This Week in WordPress #333

[00:00:04] Nathan Wrigley: It is time for This Week in WordPress, episode number, wait for it. 333. Entitled despite the technical gremlins, there were no technical gremlins.

It was recorded on Monday, the 5th of May, 2025. My name's Nathan Wrigley, and I shall be joined by three fabulous guests. I'm joined by Wendie, whose surname I can never pronounce, but she does during the episode. I'm also joined by Dave Grey and by John Overall.

It's a WordPress podcast, Guess what? We're gonna talk about WordPress.

We talk about the fact that canonical plugins have been raised as a possible avenue for doing all of the work around accessibility in WordPress. It got quite a lot of commentary in our live show. People seem to think that it was a good idea, maybe it was a bad idea, but this seems to be an idea which is gaining traction. Maybe some other things happening around canonical plugins as well.

WordPress 6.8.1 has dropped. Have you already installed it?

The free tickets that you can get for the Page Builder Summit will be useful for you next week because beginning Monday the 12th of May for a whole week, we have over 35 speakers lined up for you. PageBuilderSummit.com to find out more.

Do you fancy speaking at WPLDN? We provide an opportunity for you to do that.

And then we spend a lot of time talking about failure in terms of marketing to get your product in the WordPress space launched successfully. How do you keep the momentum going? What ideas are shared by our audience members, to help you in that endeavor?

And we talk about MailerPress, a new offering from the people at SEOPress to send emails from the block editor.

And a whole load of other things as well, especially around chatbots and AI and how much we really, don't like them.

It's all coming up next on this week in WordPress.

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Hello. Hello. We are back. It is this week in WordPress. It's episode number three. I think it's 333. It is a number. That's a magic number, man. Yeah. Three. Three. It's a magic number. Half of 666, which sounds quite sinister. however, if you are an avid follower of this show, you'll notice that it's completely different.

The, for a start, we didn't have our introduction music, which we normally do. And secondly, the whole show looks different. That is because the regular platform that we use has utterly collapsed. logged on this morning, completely broken, like totally dead. And so that's a bit of a shame. So I've had to cobble together this other solution, so it all looks a bit different.

I'm not sure what I have to click to make anything work, but hopefully we're gonna be able to model through. if we, have any technical kremlins or anything like that, I would urge you to stay with us. the video looks like it hasn't embedded on the WordPress website, so if you go to WP Builds.com/live, it looks like something got booked there.

Not entirely sure what happened, but it looks like something basically went wrong. So hopefully you found it on the YouTube channel. Anyway, here we are. I am joined as always by several, guests. As you can see, we've got John overall over there, we've got Wendy, whose name I can never get, so I shall get her to do her name in a minute.

And we've got Dave, Dave gets special mention, this week because he got a, he got an email from me about, I don't know. 12 hours ago or something like that, saying help, because our, who should have been coming on the show, MKA should have been coming on the show. He's got a bit of a crisis going on.

And so Dave has stepped in at the 11th hour. So I'm very appreciative of all of that. Let's go round the houses. Introducing everybody. Let's start with John. John founded the WordPress plugins A to Z podcast and over time bought on two different cohosts to grow the show. This podcast is still going strong after 16 years and focuses on the usage of plugins to enhance the functionality of WordPress websites and help others with learning about, about a variety of website and tech news and information.

And if you are looking at the screen, you'll be able to see where to go for that. It's WP Plugins, A to, and I'm gonna say Z 'cause you being Canadian, you say that too, right? I do. Canadians use the z The rest of the world use the z. Yeah, no, we don't. We're Oh, no. Brands with us as well. so yeah, thank you so much for joining us.

I really appreciate it. Joining also is, Wendy, can I say your first name and then you just immediately after I say it, can you say your surname or the, other bits of your name. joining me today is Wendy and she's on mute. No, let's try it. Let you missed my amazing pronunciation of me. Oh, we did, technical kremlins, you see right Here we go. And we're joined by Wendy. How in Feld? There you go. Exactly that. And, Wendy is, is, she was with us a few weeks ago. She's been on several times before. Wendy and I actually have a long and storied past years and years ago, both Wendy and I joined this thing called WP Elevation, which was run, oh.

I dunno, what do you reckon, Wendy? Was that like a decade ago that we joined that something? Yeah, I think it was something like that Pisha recently when it was, I think it was 2014. Yeah, Wendy and I were accountability partners and, I think, yeah, that's when I got to know you. But more recently we've been attending events and hanging out, which has been really nice.

But, ha I'll read the bio. It says, Hey, have you met Wendy? She's a dynamic force in the WordPress community. Started as a volunteer at the first word, camp Europe in Leiden in 2013. And she's evolved to being one of the lead organizers of the event in 2024, and is currently co-leading the communications team for the 2025 edition.

Professionally. Wendy spends her time [email protected], ON e.com. As a WordPress product marketing expert beyond WordPress endeavors, Wendy is deeply committed to fostering connections through, now I'm gonna say the love doctor, because I can't, pronounce that. word, a learning collective focused on interpersonal relationships until, and since two, 2016 as head nurse Oh.

She has been instrumental in organizing workshops and events that help individuals and organizations enhance their relational skills. You must be, you must be really hot in up for the, for the oncoming word, camp Europe. 'cause it's what, are we now, like four weeks away? Something like that. Yeah.

[00:08:15] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: I am. Very exciting. Very exciting. Yeah, it is super exciting and so much nice stuff going on and we have a great lineup. Yeah, really exciting. And still tickets available. There are still tickets available and if you actually drop a, you know when on a Google map you can drop the human and you go into street view, you can drop the little character.

[00:08:37] Nathan Wrigley: I had a little poke around Basel and never having been there before. I didn't really have any notion of what to expect. It looks magnificent as a city. I'm really quite surprised how impressive it all looks. Yeah, it's so cool. We were there in March to check out the venue and the river is in the middle of the city and, there are so many places where you can sit and hang and have a beer and, it has really old buildings.

[00:09:05] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: Oh, there's a dog barking outside. It's okay. It's okay. We can cope, with the dogs. But, anyway, yeah, there you go. Thank you so much and we will, I will be seeing you in a few short weeks time. That'll be fun. okay. And the last person joining us, as I said, stepping in at the 11th hour, so thank you very much, is Dave Gray.

[00:09:24] Nathan Wrigley: Dave started our wp plugins.com back in early 2023, and is the Man Behind Administrator Toolkit the number one plugin for site maintainers as voted for by himself? He says, no. I'll go with that too. Yeah, you can. There's two people now. his toolkit aims to reduce client related headaches by preventing them from breaking things or poking around a production site when they aren't meant to after 20 years in corporate live life, sorry, Dave is soon to make a bake for Freedom.

And he is off to his first word, camp Europe. So feel free to say hi. oh. I didn't read he both there. Yeah. That's so great. Oh, that's lovely. Three outta the four of us will be there soon. I've, I've, I sent out a tweet this week, because I'm gonna be hanging out with Mark West Guard who does WS one.

We're gonna go driving for a couple of days before the event and he sent me an AI picture, dunno if you saw it. No, but it was an AI picture of me and me marking a car and somehow cheese and and like cows and sausages and all and off in the air. And I thought it was hysterical. So I tweeted it and then Jamie, Marlin caught sight of it and I didn't know you could even do this.

He plugged it into an ai, I think he said it was Capco and something else. And he made a video as with that, as the first frame. What, why are we not having this video? it is a bit self-indulgent I guess. I dunno. But, but it was, it's so amazing. It, literally there's a random image that's the first frame now carry on and I dunno how much prompting you needed to do, but there was a road in the background, there was a car and it figured out that the car needed to, drive down the road and the road would recede in the background.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. okay, if you wanna see it, I'll see if I can find it later. Yeah. I dunno. okay, so apologies to anybody that's watching this because I don't really know how this platform works, excuse me, for the weird way in which I handle comments and things like that. first of all, influence wp.

So that'd be Ryan. Ryan saying hello. from a sunny and pleasant 73 degrees Fahrenheit, here in Charlotte. US hello too. and then we've got nomad skateboard saying, so I dunno what that emoji is. It's looks like a zombie. Okay. Zombie. All right. Okay. I dunno. I dunno. I dunno why, but, I appreciate it.

Hello there. Beautiful people says Marcus Bonnet. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Wendy. Dave, this platform just completely destroys your faces. The other one moves people up. This one doesn't. hey, there, beautiful people. Happy Monday from an already uncomfortably warm Florida. Oh. Dear me, Dave Dun says, he is driving with Ev.

Oh, driving with everything flying the air. Yeah, it was, that was the video I guess you are referring to. who's this one big, it says it was a funny picture. Okay. I'm gonna have to find it now, aren't I? let me see. I can, now that I'm on the communications team of the World Camp Europe team, I retweeted it because I thought it was so funny, oh, okay.

Oh, is that you? I saw somebody from WordCamp Europe had re retweeted it, so yeah. Thank you for that. good morning from Seattle, says Kami. Very nice to have you with us. Oh, it's a gremlin. Yeah, I said in a tweet for this. Oh, okay. Probably there would be gremlins because of the new platform. Got it. Thank you very much.

big. It's joining us from Munich. We're at seven degrees. Yeah, that's about what we got here. Tammy Lister. Joining us. Happy Monday. Sun is shining here. And and yeah, there definitely are technical grims because most of the comments I can see two or three times. Oh. this platform comes with bugs built in.

Fabulous. Yeah. Saves time. we'll see how we do. So I'm gonna raise up the bits and pieces that we're gonna talk about today. That is the intention. We are a WordPress podcast. Look at that. We all go to the wrong side. For a start, I tried to upload a logo and a little pre-op. No, it wasn't having any of it.

So whether or not we get to the end of this is anybody's guess. This is us WP Builds.com. We are happily sponsored, keeping the likes on over here. We've got GoDaddy Pro, we've got Bluehost, and we've got Omnis send. If you happen to run into any of those companies, firstly back away a little bit, it'll probably hurt.

But secondly, say hi and say you, you found them through WP Builds. So thank you to GoDaddy Pro, Bluehost Omnis. Send. If you wanna keep in touch with what we're doing, stick your email address into this form, click subscribe, and we'll send you a couple of emails each, week. One will be tomorrow when this episode gets repurposed as a podcast, audio and so on, and then one on Thursday and actually bigot who's in the comments.

It's, you. is gonna be on the podcast on Thursday. I was joined, to talk about, all sorts of things that have been happening in the recent past in WordPress. So it'll be me bigot, and I want to summon up the person's name and it is totally gone out of my head. And now I feel dreadful. There's a third guest and I cannot remember their name off the top of my head.

This is what we did in the recent past. This product seems to be getting a bit of attention. I dunno if you've come across this, you come across WP Sync Sheets. So I talked to, this fabulous chap and, he was talking about this product that he's built, and essentially it will allow you to get a Google sheet, put your data into the Google sheet, map it to any point on your website.

So let's say for example, it's a WooCommerce store. You can have your products, your images, all of it in a Google sheet, and when your website loads up, it will populate everything for you. And, it sounds like a bit weird, why would you wanna do that? and the point of it is, if you've got clients that just don't want to deal with the interface of WordPress and logging in, but they're really familiar with spreadsheets, so it's definitely worth checking out WP Sync sheets.

And I saw that Ryan, who's in the comments, he's had a bit of a, he created a bit of a partnership, I think since, since we released that episode. And now I feel better. It is Fabian cgi. He was the person that joined us on the podcast. I am so sorry being, do forgive me. It is my adult 50-year-old brain.

so that is our archive. You can find it just here, WP Builds.com/podcast-archive. And, yeah, it, his name was Arpi and this was the, this was the piece in question. Definitely worth checking out. Okay, couple of bits more. If you are in the London area and you're fancy coming to the WP ldn WordPress meetup is a meetup for WordPress people in the London area, and you would like to speak there, can I encourage you to, get on the bandwagon quickly, go to wpdn uk slash speak.

We would love to have you, we've got quite a few slots open for the rest of the year. We do it at the end of, end of the month on Thursday, last Thursday of the month. And we're looking for some speakers, WPDN UK slash speak, and the very last one from me. Is this little chap, this has been a lot of time in the making page builder a summit.

It is starting next week, and, we're getting ready. I've chopped up all the audio and the video and we're creating the close captions and getting the transcripts made and all of that. We're in, we're in that sort of final little bit where it's all gonna get tied up, but it's starting next week and if you want to join us, there are about 35 or so presentations plus a load in live networking sessions.

If you stick your email address into this little, ugh, sometimes on this computer, when I'm running live streaming software, I get that weird glitch where I click that button and it collapses to nothing. But it's anyone, I'm running a live thing. If you, if you put your name and email into here, we will keep you updated and, yeah, you'll be able to see a list of the great and the good who are speaking there.

over the next week. So look, all these people coming to join us, having a nice time. There you go. There you go. That's me, Don. Let's move on. Let's talk about other stuff. I. All right. Canonical plugins. Dunno if you know what these are. The idea mooted a little while ago was that, wouldn't it be nice if a bunch of stuff that could be in WordPress but isn't quite core, if It doesn't quite meet the threshold to be into core. It'd be a good idea to set up a bunch of what, what are called canonical plugins, which have the same status in terms of updatedness and security op checks and all of that as core, but you would decide whether you want them or not. And, Ray in the repository this week is writing a story about the idea of putting canonical plugins around accessibility.

so in other words, not focusing on accessibility in core, but doing it as canonical plugins. And, this came from Matt Mullenweg and the story goes like this. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, has suggested that accessibility improvements could be developed as a canonical plugin to help contributors respond more quickly to the needs of users who rely on assistive technologies.

And I'm gonna quote, I have, so this is Mullenweg speaking. Now, I have always been deeply committed to accessibility as a core component of WordPress products. He said the idea of a canonical accessibility plugin isn't about diminishing our commitment to accessibility at the core, but rather enhancing it.

Such a plugin could allow us to deliver specialized accessibility improvements in features faster. Then the core release cycle permits. Now, as you may imagine, the pe the, some of the people who are really into accessibility as their thing, they, they're not entirely convinced that this is the best way to go, is just, why not?

If it's an accessibility thing, why don't we just put it into core? 'cause that's where it belongs. So I'm gonna throw it over to you three and ask you, what the heck do you say? when you think about it, it should be in the, as a plugin, because the core releases, even the point releases don't come out fast enough when things need to change.

[00:19:38] John Overall: And if it's a plugin, they can make the changes in the plugin that'll impact the core a whole lot faster. And that way it's oh, we got this new piece that needs to be in accessibility. we don't have time to release a whole new version of WordPress in the core to get it in there. Just put it in a plugin, update the plugin.

and it mentioned there that it is at the high priority of. Updating in the plugin or in the core as far as issues go with it. This would make it so that accessibility is more accessible and faster to it. Yeah, it's an, it is definitely an interesting idea. I, think, it was being raised as an idea.

[00:20:18] Nathan Wrigley: I don't think anybody's saying this is what is gonna happen, but, yeah. Yeah. Dave, or, I can see that, but it is just that I see it as more responsive to it. Okay. But on the flip side, from echoing Amber's sort of comments that if stuffs are in plugins, that makes it sound like it's optional and you don't need it.

[00:20:38] Dave Grey: Oh, if it's in core, it shows it's got the priority and it should be there. So if you had like SEO plugin, you can run a site without it. But accessibility, if you've got some bits in core and some bits in the plugin, you can update more often then are you trying to fix things in that bit versus the other way through?

So it's partly the kind of how important it is versus the release schedule for it. So I can see John's point is easy to push things out more frequently, but it's also, you'd need to know about it, and it kinda just feels like it's a secondary thing because it's not as it should be.

One notepad in there. How do you do stuff? we just download it, but we need it, it should be there. One of the things that I read, and I can't remember who it was, it may have been Joe Dawson, but forgive me Joe, if I'm putting words into your mouth. somebody was saying that this stuff, it's not even gonna be an option for, it's certainly for Europeans in literally what is it, six weeks time or something like that.

[00:21:34] Nathan Wrigley: The, the European Accessibility Act basically compels you to do some of this work. Obviously it's difficult to determine whether you are entirely accessible. Feels like more of a, goal, a more of a journey, not a destination, if But, if it's not in core and you miss it, you may well regret when the, when the ambulance chasing lawyer comes around and says, what are you doing?

Wendy, anything? There's a few comments, but Wendy go for it. Yeah, I think I am, with Amber, Amber hint on this. She mentions in, I think in, in the article, that it basically creates double work. every site should be accessible, so it should not be an option. It should be the starting point.

[00:22:29] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: So putting it in a plugin, even canonical, would. First of all, it would create more work. And second of all, like Dave said, it would create the option to not have it. And we don't want that. it'd be interesting 'cause this whole canonical plugin thing, it's been talked about for, I don't know, 18 months or so now, and I, don't see them in the wild yet.

[00:22:52] Nathan Wrigley: Maybe there's some sort of place where you can get them and what have you already, but I don't know that there is. But it, I, I just don't know how they'll be surfaced inside of, for example, if you go to the wordpress.org plugin repository, will they get like special treatment? Yeah. They install a new WordPress install will like, Hey, we as WordPress recommend these plugins.

Ah, yeah. Interesting. I. but I do think that with accessibility in many ways, it makes it better for everybody. So why, have it as an add-on and not as the standard? So I guess the argument would go something along the lines of, you can be more versatile, a bit like John was saying, you can be more versatile if you put it into a plugin because you can, you don't have to worry about when the next release of WordPress is coming about.

If something can happen more quickly. That's good. And then the other side, which we've heard from Dave and Wendy is more along the lines of, it's gonna be a new requirement. Why not just put it in core? 'cause it might be difficult for people to find these things. Let's have a look what the comments say.

[00:24:00] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: Smart things to say about this as well. Okay, nice. Okay, thank you. sorry, I do apologize Dave and Wendy. I have no idea how to make it so that your face is not destroyed by the comments, but that's just the way this platform works. Tammy Lister says one thing to note on this is that design and other focus areas have had, she's disappearing.

[00:24:22] Nathan Wrigley: Wendy's no longer accessible. Have you seen that? She's literally become inaccessible. the other areas have had plugins for feature focus for a while. It's a balance. And I think we need to remember that it's not about focusing on it in core and nothing is simple. This is still Tammy. Nothing is simple, but also for a double one Y.

So ally things have variable needs. Again, it. It's all, it's about us having a conversation and exploring, to make it all accessible as a baseline. Cameron Jones, chips in. Hello Cameron joining us probably from the other side of the planet in Australia. I don't think it's a bad idea as such. It'll definitely help get things moving faster, especially with one major release per year.

Okay, so that's the wrinkle, isn't it? That's the bit which makes this all the more plausible maybe because if we've just got this one, I know there's gonna be minor releases and what have you, but, but the critics all make very valid arguments. that hasn't been the case for design though, as having it for design features that allowed us to explore and then fully bake to bring it in.

[00:25:31] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: I like that. Yeah. You like that? Using the plugin or plugin construction to experiment. See what works, and then if you have something solid. Move it to core. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Interesting. So canonical then being like a testing, it's like the a testing ground. I actually might be a language thing. I don't know what canonical means.

[00:25:54] Nathan Wrigley: Canonical is like the authoritative source of something. It's like the original, the immutable perfect copy of something. The first, if so that would contradict the experimenting and we'll see how it goes. Yeah. it does in that sense. Yeah, yeah, it does.

okay, let's move on. So we've got Dave Den not moving on, just carrying on with the comments. I feel accessibility updates is about removing barriers and fixing problems in core. So putting a plugin first sounds a bit. Weird. big it works well with the performance team. So it being canonical plugin, the idea of putting things in a plugin with performance.

Okay. It works well with the performance team. They push things into a plugin and then when it's further explored and tested, it makes it into core. Okay. and then Tammy chimes in and says, indeed, it's worked well with all the teams. where are we now? Tammy? Carrying on lots of comments today. This one's got you coming, hasn't it?

I think the conversation needs to be made around it. Is it canonical experiments or is it other? Again, it's critical to explore. It's not just about having an add-on. Canonical does have a certain status. If something is considered to be a canonical plugin, it gets that security update and it gets the, the sort of, the, it's inspected in the same way as if it was core.

Basically it's treated by the teams as a piece of core, but just separated from core. So it gets all of those checks and balances and, yeah. Wow. What a lot. I don't know what I think on it, but I can definitely see conversations happening on both sides and it seems to be that, we'll wait and see, but it's been mooted.

By none other than that. So we'll see where that goes. All right. Should we move on? Do you reckon that one's done? Am I getting any nods? Yeah. Okay, great. Oh yeah. Alright. In which case, let us go to here. This really, there's nothing to say here except just, if you're running WordPress websites for clients, you should have moved over to the latest version, 6.8 0.1, which just goes to show there are minor releases happening.

[00:28:08] John Overall: It does seem to be stable. Yeah. I've upgraded it on a few of my clients sites, yep. I've given up when I started in the WordPress space, I did this whole thing of waiting like for three or four days and letting everybody else experiment, and then I would, I just gave up on, yes. I still do because the experiences I've had over the last 18 years of WordPress is.

You'll go for a very long time with a perfect release, and then all of a sudden you'll get one that your particular configurations Yeah. Will just cause it. So I just wait. Yep. And I was a good thing on this one because there was a whole lot of error codes that were thrown out. They weren't errors, they were warnings.

But if you had. The debug turned on in your site, which some people do and don't realize all of a sudden errors are appearing on your site, or you think they're errors. So the, it is, it's interesting. the, thing that I've got nowadays is with the hosting companies that I use, I, you click a button and get a staging site, you wait for 40 seconds.

Yeah. And you got a perfect replica of the site. When I began with WordPress, none of that stuff was really, yeah. As easy as clicking a button, No, it was very hard back in the early days. Now it's easier. yeah. even my offerings have that click a button, get a staging site. Yeah. I did a, I did an interview with Andy Frain, quite a while ago now, probably about 18 months or something, where he was talking about the plugin rollback feature, which is now in WordPress.

[00:29:37] Nathan Wrigley: So hopefully if anything does go wrong, specifically around a plugin then it will roll back. And obviously we've got core, updating itself and you've got the option to update. So all of these lovely little interesting initiatives certainly do help. Anyway, you should be on WordPress 6.8 0.1.

[00:29:54] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: No, by now, that's really all there is to say about that. Okay. Next piece then is, and I have never done this before, and, so just let me have a moment if you don't mind. a friend of mine who I've interviewed on the podcast, really nice chap, he's called Leo Gal or Gopal, he, he reached out to me the other day, with a fairly heartfelt plea and it really tugged at my heartstrings.

[00:30:21] Nathan Wrigley: He's a, word presser. He's been in the community for many, years. He's done an awful lot of good in the community, and if you've ever listened to him speaking on any podcast or you met him in person, you will know that Leo is a thoroughly nice person. when, you know somebody's just really, deep down a nice person.

That's Leo. And he reached out to say that he, his mother, sadly, is very unwell, and I won't go into all of that, but basically she's unwell in a way that requires some fairly experimental treatment. In order to make her, again, an experimental treatment in the part of the world where Leo lives, is fairly expensive.

And, and so he said, is there any chance that you could smuggle into your podcast episode, a plea on my behalf? And I said, sure. So this is it. if you have any, if there's any money in your bank account, which is doing nothing, and you feel like being a, good citizen in the WordPress space, then Leo's got a website where you can go, maybe give, I'm not sure, give WP something like that.

But it's called Go Pals, G-O-P-A-L-S. Mom. I didn't know that was a domain. It's mom, MON, and, I don't need to tell you what it's all about. You can go and find out for yourself if you have an intuition that this is something that you would like to help Leo out with and, get from. He's currently managed to raise, 1000, just over $1,000 of the $8,000 that were needed, and I can tell you that the figure is a lot higher, than that as well.

Then, go and check it out. Go pals. GOPA Ls. Mom. Mom, we say mom over here. MOM. I, I have, I'm not gonna ask the anybody else to contribute to that, but, anyway, there we go. Leo, best of luck with that campaign. I hope that it brings you everything that you want. Okay. Dave, I know you've launched products in the past.

I have never launched products in the past, but I am going to be launching a product in the near future. And, and I've actually spoken with Alex, who is the founder of Siren Affiliates, quite a lot. And I'm guessing that this story is quite a thing which gets repeated in the WordPress space, and it's one of, he calls it a stalled.

Launch. And what he means by that is there's this great moment where you've built the website, you've built the plugin, you've built the theme or the block, whatever it may be. You spent absolutely ages doing it. You get it out there, you go on all the podcasts, the blog posts get written and it sells for a bit, and then it basically just stops, it, it just doesn't carry on.

That momentum doesn't carry on. Everybody gets excited by the latest new thing and so on. And and so in this piece, he's trying to figure out how to do that. And he's come up with this in interesting way, which I know that lots of people have explored before, of, partnerships launching the product, not just by yourself, but in, with many other partners, people whose product can fit in with yours or bolt on to yours or whatever it may be.

And Dave, I'm just gonna ask you as the product owner, amongst us, have you ever had this, you ever had this sort like, it's gonna be a great success, and then, okay, it was for a bit and then it went dead quiet. Very much I've not had a chance to read this through yet, but we all learn this afternoon.

[00:33:48] Dave Grey: But yeah, my sort of admin toolkit on there got like some initial sales through a Facebook group mention on that side and say like in the tens number on that side. So still low, but when you've gone from nothing, it's oh, I've actually done something. Then you kinda get a few other sort of deals and bits around the place.

And then it's case like, right? Some people have installed it, someone haven't, and then it's a case, right? How to then Market it and get more people aware on these things. So yes, it's very much like a common problem around there that's if you launch it, they will come. Yeah. And then they just disappear again.

And what longer term on there, it's like people say oh, do USCA for your long term strategy, but if you're trying to make something that people don't necessarily know that they need and could benefit from, it's the case of how to reach and educate them through. So yeah, that's a problem Zen time, but also it's just like you've got, if you are doing the plugin coding, you, probably really don't wanna be spending a lot of time doing the SEO piece, which will be never ending.

[00:34:47] Nathan Wrigley: There'll just be no end in sight to that. you want to get excited about the code and what have you. and I honestly, in the WordPress space, having interviewed many people over many years, this story is so familiar to me. And so it's nice seeing, Seeing Alex write it up and figure, actually let's spread the problem out a bit.

Let's get other people to help me. And and I can definitely point to a few examples in the WordPress space where you just join forces with people. They don't need to be massively successful already, but maybe together you can share out the burden of doing the SEO writing the pieces which combine.

I'll tell you which company is brilliant at this, and that's Maine, WP. main WP have got a fantastic product. It's like a, an update plugin for WordPress and it does so much more. You install it on your, on a WordPress site and then you can bind your other sites to it and it will update the things and it just does absolutely loads.

You can go and check it out, but because it does absolutely loads, they can find loads of partners that they can partner with and then they can do press releases. They can keep it fresh, they can go to other new audiences that didn't exist for them before. but yeah, so good luck. Good luck, Alex. I hope it goes well.

Wendy. Anything, John, anything on that? Yeah, actually, we are looking for something like this for computer, a partnership sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. So presumably not as a product, you are more after like media people or what is it you're after? The thing we are looking for is people who are not active in the WordPress community yet, but do have a WordPress website.

[00:36:31] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: So we would really, like to have some new people come to the Word camp because at Word Camps, let's be fair, it's very often people we already know and people we love and we love seeing those people. But, word Camps could use some new fresh people coming to the Word camp. The thing is, how do we reach them and how do we let them know that the word camp is happening?

So we talked with, people from the marketing, team for wordpress.org and they said, find influencers who are not in the WordPress, ecosystem. Oh, interesting. And we talked about that in the team and realized we don't know any, we don't WordPress influencers. Yeah. That's where we're now.

[00:37:25] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. It's interesting because where would you even land? what kind of people would you be looking for? So would it be like tech related, I don't know, podcasters or tech journalists? Or would it be like leaning into the people who are creating events? There's probably a whole industry of people creating events that would be kind, that'd be an interesting bunch to talk to.

[00:37:45] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: it would be interesting to come to a word camp. I think it would be people that at least have a website or use a website or, yeah, I dunno how you would, yeah. I think that's a really difficult knot to crack, isn't it? Oh. Maybe travel bloggers or artists or people who are also, who would also be interested in gaining, visibility with the crew that.

Yeah. So you're not trying to drop up new speakers or anything like that. This is just about attracting a different new audience of people that will show up to the event and be in the crowd and Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that, that's I think one of the, one of the things that I often note is when I go to the big flagship WordPress events is how old the audience is, how it skews towards older rather than younger.

[00:38:46] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you you look around, there's quite a handful of people who are, I don't know, let's say 45 plus. Oh. But if you were to look for anybody below 20, there's not many really. It's, in, in the era of TikTok and all of those fabulous things that you can do on Yeah. TikTok people that, yeah.

TikTok people there. You, oh, that's it. You've done it. If you can get through to the TikTok people and the, curious thing is if you could get through to one. TikTok. Yeah, just one person who's got like this huge reputation on something like TikTok. it's transformational, it'll be seen by millions of people, but it's trying to get those people to spend time talking about a WordPress event.

So comments? The, so I'm opening it up to the chat. If you've got any ideas that Wendy can, take out of this, just keep dropping in. I would love to hear, we did do a cut from the previous pod, podcast I was on with you. So we cut out the little piece where I say segue promoting. We Camp Europe.

Oh, did we, did that get cut out? Yeah. And that got, shared on Instagram and on TikTok. Oh. That way it got cut out. It didn't get cut and nothing by the way, but, oh, It's worth a try. what about this one then? Dave Den has made a suggestion, he says. sounds interesting. You could target graphic design influencers, come up with a poster to advertise the event.

You got the great city, you got the great venue, you got the, honestly, we've got this great example of two guys drive. Yeah, two guys flying sausages, cheese, that's all you, so honestly, all you need is ai. You just need AI to make some stupid flying sausage thing and you're off to the races.

that is a good idea though. I like that. Graphic designers. That's a cool idea, isn't it? 'cause there's tons of stuff in that, in the conference itself that would be about that. But having a competition for a poster, for example, I dunno. peach is joining us. She says hello. Hello, Wendy. Hello Wendy. and Michelle Ettes joining us.

She's saying hello as well. So dear Commenters, if you are watching this and you, and you've got any ideas, so what Wendy's trying to achieve is she's trying to get more people to come to Word Camp Europe and, innovative ways that she can market the event that aren't the normal traditional ways.

John, Dave, have you got any idea ideas for Wendy? I, yeah.

[00:41:28] John Overall: Not, off the top of my head, it's to, it is a matter of finding the younger audiences Yeah. And figuring out how to attract 'em into it. Because your younger audiences are not using websites as much as they are. Apps and TikTok and, even my boys who are starting to get in towards their twenties, and they're, Games. They're big in their video games, but they're not using websites yet. Like even when I was big into video games, I built a website for the game. Yeah. I, just don't even know if, I don't even know if the, younger people want that kind of online presence that we, I don't know that we craved an online web, like a website or if it was just, that's what landed, that was the first thing to land was websites.

[00:42:15] Nathan Wrigley: If it, that was it. Yeah. If somebody had come up with, if the first thing that had gone online was TikTok. Yeah. Would anybody have wanted to build a website? if YouTube had come before, websites, would anybody care about website? It is interesting. that's a good question. Yeah. I never thought about that one.

because my kids, I keep constantly trying to bang on the drum of you've gotta own your content, you've gotta own your content. Even if you put the stuff on YouTube, write the thing on your website, then post the video on, embed it into your website. 'cause then at least it's encapsulated.

and if it goes away on YouTube or they kill your account, at least you've got something. Yeah. they just don't care. The ephemeral nature of it is part of the deal. That's the DNA of the internet. To them. It's just I don't care. I'll do something else tomorrow. It's my homework from school.

[00:43:03] Dave Grey: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's exactly what it's, yeah. so there you go. TikTok is the norm, says Dave. Exactly. There's Dave Dunn, I should say. Not Dave. There's, there you go. I think we've answered your question. Wendy, you need to find tiktoks. Or start my own channel real quick. Yeah. Start your own channel really quick.

[00:43:25] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. And it seems to be successful on TikTok, you've just gotta do something either like massively. Offensive or really dangerous, or video up. I'm not the only person. I'm, I totally prefer doing either offensive or very dangerous thing. I don't know. My, my videos of my dog are getting lots of hits on my TikTok channel.

[00:43:46] John Overall: Really? Yeah. Really? Tell us more. You've got a dog channel. I have two, not a dog channel, just, I'm, every once in a while I remember, oh yeah, I've got TikTok and oh, I've got this cool video. My dog running into the water playing with sticks, graveling on the ground. I throw 'em on TikTok, they get more, audience than when I throw 'em up on my, on my Twitter channel.

[00:44:06] Nathan Wrigley: Honestly, it's infuriating, isn't it? There was a guy, and Dave will, I imagine Dave will remember this. There's a guy in the UK who during lockdown, he was a BBC sports commentator. He is a fairly famous Scottish, he's got a very famous voice because he's obviously doing, football commentary and things like that.

he did a few YouTube videos of his dogs. Everybody was stuck at home and he just, he's got his two dogs and I can't remember their names. I think one was called Mabel and one was called them. They just went absolutely viral 'cause he did commentary. Like it was a football match of, his dogs doing ordinary things.

okay, so she's picking up the, she's picking up the ball, she's gonna pass it anytime. Now she's gonna pass it. And there we go. Oh, tremendous move. And all the GG Aton is just moved a ball, a couple of inches, but the, it just went absolutely knot. It spawned a book series and everything.

So anyway, there you go. It says it's Mabel and Olive. Mabel and Olive. Did you remember it or have I just told you? Mabel and Olive, I adore them. Says pizza. There you go. okay, so sorry. It was really nice talking to you. I now need to go. I need to find dog videos on. You do. You've gotta go. Yeah, you do.

You do. There's a couple of ideas though. here we go. Get younger. Getting younger folks to word camps might be the best way into WordPress. Convincing them to va Oh, convincing them to vacation in Switzerland is much easier than to get them to build a site. We've been going about it backwards, so that's an interesting one.

Like labor, the amazing venue and the amazing location rather than the software. Like you have a nice time in Switzerland and whilst you're at it. Yeah. Come to, come and see some old folk. Yeah, that's right. Come and see some old folk. I like it. Yeah, that should do it. journaling your progress has also been growing.

Journaling for mental health. That's not something you can do quickly on TikTok. Okay, so journaling. oh. So journaling back to the days of, of blogging. So only they've given it a new name. So James, do you mean by that? That, that maybe Wendy should start like just a little TikTok each day or something like that outlining something that has happened.

the good, the bad, the terrible, the hair pulling, the brilliant of organizing the event, the bit of the event that she's organizing. That honestly, I would find that quite compelling. Wendy. I thought about that. I. Doing that last year when I was one of the lead organizers. but I felt we there should be consensus, about that Oh, yeah.

[00:46:49] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: Amongst all of us and there wasn't, so No. Okay. Darn it. Okay. Yeah. Unfortunately there's a committee that you've gotta, I guess you've gotta drive that through a little bit, okay. It's not a committee, but we were three lead organizers and if I was going, do a video every day or every week about what is going on, it will give away some of the things that we are oh.

Might not, very, that we wanna have public. I am very much for transparency. I think that I, I am, I think that more people, especially people coming. Or people not coming doesn't matter. Need to realize that work Europe is organized by volunteers and they do a lot of work and nobody is seeing it because we spend like the whole year working on organizing the event.

Yeah. And people are like, yeah, the food was not that good this year. that, oh, that must be so soul destroying. you've put your heart And so all of have all the complaints. That's right. And all that people can remember is, wow, the samosas weren't all that great. weather could have been better.

[00:48:01] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. the weather, what the heck? Yeah, there you go. That's quite a funny thing to do. Your TikTok about the complaints. this is what we did. We busted a gut and then we got this. But in a lighthearted way. we organized a word camp. What have you done this week? That's right, exactly.

[00:48:22] Dave Grey: Inher, well done. Yeah, exactly. Why we get to wear a halo this week and you do not. so I think there's some interesting ideas in there. So we're expecting by this time next week, Wendy, that you've got a million followers on TikTok and you've done something brilliant. And Word Camp Europe will be just massive pressure, the pressure. so all of this started, 'cause we were talking about Alex Standiford and his relaunch, with partners of his, of his plugin, which is called Siren Affiliates. So that was quite, let's move on. Uhoh. Yeah, Barry. But I didn't really have anything to Sorry. Go on. you hit your bandwidth limit, Nathan.

[00:49:06] John Overall: Yeah.

[00:49:10] Nathan Wrigley: Am I back? You glitch. You, glitched out. You're back. You glitched out. It's all good. Oh, good, Yeah, I'm not, I'm, I really don't have a lot of confidence in this platform, so I, described it to you as, I think we're hanging by a thread. And that thread was bought from a shop called Cheap and Dodgy Threads.

so we'll just see how we go. I'm back. So this one, the next piece up for discussion today is, from Ray again, it is the repository and it's a, recap of press conf. We didn't really talk about it last week because essentially the nature of that conference was that it was, I. Like quite secret.

Like obviously it happened. That wasn't a secret, that was public and everybody knew that lots of people were going and all that, but the, they took a different approach that there were no cameras recording any of the sessions. There was no mics to record anything. And and so you, the people that were attending it weren't really writing, okay, I did this and I spoke to these people and we did this and we did that.

So it was much more of a muted event. But in this piece, Ray pulls it apart, and explains why she liked it. And I think she really liked it. she almost like evangelical about how much she liked it, bringing back what the community wanted. She's got different headlines.

She's very, enthusiastic about, Raquel who organized it and how wonder Wonderful. Yeah. But to be fair, Raquel is amazing. Yeah. But even with Raquel being amazing. It sounds like this was on another level of amazing. It sounds like Raquel went like 10 x on it all. and also Raquel, I think was fairly, human in the way that she, approached that.

she was talking about the fact that it brought us to tears. It was the best thing that had ever happened, but also at the same time it was, tough and all of those kind of things. But the bottom line, I think, is that it was, just a brilliant event. It was an event, which, because it was small, 144 people showed up.

There was a lot of conversation. There was a lot of opportunity to bump into people more than once. Whereas a bigger event, maybe you'll hit somebody one time, hit somebody one time. There's a TikTok there. you collide, collide, that's the wrong word as well. You bump into somebody that's the wrong word as well, you.

You meet somebody once only, and then you move on and you spend the rest of the time, meeting other new people at this event. You were definitely meeting people over and over again. curiously, there was a bit in here where she says that, Mary Hubbard, who was there on behalf of Automatic, she's the, executive director of the WordPress project.

at one point when she was up on the stage, she had to be, she there, there was so much concern about her personal safety, given the fact that she has received some fairly, challenging, I think they even say death threats. Yeah. she had a bodyguard with her. Yeah, and the response that some of the things got during the session was such that the bodyguard apparently made their presence, felt got up and made it aware to everybody in the audience that, I'm the bodyguard.

You're gonna have to deal with me if you want to get to Mary. And I thought that was curious. interesting that, there was just a different flavor to the kind of q and a. It obviously, it was passionate and all of those kind of things. but the bottom line was what a fabulous event.

I'm guessing that it'll be run again next year. but I don't know. I now really wanna go. Yeah, I think everybody really wants to go. I already wanted to go, but yeah, it was, super far and really no business reason to go. yeah, me neither. Me neither. So it wasn't something that was on my radar.

And also, as you can see, if you're looking at the screen, apparently Mi Miriam Schwab is a badass. That's what, that's what it says on the screen. I did an episode of my, the Nice Show with Mark West Guard not that long ago, and I pointed out just how fabulous Miriam Schwab was on that as well. definitely worth reading.

If you, if you go to WordPress events in your location and you think you maybe, try something a bit different, then it looks like press con Was that, Hey, There you go, Wendy. Talk to Raquel. Get Raquel on the line and see what she did differently and, make a TikTok about, it's all about the tiktoks, apparently.

[00:53:50] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: Yeah. I wanna point out one thing that Berg is saying in the moments, about the fact that Mary needs a bodyguard is. Quite distressing people. It's madness, right? Not being terms, madness. it's insane. Yeah. People not being happy that they're not able to do a q and a. Okay. I can understand that.

You wanna do a q and a, but also sending death threats to someone because they're doing their job. no. yeah, can I just point out that my, the old platform that I normally use scrolls the comments into view, so I can see when there's new comments, this platform doesn't do it. And so I apologize.

[00:54:34] Nathan Wrigley: I've been missing all the comments that have been coming in the last minute or two and, sorry, I didn't even know they were there. so if you've said something, hopefully the other people on the, who are watching it live have been able to share the things. So where was that one? Who was that bigot?

Really? Yeah. There you go. Bigot. at the end there. Really sad to be a part of a community where Mary. Needs a bodyguard. I guess the, sort of, how to say it, the seesaw, the other side of the seesaw there is there, thankfully there's not many in the community that seem to behave like that.

My experience in the WordPress community has been just stellar a hundred percent of the time. whoever that was, I, I hope they, have a long, hard to think about it. it was a privilege to speak there, says. Yeah, she was there. Michelle Ette was there. She said, I loved press conf. Yeah, rub it in.

[00:55:26] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: Rub it in. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. see, Wendy, your natural kind of, your natural, the way that you are doing, I'm already engaging with you. Yeah, rub it in. There's a great TikTok video there. you could read through this article about how great press conference and Oh, yeah.

[00:55:44] Nathan Wrigley: Do the, do that. Yeah. Even Ray was there. if you ever have a chance for all people listening, if you ever have a chance to interact with Ray, I. From the respiratory. Is that how I can repository? Yeah, repository. do it. She is amazing. I shall do that in three days time. I'm, I'm having a chat.

We have a, three monthly podcast together and and it's coming around. This actually, yeah. Thursday. So I shall be doing, if our eyes were a thing in the physical world, Ray would definitely bring up mind if what? Hard eyes, you know the, yeah. Oh, that's nice. It was an excellent conference. As Zach Ray is amazing, says Cameron.

And, there we go. At that point, we can, move on. So press con basically gets the thumbs up, I think from everybody. Dave, John, anything to add before we, I just need to bring it to Europe so everyone else can. Get there easier. Ooh. Then Wendy can have an actual, falling out with them. The only thing I like all lights, I like, go on John.

Yeah. The only thing I liked about watching and hearing about press conference, that reminded me of the, early days of Word Camps today I attended Oh yes. Yeah. That was what it reminded me of is how the early Word camps were. 'cause we had two or three of them here in Victoria that I spoke at and helped organize back in the early days.

[00:57:08] John Overall: So I also remember being young at a Word camp. you've got all the things you, that's just brilliant. You could just record stuff like that. Wendy, have courage and go for it. I will, I will be your most avid follower. so there you go. Press Con. It's a bit of a win. And if it does come to you, I bet she's planning it in Europe.

[00:57:31] Nathan Wrigley: You've gotta imagine the success that it's had. Over in the, in the US you've gotta imagine the, some moves. agree with Marcus. What did Marcus say? Let's go back. Okay. So first of all, Kami, this is happening for many corporate execs in the us, not just WP Luigi effect. I don't know what Luigi Effect is, but on board thing, I think, is that something to do with, those two characters from the video game?

What? No, it, oh, look how old I am, guy who think shot the, corporate guy from an insurance company. Oh, Okay, okay. I was thinking of the video. What is that video game? That's it. I'm so aging myself. the video game,

[00:58:19] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: call them video games. Okay. So it wasn't that anyway. No, and I'm, laughing at a moment where I really shouldn't, but because you are absolutely right. Yeah. it's happening all over the place. It's not just WordPress people seem to be, yeah. very confident in their assertions and, very confident to go around, verbally beating people up.

[00:58:41] Nathan Wrigley: Tammy and Miriam says, Marcus Bonnets said their talks are worth the price of admission alone. Nice. That is nice to hear. A thousand. No. How much is that? That's a hundred thousand percent agrees with Marcus. and then there's that, I won't read it into the record, but you can see it on the screen. Yeah.

Gosh. there we go. Alright, so moving on from press Conf, this probably won't matter to either of you, I don't know, or any of you. I dunno if it matters, but here we go. The, the Mercantile, which is the official WordPress swag shop, has had a bit of an update. I don't actually know what it used to look like, but this is what it looks like now.

So it wasn't like this and now it's like this. Do you buy any WordPress? Do you buy like WordPress much? No. Can I just go on a total rant? Yeah, go on. Oh, wait, Hang on. You are really good at this. You are so good at this. Have you go winder up. Yeah, so the thing is their biggest size is to excel, which doesn't fit.

[00:59:48] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: So they should extend the sizes because we are talking about accessibility, but, being inclusive in your sizing is also accessibility people. It's important when you create products you want people to buy, make it size inclusive. Okay. Alright. Yeah, I hear you. so this, I guess does not have that, no.

[01:00:14] Nathan Wrigley: But you can buy, hoodies, t-shirts, the usual effect. I don't see any caps. Let's go browse to the store. Let's browse the store. What can we get? Is any of this jumping off the peg for you, John, Dave, any of this? Not really, no. I'm sorry. Does it run on WordPress in WooCommerce or if it's something bespoke?

Yeah. Oh, I don't know. Let's click, I'm not gonna click the buy now button, but yeah. Oh, little tiny children ones. They're cute. They're cute. and then I guess that's the one piece. What else have we got? Oh, here we go. So it's not all clothes. You can buy little, I don't know, I want to call it a file of effects, but it's a mole skin notebook.

You can buy all these bits and pieces. Anyway, it's now been brought into line with all the other brand stuff, you can find [email protected], which wasn't really a thing that I knew about. Okay. Back to Ray and the repository. We've already established how great Ray is. So this is the news that maybe this all put an end to us a lot, an ongoing story that's been going on since August.

Maybe this won't end yet. I don't know. Several accounts were, were taken offline, banned. I don't really know what the right word is, but quite a few people in the WordPress community, prominent people had their permissions revoked for things like wordpress.org and Slack and in some cases they were people who were doing, who were really involved in the nuts and the bolts in the article.

I think Ryan, Ew, who lives in the uk, I think Ryan's Australian, but he lives in the UK now. who. Is was a core committer, I dunno what the posture there is. his, capacity to commit was taken away. A bunch of other people famously Yos, Deval and a variety of others, their access was taken away.

now all of them are having their access restored, to all the things. And essentially they're gonna go back through, are going back through since August and they're trying to unpick and, bring all these accounts back. I don't know, maybe this marks the end of something or maybe it just for some, I don't know.

What are your thoughts in the comments as well as, as on the show? I was wondering, does it also mean that Yost is not a persona non grata anymore? that was a personal statement, wasn't it? I dunno if that was done in the spirit of. wordpress.org. That was that. So that was a comment that Matt Mullenweg made about Yost.

[01:02:50] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: Oh, and there was quite a lot that he said prior to that, wasn't there? He, made, he said a bunch of things about the relationship that they'd had. I don't know. In, all honesty, I'm not sure. But, yeah. So does this then mean that was a mistake or that they've just re rethought the policy?

[01:03:13] Nathan Wrigley: I don't know. I think there was, I'm, not really sure, but there was a, something with the lawsuit that happened last week where it was also mentioned. So maybe it had something to do with that. Oh, okay. So you've got some intel there that I didn't pick up on. So part of the ongoing lawsuit between Automatic and WP Engine, was there some, I'm not holding you for this to be true, but do you have a recollection that there was some aspect of these accounts that was brought up that might have been the catalyst for this reversal of the position?

[01:03:46] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: Yeah, there was a, there was a, conversation in post status, I think. Okay. about, the guy who also filed the. Thing. William? Oh yeah, there was, yeah. I don't remember that person's name. Yeah, that person. Okay. so maybe add it date wise. It lines up if it, if it has to do with showing, Hey, we are doing what you asked us.

see we are unblocking everybody, yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. and it would appear that this is now the official position. I don't really know how long it's gonna take to go back through and unpick all of that, but, there we go. I would love it to be, them reconsidering and thinking, Hey, this was just stupid.

Let's fix it. nomad Skateboarding. Thank you. Says, that's not a legal document. That's what the plaintiff is asking the judge to rule. Honestly, I just so don't understand the law. I'll take what you said. as read, Wendy is talking about the latest document listed in court listener. Okay, thank you.

[01:05:06] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, there's some, people watching this story closely, isn't there? there's quite a few, yeah. Quite. And I wonder if story, yeah, I wonder if they see this as like a good move or, whether it was, something that was forced or what have you. For me, it draws a line under that at least.

Anyway, I'm just glad that these 32, people are now able to communicate with the people that they're, they were able to communicate with whether or not they, they have the same, posture towards WordPress. in the future will, will remain to be seen, but they go, repository, WordPress leadership, reinstates 32 banned wordpress.org accounts and launches.

Formal review. Yeah, I think, no Nomad has a good nomad skateboarding, I dunno who it is, but, he has a good point. People should stop sharing documents they don't understand. I agree, but also, if new documents come up, and it is being discussed, I, I don't know anything about it, but I am following closely.

[01:06:13] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: and I don't understand legal documents, so if someone can, could explain what I'm looking at it, it's super helpful because someone is sending me the stuff and then I don't know what to do with it. so I don't do anything with it. But in the post status conversation, people explain what we are actually looking at.

So that helpful. Thank you. And then Cam Cameron, you're still with us. Good grief, young man. It's, it's time for you to. really think about bedtime, I would say. But, here we go. Thank you. I appreciate your comments. Matt wants WP to Dr. that stands for WP Engine. Matt wants w WP Engine to drop the suit if that were to happen or if they were to settle out of court.

[01:06:59] Nathan Wrigley: I imagine WP Engine would want people on band. and then he says we might be getting closer to a resolution. Oh, okay. So you think it orgs maybe a, maybe something that's happening in the background to smooth over this whole thing? Interesting. Yeah. I'm glad we've got clever people in our audience because I honestly can't work this stuff out by myself.

this article needs clever people. 'cause look, it's got charts and maps and as soon as I see, oh, Wendy's swooning, oh, a pie chart is all it takes. this is lovely actually. This is, jewel, Shahar and Jewel, who is from, WP Manage Ninja. They, do the fluent products, so fluent CRM, fluent forms, that kind of thing.

And, he has been going through, he did on the April the 20th at least. Anyway, some of the, intel, the data surrounding the latest release of WordPress, so 6.8. And I think some of it in, in, when you just write it out, it doesn't really mean a lot. But when you see it in a chart, not only do you swim, but also it just makes it easier for my.

Adult brain to get ahold of it. So here's the first one. Apologies for people who are listening to this on the podcast. I will do my best. It is a chart saying, WordPress core contributors across recent releases. So it goes back from 5.0 right up to now, 6.8. And the remarkable thing is. This one, 6.8 had more contributors, 924 than any other during that period, which with everything that's been going on, I find quite fascinating.

I would've almost bet you that would've been in decline, but I'm just gonna rely on his chart. Anything on that one before we move on to the next exciting chart? I'm just partly wondering whether if some of the funded or other core contributors have been doing less so there's been more people doing smaller parts to bump the overall number up in.

[01:09:00] Dave Grey: That'd be my guess out looking into numbers. Okay. So the numbers might be belie a little bit more, inspection. So you are saying that because people who are, I don't know, they're full-time like Yeah, just seconded to do it full-time. If they stepped away, maybe 10 people are filled in the void that one person.

[01:09:17] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Interesting. Okay. That's a complete guess, but that's my only sort of thought on that side. Yeah. Other countries having. More involvement. It may be they've got more people doing smaller chunks. yep. This one I would've predicted, and this is a real swing towards, towards India in particular. So this is a, it's a map and it's got colored in, sections.

And basically the darker the blue, the more contributors, are from that particular region. And really the only dark things on the map are the United States of America, and India. So they appear to be the place where most contributors are coming from. Australia and Japan also notably dark and given the population of Australia, that's quite an interesting statistic, because, what is it, 25 million or something in Australia, India, 1.4 billion or something like that.

America, 400 million Australia maybe really punch in above its weight. So let's just move on. Here we go. This, explains it even better. WP 6.8 percentage contributions by country United States in the lead, but only just 13.9%, followed by 13.7% by India. So if this was like a hundred meter race, America won it by a nose.

They just got over the line in a millisecond before India did Japan Third. Interesting. Australia, fourth blamy neck, then Georgia. Okay. Georgia. That's fantastic. Italy is in next position. Then the United Kingdom, and I'll just read a few out, Spain, Bulgaria, Russia, France, Algeria, and then the slices of the pie get smaller and smaller.

But, that's fascinating from, for me, the Australia. the pivot to India and Japan is interesting. The, yeah, it definitely happening over there. that's more or less the same graph. been very similar. And then here we go. Thought this was interesting companies that make this work happen.

what's gonna be the big one? automatic. Although, you know what, what would happen if we redrew the graph now? Oh yeah. Yeah, it'd be a different graph, I imagine. 'cause automatic, along with many other companies, have really stripped things right back. But for this data, it stands automatic at nearly 40%, 37.9 RT camp.

Come on. RT camp interviewed Rahul from RT camp. what A guy. Fascinating. They just put their money where their mouth is. GoDaddy in third position. Followed by Kinter and Yost 10 op. and then Yost will be dropping as well, because they've dropped a lot of contributors. Yeah. Too. okay, let me do that again.

Automatic RT Camp. GoDaddy. Kinter, Yost 10 op. And then in a category, all his own Jonathan de Deros. he comes in at, what's that? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, seventh, all by himself. So good. I think, sponsored, I should say by Bluehost, but I dunno quite how that whole thing works because Blue House is the next That's amazing to be your own company and yeah, Do it all. But, also he's working for Bluehost and Bluehost is the next company down, so I don't, know if the two things get merged. It's not, the contribution he's doing are not the counting as the ones, that blue host is sponsored. Yeah. So basically sponsoring himself. Yeah. Yeah, And doing stuff for blue hosts, contributing. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. and, yeah, so that's that graph. And then where can we go here? There was a, yeah, this sort of similar, oh yeah, here we go. And then we've got, individuals. This one is individual rankings and honestly, some of these are nuts.

mama Duka who works for GoDaddy, who is based in Georgia, so I think this individual sponsored by GoDaddy is the reason that Georgia was on that graph. They win, they like, it's a competition. They win, 546 contributions. Wow. Somebody called WildWorks who works for Kinta is not far behind, but there's definitely a Gap.

461 contributions, Ty Axler. An automation coming from Bulgaria. Now we see there's quite a big gap, 274 Sergei OV working at Blue House two 60, and then you can see the, the line there. There's Jonathan 189. So I don't quite know how the one graph leads into that one. If Jonathan is that, I dunno how that works.

Anyway, the bottom line is, thank you, all of you, whether you are from my part of the world or a different part of the world, that's, that's quite a lot to take in, isn't it? I, but the takeaway for me is how Europe is WordPress is becoming a thing over the India side of the world, the Australia side of the world, the Japan side of the world is definitely starting to, to have much more prominence there, I think, than, than it once did.

Any thoughts on that? No. It's great to see all of that though. Indeed. How are we doing for time? We've got a little bit more time left, so let's crack on. do you send emails, any of you send emails out about your products or what have you? I should do, no. Okay. this is the problem we described earlier, isn't it?

need to be sending emails out on a daily basis. this might have, this might interest you. I have an a feeling that this is an automatic thing, but let me see if I can find it somewhere. I don't know, mail press. Maybe it's not, maybe it's got nothing to do with Automatic. Automatic Has a male poet Yeah.

Mail It won't be an automatic thing, would I? I dunno why. So that's when I saw that and you said it might be automatic. I said, why would they Yeah. Do that when they have male poet? Because male poet. I think you're right. Such a nice add-on plugin. I use it myself. Yeah. I interviewed years ago, a few years ago, I interviewed the original developer of it.

Maybe it's the way the site looks, the color palettes that they've gone for. And the the fonts and all of that kind of stuff makes me, lean towards that. Anyway, it's definitely worth mentioning. it doesn't exist yet this product, but it's called Mailer Press and they're obviously trying to get people to fill out this form to join the wait list.

I'd encourage you to have a little look at this video. It's pretty short, it's like a minute. But basically the idea is that you would build out your, you would build out your newsletter inside the block editor. And honestly, is it just me or is the block editor not the perfect formula for making something like a newsletter?

I think no. you with male poet, when you build it out, you do have to use the block editor Uhhuh. The one time I used the block editor. But yeah, it's. It works, but it, to me, it's not the best editor for it. So I, I use a commercial rival called Newsletter Glue, which has just been bought actually.

and they have a collection of blocks, which essentially mean that you make one post. And then you say to the content of that block, go in the newsletter. Go in the post or go in both. So you just put some his running shoes and starts running towards the newsletter or how does it work? What's that?

[01:16:59] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: It just builds up the newsletter with, the different blocks or? Yeah. So you write a post, basically you just write a post as you normally would and then, but then you say, this block put in the newsletter, but this one don't and this one do this image, put this in. So Oh, is per block? Yeah. Oh, that's interesting.

[01:17:21] Nathan Wrigley: So you write the post. Just like you would write an ordinary post, but you have to use their blocks because they're configured to output HTML in two ways to the post, but also so that it's, compliant with the rubbish that a, an email client has to read tables and all that. And then when you click publish it will send it to your, active campaign, MailChimp, whatever you want.

and it'll show differently. So if you said make it the same, it'll be the same on your website as it is in the newsletter. If you just wanna exclude this thing, it's really great. Honestly, I dunno why we're all not using it. mail code and I really like it. It is also in the dashboard.

[01:18:05] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: Yeah, that's what I like, mail poet because it can automatically feed from your post wherever you want. And also because it works well in WooCommerce for I. Yeah, checking out the emails for forgot, Hey, you left this in your shopping cart. Come on back and finish it. yeah, I don't think, I don't think the Newsletter Glue solution does this anyway.

[01:18:26] Nathan Wrigley: This is a new, this is a new one into the arena. It's called Mailer Press, and it does seem to be a similar sort of arrangement. You can see it's got, blocks here. I don't know, none of those look particularly like bespoke or anything. It does look like they're the sort of just the regular core blocks, but I don't really know what the setting are.

But you can see if you're watching this, you build your newsletter inside the block editor. and then send it and obviously it will then send it to, I, don't know if they've got a, like an integration with something, but definitely worth checking out Mailer Press. dot com. Certainly worth going to have a look and Patricia brings another one, fluent CRM, with, with their SMTP plugin.

That's another option as well. Ah, yeah. And I presume you could do complicated workflows with flu CRM, if this, then that kind of add tags and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Newsletter Glue just doesn't, doesn't do anything. Newsletter sounds like a newsletter. Glue Imitation. Yeah, it does.

The mailer press, is that what you're talking about? Cameron? it, that was what I thought. But with Newsletter Glue being very expensive, for want of a better word, if you go and look at the pricing, you might be, you might know what I'm talking about. Maybe this is gonna try and undercut that.

WildWorks is au. So he's one of the Japanese contributors, presumably, who's adding to the bottom line there? ba I think I'm doing a bit of Googling. mail press is created by the folks behind SEO press. There you go. That's probably how I heard about them. 'cause I use SEO press and and probably I'm on their email list and maybe they sent me an email from Mailer Press.

So there you go. Now we know. anyway, go check it out. Mailer press.com. How much time have we got left? Not a lot. So let's crack on very, quickly. If you're into, Educational materials in the WordPress space. WP Shout have got a course. it's, I think you know, it's on sale now. It's called Modern WordPress Fast Track, learn to build High Value Block themes and plugins with ai, and automation in a 10 week focused course.

I'll link to it in the show notes, but it is called Modern WordPress Fast Track. I was gonna say more about that, but I won't. ba. Which one shall I go to next? Okay, we'll step away from WordPress for a moment, and we'll go to this one first. we all, nobody's ever satisfied with their email and, cloud Flare have decided to step into the game, and they're, offering a service now called Zero Email.

And what a cool domain that is. It is the, literally the numeral zero. Email and, they're saying that they're going to use what could possibly go wrong. They're gonna use, they're gonna use AI to, to neaten up your inbox experience. So potentially writing replies for you, figuring out which things are important and what have you.

Honestly though, I am on Team CloudFlare, so if somebody else had come across and said, we're gonna just ai the, wazoo out of your email, I would've been like, I don't know. But it's all to do with CloudFlare workers. I am definitely gonna give it a spin. my email inbox is a mess. No matter how much I try, I can't wrangle it into shape.

So I don't know if anybody does it Does your inbox or does it also create your emails and send them without me asking for? so I would imagine it's not there yet, but all I did to get it going. Was I click the authorization, so I use Google's products email, and I just click the one button, log in with what, log in with Gmail, and I got this different interface from my Gmail account and it tagged things differently and it made decisions.

I haven't really explored it all that much, but it was definitely doing things which Gmail doesn't do, and it was doing without me asking it to do anything. so obviously, now CloudFlare knows every single thing that I've ever received in an email. I dunno if that's good or not.

but it says it's an innovative email client that leverages AI to simplify e on the email management. It offers users a seamless and efficient way to handle their inbox. It's designed to work smarter, not harder, ensuring that you spend less time on the email and more on ma what matters most.

Don't they all promise what matters more than email only? that's right. That's exactly right. But it's using CloudFlare workers to make it all happen. So anyway, you can go to literally the numeral zero email. And, sign off. And you too can be, having AI in your in. There'll be nothing left for us to do soon.

Imagine. We're just gonna sit behind our computers and watch TikTok movies from WordCamp goers, because no, we'll be, we'll cl we'll spend the rest of our time on planet Earth cleaning up the slop that AI gives us. That's what's gonna happen. yeah, I dunno. Anyway, go check it out. That's interesting.

What else have we got, Jo, before we finish? let's go with this one. More ai. Oh, more ai. less ai actually. Less ai. le less ai, but we're talking about it more. So this is the surprising conclusion. Who would've thought Kinta have actually got the numbers and it says AI has taken over customer service, but customers want humans back.

You're kidding. Isn't. I thought the AI chat bots were all really good at getting what I wanted really quickly. they're just so great. this is a, study of one, just over 1000 US consumers, so it's very America centric. And the, bottom line is basically, can we just. Can we stop with all that silliness and can we just have a human at the end of the line?

93.4% say that they prefer interacting with a human over ai. That is just such a damning statistic. 94%, it's okay, 76% to say, Hey, I like AI better. Who are those people need? No, that was the 6% was an AI that managed to find the form and was trying to sell out. when you're an edge case, which seems to me every time I contact support, I'm an edge case and the AI can't help me and I actually gotta get to a human who can make a decision.

[01:25:17] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: When you get to a chat, do you know Chatbox? Get me a human. Yeah, that's all I do. When as soon as I figure out it's a chat bot I spend, I just try to get the chat bot to give me the option to get to a human straight away. And actually I use, an email service to send out my emails. And the first thing, the bot prompt, and I think this is really smart of them, it says, I'm an AI if you don't want to use me, type live agent now.

[01:25:50] Nathan Wrigley: And so that's what I do. But it, I think that's quite nice. 'cause obviously if it was something that I could get from their docs or something and I just wanted to an AI to take on that task, that's fine. But the first option is basically we'll get the A out of your way and then they hand it straight over to a human who takes on the task.

So anyway, I just thought that was good. What else have we got? 71% encountered situations where AI struggled with complicated issues. No kid in Sherlock. 78.3% said humans resolve customer problem, customer service problems faster. 84 said humans are more accurate. 80% believed AI used primarily to save money and not improve service.

88 think companies should always offer a human to speak with as an option. 62% don't believe that AI could ever replace humans in customer service. The list goes on, you get the point. To be fair, what I do like about it, I, it's a national, bank holiday today in the Netherlands, so everything is basically closed and I had some things to take care of.

[01:26:56] Wendie Huis in 't Veld: I do that I am able to have a conversation with AI and file a complaint without me just generally having a, I don't know, send an email or, the availability has gone up. I do like that. I know I can send just a regular email that's the same thing, but. in that case, my, my preference was to do it through the AI chat bot.

[01:27:22] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, there you go. You are in the 6% and, and, no, not me. Yeah, look, you can shoot a whole TikTok about that. Somebody from LinkedIn, we dunno who you are, but hello, saying are the 94% willing to pay more for a real person to talk? I would argue are the companies who are gonna lose 94% of their business willing to stay in business?

because if everybody just gets up, unbelievably frustrated. I was saying just before we, what began this chat that, in the UK a lot of this is now under, review. A lot of the, companies who've implemented a lot of these AI solutions are now really questioning whether or not it will be something that they want to pursue.

The cost of business obviously is cheaper. Deploying AI because you don't have to pay them pensions and they work 24 hours and all of that. But, it's whether or not on the other end, people are, willing to put up with that kind of stuff. Cameron says he's too technical. Yeah, I'm with Cameron on that one.

[01:28:22] John Overall: By the time I contact support, I need a human to sort out my problem. Yeah. So Andrew Palmer is the person, coming in. Yeah. I don't know, I, know what you're saying, Andrew, but, is it in the best interest of humanity for 94% of us to be annoyed all the time when we're trying to get technical support?

[01:28:42] Nathan Wrigley: Or would it be better if the company's just said, okay, you know what, that is the cost of business. Let's, let's just swallow that and, and have it, do you know what's incredible is that this platform got us through the full 90 minutes. I applaud you platform. there's no way that should have worked.

It's by, it's a company called Stream Labs who, they're fairly big in the streaming space, but I've never used this stuff before, but they got us through it. So that's it. That's all I've got time for. Thank you very much. If you were joining us from a different part of the globe and you gave us a comment, really appreciate it.

That was a lot about accessibility that got you going, wasn't there? we fully expect Wendy to have launched a very successful YouTube channel by this time next week. Anything else is a mark of failure. I would say thank you. Yeah. but no, not really. So the only last thing we've gotta do, the slightly humiliating hand waving that we do at the end of the episode so that I can turn it into some album art.

So Dave, John, and Wendy, are you willing to give us, there you go. Willing to give us your hands? Give us a smile. There you go. There we go. And I would say thank you to our commenters and also thank you to our three guests. That's to John overall. Yep. To Wendy with the surname that I can't say. And Dave Gray, whose surname I can say That's nice and straightforward.

Yeah. And now I get to press this button which says, end stream. I have no idea what it's gonna do, whether it's gonna kick you three out. Or whether the world would explode. Let's explode. Let's find out. Let's find out. See you next time on this. Oh. Oh. I won't be here next week 'cause I'm at the page builder summit, so I'm having a week off.

I'm not, I'm working really hard on that other thing, but we won't be here for this. Enjoy. I'm looking forward to it so much. Me too. I appreciate it. I'm gonna press the button and see what happens. Let's see. Exciting. End stream.