[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there and welcome once again to the WP Builds podcast. You have reached episode number 411, entitled Unity in WordPress, navigating fractures and embracing positivity with Simon Harper. It was published on Thursday the 27th of February, 2025.
My name's Nathan Wrigley, and before our chat with Simon, a few bits of housekeeping.
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Okay. What have we got for you this week? Well, it's a very nice chat with somebody that I haven't spoken to in the past. I'm talking to Simon Harper. You'll hear right at the beginning we share a little bit of heritage in the geography of both of our families, and that's kind of interesting.
And then we get into the topic, which is all about community. We speak about all of the dramas happening in the WordPress community at the moment. How this is affecting the community. How it's fracturing it. And then perhaps a more positive note towards the end where we try to figure out how this can all be fixed and what that might look like in concrete terms.
It's all coming up next
I am joined on the podcast by Simon Harper. Hello Simon.
[00:04:29] Simon Harper: Hi there. How's it going?
[00:04:30] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, good. Simon, lives in a place which is familiar to me where my, grandmother used to live. I used to go there on, I'm gonna do air quotes holiday every year, banger in Northern Ireland.
Nice to have you with us.
[00:04:45] Simon Harper: Nice to be here.
[00:04:46] Nathan Wrigley: very nice. so we're gonna talk today about the WordPress community. We're recording this in the month of February, the very beginning of February. So depending on when you're listening to this, cast your mind back to what was happening, what had happened, and try to remove all of the things that are yet to happen.
'cause we don't know about those. But, we're gonna talk about the WordPress community and, Simon, I think it's fair to say, has got some opinions on those things. Whether or not we, we allow Simon to go ballistic. Who knows? Let's. See, let's see what happens. But I'm gonna caveat this dear listener, with a few bits and pieces from my side, wherever we go, I want you to bear in mind that in my head, the role of me is to act as a sort of an impartial person and to steer clear of giving too much of my opinions.
Think, think about journalist or something like that. Not that I claim to be that. So just have that in the back of your mind whilst we get into it. So Simon, February, 2025. The WordPress community, how bad is it from your point of view?
[00:05:47] Simon Harper: I think that, we have that phrase within the community, the, WordPress drama or the WP Drama. So we are not experiencing anything necessarily new since September. We're maybe experiencing on a far greater scale than we've experienced before, but, I think as any community grows and becomes as big as it is, there's going to be dramas and, things that kind of go along with that community.
And you'll have sides that are taken. sometimes it's, it's 50 50, sometimes it's not. And as you say yourself, I'm not necessarily here to take sides. I'll certainly give my opinion on things, but I think what's different now about this drama than what we've had before is that the community Has split, and I think it hasn't split into one thing, it's split into micro communities. It's it's a diaspora of, what it was before we're not united anymore. Although I think the united front in some ways was false 'cause Not in a bad way or a negative way. It was just you assumed that, we all move as one.
Whenever it's not the case. We're all in WordPress. As individuals as well. And that's one of the great things about communities. we have some big voices, we have some small voices, and we have some in between. But I think it, it's definitely a journey that we've all been on and it's been hard to escape from for the last, what, five, six months we're at now,
[00:07:20] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, this, is the story that seemingly is not going anywhere, is it? It seems to have taken a bit of a hiatus. We'll just give some backstory what we're really talking about. Dear listener, if you're not that obsessed with WordPress, you may not even know what we're talking about, but back in September, 2024 at WordCamp us, Matt Mullenweg, Gave a presentation and in that, there was the beginnings of a fallout between WP Engine, the hosting company, and, Matt, you may say automatic if you like. And really it's been framed since then around trademark. and the use of the trademark WordPress, the word and the way that it might appear in different sentences and how that can be misconstrued and all of that.
But I'm just gonna cast the dial back a little bit. I'm gonna try going back maybe as much as 20 years when WordPress was a, this sort of fledgling thing and at that point, much like other open source projects, money. Wasn't a thing. Like basically I, I think, and I don't know the date when the first commercial plugin came up and everybody probably scratched their heads and thought, is this something we should be doing?
Is that the true nature of open source? But it became a thing in WordPress, and I wonder if the seeds were sown at that moment. I wonder if it's inevitable that if you throw capitalism, if you like, into a project like this, I wonder if. There's an inevitable schism at some point, because there's always gonna be people who see open source free at the point of use.
no money should be involved. And I'm thinking of other open source communities like Drupal seems to lean more in that direction, where all the modules think plugins are free, always have been lots of open source projects where the idea of selling something off the back of it is verboten, but in WordPress stat.
That hump. It got, people got over it and they started to sell things and it became really popular and it was probably the accelerant that WordPress needed to become the success that it ultimately came 43% of the web. Anyway, that's my long way of saying, do you think that when you start throwing money around that we were basically just waiting for something like this to happen?
[00:09:39] Simon Harper: I think, I am just about to finish my 16th year, doing this. I wasn't there at the very, start, but, certainly there in the early-ish days, and I think that you've hit the nail on the head, not necessarily just limited to. But when you start throwing money at anything, there becomes vested interests.
But equally, as you were saying there, it's not necessarily a bad thing because I don't think WordPress would be where it is today or would have the market share it would have if it didn't have the premium plugins and the premium themes and the, various marketplaces that exist and around, I think that.
Certainly throughout the year, and obviously there's a lot of us recently have been exploring other platforms and, looking at alternatives, but I think that's one of WordPress's Guiding Light's strengths throughout this time. So regardless of the money, because it is open source and so many people have been invested in it, and obviously it's going through a bit of an identity crisis.
You could argue it's been going through it for a while, but I, there's no other platform. Like it out there, in terms of its flexibility, whether you're using free or premium plugins or whether you're using free or premium themes. And obviously, themes as a whole other topic now with FSE and, all that kind of stuff.
But I think that the user. Doesn't really, obviously we've got to a point, we're not necessarily, growth is stagnated in many ways. We're, not growing at the, levels that we were and certainly the types of sites that are using it, when obviously automatic and various other, hosting providers are looking at pushing into enterprise.
And that's where the money is. And then, so we're, almost now at another level. Off a different type of investment because we, as you say, money got injected in, 20 odd years ago, or maybe not initially, obviously the full 20. But now we've gone through the point of, hold on, for this to succeed and for this to continue, for this to continue being open source and for it to iterate and move forward.
It needs some form of investment. And then obviously that came up recently with posts, that Matt had said, if. This is burning through our reserve like this, could impact the community as, automatic fights, the lawsuits and stuff. And then you're kinda like, so how tightly is money intrinsic with WordPress and its success?
Because obviously for a lot of us, including me, probably very naively as well, I assumed WordPress was everybody's, but it's not. Matt made that very. Clear. and so if WordPress is not as open as we believe, so where, does, where's the focus now go? Where does the drive now go? And obviously, Matt has also said as well out there in the open, which is fine, that, they've reduced automatics.
Ours, I find that one quite frustrating because they. Picked auto, they picked WP Engines. Ours, they could have picked anybody else in that list. So they could have done dramatically less. I a hundred percent get that. But they also could have done dramatically more RS than what they chose to do. But even that's gonna have an impact on where we go.
So if we're going to maybe not see much growth in terms of brand shiny, new features for this next year, or maybe, I think some of the commentators were saying it could be two years by the time this is done. Is this an opportunity for almost a reset within the community and a focus on making WordPress more relevant to the word?
Because to the, nobody, the, I say this and I, I care. I'm gonna preface this, I care, but the majority of users don't care that WordPress is open source. They don't, they probably would if it didn't, if it stopped being open source and they would see the implications of that. And we would see the like of, web flow just every so often, just astronomically raising their prices and saying, tough And, or Shopify, which is, a genuinely very, good platform, but it's closed, it's controlled.
For various different reasons. It doesn't have the flexibility that we have because we, WordPress is open source. So I think there is gonna be now this kind of realignment of values of, money. What, are we gonna use this money for? Where's it gonna go? Or are we gonna focus on enterprise and the rest of the communities along for the ride?
or what? Sorry, that was a very long answer with.
[00:14:40] Nathan Wrigley: good. and it's really interesting as well. So I wrote down a couple of things and we'll get to them in turn, but the. The first one is a about the, growth and whether that's stagnated. I do wonder, I was always curious about this fact, actually I did wonder if 43%, so there's this figure, which is always bandied around, that WordPress has 43% of the CMS market or the website market, if you like.
Let's go with that. so 43% of, let's say the. 10,000 top websites, something, along those lines are built with WordPress and I guess there is a ceiling there. At some point. I, you can never realistically expect WordPress to take 90%. So May maybe 43% was the moment that line would flatten out.
Anyway, I. Maybe it'll go down. Maybe it'll go up. Who
[00:15:25] Simon Harper: Yeah.
[00:15:26] Nathan Wrigley: But the, other thing to throw into the mix there is that these commercial rivals have come along, the Wix and the Squarespace and the web flow and all of these things, and, they're, really credible. they, do for what many people want out of a website.
They do what they do, and the exchange is really understandable. You hand over your $20 a month and in exchange you get a contract. And that contract says, we'll offer this amount of op time, we'll offer these features, and if you don't like it, just stop giving us the money and we'll take your website down and you can go and figure something else out.
So they're really compelling because they do, we have this expression in the uk. You'll know it. it does what it says on the tin. it, there's no, there's nothing hidden. Whereas WordPress is, much more confusing, open source. What does that mean? It's free. It can't be free.
Nothing's free. what does that even mean? it's given away, it can't be any good and, so the argument goes, so I do wonder if maybe we'd reach some sort of natural limit there anyway and concern around that it's not going up. That was always gonna be something not to worry about. But you said.
About the fracturing of the community and you used, you you, said that it wasn't united anymore and that is something that I do get a strong impression of. Two years ago, I had a very, how describe it, almost like a childlike vision of what the WordPress community was. And so it was full of magic dusts and unicorns and rainbows and all of this kind of thing.
And I thought, it's nothing can touch this. We're just surrounded by. Beautifully nice people who always have the right endeavors and the right intent and there'd be occasional hiccup, but it'll all get sorted out. And that really seems to have changed. People have been, those, that side with the automatic side of things with Matt, they've obviously got their position, you've got the other side.
And I'm so surprised that we've had this schism, but it does seem from where we are now, almost irreparable. And I worry about that.
[00:17:26] Simon Harper: yeah. And obviously I'd like to be an optimist and not think that it's not. Irreparable. but it's certainly not looking great. I think the biggest problem or issue for me, so in, in my WordPress newsletter, I have loads of, people from automatic that subscribe and from different sides as well.
And I have a lot of friends who are in automatic. and equally I think the problem is your perception of. A moral compass or ethics or where you personally feel a situation should go, and I think a lot of this situation for me is all about a word and it's integrity and I. speaking very briefly, and this is not an automatic bashing at all, it's just, a matter of fact thing that we had what, two, three realignment, from automatic within the last couple of years and not everybody was able to take those realignment.
So there are some people that are in automatic and don't agree with Matt, but want to do really good there. And then there's other people who, side with Matt and that's fine. I, think the problem where we're at, the minute is there's a lot of people in the community who want to say things one way or another and can't, or, not that they can't, but they don't feel that they can, 'cause I know there are some people that can't say things and that's, not a, that's not fine.
But, that's where we're at. But I think that for us to repair. Community or try to repair the community or to envision the community as Community 2.0 and where we go from here is that there needs to be a lot of integrity and a lot of honesty. So honest conversations need to be had, like the, whether it's actually about trademarks or not, say it.
Or, whether it's about something else or I believe X and I believe Y, behind the scenes, actually it's, I believe A, B, and CI think we, in order for us to heal and move forward, there needs to be honest conversations. And some of those are gonna be painful. I think some of the conversations, like anything that happen on social media, particularly on X, they're, not particularly healthy.
and thankfully I have not seen too many of those. But equally I've seen some horrific conversations that. you're like, how, hold on. This isn't becoming of any community forgetting WordPress. This is not how we should be treating each other within a community, is the complete opposite definition of what a community is.
A community is a, a fellowship of people together. We don't all have to be the same, and we don't all have to believe the same things, but a community is as strong as this foundation. So if our foundations are pretty weak, Where do we go? And this is why there's these other communities now that have sprung up and a lot of them have you've got the WP Community Collective, and even then there's misinformation and misunderstanding around them.
Like I was chatting with a couple of people who were saying, oh, they're a charity and sick. They're not a charity, they're not for profit. They are there to make. Money, but they're not for profit, but they're not a charity. And with then x today doing something very strange with completely redefining communities.
I dunno if you saw this, but they have completely changed the community postings. So there used to be a WordPress community, which I'm a moderator in. I'm not very active in it anymore, but, NEX are saying that. Whenever you post in a community, that post now no longer stays in the community. It's seen by everybody in your timeline and the community, but only, and everybody can reply.
So there's only certain moderations that are going on. So all of a sudden closed communities are becoming open in communities. I don't think we were ever necessarily a closed community, but there are certain things that are kept behind closed doors, like anything. And I think that, we just need to.
I think we need, whenever I say we, I say, the community, I think we need to drive it forward because what has been made very clear, rightly or wrongly, is that the leadership of automatic I. Doesn't care about the community anymore in the way that it did. I don't think. It doesn't care completely.
I don't think for one second that Matt doesn't completely not care, but there has been a realignment there and towards their attitude of the community. And to an extent I get that. 'cause there has been some horrific things said about Ians that kind of aren't fair. there may be some things that were said, we're like, you might have a point, but equally be human about it.
Please. I just think, hey, it's that classic thing of can't we all get along? No, we can't, but we need to learn to move forward together. And the one thing that I am most concerned about, and then I'll let you speak apologies, is this fractioning of the community. So yes, it's great to have all these different makeups and stuff, but if we continue to fracture and keep growing apart and there's no sort of collective coming together, I.
Then what, what really does that mean for the future? Do we all have these little mini camps and tribes that we're members of? I'm not a fan of tribalism, but that's another geopolitical thing, so we probably won't get into today.
[00:22:52] Nathan Wrigley: no. so here's a couple of observations and some of these are a bit more philosophical than they are practical and they're not bound to WordPress in particular. But I remember reading something a, long time ago, if we cast our mind back really a long way into the evolution of humans, the idea that, you know, as a species we were pretty good at knowing a handful of people that would gather around the fire with us at night.
And, maybe that number was seven or eight or. 25 or something like that, but it's a, it's, a modest number. And when I was a kid, that same kind of thing was true. we, basically knew the people that lived close to us. We knew of people that were further away because we had radio and tele and things like that.
But basically every single person that you knew you'd been in proximity with at some point. and now we've got this really interesting experiment where the entire world is trying to, and in the WordPress sense, the, entire WordPress community of whatever number of millions of people that is.
Obviously people come in and go away, and some are more vociferous than others, but, I, do wonder how practical it is to expect. Cohesion on that scale because, just humans in a room can fall out with each other and start, landing blows, verbal or otherwise. And so maybe it's just really unrealistic to expect this, like I said, unicorns, rainbows approach.
maybe criticism, dissent, anger even is the norm. No, ma, no matter whether we'd like it to be different. And, and I hope not because I, think one of the things that I noticed also on, so social media, is how quickly civility. Turned into, the opposite of that,
[00:24:40] Simon Harper: Yeah.
[00:24:41] Nathan Wrigley: uncivil, it became quite personal quite quickly and, the worst of people can quickly appear on Twitter or whatever it may be.
And I think you've obviously got some insulation. you, put some. Incendiary comment out there, and there's no expectation that you'll ever see that person probably in real life. So I don't really know where I'm going with that, but it, was just a more of a sort of big observation that maybe, we just have to accept that the default is lack of unity, not entirely unity.
Does that make sense?
[00:25:16] Simon Harper: Yeah, no, totally. the, people I'm connected with now are connected with more deeply, within the community, are not the same as they were, four or five years ago, for various different reasons and, not necessarily related to. The drama. It's just, I suppose whenever you're talking about that and not necessarily having to have the unity, I think it's more than a question of should we not leave things better than when we find them?
So should the goal of the community or the micro communities going forward to be, to make that, to make WordPress that little bit better with each increment, with each, maintenance release that, if you wanna take it down to that level, how can we. Leave WordPress a little bit better than when we found it at the last time we encountered it.
And I think that obviously WordPress is now in a place where it's probably got the most media attention it's probably ever had in its history, I would say. whether that's good or bad, I don't know, but I think that. a lot of people within the community that are really wanting to drive it forward and in a good way, and they have noble ambitions and noble goals and, but they're getting pushed down from on high.
And that I don't like because as you say, if we're, if we don't have to be united, if we don't have to be fully aligned, that's okay. But equally, if you can see something as good, but it just, it's maybe a competitor to you or it's a bit of competition, don't put it down. 'cause I think there's a lot of really good people in the community and without saying too much, people will know whenever who they are or the higher up one and who have come off hard and.
Make for example, one of the big, because I can say, 'cause this was officially released what I think it was two or three days ago. first were we 4th of February. 1st of February. So obviously with Pat Stack and Oliver, that whole situation of and their of Pat stack not being allowed to sponsor and told their contributions.
The WordPress community team, we're not enough. Now, obviously, I think it's, Philippe has, moved on or he is no longer part of that team or whatever, and Matt did apologize, but then nothing else came out of that, except now the one thing that has come out of it is the explanation has been, instead of a personal explanation to Pat Stack and Oliver and the team, it's been here's our realignment.
Here are the new rules around who can and who can't sponsor a word come. And it's trademark and money and contribution and all, and you're just, here's, that's where I don't understand things where if you say, look, we apologize, that wasn't the best worded. We will look into it. And it sounds oh, okay.
That's a, half apology and an acknowledgement that you know of the work that the patch stack team do. And I'm just picking 'em as one example. there's others. And then all of a sudden still, what, over a month later, the only official communication that comes out of, here's actually the new rules for everybody.
And you will never meet those rules in their particular circumstance. So you're, unless you change a few things, and it's just how does that advance the community? Because Patch Stack does more for other platforms, outside of WordPress. And again, that's just one example. I just. I'm just scared.
That's the biggest part of the community. So the people that do wanna move the community forward are maybe scared or facing pressures that they weren't facing before, or things are even harder because certain companies choose to push back.
[00:29:18] Nathan Wrigley: I wonder if there's a sort of solution around, out in the environment somewhere. So the, automatic, certainly the, sort of official way of paying for the project, so to put the contributors bombs on the seats, as we say in the uk. Sorry if that offends you, dear listener. the idea is that.
the, this notion of five for the future came along a number of years ago, and five for the future was this endeavor to encapsulate some reasonable expectation of what you may put back. let, so let's say that your business, the fulcrum of it is WordPress. the theory goes, let's have 5% of your, stuff.
So it could be 5% in terms of time, it could be 5% in terms of revenue. 5% put that back in. but obviously there's no nothing apart from a moral compass to, to compel people to do that. And I think really that's the, knob of the WP engine and automatic dispute really around that. but other communities, most notably, in most notably, the, one that I've noticed is the Drupal community.
The Drupal community seemed to have hit this same roadblock. many years ago, and they've come up with the, with this idea of you can only be a part of the community at certain levels if you fulfill certain predefined responsibilities. And in other words, it's a bit like carrot and stick. if you want the, privilege, I guess you would have to review, regard it as a privilege.
If you want the privilege of being able to sponsor a Drupal Con think word camp. Then you have to be able to prove that you met your, again, I'll use the word five for the future, but it isn't that, you have to be able to prove that you met those requirements. And if you did, then you can become a sponsor.
And if you didn't, then you didn't. But also you might appear on the drupal.org homepage. You might be able to, I don't know, for example, receive a certain badge of honor to say, look at us, we're com committing to the community. And that then is the kind of badge that you maybe could put on your website.
So there's this. dangling carrot of, look, here's all the nice things you can have if you play ball. And I don't really think we, we have anything like that and, I don't even know if that would work. I'm not entirely sure how it's worked on the Drupal side of things, but certainly Dre, who was the founder of.
Drupal put that out there very shortly after September and all of this stuff kicked off and so I don't know if you've got any intuitions as to whether or not some kind of carrot stick approach might, be a way forward certainly to reconcile the big money with the community anyway.
[00:32:02] Simon Harper: Yeah, I mean I think I probably hold one of those rare accolades of being the one-off, maybe, the only word, camp organizers to never have attended their own word camp.
[00:32:16] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. That's pretty unique. Yeah.
[00:32:18] Simon Harper: so we had our inaugural, word, camp Belfast in 2016. And I did, I was, pretty much second in command and we, I never got to see my word camp because I was lying out to the United States on, the weekend of the Word camp, but I was like, I'm doing all this anyway.
and. Certainly very much then, like being that, so being that side of things and organizing and learning what goes into, a word camp and the money that's involved and, the money that's involved now, it would be very different, that word camps would not happen at the ticket price level that we're asked to, make them affordable, make this, they just wouldn't happen without sponsors. whether they're GoDaddy site, WP Engine, automatic WooCommerce, whoever, It just wouldn't. So there money does kinda make the world go round and obviously there is, that's one of the ways that people can contribute with the 5G future as you, were saying. And I think, you look at other people. And you've got what, Stripe has their 1% or whatever it is, their climate thing. If
so, and you've got the, I think it's the football has one as well. I should know this being a big Liverpool fan, but there's the, 1% that you can give of your salary or it's 5%, something like that. There's certain footballers have signed up to managers and things, and you donate into this pot and it goes off to whatever charity.
Needs it. It's broken up and given off. And I think then it's a question of if you're giving money, what's the motive? is what's, what is your motive for giving? Is it to genuinely give back to the community with no ask I. And maybe the odd thanks, and there's a lot of people to do that.
There's lots of people who do private donations for things all the time. It's nobody needs to know we did this. Just go and do whatever. And then obviously there has to be transparency on the other side of, look, if we're giving this money and we're giving it freely, we need to know that it is going to be used appropriately.
But then who makes those decisions? And this is the tough thing now where we're having all these realignments of. You have to meet GPL, you have to be five for the future. You have to be X, you have to be Y. And then to answer your question, you have no other people saying within the community going, hold on, two a second.
Why do we have to run work camps? Let's just run WP Camps. And we'll do it that way. And that's the way we'll support each other. That's the way we'll grow the community. Forget Word, camp Central. Forget word camps. We're just gonna do it as WP, because again, just as an example, and obviously it was very well worded and it's on their website, WP Community Collective, where.
Asked to change their name and they said no. Because as it's been established, WP is not trademarked. It's not confusing. Here's a big explanation and a context for the request that you've made and why it's not happening, and Fairplay and for doing it because it was using automatics own words and automatics own terminology to explain why they're allowed to do what they're allowed to do.
But this is what. I think is going to be one of the solutions to your question. There are going to be companies that go to, what, psych grind, for example. I know they've been big contributors for a long time, or even, let's pick a bigger one. GoDaddy. We're gonna hold our own, we're press community events and, we're not gonna be forced to use Meetup, but we're not gonna do X, y, and z.
that, that's, that could very much be a very, quick. Solution to a lot of this. Not a long term one, obviously, but it, that could be a quick one.
[00:36:02] Nathan Wrigley: I really have the most dreadful understanding of economics, especially at the level that we're talking of, right at the top, the amount of money that is contributed and so on. But I'm imagining that the, project itself is fairly expensive.
[00:36:18] Simon Harper: Oh yeah.
[00:36:19] Nathan Wrigley: to Ron, certainly millions and millions, but I don't know how that actually stacks up and what the numbers are.
And I, found all of this so confusing because, I don't really know what the numbers are. I'm, and I haven't gone looking, so I don't know how transparent it is. To find out what all of this costs and what, what numbers can be attached to a particular event, and how much can you expect back from Word Camp Central and what have you.
and so I find all of this as soon as money gets involved, it really does make the whole conversation a little bit more difficult. It would be so lovely. Again, rainbows and unicorns. It would be so lovely if everybody just gave 5% of everything, but that's not realistic, because most people are just willing to use the software.
they're not wanting to contribute back. But again, coming back to this, sort of carrot and stick approach, the Drupal example, and again, I could be getting this wrong, but I think basically the idea was never to go and shame somebody. The idea was to only. Shine a light on the good that had happened.
And so let's say for example, company X never contributes anything. we don't mention Company X, they just get left out of the conversation. But company y gives us, I don't know, three, 4%. we mention them a bit. Company Zed over here, they give 10% of everything. We mention them a lot, they get loads of kudos and lots of representation and, we blow all the trumpets for them.
I, just don't know if that's, I just don't know if that's a solution, but it, feels like it might be.
[00:37:54] Simon Harper: It's a logical one. I don't know if, as you say, if it's that simple, particularly with the money involved, it's okay, we're just gonna stop talking about Company X, you saying, or we're just gonna promote company Y. But it is a very logical kind of approach. And I think that shaming thing is very important because I would not, now I've diversified over, like I, I've, I'm about to finish my 16th year in business doing this, but, and I've diversified a little bit over the years, but still my core is.
Is WordPress and I'm very grateful for the project and for the community. 'cause I would not, it's putting, it's helping me put fit on the table and all that kind of stuff. Now it's not entirely down to WordPress, but a huge amount of it is. And I know I could give back more, if I really put my mind to it.
and there's different ways I could do it. I've gotten better over the years, but there is, you, feel that's the whole thing of, definition of what exactly contribution is, and it's come up so many times, ramp Ramus. Dre did a, really good, newsletter blog post on it last year, and it obviously came back up again with what's going on.
Paul Charlton from WP Ts has talked about it. I tweeted about it and got a lot of, posted whatever. They call it OnX these days and got a lot of good feedback, which is really, nice. But there's a lot of people that are in the same boat. We're feeling that they are contributing, but that they're not, or they're being made to feel that they're not contributing.
And I think, for big companies, and obviously I. Bigger scenarios I like to work on. there, there does have to be certain definitions of what contribution is, but I don't think there should be belittling or shaming because it's, that, not to bring religion into it, but people will know a lot of it.
the parable of the widows might, where you give as much as you can and that could be significantly more than the rich person who doesn't give very much. there, there can be some pe there are some absolutely phenomenal people in the WordPress community that give an awful lot. And don't get any recognition for it, but they also don't seek it.
And I think as you've hit the nail on the head with the triple example edit, you're, right, it's a simple on the surface and logical way to do it. But people are so complex and I think that's that's the problem I think. Again, it's like the theme that if you're looking at, what triple is that's, the kind of thing they're wanting to make it better, inch it forward, leave it better than what it was.
I think, again, sorry to bring that back and beat that drum, but it is just look, do we want to let the next two years, do we want to let, and I'm not accusing automatic or WP engine of anything here, so I'm gonna preface that, but do we as a community want. Automatic and WP Engine to define the next two years of WordPress, or do we as a community want to help define the next two years of WordPress?
So as you say, there's gonna be negative press, there's gonna be things said. So what about, we shout that a little bit louder with the positivity of people within the community, of the individuals, of the organizations, of the agencies that are doing. Good. 'cause WordPress, like WordPress does some incredible things.
It pars some amazing businesses and foundations and charities and, everything.
[00:41:21] Nathan Wrigley: That's a really interesting point. And honestly, doing this podcast, you don't have to look very hard. To find incredible people doing incredible things. Some of them who have no interest in being acknowledged. They're just doing it for, for the good of humanity, for want of a better word. and I, honestly th this kind of is an, interesting point.
The idea that, do we just wait? As a community and just let the legal battle take. Its, let them have all the swings at each other that they can manage. see where the, court lands on that. And then regroup and think, okay, what do we do now that, all of the, or the bits and pieces have fallen to the ground and we can look at the lay of the land?
Do we, now? move forward in a particular direction, or do we do a bit more of what you are saying? Do we, have some sort of endeavor to just ignore it, but in a different way? Ignore what's going on with the legal battle, but just let's raise the voices. let's talk about the good things that are happening and just, I don't know, bring a sense of positivity.
Back because that, that in, in essence is the kernel of what I'm di discovering is it's that positivity seems to have evaporated a little bit. whereas a year ago there was so much good news in the WordPress place. In fact, you were really hard pushed to find bad news.
was almost impossible to find anything incendiary, anything bad.
The occasional thing, if you looked hard and now it feels like there's a lot of negative commentary, negative things out there, and, maybe, I don't dunno, for you, maybe it's just gonna be easier to ignore that, quiet quieten that in your mind. Mention the people that are doing good things in the newsletter you've got and things like that.
Maybe that's the best way. For now, let the, let the, big boys have, their, legal dispute, figure out what's left at the other end.
[00:43:22] Simon Harper: Yeah. And it's people like yourself that was doing it. 'cause I think what was the first one with you and Mark West? you did the positivity one and it Yeah. And it was brilliant. And again, with, with my newsletter, I. I did, I've been covering it pretty much since September. But then was it a couple of issues ago for two issues in a row, I just said, do you know what?
Screw it. I'm just gonna celebrate everybody in the community. And those two issues were ridiculous in terms of the engagement. I was just kinda alright, people want this. So people want to hear this. I want to hear a little bit of the good stuff, that's going on. and I think that is what we need per se, or certainly within my small.
Part of the community or my small sphere of the community there. People just want to hear some positivity 'cause there is so much good stuff going on.
[00:44:13] Nathan Wrigley: It really is. it's almost boundless. there's, communities spread throughout the world where WordPress is the bedrock of their entire live. Hoods, there's people writing code, which they're giving away for free. There's people, reviewing code for free. There's people making materials so that you can learn WordPress, be that on YouTube or wherever they're putting it.
There's just a literally a million things happening. And I, do wonder sometimes if the social, network algorithm has just
[00:44:46] Simon Harper: Oh, they love the hit.
[00:44:47] Nathan Wrigley: Has just upended our capacity to, to see that. Because it's because what do you see when you look for, I don't know, if you search for WordPress, I'm fairly sure that you're gonna get a laundry load of stuff, which doesn't feel great, but if you dug a little bit deeper.
Subscribe to the people who are making that endeavor. So I'm fully encouraging you to, go and, subscribe to what, to what Simon's going on, on his newsletter. And, maybe that's what we need, just a little bit more understanding. Step back, view the landscape a little bit differently. The sky maybe won't fall in.
Let the, let it all settle down. I don't know. I,
[00:45:25] Simon Harper: I
think the, yeah, I think the step back thing, and I'll just say that quickly is important that, that's the other thing. like we are very quick to speak and very slow to think, and I think that the. That's what we need to do. Whenever something is thrown out there, there's, gonna be multiple sides to the story.
There's gonna be motives, there's gonna be context, and you're gonna have your own bias that's coming with it. So I do think we need to slow down a little bit. so it's that wonderful book. think Fast and Slow. I dunno if you've read it. Yeah. So it's that kind of, we're just, oh, we just like to do word vomit and we need to do less of that.
[00:46:03] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. and interestingly, I saw a post today and I can't actually remember where it came from. I've not been in the WordPress. I really started using WordPress in about 2015 and started taking interest in it beyond just a piece of software in about 2016, something like that. And, but my understanding is that the, community has been through several, albeit not as big as this.
I don't feel it has been through several fairly seismic. things in its past
[00:46:28] Simon Harper: Yeah.
[00:46:29] Nathan Wrigley: and somehow that all it, it all was okay in the end. maybe people have got an opinion that this is gonna be a more of a rift and, things can't go back to the way they were. I, don't know, but maybe, given a fair wind, we'll be in February, 2026 and we'll be going, what was that?
[00:46:50] Simon Harper: What was it all about?
[00:46:51] Nathan Wrigley: got amnesia about all of that stuff. I have to wait and see. Simon, we're at the sort of 45 minute mark, so I guess maybe we should think about knocking it on the head. Is there anything that you would like to mention specifically? Give you a newsletter, a plug, let's go with that.
[00:47:06] Simon Harper: Okay, no problem. We can do that. yeah, you can, subscribe to my newsletter, at loop wp.com or newsletter dot loop wp.com, whichever way you wanna go to it. and it's where I talk about WordPress and WooCommerce. And not just plugins or talk about the community and the themes and topics and celebrating people really, within the community.
So we'll see, if I can keep that going. I think as we've both agreed, there's lots of good things to talk about.
[00:47:34] Nathan Wrigley: There's no shortage of things. It's just, it was whether or not you, get weary of, all of the other stuff in the meantime and think it's, harder to, get through all of the, nonsense that's going on and shine a light on the good things. I think. I think there's some part in all of us that enjoys a drama.
[00:47:52] Simon Harper: Oh
[00:47:53] Nathan Wrigley: it keeps us interested. can you imagine watching, the BBC drama that, that comes on, more or less every night where basically everything was great all the time. It's, there's no, interest there.
[00:48:06] Simon Harper: you would switch
[00:48:07] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. You need, some sort of murder mystery or something where people argue all the time.
So may, maybe this is just part of life's. Rich tapestry and we'll figure it out. So go and check it out. Loop WP and all that it remains for me to do is to say thank you, to Simon for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
[00:48:24] Simon Harper: Thank you.
[00:48:25] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. That's all we've got time for this week. I hope that you enjoyed that.
If you have any commentary, we love it when you produce comments on the WP Builds website. Head to wpbuilds.com, and search for this episode. It is number 411. So if you search for that and leave us a comment there, we would really, really appreciate it.
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Okay, that truly is all I've got time for. Don't forget, we'll be back most Mondays. wpbuilds.com/live. 2:00 PM UK time for the This Week in WordPress show. We'll have a podcast for you next Thursday as well. Join us for that.
But also, why not have a little bit of a poke around the wpbuilds.com website. Have a look in the archives. We're doing a show with Joe Dolson at the moment, all about accessibility. You'll find that in the archives section of our menu. And there's a whole variety of other things as well.
Okay, I'm gonna fade in some cheesy music. Say stay safe. Have a good week. Bye-bye for now.
