


<p>It’s an interesting conversation about how content creators can find a place in the WordPress ecosystem and what impact they can have.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links.</h2>



<p><a href="https://dothewoo.io/">Do the Woo</a></p>



<p><a href="https://mattreport.com/">Matt Report</a></p>



<p><a href="https://thewpminute.com/">WP Minute</a></p>



<p><a href="https://strangework.com/">Brad Williams&#8217; website</a></p>



<p><a href="https://woocommerce.com/">WooCommerce</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.thewpcommunitycollective.com/">WP Community Collective</a></p>



<p><a href="https://dothewoo.io/woo-bits-moving-forward/">WooBits</a></p>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/DotheWoo">@dothewoo Twitter</a></p>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/bobwp">@bobwp Twitter</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 01 Mar 2023 15:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:24;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:87:"WPTavern: All In One SEO Patches Multiple Stored XSS Vulnerabilities in Version 4.3.0 ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142373";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:96:"https://wptavern.com/all-in-one-seo-patches-multiple-stored-xss-vulnerabilities-in-version-4-3-0";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2307:"<p>Wordfence has <a href="https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2023/02/all-in-one-seo-pack-vulnerabilities-impacting-3-million-sites-patched/#:~:text=The%20All%20in%20One%20SEO,input%20sanitization%20and%20output%20escaping.">published</a> the details of two stored XSS vulnerabilities the company responsibly disclosed to the developers of the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/">All In One SEO plugin</a> in January 2023. The vulnerabilities potentially impacted more than 3 million users on versions 4.2.9 and earlier.</p>



<p>One vulnerability, which received a 6.4 (Medium) CVSS score, Wordfence attributes to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. Researchers found that this &#8220;makes it possible for authenticated attackers with Contributor-level access or higher to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that will execute whenever a user accesses an injected page.&#8221;</p>



<p>The second vulnerability was given a 4.4 (Medium) CVSS score and requires an authenticated attacker to have Administrator-level privileges. Wordfence outlined how attackers might exploit these vulnerabilities: </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Unfortunately, vulnerable versions of this plugin fail to escape submitted site titles, meta descriptions and other elements during post and page creation, and when changing plugin settings. This made it possible for users with access to the post editor, such as contributors, to insert malicious JavaScript into those fields, which would execute in the browser of any authenticated user, such as a site’s administrator, editing such a post or page.</p>



<p>This is a likely scenario to occur as posts written by contributors have to be reviewed and moderated prior to publication.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>All In One SEO has patched both vulnerabilities in version 4.3.0 but so far only 25.5% of the plugins 3+ million user base has updated to the latest version, leaving approximately 3/4 of the plugin&#8217;s users still vulnerable.</p>



<img />



<p>The plugin&#8217;s changelog for version 4.3.0 includes a brief, vague note on the security fix included: &#8220;Updated: Additional security hardening.&#8221; There have been two more releases of the plugin since the vulnerabilities were patched in 4.3.0.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 28 Feb 2023 23:15:04 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:25;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:55:"WordPress.org blog: People of WordPress: Hauwa Abashiya";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=14450";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:70:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/02/people-of-wordpress-hauwa-abashiya/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:17524:"<p><strong>This month we feature Hauwa Abashiya, a project manager in Nigeria and the UK, whose passion for community support led her to an adventure in open source.</strong></p>



<p><strong>The&nbsp;<em>People of WordPress</em>&nbsp;series features inspiring stories of how people’s lives can change for the better through WordPress and its global community of contributors.</strong></p>



<img width="1014" height="627" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/02/feature-img-for-hauwa-powp.jpg?resize=1014%2C627&ssl=1" alt="Hauwa portrait picture " class="wp-image-14437" />



<p>As we travel through life, sometimes we are drawn to a particular cause, one to which we can get behind and join in. This cause, in whatever field it may be, can help lift us beyond our everyday lives and can help us take stock. This is the journey that depicts Hauwa’s finding a global sense of place and a way to re-look at her life and plans.&nbsp;</p>



<p>That change agent was discovering and becoming part of open source through WordPress.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Learning development and WordPress</h2>



<p>In 2017, Hauwa was working full time as an experienced and successful project manager, but was becoming increasingly aware that she did not feel the same excitement for projects as she once had. She was starting to feel bored. “I knew I still loved working with and in project management, but I needed to do something different.” she said.</p>



<p>Hauwa enrolled in a web development course and studied HTML, CSS and some JavaScript. One of the course options was WordPress, which she elected to take. It was then that a course tutor encouraged her to attend a WordCamp, an event focused on the open source software and its global community.</p>



<p>She felt that she needed to have a basic knowledge of the software before she arrived at the event, so started to learn WordPress. The first WordCamp she attended was in the seaside town of Brighton on the south coast of England. There she met people who would be friends and mentors for years to come. </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>&#8220;I was inspired by meeting people in the WordPress community.&#8221;</p>
<cite>Hauwa Abashiya</cite></blockquote>



<p>She said: “I was inspired by meeting people in the WordPress community. My life and my wish to support communities have been shaped for the better by some of the people I met, and I continue to be grateful for knowing them.”</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Global WordPress community: from Germany to Nigeria</h2>



<p>After discovering a WordPress community in the UK, Hauwa wanted to see first hand just what a global connection it had. She had heard that WordCamp Europe was a flagship event and brought thousands from across the world together. She wanted to be part of this, and its organization appealed to her project management training. She applied to be a volunteer at the three day conference, which in 2019 was held in Berlin, Germany. At this event, Hauwa discovered both a global movement and an active local WordPress community in her home country of Nigeria. She was able to connect with all the different parts of this vast community from wherever she was working through an instant messaging tool.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Inspired by people she met who were using WordPress to help improve people’s lives in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, Hauwa started to delve further into how this open source software and its global community could provide opportunities and improve understanding across cultures and continents.</p>



<img width="700" height="937" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/02/hauwa-and-her-mom.jpg?resize=700%2C937&ssl=1" alt="Hauwa and her mother" class="wp-image-14438" /><em>Rosalind and Hauwa</em> <em>at an event in Nigeria.</em>



<p>Hauwa’s father, Dr Audu Kwasau Abashiya and her mother Rosalind Zulai Abashiya, were both well known for their philanthropy, especially in giving practical support to people in Kaduna, in the north of Nigeria and Abuja in the center of the country. Hauwa explained: “My mum comes from a family who give and share their skills to give practical help. From friends I had got to know in WordPress, I saw that there were parts of the community that had this same ethos. This could be something I could be part of, and also take back to Nigeria in the future.”</p>



<p>Her parents had established a charitable foundation focused on helping widows, orphans and children get access to education skills, from finance to music. It connects those who need help and those who can give support. </p>



<p>Hauwa said: “Teaching people practical skills which can be used to raise an income or be re-shared with family and others in their local area is so important. Projects like this can help grow a community and keep it strong. Skills such as sewing and cookery are not just ones that can put clothing and food on the table, but also are about gaining independence and pride. They are examples of how micro-economies can grow and inspire others to have dreams that they can see becoming real. <br /><br />&#8220;I had seen through my work and studies that technology used with care and an understanding of different needs can make a difference in local communities too. Projects like WordPress can be part of this empowerment through localized translations and software which can give a way to share ideas.”</p>



<img width="675" height="900" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/02/hauwa-in-2022.jpg?resize=675%2C900&ssl=1" alt="Hauwa in Nigeria" class="wp-image-14442" />



<p>With her project management and IT background, Hauwa is getting more involved with how IT skills can be used for not just instilling a sense of community belonging, but also the practical longer term input into the local infrastructure and introduction of fast changing technology.</p>



<p>She said: “I would love to see many of the people who have been helped by the foundation my parents started be able to share their ideas and their achievements to encourage others. One of the routes could be through open source software that is free to access and can work on mobile phones.  </p>



<p>&#8220;As a previous volunteer team rep in the WordPress Training Team, I saw first-hand just how important it is for a non-technical end user to be able to use software to share their ideas, without having to become a developer. We can all help give people a voice, and if we are working in technology, we have a role to play in creating and pushing for genuine access of tools.”</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>&#8220;If we are working in technology, we have a role to play in creating access to tools.&#8221;</p>
</blockquote>



<p>On Hauwa’s future wish list is to help African countries access software and technology in their local languages. She said: “This is part of identity, and respecting and valuing different cultures, and not expecting everything to be translated from the English as it is read. It makes it possible for older people to use the software or read content that&#8217;s published.”</p>



<p>Hauwa learned Hausa (a language spoken across several African countries) and English at the same time as she grew up in Nigeria. She had a multi-location education, like her parents, studying and going on to work in different countries. At 16, she first studied computer science on what she describes as a ‘whim,’ not knowing it would be a significant part of her working life in the future.&nbsp;</p>



<img width="700" height="974" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/02/hauwa-in-2015.jpg?resize=700%2C974&ssl=1" alt="Hauwa in a cafe in 2015" class="wp-image-14441" />



<p>She intended to go to university to study finance and sociology. When she went to say goodbye to her computer studies class, the teacher asked what she was going to study. On hearing it was finance and sociology, the teacher said: “You don’t want to be doing that, you want to be doing something in computing.” This conversation proved to be a turning point for Hauwa. She went on to study Computing and Information Systems and Object Oriented Information Systems for her Master’s degree in the UK.</p>



<p>During her second year of university, she also worked with data entry and related areas as she was determined to learn as much as she could about the moving parts of a project. After she completed her master’s, she chose jobs that enabled her to work on systems, out of hours support, project management, supply chain, and procurement. She is an advocate for learning as many aspects of your subject as you can to give you as many tools to really understand what both clients need and how to help them reach workable and timely solutions. </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>&#8220;By contributing to community projects you can share your skills and keep them fresh.&#8221;</p>
</blockquote>



<p>These skills proved to be transferable in later years to give her time to support WordCamps, meetups, and the Training Team. She said: “Contributors to open source come from so many different professional and cultural backgrounds. Contributing is a great way to share your skills and keep them fresh and open to new learning opportunities.”</p>



<p>Hauwa fascination for project management and learning continued, and she gained qualifications in the field, including Prince 2 and PMP. She continues her commitment to ongoing learning in her work today with Agile and other methodologies and draws parallels with this and her interest in community learning. </p>



<img width="724" height="399" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/02/hauwa-at-wc-london-2019-2.jpg?resize=724%2C399&ssl=1" alt="Hauwa at the reception desk at WordCamp London 2019" class="wp-image-14440" /><em>Hauwa welcomes attendees at WordCamp London in 2019</em>



<p>Committed to supporting her local community in the UK too, Hauwa joined the London WordPress Meetup and in 2019 became an organizer for <a href="https://london.wordcamp.org/2019/">WordCamp London</a> where she was able to use some of her project management expertise. During these events, she had many conversations to encourage others to develop their IT skills and share her own experiences.</p>



<p>This interest in driving up the skills levels of others naturally led her to become further involved in the Contributor Teams. Inspired to share her skills by another contributor to the project, she joined the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/">Training Team</a> at a WordCamp Contributor Day. In this team, Hauwa found in it a group collaborating on easier online ways for people to keep up with the software, its features, and how they could grow the community in their own local area. </p>



<p>At the heart of this, Hauwa felt accessibility should be key, and she gave time to better understand documentation. She felt this was essential to give people genuine access and identify where more work was needed. Her belief in this grew when she joined the WordPress <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/accessibility/">Accessibility Team</a> for release 5.6, and she continued to contribute to the team in the area of documentation and training.</p>



<p>Hauwa devoted many hours to supporting the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/">Training Team</a> for a number of years as part of her conviction that the right resources can really help communities globally use open source software. She also stressed the importance of materials being user-friendly and easy to translate as WordPress has such a large international usage.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Volunteering in open source can re-energize you </h2>



<p>Through the combination of volunteering efforts in UK and Nigeria, and supporting contributors globally, Hauwa began to re-find her love for helping people with their planning and to achieve their goals. She was able to share her 15 years of project management experience in her volunteering role and encouraged others to consider it as a career.</p>



<img width="500" height="500" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/02/Hauwa-WC-Europe-2019.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1" alt="Hauwa at WordCamp Europe 2019" class="wp-image-14443" />



<p>She said: “Through volunteering you work alongside people. Project management is about people. It is about helping people achieve. This can be the same through volunteering, and you can learn much through meeting people from different places.&nbsp;</p>



<p>“One of my drivers is using technology to solve problems. As a project manager, it is a privilege to help guide people and organizations to identify and reach goals. It is helping them gain that value. This is one of the reasons I was drawn to finding out tech communities and contributing to them. If this is something that drives people reading about my experience, there are vast opportunities to to share your skills. Find something that fits you for where you are now.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Hauwa encourages anyone working in technology to further their understanding of managing projects and working with different teams. “Project management skills are so important in whatever kind of project you are in. With long working hours over many years, I felt I had lost the connection with the people element. I was stuck in what seemed to be a repeat cycle. With the people I met in the WordPress community and my professional skills being used, I was reminded of my own values and how as a project manager I can support help others reach new heights or make something of value and quality that others can benefit from and use.”&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>&#8220;Find an area that fits you and where you can make a difference.&#8221;</p>
</blockquote>



<p>In 2022, Hauwa returned to working full time for both national and international, medium and&nbsp; large scale projects. Though her volunteering time to global community building initiatives has reduced accordingly, she focuses on encouraging skills learning and on the community cultural side.</p>



<p>“I will keep my interest in how open source like WordPress, working alongside other solutions, can help not-for-profit ground level and community building. For me, if there are technology-based solutions out there, we can all play some part in helping them grow and making a difference,&#8221; she said. </p>



<p>&#8220;How we give to wider communities does not have to be the same throughout time. It is important to keep relooking at what is needed and the difference it can make.&#8221;<br /><br />She added: &#8220;Find your central wish for the communities you are connected with, and there may be technologies that can support them. I am glad I started my journey.&#8221;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Share the stories</h2>



<p>Help share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community.&nbsp;Meet more WordPressers in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/category/newsletter/interviews/">People of WordPress series</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Contributors</h2>



<p>Thanks to Hauwa Abashiya (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/azhiyadev/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>azhiyadev</a>)&nbsp;for sharing her adventures in open source.</p>



<p>Thank you to Abha Thakor (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/webcommsat/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>webcommsat</a>) for interviews and writing the feature, and to Meher Bala (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>meher</a>), Chloe Bringmann (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/cbringmann/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>cbringmann</a>), Mary Baum (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/marybaum/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>marybaum</a>), Nalini Thakor (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/nalininonstopnewsuk/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>nalininonstopnewsuk</a>) and Maja Loncar (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/majaloncar/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>majaloncar</a>) for work on photographs and review.</p>



<p>The&nbsp;<em>People of WordPress</em>&nbsp;series thanks Josepha Haden (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>chanthaboune</a>) and Topher DeRosia (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/topher1kenobe/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>topher1kenobe</a>) for their support.</p>



<div class="wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile is-vertically-aligned-center"><img width="180" height="135" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2020/03/heropress_logo_180.png?resize=180%2C135&ssl=1" alt="HeroPress logo" class="wp-image-8409 size-full" /><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on </em><a href="https://heropress.com/"><em>HeroPress.com</em></a><em>, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories might otherwise go unheard. </em>#HeroPress </p>
</div></div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 28 Feb 2023 21:30:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Abha Thakor";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:26;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"WPTavern: WordPress 6.2 Openverse Integration Updated to Upload Inserted Images";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142353";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:90:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-2-openverse-integration-updated-to-upload-inserted-images";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4184:"<p>WordPress 6.2&#8217;s Openverse integration is getting some last minute changes after contributors expressed concerns about it <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-2-openverse-integration-hotlinks-images-contributors-propose-uploading-to-media-library-as-a-better-default">hotlinking images by default</a>. The new feature allows users to quickly insert free, openly-licensed media into their content. It also allows users to upload external images through a button in the block toolbar, but this creates an extra step in the process and is easy to miss in the UI.</p>



<p>Several contributors cited GDPR and privacy concerns in the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/48394">ticket</a> that called for uploading the images by default. They also noted that hotlinked images can pose problems for users who want further manipulate the images by cropping, rotating, and filtering, and for developers managing site migrations. Some went as far as to say the feature belongs in a canonical plugin, which would likely have had a less rushed implementation and better testing prior to landing in core.</p>



<p>&#8220;I am deeply uncomfortable with any integration of Openverse into core,&#8221; WordPress contributor Peter Shaw <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/48394#issuecomment-1445151654">said</a>. &#8220;Philosophically WordPress is a personal publishing platform so it should be avoiding external APIs and dependencies. The only external calls it should make (by default) is to check for updates.</p>



<p>&#8220;No issue with the service itself though (I like it) but it should be a canonical plugin that site owners consciously install. Either way images must be on the local server though.&#8221;</p>



<p>As the hotlinking drew more attention, WordPress contributors chimed in on the ticket to call for the feature not to be shipped in its current implementation.</p>



<p>&#8220;This cannot ship this way, or it will get unknowing users sued,&#8221; Yoast founder Joost de Valk said. &#8220;Next to that it has negative performance implications, as you can&#8217;t do <code>srcset</code> or <code>loading</code> attributes on images loaded from remote. Sideload <em>really</em> should be the default, and in fact IMHO, only way.&#8221;</p>



<p>Gutenberg contributor Nik Tsekouras jumped in with a quick PR that changes the implementation to <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/48501">upload the Openverse images when they are inserted</a>, wherever possible.</p>



<p>&#8220;We definitely want to upload to the site library for this flow and should treat this as a bug,&#8221; Gutenberg Lead Architect Matias Ventura <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/48394#issuecomment-1446883555">said</a>. &#8220;There&#8217;s work going on in parallel to upload by default on other actions (like pasting) that are not as straightforward or general enough (hence the need for something like <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/46014">#46014</a>) but this one should be straightforward.&#8221;</p>



<p>Tsekouras&#8217; PR ensures that any images inserted from Openverse are uploaded. If they cannot be uploaded to media library due to <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CORS">CORS issues</a>, WordPress inserts the Image block with the external URL and a warning about legal compliance and privacy issues. Here&#8217;s an example of a successful upload:</p>



video credit: James Koster in <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/48501#pullrequestreview-1317206726">PR #48501</a>



<p>WordPress 6.2 Beta 4 was <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/28/wordpress-6-2-beta-4-postponed/">delayed</a> this morning until March 1, due to an unrelated <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02QB2JS7/p1677581267400419">regression introduced in 6.2</a>. Tsekouras <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commit/fac5049a0b2544b27f4a3a1b29a4ae817ce9eaac">cherry-picked the Openverse PR to the wp/6.2 branch</a> to get it included in the next release, so the next beta should ship with the updated implementation.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 28 Feb 2023 21:16:32 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:27;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:83:"Do The Woo Community: What the WordPress Community Loved About WordCamp Asia Part 1";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=74563";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"https://dothewoo.io/community-love-wordcamp-asia-2023/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:415:"<p>While at WordCamp Asia 2023 in Bangkok, I had the opportunity to ask a few attendees what they most liked about the event. </p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/community-love-wordcamp-asia-2023/">What the WordPress Community Loved About WordCamp Asia Part 1</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 28 Feb 2023 09:48:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:28;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:66:"WPTavern: Gutenberg 15.2 Introduces Revisions for Template Editing";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142287";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-15-2-introduces-revisions-for-template-editing";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2229:"<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/24/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-2-22-february/">Gutenberg 15.2</a> is now available with support for revisions when editing templates and template parts. The Site Editor can be an intimidating place if you&#8217;re new to making changes there. A few clicks can make a drastic impact and some users won&#8217;t know how to return to where they started. Surfacing the revisions panel gives users a safety net. </p>



<img />



<p>The revisions panel works the same as the content editor, so it doesn&#8217;t yet provide a visual presentation of a user&#8217;s additions, deletions, and changes. Users can restore previous versions of the template if they are able to read the block markup.</p>



<p>Gutenberg 15.2 also brings improvements to navigating the Site Editor. It&#8217;s now much easier to drill down to the exact template you want to edit in just a few clicks in the Site Editor sidebar, globally save edits across navigation, template, and template parts, and more easily return to the dashboard. These changes are best illustrated in the GIF published in the release post;</p>



<img />image source: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/24/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-2-22-february/">Gutenberg 15.2 Release Post</a>



<p>Other highlights in this release include the following:</p>



<ul>
<li>New: CSS aspect-ratio controls to the Post Featured Image block</li>



<li>New in the Button block: support for border color, style, and width </li>



<li>Accessibility improvements: improved labeling, optimizing the tab and arrow key navigation, and ensuring proper hierarchy of headings</li>



<li>New in Post Excerpt block: a UI for controlling excerpt length</li>



<li>Latest Comments block: Add typography support</li>
</ul>



<p>Check out the full list of changes and bug fixes in the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/24/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-2-22-february/">15.2 release post</a>. This version of Gutenberg will not be included in the upcoming WordPress 6.2 release. If you can&#8217;t wait until 6.3, you can get these features now by installing the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/">Gutenberg plugin</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 27 Feb 2023 21:07:20 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:29;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"Donncha: Redirecting ?replytocom so bots go home";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://odd.blog/?p=89589554";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"https://odd.blog/2023/02/27/redirecting-replytocom-so-bots-go-home/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2455:"<p>Earlier this month I noticed that a particular bot that likes to visit my website, &#8220;MJ12bot/v1.4.8&#8221; seems to be particularly attracted to the &#8220;reply to comment&#8221; links generated by my blog. Those are links that bots see, but we see the &#8220;Reply&#8221; button that uses JavaScript to reply to a comment.</p>



<p>To be honest, it&#8217;s pretty annoying to see a bot constantly fetching those URLs from my website. Earlier this month, it was on a roll and grabbing several dozen at a time. While my server can handle the traffic without any issues, who wants a bot trampling over their server?</p>



<p>I decided to stop them in two ways:</p>



<ul>
<li>Redirect them back to the post in a mod_rewrite rule.</li>



<li>Block them in robots.txt and hopefully the bots will go away.</li>
</ul>



<p>Coming up with a mod_rewrite rule <a href="https://mastodon.ie/@donncha/109834002975042301">was surprisingly hard</a>, but after mentioning this on Mastodon I received a reply from <a href="https://toot.re/@JosKleverWebSupport">Jos Klever</a> who figured out I needed the QSD flag. So, to spare you the hassle of researching it, here are the mod_rewrite rules that worked for me. It causes a 301 permanent redirect to the anchor tag of the comment. Add this to your .htaccess file.</p>



<pre class="wp-block-code"><code>RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} replytocom=(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)/          $1/#comment-%1 &#91;NE,QSD,L,R=301]</code></pre>



<p>Blocking requests like this in the robots.txt is much simpler. WordPress can generate the robots.txt file for you using the <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/hooks/robots_txt/">robots_txt filter</a>. Add the following to a mu-plugin PHP script.</p>



<pre class="wp-block-code"><code>function disallow_replycom_urls( $output, $public ) {
    $output .= 'Disallow: ?replytocom';
    return $output;
}
add_filter( 'robots_txt', 'disallow_replycom_urls', 10, 2 );</code></pre>



<p>I haven&#8217;t received many comments on my posts lately. However, I stumbled upon some interesting posts by clicking the RANDOM link above, which I decided to examine as part of my research. During my search, I delved deep into the blogosphere of the past, almost like being an archaeologist, because some links were no longer available, and I had to search for them on archive.org. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that a link to a GIF from 2005 was still alive!</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 27 Feb 2023 18:18:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Donncha";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:30;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 50: 3 Interesting Trends from WordCamp Asia";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=14434";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/02/episode-50-3-interesting-trends-from-wordcamp-asia/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13719:"<p>On Episode fifty of the WordPress Briefing podcast, join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she explores the three big trends from the inaugural WordCamp Asia. </p>



<p><em><strong>Have a question you&#8217;d like answered? You can submit them to <a href="mailto:wpbriefing@wordpress.org">wpbriefing@wordpress.org</a>, either written or as a voice recording.</strong></em></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Credits</h2>



<p>Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/">Dustin Hartzler</a><br />Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/javiarce/">Javier Arce</a><br />Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/santanainniss/">Santana Inniss</a><br />Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Show Notes</h2>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/create-block-theme/">Create Block Theme Plugin</a><br /><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2021/10/episode-17-wordpressing-your-way-to-digital-literacy/">WordPressing Your Way to Digital Literacy</a><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303/status/1628422554972028933">PostStatus Networking Opportunities</a><br /><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/6-2-live-product-demo/">WordPress 6.2 Live Demo will be held 2 March, 2023 at 17:00h UTC</a><br /><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/?p=23742">Future Plans for the HelpHub </a><br /><a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-to-own-your-expertise-start-speaking-at-wordpress-events-ameremea-tickets-549285827697">How to Own Your Expertise &amp; Start Speaking at WordPress Events WP Diversity Training 1 March 2023</a><br /></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Transcript</h2>



<span id="more-14434"></span>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy.</p>



<p>Here we go.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>The inaugural WordCamp Asia happened a couple of weeks ago in Bangkok. There were almost 1300 people in attendance, and I was lucky to be able to talk with a lot of them about their thoughts around the WordPress project and community. So today, let&#8217;s talk about three of the most interesting trends that I heard from people: the future of themes, the future of work, and the future of contributions.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>So first up, the future of themes. This one was not a surprise to me. Not only has it been on my mind lately, but every WordCamp I&#8217;ve ever attended in Asia or Australia has had themes as a central element. There are a lot of theme creators making a living in WordPress in this part of the world. So it&#8217;s natural that they want to know what to prepare for.</p>



<p>Now, it&#8217;s hard to predict the future, but there are a couple of things you can do to kind of get a leg up on it. Firstly, the theme review team, if you know how to make block themes but are still struggling to understand what might make them high value to your users, donating a little bit of time to review them can help.</p>



<p>While I was at the contributor day, the team rep who happened to also be there to represent the table told me that reviewing block themes is way faster than reviewing classic themes. So if it&#8217;s been a bit since you stopped by, I would encourage you to give it a shot. It&#8217;s a lot easier than it used to be for a lot of reasons, and they can always use a little bit of help.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>The second thing is this plugin called the Create Block Theme plugin. If you don&#8217;t know how to make block themes, you know how to make classic themes. You don&#8217;t know how to make block themes. This is a wordpress.org maintained plugin that will make theme creation simpler. It&#8217;s a relatively new plugin, though, so if you&#8217;re the type of contributor who likes to create good tools for good people, you can also feel free to grab a ticket or two from their repo and help get that moving.</p>



<p>The second thing that came up was the future of work. This was also not a surprise to me. There have been a lot of reports of layoffs in the tech industry and worries about the possibility of a recession.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Since WordPress is not only a tool that folks use in their jobs but also a tool that empowers people to create jobs for themselves, it&#8217;s entirely expected for questions about career prospects to come up during a WordCamp. Here are a couple of thoughts on that. So I mentioned this briefly during the Q&amp;A session on that Sunday, but I&#8217;m gonna repeat it here because I believe it with every fiber of my being.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:06]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>You can learn every 21st century skill that you need while contributing to an open source project.</p>



<p>I talked about it in episode 17 of this podcast. I&#8217;ve talked about it at WordCamps and major event series outside of WordPress for years. Like I really, really believe this, and it&#8217;s not just like a WordPress only thing. Although obviously, that is my primary perspective, that&#8217;s true for contributing to almost any open source project.</p>



<p>On top of that, if you are contributing to WordPress and you&#8217;re doing that in the way that we encourage folks to do, you&#8217;ve got public examples of proactive, asynchronous collaboration across cultures and time zones. And I don&#8217;t know about y&#8217;all, but sometimes it&#8217;s hard to explain what my job is. And so having examples of how the whatever it is that you were doing, however, you were collaborating or contributing or working on a project together, having concrete examples to be able to share with someone can never hurt.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:04]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>I&#8217;m gonna give us a necessary side note here. I know that volunteering time is a privilege, and if you find yourself between jobs, the last thing you want to do is give up any more of your time for no money.</p>



<p>But if you have contributed to any team in the past, that benefit still exists for you. Your contributions are not taken away just because you&#8217;re no longer with your employer.</p>



<p>The second thought on that is actually one that Matt mentioned during the Q&amp;A on Sunday. He said in his experience that open source shines in recessionary times.</p>



<p>I&#8217;ll have to take his word for that one since I discovered WordPress in 2009 or so and so after the last recession that I would have experienced in the US. However, I have heard from a lot of people in the WordPress ecosystem and in tech in general who have shared their stories from the last time that we all experienced a recession.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>And certainly, when they suddenly found that they did not have a company to call the place that they were working, a company that they were working for, they were able to, at the very least, freelance until they found the next thing.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I know that that&#8217;s cold comfort if you&#8217;re in the middle of things right now, but it certainly is something that people always have looked back to as like one of those turning points for them in the 2007-2008 era here in the US.</p>



<p>Now I know that is sometimes not what anybody wants to hear. And also like, who am I to be speaking about observed experiences from other people? I did want to let you know that the folks over at PostStatus have opened up some networking opportunities for anyone that&#8217;s been caught up in the current downsizing around the ecosystem.</p>



<p>I&#8217;ll link to that in the show notes here on wordpress.org/news, but also, if you&#8217;re a part of the PostStatus network, they&#8217;ve got it posted over there on their sites and things as well. So easy to find and definitely worthwhile if that&#8217;s a situation that you find yourself in right now.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:02]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>And the third thing that I heard from a lot of folks about is the future of contributions. So 635 people attended the contributor day that happened ahead of WordCamp Asia, And at WordCamp Europe in Porto last June, it was 800 people or something, which was the biggest one on record. And so this is really close to that.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s a lot of people. And a lot of them were attending for the first time. Over the course of the day, I checked in with quite a few of the table leads and heard some pretty consistent feedback, both about what we&#8217;re doing to help onboard contributors now but also about how we can help to onboard contributors in the future.</p>



<p>Firstly, we all generally agree that documentation, which is our current problem to solve toward easier contributor onboarding, we all generally agree that that&#8217;s going pretty well. We now have a ton of our preferences and processes documented in various team handbooks, but with a ton of documentation comes the potential for overwhelm.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>So across the board table leads shared the need for sort of a quick start guide for each of their teams. Secondly, we also generally seem to agree that mentorship plays a big role in the success of many long-term contributors. I&#8217;ve talked about it before. I had some mentors as I was getting started, and I would never have made it past organizing meetup events if it hadn&#8217;t been for their help.</p>



<p>And so a bonus item I heard about is actually Meetup events. Meetup groups are one of our most resilient ways to contribute to WordPress, and they also happen to be one of the hardest working. If you&#8217;ve never been to one of these events, you may not know that you can learn a skill that&#8217;s new to you or teach a skill that you&#8217;ve had for a long time.</p>



<p>You can also network to find the jobs that you want or network to hire the people you need. It&#8217;s where people learn how to use the CMS or learn how to become an entrepreneur.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>But it&#8217;s also where they discover our community and eventually learn why we think that open source is an idea that will change our generation.</p>



<p>So if you took nothing else away from this, I guess the takeaway is that you too can organize a Meetup event that will strengthen your local community and the world!</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:27]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>Which brings us now to our small list of big things. So first up, we have a live product demo for WordPress 6.2 on March 2nd, that&#8217;s going to be at 17:00 UTC.</p>



<p>There is a post that has gone up about it, which I&#8217;ll include in the show notes. This is an opportunity for folks to watch a live walkthrough of the current release with a collection of people from the release squad as well as avid contributors and testers. It&#8217;ll give you an idea of upcoming changes, but also we&#8217;ll probably expose a bug or two along the way.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>Come with your questions, and we will see you there.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Item number two is documentation. So apparently, that&#8217;s just half of what I wanna talk about today. Documentation, so wordpress.org, has docs that are specifically written for users and pulls in not only the documentation that we have but also information from the codex, the documentation space of yesteryear.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s a bit more to do here, and I realize this project has been going on since 2015. It&#8217;s because there&#8217;s a lot of stuff we have to do. There&#8217;s a lot of documentation, and we have to kind of get it in order. But that is the area that we&#8217;re in now. We have launched the new documentation page, the new look and feel is out there.</p>



<p>And so the next question is making sure that we have it organized in a way that&#8217;s easy to find and easy to learn from as you go. There is a whole working group that meets about it, and I will share a link to that in case you find that to be of interest to you as well.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And last but not least, there is another speaker workshop coming up on March 1st.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>If you have not heard of these yet, it&#8217;s a workshop that helps speakers learn the process of presentation brainstorming and creation. It is a great workshop. It was created over the course of many years within the WordPress project by Jill Binder and crew. It is a wonderful opportunity.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It&#8217;s not a WordPress link that we&#8217;re on, but there is an event link that I will make sure that we all have access to here, in case that is something that you have always wanted to try, learning how to speak at WordPress events.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks!</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 27 Feb 2023 14:58:43 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Santana Inniss";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:31;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:83:"Do The Woo Community: WordCamp Asia 2023, A Shining Star in the WordPress Community";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=74533";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"https://dothewoo.io/wordcamp-asia-2023-a-shining-star-in-the-wordpress-community/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:443:"<p>After returning from WordCamp Asia, I feel so grateful for those who support Do the Woo and the WordPress global community. </p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/wordcamp-asia-2023-a-shining-star-in-the-wordpress-community/">WordCamp Asia 2023, A Shining Star in the WordPress Community</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 27 Feb 2023 11:08:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:32;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:122:"Gutenberg Times: 6.2 Live Demo, 20-Year anniversary, Intrinsic design HTML Tag Processor, #WCAsia – Weekend Edition #244";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=23467";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:124:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/6-2-live-demo-20-year-anniversary-intrinsic-design-html-tag-processor-wcasia-weekend-edition-244/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:20325:"<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>WordCamp Asia was one of the best, if not the best flagship WordPress event.  I met quite a few subscribers to this newsletter in person. What a delight! I also made many new friends in the WordPress community.  Over the next week, I will add links to the live stream recordings and, if available, to the slidedecks to the post with <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordcamp-asia-2023-eight-gutenberg-related-talks/">the list of talks about the block editor</a>. </p>



<p>There are quite a few posts to be shared over the last 20 days since the last newsletter. It was great to catch-up. I kept my comments short. Many good things happening. </p>



<p>Wishing you a great weekend! </p>



<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>




<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-flow"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-word-press-6-2">WordPress 6.2</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-gutenberg-plugin-releases">Gutenberg Plugin Updates</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor </a></li></ul></div>
</div></div>




<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>



<p><strong>David Bisset </strong>posted the <a href="https://davidbisset.com/highlights-of-matts-qa-at-wordcamp-asia-2023/"><strong>Highlights of Matt’s Q&amp;A At WordCamp Asia 2023</strong></a>. Read the answer to questions about sponsoring contributors for documentation,  how to take advantage of WordPress knowledge in time of economic downturn, or how to get the next generation of web creators involved in the project. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>On the <em>WordPress Developer Blog</em>,<strong> Justin Tadlock</strong> published <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/02/whats-new-for-developers-february-2023/"><strong>What’s new for developers? (February 2023)</strong></a>. It&#8217;s the first edition of a round-up of upcoming changes relevant to developers of plugins and themes as well as agency/freelancers. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/azaozz">Andrew  Ozz</a></strong> posted the <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/18/proposal-updates-to-the-wordpress-release-cycle/">Proposal: Updates to the WordPress Release Cycle</a> </strong>regarding merging Gutenberg plugin code with WordPress. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Matias Ventura </strong>shared in his post <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/04/phase-2-finale/"><strong>Phase 2, Finale</strong></a>, what 6.2 will cover and what is still left for WordPress 6.3 and transition the project to Phase 3: Collaboration and workflows. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="1-word-press-6-2">WordPress 6.2</h3>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/wordpress-6-2-beta-3/">WordPress 6.2 Beta 3</a> was released this week. <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/TahriAdel">Adel Tahri,</a></strong> responsible for testing on the 6.2 release squad, posted a call to  <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/02/07/help-test-wordpress-6-2/"><strong>Help Test WordPress 6.2</strong></a> with helpful instructions on how to set up local test environment, with a list of things to test and places where to report your findings. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> posted the <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/06/roadmap-to-6-2/">Roadmap to 6.2</a>&nbsp;</strong> with a run down of most features coming to a WordPress instance near you on March 28th, 2023. </p>



<p>The schedule until release: </p>



<ul>
<li>Beta 4 on February 28, 2023</li>



<li>Release Candidate (RC) 1 + Dev Notes on March 7th, 2023</li>



<li>RC 2 on March 14, 2023</li>



<li>RC 3 on March 21, 2023</li>



<li>Final release March 28, 2023</li>
</ul>



<p>You can join the release party in the #core channel, the release team coordinates the work in the #6-2-release-leads channel. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>The <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/6-2-live-product-demo/"><strong>6.2 Live Product Demo</strong></a> is scheduled for March 2, 2023, at noon EST / 17:00 UTC. <strong>Jonathan Pantani</strong> shared the details in his post. </p>



<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/6-2-live-product-demo/"><img /></a>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-gutenberg-plugin-releases">Gutenberg Plugin Updates</h3>



<p><strong>JuanMa Garrido</strong> published the release post <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/10/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-0-18-january-2/">What’s new in Gutenberg 15.1? (8 February)</a>&nbsp;</strong></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Sarah Gooding </strong>covered Gutenberg 15.1 for the WP Tavern in <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-15-1-adds-openverse-integration"><strong>Gutenberg 15.1 Adds Openverse Integration</strong></a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Daisy Olsen</strong> was release lead for the next version: <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/24/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-2-22-february/">What’s new in Gutenberg 15.2? (22 February)</a>&nbsp;</strong></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



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<p><strong>🎙️ </strong> New episode:  <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-79-wordpress-6-2-gutenberg-plugin-versions-15-0-and-15-1/">Gutenberg Changelog #79 – WordPress 6.2, Gutenberg plugin versions 15.0 and 15.1</a> with Birgit Pauli-Haack and special guest Nick Diego </p>
</div></div>



<p><em>The next recording for the Gutenberg Changelog podcast is scheduled for March 9th, 2023, which will cover the Gutenberg plugin releases 15.2 and 15.3 and the dev notes available for WordPress 6.2.  We will also answer questions from you and others.  Send your questions to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com.</a> </em></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>



<p><strong>Ben Ritter,</strong> founder of Kadence Themes, announced the release of <a href="https://www.kadencewp.com/blog/introducing-blocks-3/"><strong>Kadence Blocks version 3</strong></a>. Kadence Blocks plugin has been around since the block editor arrived to WordPress in 2018, and with the rapid development of more design tools, and the site editor, the plugin needed a rewrite and a fresh coat of paint. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>In this video, <strong>Jamie Marsland</strong>  revealed the <a href="https://www.pootlepress.com/2023/02/the-secrets-of-wordpress-site-editing-beginners-guide/"><strong>Secrets of WordPress Site Editing</strong></a>, and answers common questions, like how to add fonts, why editor settings might be missing and how you can download good block themes. </p>



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<p>In his latest post, <strong>Mark Howells-Mead</strong> shared his thoughts on <a href="https://permanenttourist.ch/2023/02/block-patterns-and-block-variations-of-the-query-loop/"><strong>Block Patterns and Block Variations of the Query Loop</strong></a> and explored the differences between the two and reusable blocks.</p>



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<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> reported on the latest Theme published by Automattic:  <a href="https://wptavern.com/automattic-releases-bibimbap-a-free-block-theme-for-restaurants"><strong>Automattic Releases Bibimbap, a Free Block Theme for Restaurants</strong></a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>



<p>On the WordPress Developer Blog, <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> published the article.  <strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/02/intrinsic-design-theming-and-rethinking-how-to-design-with-wordpress/">Intrinsic design, theming, and rethinking how to design with WordPress</a></strong>. &nbsp;He wrote on Twitter: &#8220;This post explores some thinking behind why WordPress doesn&#8217;t have many block settings tied to specific device sizes and what the current approach is. It also provides theme authors with some techniques they can use to work within the system. There are tons of thoughts, techniques, and tools related to the subject, which is impossible to cover in a single post. But, I encourage continued exploration from the extender community and sharing what you learn.&#8221; You can follow more discussion in the comments of the post. </p>



<p><strong>Hendrik Lührsen</strong> and <strong>Jakob Trost</strong> also <a href="https://twitter.com/hluehrsen/status/1628823761557368838">discussed the topic on Twitter</a>. </p>



<a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/02/intrinsic-design-theming-and-rethinking-how-to-design-with-wordpress/"><img /></a>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>For developers who want to get started or dive deeper into creating Block Themes, ready for the site editor, <strong>Daisy Olsen</strong> collected a great list of links covering all aspects for the Developer Blog: <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/02/block-theme-resources-roundup/"><strong>Block theme resources roundup</strong></a>. She wrote: &#8220;Whether you build sites mostly from the site and styles editors or you develop bespoke and custom themes from the ground up, there are always new things to learn. Read on to learn all about block themes.&#8221; </p>




<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2022&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. Updated by yours truly.  <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/"><em>The index 2020 is here</em></a></p>




<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>In his latest post, <strong>James Koussertari,</strong> of Gutenberg Market asks <a href="https://gutenbergmarket.com/news/what-are-hybrid-wordpress-themes"><strong>What are Hybrid WordPress themes?</strong></a> and gives you the answers, of course. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong>, instigator of the Block Museum of Art, posted <a href="https://block-museum.com/2023/02/21/lets-celebrate-20-years-of-wordpress/"><strong>Let’s celebrate 20 years of WordPress</strong></a> &#8220;This is an opportunity for folks to showcase their creativity and imagination using the features of the WordPress block editor that make it a powerful creative platform. We invite artists from all backgrounds and experience levels to submit their own WP20-inspired blocks and join us in celebrating two decades of WordPress.&#8221; McCarthy wrote. </p>



<a href="https://block-museum.com/2023/02/21/lets-celebrate-20-years-of-wordpress/"><img /></a>



<p>If you are curious, what is all in store for the milestone anniversary, celebration around the WordPress community, follow up on the special website: <a href="https://wp20.wordpress.net/"><strong>wp20.wordpress.net</strong></a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>In this article, <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/donnapep">Donna Peplinksie</a></strong> shared <strong><a href="https://senseilms.com/how-we-built-a-theme-for-sensei/">How We Built a Block Theme for Sensei LMS</a> </strong>and explains key decisions, the breakdown of the work, and using the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/create-block-theme/">Create Block theme plugin</a> to built out the theme. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>On her website, fullsiteediting.com, <strong>Caroline Nymark</strong>  posted a new <strong><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/lessons/child-themes/">Lesson on Child Themes</a></strong>. &#8220;I am very happy with the progress we have made to support block and hybrid child themes in WordPress.&#8221; Nymark <a href="https://twitter.com/carolinapoena/status/1626964953914638337">tweeted</a>. You learn when you still need child theme, and the relationship between parent and child block theme. It&#8217;s a comprehensive guide for theme developers. She also answer frequently asked questions, you might have. </p>




<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>





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							<div class="ngl-article-featured"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/live-q-a-layout-layout-layout/" target="_self" rel=""><img src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Screenshot-2023-02-05-at-11.21.47.png?w=652&ssl=1" /></a></div><div class="ngl-article-labels">gutenbergtimes.com</div><div class="ngl-article-title"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/live-q-a-layout-layout-layout/" target="_self" rel=""><span>Live Q &#038; A: Layout. Layout. Layout</span></a></div><div class="ngl-article-excerpt">Layouts are a fundamental part of how block themes work: Layout allows us to define the width of our post content, and arrange blocks horizontally or vertically, right or left&hellip; <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/live-q-a-layout-layout-layout/" class="ngl-article-read-more" target="_self">Read more.</a></div>							</div>
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor </h2>



<p>Ryan Welcher started to record YouTube Shorts. For the first one, we also created a blog post with the Quick Tip. </p>




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							<div class="ngl-article-featured"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/quick-tip-creating-a-custom-webpack-configuration-file/" target="_self" rel=""><img src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Screenshot-2023-02-04-at-10.56.27.png?w=652&ssl=1" /></a></div><div class="ngl-article-labels">gutenbergtimes.com</div><div class="ngl-article-title"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/quick-tip-creating-a-custom-webpack-configuration-file/" target="_self" rel=""><span>Quick Tip: Creating a custom webpack configuration file</span></a></div><div class="ngl-article-excerpt">https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VgK_Y9wAGXw Ryan Welcher on YouTube Shorts. &#8211; Also available on TikTok Ryan Welcher started a recording YouTube Shorts also available on TikTok. Here is a transcript and code example of&hellip; <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/quick-tip-creating-a-custom-webpack-configuration-file/" class="ngl-article-read-more" target="_self">Read more.</a></div>							</div>
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<p><strong>Adam Zieliński </strong>created an interactive tutorial for the new HTML processor coming to WordPress with 6.2: <a href="https://adamadam.blog/2023/02/16/how-to-modify-html-in-a-php-wordpress-plugin-using-the-new-tag-processor-api/"><strong>How to Modify HTML in a PHP WordPress Plugin Using The New Tag Processor API</strong></a>. &#8220;If you’ve ever struggled to add an HTML attribute using regular expressions, you know how big of an improvement this is! In fact, Tag Processor was born out of this exact struggle.&#8221; He wrote. You&#8217;ll find use cases and code snippets in his post. </p>



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<p><strong>Brian Coords</strong> shared his experience of <a href="https://www.briancoords.com/hooking-into-the-block-editors-post-publish-panel-with-copilot/"><strong>Hooking into the Block Editor’s Post Publish Panel (with Copilot)</strong></a>. Coords walks you through the steps of building a feature for his plugin that taps into the block editor. </p>



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<p>Last month, <strong>Mark Howells-Mead</strong> published a tutorial on <a href="https://permanenttourist.ch/2023/01/using-useselect-in-gutenberg-to-fetch-data-from-the-rest-api/"><strong>Using useSelect in Gutenberg to fetch data from the REST API</strong></a>. The function <code>getEntityRecords</code> enters the stage, too. </p>




<p>Featured Image: Bangkok, Thailand  &#8211; View from the 31st floor. Phot by Birgit Pauli-Haack</p>



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<form class="wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait" action="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/" method="post"><div class="ngl-form-container"><div class="ngl-form-field"><label class="ngl-form-label" for="ngl_email"><br />Type in your Email address to subscribe.</label><div class="ngl-form-input"><input type="email" class="ngl-form-input-text" name="ngl_email" id="ngl_email" /></div></div><button type="submit" class="ngl-form-button">Subscribe</button><p class="ngl-form-text">We hate spam, too and won&#8217;t give your email address to anyone except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition</p></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay"><div class="ngl-message-svg-wrap"></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay-text">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type="hidden" name="ngl_list_id" id="ngl_list_id" value="26f81bd8ae" /><input type="hidden" name="ngl_double_optin" id="ngl_double_optin" value="yes" /></form>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 25 Feb 2023 20:22:45 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:33;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"WordCamp Central: Get your tickets for WordCamp Kerala 2023 on March 25th!";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=3161846";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:98:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2023/02/get-your-tickets-for-wordcamp-kerala-2023-on-march-25th/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7396:"<p>The southern state of Kerala in India is all set to host its first regional WordCamp &#8211; <a href="https://kerala.wordcamp.org/2023/">WordCamp Kerala 2023</a> on March 25, 2023 (Saturday) at <a href="https://kerala.wordcamp.org/2023/location/">IMA House, Kochi</a>! </p>



<p>The WordPress community in Kerala is not new &#8211; it had its humble beginnings in 2014, when it <a href="https://www.meetup.com/kochi-wordpress-meetup/events/206595912/">kicked off with an informal local meetup in Kochi</a>. The love for WordPress grew the community slowly, but surely, which eventually spread out to multiple cities in the state. Together the community organized scores of local meetup events and three editions of WordCamp Kochi (<a href="https://kochi.wordcamp.org/2017/">2017</a>, <a href="https://kochi.wordcamp.org/2018/">2018</a>, and <a href="https://kochi.wordcamp.org/2019/">2019</a>) before the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down. Even during the pandemic, our community stayed active by organizing online events together under a &#8220;WordPress Kerala&#8221; banner. As the global health situation improved in 2022, our community started organizing in-person events again. A strong desire to organize a WordCamp united members the Kerala WordPress Community. As a result, the local WordPress Meetup groups of <a href="https://www.meetup.com/trivandrum-wordpress-meetup/">Trivandrum</a>, <a href="https://www.meetup.com/kochi-wordpress-meetup/">Kochi</a>, <a href="https://www.meetup.com/Kozhikode-WordPress-Meetup/">Kozhikode</a>, and <a href="https://www.meetup.com/Palakkad-WordPress-Meetup/">Palakkad</a>, have decided to bounce back by organizing WordCamp Kerala 2023!</p>



<a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2023/02/WordCamp_Kochi_2017_21.jpg"><img /></a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What makes WordCamp Kerala unique</h2>



<p>Our event promises to be as <a href="https://kerala.wordcamp.org/2023/10-amazing-things-you-didnt-know-about-kerala/">unique</a> as our location and host state. Kerala is known as “<a href="https://www.keralatourism.org/video-gallery/life-in-god-s-own-country/">God’s own country</a>” and was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/travel/52-places-travel-2023.html">selected by the New York Times</a> as one of the must-visit places in 2023. In 1999, Kerala made it to National Geographic’s list of <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/50_places_of_a_lifetime_1">10 Paradises of the world</a> too. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging</h3>



<p>At WordCamp Kerala, one of our main priorities is to ensure that every voice is heard. We are working hard to ensure that our event is as diverse and inclusive as possible, from our organizing team to our speaker roster, and every aspect of our event and its planning. </p>



<p>Our aim is to present a speaker lineup that is as diverse as possible, by ensuring that non-male applicants and applicants from marginalized backgrounds have excellent representation in our roster. To facilitate the same,  we collaborated with the WP Diversity group of the Make/Community Team to hold a <a href="https://kerala.wordcamp.org/2023/announcement-free-speaker-workshop-for-wordcamp-kerala-speaker-applicants/">successful diverse speaker workshop led by Jill Binder on January 28th</a> &#8211; the workshop had 25 attendees, and resulted in at least seven unique speaker applications!</p>



<p>Additionally, our event aims to have something for folks from all backgrounds &#8211; from advanced technical workshops to sessions aimed at every WordPress professional. For this WordCamp, we are also doing our best to facilitate excellent networking opportunities between attendees, which are one of the biggest strengths of WordCamps.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">An Eco-friendly WordCamp</h3>



<p>The event is planned as eco-friendly and adequate plans are in place to ensure that no harm is done to the environment at any stage of the event. It includes avoiding plastic items and using LED televisions for sponsor branding as opposed to banners to save our environment. We are even thinking of ways to reduce our environmental footprint in every aspect of event planning as well. </p>



<a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2023/02/DSC_0498-1.jpg"><img /></a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Get involved</h2>



<p>There are several ways to become a part of this exciting event! </p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://kerala.wordcamp.org/2023/tickets/"><strong>Grab your tickets</strong></a><strong> to attend this event!</strong><br />WordCamp Kerala tickets are priced at an affordable INR 500 (~USD $6) per attendee. As of late February 2023, we have sold more than half of our total tickets available for public (we are planning 500 total participants at our event including volunteers, speakers, and sponsors), and there is a high probability that we may sell out way before the event date. Get your tickets now! </li>



<li><strong>Last chance to </strong><a href="https://kerala.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-speakers/"><strong>apply to speak at WordCamp Kerala</strong></a><strong>!<br /></strong>Due to popular demand, we have extended our deadline for call for speakers. <a href="https://kerala.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-speakers/">Apply to speak at WordCamp Kerala 2023</a> before February 28th 2023, 11:59 PM IST.</li>



<li><a href="https://kerala.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-sponsors/#bronze-10-000-125"><strong>Sponsor WordCamp Kerala<br /></strong></a>We received an unprecedented response to our call for sponsors, and most of our sponsorship tiers have sold out. A big thanks to our community for this warm response and support! Nonetheless, <a href="https://kerala.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-sponsors/#bronze-10-000-125">we still have some available sponsorship options</a> for interested applicants. </li>



<li><strong><a href="https://kerala.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-volunteers/"><strong>Apply to be a Volunteer</strong></a><strong> </strong>and be a part of the team that helps organize WordCamp Kerala 2023.</strong> Deadline: February 28th 2023, 11:59 PM IST.</li>
</ul>



<p>And don’t forget to post about this event on your social media handles for all WordPress enthusiasts. Feel free to <a href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkerala.wordcamp.org%2F2023%2Ftickets%2F&text=">Share about us on Twitter</a>, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fkerala.wordcamp.org%2F2023%2Ftickets%2F&title=">write about us on LinkedIn</a>, or<a href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fkerala.wordcamp.org%2F2023%2Ftickets%2F"> post about us on Facebook</a>. Psst&#8230; You can also post about our event on your (WordPress-powered) blog or on Tumblr! Don&#8217;t forget to join the discussion on WordCamp Kerala 2023 using the hashtag <strong>#WCKerala</strong> hashtag on all social media platforms.</p>



<p>Looking forward to seeing you at our lovely little event celebrating WordPress, at the beautiful coastal city of Kochi, on March 25th, 2023! </p>



<div class="wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex">
<div class="wp-block-button"><a class="wp-block-button__link wp-element-button" href="https://kerala.wordcamp.org/2023/">Get your tickets for WordCamp Kerala 2023!</a></div>
</div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 25 Feb 2023 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"jyolsna";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:34;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:130:"WPTavern: WordPress 6.2 Openverse Integration Hotlinks Images, Contributors Propose Uploading to Media Library as a Better Default";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142305";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:140:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-2-openverse-integration-hotlinks-images-contributors-propose-uploading-to-media-library-as-a-better-default";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1911:"<p>WordPress 6.2 is set to introduce an integration with Openverse that allows users to quickly insert free, openly-licensed media into their content. It was not readily apparent when the feature made its debut in version 15.1 of the Gutenberg plugin that the inserted images are hotlinked.</p>



<p>WP Engine developer Phil Johnston <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02QB2JS7/p1677269705274569">brought up this issue</a> in the #core-editor channel on WordPress Slack today. WordPress core contributor Paul Biron confirmed images are hotlinked when first inserted but can be added to the site&#8217;s Media Library using the &#8220;Upload&#8221; tool, which is located in the Image block toolbar after Openverse inserts the image.</p>



<img />



<p>Hotlinking is generally considered a bad practice, as it uses another site&#8217;s bandwidth to display the asset. Hotlinked images can easily get renamed or removed from the source site, which can negatively impact the sites that are displaying them.</p>



<p>WordPress core contributor Jeremy Herve opened a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/48394">ticket</a> yesterday with concerns about the hotlinking and suggested it would be better to upload the images by default.</p>



<p>&#8220;I would suggest uploading the image to one&#8217;s site once picked and inserted,&#8221; Herve said. &#8220;This way it would remain available on the site, whatever may happen to the service or the original image. Of course, the image attribution should remain in the caption.&#8221;</p>



<p>Johnston also suggested hotlinking the images might be a privacy concern if it allows the host to gather data about the device loading the image.</p>



<p>WordPress may end up changing the default behavior for Openverse inserts, but in the meantime, users should be aware of how this feature works and where to find the Upload tool. </p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 25 Feb 2023 04:48:33 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:35;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"WPTavern: Prison Journalism Project Launches Prison Newspaper Project on WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142256";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:93:"https://wptavern.com/prison-journalism-project-launches-prison-newspaper-project-on-wordpress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5036:"<p>The <a href="https://prisonjournalismproject.org/">Prison Journalism Project</a> (PJP), a non-profit organization founded in April 2020, trains incarcerated writers to be journalists and publishes their stories with the goal of empowering them to be a vital voice in criminal justice reform. Over the past three years, the project has published over 1,700 pieces of work from more than 600 incarcerated and incarceration-impacted <a href="https://prisonjournalismproject.org/our-writers/">writers</a> representing 180 prisons across 35 states and three countries.</p>



<p>The project is bringing important issues to light, such as <a href="https://prisonjournalismproject.org/2023/02/24/its-still-a-covid-19-emergency-in-here/">diminishing access to programs that further rehabilitation due to COVID-19</a> and the <a href="https://prisonjournalismproject.org/2022/02/04/the-failure-of-drug-treatment-in-prisons/">failure of drug treatment in prisons</a>, first-hand accounts from incarcerated individuals that expose the inadequacy of state and federal prisons to meet the needs of those in their care. These stories and more are featured on the organization&#8217;s website, which is powered by WordPress and <a href="https://newspack.com/">Newspack</a>, a project from Automattic that provides a publishing platform for small and medium-sized news organizations. Newspack includes professionally designed themes and a set of pre-configured plugins, like Newspack Newsletters and WooCommerce Subscriptions, that help drive audience and revenue. </p>



<p>This week the PJP <a href="https://prisonjournalismproject.org/prison-newspaper-project/">launched</a> the Prison Newspaper Project, which aims to connect prison publications with a broader general audience, including educators and researchers. At its peak, U.S. prisons running their own newsrooms published 250 prison papers in 1959. The prison press has declined significantly since then, despite massive improvements in the available technology for telling their stories. As of February 2023, the PJP counts 24 operational, prisoner-run news publications across 12 states.</p>



<p>The new Prison Newspaper Project has indexed these publications into a&nbsp;<a href="https://prisonjournalismproject.org/prison-newspaper-directory/">prison newspaper directory</a>. It also has a new category section on the site called &#8220;<a href="https://prisonjournalismproject.org/category/from-prison-newspapers/">From Prison Newspapers</a>,&#8221; where the organization highlights and amplifies the work of incarcerated writers across various publications. Their work is republished to PJP&#8217;s wider audience, offering a window into the incarcerated population and the conditions where they are living.</p>



<p>While most of the prison newspapers in the PJP&#8217;s directory run on legacy systems or are only available via print-versions with digital archives, a few have online publications. <a href="https://sanquentinnews.com/">San Quentin News</a> is one that runs on WordPress, publishing beautiful stories of the humanity and artistry of those behind bars. One story features San Quentin artist Idalio Villagran, who &#8220;takes prison-constrained creativity and resourcefulness to another level, crafting beautiful roses of various colors from state-issued bread and Kool-Aid.&#8221;</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://sanquentinnews.com/roses-are-red-mostly/">Roses are red . . . mostly</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>Another post features the work of San Quentin artist Edgar Zarate Martinez, who is keeping his Mexican cultural heritage alive through his paintings that reflect his yearning for his family.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://sanquentinnews.com/for-love-and-honor/">FOR LOVE AND HONOR</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>PJP was founded by Yukari Iwatani Kane and Shaheen Pasha at Penn State University in 2019, after teaching journalism at San Quentin State Prison and Hampshire County Jail in Massachusetts.</p>



<p>Most of the other indexed prison publications don&#8217;t have an online presence, so the Prison Newspaper Project is vital for connecting them and bringing more exposure to prison journalism. Getting these publications online isn&#8217;t part of the current scope of the project, but there is a big opportunity here to modernize these newsrooms with WordPress and help them find a global audience.</p>



<p>The Prison Newspaper Project is committed to regularly updating the list of active publications in the directory. People can submit newspapers or magazines not yet listed by emailing&nbsp;<a href="mailto:editorial@prisonjournalismproject.org">editorial@prisonjournalismproject.org</a>.</p>



<p>&#8220;As this section grows, we hope to offer you more resources on the history of this remarkable part of the fourth estate,&#8221; Prison Newspaper Project Editor Kate McQueen said.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 24 Feb 2023 23:08:35 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:36;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"Post Status: WordCamp Asia Wrap-up";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=147369";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:45:"https://poststatus.com/wordcamp-asia-wrap-up/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6725:"<p>I know you're wondering. And yes, I showered.</p>



<p>As a matter of fact, the WordCamp Asia team was very deliberate in considering disability needs from the start of Contributor Day through to the announcement of WCAsia 2024 at closing remarks. The hotel was perfect. The venue had elevators and automatic doors (or security stationed to open doors). I couldn't have asked for more.</p>



<h2 id="h-wcasia-by-the-numbers">WCAsia By the Numbers</h2>



<img width="752" height="564" src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IMG_5800-752x564.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-147370" />



<p>You can see by this screen that WCAsia succeeded in attendance and contributors. In addition, there were 60 speakers, 53 orgainzers, over 80 volunteers, and 29 people on the AV team.</p>



<h2>Contributor Day</h2>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A sneak peak of the photographs we will be publishing from <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WCAsia?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WCAsia</a> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f913.png" alt="🤓" class="wp-smiley" /><br />Huge thanks to the Contributor Day Team Leads! <a href="https://t.co/A4hpwank6U">pic.twitter.com/A4hpwank6U</a></p>&mdash; Shusei Toda (@shuseitoda) <a href="https://twitter.com/shuseitoda/status/1627617457988050944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 20, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>I was fortunate to be a table lead for Contributor Day. We onboarded many photographers who submitted photos to the WordPress Photo Directory for the first time. Topher DeRosia and I moderated almost 250 photos in one day, while discussing with contributors what makes a good photo, what isn't allowed to be added to the directory, and how every contributor gets a badge on their .org profile. </p>



<p>From what I heard from other table leads, every one of the teams onboarded new contributors and accomplished their goals for the day. It was truly inspiring.</p>



<h2>Sponsors</h2>



<p>Instead of being off in another part of a building, the sponsor area was in the center of it all. To get from point A to any other point you either had to go through or around the edges of the sponsor booths. I imagine this was incredibly helpful for sponsors, and, honestly, it made it the perfect place to run into people, make connections, renew connections, and grab some awesome swag.</p>



<h2>The Selfie Challenge</h2>



<p>I put out a challenge that if people posted selfies with me I would donate $5 per selfie to <a href="https://bigorangeheart.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Big Orange Heart</a>. (Up to $500 total.) I'm please to say that not only did I meet that goal (with well over 100 selfies with our amazing community) but <a href="https://twitter.com/carlhancock/status/1628156351636508672?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Carl Hancock of Gravity Forms matched it</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/insta_wp" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Vikas Singhal of InstaWP</a> matched it at 50%. All told we raised $1250 for BOH!</p>



<h2>Q&A; with Matt Mullenweg</h2>



<p>I asked a question to Matt during the Q&A; Friday morning.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>With the wave of layoffs and hiring freezes we have seen in the WordPress community lately, what do you think we, as a community, can do to create more jobs in our ecosystem and stop the anxiety and fear that comes with layoffs like this?</p>
</blockquote>



<p>Matt's reply was a bit less than I hoped, basically encouraging anyone who has been laid off to sharpen their WordPress skills, market themselves as freelancers to build a portfolio, and encourage local businesses to get on WordPress.</p>



<p>Some of the people who have been laid off are already big names in WordPress and have a portfolio to back it up.</p>



<p>So it still begs the question &#8211; how can we support those who have recently lost jobs in massive layoffs and what does it say about the adoption of WordPress if companies are scaling back? While I don't have the answer, I'm watching closely.</p>



<p>And if you find yourself job searching in WordPress here are a few resources:</p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://poststatus.com/jobs/">The Post Status Job Board</a></li>



<li><a href="https://WPCareerPages.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WPCareerPages.com</a> </li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23wordpressjobs&src=typed_query" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter posts</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.underrepresentedintech.com/resources/">Underrepresented in Tech Resources</a></li>
</ul>



<h2>Photos, Photos, Photos</h2>



<p></p>



<p>To see how truly impactful the first WordCamp Asia was, one has only to look into all of the smiling faces captured in selfies and more.</p>



<p>Here are a few places to look:</p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23WCASIA&src=typed_query" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twitter #WCAsia</a></li>



<li><a href="https://photos.app.goo.gl/WEUjLaPbS2zyz9fM6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google Photos</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/michelleames/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">My Instagram Photos of Bangkok</a></li>
</ul>



<h2>Thanks to the Organizers and Volunteers</h2>



<p>WordCamp Asia seemed to go off without any issues (though anyone who has ever organized a WordCamp knows there are always hiccups). If there were, the attendees didn't see them. (Other than the technical glitches in the Q&A; with Matt Mullenweg, which was still handled very well.)</p>



<p>I would add my thanks to all of the voices praising the organizers and volunteers that made WordCamp Asia so amazing. From the updates on the website to the after party, you all provided information, hospitality, and an incredible warmth to the event. </p>



<p>Thank you a million times over.</p>



<p>WordCamp Asia 2024</p>



<img width="752" height="564" src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IMG_5827-752x564.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-147581" />



<p>And to the organizers for WC Asia 2024 &#8211; wishing you the best as you continue this new legacy. I know you're up to the challenge!</p>



<img width="752" height="564" src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/organizers-752x564.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-147582" />WC Asia 2024 Team (photo credit <a href="https://twitter.com/ratneshsonar" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ratnesh Sonar</a>)
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 24 Feb 2023 05:29:40 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Michelle Frechette";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:37;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"WPTavern: Automattic Releases Bibimbap, a Free Block Theme for Restaurants";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142258";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"https://wptavern.com/automattic-releases-bibimbap-a-free-block-theme-for-restaurants";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2858:"<p>Automattic has a new theme in the WordPress Themes Directory. <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/bibimbap/">Bibimbap</a>, named for a beloved Korean comfort food, is a restaurant theme. It is described as &#8220;simple and fun&#8221; but does not come with a live demo, so users will need to be prepared to work with patterns to get their restaurant sites put together.</p>



<p>The home page pictured in the screenshot displays a full width Cover block with an image as the background, a call to action, and some contact information. Bibimbap features the Cooper Hewitt typeface throughout for paragraph text and headers.</p>



<img />



<p>The theme comes with five custom block patterns for building restaurant websites:</p>



<ul>
<li>Contact pattern with a map, location, and hours</li>



<li>Cover block pattern for restaurant Specials</li>



<li>Default footer</li>



<li>Restaurant menu</li>



<li>Menu add-ons</li>
</ul>



<img />



<p>I took the theme for a test drive and found that is not very intuitive in its current state, although the patterns are nicely designed. When first installed and activated on a new site, the theme looks blank with nothing in place and no hint of how it can be made to look like the screenshot.</p>



<img />



<p>The most ideal experience a block theme can provide gives the user a ready-to-go website that looks like the demo, or at least provides a full-page pattern that is easy to insert. Bibimbap has missed a few opportunities to make the theme more user-friendly. Although it is also available on WordPress.com under the Business plan, the preview is similar to the experience of installing it on a self-hosted site. With no live demo available, it&#8217;s difficult to know where to go after installing it.</p>



<p>In the Site Editor, users will need to navigate to the <em>wp-custom-template-home</em> template to edit the home page template. If this is a new website, users will also want to create a new page and assign it to use the <em>wp-custom-template-home</em> page template to get the right design.</p>



<p>The home page header design is not available via a pattern, which would make the theme so much more versatile and easy to use, especially in the case of multi-page websites.</p>



<p>Although the theme comes with just a handful of patterns, they work well dropped onto the page in any order. </p>



<img />



<p>Overall, this theme is a good option for those who know their way around WordPress and the Site Editor. It makes it fairly quick to build a restaurant website with a cohesive design. The problems with user-friendliness can be easily remedied with a few full-page patterns and a bit of thought towards the experience after activating the theme.  <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/bibimbap/">Bibimbap</a> is available for free from WordPress.org.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 24 Feb 2023 03:55:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:38;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:63:"Post Status: Launching a WordPress Product in Public: Session 2";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=147564";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"https://poststatus.com/launching-a-wordpress-product-in-public-session-2/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:70348:"<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-group eplus-wrapper has-theme-palette-2-color has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-text-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><div class="wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt"><a href="https://twitter.com/hirethere">Corey Maass</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> share the messiness of building a WordPress product live. They reveal the initial version of <a href="https://crop.express/#welcome">Crop.Express</a>, a plugin designed to crop a featured image within the WordPress workflow and discuss their progress and ongoing development. </p></div>


<div class="wp-block-spacer eplus-wrapper"></div>



<p class="yoast-reading-time__wrapper"><span class="yoast-reading-time__icon"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__spacer"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__descriptive-text">Estimated reading time:  </span><span class="yoast-reading-time__reading-time">3</span><span class="yoast-reading-time__time-unit"> minutes</span></p>
</div></div>







<p><a href="https://poststatus.com/planet/feed/#h-transcript">Transcript</a> ↓</p>



<p>In this episode, <a href="https://twitter.com/hirethere">Corey Maass</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> share their initial version or MVP of the product they are building, <a href="https://crop.express/#welcome">Crop.Express</a>.  Together they work through enhancing UX, selecting the right business model, crafting marketing messages, and more.</p>



<p><strong>Top Takeaways:</strong></p>



<ul>
<li><strong>Work Out the Workflow. </strong>You will teach people how to use your product with demos or tutorials. While you want to make adjustments to improve UX, you don’t want to constantly change the workflows for your product. Being thoughtful on the front end can result in better usability and less change.</li>



<li><strong>Business Models. </strong>Building a product also means determining a business model.<strong> </strong>Offering some functionality for free can gain exposure for a base product. Adding a pro or paid version with increased value to deliver a better end product for a customer.</li>



<li><strong>Focus on Feedback.</strong> As a product builder, you work to anticipate pain points and solve for them. With a quality product, you will solve real struggles for users. But there is a reason users are uninstalling. Accessing their input and experience could be the key to taking your product to the next level.</li>
</ul>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div>





<h3 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-mentioned-in-the-show"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f517.png" alt="🔗" class="wp-smiley" /> Mentioned in the show:</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://crop.express/">Crop.Express</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.canva.com/">Canva</a></li>



<li><a href="https://elementor.com/%5C">Elementor</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-you-can-follow-post-status-and-our-guests-on-twitter"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png" alt="🐦" class="wp-smiley" /> You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:</h3>



<ul class="eplus-wrapper">
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/hirethere">Corey Maass</a></li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> (CEO, <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status">Post Status</a>)</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/lemonadecode">Olivia Bisset</a> (Intern, <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status">Post Status</a>)</li>
</ul>



<p class="eplus-wrapper has-background">The <strong>Post Status Draft</strong> podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4dd.png" alt="📝" class="wp-smiley" /><br /><br /><a href="https://poststatus.com/category/post-status-podcasts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Browse our archives</a>, and don’t forget to subscribe via <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/post-status-draft-wordpress/id976403008" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">iTunes</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8ySkU5c2M4UA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/PostStatus" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YouTube</a>, <a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/krogsgard/post-status-draft-wordpress-podcast" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://wordpress-post-status-draft-podcast.simplecast.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Simplecast</a>, or <a href="https://feeds.simplecast.com/2JE9sc8P">RSS</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f3a7.png" alt="🎧" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<h2 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-transcript">Transcript</h2>



<h2>Session 2 Corey & Cory Launch a WordPress Product Live  </h2>



<p>Cory Miller: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome back to post status. Where we're, um, Corey Moss and I are session two.  </p>



<p>Launched a WordPress product in public, and you're getting to see all the, you know, um, kinks and rough edges. But what we hope really comes through is that we've had these really good conversations and we're like, we're okay with not, we're being imperfect and showing how this product works, at least with us.  </p>



<p>So hopefully it helps somebody else inspire somebody to do better. Um, but, all right, Corey, I have to be the first admit as my partner in this, um, donate my homework. Excuse, excuse. I was frantically in between meetings, trying to like, be creative with the read me text. Mm-hmm. Um, But I, um, so I have to say that first and foremost, and then second.  </p>



<p>I know you shared a cool feature that we were talking about that I was like, Hey, we can put this on the backlog. And you're like, no, it's here, it [00:01:00] is . Um, so I haven't even got to see that. But, um, that, that's kind of my update. But what, what things do you have or want to talk about?&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Um, yeah, I, it, it. Uh, like I'm on top of my stuff, you know, by getting these updates to you.  </p>



<p>But I mean, I'm in the same boat. I promised, uh, last Wednesday that, you know, within a day or two I would have this other feature implemented. And it was like last minute on Friday that I actually, or even Monday, that I was like, oh crap, I owe us this thing. So, um, yes, technically I got my paper written and handed in, uh, and you didn't, but it doesn't mean I wasn't up until 6:00 AM the, the morning of writing the paper.  </p>



<p>Uh, you know, so, I mean, again, these are, these are the realities. You know, I, I've [00:02:00] got client work, I've got numerous products that need updating and bugs fixed, and, uh, life goes on. And so, you know, we've, we've fit this stuff in, in between. When we can. I mean, and, and I think that that's too, like where we're at, right?  </p>



<p>Like right now, this is, uh, an idea that we're, you know, we're still in the garage phase or we're still in the, like, we can't make this a priority yet because it's not out there. It's not, we don't have users to satiate, we don't have revenue to chase. We don't have, you don't, you know, you're doing the marketing and you don't have anything to market.  </p>



<p>And so, I mean, this is, this has been my MO for a long time where if I've got a new idea for a new product, it's just gotta get shoved in between all the other stuff that is at the moment, more important.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: It's always a game. And this of juggling, I think. And I [00:03:00] swore to myself, I was like, I'm gonna stop juggling, but I juggles for so long with Ithe stuff.  </p>



<p>It's like, as an entrepreneur and doing these type of things, you're owning all the responsibility and, um, but it's really good to have someone that understands we're all juggling, um, back and forth. Um, well, would you want to like, look at where we're at now from the plugin side, since you've got, you've done your, you've done more than your homework, by the way.  </p>



<p>Um, do you wanna share your screen? Do you want me to share?&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Yeah, let me, let me share because I've got it, um, set up pretty readily here, I think. Um, so what we're talking about, um, is the, the very first version of this plugin and I just don't wanna. Because we are so professional, um, [00:04:00] you know, I need to carefully culminate the experience that people will have.  </p>



<p>Um, how do I top left or Let's do this. Move the screen. Full screen. Uh, move the window. . All right. Um,  </p>



<p>nope, that won't work. Share screen. Let's try this again. Where's the plate? Blue window. There we go. Share. All right. So hopefully you can, you're seeing a, a WordPress install. Yep. Um, so, uh, for the nerds out there, um, I've got this, um, are we still recording?&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: No, we are now recording again, . Oh, awesome. I pause it.  </p>



<p>So now we're [00:05:00] actually recording . So we're on session two. Everybody, for the recording sake of launching the WordPress product in, in, in public. And you're seeing all the foibles, particularly mine. But Corey's now showing us 0.001 version of the. Right.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Um, yeah, what everybody missed is us discussing how, just how, uh, we are the epitome of professionalism and, um, it all works out in the end.  </p>



<p>But the, you know, part of the point of, of this whole experiment recording is, is to see the kind of, uh, the messiness, the behind the scenes, the, um, so, uh, for the nerds, uh, I'm using, I, I use local WP to develop locally, um, and to run sites locally and stuff like that. So that's what you're seeing here is just a local site of vanilla WordPress install.  </p>



<p>And, um, so we've got version, you know, 0 0 1 [00:06:00] installed, um, crop Express, and then where that puts us is, We had talked about lots of different features, um, but decided that our m v p, our, let's just add some value to the world version, um, is, is just the ability to crop the featured image. Um, so what we're doing here is, uh, we still have a featured image panel on the side here.  </p>



<p>Um, whoops. Oh, come on. Don't. We have a featured image panel on the side in, in the block editor. Um, but this is actually our custom panel and we're hiding the built-in featured image panel. Um, and we say select and crop an image. And so here's the new UI that I was talking about. Um, I've moved some things around and, um, I still think that I want to make one more change where I wanna put these two buttons on top of each other [00:07:00] with a sort of, um, broken image or a, a place.  </p>



<p>You know, a, your image will appear here soon because right now if I say upload an image, um, and I choose an image, um, It just, right now it just says, you know, here is the, the name of the file selected. But I think much more, you know, to most people, they're gonna wanna see a little thumbnail of the image that they've selected, again, to kind of prove like, okay, wait, I chose the right one.  </p>



<p>Um, and so then you choose, uh, this is when you're cropping it. Do you want to crop a square? Do you want to crop 16 nine? Um, and then the first fanciness that, uh, you said, boy, it would be slick if was being able to crop a circle. So that's now there, but, so we'll start with a square. In a square, you say, crop it, and you get into the cropper.  </p>



<p>And so this is where you can zoom around and you select your image.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: [00:08:00] And um, Hey, real quick, Corey, how does it go if you want to crop back out, like you go, oh, it's too tight. Will it, can you push back out?&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Um, so there's, there's zoom in and out here. Ah, ah, okay. Okay, okay. On the bottom because Yeah, I didn't, what the, the better way to, to manipulate this is actually the, the mouse wheel.  </p>



<p>Like I'm zooming in and out here with the mouse wheel. I got you. Um, but we can't assume that everybody has a mouse wheel. Um, right. So, um, I think eventually maybe we want a slider, but for now, I just wanted us to have something so you can zoom in, um, and then, and then move it around kind of thing. Okay.  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: Can you go back to the previous screen first? Oh, go ahead.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: If you have something else. Oh, just, and, you know, so there's, um, yeah, lots of different ways to kind of move this around. It's, I think it'll take a [00:09:00] little, everybody's gonna have to kind of get used to it. They'll get used to it. Um, yeah, there's also a new preview in a new window.  </p>



<p>So like if you've, if you've zoomed in before you actually set crop this and set this as your featured image, um, it'll open a new window with the result. So you can, you can see it. Oh, that's cool. Um, so if you go back, you can say, crop a circle and go to crop it. And so there's your circle. Um, and that will now save as a p and g with transparent around it.  </p>



<p>So this is, you know, I think again, when, when you mentioned it, I was like, oh snap, that's gonna be really slick because it's now really common that you've got avatars images of people are circles. I think that's just a very common pattern. So the fact that we can offer that here, um, is very cool. And then the, the other new.  </p>



<p>What I was [00:10:00] insisting on, um, as of last week was, um, you had said, okay, maybe version one, but it was like, no, we need this. So the circle is a nice to have. I think that's gonna be really fun and cool to talk about as a feature, but not totally necessary. Whereas choosing an image from the media library to me, was a non-starter.  </p>



<p>Cuz you, once you brought it up, I was like, yeah, you can't, again, you know, one of the things I kept talking about last week was I'm trying to do a lot of product development for this from the perspective of my clients. And I'm like, my clients half the time, like they'll crop an image and then they've got no idea.  </p>



<p>Once they've uploaded it, they've got no idea what happened to it. Is it on the desktop? Is it in their download folder? Whatever, whatever. So, um, we need to be able to essentially recover, you know, start over using an image from the media library. So that's now supported. Again, you select an image, [00:11:00] pick your shape and size and all that.  </p>



<p>And then, you know, here's one that I've pre previously cropped as a square. So that's what you've got. But you can like zoom in on our little person here. Um, are you double&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: clicking or are you doing your scroll?&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Well, uh, uh, I'm, I'm, uh, moving the box around. Okay, there we go. Yeah, so, and that's where it's like, I'm clicking and dragging.  </p>



<p>Yeah. So, yeah, it's, go ahead.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: So I'm side bared on like product for a second and more, so I wouldn't even do this, explain it if we weren't live, but, um, cuz I know, you know, these things, I'm, this is where I dig in on product personally is I go, okay, I use myself as the default, but I know that's, there's some ancient practices I have, for instance, but, I think our biggest thing is showing them how the workflow, like it's gonna take out this amount of time [00:12:00] for you to go over here from a marketing side too.  </p>



<p>And product is like, how are you cropping today? It's probably piece together stuff. Maybe somebody's in Canva or something like this. But the workflow we're doing is like you're writing up post-it. You go in, what's your, you know, do you do your feature demos first? Do you do it third? And when you do that, you're gonna save this workflow over here.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. . And the re, the reason why I was just asking some of these questions is to know myself and to make sure I calibrate and go, okay, we're gonna be teaching people. Mm-hmm. because you get, you teach somebody a workflow and you don't want to change workflows very often. And so that's why I was just asking cuz I, you, you've seen this a hundred times, but like any little edge in the flow of the process is something we'll be watching where people get tripped up.  </p>



<p>So if I understand that, I can help . Um, so I think that was really good. Could you go back to [00:13:00] the previous screen for a second? Sure.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: So from the work, and I think, I think where you, you know, what you're bringing up now is exactly the right thing at the right time, because what I've been focused on is, to me this is, this is slightly better than a proof of concept.  </p>



<p>Yeah. It's like we, we have now proven that we can upload an image or select an image. We can crop it in a few different ways. It saves as the featured image, all of, you know, I'm clearly, I'm using the WordPress blue. These are not pretty things, you know, the buttons are inconsistent in, in inconsistent places, you know, so now is the right time for you to start looking at this from a products perspective and Me too, and going, okay, so what's actually gonna be, We don't want to deviate too far from like WordPress patterns that people are used to, but this is where we start to make it our own product and a product that's fast and easy to [00:14:00] use.  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: So I think my first thing, um, reaction to this is it's the, it does the job we need where we don't have to go into too many of the, you know, really fine tuned ui ux stuff, but like, it does the job. Mm-hmm. . But we were talking last week about like, you know, opinions trying to in, kind of push a reaction back from, um, the users.  </p>



<p>Uh, I just wanna mention that note. I don't think I have anything particular, but like, to me, this is functional, what we're trying to do, like this gets the job done and it's maybe not the most elegant, modern design we've ever seen, but it, it's clear, um, And he gets the job done.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Yep. Doesn't work on mobile.  </p>



<p>Uh, I don't know if it ever will, cuz that's kind of a lot of functionality to try to do on a phone. [00:15:00] Um, but at some point we will review that.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: Um, what I'm curious about is we have selected five ratio sizes and two shapes. We put the functionality, which I think, thank you for putting the media li library in there.  </p>



<p>I think that's, that, that was a really, really good decision. I just never know if I go, can we get that in there? What that might look from a timeframe, but I love that you made that decision. So it seems like we've made some assumptions for them. Like, Hey, here's the common aspect ratios. What I'm gonna bet like five bucks on is one of our first things we're gonna get is, can you do, and it's gonna be this, oh my god, 50 flavors of.  </p>



<p>Uh huh process. But from a product standpoint, if you're able to take a step back for a second, what do you think will get some reactions from Yeah,&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: I, I think you're exactly right. And I think that [00:16:00] every, cuz every theme I think has their ideal image, size, shape, et cetera. Um, we, and, and so one of the things that I've got in the back of my mind is, um, the next step is, or one of the next things we're gonna need is essentially I'm envisioning, and this is an assumption, but I'm envisioning there's, there's two roles.  </p>



<p>Involved here. One is, again, because from the, from the, from my situation, there's Corey who controls and sets up the website, and then there's clients who go in and are publishing story after story. And so Corey needs an admin, like, I don't want, uh, my clients to have four, three or three four. There's nothing on our website that's those aspect ratios.  </p>



<p>Um, and so [00:17:00] I want an admin screen that only admins meaning me have control over that says, you know, what aspect ratios, what essentially what, you know, what options are available for featured images. And I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna say square and 16 nine, not nine 16, and nothing, four three. Um, I might or might not even let them choose a shape, you know, and then, and so I'm gonna clean that up.  </p>



<p>or I'm gonna select options so that then when the client goes in, there's, you know, there's one option or some, you know, or something&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: like that. So switching gears over to marketing and mm-hmm. , you know, business model stuff. That's where I go, okay, that seems like Corey a del, uh, free does this better image cropping outta the box with a lot of template sizes, ratios that like, does a job that could get us bigger [00:18:00] exposure for the base plugin.  </p>



<p>And then I just see right there, the way you were describing, it's like there's the pro or the paid side, which is, hmm, I'm a developer, I'm an agency. My clients mess this stuff up all the time. I'm gonna preset it and right there I go. That's value to an agency. One, they're gonna get a better end product for their customer.  </p>



<p>They can, they can have some opinions about it, like if you wanna limit them, but like you do this from a client facing side too. But that right there from a business perspective is where we go, okay, there's the start of our pro. Love it. You know, are we adding some value to that? Like they don't want them to mess up their theme.  </p>



<p>And, and you know, even on a bigger perspective, maybe there's 10 people on a website or something mm-hmm. , you know, going in. But, you know, I could think of higher ed in this instance or something where it's like, no, they shouldn't have 16 by nine option. Never. Right. You know?&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Yeah. I, yeah. And [00:19:00] I, I, one of the things that immediately jumps out at, you know, first of all, you, my bad habits are showing, right.  </p>



<p>I think in terms of product and feature. And so I'm like, I'm, I'm by default, I'm, I'm, I go down those rabbit holes immediately and I love that you immediately are like, here are the people . Which my brain doesn't even, I mean, I'm, I'm talking about me and roles and stuff, but I'm not, it doesn't register consciously.  </p>



<p>Whereas you immediately are like the difference between a free version, a person, mom and pop shop, or a power user on their own website installing a plugin. They're still gonna have great options. It's still gonna bring them a ton of value, which I think is, is awesome. Um, and we can do some simple ways to, cuz it's like, I don't want people to install and go, well I need, you know, instead of 16, nine, I need 1610.  </p>



<p>So [00:20:00] uninstall. Mm-hmm. . So we'll have to think about some ways to give. Some more options so that, you know, we accommodate more people. But I love that you're immediately going, okay. You know, but, but there's a different version for a different role. A different kind of person. A different kind of user. Um, cuz I, because I mean, as we always talk about it, it's like B2C and b2b.  </p>



<p>Yeah. You know, b2b, there's, there's more opportunity, there's more money, there's more investment in tools and whatnot. So that just makes more sense.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: This is where I want to be watching, but I never, I have, I go into these things with some kind of a straw man, you know, avatar. Yeah. But the, how it's worked way better for me is not, I'm not clairvoyant and go exactly this.  </p>



<p>I go, okay, here's my straw man. We have use cases around that. We think there's others. And then what I love Corey is [00:21:00] like, Those first responses, even if they're bad, are helpful. Yeah. But what I tried to train the team and I themes is like try to a long answer in their question. Figure out what are they trying to get done.  </p>



<p>Yeah. But, and then that helps us. Like lineate, it was probably two or three years into Ithe where I was like, oh, it's do it yourselfers and what we call builders, you know? Mm-hmm. people building stuff for other people and then we could create product better. But my hypothesis for all this is like I wrote down bloggers, anybody that does rapid WordPress content creation.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. , that could be our big base, right? Mm-hmm. . And then you just gave me a use case's, like I'm delivering project to Clint. I don't want them to mess it up cuz it's gonna cause problems for us. Ding ding. I just found it's worth, there's a value numbers assigned to that. Absolutely. Which we can talk about when we get to like the pro and licensing and stuff.  </p>



<p>Yeah. And we confirmed on the huddle by the way too. Like several of the agency owners were like, oh yeah. [00:22:00] What my challenge will be in marketing, our challenge will be in marketing is I think if we can as succinctly as possible, go see this problem and somebody go, fills that pain going, yeah. Like I did when you go, I'm working on this thing.  </p>



<p>And I was like, I, I instantly felt that pain. That's when, when we'll start to see some interesting metrics. A part of this. I think. So like I was thinking like even if we showed this, like, I don't know how we do this on the marketing set, but you're like, Hey, I'm, I'm a rapid, you know, content creator type person going in there, and then I have to go over here and find my workflow.  </p>



<p>Yep. You know, and then come&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: back this other site, or I have to open Photoshop, I have to&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: do.dot. And then I think some of the best potential pro features for this are gonna come from the, but I want this. And those are simply the, like the, oh, I want it to be exactly this. [00:23:00] Dimensions. I say it by the pixel, whatever that is, you're like, ding, ding.  </p>



<p>Maybe that's something you'll pay money for.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Well, and, and I mean, the other opportunity for this, I think is, um, I'm, I'm very far out of the theme market. Um, it's not even, even in, in the, the decade plus that I've been in WordPress. Like I've done mostly custom development, but I'm envisioning like a c f advanced custom fields can get in, can be embedded in other things.  </p>



<p>And I'm kind of envisioning, again, I know we're, we're moving more towards, you know, full site editing and all that kind of stuff. But, um, a theme that has our functionality built in, because the theme is built specifically to show off a 16, nine image. You wanna prevent your users from uploading anything that isn't [00:24:00] 16.9.  </p>



<p>And so I can also see some sort of like the developer version that, that is embeddable, you know, as a must use plugin or something that, um, yeah. You know, so then, so then the theme, because imagine, uh, a theme developer, again, if a, if, if my experience and assumptions are correct, um, a, a theme developer is getting hit with tickets that are like, your demo looked great, but then as soon as I started uploading my pictures from my phone, the layout's broken.  </p>



<p>You know, what the hell? So, you know, if there was, if a, if it was embedded or built into a theme that had the, that limited the end user from making mistakes, you know, which isn't really them making a mistake, but you know what I'm saying?&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: Um, yeah. So let me say this coming before I do these, cuz I don't want it to think that we're gonna, I don't want it to.  </p>



<p>Bloat V1 release. Um, I think this is ready for v1. [00:25:00] I agree. The second thought I just had is when you should keep talking about themes. I think about, I, I wrote down here, cadence Astra, generate, press, whatever. Uh, I mean, let's throw in elementary in there. Um, I've got at least three of those four connections to say like, it might be worth us seeing what, let's say cadence for instance.  </p>



<p>Um, we run that at posts, like, okay, what are those features in their themes? And maybe take a browse, but we have connections with these theme groups mm-hmm. To say like, we could get some adoption through helping their user. You know, we're a third party free add-on kind of thing. But that could help us get some adoption.  </p>



<p>And that's something I can, I can put on my plate, uh, for sure is to one, look around some of those themes and just see, um, , but you know, those four as elements or technically isn't a theme, but you know, cadence [00:26:00] Astra generated press are hot themes. Mm-hmm. , you know, that we can get some adoption for,&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: you know, like, and I'm, and I'm a Beaver Builder user deeply, but, and they allow, and I know Elementor also allows, uh, custom modules.  </p>



<p>So again, down the road, if we think that there's a market for this, then a, there's the Beaver Builder Image module. Elementor I'm sure has the similar, you know, but there's a,&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: we could just hook into And that's another paid pro feature too.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Exactly. You know, I love it because, I mean, people, people buy.  </p>



<p>Other, other add-ons or additional modules or module sets or whatever. Like, I don't, I, um, I don't want to get too far down there, but that's also like, I love the, the, uh, obviously as a, as a developer, I am most comfortable with developing as marketing. And so, you know, integrating with Beaver Builder, if we show up absolutely on, on their [00:27:00] marketplaces, then people are going, oh, what's this Crop Express thing?  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: I just talked to Robbie a couple days ago on Slack, so Yeah, absolutely. I should have included B Builder too. Um, so that's like on the future, that's on the backlog for the marketing business stuff to get some adoption. But what I'm doing on this course, so, you know, is like building a case. Mm-hmm. of like, we've selected a pretty narrow workflow issue, but I, you're helping me with those thoughts is build a case for that pro side of, oh, cuz I'm already building a case for like, there's an agency package that's, Has the pro.  </p>



<p>Yep. That's, you know, if we can continue to build, find, and build value in this. I, I love that because there's so many bigger builder Elementor Yeah. Um, developers that use that love it. And both those tools and to go, here's something that's gonna make your clients, [00:28:00] well, it's gonna make your life easier as the agency.  </p>



<p>Cause they're not gonna put something stupid within the layout . Um, and it won't slow down their site that causes performance issues. Right, exactly. Or, you know, just doesn't look right. Yeah.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Yeah. And that was the, uh, it's, it's sort of a, we, we won't actually do this, but one of the things that popped in my head when you were talking about how do we illustrate the difference that this.  </p>



<p>Plugin will make for you, as I was picturing, a, uh, a marketing site where all of the images are wrong. Like Yes. The wrong Oh, yes. You know, like it overlapping text or like way too long or whatever. And there's like, click a button to see the difference that our plug-in will make. And then all the images are like&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: Corey.  </p>



<p>Yes. Like there's, there's a page. Like, let's do that because it's like, that's the raw [00:29:00] emotional obvious effect that connects. Like, I, I think I told you, you know, 10 years ago, my, my mom put, and we had feed rotating images in the theme, and it was like, yeah, , you know, just sewing, like showing, Hey, ever, ever have this, there's a beautiful design, you know, of a site.  </p>



<p>And then the image is just like, . And then go, that's our, that's our agency. Marketing thing is like tired of this, like this is a point.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Love it.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: Crop express&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: even. Oh man. Even, even just a carousel. Cuz like, I literally was dealing this with, dealing with this with a client the last couple of days was like a carousel where like an Im, one of the images, not kidding, was this was like as tall as it should be, but an inch wide.  </p>



<p>And then the next picture was like the, you know, and, and they're like, why is it stretched out? And it's like, cuz the carousel is forcing it to fill the space, you know? So it's like if [00:30:00] we just put in a whole bunch of janky images and then was like, click a button or see the carousel where it's like all of the images are sized correctly without a ton of effort.  </p>



<p>Like now you get it, you know,&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: protect your clients from themselves. Like we would build tools and they'd be like, yeah, you can basically make it as ugly as you want. This is protect your clients from themselves. But there's that. So we're fleshing out these two avatars, which maybe this one is. Maybe it ends up being the free one, but it gets to this one, which we think, my hypothesis might be, there's money here.  </p>



<p>Protect your clients from themselves, protect your work from themselves. Um, but this one could be something that shows, like ever trying to like, add all the tools you crop and like ever. I don't know, there's something there, but we're fleshing out the use case to me of a problem. Then I think there's more around this base problem, like we're coming to a belief of, [00:31:00] you know what I mean?  </p>



<p>Like over here it's like everybody's built a site and the clients have like rurally screwed it up. Yeah. And, but we're also hitting a pain point where they're trying to create content and this is in the way. So I, I love those two avatars. You.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Yep. Um, I, the other thing that comes to mind is like, I mean, it's, it's protect clients from themselves so that they stop sending you emails.  </p>



<p>Yes. You know, as, or stop opening support tickets.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: Sean from, uh, Sean Heskes from WP 1 0 1 basically created that, his thing, his entire little empire over there on that scenario, tired of your customers complaining about the, or, you know, asking these sets of questions and that's how they built it. So, like, that's part of that marketing material.  </p>



<p>We'll remember on the pro side is mm-hmm. , you know, stop messing up your work, protect them from themselves. . [00:32:00]&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Yep. Yeah. And if you can, and if we get so that it's configurable, so it's like, okay, you're setting up a new site for a, for a client. This might be a, a process that you do over and over again, or it might be a one-off, whatever.  </p>



<p>But one of the steps, you know, you're installing the theme that you like, you're in, you're plugging in those templates, page templates, you know, setting up the nav, whatever. And then just one of the things is you install Crop Express. You go in and you say, you know, only let them upload 16, nine. Um, I also think, you know, there's, there's others.  </p>



<p>Basically it's wherever. For me, one of the end goals is wherever WordPress uses images to, ideally wherever WordPress uses images, we're there for you . Um, but like, you know, we become that, that middle, um, middle layer so that it's like, oh, you're in the media library. You can upload these kinds of images [00:33:00] or these sizes and shapes.  </p>



<p>If you are in the, you know, you have a custom post type that's all about people, you know, you've got users, well then you want that circle option, whatever it is. But it's like being able to configure each one of those SY scenarios and lock it down so that then again, when you know, you've got, you've got a membership site, you know, if, if a u a new user clicks the Add my Avatar button, They have to crop a circle, you know, things like that.  </p>



<p>And then being able to basically inject our functionality in all those places so that it just, you know, prevents chaos. It prevents all those bugs, it prevents all those layout breaking changes. Um, you know, that, and frankly, anybody interacting with the website could make based on, you know, by uploading images.  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: So it seems like we wanna be paying attention to a lot of how. As we're scrolling through the web, how people [00:34:00] utilize featured images. Mm-hmm. , and there might be some things here too, like this circle add-on. I would use this just for Mike Demo came on as a new columnist at, uh, post status. And I, I came back to this problem  </p>



<p>And so like, I might go into WordPress somewhere and or this and crop it, so I'll just can save it rather than trying to hunt it down on the internet.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Um, well, and this is, I think, I think the other, the other thing that we wanna do on eventually on the marketing site, right? Like right now, crop Express is a cropper crop express.  </p>



<p>The website is a cropper. Yeah. And so I, I still like the idea of this is a WordPress plugin, but somewhere on the marketing site is like the ability to try this. So there's a front end friendly. You know, crop an image. And so like, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a nice little web utility. And then also our website subsequently gets listed on all those, you know, infinite number of websites that [00:35:00] list all the free little utilities that are out there.  </p>



<p>You know, all the ones that convert image, image types or compress images or convert PDFs to JPEGs or whatever it is, like Crop Express as a free online simple image crop can get listed. So again, marketing,  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: it's content built in content marketing. I love that. Exactly.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Exactly. Um,&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: well that means we should maybe keep note of that public site too, because like, hey, you're, you're right on, there's another level of adoption that I just kind of glossed over, but the fact that someone would need, like the circle thing, you just need to, you know, there's the a hundred sites that do all these different things and they sh slam ads at you and you're like, or you can come here.  </p>



<p>Utility. And then, by the way, if you want to buy, if you need the word press plug in, here it is. That's Visibility Pro to do that. Mm-hmm. , which leads me all back to co I love that. Like I've never had something like this where it's built in content [00:36:00] marketing, so that's something to keep track for sure.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Um, and I think, I think this is what you just said, I just wanna finish the thought.  </p>



<p>Um, but not only, you know, not only having a crop, but it's like we basically using the same code base. We have a dozen different crops that are basically just a dozen different configurations of our crop. And so if you google for crop and image in a circle, the circle cropper pops up. And if you crop, if you say a square, the square cropper pops up.  </p>



<p>But it's all the same thing. So it's no, it's no extra, not really any extra work for us, but a phenomenal s e o opportunity.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: So I just did that. That's so interesting. Cro. Um, yeah, there's search stuff I'll have to look through cause I just Googled that. Mm-hmm. , because I mean, those are, those might be really good ways.  </p>



<p>And again. Okay. So [00:37:00] all that talk front, you know, the actual crop.express website, the plugin and everything. Um, back to like feedback loops. Mm-hmm. . So I think the only other thing be besides meeting Readme done for V1 launch of this and the repo, um, is thinking for me is th on my agenda is thinking through the feedback loops.  </p>



<p>How are we gonna get that feedback? Yep. Because what we want to do is like, I'm not saying we do it on this screen that you're showing, but like ideally there'd be like, once something else needs something else mm-hmm. and it goes to a mechanism that. You know, a forum, a trailer board, whatever stuff common, combine, whatever we wanna do, but like something where we can like, cuz that's what I'm most interested in is that feedback loop, you know?  </p>



<p>Yeah, absolutely. Um, um, where they go, I want custom spec, custom specifications. Cool. You're, we're working on that in version two or [00:38:00] pro or whatever we, you know, decide to do. Yeah. But the feedback loop to me would be the only thing I can think of before launch. Yeah. Before V1 MVP launch.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Yeah. I mean that's, you know, one of the magic aspects of WordPress plugins is absolutely the WordPress directory.  </p>



<p>And I know a lot of people that's not, I don't know if that's true. There's more conversation lately about not having a free version. And I, I understand and, and appreciate that perspective, but the, the opportunity that. Is missed. There is the, the discoverability inside that directory. And it's like, I want, because my, my initial, I say that because my initial reaction is, yeah, well, I mean, first of all, we need to go through the process of getting approved.  </p>



<p>Like that'll take a week. Um, but just because it's there, it's like if you launch an [00:39:00] app online, you know, and, but don't tell anybody about it. You know, did it happen? Falls in the woods. Yeah. Whereas you put a plugin in the repo, the likelihood is that, you know, you're, you're gonna start to get a trickle unless you're, unless you're, there are no keywords or you know, you're using.  </p>



<p>Truly random wording or whatever, but people are gonna start, you know, you have to assume that, that some people search for the word crop and we're gonna, we won't be number one, but you know, you're gonna start to see a trickle of users. So yeah, we, we do want whatever we want from the beginning, we want from the beginning kind of thing.  </p>



<p>Um, yeah, it is, it's easy enough to add. I mean, there are a couple of options just to flush this out. Like we could link to a Contact us form on the website. Um, we could build a little, you know, the little, a little modal that pops up right in [00:40:00] place, which is probably the right answer, because it's less friction.  </p>



<p>It doesn't open a new window. It doesn't, you know, so it have feedback and it opens a text area. They type and, and we, we get it. Um, so something like that, you know,&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: in, in plugin, you mean in WordPress port.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Yeah. Um, not in dashboard, but it's like looking at, you know, our on, once our modal opens for cropping, we have a little, you know, link.  </p>



<p>It's like the, yeah, A little link. A little button. It's like, you know, the, every website now has the, um, help desk or whatever, the little icon that's always floating in the corner that inevitably pops up with texts, , that you then have to close. Um, you know, but we could have something similar right next to crop, crop, the big crop button.  </p>



<p>Um, we could have a little button that says, you know, feedback. Uh, I mean, we can, we can kind of take this as far as we want, [00:41:00] but I think, and I think inversion 0 0 2, like we can actually on install, we can, we can throw up a little notice or something that's like, Hey, we're a new plugin. We'd appreciate feedback, but at least for now, like there is at least a button that will, again, you know, one click type.  </p>



<p>Click send and we get something.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: Um, so I think if we were able to do something like maybe it's in that modal, uh mm-hmm. that you just showed me, it's like request a feature. Mm-hmm. , um, just a little link. Someone that says, request a feature, there's an action to it, and then they'll go to the Crop Express site.  </p>



<p>I think see that there's an online tool too, but the form is there and you're just like, tell us what you're wanting. We're, we're trying to make content creation easier. We're not, we're specifically starting, I guess with image, we're trying to make image, I don't know, [00:42:00] there's some word there of like making your, it's a part of content creation to me.  </p>



<p>Workflow easier, faster, and then get that feedback that goes to both of our emails, and then we can continue to talk about that. Yep. I think if we could just, if we could maybe put that in a modal. Do you like it? Are you okay with it being in that modal right there? Absolutely. Just like absolutely a little link down somewhere outta the way.  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Yeah. It's cuz at that point it's topical, right? Like you don't, you know, you, you don't want it somewhere on the website. You don't want it hard to find. And so it's like, I'm cropping, this is pissing me off. Oh look. A link where I can tell them that this is pissing me off. You know? That's exactly the moment we want to capture their thinking.  </p>



<p>Yeah. So simple. And, and that's simple enough. I mean, a web form that sends an email is, is, you know,&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: I think if we just do that for launch, we're [00:43:00] good, man. This looks really nice. That's what we're trying to get it to do out. It's, it's hitting. Use case. And then we're opening just the feedback. Channel loop is the biggest thing.  </p>



<p>And having those emails, this is what I did, you know, you like, come up with an idea now. Great ideas. They always suck. the, the good ideas. You're like, they probably, they might work, you know, but oftentimes you get, I got the Valida and I'm sure you have over the years is like that validation from someone going, I want that.  </p>



<p>Well if so, my bet's gonna be one of the first like set of customs specification. Mm-hmm. . Um, at least we get some validation for that. Like, right. Oh, they want that. Cool.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: So like, or we, you know, we've, uh, people talk about solving the problem or not, you know, if we solve 60% of the problem or they see the solution.  </p>



<p>Over the [00:44:00] hill. Um, then, you know, then hopefully it's, cuz it's what, so I, I think I've told you about this before. Like one, the pattern that I, part of what drew me into WordPress plugins as a business opportunity years ago was I saw how. Clients and website users, like I would spend hours and clients would spend, you know, gobs of money hiring to set up these websites, e-commerce, blogs, web apps, whatever it is.  </p>



<p>And so if it's e-commerce, then they should be, you know, their job is to add new products, to promote products, you know, to try to get sales. If it's a blog, then their job is to write content. And instead I would see them spend hours, you know, scrolling through the free plugins and going, oh, do I need a to-do list, you know, plugin inside my WordPress install, do I need snowflakes falling because it's Christmas time, [00:45:00] kind of thing.  </p>



<p>Yeah. And it's like, it was. It was, it felt like, I mean this is all very, a very cynical view, but I, but I witnessed it. It was like they would essentially, it, you know, it felt like productive procrastination. Um, they felt, it made them feel like they were doing something, but they weren't actually doing the thing that they were supposed to do.  </p>



<p>Cuz what they're supposed to do is hard, and I can relate to that. I get that, you know, but, But the discoverability, you know, and this is, this is where I think that comes from, is people will just kind of go in there, here's, you know, an infinite num, well, there's 60,000 free plugins, you know, let's have some fun and try these things and it'll spark my imagination.  </p>



<p>Um, the problem with that, of course, is that there's the, everybody, just about everybody is a tire kicker. Mm-hmm. , I'll install this, try it uninstall, I'll install this, try this uninstall. Um, depending on, you know, how specific of a problem they're trying to solve. And so, yeah, we want to, we, you, you [00:46:00] always run the risk of, um, you know, people, people trying it and leaving without getting any indication of, and again, it's like it solves a problem where it doesn't is the assumption.  </p>



<p>And that's kind of like first gen startup thinking. Mm-hmm. , um, Whereas now the better way to look at it is like, does this, especially in the WordPress plugin world, it's like, does this start to solve the problem? Does this almost solve the problem? Because there's definitely a, uh, a pattern in WordPress of hobbling together a number of tools to solve the problem overall.  </p>



<p>And so, yeah, how do we, how do we determine that we are almost solving the problem or we are part of that work chain? Or people are uninstalling because it's useless, or are they uninstalling because it doesn't quite get them there. But they, but we, if, if we added one more button, We would get them there.  </p>



<p>How do we determine that? So I like your focus on feedback,&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: and the way [00:47:00] I'm always trying to do is sense out pain because people will pain for, you know, the whole str, I can't remember what the book is, but it's like, it's the pain and gain. But I, I've spent most of our time with Ed. I themes with the pain just helping.  </p>



<p>I mean, at the first it was like themes, but then with plugins it was solving for some pain point. Now I'm trying to rate this pain right now and then discover if there's more pain that we could like actually solve that. They go, sh I will pay you to solve this pain point for me. Yeah, I, I think we've got some good thoughts there.  </p>



<p>Um, but I'm really hoping Corey, in this, that we discover something we hadn't thought of that we go, oh, a hundred percent this could go down that, down that path. And it could be. More lucrative than we're probably thinking. So I'm kind of hoping for that. Yeah. Um, but I think we've demonstrated enough that there's enough pain that we could, we could do and then we're gonna iterate on what we [00:48:00] hear back.  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Yeah. Yeah. And if it's, and if it ends up, you know, there, there is an, a likely scenario that we put this out there, we get enough users that it does something, but not enough users or not, or we don. Understand that opportunity or, or it doesn't present itself for a while. Like I had that with social link pages that I built this thing out.  </p>



<p>Um, and there was some ob the, the sort of the obvious like, oh, let me add more features and that's what I'll charge for. But I wound up just letting it ride for a year. Didn't think about it. I fixed a few bugs, but, you know, and it was after a year I had a thousand users, like, okay, there's something here.  </p>



<p>But it took that ramp up, you know, to try to discover. And I, and frankly, I still haven't. Nailed it. You know, so like you and I may end up having a lot of conversations.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: Um, [00:49:00] this is why&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: four ways figured this&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: out. Maybe there's unicorns out there, the geniuses that are like, oh, everything I touch is a perfect product and it makes a bunch of money.  </p>



<p>I think the rest of us are like just figuring it out, wanting to do something good and&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: figuring it out. I was counting on you, man. I thought you were that&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: guy. I'm the leprechaun.  </p>



<p>Um, now, yeah, I had something. I was thinking when you were saying that, I was like, ah, sorry. Maybe. Oh, this is like.org, the.org repo. There's conversations about that and I go largely when someone has an opinion like that, it's not one size fits all. It's just for their use case. It doesn't work. What I love about us, our conversations is we had deliberate, a deliberate conversation that we figured out this is enough for a.org.  </p>



<p>That let's say, doesn't go anywhere would solve a problem for us and we could probably be happy about it. Right. And at this level, [00:50:00] maybe, I don't know, technically speaking from your perspective, but like wouldn't require a ton of maintenance potentially. Right? Now I get it When we get into blocks and stuff that also showcases value.  </p>



<p>Like you wanted a block. Yes. Well that's Then is that a pain point then pay me for the SL solving that problem. But I know there's people@poopoo.org. I don't. Um, definitely not in every case that this case, I love it because you and I made it narrow. We're not trying, we didn't say this is the be all, end all image editing software for WordPress plugin in the repo and free.  </p>



<p>We didn't do that. We made it very practical, purposeful, getting some of this feedback. So like that's why I'm okay, because I think the free plugin could exist in perpetuity. We've seen some. Jumping off points that go, maybe we weren't a case for a pro paid ver version of this. So yeah, I wanna come back to that dart org thing.  </p>



<p>Cause I hear it all the time too, and I'm like, I don't know. For every case that went wrong, I [00:51:00] can probably give you five more. That went right?&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it, it's, it's not without its challenges. I mean, I answered a, a question in on post out this morning that was like, how do you maintain a free and a pro version?  </p>



<p>Um, and I have solved that problem. For myself. And so wanted to put that out there, you know, but there isn't just as, you know, there somebody else even chimed in, like, how is this still not a solved problem? But it's, there's a reason for that. Like, too much development is too, uh, varied. And so there isn't one solution.  </p>



<p>Um, yeah. But you know, so it's not without, its, it's foibles, but it's, um, that's not the right word, but it's not without its issues. But I, to me, the, the benefit outweighs the work, the extra work.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: Yeah, I do too. Um, yeah, if you had built in, if we had 50,000 [00:52:00] people we thought were like blogger content stuff, it might be maybe a bit different story, maybe.  </p>



<p>Um, but even then it's like you could generate interest for the time and investment. I understand it's taken to this part. I go. Let's put it on George, Oregon. See it? Yeah. Worth it. Oh, that leads me to my second, so we got the feedback loop. The other thing we want to do, this is something that'll be on my task, is on the website, something to go.  </p>



<p>I want to see the next things you're doing, get on the email list that we, I think we set up. Yeah, we did set up. Um, I don't have that today. I just know I want to share with you so we can, you can help me on that. Keep me accountable to this. But the next thing I would want to do for on the marketing business side is um, start generating that email list feedback, number one, and then email and I'll, we should be thinking of something that could be an incentive to [00:53:00] the email.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. , you know, why you should get in the email. You know, I know we do, a lot of people do like 10% off stuff like that. We don't have the pro yet, but something that goes.  </p>



<p>It is enticing for this core user avatars we're thinking. Does that make sense? It does, yeah. Just to start building that email list and we get enough people and we can start actually pushing content out. Yeah. And then when we get new version, I only wanna just say that, so we set the tone for like next, next stage of like, I need to be thinking we too, you can add your ideas in.  </p>



<p>Here is what we could do to help incentivize that email.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Yeah. Yeah. And I don't, I don't have, I don't have an immediate answer. Like what do they, um, what's it called? It's not click bait.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: opt. Yeah, it's click bait. It's, you can say it, it's&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: okay. Well, no, but it's the, you know, the, the incentive lead magnet.  </p>



<p>There it is. Thank you. Lead magnet. Um, you know, nothing [00:54:00] obvious comes to mind. I mean, who, who's gonna read the, you know, here's the expert guide on image cropping. Like, it's, no. You know, like, yeah. It's not that we're, we don't have, we don't have the authority, we don't have the, an, you know, the definitive answer.  </p>



<p>We don't have, I've definit. Built things like that, written things like that before, you know, because you're supposed to, but at this point I'm a little skeptical of them. Um, you know, I don't think most people are scratching their heads about image cropping, and I don't think that there's some deep, you know, tech knowledge to be gained, uh, the right way to crop circles like the one&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: you've never been to the image cropping meetup group, then it's fascinating  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Now I, the image crop conference coming this year, you know, I'll be&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: thinking of that. We, we were able to do it with a number of plugins to help juice that, but you're right, it's, it's watching [00:55:00] Paint Dry, but, But there's something I'll be thinking of that. Yeah, yeah. Um, I just know because when I added that loop in at Ithe, that was the circle.  </p>



<p>Yeah. And a lot of WordPress company com product companies don't like email. And I'm like, sure, maybe it's 10 years old, 50, whatever the, you know, however long email's been around. But I email marketing, that's what we grew ithe with. Most people don't really realize that unless they were getting our emails and it was like, Hey, that's the stuff we were doing on the scenes.  </p>



<p>I'm blowing that way out of proportion for a crop express right now. But just going like, I want the path to be open to like have that direct marketing relationship with the customer.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: So. Well, and I don't, I don't, I don't care if you like email or not. If, if it works, then we'll then we're gonna use it.  </p>



<p>Yeah. Like, it's not. You know, PE people have their preferences, you know, and we are not, that's a lesson I have to learn over and over again. Like, I'm a power user, you know? Yeah. Just cuz I, I understand this, you know, [00:56:00] you know how to manage interruptions or something like that. You know, most people are still checking their email a thousand times a day.  </p>



<p>So that&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: what I will do is like talking about this, you're pro, you're helping me more than, you know, from a product and marketing perspective because I like to have that person in mind and as best I can be that person and Sure. You know, and then go, because when I get clear down that it, that for me is a switch.  </p>



<p>It's like, okay, I understand our clients, like the day we kind of realized we're looking at our customer base going, these said the people look like freelancers, agencies, web, you know, web developers. This side over here, like, what's that dentist office doing? You know, you're like a dentist is, yeah. So it helped us and then that's when we started to do our marketing.  </p>



<p>But that's what for, for me, is getting in their skin, getting in their workflow, trying to sniff out and get a picture where I walk [00:57:00] in their shoes and go, okay, this is what they need. Which by the way, we've joked enough about these things. It's like there's gotta be a parody in here about the, you know, I don't know, there's something fun that we could do.  </p>



<p>Like cropping is watching paint drive, but could we make it quirky and fun? Right? Yeah. Put that in the point. Put that uh, in the column of stupid ideas. Corey Miller has.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Well, I, I'm the, I'm the one that came up with, you know, we need a website that looks broken and then, you know, click the big, you know, crop express button that, that makes it all look sparkly and, and beautiful.  </p>



<p>And, and that's where we use the Snow Effect and, and a unicorn bo bounds by, what is it? Um, not Gravity Forms, gravity view that has the, you know, the astronaut, astronaut sing songs and all that stuff. I mean, I'm, I am all for, you know, maybe this is your Safe Dad joke space. And so then we, we integrate more of that into, uh, into the marketing.  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: Um, I [00:58:00] hope Lin, I hope either of our Lindsay's doesn't watch this thing. They'll be like, seriously, you guys are just doing dad jokes, which&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: is, Hey, sorry, go whatever. Hey Corey. But it's, it's, it's dad jokes as marketing, you know, so it's, they, it it's their retirement fund too, you know, , um, But yeah, with, with a, a little bit of of time left, like, let's get around to, um, you know, next steps where we're at, that kind of thing.  </p>



<p>So I, I'm happy to put in the feedback form. Um, I definitely want you to install the plugin, mess around with it a little bit if there's, and, and if there's anything obvious that's annoying. Again, I think we're good enough. We're certainly good enough to get in the repo. You know, things will change quickly as we move along, but we're trying to just draw a line in the sand to get the damn thing out the door.  </p>



<p>Um, you know, but if there's any, any obvious red flags, like, oh, hey, [00:59:00] you know, on when I installed it on my site, it everything's 90 degrees or something, you know, like, yeah, then let me know. Um, and then I hope I haven't. Made you stuck with like, the first version of the readme can be very simple. Um, you know, enough&nbsp;  </p>



<p>to launch.  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: I No, no, no. I, I stuck my, I stick myself quite a bit, get stuck on my own, but, um, I was looking at description as really the meat of it, you know, because that's what, that's what does the little blip at the top and the actual page text. Yeah. Um, insulation. I need to just go and find another plugin. Copy and paste that FAQs.  </p>



<p>We can keep that pretty simple. Do you want, do I need to do screenshots and stuff?  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Nope. I mean, and, and none of this we need, none of this is, other than the description, none of this is [01:00:00] necessary to submit. Like, we don't need installation instructions to submit. We don't need f a Q to submit. Um, You know, we want enough of a description so that whoever reviews this gets a sense of, excuse me, who, who we are, you know, broadly speaking like that we are not trying to upload malware kind of thing.  </p>



<p>So it's like, yeah, if, if we write three sentences that just kind of give them a hint of the direction we're gonna take this, um, then it, you know, like coming and, you know, feature image cropping done easy and well, you know, coming soon, you know, more ways to crop images. And WordPress said, well, you know, and again, in a few sentences is sufficient.  </p>



<p>Um, okay. And then, you know, and then cuz you can. I've definitely seen, heard, [01:01:00] read about like, you don't wanna update your readme six times a day. They will actually ding you for that. Um, you know, but there's nothing that says we can't upload, update the README every day or a couple of days. So it's like you can, you can iterate on it.  </p>



<p>Okay. Pretty regularly, you know? Um, I think there's, supposedly there's, it's in the algorithm too that's like if you, if you only ever push updates that are the read me, they'll ding you as far as, you know, search optimization stuff. But like, none of the things we really need to worry about, I just want, like I've, I've submitted plugins before that I already had stubbed out, um, or mentioned a pro version and got feedback that was like, I see you're gonna do a pro version.  </p>



<p>So it's like they definitely read it. To get and get sort of a sense of the intention, [01:02:00] you know what I mean? Yeah. Um, and so, um, and I, I mean, I no comment on pros or cons of mentioning that kind of stuff, but just I think, I think that's all we need. Okay. Okay. Um, but I, and from my perspective, like it's Wednesday, you know, ideally we get this out the door in the next day or two to submit, you know, start that process.  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: Okay. I've got it now saved. Um, and I'll try to add more than two sentences in here, but yeah, I, this is the block I've had on these things is I feel so far outta riding and doing things, and now I just do a lot of voice stuff. But, um, anyway, I, I'll get that done. Um, I'm out this afternoon and then I've got time, I've got some blocks of time tomorrow, so, I don't think it should be a problem to get that to you.  </p>



<p>Let me just say I'll get it to you tomorrow. Okay. [01:03:00] Then I get a little deadline for myself and I'll, do you think in the long description you said this, like, should we mention there might be a pro or say&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: I, from, from the experience that I had, I would say no. Okay. Like, it, it definitely, I, on a, on a previous plugin, I, I got some pushback on the, the product itself.  </p>



<p>And I think that by mentioning Pro, cuz you, you, you get there, you know, still in the WordPress world there's a, a fair number of zealots, zealots people who are emphatic that everything should be free and so you run the risk of sort of rubbing somebody the wrong way. By starting with that, you know? Um, and so I, the less mentioned, uh, you know, we're not being insincere, we don't have a perversion to talk about.  </p>



<p>So why talk about it, I [01:04:00] think would is my, my perspective now. Okay.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: Okay. Well I have it saved on generate WP two, so don't fine things, but, okay. And that, and that's easy, man. I, I'm, I'm trying to get these, get through some blocks and then some chaos, but, uh, man, I'm super pumped. Um, yeah. Well, okay, well, uh, lemme get on this tomorrow and we'll be checking in.  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Um, cuz down the road, like part of the iteration too is going to be like, there's the, the banner images, you know, we're gonna wanna decide on a logo. Um, you know, but again, I don't, none of that. None. Even if we start to get a trickle of users, like I don't think it's gonna hurt us to not come out of the gate.  </p>



<p>A hundred percent polished. Yeah. Like we can iterate on that stuff pretty quickly,&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: so, okay, perfect. [01:05:00] All right, sir.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Anything from your perspective? No.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: Yeah, we spent most of the call talking about mine, so I feel like, but no, I think we're ready to go with what I've seen. I will look at the pl, uh, I will put, look at the plugin.  </p>



<p>I've already got it on my site test site. Um, yeah. Cool. I'll have something to talk about. So hopefully we might, by end of week we're in the submission process, so we next week can talk about where we are with it and um, maybe it ends up talking about other things while we're waiting on. That, yeah.  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Approval process. I think one, one of the things I do think I will do, because I'm thinking about our conversations while going through this process, is I will jot down some of the steps that I took and, and so I might monologue for five or 10 minutes next time of just like, okay, so once we got everything together, here are the steps that I went [01:06:00] through.  </p>



<p>In order to submit it, you know? Yeah. Here's what I included in the email or you know, here are the documents cuz there's a, there is a whole section on, on the word, the WordPress documentation about building plugins and then specifically how to submit them, you know, what should be included, what shouldn't be included.  </p>



<p>I need to review my codes for any like red flags about, you know, they wanna make sure that it's, every plugin obviously is secure and, um, and stuff like that. So it's like, here are all the steps that I kind of, you know, at a high level went through before submitting this and then here's the feedback we got back.  </p>



<p>Like, what did I miss? Is there a, you know, gaping security hole that I should have picked up on or whatever. So, you know, let's, um, I want to kind of earmark that cuz I do think it's like, these are the sort of things that I've now done a few times, I think other people. Who haven't gone through the process, like we all just kind of go through it.  </p>



<p>Cuz you only go through it once and then you never have to think about it again. It's submitted, it's done, it's out there, whatever. [01:07:00] So it's like, then the next time you do it, you forget all of the steps and, and what the process looked like. So I think it'd be good to document&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: it. Oh heck yeah. It's awesome.  </p>



<p>Thanks for friend.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: Yeah. I will talk to you soon. Sounds good.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Cory Miller: Bye bye.  </p>



<p>All right. I guess it stops on YouTube. We'll see now.&nbsp;  </p>



<p>Corey Maass: It's still live though.</p>
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";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:92:"Post Status: Interview With Product Lead Mark Westguard Of WS Form — Post Status Draft 142";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=147499";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:99:"https://poststatus.com/interview-with-product-lead-mark-westguard-of-ws-form-post-status-draft-142/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32741:"<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-group eplus-wrapper has-theme-palette-2-color has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-text-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><div class="wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">In this episode, <a href="https://twitter.com/westguard">Mark Westguard</a> of <a href="https://wsform.com/">WS Form</a> joins Cory Miller to discuss OpenAI, the innovation we are already seeing, and what we can and should expect in the future when it comes to WordPress. </p></div>


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<p class="yoast-reading-time__wrapper"><span class="yoast-reading-time__icon"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__spacer"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__descriptive-text">Estimated reading time:  </span><span class="yoast-reading-time__reading-time">3</span><span class="yoast-reading-time__time-unit"> minutes</span></p>
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<p><a href="https://poststatus.com/planet/feed/#h-transcript">Transcript</a> ↓</p>



<p>Learn from <a href="https://twitter.com/westguard">Mark Westguard</a>, founder of <a href="https://wsform.com/">WS Form</a>, a powerful, next-generation WordPress form plugin. Mark and Cory discuss how AI is starting to integrate into the world of WordPress and how the WP Form software is leveraging its power.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Top Takeaways:</strong></p>



<ul>
<li><strong>Harnessing the Power of Open AI.</strong> The possibilities are endless with the revolution of AI as an open-source tool. Making the most of its capabilities allows WordPress users to create more intuitive and integrated content, like better fields and options in WordPress forms.&nbsp;</li>



<li><strong>Create, Edit, Moderate.</strong> AI should be seen as an assistant working alongside you to help generate your content. You’re still essential in the creation process, and it’s important not to rely on AI 100% for accuracy. You can get creative prompts, edit for grammar or spelling and generate unique images, but moderating that content is essential.&nbsp;</li>



<li><strong>The Future is All-in-One AI Integrated Tools. </strong>Limiting time spent running around to different AI software is good for business. So how can that be accomplished? By integrating the AI capabilities into WordPress tools, where everything you need is in one place. These are the things we look forward to in WordPress software and plugins</li>
</ul>



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<div class="is-layout-constrained wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
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<p>A2Hosting offers solutions for WordPress and WooCommerce that are both blazing fast and ultra-reliable. WordPress can be easily deployed on ANY web hosting plan from A2: Shared, VPS, or Dedicated. A2 also offers Managed WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting. Take a look at a2hosting.com today!</p>
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<img width="752" height="470" src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/imageedit_1_6433774706-752x470.png" alt="A2 Hosting" class="wp-image-104073" />A2 Hosting
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<h3 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-mentioned-in-the-show"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f517.png" alt="🔗" class="wp-smiley" /> Mentioned in the show:</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/westguard">Mark Westguard on Linkedin</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wsform.com/">WS Form</a></li>



<li><a href="https://openai.com/">OpenAI</a></li>



<li><a href="https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/">ChatGPT</a></li>



<li><a href="https://openai.com/dall-e-2/">DALL-E</a><a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/">WordCamp Europe</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-you-can-follow-post-status-and-our-guests-on-twitter"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png" alt="🐦" class="wp-smiley" /> You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:</h3>



<ul class="eplus-wrapper">
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/westguard">Mark Westguard</a>, (Founder of <a href="https://wsform.com/">WS Form</a>)</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> (CEO, <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status">Post Status</a>)</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/lemonadecode">Olivia Bisset</a> (Intern, <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status">Post Status</a>)</li>
</ul>



<p class="eplus-wrapper has-background">The <strong>Post Status Draft</strong> podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4dd.png" alt="📝" class="wp-smiley" /><br /><br /><a href="https://poststatus.com/category/post-status-podcasts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Browse our archives</a>, and don’t forget to subscribe via <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/post-status-draft-wordpress/id976403008" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">iTunes</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8ySkU5c2M4UA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/PostStatus" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YouTube</a>, <a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/krogsgard/post-status-draft-wordpress-podcast" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://wordpress-post-status-draft-podcast.simplecast.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Simplecast</a>, or <a href="https://feeds.simplecast.com/2JE9sc8P">RSS</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f3a7.png" alt="🎧" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<h2 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-transcript">Transcript</h2>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to Post Edits draft. Um, one of the things I want to continue to keep top of mind because it's honor, honor, mind, is ai and specifically open a AI and chap G B T and all of that because there's this. Huge opportunity, uh, for integration with WordPress. And so I, uh, was talking with one of our longtime members, Mark West Guard, from WS Forum, and they've just come out with, uh, uh, an add-on.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I'll let him share more about that, but I want to talk to Mark, who we've had on the podcast before, but specifically about the opportunity and some of the application of using integrating open AI power. Which we were just talking before we started recording is like magical. How, how did the little that make it all work?&nbsp;</p>



<p>Um, and then, um, really just talk about, uh, what the opportunities are there. So Mark, thanks for coming back to post edit draft. [00:01:00] Hi, Cory. How&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Mark Westguard:</strong> you doing?&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Pretty good. All right. Tell me what you're doing with, uh, well, let's talk first about open ai because you were helping, you've been digging in with this.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You've created an add-on mm-hmm. for WS forums that leverages some of the power of, uh, Open AI but tell me a little bit about that. The Open a ai, um, you were kind of breaking this down for me and sharing the, the ability, you even got a demo that you can show some of this, which I think would be really awesome, um, to show some of the power and then we'll get into the application of how you're using it in, in Ws forum to help users.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So Sure. First, uh, what drew you to this .&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Mark Westguard:</strong> Um, just to talk about it in the industry really. Um, Twitter was just full of open AI stuff. And, um, also, you know, just talking to friends. I have like Andrew Palmer and Stephanie Hudson, who run Bertha ai. Um, they were integrated in with open ai and I'm like, okay, what is, what is this thing?&nbsp;</p>



<p>[00:02:00] How, how do I, how do I plug into this and use this, um, in a way that's gonna be useful for our customer? . So, um, the first thing that kind of drew me, drew me to it was the moderation feature of OpenAI. And, um, in short, you can send a block of text to it, it will moderate it and look for anything offensive and let you know how offensive it thinks that content is.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And I'm being an advocate for reducing as much spam as possible in form submissions. I thought, well, that would be a, a great feature to have in, in WS form , then I started digging into it a bit more and I thought, well, these are the features that it offers would be great for forms as well. So, broadly speaking, there are four main things that OpenAI can do.&nbsp;</p>



<p>First thing is completions. Um, a completion is where you basically prompt it with a question. Um, so you could say, you know, what is an apple? And it would then give you a response and it'll write a paragraph about that. Um, you may have used that in chat. G B T Chat. P G P T has really brought that open AI technology to the masses cuz it just makes it [00:03:00] so easy to use.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In that chat environment. Um, so as you know, you can ask it to write code. You can even start playing nos and crosses with it if, if you want to. Um, it's pretty incredible what it comes back with. Um, and then, Uh, you have the edit capability, which is where you can give it some existing text, and then you can ask it to edit that text.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So you could ask it to do spelling, uh, you know, fix better mistakes or improve grammar and things like that. Um, then there's the moderation component that I just spoke about where you've given it content, it moderates it and says, yay or no, it's, it's bad content. Um, it, the moderation side of things tends to be more towards, you know, violence and.  </p>



<p>People saying bad things about each other rather than bad words. So, you know, putting the word Viagra in there is not gonna prompt it, but if you say something bad about somebody, it'll start flagging that content more. Um, but it's quite a, quite an interesting way of looking for bad content on a form submission.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And then the last one [00:04:00] is images. So, uh, creating, you may have. Try that with Dolly, um DALL-E where you can type in what type of image you want and it will then return an image. So we've integrated that in with WS forms, so you can actually submit those images as part of a form submission. Um, so you could use that for maybe creating an avatar on a user or a featured image on a post or, you know, anywhere that you are looking for an image, you can use that, um, as an optional feature.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So tho those are the four main kind of broad areas of open.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> That that, that's awesome. Um, Similarly, it's like, uh, just working with chat t p t. You're like, there's pretty cool power . It's kind of mind blowing. You're, I was asking it all kinds of questions and coming back. Um, but hearing, hearing is a n Amazing opportunity for us that I love that you and others in our community have started to go, let's test some of these things out. Let's use this. That integration potential, which just the things you just said just now. Mm-hmm. There's [00:05:00] immediate, practical opportunities and then there's some far reaching ones.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Yes. Um, so would you show us a little bit then? I just want to talk. Show us what you've done. You've got a demo and I know how that works, but go. Would you screen share and share what you're your Absolutely. You've done so far. Then we'll start talking about some of the opportunities, this integration between this for what WordPress can do on the web.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Mark Westguard:</strong> So this is a, a knowledge-based article on WS form that just describes how open AI works, um, and how our, our add-on works. And below here we've got a, a demo. This is probably the thing that we wanna show people. Um, so here's an example of a completion. So as I said before, you could say, you know, what is an apple?&nbsp;</p>



<p>Uh, not a very good. Prompt, but it'll just show you how, how it's working. Um, so this is now making a query off to open ai and it will then put a completion in whatever field I want on that form. So that could be a text field, it could be, you know, it could even be a section of HTML on the page if you wanted it to be.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Um, the [00:06:00] way the open AI works, it's all token based, so the more tokens that you allow open AO to use, the longer the content's gonna be that it, that it will come back. So if you are asking it to maybe produce some code, I mean I can show you a quick example of that. So, uh, write me some PHP code for WordPress.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If I could type properly, it would be nice, wouldn't it? Um, that loops through posts with a category of book. Let's try that. So we do get completion. So now it's gonna go off to open ai. Again, this is using the same technology as the Chat GBT , and there's the code that it has come up with. So that's an example of a completion.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Um, you can also use that completion technology, more of a chat environment. So this is kind of like ai, human, and again, I can say, you know, what is an apple? Oh,&nbsp;</p>



<p>submit. And then it's gonna give you [00:07:00] a response back and then come back to the human prompt as well. So this, this is more of a chat format, so it's kind of remembering what you've asked before and you can keep that conversation going. Um, editing. So with editing, what you do is you provided some content.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So you can say, you know, my name is Mark West Guard, and then you can give it some instruction on that. So let's say I spelled the. The word name wrong. I can say fix the spelling and then get the edited output. It'll now look at that, look at my instruction and correct that output. So you can do stuff like fix my grammar.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You could say, you can even do stuff like. Um, write an additional sentence that describes this a little bit further and actually it'll actually do that. It's pretty crazy what you can do with that edit. Um, moderation we don't have a demo for, cuz it's actually just, um, uh, masking the form submission of spam or not.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So I can't re demo that. Um, but essentially it works like most of our other spam features where, you know, if it finds spam, it'll [00:08:00] move that to the spam box, um, in your submiss. the image one. Um, with images, what you can do is I can say, um, enter an image description that's say, uh, cat on top of a dog, and then you get image&nbsp;</p>



<p>So you can put, you know, all kinda the crazy stuff in here. And what that'll do is then load that image into, uh, our image field, which can then be submitted as part of a. Or, you know, it could be used for an avatar for a user, or whatever you want to use that image field for. You could even push that through to any of our add-ons like Slack or, um, any of the third parties that we integrate with.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We, we have a URL version of that as well. So if you just want to get the URL of that image from open ai mm-hmm. , you can do that. But, um, I'm sure this one will probably be the most popular. So really what we've tried to do is just. Open AI as accessible as possible for people that are using forms. Um, and you can actually put multiple requests on a single page as well.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So [00:09:00] you could have one for a tech bit of text content, have another one for image, and you could also include the editing functionality on the same text field if you wanted to. So yeah, that's where we are. Okay.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I want to geek out with this in just a minute, but I want to take the next step and show what you can do inside of WS forum like we've this.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Incredible. We'll talk hours for this, you know, . Um, I wanna see the application side, how these are, I think, excellent examples of the power of it now, the application of it even more powerful.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Mark Westguard:</strong> Yeah. So let's go into WS four and you'll see where this gets added. So, um, this is our add new pay for creating a new form, and you'll see there's a new tab called Open ai.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So these templates here are basically designed just to kind of get you started. Um, you can add to these, modify these. You can even just use an existing form and add the open AI functionality if you want. Let's just do a simple one. So we'll do a completion, so we'll use that template. So WS forms now building the form for [00:10:00] you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Um, and you'll, you'll notice on this form we've got the prompt. We've got a button to actually go off and get that completion, and then we have the completion itself, and there's a submit button for actually sub ultimately submitting that form if you, if you wanted to do that. Um, and the way this works, very simple.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Uh, we have conditional logic on here, which actually runs the a, the AI request. So we're saying if that get completion button has been. Then make the open a req open AI request and run that immediately. Um, and if we go to actions, you'll see here is that open AI request that gets run. So what we're saying to open AI is we want to do a, a completion.&nbsp;</p>



<p>This is the open AI model that we want to use. So there are different models. Um, G P T three is currently the best one that's out there. Um, and then you can actually tweak this as well. So I can choose how many tokens I want to. Um, the more tokens you enable, the more likely you are gonna get charged more cuz the charging is done on a, on a token basis, [00:11:00] but, um, actually running a completion is, you know, a couple of cents at most.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Um, it's quite inexpensive. And then below that we have, uh, different things that you can tweak to modify the output. So here's an example here of tempera. So temperature actually determines how much that output's gonna change each time I submit that completion. And if I put completion up to one, I'm gonna get much more different content every time I do a submission.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If I do it at zero, it's gonna be pretty much the same each time. Uh, and there's a few other options on here. Some of 'em I actually don't really understand them , the, um, but we've included them just so if somebody does understand what's going on with that, they. Go ahead and, and tweak those. So pretty much everything that the OpenAI API gives to us as a setting, we have made that available to you within WS form.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And of course, uh, all of the, um, fields and everything that are created in that template can be adjusted [00:12:00] just like you can any, uh, you know, on any other WS form. So you can move things around, um, make it responsive and, and make it look how you want. And then you can just preview that and, and change, you know, uh, test that out, make sure it's working completion.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And there you go. So, very, very easy to, uh, implement this on existing forms and creating new forms as well. Awesome.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Oh, okay. So what does the front end of, like, something like this look like?&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Mark Westguard:</strong> Uh, it's basically whatever you want it to be. So you can do, you know, multi column output, single column output, mobile responsive.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Um, you'll see here we have the break point selector in WS form. So for example, on mobile you may wanna have full width. Um, and then I could actually move between different break points here, um, and make that responsive. So for a larger screen, you may want to present that in a two column format, entirely up to you what [00:13:00] you wanna do.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I'm sorry. Uh, so, so like this example, what mm-hmm. , what does the front facing website person say? Or&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Mark Westguard:</strong> it'll look pretty much like this demo. Yeah, I gotcha, I gotcha. This is actually a WS form form on our knowledge base page. Okay, gotcha. This is, this is not, um, an open AI component. This is actually WS form, uh, and we've just created these demo forms to show you what it may look.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I gotcha. But again, you can, you can make that look however you want. You can start it with CSS . You can use our starting tools for that if you want to change the columns. Yeah. Um, so really it's completely flexible in terms of how you want it to look.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> So essentially you can say, uh, Ws forum can, can be a conduit for the open AI stuff to be like this built in research thing for a team or different stuff to leverage some of this power.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Like if you're a blogger, you can create within WordPress Publishing, [00:14:00] you know, I need an image for this blog post that is this type and, and then go over here. So really doing that tight integration with the open AI, where you don't have to go over to chat d p t and copy stuff. It's all right here. Yeah.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Yeah. I mean,&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Mark Westguard:</strong> usually just experiment with Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but usually what will happen is the form would be on the front of the site with somebody creating some content. Uh, so they may log in to access that, and then the form will come up. And then if, if you're creating a post, maybe that would be, you know, PostIt the post content.  </p>



<p>Um, and then you could, in that post content, have a little prompt that says, what do you want me to write about? Yeah. And then object that into the post content. And then what, what, you know, upload a featured image or I'll create an image for you. What image do you want me to create for you? And then it would then put that into the file upload.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Um, and then, so Rudy, you've. Full AI on creating a post if, if you wanted to, you know, um, you don't have to use all the features if you don't want to, but, uh, [00:15:00] uh, it's funny, I was talking to, um, You know, Bob WP yesterday about this, we actually did a podcast about it and yeah, there's a lot of talk about it being quite a scary technology as well.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Um, so I, I think that, um, anything you create with it, you wanna check it, you know, don't trust it a hundred percent. You wanna check what comes out of this system and, and make sure that what it's giving you is what you're looking for. But it can certainly be a great tool. Getting you started with a blog post or getting you Yeah.  </p>



<p>Help with editing and improving grammar. Maybe writing it in a slightly different way that you haven't thought of. Use it as a creativity tool. Um, yeah. But don't trust it. A hundred percent .&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, so, okay. When we were talking before, uh, we started recording, you know, you're like, there's basically like three categories.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You said create, edit, moderate. Yep. I'm really. By the create and edited edit capabilities of open ai. And I'm curious to get your perspectives on that, that [00:16:00] applica not from the software side, applying what the power is of, open AI to WordPress inside of there. And it's just intriguing. Um, you kind of started with this like you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>What are some of those things you're seeing that you could do? Like we've seen, this is great, you know, be able to kind of moderate content, create videos. Mm-hmm. , uh, or not videos, I'm sorry, images. You know, those I can try back to. What the power WordPress is, is publishing, creating, and publishing. Mm-hmm.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Um, so what, what are some things you've seen messing around with all of this and seeing some of the power of it that you, that's not here today, but like, you're, you're curious about interest in,&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Mark Westguard:</strong> you know, it's really early days with this technology. It's, um, it's interesting. I've, I've had some customers already coming back to.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Um, one of thems been using this in a support environment and they've actually got it on their support form because a lot of their contact is online. [00:17:00] Um, so they're able to query open AI about their own product with questions that have been typed in by a user, and it then can spit results back. So, you know, there's one application.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Um, just some others that people have spoken to me about has been creating avatar images for users. So we have a user management add-on that you can use to register users on WordPress. Um, and you can use a file upload field to specify the avatar image for that user. So, um, Open AI could be used to create that image.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you want to create a funny one-eyed, fuzzy monster, then you can , you can use it to do that. Um, and then, you know, improving grammar on blog posts I think is a great thing. I I, I love that. Edit feature. Um, I wasn't even aware that it could do that before I started writing the open AI add on. Um, but just having that as a feature where maybe you've written a blog post and you need some help with part of it, um, that would, I think that's a, a great application for it.[00:18:00]&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Um, in, in terms of kind of the code writing part of it, um, I don't think US developers need to worry too much about it. It's not gonna take our jobs. Uh, it has an upper limit of about 4,000 characters. . So it's never gonna, you know, I can't go into it and say, Hey, write Yost, um, or write WooCommerce. It's not, it's not gonna do that for you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But, uh, in terms of giving you some pointers towards smaller snippets of code, it's certainly helpful for that. Um, again, I wouldn't take it on face value, always make sure that it's, it's working properly. One example of where I don't trust it is obviously we always want. Make sure our inputs and outputs with code are secure.&nbsp;</p>



<p>They've been escaped and, uh, we've made sure there's nothing malicious in there. Typically, when you ask open AI for a bit of code, none of that happens. It's, it will literally just take, you know, what's coming in on, on a post request and just spit it out. So, um, definitely take that in mind when you're using this tool.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It's not intelligent enough to, to do that type of stuff.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> [00:19:00] I, I the utility of what WS Forum does for sure. Like I see that, like I love the moderation thing about spam stuff. Um, sky's the limit. My background, I draw to content creation and editing because we've all hit that dreaded rider's block or just needed a little spark or inspiration to get going.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And I've, I've heard and talked to enough people to go like, Those are the type of things that I think could really light of fire to this. Mm-hmm. is, it's an assistant. Yes. It's, it's assisting you and, um, doing all the functions you want, particularly on your WordPress website. But when that subset of function create content, edit content, like I saw you say that, fix the spelling, you know, and the very simple example you gave and it's like, yeah, I might use Grammarly, but there's.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So much more power out there that, uh, and, and AI obviously is getting way, way, [00:20:00] way, way better. Yeah.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Mark Westguard:</strong> Um, maybe if you had a big article that was referenced in someone's name and maybe you had the name incorrect, you could just say, change the name to whatever, and it'll go through and change it. So, um, it's a great, great editing tool.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I think. Um, it's almost kind of like, You know, Google 2.0, whereas, you know, on Google, you'll, you'll type at a question and it'll give you URLs for you to then trundle through and try and find the answer. This is kind of jumping in that step and trying to give you that answer immediately. Um, and I think it does a pretty good job of it.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Um, it's not always accurate. Um, and I, like I said, you and I have said it's, it's gotta be an assistant tool. It's, it's not gonna give you the a hundred percent the correct answer every time. , but it does an impressive job. Um, I've been amazed by some of the stuff that it spits out .&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah. And, and that headstart that sparked to help you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Uh, you know, so I, I'm, I'm excited. I'm gonna go play with WS forum. Um, you're [00:21:00] opening cuz uh, it didn't click for me until yesterday. I go, these people are all doing all this stuff, but they're not logging into chat G B T and I just hadn't taken the time to go. There's an API that you can buy, and what you do with your add-on is make that, oh, I can use it now.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Um, it sounds a lot like, like aws, you know, you buy mm-hmm. computing power and all this stuff. And I looked at the pricing and I was telling Lindsay last night, I was like, oh, this is a, a WS type, you know, resource. Um, and you've done that integration point to leverage it within WordPress.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Mark Westguard:</strong> Yeah. It's basically about making that data accessible.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Right. So, um, and making. Essentially no code. So all you gotta do is just drag and drop a couple of input fields, tell, um, WS form, which is the input, which is the output, and off you go. Um, so it's pretty easy to to, to build forms that integrate that open AI technology. Um, and by, you know, by all means, use those template, they templates are ready to go.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So you just [00:22:00] click it, it builds a form for you and you can start playing with it. So it's, it's pretty straightforward. I&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> wanna play it around with the. That you were saying and how, um, when you do the completion chat function, um, it's reading what you've already talked about. So if you have a thought, okay, I'm trying to create a blog post on WordPress hosting, whatever.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Mm-hmm. . Or something, you know, and then it reads, I wanna do some experimenting with that. So now you give me a new toy to, to go take for a test spin.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Mark Westguard:</strong> Yeah. That should behave relatively similar to chat G p T, um, cuz that's, that's how that one works, so&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> yeah. Awesome. Mark, what else do you got going on over at WS Forum?&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Mark Westguard:</strong> Oh, you know, we're just right now getting ready for work Camp Asia. Um, we're gonna be,&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I was about to say, I think I knew you were going to Asia and probably Europe too, right? Yeah.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Mark Westguard:</strong> That's gonna be some serious jet lag . Yeah, no kidding. And, uh, I'm gonna actually go to work at Birmingham at the. [00:23:00] beginning of February, so I'm looking forward to that as well.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And then we just got approved to sponsors for Work Camp Europe again, so right on getting, getting ready for Athens. So we're looking forward to that. Um, and yeah, just, you know, day in, day out, answering those support tickets, keeping customers happy and, and doing what we need to do to grow the business.  </p>



<p>So, Love it.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Thanks Mark for sharing, um, the integration you're doing with Open AI and talking a little bit about this opportunity. Um, and again, I want, I wanna see more and more, uh, I want great members like yourself to lead that, but more and more innovation. Yeah, absolutely. So All right, thanks. Thanks, Mark.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We'll talk to you last time. Thanks. Appreciate it.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /><strong>Mark Westguard:</strong> Thanks a lot. Take care.</p>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 23 Feb 2023 21:06:21 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Cory Miller";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:40;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:93:"WPTavern: Museum of Block Art Calls for Submissions Celebrating WordPress’ 20th Anniversary";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142175";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:101:"https://wptavern.com/museum-of-block-art-calls-for-submissions-celebrating-wordpress-20th-anniversary";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5084:"<p>The <a href="https://block-museum.com/">Museum of Block Art</a> (MOBA), a project launched in 2022 featuring art created using the block editor&#8217;s design tools, is <a href="https://block-museum.com/2023/02/21/lets-celebrate-20-years-of-wordpress/">calling for submissions</a> celebrating WordPress&#8217; upcoming 20th anniversary. </p>



<p>In a short amount of time, the museum has collected more than three dozen works of block art, creative pieces that leave the viewer wondering how they were made using only WordPress&#8217; core design tools. The MOBA features a diverse set of works &#8211; from <a href="https://block-museum.com/2022/02/02/its-me/">a Mario mosaic</a> made entirely of differently colored Button and Group blocks, to <a href="https://block-museum.com/2022/01/26/city-textures/">a textured gallery of city images</a> melded together using the Columns, Cover, and Gallery blocks. All pieces are displayed with the HTML markup of the block(s) beneath, so curious viewers can dig into the details of which tools design tools have been applied.</p>



<img />



<p>MOBA&#8217;s curators are challenging artists to submit WP20 blocks inspired by the <a href="https://wp20.wordpress.net/download-the-wp20-commemorative-logos/">20th anniversary logos</a> and/or the color palette and images from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/author/wordpressdotorg/">default themes through the years</a>. These blocks will become part of the art history of WordPress&#8217; capabilities. </p>



<p>MOBA founder Anne McCarthy said the submissions have &#8220;definitely evolved as the controls have grown since each new control added has a cascading creative impact.&#8221; To better illustrate this evolution, she has created release-specific virtual exhibits, including one for <a href="https://block-museum.com/wordpress-5-9-exhibit/">5.9</a> and another for <a href="https://block-museum.com/wordpress-6-0-exhibit/">6.0</a>. She didn&#8217;t receive too many pieces for 6.1 and hasn&#8217;t created an exhibit for that release yet but has created <a href="https://block-museum.com/2022/12/25/relentless/">some</a> <a href="https://block-museum.com/2022/12/26/shining-through/">blocks</a> using 6.1&#8217;s tools, and <a href="https://nomad.blog/2022/12/26/behind-the-scenes-of-creating-art-with-wordpress/">wrote a post about the process</a>.</p>



<p>&#8220;I think it would be really neat to compare a 5.9 exhibit to a 6.9 or 7.9 showing how far the art has come in the same way you might look at art in a museum across the centuries,&#8221; McCarthy said.</p>



<p>&#8220;The vision is to explore WordPress, a software we take for granted, in a new way to create something unexpected—a virtual art museum featuring art made from the same blocks used to house the experience itself. WordPress is so known as a site building tool but we don’t talk about all that it unlocks, including being able to create some pretty rad art pieces. I hope it helps both empower folks to make their own art pieces and offers some inspiration, in the same way a museum might. I really just want to supercharge the sentiment of &#8216;Proudly Powered by WordPress&#8217; to show just how much WordPress truly can power.&#8221;</p>



<p>One piece, the circular rainbow created by Chuck Grimmet, was printed out and displayed on one of the walls behind Matt Mullenweg during the 2022 State of the Word address. McCarthy said she would like to see more real life exhibits of the work from MOBA contributors, and that there is a chance some will be displayed at an upcoming flagship WordCamp event. Another idea she had is offering a way to order the art and print it out as a fun use of e-commerce, perhaps as an integration with the WordPress swag store.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://block-museum.com/2022/06/03/circular-rainbow/">Circular rainbow</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>In the future, McCarthy hopes to recruit submissions from artists outside the WordPress community and someday host an art &#8220;hackathon&#8221; where people gather to produce submissions. </p>



<p>MOBA&#8217;s curators are inviting users of all experience levels to create WP20-inspired blocks as part of the upcoming celebration. Those who are newer to the block editor can check out some of the recommended <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorials/?series=&topic=7&language=&captions=&wp_version=">block tutorials</a> as well as The Creative Side to Blocks series (volumes <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2022/08/08/the-creative-side-of-blocks/">1</a>, <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2022/09/07/the-creative-side-of-blocks-vol-2/">2</a>, and <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2022/11/18/the-creative-side-of-blocks-vol-3/">3</a>) on WordPress.tv. Prospective contributors can learn more about <a href="https://block-museum.com/contribute/">how to contribute blocks</a> to the MOBA collection on the museum&#8217;s website. Submissions will be reviewed by the initiative&#8217;s current panel of contributors.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 23 Feb 2023 03:56:19 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:41;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:90:"WPTavern: WordPress 6.2 Beta 3 Released, Contributors to Host Live Product Demo on March 2";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142213";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-2-beta-3-released-contributors-to-host-live-product-demo-on-march-2";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2491:"<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/wordpress-6-2-beta-3/">WordPress 6.2 Beta 3</a> was released this week, another small milestone towards the official, more polished version that is expected in under five weeks on March 28, 2023. Testers will find 34 issues resolved since the Beta 2 release, bringing the cumulative number of enhancements to 292, with 354 bug fixes and counting. Details for the changes in beta 3 are available in the linked tickets:</p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6.2">GitHub tickets</a></li>



<li><a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=accepted&status=closed&changetime=02%2F14%2F2023..02%2F21%2F2023&milestone=6.2&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id">Trac tickets</a></li>
</ul>



<p>Contributors will be hosting a live product demo on <a href="https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20230302T1700">Thursday, March 2, 2023 at 12:00 PM EST</a> via <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82841185159">Zoom</a>. WordPress contributors <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/annezazu/">Anne McCarthy</a> and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/richtabor/">Rich Tabor</a>, who are helping lead the release, will give viewers a tour of the features coming in 6.2.</p>



<p>&#8220;This is a slightly different format from the previous <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/30/6-0-product-walk-through/">6.0</a> and <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/09/05/6-1-product-walk-through/">6.1</a> walk-throughs, focusing on showcasing the great work that’s been going into the release,&#8221; Marketing Team contributor Jonathan Pantani said. &#8220;Future releases can expect to see this, a walk-through/discussion, or both types of live events become part of the release cycle.&#8221;</p>



<p>The event will be moderated by Nathan Wrigley, who will guide the discussion and present questions from the audience. Questions can be submitted in advance in the <a href="http://wordpress.slack.com/">Make WordPress Slack</a> via the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C039R2P1ZC1">#walkthrough channel</a>. The livestream will be recorded and published in a follow-up post after the product demo has concluded. There is no registration for the event. Those who want to watch and participate live can <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82841185159">launch the meeting using Zoom</a> at the scheduled time.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 22 Feb 2023 22:22:53 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:42;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:95:"Post Status: WordPress 6.2 Beta 3 &amp; Live Demo • Help Test • Changes to WP Release Cycle";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=147449";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:92:"https://poststatus.com/wordpress-6-2-beta-3-live-demo-help-test-changes-to-wp-release-cycle/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16090:"<h2 id="h-this-week-at-wordpress-org-february-20-2023">This Week at WordPress.org (February 20, 2023)</h2>


<div class="has-background has-theme-palette-8-background-color wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">WordPress 6.2 is just over a month away. Join in the live demo and help test beta and release candidate versions. Should we revise the WordPress release cycle? Share you feedback. </p></div>


<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



<div class="wp-block-kadence-infobox kt-info-box_94d1bd-77"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap kt-blocks-info-box-media-align-left kt-info-halign-left"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media-container"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media kt-info-media-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-container kt-info-icon-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-inner-container"><span class="kb-svg-icon-wrap kb-svg-icon-fe_arrowRightCircle kt-info-svg-icon"></span></div></div></div></div><div class="kt-infobox-textcontent"><h2 class="kt-blocks-info-box-title">WP 6.2 Beta 3 & Demo, Proposal to Update Release Cycle </h2><p class="kt-blocks-info-box-text">β  <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/wordpress-6-2-beta-3/">WordPress 6.2 Beta 3</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f5d3.png" alt="🗓" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/6-2-live-product-demo/">6.2 Live Product Demo</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64b-1f3fe.png" alt="🙋🏾" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/02/07/help-test-wordpress-6-2/">Help Test WordPress 6.2</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f503.png" alt="🔃" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/18/proposal-updates-to-the-wordpress-release-cycle/">Proposal: Updates to the WordPress Release Cycle</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/270d-1f3fc.png" alt="✍🏼" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/02/08/apply-to-attend-the-2023-community-summit/">Apply to Attend the 2023 Community Summit</a></p></div></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-_8f6276-eb"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>



<div class="is-layout-flex wp-container-39 wp-block-columns">
<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-column">
<h2 id="h-community">Community</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/02/21/feature-request-additional-roles-for-wordcamp-sites/">Feature request: additional roles for WordCamp sites</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/02/20/upcoming-wpdiversity-events-march-2023/">Upcoming #WPDiversity Events: March 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/02/17/meetup-com-accessibility-overlay-february-update/">Meetup.com Accessibility Overlay February Update</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/02/17/updates-to-the-wordcamp-site-setup-handbook-page/">Updates to the WordCamp Site Setup Handbook Page</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/02/15/meetup-organizer-newsletter-february-2023/">Meetup Organizer Newsletter: February 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-core"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core">Core</a> </h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/a-week-in-core-february-20-2023/">A Week in Core – February 20, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/18/proposal-updates-to-the-wordpress-release-cycle/">Proposal: Updates to the WordPress Release Cycle</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-wordpress-6-2">WordPress 6.2</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/wordpress-6-2-beta-3/">WordPress 6.2 Beta 3</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/6-2-live-product-demo/">6.2 Live Product Demo</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/04/phase-2-finale/">Phase 2, Finale</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/03/hallway-hangout-performance-improvements-for-wordpress-6-2/">Hallway Hangout: Performance Improvements for WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/06/roadmap-to-6-2/">Roadmap to 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/18/bug-scrub-schedule-for-6-2/">Bug Scrub Schedule for 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/11/early-bug-scrub-schedule-for-wp-6-2/">Early bug scrub schedule for WP&nbsp;6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/17/wordpress-6-2-planning-roundup/">WordPress 6.2 Planning Roundup</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-meetings">Meetings</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/20/editor-chat-summary-wednesday-february-15-2023/">Editor chat summary: Wednesday, February 15, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/22/dev-chat-agenda-february-23-2023/">Dev Chat Agenda, February 23, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/22/editor-chat-agenda-22nd-february-2023/">Editor Chat Agenda: 22nd February 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/17/dev-chat-summary-february-16-2023/">Dev Chat Summary, February 15, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-developer-blog">Developer Blog</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/02/block-theme-resources-roundup/">Block theme resources roundup</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-docs"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs">Docs</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2023/02/10/agenda-for-docs-team-bi-weekly-meeting-february-21-2023/">Agenda for Docs Team bi-weekly meeting February 21, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-meta"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta">Meta</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/02/10/theme-directory-redesign-update/">Theme Directory redesign update</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-openverse"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse">Openverse</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/02/22/openverse-is-now-a-monorepo/">Openverse is now a monorepo</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/02/22/community-meeting-recap-21-february-2023/">Community Meeting Recap (21 February 2023)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/02/21/post-inaturalist-data-refresh-status/">Post-iNaturalist Data Refresh Status</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-performance"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/performance/">Performance</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/performance-chat-summary-21-february-2023/">Performance Chat Summary: 21 February 2023</a></li>
</ul>
</div>



<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-column">
<h2 id="h-polyglots">Polyglots</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/02/22/agenda-weekly-polyglots-chat-feb-22-2023-0700-utc/">Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – Feb. 22, 2023 (07:00 UTC)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/02/21/helphub-and-devdocs-redesign-request/">HelpHub and DevDocs redesign request</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/02/20/sync-translations-between-dev-and-stable-projects/">Sync translations between Dev and Stable projects</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/02/20/components-into-tabs-in-the-right-sidebar/">Components into tabs in the right sidebar</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-plugins">Plugins</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2023/02/03/twitter-api-changes/">Twitter API Changes</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-project">Project</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/02/06/proposal-creating-a-wordpress-contributor-mentorship-program/">Proposal: Creating a WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/01/27/discussion-ending-the-eternal-september/">Discussion: Ending the Eternal September</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-support"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support">Support</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/2023/02/agenda-for-february-9th-support-meeting-2/"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/2023/02/summary-for-february-16th-support-meeting/">Summary for February 16th Support Meeting</a></a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-test"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test">Test</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/02/21/hallway-hangout-lets-chat-about-using-replay-io-in-the-fse-outreach-program/">Hallway Hangout: Let’s chat about using Replay.io in the FSE Outreach Program</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/02/07/help-test-wordpress-6-2/">Help Test WordPress 6.2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/02/20/test-team-update-20-february-2023/">Test Team Update: 20 February 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-training"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training">Training</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/02/17/february-2023-faculty-meeting/">February 2023 Faculty Meeting</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/02/10/training-teams-new-onboarding-program-is-now-live/">Training Team’s new onboarding program is now live!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/02/08/video-conferencing-options-for-online-workshops/">Video conferencing options for Online Workshops</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/02/06/training-team-2023-goals-setting/">Training Team 2023 Goals Setting</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-online-workshops">Online Workshops</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=introduction-to-templates-block-theme">Introduction to Templates (Block Theme)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=customizing-the-single-template-and-404-template">Customizing the Single Template and 404 Template</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=intro-to-wordpress-accessible-color">Intro to WordPress Accessible Color</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=wordpress-as-a-paintbrush-internet-art-then-and-now">WordPress as a Paintbrush: Internet Art Then and Now</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=best-design-practices-to-create-engagement">Best design practices to create engagement</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-to-own-your-expertise-start-speaking-at-wordpress-events-amer-emea">How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events AMER/EMEA</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=wp-dev-livestream-building-a-react-app-utilising-the-wp-rest-api-2">WP dev livestream: Building a React app utilising the WP REST API</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=help-test-wordpress-developer-edition">Help test WordPress – developer edition</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-to-confidently-migrate-from-a-classic-theme-to-a-block-theme-2">How to Confidently Migrate from a Classic Theme to a Block Theme</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-to-confidently-migrate-from-a-classic-theme-to-a-block-theme">How to Confidently Migrate from a Classic Theme to a Block Theme</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=designers-developers-cats-dogs-living-in-harmony">Designers & Developers: Cats & Dogs Living in Harmony</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=training-team-contributor-day-online-session">Training Team Contributor Day Online Session</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=community-sharing-media-plugins">Community Sharing: Media Plugins</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=lets-code-developer-ama-ask-me-anything">Let’s code: Developer AMA – Ask Me Anything</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=wp-dev-livestream-building-a-react-app-utilising-the-wp-rest-api">WP dev livestream: Building a React app utilising the WP REST API</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-tutorials"><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorials">Tutorials</a></h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/designing-with-the-columns-block/">Designing with the columns block</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/using-the-wordpress-rest-api/">Using the WordPress REST API</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-wptv">WPTV</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/category/year/2022/">Latest WordPress TV videos</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<h2 id="h-related-news">Related News:</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-02-02-1">PHP 8.2.2 Released!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-02-02-2">PHP 8.1.15 Released!</a></li>
</ul>



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<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 22 Feb 2023 19:31:35 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Courtney Robertson";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:43;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"WPTavern: #64 – Patrick Posner on Using WordPress To Create Static Sites";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=142108";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:88:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/64-patrick-posner-on-using-wordpress-to-create-static-sites";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:50676:"Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case using WordPress as a way to create static sites.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice. Or go to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you. And hopefully get you or your idea featured on the show. Head to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox. And use the form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today, we have Patrick Posner. Patrick is a solopreneur and has been developing with WordPress since 2010. He&#8217;s worked in all sorts of environments as a freelancer, a senior developer in a WordPress product company, and since 2020 he&#8217;s been working full-time on his own projects.</p>



<p>One of his projects is a plugin called Simply Static. It&#8217;s purpose is to make a static version of your website. This of course begs the question, what is a static site?</p>



<p>Back in the early days of the internet, before WordPress, if you wanted to put a website online, you had to write the HTML yourself. You opened up a text editor and started to type. When you&#8217;d finished, you had an HTML file which you uploaded to a server somewhere. And if someone wanted to view that page, the server would send over that file.</p>



<p>It worked, but thankfully, it didn&#8217;t stay that way for long. Software for desktops were developed, which would create the HTML for you. CMSs such as WordPress would take this further and create the HTML and CSS based upon the content you&#8217;d created, and the theme that was active. This was extremely convenient, but when all is said and done, the output is still the same as it was years ago. HTML, CSS, and possibly some JavaScript.</p>



<p>Depending upon your setup in WordPress, quite a lot of complicated operations are needed to generate that code. Caching aside, is there a case for saving your HTML files, uploading them to a server, and then taking WordPress offline? Patrick certainly seems to think so.</p>



<p>We talk about how this flattening of your website takes place, and what the advantages might be in terms of speed and the cost of hosting.</p>



<p>We also get into the pros and cons of adopting the static site approach. Are there any sites which are more suited to being static than others?</p>



<p>We also discuss what solutions are out there to make this happen, from Patrick&#8217;s own plugin, to the hosting providers and SaaS solutions which enable things like search and forms to still function.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s a really interesting subject and one that you might like to explore, and this podcast is a great primer for that.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Patrick Posner.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Patrick Posner. Hello Patrick.</p>



<p>[00:04:16] Patrick Posner: Hey Nathan. Glad to be here.</p>



<p>[00:04:18] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you so much. This is honestly going to be a really interesting topic. I think there&#8217;s going to be a lot of people at the end of this conversation who go away and start to fiddle with their setup. Because we&#8217;re going to be talking about a really different way of serving up your website.</p>



<p>We&#8217;re strictly in the bounds of WordPress. Everything that we&#8217;re going to be doing today is WordPress, but we&#8217;re going to add a little bit of a twist, and this is the way that WordPress is served up to your clients.</p>



<p>Patrick is the owner and developer of a plug-in called Simply Static. I&#8217;m going to link to it in the show notes. There is a version on the WordPress repo, which is available for free. There is also a paid version and we&#8217;ll get into all of the different pieces of that. So we&#8217;re going to be talking about static sites today, essentially. Ironing out the problems, figuring out what it all is and what Patrick&#8217;s solution does.</p>



<p>Before we begin that, let&#8217;s go into Patrick&#8217;s origin story. Patrick, if you wouldn&#8217;t mind, just tell us about your relationship with WordPress. Tell us where you are, what you do for a living, how long you&#8217;ve been doing it, and all of those good things.</p>



<p>[00:05:25] Patrick Posner: Yeah, sure. Happy to share. So I&#8217;m a WordPress developer since 2010. And I moved from several steps into the career I&#8217;m having today. I started with an agency as a developer, building client sites. And, after a couple of years I moved into self-employment and started getting some freelance clients. Building my first WooCommerce stores and more advanced WordPress websites.</p>



<p>After a bunch of years I got employed again and worked as a senior plugin developer for one of the biggest WordPress product companies here in Germany. Just before Covid, I decided to get back to self-employment again, and since then I&#8217;m working full-time on my WordPress products, mainly plugins.</p>



<p>[00:06:16] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you very much. You&#8217;ve got a website which people can find. It&#8217;s patrickposner.dev, and I will link to that in the show notes, but you can see the range of different things that you are doing over there. But we&#8217;re going to be focusing very much on one of your endeavors, which is a static site generating plugin.</p>



<p>We&#8217;ll get into how it works, that particular plugin in a moment. But I think first of all we should clear up what a static site is. So just to reiterate, we&#8217;re using WordPress, but there&#8217;s something different about the way that WordPress distributes the pages and posts that we save. So, could you describe to us, any amount of detail, I guess, considering this is a WordPress specific podcast you really can go into the weeds with this if you like. But just tell us what is a static site? What are the benefits? Why should anybody making WordPress websites be interested in this?</p>



<p>[00:07:12] Patrick Posner: So imagine stepping back 20 years. The internet consists of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. You have no database interaction. You have no complex server setups, just plain files. You can edit them directly, you can upload your images, PDF files and other stuff. That are static websites.</p>



<p>And as the world and especially the internet is getting more and more complex, people are really enjoying the ease of static websites, as they don&#8217;t have to handle with updates with a database, with complex deployments and all that stuff. So that&#8217;s a basic idea of static websites.</p>



<p>They don&#8217;t have a database. They are pretty secure and almost unhackable as they have no connection to a traditional server. So there&#8217;s no PHP exploits, having no database where people can or where hackers can fetch your user data, or install any malicious code or something like that.</p>



<p>Another really beneficial thing of static sites is a part of hosting. So you can basically host a static site everywhere, on a pretty cheap standard web hosting package. But there are also a bunch of more optimized hosting providers like Netlify or GitHub Pages, which cover a couple of common problems. We may get into detail a little bit later for that. But, let&#8217;s say 404 pages or a search integration or basic form integration, where people can submit the form and the content of that is forwarded to you via email.</p>



<p>[00:08:56] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, so just to rehash a bit of that and go into the weeds on some of the bits and pieces there. So you mentioned that 20 years ago, I remember it well, actually. If you wanted to browse a website, essentially you would go to the url, and if you inspected the source code, you would just see a list of HTML, there may be some CSS in there and so on, and perhaps some images were linked to.</p>



<p>But typically that HTML would&#8217;ve been written by a human probably. They would literally line by line, have gone through and written the whole thing. And the only thing crossing the wire was the HTML. So the page that you requested was a file.</p>



<p>You would request index.Html and the internet, wherever that was served, would give you that file. That file was somewhere. Fast forward 20 years, now we&#8217;re into WordPress territory. And again, there&#8217;s a whole broad spectrum of people that listen to this podcast, and some of them may not be aware that the moment you request a WordPress page, a whole litany of very complicated things are going on in the background, depending on how many plug-ins you&#8217;ve got and what it is that you&#8217;re requesting. But it&#8217;s not as simple as I request a page, WordPress serves the page. No, there&#8217;s a whole theming engine and all sorts of database requests are being built on the backend at the time you request them.</p>



<p>Now, typically, you know, if it&#8217;s a really lean site, you might not notice that it might be very, very quick. But when you start to do more complicated things, the time it takes to build that page adds up. So what you are proposing is that you can still use WordPress, but the output is saved and it&#8217;s the output which is served up just like it was 20 years ago. Have I got that roughly right?</p>



<p>[00:10:52] Patrick Posner: Perfectly perfectly. So that&#8217;s exactly what the static site generation does within WordPress. You can edit your content in WordPress, but the result is just a static website.</p>



<p>[00:11:05] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, right. So hopefully we&#8217;ve cleared that bit up. Now you mentioned that there&#8217;s whole bunch of benefits to this. Number one, I think, really would be the speed. The fact that there&#8217;s nothing being constructed by WordPress. So seconds, milliseconds. I don&#8217;t really know. It depends on each individual instance of WordPress.</p>



<p>But the point is, there&#8217;s nothing complicated going on the background. You request a file, a file is served back at you, and so that&#8217;s quicker. Now, along for the ride there is also the security benefit. And you said that these websites are typically unhackable. And again, that might be a mystery to people. Can you explain why the security posture is improved by going static.</p>



<p>[00:11:52] Patrick Posner: Yeah, sure. So security is often overlooked when it comes to static websites. But for me, that&#8217;s as important as the performance aspect of it. So you have basically a layer before your WordPress website. So you have your WordPress website, and the entire website is protected by basic authentication, for example. Or even better, you have your WordPress website on your local computer with a tool like Local WP, and your WordPress website don&#8217;t even touch the internet directly.</p>



<p>And you convert the WordPress website to a static website. And this static website don&#8217;t have access to your WordPress database. There&#8217;s no ability to execute PHP, for example. So there&#8217;s no one that can access your server and do anything you don&#8217;t want.</p>



<p>That starts with forms. So someone submits like malicious code in your form, and the input isn&#8217;t really escaped. So it doesn&#8217;t matter on a static website as you never have the problems that someone submits a form and it will be directly transferred to a WordPress website.</p>



<p>The same is true for executing code. So if you have a static website, there aren&#8217;t any PHP files, and most statics hosts even block PHP files from executing in general. You will never have something like a malicious script on your aesthetic website that sends spam emails or collecting user data you don&#8217;t want. All of that is gone once you have a static website.</p>



<p>[00:13:30] Nathan Wrigley: So you mentioned the scenario where, and I would encourage people to explore this a little bit, because it&#8217;s quite an interesting scenario. You mentioned that you could use a local install of WordPress. And so you may, for example, have come across a tool like Local, which is a desktop application. So you can download it for the Mac and windows and so on. There may be versions for Linux, I actually don&#8217;t know.</p>



<p>But you can have a local version of WordPress and really, it only works on your machine whilst your machine is switched on. The principle being that you may use it just to test out a plugin, or you may use it just to test something out that you want to do quickly. You can spin up a website, but that website doesn&#8217;t really have an online presence. If you switch your computer off at the end of the day, it&#8217;s gone, it&#8217;s nowhere. It doesn&#8217;t exist.</p>



<p>But in your scenario, you can create your website on your local machine. Then export the pages because you&#8217;ve essentially scraped the output HTML and figured out where the CSS and the files are and so on. And then you could push that to the server and then shut your computer down and the website will still work. But there&#8217;s absolutely no database online. There&#8217;s no PHP files getting requested, and so in that way, it&#8217;s more secure.</p>



<p>[00:14:49] Patrick Posner: Yeah, absolutely. Also means that you have like a staging environment automatically. So your WordPress website is your staging website, right? So as long as you don&#8217;t push an update to your static website or to your hosting, you can do whatever you want with your WordPress website. Installing a new plugin, testing a new theme. Updating or not updating WordPress is also fine. Your static website stays online no matter what.</p>



<p>[00:15:17] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it&#8217;s a real one way relationship, isn&#8217;t it? Whatever is on your WordPress website is always in isolation, if you like. And you have to publish the changes and push them to the server. So in that way, nothing comes back because the server really, in a sense, has no knowledge of the fact that there&#8217;s a WordPress website. It just knows that, well somebody&#8217;s requested a particular page. Have I got that page? Yes, I have. Here it is. It doesn&#8217;t know that there&#8217;s a WordPress website there at all.</p>



<p>[00:15:51] Patrick Posner: Yep, that&#8217;s right.</p>



<p>[00:15:52] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, and you mentioned another benefit of this approach was the fact that it can be hosted, and my understanding is that can in many cases, depending on the size and scale of your website, it can be hosted really, really affordably. And by affordably, I mean incredibly affordably. Now, I don&#8217;t know if there&#8217;s a dozen, hundreds of companies which are dedicated to this type of environment, but can you just talk us through the sort of cost benefits of doing it this way? Static.</p>



<p>[00:16:24] Patrick Posner: Yeah, true. So, hosting a static website is completely different when it comes to the pricing tag attached, compared to any kind of a press hosting. We&#8217;re talking about like $1 for an entire year of hosting.</p>



<p>There are also a bunch of providers that you can use for free, like Cloudflare Pages. Cloudflare Pages allows you to do like, I&#8217;m not entirely sure, it&#8217;s 500 updates to your static website per month for free. They don&#8217;t charge for the amount of files or the used data, the used space. So that&#8217;s one thing that you can use completely for free. There are others where there&#8217;s a little fee attached, but it&#8217;s always insanely cheap compared to traditional WordPress hosting.</p>



<p>[00:17:16] Nathan Wrigley: You literally are in many cases talking about a handful of US cents, not dollars per month.</p>



<p>[00:17:24] Patrick Posner: Yeah.</p>



<p>[00:17:25] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it really is amazing. You mentioned earlier that the hosting company does take on a slightly different burden, in that because it&#8217;s just pages and that&#8217;s all they know about, then some of these hosting companies do take on additional responsibilities. So for example, in the scenario where somebody accidentally searches for a url which doesn&#8217;t exist.</p>



<p>Well, WordPress, if you&#8217;ve got a traditional WordPress site, which is online with a traditional host, it handles that and it serves up a 404 page. Plus it can do things like search for you. That&#8217;s not the case here. And you have to take additional steps for those things to be catered for. So 404, search, things like forms. Do you just want to talk us through how you overcome those things?</p>



<p>[00:18:10] Patrick Posner: Yeah, so you can, there are two different directions you can go here. You can do it yourself. It&#8217;s not that hard to provide an htaccess file to serve the request to a specific page. That&#8217;s one way. So there are a lot of users, especially in the Simply Static world, doing all of that on its own.</p>



<p>But you can also use a provider like, let&#8217;s say Netlify. Netlify provides an easy way to configure a 404 page, and they handle all of that for you. So you basically type in a search and if there&#8217;s no result coming up, Netlify will handle the redirection to the 404 page for you. They also handle things like forms. So you can basically add a little ID into your existing form, and they will forward the submission to your email address that you also configured within Netlify.</p>



<p>There are a bunch of solutions for different use cases. You can always decide to use a more like all in one solution like Netlify, or use your traditional hosting package and use services like Formspark. Formspark is a static site form tool. You can easily configure forms on Formspark and embed them. You get a little HTML snippet. You can embed them on your WordPress website and they handle all of that for you. Spam detection, forwarding, CC, BCC connections, automations with Zapier. So let&#8217;s say you want to, you have a, like a, newsletter form and you want to, each time someone submits the form, you want to automatically submit this user to your Mailchimp list.</p>



<p>You can do that with Zapier or within Formspark. I&#8217;m not really sure, but I think Formspark even have a automation with MailPoet right now. So there are a bunch of ways you can handle that. And all of them, or most of them, don&#8217;t require to be like a professional developer or something like that.</p>



<p>[00:20:12] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I guess that&#8217;s an important point, isn&#8217;t it? So there are many benefits that you can list. You know, it&#8217;s quick, it&#8217;s secure, it&#8217;s affordable. But there&#8217;s also a few little additional hurdles. You have to in some way manage search. In some way manage 404, and forms and so on. And, it sounds like the industry around static website hosting is beginning to mature to the point where there are off the peg solutions.</p>



<p>So you mentioned Netlify can configure it so that 404 is taken care of. You don&#8217;t need to necessarily manage that yourself. And again, you mentioned a SaaS service, which will deliver forms to your email address. And I&#8217;ve had a little bit of a play with Formspark, and in all honesty, it was trivially simple to stick up a form and get it sending the data that was consumed by that form to my, my email address, it only took a matter of moments. It was really good.</p>



<p>So, what we&#8217;ve talked about there is what a static site is. And because you&#8217;re on the podcast, it&#8217;s clear that you&#8217;re into that area and in fact, you&#8217;ve got a solution to turn a WordPress website into a static website. It&#8217;s called Simply Static. I&#8217;ll link to both the paid version and we&#8217;ll go into the differences a little bit later, but I&#8217;ll also link to the WordPress repository version, which will get you certainly going. Tell us what simply statics approach is. What is it doing? How long have you been working on it? Is this yours? Did you take it over from somebody? Just give us the rundown of what is Simply Static.</p>



<p>[00:21:46] Patrick Posner: So Simply Static is a static site generator as a WordPress plugin. It basically acts like Google or a regular user. So, once you start an export within Simply Static, there&#8217;s a crawler behind it that visits each page on your website and downloads the entire HTML rendered, and all the CSS files, JavaScript files, and of course all the images.</p>



<p>And, at the end, it zips the entire results. So you can use it to upload it, for example, to Netlify. I adopted the plugin in 2020 from Scott Blaine, who does an incredible job putting together the initial version of Simply Static. I got in contact with Blaine due to the fact that I was a user of the Simply Static plugin, and I used it for a client website where we had problems that we hadn&#8217;t full control over the server configuration.</p>



<p>It was like a traditional hosting package. And the client booked a TV commercial and we expected a huge spike in traffic for that day, and we need a way to handle that. So nothing could be worse. And once TV commercial was out the landing page would simply get away. And so I would never restart again once TV commercial was on. So, I stumbled upon simply Static and it wasn&#8217;t working at that time, but I thought, okay, so working as a WordPress developer for like 12 years, I should be able to make it work.</p>



<p>And, I fixed the problems in like one or two hours and provided a patch and Scott implemented that one and we got in a little discussion about the future of Simply Static and he told me that he was having his third or false kid, I&#8217;m not really sure, and he don&#8217;t really have the time anymore to maintain or even extend Simply Static from now on.</p>



<p>And I thought, okay, so I&#8217;m working on my own products for like six years or seven years and I really, being a fan of complex products. So my other products like Password Protection or Secure File Transfer, it&#8217;s always something a little bit nerdy and I thought, okay, Simply Static is a pretty good fit for my existing portfolio, so why not taking it over and shipping all the patches, all the features people were requesting for years. And yeah, that was almost two years ago, or two and a half years ago, I&#8217;m not exactly sure. So that was the short history of how I get into Simply Static.</p>



<p>[00:24:31] Nathan Wrigley: Perfect. So you took it over and ever since 2020, it&#8217;s been under your stewardship. And you just described that when you click publish in the same way that Google go around the internet and capture what is on your webpage, they&#8217;re not literally, well, they probably are as well, but typically they&#8217;re not taking an image of what&#8217;s on your page, they&#8217;re looking at the source. So they&#8217;re looking at the HTML and any other things that might be attached via that HTML.</p>



<p>And essentially that&#8217;s what your plugin does. If you&#8217;ve got a brochure site, let&#8217;s say it&#8217;s got 10 pages. When you click the button in Simply Static.</p>



<p>[00:25:08] Patrick Posner: Generate.</p>



<p>[00:25:09] Nathan Wrigley: The generate button, thank you. Then it will scrape those 10 pages and put it into a zip file. That zip file, in the free version, you then take to a hosting provider and we keep talking about Netlify, so we may as well go with that. Take it to Netlify, upload it, and it&#8217;s then live, you&#8217;ve got your new iteration. So it&#8217;s a process of creating your WordPress website, saving things as you would normally, clicking generate, carrying the zip file over to Netlify, putting it over there, and then from that moment on the world, if you&#8217;ve got your DNS set up correctly, is looking at the flat html, the static HTML files, that simply Static has generated. Is that right?</p>



<p>[00:25:55] Patrick Posner: Correct.</p>



<p>[00:25:56] Nathan Wrigley: Perfect. How is the project going? You know, you&#8217;ve had it under your stewardship for a couple of years. It feels like static sites have become a bit of a hot topic. So I&#8217;m imagining that the plugin is experiencing growth.</p>



<p>[00:26:10] Patrick Posner: Yeah, so Simply Static had a huge growth within the last two years. We almost 4x&#8217;d amount of active installation. So at the moment I took over the development of Simply Static was like 10 K active installations. We are now reached 40 K active installations. One thing I&#8217;ve done on day one, as I took over Simply Static and the GitHub repository was switching it to public.</p>



<p>So it&#8217;s really a community driven project. You can always check the entire code base on github.com/simplystatic. And, you will find a little roadmap. You find issues we are working on. You can provide pull requests. Or you can make suggestions for new integrations or things that may not be working as expected.</p>



<p>So we had that case with Elementor last week where Simply Static isn&#8217;t able to extract the bundled js that Elementor is generating to improve the performance. And we handle all of that, try to be as open as possible about the future of Simply Static. How things are going. Which direction we are going. Why I do things the way I do.</p>



<p>So, for example, the crawling part, there are other solutions that do it more in a WordPress way. So they fetch all the custom post types and the generated archives and things like that. And it&#8217;s a valid approach, but I thought SEO is such a popular thing today and why not work as close as Google as possible to give an expected result once you generate a static website.</p>



<p>So see it through the eyes of Google, and the eyes of your users and make sure your content is linked properly. You are having valid URLs. You are not having a bunch of 404 errors on your website. All of that is things Simply Static is taking care of to make the export as easy as possible.</p>



<p>[00:28:17] Nathan Wrigley: It&#8217;s interesting because you and I are both obviously deeply embedded in the WordPress community. We love it and we probably obsess about WordPress more than is healthy for us. But a typical, I&#8217;m plucking this out of thin air, but I&#8217;m imagining there&#8217;s some truth in what I&#8217;m about to say.</p>



<p>I would imagine a significant proportion of implementations of WordPress could really benefit from being static. And what I mean by that is, they are literally a site which is not really getting updated. It was built for let&#8217;s say a small business. And, that small business, they just need an internet presence. They need to be out there. They need a contact form. They need some description of what it is that they offer. Something fairly straightforward.</p>



<p>The users of that, there&#8217;s a possibility that they don&#8217;t want the burden, because the internet is not what they do for a living. They don&#8217;t want the burden of having to renew licenses. They don&#8217;t want the burden for having to update plugins. They don&#8217;t want the burden for updating WordPress when it reaches the next version and so on. And I suppose in a sense, your solution kind of obviates that a little bit, because you don&#8217;t really, now, forgive me for saying this, because everybody will probably shoot me down for this.</p>



<p>The site would still be secure, serviceable, workable even if you didn&#8217;t do all of the updates. So long as when you save it and generate your file, even if you&#8217;re on a really, really old version of WordPress, so long as the HTML that comes out the other end is valid and works, you are fine..</p>



<p>[00:29:52] Patrick Posner: Yeah, absolutely. So one thing I keep saying to, a lot of users and customers is, let&#8217;s take WordPress offline in a good way. So we can use WordPress as one of the best tools to create a website. That can be on your local computer, on a protected environment, somewhere hosted. And can be sure that the results exported statically is still secure.</p>



<p>Even if you don&#8217;t update or you don&#8217;t update your plugins regularly, you don&#8217;t update WordPress each time. You may not even update your theme out of a fear that it may break something. And all of that is covered by Simply Static due to the conversion. So use WordPress as a powerful editor for your website and use Simply Static to have peace of mind that your website is fast and secure even if you don&#8217;t get that much involvement in the WordPress world and you are always on track on all the security vulnerability reports and what&#8217;s new on Google page speed and all of those things.</p>



<p>[00:30:59] Nathan Wrigley: It&#8217;s, really interesting. I&#8217;m just thinking about appliances in my kitchen. So an example would be my dishwasher. I don&#8217;t want my dishwasher to be on when there&#8217;s no dishes that need cleaning. It just needs to be off. Turn it off, then periodically go back to it and when it needs it, switch it on. And then once it&#8217;s done, switch it off again. It&#8217;s the same sort of principle here, isn&#8217;t it?</p>



<p>WordPress, as on off-able. You switch it interact with it, publish the changes, get the changes onto the hosting in some way, and we&#8217;ll talk about the different methods in a moment, and then turn it off again, and remove any of the things that WordPress being switched on all the time may bring with it. Yeah, so I really like your description of it there.</p>



<p>Now, just moving the subject forwards a little bit. Static sites, I feel that the word static sites and headless are being used a lot at the minute. And in many cases there may be confusion that these are in fact the same thing, that a static site that we are talking about today is the same as headless.</p>



<p>Now it&#8217;s not really true, and I wonder if you could describe the differences. We could really go into the weeds here, but I don&#8217;t think we&#8217;ve probably got time for that. So a simple description of how they differ would be good.</p>



<p>[00:32:11] Patrick Posner: I think simple is the best way to describe the difference between headless and static websites. So a headless website is more like a technical challenge. You usually have your WordPress website online somewhere all the time when you run a headless setup. The headless website continuously makes use of the REST API for WordPress to fetch content. To submit forms. To do all of dynamic stuff, but with JavaScript and not with PHP.</p>



<p>And, one of the problems with headless website is that you almost ever need to be a developer or you have a developer maintaining your headless website. And that&#8217;s not the case with static websites due to the static generation, you can be pretty much anyone, and use the benefits a headless site offers without the technical challenges involved.</p>



<p>And you can even use, and that&#8217;s a huge point for a lot of people, use your existing theme. So headless websites tend to be built from scratch, mostly in an enterprise context, and the theme is built with JavaScript and a modern JAMstack. So things like React are involved, Next.js, just to name a few of the tools involved in the stack.</p>



<p>And they are complex and far away from end user friendly. A static website you use the tools you already know, but you get the benefits of a headless website. So the security improvement and the performance.</p>



<p>[00:33:44] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I think it&#8217;s important to say that both implementations, static and headless, they really do have benefits. There&#8217;s clearly benefits that you&#8217;ve described for static and clearly there&#8217;s benefits for the headless approach. And as you described, enterprise level clients, and the fact that they may have access on tap to developers is a possible requirement there. I mean, you may be an incredibly technical non-developer, but I would imagine that it&#8217;s true to say that static sites are a little bit more straightforward to implement.</p>



<p>Okay, with that in mind, let&#8217;s go through some examples of places where static sites are a good fit. And it is very important to say it&#8217;s not always the case. There is definitely going to be some examples where switching WordPress off is not what you want to do. So let&#8217;s do this in two ways. Let&#8217;s do the good first, let&#8217;s have some examples where being able to turn WordPress off using a static site is a good fit. Let&#8217;s do that first.</p>



<p>[00:34:46] Patrick Posner: Sure. So, a good fit for a static WordPress website is a corporate website. It&#8217;s the most basic example. So yeah, traditional WordPress website for your plumbing service or whatever you do for a living. These sites are a perfect case for static sites. They rarely change. They don&#8217;t have any highly dynamic interaction with the WordPress website. You export them, leave them online, and that&#8217;s all you need.</p>



<p>Another good example are blogs. So you can serve your entire blog as a static website and use little tricks to make something like comments work. So there are a bunch of tools and they are not that expensive to make comments work on your static website. You can publish new articles quite easily with Simply Static. So that&#8217;s a good case too.</p>



<p>There are more specific types of websites that are also good fit. Think of documentation websites, where you add or improve the copy of the documentation, but you rarely switch the entire design, for example, for a documentation website.</p>



<p>Another good fit are landing pages or lead generation websites. Think of AdWords landing pages or just an SEO landing page optimized for a specific keyword. Those pages are mostly small, so the static export is quite fast. And you don&#8217;t have to worry about updates or is my lead generation form working and all of that.</p>



<p>Another thing that is often offloaded from the traditional website, and is more common in an enterprise context are career and department websites. So you have a separated career portal for all the jobs you are offering or you&#8217;re planning to offer to start a new department. And these pages are often separated from the main website. So like department-x.my domain.com, for example.</p>



<p>[00:36:45] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, perfect. So essentially what we&#8217;re saying there is, if the site is more or less static, then it&#8217;s a definite fit. So a corporate website. But even if it&#8217;s being modified, not necessarily being modified every few moments, then a blog for example. This is perfect. So all of those scenarios are a perfect fit. If you can say that you&#8217;re going to modify it not every moment of every day, then it seems to be a good fit.</p>



<p>But that leads us onto the areas where potentially it&#8217;s not a good fit. And really this is where the dynamic stuff comes in. Any website which needs access to the database because it&#8217;s doing database intensive queries, that&#8217;s probably the area where it&#8217;s not such a good fit. So let&#8217;s go into the not good fits then.</p>



<p>[00:37:30] Patrick Posner: So what the dynamic is key here. So there are a bunch of types of websites that obviously aren&#8217;t a good fit for a static website. The most common one is eCommerce websites. So think of WooCommerce as the most popular eCommerce solution for WordPress. You don&#8217;t really want to run a WooCommerce store as a static website. People need to be able to add things to their cart. They need to be able to log in to their customer account to download invoices or review their orders, and all of such things. I mean, you can do that with a static website, but it&#8217;s really a challenging part and you don&#8217;t want to do that.</p>



<p>Another common thing, especially in the last couple of years are membership or community websites. So all kind of websites that really are highly interactive. People commenting. People sharing. There are subtypes of that like, forums or you even use like BuddyPress to have your own little social media space or corporate intranet where people discussing topics and you don&#8217;t really have a control over the publishing. There are a lot of users, high interactivity. It wouldn&#8217;t just make sense to publish a static version of a forum thread each time someone submits a new reply to it.</p>



<p>[00:38:48] Nathan Wrigley: You imagine things like LMSs and e-commerce websites, where more or less everything that the end user wishes to do involves sucking something out of the database. So yeah, I can see why those scenarios won&#8217;t work. So that&#8217;s a nice clear definition. There&#8217;s definitely good fits here and there&#8217;s areas where, yeah, you probably could make it fit, but really, at that point you&#8217;re probably needing to really push the boundaries a little bit.</p>



<p>In terms of the product that you&#8217;ve got, so Simply Static,. You have a version on the WordPress repo, but you also have a paid version. Typical case is, if there&#8217;s a paid version, there&#8217;s probably some extra features. Would you just like to outline the difference between what you have to do with the free version and what you can do. We&#8217;re recording this at the beginning of 2023, so caveat emptor, things may change, but at this moment in time, what&#8217;s the difference between the two different products that you offer?</p>



<p>[00:39:44] Patrick Posner: Sure, happy to clarify that. So, Simply Static Pro works kind of like an add-on to Simply Static. And, the major difference is the convenience and the amount of automation provided. So while you can use Simply Static in the free version to generate a static version of your website, getting a zip and uploading it to Netlify. Simply Static Pro offers automation.</p>



<p>That means you can connect Netlify directly, or you can connect services like Bunny CDN directly. And you don&#8217;t even need to log into Netlify to publish a static version. You can just simply use the generate button. And once you set up the configuration, everything is automated. So you generate the website and the files are automatically transferred to Netlify.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s also a point of convenience in the ability to export subsets of your website. So you do a full static export at the start and you have your website running on Netlify and you just want to publish a new post. Or you want to export a collection of pages with their images based on a taxonomy, for example. This is where also Simply Static provides additional features, like single exports and build exports. Build exports, work like a taxonomy. You attach posts, pages, images, additional files, and you can export the entire subset with a simple click of a button. These are two of the main reasons people are using Simply Static Pro.</p>



<p>Another thing is the idea to avoid external services as much as possible. That&#8217;s why Simply Static Pro&#8217;s also shipping with a forms integration, for example. We&#8217;re currently supporting Contact Form 7 and Gravity Forms, but we also figured out ways to use Elementor forms or Formidable Forms and a bunch of others. To use them without a service like Formspark we mentioned earlier.</p>



<p>The idea is that your WordPress website is on a protected area and Simply Static Pro is forwarding the requests from your static website to your dynamic WordPress website by authenticating and submitting it back to WordPress and receiving the request on the static website with JavaScript, where I have a similar approach with the built in search integration.</p>



<p>So Simply Static Pro ships with two different tools to make search work. One is fuse.js. It&#8217;s basically dependency-less JavaScript solution for search. We&#8217;re building json file, it&#8217;s a physical file on your server that contains all the search results that are available as content on your website.</p>



<p>We&#8217;re fetching the titles, the description, and the complete, the full HTML content of each page. Storing that on a physical file and once a user starts typing the search, there is a auto complete feature suggesting results. User clicks on it and the search integration handles a redirection to the correct page.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s another integration with Algolia. Algolia is a paid service. It&#8217;s like an online search solution, which is quite powerful as they handle fuzzy search and synonyms for you or typo tolerance search. So if someone types in a keyword of a typo, Algolia makes sure that he still finds the correct content.</p>



<p>But in the end it works the same way. The major difference here is that Fuse.js has a physical file, which I wouldn&#8217;t recommend for a pretty huge website, but it&#8217;s fine for a standard website. So if you have like a simple corporate website, you can feel free to use Fuse.Js. But if you have like 150 K pages corporate website, I wouldn&#8217;t recommend Fuse.Js as a json file. I mean, you can imagine that the json file is adding up in size pretty quickly if you have 100,000 results stored in there.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s where Algolia comes into play. Algolia is also really cheap. So you pay nothing for like 10 K searches per month and I don&#8217;t know, $2 for an additional 10 K search results. So it&#8217;s not a huge cost attached to your static site overall cost.</p>



<p>[00:44:14] Nathan Wrigley: The number one thing that I take away from that is the pro versions really is adding, for the typical user, it&#8217;ll be adding convenience. The ability to, if you like, sync your WordPress website with wherever it&#8217;s hosted. So rather than having to download a file, take it over and upload it, you just click a button and the plugin takes care of that. Makes a decision about what it is that needs to pushed over and so on. So, yeah that&#8217;s really interesting.</p>



<p>Patrick, we&#8217;re running out of time, but just very briefly, last question really is all about the future. You&#8217;ve obviously had experience of this now for two years. It sounds like you&#8217;re in it for the long haul. What have you got in the pipeline? What&#8217;s on the roadmap for the next period of time?</p>



<p>[00:44:56] Patrick Posner: Yeah, so I just finished the roadmap for this year for Simply Static. So a bunch of things planned. One thing I&#8217;ll be launching simplystatic.com next month? Yeah, I think it will be next month. And it will contain all information collected for Simply Static and Simply Static Pro. All tutorials, a free course on how to use WordPress as a static site generator that I&#8217;m just in the middle of the production phase.</p>



<p>We&#8217;ll also improve the onboarding for new developers and optimizing the way of contribution on GitHub. That means writing guides, how to contribute, offering documentation, how the code style is working, and what we expect from a commit or pull request. Offering a bunch of new issues to pick from. I got quite a lot of inspiration from the WordPress project itself. So you can imagine finding things like good first issue. In the future on the GitHub repository of Simply Static.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s also a huge relaunch plan for the entire admin area of Simply Static. I&#8217;m already six month in a new ui ux concept for Simply Static. I try to completely modernize the look and the feeling of Simply Static and the configuration, and simplify a lot of the those things to make it easier for end users to use Simply Static, and get all the benefits without knowing about what is GitHub or what is deployment or things like that.</p>



<p>So, easier wording, easier configuration. A little wizard that asks a couple of questions and preconfigures Simply Static for you, to make it as easy as possible. There&#8217;s also an ongoing task that we have pretty much like every WordPress plugin out there. So we like to improve the integration with popular plugins like Elementor, SEO plugins.</p>



<p>This week we just shipped a huge update for the Simply Static free version. That contains an automation for XML site maps. So we automatically check which SEO plugin you use, finds the XML site map and add it to the static export so you don&#8217;t have to even know that you have a XML site maps, as long as you have a SEO plugin installed and basically configured, Simply Static will now be able to pass the XML sitemap and extract all URLs provided there.</p>



<p>We&#8217;re also planning to build an official integration with the really popular Autoptimize plugin, make the HTML, CSS minification and bundlings that Autoptimize offers work with Simply Static without any additional configuration.</p>



<p>[00:47:38] Nathan Wrigley: Sounds like there&#8217;s a lot.</p>



<p>[00:47:40] Patrick Posner: I&#8217;m always planning a lot, but I also onboarding new people to the team. So, there&#8217;s a developer helping me right now with the Simply Static tasks and I may be able to onboard an additional developer, or maybe if someone is willing to lose the job, someone helping with support.</p>



<p>Feel free to reach out if you are a technical person and maybe not a developer, and you would like to help with customer support for Simply Static. So I would really appreciate it.</p>



<p>[00:48:10] Nathan Wrigley: Perfect segue Patrick, because the final question I want to ask is how do people contact you? Where are you online? That could be anything you like, an email address, obviously your contact form page on your website, but Twitter handle. Whatever you like.</p>



<p>[00:48:23] Patrick Posner: Yeah, so patrickposner.dev is my website. You find all the information about Simply Static and Simply Static Pro here. And you can always reach out to me at hello@patrickposner.dev. I&#8217;m also quite active on Twitter, so @patrickposner_. Don&#8217;t ask me why there&#8217;s an underscore. That&#8217;s the two best ways to reach out to me.</p>



<p>[00:48:47] Nathan Wrigley: Patrick Posner, thank you very much for chatting to me on the podcast today. I really appreciate it.</p>



<p>[00:48:52] Patrick Posner: Thanks for having me.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today, we have <a href="https://patrickposner.dev/">Patrick Posner</a>.</p>



<p>Patrick is a solopreneur and has been developing with WordPress since 2010. He’s worked in many environments, as a freelancer, a senior developer in a WordPress product company, and since 2020 he’s been working full time on his own projects.</p>



<p>One of his projects is a plugin called <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-static/">Simply Static</a>. Its purpose is to make a static version of your website. This, of course, begs the question, what is a static site?</p>



<p>Back in the early days of the internet, before WordPress, if you wanted to put a website online, you had to write the HTML yourself. You opened up a text editor and started to type. When you’d finished, you had an HTML file which you uploaded to a server somewhere, and if someone wanted to view that page, the server would send over that file. It worked, but, thankfully, it didn’t stay that way for long.</p>



<p>Software for desktops were developed which would create the HTML for you. CMSs such as WordPress would take this further and create the HTML and CSS based upon the content you’d created and theme that was active.</p>



<p>This was extremely convenient, but when all is said and done, the output is still the same as it was years ago, HTML, CSS and possibly some JavaScript.</p>



<p>Depending upon your setup in WordPress, quite a lot of complicated operations are needed to generate that code. Caching aside, is there a case for saving your HTML files, uploading them to a server and then taking WordPress offline? Patrick certainly seems to think so.</p>



<p>We talk about how this flattening of your website takes place, and what the advantages might be in terms of speed and the cost of hosting.</p>



<p>We also get into the pros and cons of adopting the static site approach. Are there sites which are more suited to being static than others?</p>



<p>We also discuss what solutions are out there to make this happen, from Patrick’s own plugin to the hosting providers and SaaS solutions, which enable things like search and forms to still function.</p>



<p>It’s a really interesting subject and one that you might like to explore, and this podcast is a great primer for that.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links.</h2>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-static/">Simply Static plugin on the WordPress repo</a></p>



<p><a href="https://patrickposner.dev/plugins/simply-static/">Simply Static Pro website</a></p>



<p><a href="https://patrickposner.dev/">patrickposner.dev website</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.netlify.com/">Netlify</a></p>



<p><a href="https://pages.github.com/">GitHub Pages</a></p>



<p><a href="https://localwp.com/">LocalWP</a></p>



<p><a href="https://pages.cloudflare.com/">Cloudflare Pages</a></p>



<p><a href="https://formspark.io/">Formspark</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.mailpoet.com/">MailPoet</a></p>



<p><a href="https://bunny.net/cdn/">Bunny CDN</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/">Contact Form 7</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.gravityforms.com/">Gravity Forms</a></p>



<p><a href="https://elementor.com/">Elementor</a></p>



<p><a href="https://formidableforms.com/">Formidable Forms</a></p>



<p><a href="https://fusejs.io/">Fuse.js</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.algolia.com/">Algolia</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/autoptimize/">Autoptimze</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 22 Feb 2023 15:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:44;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:123:"WPTavern: New Proposal Seeks to Update WordPress Release Process for Merging Gutenberg Features After Beta 1 Feature Freeze";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142157";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:134:"https://wptavern.com/new-proposal-seeks-to-update-wordpress-release-process-for-merging-gutenberg-features-after-beta-1-feature-freeze";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6372:"<p>WordPress lead developer Andrew Ozz has published a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/18/proposal-updates-to-the-wordpress-release-cycle/">proposal</a> for the addition of a new &#8220;gutenberg-merge&#8221; ticket type that would formalize the latitude Gutenberg contributors have been given for committing code after Feature Freeze during the release cycle.</p>



<p>Ordinarily, any new features and enhancements landing in the release are required to be committed before Beta 1 so they can be ready for testing. It used to be the case that tickets could be changed from “enhancement” to “task” right before Beta 1 as a rare exception for items that were not ready in time for beta and just needed a few more days to get committed. </p>



<p>&#8220;The intent was to allow another two or three days, not a week or two,&#8221; Ozz said. &#8220;This exception used to happen quite rarely, perhaps a few times per year.</p>



<p>&#8220;However lately this exception has become part of the standard release workflow. In recent years, it’s become common for 15 to 20 tickets for code coming from Gutenberg to be changed to tasks each release. The reason they are changed is not to give the developers a few more days to complete them. It is mostly to signify that they are going to be committed later.&#8221;</p>



<p>Ozz contends that because the Gutenberg feature plugin is used on more than 300,000 site, including WordPress.com, and because 60% of users rapidly update to the latest version, that any features and enhancements coming from Gutenberg have already been tested.</p>



<p>The comment section of the proposal is active with differing opinions. Several participants in the discussion did not agree that just because features are in the plugin does not mean that they have been adequately tested against the goals they were intended to achieve.</p>



<p>&#8220;Something that worries me about how this could work is, that currently the level of documentation for features that land in core have a higher standard than Gutenberg merges,&#8221; Core contributor Fabian Kägy said. &#8220;Once we approach the beta 1 time the documentation team goes through all the features that were merged in that cycle, making sure there are dev notes for any changes that might impact users / developers. If this deadline is shortened this also means that it may become harder to uphold this standard.&#8221;</p>



<p>Kägy also noted the challenges of plugin and theme developers testing their extensions against core in order to ensure compatibility with the latest version.</p>



<p>&#8220;With this changed workflow the actual amount of time where you know with a pretty large likelihood what features will be part of a given core release becomes shorter, making it more difficult to ensure compatibly with a release in time of the release,&#8221; Kägy said.</p>



<p>Core contributor Peter Wilson <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/18/proposal-updates-to-the-wordpress-release-cycle/#comment-44390">outlined</a> two concerns with the proposal: </p>



<ul>
<li>by treating&nbsp;Gutenberg&nbsp;as a special case, it will increase the&nbsp;conflict&nbsp;between those who primarily work in the WordPress-Develop repository and those who primarily work in the Gutenberg repository,</li>



<li>bypassing the feature freeze requirements for the editor goes against the contention that <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/08/18/wordpress-development-setup/">Core is Gutenberg and Gutenberg is Core</a>.</li>
</ul>



<p>Wilson said the late merging of Gutenberg features has &#8220;been a source of conflict for several years.&#8221;</p>



<p>&#8220;Bulk merges of Gutenberg features late in the cycle have also been an issue <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/11/25/devchat-after-the-hour-november-20/">reported from both those who work primarily in the Gutenberg repo and those who work primarily in the WordPress-Develop repo</a>,&#8221; he said. &#8220;For years incremental merges during the cycle have been advocated but never achieved per the comments in the linked post.&#8221;</p>



<p>Wilson also disagrees with the proposal&#8217;s assertion that features developed in the Gutenberg repository are better tested in the feature plugin, as the goal of the Beta and RC periods are to test the release as a whole.</p>



<p>&#8220;With Gutenberg as a plugin <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/blob/cc497909ef1deb51c5bc4d6d43f334131bf31194/lib/blocks.php">replacing core blocks with the plugin’s versions</a>, testing the release as a whole doesn’t happen until after the editor changes merged in to WordPress-Develop,&#8221; Wilson said.</p>



<p>&#8220;It’s only once Gutenberg is merged in to WordPress-Develop that the unit tests start running on various <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/test-results/">hosting providers running the test suite</a> in a range of environments.&#8221;</p>



<p>WordPress Core Committer Joe McGill encouraged the proposal&#8217;s authors to <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/18/proposal-updates-to-the-wordpress-release-cycle/#comment-44400">elaborate on the policies and expectations</a> that will be applied to committing patches to tickets designated with the new ticket type. </p>



<p>&#8220;For example, should all of these commits be completed before RC-1, unless a bug is discovered during the RC period—and only the fixes discovered be committed, or are there other rules in play?&#8221; McGill said. &#8220;Personally, I still think that we should aim to have code for any major new feature merged before the Beta-1 milestone, regardless of whether it’s being tested in the Gutenberg plugin or not.&#8221;</p>



<p>The discussion is ongoing in the comments of the proposal. Although the proposed changes primarily affect core contributors, committers, and release leads, they also impact testers and WordPress&#8217; plugin and theme developer community working to ensure compatibility ahead of a major release. Those who have feedback on how Gutenberg features are handled during and after &#8220;feature freeze&#8221; should jump in on the comments of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/18/proposal-updates-to-the-wordpress-release-cycle/">proposal</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 21 Feb 2023 22:44:25 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:45;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65:"Do The Woo Community: Regulated Cryptopayments with Jonathan Wood";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=74490";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:45:"https://dothewoo.io/regulated-cryptopayments/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:404:"<p>Kathy, Brad and Dave chat with Jonathan Wood from HAYVN chat about crypto payments and regulatory, two words you don't hear often together.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/regulated-cryptopayments/">Regulated Cryptopayments with Jonathan Wood</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 21 Feb 2023 09:12:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:83:"WPTavern: Meetup.com Follows Through on Commitment to Improve Website Accessibility";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142142";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"https://wptavern.com/meetup-com-follows-through-on-commitment-to-improve-website-accessibility";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2385:"<p>In November 2022, Meetup.com raised concerns with the WordPress community (and the broader community of accessibility professionals) after it <a href="https://wptavern.com/meetup-com-raises-concerns-with-new-accessibility-overlay">added an accessibility overlay</a> to its website, powered by <a href="https://www.equalweb.com/html5/?_id=8591&did=1116&_gid=202027&trace=equalweb_menu_en_">EqualWeb</a>. Accessibility advocates and professionals unequivocally discourage the use of overlays as they are often marketed as a quick fix for making websites ADA compliant and immune from legal action when the accessibility issues persist underneath.</p>



<p>Meetup.com <a href="https://wptavern.com/meetup-com-removes-accessibility-overlay-in-response-to-wordpress-communitys-concerns">removed the accessibility overlay</a> in response to the WordPress community’s concerns and committed to focus on direct improvements to the Meetup.com platform. WordPress&#8217; Accessibility team <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/02/17/meetup-com-accessibility-overlay-february-update/#respond">reports</a> that the company is following through with this undertaking and has completed an assessment with <a href="https://www.deque.com/">Deque</a>, a well-respected accessibility consultancy.</p>



<p>The assessment identified 732 issues that need to be resolved, which Meetup.com plans to address through two phases. Approximately 40% of the issues are related to design and color contrast. These will be resolved in the first phase with the help of an external consultant who will guide Meetup.com&#8217;s engineers and staff to fix issues and ensure ongoing compliance. In the second phase, the company will tackle the remaining issues which center on web remediation. These include problems with the site&#8217;s component library and website components. </p>



<p>Meetup.com serves approximately <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/meetup/technology">24 million visitors</a> every month in more than 190 countries. The WordPress project uses the platform for local meetups and educational events &#8211; both virtual and in-person. As a result of WordPress&#8217; diplomatic advocacy and Meetup.com&#8217;s reception to user feedback, the platform will soon provide a better experience for people with disabilities and those who use assistive technology.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 17 Feb 2023 22:57:57 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"WPTavern: WordCamp London In Early Planning Stages for September 2023";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=142125";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"https://wptavern.com/wordcamp-london-in-early-planning-stages-for-september-2023";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2131:"<p>The organizers of WordCamp London are in the <a href="https://twitter.com/WordCampLondon/status/1626199074876624897">early planning stages</a> for an event that would take place in September 2023. It has been nearly four years since London hosted a WordCamp. The event was cancelled in 2020 and scheduling was not resumed until recently.</p>



<p>Organizers have created a <a href="https://wclondon.crowdsignal.net/delivering-wordcamp-london-2023-1a72">survey</a> that respondents can take anonymously in approximately 2-3 minutes. The questions were created to help them know how to shape the event. In 2019, <a href="https://london.wordcamp.org/2019/">WordCamp London brought in 768 attendees</a> and sessions were livestreamed for the first time. Organizers are asking how many people attendees would like to see at WordCamp London, with options ranging from fewer than 400 to more than 800. A few popular WordCamps in recent years have elected to keep a smaller number of spots available in order to better manage uncertainties and ensure a sold out event.</p>



<p>The survey also attempts to gauge potential attendees&#8217; preferences on the number of conference days, as well as interest in volunteering, organizing, sponsoring, or speaking at the event. There is an option at the end for respondents to leave their contact information to stay in the loop on opportunities to participate in and support the WordCamp.</p>



<p>For many in Europe, and especially the UK, WordCamp London was their first WordCamp experience. Those interested to attend can <a href="https://london.wordcamp.org/2023/">sign up for updates</a> on the placeholder website, or follow the camp on <a href="https://twitter.com/WordCampLondon">Twitter</a> or <a href="https://connected.so/@WordCampLondon">Mastodon</a>. For those in the local area, the WordPress London Meetup has opened <a href="https://www.meetup.com/london-wordpress/events/291658618/">registration</a> for this month&#8217;s gathering at The Liberty Bounds. They plan to discuss WordCamp London and reconnect and will resume having speakers and pizza at future events. </p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 17 Feb 2023 21:41:31 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:48;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"WordCamp Central: WooCommerce sponsors WordPress community events across the globe";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=3161236";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2023/02/woocommerce-sponsors-wordpress-community-events-worldwide/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1615:"<p>We’re very grateful to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.woothemes.com/woocommerce/">WooCommerce</a> for&nbsp;<a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/global-community-sponsors/">sponsoring WordPress community events all around the world</a>&nbsp;at the Bronze level again in 2023! WooCommerce’s support helps make local community events (like WordPress meetup groups and WordCamps) better for WordPress enthusiasts and easier to organize for our wonderful group of hardworking volunteers.</p>



<a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2019/03/Copy-of-woocommerce-logo-color-black@2x-2.png"><img /></a>



<p>WooCommerce is a customizable, open-source eCommerce platform built on WordPress.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Sell anything online with the flexibility and freedom of the world’s most popular CMS.</p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/stats/">4+ million active installations</a></li>



<li>55+ million downloads</li>



<li>450+ extensions to add and extend functionality</li>
</ul>



<p>Whether you’re selling a few handcrafted items to a niche market, taking an existing business online, or going global with an enterprise-level eCommerce business WooCommerce gets you set up and selling fast, scaling securely as you grow.</p>



<p>Your content is forever yours and customizable down to the button color. Plus you’re joining a supportive, <a href="https://woocommerce.com/meetups/">global community</a> of developers and store owners.</p>



<p>Developed and supported by a distributed team, WooCommerce is powered by Automattic, the creators of Jetpack and WordPress.com.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 17 Feb 2023 15:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6:"Isotta";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:49;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:111:"Post Status: Product People Arnas Donauskas, Web Hosting Product Owner at Hostinger  — Post Status Draft 141";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=147310";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:115:"https://poststatus.com/product-people-arnas-donauskas-web-hosting-product-owner-at-hostinger-post-status-draft-141/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:38855:"<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-group eplus-wrapper has-theme-palette-2-color has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-text-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><div class="wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">Arnas Donauskas, Web Hosting Product Owner at <a href="https://www.hostinger.com/">Hostinger</a>, joins Cory Miller to discuss his WordPress product. Arnas leveraged his experience in customer success and UX research to transition into owning a WordPress product. </p></div>


<div class="wp-block-spacer eplus-wrapper"></div>



<p class="yoast-reading-time__wrapper"><span class="yoast-reading-time__icon"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__spacer"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__descriptive-text">Estimated reading time:  </span><span class="yoast-reading-time__reading-time">3</span><span class="yoast-reading-time__time-unit"> minutes</span></p>
</div></div>







<p><a href="https://poststatus.com/planet/feed/#h-transcript">Transcript</a> ↓</p>



<p>In this episode, Cory Miller and Arnas Donauskas, Web Hosting Product Owner at&nbsp; <a href="https://www.hostinger.com/">Hostinger</a>, talk about what it means to truly value customer obsession. This core value has shaped Arnas’ career path, from his roots in customer service to creating products to provide simple website restoration and security for principal vulnerabilities.</p>



<p><strong>Top Takeaways:</strong></p>



<ul>
<li><strong>Customer Obsession. </strong>Users are facing daily challenges that need real-time solutions. Think about their problems. Value their feedback. Sometimes clients are limited because we haven’t kept up with the speed of evolving technology. Approaching things from a user perspective to prioritize and build products creates optimal impact.</li>



<li><strong>Removing Manual Work. </strong>Wherever possible, we are working to automate things to provide more easy buttons for clients. Automating things, creating single-click solutions, and providing the best examples and guidance to reduce users' steps to accomplish tasks.</li>



<li><strong>Possibilities with AI. </strong>Everyone is eager to see how AI will change the industry. Cory and Arnas discuss the potential opportunities AI creates to build even better products in the future.</li>
</ul>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div>



<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<div class="is-layout-flex wp-container-46 wp-block-columns sponsor has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background" id="StellarWP">
<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-column">
<h3 class="StellarWP has-theme-palette-1-color has-text-color" id="Sponsor"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="🙏" class="wp-smiley" /> Sponsor: <span><a href="https://poststat.us/elementor" rel="sponsored nofollow">Elementor</a></span></h3>



<p><strong>Elementor </strong>enables web creators to build professional, pixel-perfect websites with an intuitive visual builder. Quickly create amazing websites for your clients or your business with complete control over every piece, without writing a single line of code. Join <a href="https://elementor.com/community/">a vast community of web creators</a> from all around the world who deliver exceptional websites using Elementor.</p>
</div>



<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-top"><div class="wp-block-image elementor-logo">
<img src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Elementor-Logo-Symbol-Blue-150x150.png" alt="Elementor" class="wp-image-104033" width="150" height="150" title="Elementor Logo" />Elementor</div></div>
</div>
</div></div>



<h3 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-mentioned-in-the-show"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f517.png" alt="🔗" class="wp-smiley" /> Mentioned in the show:</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/Hostinger">Hostinger</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.hostinger.com/">Hostinger Website</a></li>



<li><a href="https://ithemes.com/backupbuddy/">Backup Buddy</a></li>



<li><a href="https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/">Chat GPT</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/">Cloudflare</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-you-can-follow-post-status-and-our-guests-on-twitter"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png" alt="🐦" class="wp-smiley" /> You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:</h3>



<ul class="eplus-wrapper">
<li>Arnas Donauskas (Web Hosting Product Owner at&nbsp; <a href="https://twitter.com/Hostinger">Hostinger</a>)</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> (CEO, <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status">Post Status</a>)</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/lemonadecode">Olivia Bisset</a> (Intern, <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status">Post Status</a>)</li>
</ul>



<p class="eplus-wrapper has-background">The <strong>Post Status Draft</strong> podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4dd.png" alt="📝" class="wp-smiley" /><br /><br /><a href="https://poststatus.com/category/post-status-podcasts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Browse our archives</a>, and don’t forget to subscribe via <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/post-status-draft-wordpress/id976403008" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">iTunes</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8ySkU5c2M4UA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/PostStatus" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YouTube</a>, <a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/krogsgard/post-status-draft-wordpress-podcast" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://wordpress-post-status-draft-podcast.simplecast.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Simplecast</a>, or <a href="https://feeds.simplecast.com/2JE9sc8P">RSS</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f3a7.png" alt="🎧" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<h2 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-transcript">Transcript</h2>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> [00:00:00] Welcome to Post Status Draft. We've got another series in our product people interviews and I have a new friend named Anis from, uh, hosting her. We've been talking about Lithuania, where hosting is based and his beautiful full country. And tell him that I can't wait to visit sometime. But welcome to the post draft podcast artist.  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Hi Corey, and thanks for inviting me. Uh, it's been a pleasure being in this, you know, uh, uh, podcast and, uh, yeah. Uh, let's get started on that one. Right. Okay.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Um, so could you tell me what you do at hosting?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Uh, yeah, of course. So, uh, right now at hosting here, I'm a web hosting product owner. And, uh, yeah, this is the current troller I'm, uh, going with and I did had some previous roles in hosting her as well. And yeah, I, a short journey perhaps, uh, what I did [00:01:00] at, at hosting.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. Would you, would you tell me about, oh, well, let me ask you one question first. Yeah. Yeah. So when you say web product owner, that obviously, I'm sorry, web hosting product owner? Yeah, yeah, yeah.  </p>



<p>That, that includes WordPress. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. If there's more that you do in that role, or is it concentrated on WordPress?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Uh, so WordPress is only a part of what we do. Mm-hmm. , uh, but we cover everything that involves hosting, uh, all of the features of the hosting. Uh, basically whatever you have to do on hosting, this is our responsibility to manage it, um, develop it.  </p>



<p>Um, Any new features, perhaps, uh, clients feedback. Uh, clients want something new and uh, they find it really awesome to use it. Or perhaps clients face some kind of an issue with hosting and we see trouble over there and we want to assist clients. Um, this is our job, you know, to make it, uh, happen and deliver it to them.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Awesome. [00:02:00] Well, okay, before I get into WordPress, I'm, we're gonna geek out on WordPress and the WordPress product at Hosting Gear, but tell me your story. Where, how did you get here? You just mentioned you had been in a couple roles before the web hosting product owner at Hosting Gear. So how, how'd you get started in this and, and end up as the, uh, today as the product owner?  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Uh, yeah, of course. So everything started almost three years back. Uh, next month it, it'll be my three years anniversary. And, uh, I've started as a customer success specialist. I worked there for over a year and, uh, yeah, over the journey in the Success Special Specialist role, I noticed that I had, uh, Um, let's say I liked working towards website issues that clients came to us and they delivered their problems.  </p>



<p>And, uh, over time I got, you know, I naturally noticed that they are way more, uh, WordPress clients compared [00:03:00] to other platforms. And, uh, only later on in my future also understand by looking at the data directly, what's the actual difference in there? Cuz I didn't, you know, read something online in that time and, I over time board press, I guess, grew on me in the success, uh, specialist role.  </p>



<p>Uh, I did more digging in, you know, the plugins, what are the actual critical errors mean and how we can, you know, help clients fixing on them. And, uh, yeah, so I did that role, uh, for over a year and then I got an a job promotion opportunity. To be a UX researcher. What I did in that role is found out what our, what issues our clients had, uh, where they struggled using our services as a hosting provider, including the control panel they used every day, and the [00:04:00] services in general.  </p>



<p>Perhaps their site speed is slow and we have to find out what exactly their clients know dealing. And work on that. So yeah, as a UX researcher, that was my main role. And if we happen to, you know, design some something new, I would be that guy who's telling, okay, in here we must have this, this, this.  </p>



<p>Because our clients face the issues here daily and we want to address that part and, you know, make that happen and solve that. And after, you know, everything, we measured the numbers, how it helped for our users, perhaps we. Missed something releasing here or, uh, we should update something here. And yeah, we worked on that as well.  </p>



<p>And, uh, after the UX research role, I got offered a role as a product associate. Uh, so in for me, product associate is like a, a starter role of product owner, uh, [00:05:00] because you. Learning things that you are gonna do as a product owner. So they are prioritizing issues. Uh, for, uh, for developers, what we're gonna work on, what is the most important things for our client to get shipped as fast as possible.  </p>



<p>And everything is based on our client's needs, what they face daily. Uh, Know, seeing the bigger picture, checking online trends, what is happening in the industry? What is happening in the, the WordPress world? Uh, if something happens, uh, like let's say, uh, a random example, new AI drops that generates WordPress websites automatically, why we still don't have it?  </p>



<p>What's blocking us to delivering this to our clients? And uh, and uh, yeah, so when I worked in that role and gathered my experience as a product associate, I was, uh, offered to work as a product owner of web hosting that which includes WordPress and, [00:06:00] uh, yeah, working on the delivering features to our clients that, uh, means them the most, uh, that, uh, automates, uh, you know, Painful manual areas of set, setting up things for the website and yeah, in general, on the web, on the hosting platform, I see it in the way that I want to help and automate things as much as possible for our clients so they wouldn't have to deal with that struggle manually and doing everything by hand.  </p>



<p>Let's see. From that perspective,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I think that's the ideal, you know, if I could create an ideal path to being a product owner. It's that you spent your first career in customer success seen firsthand. That's the cutting edge of any software or hosting business because, um, for the first eight months of my tenure starting ithe, I did cus I did all of the customer support and success for our, our company.  </p>



<p>And that gave [00:07:00] me a bird's eye view. I mean, Really face-to-face view of the problems and what people were encountered when they're trying to get something done. So that's number one. I I love that that's where you got your start, because you're always gonna stay close and sensitive to the needs of the customer.  </p>



<p>And then second, you a you, you asked, I'm like, so I obsessed. Over the experience of a customer, what are other problems? And you found those often in the support. Anything that kind of hanged up, you're like, that's a problem that we can try to eliminate. And sometimes it's software code and sometimes it's, it's that UX and UI part, part of that.  </p>



<p>So I love that background leading to be a product owner because I think those are. Key experiences that make a good product owner, like a part of the whole mix make, cuz you see firsthand what people are trying to do and that knowledge and experience comes in and it gets baked into how you lead your team.  </p>



<p>So I, I love that background. [00:08:00] I.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> One thing I could add is that throughout this, you know, past experience, what really also helped out, you know, the product knowledge, if we had to like, collaborate with the teams, the, the developers to give them the feeling, how the users see it and how they use it, it really, you know, assisted in that area as well.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah. And, and I know hosting from T to Dominica, your ceo, cmo, and different people on your team at work camp past couple months, um, When there's people that say Customer obsession is our core value, but I hear it over and over authentically from everybody I talked to at Hozier and then knowing that the product owner came from that, like, you know,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> the best feedback always comes from the clients. That's why, you know, uh, we do have, I regularly have, uh, uh, interviews with the clients. Uh, just hearing what they have to say about the product, uh, the better they like it or don't [00:09:00] just, you know, uh, raw data from, directly from the user who tells it the best, what, what's their experience with our services.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Okay. Thank you for that background. I like to tell the human side of the story of the people leading the products that we use out there. Um, and that's what this series is all about. So that's why I stick there and like, who's the human behind leading the product? And thank you for sharing your journey there.  </p>



<p>Um, okay, now let's dig into product. Let's Geek Adam product. So, I love that you saw like naturally in the form, like so many people were talking about WordPress and that kinda led to this. So that form helps formulate your experience. But tell me about the product that you're leading now, um, at Hoer, um, related to WordPress.  </p>



<p>Um, what things are you excited about that you've done? Shapes or your experience and your team experience, and obviously the customers, but tell me some things that stick out a part of the.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Um, yeah, so [00:10:00] about the feature set that I'm really excited that we recently, uh, released would be, uh, one of the things that, uh, we directly bring to the clients is, uh, a simple website restoration.  </p>



<p>Uh, and it's, uh, Basically, uh, pre what we've improved, uh, uh, right now, users, workers users will not have to select any files and database they have to restore. The only thing they have to select is data. Uh, what we remove, what we wanted to remove here is the struggle, selecting files and database separately.  </p>



<p>And yeah, we just wanted, you know, uh, just select the date. If you, uh, remember, you know, the, the working one, no, if you don't, no worries. You can just restore the, another one as we save quite a few of the, of the backups, uh, on our services. And yeah, all of the processes are fully automatic. After that, you just click restore and that, that's that.  </p>



<p>And, um,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I, I think that's, uh, before you go on, I think that is, is [00:11:00] really awesome that that's the first one you listed because we've all been there where we break a site doing something or something's, some event is happening in scrambling and, and I think we had a plugin call back buddy, so I know this subject really well.  </p>



<p>It's like, and I've been there where you, you break something and you just wanna roll back the change without having to go into all these. Processes and stuff. And then the facts of the web is something's gonna happen. It's the web, it's tech, it's something's gonna happen. But being able to go to a date and time and restoring, I think is so critical.  </p>



<p>It's that classic un, you know, uh, command Z undo function. It's like I can go back to my timeline and restore it.  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Yeah, exactly. And, you know, uh, we want to, I always try to put, you know, myself in the client's shoes, what I, I would have to do. And, you know, that, uh, I want to restore it as fast as possible.  </p>



<p>And you know, in the, in the brief moment when something happened to my website, I site tried to search it, the, [00:12:00] the root issue as fast as possible. If I can't, I go restore the site and, uh, yeah. Uh, That in that moment, selecting correct files and database could, you know, be crucial. So why just don't move that step and just allowing users to select database in that uh, date.  </p>



<p>And that's all.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> We've all been there where we've, uh, installed a new plugin or upgraded plugin and it's broken things and being able to have that easy undo button with their restore is so critical. So thank you for sharing number one. Cause I think that's something I wanted to highlight. I know. Process.  </p>



<p>And most of us that do web work with WordPress understand this too, is like something's gonna happen where you're gonna have to back it up. So, okay. Re restoration process. Uh, what's, what's another, uh,  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> another one is in a bit of difference, uh, area. It comes from, uh, security. It's, it would be work principle vulnerabilities.  </p>



<p>Uh, At first we released only, uh, [00:13:00] vulnerabilities to WordPress plugins. Uh, basically what we would do is, uh, we. We tell clients when there are vulner vulnerabilities in any of their installed plugins on the, on the site. Uh, let's say you have 10 plugins, we keep track of all of them, and if we notice everything, uh, is there a security issue we give you, uh, automated steps.  </p>



<p>Uh, either there is an update, uh, if there is a safe version, we tell you. 1.2 version is safe. You can update it. If we don't have, you know, the safe version to recommend, we say, uh, this plugin is better be deleted cuz it may directly harm your website security and create, you know, a bag door or something like that to it.  </p>



<p>And, um, further we thought, We can't only cover plugins, you know, when it comes to vulnerabilities of WordPress, we also have, you know, to include themes and the core versions. So this [00:14:00] was what, uh, included as well. So, uh, the same principle. Uh, we keep track, you know, on the, on the used themes. Uh, it could either be, you know, the active one or just sitting files over there.  </p>



<p>Uh, and of course, you know, the core files of the board press we give, you know, Suggestions to clients to either o update it, if there's a, a say, versions or not. Yeah, so this was the, the feature that was like recently quite released and we, from the client's perspective, we really saw the, you know, the, those tips that really helped clients and that they don't need to worry about the security and checking for vulnerabilities themselves.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> See, I go, I bet you encountered. A hundred times in your job and your role as a customer success success operator because WordPress is safe. Uh, it's continuing [00:15:00] to be ev vulnerabilities in, in, in everything that you see, uh, because it's just part of being a citizen on the web. But that, uh, I bet you saw that and I bet that formulates the experience's why you said that was number two because you just Two problems that I solved back in the day over and over.  </p>



<p>Wanna be able to restore something, something broke, and then, oh, there's something coming in that you want to be able, or a part of it that you want to like, have some knowledge. So I think security is absolutely awesome and I love that. That's first and second. You, you, you probably don't know a lot.  </p>



<p>That's not about me, but you hit my hallmarks where I spent 10 years of my life doing so I love that. These two things are, are these two, two things part of the WordPress hosting packages you all do? Is it a separate thing?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Uh, everything comes included into the WordPress packages, you know, in the WordPress hosting that we offer.  </p>



<p>Yeah. Uh, just, you know, the, the backups, uh, that I've firstly mentioned there are, you know, daily and a weekly. It depends on the hosting [00:16:00] plan, of course. Uh, but yeah, the restoration feature itself is included when you just purchased the plan itself.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Awesome. Okay, so we talked about. We've talked about restorations, vulnerabilities, and what, what's the third that's on your mind about the product?  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Yeah. The third one is the one we just recently released and are currently working on it is the hosting your award press plugin. Uh, why it was Bruce released. We just have to be fair and understand that a lot of clients not always, you know, using hosting control panels continuously because a lot of users just know, you know, slash VP admin and just go inside their, uh, panel and do their stuff and we wanted, you know, still have the communication, let's say in that side.  </p>



<p>Did the client inside the [00:17:00] word. And assist them if possible. Uh, so right now with the first iteration, uh, we focused on assisting client publishing their website and, uh, changing, you know, the essentials of the website, like uploading logo, editing description, and so on. It's for, um, uh, let's say fresh user in the WordPress who wants to know to have a simple blog website and.  </p>



<p>Still wants to do it on the WordPress and not, you know, the standalone builder, uh, let's say Vics. And, uh, what we are working on is, uh, we. We do have quite, you know, big, uh, YouTube library of, uh, hosting your learning section and we want to include that section inside the, uh, hosting your plugin so users will be able, you know, to check quickly, uh, steps to.  </p>



<p>on [00:18:00] YouTube cuz you know, uh, there are people who are good at, uh, getting information through knowledge-based articles and there are people who prefer video material when they getting, you know, things done. Personally, I'm a video guy. Uh, I just have to be honest. If I see a knowledge-based article, I probably scroll to the bullet points where everything main is mentioned here.  </p>



<p>But when it comes to video, yeah, I just watched it and it's way easier to consume information that way. And yeah, so that's another kind of interaction with the user. And we will provide, you know, the jumps to them. Knowledge-based, uh, article, uh, contacting, you know, support or assisting to contact the support.  </p>



<p>And there are further plans I would like, you know, to implement some custom settings to, to the plugin itself, where users are able to, uh, implement them on the website, uh, maintenance page, some caching options so users wouldn't have to, you know, to find that information manually. So [00:19:00] it would be, you know, like a, a hot quick.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Um, when you think about building, continuing to build, refine, uh, and even improve the offering that you give your clients, um, who are types of customers that you all think about? Who, who is hosting your manage WordPress? Um, really kind of for,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> uh, sorry, could you repeat the, the first part of the question bit?  </p>



<p>Like, for me,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah. Who are, who are the, uh, like avatars or Oh, that you think of when you're building these products? Like restore vulnerabilities? Yeah, the plugin. There's somebody you're thinking of, or a couple people, types of customers you're thinking about that use this product. And can you, can you share a little bit about Yeah, yeah, yeah.  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Sure. Of course. So, uh, it'll be like, you know, small businesses, online, hustlers, uh, beginners at the. The [00:20:00] hosting business in general because like we know as a hosting, wanting, provide ability to make a website online for any everyone. Uh, so our, you know, uh, when we thinking of these features, our, we are thinking of the clients who are re relatively, relatively new in this business and they want, you know, help in all of this.  </p>



<p>Uh, that's why we try. Trying to listen to what clients have to say when something releases out and if it's, you know, difficult. Uh, there have been already some improvements on the restoration feature on the, I'm just some saying some examples on the website, automatic migrations where the users saw struggles and we worked on that.  </p>



<p>So we always think, thinking of the online hustler, uh, beginner. When this information is new for the client and they just want, you know, to have their blog small, uh, shop online and do their stuff.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I love that [00:21:00] because I think a lot of the WordPress market overall has gotten, um, beyond that, I, I don't, there's probably a better way to say that, but I, I remember the day when you can go find hosting and you had an idea and you could take WordPress and good hosting and create something that may or may not go anywhere.  </p>



<p>So when you say the hustlers, the the do it yourself first type, I love that because I've, I'm afraid. Some parts in our industry we've gotten away from the mention of WordPress is d Democratize Publishing to give people tools and Awesome. And so I love that you all, there's, there's. An awesome company out there offering that where, you know, I'm like a lot of people, I, I was looking at your plans and I go, when was the last time I saw a hundred sites that you could build, [00:22:00] you know, for every little. Quirky and sometimes dumb idea I have.  </p>



<p>I can start it and then see where it goes. And I love that with the plans that you offer and the work that you're doing too. And then have the Easy Restore button kinda keeping me safe and you're helping me use this, so I love that. That's one of the avatars that you all focus on.  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Uh, yeah, like I understand that fact.  </p>



<p>You know, when I first tried the WordPress myself, uh, it, there's no lying. It can be scary, you know, seeing all the sidebar options, what to do, what to change, uh, and seeing online there's a bunch of information about the WordPress, what could be edited and so on, so on, so on. Uh, so we don't want. Provide the best examples, guidance to the users and, you know, remove manual work as much as possible.  </p>



<p>So they would just, you know, do their thing and have their website online and slowly, you know, gather traffic to their whatever project it [00:23:00] is.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Awesome. Okay, so we talked a little bit about the product and some of the features that you're very proud of, you and your team. Um, we've talked about some of the fits for how hosting, hosting can fit into whatever you're kind of building.  </p>



<p>Now, I wanna get, as a product owner, someone that has a lot of experience with WordPress and the web, um, what are you excited about in the future, um, with what you're.  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Uh, you know, like talking from the future perspective plans and Yeah. You know, the releases, the features.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> If, if you want to, or, you know, I'd love to get your take also on just the web, where the web's going, where WordPress is going. What's exciting, just looking out on the landscape of this. Amazing software that turns 20 years old.  </p>



<p>I can't believe that. 20 years old this year. Um, you know what you're seeing on the web, we've got new things coming up all the time. Like you were talking about automation, AI stuff. These things are just [00:24:00] going insane and accelerating. And is there anything from that perspective you see that gets you excited about working on the web?  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Yeah. Yeah, so I can definitely talk about AI stuff. Uh, that, yeah, I find really intriguing and I would just think how awesome it would be. Uh, because, uh, I recently saw one of the website that, uh, Uh, they create webs, WordPress website based with ai, but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for, and I just imagined if I would describe what I would do on my, uh, WordPress website directly.  </p>



<p>Let's say I am a dog, I'm a animals photographer, and it'll be my blog about. And I just, you know, uh, just give a description about my website and I would get like, you know, pre-built all of the content with some dummy images that could just be replaced with my own photography stuff. I just think from the perspective how it would [00:25:00] shorten the journey for the client on building the website.  </p>



<p>Uh, because, um, if you want, you know, to build neat website, You still have to install some plugins and, uh, you know, make changes in, let's say builder or even the gut, Gutenberg blog builder. You still have to make changes, but if everything would come pre-made for you and all of the things, it's si like, it's similar to demo content when you imported the website because everything gets important.  </p>



<p>But I want to, you know, skip. Skip that step where just I have to describe what I want to have in a website and bam, in five minutes it'll just, uh, generated and I just change my pictures to whatever I photograph.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I think there's so many, um, opportunities that a AI presents for WordPress in particular. And um, that's [00:26:00] another thought I was like, oh. Um, the technology's innovating and going so well. It's like I saw somebody, uh, tweet, they use chat g p t for, to build a WordPress plugin, and you're like, okay. If you understand that language, then they can do a lot of the heavy lifting AI part, but it's like maybe the AI's asking you, what do you want?  </p>



<p>Are you wanting to sell something on it? You know? Okay. What kind of thing you're trying to sell. The idea of that they can go out there and say, here are three options that would do that. Um, is pretty, pretty incredible. And, you know, I like to tinker on, on WordPress websites. Um, but it'd be nice just to go like, have a prompt, someone asking you something, asking you what are you trying to do, and lead you through that process with good options.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Exactly. Imagine if you would, after our conversation, we would have a built workplace website that it's not fully ready to go online. Yeah, yeah. Like conversation and that's all. [00:27:00] So the conversation with AI and yeah, I have my website online.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> The new website builder be ai. And I think the answer is yes.  </p>



<p>How? How soon? We'll see. That would be interesting. Yeah. But I, I continue to have these conversations with people around the WordPress business of WordPress ecosystem because I think there's so much potential here and it just takes bright minds like yourself to think of. Oh, we could do this. WS Forums, for instance, has worked on some open AI integrations.  </p>



<p>The Jonas over at Webhooks has done a tutorial and integration and, uh, I wanna see more of that because you've seen this, you know, as you've been working on the web and doing all these things, you've seen, like, there's problems that people, it takes. It's just time consuming. And if we can take some of that stuff away, we help them get to their goal and their dream faster and better.  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Hmm. Yeah, that's, Definitely, uh, I found what I can say, like on hosting the ai, we have a logo maker that's, you know, AI powered. So [00:28:00] personally I need a simple logo for something and that's, you know, in a way unique. I just use the, the, the, the AI generator of logos and that's helps.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I have to check that out.  </p>



<p>We'll have to put that in. Show notes, the logo generated to test test it out. Yeah. Nicole, well, anything else you wanna share about what you're doing? Uh, any other thoughts you have on the web? I wanna make sure we get the chance to hear from you, someone that leads the WordPress product in particular, uh, at hosting your, um,&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Oh yeah.  </p>



<p>The, the thing that we are also working on that will affect our WordPress users as well, uh, it's already in our public word, uh, roadmap, is that we will soon be releasing our c D n. So, you know, it's, uh, From the public roadmap, we receive quite a lot of, you know, requests from the clients that Yeah, yeah.  </p>



<p>It's really crucial for us to have this and we understand it. [00:29:00] Uh, because then again, if we want, you know, to give clients a seamless experience, uh, it's part of it. Cuz you know, if client wants to use CloudFlare as a a CDN provider, they would have to go over there, you know, make the setup process happen.  </p>



<p>But with the in-house, we remove that step as well. So, uh, yeah, uh, this one is coming up on the way and I'm really excited to see how it will help our clients in the website per, uh, performance and, and the boost of it.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Well then you've covered the trifecta here. You've got, uh, safety and security, you know, being able to restore and watch out for vulnerabilities.  </p>



<p>And then you've got speed and speed's always sexy to everyone because Yeah. Yeah. Faster. The better it rank, the better the customer experience. So that, that's pretty cool.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Uh, on the speed note, I could add another thing, uh, that's still requires some. Deeper, uh, refinement, but what I [00:30:00] want to offer for the clients is automatic website optimizations.  </p>



<p>Mm-hmm. Uh, why it requires a, a bit deeper refinement because we want to, you know, to refine to the way that it will not break a website. Uh, because we know that if we automatically, you know, use some ca uh, plugin to go maximum aggressive, uh, with the settings, it could create, uh, you know, break something in the website because it was just so aggressive on optimizing it.  </p>



<p>So we want to find that gold spot for the client where he pushes a single click and the content of the website gets optimized and it does, you know. Loads without issues.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Love it. That's awesome. Uh, Anas, uh, would you tell us how we can find more about you and then also your, your work at hosting?&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Um, yeah.  </p>



<p>So we do have a public roadmap that you [00:31:00] can access as a, uh, user. It's, uh, simply, uh, roadmap dot ho hosting your.com. And all of there, uh, you will be able to see all of the release stuff, all of the upcoming stuff, and you as a client can, you know, express your, uh, opinion on here. And also you can submit an idea.  </p>



<p>So th that idea would be checked by me and we would, you know, include it into the backlog since you know, the clients, uh, want to see that happen.  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> This is excellent. I love when a software company,um, a hosting company puts this in front. It's like, this is what we're working on, this is what we're doing. It shows real leadership and I love this.  </p>



<p>I'm looking through here and this is awesome. Well, ARN, thank you so much for your time today and, uh, I, I appreciate hearing your story and what you're doing at Host hosting your Please keep up the good.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Arnas Donauskas:</strong> Uh, thanks Corey for inviting. Uh, it's been a [00:32:00] pleasure. And yeah, if anything, I'm here. Awesome.&nbsp;  </p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> All right.  </p>



<p>Thanks everybody for listening in to post status draft. This is another, uh, interview in our series called Product People to help you see the hu here and see and hear the humans behind the, the best WordPress products out there. So we've been talking with Arnas, web hosting product owner at Host.</p>
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