This Week in WordPress #363

[00:00:03] Nathan Wrigley: It is time for This Week in WordPress, episode number 363 entitled, I didn't know there'd be pointing in this episode. It was recorded on Monday, the 26th of January, 2026. My name's Nathan Wrigley and I will be joined by co-host Jess Frick, but also by Marc Benzakein and by Marcus Burnette. We do obviously spend quite a lot of time talking about WordPress.

We also, curiously spend quite a lot of time talking about corgis, and alligators, because obviously they're very important. And really a lot of time spent on AI.

We talk about the fact that WordPress 6.9.1 is around the corner.

We talk a lot about education, and the fact that there's a new home for all the broad initiatives surrounding education in the WordPress space.

We talk about companies which inspire trust for us in the WordPress space, and the panelists share ones which they feel very comfortable with, along with individuals as well.

Amber Hinds has got a post all about using Core Blocks only in her new WordPress website builds, and like I said, an awful lot, a very awful lot about AI.

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

This episode of the WP Builds podcast is brought to you by GoDaddy Pro, the home of manage WordPress hosting that includes free domain, SSL, and 24 7 support. Bundle that with the hub by GoDaddy Pro to unlock more free benefits to manage multiple sites in one place, invoice clients and get 30% of new purchases. Find out more at go.me/wpuilds.

Hello there. hello. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, morning, wherever you are in the world. It is a thoroughly, typically miserable day in the uk. It's great. It's just a blanket of gray and it's cold. So we're here to brighten up your day. We're gonna bring out the blue skies, talk about WordPress.

Probably talk quite a lot about AI as well, the drill. but if you're joining us, thank you. We appreciate that. If you're watching this live, you have an additional responsibility. Dare I say it. We would love you to comment because commenting makes the world go round or something, like that.

And, if you wanna do that, I have the easiest way to do it. So again, if you're watching this live, this applies to you. If you're not watching this live, sorry, join us 2:00 PM UK time every week. The easiest way to do it is to head here. Go to this. Jess Crick is supporting a slightly broken version of it.

No, there it is. Jess Frick, I just called you Jess Crick. there we go. WP builds.com/live. If you'd like to join us and make a comment, we would love that about you are really giving it all guns. Thank you for that, Jess. That's appreciated. I'll take it away though so we can see your marvelous space.

So wp builds.com/live. If you want to join us, if you do make a comment, then sometimes they get on the screen, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they come in so fast that I can't. Actually keep up, given that I'm talking quite a lot, so apologies for that. The other thing to say is if you're watching it on the myriad platforms that this thing goes out to, we really can't receive your comments.

So if you're watching it on X or Facebook or anything like that, they don't get sucked in by the platform. So if you comment, nothing will happen. go to the WP Builds website, like I just said, and there's a little box. You can put your comments in there. And if you don't like having a Google account, then don't put your comments in the box on the right of the screen.

Just click the little live chat icon, which you can find actually in the video itself. And if you go to that, then yeah, you'll be able to comment regardless of whether you're logged in or not. Okay. And I can see a couple of people have done that, which I will just say hello to them very quickly.

So the first one is Courtney minus eight. Oh, that's brutal. Yeah, we've got miserable, but we don't have that. We don't have really, cold eight minus eight degrees centigrade. Thank you for converting it into sensible. Units for me that's appreciated. Minus eight degrees centigrade and 30 centimeters of snow with a top coat of sleet and ice.

Oh, stay inside would be my advice there. Jess, Jess. is saying, come and join me, mark, me, Marcus, me and Courtney. It's the opposite of that, but also with coffee. Yeah, you are in. We'll get to that. Let's do that in a minute. Marcus who's joining us obviously says it's 21. 20. See, that's as hot as we ever get in the uk.

That's like our best summer day. We're on t-shirts and shorts and things. Oh, that's lovely. 22 degrees where he is. 71 Fahrenheit with rain. Yay. Florida. No kidding. Elliot saying hello. He's just down the road from me, so Hi Elliot. You know what I'm talking about. Look up if you can see anything but gray. I dunno what I've got.

oh no, it's could never.

Oh, I feel so bad. I 50, 50, 50 chance every week. This guy shows up and every week I can never remember his name. I want to say Gordon, but I know it's not right. I am so sorry. Please put it down to my incapacity to be clever. oh. I'm so sorry. You need to write it on a post-it note. I do. Just getting you down.

I hope he's not offended. It's nothing to do with you. It is my capacity to, learn new information. I'm so sorry. But anyways, coming to us from Adam Amsterdam where it's a bit great. No kidding. You're just across the, river if you like the North Sea from me, so it's probably the same. I can see and hear you all.

I was on LinkedIn now on the live page. Thanks to Jess Wave in. There we go. That's great. Thank you Jess. Okay, so there we go. There we have our, little comment section, but that doesn't tell us who we've got on the show today, and I think it's important that we do that. So if we cast around as always, attempt to be joined by three people and this week we are.

Let's go, let's go here first that I'm pointing at. Jess. Jess Frick. How you doing? Jess? How you doing? I'm so good, Nathan. How are you? That's great. I'm pleased to hear it. I love it. I've just realized nobody's names are on the screen. I've just made that come up, so, anyway, there we go. We've now got people's names showing on the screen.

I am good. Yeah. Thank you. Jess is the general manager for rocket.net and the director of WordPress for hosting.com. Additionally, she's a di diet Dr. Pepper's devotee. I, we'll come back to that. Okay. It's Rescue dog and cat Mama, and a proud member of the post status and WP Minute communities. So before we move on to the other two, what even is Dr.

Pepper? I don't mean, what is it? I know it's a soft drink, but what the heck is it? What even it's barbecue water. is it supposed to be cherry a bit? It's, I think it's like barbecue sauce, but soda. Okay. It's it's one of those drinks that, I think it's a bit like Marmite. We have this stuff called Marmite.

[00:07:13] Jess Frick: No, Marmite smells like there meat, like, ugh. So see the reaction Dr. Peppers I think is a bit like that. You either love it. So it's just like that. It's just like that. Exactly. No, don't you dare talk about my sweet diet Dr. Pepper. Like that. I am so sorry to be Smirch. Your favorite soft drink. But anyway, there we go.

[00:07:34] Nathan Wrigley: That's Jess Frick joining us. It's an absolute Oh, we're already starting out fighting. Here we go. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. You've had a goat. My favorite drink. it's fighting all the way down. Okay, next. Let's go over there. We've got Mark, mark Benzocaine joining us again. How you doing, mark? Hello. I'm doing very nice to have you.

[00:07:52] Marc Benzakein: I'm doing fantastic. No kidding. Look at you. Look at you on Balcony. Balcony. Ridiculously good, Yeah, beautiful. every week, it's a, yeah, it's a beautiful view. I, every week you're a difference. I don't know what it looks like in front of me, but I can tell you what it looks like behind me.

[00:08:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Just so that that's genuinely what I do. Every single week I'm in some sort of tropical paradise. I move around, week by week, get on a plane, go somewhere like The Bahamas and the Maldives, but I have this saved as a background, just, Yeah. So it looks like I'm in a boring office in my attic.

Well, you want you, you're going for consistency. Got it. That's right. Yeah, that's right. No, this is actually where I am in a boring office in my attic. So anyway, mark. Mark Zaca is the partnerships and community lead at Main wp, where he spends most of his time thinking about how agencies, developers, and product teams actually work day to day.

He's been around the WordPress ecosystem for ages, wearing a lot of different hats along the way these days. He's especially focused on ownership, sustainability, and what it really takes to run and maintain sites at scale. When he's not buried in plugins, releases and or community projects, he's usually asking uncomfortable, but hopefully useful questions about where WordPress is headed.

How we can make it better for the people building it. And I've just realized I need to go for an eye test. That font, which until this moment in time was perfectly suitable for me to read off the screen. I'm now, there's a, it's very difficult for me to read. Right. And then the last one, there he is, right in that corner over there.

We've got Marcus Bonnet. How you doing Marcus? Thanks for joining us. Amazing. Thank you for having me again. I'm two, two weeks in a row. Thank you for allowing me to do that. Lovely. Well, I'm most grateful. I really am grateful. I'm really, I messed up, but I'm happy to be here anyway. Yeah, Well, I'm delighted that you are.

I really love it. Marcus Burnett is a WordPress builder and Community Wrangler who runs the WP world, and works at Bluehost. He's usually juggling a few side projects, a podcast Mike, and at least one idea that's almost ready. Ah, you have that as well. Mind you, you actually seek, you carry on through with most of your ideas as far as I can work out.

They actually see the light of day. And one of those serial failed entrepreneurs that get about 10% in and then shiny, something else happens. And I go and do that instead. I've done so many of those things. but thank you for joining us. So there, ladies and gentlemen, is your panel for today. Like I said, keep the comments coming in.

I don't know where we got to. oh, we got to here. Oh. Oh, no thank you. There you go. Of course. It's Gerard e Everybody knows that it's Gerard. Oh, last week you had it, right? I'm so sorry, Gerard. I am gonna write it on a post-it note. I'll stick it to my screen for next week. So please come back. don't leave us.

don't want you to go away. Right. I promise you, you should have heard what he called me before we started recording. It wasn't, was it bad? it wasn't frick. Well, yeah. Okay. I'm groveling now. Courtney's with us. Nathan, go for a full English with him again In Oh, of course. Yeah. Yes, We actually spend time together. This, I also forget. Oh, it's not good. it's not a cola. No. I'll have full fat coke every day of the week. I'll have to do that. Simon, I thought you would be on my side here. No. Good for you, Simon. join the correct side of the, of this argument. and it's not misunderstood, it's just wrong.

Fight and talk. Stay on, stay in Northern Ireland. Simon, don't, stray out. Jess is after you. Okay. So WP Bills, obviously it's about WordPress, so let's put on the screen the few different bits and pieces that we're gonna do. A few bits of self promotion very quickly. This is our website. We produce two pieces of content each week.

Stick your email address into that, and I'll notify you via a, via email every time we produce a new piece of content. The latest one that I did was, with a young English fella called Taylor Dra. I had not heard of Taylor, but Taylor's been very busy in the WordPress space. He's got a range of plugins.

He's got sort of like an educational thing called Snippet Club as well. But the real thing that I thought was interesting, and this may lead to a conversation, was that Taylor is very young, Taylor's in his early twenties, so he is the rarest of WordPress things. He's a person whose age begins with a two or lower.

Now, I dunno about you lot, but when I go to WordPress events, I look around, I am now move on and I look around and there seem to be people of my age. There's quite a lot of people who are older, but, and a few that are a lot younger as well. But 20 something is not typical as far as I can work out.

And, I do wonder as with all things, that have got this sort of demographic skewing older. What kind of shape we're gonna be in a few years time. I don't know if it's exciting anymore to the sort of, I'm gonna say Utes and then I'm gonna regret it 'cause I sound like an idiot. But, but anyway, that's the word.

I dunno, what we do about ex enticing these people in. When I was 20 something I wasn't touching CMSs. The internet was, just a sort of, just sort of beginning its journey. So I didn't have to worry about any of that stuff. I'm still excited about it, but I don't know. I dunno if the, young people are still excited.

Go to Word camps, the age skews older. I run the, co-run, I should say the WordPress London Meetup and same thing. Lots of more senior people in the room and my age and above and what have you. Not too many of the younger folks. So I dunno if you have any thoughts on that. I was really just introducing that topic because we had a podcast episode, but if you've got anything to say on that, then far away while I have a sip of water.

[00:13:43] Jess Frick: I feel like we need to jump ahead to what we're gonna talk about in a minute about the new home for WordPress educational programs. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So we combine the two things. Yeah, let's do exactly that. All right. In that case, we will slide ahead. So let me just pop this on the screen. so there's the piece, sorry, Marcus.

[00:14:01] Marcus Burnette: I listened to this episode and I was a little disappointed that you didn't dive a little bit deeper in the fact that he said that his dad is a professional magician. I know, I, was listening back to I need to hear more about that. I know, I wanted to hear more about that. Yeah. And the fact that he works with his dad.

Yes. How, nice is that? And by not as a magician, the magician. No, that's, he's the guy in the box web design company gets sort in half each week. No. Wasn't it interesting though, how he, his dad's a real inspiration to him. It's really fascinating. Okay, so what I'll do then is we were talking about skewing younger and so Yeah.

[00:14:38] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, here we go. So let me see if I can find the correct thing. Was it this? No new home. There it is. The gli. Yeah, there it is. Thank you so much. So perfect timing. so this is on wordpress.org and it's the news that there is a new home for all the educational bits and pieces in the WordPress space.

you can see it here actually. that's actually what it looks like. And the, URL is super easy to remember. It's wordpress.org/education, and it really, it's an idea to co combine the, different and disparate things that are going on out there. So we've got this thing called Campus Connect.

We've got this thing called student clubs, and we've got things called WordPress credits, and they all do a slightly different thing. Campus Connect is like real world, attendance at universities where, they'll go into a university and they'll set up a, day's workshop or something like that.

WordPress credits is where you literally get credit from the institution that you are already subscribed to. So the University of Pisa is an example. You can get credits for doing a WordPress thing. So I don't know, maybe that's gonna be a 12th of your entire degree, can be WordPress related stuff. And then student clubs is exactly what it says.

It's more sort of club-based collaboration, growing community and all that kind of thing. Anyway, it's got a new home, which as you can see here. And, okay, so there is the piece I'm teeing you up a bit there, Jess. So how you're, how are you thinking of combining these? So we're talking about, the, current audience at Word Camp, skewing a bit older right here, they are bringing in the next generation.

[00:16:17] Jess Frick: They're reaching 'em on campuses. they're reaching them with free education. They're making it accessible through the avenues where they're currently hanging out. and I don't know if you've hung out with any 20 somethings lately, but they're kind of fickle when it comes to online tooling. Yeah.

'cause they're native to this, they have lots of opinions and thoughts on it. And I think that this is a brilliant idea to start bringing in that next generation. Because, some of us oldies are retired. Yeah. The, I suppose the one that speaks most clearly to me is, lemme just scroll back down.

[00:16:56] Nathan Wrigley: Is, this one the one that's called WordPress credits? Because that will take people who are on, there's a few universities that I can't, when I recorded a podcast episode with somebody about it, I think there were two universities at that point, but the intention was to, and they were going through the whole process of making sure, that other universities were coming on board.

'cause as you can imagine, if a university's gonna put their name to what you are doing, you've gotta demonstrate that it's credible and you're not just sort of giving them some 10 minute exercise to do over here. It was, it's really credible stuff That seems to be a great way of doing it because you're just sort of dropping in something into a program that we're already doing, presumably related to tech or computer science or whatever it may be.

So that seems like a really good idea. Two things before I shut up and handed the bank to my colleagues. Oh, number one, it's bold of me to assume that everyone that's a part of this is young. There are plenty of people going back to school at, later stages in life looking for a second, third career.

[00:17:55] Jess Frick: this is also a great opportunity to reach people at a stage of reinvention. And number two, rocket.net and hosting.com have a full-time contributor named Ahmed, and he is hugely, active in these circles. And I think we would also be remiss to not mention that this is an international play too.

Yeah, nice. So it's not just, trying to get the younger next generation, but it's also expanding it well beyond our current geographic boundaries, which dovetails very nicely to my friend Marcus. Nice. Marcus, mark, anything on that? yeah, random scattered thoughts. I really like it. I like the, I know that Jess said that, there are all sorts of different age groups going to, college for second, third careers, but that doesn't discount the fact that the, a lot of folks coming straight out of high school are going to college.

[00:18:57] Marcus Burnette: So even if that's not what they're looking at, they're not being exposed to it. And so, you kind of get this automatic exposure to, sorry, automatic with one t, exposure to WordPress as an option, as something that you can do for a career that you may not have thought of coming out of high school, going into college.

May not have been looking for that, but now you see it as something that's an option on the curriculum. And, now you can kind of follow along there. Yeah. and, like Jess was saying internationally, I think this is, really great too. And I wanna say, and I don't have actual numbers for this necessarily, but while the age group does tend to skew a little bit older as far as the US goes, yeah.

There's a lot of younger folks in Spain and India that are doing lots of really great stuff with WordPress. and we, they tend to get somewhat overlooked, I think, but I think they're, there is a younger group, they're just maybe not as loud and as prominent yet, and we're just starting to see some of them show some of the, really great stuff that they're, doing coming out of, like I said, some of the larger communities abroad, especially India.

[00:20:07] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, India I think is on fire with all that kind of stuff, isn't it? And I think, my comments about the demographic skew in older, they really do apply to the country where I live, the UK and the us. But I think you're right. I think it's probably not the case that in other places like India for example, I think it is much more broad and the opportunity.

Okay. So a add to that, the whole thing, that the infrastructure I'm guessing in India is now Super rock solid. there's probably a whole heritage of people who've been employed, like a generational or more of people who've been employed in the tech space. You can see it's a really credible learning path, but maybe the learning bit has been missing and now there's a lot of these things happening in institutions, hopefully at an institution near you.

So this is the student clubs that we were showing on the screen earlier. Let's just put that back. So the Campus Connect bit here and the student club bit here, oh, I failed to put it on the screen. these two at the Tops campus connecting student clubs. they're enabling it so that hopefully there's something close to where you are.

I get this palpable sense of excitement whenever I talk to somebody from that part of the world that this is, it, still is really exciting and in the same way that it was exciting to me, like really, genuinely exciting to me 15 years ago when I discovered that there were these free things on the internet that you could download and get a website with.

I think a lot of that excitement is just beginning to get exposed in that, in those parts of the world, and it's very cool. very cool. mark, anything on that before we move on? boy, everyone else said it so Well. I, think that hitting. People up at the college level, that works for things both good and bad at the college level as far as like, I, I can't think of a better word than indoctrination, which is a terrible word.

[00:22:00] Marc Benzakein: I get what you mean. Exposure. How about we go with that Expo? I like exposure better. So much better than indoctrination. Yes. this is like our Joe Camel. We're getting another yet. Yeah. Maybe this has to do with our conversation prior to going on live. I don't know, but but yeah, I, I think this is a fantastic idea.

I, I remember years ago, years and years ago when I was just getting into WordPress. I actually went to my son's school. He was in third grade or something. And of course I was pushing ServerPress not to the kids, but, it made it very easy actually. But it made it really easy for me to go in and show them how you could build a website.

and we actually built like this, Minecraft, WordPress Word website, like in, in one class period. And they were all excited and coming up to me. So you can see that if you get, if you get to them when they're young, you can actually like impress upon them what a great thing it is. So, yeah, it's, kind of interesting.

[00:23:04] Nathan Wrigley: So when I, so if you rewind the clock, like 15 years ago when I first discovered CMSs, there was no, there was a computer and you had a computer and typically you had to plug it into a wall with a cable and the internet was patchy and all this kind of stuff. And, just the idea that I could, me, Nathan could press a few buttons and something would be available to the entire world.

That was so new and interesting. Yeah. And yet now, the mobile phones, the tablets, the myriad of different platforms out there, there's a lot of noise that they've got that, that we're competing against. And yeah. And I suppose trying to get in there early. in these ways is, gonna help. And I've gotta think that if you are senior management in some way in a WordPress company, this has gotta be on your radar.

The whole generational demographic thing. Yeah. Because if we leave it for another decade and just hope that the 43% of the internet sticks around, probably won't, it's gonna require a bit of hard work and programs like this. And so I suppose at this point we should say a great big thank you to anybody who is in any way, shape or form, been connected with this, endeavor.

I know there's a lot of hard work going on in the background. I don't think it's easy to approach institutions and try to get 'em to give you a portion of their, curriculum and say, yeah, sure. Run with it. That's fine. So I imagine there's a lot of, phoning email and site visits and all that, so thank you.

To anybody who, who's been contributing to that, by the way. Completely going off piece mark. I'm just imagining you entering like your school and trying to sell server press to a c like 8-year-old children. Everybody sit down. I'm gonna tell. yeah. I mean, it was, yeah, it turned into quite the, fundraiser.

[00:24:46] Marc Benzakein: I'm, telling you. yeah. I, there was this TV show in the uk. it was, how We Kick It was how we Kick started River Press, I'll be honest. Yeah. It was all children's subscription. Yeah. There was, there was a TV show in the UK called The Fast Show, and it was called that because each sketch was really quick.

[00:25:03] Nathan Wrigley: It was just a few seconds. And, there was this, character in it called Competitive Dad. And competitive dad would do everything that, a normal dad would do with his children only. He would have to be significantly better than them at it. So he'd be playing like a game of cricket or something and he'd get them to bowl it under arm and then, and he would like.

Smack it, miles and then Ron and Ron, everything that, anyway, just sort of the parallels made me laugh there. Okay, there we go. So. That was that. Right? Okay. I'm gonna go back to the WP builds, put the bits on the screen. So we were talking about, Taylor, Jason, go and check that podcast episode out and, yeah, it was really nice.

His dad is a magician, as Marcus says. The other thing that I put out this week is, it's a podcast episode, but this chap, it's called, mark Zaca. We hit record just before Christmas, honestly, because Mark, I edit these, I listen to it. I listen to every single. Again, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. No, it was so enjoyable.

'cause it turns out that Mark and I are kind of, he's got started on the internet a little bit earlier than I did, but not much. And you remember the days of dial up modems and the, all the noise that the thing used to make and all of that. and it's just a journey mark talking about how the internet has changed, what it used to be like, how difficult it was to get started and all this.

So it's just like a walk, it's a trip down memory lane. So, if you are, skewing older in the age demographic, this is the episode. for you. It was absolutely lovely chatting to you. It was, I had and I had a great time. Yeah, it was lovely. And I edited out all that, in century politics that we talked about.

[00:26:54] Marc Benzakein: Well, that's good. yes, that was a good two hours of that, that we covered it all. I actually had someone text me over the weekend who I haven't spoken to in a while who, oh, used to be a very active member of the WordPress community, and he said he had listened to it, so you at least got one listener to it.

So that's good. That's my goal. I get the one listener, I'm a happy. Yeah, but he did call me old. He did call me old. Oh, well there's a time for that, isn't there? I think I reached it many years ago. Anyway, go check that out. It's on WP Tavern and then apropos of nothing, this is not new. I put a little post out on LinkedIn and I don't even know if it's still open, but it just got me thinking about this show and this panel and whether or not you want to contribute to this.

[00:27:39] Nathan Wrigley: I put out this little message saying, WordPress Company Trust question. I just said, I'm curious to know which companies you trust without question in the WordPress space, a company that you simply know or assume will do the right thing by you, their customer. Then I went on to, explain how you know that they earned your trust.

You can read that if you wish to. It's over on LinkedIn, but the reason I mentioned it is I was just curious. This panel if anybody wanted to share anything like that. If you don't because you feel that's like, it's a bit weird, then that's fine as well. But I'll share mine. There's honestly, there's like three or four that I could really trust.

I'm gonna share two. The first one is WS form. because of Mark, West Guard. You all know Mark, I'm sure, but I've got to know Mark extremely well in a way that I've really not got to know any plugin developers. Most plugin developers are still companies to me, so when I buy their stuff, I'm buying it from the website and I don't really know who's behind it.

But Mark is, that's a totally different, ball game for me now. I know him really like him, really trust him. So there's, my first one is Ws form. I just completely trust him to do the right thing, to keep that plugin a, grade. And the other one would be generate anything, generate blocks, generate. generate, press the theme.

I don't, I, I've met, I've met Tom online, like on a call like this, but never met him in person. But I just get the same vibes. I just get the vibe that he is got, his ethics are really aligned to mine. He clears up his support queue each night. He does the right thing relentlessly, keeps the plug and updated.

It doesn't get, detracted, what's the word? It doesn't get sort of shiny object syndrome and go off and do a myriad other things like I do. and so there's my two. So I'll just open it up to you if anybody wants to share. If you think that's weird, just ignore it and we'll move on. But if anybody wants to.

[00:29:37] Marc Benzakein: Well, I'll speak first and I'll say I probably am not too far out of line. If of the other three or the other two panelists here would, all agree that the companies they represent are people that they 100%, back up. I certainly would not be involved with May WP if I did not 100% trust who they are and what they are.

And I imagine Jessica and Marcus feel the same way about the companies they work for. So, I will say that, but the other company that, I've gotten to be pretty close with also, in, not quite the same way you have with Mark, but, I really like what they're doing and there aren't a lot of people, if any, other people doing it, which is term mageddon.

I don't know if people are familiar with them, but, yeah, Han Hans, and, I mean, Don is just like a brilliant lawyer. I mean, just. Incredibly brilliant. And and they, put together a really cool product that has saved me personally a lot of time. So, so yeah, I, would say those two companies for me, he is extremely fondly.

[00:30:47] Nathan Wrigley: He is Oh yeah. If you ever hung out with Han, but he's Oh yeah. Like his sense of humor and mine just overlapped perfectly. He's same. Yeah. And also his office looks like a submarine, which I think, yeah. Yeah. So really, and I have obviously an interview, I did an interview with him for actually a couple interviews with him for, for May WP that are online.

[00:31:11] Marc Benzakein: And, and the stuff that doesn't make it to the interview is usually us. Doing exactly that, joking around and, going way off book. But that's not surprising for anything I'm involved in, so. Oh, well, I'm very pleased. That's a lovely recommendation. Yeah. So term again is Mark's obviously. Yeah.

[00:31:30] Nathan Wrigley: It goes without saying your own company. I understand that. Yeah, Jess or Marcus, do you want or not? You go first. Okay, sure. I, don't know. I generally find myself to be an optimistic person, but this is probably one of the places where I feel a little bit more skeptical. However, I will say, I don't know if I, and this kind of follows the same trend so far.

[00:31:55] Marcus Burnette: I don't know if there are any companies really that I trust in that way as much as people that I've formed relationships with. Yeah. That then represent the companies. Yeah. certainly Mark is one of those for me, for sure. and it's less about whether or not trust, I trust Ws form. It's that I know Mark and I trust Mark and Mark is the head of what's going on with Ws form.

[00:32:18] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I, I don't know. I'm, there are definitely others, that I'll just kind of, I'll leave it to, to Justin. Yeah. It's okay. The name names if she wants pressure, pressure me. Yeah. Yeah, And, I think that's it For me, it's just the, relationships. I think that's why the community is so important.

[00:32:40] Marcus Burnette: I think that's why seeing each other and hanging out at events, is so important. Whether that's a giant event, like a work camp where lots of people are coming together or just being in the same space with each other at meetups locally, and all of that. I think the, relationships that are built are what form that trust for, me.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you Marcus. I appreciate it. Jess, do you wanna avoid or kinda lean in? I was gonna say exactly the same thing as Marcus. It's not so much about companies, but it is people like, for example, Ben G. I would trust that guy to the moon and back again. He is Oh, nice, principled and morally sound people that I have the privilege of knowing and it's why I wanted to work with him.

[00:33:26] Jess Frick: and there are a number of great people on our team too, and that I think comes through in the way rocket.net does business. I think the only appropriate answer to this though is WP builds. and so that was not. The intention, by the way, Jess. It's okay. It's okay. Stop. No, stop. Now. Stop. We know what you were trying to do and if you want attention, you can just ask for it, Nathan.

[00:33:49] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, I'm so sorry. That wasn't how it was supposed to go. Let's move on. so the, I'm desperately trying to find something else. I appreciate it, Jess. But you know what, Courtney has seemingly read now. Courtney has some great examples in the chat too. Yes, you're great. Thank you. Let's lean into that.

So the first one, is from Simon who lives in Amsterdam. We can see his name clearly there. he says, I'm gonna just lead into this. I'm gonna get his name deliberately wrong for the rest of the show. Keep putting in comments, Simon, and I'll just make up a new name every time. great podcast with Mark.

Brought back lots of memories. Oh, I'm so pleased. So there were two listeners. Yes. and somebody saying, oh, the webinar. Hello? Yeah. No, I didn't do your survey, but you obviously had a similar survey to the question I just posed our panelist. Okay, there we go. and Courtney has leaned into this. She's saying Mike McAllister from Ollie.

Wp, do you know what, Courtney. I think if I was a, I only said two, but if I could say a third one, I think I'm with you on that. I've used Holly. Yeah. I like, I've met Mike and I have gre very good intuitions about Mike, as well. So thank you. That's a great suggestion. Yeah. I agree with Courtney's other one there too.

[00:35:03] Marcus Burnette: Yeah. Yeah. And then there's another one that is really getting into it. Look at this Equalize digital. Anything from Amber Hines. Basically she says, WP Ally Day, make WP Ally team, meet ups and so on. So, Amber Hines, which then leads us to equalize digital. Hold the thought, we're gonna talk about them in a minute.

[00:35:21] Nathan Wrigley: and then Marcus, you're getting a nod here, saying people are. People are what attract customers rather than companies? I think so. I think in our space it's totally possible to have that relationship, isn't it? So the, example we're now using Mike McAllister, Ollie, Tom Osborne generate things, mark, west Guard, Ws form.

It counts for a lot, doesn't it? That personal connection. Which you can really get. Danielle, it can, go the other way too. There have been people that I've met. I, yeah, I'm like, maybe I would've gotten your product, but now that I have met you, maybe I'm, yeah. See what the alternatives are.

yeah, that's right. Luckily we don't sell products. Daniela de Danielle Osa, is someone I trust a lot as well. Thank you. Okay. That was interesting. Alright, so that was that. Can I ask for, just because he's so sweet. I love the main WP team too. Oh, I love that they stay open source. I love their commitment to the community.

[00:36:26] Jess Frick: They could have sold out 10 ways to Sunday already, and they have not. So they're another great trustworthy company that I recommend. Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I gr and now I hope he's going red as well. That's great. I guarantee, you he is. I, know he is listening and I guarantee you he is.

[00:36:44] Marc Benzakein: but, but it's true with dentist, what you see is what you get. And, that is the reason that I aligned myself with them in the first place was because that whole team is all about the integrity and all about giving, working with the community to give them what they need. and so yeah, it's really been a great, for me personally, I'm, sorry to.

Sideline this, but, for me personally, it's been really great because of the fact that we were so aligned and for me to go from owner of a company to a company where I can take ownership, of what I'm doing, and, Feel part of a team that has similar vision to me, even though it's not my vision or defined by me.

it's been really great. So yeah. Look, there's,

[00:37:47] Nathan Wrigley: he's, he know my love. It's, Dennis from Main wp. He's popped in and he's managed to find on, he was listening though, with Red. Oh yeah. Well, oh, hello Dennis. That's lovely. Okay. He wants to make sure I don't make a fool out of, out of the team. That's right. So he's he listens to that. Yeah. That's nice.

Oh, okay. So here's another thing, and Dennis, I think fits this perfectly. One of the things that I seem to be drawn to is, it's one word and it, this may resonate with you, or you may think, Wrigley, what are you talking about? It's humility. Yes. I Oh, All the nods. All three of you Absolutely. At the same time.

Absolute. Like that. Yeah. That was, fascinating. There's something about the humble. Persona, which really draws me in. Like obviously, if you're in the WordPress space, you have to be the out and out marketer. You have to be, you have to do the noisy marketing as well. But when you meet the founders and when you see the humanity in them and the humility in them, and the fact that they do ordinary things like walk the dog and put the kids to bed and all of those kind of things, there's just something, there's just something ever so human about that.

Yeah. That I really get attracted to. Yeah. Anyway, so there we go. Yeah, he's definitely long on humility. I will give you that is, that's great. A great way to, yeah. That's lovely. Yeah. Oh, you know where I often will see humility the most though, and I'm gonna, I've told this story a hundred times already, but I'll say it again because he would never tell you, first of all, don't buy hosting from them.

[00:39:18] Jess Frick: Buy it from me. But also Tom from Conveo is one of the. Most humble and kind individuals you'll ever meet. And I was just kidding about the don't buy hosting from them. It's just again, we're but don't. Right. Here's the thing. When I was a hosting team rep on contributor day, Tom showed up early.

He had never contributed before in his life. He was not yet familiar with how we use GitHub, as part of the contribution system. And that man spent an entire day helping proofread a hosting handbook. Like grunt work. This is the CEO and founder of Conve. Yeah. these people are around all the time.

And if you really wanna find who the humble, folks are, show up on a contributor day. Yeah. And see that's sitting there doing the job. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a curious space, isn't it? And that we really are lucky to be surrounded by a lot of those kind of people. There is something about that characteristic.

[00:40:21] Nathan Wrigley: Which I think aligns with open source o obviously that's a very, there's not a lot of depth to that s sentiment. it sounds very glib, but that, that has proven itself time and again, in my opinion at least, the humility and the open source side, I think there's a strong. A strong connection between those two things.

And by the way, that is now the universal symbol for strong connection. Just so that, yeah. Thank you. I appreciate you. Yeah. Mark's nodding, but he didn't do it. he's, yeah. This just got flag. I just, I'm nodding in agreement. I'm nodding in agreement. That's great. Oh, it's so nice that Dennis popped in and he is saying thank you and, very good to find the, red cheek emoji as well.

That's lovely. Okay. Right. Okay, let's move on. So, one of the things that we allow the panelists to do is to bring their own, content along and we're doing that right now. So, Jess, as works with rocket.net hosting.com and all the other bits and pieces that are attached to that. You've brought a piece called How WordPress Companies are using AI for data modeling.

We'll get into a bit of AI stuff later, but Jess, tell us more. What's this on the menu for? I'll keep it quick 'cause we've got a lot of really great content to cover today. But, obviously our blog puts out a lot of great content, but this one got. Some legs under it. People were founding it to be very helpful.

[00:41:42] Jess Frick: And here's the thing, most of us already have the data, we just don't know what to do with it. and so this particular post is giving clear instructions on how you can leverage AI to make the most out of your data and get it to tell the stories that you're hoping to understand about your business.

The, I know a lot of people hear data modeling and it sounds a little intimidating, but it doesn't have to be anymore. Okay. And so thank you very much. Do we just so that Jess, a minute ago, I stared up. I looked up and your, what I now know is a Corgi. Yeah. At least I think it's a Corgi.

[00:42:22] Nathan Wrigley: You have a Corgi behind you. Where's he's hiding. she got spayed this week, and so she's in jail because she can't run around. Well, I've already written the, the episode title name down. It's called Caged Corgi. But yeah, her name's Doty and so we are calling it Dotie Jail Cage. Dotty Jail knows.

Maybe that's a good one. I, there you go. Dotie. But she's a puppy. She wants to run around and so, because I'm paying attention to you guys, the reason, I said it though, Jess, is because I looked up and I swear for a good five seconds, there was only so much of the cor to be seen. Just enough of her body was.

Poking out and I, swear it was a chicken. There was definitely a chicken on. Dotty, are you all very I know, I'm so sorry, Dottie. I apologize. Doty. Oh, okay. So there we go. I will put a link in the show notes to the, rocket.net piece. It was called, though, using WordPress Companies, sorry, how WordPress companies are using AI for data modeling.

We'll get onto a load of WordPress AI source related stuff in a moment. But, let's move over to this one. gosh, seems like WordPress 6.9 only just dropped, but we're, fast moving to WordPress 6.9 0.1. Quite a few of the milestones have already been reached, so there's various bug scrubs that have taken place and we're about to enter in tomorrow.

There's gonna be another bug scrub a week after that, another bug scrub. But just to let you know that at the end of the month, January 29, release candidate one should be coming around and then the third of Feb. It is hopefully gonna be the day when the, latest and greatest version of WordPress drops.

If you are a sort of casual user, it probably doesn't matter all that much, but I imagine at, hosting companies, Bluehost and rocket.net stuff like this really matters and you've gotta do quite a lot of spade work to make sure everything is tip tiptop and, corgi agrees. Do is in agreement.

Get ya, I ran for the mute button. Sorry guys. That's fine. I think the more the merrier, so there we go. I don't suppose anybody's got anything to add to that. I shall just move on unless somebody shouts out. No. Okay. In which case I will go, oh, no, we did that one. We sort of snuck that one in a little bit early.

So let's go to this one instead. Now, last week on the show we had Andrew Palmer and Andrew Palmer mentioned, this chap, who sadly has passed away. So getting all serious for a moment. So, Tom, Dello, was a member of the WordPress community, and Andrew drew attention to a GoFundMe page, I believe.

I can't remember whether I managed to get that page on the screen or not, but, The, goal of $18,000 has been put up on the GoFundMe page in order to take care of the, funeral and burial arrangements and what have you, and 97 people so far have raised almost $16,000, so I would say we're 80% there.

If you fancy, contributing to that, then I will put the links in the show notes. But, if you go to GoFundMe and search for Tom, debell, it may be that you knew him or knew of him and would like to help with that, then. You certainly can. So yeah, there's, that one sad news, but, see if we can get that one over the line.

Okay. We were talking about Amber a minute ago. I think it was Courtney, wasn't it? In the comments Saying how much she likes Amber Hines this stuff. And by coincidence, we've got this from actually Amber's website. So it's not the Equalized digital website, it's Amber's personal web website, amber hines.com.

And, it's just an interesting take from an accessibility point of view, but also from their company's point of view. They, they, well, she had a conversation with Matt Cromwell. Over on X. and in that conversation it was kind of, it kind of came up that Amber and Equalize digital only use default blocks and default themes now for their websites.

And, Matt sort of came back, well, if, you, if you can't do all of the bits and pieces with these third party blocks, would you not be better off just using a, an AI like lovable or something like that and creating a flat, static website. And, you can do that in very short shrift. But then this, sort of post developed so Amber quickly realized, you know what, this conversation deserves a little bit more airing.

And, essentially just to sort of cut a long story short, that, that's it, they, u Amber used to use block libraries. They've now been sort of burned and it's quite interesting 'cause I can completely empathize with this. it said that they were quite happy using some block libraries. They would tweak things, but here's what happened.

She says, so what changed? A few devs ruined it for everyone. Here's the story without naming names. Library A was bought by a hosting company, which de deprecated it. and people had to switch to a, a renamed version. Library B changed it CSS classes, which mean a load of work needed to be done to, change their custom CSS library C change the loading of the style sheet order, which meant that their CSS got loaded after the new block CSS.

Hence, it all got messed up. Library d got abandoned completely from.org and so that just went away and so they couldn't rely on. Anyway, long story short. they're only doing their own, they're using core blocks, core themes, and if they can't figure out how to do it with a core block or core theme, they custom code it.

So they'll build their own block to satisfy this one thing. And she makes this really interesting point, which I'd never really thought of, and I can't find it now and I probably won't find it, but there's one point in the article where she makes the point that if anything goes wrong and you're using core blocks and a core theme and you disable every single plugin on your website, the website, your website still looks exactly the same.

And that never happens to me. If I uninstall a block or a, or all the plugins, there's a significant impact anyway. we now know that many people in the audience really like what Amber does. I just thought that was an interesting piece, core. Core library for blocks, core themes, and they're away to the races.

I don't know if anybody wants to contribute on that one. She did say if she was gonna use it, she'd use Cadence. And she did. That's, my favorite too. She did, she worked a lot with Cadence, didn't she? I don't know if that was well, I dunno if that's been going for years and years. Yeah. They've made a lot of progress when it comes to accessibility and, again, trying to do the right things for the right reasons.

[00:49:06] Jess Frick: yeah. Yeah. But I, hear, I mean, core Blocks are where it's at. Yeah, it certainly does make it easier. I've been, I, don't really build it. I used to build websites for clients a lot and I don't really do that much anymore. But, when I have done more recently and I've used Core Blocks, I've definitely hit roadblocks though.

[00:49:22] Nathan Wrigley: I've definitely, that's easy to say. and I've definitely hit roadblocks where it, I've wanted to do something which I anticipated would be really straightforward with Core Blocks and it hasn't been, so you're into either the custom block technology or for me, as I said earlier, generate blocks.

I've relied on that a lot and I have total faith in it. So I, I'm quite happy when you find it's not working though. Historically because of a plugin. Yeah, Usually it's something like that. but also I just like the fact that you're not, I'm not, I don't know. I guess Amber's got a bit of this as well.

There's this bit of you, there's this sort of tipping point where you think, if I can't do it with a core block, do I actually need it to look like that? Can I not? Just, can it, just look like this will a, I don't know, will a two column layout be fine and I don't need some complicated grid layout or something like that.

so I lean more into that and the, what core blocks can do, I just do what the core blocks can do more and more. anyway, there we go. So, let's see. There's a few more comments that have come in. This one came up in terms of some, somebody that can be trusted from a few minutes ago. I don't know this person, but, Maxim.

I won't say be when, but I presume that may well be wrong. Anyway, thank you. That is obviously somebody that you have trusted in the WordPress space. good morning, says James Lau Jess. Well, I think we've answered this question, Jess, is that a great puppy in the play in behind you? If so, I want photos.

Jess, you are excused from the podcast. go and take photos. I'll text you the minute this is over. it's James from Florida as well. He says two Floridians on the show. He was from the Nor Northeast US somewhere. Oh, okay. Okay. I don't remember exactly where. yeah, okay, there we go.

Right, let's new, just looking for alligator stories. I remember you were on the podcast once and you, I'm sure it was you, maybe you two were on the show and you say that you frequently see. Alligators, which was about actually the weirdest thing that you could say. Actually, all three of us were on that show.

What? Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. There you go. It's a rehash. Like, honestly, you might as well have said like dinosaurs, as far as I'm concerned, alligators are not a feature of the earth as far as I'm concerned. they're just, they're not real. but apparently they are, and they just wander around the streets where you live.

What do you do if you see an alligator wave? I mean, you just, but I mean, do you leg it? Do you run in the opposite direction, or are they basically benign? I mean, I wouldn't say benign, but if you leave them alone, leave you alone. yeah, You're not gonna go up the I'm not continuing to approach.

Yeah. Okay.

But I can imagine your corgi might be quite intrigued by going up and, checking out the alligator. So I presume there's gotta be a little bit of maintenance of the corgi. Marcus can back me up. We live very close to a lake that is next to the Everglades, one of the most populous, bodies of water for alligators.

Right. and so you'll see babies walking around. It's not that big of a deal, but I wouldn't let my corgi roam the coastline of that lake because she would absolutely be eaten by a big one. Okay. So, yeah. Okay. That happens, right? The alligators, a lot of the creeks and stuff around here kind of branch off of that lake, so they make their way around and into neighborhoods and wherever.

I don't mean to, besmirch the, the Corgi, what is it? Dot Dottie? i Dottie. Yeah, but she's a snack. The alligator would've thought to her. Yep, exactly. She's like a little snack to an alligator. It's like an a pair of teeth. that's a horrible thought. I dunno why I said that. I'm so know, though.

[00:53:16] Jess Frick: Florida is so crazy and Marcus, you will not be surprised to hear this. 'cause for those who don't know, Marcus and I live about a mile away from each other. I saw on the main road in front of my house an eagle carrying a baby gator. Oh yeah. That's very Florida. Yeah. That's, that should be on our flag if it's not.

So, to be though, that's, you've just taken a page out of Jurassic Park. That's not actually what happens on planet Earth in the uk I love this. We have literally nothing. I mean, this, I stand corrected. If somebody can find a weird edge case. There's no. Well, apart from humans, there's no creature which can harm you.

[00:54:03] Nathan Wrigley: Like, the worst that could happen is ba I don't know, like you accidentally getting fallen on by a cow or something as it falls over. That's the, limit of it. Well, you guys have, nessie, I mean, well now yeah, that's a whole thing. Speaking of dinosaurs. Yeah. But we don't, and so when I hear about these things like an alligator walking down the street, by the way, another dog has just came.

I don't know if that's yours, but, we have another that's don't just coming in, just come to commune with the caged one. but we don't have anything like that. even our spiders, they just sort of crawl on you and sort of go, eh. they can't harm you or anything like that. So when I go to other countries and there's, just tons of creatures that can kill you, then yeah, it's a bit, freaky, right?

Tao says, where did Tao go? He's gone. What do you do? He said, what do you do when you see an alligator in the glaze? He said he simply stayed in the boat. I think wise choice, you carry some pocket meat and just throw it towards the, throw it towards the alligator. I don't know if carry some pocket meat is really great advice.

No. Okay,

I think I've just invented the phrase, pocket meat. Pocket meat. Fuck. Yeah, let's take advice from the English guy on how to handle alligators. Just walk around with meat in your pockets. That'll solve everything. Yeah. See that corpse over there? That was the English guy. Thought it was Clever Meat. Maybe that's the episode title.

I like that one. Oh boy. Yeah. Outta context. Nathan, I think you might wanna, yeah. You flag again? Yeah. Oh, is that okay? I crossed that out, right? No, consider it just, okay. Okay. Right. Yes. Immediately the dots connect. Yeah. In my head and I, I apologize. Reel that one back for a second. However, we are joined by another Floridian.

Oh, it's Steve Burge. I can tell from the picture, but I wouldn't have told from the the handle. what else have we got? There's lots of comments coming in. Something about Corky armor. yes. Thank you, Tammy. What, is that? What does it mean? What does Corgi armor mean? We're gonna have to armor her up and protect her so that, she doesn't I see.

Oh, okay. Get her a little like Kevlar suit or something like that. Corgi Kevlar whole company. I really need to sit down. I'm getting too excited. Right. There's lots of comments coming in. I'd be very surprised if they came falling from the sky. Yeah, me too. If the alligator was dropped by the eagle, that would really, there's no getting outta that.

[00:56:49] Marcus Burnette: I would be 50% less surprised than Taco. Yeah. okay. and then Tammy says, have you seen an angry badger? I haven't. but maybe they could do me some harm. I don't know. Nathan, your squirrels are double the size of the ones in my backyard. Likewise, your ducks of the size of Canadian. Yeah. But they can't do anything to you.

[00:57:07] Nathan Wrigley: They just quack and gather nuts. or pocket meat. Right. Moving on the singles. These are crazy though. Yeah. Just to be clear. Canadian beast, like they're aggressive. Okay. Yeah. Unlike a goer, which will probably leave you alone, A Canadian goose doesn't care. Like they'll come right for you. Yes. Well that's true.

I was once attacked by a swan and honestly we have gone so off the pill, off feast, don't we? I'm so sorry. Right. Let's get back to, let's get back to the WordPress stuff 'cause that's what we're here for. I do apologize, James. Just the alligator button and we just out in a different direction. It just derailed my head.

It's too interesting. okay. Right. Let's move on to some AI stuff and karma is all down and I'll get rid of the aggressive Segal comment. There we go. Oh, right. Okay. So we're gonna stretch into a few bits of AI stuff. The reason I'm putting this on the screen is 'cause I saw James LaPage who's gonna feature in the next couple of articles.

He's the, he's the lead of the Automatic, and I believe it's called the WordPress AI team. But he's, I think he's an a automattic. He, He wanted to mention this website, so it's called Skills sh and it's not WordPress specific, but I think he wanted to make the point that in the open source space, this, new kind, well, it's not new, but this, whole thing about, skills and the way that AI can interact with skills, the open side of things is a bit of a thing.

And I think he wanted to make sure that we all knew that Automatic was doing its thing. So if you go to this website skills sh and you type in the search bar, which you can see at the top automatic, then you can see that yes, indeed Automatic are doing their thing. So that's that. I just thought I'd show that off.

And then James is back over on wordpress.org. Well actually make wordpress.org. He's got a piece entitled, introducing WP Bench, A WordPress AI Benchmark. And you see that I've highlighted quite a lot as Tammy who's in the comments will know me and Ai. I don't, fully understand it. I sort of clinging on with my, clause, but I'm gonna try and do my best.

so I'll read a few bits out. So how well do language models actually understand WordPress to answer this? We are in, we're introducing WP Bench and. If you click on the link, which is buried in there, you'll get to this GitHub repo, it's github.com/wordpress/wp-bench. You can go and check that out there.

and this is the official WordPress AI benchmark, and the idea is that it's gonna evaluate how well AI models understand WordPress development from core APIs and coding standards to plug in architecture and security best practices. and then why WP Benchmark, and I've just done the, highlight lighted bullet points so that they can understand today's models, shape, tomorrow's models, and build an open source variant of this.

And then here's the important bit, I suppose, WP Benchmark, how does it work? Well, it's got, it says WP Benchmark measures AI capabilities across two dimensions, knowledge and execution. And the benchmark, uses WordPress itself as the grader, which is I thought was quite interesting, running generated code in a sandbox environment.

This ensures we measure both theoretical understanding and a practical ability to produce working standards, compliant code. And then there's a bit about, knowledge. Knowledge where we're at, and limitation, what have you. But I just thought this was a really interesting project where we're trying to get an A handle on what AI thinks of WordPress, what it can do with WordPress, how it understands WordPress, and I guess that's gonna be a two-way street.

So if we can see that AI typically don't. Do things well with WordPress. Maybe there's knowledge that's useful knowledge so that we can teach them, how to do things well in the future. There was something down here, it would appear that it skews, it's more correct. I'm doing air quotes. It's better when it's doing things from WordPress 6.9 features like the Abilities API and interactivity API.

and early testing showed it scored very highly on older WordPress concepts. I guess that's just because there's more stuff out there on the internet. So again, just another example of, James Automatic WordPress in general. Just sort of trying to keep up and kind of stay ahead of, the trend in the AI space.

I'm sorry if I was clinging on for dear life there, Tammy, I apologize. Do Mark, Jess or Marcus have anything they want to say about this in light of fact that we're all talking about AI all the time. This really is not helping the rumor that James is at least 50% robot. I've actually prodded him once and, he, he's very, seemed very authentic to me.

they've got that whole flesh. Yeah. But they're making him so much more realistic now. It, the bit that doesn't fit is how do you get such an intelligence into some. Body so young looking, I don't quite understand. Oh no, I know. And like he seems to register like human emotions perfectly. Yeah, it's pretty incredible.

I mean, genuinely. So we had this thing, the skills stuff, which he pointed in my direction. Then we got this thing, and then if memory serves, no, that was the two bits for this week. There might have been another bit, which I took off, but James is producing an awful lot of content. I dunno, I genuinely dunno how he keeps up with it.

I think even for journalists, it's very hard to keep with, but he's having to keep up with the, news cycle, but also the technical aspects of it and build with the team and what have you. So it's pretty, seems like an incredibly good hire. Yeah. Is too, that's for sure. Yeah, That's right. okay.

If nobody else has got anything to add to that, I will just point you in its direction. So make the WordPress org. Sorry, Marcus. That's okay. Yeah, I was just gonna say it's the important bit here is kind of twofold. Like, like you said, one, it's figuring out which models need help and then we can also see how they need help.

[01:03:27] Marcus Burnette: So what documentation needs to be created, for us to help those models out. And then the other is obviously. The costs, both financial and environmental costs. So obviously the, best model may be the most expensive model, but maybe the next best model is one of the cheaper, both in terms of financial costs and, environmental costs to, to run servers and stuff.

So helping make decisions on which model we should use. Maybe I don't need the very best model. Maybe I can go with the second best model because it's gonna cost a whole lot less in a number of ways, and kind of make those decisions based on this. So I think that's super helpful. It, feels like in the last, let's say two years, since it's probably a little bit more than that, but it feels like the, there, there isn't much of a loyalty test in terms of ai.

[01:04:17] Nathan Wrigley: It does seem like developers will very quickly move from one. Platform, so for the longest period of time everybody was talking about open AI and chat, GPT. That seems to be in the rear view mirror. I don't hear much mention of them anymore. Now it seems to be, well then for a while there was other things which came online and seemed to get talked about a lot, and I could be wrong about this, but it feels like Claude Code is, which I believe is Anthropics, yeah.

Technology. They seem to be the one that's being talked about. And so why I'm saying all that is, I guess if another AI comes along and then quickly drops a feature set, which everybody thinks is superior, nobody's gonna be bound to Claude code for any length of time. It's just gonna drop it. So having some sort of benchmark, what is this good a.

In terms of WordPress, what can anthropic do? What can Gemini do? What can open AI do and what can't it do and what have you? That's gonna be really useful so that you just don't go down downloads of dead ends, seeing where things are at. But equally, I'm imagining you'll have to check this on a more or less hourly basis.

'cause, it's seems to change so readily. yeah. Let it alert you or whatever. No, I've already, switched what I've used for different things a couple of times. It really does come down to, I think, what is doing the best job in the least amount of time. I mean, that's the, productivity, math, right.

[01:05:41] Marcus Burnette: What's gonna do the best work and do it the, fastest and whichever thing rolls out. The new model that does that is gonna be the one that's gonna be used until the next one does it faster and better. How, do you gain the intuition that it's time to look at something new? How, do you get the understanding that I've been using this one for a while, it's working for me reliably.

[01:06:04] Nathan Wrigley: 'cause obviously if you lived in that bubble, you could just carry on with what you've got forever. Is it social media and things like that at the moment that you are reliable? Yeah. Do you go market? Yeah. Marketing and social media. but OpenAI especially has done a good job every time they release something.

[01:06:19] Marcus Burnette: Put a video out to kind of showcase it and show some of the new capabilities and how fast it's running and stuff. and then when that's kind of more general public type stuff. But then when it comes to development, there's just, yeah, social media, a lot of chatter about who's using what and things kind of come and go and, oh, I'm using this now instead of that.

And then I'll give it a try. And, cursor, I had a, an extension that I was using for VS code for doing some coding stuff and then everyone's talking about how Great Cursor is, the one that I was using for vs. Code changed their pricing model. So I was like, well, let's go check out Cursor. And so now I've been doing some stuff with Cursor It, it doesn't matter to me and I'm just speaking for myself, but it doesn't matter to me which one I'm using.

[01:07:04] Nathan Wrigley: Right. As long as it's doing the best job for kind of the, least amount of time so I can get to where I'm trying to go quickly. So would you use something like WP Bench then to, inform your decision, obviously on the WordPress side of things? Yeah. Specifically you would use that as a credible source of, okay, anthropic can now do this thing, which seems to put it ahead of the game compared to this one and this one.

Okay. Yeah. Well, I kind of need to, to some degree because most of what we're comparing is just development in general. And what, I do a lot of stuff with WordPress. I'm kind of trying to work my way through the social media noise to figure out what the other WordPress people are using versus people that are all in on React and, Yeah, non WordPress, DMS type stuff. So WP Bench would be super helpful because it's very WordPress specific, so that when I'm building things for WordPress, then I know, okay, these three models are doing it the best. maybe I'll try all three of 'em and see which one I find is the best fit for me.

[01:08:07] Marcus Burnette: do, you have like a lot of overlapping subscriptions then, which, like for a period of Yeah. So you'll have, yeah, for a period of time you'll have multiple during that flipping over to, and then presumably one of them drops off because now you've really not used. Okay. Gosh, that's interesting. it's interesting what I'm thinking about here is a couple weeks ago I was on the show and we talked about.

[01:08:31] Marc Benzakein: How, KA Katie Keith's article about, one of the things that they noticed is that when you make your plugin irreplaceable or hard to replace, that generates that loyalty. I think that maybe one of the weaknesses with, AI is it's so easy to switch. It's so easy to say, oh, let me try this, lemme try this. There's no real pain involved in migrating from one service to the other unless you've like spent a year training one to think the way that you do, or, so that's. That's both true and not true. I think in the development space. That's true. It's very easy to switch.

[01:09:08] Marcus Burnette: Yeah, because the con, the context that you're bringing is basically what's in that folder's fresh, what's in that project. It's fresh. It's fresh, yeah. Yeah. But when you're talking about using AI more generally, like that's where I'm stuck on chat GPT because I've used it forever and it's got this really long context of memory about how I write and what matters to me and all sorts of different information where I can hop in and say, give me a two paragraph bio for this thing.

It can write that pretty easily where if I jump to something else, it doesn't have that context. Right, exactly. It does kind of depend on what you're using it for. Yeah. Yeah. Jess, did you have something you wanted to throw in? Yeah, I filled out a few custom gpt myself, and that's honestly. Part of why I haven't fully untethered from chat EPT, but I think it's honestly a lot like hosting.

[01:09:57] Jess Frick: you're gonna have to have some kind of pain before you're willing to switch away from something like that, because switching can really suck, right? it's like changing ho cell phone providers. You wouldn't do it if it's just working for you. But I know that we're gonna talk about this in a minute.

It'll be really interesting to see what happens when chat GPT starts introducing ads. In a more prevalent basis, I pay for it. am I going to see as many ads and in what way? 'cause then it starts introducing questions about my privacy. right now I assume, with a paid account, I have a certain level of isolation.

But if they're using my data to connect it to marketers, it's gonna make me really question what I'm willing to trust it with. Well, and, I would also question the integrity of the information that's returning to me, just like we do with Google now. Of course. Yeah, so I'm just popping on the screen.

[01:10:55] Nathan Wrigley: So we were gonna maybe cover this at the end, but I'll just put it on the screen now. This is a piece on in Gadget, which is exactly what Jess was talking about, this idea that OpenAI is bringing ads to, to chat GPT. it says free and go tiers. I dunno what the go tier is, but presumably there's some monetary value attached to that.

users in the US will start seeing sponsored content soon. honestly, I read this on the day it came out, which is like 10 days ago now, and I can't actually remember the context of it, but it, seemed like everybody was kind of resigned, like, well, duh, what did you expect? Yeah, like, it's not a money printing machine.

It was at some point gonna have to figure out ways to monetize and what have you. And it, would appear that the amount of money that they get via subscriptions in no way comes close to what they need. So, putting ads in there, but I think you're right, Jess, that's the wider problem. Like, can you, trust it?

To give you something that's objective. Like a perfect example would be, I don't know, you wanna ask it about a restaurant in your local neighborhood that is good for pizza or something? you kind of, no, maybe that's not a great example 'cause that's very subjective. But you want something where objectively it's giving you the best result back.

And when ads come into question, obviously that is gonna skew it, right? It's gonna give you presumably results that are. Paid for in some way, shape, or form. And it, if the, advertising is within the response, then yes, I'm questioning it. If it's a separate, I mean, I'll question it either way probably, but if it sorts it out separately from the actual results, I may be slightly more inclined to believe that it's, yeah.

[01:12:34] Marcus Burnette: So the little screenshot here, you can see that somebody's got it. Somebody, again, if you can't see this, apologies. I'll describe it. There's a screenshot of a phone and somebody's typed in the response, they're obviously generating ideas for a dinner party. So there we go. And then it's given a bunch of recipes, and then there's an ad, which is clearly demarcated.

[01:12:55] Nathan Wrigley: It's got like a divider at the top, and it just, it looks slightly different. The, body of the text looks broadly similar, but there is a little banner saying this is sponsored. So in that scenario. Yeah, I can get that. But now am I thinking, is this Harvest groceries company, which is, where the ad appears to be coming from?

is that gonna find its way into the text? Can I trust any mention of harvest groceries? Jess and that's where I'm coming from because everybody knows AI wants to make you happy. Yeah. That's, it wants to please you. And so if it starts getting signals that everybody thinks Ember hot sauce is the best hot sauce because everybody's clicking on that ad, or people are engaging with it or talking about it, it's probably gonna think by and large.

[01:13:42] Jess Frick: this seems to be a very popular hot sauce. where is it getting its data to understand that, harvest groceries is an advertiser versus something that people are genuinely interested in. Yeah. Is it gonna be nuanced enough to know the difference between, paid or organic lift when it comes to, interest and engagement?

I don't know the answer to that, and I'm sure more will be revealed. well just amazing segue, because do you remember I said there was another piece by James LaPage? Well, there is, and it's here. James didn't write this. This is on Search Engine Journal. but it's James LaPage again, not quite sure if he's an automaton, because you know how James, just how, he goes into, he's got an article where he is talking about how WordPress AI team, is working to make SEO Honestly, I'll cut, it out for you.

[01:14:37] Nathan Wrigley: Basically the long and the short of this article is, at least it appeared to me anyway, is. If you do the same stuff that you do for Google, you're probably gonna have good results. if you pause your content, if you put, if you structure it correctly, put the most important stuff at the beginning, put in headings, demarcate the content into various different content sections and what have you, you're off to the races.

But, yeah, I, agree. Like, which, okay, so if it's code, I can imagine that it's not gonna do anything to your code. It's not gonna inject ads. Is it, gonna inject ads into your code? One would hope not. But now that these, chat bots are becoming, a, basically a substitute for Google, it does raise a question.

If they keep it with those little advertising blocks, I can get it, but now I'm suspicious that content is gonna be in some way, interfered with the main content. the response that you get back. And of course, because it's a bit of a black box. We have no idea what the secret sauce is that they're using.

So, yeah. Okay, so let's have a look here. There's a few comments that have come in about this. tacho says that he hasn't used chat GPT, since switching to Gemini two months ago. Isn't that interesting though? It's like two months. And yet it, like, tacho, you are saying that like it's a long period of time.

I, it feels like you're saying, oh, it's two months, it's ages, it's nothing. Is it like, when was the last time you switched from Google to a different search engine? Like that's a locked in for life now. The whole AI thing, you've got No, You're not locking anything in for any period of time. Elliot says Google would never use your data to sell you stuff.

No, I, can't think of a single example or I've seen an ad on any Google property. No, never. I've told you I use cgi. I've switched to cgi. Switch to cgi, everybody. cgi.com, KAG i.com. You'll have to pay them dollars, but in return you get no ads. Elliot says he switched to, to, Gemini as well.

Marcus. Oh, so Marcus, who's here. Gemini knows a lot and a lot about me, but I have such a history built with chat GPT that it's hard to fully switch, the webinar. I think ads are gonna be generating a shift. To other AI models. Okay. I think that's, they're gonna have to follow suit. I mean, Chachi, BT is just going to be the first uhhuh.

[01:17:10] Marcus Burnette: All of this is far too expensive for any of our $20 a month subscriptions to cover. Yeah. So I mean, if it doesn't have ads now, it will at some point. So let's just put that piece on at the end as well. We'll just, oh no. Where's it gone? Where's it gone? Where's it gone? So this is, Cory Dro writing in The Guardian.

[01:17:28] Nathan Wrigley: It's a UK based paper and he's not saying anything you haven't already heard, but he's basically saying that, So he's making the fairly grand point grandiose that AI companies will fail. and this, seems to be getting talked about quite a lot, but we're still working on the fumes, I think, of VC money.

Maybe that is gonna run out at some point in the near future. but it would appear, I dunno where I read it, I don't think it was in this article, but it would appear that the amount of a subscription that you might need to pay in the future, rather than it being 20, 30, 200 $50 a month is gonna be more in the multiple thousands of dollars a month, which presumably for a business, if you are a, I don't know, a massive WordPress agency, eh, whatever, yeah, we'll pay that.

But for the likes of tinkerers, like I might do. that's now completely outta my, league. So it will be kind of interesting to see how that all breaks down. But yeah, it does look like those, we can't go on forever, so presumably ads are coming in every single interface. But that article, in, in, is in lockstep with what Marcus's other comment there is.

[01:18:44] Jess Frick: Sorry guys. All right. he said, I wish there was a context protocol that I could export and import between services. And I think that's where Interesting. Yeah. So that you could take your context with you. Yeah. Yeah. That was actually something that I was, Messaging back and forth with Mark Semanski over on, over the weekend on X was, how do we, if I had a way that I could just take everything that chat GBT knew about me, bundle it up and put it into Gemini, it would make that an easier switch.

[01:19:14] Marcus Burnette: And, there's obviously reasons that Chat GPT wouldn't want that or yeah, that Gemini would, or the other way around. So, I don't know how one or the other makes that happen, but it would be really great to be able to kind of bundle up everything that chat PT knows about me and take it wherever the places that I want to try the model out so that I can, in a way kinda make that switch easier.

[01:19:38] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I, can't think of, I can think of almost nothing which the AI companies would want less than that. Yeah. because that you've immediately just, you've made something open source suddenly, haven't you? Just like, sure. God. Who wants their own data? Oh, more or less. Everybody. Who are we gonna give it to?

Yeah. Ah, more or less? Nobody. All right. Yeah. Fine. Yeah. The market will, win. okay. So thank you. There was lots going on in there. Where did we get to with the comments? There was a lot of comments. I'm sorry. I think that we're kind of fast running out of time, so I think I'm just gonna have to leave your comments in the comments.

So sorry about that. Yeah, the webinar mentioned briefly local models and I think, if we're, if we're looking at thousands of dollars a month, then there will be more of a shift for tinkerers to having to figure out what running local models looks like. And hopefully those ca I mean, the reason they haven't caught on now is one, there's a barrier.

[01:20:31] Marcus Burnette: You have to set things up yourself and, all of that. But two, they're just not as good as, the chat GPTs and the Geminis. But hopefully they'll continue to get better as well. Yeah. and maybe easier to install and we'll have to go in that direction if, it does end up being thousands of dollars a month.

Yeah, I can't do that. This, thing happened over the weekend. I dunno if you caught sight of, or if it was just me, but like it would seem that over the weekend everybody suddenly started buying Mac mini. For, for this thing called Claude Bot, C-L-A-W-D bot, I believe it is. I don't honestly know anything about that, but it would appear that obvi, like if you're buying a Mac mini, does that mean that's local?

[01:21:12] Nathan Wrigley: I don't really know, but Okay. I'm not sure. Yeah, I saw mention of it, but I don't know a ton about it. I didn't just see a mention of it, I saw like a hundred mentions of it. Genuinely, like loads and loads of people seem to be buying Mac Minis over the weekend. So yeah. and just quick message to say to everybody watching that Jess, at some point on the half hour, so in seven minutes time, Jess is just gonna suddenly wave and and bid.

Yeah. 'cause she's got other things that she needs to get. Take her Corgi and go. Yeah, she's gotta take that Corgi outta that out, that the cage. She's quite happy. Yeah, she's very happy. right. In which case we'll just race through a few of these honestly, very quickly. Now just, let's see if we can get through them and say goodbye at the same time as we say goodbye to Jess.

if you're an elemental user, you may be interested to know that Elementor have this new kind of wraparound product. It's called Elementor One. this article explains that. But really you've gotta scroll to the bottom to sort of see what it, I say that I saw it before. Here we go. what's in it?

Basically, you get hosting, you get all of the elemental tools. You can share the, credits that you buy throughout the tools so that you can push the credits to the hosting or to the, the, different, AI services and what have you that they've got. I was gonna spend a bit more time on that, but I can't, we haven't got the time.

So anyway, if you're an elemental user, a big fan of that, then go and check it out. It would appear that it's quite a seismic moment in their product offering. I don't think the plugin, sorry, the page builder or anything has changed much necessarily from V four. It's just they've now got this bigger thing going on in the background.

Right? Events, word Camp Europe is coming around, not that long away now, but obviously in the preamble to that they need speakers and here we go. You can submit your speaker application now if you want to be involved in that. WordCamp Europe in Crackup, Poland. In the year 2026. I can't remember the month, but I think it's July or June or something.

But it's, anyway, it's at some point in the coming months and obviously WordCamp Asia is, coming up before that. They are now releasing their tranche of speakers so that you know who is coming so that you can decide whether to attend or not. Here is speak around two Ryan Welcher, Jonathan Roia, Anna Herko, and Rebecca Markovitz.

They are some of the people that are gonna be joining you there if you wish to come. And still, speaking of WordCamp Asia, if you would like to be a part of that, whether that's getting your ticket to attend or becoming a sponsor, those options are still available. So that is that. And then I think we've touched on all the word pressy things.

Yeah, pretty much. So, in which case, we're just gonna strain into weird territory. Just for two minutes. I want everybody to go to this. There's no way I'm reading this URL out. It's obviously an app run on some service somewhere. So it's got a URL, which is disposable and on unreadable 'cause there's like 15 digits in a row.

But this thing is called Wonder Word and it's so cool they've actually become so popular that they've shot down their search 'cause they were getting overwhelmed. But what it does is in the original version you could type in a word into the search, any word in the English language and it would show you where it came from and give you a bit more information.

So as an example, silk, I didn't know it comes from this word in China Magazine. I didn't know it came from Iraq and it's magazine or saffron com, also from Iraq. And anyway, arsenal, Sher Sherbert, they're all coming from Iraq. It would appear that the entire language is coming from Iraq. That's fascinating.

anyway, keep your eye on it. If they bring out their search again, I lost a whole half day to this and it was absolutely fascinating. If you're a etymologist, woo hoo. Got that word in. then this is, I love that Newton's family thinks he's in his office working and he's just looking up the origin of ketchup.

I totally waste so much time on stupid things like this, but it's very enjoyable. I love it. and the observer. So okay. Sort of slightly straying into politics here. I'll avoid the Ince side of things, but it is kind of interesting. The po the political situation, the observer says over your side of the pond is so interesting.

Let's go with. That, that it would appear that the UK along with the eu, so it's a more broad thing, is now looking to decouple itself from a lot of the tech that we have become dependent upon. So as things stand at the moment, there are so many companies from the US that we just lean into.

Like you don't even think like Google. Yeah, we'll take loads of Google, Salesforce, just list them. There's just thousands of them. And the EU and the uk, we really have no credible competitor because your software is the best and I think the EU and the UK are, at the moment looking to sort of pivot that slightly.

Whether or not that will happen in the short term or the long term will be kind of interesting, but certainly a consequence of the way things are going, at present. And we've done that one. We've not done this one, but we don't have time to do it, so I'll just drop that in for next week probably. And that's it.

I think we did it. Wow. And got to talk about alligators. Oh, we spoke so much about alligators. I wanna do a whole alligator section next time you are on. Just, we'll just get into alligators. Maybe you could go out with a webcam, film me some alligators in real, time. But don't take Marcus. We could report live from the shore of Lake Jessup.

[01:26:55] Marcus Burnette: Yeah. Yeah. Well, just looking out a black hammock, and now it's take, a little bit of pocket meat with you. There, there go. just do, oh. Yeah. Just keep the, whole thing going. Once again, Nathan, they can jump from the water. Like jump. Yes, they jump. Okay. Well take a, they propel themselves out of the water with their tails, alligator shaped shield.

[01:27:16] Nathan Wrigley: And I, I'm imagining it's just really easy and I'm some sort of superhero that won't be affected. and Tacho says that's a hundred percent true. I don't know what he's saying is a hundred percent true, but you know, oh, no, it's not. Tacho saying it must be some previous comment. Okay. Anyway, there we go.

So, in which case are, has I been saucy today? Have I been saucy? I hope so. That was everybody wants. I think it'd be great if you just invite me to like pour gasoline. I would, I think it'd be nice at the end of each episode if I too had been saucy, but I don't think I've caught it in me. I'm too old. You do.

I don't think that I've ever been called Tassy myself canceled here. on that bombshell, we will say thank you to anybody who made a comment that was very kind of you to give up your precious time, but also to, take time out and give us a comment. Really appreciate it. But obviously it goes without saying.

I'd like to thank Jess Frick for joining us and I know she's got to go probably this minute. we're also gonna thank Marcus Burnett, who's over there. Thank you so much. And Mark Zaca, who is over there, really appreciate it. I can never get the pointing right. It's not easy. I have everything mirrored perfectly to Yeah, that's right.

You need to set it up in advance. I now know. Yeah, because I, it is like muscle memory now, but I still get it wrong from time to time. I didn't know there'd be pointing in this show. I'm sorry. Next time. There's always pointing. There's always point. There's always point. There's another great episode title.

I didn't know that. Any pointing in this show. Maybe that would be it. Right, Jess. See you later. Thank you. See you later, mark. See you later, Marcus. Take it easy. We will see you next time. Bye bye. Bye Bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.