming down. Yeah. I, went past it the other day and it was just dent. It must have been hit at half a dozen times.

[00:07:39] Nathan Wrigley: I'll tell you what, the problem as well, Michelle, is because we, because snow is now a thing that's not really a feature of our lives in the uk. When I was a kid, it really was reliably gonna snow every year. But now it's not. So I think the inve the investment from a government point of view, it must be one of those decisions like, is it worth it?

Is it not worth it? Is it worth? So there's no investment for that kind of infrastructure. So when it does happen, everything falls to pieces. But they get accused of wasting money if they spent it. And we had a summer where there was no snow. there you go. That's my political analysis. Did you with no

[00:08:16] Michelle Frechette: snow?

[00:08:16] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. we have, yeah, I, I'm, not let's let Tim do his bio, because there's no way that I'm doing this. Tim, what, am I even gonna introduce this? Or are you just gonna do it? No. I, the whole idea is that you are meant to do it. No, There's no way I'm singing.

[00:08:40] Tim Nash: There's the fight, this, the idea.

Go on show.

[00:08:45] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Alright. Make

[00:08:45] Tim Nash: you sing and do silly things.

[00:08:47] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. I will do it. But I want everybody to, I'm danced on your show, Nathan. The least you do. Oh yeah, this is alright. I'm sucking it up. So Tim wants me to sing his bio in the style of, what's that thing called?

[00:09:00] Tim Nash: C shanty. So in the, you can go for the Wellman, which is

[00:09:05] Nathan Wrigley: oh.

Ah damn. Okay, here we go. Apologies to everybody with functioning ears. There once was a man from Yorkshire Land who sailed WordPress with a steady hand. Snow comes down, but he snug inside Tim Nash. I can't do that, but Tim Nash co uk on his online guide. Sometimes it gets an update. Not nearly off, done enough.

Oh, Tim comes to keep your site safe, secure from hacks. He will do site reviews here if you pay him. Lots of dos on WP Builds. He shares insights and makes Nathan sing Very silly songs.

It is the lowest point of my life.

[00:09:53] Tim Nash: You be clear. I'll say to I did send him a sound wave with me singing it. He did. He knows It's a very bad idea. Yeah.

[00:10:01] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I think you and I are on an, equal footing. No, I am joking. That was a lot of fun. Thank you very much. We like

[00:10:06] Michelle Frechette: two things though.

[00:10:07] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.

[00:10:08] Michelle Frechette: One, you have a lovely voice, Nathan, but two, don't quit your day job.

[00:10:11] Nathan Wrigley: No, thank you. You're right, no, I think that's fair. I never was gonna be a singer. I'm awfully good at singing in the bath, but I'm also awfully good at receiving horrible comments from all members of the family. You have a lovely voice. Yeah. thank you. Appreciate it. that was fun.

Thank you so much. Corey wants me to do his bio Follow

[00:10:29] Michelle Frechette: that

[00:10:31] Nathan Wrigley: I have to. Mind it. No, I don't. No, I don't. I'm just gonna read Cory's. How are you doing, Cory?

[00:10:36] Corey Maass: Because it's, 'cause it's six letters. Did you notice that as soon as Nathan started singing, we all did this? Yeah. It is like the body language of like you're covering your mouth and endorsement.

[00:10:49] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. It was almost like you were all vomit.

[00:10:51] Tim Nash: All three of us took a sip. The key though was that, did you actually take a sip? Because I just held it up. It was in my mouth and it went wrong.

[00:11:02] Nathan Wrigley: I did actually take a sip. never, let it be said that I don't cause vomit. Here we go. Cory Mass. Cory MAs, founder, creator of O-M-G-I-M-G, wearer of Yorkshire t-shirts, and a WordPress freelance developer. Look at that. It says Irks. Irks, a tea yorkshire's. Nearly there. Yorkshire Tea. So that means that three of us are adjacent to Yorkshire.

I'm in Yorkshire. Tim's in Yorkshire, Canna. Corey wants to be in Yorkshire, and there's only Michelle, and she's in New York. York, Yorkshire

[00:11:34] Corey Maass: is in my cup, Yorkshire.

[00:11:36] Nathan Wrigley: Look at you. Anyway, I've gotta get to the comments 'cause we've had loads of coming in. I really appreciate it. Oh yeah. Anybody who's, who's given us a comment, really appreciate that.

If you want to do that, by the way, the quickest way to do that is to go here. Go to WP Builds.com/live. This was the perfect moment for Corey to start pointing, but he missed that queue look. Yeah, he's smiling. That'll do. Yeah. WP Builds.com/live leavers a comment there. Send your friends relations and colleagues over there as well.

Okay, here we go. Let's see what we've got. We have Tacho joining us. He says Hello. Hello. Hello. hello. Happy New Year from James. Thank you very much Kami. You reached out to me last week when the show wasn't on to say where the heck's the show. And, so here we are. We're back. routine change. I'm on a walk outside and it's cold in Seattle.

Good to see you all. Can't believe you are doing, watching this whilst you're out on a walk. That's incredible. Thank you so much. Influence. Wp. Hello. From Charlotte, North Carolina, where it's 33 degrees in. In our degrees. That's a really nice temperature, I'm guessing in yours. It's not too much, friendly web design.

So this'll be Dave. I got myself, from my wife a Star Wars at St. Set for Christmas. Is that not Atta at? I think it's at. I thought so. My 7-year-old helped me finish it a few days ago. Yeah, I was gonna say it was bought for the child. Was it Dave? But it ended up being you going on there.

Happy New way. Everybody says, Ko. Tammy, listeners joining us, good afternoon. We're gonna mention your name in a bit and also tackle a bit later. Pete's joining us. I'm maybe in Spain. I'm not entirely sure, but there you go. Your clock is the wrong way. What? Clock my clock. I don't have a clock.

[00:13:14] Michelle Frechette: When you, were going clockwise versus counterclockwise.

[00:13:16] Nathan Wrigley: Oh yeah. It was actually the right way. But I think my video is flipped. I'm just sticking with that. Happy New Year, says Marcus from Florida. Patricia's joining us. Thank you very much. da Joining Cami on a walk this morning from thousands of miles away, 12 degrees centigrade. Ah, we dream of 12 degrees centigrade.

Over here in the Netherlands. We measure snow in millimeters. Centimeters at best, but it rarely ever happens. Yeah, we're mostly like that. I'm quite amazed that, Tim has had three feet of snow. Gosh, the comments are just coming in really thick and first send help building Ikea. That's great. Send help building IKEA stuff.

Snow has finally gone from Aberdeen, Scotland. I bought a, I bought the most basic IKEA thing about five days ago. No, got it wrong. Like I was that guy that doesn't read the instrument. Oh, I could see from the first picture what this is supposed to look like. when you get like 10 steps in and then you're almost complete and you go, oh, this is backwards.

Oh yeah. In this case, all the sh Anyway, it doesn't matter. that was amazing. I guess you're talking about singing. You are a good liar. Thank you very much. da dah Shanti made it worth getting up this morning. Da. Oh, at A-A-A-T-S-T is the two-legged one. I had one of those. You pushed the little button at the back and it used to, it wasn't Lego.

I had the actual toy. It's

[00:14:43] Michelle Frechette: harder to say though. Is it like

[00:14:45] Nathan Wrigley: at Yeah, it's at yeah. That's really difficult to say. At. When I was a kid, I had a Star Wars gone. It was about this big black plastic thing. Star Wars gone anyway the other day, but not the other day. It was about two years ago. I saw it advertised on eBay for $10,000.

[00:15:03] Michelle Frechette: Oh my.

[00:15:04] Nathan Wrigley: I know. And I thought that's a bit cheeky coming around my house, stealing it and advertising it for $10,000. But anyway, I don't have it anymore. It probably just went in the bin, but there you go. I think that's it. I think that's it. yeah. Okay. Let's, let's start what we're supposed to be doing, which is talking about WordPress stuff.

So first thing to say is, I am gonna read out the bits and pieces that I've got this week. I'm not gonna compel anybody on this show to say anything they don't wanna say. so guess just be very clear right from the outset. don't get involved in stuff that you don't wanna get involved with you.

You know me anyway. I'm not here to put trip wise in your path. but feel free to contribute if you wish to contribute. Gotcha. Gotcha. My job. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. My job is just to say the things and see what lands. Okay. Firstly, let's do New Year's resolutions. Got nothing to do with WordPress.

Sorry. Got any New Year's resolutions? I'm gonna go first for the 10th year in a row. I'm gonna write a book this year. I've been highly successful at it for the previous nine years. I've written no words at all, but this year's gonna be different. and is important. I'll tell you why. I know it's gonna be different because I signed up for a course on Udemy about how to write a book.

Oh. And, that's all. It's honestly, it's like prevarication, when you, buy the tool because you think the tool is gonna make you better at something. It's just No. And I didn't even, so the question

[00:16:31] Corey Maass: is, yeah. What, kind of book? Oh, now I couldn't

[00:16:37] Nathan Wrigley: possibly reveal that. Instruc? No.

fiction children. Sexy YA children's fiction. I could tell you the plot, but I would have to, I'd have to come around to your house and silence you forever

[00:16:50] Tim Nash: for children.

[00:16:51] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, okay. Yeah. That book is not for, I know where this is going.

[00:16:55] Michelle Frechette: I actually just invested in an accessibility coach to make sure that I finished my novel by the end of this year.

[00:17:02] Corey Maass: Oh, accessibility or accountability? I think you said accountability. I

[00:17:06] Michelle Frechette: meant accountability. Accountability, coach.

[00:17:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah,

[00:17:09] Michelle Frechette: it will be accessible though.

[00:17:10] Nathan Wrigley: What happens though? What happens if you just go to the accountability coach and just basically say, I haven't done it?

[00:17:17] Michelle Frechette: Oh, she's gonna whip my Oh, really?

You're

[00:17:19] Nathan Wrigley: gonna get in. Okay. So

[00:17:21] Michelle Frechette: she's also one of my best friends, so she will, okay, good. No, that's really, that's very

[00:17:25] Nathan Wrigley: good. Yeah. it's her

[00:17:26] Michelle Frechette: business too, don't get me wrong. I'm not just paying some person to

[00:17:30] Nathan Wrigley: No, but that's great. I think that's a really good idea. Anyway, that's my New Years resolution.

I know it won't happen already, but that is my resolution. Michelle, have you got any? this book,

[00:17:40] Michelle Frechette: I don't have resolutions. I have goals first of all, because I think a goal is something that's more attainable and a resolution is something you regret. Okay. Not completing. But, but yeah, I'm excited about that.

And, you should, if you come, if I get selected to speak at Word Camp Europe this year, then you should come to my session because it's about how to turn your blog into a book, which is what I did before. So I do have a book that's been published.

[00:18:05] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. I like the pivot. Yeah. If I write a successful blog, then it, I can just turn it into a book.

Okay. Alright.

[00:18:10] Michelle Frechette: That's good. Let's talk

[00:18:11] Nathan Wrigley: later. We'll talk later. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Tim, any New Year's resolutions or goals?

[00:18:16] Tim Nash: see I don't make New Year's resolutions and I try to avoid goals 'cause that way I'll be stuck to them and I'll feel really bad when I fail. So what is better to do is just to wander aimlessly through life and hope that things will work out for the best.

And I'll continue to do this. I've done this very successfully. Cheers for many, years. And I'll continue on this Pat.

[00:18:38] Nathan Wrigley: It sounds like prevarication to me. but I

[00:18:41] Tim Nash: would like to say that, after this call, I will be moving on to chapter one of my novel. Really? You are writing a book as well? What the heck?

No. No. To be fair, I've been trying to write chapter one of my novel for about 14. 3 44 years.

[00:18:59] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So you're like me only, you are much better at prevaricating than I am. Okay. you are the master. I am just merely the, pupil.

[00:19:08] Michelle Frechette: Wait, 43, 44 years. What are you like 65?

[00:19:11] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, he, when he was like minus I, start

[00:19:14] Tim Nash: very young, obviously.

[00:19:17] Nathan Wrigley: Cory, anything that you are do hoping to do this year,

[00:19:21] Corey Maass: this is a loaded deck. Okay. So first of all, I dreamt the idea for a kid's book like six weeks ago, and it's been sitting at the bottom of my to-do list. So now you're inspiring me that, oh, maybe I need to like, take the idea and. Plug it into AI and let it write the book for me.

Write a children's book. I hadn't even thought about that.

[00:19:47] Tim Nash: Do you know what, plan will this be when at the end of the year, the only person who hasn't published a book from the four panel of four is Han.

[00:19:54] Nathan Wrigley: You'll be Honestly, I was just thinking when we finish this show, you guys should all book on for this first episode in 2026, and we'll ask that same question and yeah, it'll be me.

I'll be there. The two of you, the three of you. Sorry. I'll all be successful novelists and I won't have written a blooming word. did you start writing your novel in nursery, Tim? That's

[00:20:13] Tim Nash: no. I started, but I certainly started thinking about it, which is about, let's face it, I haven't started writing the novel.

I've only been thinking about it since nursery.

[00:20:22] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah. okay. That's good enough. no, I've got a solid idea. I really think it's got legs. I just need to discover what those legs are. and,

[00:20:32] Michelle Frechette: Tim was there. I need a nappy, change a bottle, and somebody to write down this idea

[00:20:39] Tim Nash: and problem.

And do, put that one a good idea and you have to recreate it.

[00:20:44] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Tammy's gonna be my, a accessibility accountability person. She's going to, she's, she says she's gonna write two. Okay. If I write one, you are gonna write two. Oh, that's tempting. Tammy's already written two. Oh, that's the idea.

that's, no, We can't have that. Tammy, you've gotta go through some drudgery this year. It can't be the stuff you've already written. There's no accountability there at all. best advice is to make it habit. I know. I know. Yeah, that's what I should do is just write a few words each day. That's right.

Everybody has a book inside. Gosh, I hope not. we should all write. You

[00:21:20] Tim Nash: might have two.

[00:21:21] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. After all those min spies over Christmas, I like, I've got like the works of Shakespeare inside me. there you go. That's today's title. The works of Shakespeare, Come on, Wrigley. It's 25 past the Hour.

You still haven't done anything to do with WordPress at all, but that's why this show is fun. Here we go. WP Builds.com. This is our URL. You can see that we are brought to you by GoDaddy Pro, blue Host and Omnis Send. Thank you very much to those three companies for keeping the lights on over here. If you want to keep updated with what we do, why not?

Put your email in that little box and hit the subscribe button, and we'll send you a couple of emails each week. One to do with this when it's produced, we record it on a Monday like we're doing now, and then we put it out as a podcast episode tomorrow. So you'd get an email tomorrow, and then you'd also get an episode, notification on Thursday when we put the episode out then as well.

So why not put your email address in there and join many, others who, get that notification. One thing that we've been doing, over the past few months, and we're on episode three of this is a show with Joe Dolson. Joe is, an accessibility expert in the WordPress space, and we've been checking out some sites from the WordPress Showcase and he's been taking them, to pieces if you like, from an accessibility point of view, not with the enterprise of, ridiculing anybody.

More look, here's what could be improved. And on this episode, number three. Joe looks at navigation menus, and how they can sometimes be wins. So he is talking about things that are done well, but then he goes on to subscription forms and like subscribing to a newsletter, for example, and how they can be done badly.

mine didn't come under the microscope, probably would've failed horribly. But anyway, you can get to that. If you go to this archive section on WP Builds.com, the accessibility show archive, and you can see that we've got episode four coming out in the near future as well and then attached to that, but not really 'cause the two weren't together.

I did an episode of the Tavern podcast with Eleanor Elna Ellen, I do apologize, for Elena braca. Yeah, Elena, let's go for that breast. and Elena, thank you, Michelle, by the way, is has been blind, a hundred percent blind since birth. And we have a con a really, in honestly profoundly interesting conversation about what it is like for a person who has never been able to see how they managed to navigate the web.

And, it was really interesting, the frustrations caused by me trying to record the podcast episode. as an example, this platform that we're on now is. Utterly unusable by somebody who is not cited. Like everything that could go wrong is wrong. And we tried two or three different platforms, all of them a complete disaster.

And then eventually we found one which worked, and so we recorded it on that. But it was a real, it was a real eye-opener to me about how my expectation that if you just send somebody a link. Everything's gonna be fine. But of course that wasn't the case. But go and have a listen, talking about the challenges and solutions.

And actually Elena is very positive about the block editor, which Joe was surprised about when I told him. he's often meets people who find the block editor from an accessibility point of view, really difficult. But Elena has a load of reasons why, she likes it. So go check that out. I'd appreciate that.

And then last, but by no means least, I, couldn't find this episode. It was episode number 404. I know I had to get it in there. but eventually I did find it, it was found. And, we're talking about building blocks with Alan Fuller. So go and check that out. You can find that in the archive.

This one WP Builds. All right.

[00:25:09] Tim Nash: Okay, just to check, Nathan, is the, is four 10 gonna be the last episode?

[00:25:15] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, you are good. Yeah. Yeah, that's probably, yeah, there's no more after that. That's the absolute ceiling. Now I want to get to at least 1,999. Maybe I'll call it a day then. How's that sound?

Yeah, four 10. I like it. Moving on. Here we go. WordPress 6.8 release squad has been announced. In case you didn't know WordPress is, created by largely volunteers. We'll get onto that subject in just a moment, whether people are seconded to do that or not. And the release squad for 6.8 has been announced and here it is.

the release lead is right. Wait a minute. We know somebody on that list. We do know somebody on this list. There's a lot of people on that list. Can you see a name on there that you are familiar with? Who did you see? My goodness. Tammy

[00:26:00] Michelle Frechette: Lister.

[00:26:02] Nathan Wrigley: Tammy Lister. She's in the comments. That's right. yeah. Michelle Frechette.

Look at that. She is one of the two coordinators along with Jeffrey Paul. Can I ask Michelle. Yes.

[00:26:12] Michelle Frechette: What does this involve?

[00:26:13] Nathan Wrigley: What does this role mean?

[00:26:15] Michelle Frechette: I am still learning that, but it basically is coordinating all the different pieces, making sure that everything stays on track and on time. And if I could be honest, I'm most excited about working alongside Jeffrey, because he and I have never worked on a project together, so it's gonna be exciting.

Are

[00:26:32] Nathan Wrigley: you herding cats then? Is your job to make sure that the human beings are doing what they, that things are done in a timely way and that coordination happens? Yeah.

[00:26:41] Michelle Frechette: I, had once, on WP Coffee Talk interviewed, Francesca Murano, who had. Done this role before and she called herself the shouty lady.

in that she was making sure that she was shouting at everybody to get it all done. So I now have the title of Shouty lady after Francesca has, created that role. So yes,

[00:27:01] Nathan Wrigley: appreciate your commitment to that. We've got the release lead of Matt, obviously the coordination. Now we know Jeffrey Paul and Michelle Frechette.

it's on the screen, but tech leads is gonna be Joe McGill, Jonathan Deros and George Mamma dash VI apologize for the pronunciation there. Triage JB Res, design lead. There we go. Tammy Lister. She's on the call performance lead. Felix Ants, we've got a video from him later. And the test lead is Krupa Nanda and the release timeline is beta one 4th of March.

Candidate release one, sorry, release candidate one 25th of March, and then hopefully shipping generally by the 15th of April. Does, Tim or Tori have anything to add on that, or should we just move on? I've got a

[00:27:47] Tim Nash: question for Michelle. What, when you frank down you were going to be the co one of the coordination leads, was it a case that you'd stepped forward or stepped back?

How did the volunteer process work, I guess is what I'm asking?

[00:28:02] Michelle Frechette: How, do you volunteer if you've stepped back? I'm not certain how that would work. that's what you shoved thought. Oh, I see. no, I did when the call for, contributors went out, I did volunteer myself, yep.

[00:28:15] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, look. And I thought I was good at jokes.

Tacho being a dad gets right to it. Look at that. Keep everything on track without a K. That's good. I like that. I.

[00:28:29] Michelle Frechette: Extra, extra points for him because this is not his primary language. And for him to pun and do dad jokes in a language that's not his primary language. That's true. Major, shots. Taco.

[00:28:39] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Honestly, if I tried any jokes in Dutch, it's not gonna happen. I don't know. Word of Dutch, the. Tammy's come back that you are going to be herding deranged cats. The shouty lady. Yes. The shout. Yeah. you maybe you can reassign that epi himm and become the quiet lady.

The quiet, but effective non shouty. Maybe you can be the step lady. Have you ever known me lady?

[00:29:04] Michelle Frechette: Oh, come on. Have you ever known me to be quiet?

[00:29:08] Corey Maass: one of the things that goes along with like dad jokes right, is the looks that mothers can give. Oh yeah. Oh yes. And so I feel like you don't have to shout, you just do one of those.

you just lower your glasses and just give one of those looks, Did

[00:29:21] Nathan Wrigley: you get that? I used to. So every, Sunday we'd sit down and have a full meal with the family. And and my mom would often invite people from the community around and I was quite a precocious sort of young child, and I'd often get in trouble.

My mother could put me in my place with the merest, like movement of an eyebrow just like that. And I'd be like. It's very effective. Exactly. Do that, Michelle, do that. Deploy the eyebrows. There's another title for this episode. Okay. Getting back to it. I was

[00:29:57] Tim Nash: just gonna say, just imagine Michelle quiet, how much fear would be spread.

Yeah,

[00:30:05] Corey Maass: Oh, you see that?

[00:30:07] Tim Nash: Just, just a, little. See I'm scared and I Yeah.

[00:30:12] Michelle Frechette: There's an ocean between us. Yes.

[00:30:14] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. the British do this thing, I dunno if it's an American, north American thing as well. We do this thing called totting, where we go. Yeah. And totting can be enormously powerful.

Yeah. Just like tiny shake head test,

[00:30:29] Michelle Frechette: guess.

[00:30:30] Nathan Wrigley: The tots bomb as Armando when she calls it. Yeah. Cory's got it. eyebrow says Tammy. Okie doke. Anyway, there she, that she get

[00:30:42] Michelle Frechette: to the salon.

[00:30:44] Nathan Wrigley: There's your lead. Yeah. Get to the salon. Here we go. and aligned to that, that was the lead for the, that was the team for 6.8.

However, we also have hosting and team, theme, sorry, reps that have been announced for 2025. This is a post on, the WP Tavern, which by the way, genuine bit of water coming out the eyes here. Lesner, who has been writing, for the tavern for a while. Michelle, did you tweet me? Was it, I think it was you that tweeted me to say that, Joel Ner, has tweeted I think today that they, not that role.

no, this is news to me. Yeah, no. Maybe it wasn't you. I can't remember who sent it. Anyway, somebody did. and so I would just like to say thank you to Joel and for stepped in obviously when Sarah, Gooding stepped down after Justin. We had a vacuum for quite a while. Joel filled that gap admirably, I think for the last few months.

But, the, tavern is gonna go cold for a bit. I dunno what's gonna happen to it, but, keep your eye on this tab 'cause I'll be hopefully still doing the podcast episodes. We'll talk about that. we did do already. But, Jo's last, one of the last pieces. the team, the hosting and theme reps.

And here's the names, Alex, Andrew Cosman, Ganga, kale, Shiva Shanka, barter. Apologies for butchering. Any names be themed. Hosting reps are gonna be, and, Lucas Redka. so thank you to them for their work as well. Anything on those.

Okay.

[00:32:19] Michelle Frechette: Is, Nathan's audio garbled for anybody besides me? Okay. Oh really? He garbled.

[00:32:24] Corey Maass: Little bit of botting going on, yeah. Oh, okay. Okay.

[00:32:27] Nathan Wrigley: let me try a couple of things. Let me remove a couple of things on my end that might be chewing up my CPU. Is that any better?

[00:32:37] Michelle Frechette: Yes, absolutely.

[00:32:38] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, interesting. Okay.

Let's see how we go. apologies if please just interrupt me and tell me, 'cause I can always refresh and come back and you can always, have fun while the cat's away or whatever that expression is. okay, here we go. Here's the stuff that, that's gonna be causing controversy this week that I mentioned earlier you may or may not wanna contribute to.

Here's number one. This is a post from automatic.com. this happened on the ninth, so just a few days ago, four days ago. it's entitled, aligning Automatic Sponsored Contributions to WordPress. If you were to look, a graph which comes out each year, I think Yos, DeVol, is the person that typically puts the graph together.

At least that's where I'm colliding with it. There's, these circles and those circles represent the amount of hours that different companies in the WordPress space have contributed to the WordPress project. usually automatic is by far the largest. Of those circles and then you get things like Yost and various other people as well as other companies as well.

However, that is being pivoted. Automatic in this piece are saying that because of the ongoing, legal dispute with WP engine, it has been decided, and I'll quote to recalibrate and ensure our efforts are impactful as possible. Automatic will reduce its sponsored comp contributions to the WordPress project.

This is not a step we take lightly. It brings it, sorry. It is a moment to regroup, rethink, and strategically plan how automations can contributing in ways that secure the future. Of WordPress for generations to come. Automations who contributed to core will instead focus on, and I think this is the most interesting bit on for-profit projects within automatic, such as.com, pressable, VIP, jet Pack, and WooCommerce.

and then they say that what they're planning to do as part of the reset, they're going to match the, pledge from particularly is written here, WP Engine. So at the moment, 45 hours a week. Now, if WP Engine's commitment went down, I dunno if that means that automatic commitment would match that, and equally if it went up, I dunno if it means that they would match that as well.

and yeah, so this was obviously a fairly big shift and it does make you question if such a giant contributor to the project has decided to step out of contributing to the code base for core and everything's gonna be now focused on the bits and pieces around it, the for-profit stuff, what impact that will have.

And I offer it up to you if you want to talk. And if not, I will move on to the next bit.

[00:35:24] Tim Nash: I think it's not utterly surprising. I think this was something that could have been, that was, being predicted as a part of larger stuff that was going on. As always, there are much better ways to communicate stuff and even in this is the nice version of some of the stuff we've seen in the last week, but even this makes very little sense from an outside perspective.

And you've gotta be sitting there going, if you are an automatically who you know is sponsored to work on WordPress core. it must be really worrying in internally. I'm hoping that there, there's lots of internal communication going on, encouraging people and saying, don't worry, we'll sort this, it all gets better, et cetera.

But if that's your job, if you are like somebody who's internal there, Kim, especially if you've gone through several rounds of these various offers where they've been said, look, if you don't agree with us, leave, and not everybody can do that. Not everybody could just leave. So then for a lot of the people there, they're just gonna have to put their heads down and, want to not, to be seen by anybody I suspect.

so I feel very sorry for the magicians who are stuck in the middle, but

[00:36:36] Nathan Wrigley: So what you are saying is that there's obviously automations who've taken on a job where for many, years they'll have been doing work that now they've got like a new job description basically, and they've gotta do something which they weren't necessarily doing before.

I see.

[00:36:50] Tim Nash: And quite a lot of these people will not. they're all, especially, particularly the development team developers at automatic are very talented individuals who obviously can change their hands of things. But if your job's to been working on WordPress core, that is a very different place to a lot of the places that they're now being told they're going to be reassigned, potentially reassigned to.

And obviously this is just an external communication that has been put out into the wider world, what impact it might actually have. but given you've got, I've forgot. Oh, no, I feel really proud. I've forgotten the name of the, the, lady who took on the role as the executive director of wordpress.org.

Mary Ho.

[00:37:31] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, Mary Hobar,

[00:37:33] Tim Nash: yes. Given her role is the executive director of wordpress.org. She's gonna find, and she's, which was a full-time role, she was employed to do, she's now supposedly doing less than five hours a week. She's gonna be either, she's got not gonna have a lovely time not doing very much, or presumably has now got to find some other job, some other work to be doing inside the company.

It just feels really oh, that's unfortunate. but generally I just, this doesn't feel like it's a either, it's very short term and this is just mud slinging or it's. A long term realignment, in which case I think there's a lot of people who are gonna be truly shocked because that wasn't what they signed up to do.

[00:38:17] Nathan Wrigley: So just to address that point, let's just pop that article back on the screen. If you go right to the bottom, it says, I just highlighted this bit. We're excited to return to active contributions to WordPress called Gutenberg playground open verse.org, when the legal attacks have stopped. So the, constraints around this change, of course, seem to be bound to the, the, legal dispute becoming, an event in history.

no longer hanging over anybody's head. comment from Courtney Robertson here, in post status. Sorry, Tim. You've, been obliterated by that. There we go. in post status, Jonathan Boer confirmed other teams, not just core are reassigned as well. He will be dev education on internal projects.

So Jonathan's job was to do the. public facing learn materials. I don't know if that encapsulates all that he did, but I, saw him doing that and now it's going internal by the looks of that, on internal projects. So education, but turned towards the people on the inside. Okay. anybody else?

Michelle or Corey, or shall we move on?

[00:39:28] Michelle Frechette: I, I know that I'm not a, that I'm not a coder and I, and there's a lot that goes on with the code of WordPress and moving it forward. I'm a community person and I'm really hopeful that we have enough people who are not mathematicians that work in community to keep things moving forward for upcoming word camps and things like that.

That's where I think I really wanna see a lot of the momentum keep moving forward, with ownership in the community, about the community, which I think is what this all should is about from the beginning anyway, not just code. So there have been people, who have been reassigned within Automatic, who have reached out to me to say, if people ask about this, can we send them to you to give answers about things that you're working on?

and I'm not gonna go in, in depth on some of that, but, but yes, there are those of us who continue to work in the community, who are sponsored by other companies. We'll work within other companies who will keep doing the best that we can to help keep things moving forward as well.

[00:40:23] Nathan Wrigley: It will be interesting to see though, if the number of hours, so because automatic was that biggest piece of the pie, if you like.

I, I honestly dunno, what if I always saw it as there was just a bunch of circles next to each other, so you never got that kind of pie chart bit, but I imagine that the automatic piece of the pie was pretty big. it will be interesting to see. let's imagine a scenario in which this law soup goes on and on and just keeps going for months and months.

It will be interesting to see if your 6.8, is, let's say let, has less of the things that were intended to be shipped. If we were to look at the roadmap several months ago, will it have less things in it? I'm imagining the answer's gonna be yes because, those, hours that would've been put into it will be different.

Tammy's just making the point though that it is important to note core. To note core and work is still going on. I should also point out that the hours that, here we go. I'll just pop this on the screen again. that it says here, these hours, so the, remaining hours that automatic will be putting in will likely.

Go towards security and critical updates, which is, I, think, an interesting, interesting thing to, the, if something comes up, hopefully that will get addressed, some new vulnerability crops up that's on, that's unheard of. That will be one of the things that the Autumn petition will be assigned to doing.

Imran Web Squadron saying, How do they qualify? Hours spent, I've logged in every day to their slack since the end of September. I have done audio for some of their videos. There's, and it's truncated on the screen, but I can see it here. There's no clarity on how they record hours contributed.

[00:42:11] Michelle Frechette: Log, log into your wordpress.org account and adjust the number of hours and what teams you're contributing to. It's all coming from your profile and how you report your hours.

[00:42:22] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, thank you, Michelle. I. and can I

[00:42:25] Michelle Frechette: just say too that there are a number of companies, it isn't just one or two companies. I am so grateful.

I just wanna say this publicly. So grateful to Stellar WP and LiquidWeb for affording me the time within my work week to continue to work on community and things that I do within the community. and my company is not the only company doing those things and I'm not the only person within Liquid Web doing those things.

So other companies are doing what we're doing and trying the best we can to keep community and code and everything moving forward as well.

[00:42:57] Nathan Wrigley: Let's just go to Courtney again. Courtney Robertson. there was a post in the communities team site that there will be folks stepping up such as Timmy, to keep events going.

I'm struggling to keep up with the comments that are coming in, but if I see any more that I wish to put up, I will. Cory, Michelle, Tim, Cory.

[00:43:18] Corey Maass: Yeah, I, so I don't know if it's devil's advocate or a little bit of a different take or something, but, I, I would, I, I hadn't seen the, as soon as the lawsuits end where we'll go back to normal, I'd hope that this would actually become the norm, which is I think, going to get me booed.

But, automatic. From an out outside perspective has, it has felt like for a long time. I'll just say people in and around automatic have, lorded this over the rest of the community and used it as justification for, we are gonna make these priorities for every release and we are better than every other company and we are holier than thou because of the hours contributed.

And and, this idea that automatic is somehow better than the other. Capitalist corporate entities in the space. and if they, if their contribution becomes even with everybody else's, then that argument goes away. and to me, there's people have said, and Twitter and in conversations and whatnot, automatic is a company, there's a lot of discussion going on and, big voices, screaming loud about, the evil of this corporation and that corporation.

and a lot of people rebutting like. Automatic's a company too. And so to me, this kind of draws an underline on of that, of automatic is just another company. And, again, people will disagree with that. Every company's a little different, But if they are just another company in the space, I think that's actually better.

'cause like, that ar that article says though, they're making the opposite point. Like this levels the playing field a bit Interesting.

[00:45:25] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Tim? I think, did you wanna say something that it sounded like you were Yeah,

[00:45:29] Tim Nash: just, I was gonna make a point that was similar to chorus, which is that the reduction down in hours, while initially will hurt, as Michelle said, people will step up.

and as a project it could, it, it could be very positive because there has been this massive imbalance that said. If it work, that only works if there is, when Corey said, we, are delivering this feature because we've got all these hours supported. We, as long as we don't end up in a scenario where features cannot be delivered because they've been roadblocked by people saying no, but we are not gonna work on that.

And we are not gonna work at all. We're just gonna do the, these updates and we're gonna, but we're gonna stop any progress being made on anything that doesn't support our goals. if we can get past that sort of stage and we can have a stage where we actually have a collaboration across multiple contributors, and there isn't this giant sort of, just gravity that automatic would have when it has so many people contributing it, it naturally draws all the tickets towards it, it draws its features into the WordPress sort of project.

So this might be a really positive step. But it has to come with undoing of some chains regarding leadership and control and project can't. So if you're gonna reduce down that the amount of hours you're doing well, that in turn means you've gotta let the people who are stepping up. Make, take the decisions and make some of the decisions.

[00:47:02] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Yeah, that's an interesting point. I hadn't thought of that. Tammy Lister says one thing to keep, one thing, please keep reporting bugs, raising issues. Track. And GitHub is still open for, the release as it's happening. 6.8. Again, an interesting point, 6.8 is gonna be a focus on iterations and improvements, not features, which is maybe an unexpectedly good consequence of this.

so maybe that's what everybody needs right now is how she finishes off. And then Marcus makes a similar point, I think to, Corey and Tim there. as a fan of local, a local sports team who has had many injuries, I do think this gives other folks who have not been given a chance. and OP is truncated, but it says an opportunity to step in and show what they can do.

So yeah, interesting. Every cloud and all that. I just have to ask Marcus, sorry. Let's go, Corey first, then Michelle, sorry.

[00:47:58] Corey Maass: Sorry, Michelle. I am, I'm happy and hopeful that the article specifies that, that the hours that automatic will be contributing are focused on security. I'm skeptical that it'll actually work out that way, to be cynical, but I'm hopeful that, as that comment said, that the focus will be on improvements, cleanup.

The bare necessities more, on code, less on, the block editor, broadly speaking, but we'll see.

[00:48:33] Nathan Wrigley: I'm gonna use that as the, the title of this week's episode, more on code. I like that. yeah, I know. dad joke, Michelle.

[00:48:46] Michelle Frechette: Nah, I'm good.

[00:48:47] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Sorry for, interrupting.

[00:48:50] Michelle Frechette: No, I was just gonna make, a funny and it's not really that funny.

So let's keep going.

[00:48:54] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, that's my job. That, is what I do. okay, let's move on. Change the subject a little bit. So this happened as well. this is on the repository. So Ray Moy writes, Mullin, mugshots down WordPress Sustainability team, igniting backlash, and the sustainability team, which you can see, some members thereof.

that I think this is WordCamp Europe, it looks like by the stuff in the background. it's happened this team was disbanded, by Matt Mullenweg in the chat, sorry, in the Slack, probably about a week ago. I feel it was now something like that, announced in the WordPress Slack on Wednesday that he was stepping down for.

Oh, yeah, that's a bit of context, which doesn't really matter. Anyway, the long and the short of all of this is that team was shot down. and I don't know if anybody was aware that was going to happen. So that team just got shot down, fairly swiftly. and the people who had been contributing to that team, obviously had an opinion on all of that.

Anything on that? Michelle? Corey? Tim is,

[00:50:04] Tim Nash: just to emphasize that sustainability is a legal requirement in awful lot of countries and every other major open source project has a sustainability team. The sustainability team would, and the way it was shut down was just like, bang, you are no longer interesting.

Goodbye. Which obviously, given the current drama, is always gonna go down badly. But this is one of these things you can't, I, as much as improving performance improves sustainability. Sustainability is more than just getting down a few bites in core and saying we've done it. It's part of a much wider remit.

This would be very similar to saying, we're gonna shut down the accessibility team because we think that the accessibility should really just be in core or we're gonna shut down the security team because we just write better and more secure code. It's on that sort of same par just because we are more used to, accessibility and security being a little bit like priorities, even though they are the eighth class citizens inside the project.

In many ways, sustainability is even further down that chain and just got whacked straight off. But for a lot of people, that's gonna have a lot, a big implication going forward. and come when they're starting to look at, when agencies and when these really big. Projects, these really big projects that are prestige ones that we really want on WordPress when they're gonna start asking questions and they're gonna go to places like WordPress, VIP or to one of the, or one of the bigger agencies, and start talking about sustainability.

And it's, they're gonna struggle to have answers because they're gonna be, they, 'cause we've cut that team away. it seems very shortsighted. And obviously the mannerism of how it got shut down was just, we are here now, aren't we?

[00:51:56] Corey Maass: Technically, this was going to be my response to your comment about, I.

People's roles changing and automatic as I was gonna be like, look at that other article. The, likelihood is that things are just gonna get shut down, worryingly, potentially willy-nilly based on somebody's whim. and there's, and I feel bad for people who are the brunt, bearing the brunt of that.

[00:52:23] Nathan Wrigley: The, the, I did a podcast episode with one of the people that you can, on the screen here. this, fine gentleman right here, whose name is now I badiola. And, in it we talked about the sustainability team. This was back in, may, just. The previous May. And the, goal of the stability of the sustainability team wasn't as you might expect, just sort of performance.

I, IE let's make the code a WordPress website load quicker. There was way more to it and it was about, events and, sustainability in terms of, jobs and all sorts of other things as well. So it's a broader, remit. If you want to though, head to the repository email, and you can see the title here, Mullenweg Shut Down, WordPress Sustainability Team, igniting Backlash is the title.

And, if you scroll down, you'd be able to see that Ray has written up a whole slew of, differing opinions on that, which we haven't got time to get into here. But you can imagine, given that it went from something to nothing in fairly short shrift, that there were a lot of, differing voices, let's put it that way.

Sustainability team, Courtney says, is where, five for the future new contributor, mentorship, contributed, stats, dashboard and more. Were also centralized. Okay. So maybe there's some, cleanup work there. Core or Courtney for that team as well. I don't really know anybody else on that one. Corey's gone.

He's, he'll be right back. Okay, great. Okay. Thank you. That's great. Okay. honestly, we can't. Seemingly get away from all this. There's a lot happening, isn't there? There's loads going on. This is that, patch stack were rejected as WordPress, sorry, as WordCamp Europe sponsor for 2025.

This is WordCamp Europe. I dunno if I said that. due to lack of significant contributions. So Oliver Sill, the CEO of Patch stack shared a message that he'd got from it. It's written here at least. Anyway, the WordPress, community team. And, if you read that, basically it was to sum it up, your application has not been approved this time around.

and for instance, I, we recognized that she, I'm trying to find the exact line. Doesn't matter. The point was they pointed to, the, history of patch stack's contributions, and the way that it felt from that email is that they didn't match what was expected in order to be a sponsor at that event.

that obviously again, blew up as so many things are at the minute. Everything is it's getting posted, a thing happens and then, it all gets blown up. And, actually, interestingly, just down here, Matt Mullenweg, himself got into this debate by saying that he thought that, and I'll quote, he says, I agree, that's a crappy email to get.

It's also not a hundred percent accurate. that is to say that the. The definition of why they were not allowed to sponsor was not accurate. I'll look into it. Thank you for your, and to you and all your colleagues for trying to make WordPress plugins and themes better. And, Oliver, the update on here is that it says right now Oliver Sil from Patch Deck says, the last thing that we've been told is that we're not eligible to sponsor, but we'll see obviously how that story develops.

interestingly, and I don't know if there's anything in this around the time that, that the, whole saga with WP Engine and automatic kicked off, I dunno if you remember on this show we reported, from Drupal. DRIs Bagar from Drupal over there, they have this system where, based upon what you did in the previous year, so it's not five for the future, but it's whatever metrics they've got, you are or are not entitled to become a sponsor or you're, appear on the drupal.org a webpage or come to their Drupal comms as a sponsor.

And I wondered if it was something like that was being put in place in the background, the scaffolding around that was being built, but not, that we would know 'cause we didn't know. But I wondered if that's how they're gonna pitch it. if you've ticked off this thing, and this thing, then you can be a sponsor.

But in this case, if that's the case. Then patch that well, or indeed anybody would not have known that. So I'm making it up really. I dunno if that's what's going on or not. Tim nodding his head, maybe that's it.

[00:57:00] Tim Nash: no, I was just nodding my head in. like that whole, the way that Drupal does it is very transparent, very open right?

And comes through the fire of making, doing lots of silly mistakes with their community events. so they've learned and they've reiterated over many times and it's sometimes got it wrong, but the key word to that is transparent. they're very clear about what the requirements are, how you gain those requirements.

Yeah. and the whole thing. And objectively so the five to the future has been, it's really, I, mean there's been efforts to make it better, but it is quite opaque and it's self-reporting and it's all the, and it's this really obscure little thing that for years it has been around for a while, but nobody really.

It wasn't a thing until you got frost into the limelight with this, no, you are not contributing unless you are doing it through five to the future. As a business owner, I have sponsored a Word camp with my tiny little business. I am not subscribed to five to the future. Does that mean I will no longer be allowed to sponsor word camps?

Do I not contribute? Have I not contributed enough in the past historically enough to qualify? These are all

[00:58:14] Corey Maass: Does it bother you? Did you get your money's worth out of sponsoring?

[00:58:18] Tim Nash: Oh,

[00:58:19] Corey Maass: that, that is a complete, again, be the cy cynical one here.

[00:58:22] Tim Nash: Yeah. Yeah. And totally, and one, one. I'm very happy to have conversation to have, but it's still that sort of comes up over again.

Are we gonna say that actually you can't be a speaker unless you are subscribed to Five to the future. What about an attendee? We, you already, we were stuck with attendees must go through the rigmarole of signing up for a wordpress.org account and all the other bits. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna put down a, bet that I want to lose, but I'm not convinced Work Count Europe will be on.

I'm willing to, put a bet. I wanna be wrong about it, but I'm not sure Word Camp Europe's gonna be on. I don't think they're gonna get, I would say,

[00:59:02] Corey Maass: I would use the word can't. I wonder how many word camps can't go on because there aren't going to be sponsors.

[00:59:11] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. Historically the flagship events have been run a little bit differently than the local events.

And I wonder. How that will play out with the set of rules that it seems to be in play. like Word Camp Rochester, when you meet with your mentor, you're told that you have to get so much sponsorship that's local sponsorship and people like that. a local company that's say, printer, is not contributing to WordPress other than paying money to have their name on your website.

Is that, still okay because it's a local sponsor? Are you going to be able to find local sponsors that contribute in that way? And so I would argue that it's probably still going to be a little bit of a different set of rules for local camps, the regional camps versus the flagship events.

[01:00:01] Corey Maass: But I don't know that speech.

Wasn't there a news story recently about how they've introduced, $500 is supposed to go to, TV ads and radio ads or some. Am I the only one that remembers this? I

[01:00:15] Nathan Wrigley: don't remember that one. No.

[01:00:16] Michelle Frechette: So that, was, that, not that, that money from the com, from WordPress itself, the word Oh, yeah. That was money from Word could be earmarked for those things.

Yeah.

[01:00:26] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I think that was $400, which is different.

[01:00:28] Corey Maass: Yeah.

[01:00:28] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.

[01:00:29] Michelle Frechette: Which is different than raising money, from a local. Yeah. That was,

[01:00:32] Corey Maass: I realized it just, it, all feels very, it, it feel like, I, like Tim alluded to, it feels like there's a bit of, there's some mistakes being made and there's a bit of, splashing around trying to figure out how to make all this stuff work.

How to,

[01:00:48] Nathan Wrigley: how do

[01:00:48] Corey Maass: we, what is sponsorship? How do, what are the rules around sponsorship? And then also like the inverse, how do we get sponsors? How do we get local sponsors? and just none of, it. None of it seems like it's landing quite right. Okay.

[01:01:06] Nathan Wrigley: And Tcho Verdon shot, just fully cementing his credentials here as a brilliant, just got the full dad joke thing going on.

And like Michelle says, to be able to do it in a second language is pretty incredible. Word. Can't like it, word can't. Nah. Word Camp Europe will happen. He's sure. but that, yeah. Brilliant. Well done. is that printer contributing by sponsoring? I heard sponsorship is marketing not contribution. I hope you're wrong.

So Steve Mosby, sorry. The previous one was Marcus Burnett. and all right, that is it. We, all of these articles are just paint a picture of a WordPress. Ecosystem that we just don't recognize. it's very different. We're, we've been used to it decades, literally decades of it evolving slowly over time.

And things just morphing at, fairly pedestrian rate so that you can keep up with what's going on. And now we're in a period of very rapid flocks and, and so it's all kind of hitting all at once. And so it, definitely is interesting, should we say. And we seem to be making lots of dis big decisions, happening off the back of things, in, in the, press for what have you.

[01:02:20] Corey Maass: And so one, one more comment about the patch stack thing. I think we're with, what's it called? Press conf now. Oh, yeah. Which you've reported on previously. Yeah, we did. Yeah. and I, I'm excited to see more. I. Unofficial or parallel, or whatever the right word is. Events that are, WordPress related, but not necessarily involved or directly sponsored by or overseen by like the, core WordPress ecosystem slash universe slash whatever you wanna call itm.

I'm, excited about that. 'cause I'm, slightly related or, yeah. Is I've been real disappointed. I'm just sad that there, there used to be so many small local camps and post covid, there aren't, and there can't be. And I'm, sad that it feels like a lot of this, the stuff that we're talking about here is getting in the way of.

Those coming back. I'm hopeful that people will take their own reigns and, start putting on their own events, local events, small events and 'cause like when I lived in Nashville, there were, what they, what were they called? free, camps, right? And, there was an event space people could show up and elect themselves to speak.

And you still got some of those elements of great conversations happening and we were all there together to collaborate, to be part of a community, to, interesting conversations would happen. And I'm really excited for that to happen and I'm really excited to happen for that to happen without.

All this, all these hoops that people have to jump through and all these, official rules and yeses and nos going on. It'd

[01:04:20] Nathan Wrigley: be interesting to see, won't it, whether, that ecosystem of, events outside of Word Camp Central, occurs. Let's see. Humans are resilient, says Tammy, but we need to be kind to each other.

Nice.

[01:04:35] Tim Nash: I feel that's the point. The cat comes on.

[01:04:38] Nathan Wrigley: The cat. Oh, I see. Okay. yeah. For 10 seconds only. I'm not doing this for long. You're gonna get the cat for 10 seconds. So just so that we can all have a breather. Okay. Here we go.

What and a half seconds. sorry. sorry. Poor Kat. And there's goats as well, but I, we never got to the goats. Oh, sheep.

[01:05:05] Tim Nash: There's goats out there.

[01:05:06] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. You can follow them. Is that what that data is? No. Hashtag behind Tim. Okay. Let's move on. So this is, this is an interesting piece of news and it's not actually news in that it's not new.

So you, you might regard it as stale, but it's, it fell at just that moment where we went off air just before Christmas. So we never quite got it. But I think it was like mid December, mid to late December. WP Community Collective. dot com. The article is entitled, the WP Community Collective announces formal nonprofit incorporation.

Now, honestly, the amount that I know about nonprofits and incorporation in the US can be written on a grain of rice in a Biro. so hopefully Michelle can help us out here. But it says, we're thrilled to announce a significant milestone in the evolution of the WP Community Collective. On the third 13th of November, 2024, we officially incorporated as a California membership nonprofit for Mutual Benefit, launching an exciting new chapter in our commitment to supporting people and projects that comprise the communities of WordPress and the opens and open source software.

WPCC, that's the acronym, aims to remove the financial and logistical barriers to open source contribution and support the development of projects and initiatives that drive open source forward. And there's a call to get involved if you wanna be a part of that. And there's a Slack, which has been launched as well, so that you can join up and be a member in that way.

Then it goes into here the structure of what this all means. But I'm gonna pause there and just hand it over to Michelle and say, tell us more, Michelle. 'cause I don't, really get it.

[01:06:38] Michelle Frechette: So it, I don't know how it is in other parts of the world, but in the United States, a nonprofit organization has different oversight, different spending rules and things like that, but they also are not taxed themselves so they can make purchases without paying sales tax, for example.

and contributions made from, people within the United States at least, are not, are tax deductible. you can't just give away your entire salary and not be taxed, but there's, because there's of course a million tax codes here, but contributions made are tax deductible to what you are taxed on an annual basis from your salary.

And so this is a move in the right direction. This is something that allows them to operate. With better outcomes for the people who are contributing. And it allows them some freedom to be able to do things also without being taxed themselves. And so I think this is great. This is something really to be applauded and say.

Katie and Courtney have done a lot of work for this. I will also say that I don't know how they've funded being able to become a nonprofit, but it is not an inexpensive ordeal because lawyers are involved. And if lawyers, that is not something that is usually very cheap. but becoming, a nonprofit organization usually costs the organization between 10 and $15,000.

I don't know what they've paid or what they've had to pay. But that means that it's a very big commitment to the future of their organization to have gone through that. applause all around for them.

[01:08:11] Nathan Wrigley: have I summed it up right? If I say that it's almost like an escrow service for, if you as a company wish to, but you don't know where you want your endeavors to go, you can pay some money to the WP Community Collective.

They will then act as an escrow holding service, and then they will redistribute that money to, willing volunteers and people in the community who wish to be financially remunerated. in other words, it takes the decision making about where you might want the money to go. You're just you can hand over some money and the WPCC in the public, very transparently will say where all of that money is ending up.

[01:08:51] Michelle Frechette: I'm not sure exactly how they're doing it. I know in the past you've been able to earmark your donation towards the specific

[01:08:57] Nathan Wrigley: You have organiza Yeah.

[01:08:58] Michelle Frechette: Subset organization. not organization, but subset project. So for example, Alex Stein was previously, awarded money to do work on accessibility through WPC.

And I don't know if they're still doing it that way. I haven't ha looked further into it. I, if Courtney's still in the chat, she could give us a little bit of, insight

[01:09:17] Nathan Wrigley: into that. Yeah, I was hoping that she would drop in and give us that little heads up, but know she, she

[01:09:20] Michelle Frechette: may have had to she may have had to step away.

Yeah. But, and, I'm sure if you were to scroll up and look at their donation page, you may be able to still see if that is, true statement or not. So they have a donation page there.

[01:09:32] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. WP can So done with Open Collective, and at the moment, yeah,

[01:09:37] Michelle Frechette: so you can contribute to different earmarked, places so they have that founding member donation that now is different than what it was before where you could say, I've specifically wanna donate to this, specific, Project or what they were doing. So you can Yeah, that's right.

[01:09:52] Nathan Wrigley: Along here were a bunch of different specific projects and they were, bound sometimes I think to individuals like Alex and what have you. Yeah. anyway, there you go. So it was a bit of, it's not brand new news, but I thought it was worth mentioning given,

[01:10:05] Michelle Frechette: it's still very, it's very momentous, for this organization and for those who of us who contribute to it.

congratulations to them. Okay.

[01:10:13] Nathan Wrigley: we were talking about WordCamp Europe a moment ago, whether or not it will or won't happen. and here is some intel. Hopefully that means that it will, because just this week, just a few days ago, they put out a call for speakers, so europe.wordcamp.org/ 2025 and you've got the call for speaker page, but also the call for sponsor page.

And it will be interesting in the next few weeks to see. I guess this one in particular, the call for sponsors, as we described, might be an interesting litmus test of the, reading the room about how people are feeling in the WordPress space at the moment with their, if

[01:10:49] Michelle Frechette: you plan to apply to speak, you have till the end of this month, I believe.

Yeah. To the 31st of January. Good.

[01:10:54] Nathan Wrigley: Point 31st of January if you want to be a speaker and if you would like to be a sponsor. I don't remember that date. It didn't come into my head for some reason. Can't remember. Anyway, you can go to this page and find out and they've got all the lowdown on what the room will look like and what you're gonna get for your money and so on.

Okay. Anything to add to that or shall we move on? Okay, let's move on. so we were talking earlier about how automatic are making the auto, making that's maybe the wrong word, are getting the Ians to, to it turn into internal for-profit projects. wordpress.com is one of those. And this came out this week, I thought it was interesting.

so Studio, which is a local development environment that is built on the backbone of, I think I'm pretty sure in saying it's built off the background of playground. now has the capacity to sync to wordpress.com websites. And again, if we look at what it was saying in the automatic article, it does sound like there's gonna be a push on the.com side to make it look like.org.

There's nothing really to say here, apart from the fact that this is now a new thing. If you bind it to your wordpress.com account, you can now, develop locally and, press the bottom and sync it up into the. wp.com cloud. Anybody got anything to add to that? Probably not.

[01:12:17] Michelle Frechette: It's a very cool app actually on your computer.

Yeah, I used to, I've tried to set up z and m and things in the past with, it's not my, it's not my bailiwick, for example, to be able to do a lot of those kinds of things that seem to have a lot of steps. This was so easy to deploy, so easy to work with. they've integrated AI back in October. There's a lot of things going on and, if you are interested in learning more, Ian Stewart, who is a wp.com product lead, is gonna be on post status happiness hour this Wednesday, and we're gonna go a little more in depth on it.

So if you're interested in learning more, I invite you to that live stream. There

[01:12:55] Nathan Wrigley: you go. Thank you. That's good. That's nice. Post status.com and you'll be able to find the, feed there. I'm sure. There we go. The, so that's sync, right? Moving on. this is just to say somebody who's often, commenting on this or writing to me on Twitter and things like that, is, this fine gentleman, Elliot Richmond, and he has put out, he puts out a lot of YouTube content.

This one caught my eye though. it's a completely free, piece of content. it, I don't think it's got upsells or anything like that. And it's, if you're curious about. Block theme development. hopefully I'm gonna be talking to Tammy Lister on a podcast episode, which will come out probably in the next couple of weeks, this week about this very subject.

But, just a bit of a hat tip to, Elliot there for putting out really nice, really nicely Dom professional, YouTube content in this case around the theme of block theming and how you might get up and running with that. Again, I don't suppose anybody's got anything to contribute to that. If you do, pipe up now.

If not, I'll move on. All right, plugin that I saw coming out. this is John o Alderson and he's got an edge image plugin. I think I, this is not new, but it's new to me and I just thought it was curious and, interesting. it puts your images to the edge, as you might very well imagine.

And it uses things like CloudFlare, Bonnie, CDN, and it'll put your images up there, serve them from those edges, and also, if you needed to do any transformation, resize them and so on. and it's completely free on the WordPress org repository. again. Probably nothing to add to that, but I just thought after, just to say it,

[01:14:36] Tim Nash: is brand, relatively brand new.

I think he did the first release like five days ago.

[01:14:40] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, it is brand new. It was me looking at he's

[01:14:42] Tim Nash: first plugin. So

[01:14:43] Nathan Wrigley: interesting. But it was me looking at this version number that made me think, it can't be brand new then has he just been like releasing a version like every 10 minutes or something?

[01:14:53] Tim Nash: He's clearly into. but yeah, it's, it is brand new and I say it's his first plugin. So huge. Congratulations is the very first thing to do. We were plugin to ship it and so many people start writing a plugin and don't ship it. It's a bit like writing a book.

[01:15:11] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, don't get me started on writing a book.

I could use up like a whole 10 minutes of a podcast episode on that subject if you want me to. oh, no, I did that already. yeah, so well done, Jono. that's brilliant. edge images, there's more to say. I'll just quickly read the very beginning of the description. Edge images automatically uses your edge transformation service, CloudFlare, accelerated domains, et cetera, to apply performance optimizations to image markup.

I, didn't know if this was close to your heart, Corey, given everything that you do at O-M-G-I-M-G, but fascinating plugin on. Yeah,

[01:15:46] Corey Maass: it's a great little, plugin and, pleased to see it. Nice. I love the, artwork, especially I always, honestly, one of the things that I rate plugins on, in addition to code and reputation and all that, but mostly, title and.

The images they choose. And this is, adorable.

[01:16:08] Nathan Wrigley: It's a good one. It is a good one, that's for sure. the first, rule of book club is don't talk about book club. That's right. The first rule of writing a book. Do not write a book. I actually, this is no word of a light. I've mentioned this before.

[01:16:24] Tim Nash: Surely the first rule of book club is don't read about book club.

[01:16:27] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, don't, yeah. Don't even think about book club. Just bring

[01:16:30] Corey Maass: another

[01:16:31] Nathan Wrigley: bottle

[01:16:31] Corey Maass: of wine,

[01:16:31] Nathan Wrigley: I thought. Yeah.

[01:16:32] Michelle Frechette: Yeah. Don't book it either.

[01:16:33] Nathan Wrigley: No, don't book it. Oh, you're qualifying for dad jokes then, Michelle. I know. Yeah. There's such thing as mom

[01:16:41] Michelle Frechette: jokes.

I have to lean in with whatever testosterone I have in my body. So

[01:16:48] Nathan Wrigley: well caught. okay, I don't know if we want to get into the time is running short, so we don't really that much time, but we'll just go into this. This was another piece which, caught people a little bit off guard this week. this is on the repository, the reporting of, a call for more weirdness in WordPress theme design.

Sparks debate about accessibility. and this was Nick Hansey, who proposed that it would be good to see more. Let's use the word quirky instead of, weird. Weird. I think I've got this intuition, and Tammy cemented it a little bit. I don't know if weird has got the same connotation in the US as it does in the uk.

I dunno if there's a different depth to the, quality of that word. But weird in the UK kind of implies not good to some extent. So if you say weirdness, you are basically giving it the thumbs down. we've, whereas

[01:17:49] Corey Maass: we've taken it back, Nathan, so you've got back to

[01:17:52] Nathan Wrigley: the original Elizabeth version weirdness.

I,

[01:17:56] Corey Maass: yeah, a hundred percent. Austin, has a whole marketing campaign. Keep Austin weird. And then I, and I don't know if they were the first city, but lots of cities have done this and, I, I do think that it isn't necessarily, I. in a 1950s suburban sense, weird is bad. But I think it, in modern parlance, it generally over here has a, quirky, charming, at least potential use.

but I, to me, I, this is, a thing that comes up often, in Reddit and other, hacker News. There's frequently. Threads about oh, I missed, I missed the internet of, of, 20 plus years ago. And, I'm totally that old guy that misses, my first websites were so weird 'cause I was treating them as little art installations and, also what can I do?

This is pre CSS. So it was slicing up, so it was going crazy in Photoshop. Drop shadows all over the place.

[01:19:07] Nathan Wrigley: Oh yeah.

[01:19:09] Corey Maass: and then, and then, what could I do? What, how can I bend and break HTML in this thing called a browser to my wim? and how can I confuse people? And the. Website. A little digression here.

One of one of the websites that I always quote is, or reference is, so when I was first learning about the internet in 96, 97, 98, hell.com, sorry, censorship boop.com, but hell.com was a website that you went to and every month they got a digital artist to do an installation where it was something weird, including things like, you'd click a button and a popup would open a popup until it crashed your browser, and usually, yay.

but it was intentional. It was, meant to be a, pushing the boundaries of the medium. And, and I miss those days. It doesn't have to be as outrageous as crashing your browser or experimental JavaScript or whatever. in, you look at, most landing pages, you look at most of the internet, which is now landing pages, you look at most landing pages and they look very the same.

and, I get it, right? 'cause we wanna make money and we don't wanna put people off by making a website too so creative that it's, hard to use, and stuff like that. But, there's definitely, I, anyway, I was thrilled to see this come up in, even in the WordPress context, 'cause I see it come up often in.

The rest of the internet context. I was a little surprised at how much like I actually had friends and colleagues reaching out to me or, referencing this sort of like in our ongoing private conversation. So it really seemed to resonate with people and which I'm, happy about. I would love to see more creativity, myself included, I'm guilty of this too.

But like all of us could, take opportunities like personal blogs or websites or do little experiments or whatever to continue to push the medium forward.

[01:21:25] Nathan Wrigley: It is really interesting, isn't it? How the accessibility piece, no, let me rewind, let me start again. The, I think you're right. If you were to look at a thousand websites randomly, I'm sure that the design metaphors across a lot of them would be fairly similar.

And whether or not the internet has become a little bit uninteresting, or a little bit tired, and print publications, that is a real thing that they can do, isn't it? they go to town on making every page quirky for want of a better word, and different from the previous ones. experimental is a word that Tammy thinks Should be used, but also, artistic. or quirky. So those three things, perhaps. Creative, weird. Yeah. Creative and what have you. the, reason this story came about was because the collision between, okay, if it's weird for the sake of weird and accessibility just gets, the baby gets tossed out with the bath water.

That's not. That's not good. because in many cases, if it looks fabulous and really interesting, but nobody with a, for example, a screen reader can make head nor tail of it, then that is bad. and it was, as we do at the moment, everything gets heated and taken off in different directions and peach and who's was in the chat earlier, if she's still with us, she had a, fairly long, Twitter, thread, proposing, like fairly carefully explaining how artistic, is not the same as functional.

a piece of art that you put on a wall and hang on a wall is not the same thing. For example, it's not the same use case as a website and what have you. Anyway, that, is all I'm gonna say. Tim, Michelle, anything you wanna add?

[01:23:08] Tim Nash: I just wanna emphasize that weird isn't, doesn't have the same con connections internationally as it does in the US and it to know divides from like Shakespeare and English and the Weird Sisters.

so the free weird Sisters from Shakespeare. so it really doesn't have the same happy, all with artistic connotations. It really has a negative view. So when he's saying Weird, we are all going, we don't want weird. We want good and happy and cheerful and experimental and artistic.

[01:23:42] Nathan Wrigley: It's interesting 'cause Corey's second like checked himself then when he used the word hell.

And the word hell to me has no. there's nothing in that word. It's just a word. It has no connotations. And also there was a guy on, there was a guy on the BBC not that long ago. He's an American, and he used the word crap. And that in the UK is powerful. That word is don't use that in front of children.

But I think in the US it's it's just a word you use all the time. Just means not good.

[01:24:10] Corey Maass: that's the word you don't use instead of the S word.

[01:24:13] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, okay. Yeah. But it's not as powerful, but it definitely is somewhere along the spectrum towards it. But this guy got shot down and that's the word he said.

And Oh, that's interesting. anyway, so there's peaches, he's back. Thanks for the mention. Yeah. Go and find Peacher, at Peacher and you can see, what she said there, but, certainly sparked some debate. Michelle, you haven't had a chance, I dunno if you wish to.

[01:24:37] Michelle Frechette: I just, I put it in the chat that I think of the word weird as being several standard deviations outside of the bell curve.

[01:24:44] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Got it. Yeah. Thank you. peach said it was on blue sky, not Twitter. Apologies. Those two things look so similar. Now

[01:24:50] Michelle Frechette: they do.

[01:24:51] Nathan Wrigley: I can't tell the difference, but yeah, certainly you are very welcome for mentioning it. The, article that we're talking about was on, the repository call for more weirdness in WordPress.

Themes, sparks debate about accessibility. You can read a lot about it. it got very heated at points. All right. How much time have we got? Not a lot. So very quickly then I just want to mention AI services. We mentioned Felix sys the performance lead for 6.8. He has this fabulous walkthrough where he illustrates what you can do with the new AI services plugin, where you can bind your WordPress.

Website to all the ai. So it's not just chat GPT, you can select which one you want and you can ask it to re, retain a memory so that you can improve things over time. It's just a really interesting walkthrough. It's about seven minutes long and it really shows what's coming, down the pike inside a WordPress.

I apologize, tacho, I said I was gonna mention this. I'll do this a little bit more. another moment because we haven't got much time. But if you've been following, tacho has moved from Yost and he's now working with, Yost, Devo and Marika and the team at Progress Planner. in the very near future, they're gonna be launching their pro version.

It says you can get pro. Now, my understanding is for a period of time, I think 99 licenses are gonna be for sale at a discounted rate. Perhaps that window has already gone. But if you've heard me talking about what Progress Planner is, we did an episode on WP Builds with Yost DeVol about what it is and how it's gamifying the drudgery of putting a website together and keeping it up to date and making sure that your editors are checking things and making sure that your contributors are putting things in a timely manner.

It gamifies it all and makes it, an interesting challenge. now they've got a pro version and, you can see the difference here. You get many courses, you get some challenges, and you get access to their support team as well. So a little plug, and we will, I'm sure, be plugging it on various different channels as well.

Progress planner.com. Slash Pro. Okay. and also Dave Foy. Sorry, Dave again, same thing. Dave Foy, amazing content creator. Like his videos look like TV basically. he's got a new course called No Stress, DNS, where he tries to take on the, let's call it boring work of fiddling with dn DNS. What it does, I just fill in the DNS field.

I usually just copy and paste him. I have no idea what any of them do. Tim is gonna be like, oh, Nathan, can you, I know that it's shaking his head. Can we

[01:27:33] Michelle Frechette: just say he missed the opportunity to say, DNS also means do not stress.

[01:27:38] Nathan Wrigley: Oh. Yeah, he did. I'm gonna get, I'm gonna mention that to him straight away. is that an acronym in the us?

Do not stress DNN? No,

[01:27:47] Michelle Frechette: but I'm a marketer so I see things like that all the time. Ah, I

[01:27:51] Nathan Wrigley: like it. I'll get back to him. I'll tell him anyway it's available. you can, it's not available at the moment, but you can sign up to his list. It's day four.com. or just go Google, no stress DNS and I'm sure it'll be there for you to have a look at.

it

[01:28:04] Michelle Frechette: rhymes so it's still there.

[01:28:05] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, exactly. Maybe that's what he was going for. Won't mention that. Not over time will mention this. Go and just check out easing wizard.com if you fancy make making little blue rectangles move from left to right in a sort of easing way. This is your, best friend.

if you want to ease it in, if you want it to be quint, circ Expo quart sign, dunno what any of those mean, but you can do it. Then you can fiddle with the curve and make things. Look at that. How cool is that? It's not that cool, but I really think it's cool. sad. Nathan, go

[01:28:36] Michelle Frechette: build some Legos.

Nathan, just go build some. Thank you. Thank you.

[01:28:39] Nathan Wrigley: Easing wizard.com. Go check that out. This one is worth looking at. I'll come back to it. it's called Squished Do Addie, ie. And it's an image squishing service. It will, compress your Avis JPEGs. J jpeg excels PNGs and web Ps to make them smaller. And it's just right there.

You just chuck it in and press the button. And finally, for Tim Nash's dilatation, not very long, I'm afraid, Tim, the data breaches of 2024, the best ones. I've highlighted a few. You're weird

[01:29:06] Corey Maass: again.

[01:29:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, Look, they're weird weirdness. It does say that. Yeah. Yeah. Anything on here, Tim, that gave you context, joy or fear this year?

Pardon? Was there anything on here that gave you, s murkiness.

[01:29:23] Tim Nash: Again, the snowflake by far. if you just scroll down to near the bottle, we might even have it. It's got a nice list at the top. Snowflake though is like one of the last ones down there.

[01:29:32] Nathan Wrigley: I did get that far, but I didn't highlight it.

Tell us what Snowflake was.

[01:29:36] Tim Nash: So basically, bad actors managed to compromise, customer accounts for, cloud analytics services. 'cause they're not attached to lots of things and they, managed to therefore then grab out details from people like at and t Ticketmaster, but also, big banks like Santander.

And this wasn't just like little bits of data, this was like loads of data. And it was a, it's a really good example for the web that we rely on these first parties. So we rely on Google Analytics, we rely on all these services and we're installing their random little bits of JavaScript. And you have no idea if that site's been compromised.

There are ways to tell, but generally most people have no idea. And if, if you were a bad actor and you were like a state actor, your target isn't going after WordPress sites, your target is going after Google Analytics. 'cause once you've got managed to compromise that piece, little piece of JavaScript, you have access to everything.

And Snowflake was an example of, hello, this is really bad. And the amount of data they just managed to trawl was immense. There's actually since 20, we're now 2025. There's been a couple more in the last couple of days. gravy is, an analytic service also just been, compromised. And it's considered to be one of the largest breaches ever.

Oh my lord.

[01:31:06] Nathan Wrigley: Oh God. We're starting off 2025 on a good note. Yeah, no, the, one that I thought was interesting 'cause it would, it just took me. back a little bit was the w was the one where they're authorizing you because they keep passport information or something. I can't remember what it was.

But essentially they were keeping hold of loads of data. It's the kind of place where you go, if you're, I don't know, you've got to prove that you're a certain age or something like that, so you might upload your passport image or something like that, that service was breached. And I thought, oh my goodness.

you've got everybody's age, date of birth, house address, social security number in some cases. And the data breach itself is not really the point. It's what people do with it afterwards, isn't it? All of the, the fake calls that they make to different services to try and, I don't know, cream money out of an account, some wish or other, I don't see it's gonna change, Tim, unless you, you get on your Spider-Man suit and get out there, swing through New York City and fix it all.

Can you just do that for us? And I,

[01:32:07] Tim Nash: think in the safe, obviously, it is, it's not gonna change, but at least people can start thinking about this and. What you, what data are you giving up? And obviously in, in the EU and the UK we have quite strong data privacy laws, and quite often people see them as a barrier and complain about them.

And then you really have to point to articles like this and go, are you sure you don't pick to people to be collecting all this data about you? Are you really sure? and so I, really like it when the EFF publishes link articles like this and, or does a similar one in o over here. It's, valuable to just give people a bit of a jolt about what data do you share?

How much we share accidentally, how much we don't even realize we share. And then next time somebody tells you, oh, think about block. it's not a problem that Chrome no longer allows you to block the block ads and popups and other Java script links. So it's not an not too much. That's, you've have to now because of legislation, prove your identity to go on your favorite social media site because a country somewhere has decided that kids under the age of 13 shouldn't be allowed on it.

These are all of these things now are having knock on effects to your personal security and your livelihood and life because if you are got bias, if your entire identity has taken over. For some people it's really difficult to recover from. Oh

[01:33:45] Nathan Wrigley: boy. Yeah. You hear some stories of things which you actually can't believe are true, where people's actual lives are ruined by some

[01:33:54] Tim Nash: things that, and a lot of people, a lot of people watching, but a lot of people in this world will be living on credit.

They will be living paycheck to paycheck nipping into their overdraft nipping using their credit cards. So to suddenly have that wiped out because you've a bad actor, has managed to destroy your credit rating, suddenly you can't move house. Yeah. Suddenly you can't get insurance. Suddenly you can't get a phone contract and you are, this can last for years and years.

So it is really devastating. so even if you don't worry about, oh, I've got nothing to hide. My life is an open book. I. You still need to take basic precautions and we'll eventually learn.

[01:34:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. So to sum up episode number 320 of this week in WordPress, it's all cheery, isn't it? Everything's great.

There's nothing weird going on at all. and by the way, this is a beautiful comment, by Dave, speaking of the, the, what was that website called? I've forgotten already. The easing website. Put the cancel subscription action behind the moving button. Game changer. I love it. I like that you're just about to get the button and you just woo, because chase the button around the website.

I'm a bit worried.

[01:35:12] Tim Nash: You're giving people ideas. There's already enough people. That's right. I struggle to cancel subscriptions.

[01:35:19] Nathan Wrigley: there we go. We've overrun. I apologize for that. And I thank Michelle Frechette. I thank Corey Mass and I think Tim Nash for. Thank Tim Nash. I thank Tim Nash for staying the course, even though he made me sing.

I don't I'm ever gonna get over that. In all honesty. I won't change this episode to my children, that's for sure. but we'll be back. We'll, yeah. No, We'll be back next week. I'm not entirely remembering who's gonna be on, but, Michelle, Tim and Corey, thank you so much for joining us. The other thing to say is, thank you so much.

If you made a comment, there was loads of comments today and, really appreciate it. Couldn't really keep up. But, hopefully you, you understand that. And before we go. The final, humiliating weird thing to do is to put up the hands and I'll make It really weird. Oh, I love it when you do that.

That's so good. There we go. You gotta get my fingers

[01:36:12] Michelle Frechette: outta it.

[01:36:12] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, there we carry on. Carry on. Okay, there we go. Okay, we

[01:36:15] Michelle Frechette: got on the wrong hands.

[01:36:16] Nathan Wrigley: Cory, I'm sorry. We're gonna have to put you through it one more time. Here we go. Give us wave. Thank you so much. We'll be back if you three Wanna stick around for a quick chat at the end.

we can do that Iara, we will see you next week for this week in WordPress. Take it easy. Bye.