[00:00:20] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there, and welcome once again to the WP Builds podcast. You have reached episode number 423 entitled What Just Happened, episode four, big events and Core release changes. It was published on Thursday the 29th of May, 2025.
My name's Nathan Wrigley, and in a few moments I will be joined by Rae Moray so that we can have a chat, and I'll explain more about that in a moment. But before then, a few bits of housekeeping.
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Okay, what have we got for you today? Well, I'm joined by Rae Moray from The Repository. That's an email that is published every week in the WordPress space. She and I have decided to do a quarterly podcast episode, summing up all of the different bits and pieces that have happened over the last three months.
When we started this show, there wasn't really too much to talk about. Now, of course, the WordPress space is just simply full of interesting news, and so that is what we talk about.
We've divided it up into different categories, and so for example, we talk about a whole load of community events that have happened.
We get into plugins, themes, and code, all the different bits and pieces that we've noticed.
AI and website technology takes center stage.
There's also a section which really kind of encapsulates hosting.
And then there's a community, Core, governance section and the list goes on.
We really do try and sum up all of the bits and pieces that have happened, and I hope that you enjoy it.
I am joined on the podcast again by Rae. Rae Morey. How are you doing, Rae?
[00:04:45] Rae Morey: Again. I can't believe this is what episode four.
[00:04:49] Nathan Wrigley: You thought it was episode three, but that's
[00:04:51] Rae Morey: thought it was three.
[00:04:52] Nathan Wrigley: it has been. Yeah,
[00:04:54] Rae Morey: Well, it's, it feels like, it feels like so long ago that we recorded the last episode and then so long ago,
[00:05:01] Nathan Wrigley: Well, I'll tell you what, there's a lot
[00:05:03] Rae Morey: the last one.
[00:05:04] Nathan Wrigley: the WordPress
[00:05:04] Rae Morey: There's a lot.
[00:05:05] Nathan Wrigley: but, um, Rae MoRae, if you don't know, um, has a fabulous newsletter. It's called the Repository. It's got a great URL as well. It's called Repository email. And, uh, if you haven't subscribed, what are you playing at? Go and get subscribed right away because Rae, officially, I'm, I'm labeling you the best journalist in the WordPress space.
So there you go. It's now, now official,
[00:05:31] Rae Morey: it's official. Do I get a little badge?
[00:05:34] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I'll make you a little, I'll make you a little badge. Um, but yeah, really every week,
week Rae drops a fabulous newsletter with all the news. I, I do something similar, but mine's just a bunch of links. Uh, and then you have to go and figure stuff out yourself.
Whereas Rae actually puts writing into it and thought and
[00:05:52] Rae Morey: Trying to do the figuring.
[00:05:54] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:05:55] Rae Morey: Yes. Thank you for that lovely intro. Um, yes, bringing, bringing folks all the news
[00:06:00] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, and there's a lot. So the endeavor of this show as, as we said, we're sort of four episodes in, is about once a quarter. So we're, we're not, uh, up to a year yet, but roughly every three months or something like that, we, we look back because Rae's got, um, you know, an archive of newsletters.
She can dig into that. And because I do my new show, I can dig into that. And then we just find, well, the endeavor was to find one or two stories that would be of interest. We've already spent about an hour and a half talking through this giant spreadsheet of about 40 stories.
[00:06:31] Rae Morey: We do this every quarter.
[00:06:33] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Heck. Um, so let's see how we go. So we're gonna chunk up the news into various different sections, loosely different sections. Um, but that's the endeavor of this podcast to, to talk through all of the bits and pieces that we found
[00:06:48] Rae Morey: Yes.
[00:06:48] Nathan Wrigley: the last three months. Do you wanna do any quick promotion, more promotion of the repository before we start?
Feel free if you do.
[00:06:55] Rae Morey: No, just, uh, you know, subscribe to the newsletter, the repository. Do email? Yes.
[00:07:00] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Um, so there will be a lot of the, the bits and pieces that we're talking about today. Everything will drop into the show notes. Quite a lot of it is in the WordPress community. Maybe we'll stRae outside of WordPress, but I think we'll try to keep it inside of WordPress. And so the first bit that we're gonna tackle, really, I suppose you could categorize as events, uh, bits and pieces that have been happening in the WordPress space.
Um, I just wanted to alert the fact that some big events have happened in the, in the period since we last spoke. So, for example, WordCamp Asia happened in Manila. That was pretty huge. WordCamp Europe is about to happen. We are literally weeks away from that and it looks like it's gonna be. Very well attended and what have, have you.
Um, and also there is, uh, a brand new event, which you personally were very involved in, which I think probably will be where we get to first. So press conf. Do you wanna tell us what your experience is there? You went in person.
[00:07:57] Rae Morey: I did. I was very lucky to go along with the invitation of the, uh, press Conf organizers, uh, obviously Raquel Manriquez, the um, the. You know, the person who organized this event, she, um, decided to bring back PressNomics. Um, and so. Essentially Pressonomics finished up in 2019 after a six year run, um, organized by page Lee when they were sold to GoDaddy.
And, you know, that left a real gap in the WordPress community for a, a business focused, um, event. And everybody kept saying, over the years, we need something. We need Pressonomics back, we want it back. You know, we, you know, let's get it back. No one did anything. Raquel's, you know, stepped up and done something.
So she, um, has organized press comp. The first one was held, uh, a couple of weeks ago in, um, Tempe, Arizona. And it was, it was really great. I had such a great time. Um,
[00:08:59] Nathan Wrigley: What's interesting about that is everybody said the same thing. They, I mean, it was a fairly small crowd, right? I think it was like 140 something people that were there. But by design it wasn't like, you know, only 140 people showed up. There were, that was the number right? That was always gonna be the maximum amount.
So it kind of more or less sold out at that number. So was the intention then to keep it like small deliberately, and, and if so, how did that, how did that work? Was there, were there benefits to it being smaller?
[00:09:27] Rae Morey: Yeah, it, I think, uh, I think honestly they would've liked more people. I think they could, they've got capacity for more. But, you know, this being a first time event, uh, I think the, the, the numbers were quite comfortable. 140 was good. It was, it was large enough that if, that, when, um, I walked around, I was able to meet a lot of new people, and it was small enough that I kept running into the same people all the time.
So. Rather than having, you know, quick flyby conversations that you might have at some really large, uh, you know, flagship word camps. I was able to, uh, catch up with a, with a few people over and over and, you know, whether it was going, sitting next to each other a session or going for coffee. I ran into Roger Williams from Kinter on the Hill when I went for a hike one morning because I couldn't sleep because of jet lag.
Um, but it, it was just, um. The ideal conditions for, for having really meaningful conversations with people, and it wasn't so much like this. The sessions were great, but the real value out of the event was, was these often serendipitous, unplanned conversations. The, the going for a walk to grab coffee, the running into people and or just joining a group that was talking about something and, and, you know, being part of that conversation there, there were just lots of opportunities for that.
And, um, yeah, that was, that was a real value. And, and I guess because it was very business focused, everybody there was open to, um, learning, to sharing advice. And, um, and listening, and it was, it was. Very, I mean, for me personally, it was very valuable because I was able to, to learn a lot from other people, share ideas, talk about everything that's happening in WordPress and, and even what's happening with my business.
'cause I'm a business owner too. And, um, it was just a really great environment. The, the sessions are really fantastic. I was lucky enough to host a couple of really great ones. Um, I hosted a fireside with Mary and Mathias. Um, Mary Hubbard, of course, executive director of WordPress and, and Matisse Ventura, who's lead architect of Gutenberg.
And so that was a really fascinating chat that I would love to have written a story about, but I can't because what's, what happens in the sessions at press conference state, the sessions there, the idea is that people are encouraged to be there in person. So there's an understanding that you don't share what happens in the sessions.
And I also ha um, hosted a really, um. Opening, I would say session with Kareem, uh, Maki from Crowd Favorite, who spoke about what he's been up to with, um, Yosef, a since, uh, calling for, for Matt, just to, to relinquish some control over WordPress in December. And so there was some, um, really great insights during that session as well that got a lot of folks talking.
So it was, it was a really, it was a really great event. Yeah, and I know that, uh, Raquel is already planning to host, um, an event next year. Um, I know everybody would love to go back again, who was there this year? All the, all the reviews I've seen have been, um, and the recaps have been really positive. It was just the event that, um, it didn't feel like a lot of work to be there.
Um,
[00:12:48] Nathan Wrigley: um, the listenership to this podcast is pretty broad and I, I would definitely say it isn't all about business. There's a lot of community people and, you know, people who are just using WordPress a little bit for their own. Um. Website, they might just have one install of WordPress or what have you. W would this be the kind of event that would interest them, or is it really the sort of inside the baseball of, I don't know, plugin developers, theme developers, people who have something to, for, for want of a better word, sell inside of the WordPress space?
[00:13:15] Rae Morey: I didn't feel like anyone was selling me anything and, and often people do approach me a lot to promote their products on the repository website. Um, I. I think it's definitely a conference for people who run some kind of business or, or represent a company. So I wouldn't, I would certainly wouldn't recommend it for hobbyists.
Yeah. But there were people, there were, uh, core contributors there, uh, other contributors in the WordPress space, so it's definitely. Somewhere that, um, like Tammy Lister, who's a, a long time contributor, she gave a a talk. So did, um, rich Tabor, who now works for Automatic. And so, you know, those folks were, were sharing a lot of their insights as contributors.
And, um, yeah, so there is, it is, um, it is a great event for a broad range of people, but yeah, definitely people who are very, um, clued to what's happening with WordPress and the, and the business community.
[00:14:14] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so another one worthy of mention probably is, uh, cloudfest, which happened. A couple of, uh, probably, I'm gonna say six weeks ago now, we're recording this right at the beginning of May, 2025. And, um, that happened as it always does at a theme park, uh, which is just bananas. I was lucky enough to go to that.
And there, there's a WordPress component to it. It's called like the word the WP Zone, but the, the event really feels like it's more for the sort of cloud. Infrastructure. So there's a lot of people there from, oh, I don't know, um, operating system, you know, like Red Hat, Linux, that kind of thing. But also, um, some of the big.
Security companies. So Black Wall was there and security and all of these kind of things, but there was just tons and tons of actual physical machines as well. But, you know, so racks people literally tell, trying to explain the virtues of their microchips and what have you, and it is just really interesting.
But the, the, the bit that I thought was the most interesting was the, the CLOUDFEST hackathon. Which happened three days prior to the main event, and that was, um, uh, not really invite, but it was kind of invite. 400 people applied, I think 111 were selected, and they all got together in a room for three days.
And with particular projects in mind, there was, you know, something in the order of about 10 or 11 different projects. And so the people hived off into whatever it is that they were interested in. Um, hacked away for three days and then there was, um, presentations of what they'd managed to do. And then finally some winners were announced and, um, and the one that won ultimately.
Um, was all about accessibility. It was kind of an interesting take on upload and accessibility, uh, you know, an infographic, so, you know, like a, a JPEG or something like that, which has just got loads of data held in it, but unavailable to anybody who can't actually see it. And then an AI would examine it.
And then append the image. So beneath the image, it would, in a, like an accordion, like a details block, it would then write what it thought was the, uh, the content of that, um, that data. Um, and it was profoundly good.
[00:16:33] Rae Morey: damn cool. Yeah.
[00:16:35] Nathan Wrigley: interesting. Did, did it in a heartbeat, but, but also, um, got into some of the really like fine bits so that, you know, there was a pie chart or something like that.
It was able to draw out which bits got which, and then write conclusions and summarize everything. And all happened in a, in a moment. But there were many other projects and at some point I'll be dropping an episode about what I made of that whole thing. But anyway, there was that cloud fest,
[00:16:59] Rae Morey: how amazing the, uh, you know, the vision just on that visually project. I spoke with Anna Kay and who led that team and, um, hats off to, to them for winning. It sounds like they created an amazing, um, plugin with a really switched on team that were really committed to seeing it through. So, yeah, congrats
[00:17:17] Nathan Wrigley: it, it was kind of interesting. So she, that she's now the recipient of the, the winner's medal twice in a row. She won it the previous year as well, but, um,
[00:17:25] Rae Morey: for accessibility, um, related products too, which is fantastic.
[00:17:29] Nathan Wrigley: So because they know what the projects are in advance, the organizers, so hat tip to the organizers, Carol Inger and various other people, um, they, they know what the projects are in advance.
So they pick people who've applied who they think will slot into one of those teams, one of the projects, but they don't assign them. So you listen to the project leader. Who obviously has assigned themselves to a project and then everybody in the room just decides who they're gonna work with. And I just thought there's bound to be some which are really popular and others which are not.
But it didn't work that way. Everybody sort of settled out and there were more or less equal sized groups. And then within a heartbeat outcome, the whiteboards and within about. A minute. The whiteboards to me were just incomprehensible. It was just like, right, we're gonna just put every nerdy thing that we can do onto this whiteboard, and then everybody would gather around and look and you know, it was just brilliant.
[00:18:18] Rae Morey: I saw some photos. I saw the security one, and I looked at it and thought, oh God, I can't, I have no idea what's going
[00:18:24] Nathan Wrigley: Obviously if you're drawn to security and the other eight, nine people on your table are really into that, you can just go straight in on the nerdy side, can't you? And anyway, it was just fascinating watching these people contribute and, and but also some of the teams, it's not just code and it's not just nerdiness.
They need like. They need to think, okay, in the end, we want a plugin, and if we've got a plugin, we need some graphics to go with that. We need like a landing page, we need a website. So it's not all about creating the project, you know, the code of the project. It's about creating the, the marketing around it, the, the landing page, the graphics, the
[00:19:00] Rae Morey: that's a, that's a smart thing, right? Like Carol's really set up the hackathon, so it's not just a bunch of developers just making something, just coding something, but actually proper teams that create an actual substantial thing at the end that includes even some marketing and, and yeah, that's how smart.
[00:19:23] Nathan Wrigley: I'll, um, I'll, I'll drop an episode in the near future about it, but yeah, so that, that has happened and no doubt it will happen again. And I think that the, the sort of companion event which is happening in the us uh, cloudfest us. I think they might have a hackathon this time around as well.
So we'll have to wait and see. But, uh, so, so there we go. There's a bunch of events that have happened. Word Camp Asia. Um, WordCamp US Press Con Cloud Fest. Uh, and then let's just drop this one in. Happening kind of on the periphery of WordCamp Europe. Coming up is, is a new event and it's called, I, now you've written it in the show and it says Grassroots alt control org.
I think it's official name is just alt control.org event. I'm not entirely
[00:20:05] Rae Morey: event. Yeah. So alt control org, it's organized by a group of independent, um, WordPress. Uh, uh, contributors people who've, who've organized a lot of word camps and WordPress events in the past, and so they're mostly from Europe and they've organized this event, I guess, um, as an alternative side event to word Camp Europe for people who are interested in.
The open web who wanna, who wanna have open conversations about what's happening with, uh, governance and, uh, governance reform and leadership transparency in the WordPress space. So, um, I spoke, I've published a story about it, the, the organizers, how, um, put out some tickets last week. Uh, all 100 tickets.
Were gone within a day. And so they've expanded the, the into a, uh, the, their, um, booking, uh, venue can now fit 200 people. So they've, uh, opened up tickets, uh, and it's a free event, so it'd be interesting to see how that goes. Um, they've got some really interesting speakers from the Free Software Foundation, from Typo three Association, from, um, also the WP Community Collective.
And, um, there's a panel with, with say, Reed and Yost ba, who's also working on a project called Fair. Um, yeah, I'd be interested to hear more about this one once, once it's, uh, happened.
[00:21:37] Nathan Wrigley: So it's happening in the same city, very, very close to the, um, to the main event, the Word Camp Europe event. I think it's a stones throwaway, really a short walk away, but it's just a handful of hours. I think it begins at 5:00 PM on one of the days at Word Camp Europe. So hopefully it won't, you know, hopefully there won't be too much in terms of overlapping.
If you want to do. Excuse me. If you want to do both, you'll be able to do both. Not simultaneously, but you know, one finishes and the other begins. But there, there's some kind of curious thread there. So you were talking about press conference, I think you said what, what is said in the room stays in the room.
And also this event feels a little bit like, maybe that's what it is essentially trying to do. You know, it's trying to raise a, a, a platform. Let's go with that. Um, for these conversations. So, yeah. And when you were at, obviously, I'm not trying to get you to divulge things that happened at Press conf, but did you, did you get a sense that people did loosen their tongues, for want of a better word?
Were there things said that you think that might not have happened in a, in a different spot?
[00:22:42] Rae Morey: Uh, definitely conversations you'd still hear at at word camps, but not, but PE people would be more guarded, I think.
[00:22:51] Nathan Wrigley: Yep.
[00:22:52] Rae Morey: Yes, yes, yes.
[00:22:53] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So let's see how that goes. Um, you'll be able to find all of the links to all of those different bits and pieces, the upcoming events, as well as the ones that have already happened. Obviously, the, the flagship events like Word Camp Asia will be happening again. It's gonna go on in Mumbai next year.
I'm not sure about the location of Word Camp 2026 in Europe, but, um, for now that's happening in June. In, uh, Basel, in Switzerland. Okay. Should we move on or is there anything you wanna drop into that events a
[00:23:21] Rae Morey: Very quickly. Um, I am interviewing the leads of WordCamp US 2025. There's been a lot of chatter about what's happening with it. I'm gonna drop a story in the next couple of days about that one, going ahead and where it's at and you can't move past your own event that's
[00:23:42] Nathan Wrigley: can. I'm so gonna move past my own event.
[00:23:45] Rae Morey: Quick, quickly mention, come on, page builder, a summit.
[00:23:47] Nathan Wrigley: You do it then
[00:23:49] Rae Morey: Page builder, summit 8.0 is coming up. Uh, I haven't been able to promote it because you haven't been promoting enough
[00:23:57] Nathan Wrigley: I'm so good
[00:23:58] Rae Morey: I need some more details.
[00:23:59] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I'm so good. There's,
[00:24:01] Rae Morey: So it's the 12th till the 16th of May?
[00:24:04] Nathan Wrigley: My, my guess is that this episode might have already it, you know, we might have missed it so you know it. Anyway, there it was. It's been and gone probably and all likelihood, but next time if we do a nine, which we probably will, then uh, you'll be able to check it out.
It's fun event. It's, there's a lot of, I'll tell you what I mean. You were talking about Raquel organizing that in-person event. That it, they take some time. They don't just drop out thin air. So if you are ever in an event that somebody else has organized, do, do, be, do, be sort of conscious that it, they don't just come outta thin air.
There is quite a lot going on and, um, and we do try our best, but we don't always succeed. But, uh, we, we try and succeed
[00:24:46] Rae Morey: Try, try, try.
[00:24:47] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, exactly. Okay, well thank you. I appreciate you dropping that in. Um, okay, let's move on. So this is, you could broadly classify this, I suppose as code plugins, something like that.
All of the bits and pieces attached, maybe hosting will get thrown in and a couple of things which have happened. Um, the first one I wanted to mention was Oxygen, which was a very popular page builder, kind of, well, obviously if you're in the oxygen community, perhaps it still is, but I, I don't know. But it kind of, it, it.
Sort of took a bit of a backseat because the developers of that, uh, page builder decided that they were gonna launch another page builder, which was very confusing to many people. They had this oxygen product, and then they kind of put that on the back burner to launch a break, this thing called break dance, and it was difficult from the outside.
To see what the heck was going on. Like, well, why have they got two? What's the difference between one or the other? Dear listener, you may well understand what the difference is, but I didn't and um, and I think a lot of the oxygen community became a bit disillusioned with it. I know, I know from personal experience.
Many people who just thought, right, that's it. I, I don't know what to make of these products anymore, so I'm just gonna move on to something completely different. And they found, I don't know, elemental or blocks or bricks or whatever it may be. But then curiously, during the earlier part of this year, oxygen kind of came back with a brand new version, oxygen six.
And I was kind of just a bit confused by how it is that you can. Do that to a product, kind of put it on ice and then bring it back. With a bit of fanfare and, and kind of have that expectation that people will just say, oh yeah, great. It's like nothing happened. Um, so I dunno how that project is going. I mean, as with everybody in the WordPress way, I wish them well.
I hope it's a barnstorming success, but it was a curious indication to me of okay, I wonder if people will be able to sort of have confidence in it knowing that there was all this bruhaha and, and what have you. You may not have anything to
[00:26:50] Rae Morey: Hmm.
[00:26:51] Nathan Wrigley: if you followed that one at all.
[00:26:53] Rae Morey: I haven't followed it very closely, to be honest, and I, I just opened the site to look at the pricing because, you know, how do you, how do you come back after disappearing? Hearing And how do you, you know, because launching any kind of product is about trust. If people don't trust your product and don't think you're gonna hang around, why would they, why would they invest their time and potentially their, um, their client projects in your product?
Um, and it's interesting because on this site, the, the, the only pricing is. A lifetime bundle for $199.
[00:27:33] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Maybe that's what they've gone to. Yeah. Maybe that's how it was. I, I certainly know that when, when it was growing in popularity, they were all about their lifetime deals. So maybe that's. Literally what they've got. But, um, yeah, curious, I I if you've got any commentary on that, you know, if, if you have, um, you know, positive impressions of how that all worked out and you think that oxygen is brilliant, I'd love to hear because from the outside, not ever using it or frequenting any of the communities that surround it.
I just found it all very confusing. And, uh, like I said, I wish them success, but I thought that was curious.
[00:28:03] Rae Morey: Uh, no actually, um, just this pricing is really confusing. There's a lifetime bundle for oxygen six, but then Oxygen Classic has regular pricing that starts at $129.
[00:28:18] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. May, maybe Oxygen six is a break. Maybe it's a breaking change from oxygen five or
[00:28:25] Rae Morey: Well, it says it's still in beta anyway.
[00:28:27] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Okay. Anyway, it was a kind of an interesting study in how you can kind of, you know, in my case anyway, cause confusion, um, having a variety of different products, which ostensibly did very, very similar things.
We will see. Um, okay. Sticking with page builders though, let's move to Elementor. Big changes coming. I mean, you've, nobody's not heard of Elementor in the WordPress space. It's the juggernaut, isn't it? Of page builders, I think.
[00:28:54] Rae Morey: about 10% or something of
[00:28:56] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, no, no. I think it's like 29%.
[00:28:59] Rae Morey: what?
[00:29:00] Nathan Wrigley: It's some bizarre number. Yeah, you go research that.
But anyway, um, it's a huge number and, and if you were to strip out elemental of the growth of WordPress over the last six or seven years, I. The line would be very different. An element or by itself represents a huge amount of WordPress's growth. 12. Okay. So I'm wildly wrong. Yeah. Thank you for putting me correct there.
That's
[00:29:25] Rae Morey: But they, as they say on the website, one in every eight websites.
[00:29:29] Nathan Wrigley: Massive. Yeah, massive. I got the numbers the wrong way around. I I 21 and 12. They're so similar, right. Um, the, but they've got a version four coming out, which is a massive, massive undertaking. Do you wanna tell us what you know?
[00:29:43] Rae Morey: Yeah. So, uh, elemental dropped their, uh, editor V four as part of the, uh, I don't wanna get this wrong, the version 3.8. That came out, uh, last week and yeah, so they're, they're slowly starting to, um, release. Version four. So the, the first reviews that we've seen from, you know, these big popular YouTube, um, channels like Web Squadron, you know, IM Imran Sadique from, uh, web Squadron Squadron, uh, and also, uh, WP Crafter.
Um. They all love it and think it, it's gonna be great. It's, it's, um, it's getting really great, um, feedback so far. Obviously some people have their reservations, they wanna see more because it's only an alpha at this point, but, um. Yeah. Element Elementals doing a lot at the moment. They, this year, they, they've released, um, they had their road big, um, web forward event earlier in the year, and they've released Ally and accessibility plugin.
They've got editor V four coming. They've got a new send plugin. There's, there's a whole lot of products that they've, they've been, um, working on. And, uh, yeah, it's a, it's a pretty big year for Elementor. So I think editor V four is gonna drop in Q3 from what, what I've heard. Uh, it'll be interesting to see how that rollout goes because it's, uh, uh, Elementor is moving to a CSS first.
Um. Um, you know, way of working with, with, um, the page builder. So that's gonna be a very big change that is very welcomed by many more experienced people, I guess, in the elemental community. But it'd be interesting to see how they transition, you know, beginners who aren't familiar with CSS into, into this new, new, new old way of working.
[00:31:40] Nathan Wrigley: I did a podcast episode with the Elementor crew the other day, and what was kind of curious to me was the CSS first approach. So the idea being that it's gonna be less about kind of click point drag and more about learning CSS. Like I, I think they're gonna help you through this.
Period of change. But the idea being that you'll assign classes for different things. So I dunno, you want a red button, you'll, you'll have a class of red, which will make everything that it goes to red. And then you'll have a class of bottom which you then might assign, assign a board, a radius or a certain padding.
And um, and that'll be interesting. It'd be interesting to see how the elemental crowd can cope with that. 'cause obviously they've pitched themselves as a no code solution. Well this is still very much no code. But they're leaning into CSS and CSS is really gonna be interesting in the next few years. If you follow that whole CSS thing, it is transformational what's coming in CSS.
In fact, it's already there, but none of the page builders make much use of those things. Because they can't really, um, so anyway, there's that. So go and check it out. Elemental V four links will be in the show notes. Um, let's move on. Quick one, couple of couple of ones around, um, publishing things as newsletters.
So the first one is that the, the plugin newsletter Glue, which is what I actually use on my websites on WP builds, uh, that has been sold. Leslie Sim, who's built it with Ahmed. Um, over the last several years has decided to, uh, move on to an events platform. She's got this thing called Events coi, which she's working on at the moment, and as a result, wasn't able to put the time into Newsletter Glue and has sold it.
I can highly recommend it. It seems like the guy that's taken it over Tyler dunno anything about Tyler, but it it, I I think he's basically in the industry already. You know, he's in the WordPress and newsletter. Industry. So hopefully the product will get some, get some attention. We'll wait and see, but I dunno if you've got anything about that one.
[00:33:43] Rae Morey: Yeah, I mean, he, it was real. I, I spoke with Leslie after the sale and, um. She seemed ready to move on, I think after, you know, working on newsletter Glue for such a long time and she just, I think she feels really reinvigorated with something new to work on, you know, starting again. Um, as, as far as Ty Tyler goes, I think he did an a, an interview recently with published the published press.
Podcast. Um, but he's, he's, you know, built this, um, this product paywall project and he, um, works with a lot of publishers, I think a small to medium sized publishers. And it looks like, um, newsletter Glue is, he's building out his suite of products to support publishers. So good on him. I'm always gonna support someone who's supporting publishers since I'm one.
And, um, it's great to see that he's picked up, um, you know, that Leslie's moving on and she's working on something she's passionate about. Um, and, and Tyler's able to continue working on newsletter glue and carry on that legacy.
[00:34:48] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, the next one. The
[00:34:50] Rae Morey: all round.
[00:34:50] Nathan Wrigley: yes. Sorry, I, I interrupted you there a little bit. The next one though, might be something that Tyler doesn't want to, uh, to think too much about because it's a, a rival, which seems to be coming around and it's called Mailer Press. Having dug around a teeny tiny little bit, it, I think that this is done by the company that are behind SEO press.
So if you've heard of that kind of, um, SEO plugin, um, they've got a good reputation. Then maybe this'll be a similar product to Newsletter Glue. There's only a video at the moment, but I'll link to the show notes. And you can see it's basically a suite of blocks you can drag the blocks in. So if you think, I don't know, MailChimp or Active Campaign, you know that interface you drag in different bits and pieces, it'll be a bit like that and hopefully you'll be able to build your newsletters.
The WordPress block editor, unless they do something utterly transformational, I will be sticking with Newsletter glue because it literally is the perfect thing for me. So, um, anything on that or should we head over to Theme Switcher?
[00:35:50] Rae Morey: no. Let's move on. Theme Switcher Pro. This one's getting some attention.
[00:35:55] Nathan Wrigley: It is really getting some attention. I, I wanna speak to that actually.
This is kind of curious to me. So I am about to do an interview with Brad who is behind this plugin, and one of the things that I wanna focus on is how the heck. Did he get this product so much attention? Um, because if, if like me, you obsess about WordPress, you, you'll, you'll know this, like products come and go all the time.
Some of them just get this tidal wave of attention from. Some influences for want of a better word, which then spawns more people to talk about it, and it's this virtuous cycle. Well, he, I think he's just dropped right into it now. Maybe it's his history. He's got a long and storied history in the WordPress space.
But, uh, but you know, I've seen products, not this product, but I've seen products that really, you know, could have had an, an equal impact that have just come. Just never got the traction and just gone away. So I am, I'm really curious about how he's managed it already, as far as I can see, make it a success before it's, before it's really had much of a, of a chance to be battle tasted.
So I think that's curious how personalities, influences, can influence the, uh, the direction of a product in such a seismic way.
[00:37:11] Rae Morey: definitely gonna listen to that interview because that's, that's fascinating how you're right. Like some people launch products. Really struggle with marketing and dunno where to get started. But I guess, um, now this is a web dev studios product, right? They've
[00:37:27] Nathan Wrigley: counts for a lot already, right?
[00:37:29] Rae Morey: yeah. So that's an agency that's been around for a really long time.
So they're already well connected in the space and so some people just know where to go to, you know, to approach you for an interview, you know, approach the right people who can help, um, spread the word. So yeah.
[00:37:46] Nathan Wrigley: It's a curious idea though. And to be honest with you, I kind of looking at it, I'm thinking, why don't, why did we not always have this in core? And it basically, what it does is it offers you the option to have two or more, I, I think I'm gonna say, or more, I could be wrong about that, but multiple themes at the same time.
So you can say this page, use this theme, this page, use this theme. And that could be a classic theme or a block-based theme. So this could be a real great. Option instead of working on a staging site to try and get your theme over to a block-based theme and, and have to do all of it in one go, and then finally take staging to live.
This could offer you the opportunity to just change it slowly over a number of months or years even until finally, you know, nothing now on the website is using the old theme. Okay, let's just can that and go back. But, um, that's the promise. So I, it's a really interesting product I think.
[00:38:41] Rae Morey: Yeah, it's a clever product. Very clever.
[00:38:44] Nathan Wrigley: Um, the next one I'll just mention, I just thought it was quite interesting, um, patterns, WP um, again, links in the show notes. I don't really have a lot to say about it 'cause I haven't really inspected it, but it just came up on my radar. It looked like a really credible suite of patterns with a big free offering.
They have a pro, which obviously will offer more. I don't really know, but I always, I'm, I'm just drawn to these kind of things, just the idea of leaning into patterns and. Loads of free stuff that's been pre-designed by people who are much better at design than I am. So there's nothing else to add than that.
It's just there. So, yeah. Um, anything, did you wanna say anything about that? Probably not.
[00:39:22] Rae Morey: No, no,
[00:39:23] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:39:24] Rae Morey: no. Happy to move on. Try to get through everything.
[00:39:26] Nathan Wrigley: the, take us into AI Rae.
[00:39:29] Rae Morey: Uh, ai, everybody's talking about it, um, including James LaPage, who is so damn smart. Um, I had a really good chat with him about the, um, uh, the AI powered website builder that he has helped work on for wordpress.com. There's been a lot of, there's been a lot of interesting media about this. WordPress, um, WordPress, uh, site builder.
Hey, have you seen a lot of the, the. Sites out new sites outside of WordPress that have been writing about this.
[00:40:01] Nathan Wrigley: No, no, I haven't to be honest. Go on.
[00:40:04] Rae Morey: Oh. Sites like, I tried WordPress dot com's, new builder, and it was really terrible and stuff like that. It's been a lot of bad reviews, but the, um, the, yeah, so I had a chat with James.
The idea with this builder is that it's, it's essentially an MVP and it's designed for beginners who have never used WordPress before, who are new to it, and. Dunno how to get started with a website. So, as you like, with a lot of these kinds of builders, you um, you put in a prompt, um, describing what kind of website you want and it, it basically builds it for you.
And, um. The, the, the cool thing about this product is that it's completely integrated with WordPress and the block editor. So once you come, uh, once you get to the end of the, the AI powered bit, it drops you into the, um, block editor and then you can continue building out the site. Uh, and it's cool. And so, um.
Uh, yeah, it was really good to speak to James about what, um, you know, the team wants to build out for this product and also get an idea of the other kinds of things that he's working on as, um, you know, head of, um, AI engineering at, at automatic. Um, so, yeah, um, I, I guess watch this space to
[00:41:27] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, ai, honestly, all the hotness until it's, until it's not. Let's, uh, let's, let's see. Okay, there we go. Um, that will be linked from the repository article that Rae wrote about that and, and then couple of things hosting. Maybe we could describe it as, um, there's nothing to say here other than that it's happened.
A two hosting a company that's been in the WordPress space for a very long time, offering their hosting op, uh, name change, branding change they have acquired. Wait for it. I mean, this is the golden URL if you're in the hosting space.
[00:42:00] Rae Morey: Mm-hmm.
[00:42:01] Nathan Wrigley: heck, uh, they got hosting.com. Um, and I imagine they paid a pretty penny for it.
So if you're an A two hosting. Provider user. Then, uh, at some point in the near future, maybe already, I don't know, you are gonna be using hosting.com, which just sounds pretty cool I think.
[00:42:20] Rae Morey: well, I've yet, so, so I did a bit of digging around. Uh, a source told me that the, the hosting.com domain costs $2 million. So, uh, they, and, and so. Digging around with a way back machine and going back through, I, I went back through, you know, all, um, the history of the website. So it was really interesting.
[00:42:45] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. great.
[00:42:46] Rae Morey: I had nerded out one afternoon having a look, so, so it was first registered in 1996. Um, it was originally, um, it operated under the name hosting.com for a really long, long time until. 2019 essentially. Um, I guess along the way the, the company kind of rebranded to just hosting in capital letters as you do.
Then they merged with another company called Hostway. And once those companies, uh, merged in 19, uh, 2019, they decided to rename, um, to, um, a new company called, UH, entirety. So
[00:43:25] Nathan Wrigley: What away from hosting.com? That
[00:43:27] Rae Morey: I know why, why? I don't know of the context around it, but they, they took on, uh, they moved to uh, entirety.com and then the hosting.com domain began redirecting to entirety.com and so around, um.
Uh, mid 2023, that's when a for sale landing page started appearing on the hosting.com domain. And, um, looking at, looking at way back machine, it looks like World Host Group, which acquired a two hosting. So, so World Host Group looks to have acquired the domain around December, 2024, so December last year.
And, um. So they already had the hosting.com domain before they bought a two hosting in, I think it was in January that they, they bought a two hosting. Um, so it's, so it looks like a world host group is they've, they've grown their, their company by acquiring lots of, lots of hosting companies over the past two, three years.
And so they recently, um, acquired.
[00:44:39] Nathan Wrigley: There for quite, quite a lot
[00:44:40] Rae Morey: Uh, fast Comet recently. They have 30 hosting brands now, and so they, it looks like they're bringing them all under this hosting.com domain, including a two. And so, so it is a little bit sad after, um, you know, more than two decades, 20, 23 years I think it is that, um, a two hosting was a name and that's been brought into this larger company.
[00:45:03] Nathan Wrigley: And somebody somewhere is just rubbing their hands together for the fantastic decision they made in 2000 and whatever. No, 1996 or something.
[00:45:13] Rae Morey: when they registered.
[00:45:15] Nathan Wrigley: Just like absolutely fabulous. I, uh, complete aside, I heard on the radio the other day that, um, an, an individual whose initials are ai, it was like, I don't know, like Andrew something or other, you know, Andrew Ignatius, let's go with that.
Um, I couldn't think of anything that began with Ari. Um, they, years and years ago, probably at about the same time, just bought the domain, which had their initials. Obviously there was no. Conception that AI would become the, the euphemism for artificial intelligence and they're now selling it in the year 2025.
And the price tag, the beginning of the bidding, I dunno, bidding's the right word, but they've employed this guy in New York whose job it is. That's all he does, I think, is just to shift massive domain names and the asking price is a hundred million dollars.
[00:46:04] Rae Morey: is insane.
[00:46:06] Nathan Wrigley: and it makes me think, what the heck was I doing in 1926?
Why wasn't
[00:46:11] Rae Morey: gonna buy that?
[00:46:12] Nathan Wrigley: if I wasn't, I bent over my computer just getting all the domains.
[00:46:16] Rae Morey: it's gonna be someone like Elon Musk who buys that
[00:46:19] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Um, I mean it, but, or open ai, you know, some Sam Altman or something. Uh, it's so memorable, isn't it? Anyway, a bit of an aside. And then the other one, which you've, uh, put in is Stellar WP who've, um, who've come up with this product called Stellar Sites. Tell us about that.
[00:46:36] Rae Morey: Yeah, no, I just found this one fascinating. So Stellar, WP for a long time has been, uh, I guess an umbrella brand for several standalone. Um, separate products. So, you know, like, uh, LearnDash give WP Cadence, um, and, uh, I'm forgetting, I'm forgetting something. There, there's, there's, there's several different products.
[00:47:01] Nathan Wrigley: give WP Cadence. Uh,
[00:47:04] Rae Morey: Is a solid WP as well. Uh, but several, several products. So, um, oh, the iconic, iconic wp. Uh, and so, so yeah, so it is been an umbrella, umbrella brand. But um, in the past a week or two, they've launched Stellar sites, which, uh, is a managed hosting platform that unifies their. Uh, plugins into a, a more tightly integrated, vertical focused service.
Which is interesting because now when you, when you go to Stellar wp, um, it, look, they've, they've re, they're slowly rebranding to. Push people into signing up for this hosting platform. So they have an AI powered, um, uh, website builder. So it was really interesting testing this after using the wordpress.com AI powered builder.
Um, I kind of prefer the stellar sites one because it's, it's, it's a little bit more feature rich and it, it provides more options and it guides you through. And, um, what's really great is that. If you wanna do something that's, um, you know, a bit more feature rich, like, um, a donations website or something, a platform for selling products, you can do that with this new platform.
So, um, yeah, I'd be really interested to see where this, this goes because it's, it's, um, um. Interesting example of niche hosting that's popping
[00:48:37] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:48:37] Rae Morey: And when I saw this, I couldn't help but think of, um, Jason Coleman from Paid Membership Pro, who recently announced on Twitter that um, they're looking at launching, um, their own managed, uh, hosting for their.
Their own, um, customers. Um, so yeah, it's, I wonder if we're gonna see more, um, you know, a product based companies go down the road
[00:49:06] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. We've. Always had big companies being the hosting companies. And now it feels like some of these smaller companies that have grown large over time, they've got the, they've now got the brand reputation and deep enough pockets and maybe they've had some investment along the way to make them into a hosting company at the same time.
And you throw AI into the mix and all of a sudden you've kind of got the. You've got the full package, haven't you? Okay, so Stellar WP launches. Stellar sites. Again, that'll be linked. That's on the repository as well. Okay, so that's our kind of newslettery plug, Iny bits. Let's move over to the community. I suppose you could describe this as core things like that.
Um, we have to mention that WordPress 6.8 has just dropped it, featured some, some stuff which you may not be aware of. If you just update WordPress and you don't look at the news, you might not be aware that, for example, your website, the, the hashing of the, the passwords is now handled by something called.
B script. It used to be handled by something called M Script, and the the nerd value that you can get out of that would be enormous. I expect. If you knew what you were talking about. I don't really, I just know that one's better than the other. Um, and, and we're on the better version. Thankfully, uh, go and speak to somebody like Tim Nash.
He'll be able to explain it to you. But essentially I think it's a more brute force, uh, a more secure way of keeping your passwords hashed within the, uh, the WordPress database. But also we have this thing called speculative loading. Which I think is on by default in WordPress 6.8 and beyond. And this will, this is kind of voodoo and a bit scary when you say it.
It's trying to figure out what you're gonna do next. Um, so it's taking the, the action of your mouse. So if you hover over a link, turns out that that fraction of a second that you are hovering over the link is enough for. A platform like WordPress to figure out, you know what, it's highly likely that this person is gonna click, so why don't I just go and start downloading that page?
And that's what it does. Um, so the, the intention being that it will already be basically in the browser ready to go, so that when you do click on it, it will be there either partially there or completely there. And in this way we will speed up websites. Fascinating to me though, that the web, the browser can figure out Yeah.
[00:51:31] Rae Morey: Yeah. I think this is very cool. Um. Making websites faster. I'd, I'd never heard about this before until I started reading about it, but,
[00:51:41] Nathan Wrigley: So it's called, I think it's the speculation, API that, that speculation rules api. Sorry, I've forgotten. But, um, the, the, the way that WordPress is implemented it is fairly conservative. There are, there are, there are some lovely words around it and I've forgotten, but it may, it, it kind of cutesy words that go around it.
We've got something like, I can't remember what it is, but we've got a fairly conservative. Interpretation of that. It is possible if you know what you're doing within WordPress to switch it on to be more aggressive so that it'll more, you know, it'll capture and start downloading everything. I guess maybe we need to think a little bit about the environment.
Do we need to be downloading pages that nobody's ever gonna actually look at? So maybe that's why
[00:52:18] Rae Morey: my brain went to.
[00:52:19] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's why WordPress has gone for this. But, um, anyway, so that's, that's there. And then there was a bunch of, um, editor improvements as well, but this is maybe not the place for that.
But just go and poke around in Gutenberg and you'll, you'll find out. Um, then what have we got? Oh, then we got the whole accessibility improvements and whether or not accessibility should become a canonical plugin thing. I'm over to you with this one 'cause you wrote this or not.
[00:52:49] Rae Morey: Handball it to me.
[00:52:50] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, yeah,
[00:52:51] Rae Morey: yes. So, um, so in, uh, what's the backstory to this one? So, a few weeks ago, back in, I think it was March, uh, Matt Mullenweg posted in, um, the court committers channel, the idea of, uh, potentially, um. Developing, uh, some things in a canonical canonical plugin. So a canonical plugin is, uh, a plugin that's community developed that's maintained in close alignment with core, such as, you know, the performance plugin that the WordPress performance, uh, core performance team works on.
So he suggested a few things that could be, um. Developed as canonical plugins, such as, uh, such as secure custom fields. And uh, and um, I think there was, uh, oh, there were a couple other things I cut that don't come to mind, but accessibility was one that he mentioned as well. And, um. Uh, a few people spoke to me about it.
Uh, um, Joe Dolson, who's a call committer and a longtime accessibility expert. Um, I also spoke with, um, uh, I don't wanna get her name wrong, um, Ryan Feld, who is a web accessibility specialist, and also Amber Hines, who runs Equalized Digital, and they were all dead against this. Idea. Let's just be very clear.
It's a, it's an idea. There's no proposal. It wa it was just something that, that, um, I guess, um, um, you know. At the moment, there's a lot up in the air about how WordPress is moving forward. So this is a suggestion that Matt was putting out there as a way to, to move accessibility forward. Whether it's a good idea or not, these, um, these folks are saying it's not so, um, well, some people say, you know.
We see performance being developed as a, as a plugin outside of WordPress. Why don't, why don't we do that with accessibility? Well, accessibility is a, is a, um, a legal requirement in, in some countries, especially in, in Europe and, um, and in and in the US as well. And, um, you know, performance isn't so, you know, this is.
Accessibility isn't a a nice to have, it's something that's actually needed. And um, and so these folks make a really good point that if we developing it is as a, a canonical plugin, who's gonna do that work? Are we see, gonna see a duplication of effort? Because, you know, there needs to be some work in core and also in this plugin.
And there are just a lot of, you know, I guess what ifs at the moment 'cause we don't have a proper proposal, so,
[00:55:39] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah,
[00:55:40] Rae Morey: Just interesting to unpack it.
[00:55:42] Nathan Wrigley: Definitely I, I, I, who knows how that'll pan out. But the, the voices were quite loud, weren't they? On the, please don't put this into a canonical plugin. You know, this should be in court. And I think the argument that you just articulated sums it up perfectly. It is a requirement, uh, performance is legal requirement, whereas performance is not.
And also you might be on a different host, which would, you know, have different. Expectations of what your WordPress site would perform like because of the hardware they're on or the operating system that they're using or what have you. So yeah, so that's interesting. Again, written up on the repository, you can go and check that out.
Um, I was gonna mention playground. I did an interview with Big at Powerly Hack about the magic of WordPress playground. I'll just mention it like that. And. Drop it in. I did that on the tavern. If you haven't played with playground, it is blooming marvelous and it's getting better by the, by the, by the week basically, uh, enables you to click buttons and launch WordPress in your browser, but it's doing so much more now.
It really is becoming a really robust way to test things and, um, maybe even demo your plugin or theme to. Other people. It really is remarkable and it is going a heck of a clip. So there we go. Okay. Then we got more community related stuff. And um, although this article you said a minute ago before we hit record is, is a little bit older now, I think probably the, the metrics that you were measuring haven't changed.
This is your piece entitled Who Leads WordPress Businesses. The data confirms it's still not women. Can you remember the takeaways from that one?
[00:57:14] Rae Morey: Yeah, I feel like I wrote this so long ago because, you know, three months in WordPress feels like a lifetime these days. So, um, last year I, um. I worked with WP Includes, which is led by the lovely Chiffon, McKean and also, um, Francesca Murano and uh, D Detail. Um, it's an, uh, a non-profit organization that, um, supports, uh, women, uh, to help, uh, equip them with, with the tools they need to, um, to attain leadership roles in, uh, WordPress focused organizations.
I guess. Yeah, WordPress focus organizations. Anyway, so, um, WP Includes launched, uh, a gender equality and WordPress survey last year that I assisted with, and then we published a report based on those key findings and, and a lot of the key findings, um, were quite, um, disappointing to be honest. Um, there are a lot of, um, that found that there.
A lot of leadership disparities with very few women at the top in, in WordPress, um, WordPress, uh, companies in the ecosystem. Um, only 4% of companies that have pledged. For example, only 4% of companies that have pledged to WordPress as five for the five, five for the future initiative have women in their leadership roles, uh, in their top leadership role, I should say.
And then an interesting one, only five of the 69 agency partners that work with WordPress VIP, have women in their top role. Uh, out of, yeah, five outta 69. Um, and you can kind of see how this has happened over time. Tech was a very. It was a fairly equal industry for a long time up until I think the, the seventies, eighties.
Not sure when it changed. I'd really recommend to people who wanna learn more to watch, uh, Chevon and Dee's, um, talk on WordPress TV from Word Camp Europe last year about, um, women in WordPress. It's, it's a really fascinating look at, at how that's kind of rolled out, but, um. Yeah, I, I guess when we, when we launched this, uh, report last year, it was a couple of days before WordCamp.
Um, it was the first day of Word Camp US, I think, and a couple of days before, um, Matt's, uh, infamous, controversial, uh, keynote address. So. The report got buried in everything that was going on. So for, so that's what happened. So for, uh, international Women's Day, I decided to revisit the report six months on and had a really good q and a with, um, Shavonne about, um, the findings of the report and, you know, the, the action that we'd really like to see taken, um, whether it's landed.
Probably not, because it didn't, I think it feel, it felt like when we put it out there, it was preaching to the converted, you know, so all we can do is, is keep putting this stuff out there and hope that people will start to pay attention eventually.
[01:00:33] Nathan Wrigley: Uh, the link will be in the show notes, so if you wanna go and check that out, you are more than welcome to. What else can we say in here? 'cause we are approaching the, the hour mark, so let's try and cut a few out. We've got a lot in there.
[01:00:46] Rae Morey: Uh,
[01:00:46] Nathan Wrigley: What do you want to go to? We've got, we've got lots, our automatic workforce cuts.
We've got core committers struggling to keep up.
[01:00:53] Rae Morey: I wanted to just mention, I think we pass over it quickly, but the, um, WordPress slowing to one major release per year. That was a, that was a big, uh, a big deal. Um, yeah, so that was, uh, oh, that was a few weeks ago. I have to remind myself
[01:01:11] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it feels like it was
[01:01:12] Rae Morey: of that one.
[01:01:13] Nathan Wrigley: eight, two months ago? Something like that now.
[01:01:16] Rae Morey: No, it wasn't. It was only this day in April,
[01:01:18] Nathan Wrigley: Was it?
[01:01:19] Rae Morey: so,
[01:01:20] Nathan Wrigley: Gosh.
[01:01:21] Rae Morey: no.
Right. It feels like it happened in January or something, but, so, yeah. So WordPress, uh, has the WordPress project to clarify, has officially shifted to one release per year. Um, we've just seen the release of WordPress, uh, 6.8, which is the only release. For 2025
[01:01:37] Nathan Wrigley: The only major release we should
[01:01:39] Rae Morey: only, yes. I should say ma, major release.
So we could still, we'll, we'll still see minor releases come out this
[01:01:45] Nathan Wrigley: had a 6.8 0.1 already, so,
[01:01:47] Rae Morey: Yes.
[01:01:48] Nathan Wrigley: Yep.
[01:01:49] Rae Morey: And hats off to Aaron Jor, who's, who's leading those releases at the moment. He's an excellent call committer. Uh, and yes, so the next major release won't be released until sometime next year. Um, sometime in 2026. We don't know when.
There's no. No real schedule for that yet. Um, and the interesting thing, um, that Matt has said. Is, um, uh, maybe, no, maybe it wasn't Matt who said it. No. Mary Hubbard. Um, it's really about the lawsuits with WP Engine. Um, in her announcement she said that, you know, if the lawsuits are dropped or resolved, um, the cadence will be, uh, revisited.
And, um, there'll be a strong consideration to returning to a three year release, uh, three releases per
[01:02:35] Nathan Wrigley: I was gonna say that's
[01:02:37] Rae Morey: So.
[01:02:38] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. We'll go to one release every three
[01:02:41] Rae Morey: and that's it. Uh, so, um, it's definitely slowed down. Um, and I guess, we'll, yeah, we'll wait and see what happens. No one's really upset about it though, at being one release per year.
[01:02:56] Nathan Wrigley: Quite a few people have been, um, talking about there's some potential upsides. Obviously there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of concern in the community about it, but I, I've seen quite a lot of people saying, actually, I wonder if you know this is happening.
We can't change that. That's now how it is. Are there any bits which can be perfected? You know, maybe the fact that we've got a longer roadmap. It will allow plugin and theme developers to, for example, test their code more because they'll have this long runway. Um, also, maybe it'll get some attention to other things because we won't be just dropping features all the time.
And obviously if features are dropping and the block editor is changing all the time. That makes it difficult to, well, as an example, the newsletter Glue plugin, they probably have to keep abreast of absolutely everything that's going on with the block editor to make sure that nothing breaks and if, well, I suppose that was a bad example.
'cause Gutenberg, the plugin is released fairly regularly still. But anyway, so some sort of, not counter arguments, but people trying to, I guess, make the best. Out of the, uh, the situation. So anyway, that's it. Yeah. So we'll get a, a version 6.9, probably in 2026 as it stands, and then a version seven. Probably in 2027.
So a, a huge change actually. And, um, we'll see how that impacts the community and what people make of that. 'cause we haven't really felt the effects of that. Everything at the moment feels like it's the same because 6.8 came out when it, when it would have done 6.8 0.1 came out when it would've done. But by now we are expecting.
6.9 in the next, I don't know, couple of months, something like that. And obviously that won't happen, so it will only be in the next few months that we'll notice that that hasn't occurred and, and we'll see how that goes. Um, and then I suppose the last one time is the enemy. Here down, we've got loads. The last one I, that I think maybe we should touch on is the, um.
The reinstating of a bunch of people in the WordPress community. So there's this, there's this whole thing about people getting blocked from, um, let me, I list off the things that I can think of. Make Slack wordpress.org. That was probably it, wasn't it?
[01:05:06] Rae Morey: Mm-hmm.
[01:05:07] Nathan Wrigley: and many, many
[01:05:09] Rae Morey: being, um, banned on social media accounts as well,
[01:05:12] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, okay.
[01:05:13] Rae Morey: um, across WordPresses, various social accounts. But yeah, this was an interesting one because it just kind of dropped out of nowhere with Matt posting on Twitter that he was having problems with trying to unblock people. So it wasn't, there was no official announcement.
It was like. Oh, hey, I am trying to do this, but it's not working. Um, and then it, and then it slowly came out as a strange post on wordpress.org that, oh yes, we, we are unblocking everybody. And then there was Matt's, um, post on his personal blog that, um, uh, acknowledging, um, the, the Pope's death. There was a post also on Word, another post on wordpress.org, um, um, WordPress Jubilee that was like kind of acknowledging the Jubilee in a Catholic tradition.
And so it looked like this was all tied to some kind of. Easter revelation, I'm not sure. I don't wanna make assumptions, but, um, anyone's guess is as good as mine, I guess, or my guess is as good, but as, as what anyone else can try and ascertain out of what's going on. But, um, I spoke anyway. To cut through all that.
I had a chat with Mary Hubbard to, to get stats and so, um, she, she clarified for me that 32 WordPress accounts that were blocked since September have been unblocked. And so that includes people like Ron, who's really, really, um, who's been a long time. Uh, core Mider and created the, um, WordPress rest API.
He's been, he's back. People like Yo Deval, um, Kareem Aki as well, and say re people who were blocked because of governance issues and so they're all back. Um,
[01:07:04] Nathan Wrigley: Do you, do you know if they've been taking that bull by the horns? Have they been embracing there? Unblock ness, if you know what I mean, or has it more, was it more a case of, okay, I've been blocked that that's me, I'm, I'm done. Or maybe you don't know. I don't know. So
[01:07:19] Rae Morey: Uh, I haven't seen, I haven't seen them taking advantage of being back. I know, I know for people like Ryan, it was quite distressing to be banned and to suddenly be, you know, not be able to log into an account he'd been using for 20 plus years. Um. Yeah, it's, it's a tough one because I know a, a couple people have written blog posts about being banned and what it was like.
Um, so I think it's bittersweet to get their accounts
[01:07:52] Nathan Wrigley: Mm. I I guess in some respects, you make other plans, don't you? You, you, you, life probably has moved on in different directions for all of those 32 people, and maybe, maybe they've found other things to do. Maybe they're, you know, welcoming in it and we'll come back. But, uh, again, we'll link to that. But that's, that's a fairly.
Obviously, you know, if we go back 10 months, we, none of us for saw any of this. And now we're in the position where, you know, people were banned and now have been on band. Um, then, you know, it moved in one direction. It seems to be moving in another direction. Maybe only time will tell what the reasons for all of that are, but, um, yeah.
Okay. That's, that's all. I think we've got time for, darn it.
[01:08:33] Rae Morey: Yeah. Geez. We, three
[01:08:35] Nathan Wrigley: four in the morning where you are.
[01:08:39] Rae Morey: Not quite. Not quite.
[01:08:40] Nathan Wrigley: A three. Then,
[01:08:41] Rae Morey: late.
[01:08:42] Nathan Wrigley: uh, Rae is we, we are recording this kind of, you know, it's early afternoon for me, which means in Australia it's brutal o clock
[01:08:51] Rae Morey: uh, 10 to 11. 10 to
[01:08:52] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, well here you are talking to me at 10 to 11. I think that's pretty, pretty brutal. Um, so I appreciate that. We have put so many other things that we could have talked about, sadly.
Time is the enemy, but we'll, we'll end it there. So if you've got any commentary on that, head over to wp builds.com. Search for this. What just happened, episode, what did we think? Episode four? I think we
[01:09:15] Rae Morey: Episode four.
[01:09:17] Nathan Wrigley: four and, uh, give us some commentary if you, if you wanna do that. And don't forget. Go to the repository email, just Google it and go there and subscribe right away.
And if you don't, you're very naughty. Um, it's brilliant and, uh, this is
[01:09:34] Rae Morey: you. Thank you.
[01:09:35] Nathan Wrigley: Rae awake at 11 o'clock at night is thinking about WordPress and keeping us all informed. So Rae, without further ado, I'm gonna say thank you so much for chatting to me. I really appreciate it.
[01:09:48] Rae Morey: No, I really enjoy doing this, uh, podcast. It's, it's a lot of fun.
[01:09:52] Nathan Wrigley: You are. You are very good. Very, very good. Thank you so much.
Okay, that's all we've got for you this week. Before I fade in the cheesy music at the very, very end, I would just like to thank once more Rae Moray for joining me and summing up the last three months in the WordPress space incredibly effectively. I hope that you did enjoy it. If you did, you've got any comments about that, head to WP Builds, search for episode number 423, and please leave us a comment there.
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Okay, that really, really, really is very, very, very near the end of the podcast. The cheesy music will come in a moment. Just before then, I would like to thank you, dear listener. Thanks for engaging with the podcast.
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As always, some cheesy music is about to fade in, and all that I need to say is, stay safe, have a good week, bye-bye for now.
