This Week in WordPress #326

[00:00:04] Nathan Wrigley: It's time for This Week in wordPress, episode number 326, entitled Things Hard Won Will Not Be Easily Lost. It was recorded on Monday the 10th of March, 2025. My name's Nathan Wrigley, and today I am joined by Taco. I don't know how to do his surname. Taco Verdonschot, something like that, but also by Marieke van de Rakt and Marcus Burnette.

We are a WordPress podcast. We get a bit silly this week in all honesty, but that's quite entertaining. But we do finally get onto some WordPress bits and pieces.

First up, we talk about Marcus and the fact that he took over Buds, Seriously, Bud podcast.

And then we get into all of the bits and pieces in the WordPress space. So there was a bug, which got quickly resolved, disconnecting parent themes from child themes.

Then speculative loading, which is coming in WordPress 6.8 is under the microscope, and we talk about how this could be good, but possibly bad for the environment, but broadly speaking, it's very good.

Then we talk about, for a long time, the majority of this podcast is talking about a piece in The Repository where Rae Moray talks about who leads WordPress businesses and the fact that females are very, underrepresented indeed.

W-P-L-D-N has a masterclass coming up.

The Admin Bar has an event which is happening next week, which you might be interested in. It looks a little bit like a panel show quiz or something like that.

And then we spend a little bit of time talking about Cloud Fest. I eat a banana. And there's a lot more other things happening as well. 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.

And by Bluehost. Redefine your web hosting experience with Bluehost Cloud. Managed WordPress hosting that comes with lightning fast websites, 100% network uptime, and 24 7 priority support. With Bluehost Cloud, the possibilities are out of this world. Experience it today at bluehost.com/cloud.

And by Omnisend. Do you sell your stuff online? Then meet Omnisend. Yes, that Omnisend. The email and SMS tool that helps you make 73 bucks for every dollar spent. The one that's so good, it's almost boring. Hate the excitement of rollercoaster sales? Prefer a steady line going up? Try Omnisend today at omnisend.com.

Hello? Hello? Hi. Hello. Hello. Hi. Hi. Hi. Is episode number 300? I think that's wrong. No, it's right. It's 326 of this week in WordPress. That means it's the three hundred and twenty six one. We've done 325 before this. And, hopefully we'll do many more in the future. As you can see, I'm joined by three other people.

However, there's only two other boxes because I won't bore you. Technology. Yeah, we, had fun. Honestly, that was really entertaining. Let's do it. about five minutes ago, 10 minutes ago, Mariko, who's there, she joined the call in her own little rectangle, but we couldn't hear the audio. And so I was worrying oh no, we're not gonna be able to, not gonna be able to have Marika on the show.

That'd be a nightmare. And then Tacho just left his little rectangle and then appeared in Marika's little rectangle. But normally we're all in different parts of the world, so that, that was quite exciting. I would love one day that I could do this. Yeah, exactly. Come into your screen. And that was nearly possible.

So as you can see, I've got three WordPresses with us today. I've got Tacho Verdon. I don't know how to do that. I've got, don't worry. We'll get your practice. I've got Tacho Veon shot. We'll do the bios in a minute. We've got Marika Vandereck and we've also got Marcus Bennet, joining us from different parts of the world.

As always, we're gonna talk about the WordPress bits and pieces that have happened in the last seven days. Honestly, like when we started this episode number 40 or something like that, we weren't all that far in. It was quite a hard thing. Getting WordPress news. There wasn't really a lot happening.

Now it's like a tidal wave. It's a relentless, it's just nonstop. It never seems to stop. So hopefully we'll cover some of that today, some of it more. political than other things and what have you, and a piece of news which has just dropped like moments ago, which is quite transformational in the WordPress space.

few bits of housekeeping before we introduce our guests. The first one is if you're joining us, thank you. You make the show so much better, and we would love it if you want to make some comments. The best thing to do if you want to join us is head to wp builds.com/live. And if you don't know how that's spelled, there it is, look right there next to Marcus wp builds.com/live.

Over there, you've got a couple of options. You've got the YouTube embedded chat, so you need to be logged into some kind of Google account, Gmail or something like that, and you can, you can give us some comments there. However, if you don't like Google and honestly it's going that way, isn't it? then you can use the inbuilt chat into the little rectangle, which is the video player.

There's a little thing at the top right and corner. I think it's a little black button, says something like live chat and you don't need to be logged into anything at all. And you can comment in that way. Send your pets dogs. Family relations enemies, anybody send them to that URL and get 'em joining in the chat a bit like some of these people have done.

Thank you so much. If you are joining us, here's Michelle Fahe look, she's saying good morning from Rochester, New York. It's 43 degrees Fahrenheit over there, six degrees and sunny. I think it's warmer here, Michelle. It's probably about 10 at the minute, but guess what? Guess what? guess what the skies look like.

you can't possibly, it's very cloudy. It's the UK after all. Hey, I don't know. Tacho and Marika, I dunno if you've seen about halfway Between me and you is an environmental catastrophe unfolding. Yeah,

[00:06:45] Merieke van de Rakt: tacho just told me.

[00:06:46] Nathan Wrigley: Oh,

[00:06:47] Merieke van de Rakt: absolutely. Right man.

[00:06:48] Nathan Wrigley: There's been a collision between an oil tanker. And a, another vessel of some kind of, yeah, literally is about halfway between the pair of us.

And, and it's gonna make life entertaining on the coast where I live, I imagine in the near future. friendly web guy says, no comment. Okay, thanks. that's Dave by the way. appreciate it. Good morning. Says Cammi back from my Ron walk and missing everyone. Marcus, see you later today. Oh, that's nice.

Cammy's just had daylight saving, changing in her favor so she doesn't have to get up at stupid o'clock. To be part of the show. She can now get up at seven o'clock, which is not so bad. Maria,

[00:07:24] Taco Verdonschot: that's week for a week, right? Oh, is it? oh, really?

[00:07:27] Nathan Wrigley: Again. And then it'll be, it doesn't last long.

[00:07:30] Marcus Burnette: Oh,

[00:07:31] Nathan Wrigley: bogus.

Didn't know that. Okay. Sorry. Commiseration coming. I thought that was, a six month thing. Maria says Hi. Thank you. Thank you, Maria. Seeing Marcus reminds me I need to update my WP. World profile. Oh yeah. We can get into that in a minute, can't we? And, what's going on here? Said Bob Kraus. Don't you guys work?

Yes, we do. but probably not as much as we should. And so this

[00:07:53] Taco Verdonschot: is work, let's be fair.

[00:07:55] Nathan Wrigley: That's right. Yeah. And some of us, Michelle says, are looking for work. We could get into that in a minute, but, but let's do the bio, shall we? And let's remove that little thing. Okay. First off, I have to make an apology.

And every time that Tacho comes on this show, I misspell his name in exactly the same way. It's ridiculous. I have a mental block and, I always misspell his name so that the fine, his surname, which has got a C in it, the letter C in it, I just omit it. And, frankly, tco it would be really helpful if you just changed your name so that I know, that's why I used the shortened version online, because you're not alone.

[00:08:36] Taco Verdonschot: yeah. I like taking a piss of you, yeah, that's, I appreciate it. You know me. I love that kind of stuff. however, as a, sort of getting me back thing, tachos decided that I'm gonna say his name rather a lot in the bio, so here we go. I'm quoting, he's written it himself, but I'm reading it.

[00:08:55] Nathan Wrigley: I, as Nathan Wrigley continue to forget to write a C in Tachos surname. I will use this intro to practice pronouncing his last name. Vaon shot, which I think is right. Tacho Verdon Shot is the co-owner of Progress Planner and a director of Community and partnership at Amelia Capital. Mr. Vaon Shot is active in the Make WP Community team and does some Polyglots work on the side.

Don't forget to mention that I'm a father of two amazing daughters Shot told me, and according to the WP world, nicely, Don Tako, o over 50 WordPress events have been attended by VA Don Shot thanks to his former position at Yost and his current job at Progress Planner. This is called Keyword stuffing.

And now I'm done pronouncing Don Shot. So it's time. So this is the end of Tack Over Don Shot's introduction. Let me move on to our other guest today. I appreciate that. Tko. That was good. Yay. Well done. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for letting me get through it. So there we go. There's our cohost for today and moving on.

Obviously sitting next to him is Marika. How you doing Marika?

[00:10:00] Merieke van de Rakt: Good. Good.

[00:10:02] Nathan Wrigley: Sharing the mic today. That's quite nice. Yeah. I don't know that we've, oh yeah, I have one time we had a mic share one time. Marika Vander Act is a partner at Amelia Capital where she advises portfolio companies on marketing and branding.

She's also involved in developing progress planner. Next to that, she's active in local politics and she's a teacher in online marketing at a university. Previously she was the CEO of Yost, where she founded Yost Academy and played a key role in the company's growth. In 2021, she led Yost to a successful acquisition by New Fold Digital.

Thank you for ju thank you for joining us. Local politics, what's that about? Local politics? Yeah. Is that, are you like a burgeoning MP we call them? Or is it very much local? Are you just doing It's

[00:10:45] Merieke van de Rakt: very much local. Oh, nice. Tonight I'm going to talk about, we have a little castle in our hometown and we're talking about the yard of the castle.

Okay. It really

[00:10:55] Nathan Wrigley: is that local. Okay. It's very local, but

[00:10:57] Merieke van de Rakt: I, like it a lot. Yeah. And I can do some, I don't know, it's still valuable I think so. It's a nice equilibrium, is that word?

[00:11:06] Nathan Wrigley: It is, yeah.

[00:11:08] Merieke van de Rakt: between WordPress, which is all around world and then having something so local and tangible to do. So do you know sense?

[00:11:16] Nathan Wrigley: Do you know? That is really interesting. 'cause I think there's a big part of me and it took, it wasn't until about two or three years ago that I noticed it. I was really looking outwards through the medium of my phone and the internet. Like the world was elsewhere. Yeah. And forgot that probably the more important bits of my life were actually here, Yeah. Within a hundred meters of where I live and beyond. And it's easy, isn't it? you obsess. I don't mean you one can obsess about Twitter and Facebook and social media, and. forget that the yard of the castle needs looking after him. Tell me. and local politics here and is still so nice.

[00:11:57] Merieke van de Rakt: Everybody's nice to each other. We don't agree at all because, they don't. But they're all nice and civil. So it's actually fun to attend such a meeting and to discuss about stuff. And so this, so it's very different from the global politics at the moment. Yeah,

[00:12:16] Nathan Wrigley: Global politics at the moment is anything but civil, isn't it?

Yeah. But, we won't get into that. No, because we might end up being non-civil. Now, I should say that in all the bits and pieces that I tweeted out, we were gonna be joined by, Rob Cairns. But sadly he contacted me just a few moments ago, about an hour ago actually, to say that they're having power outages in Canada, or at least where he lives in Canada.

So he is not able to join us. He couldn't rely on that. commiseration, sorry about that, Rob. But, I hope that all of that gets fixed quickly, however. As you can see just down there, we do, have Marcus Bonnet who's joining us today. How are you, Marcus? I'm doing great, thanks. Yeah, Marcus is, Mike always sounds so nice.

I, think it's a confection of not only the mic, but your vocal chords. I think you've got one of those radio voices, which is, thank you. It's nice. Okay, so here we go. Marcus is now well settled at Bluehost, where he's grafting a away on all things customer experience. He's the brains behind the WP world, a cracking WordPress community networking site, and co-hosts the Do the Woo podcast.

He's also mucking in with the WordPress photo directory as a photo moderator and happens to be one of the top photo contributors to boot. Mostly he's just chuffed a bits to be here with a brilliant bunch of WordPress folks. that's nice. Thank you very much indeed.

[00:13:32] Marcus Burnette: I, I wrote my bio and then asked chat GPT to British verify it for you.

Oh, so it's

[00:13:38] Nathan Wrigley: got chaps and things like folks and things like, that's nice. Oh, I did a good job. I, appreciate it. It, okay, so let's crack on. First of all, a couple of things here. Let's just see who's given us a comment. Bo. It's like an episode of friends. We sit around talking and drinking from promo mugs.

That's what we do here. It is very lighthearted. This whole episode. get Real Tacho. I dunno what that's in reference to. how do you really pronounce it? Tacho is it, is ta have I got Tacho right? Is that bit right? Yes. Yeah. give us the real, genuine, authentic pronunciation of your surname.

Ko No, I'm not even.

[00:14:15] Merieke van de Rakt: I can do that. I

[00:14:16] Nathan Wrigley: know, I, can't for anyone you can who speaks Dutch is not very hard. No. For everyone who does not speak Dutch, it's quite hard.

Yeah. I think you grow up and your mouth is moving in different ways and your tongue is probably ending up in different locations than we have in the same way that, if you hear somebody speaking in French or something, it's just a little different, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. And then, but. Says, I want Marika to be on. Seriously, bud. How do we do that? We don't Come on this show and try to solicit guests for another podcast, bud. What the heck? Do it afterwards. I love it. You first put it on screen and then

[00:14:52] Taco Verdonschot: read

[00:14:52] Nathan Wrigley: what

[00:14:52] Taco Verdonschot: he

[00:14:52] Nathan Wrigley: says. Totally fine. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure Marika will be in touch.

But, we are gonna get on with the WordPress e bits and pieces. This is our website. Here it is, wp builds.com. we are currently sponsored. Thank you very much to these following companies. We're sponsored by GoDaddy Pro, by Bluehost, and by Omnis. Send. They keep the lights on over here. Thank you, thank you.

really appreciate it. We have, a podcast archive of over 400 and so we've got this show, 320, whatever it is. And and then we've also got a show that we release on a Thursday, which comes out and we're on episode 312 of that. So we're honing in on nearly a. Is that like nearly a thousand episodes?

No, it's not. It's about 900 or 800 or something like that. Anyway, it's quite a few and you can see recently we've been speaking to Simon Harper. We spoke to Matt Mad Ross recently. So if you wanna subscribe to that, click on this little link at the top forward slash subscribe and get yourself signed up.

And that's probably it. The first thing I wanna mention this week though, is a guest contribution. Look at this. Is it Bud's just taking over? What the heck? Seriously, bud? Actually bud's not taking over. Marcus is taking over. and Marcus has raised this as one of the things he wanted to mention today.

What happened here?

[00:16:08] Marcus Burnette: Yeah, Bud's podcast is, just hit the 50, the 50 episode milestone and as we were approaching it, Thought it might be a good idea to turn the spotlight back on Bud. Nice. Bud and I, partnered up a little bit ago to make seriously Bud somewhat of an unofficial podcast for the WP world.

So there's a seriously bud tab in the top navigation and everything, because I really like what he is doing, sharing the stories Yeah. Behind the people in the WordPress space. and, but I wanted to turn the spotlight back on Bud and let people get a chance to hear his story. So I asked him if I could, interview him and he graciously agreed.

And so that came out on Friday.

[00:16:51] Nathan Wrigley: Nice. So you can check that out. If you go to seriously bo.com then then yeah, there's a whole slew for 50 previous episodes. One, one, this one you should avoid though, 'cause there's not a lot of content in that one, but the others are pretty good. so thank you for doing that.

That's quite nice to be invited to do that kind of thing, isn't it? seriously bo.com, if you want to check that out. And, okay, let's move on to WordPress, Corey type things for a moment or two. This is an interesting one. I, noticed this at the end of last week and I thought, gosh, this'll be an interesting one if it develops.

And I, think now Tacho, I think you've said this has now been patched, right?

[00:17:28] Taco Verdonschot: Yes.

[00:17:29] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.

[00:17:29] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah. So if you scroll all the way down, because it's a long ticket by now, you'll see that the patch was tested successfully. Yeah, so these are the screenshots related to that. Slightly above that is the confirmation that, it has been fixed.

[00:17:47] Nathan Wrigley: this was a really interesting one though, 'cause it really could have upset the apple cart. obviously that's what the beta testing and all of that is about, but this was, Somebody, and I can't, it's Fabian cgi. who noticed that? the title of it gives it Away. Parent Themes incorrectly Not getting resolved in WordPress.

6.8 beta one. So the beta version, which is what it's all about, checking it all out. The, the child themes weren't getting, getting picked up as by the parent theme or the other way round. and this a really serious problem. So I, thought, ah, this is really something to get our teeth into. And of course, the moment I pick it up, it becomes a non-story because it gets fixed.

But, thank you.

[00:18:26] Taco Verdonschot: but it was a real thing. And I think this shows why it's super important to, be testing in that beta phase and in the RC phase. So this is exactly what this beta phase is for.

[00:18:41] Nathan Wrigley: And it's interesting, right? So looking through this, issue was, initially tracked, I think it was four days, four and a half, five days ago or something like that.

And, Fabian puts out this thing hoping that people will pick it up. And it really does give you a, an indication of the level of seriousness that's many people take the project. just look, I'm scrolling, There's an awful lot in here to fix. What? what would've been a fairly cataclysmic bug, but the point is loads of people jumped in and, saved the day.

So, anybody who contributed towards this or any other ticket, frankly, thank you very much indeed. But, nothing to see here, which I suppose is a good thing. However, speaking of core and all that kind of thing, just moments ago I was, prior to hopping on this call, I got a message on Slack from Tacho, and I don't think we've got a screenshot or anything like that, but Tacho do you, wanna just say what you just saw?

This is like breaking news and it's really interesting.

[00:19:45] Taco Verdonschot: yeah. there's a core committers channel on the make WordPress Slack. basically that's in a channel where all the core committers have discussions, but it's open so you can follow what's happening. And, Matt Muli posted a rather large message, which contains amongst other things, the proposal to do only one release a year until, the, court case against WP Engine in 2027.

Yeah. which is. So it's a proposal. It's not set in stone yet. at the time I saw it, there hadn't been any comments to it, so everything may change, but it would be, quite a significant, change from the three to four releases that we've had in the past. As long as I can remember. and in fact have mooted for this year as well.

[00:20:51] Nathan Wrigley: So I dunno if it's gonna hijack that, but the, I'll just, I'll, so I'm reading off a screenshot. So first of all, I'm trusting that Tacho successfully screenshot something and didn't just create some fake news. but Matt posted and there was a bunch of bullet points, all about 6.8 and the commitments and WP engine and so on and so forth.

And then it moves on to say this, one approach would be delaying 6.8 and making it the only release this year, 6.9 in 2026, and then aim for seven 'cause Matt also previously indicated he didn't want to buck the tradition of going to 6.10, six point 10 'cause that's n not happened before. Assuming a positive outcome of the jury trial, that in itself is an interesting little.

Portion of that sentence. 'cause what if it isn't successful? I would estimate WP Engine is, oh, and then it goes on to the cost. But, of that, but we don't. And how

[00:21:46] Merieke van de Rakt: ridiculous it all is.

[00:21:47] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. And how much money is being spent on basically lawyers and what have you. Yeah. But that's interesting.

that feels like a total feature freeze, right? You would it just be a case of if there's one release, would you jam pack it with features or is it just steady away, make sure nothing breaks? Dunno.

[00:22:06] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah, so either way it could be very interesting and not necessarily in the good sense. because if you wanna keep things safe, so you don't want a single update a year, have anything break, you're basically halting any progress, which.

Competitors like Wix and Squarespace are definitely not doing so that potentially hurts or maybe not even potentially, but might hurt WordPress in the slightly longer term. maybe even short term because that will take a reputation hit if the work gets out that there's hardly any development being done for the next year.

the other way around, if you jam back a release and you build for 12 months or even longer, before you do a release, what's the chance that there will be no serious bugs? And that they'll, if there are bugs, that they'll be easy to track because you'll have changed so much code over the time of a year that it becomes really hard to properly test and release something bug free.

So that would be a whole different challenge.

[00:23:35] Nathan Wrigley: It's interesting if, like me, you're on the inside of the baseball of WordPress and you are obsess about it, the, releases of WordPress become kind of non-events because you've, you've, got all the preamble, you know what's coming.

It's been well announced and then, the, news articles describe it. People write blog posts about it. You go into the slack and it's all described and then it finally drops. And typically there's no, there's nothing to see here, the features that dropped drop and there's not much of a problem.

Very occasionally we have to do a very quick update, but, it, means that when WordPress rolls out over into a new version, there's not much, apart from, you upload and you get a screen splash for a moment of something new. There's not much to see. This could really alter that, couldn't it?

you'd have a whole 12 months to wait. And then potentially a ton of new features that. I guess would overwrite features that haven't been, that would Yeah. Go, that would be the good news. So I'm afraid, and I don't know, but if you combine this with kind of a lack of vision of what WordPress will be in the future and in five years, which I don't see, and with automatic pulling back in all their resources, just feels like we're going to delay our progress in, WordPress altogether.

[00:24:57] Merieke van de Rakt: So perhaps it would be good if it would be a really big release once a year. It would be really bad news if we now, instead of three releases, we'll do one a year. And I'm afraid that's going to be the case. Marcus, but we don't know that.

[00:25:13] Nathan Wrigley: No, we don't. No. And of course we should just say it's breaking news because we saw, or rather Tcho saw it on a, Slack comment a moment ago, and it really is.

It's not, this is what we're doing, it's more, would have a listen to this, see what you make of it. Kind of commentary, isn't it? Marcus, anything to add to that? Yeah, I

[00:25:31] Marcus Burnette: think there's a general trust in WordPress that exists because of the multiple releases a year, knowing that there are things.

Coming down the road that we can look forward to in, three months, four months versus waiting 12 months. I think impeding that progress would be, difficult like Taco and Marika have shared, but also I think it erodes some of the, trust, not to say that there wouldn't be minor releases in between those major releases, right?

So if bugs were introduced, I imagine there would be work done to fix a, fix those bugs. So not as worried about that. But as far as like the, major features being released and that kind of progress, there's trust that WordPress has built with the community and with, people that are using WordPress to build that.

if, what you're missing is not there now, it may just be a few months before that piece is there, versus you may have to wait a year before that ends up in the WordPress, core product that you need.

[00:26:38] Nathan Wrigley: You need to be there. Yeah, it's really interesting. I, and honestly, I never see things through this prism, but that's so interesting.

Dave, sorry Marco. It's just always gonna wipe out your mouth, I'm afraid when we put comments up this, or, your entire head depending on what you did. Thank you. Yeah, you just go like that. another attempt. So this is Dave, Gray. another attempt to get the community to uproar that we need regular releases and put pressure on WP engine, WPE to drop legal.

So Dave's seen it through that prism, the idea of the, yeah. Okay. Interesting. Who knows where that'll go, frankly, but it, that's quite a seismic shift, isn't it? Quite a seismic change. But obviously if we don't have the manpower and all the money is being consumed in, legal fees and what have you, I guess from Matt's point of view, things will have.

To change and, he's speculating what that change might look like. Look Andrew Palmer. Hello Andrew. taking a little launch, late launch to watch and how can it be possible that his podcast is four of my faith people on it? I. I, do it for you, Andrew. That is, we're all here for Andrew. Yeah.

Honestly, we were talking about you relentlessly before we hit record. It was, an Andrew Love fest. Okay. And I don't know what to say after the words Andrew Love fest. So I'm just gonna quickly Awkward silence. Yeah, awkward silence. And then, move on. okay. So that was the previous piece.

And then this. Okay. Something exciting in WordPress court. I love this. really interesting. Let's hope that 6.8, comes in a timely fashion. So this is the idea. This is written by Felix Ants, who I believe is a Googler. I wanna say he's Yes. Yes. Okay. I'm getting nods. Okay, great. Yes. and Felix, has been working with the performance team, I believe, and he's talking here on the make wordpress.org channel.

The article is called Speculative Loading in 6.8. This is so clever. This is such a neat little way of getting. Like tweaking a great performance improvement really for, I, want to say not much work. The engineering is probably a lot of work, but dear listener, your WordPress website will not need almost any work for this to, to take effect.

And the idea is that we use something called the speculation rules. API it gets baked into core. It's been tested on over 50,000 WordPress websites as a plugin. And basically what it does is when you are moving around on a website, your mouse hovers over a link. There's this tiny little window of time in which you don't click.

Your finger hasn't yet descended on the bottom. And that tiny little amount of time is impossible for you to calculate, but your computer has gone. Looks like this person wants to go to this website. Why don't we just start loading it just in case they click and it's a fraction of an amount of time.

it, what is it? It's something like nwt 0.1 of a second or something. But the point being it's loading in the background. so that when you do finally click, either it's all ready to go or it's partially ready to go, and it's just such a clever idea. And across the board, the prediction is that this one little tweak will shave 1.9%.

Off, off your LCP score. So 2%, let's call it that. And what do you have to do? Absolutely nothing. It's gonna be baked into core, basically no settings. And, this is the way the world's going. All the major browsers, I say major browsers. I don't think, Firefox has got this quite yet, but Chromium Edge Opera, those kind of things, they've all got it and it just seems like a really neat idea.

This article goes into the weeds of how it all works, but, I have two thoughts. My first one is hooray. Very clever. My second one is the environment. Which is what are we doing? do we need to load that? is it that important that we, shave this amount of time off and we're always talking about sustainability and needlessly sending pixels across the internet and all of this kind of stuff.

So I'm sitting somewhere in the middles, and so I'm just gonna throw that to you. Do, you like this idea? Is this something you're welcoming for? And now that I've thrown that sort of alternative view of it, is it potentially a thing you might wanna switch off depending on where you sit on the whole environment and the internet debate?

over to you.

[00:31:20] Merieke van de Rakt: I think the question here is, how often is it wrong?

Because if it's Good point, If it's, right, like in 99% of the time, then, that's totally fine because then you won't, you'll click it anyway.

[00:31:35] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.

[00:31:36] Merieke van de Rakt: But if it's wrong, like in half of the times, then probably it will be an environmental thing.

And then I'll be against it.

[00:31:44] Nathan Wrigley: that's an interesting point. and I read this article from top to bottom and I have no recollection of the, percentage, the probability that, that amount of hovering leads to a click. But my guess is it's gone on some algorithm, which is as a very high

[00:32:00] Merieke van de Rakt: Yeah, I think so too.

Yeah. That would also be my suggestion.

[00:32:03] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah. and in the plugin, they test it with a slightly more aggressive setting, so it would, earlier say, you're probably going to load this next page. whereas the setting that they will use by default in core is quite conservative. It's actually called conservative.

[00:32:27] Taco Verdonschot: Which means that it will be correct in a larger, number of cases.

[00:32:34] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. In fact, they use the, phrase which I love, I dunno why, it's being pre fetched with conservative eagerness. It's great. I love that. so yeah, I think you're right. So conservative there I guess means we're gonna err on the side of caution.

Yes. So the amount of time that mouse is there is not okay, the minute you hover over any link, let's start loading it. There's gonna be a little bit more to it than that, but just absolutely fascinating that there is a period of time in which the mouse set. You can imagine it can't you? You're moving the mouse around.

The mouse slows down as it approaches. The link hovers there, and then the human brain goes, okay, I've arrived. Now let's finally do the click. That tiny portion of time is enough of the computer to go, Hey. Let's get on with it. We know what's coming and, such a, little tweak. But, yeah, like you said, in this case, a pre fetched with conservative eagerness.

Eagerness. Yeah.

[00:33:32] Taco Verdonschot: And, let's be real, if you already have a fast loading website, it means that loading time goes down to practically zero.

[00:33:42] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.

[00:33:44] Taco Verdonschot: so if it is even half a second that it gets that advanced time to load before you've decided I'm gonna click this. and your website takes 0.6 seconds to load, then for the feeling will be it's instant.

[00:34:04] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. it will be. Yeah. So user

[00:34:06] Taco Verdonschot: experience on a fast website will be absolutely magnificent.

[00:34:12] Nathan Wrigley: It's interesting 'cause it makes me wonder if so WordPress, 43% of the internet, if every website gets this and everybody's scores for let's say lighthouse and what have you, if they all calm down, IE improve.

does that mean the goal code goalposts just get moved from Google then? 'cause that well, everybody's good now we need to make it even more difficult to get these good scores. I'm guessing probably the answer would be maybe a bit of a yes. So yeah,

[00:34:38] Merieke van de Rakt: but not everybody is good.

[00:34:41] Nathan Wrigley: No. Okay. Yeah. speaking of this, speaking of good, Bob thinks it's a bad idea.

he says it needs to have opt in or opt out. Yeah. So if it does have opt outs, yes. so it has opt out. But my understanding is there's not much in the way of settings. If you opt in, you just, it's on. but there are settings if you're a developer, as you can see here, yes. There's ways to customize it in code and what have you.

yeah.

[00:35:04] Taco Verdonschot: And I can imagine that someone's going to write a 10 line of codes plug to. Add some settings in a UI for those who don't want to do this in code.

[00:35:16] Nathan Wrigley: So Marcus, you've got like a really like dynamically driven website with a ton of data moving around. So you've got maps and you've got these queries about events and jobs and what have you.

I'm presuming this is the kind of thing that would appeal to you, because if it can shave, I don't know, a quarter of a second off your, your load time, that would be a good thing, I'm thinking.

[00:35:38] Marcus Burnette: Yeah, absolutely. And the WP world would be in that group of 50,000 that have been testing that. because I've had the, performance, plugin with the speculative loading in it, on the site for a little while now, and it does make a difference.

I will say I was, hesitant at first for maybe not quite the exact same reason as you with the environment. but just thinking about. People who are paying for data on their devices that have data loading in the background now, whether they click on it or not, and also just bandwidth on websites in general.

there's more bandwidth if, they're not clicking on that link, there's more bandwidth being taken that maybe wouldn't have been taken up previously and at the scale that WordPress is, if it's wrong even a percent of the time, yeah, times 40 plus percent of the internet. That's still a lot.

Yeah. that being said, I think what ultimately the, best news is, that there are two, two pieces to it. There's the WordPress side of speculative loading that can continue to get better over time, but it's also using native browser technology that will also continue to get better over time and will close that gap of.

How often it's wrong. And so I think between those two playing nicely together, figuring out where that sweet spot is on how to determine whether somebody's gonna click on those links or not, I think will, make some of that a non-issue.

[00:37:16] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I'm waiting for AI to figure out all the links I'm gonna click over the whole year, frankly.

Yeah, just go ahead and click them for me and I'll just preload for the whole of 2026, even articles as yet Onri on written. It's just gonna figure it all out for me. It'll happen. It's bound to happen. but there you go. Interesting technology are not one, I've gotta say, not one that I'm seeing being talked about in other communities.

So maybe we're pushing the vanguard a little bit in the WordPress space with this. I, so I do think that, the performance team has a history of really pushing sort of state of the art stuff to WordPress. Yeah. Pretty much everything they've been doing so far has been. Quite game changing.

Yeah. That performance team, like I've hid it out the park so many times in the They're really

[00:38:08] Merieke van de Rakt: performing.

[00:38:09] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, they're doing, ah, that's good. I wish I'd said that. Damn. Okay. Yeah, they are, they're getting like top grades, getting an A grade. so thank you to Felix for writing up that piece and also the performance team for doing all the bits and pieces now.

Okay, here we go. It's not lost on me. The irony of what I'm about to do, I am a white male, so is Tacho. I. So is Marcus. And this show, frankly, was gonna be entirely occupied by four white males. And, this happens. I'll tell you how the booking for this show works, just so that I inoculate myself a little bit, even though you are gonna say it's not good enough, Wrigley, because it isn't.

I have a booking system, which is a spreadsheet, which a few select people. Taco is one of them they can book onto and they just pick dates that they want to go in. And the other one is a link, which I spread far and wide to anybody who wants to come on this show. And it's occupied on a first come, first served basis.

Okay? So that's how it works. But something interesting dropped in the news this week, which makes me feel like I, we can't talk about this. And Tacho was very gracious and he said, look. We really can't talk about this. We need other voices and we

[00:39:33] Taco Verdonschot: should we, yeah. We still should talk about it,

[00:39:36] Nathan Wrigley: right? Thank you.

But I don't, wanna be accused of like being insensitive, saying the wrong thing because I am probably part of the problem. Okay. There, having said all of that, Ray Maray posted a piece this, oh no. So I should say Tacho in the background, reached out to, a lot of people and asked 'em to come on the show, and sadly many of them couldn't because I had other bits and pieces.

But I'm very grateful to Marika for joining us today. And actually, I'll say the stupid things. Yeah.

So good. Thank you. Brilliant. That's great. Can we have you back every week? I'm definitely outta room. Yeah, just over there. and so Ray produced this piece this week, which is leaning into a load of work, which has been done by her and various other people, since, the backend of last year now.

We all know what happened towards the back end of last year, and as, Locke would have it, or the opposite, I think is probably the case as Locke would not have it. This, piece that they were, that they were talking about dropped at the same time as the whole bruhaha with automatic and WP Engine.

But here we go. So Ray Moray in the repository wrote this piece during the course of this week, it's called WHO Leads WordPress Businesses. The data confirms it's still not women. And so this is WP Includes, which is co-founded by Shavonne McGowan. she, I believe, is she 10 up or is she human made? I don't wanna, she's neither.

Oh, is she not?

[00:41:13] Merieke van de Rakt: She was human made. Oh, that's, it's already out there, right? yeah, she's

[00:41:18] Taco Verdonschot: at Patch

[00:41:18] Merieke van de Rakt: Stack

[00:41:19] Nathan Wrigley: nowadays. She's

[00:41:19] Merieke van de Rakt: a patch stack now.

[00:41:19] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Shavonne, who was at one of the two companies I just mentioned, but is now at Patch Stack, co-authored a report with Ray. And they, got in touch with, a bunch of businesses.

The numbers are down here somewhere, 332 people across 90 WordPress businesses, gave their data and, you know, what's coming, right? It's just entirely predictable. you can imagine. But the bottom line is, so it's related to, female representation. At the top of WordPress companies, 4% of companies, have only have pledged to WordPress is five for the future initiative to have women in their top leadership roles.

Only five of the 69 WordPress VIP agency partners have a woman in their top leadership role. More than half survey respondents report, report to a male manager with only one in five. Having a female manager, nearly a quarter of women surveyed, said that they have experienced bullying, harassment, and or discrimination due to their gender in the workplace compared to 4%.

Of men. That is an eye warring difference, isn't it? one in five women have had their judgment question due to their gender compared to 1% of men. It just goes on, doesn't it? 55% of those surveyed report to a man, only 24% to a women. This piece, you just read it. who leads WordPress businesses? The data confirms it's still not women.

Now, at the risk of putting my foot in it horribly, I'm just going to hand it over to Marika, who, as the bio confirmed at the beginning, is really quite a remarkable person in the WordPress space. It turns out what you did was entirely atypical.

[00:43:03] Merieke van de Rakt: Yeah.

[00:43:05] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, it was, yeah. what do you make of this? And I

[00:43:08] Merieke van de Rakt: noticed that especially when we were doing the acquisition process, we talked to a lot of.

Companies and I was often we, it was covid, so we did it all online. So I was often the only woman in a box because all the other ones would be, men except for new full digital, which we ended up, selling to. Yeah. But all the other ones were. Mostly men. Yeah.

[00:43:36] Nathan Wrigley: So all of that, like we can't rewrite history.

All of that is the case. And, obviously, you can be, you could take apart, raise survey numbers and say, 390 odd, whatever it was, is not that many. And but it's what we've got. So let's just assume that is broadly speaking, true. Firstly, it's a bit of a sad indictment. I do wonder if the tech industry in general, has this kind of skew, I'm afraid

[00:44:05] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah. With, every, every bit of research that I've seen over the past 10 years on this topic, the tech industry is not in a, good place. Diversity wise,

[00:44:19] Merieke van de Rakt: no. And then WordPress is actually not as bad. So if I look at, if we go to conferences, then word camps are the most inclusive. conferences there are, they're really, quite inclusive in, what kind of people are on stage, compared to other, communities, especially if I compare with the SEO community.

But the SEO community actually made a big, so they were really bad and nowadays they're not anymore. So they're, they've also caught up with us. But I think WordPress was. Really good at that. And that was also something that was weird to me because I was the CEO of Yost and I didn't really feel oh, that would be a big deal or a big thing up until we started selling the company.

And then I saw, oh, but everybody, like in the top levels, they're all men and usually white men.

[00:45:20] Nathan Wrigley: It's really interesting because I, don't, work in a company, it's just me. And so I really don't see the knock on effects of that. Marcus, you work in a big company, taco until recently worked in a big company, but obviously Yost was going its own way and.

Probably on this metric at least anyway, was doing excellent work. But yeah. Marcus, any thoughts on this?

[00:45:41] Marcus Burnette: Yeah, and like Marika mentioned new fold, CEO is female Sharon Roland. proud of that fact working at the company with a female CEO at the top. But, yeah, like you shared where you and I and Taco are not the right demographic.

However, I do have two daughters. Those are my children. I only have daughters and so my hope in all of this is that they have role models to look up to and, can see beyond, middle management or something as their like ceiling for opportunity. And I follow along with the same, news stories and read the same, through that lens, through the lens of a dad of daughters who wants to, make sure that they know that they, have those opportunities Right now, maybe it doesn't feel like they do.

I want us to be in a place where it does feel like that for, females entering the space. Young girls that are entering tech in general, or WordPress specifically. That, the ceiling is truly the top like everyone else. so interesting

[00:46:56] Nathan Wrigley: that you use that phrase ceiling.

'cause if I just put the screen back up, the piece, obviously, it, it's easy just to lay out all of the problems, but here's an interesting phrasing of it, and I'll quote directly. Ray says, the report highlighted a. Both a glass ceiling, keeping women from top positions and a broken role preventing women from stepping into leadership roles at all.

And I'll paraphrase the bullet points as well. Men are almost twi twice as slightly as women to believe. They had good progre career progression opportunities, sponsorship and mentorship programs, which have been proven to help women are rarely implemented in WordPress businesses. And women are three times more likely than men to spearhead gender equality efforts in their workplace, which, adding, as it says here, extra unpaid labor to their roles.

And then actually, there's a little bit more to it than that, but you can read the article. And then Shavonne has an interview with Ray in which this problem is spelled out because shavonne describes just how difficult it's to generate the time. Even in her own life as somebody that really cares about this, she makes the point that priorities are putting food on the table.

AKA, doing the good work of being an employee or an employer or whatever, and then worrying about the family and in her case, relations and children and all of that kind of stuff. And so doing this kind of work just feels like an, added burden, to the female people who end up having to do it because there doesn't seem to be enough, out there, enough companies out there who are doing this work.

So I, I don't know that this article is presenting the, here's the problem, here's a perfect solution. This is more of a here's the problem, what do the community think about it? But, I was just highly aware that, it doesn't, the optics are not very good. if I just drone on about it, like I've got a solution to it.

'cause I really don't. But, yeah, and you, say that and, but. Even if it was just you, me, taco and rob, and you don't feel like we should be talking about this. I think the burden rests on us just as much as the, females to make sure that we talk about this, make sure that we, do something.

[00:49:14] Marcus Burnette: It shouldn't be completely on, people who are worried about, taking care of their children and putting food on the table and all, it's everyone's problem. We should all be trying to figure out how we can make this, better for everyone. So interesting.

[00:49:32] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah, and I cannot speak from personal experience, but I'm happily married and a couple of years ago my wife was pregnant.

Was on maternity leave for a couple of months. Came back and at the end of that year her manager did, the, end of year appraisal and said, look, you've been away for four months, so there's no way I can give you a perfect score because you haven't been performing for four months. And even though that, the fact that he just said it like that, could have been reason to go to court because that would be illegal in the Netherlands to, act like that.

But what are you gonna do? What are you gonna win? Because it would be the end of her career at that company if she would actually sue the company for. You copy that a couple of bucks. So that's impossible. Yeah. So even though it's super frustrating and it is, there's laws against it, it still happens. And I can only stand there and support and hey, this is not on you.

This is the company's fault for not recognizing how well you've done this year. but it's super hard. So yes, when we see this happening in our own companies or with people around us, the only thing we can do is speak up and not. Let that burden be on the person that is being discriminated against.

[00:51:15] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. I feel less like I'm doing the wrong thing now. No, you're

[00:51:21] Merieke van de Rakt: not doing, I think you, we need everybody to, change it. And we should be aware that everybody has prejudice against men and women. It's re really important that women have prejudice against women as well. That's just how we are raised.

All of us And you. So I think it's very important if you hire someone, in, a technical company, that you'll have, a committee, the hiring committee that represents both men and women. So when I entered the, leadership of Yost and became the CEOI was the only. Female. But I think because of a role model, but also because I was more into the hiring process, we hired lots of more women also in the development department.

So having a women hiring people, that means you, you, end up hiring people that look like you because you understand those people. It's just as simple as that. Not because you don't like them or, but they, probably have the same humor. I like Dutch people because I understand what they do and other people think they're really, we're really blunt, but I understand, I know exactly how to pinpoint them and to be sure, that they can do what they supposed to do.

but that's not always the right choice to hire the one that looks like you. That's just the, safe choice. So I think having a committee that is consists of men and women and also people with a different background that will help in hiring, people. And maybe also in, in giving promotions and stuff.

[00:53:04] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. It's interesting you disclose in there that you just hire based upon, it's not a conscious bias. You're not thinking, okay, This is the laundry list of categories that have to be, ticked. It's just, you just hire the person. But if the people are all a bunch of white men, the glass ceiling is real, right?

Yeah. You're not gonna get through that glass ceiling because they are typically gonna hire people. I don't know how we solve that problem. The reason I said I don't feel quite so bad is because, my job really is to just raise awareness of things. I don't have to be the person that created the idea of any of these stories.

Other people wrote them, generated them. I just raise awareness about it. So I feel less, I. Weird about that. So I'm pleased about that. And and Peach has made an interesting comment as well, which is worth putting on. Sorry, Marcus. there are so many situations, so peach in area, I should say.

Yeah. Thank you. beautiful bit of highlighting there. Look at that. That's great. there are so many situations also where it's quite hard to prove that you were excluded or bypassed or gaslit because you were a woman. It's been truncated on the screen, but I'll read it out. and I, and may I add an older woman in some cases, so also age, getting into that conversation there.

And then she goes on to say, and yet you find out, later that a job you didn't get, even though you had decades of experience in a specific area, was given to a young man who tells you openly that he has no experience. it's just somewhat calling, isn't it? So I don't have the solution. I do have a platform to raise it.

If you've got more intelligent answers than I clearly have. Please step up, do your bit, make yourself known. I, think that the interesting thing because you said when you joined Yos leadership, you were the only woman. at one point in Yos leadership team, I was the diversity hire for being the only man did really well in terms within, yeah, within a couple of years that completely turned around.

[00:55:12] Taco Verdonschot: And that's the role models that you need. And, so having someone being the first to, to bridge that gap. Pulling up others, not because they're women, but because they're most qualified for the job but are now considered instead of dismissed due to prejudice.

[00:55:37] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:55:38] Taco Verdonschot: And I think

[00:55:38] Merieke van de Rakt: we need fathers like Marcus because for me, no, it's also been, I only have one daughter and I have three sons, and I see how they are now all hitting purity and she gets different, and I think she's the smartest of the bunch.

They're all lovely, but she doesn't feel like that. She's always been told that she's not good at mathematics. I don't know why, but she feels like she's not, because I think that's just a boy thing. So I. This is something I do every day. Making sure that she doesn't feel like she's any Yeah. I, any less smart than boys are.

and smart is often, is that correlated to how well you are in math? I, think women in general are smarter. What I, will say is that what I think the problem

[00:56:31] Taco Verdonschot: with a PhD here

[00:56:32] Merieke van de Rakt: Yeah. But that doesn't, there you go. No, I think the, IQs are equal, but there are, both, more men that are really, smart and weird.

And there are more men that are really, dumb. That has to do with the fact that intelligence actually is, no, you're not like you, you can talk. No, the intelligence has to is on the X chromosome for a bit. not all everything, but a large chunk of it is on the X chromosome. So that means that, if you are a girl, you have two X chromosome.

So it levels out. So you're not the weird ask

[00:57:05] Marcus Burnette: double smart I hard,

[00:57:07] Merieke van de Rakt: I think

[00:57:08] Marcus Burnette: in hiring, I think a lot of time it's finding the culture fit right and then teaching the gaps in the knowledge. I think if the culture fit is all men, then your culture is wrong. Yeah. I think that's where it needs to start, is figuring out how to have the right diverse, different perspectives, culture within your company so that when you are hiring for the culture fit, The pool is wider. It's not just that, young white man.

[00:57:36] Merieke van de Rakt: Yeah. it's a thing I hear people say, you should trust your gut while hiring people. If you trust your gut, you trust your prejudice. And that's I don't want to say don't trust your gut, but at least be aware that your gut is full of prejudice.

And if you, are hiring that, you should be aware of that. So what we would do at Yos, if someone would come in, which I wouldn't understand because maybe a different background or something, then that person would get an extra interview to make sure that we would not hire someone for the wrong reasons.

[00:58:13] Nathan Wrigley: Gosh, that's interesting. Yeah. Okay. So little like little steps that you can introduce in your company to, to offset that, to

[00:58:20] Merieke van de Rakt: make sure that you're not prejudiced because we're all are, and you can't, that's okay. But you can do stuff to make sure that you are. Not hiring someone for the right reasons.

[00:58:35] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, Interesting. Andrew Palmer making a comment. we should never be afraid to discuss issues that affect people. He says, yeah. It's interesting though, if you 'cause curiously, there's, not many subjects that I don't really feel comfortable talking about, but there are a few, and this is one of them.

And it's, it just comes from the abundance of not wanting to seem like. You know what you're talking about, because how can I know what it's like to, peach made the perfect comment there. I, haven't been turned down because of a suspicion that I have in the back of my mind that because I was a white male and I was looked over for that job.

I just haven't gone through that. So it's

[00:59:18] Marcus Burnette: ah, it's just as, it's just as valuable for you to say, I don't know, and make that be known. Yeah. Rather than saying nothing at all.

[00:59:27] Merieke van de Rakt: I am a, before I, the whole thing at the ocean stuff, I was a criminologist, but I wasn't a criminal.

[00:59:35] Nathan Wrigley: I was gonna say that sounds bad.

[00:59:36] Merieke van de Rakt: You can still study things that you're not a part of.

[00:59:39] Nathan Wrigley: That's well said. Yeah. All right. I like it. I, what I've learned from this is that I want more X chromosomes. That's, that's, I think that's what I need.

[00:59:50] Merieke van de Rakt: That's what you want.

[00:59:50] Nathan Wrigley: I want a world in which I. People care as much about my skin color, my gender, my religion, fill out the rest of that sentence with all the things as they care about the color of my eyes.

Yeah. nobody's ever coming up to me and going, what you got brown eyes? We can't possibly, or my hair color. I don't have any hair color. I have an absence of hair. But you get the point. that's the, I, that's my, that's the world I wanna occupy. Where those kind of things just, it's just not relevant.

Yes. I'm just, nobody's thinking about it. Yeah.

[01:00:23] Taco Verdonschot: But in order to get there, you do have to care.

Because, that's obviously something that a lot of people will respond is, but I don't look at color, I don't look at gender. I don't look at, except that you should. It's because there is a difference and it's super relevant.

And, the fact that you are. A woman or queer or, of a different skin color or whatever metric means that your journey towards that same interview, towards that same, position in a company has been different from anyone else's. And so we should care about all of those

[01:01:12] Merieke van de Rakt: up until it doesn't make a difference

[01:01:14] Taco Verdonschot: anymore.

Yes. Yeah. So that's the, I fully agree that I, hoping that day comes. That's what, we wanna get though. When

[01:01:21] Merieke van de Rakt: I was doing my PhD about criminals, I, won a prize, but it was only a prize for, females. So, I was like, fed up because I want to beat all the men as well, one my, this prize to make sure that there were more women into, I don't know, academia stuff.

But, I was annoyed by that because I wanted to win from, for everyone. Yeah, it's not, the best feeling. And I've had it a lot of times that you are on a stage and you know that you're only there because you are a woman. But I still go and then I'll just make the best of it. But it's not the best feeling you want to be there because you are awesome.

But then I'll think, I'll show them that I'm awesome. Yeah.

[01:02:09] Nathan Wrigley: Ray, could I make a request? Ray will be fast asleep at this point, but Ray and I speak fairly re frequently. I'm gonna make a request, Ray. I'd love for a follow up piece to see, not necessarily just to make us all feel good, but it was something about what, Marika said earlier about the WordPress space being potentially slightly ahead of the curve.

Yeah. I'd be interested in comparing the WordPress data. With just, I don't know, tech or anything in general, because I have an intuition that our community might be one of the communities that could advance this more rapidly than potentially other communities. I could be wrong about that, but I do, I have an intuition, although, prob certainly unscientifically tested that the WordPress community does tend to apply a little bit more thought to these kind

[01:03:03] Merieke van de Rakt: of things.

Yeah, it's the community and the business side of stuff, right? While the community is far ahead and the thinking about diversity, I don't know what the business side is.

[01:03:11] Nathan Wrigley: Good point. Yeah. I'm conflating two different things, aren't I? There actually thinking about it business side. Yeah. And the

[01:03:18] Taco Verdonschot: last, thing I would want is for us as WordPress community to sit back and say, oh, look, we're doing better than the, yeah.

Yeah. So we're there. I we're not, I wonder

[01:03:28] Nathan Wrigley: what perfection here looks like then that, because that's an interesting thing, isn't it? When you think about these things, what, would the goal be? the world is, I guess in every respect, the world has bits of unfairness thrown into it. So given that, it'd be interesting to hear from Ray and Shavonne what the, what the goal would be.

what would be a moment at which you say, that, that year was a measure of success. things happened, this happened, and we can say that we succeeded, we moved that forward a little bit. Kami says, so this is more broad political comment.

We're currently going in the wrong direction in America on this type. I, feel like the whole world has moved in a sort of slightly different direction. not just America, if you look at things in Europe as well. Yeah, things are definitely, on, the moves, shall we say. Ah, fingers crossed that things hard won will not be easily lost.

I think I just came up with a neat phrase. I think that's, I think that was quite good. I should just left out. Yeah, it just came right out. Can somebody write that down quickly? It can go on my, it can be my epitaph when I finally move on from this world. I've already forgotten it and I was so pleased to listen.

Good

[01:04:47] Taco Verdonschot: news is, it's recorded. Nathan. Oh,

[01:04:49] Nathan Wrigley: yeah. The

[01:04:50] Taco Verdonschot: whole thing of

[01:04:51] Nathan Wrigley: this

[01:04:51] Taco Verdonschot: podcast,

[01:04:52] Nathan Wrigley: hang on. I'm gonna write it down. One hour and three minutes is when I uttered the groundbreaking, sentence. It's gonna change everybody's lives. okay. Are we happy to move on from that story? Should we go on to something else?

'cause there's plenty of other things that we've got. Yeah, I think

[01:05:07] Taco Verdonschot: there's a related story that we should probably touch on.

[01:05:10] Nathan Wrigley: We did. Yeah. Funnily enough, we did cover this last week, but let's touch on it because I think it's important. So again, Ray, doing the good work. by the way, if you don't subscribe to Ray's news, just.

What the heck? Yes. just, go do that. So it's called the repository email. Ray does the journalism. Yeah. She actually writes the story. She knows what she's doing. She can actually write as a journalist because she is a journalist. And, she was, is a journalist, if She has a heritage doing this kind of stuff, and she really does the hard work of digging out the stuffing WordPress.

So bravo to her. Go and subscribe The repository email, we did cover this last week, which is why I didn't raise it too much. But, somebody with this impacted in, in a similar way, we'll just cover it briefly, was, Puja Deri, who independently, if you like, spotted that this was a thing and rather than, sort of Pont pontificating about it, I do, decided to get out there and do real things and, facilitate real change.

And as a result of the bits and pieces that Puja and probably many others did, look at all this, all these different bits and pieces that are going on in the world. Over the next period of time? really mostly in the month to come. smorgasbord, I'm glad I got that word in this show. a smorgasbord of things going on which are empowering women for WordPress.

Sorry, women WordPress Day 2025. Like I said, many of them have already happened, but it looks like there's a couple tagged on towards the end of the year. Puja and anybody else that was involved in that. Bravo. Bravo. Bravo. Yeah. Was there anything you wanted to add to that taco? No.

[01:07:04] Taco Verdonschot: Mostly just highlighting that, most of these events happened on March 8th, which is International Women's Day.

and if you look around, X or Blue Sky or Instagram, you will see, super inspiring pictures to show to your daughter Marcus. because it was absolutely fantastic to follow what was happening around the world.

[01:07:30] Nathan Wrigley: interesting when we say around the world as well, though. Look at the geography of these things.

Now, I don't know if it's just these were the ones that sort of captured, raise attention, but let's just go through this now. I dunno where this one is, this first one, but by Latin, I'm guessing it's Latin America somewhere. India. India, Africa, Uganda, Costa Rica, south America, India.

Bolivia, Guatemala, Nicaragua. it's interesting the geography of where these things actually,

[01:08:01] Marcus Burnette: those, were all of them. There were none in the US as far as I know. Yeah. Yeah. Interest. So interesting. Interesting. And none in Europe or Europe. Yeah. Or Europe.

[01:08:09] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah.

[01:08:11] Marcus Burnette: So that is interesting.

That's a story. I think it also, I think it also is a testament to the growth of WordPress in India and Uganda as well. Yeah. Which is definitely growing in those places over the last couple of

[01:08:22] Nathan Wrigley: years. Yeah. Kami has presented the most cryptic comment of the day. I think it's just the word title and, what did you mean Kami?

Did I miss a time? I think

[01:08:34] Taco Verdonschot: she means that, so now it's timestamped because she. Said it when you said, Hey, let me remember this sentence. I see. And you can use it for the title. She's, she's helping you timestamp. She's

[01:08:47] Nathan Wrigley: so good. It's not cryptic at all. It's just that I'm not that clever. I don't have enough chromosomes.

There's another one, it should be called that I don't have enough chromosomes. I love that. I love it when I make myself chuckle. It's the highlight of my day. I have a friend who I will name, he's called Jonathan. I won't name him more than that. He has this profoundly cool habit, right when he is feeling a little bit low or miserable, he starts laughing and he totally puts it on, and he starts to go and then he carries on ha.

And within 30 seconds he can't stop. Everybody should try it. I sat in a room with him and we did it and within 30 seconds it was like five minutes of belly ache, laughter. give it a go next time at one of your staff meetings that's going a bit flat. Just get everybody to do that 'cause it's guaranteed a win.

okay, here we go. Michelle Ette. I gotta put four 30 to participate in an online out one out of Calcutta. Thank you

[01:09:50] Merieke van de Rakt: Michelle. Wow.

[01:09:51] Nathan Wrigley: By the way, Michelle was on last week. I presume the situation is still the same. Michelle Ette, you all know who she's, she is looking for work. Meet Michelle online. she was let go from her current job about 10 days ago, I'm gonna say.

so if you've got any intuitions as to work that Michelle could do, we'd love for you to be in touch with her. yeah. Your statement about the sentence. Got it. Thank you. Sounds like the end of. Of the Mr. Happy book from the Mr. Men? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it probably is. He probably stole it from, do you know what the Mr.

Men book? No. Let's move on. No idea. I do. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Little books drawn by a, yeah. Very, basic artist in the uk. Just a little bit older little kids stories. We won't dwell on it. Let's move on. Okay. So speaking of online events or real world events, the, W-P-L-D-N, which is an event which I'm co-running with Dan Mabe and Paul Smart, we have a masterclass coming up.

So if you are in the London area and you are free on the 24th of April, one of the regular attendees called Jackson is gonna be doing a little, a little masterclass for the day. it's all about block theming for WooCommerce. So if any of that meets your requirements, head to Wpdn uk. Slash masterclass and, you'll be able to learn all about it.

It's on this page here, but it's gonna be in person. I think there'll be a select number of people, but, we'll be there. And, by the way, if you are in the WordPress community, the W-P-L-D-N meetup, which takes place on the last second to la I can't remember. it happens on a Thursday, right towards the end of the month.

It's now getting really popular again. Oh, great. I know we had standing room only at the last few, and, and so it's really great. I don't know, 70, 80 people in a space, which is designed for no more than that. Really good coming back. You should go someday. Yeah. Just

[01:11:49] Merieke van de Rakt: drop London. Yeah. We do it by training.

it works.

[01:11:51] Nathan Wrigley: You can, you can, yeah, that's right. Okay. I've managed to fill it up even more. That's brilliant. Yeah, it's great. It's really nice. And the bonuses you get to hang out in the middle of London and you can sightsee the next day. So anyway, this is happening, like I said, 24th of April if you want to be a part of it.

Another event. this has just come to my attention. Kyle messaged me about 10 minutes before we started this. So Kyle Van Dusen runs the admin bar very popular. website, Facebook group, all to do with WordPress and what have you. He's got an event, which is a live event. It's happening on the 17th of March, so a week today.

I can't see the exact time from that. Maybe it'll say somewhere on the screen. I can't see it. Anyway, he's got an, he's got like a, it's almost like a game show feel. Yeah. it's called name that page builder. And he's gonna be putting am Hines against Jonathan Ju Journigan, who is working with generate blocks at the moment, but has been, in the oxygen community in various other places.

And I think, I guess the intuition, judging by what it says on the screen here, it says, can you, think you can smell a divvy site, from a mile away? It's time to put your prowess to the test with the hottest new game in WordPress. Name that page builder. Join us live as two Pros am Behind, and Jonathan Jernigan battle head to head with their WordPress page Builder Trivia Knowledge.

yeah, you can find that. Google the, what do you think, what do you think a divvy site smells like? I'd reckon probably lavender, personally, maybe, that or cheese, some kind of Ian cheese difference. A very different, I'm

[01:13:29] Taco Verdonschot: so happy you didn't ask this question for Beaver Builder. Yeah. I'm not even, I'm moving

[01:13:36] Nathan Wrigley: on so fast.

Keep going. from that comment that's goes, whoa, crikey. I don't know, but I, have you ever played that game? We used to do it in the car with me and my mates when we'd go on a journey and we'd have to describe somebody that we knew. So not some like random film star, but it was usually somebody that we knew as a whatever and cheese was a good one.

So you had to describe somebody as a cheese, and then if nobody could get it based upon the cheese, it'd be things like as a piece of furniture. And you'd be surprised how quickly. You can figure out who the person is. It doesn't take too much. I lead such an uninteresting life. What's the matter with me?

best joke of the day.

Okay. Alright. I thought it was a bit just my

[01:14:27] Taco Verdonschot: personality, Okay. I,

[01:14:30] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, it's in caps, so it's gotta be true. It's all in caps. Nathan is cheddar. What the heck? Classic. That's the poor man's cheese. Works on everything. Wanted to be a nice Gorgon, Zola or something like that. But, there we go. Anyway, there we go. So that's, the page builder. name that page builder event happening next week. Go and Google it or go to the admin bar and ask Kyle how you actually get to this. The link is too difficult. It's a YouTube link, so it's a bunch of pseudo random letters and stuff at the end, so I can't read it out.

Okay. This is curious. This came out of the, the FIUs site this week, and I subscribed to this thought I think a little bit when I started using WordPress back in, for me, it was about 2014, I started dabbling with it and then a little bit later got more serious about it. I used to, really hang out at Invato and those marketplace, did you remember theme forest back in the day and things like that theme, forest Code Canyon and things like that.

And they are now something that I never use. I don't go to AppSumo anymore. I don't go to theme forest. I don't go. What do you do now? Oh, generally I just sit in the corner and, moan about inequality.

[01:15:47] Marcus Burnette: you've gotten

[01:15:47] Nathan Wrigley: to a place where people will message you about new products. but also, yeah, but also I, I go and I go to the individual's thing.

yeah. Usually it, yeah, I am driven, I think a lot by social media, so I'll hear about a thing on social media and I'll go to that thing, but I'm not going like my first port of call if I need a plugin to do a thing. I am not going to a marketplace and then hoping to stumble across the right thing. I'm going to Google or something like that to discover.

And then presumably I'll end up at some, top five. Plugins that do this, that and the other thing. That's the way I'm usually doing it anyway. This article is all about the decline in those marketplaces and whether or not the, the plugin vendors and creators are moving away from that.

And I, and for me, that's exactly what's happening in the, industry. And presumably you guys over at Yost, when you were doing your plugin, you went all independent. You didn't marketplace at the beginning, did you? No.

[01:16:47] Merieke van de Rakt: So for me, those marketplaces was never a place where Yost was in. but I, as a new plugin owner now see very different landscape as it was.

Like in 2014. And that has to do with the fact that social is so much harder to get traction from. So you used to just, when we used to do Facebook, I would just post something and it would get to all of our followers and in the end at jsap was no longer the case. It was really hard to get to, to reach people.

Even a few

[01:17:23] Taco Verdonschot: percent. Yeah.

[01:17:24] Merieke van de Rakt: Yeah. So I think there is a lot of saturation in the market, in plugins and stuff. It's harder to get your new product out.

[01:17:33] Marcus Burnette: Yo premium wasn't and isn't, but yo, the free version has always been in.org. Oh. We call it

[01:17:40] Nathan Wrigley: a marketplace. That's interesting.

[01:17:41] Marcus Burnette: Which would be a marketplace of sorts.

Yeah. there's. A fair amount of distribution value to be had for being in the.org

[01:17:48] Nathan Wrigley: marketplace. Do you know, it's interesting. I hadn't made the con, that's really stupid of me, isn't it? I hadn't really made the connection with, the.org being market, growing to be

[01:17:57] Merieke van de Rakt: Oh yeah. the, top SEO choice in the.org marketplace, I think something to do with the growth of you marketplace.

So, I didn't, so of course, but even there now is so much competition on on.org that if you, used to be like one of the few, no, not of the few, but there, were, there, there are so many plugins out there now, so it's hard also for an individual to find what they're looking for in in the repo org.

In Repo

[01:18:28] Marcus Burnette: Inpo. Yeah. I would, say marketplace alone isn't enough at this point, but there is some value to having a distribution channel like the marketplace. Yes, for

[01:18:38] Merieke van de Rakt: sure. For sure. That

[01:18:39] Marcus Burnette: gets you in front of people, especially for the free version that, that ultimately I think, drove sales for a lot of the premium.

Yeah,

[01:18:47] Merieke van de Rakt: and so for SEO is something people search for

[01:18:52] Nathan Wrigley: sure.

[01:18:52] Merieke van de Rakt: For Progress planner. Now people don't know that they need that, so then the, then the.org repository is just. Not as valuable because there's so many plugins out there and people don't search for what we offer. So it's hard to get that traction there now.

[01:19:11] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So I have a couple of observations from that. Firstly, in the article, it doesn't mention as far as I remember, and I read it a few days ago now, I don't think it mentions.org. So I guess it was, I guess it's placed, that article was written in the, in with a reference point of paid marketplaces.

Yeah. So you go somewhere and, everything that you buy, everything that you acquire is you pay some portion of the money. And the idea that you go there and you hope that the algorithm or the search or whatever boosts your product because it's been successful and you've got an, I don't know, a high star rating.

So there's that. But also I'm curious, and I'm gonna fire this one at Taco and you can say as little or as you, basically you can back out of this question if you want, given what Marika just said. And you are launching a new, not really new now, but new still ish, I guess this product progress planner.

What is. What's, oh, what's the plan for progress planner? what, how are you tackling that if.org is really hard if marketplaces don't exist? what's the, plan? I.

[01:20:15] Taco Verdonschot: part of that we're still figuring out. part of it is appearing on podcasts, putting Progress planner in your title, getting people to go to progress planner.com, saying Progress Planner a thousand times, so that people who are listening to this podcast think, oh, progress Planner, maybe I should install.

So that's one. check our progress planning. he's beguiled, he's already become an automaton. I think we're figuring it out. And the reason for us to start with Progress Planner was to figure this out because we have invested in a number of other plugins and, the whole WordPress world has changed.

[01:20:55] Merieke van de Rakt: So for me it was also figuring out, okay, what works in 2025 and what doesn't work in 2025? Because I think it has become. Harder. And I, I don't know if the market is as good as it was a few years ago. There's a lot of things going on. but we're still moving forward.

[01:21:17] Taco Verdonschot: Yes. Yes we are. And yeah, and, my hope is that, in person events, like we have to work camps, like there's press con happening soon.

cloudfest happening, next week. stuff like that will also help getting the word out initially, probably to people we already know. But hopefully beyond that very quickly.

[01:21:44] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it's interesting 'cause I think you, one of your superpowers that you have over there is, you tcho. no, I'm not saying that to ingratiate myself with you.

I think that's true. I think you are, like really, recognized. You're quite tall. That helps. We can see you wherever you go, at these events. You show up to these events and, you are well known. You've got a heritage of doing the right thing and working at a company and becoming popular and well thought of and things like that.

I think it's really interesting and honestly, the reason that I'm asking this question is very selfish because I too am soon to have a product that I need to launch into the WordPress. Space and I don't have the slightest clue what I'm gonna do about it. And so basically I'm gonna ask Tacho, when this call has ended, how he's doing everything.

[01:22:36] Merieke van de Rakt: We can

[01:22:37] Nathan Wrigley: negoti

[01:22:37] Taco Verdonschot: get

[01:22:37] Nathan Wrigley: a price. That's fine. Yeah.

[01:22:39] Taco Verdonschot: Nice.

[01:22:40] Merieke van de Rakt: that's, it's something I think we're pretty successful in getting the word out. So because Taco says progress planner every other sentence, but that's not the same as people actually using it. And that's where we now, we're now like. T tweaking a bit on our proposition, because I think that's important too, to, so the fact that nobody searches for a problem.

We solve, we need to have people wanting to solve something as well. So the problem that we're solving isn't clear enough to people yet. So that's what we're working on now. Yep. So we're going to make that all clear.

[01:23:16] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, no, honestly, I'm really genuinely curious 'cause like I said, this is gonna be a thing that I've got to deal with in the near future, but the, these marketplaces going away, on the one hand it means that, people are going out and doing Googling and all of those kind of things, but also it just make it so much harder.

And yeah, interesting. So that was, on the MIUs marketplace. Sorry, Marcus. Correct. No, that's

[01:23:39] Marcus Burnette: okay. not speaking to the product side of it, where of course you have to have a product that people want to use. For me, I think if I see something show up in four or five different places, Ooh, I think.

At some point I say, I have to check out what this thing is. I've gone to an event and I've seen it. Said, I've listened to a podcast and they talked about this thing. I was watching YouTube video and it, came up in, this product review, or I searched and it was in this top five list.

Okay, now I've seen it four or five times. I have to check it out. So then I go to the site and then it's all about the product positioning and that's where the product side is important. Once you've driven people to the product, you've gotta then make the case for the product being used for them to. For, for them to check it out and pay for it.

But for me, I think it's just some level of saturation across different things. And that's, I think what Taco was talking about too, about being on this podcast and talking about it. Taco is making the rounds to different things, making sure that people talk about it. And now, I've heard about Progress Planner four or five times now I have no choice but to go check it out.

I need to know what it is. I've heard it enough times that I need to know what it is. Go to progress planning.com and check it out. But that's when the product side of it picks up though. And you have to say, okay, they've, come to our site, now I have to make the case for them.

Downloading it, trying it out, seeing, what it's all about. Yeah. There's a whole load of psychology behind that, isn't it? I think,

[01:25:02] Merieke van de Rakt: it's, Marcus just speaks about what science says. So it needs four or five pinpoints that a, consumer needs on average. And that's when they decide, okay, I'm going to, buy or try.

[01:25:17] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I mean there's no, direct relationship between the amount of television adverts that you do at the great cost of those and the, the cars purchased. But there's definitely a relationship.

[01:25:28] Merieke van de Rakt: Yes. Because when people stop doing those television ads, then those sales go down. Yeah.

There's a famous, example of a laundry detergent that didn't see direct effects of television commercials and then decided we're going to stop doing television commercials and then that entire brand broke down. So there is an effect, but you don't see it. Okay. And it takes a while. And we always think that we can do it tomorrow, right?

Yes.

[01:25:56] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, yeah. let's just have a look. Quick look here. do cost him print t-shirts at work camps for people thinking, what's that? yes. Does he's got it. Can I just say, interestingly. It doesn't have the words on it. Was that a conscious decision or, yeah, it does on the back. Oh, it does. On the back. On the back?

Yeah. fine, fine. At the q&a.

[01:26:17] Taco Verdonschot: Matt did in work.

[01:26:20] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. I didn't hear the beginning of that sentence. What did you say?

[01:26:23] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah, you can see the text on the back in the q and a that Matt did at work in Asia, because

[01:26:30] Nathan Wrigley: I was very, you knew where the cameras were very cleverly done. catch up on the latest WP Coffee, sorry.

WP Product Talk series that's covering a new plugin idea from launch week by week. Okay. Thank you. That's good advice as well. From, from Dave. It's just, I've just looked at the time and we've got quite a few stories to cover, but no time to cover them. and I haven't even started my banana yet. What the heck?

so we'll just quickly race through a, I've, made, tacho, cough. I feel quite, that was my goal at the very beginning. CLOUDFEST is coming up. Honestly. We have enough clouds in the uk. We don't need to celebrate them with a festival. But this is happening and WordPress is a big part of it.

This year. It wasn't previous years, but this year it's a really big part. there's a whole thing called the WP Zone and, Carol Inger, is running the hackathon and bits and pieces like that. I wish I'd had more time to cover it, but this is, an article very, nicely done by, Bob Don, that we all know.

Bob wp, and I'll just quote from the Top Cloud Fest. Coming up next week, the premier event for cloud computing and internet infrastructure professionals is taking place 17th to the 20th at the renowned Europa Park in Germany's Black Forest This year's conference introduces the WP Zone, a dedicated space to connect the WordPress ecosystem with the broader cloud community.

I dunno if it's sold out or not yet, but, I'm gonna be going for the first time and, there were a

[01:28:02] Taco Verdonschot: couple of tickets left last week, so it may be sold out by now, but Okay. Check it out. Cloud fast.com.

[01:28:10] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. And, any, are you guys going?

[01:28:14] Merieke van de Rakt: Yost is going, but turn off

[01:28:16] Nathan Wrigley: Yos de the person. Person. The person, okay.

Yeah, I was gonna say the whole of the Yost company is going. Okay, I'll, try and see him there. Maybe I'll challenge him into a server throwing, contest. 'cause apparently that's something they do. I don't, I would love to see the video of you

[01:28:31] Taco Verdonschot: competing against, yo, I

[01:28:32] Nathan Wrigley: think I'm gonna have a, not only not throw it very far, but end up in the hospital with some kind of problem with my bones.

I, I'm not built for throwing service techo. That's the truth.

[01:28:45] Marcus Burnette: It was a server accident. That's why you're in the hospital. That's right. Yeah. So you serve down

[01:28:49] Nathan Wrigley: No, but Wrigley is, he's down. He's down. He's not coming back up again. okay, so go to that. If you've got the bandwidth. I've decided to get the train, which I'm quite excited about.

Oh, cool. I know. Yeah. I'm very excited about it. it's quite a lot of changes here, there, and everywhere. Ah, but hopefully it'll be, it'll be a nice entertaining thing. Let's see what else we've got very quickly. Nothing. We've got loads of things that we could have covered, but we have literally run outta time.

I'll just say this one though. Do you want a domain for a hundred years? I, what? What's that? yeah, it's a nice idea, but I wonder how many people would do it. It's an interesting one. WordPress, dot com is selling domains for a hundred years, so you can lock it in. I'm just thinking about the town where I live, a lot of my town was different a hundred years ago.

It's hard to imagine what the future will hold in a hundred years or whether people will even be visiting domains and things like that.

[01:29:46] Merieke van de Rakt: No, you don't know. And is it very expensive?

[01:29:49] Nathan Wrigley: It is not cheap. but it, but they, after our, now where's it gone? Here we go. Yeah. Hundred years. $38,000. So it's, it's not,

[01:29:59] Taco Verdonschot: that's for, the hosting domain and hosting

[01:30:01] Nathan Wrigley: Precisely, right?

Yeah. the domain cost itself is a small part of that, but you get hosting for a hundred years and the intention would be that they give you all sorts of guarantees about, if automatic or.com goes out of business or what have you. These kind of curious guarantees about how it will, how it will keep going.

And you get one of those. To, to hold as well, which is fun. but I don't know, it seems like I just don't, I'm quite happy to pay year by year and I guess the, yeah, I guess you go, they introduced this two years ago. the, they got

98 years left already. What the heck? Pretty

[01:30:41] Taco Verdonschot: much, no. So they, introduced the whole a hundred year, hosting offering two years ago.

And the only new thing now is that you can secure a domain name for a hundred years without the hosting.

[01:30:55] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.

[01:30:55] Taco Verdonschot: and that's just two grand, but it's limited to a couple of TLDs.

[01:31:00] Merieke van de Rakt: Yeah.

[01:31:01] Nathan Wrigley: I am so profoundly bad at maths that I am chuffed to bits of myself at having a hundred minus two coming out of my mouth in real time.

That's, that's pretty good. I'm gonna have a bite of banana. That's how excited I am about that. Okay. That's it. We've got no more. I wish I hadn't eaten banana. Why? Because I've got, what was I, thinking? I'm now gotta wrap up with a banana in my mouth. Oh. Oh, folly. Nevermind. Yeah. But, gimme a minute.

[01:31:33] Taco Verdonschot: So maybe while you are finishing your bite of banana, can you quickly open up the Maine WPS 11th anniversary? Oh, yes. that would be quite nice to highlight because Thank you. People can get a discount

[01:31:49] Nathan Wrigley: 50 bucks off if you're using, or you haven't used Maine wp they've got 11 years under their belt now.

And, as a sort of way of demonstrating that they're offering $50 off main WPP Pro, every year, main WP is a self-hosted version of one of those services that's takes care of updating your website and does so much more. It is a properly credible tool. It's literally the first thing I do when I sit down at my computer every day as I log into my install of Main WP and, update the bits and pieces across the, across my Vast Empire website.

Mo, which is running of course. Yeah, there's that four websites. Yeah. Mo so Bravo to them, Dennis and team, for keeping that project going for 11 years. Seems like they've done a really fantastic job of growing in the more recent past, and so I suspect that, we will be hearing about them for many, years to come.

there were other pieces that I missed. Was there anything that any of you wanted me to desperately do? I think we'll leave some good stuff for next week. We'll leave some good stuff for next time. That sounds good to me. In which case, it only remains for me to do a couple of things. The first one is not eat anymore, banana.

The second one is to say a great big thank you to the people on the screen. So thanks to Tako and Marika. Thank you Marika for coping with the audio gremlins at the beginning. That was quite fun. Yeah. and also to Marcus Burnett, for joining us as well. Thank you. Thank you to you. If you joined us live or I nearly said dead then.

I really appreciate you joining us. It really does make the show a whole lot more interesting. really appreciates. We'll be back. I dunno whether we'll be back next week 'cause I'm gonna be at Cloudfest. Maybe I'll try and do it live from cloudfest. Would that Yeah, that'd be fun. From

[01:33:45] Merieke van de Rakt: a rollercoaster.

[01:33:47] Nathan Wrigley: Oh my. And Papa, come on. No, with a banana. What could possibly go wrong? we'll see. Nothing. You'll be

[01:33:55] Taco Verdonschot: strapped in.

[01:33:56] Nathan Wrigley: You'll be fine. Yeah, we'll see. I might try that. we'll see. I dunno. I dunno. tacho looks like you had something quickly to say before I the hands. Oh, we need to do the hands. The hands.

Yeah, of course. We're gonna do the hands that goes without saying. So thank you to guests. Thank you to cohosts. Thank you to anybody who joined. Really appreciate it. Oh, Michelle. This is how good my brain is. Michelle Ette, who's in the comments, has told me that I've already decided that I'm not doing it next week because of cloud first.

Thank you, Michelle. I appreciate it.

[01:34:26] Taco Verdonschot: Yeah, but now you'll be doing it from a rollercoaster. Yeah. Yeah. Now

[01:34:28] Nathan Wrigley: I'm gonna do it from a rollercoaster. That's great. Oh heck. And so it begins. See? Okay, I'll see you there, Patricia. We have to do the silly hands thing.

[01:34:40] Merieke van de Rakt: Do we have to do this? We

[01:34:41] Nathan Wrigley: all have to raise it.

Look Marika's what the heck? Look, there they are. We got 'em. We got all the hands. Thank you so much. We'll be back at some point in the near future for episode number 327. For now, thank you for joining us. We'll see you soon. Take it easy. Bye-bye bye.