l_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Tue, 13 Dec 2022 10:49:00 +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:12;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:76:\"WPTavern: Mailchimp for WordPress Plugin for Sale in the Ballpark of €1.6M\";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=140295\";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:85:\"https://wptavern.com/mailchimp-for-wordpress-plugin-for-sale-in-the-ballpark-of-e1-6m\";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:3896:\"<p><a href=\"https://www.dannyvankooten.com/\">Danny van Kooten</a>, creator of the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/mailchimp-for-wp/\">Mailchimp for WordPress</a> plugin, has indicated that he is interested in selling his plugin for somewhere in the ballpark of €1.6M. It is the most popular Mailchimp solution for WordPress, although it is &#8220;unofficial&#8221; in that it is not developed by or affiliated with Mailchimp in any way. It has more than 2 million active installs and has been downloaded more than 42 million times.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a <a href=\"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33931627\">comment</a> on a popular Hacker News post that asks, &#8220;<a href=\"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33923137\">What is the best income stream you have created till date?</a>&#8221; van Kooten dropped the hint that he is willing to sell the nearly ten-year-old plugin: </p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>It’s definitely not my passion but in 2013 I built a WordPress plugin around the API of a popular newsletter service and it’s been paying my bills ever since.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Still going strong at €36K per month excluding VAT.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was (and still is) a huge market where non-technical people are looking for a GUI around something a programmer would find very simple (and usually too boring to work on). More so if the tech surrounding it is not particularly sexy, as is the case for WordPress and PHP.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ps. In case anyone is reading this, I am open to selling. I spent about 4 hours a week on it and the rest is handled by 2 freelance people costing about €1K / month each. Contact me for details if interested and willing to pay in the ballpark of €1.6M.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>van Kooten developed Mailchimp for WordPress when he was hospitalized in Vietnam due to acute appendicitis with extra time on his hands during his recovery. He identifies himself as an &#8220;accidental entrepreneur&#8221; in his Hacker News bio. In 2021, he was <a href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/sustainable-software-design-climate-change/\">featured in Wired</a> for his efforts in reducing his carbon output as a plugin developer. He refactored the plugin to send 20kb less data, and, due to its large user base, he estimates these changes reduced  the world&#8217;s monthly CO<sub>2</sub> output by 59,000 kilograms, which Wired estimated is &#8220;roughly the equivalent to flying from New York to Amsterdam and back 85 times.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mailchimp for WordPress has commercial upgrades ranging from $59 &#8211;  $149 per year, and 1% of the plugin&#8217;s revenue goes towards environmental projects.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although Mailchimp recommends WordPress.com&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"https://mailchimp.com/integrations/wordpress/\">Mailchimp block</a>&#8221; as the official WordPress integration (also available in Jetpack 7.1+), van Kooten&#8217;s plugin is far more flexible. Mailchimp for WordPress integrates with other popular plugins like WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms 3, BuddyPress, MemberPress, and Events Manager, allowing visitors to subscribe via the checkout or comments form.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Several commenters on van Kooten&#8217;s Hacker News response indicated interest in his offer for sale. His comment offers a a rare, transparent look into a popular plugin&#8217;s revenue and potential sale price, as most companies that acquire WordPress plugins are almost never willing to reveal how much they paid for them. As Substack moves to <a href=\"https://twitter.com/cjgbest/status/1602370307884318720\">add compatibility for Ghost themes</a> and other third-parties, and newsletters become even more critical with people leaving Twitter, it will be interesting to see more movement in the newsletter support space. van Kooten may be setting out at just the right time to find a buyer for Mailchimp for WordPress.</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, 13 Dec 2022 04:30:16 +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:13;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:115:\"WPTavern: Gutenberg 14.7 Introduces Color Coding for Template Parts and Reusable Blocks, Adds Media Tab to Inserter\";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=140270\";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:125:\"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-14-7-introduces-color-coding-for-template-parts-and-reusable-blocks-adds-media-tab-to-inserter\";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:2734:\"<p>Sometimes Gutenberg introduces features that you never knew you needed. Such is the case with the new color coding system in the Site Editor. The latest <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/09/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-7-7-december/\">14.7 release</a> adds color to template parts and reusable blocks in the list view, block toolbar, and block selection outlines. The colorization is intended to help users differentiate between the different block types as they edit their designs.</p>\n\n\n\nvideo source: <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/32163\">Gutenberg PR #32163</a>\n\n\n\n<p>Another UI enhancement in version 14.7 is a new, experimental split control for block settings. It splits the block inspector sidebar to separate the settings controls from the appearance controls, giving the appearance side the same half-moon icon used for styles in the Site Editor. The intention is to make it easier to manage blocks with many controls, such as Group or Navigation blocks, that would end up having the settings scrolling down the page. </p>\n\n\n\n<img />image source: <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/09/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-7-7-december/\">Gutenberg 14.7 release post</a>\n\n\n\n<p>The split control enhancement isn&#8217;t set in stone yet, as it must be enabled as an experimental feature in the Gutenberg > Experiments admin menu. It seems helpful but could prove to be more confusing for users, so further testing is needed before it moves out of experiments. </p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>The inserter is getting a major change in 14.7 with the addition of a Media tab, making it faster to add images, video, and audio. Users can select the new tab and select a media type to see the ten most recent items. There&#8217;s also an &#8220;Open Media Library&#8221; button at the bottom of the panel.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>Other notable updates in 14.7 include the following: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Page List block can now expand inside the List View to see the hierarchy of pages (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/45776\">45776</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Layout controls added to children of flex layout blocks (width for row and height for stack are now available for child Row and Stack blocks) (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/45364\">45364</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Significant load time performance improvements from caching the results of querying settings from theme.json. (<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/45372\">45372</a>)</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Check out the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/09/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-7-7-december/\">changelog</a> to get a more detailed look at the dozens of improvements and bug fixes included in 14.7.</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, 13 Dec 2022 03:17:06 +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:14;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:127:\"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #77 – Gutenberg 14.7, what’s new for Block Themes, an upcoming Live Q&amp;A in January\";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://gutenbergtimes.com/?post_type=podcast&p=22971\";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:131:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-77-gutenberg-14-7-whats-new-for-block-themes-an-upcoming-live-qa-in-january/\";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:45870:\"<p>Daisy Olsen and Birgit Pauli-Haack discuss Gutenberg 14.7, what’s new for Block Themes, an upcoming Live Q&amp;A in January and much more.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-69-gutenberg-releases-wordpress-6-0-1-the-create-block-theme/#shownotes\">Show Notes</a> / <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-69-gutenberg-releases-wordpress-6-0-1-the-create-block-theme/#transcript\">Transcript</a></p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Music:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://soundcloud.com/xirclebox\">Homer Gaines</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Editor:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-reed/\">Sandy Reed</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Logo:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://markuraine.com/\">Mark Uraine</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Production:&nbsp;<a href=\"https://icodeforapurpose.com\">Birgit Pauli-Haack</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-larger-font-size\" id=\"shownotes\"><strong>Show Notes</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<h3>Announcements</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/support/2022/12/introducing-the-block-editor-in-the-support-forums/\">Introducing the Block Editor in the Support Forums</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/12/07/leveraging-theme-json-and-per-block-styles-for-more-performant-themes/\">Leveraging theme.json and per-block styles for more performant themes</a> by Justin Tadlock</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/oaknut/\">Oaknut</a> by Anders Noren</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wptavern.com/anders-noren-releases-oaknut-a-new-profile-block-theme-with-23-style-variations\">Anders Norén Releases Oaknut, a New Profile Block Theme with 23 Style Variations</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/11/29/a-php-developers-guide-to-getting-started-with-block-development/\">A PHP developer’s guide to getting started with block development</a> by Michael Burridge</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/course/a-developers-guide-to-block-themes-part-1/\">Developers Guide to Block Themes (Part 1)</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/course/a-developers-guide-to-block-themes-part-2/\">Developers Guide to Block Themes (Part 2)</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3>Community Contributions</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/lang-attribute/\">Lang Attribute for the Block Editor</a>  </li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/abbreviation-button-for-the-block-editor/\">Abbreviation Button for the Block Editor</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3>What&#8217;s released</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/09/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-7-7-december/\">What’s new in Gutenberg 14.7? (7 December)</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.github.io/gutenberg/?path=/docs/docs-introduction--page\">Storybook</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3>What&#8217;s worked on</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/wordpress/gutenberg/issues/45371\">Global Styles: Allow saving, importing, exporting, copying from another theme without switching to it</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/wordpress/gutenberg/issues/29577\">FSE: Create more robust autosaving including UI&nbsp;</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/design/2022/12/05/design-share-nov-21-dec-2/\">Design Share: Nov 21–Dec 2</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\">Stay in Touch</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-layout-flow\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container\">\n<ul>\n<li>Did you like this episode? <a href=\"https://lovethepodcast.com/gutenbergchangelog\"><strong>Please write us a review </strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ping us on Twitter or send DMs with questions. <a href=\"https://twitter.com/gutenbergtimes\">@gutenbergtimes </a>and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/bph\">@bph</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>If you have questions or suggestions, or news you want us to include, send them to <a href=\"mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. </em></li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Please write us a review on iTunes! <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/itunes/\">(Click here to learn how)</a></em></li>\n</ul>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\" id=\"transcript\"><strong>Transcrip</strong>t</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Hello </p>\n\n\n\n<p>and welcome to our 77th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog Podcast. In today&#8217;s episode, we will talk about Gutenberg 14.7, what&#8217;s next for Block Themes and an upcoming Live Q&amp;A in January and so much more. My name is Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times and WordPress developer advocate and core contributor on the WordPress Open-Source Project. Today we are recording the last show of 2022, and we are all in for a special treat. I&#8217;m thrilled to welcome Daisy Olsen to the show, a master educator on Block Themes, fellow developer advocate, and first-time release lead of the latest Gutenberg plugin release 14.7. Good morning, Daisy. Thank you for making the time and join me on the show. How are you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: I&#8217;m doing really well. Thanks so much for having me today.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: You&#8217;re so welcome. It&#8217;s a special pleasure for me. So, for the last year, you have been working on various educational material around the Block Themes. Your workshop at Word Camp Europe was standing room only. And then you gave an updated version three months later on Word Camp US. You also worked with a training team on online workshops. If someone knows about Block Theme, it&#8217;s you. So, what are some of the most asked questions you hear from participants about Block Themes, or what are they&#8217;re most struggling with when building Block Themes?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: So, I think that people come from a lot of different places in their development career or path. I&#8217;m not sure if I have any specific most asked questions at the top of my mind. But I do think that the move to more low-code or even no-code options for creating themes is a paradigm shift and it&#8217;s going to take some time for everyone to get used to it. Given how quickly the number of block themes has increased, I heard like 250 or more potentially in the theme directory there&#8217;s certainly some energy building. I would say that one thing that I&#8217;ve heard in general is that there&#8217;s sometimes some worry around how existing theme functionality will work as we move towards a block theme first ideal. And the short answer is that the old waste will still work. We&#8217;re not replacing the PHP-based theme engine. We&#8217;re expanding on it and making it much easier for developers, and users alike to participate in the theme creation process. But change can be hard, and this is a process that will happen over time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, thank you for that. What I see that it&#8217;s also what the last bit, that it&#8217;s actually not a replacement, it&#8217;s actually an expansion of the existing theme hierarchy framework is a little hard to hear overall. This is the new things doing things what happens with the old and I think that&#8217;s part of the problem that we have, and we are all working on it. And I know that Matias also said that, there&#8217;s nothing&#8217;s going to go away or get obsolete. It&#8217;s just that the user no code, creating a theme with the site editor is actually kind of expanding the user base of it and not shrinking it. And if the pie gets bigger, I think we all really profit from that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: I would just add that as we think about the way that WordPress themes are created as an expansion. It will open up the opportunity for people to come in with a different skill set that maybe would not have been able to create theming in the WordPress, they mentioned the way that it has existed. And one of my very favorite things about WordPress theming is that you can take a theme created for version 1.2 and install it today and it&#8217;ll still work. You can&#8217;t go the other direction because new features have been at a new functionality. But you can take something as old as so many years ago and still basically use it today. I don&#8217;t know that anybody is going to do that necessarily. But the fact that backwards compatibility is such a big part of the culture of WordPress is a huge comfort if you&#8217;re thinking about the future.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Totally and that&#8217;s also what made WordPress so big is almost a 20-year backwards compatibility. And I&#8217;m really amazed, and every release party that I participate on beta releases or release candidate releases when we upgrade 4.0 something themes to the new theme, the upgrade is just seamless. Everybody who worked on the core releases has made sure that older versions upgrade to the new versions and the same happens with the classic themes that the workers will always work for classic themes. It&#8217;s not, sometimes things change, but it&#8217;s also, there&#8217;s a lot of effort also in the developer. Good work developer could not develop, a community where the effort is to make part of the block theme features available for classic themes. An example was that all the block-based template parts that can be used for classic themes, and they had that came with 6.1. Do you have seen a lot of adoption of those or what people are doing with them?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: We have more to do to encourage people to adopt those gradual adoption pathways, but the fact that they exist is really a great thing that we&#8217;re not expecting. The project is not expecting people to go in headfirst and change everything that they know and all of their workflows and everything. But there are ways that you can take legacy code because the truth is that not every client is going to be ready for a full redesign and some never are. But the pathways that we have to take legacy code and expand it to adopt some of these new features is really powerful.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It&#8217;s not a really good business case to make to say, &#8220;Okay, now I start using the new thing for new client project.&#8221; Unless when you have a tested and proven workflow to get new clients online very easily for the last six or seven years, you are not going to change your workflow as the same available or agency freelancer to change that from today, from tomorrow. So, it definitely takes some time to adjust to that. We have seen this with other new features in WordPress they take about two to three years. All right. But I digress or we digress a little bit, but I think we always kind of need to talk out about a few things.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3><strong>Announcements</strong></h3>\n\n\n\n<p>But we are ready for our announcements. And as I mentioned in the intro, we have a great good work time live Q&amp;A planned. It&#8217;s in preparation for working with Asia. The title is layouts, layouts, layouts, and Layouts of fundamental part of how Block Themes work. And it allows you to define the width of your post content, arrange the blocks horizontally, as well as vertically. And left or right aligned and inside container blocks. And in terms of block styling, layout is a complex feature because it affects not only the container but also the child blocks in ways that go beyond the cascading style sheets inheritance.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the show, we will have Isabel Bryson, Andrew Serong, Justin Tadlock, and we will discuss the opportunities and challenges for this layout feature and for site builders. Both or all three of them, and I&#8217;m two but only minimally available for your questions to answer them. And Isabel Bryson will also give us a little demo of the various layout scenarios, which is kind of flex and fluid and constrained. And there&#8217;s certainly some more development being done in the few, in the couple of weeks that are until we have that, it&#8217;s going to happen on January 11 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern. That&#8217;s 10:00 UTC, 2200 UTC. And it&#8217;s a little bit of a different timeframe than other because Isabel and Andrew are in Australia. So, we have a little Pacific, an Asia Pacific kind of timeframe there. And Isabel is also a speaker at Word Camp Asia, so it&#8217;s going to be a great show.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: All right. Sounds great. Another thing that has come up recently is that the WordPress support forums are now including, rather than the WYSIWYG formatter or text format block. We have the embedded block editor. So, we&#8217;re going to see the ability to add blocks and support forms. So, it&#8217;s going to be interesting to see how that is received for by the user base and if it helps to move the support questions forward in a way. But anytime we see the Gutenberg project, the block editor as we know it outside of WordPress. Outside of the WordPress administrative area, it&#8217;s really neat because it shows how the power of this contained thing that can be dropped into another environment and used in a different way, so&#8230;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: We have in the show notes where we have the post from Alvaro Gameiro, I&#8217;m just checking the name, Alvaro Gomez. I had all letters write, and right now it&#8217;s in testing, but it won&#8217;t be in testing for long, so if you follow the post, there&#8217;s also a link for the test site, so you can try it out and see how you feel about it and also share your feedback on the make blog support post in the comments. We also have new posts on the new developer block. So, for five years I have now the trouble that is block and blog with the pronunciation so that the new developer blog is two new articles: One is Leveraging theme.json and the Per-Block Styles for More Performance Themes by Justin Tadlock.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And he outlines how using the theme.json two style, all your elements, the blocks, the individual blocks, as well as some of the elements centrally through the theme.Json file saves you quite a bit on CSS file length. And also code I&#8217;m a fan of Anders Noren themes and he has done some great work on the block themes and he just released his theme Oaknut, which gives you a kind of link tree way to create your page and has, he says a really small CSS file, and it comes in less than 150 lines and 120 of those are lines for the custom block styles that he includes in the theme.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, he does not style the main thing and all the other styles that come with WordPress theme classic theme. So, I think that&#8217;s also another reason to maybe use the theme.json funnel for classic themes, which is possible. Any comments on that, Daisy?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: Just that it&#8217;s exciting to see that our CSS starts to get smaller and by moving things into theme.json we are paving the pathway to make more performant sites because we&#8217;ll be able to build up more tooling to only use the CSS in line when we need it. And that hasn&#8217;t always been the case. So, trying to keep things small and concise where possible is going to take things a long way. So, I think we&#8217;ll see a lot more improvement. And it&#8217;s great to see people trying to push the boundaries of small, can you make your custom CSS and still get a really beautiful design out there? That can be distributed out to a lot of people. Anders puts his themes out to the community through the theme directory quite often, and I think that he&#8217;s right on the front edge of where things will be in a couple of years.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And as Anders also opened up his GitHub repost for the theme, so you can actually learn from his coding and kind of inspect them a little bit closer if you want to. So, the second post on the developer blog is a PHP developer&#8217;s guide to getting started with Block Development by Michael Burridge, and he practically gives you a roadmap of what you need to learn or what you need as tooling and also some shortcuts and tips. If you are new to modern JavaScript development, it&#8217;s all in one place so you don&#8217;t have to chase other sources. You might need to read up a few things, but also have some great links for you to study more.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: I love the approach of moving into trying to help PHP developers because so many of us are coming from that side of things as WordPress-focused developers. And sometimes the JavaScript is especially modern. JavaScript is, it&#8217;s kind of daunting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: If you start researching yourself if you don&#8217;t know where to focus. So having a curated guide is really valuable and cuts down a lot of the time that you would need to do your own research. Still and he says it in his post as well. There are some hurdles or learning curves to overcome, especially with react. But there&#8217;s also some great abstraction in Gutenberg that you can get quite a long way adopting the blocks without actually touching JavaScript. What comes to mind is block styles, block patterns with new locking features. I can see that a few agencies might say, &#8220;Okay, we are not creating new blocks because now with the block patterns.&#8221; We can style them and we can lock them down for our users to use, and we don&#8217;t have to create new JavaScript for that. That&#8217;s also a great approach is to kind of think about when do I actually have to start developing for my own custom blocks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A while ago, must have been maybe a year and a half ago, Victor Ramirez and I, we had a little live Q&amp;A on that approach to kind of see what an agency approach could be in a gradual adopting, here&#8217;s the word again, gradual adopting the new things. When do you really need a developer where designers and content creators actually can go a long way. So, I&#8217;ll put the link to that video and all the resources there into the show notes, so you can look up about it as well. So, the training team published two-part courses talking about block themes. It&#8217;s the developers Guide to block themes, part one and part two. So that is definitely a great resource if you want to go from Zero to Hero and get all the latest features in there. And of course, the links are in the show notes developer&#8217;s guide to. But they&#8217;re all published on learn.wordpress.org. That&#8217;s a fabulous site. And I know that some of your events that you did on online education Daisy are also available through the site.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: I have some workshops published there, and also, I will occasionally run online workshops through the Learn WordPress Meetup group, which is also part of the training team&#8217;s efforts.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3><strong>Community Contributions</strong></h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Awesome. Awesome. All right. We&#8217;re coming to Community Contributions and then we are for the release. I just wanted to give a shout-out to Jean-Baptist Audras address from the Whodunit Agency and is also outgoing team rep of the WordPress court team. And he tweeted that his agency released two new plug-ins mini micro plugins with creating accessible content. One is called Lang Attribute for the Block Editor. When you change in your writing the language that you can add a Lang attribute to your paragraph tag or whatever block that is, which makes you then also compact or compliant with accessibility standards for language of parts.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then, the second plugin is the abbreviation button for the block editor. Which helps you provide definitions for abbreviations using the tag the HTML tag, &lt;abbr&gt; element. And it&#8217;s quite neat because then you get a little, if there is an abbreviation, you get a little on the front end, a little squiggly line or something like that where you can point to it with your mouse and then get the long content for the abbreviation, which is actually quite neat.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also tweeted that worth noting that indicating language changes in content is mandatory for the WCAG or CWE compliance. And there is currently no way to do this in the block editor except for adding the code manually, editing the code manually. And this features, he says, continues this feature should be implemented natively into Gutenberg. And I just did a little digging and there has been an open issue and it&#8217;s actually goes back to the accessibility audit and there has been some movement, but not we need some developer to kind of get it on it and fix it or put it into a core. All right.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3><strong>What’s Released &#8211; Gutenberg 14.7</strong></h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: So, let&#8217;s move on to the Changelog for Gutenberg 14.7. Gutenberg 14.7 was released this week with 165 merch PRs by 48 contributors, nine of which were first timers. And it&#8217;s packed with quite a few features, some of which are pretty experimental. And you would need to enable them through the experiment settings. And namely, that is a tabbed sidebar that splits out your block control settings between appearance, tools, styles, and other settings. Hopefully the hope there is to make it a little easier to navigate big improvements to the navigation block media selection from the inserter and more controls for the inner blocks of flex layout blocks. Other core blocks receive some small refinements that make the overall experience more consistent. There are also 19 bug fixes for accessibility improvements and quite a few documentation and code quality updates.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And congratulations, Daisy, for your first Gutenberg plug-in release. How was that experience?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: It was exciting and I learned a lot about how the release post comes together quite a bit that goes into it and I hope that I have another opportunity to go through this process again.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I found it when I did. So, mine was actually 13.7 yours were 14.7 so it&#8217;s kind of a bookend kind of there. And I really learned quite a bit how the whole thing comes together and about PRs and about all the processes that there are quite a few automations happening and how to handle between release candidate and stable, how to handle updates that need to get into the release. Everybody who wants to be should start reading about the release process and see if you want to volunteer for that. That definitely needs some technology background on that. That&#8217;s not something for a fly-by contributor of course, but you get help from others.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3><strong>Enhancements</strong></h3>\n\n\n\n<p>All right let&#8217;s dive into the changelog as mentioned, the block library, some standard core blocks got some refinements. The first one is that the heading block now has a class name of WP/block/heading, which means that you can target any heading with your CSS, and now that that&#8217;s in place. And it&#8217;s kind of a prototype of getting other blocks, also having a specific class name so you can target again, that was some in and out from the team that it was in there at the beginning and then they were moved around a bit and now they&#8217;re coming back.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I see how that&#8217;s kind of going to work out the navigation block, I think we&#8217;re going to talk about the navigation a little later in quite some detail because it has a revamp and it&#8217;s in the experiment. We&#8217;re going to talk about that a little later. The template part block has now you now see in the site editor the colorized template parts, what is ahead of, or what&#8217;s a reusable block when you go down the list view on the left-hand side, you see some color coding there. Your eyes and your brain can better disseminate the different pieces of your page.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: I really like that. I find visual cues to be very helpful. Things like if I were on a staging site, I might change the theme on it to be some obnoxious color on the admin side. I know that I&#8217;m in staging, but this is a small improvement just to give you a visual cue of what is a bigger piece of your list view rather than the individual blocks that are within the content.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And your reusable block, I don&#8217;t know if you said it, but the reusable blocks also have this colorized outline. The page list block hasn&#8217;t been touched for a while, but it gets on refinements that it actually expands in the list view, and you can change the starting page. If you are on a page that&#8217;s kind of the beginning of a set of other pages here, like a hierarchy, you can add links to the subpages in the page list block that you can add to the side of your page. So, you can outline the subpages as well. That was still missing. It was available in the other editor, in the menus, but the list block now has that, too. And the table block now, there are a lot of things that can be done to improve the table block. But now, it supports the colspan attribute so you can merge cells from the same column into one place in the table HTML and you have some listed tables if you want to. But that was definitely important when you copy-paste tables from another page or another text editor into the block editor that you keep the colspan attribute aligned so the columns and rows align correctly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: I&#8217;d say that, just in general, anytime we improve the ability to paste content in from another place is a good thing. Because the truth is that we don&#8217;t always start our writing within WordPress or we&#8217;re using something that was collaborated on some other location. So, trying to keep things aligned with how they might exist in other places is super helpful.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Really. Well, really, we use Google Docs quite a bit, or I use Google Docs quite a bit. And from the beginning of the block editor, I was so amazed how seamless the copy and paste works from Google Docs to block editor, if you are sparse with your design on Google Docs. The layout you have to do on the other side, but it brought over the headings, the list, the indented list, and all that. It&#8217;s a really good place. But now, we can also do the tables, yes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: Another thing that I use is to pull in markdown, and I love that it just magically turns into HTML.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. There are actually markdown shortcuts that you can use on the block editor, yeah. That&#8217;s really cool. I need to do more markdown. When you paste markdown into GitHub, it kind of ceases that code and you cannot&#8230; It was weird. But post it into WordPress, and you can all read it. So, there was quite a few changes to the components, mostly adding a new opt-in for background color and for opt-in props. So, you can actually use that component.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The global styles component got a new on-change action. So, when the color to the color palette, so when you click on the color palette on the&#8230; So, on the right-hand side, you see the color palettes and you see, every time you change the color, the little circle next to the property takes on the color. But when you click on it, it always went back to the default setting of the color palette.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, when you click on it, you see the color that was in there before also in that little window in the color palette. So, if you just want to change the view of a color, then you don&#8217;t have to navigate to the color again and then change the views. You really see, okay, this was before and this is&#8230; So, it&#8217;s a really good improvement for changing colors. And yeah, I really love it. That&#8217;s why I pointed it out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The others are more like code quality improvements there. And then, now, the block editor gets the insert of the block editor. It gets a new media tap. So, now, you will be able to add pictures right from the inserter instead of going to go to the media library selected, come back to the editor. It&#8217;s now very seamless, which means that there are additional tabs. There&#8217;s one additional tab. And it gets a little crowded. So, you have the blocks, then you have the patterns, then the media tab. And your reusable block are still there, but they are replaced by an icon. And that&#8217;s the icon that you see on other reusable block references. So, I really like it. You get also some preview to the pictures. And so, it&#8217;s tested out. It&#8217;s quite amazing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: And then at the bottom of the area, you still get an option to load up the old media library modal overlay. So, if you prefer that, it&#8217;s still there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, good point. Because the media library view gives you a lot more pictures to look at to select from. Because the other pictures in that view, you see one at a time in a little preview and you have to scroll through them. But if it&#8217;s just an image that you uploaded the last week or the last two weeks, depending on how much content you provide, it&#8217;s a really neat shortcut.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: So, the layouts control has been added to flex layout blocks, notably the row and the stack, so that you can fit. What is it? Fit, flex, and contain. Basically, those are not the right words. I wish I have to cover.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Fluid.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: Yes. So, it gives you more control over how those two group block types will display the blocks or how the inner blocks or child blocks will be structured.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: You also get now a minimum height block support under dimensions for the container block. Container block is like a group block or the cover block. Because it&#8217;s hard to fill something when it&#8217;s in it, it doesn&#8217;t have a maximum height thing or minimum height to put an image that fills up the whole block. So, that&#8217;s also something in there. And you can also resize the children or inner blocks. Resizing children is really hard. That&#8217;s why I try to find a different. Because the parent-child relationship, that&#8217;s more like a developer thing. It&#8217;s not for, yeah&#8230; But, yeah, that&#8217;s a great addition to that. Scrolling down to the experiments. And then, there&#8217;s a whole lot of things for the navigation block.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3><strong>Experiments</strong></h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: So, there&#8217;s a new experiment flag that you can enable or opt into by going to Gutenberg experiments and checking the box. And what this is going to add is, in the sidebar controls for your blocks, where you would normally set your appearance settings or any other settings that are part of that block, it&#8217;s going to split out the appearance items from everything else. So, there will be a new tab interface in that sidebar, so that you can minimize the amount of scrolling that you need to do. So, it&#8217;s an experiment. And feedback, obviously, welcome. I don&#8217;t know how much it&#8217;ll change, but it&#8217;s a cool idea. I like anything that we can do to make the interface less overwhelming will be beneficial. But that is a new experiment. And I look forward to seeing how it evolves.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: The navigation block also uses that space in the sidebar to actually have an off-canvas editor. That&#8217;s how it&#8217;s used now that, in the sidebar, so you get a list of your pages or the menu items that are in the navigation block. So, you have a little bit more space to edit them and rearrange them and, also, add new pages to it, because the little place that you had in the navigation block, if it&#8217;s in the header, you have overlapping issues with links and setting block tube settings. And it was a total chaos, I would say. Yeah, if you really wanted to get in there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it was hard to actually add sub menus. And this feature makes it really, really easy to create sub menus. And it&#8217;s almost like a mini-version of the old menu navigator from the WP admin, the old menu settings there. And you can add and remove pages or links quite easily now, in addition to the being able to add other blocks to the navigation bar, like a search block or a site logo block like that. So, yeah, test out the new navigation block, because it&#8217;s a test that has gotten quite a few revamps from the original features, and if you like it better.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, the experimental settings that you see now in that menu item, one is the zoomed-out view where you can see all your template ports and all your themes all in one place in thumbnails. And then, the off-canvas navigation editor. And then, there&#8217;s also a&#8230; I haven&#8217;t tried it yet, but I heard about it yesterday on the hallway hangout for the FSE project. There is a global styles color randomizer. So, if you are not very good in color combinations, you can select one color, or the randomizer gives you a full palette for your styles. It&#8217;s a really interesting thing. It&#8217;s more a gimmick, but it&#8217;s like the dual tone or the gradient.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the people who want to work with colors, it&#8217;s definitely an improvement. And then, the fourth one is the block inspector tabs would be with the settings and the appearance controls changed. So, for experience, it&#8217;s been a while that we had four experiments happening in the block editor. I think it was the early days of full-site editing, had quite a few experiments. But that was back in 2020, early 2020. And now, two years later, almost three years later, we have new experiments, also.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: I think that&#8217;s a great thing because it shows we&#8217;re feeling confident with what&#8217;s not experimental anymore enough to go out into new territory again.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Sometimes, it&#8217;s also hard to isolate a feature into a separate place that it&#8217;s turned on and off. But yeah, it definitely has&#8230; But you need testers. So, if you are in the get the new version, check it out and let your feedback be known. It&#8217;s really important that those things are tested very early and feedback comes in, even if it&#8217;s not testing or if you don&#8217;t find a bug, but you say something is quirky or, &#8220;I don&#8217;t understand things, yet,&#8221; it&#8217;s very, very helpful when you let the team know. The document there were&#8230; Do you have anything else that you wanted to add to that?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: No, all good.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3><strong>Documentation</strong></h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: There are a few documentation edits happening there. And I only want to point out that the storybook site that&#8217;s online or that you also can get locally with the Gutenberg thing has now a link to the component folder on GitHub. When you look at a component with all the isolated, with all the features or features, attributes, on and off switches, different color scheme, you can test it on the storybook site. But when you want to check out the component, you get a direct link to the place in the Gutenberg report for the source code, so you can really double-check certain things. So, it&#8217;s a really good tool when you get down to the component level on whatever you want to build and use the storyboard to test your code.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3><strong>What is Active Development or Discussed</strong></h3>\n\n\n\n<p>So, this was the Gutenberg 14.7 change log. Well, thank you for going over it with me, Daisy. We are now in the section what&#8217;s in active development. And I have a few things there. One of them is that the team is working on making style variations theme-agnostic. What I understood with that is that you can use theme style variations that you selected even with a different theme.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: There are a few parts of it, the way that I&#8217;ve seen it in the design panels. And one is the other installed themes that may not be active on your site. The variations will be available, also, to be able to edit them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: Which is very cool. And then, to be able to import and export style variations from other places is another piece of it. So, I think that just a general expansion of the way that we can work with style variations is going to be really interesting. But, yes, theme agnostic is a great way to put it, because really, with the right base for how those style variations are created, particularly in terms of how things are named for color palettes and such, you should be able to take a style variation and put it onto any site that&#8217;s using a theme.JSON. So, I think that it&#8217;s been a really great thing with the way that 2023 default theme was created. And it spearheaded this idea that we should be able to use these in more than one way. But this is one piece of making it easier to switch themes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And even if that&#8217;s not a one-on-one good fit, you definitely get 80% there when you switch a theme to use the same styles that you had and then adopt what is missing. Because, you mentioned in the sentences, if the color scheme is not standardized from one style variation to the other, it might be a little bit wonky at first, but you can certainly adjust it. And I also can see one feature that could be used someplace else or in some other way is to just import style variations from other places. Like, if a theme developer has a website where have additional style variations that he doesn&#8217;t want to package with his or her theme, it certainly would make it available, just download it and add it to it. I can also see the 2023 theme as a community-wide effort. And there were 38 style variations that were submitted to be included, and 10 of those were selected. But now, there might come a way where you can actually add some of the others into your site, at least.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>All right. So, Joen Asmussen, he&#8217;s on the design team and one of the early design leads on Gutenberg, has started quite a while ago, every two weeks, posting on the design team&#8217;s make blog his design shares. And the one from last week had a few things in there that I want to point out. So, wordpress.org is in a huge site overhaul. And in the post, you see the markups of the dev hub, which is the developer site, and the job site. And there&#8217;s some great visuals. Sorry, I can&#8217;t show them to you in the podcast. But, of course, I share the link in the show notes. But you see the updates of the dev hub pages as well as the jobs pages on the org, on how they are designed and worked on right now by the meta team. Have you seen those designs?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: Some of them. I haven&#8217;t seen the post, but I saw some of the designs other places, the meta team.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: The design process is quite a long one. There&#8217;s a second round of feedback now through the docs team because they are the owner of the sites. So, maybe I should find that as well and put it in the show notes. Another one is that the design team created the designs for a future style block. No, style book, not a block, style book. The name is still not final, but what it is, is actually a neat feature where you can see on a screen for each block how it&#8217;ll appear on your site. That&#8217;s not new. You had this with any of the themes that you got a page where you can look through how my heading&#8217;s going to be looking at. But now it&#8217;s for every block. And you can now, also, on the right-hand side, see when you check a different style variation, see how the blocks change with that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that is a fabulous feature. It really makes that coming up with new things or checking out new things like a new style variation, or so. It comes really handy. There is no surprise. There is no, &#8220;Oh, Don, we didn&#8217;t look at it beforehand, but there are two things wrong with the table block,&#8221; or something like that. You see it before you do it. And then, you can do some fixes, if you want to. But you see how the site really works, not only on the front page but with every block that you put in there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And when I tested it, what I also saw is that it also includes the third-party blocks. So, if you have from JetBag or from Jost or from Coblocks, all those blocks will also show up in that and you see how they will change with a change of the style variations, which is, I find that particularly important because many of those block suites came out in the early days of the block editor, and some of them have not been updated. And you will see it there, too, and see which ones are actually a little bit that needs some more TLC there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: I think of this as like a unit testing feature. But rolled in, instead of having to be imported, it&#8217;s available. Once it gets in, it would be available all the time. So, you can always double-check how things are looking without importing content or some of the other ways that we&#8217;ve had to do this kind of unit testing in the past.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: The feature is merged into the code base. And it&#8217;ll be released in the 14.8 release. But it&#8217;s also available, it&#8217;s already available in the Gutenberg Nightly version, if you want to download that and get an early look at it. I really loved it. And then the last one from that post is the&#8230; Is it in any post? There is a video in the design post on the reorganization of the editor.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s also coming or slated for 14.8, is that the editor screens receive some reorganization that it&#8217;s better positioned for the future enhancements like the browse mode. And the poster design post has a short video for the new way of things. So, it&#8217;s more like an organized version. Right now, when you click on the appearance editor link in the WP admin, where you get your right into the editor of your homepage, which is a little bit confusing, now, when you click on it, you get the menu on the left-hand side.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And what you see in the canvas is actually just a view. There&#8217;s an edit button where you can start the editing, but you are not going to edit by accident. Or, you can then navigate to the other template parts much easier instead of getting out of the canvas. There are all these little things where little annoying things are taken care of. And I&#8217;m looking forward to that. Some of the UI experiments, new UI is already in the experiments, but that gives them a new home, so to speak. Any comments on that?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: No, I look forward to seeing more about what&#8217;s coming.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It&#8217;s really cool. I think there&#8217;s so much more coming. And I&#8217;m looking forward to 6.2 because some of it is definitely slated. We don&#8217;t have any plans yet on the 6.2 release cycle. That&#8217;s a very shortening&#8230; It&#8217;s a nice shortening of things. Instead of release cycle, you say recycle. Well, the state of the word is coming up. And I&#8217;m sure we hear a little bit about what&#8217;s coming in 2023, a review of 2022. It&#8217;s on December 15th at 1:00 p.m. Eastern 1800 DTC. I always need to check my calculations on the time zones. That&#8217;s just a shout-out for don&#8217;t miss it. It will be recorded, of course, for anybody who has no time at 1:00 p.m. or in the evening. So, Daisy, is there anything? How can people reach you if they wanted to connect with you? And what is in store on the online meetup?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: Let&#8217;s see. So, nothing scheduled for online meetup, as we&#8217;re coming into the holiday season. If you&#8217;d like to get in touch with me, I am Daisy O, the letter &#8220;O,&#8221; on mixed Slack. And also, that&#8217;s my WordPress profile. Most other places, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, I&#8217;m DaisyOlsen, all one word.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right. So, so we&#8217;re coming to the end of the show, and I will thank you very much for spending the time with me here and going through the change log. Good work on all the good educational pieces that you do. And if you have any questions, still listening about block themes, you can contact me. But I will point you to Daisy, in shortcut, unless we find, of course, already material online. She also has one post in the developer blog. What is that about?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: It was about the various ways you can use the home template and post template options and theming.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Excellent. As always, the show notes will be published on the gutenbergtimes.com/podcast. This is episode 77. And if you have questions and suggestions or news that you want us to include, send them to <a href=\"mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. That&#8217;s <a href=\"mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. Yes, that&#8217;s an email address. No slack, no Twitter. Well, of course, you can always follow us on @gutenbergtimes on Twitter. We also have pinned on the profile page our place on Mastodon. If you have left Twitter, just go there. It&#8217;s a public page. You can still see it and link it. Thank you all for listening. Thank you, Daisy. Wishing everyone wonderful holidays and a happy new year. And I&#8217;ll see you on the other side until 2023. Goodbye.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Daisy Olsen</em>: Thanks so much for having me, Birgit. And happy holidays to everyone.</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, 12 Dec 2022 02:40:51 +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:19:\"Gutenberg Changelog\";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:15;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:\"Gutenberg Times: State of the Word, Gutenberg 14.7, Box Shadow and more – Weekend Edition 238\";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=22914\";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://gutenbergtimes.com/state-of-the-word-gutenberg-14-7-box-shadow-and-more-weekend-edition-238/\";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:24884:\"<p>Howdy,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Going through the latest Gutenberg release, and seeing what is in store for the next one, I feel, fantastic progress has been made on Phase 2 of the block editor. WordPress will be in great shape to start the next phase: collaborative editing.  If you are keen to learn more, I suggest you watch <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/state-of-the-word-2022/\">next week&#8217;s State of the Word</a>.  As always, it will be recorded, and you can watch it at your leisure. </p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/state-of-the-word-2022/\"><img /></a>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;d be interested in your take of the keynote as well as the Q &amp; A that will be held afterwards. I hope you write with your thoughts.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Until next week, be well! </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"0-strong-a-href-https-us-02-web-zoom-us-webinar-register-7616700808432-wn-ig-f-xjz-c-qym-tk-62-c-v-9-ocw-layout-layout-layout-a-strong\">Layout. Layout. Layout</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7616700808432/WN_IG_fXjzCQymTk62cV9_ocw\">Reserve your seats!</a></strong> The next <strong>Gutenberg Live Q &amp; A</strong> will take place on January 11th, 2023 at 5pm ET / 22:00 UTC . </p>\n\n\n\n<p>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 aligned, inside container blocks. In terms of block styling, Layout is a complex feature because it affects child blocks in ways that go beyond CSS inheritance.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this show, <strong>Isabel Brison</strong>, <strong>Andrew Serong</strong> and <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> will discuss the opportunities and challenges of the Layout features for site builders, and they will be available to answer your questions. Isabel Brison will also give us a demo of various layout scenarios. <strong><a href=\"https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7616700808432/WN_IG_fXjzCQymTk62cV9_ocw\">Join us! </a></strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This is also a preview on <a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2023/session/layout-layout-layout/\">Isabel Brison&#8217;s talk at WordCamp Asia</a></em> i<em>n February 2023</em></p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7616700808432/WN_IG_fXjzCQymTk62cV9_ocw\"><img /></a>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Lana Miro</strong> collected <a href=\"https://crocoblock.com/blog/best-wordpress-podcasts-to-listen/\"><strong>16 Best WordPress Podcasts to Listen To (Top Selection)</strong></a>. She wrote about the Gutenberg Changelog: &#8220;This podcast is not just about WordPress in general but specifically about the Gutenberg block editor. In each episode, host Birgit Pauli-Haack and a guest discuss the latest version of Gutenberg and any related issues. They do all the hard work of curating news of Gutenberg’s development and then present it with infectious enthusiasm.&#8221; Thank you, Lana &nbsp;💞</p>\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-flow\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container\">\n<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost\"><ul><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-strong-a-href-https-us-02-web-zoom-us-webinar-register-7616700808432-wn-ig-f-xjz-c-qym-tk-62-c-v-9-ocw-layout-layout-layout-a-strong\">Layout. Layout. Layout</a></li><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/#2-gutenberg-14-7-released\">Gutenberg 14.7 release</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><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#6-new-videos\"> New videos </a><ul><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#7-word-press-tv\">WordPressTV</a></li></ul></li><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#5-s\">Upcoming WordPress events</a><ul><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-l\">Learn WordPress Online Meetups</a></li></ul></li></ul></div>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"0-word-press-release-information\">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"2-gutenberg-14-7-released\">Gutenberg 14.7 release</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Gutenberg 14.7 </strong>was released this week, with 165 merged PRs by 48 Contributors, 9 were first timers! And it’s packed with quite a few features, some of them still experimental. You see big improvements to the navigation block, a media selection from the inserter and more controls for the inner blocks of flex layout blocks. Other core blocks received some small refinements that make the overall experience more consistent.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Daisy Olsen</strong>, lead for Gutenberg 14.7 plugin release, wrote in the post. <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/09/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-7-7-december/\"><strong>What’s new in Gutenberg 14.7? (7 December)</strong></a>,  &#8220;It introduces a new experimental tabbed&nbsp;sidebar, colors to help identify some&nbsp;block&nbsp;types in list view, and improvements to the Page List block to make it easier to manage page links in your content.&#8221; </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Olsen highlighted the following features:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/09/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-7-7-december/#improved-organization-of-block-settings-with-split-control\">Improved organization of block settings with split control</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/09/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-7-7-december/#quickly-identify-template-parts-and-reusable-blocks-by-color\">Quickly identify Template Parts and Reusable Blocks by color</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/09/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-7-7-december/#add-media-to-your-content-directly-from-the-inserter\">Add media to your content directly from the inserter</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/09/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-7-7-december/#see-all-pages-in-list-view-for-the-page-list-block\">See all pages in List View for the Page List block&nbsp;</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/09/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-7-7-december/#layout-controls-added-to-children-of-flex-layout-blocks\">Layout controls added to children of flex layout blocks</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/09/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-7-7-december/#improved-load-times-by-caching-the-results-of-querying-settings-from-theme-json\">Improved load times by caching the results of querying settings from theme.json</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>Yesterday, <strong>Daisy Olsen</strong> and I recorded the 77th Episode of the Gutenberg Changelog. It was such a great pleasure to discuss the release and what&#8217;s coming next for the block editor. The episode will arrive at your favorite podcast app over the weekend. </p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/\"><img /></a>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-flow\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container\">\n<p><strong>🎙️ </strong> New episode:  <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-77-gutenberg-14-7-whats-new-for-block-themes-an-upcoming-live-qa-in-january/\">Gutenberg Changelog #77 – Gutenberg 14.7, what’s new for Block Themes, an upcoming Live Q&amp;A in January</a> with special guest, Daisy Olsen and host Birgit Pauli-Haack. </p>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong>, who runs the FSE Outreach program held this week&#8217;s <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/12/08/hallway-hangout-lets-chat-about-the-future-of-custom-css-with-block-themes/\"><strong>Hallway Hangout: Let’s chat about the Future of Custom CSS with block themes</strong></a> and posted the recording and a summary. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>In another update from the FSE Program, Anne McCarthy is<a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/12/07/fse-program-seeking-volunteers-to-use-replay-io-for-capturing-bugs/\"><strong> seeking volunteers to use Replay.io for capturing bugs</strong></a> . After using Instant WP for spinning up test site for call for testings, Anne McCarthy will expand the program to pilot using Replay.io. Volunteers will  &#8220;help determine how it can be used to better WordPress’ bug finding and fixing feedback&nbsp;loop.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-constrained\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container\">\n<p>The <strong><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/\">WordPress Developer Blog</a></strong> is still in beta. The editorial group is working on getting more posts published. If you want to write a blog post that would help WordPress developer be successful building themes or plugins or bespoke site for client, browse through the <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/developer-blog-content/discussions/categories/topic-ideas\">topic Ideas, that have already been submitted</a>.  </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/how-to-contribute/\">How to contribute</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/tips-and-guidelines-for-writers/\">Tips and guidelines for writers</a></li>\n</ul>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alvaro Gómez</strong> posted about <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/support/2022/12/introducing-the-block-editor-in-the-support-forums/\"><strong>Introducing the Block Editor in the Support Forums</strong></a>; only a few core-block will be allowed. &#8220;Users will be able to easily insert links, share code or embed screenshots. Using Blocks will also enable new possibilities, such as using patterns for common responses to allow for faster answers.&nbsp;&#8221; he wrote.  If I read it right and the current editor in use &#8220;predates TinyMCE&#8221;, then this might be the first update to the forums editor since the start of the website in 2003. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>For now, it&#8217;s available via a test site, and you are invited to try it and share your feedback on the <a href=\"https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6608\">meta trac ticket. </a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> also reported on this update: <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/the-block-editor-is-coming-to-wordpress-support-forums\"><strong>The Block Editor Is Coming to WordPress’ Support Forums</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"0-p\">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In her article <strong><a href=\"https://wptavern.com/woocommerce-blocks-9-1-0-introduces-products-block-in-beta\">WooCommerce Blocks 9.1.0 Introduces Products Block in Beta</a> Sarah Gooding</strong> reports on the latest release of WooCommerce Blocks. &#8220;The plugin serves as a place to iterate and test new blocks, and this release introduces the new Product Query-powered Products block in beta. (&#8230;) The new Products block is based on the core Query Loop block. WooCommerce Blocks contributors are aiming to replace all the plugin’s current product-displaying blocks with this one.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Rich Tabor</strong>, theme and plugin developer, was <a href=\"https://richtabor.com/wordpress-design-tool/\"><strong>exploring WordPress as a design tool</strong></a>. It&#8217;s the story of how he challenged himself to take one pattern, from one theme, and morph it multiple times — only using the design controls of the block editor.  &#8220;Every font family/size, color, border, radius, image, video, and spacing value were all added in-editor.&#8221; And he also challenges you to give this a try: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><em>Use only the&nbsp;<a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/twenty-twenty-three\">Twenty Twenty-Three&nbsp;</a><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/twentytwentythree\">theme</a>.&nbsp;</em></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Design a section of a page, then </li>\n\n\n\n<li>morph it a couple of times using only the design tooling within the editor.&nbsp;</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https://richtabor.com/wordpress-design-tool/\"><img /></a>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Automattic&#8217;s Sensei LMS</strong> has <a href=\"https://senseilms.com/meet-course-a-new-free-block-theme-by-sensei/\"><strong>released a new free block theme called &#8220;Course.&#8221;</strong></a> It is designed for creators and is built to work perfectly with all Sensei LMS features, including course lists, sales pages, and learning mode course templates. It is also open-source and <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/course/\">available on WordPress.org</a>, making it ideal for course creators, bloggers, coaches, small businesses, and even those using competitor LMS WordPress plugins. The theme is mobile-optimized and allows for customization to match your brand.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://jetpack.com/blog/jetpack-11-6-update-to-the-form-block-and-more/\">Jetpack 11.6 release</a></strong> added new features to its forms and SEO capabilities. It now has block pattern support for forms, making it easier to create them, and new SEO features allowing users to specify that certain posts or pages should not be indexed by search engines, and to set custom SEO titles for individual posts and pages.</p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https://jetpack.com/blog/jetpack-11-6-update-to-the-form-block-and-more/\"><img /></a>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://wptavern.com/podcast/54-steve-burge-on-where-were-at-with-multi-author-collaboration-in-wordpress\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">#54 – </a><strong><a href=\"https://wptavern.com/podcast/54-steve-burge-on-where-were-at-with-multi-author-collaboration-in-wordpress\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Steve Burge on Where We’re at With Multi-Author Collaboration in WordPress</a> </strong>with Nathan Wrigley. On this episode of the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern, the topic is multi-author collaboration in WordPress. Steve Burge discusses the current state of collaboration in WordPress, the challenges that come with it, and what the future holds for the platform. Burge also elaborates on the site editing phase of the Gutenberg project and how it relates to collaboration.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled\">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> just published a new post on the WordPress Developer Blog:  <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/12/07/leveraging-theme-json-and-per-block-styles-for-more-performant-themes/\"><strong>Leveraging theme.json and per-block styles for more performant themes</strong></a>. I<a href=\"https://twitter.com/justintadlock/status/1600623143558828034\">n a tweet</a> he wrote: &#8220;This post dives into how to primarily lean into theme.json when styling your theme, taking advantage of the built-in performance enhancements that WordPress offers out of the box, such as only outputting CSS when it&#8217;s needed. All theme authors know that theme.json isn&#8217;t quite enough for every project. However, you can benefit from those same enhancements by loading per-block stylesheets. This is also great for integrating with third-party blocks without bulking up your CSS.&#8221; </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n\n<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>\n\n\n\n\n<p>In his article on the CSS Tricks, <a href=\"https://css-tricks.com/adding-box-shadows-to-wordpress-blocks-and-elements/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Adding Box Shadows to WordPress Blocks and Elements</strong></a>, <strong>Ganesh Dahal</strong> provides you with a tutorial and an example of how to add a `box-shadow` to the hover state of a button in `theme.json`. ICYMI: As of WordPress 6.1, it is possible to add styles to elements and blocks using `theme.json`, including pseudo-classes such as `:hover`. Ben Dwyer wrote the corresponding Dev Note: <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/10/10/styling-elements-in-block-themes/\">Styling elements in block themes</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press\">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In his post, <a href=\"https://fluffyandflakey.blog/2022/12/06/access-all-block-attributes-structurally-with-the-gutenberg-block-editor/\"><strong>Access all block attributes structurally with the Gutenberg block editor</strong></a>, <strong>Dennis Snell</strong> wrote &#8220;about a small experiment to eliminate sourced attributes in Gutenberg posts. If you want to build a custom block editor, and you wish to avoid parsing HTML to get the full set of attributes, then it’s strikingly easy to do so: all it takes is disabling a few properties of each block’s attribute definitions.&#8221; Let him tell you more! </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n\n<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>\n\n\n\n<p><img alt=\"GitHub all releases\" src=\"https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge\" /></p>\n\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"6-new-videos\"> New videos </h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://torquemag.io/2022/12/torque-social-hour-learning-to-use-the-site-editor/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Torque Social Hour: Learning to use the Site Editor</strong></a> with <strong>Brian Gardner.</strong> On this week’s episode, Brian Gardner teaches Doc the fundamentals of editing a block-based WordPress theme with the new Site Editor. Brian designed one of the Style Variations that came in the new Twenty Twenty Three theme.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"7-word-press-tv\">WordPressTV</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2022/12/09/builder-basics-demystifying-theme-json-and-global-styles/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Builder Basics: Demystifying theme.json and Global Styles</strong></a> (Learn WordPress)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2022/12/09/manage-your-block-theme-fonts-with-create-block-theme/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Manage your block theme fonts with Create Block Theme</strong></a> (Learn WordPress)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2022/12/08/the-key-to-locking-blocks/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The key to locking blocks</a> </strong>(Learn WordPress)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2022/12/08/content-creators-are-users-too-the-crucial-importance-of-carefully-crafted-editorial-experiences/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Content creators are users too: the crucial Importance of carefully crafted editorial experiences</a> </strong>(WCUs)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2022/12/07/using-the-navigation-block-2/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Using the navigation block</a> </strong>(Learn WordPress)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2022/12/02/hallway-hangout-future-of-css-in-block-themes/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Hallway Hangout: the future of CSS in block themes</strong></a> (Learn WordPress)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2022/12/02/builder-basics-building-with-columns-groups-rows-and-stacks/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Builder basics: building with columns, groups, rows and stacks</a> </strong>(Learn WordPress)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2022/12/02/lets-code-developing-blocks-without-react-controls/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Let’s code: developing blocks without React! – Controls</strong></a> (Learn WordPress)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2022/11/30/using-page-templates/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Using page templates</strong></a> (Learn WordPress)</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"5-s\">Upcoming WordPress events</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>December 12, 2022 &#8211; 10 am &#8211; 1:30 pm ET / 15:00 &#8211; 18:30 UTC </strong><br /><a href=\"https://bluehostawards.com/\"><strong>WP CreatorCon</strong>  </a>&#8211;  a virtual event curated by Bluehost to bring together all WordPress creators of the world. It&#8217;s an event that will culminate the Bluehost Creators Awards. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>December 15, 2022 – 1 pm ET / 18:00 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/state-of-the-word-2022/\">State of the Word 2022</a></strong>&nbsp;– Matt Mullenweg’s annual keynote.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>January 11, 2023 &#8211; 5 pm ET / 22:00 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href=\"https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7616700808432/WN_IG_fXjzCQymTk62cV9_ocw\">Gutenberg Times Live Q &amp; A: Layout, layout, layout</a></strong><br />Panel discussion with Isabel Brison, Andrew Serong, Justing Tadlock and Birgit Pauli-Haack</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>February 17 – 19, 2023</strong><br /><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2023/\"><strong>WordCamp Asia 2023</strong></a>&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"1-l\">Learn WordPress Online Meetups</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>December 12, 2022 – 3 pm ET / 22:00 UTC<br /><a href=\"https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/289957641/\"><strong>Creating a Call To Action with the Block Editor</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>December 14, 2022 &#8211; 7 pm ET / 24:00 UTC<br /><a href=\"https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/290170169/\"><strong>Exploring Category Templates and the Query Loop Block Session 1</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>December 15, 2022 &#8211;  9 am ET / 14:00 UTC<br /><strong><a href=\"https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/290237910/\">Let&#8217;s code: Developing Blocks without React! &#8211; Review</a></strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p>December 21, 2022 &#8211;  7 pm ET / 24:00 UTC<br /><a href=\"https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/290170454/\"><strong>Creating a Theme with the Create Block Theme Plugin Session 1</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>December 21, 2022 &#8211; 3 am ET / 8 am UTC<br /><strong><a href=\"https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/290170469/\">Creating a Theme with the Create Block Theme Plugin Session 2</a></strong></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n\n<p>Featured Image: &#8220;Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II&#8221; in Milan by Dennis Hipp via <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/6136384d1b/\">WordPress Photos</a> </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>\n\n\n\n<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>\n\n\n\n<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, 10 Dec 2022 13:57:00 +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: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:16;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:68:\"WPTavern: WooCommerce Blocks 9.1.0 Introduces Products Block in Beta\";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=140245\";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:79:\"https://wptavern.com/woocommerce-blocks-9-1-0-introduces-products-block-in-beta\";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:2447:\"<p>WooCommerce Blocks<a href=\"https://developer.woocommerce.com/2022/12/09/woocommerce-blocks-9-1-0-release-notes/\"> version 9.10</a> was released today, hitting a major milestone for the development of its new Products Block. The plugin serves as a place to iterate and test new blocks, and this release introduces the new Product Query-powered Products block in beta.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this first iteration, users can arrange products by popular presets and control the layout in the list/grid. </p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>The new Products block is based on the core Query Loop block. WooCommerce Blocks contributors are aiming to replace all of the plugin&#8217;s current product-displaying blocks with this one. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;This new block should be flexible enough to reproduce all of the use-cases currently covered by existing blocks (e.g. showing all products, showing only new products, or products on sale, etc.), while also being filterable via dedicated filter blocks and compatible with FSE templates (i.e. it should replace the placeholders we currently use in archive templates),&#8221; Automattic-sponsored WooCommerce contributor Marco Lucio Giannotta said in the <a href=\"https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-blocks/issues/6793\">ticket</a> proposing the new Products block.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first iteration still requires some polishing but it&#8217;s meeting the basic objectives for allowing users to display and customize products using the new query-based block.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Version 9.1.0 also unveils three new &#8220;product-adjacent&#8221; patterns. These are patterns that don&#8217;t use WooCommerce store data but rather focus on presentation. They include the following patterns:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;WooCommerce Alternating Image and Text” block pattern. (<a href=\"https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-blocks/pull/7827\">7827</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;WooCommerce Product Hero 2 Column 2 Row” block pattern. (<a href=\"https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-blocks/pull/7814\">7814</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>“Just Arrived Full Hero”  block pattern (<a href=\"https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-blocks/pull/7812\">7812</a>)</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>WooCommerce Blocks contributors are also working on patterns that connect to store data and will be releasing new patterns soon. Other notable additions in this release include support for the alignment setting in the Add to Cart Button and Product Rating elements.</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, 09 Dec 2022 22:21:36 +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:17;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:52:\"Post Status: More WordPress People Doing Good Things\";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=145785\";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:63:\"https://poststatus.com/more-wordpress-people-doing-good-things/\";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:4077:\"<h2 id=\"h-wordpress-gives-a-hand\">WordPress Gives a Hand</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>For the third year in a row, a bunch of WordPress community members will join together at the holiday time for the charity campaign “<a href=\"http://wpgivesahand.com/\">WordPress Gives A Hand</a>” <a href=\"https://twitter.com/search?q=%23wpgivesahand&src=typed_query\">#wpgivesahand</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the holiday season, instead of giving out discounts to customers, participating WordPress community members will donate a percentage of their revenue to supporting people in need. Each company chooses whichever charity they would like to donate to.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This great initiative raises awareness across the global WordPress community. Last year, participating companies included Cloudways, TranslatePress, Visual Composer, wpDataTables, Amelia, and others. This year WordPress Gives a Hand is asking for your help to show the world that WordPress is a place for everyone!</p>\n\n\n\n<p>To learn more or to get involved visit <a href=\"http://wpgivesahand.com/\">wpgivesahand.com</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-the-wp-community-collective\">The WP Community Collective</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The WP Community Collective aims to address some of these ongoing challenges by creating community-funded <a href=\"https://www.thewpcommunitycollective.com/fellowships/\">Fellowships</a> to financially support individual contributions to the WordPress project and community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>“We hope that the WP Community Collective can help bridge the gap between the passion people feel for WordPress, and the very real and practical limits of volunteer contribution,” said founding co-director Sé Reed.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The WPCC’s first initiative is the <a href=\"https://opencollective.com/thewpcc/contribute/accessibility-fellowship-46812\">WPCC Accessibility Fellowship</a>. They are currently in discussion with an existing unsponsored core contributor to hold the inaugural role of Accessibility Fellow, and have launched the fundraising efforts to fund this Fellowship: <a href=\"https://opencollective.com/thewpcc/contribute/accessibility-fellowship-46812\">https://opencollective.com/thewpcc/contribute/accessibility-fellowship-46812</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>To learn more or to get involved visit <a href=\"https://www.thewpcommunitycollective.com/\">thewpcommunitycollective.com</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-post-status-membership-deal\">Post Status Membership Deal</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the spirit of Black Friday/Cyber Monday, Post Status is offering $100 off any annual membership through December 31. Why? Because we love you! Membership gets you into our Slack community, too!</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Use discount code BFCM for your best Post Status membership deal ever!</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-in-the-spotlight\">In the Spotlight</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Post Status professional member, <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/member-spotlight-jamie-madden/\">Jamie Madden</a>. Jamie is the founder and lead developer of WC Vendors Marketplace, the first free multivendor marketplace plugin for WordPress and WooCommerce, launched back in 2014.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-weekly-member-huddles\">Weekly Member Huddles</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Wednesdays <a href=\"https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYuf-GrpjksH91MJiGiaIwzpHWzhWSgOrKL\">Sign Up</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Fridays <a href=\"https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcuf-uprT0oGdx2Pg91t1eADl5JOow2YwLR\">Sign Up</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-upcoming-events\">Upcoming Events:</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/state-of-the-word-2022/\">State of the Word</a> December 15, 2022</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://kolkata.wordcamp.org/2022/\">WordCamp Kolkata</a> December 17-18, 2022</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2023/\">WordCamp Asia</a> February 17-19, 2023</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Calls for Speakers and Sponsors are open at <a href=\"https://www.wpwealthbuilder.com/\">WP Wealthbuilder Summit</a> May 12, 2023</li>\n\n\n\n<li>WordCamps are back. <a href=\"https://central.wordcamp.org/schedule/\">Check the schedule online</a>!</li>\n</ul>\n<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, 09 Dec 2022 20:10:12 +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:18;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:113:\"Post Status: The WP Agency Journey with D’nelle Dowis of Berry Interesting Productions— Post Status Draft 132\";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=145319\";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:118:\"https://poststatus.com/the-wp-agency-journey-with-dnelle-dowis-of-berry-interesting-productions-post-status-draft-132/\";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:43796:\"<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\">D\'nelle Dowis has been a part of WordPress for more than a decade. Her passion for genuine, sustained relationships informs how she leads her agency, <a href=\"https://berry-interesting.com/\">Berry Interesting Productions</a>. D\'nelle talks about her experiences meeting clients where they are and helping them leverage technology to solve the challenges of today while making room for future opportunities. She shares why she values support, her thoughts on DIY, and how she makes room for her clients to ask the weird questions.   </p></div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer eplus-wrapper\"></div>\n\n\n\n<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\">31</span><span class=\"yoast-reading-time__time-unit\"> minutes</span></p>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://poststatus.com/planet/feed/#h-transcript\">Transcript</a> ↓</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this episode of <strong>Post Status Draft</strong>, Cory is joined by <strong>D\'nelle Dowis</strong>, CEO of <strong><a href=\"https://berry-interesting.com/\">Berry Interesting Productions</a></strong>. She and her husband have worked in WordPress for over a decade and run a small, consultative agency. D\'nelle shares truly helpful insights about centering relationships in work and life. From being invested in clients for the long haul to being intentionally curious about knowing others and how they spend their days, D\'nelle invites us to let connection be the fuel that informs and inspires who we are and how we work.  </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Top Takeaways:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Build Long-Term Client Relationships: </strong>Building long-term relationships enables you to advise clients from a big-picture perspective, as opposed to just building technical solutions. \n<ul>\n<li></li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Support is Serious Business: </strong>Doing what we do best should give our client\'s peace of mind that their sites will perform as needed when needed. </li>\n\n\n\n<li>Look Beyond a Client\'s Ask to Unseen Opportunities: As clearly reflected in D\'nelle\'s experience share about her yoga studio client, leaning into hard seasons with clients to bring unique solutions with technology can transform the future trajectory of their business.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"is-layout-flex wp-container-26 wp-block-columns Pressable has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background\" id=\"Pressable\">\n<div class=\"is-layout-flow wp-block-column\">\n<h3><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png\" alt=\"🙏\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> Sponsor: <a href=\"https://poststat.us/pressable\">Pressable</a></h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Founded in 2010, <strong>Pressable</strong> is a world-class managed WordPress hosting provider built on the same data network as <strong>WordPress.com</strong> and <strong>WordPress VIP</strong>. With industry-leading performance, 24/7 expert support, a 100% uptime guarantee, and seamless integrations with <strong>WooCommerce</strong> and <strong>Jetpack</strong>, Pressable provides the tools you need to manage your WordPress websites and grow your business all in one place. <a href=\"https://poststat.us/pressable\">TRY PRESSABLE→</a></p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"is-layout-flow wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center\">\n<a href=\"https://poststat.us/pressable\"><img src=\"https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/pressable-icon-primary.svg\" alt=\"Pressable\" class=\"wp-image-121339\" width=\"150\" title=\"Pressable\" /></a>Pressable\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<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>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://troydean.com.au/\">Troy Dean</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.thecaverns.com/\">The Caverns in Tennessee</a> </li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.novofitnessstudio.com/\">Novo Fitness Studio</a> </li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/divi/\">Divi</a> </li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<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>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"eplus-wrapper\">\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/d_nelle\">D\'nelle Dowis</a> (Owner, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/berryinterestin\">Berry Interesting Productions</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/corymiller303\">Cory Miller</a> (CEO, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status\">Post Status</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/lemonadecode\">Olivia Bisset</a> (Intern, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status\">Post Status</a>)</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<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>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"eplus-wrapper\" id=\"h-transcript\">Transcript</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to Post Status Draft. This is another interview in our agency journey series where we\'re talking to agency owners and getting their backstory and their story, and sharing a little bit about their passions and the work and the world of WordPress. So today I have someone I\'ve known for a very long time, D\'nelle and I\'m gonna let her introduce herself in a second.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, um, we\'ve been, I\'ve known D\'nelle for, let\'s see. Gosh, 10 years. I\'m trying to think at least. Oh yeah. Yeah. And um, so we\'ve got to meet a couple times and I was just hearing a little bit about her story and I\'m excited for you to hear that too. So, D\'nelle, would you mind in, uh, introducing yourself and sharing, uh, what your agency is?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>D’nelle Dowis: Yeah. Um, so my name is D\'nelle Dallas. I own an agency named Berry interesting productions. We\'re very small. Um, it\'s owned by me and my husband. Um, and then we have a developer who we rely on heavily, but she is still contract with us. We primarily provide WordPress support. That\'s what we get really excited about.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, but we also build WordPress [00:01:00] websites. And depending on what the client\'s needs are, we will either say, Hey, maybe you should be on Squarespace, or, Hey, maybe you need a bigger agency. So a lot of. Is very, take a very consultative approach. And, um, yeah, so been in WordPress since 2010 now. Um, it\'s, it\'s been a, a hot minute since all of that started.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, and yeah, we\'ve seen a lot happen. It\'s, there\'s a lot has happened over the last 15, 17 years.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller: No kidding. Tell me a little bit about, okay, so that\'s where you are now, and we\'re going to dive into parts of the in a minute, but tell us how you got there. So you started with WordPress in 2010?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>D’nelle Dowis: Yeah, so I started writing HTML websites.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean, I don\'t go quite far enough back to have written, um, themes for MySpace. But that is, that\'s the kind of era that we\'re talking about is write your own HTML website era. Um, and I, so I, I came from a print background, um, [00:02:00] primarily in journalism. I thought that I was gonna go and like lay out. Uh, newspapers for a living.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I had a lot of experience with type setting, a lot of experience with, um, graphic design in the sense of like user experience design. Like I kind of, um, during Covid, I, I dabbled a little bit in UX and it very much lined up with the ba like, like career background of having worked in print journalism and um, print design.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, and then, um, in 2000 and. 10, 2011. Um, I went through career change where I was let go after a reorg and I was like, I really don\'t know what I\'m gonna do. Um, and was hired as a webmaster just because I happened to be tech savvy, was hired as a webmaster at a little company in Nashville and that company was building themselves a website.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so I was tasked with. Basically liaising with the agency that was building this site so that I knew as much about it as possible so that I could be a good [00:03:00] webmaster for ongoing upkeep. Um, and that\'s really where I started to see the power of WordPress and what it can do for you and the ways that it can be used to do all kinds of different things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, and it was. After encountering WordPress that it really made sense for me to move into doing it, um, as a like long term business. Um, in 2012, I quit doing anything for anybody else and started doing this full time. Um, I\'ve definitely like kind of dabbled in other agents. Um, that was really like from a, a like supplement my own income as I built my business kind of thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I would do project management and like low level development for other agencies, um, which really has formed the way that I run. Very interesting today because you, you see that man behind the curtain, you see where. Those cracks are in the fascia and you wanna, I mean, at least I wanna fix it. Um, I didn\'t want it to be like that for the people who are working at agencies, and I don\'t want it to be like that for clients.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, so that\'s kind of how we ended up here with the [00:04:00] goal of making sure that we have clients that we are in long-term relationships with, that we can advise from a big picture perspective as opposed to just building. That\'s not what we want. Do we wanna be in the long term relationship business? Um, and so kind of as a result, we are in the website development business.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, but it really is all about the support, all about the kind of holistic business advice from a, I was writing a blog the other day about, um, tech stacks and really like tech stacks come from the world of application building where you think about all of the languages and tools that you\'re using to build an application.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I really like to think about that from a business perspective. There\'s a lot of like tech stack advice that I will give to clients. Like, you shouldn\'t be, you know, uh, registering your domain over here, or maybe we should think about different hosting, or you might wanna think about a different calendar booking tool that integrates with your website.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those kinds of things that aren\'t just about web development, but are more about the overall business operations. [00:05:00] Those are the kind of relationships that I wanna have with our clients, and that is what I wanna establish with our agency, which is a space where people are not just like coming to you saying, Hey, could you build this website for me?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But they might come to you with weird questions. I wanna have the kind of relationship with our clients where we can answer those weird questions and if we can\'t answer them, we can help them find somebody that they, we know that they can trust.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller: Tell me a little bit about support. You mentioned like, okay, there\'s building this side, but there\'s this ongoing thing, and I think that\'s one of the beauties of WordPress that can do so much more for businesses.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But could you talk about from that angle, um, the support, what it, what you\'re intending to do and what you see from some of the types of clients that you have that you do for?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>D’nelle Dowis: Um, so at the very basis of it, um, I mean I\'m kind of coming from the, uh, space where I\'m influenced by like Troy Dean and also like, let\'s not forget to mention Nathan Ingram, who is like an absolute genius in this space.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, talking about like Nathan\'s scope document where he [00:06:00] talks about how you talk to clients when you are meeting them for the first time and evaluating what their needs are. Inevitably, people think they are coming to you because they wanna buy something from you. They wanna buy a product, they wanna buy this website.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What they don\'t understand about buying that website. And I find myself in a situation where I\'m often kind of like educating people about what it\'s like to own and use a website is that it\'s not something where you can just set it and forget it. You\'re not going to buy a car. You\'re thinking about the ongoing mainten.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is going to have to happen. So I mean, we, we take a little bit of a kitchy approach with it. Very interesting productions like we are, we have this kind of like garden, like tending your garden sort of theme. That\'s really where that support comes from, is that, You can\'t just go out there and throw some seeds in the ground and then expect that you\'re gonna get the harvest that you want.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You really need to be paying attention to your site long term. That being said, there\'s so many things about website maintenance that really should not be on [00:07:00] mind of a business owner. Like it\'s I, I\'m kind of in a weird position because we build websites and we provide website support. So I think about this for our own website as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, you know, we serve a lot of yoga studios, a lot of wellness businesses, a lot of, um, like, you know, independent musicians. And I don\'t want, you know, the musician to be laying awake at night thinking about, is my website gonna break? Um, are, are people gonna be able to access those tour dates? Is the thing that we have set up for people to enter this raffle so that they could potentially win?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like VIP experience, is that gonna work after we put out the marketing for it? Those kinds of things. Those worries of, is this gonna work for me? Am I gonna be able to use this tool in the way that I need it when I need to? They shouldn\'t be having to think about those things. Um, you know, last year we bought a house, um, out here in Denver, Colorado.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, it was the second house that we purchased, but this really is like our forever home and. Thinking about the like long term [00:08:00] things that you need to do to keep this house healthy, to keep it safe, to keep everything working properly. Like I kind of wish that I had the budget to hire somebody who would come out here and do a property walk once a month to see if my gutters are sagging or to see if there\'s something that\'s gone wrong on the roof.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those are the kinds of things that I don\'t have the knowledge of in my own head because I\'m not spending the time thinking about it every day. So from a support perspective, We want to be that resource that is the expert on this particular niche so that you can trust us to handle it for you. And you could be thinking about, okay, what am I gonna create next?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like, what is my next tour gonna look like? Um, what do does the, you know, brick and mortar expansion to a second location of our yoga studio look like? It really is a situation where I want to be the trusted space that they can outsource those sorts of things so that they\'re not having to worry about them so that they\'re not spooked when somebody goes on their website and, you know, puts in a, I notice that your site\'s SEO is terrible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You should contact us, you know, like through your [00:09:00] contact forum. Like I don\'t want people to be spooked by that. I want them to know that if they\'re gonna, they have a question about anything, they got a phishing email that they can call. And we\'re gonna give them that the advice that they need so that they don\'t have to like, learn a whole new set of domain knowledge.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so that if they don\'t wanna deal with it that day, they can out, they can just offload it to us. That\'s, that\'s really what needs to happen. You don\'t wanna worry about looking into this like you have copyright infringement images on your site. I got that for you. I will let you know whether or not you need to pay attention to this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And meanwhile, we\'re gonna make sure that your site has not actually been. So, um, it really is more about being that, that support source of support for clients, almost from an emotional perspective, more than a practical perspective. We have done the property walks around your site. We know everything is working fine.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This one really important page that is tied to your marketing is working. There\'s nothing broken on it. You can confidently move forward with your marketing without worrying about whether or not your [00:10:00] site is gonna, you know, crack under the.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller: And when you go to these types of experts, you want them worrying about their craft, what they do best.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like the musicians for instance, like Right. You know, hey, if you\'re a fan of a big band, I want them thinking about their next song. Not necessarily worrying about, okay, what is this fishing like you said to that fishing email part. And I think that\'s the beauty of WordPress too. You can do so much with it, but as these businesses, organizations grow, they need more complexity that WordPress gives \'em.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that\'s where I, I see you all coming in to say, we\'re gonna take this load off you so that you can focus on what you do best.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>D’nelle Dowis: That\'s exactly right because I am so passionate just about artists in general. I mean, when I was in college, like one of my majors was creative writing. Like I definitely come from a creative space, but what I came away from college with and what has has happened during my career over the intervening years is that I find myself time and time again wanting to.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>People to [00:11:00] do the thing that they are really passionate about, and there are plenty of times that I have just, you know, sat head in hand being like, I do not wanna think about whether or not I should buy this new garage door or have it fixed. I don\'t wanna think about like why my water bill is so high. I just wanna hire somebody to come out here and make sure that it\'s okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>With their expertise. I don\'t wanna have to develop that expertise myself, and I don\'t want my clients to have to develop that expertise cuz I want \'em to spend that time creating new and amazing things that they\'re excited about. Like it\'s really hard to get excited about dns. Like really hard, like I have a hard time getting excited about dns.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don\'t want \'em to have to worry about it. If there\'s a term that they don\'t know, they don\'t know, that they don\'t understand, I want \'em to be able to come to me and me to be able to be trusted enough to give them the answer. That doesn\'t seem like I\'m coming from a place of trying to get \'em to.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Spend more money or come from a place of trying to, you know, change the nature of our relationship in some way. Like my whole thing has always been like, I don\'t wanna hold people hostage. And I [00:12:00] really, really don\'t want artists to feel held hostage by this need to engage in something that really, like, they don\'t wanna spend their time thinking about.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like, there\'s plenty of people who are like, oh, I\'ll just DIY that website myself. Awesome. I wanna support you in DIYing it, but first let\'s have a conversation about the complexity of it so that you can make an informed decision about what you wanna learn in DIY versus what it really makes sense for you to outsource.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that. You can spend the time thinking about the things that you\'re really excited about, whether that is the book that you wrote or the next tour that\'s coming up, or you know, the expansion of your studio. So it, it really is like, I mean it\'s, it\'s very much like comes from a mothering instinct in me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think. Like I\'ve got dogs, but we don\'t have kids really, like my clients and the business really take up a lot of that energy of me thinking about how can we best take care of our clients so that they are enabled to do the thing that they\'re really excited about.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller: Well, you mentioned artists and I wanna talk about that part of your business.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, I [00:13:00] think it\'s so interesting working with, with artists and musicians and things like that, but, uh, that, and also the yoga and the wellness industry you talked about too, seemed like, um, we, we were talking before we started this interview, you\'re mentioning like during Covid helping some of these people that didn\'t have a lot of support infrastructure that I, I think about as like, uh, analog almost in the sense of they\'re meeting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>People, um, in person and, uh, you know, whether it\'s a band playing a venue or it\'s a yoga instructor, and I\'d love to you to share a little bit about that, that work with those types that I think Covid, uh, helped, uh, open an opportunity, I think for a lot of businesses like. To kind of go, okay, now we can use leverage web and online to build and grow our business.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>D’nelle Dowis: Well, I mean, for a lot of people it really was a smack in the face. I mean, if you think about yoga studios, that is a very in person [00:14:00] thing. I mean, we definitely have like online classes that we can take, but I mean, if you\'re anything like me, like it is not the same. And it\'s, it\'s the same for like, um, for musician.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, my, my favorite story that I like to tell about Vibe is that in October of 2020, uh, we went to a show in South Central Tennessee. It\'s a place called The Caverns in Pelham, Tennessee. And they normally have bluegrass underground in their caverns, but because everything was, we can only do outdoor. Um, they set up a stage above their caverns.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They like brought in a stage and we, our favorite artist was playing a show on this stage. And we were like, partially it was a personal thing, like, we have got to get out of this house and, and do something, or we\'re gonna absolutely drive each other mad. And the other part of it, especially for me, was a deep curiosity about how they were gonna pull this off, because it really was, I mean, you know, to use a very tired word, it was unprecedented for all of.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:15:00] So what is this gonna look like with all of these new restrictions and all of these unknowns? And so we went down to the caverns and I was incredibly impressed with the operations of how they had turned this thing that they normally have, like in a, in a enclosed space. Into doing this outdoors. Um, which I think that they\'ve continued to do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They definitely had more shows outdoors after this first one. But the notable thing about this show was that we are sitting in like our little six foot square and they have, they\'re using an app that you can order, um, concessions off of that\'ll be delivered. And it was all very interesting. And then the show started and the vibe of everyone in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In that audience was so subdued, it was unnerving to watch the way that we had all clearly been affected by being in our houses for six, seven months at that point. And I think about that a lot in terms of these in person things. That in person is incredibly important and we\'re never, [00:16:00] I don\'t think we are ever really going to be able to replicate that in an online, in a virtual environment, but a lot of us were forced.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And one of the people that was forced to do that was a, um, client of ours, um, named no Novo Fitness studio. They\'re out of Midland, Georgia. We absolutely adore them. They are like, they\'re just our favorite to work with. Like they really get our vibe. We really get their vibe. And we\'re in a position where the yoga studio owners, it\'s a two sisters, they don\'t have to think.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Their website because they know that they can come to us and be like, Hey, we wanna do this, can you make it happen? And we can give them good advice about whether or not they should make it happen. And so with them, what we did is, this was very early on, I think this like started in April of 2020. They are like, we are absolutely bleeding money.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are paying. Rent on a brick and mortar that we can\'t use. Like the sisters would go in there and like do yoga in the studio themselves, but you can\'t have other people coming in, right? [00:17:00] Like it\'s, this is, we\'re all in lockdown. What do we do to maintain the, the vibe of the community that we have built.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, whether that is. A music, like a touring musician or whether that is, uh, a yoga studio or an acupuncturist or any kind of like wellness. Any, any of the people who are kind of in the, the verticals that we tend to work in. Um, how can we retain the magic that is that in person stuff while we are all stuck inside?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so with Novo, what we did is we built them like a little OnDemand, uh, video portal. So it\'s got gated content. The content is served up through Vimeo, but you can only access it if you\'re logged into their website. It was a relatively simple thing. We hadn\'t built anything like that before, but we had used all of these tools before the, um, the content gate tools.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\'d used Vimeo before. Um, and really like we were all stuck inside. Nobody really knew what to do, so we built this really quickly. I mean, it definitely, I think there\'s a case study out on. About the, [00:18:00] the process of it. It was definitely daunting because this was completely new for them and they weren\'t really sure how they wanted to use it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What they ended up with is a thing that\'s gonna do two things for them. First, it helped them keep a revenue stream going. Which was really, really important. But that, like during Covid, but that turned into an additional revenue stream now that we are all back in person and they are, you know, having their five, six classes a day in their brick and mortar.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, so having that additional kind of passive revenue stream, really, you upload one video and it\'s. Going to serve up, you know, infinite number of times for infinite number of people. Um, you know, I think about that a lot with my business. What is recurring revenue? Like, how does that help us to be able to make long-term decisions?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They now have a line item in their budget that is recurring revenue in a way that is almost passive, that\'s not dependent upon being present in the real world. But the thing is, is I don\'t think that that really is the end of it. I think that now we\'ve got this on demand. [00:19:00] Tool that they can use as a revenue booster, but it is helping them to maintain that those in person relationships, like they\'ve got one person who, um, right prior to c she and her, she had moved to Italy because of her partner\'s job.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so she wasn\'t able to come into these yoga classes anymore. And when she found out that Novo was offering on demand video, she was like, please, can you figure out a way that I can. Um, get to these videos because I miss attending these classes. I miss these instructors. I miss the community of the people that I was with.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And at this point, that\'s what I wanna see out of virtual. I wanna see virtual providing this kind of like steam release valve. Like there is no telling what\'s gonna come our way, is another pandemic gonna come our way? Like, who knows what\'s happening? Like right now with like, I think I read something the other day about like avian flu making things like really.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like difficult for, uh, the, the poultry industry. Like there\'s just all of these variables that we don\'t know what\'s gonna come at us, but if we [00:20:00] have a really strong virtual presence that\'s supporting our in-person presence, it\'s gonna make us more resilient all around. If you know one of the artists that we\'re working with right now, Has the flu and if she were not feeling as bad as she is, the conversation that we would be having right now is, okay, well I can\'t go do this show this weekend, but I still want to connect with the people who are gonna be there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I still wanna make sure that they\'re gonna have an amazing. Friday night. What does that look like from a digital perspective? Do we have the infrastructure on our site to have this membership portal set up so that we can gate this content and make sure that we\'re still capturing that revenue so that we can keep doing what we\'re doing?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right? Like that really is what I want. I want our yoga studios. I want our artists to be able to keep doing the work that they\'re really, really passionate about, and if they have a digital infrastructure, Stable. They\'re gonna be able to rely on that to be able to create a, a more holistic approach to, well, I, I can\'t go out this weekend for whatever reason.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\'m tested positive for Covid, but I feel [00:21:00] fine. I\'d love to do something this weekend. Okay, well we can move into digital for that. But primarily we are still invested in being in the real world. Um, which is honestly, like Covid taught me that, like, I don\'t think I really appreciated the value of those real world connections and being in the same room as people until you weren\'t allowed to be.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller: Well, I, I think you\'ve really illustrated great, uh, case study too, which is having a backup when you\'re in person, whatever that is, and you just can\'t happen. But also I think you\'re showcasing too, where they can use that, not just in those bad times, but good times to continue to grow and support their businesses.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like when you talked about the Exactly. The yoga fitness studio, um, it\'s an extension. They record those videos once. And then they get to share that with whoever they want in their, uh, in their business. Uh, and it\'s up there. That\'s the beauty of the web. That\'s 24 7, 365, especially if they\'re supported by [00:22:00] very interesting productions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But like, you know, to extend the service and things that you do. Websites, web\'s always been, I love this because you can do so much more with little.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>D’nelle Dowis: Exactly, exactly like these, the, the yoga studio like Nova, uh, fitness is not focused on their website, and I don\'t want them to be focused on their website.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I want them to focus on the real world, brick and mortar, making the vibe in that yoga studio exactly what their community needs. I don\'t want them to be thinking about like, oh, well, I need to go do this on my website now. No, no, no. You\'ve got somebody who\'s gonna handle that for you. They\'re gonna take care of it, and they\'re gonna provide you with the advice that you need about whether you should be doing it or not.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like there\'s a lot of people who I\'m like, no, I, I really don\'t think you wanna like, Spend part of your budget on that. Um, we have that conversation when it comes to design a lot that the, the level of client that we work with doesn\'t necessarily need custom design. What they need is [00:23:00] graphic design support.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And use existing design templates or, you know, like we, we really love to work with Divvy a lot, and Divvy has a really great library of, um, page templates and like kind of starter designs that really serve our clients. But I don\'t want them to be spending their time and their money on something that they could otherwise have turned to really growing their business and cultivating the, the, what they\'re really passionate about.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which, you know, for Novo it\'s really about being in person and. You know, cultivating that community that they have built up. I mean, that was the scary part of Covid, is you think I have spent all of this time building up this community of people who are willing to get out of their houses to come see me every day.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And what is going to happen now? Everybody\'s gonna be out of the habit of it. And are people gonna also forget about me? Um, I don\'t want, I, I. To be able to create the kind of stability that like helps businesses thrive. And so having this in an [00:24:00] emergency is great, but also having it as a part of the overall plan for growing your business is really huge.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because I mean, if they had already had on demanded place, they could have spent their time in their money marketing that on demand to people who are not. Already their students. Um, so I, I want our clients to be able to make really smart decisions and decisions that are gonna keep their business as stable as possible, even in the face of something like Covid.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller: Well, you, you very much, you know what I\'ve heard resonates with me because you\'ve talked about a web presence can be a chore. Or the two words you used were, uh, cultivating community. So using it as a channel to reach your customers, reach your prospective customers, and build and cultivate that community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like the musician we were talking about is like, right, she can\'t be there Friday night, but her website can be there in some shape, manner, or form to help cultivate that interest in community. Right. [00:25:00] Um, Okay. So the last question I want to ask, uh, is tips for people starting out as an agency wanting to do, uh, use WordPress as a, as a tool to build, uh, and, and, uh, client websites and things like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What, what advice would you give looking back as you\'ve shared your story? I</p>\n\n\n\n<p>D’nelle Dowis: I wish that I had listened harder and more intently to the things that Nathan Ingram was saying from the very beginning. Um, you know, it took me a really long time to build up, um, not necessarily automated processes, but processes that I\'m really comfortable with.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, you know, whether that is the task management system that we are using or the way that we onboard clients, what those discovery calls look like, what our road mappings look like, kind of vetting those clients to see what the relationship between us and that client is like. I wish that I had, I could like just magically go back in time and tell [00:26:00] myself.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Focus on those relationships with your clients because that\'s what\'s gonna feel the best for you. So anybody that\'s starting out, I mean, first of all, like just meet as many people as you possibly can. I feel like Covid has kind of done that for like the kids that are graduating college right now. I\'ve had some really cool conversations with kids that are like, I am graduating.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don\'t know how to get into this industry. What do I do? My answer is always meet and talk to as many people as you possibly can who are already doing the kind of thing that you wanna do or that you think you wanna do. Like you may think that you wanna build websites, but you get five years down the road and you realize what your talent actually is, is project management.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean, I\'m calling myself out on that. Like I am first and foremost a project or a production manager. I am super good at that. It, my brain works that way. I really should not have my hands deeply in code because it takes me longer to do that than it would somebody who is really focused on that. So the more people that you can meet [00:27:00] to find out what it is that they do, what is their day like?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like what do they get really excited about when it comes to the work that they do is gonna help you identify the best. For you and I mean if it, if you are, are like already hell bent on starting your own agency. The advice there is, is kind of the same, get to know people as much as possible. I mean, I, there was a a point in 2015 where I made a, well 2016, where I made a huge mistake.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hired a couple people who I thought that I had a good relationship with. And it went very south very quickly. I think it ended up costing me a little under $20,000 when it all came down to it. I mean, I was really lucky that I had the ability to be financially resilient in that way and we\'re still here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, but. The relationships that you\'re gonna build with clients and the relationships that you\'re gonna build with other people in the community are what are going to support you and help you be resilient. I could not be as resilient I as I am if it [00:28:00] weren\'t for the people at Ithe who are providing part of the engine to run my business.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The people in the post status community who, if I need a specific type of developer, I can go out there and it\'s like shooting fish in a barrel. You can. Five people who are gonna be the exact person that you need to do this work for your client. The relationships that we have are above all the thing that are sustaining us and helping us be resilient, and I did not.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I couldn\'t really wrap my head around that until probably five years into doing my, into doing my business. I mean, I grew up in a situation where it was very much like, shut your work is the proof of the actual, like work product is the proof of whether you\'re good or not, and. As I moved through kind of owning my own thing, it became obvious that there\'s a lot of people out there who are doing really, really quality work.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is more about how you resonate with the people who you are working with and, and the maintenance. And the cultivation of those [00:29:00] relationships that is going to provide you with the stability you need to build whatever it is you\'re wanting to build. Whether that is a web development agency or a a, you know, content marketing business, or, you know, if you wanna start a yoga studio, think about the people who you have in your network who are gonna be able to support you in that, and how much do you trust them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it takes time to build up trust. It takes experimentation. It. You know, a lot of, um, hit a lot of, you know, mishits really, you know, just like the people that I hired in 2016 who it didn\'t work out. I mean, there are definitely like plenty of situations I found myself in where I didn\'t do all of the work I needed to do to really establish that Right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kind of trust. I mean, and I take responsibility for that too. Like I really dove into that relationship in a very naive way. Um, whereas I think that if it happened to me now, I don\'t think I would\'ve ended up in a situation that was as scary as that was for me, a sort of. Gigantic fail that it took me a couple months to recover from emotionally.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, just because I went into it thinking [00:30:00] more about the work than I was about the relationships, which is why I focus so hard on relationships now because that really is where the best stuff is.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller: I love your energy and your approach. It really resonates with me relationship. So key. When you really get that aligned, you\'re, you\'re doing your best work, you\'re helping someone else, getting rewarded for it, and um, it makes everything better, doesn\'t it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>D’nelle Dowis: It really, really does. I mean, that is why I\'m focused on support instead of website development. Like it\'s almost like you go anywhere and get anybody to build a website for you. Like you can hop out on Upwork or you can outsource it to a team in India. But the long relationship provides so many dividends over the years of knowing that person\'s business of understanding really where they are.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like we have one client right now. Her mother just passed away. She needs some time. That changes the project. The, like, the, the arc of our project build. It [00:31:00] changes, you know, the, when I\'m gonna need to bring in a, um, a developer for something versus when I\'m gonna need to bring in the SEO specialist. It changes a lot.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But having known this client now since 2012, I know what I\'m gonna be able to expect from her, what she\'s gonna be capable of. And she knows that in a situation where she\'s kind of like in a personal crisis, she knows that she can offload and delegate more work to us that is gonna make it possible for her to do what she needs to do for herself personally.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And those are the kind of relationships that I want to. I wanna be in a situation where somebody knows that they can call me up and say, Hey, I\'m gonna need more help this month. In the same fashion that they can call me up and be like, Hey, I\'ve gotta go with this other agency for X, Y, Z. Can you help me offboard myself from you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don\'t ever want people to felt, feel like they\'re held hostage. I want people to feel like if they need a hand, they\'re handheld, that we are right here to grab.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller: Hostage to an ally you want.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>D’nelle Dowis: Exactly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller: Pardon me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>D’nelle Dowis: Exactly. Yes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller: Well, Daniel, thank you so [00:32:00] much for sharing your story and also your passion and what you\'re doing in WordPress for your clients and making a difference in the world.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, tell us where we can find more about you and, and your work.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>D’nelle Dowis: Um, so if you are interested in primarily the digital side of our business, we do have some in-person stuff that we do with live events, um, that we are, uh, kind of weaving in and out. But um, for the website support, go to web dot berry interesting.com.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, I did the other day just get the domain that doesn\'t have the hyphen in it, and I\'m all excited, but, Switched over yet. Um, so yeah, web dot barry interesting.com and all of the information is out there. Um, we also have kind of upped our presence on social media. Um, I\'m doing a lot more on LinkedIn than I used to do, um, and we\'re pushing a bunch more content out to our business, LinkedIn as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, but all of those links are out on our website. And, um, if you wanna find me anywhere on social media, um, I\'m primarily on Instagram. D underscore, n e l l e. [00:33:00] Um, I post a lot of dog photos and, uh, and stuff from when I am actually traveling. So it\'s that, that is not really, uh, professionally focused, but it\'s fun.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, and I, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. It was a wonderful way to come back from the Thanksgiving holiday.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cory Miller: You bet. Thanks D\'nelle.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>D’nelle Dowis: Awesome. Thanks.</p>\n<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, 09 Dec 2022 13:03:00 +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:13:\"Olivia Bisset\";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:19;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:81:\"Do The Woo Community: WP Community Collective, CertifyWP and WordPress Enterprise\";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=74009\";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:79:\"https://dothewoo.io/wp-community-collective-certifywp-and-wordpress-enterprise/\";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:438:\"<p>Supporting and funding contributions and initiatives, credentialing process for WordPress and enterprise in the ecosystem. </p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io/wp-community-collective-certifywp-and-wordpress-enterprise/\">WP Community Collective, CertifyWP and WordPress Enterprise</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:\"Fri, 09 Dec 2022 10:44:00 +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:20;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:118:\"Post Status: Interview with Product Lead Robert Jacobi at Cloudways Managed WordPress Hosting— Post Status Draft 131\";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=145014\";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:126:\"https://poststatus.com/interview-with-product-lead-robert-jacobi-at-cloudways-managed-wordpress-hosting-post-status-draft-131/\";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:52746:\"<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\">Director of WordPress at <a href=\"http://cloudways.com/\">Cloudways</a>, Robert Jacobi, talks about WordPress and their WordPress hosting products in this interview with Post Status Publisher Cory Miller. </p></div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer eplus-wrapper\"></div>\n\n\n\n<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\">31</span><span class=\"yoast-reading-time__time-unit\"> minutes</span></p>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://poststatus.com/planet/feed/#h-transcript\">Transcript</a> ↓</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Robert Jacobi shares his work as the Director of WordPress at <a href=\"http://cloudways.com/\">Cloudways</a>, or to put it simply-strategy, partnerships, and product marketing. After working for years as an agency owner, Robert joined the WordPress community. His experience enables him to foster the relationship between business and open-source projects and vice-versa. Robert shares how the products and services offered by Cloudways enable businesses of all sizes to accomplish their vision of “moving dreams forward”.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Top Takeaways:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Cloudways Offers One-Click Easy: </strong>Staging in one click. Migration in one click. Scalability without the complexity.&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Open-Source Ecosystems Thrive:</strong> Communities are driving satisfaction. There are so many opportunities to take in feedback and make improvements. They are driving new niches for flexibility, freedom, and scalability.&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Find the Right Fit:</strong> Are you getting the value of what you are paying for? Are you getting less than you need? Are you taking advantage of all of the functionality you are paying for? Little things make a big difference for your site performance and user experience.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>WordPress is Comforting: </strong>WordPress has risk, but the history, knowledge repository, documentation, and training resources offer a level of security from the enterprise on down.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"is-layout-flex wp-container-34 wp-block-columns sponsor has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background\" id=\"Cloudways\">\n<div class=\"is-layout-flow wp-block-column\">\n<h3 id=\"sponsor-wpengine\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png\" alt=\"🙏\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> Sponsor: <a href=\"https://poststat.us/cloudways\">Cloudways</a><a href=\"https://poststat.us/wpengine\"></a></h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><strong>Cloudways</strong> </strong>is proud to sponsor Post Status. Our <a href=\"https://poststat.us/cloudways\">managed hosting for WordPress and WooCommerce</a> takes away the cloud server-related learning curve with a seamless and scalable web hosting experience. Trusted by over 250,000 WordPress users, Cloudways gives you the freedom to choose from any of the top IaaS (infrastructure as a service) providers for ultimate performance.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"is-layout-flow wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center\"><div class=\"wp-block-image cloudways-logo\">\n<a href=\"https://poststat.us/cloudways\"><img src=\"https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Stacked-Logo-300x176.png\" alt=\"Cloudways: Created for Exceptional Experiences\" class=\"wp-image-93196\" width=\"200\" height=\"117\" title=\"Cloudways Logo\" /></a>Managed Cloud Hosting Simplified</div></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<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>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.cloudways.com/en/\">Cloudways</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.joomla.org/\">Joomla</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.drupal.org/\">Drupal</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.digitalocean.com/\">Digital Ocean</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.cloudflare.com/\">Cloudfare</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://woocommerce.com/\">WooCommerce</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.linode.com/\">Linode</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.vultr.com/\">Vultr</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://aws.amazon.com/\">AWS</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<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>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"eplus-wrapper\">\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/RobertJacobi\">Robert Jacobi</a> (Director of WordPress, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/Cloudways\">Cloudways</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/corymiller303\">Cory Miller</a> (CEO, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status\">Post Status</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://twitter.com/lemonadecode\">Olivia Bisset</a> (Intern, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status\">Post Status</a>)</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<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>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"eplus-wrapper\" id=\"h-transcript\">Transcript</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> [00:00:00] Welcome back to Post Status draft. Um, we\'re doing a new series called The Product People, basically where we\'re talking to the people actually driving the product at all these great companies. And one of our first to do this is Robert, my friend Robert Jacobi. Who leads WordPress endeavors over there, and I\'ll let him actually share in just a second what he actually does in his actual title or Robert.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I\'ve known Robert for a couple years now and hearing some of his backstory, I\'m excited for this because. I mean, he\'s had a wealth of experience, not just in WordPress, but before that other communities and agency work. And so, um, today, the purpose of this, the intention of these interviews is really to say there\'s all these cool products out there in the WordPress space.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But let\'s talk to the people driving the vision, um, the roadmaps, the work that gets done for the people buying those products. So I wanna give, like, I, I personally, Robert, like [00:01:00] the human angle. I don\'t like to just buy from a button. I wanna buy from a human, ultimately know there\'s people out there. I give the example a lot of like Tom bin bags.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And now Tom has actually exited that business. But I was like, you get to hear the story. You get to hear him, his background and talk about how you designed this particular backpack. But, uh, anyway, Robert, thanks for coming on to the draft podcast, talking about, uh, the product and what you\'re doing at Cloud Ways.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But would you give us a set, uh, little background about yourself, how you got into it, what you, well, let\'s say, let\'s start with what you actually do at Cloud Ways, what you\'re responsible for, and then I\'ll ask how you got there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> Okay. So we\'ll, we\'ll, we\'ll, Teased it out backwards. Fantastic. Yeah. Thanks so much for, for having me here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Corey, I, you know, I, I love post status, love you and your family. Uh, really thrilled to be here. Uh, so I, my title, which titles don\'t mean Anything, but, uh, as director of WordPress at Cloud Ways, uh, it\'s a fancy way of saying [00:02:00] strategy partnerships, product marketing, c. So all the above. All the above. And probably things I\'m missing, and those</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> that know you well, know that it\'s very fitting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>All the things were in one hat and director of WordPress. I love it. .</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> But, uh, yeah, it\'s, I, I guess I could say it\'s been like a 20 year journey to get here. I\'ve been at, uh, cloud Ways for about a year and a half actually just. But started, uh, in open source decades ago. Boy, that makes it sound so long. . Years ago.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just, just years ago. And, uh, uh, built an agency around initially Java, but then actually jula, uh, the content management system and focused on that aspect of implementing backend work with Jum. Open source, connecting up to all that fun open source [00:03:00] stuff, which actually led me to being a leader of the project, uh, for a little bit in the late 20 teen.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> That\'s the part that I, I really appreciate. One of the many things about your story is like you were in, in this very big community called Joomla. And I, I\'ve told you my story, it was in 2006 when we were retailing our organization\'s website. I was working at, at the time, and one of the developers, uh, mentioned Joomla and Joomla, still around.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jim was still. And I think still with the open web conversation serves a vital interest, but you really were like in that inner circle of community helping lead and drive that project for a long time. And I know I bounce things off you over time because now we have this WordPress thing, and I know Drupla was even set up differently too from a governance standpoint and getting your feedback and the pros and cons and strengths and weaknesses of those.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>With all that say, I, I still am a cheerleader for Jula cuz I think it works in a lot of, [00:04:00] for a lot of people in a lot of settings. But I think there\'s lessons that you have from that experience that, that I know. I\'ve appreciated hearing your thoughts on WordPress specifically.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> Oh my gosh. Well, we don\'t have 17 hours to go over that, but</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah, exactly that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\'ll say that one for another one. Yeah. But three</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> very differently run organizations. Each successful in the way they wanna be successful. So that\'s what actually makes it interesting that the way you run an organization can define, helps you define what success is and then you can actually focus on it more.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. And</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> the other part of the background for you too is running your own agency. So like you, when you\'re building product there, I love highlighting this because you\'re, you were, The user for a lot of companies, including cloudy product stuff that I think is really, uh, helps you build a more intuitive product too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I know from years running your own agency, like you come in from the gr, you know, from the people doing the work out there, that always [00:05:00] don\'t get showcased as well. And WordPress and Post has specifically, but I think that\'s another angle is like you\'ve been there, you\'ve earned your straps as an</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> agency owner.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you. And I just, whenever I think that far back, I think of when we had our servers in a closet, you know, hosting customers, you know, way back then. Yeah. Oh wow.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Now you\'re, now you\'re dating yourself .</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> No, I don\'t miss that .</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> So, uh, then fast forward, okay, so there was this time where I know you stepped into the WordPress community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was before cloud. Can you share a little bit about that and why you chose to step into the WordPress</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> community? Sure. After I kind of, uh, rolled out of the agency, I started looking for just something new to do, for lack of a better term or phrase, and, uh, uh, joined the executive team at Perfect Dashboard, which is, uh, which was a company that built a automatic [00:06:00] update.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tool for WordPress, uh, that was acquired by WP Engine at the beginning of 2019. And then I just focused on, uh, in a lot of ways helping the open source community understand what businesses needed, but even more importantly, for businesses to let them know how open source communi. Work and, and it\'s not just about, you can throw, you know, millions of dollars at something and everyone\'s gonna love you there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\'s a lot of, you know, get to know the people, get engaged, uh, be a part of everything from a word camp, you know, to a jula day, to, you know, whatever the open source project is. But you know, you, you need to have skin in the game to be taken seriously by a lot of people who have spent hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of hours within those open source.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, I\'m</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> thankful you, you took the step into the WordPress community and then so fast forward, you got the [00:07:00] gig at Cloud Ways. You all have had a lot of, um, new things coming out from a product standpoint and then also new news coming out from a company standpoint and that you were acquired by Digital Ocean or, um, let\'s see, August, September, I</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> wanna say, uh, the beginning of September was, uh, yep.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we closed there. It\'s been, uh, 2022. Uh, so it\'s technically our 10 year anniversary. And, uh, I unfortunately we\'ve had like no time to celebrate it. It\'s been busy as can be. You know, the, the, the opening up of the world post, you know, post covid, uh, you know, depending how you look at it. So, lots of travel, lots of events, a lot of, you know, Meeting folks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Uh, uh, partnership with CloudFlare. We announced, uh, safe updates. Uh, so, and then of course the digital ocean acquisition. So we\'ve been, it\'s this, this one year\'s we feel like we\'ve done, uh, 10 years of work in one year for our 10th anniversary.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> That\'s how it goes. That was similar. Similar to mine with iThemes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We had just celebrated our [00:08:00] 10th anniversary and we were required. Um, okay. So let\'s talk about WordPress as it relates to cloud ways. So this is what you lead that particular product. Tell us about the product at Cloud Way specific to</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> WordPress. So, uh, we actually have a number of WordPress products, I guess to put it that way.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The goal of Cloud Ways is to just, it\'s a managed cloud, you know, hosting solution and, you know, we can all blah, blah, blah about manage hosting. Um, and I will, don\'t worry. But, uh, you know, one of the things we, we focused on was just making it, you know, One click easy. So we, we really want to, uh, enable folks, you know, who have one 10, you know, hundred sites to just be able to get on there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Uh, either start from scratch with, you know, sort of a, a more, you know, cloud ways, uh, adapted version. WordPress. It\'s totally WordPress. We just make sure that, you know, caching and things are turned on the way you might want it. [00:09:00] Um, or, you know, or just sort of. Naked WordPress. So nothing\'s tweaked at all.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Uh, WooCommerce of course. And then, you know, we, we have some bundles around, uh, other packages and products. Just make it, again, one click easy. Uh, lots of folks can do one click easy. WordPress, what, you know, we focused on the whole time is how do you get that WordPress Cloud site cloud enabled? And, uh, you know, yes, you can go to a shared hosting site and say, I want a WordPress install.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there\'s a lot more work behind the scenes. You know, we want our users to feel like, yes, it\'s just the same thing, but behind the scenes you\'re on a very scalable, uh, high performance, secure infrastructure. So when</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> someone\'s looking at their building, building a website or launching a project, and they go, Hey, I want the scale of cloud.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>With the easiness, not having to kind of go through and tinker with settings and things like that from a, and you know me, I\'m not very technical, but [00:10:00] from the cloud is awesome in this dream, in that you can scale and do all these kinds of things, but there\'s work in between that needs to happen to help get it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress ready. Is that where kind of cloud waste kind of comes in?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> Without a doubt. I mean, if you go to any of \'em, so obviously we\'re now owned by digital lotion, but you know, digital lotion, aws, gcp, so that\'s Google Cloud, uhlin, node, vulture, you know, all these platforms are much more tech focused. So you can do a lot of really cool stuff on any of these platforms.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like really dive data, dive, uh, Deep in, uh, you get root, you can do, you know, all kinds of crazy tech voodoo and you have fantastic platforms and applications out there on that. But boy, if you just want to get WordPress going, that is a pain in the rear. Uh mm-hmm. , you know, we used to work with AWS and Azure back in the agency days, and [00:11:00] Oh man, just to get stuff going.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You know, you need that certification or, or you\'re going to misconfigure something or even worse, you\'re gonna misbuild the Jesus outta yourself and what you thought was gonna be a, you know, a $50, you know, bill for the month. All of a sudden it\'s like 500 or a thousand dollars because you left something on that you weren\'t supposed to, and you didn\'t know that it was gonna be metered and build out in such and such a way, or some database process went crazier, haywire.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, We try to get rid of that risk at Cloud ways and just mitigate that so you can be like, oh, I am on Digital Ocean and I don\'t need to worry about any of this stuff. I\'m paying a monthly fee. I\'m not gonna get surprised with anything. Uh, really just kind of making it what, you know, a lot of shared hosting used to be back in the day, but without all the performance bottlenecks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mm-hmm. now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Okay. You mentioned cloud. Is 10 years old and so I like been around for a long time. And I know this predates you [00:12:00] at the company, but like when did the WordPress specific offering start to come into the cloud? Ways history and product climate.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> We started out as actually a Magento shop. That was our first big offering, uh, that was sort of cloud enabled.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>As we, uh, look at it, I think with the n memory serves, About three years, two to three years, we, uh, had on, you know, put together our WordPress packages to be able to deploy across, uh, cloud providers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Okay. So when you think about the product, um, that we, we talked about this big problem, you know, and I love your phrase there, cloud enabled.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, so who do you find in your customer community that you know just goes, okay, this. This is exactly what we need for what we\'re doing. Are there some common kind of avatars and customer journeys you see most often?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> Uh, first and foremost, our best customers are agencies, uh, because it\'s really easy to manage, [00:13:00] uh, you know, the costs of having a ton of clients on your infrastructure.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean, the flexibility is yes, I can have a digital ocean droplet. A hundred sites, if they\'re all, you know, small, simple brochure sites and you know, that\'s costing you $10 a month, plus or minus, I can\'t remember the exact, maybe it\'s 10 99 . Mm-hmm. , you know, a. To host as many, you know, as many sites as that droplet can handle, or you can scale that heck out of it and have, you know, a super e-commerce site that\'s, you know, got 300 plus concurrent users and chugging away, uh, on its own droplets.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You, you can mix and match, you know, across the platform. Uh, not even just with one cloud provider, but across multiple providers. Cause some folks do have that. AWS expert in a house or as a contractor, and they do wanna tweak some things, uh, to the best of their ability. Again, it\'s managed so we don\'t let them blow up everything.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, [00:14:00] uh, we, we have, uh, use cases where, you know, there\'s front end stuff that\'s, you know, quickly being handled by, uh, digital ocean. And then there\'s like some crazy backend batch processing that\'s happening on a, you know, super high performant, you know, aws, uh, EC two. So like diversity</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> of the projects within an agency, like you said, brochure wear all the way to something that skills bigger in one place where you can kind of manage all those.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, that\'s pretty</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> compelling. Uh, I wish I would\'ve had that 20 years ago. , right, right. Building up a staging and deployment server and a production server and yeah. All that fun. And managing</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> all that cloud complexity too. Uh, for sure. So what are some of the, um, examples, like you mentioned eCommerce, um, and I know WooCommerce is something that a lot of your customers do and use the platform for.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, can you give us some more like, niche down examples too, of, it doesn\'t have to be by name [00:15:00] of course, but like what you\'re seeing in the community at cloud ways, you know, you\'ve got is WooCommerce, something that comes up quite a bit is obviously WordPress too, but what are some of. Uh, niche down, you know, journeys that you see</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> in the community too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, it\'s e-commerce across the board. So, uh, just jump back slightly on the sort of the audiences we have at, at Cloud Wastes. Yeah. Uh, we focus on SMBs. I mean, that, that, that is, you know, the crux of our mission, the crux of our joy. Uh, our, our model\'s always been moving dreams forward, but it\'s also, you know, how do we accelerate?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Opportunity for our customers. And it, it, it\'s almost easiest to see in the SMB space cause you can do a few little things and, uh, performance increases, uh, trust increases. Uh, our customers, customers are happy. And that, that kind of is a, a flywheel of, of, I wanna say a flywheel of joy. Patent pending, um, , [00:16:00] uh, but that, but a lot of it\'s on the e-commerce side.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, Pretty much every site on the web these days has some kind of e-commerce component, however you wanna monetize it, whether that\'s through ad traffic or actually running a store. Uh, we focus a lot on WooCommerce because it\'s a, uh, a great platform. It\'s an open source e-commerce platform. Um, it\'s hard to name many of those.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, uh, it, it, it, there\'s a lot of flexibility with what you can do with it. And so, People wanna spin up a shop. Uh, no, we\'re not Shopify, you\'re not gonna be able to just start dragging, dropping. But when you\'re looking at, you know, do I wanna be locked into, uh, a system where, you know, I don\'t have all the control that I need?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For my site that I, you know, I might be locked in on data. I might not be able to, uh, move or migrate or all that kind of stuff. We, you know, we certainly believe that W Commerce is the way to go. Uh, we [00:17:00] just, uh, had a, you know, w Commerce speed challenge. Uh, you know, we like to engage with the W Commerce community, with other users of Glu commerce.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Uh, you know, it. I\'ve always loved open source. It\'s, it\'s the, the communities, uh, drive satisfaction, which makes it exciting to, uh, evolve with customers. And because it\'s open source, you can do a lot of stuff to, you know, quickly, uh, take in that feedback. So</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> drilling down to the products, the offerings that you have too, what are some.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You know, we, we could just say it as what are the kind of features, the core parts of the products that you\'re really most proud of, and that you see people really like maxing out to the, uh, to the, to the furthest they can with, with the actual products.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> I love having staging that\'s always there and one click ready</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think that\'s, that\'s great. It should be everywhere. Um, you know, [00:18:00] we get you going with that right away. Uh, you know, one click to be able to migrate across cloud platforms, I think is, is amazing. I don\'t know where else you can just sit there and go, oh, you know, uh, I don\'t need Google anymore. You know, I just, I just wanna put this over on digital.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, you can do that and you can go back and forth all day long. Um, that it\'s a, it\'s a unique, uh, for me cool factor to be able to take advantage of, uh, you know, how different platforms run and the, you know, the value some, you know, are obviously gonna cost more and maybe there\'s value, maybe there\'s, you know, you have the value, you don\'t need that, uh, type of, uh, expense performance, so you can easily ratchet down as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, so, you know, that\'s cool. Uh, you know, a lot. Good things around, uh, optimizing and securing WordPress from, you know, how we implement CloudFlare, how, how, you know, how our safe updates work. Um, which is sort of that very similar to what I did back in [00:19:00] the perfect dashboard days. Um, automatic WordPress and plugin updates.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Um, you know, getting those basics in line is critical. So I really like that those work and, you know, You don\'t wanna worry about that as a customer, you know, you wanna worry about the cool stuff or, you know, what\'s my next product gonna be? You know, or you know, how am I gonna launch a, you know, a Black Friday Cyber Monday campaign?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You don\'t wanna be worried about, you know, is my site gonna get jammed up? Is it gonna get a hacked, is it, you know, gonna just flub around. Yeah, went</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> back to the one click across the platforms that, that\'s a, seems like a compelling feature specifically for agencies who go, okay, I\'m not getting what I want here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And being able to click do a one click migration. That\'s outstanding. It, it\'s, it\'s,</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> it\'s really cool. It\'s, it\'s like, you know, that value proposition got me hook, line, and sinker when, uh, I first started working at cloud. Yeah, I</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> remember, uh, we had, [00:20:00] uh, an aws, you know, part of our SaaS solution at Ithe, and that built, you know, initially the processing really awesome until you do it on scale and then you\'re like, just that, being able to move the, uh, and migrate to different, you know, cloud solutions I think would be great from a price standpoint, if anything, but I\'m sure there\'s other compelling reasons to do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like if you\'re not the right solution, isn\'t there? But do you see other, do you see com, you know, other paths why people would go, okay, I\'m gonna use this one clip to go over here. Do you see that quite a</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> bit too? Uh, a lot of times just the needs have changed. So it\'s, you know, either I need to ramp up, uh, what I have at Digital Ocean or, you know, or ramp down from, uh, something that I thought was, that started off strong, but you know, It\'s going, but we really just don\'t need that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we don\'t need, uh, whatever GCP may be offering and then, you know, ramp it down to, you know, maybe a high end [00:21:00] digital ocean server, but you\'re still save droplet, I should say. Um, but you\'re still saving 50%, uh, for what you were paying before. And, you know, we\'ve, we keep a, a big guy on. The value propositions, especially in our fund, ever-changing, uh, economy.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, uh, we\'re seeing a lot of people take the time to evaluate what they, you know, have provision for themselves, whether that\'s at Cloud ways or another provider and, and, and, you know, spend a week or two doing the math and being like, you know what, we can get the same kind of performance, you know, at cloud ways.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Somewhere else, but you know, people are actually finally looking at, you know, those infrastructure costs I think a little bit more seriously.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah. And when you said the needs part, I thought it seems like a graduation. Okay, this served me for this season of time, for whatever I\'m doing now. I\'m graduating to a different, different offering.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then even though Cloud Wises is owned by Digital Ocean, I know you have all those. [00:22:00] Yeah. And um, I\'ve heard the plan is to continue to, to have those options so that. Being able to pick where you\'re at with that kind of ease is a lot, a lot in the hosting. Now I go way back here, but like in the, the problem with hosting was typically you can\'t move.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\'s hard to move, it\'s easy to get in, hard to get out. And so now with that, that those options out there you can graduate on when you have</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> needs change. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we support digital Ocean Lin, node Vulture, gcp, and aws, and, uh, you know, yes, you\'re on top of clouds doing that, but of course, we\'re all, we\'re launching open source applications, so yes, you could even move off of clouds very easily.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean, that\'s, that, that kind of, I think the, that idea of hosted lock in is it\'s never gonna leave because you can make a lot of money if you get the right, you know, Bit of traction initially. I mean, obviously you can look at, you know, the wickes of the world, but I, I think people are only satisfied for [00:23:00] so long with that until they realize that there are, there are a lot of stumbling blocks, uh, to doing what you want and having, you know, flexibility, freedom, scalability are, are, are much more important than, Just being able to do a little bit of drag and drop, and frankly, I\'m gonna keep rolling on this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Open source keeps improving. And, you know, I don\'t want those guys to disappear because, you know, it\'s great to keep, you know, open source projects on their toes. Like, you know, they\'re, they\'re finding niches in the market which are, are critical, important, and relevant, and, and users are going to them. So I think that\'s a great challenge for open source projects to, you know, evaluate what\'s going on there and being like, okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\'s something we should add in. We should add in blocks, for example, and we can have a block editor and we can have, oh my gosh, they just changed. Name. What\'s FSC being called now? Just site editor. It\'s not site editor. Site editor.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Okay, so we, we\'ve been talking about some of the product [00:24:00] solutions in particular, like the one click staging. Um, anything else before I ask about, you know, how you\'re seeing users in your community make the most of it, what the ones are going? Okay. They\'re, they\'re, they\'re taking the most advantage of what we designed this for.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For anything else before we get to that?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> Uh, I think folks should, I, I touched on just a mo a moment ago. Uh, take a look at your infrastructure, see what you\'re paying for, see if that\'s providing the value. Uh, you know, and cloud ways may not be the right fit and that\'s okay. Um, because if there is a right fit somewhere else, you should always go with the right fit.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, uh, take the time and I think this year especially is a good time to you. Just kind of go through that, you know, are, are you really getting the value out of you know, what you\'re paying for and maybe you\'re paying too little and getting too little and not even realizing it because you haven\'t done the homework of maybe running a couple of speed tests and realizing that, wow, my site actually.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Takes five plus seconds to load. It\'s just really fast. Cause it\'s always cashed on my own [00:25:00] browser cause I\'m checking it every morning. So , you know, little things like that can make a huge difference in, you know, in seo, in sales, uh, and, and just friendliness, uh, for web visitors. People don\'t, people just are impatient on the internet.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I like that. So</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> the two themes I\'m hearing is value, being able to assess, hey, is this the right solution? Are we getting the right value? Are we spending too much? Whatever that is. And the other side of it, which is need, okay, are we getting what we need from that platform? We\'d rather, Hey, we\'ve been looking at this different option.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And those are two that kind of funnel into what you built. You all build it cloud waste. Yep. Awesome. Okay. All right. So. Now let\'s how to use the most, how to get the most out of the product that you all have built at Cloud Wastes. So what are the ways you see in the community or the ways you even think from the product perspective?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You\'re like, I just wish people would do this, this, and that, or whatever that is. Um, you, I built products for a long time, or at [00:26:00] least led product teams that both work and you\'re always. We built that. So you would do this, but they miss it or, gosh, we, we spend our, you know, for us it was like we spend every day thinking about the product and the, or the problem and the solution, and then people get it and you\'re like, they\'re using like 5% of it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What sticks out in your mind from that standpoint? People that are really using it for all it\'s worth or the, or also the ones that go, oh, I wish they\'d just do these two things, or whatever that is. Uh, in terms of making, making the most of what you\'ve, you and your team have built?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> So for the, for the technically and kind companies, I really wish they would use our API more.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Uh, we have an agency partner that. Very geeky on the inside. So it was great. They, they, they jumped on the cloud ways and they said, oh, you guys have this api? We\'re like, yeah. And they\'re, well, can we do X, Y, and Z with it? [00:27:00] We\'re like, yes. So they are literally, uh, they\'ve created their whole, you know, to mention a competitor.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They\'ve created their own like Pantheon esque. Instance of cloud ways. So the, all their deployments, uh, whether it\'s for existing projects or new projects from staging, from dev to staging, uh, production, it\'s all done with, you know, scripts, you know, on their, on their side of the universe, and they can, you know, Do very complicated, uh, integrations of, uh, new code and whatnot, you know, across their stack.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it\'s all on cloud ways, on, you know, a bunch of droplets. And it\'s brilliant. It\'s, it\'s actually my favorite use case for clouds and I really wish more people would take a look at the API and realize how powerful it is to really be able to spin up what you want when you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dig that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> So not being technical minded, [00:28:00] but how do you talk to those agencies? If I put on that hat and you talk to me for a second, you\'re like, Hey, here\'s some ways, but that seems like, for instance, on an API perspective, is customize it for your unique need. This is that last percentage where you\'re like, I\'m, we\'re never gonna be able to do these things, but we can put the API out here that allows those kind of custom.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anything specifically</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> St Yeah. Yeah, I mean, every company is, uh, I guess engineering, you know, uh, what\'s the word? Oh boy, uh, engineering resource constrain these days. So while there\'s a ton of cool stuff we like to do, some of it\'s gonna be edge cases, so we just wanna be able to say, Hey, you know, let us help you walk through this, you know, we\'ll guide you through any questions you have.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then run with it, you know, this is, it\'s full tested, uh, in, you know, in production api. It\'s the API we use. So it\'s not like , you know, if we sign, find something wrong with it, we\'re the first ones to know. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah. Awesome. Okay. API big one. Make use of [00:29:00] that. Anything else stand out to you? Um,</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> You know, on sort of the almost new user aspect, uh, I, I, I would like people to understand the variety of applications they can actually deploy. So, yes, you know, I\'m always gonna have my cloud way\'s WordPress head on, but if you\'re working in Laville, And, you know, or other custom PHP stuff, you can still deploy those applications with one click, or at least the framework with one click and be ready to go on, you know, on one or more, uh, servers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, uh, you know, being able to just take advantage of that pretty quickly or ask questions about that we\'re. Always interested in people\'s opinions and questions and suggestions. I mean, we literally had, uh, a suggestion come over, uh, the wire this morning, which was like, duh, why haven\'t we done that? Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cause you know, you sometimes you just get myopic on, you know, you\'re sitting in your, uh, you know, cubicle and, uh, what\'s a [00:30:00] cubicle? I, I think we don\'t use those . Um, but you know, you know too much about your product and you just make assumptions and that\'s, that\'s always tricky to. People internally to be like, oh yeah, of course.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Duh. So as I talk to ask questions more, reach out to us, uh, you know, good, bad or ugly, uh, you know, that\'s, that\'s always one of those things. Feedback\'s never useless. It\'s, it can just be sometimes interesting . And that\'s</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> an advantage of having Robert and Slack as well. So you can hit, you can hit up Robert and Slack too, and give.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Feedback or ask some questions too, or he can point you in the right direction. But what I heard from you, um, too, is that it\'s, even though you are passionate about WordPress at Cloud Ways, cloud Ways is passionate about WordPress, it\'s not just. WordPress and I talk a lot to a lot of, uh, agency owners, particularly in our community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it\'s interesting because I, I too have just won the WordPress hat for years and I, [00:31:00] and it\'s refreshing to hear what all these agencies are doing, but it\'s not just what, there\'s a lot of tools out there that they might go, I talked to one last week and they\'re doing API develop. With like dairy farmers and things like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there\'s, so what I hear you saying too is like, it\'s, even though we\'re having a WordPress conversation related to cloud wastes, it\'s not just cloud wastes. You can do other other</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> things with it. Oh, for sure. And I, I, I\'ll put my agency hat back on and, you know, we were a jula shop easily. 50% of the work we did was not ju.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You know, direct, it was maybe tied into it, but there were custom applications, uh, maybe some kind of server architecture that we were building out. Um, you know, crazy database thing. Um, JUUL was a part of it, but then we needed to have other environments to support whatever other, uh, platforms we were, uh, integrating with.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gotcha.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> All right. Anything else on the making the most part, things [00:32:00] you wish people knew about or did? Uh, before we start talking about, I want to get your takes on the future where WordPress is too, and technology and vision values and things like that. But anything else on the making the most part that you wanna mention?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> APIs, reaching out, uh, you know, play with all the tools. We have a lot of, you know, sometimes people just do that one click and, uh, You know, skip over some of the, you know, interesting features that are already available to them. You know, we have different types of caching that are already available. Um, yes, it gets a little more geeky and you have to know what you\'re doing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, yes. Um, but I mean, you can go all the way up to, you know, sort of, uh, enterprise esque, uh, CloudFlare, and uh, you know, that\'s pretty cool. I</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> should have asked this earlier, but a lot of the, it seems like a lot of the, uh, customers you have, or at least the contact points with cloud ways or they\'re using the platform, might be more developer, technical minded people too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So can you speak? So that really speaks to them in the sense of get in there and play around. [00:33:00] They might not, okay, I\'m thinking solution and I just need this fixed. But there\'s also other things that they can get in, explore. Anything, particularly if we put on that developer and agency type role and like, what else would you say to</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> them?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Uh, well, a lot of that developer-centric nature comes from being a completely self-service. You know, provider for a long time. Uh, you know, we\'re expanding how we reach out, how we communicate, how we, uh, expose offerings. But, you know, make sure you use, you know, a lot of the basics. Make sure you\'re using , the staging environments.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They\'re already there. They\'re not gonna anything extra. Uh, take advantage of. You know, evaluating, you know, potentially different servers or how you, uh, load up on, you know, droplets or something like that. Uh, you may find that, uh, one application is really, you know, kind of, [00:34:00] uh, what\'s the, uh, impacting, that\'s the word I wanna look.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>sometimes hard find these, these seven letter words, um, impacting, you know, other applications. You know, never thought about it before, but you can actually tell now the difference. And so yeah, move that over to another, uh, you know, add an extra droplet into the, uh, mix and, and also play around with, uh, how you might split up that architecture.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Again, I\'m, I get, I get geeky on this, but you know, no geek geeky. We, we, uh, uh, we have a customer. Yeah, put their entire database on a really high performant droplet, because that was getting hammered all the time by the type of applications that they were running, but their front end wasn\'t really that busy, so they could, you know.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Put multiple versions and variations of that front end on a much more, uh, cost efficient, you know, value based, uh, package. So you can do [00:35:00] cool things like that without having to, uh, go crazy and worry about, you know, third party, you know, database as a service, things. I mean, it\'s already there. Um, so you can kind of take advantage.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right. Get</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> in and look around the API and, uh, you play with the tools. Okay. Thanks for that, Robert. Now let\'s talk about, I want the, the part that I can talk better about is where is WordPress now in the open web, in the web in general? Um, where\'s the position, what are you seeing in WordPress? What are you excited about with WordPress as we kind of move forward and continue to like help democratize publish?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> Uh, well, WordPress is the defacto content management system platform right now. I, I, I don\'t think there\'s any way just by the sheer volume, the ubiquity, the types of traffic. Uh, there are probably a hundred million people on a WordPress site right now. They don\'t even realize it, [00:36:00] so it, it, it, there, there\'s a ubiquity to it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Uh, that\'s not gonna disappear overnight. Uh, My assumption is it\'ll continue growing. It\'s, it\'s, there are a lot of things that have been done right with WordPress. There\'s a lot of, you know, quarreling, cobbling, squabbling, um, sometimes about how things get deployed and rolled out. But, uh, on the whole of, for a community driven project, it\'s pretty amazing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>How far it\'s come, how far it\'s going to go, and, uh, the breadth of, of adoption. It\'s, it\'s, is it the easiest thing the universe to use? No, but it\'s not the hardest, uh, is, is, is it the most flexible thing? It\'s up there. I mean, there may be things, you know, if you really wanna just hand code everything from scratch, I guess that\'s the most flexible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But this allows a level of [00:37:00] consistency, uh, comfort. I know it\'s not a word we typically use with open source projects, but I can go from one word press site to another for completely different applications, and there\'s a comfort in knowing where all the pieces are and that there\'s documentation and training and all these things that help continue to grow an ecosystem.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That at some point everyone knows at least enough about WordPress to be dangerous and people can build careers and companies out of it, uh, quite easily.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Absolutely. Is there anything about in the project too that you like that\'s getting you excited? Uh, whether it\'s, um, a particular market that\'s able to really crush or, you know, cont not crush, crush in a good way, um, really expand into, and I think of enterprise here, so I\'m baiting you on that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But um, also specific features. Do you know we got good word, the code editor. Or the block editor always. We\'ve got side editor coming out now, changed from full side editing, but anything, anything that [00:38:00] you, you\'re excited about specifically related to the project that</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> it\'s doing? I think there\'s, uh, small stuff being done and you kind of, you know, um, lob the pitch at me, uh, to, to get enterprise just sort of, uh, happy.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean, there\'s a. Performance work being done all the time on WordPress there, you know, there\'s, uh, you know, WordPress learnings now, I mean, these are the things the enterprise cares about. They wanna be performant, they wanna be secure, and they wanna know that there\'s a knowledge repository that they can go back to, uh, either for reference or for training their workers or being able to evaluate their workers against, or contractors, uh, vendors or whatnot that kind of.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\'s risk mitigation. And the enterprise cares about mitigating this kind of risk. And that\'s why open source had such a hard time in the beginning, and new projects have such a hard time getting traction. There\'s a lot of risk, you know, who\'s running the project. Uh, [00:39:00] you know, are they awake? What happens if something is horribly broken?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What if there\'s a, a core vulnerability that destroys everything? You know, these corporations don\'t, the enterprises not wanna worry about those things. They do, but you know, let\'s not make it even scarier than it already is for them. And I think what you know, the project has done very well is try to cover some of these aspects and, uh, provide that faith and security.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, I,</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I, I have no enterprise experience, um, but I love that WordPress is, seems to be really doing well on an enterprise. And I hear from a lot of marketing types in those companies that love WordPress, cuz it\'s. Faster, cheaper, and oh, we can actually make side changes on the side. Like they can actually use Gutenberg block editor to roll out things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that\'s exciting for me. I, I came in from more the, here\'s your $80 theme, but to [00:40:00] see WordPress release, start to take. Take a lot of ground up there and help a lot of people, particularly at the enterprise is exciting. Talking with a lot of our agency owners. Same. Same thing is like, that was music to my ears.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\'s what you want to hear WordPress is doing, um, is continue to grow in the new markets and help with that expansion of the.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> Of the open web and even things like headless. I mean, so again, you have all that consistency and reliability for from cord WordPress, but now I can just spit out my whole site via APIs.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean, you could always kind of do that, but now it just gets better and more robust and, uh, again, uh, mitigates risk by being able to have the worker\'s stuff on one end and then sort of the display part on the other end. All right. Well,</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> thank you for that. Anything else you\'re excited about, uh, the work you\'re doing at Cloud Ways, the work in WordPress?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anything else that we left out that you want to share? Oh,</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> there\'s so many things I\'d love to share. , uh, it\'s, it\'s, it\'s [00:41:00] a busy good time for WordPress. I know there\'s a lot of concern about, in the tech Mark about what\'s going on with this or what\'s going on with that. One of the amazing things about, you know, successful open source project, Is that the opportunities exist.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean, if you\'re, if you\'re a Linux geek, you, you, there are so many millions of opportunities If you\'re a WordPress developer, implementer, you know, uh, editor, content creator, you know, those opportunities are all over the place. And, and it\'s, it\'s, you know, nice from. You know, working in this space now that, okay, the, you know, this is not just a one trick pony, this isn\'t the, you know, some kind of project, which may, may be fantastic or may just drop dead tomorrow.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Uh, WordPress is, uh, It\'s solid and we should really take an immense amount of pleasure in the fact that it\'s solid. Yes, we\'re not getting things always done as quickly [00:42:00] or, you know, can\'t make everyone happy. But that\'s, that\'s not the worst problem to have in the universe. Uh, it\'s the project. And the platform is flexible enough to accommodate well third party solutions that can integrate with WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You know, why not? And that kind of stability helps everyone from the enterprise on. Yeah, that\'s</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> a good way to end it. Well, thank you my friend Robert, and also the cloud ways for continuing to support business award press at post status. And I love what you\'re doing over there. Keep it up and keep sharing, uh, what you and your team are doing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Will you be you and the team? Um, where will you be next? I know Word Camp are coming around, but, uh, where will you be?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> Yeah, a deploy, depending when this gets pushed out, there\'s a digital Deploy, digital Ocean Deploy conference, uh, virtual conference that that\'ll probably pass by the time this, uh, airs, uh, recurring revenue summit.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Uh, all the Black Friday, cyber Monday madness that we, uh, are [00:43:00] already kicking off. Um, I, I think that\'ll, I think that\'ll finish out the year. I think the, uh, we\'ll, we\'ll all take a needed, uh, break at, you know, for at least a week or two at the end of December,</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> break and kick into 2023. Well, thanks, Robert.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Again, we appreciate you sharing the story and what you\'re doing, uh, with the product, WordPress product specifically over at Cloud Waste. We\'ll talk to you next time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Jacobi:</strong> Thanks so much, Corey.</p>\n<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, 09 Dec 2022 03:24:12 +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:\"Olivia Bisset\";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:21;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:91:\"WPTavern: New WordPress Sandbox Project Demos: Test-Drive Themes and Plugins in the Browser\";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=140222\";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/new-wordpress-sandbox-project-demos-test-drive-themes-and-plugins-in-the-browser\";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:4025:\"<p><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-sandbox\">WordPress Sandbox</a>, an experimental project that uses WebAssembly (WASM) to <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/new-prototype-runs-wordpress-in-the-browser-with-no-php-server\">run WordPress in the browser without a PHP server</a>, has been chugging along steadily since Automattic-sponsored core contributor Adam Zieliński introduced it earlier this year in September.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Zieliński published three new updates to Twitter this week, demonstrating the project&#8217;s potential to provide an in-browser IDE for plugin development along with a quick way to spin up a test environment for themes and plugins. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the first example, he shows how the project could be used to test-drive themes from WordPress&#8217; Themes Directory right in the browser. Clicking the <a href=\"https://t.co/nYDjXUAwLv\">demo URL</a> will launch a site with the Pendant theme active, but the theme can be changed to another from the directory by appending a different theme name to the end of the URL. All your changes made on the demo are private and disappear after a page refresh. With a few improvements, this could be transformative for previewing themes on WordPress.org.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">With WordPress Sandbox, you can test-drive themes from the directory right in your browser.<br /><br />For example, click here to try Pendant theme:<a href=\"https://t.co/nYDjXUAwLv\">https://t.co/nYDjXUAwLv</a><br /><br />You can replace \"pendant\" in the URL with another theme from the directory. <a href=\"https://t.co/OFGqimFd6c\">pic.twitter.com/OFGqimFd6c</a></p>&mdash; Adam Zieliński (@adamzielin) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/adamzielin/status/1600484342588997634?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 7, 2022</a></blockquote>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>Zieliński also showed WordPress Sandbox&#8217;s potential for test-driving plugins directly in the browser. The example uses CoBlocks but can be changed to any other plugin from the directory by replacing the plugin name. Having this available to WordPress users would greatly speed up the plugin selection process in cases where it&#8217;s not clear if a plugin will do what you hope it will do. It would also be handy if you could append multiple plugin slugs to the URL to install more than one.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">With WordPress Sandbox, you can test-drive plugins from the directory right in your browser.<br /><br />For example, click here to try CoBlocks:<a href=\"https://t.co/18jTGosPW7\">https://t.co/18jTGosPW7</a><br /><br />You can replace \"coblocks\" with another plugin from the directory. <a href=\"https://t.co/zzelQNtzK2\">pic.twitter.com/zzelQNtzK2</a></p>&mdash; Adam Zieliński (@adamzielin) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/adamzielin/status/1600482887710789635?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 7, 2022</a></blockquote>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>The most recent demo is a video showing how the project can be used to create an in-browser IDE for plugin development, where changes are displayed live.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The future of WordPress development?<br /><br />Build plugins in your browser and see the results live.<br /><br />Here\'s an early demo with WordPress Sandbox – there is no WordPress running on the backend! <a href=\"https://t.co/yIhRoNW5IK\">pic.twitter.com/yIhRoNW5IK</a></p>&mdash; Adam Zieliński (@adamzielin) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/adamzielin/status/1600837230779580416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 8, 2022</a></blockquote>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>For more examples of WordPress Sandbox&#8217;s capabilities, check out the quick <a href=\"https://adamziel.github.io/tutorial.html\">showcase</a> Zieliński built and play around with a <a href=\"https://adamziel.github.io/index.html\">live in-browser WordPress instance</a> to see the site updated instantly as you code. </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, 09 Dec 2022 01:41:21 +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: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:22;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:67:\"WPTavern: Course: A New Free Block Theme Compatible with Sensei LMS\";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=140201\";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/course-a-new-free-block-theme-compatible-with-sensei-lms\";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:2136:\"<p>Sensei LMS, Automattic&#8217;s teaching and learning management plugin, has released a new free block theme called <a href=\"https://senseilms.com/meet-course-a-new-free-block-theme-by-sensei/\">Course</a>.  In February 2022, <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/sensei-lms-4-0-includes-new-block-based-learning-mode-course-theme\">version 4.0</a> of the plugin introduced support for full-site editing with its bundled &#8220;Learning Mode&#8221; theme. Course features a new bold design made to be customized in the Site Editor.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>Although Sensei works with neaerly any WordPress theme, the plugin looks its best with themes designed specifically for Sensei compatibility. Course includes styles for Sensei functionality to perfectly display course lists, sales pages, and the &#8220;Learning Mode&#8221; course templates. It integrates with the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/sensei-lms/\">free Sensei LMS plugin</a> as well as the <a href=\"https://senseilms.com/pricing/\">pro version</a>. Sensei&#8217;s <a href=\"https://senseilms.com/new-course-list-block/\">new Course List</a> block will also inherit all the theme&#8217;s styles seamlessly.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>If green is not your jam, Course includes four style variations suitable as a starting point with blue, dark, and gold as the accent colors and multiple font combinations.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to the various styles, Course brings all the power of the Site Editor for customizing for Sensei templates, as seen in the Lesson template below.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>Although Course is ideal for website owners who are selling courses, the theme is also flexible to be used without Sensei for other purposes like blogging, coaching, and small businesses. Course isn&#8217;t easy to find if you&#8217;re hunting for block themes, as it doesn&#8217;t seem to be tagged as a block theme on WordPress.org. It&#8217;s <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/course/\">free to download</a> in the official Themes Directory or <a href=\"https://senseilms.com/meet-course-a-new-free-block-theme-by-sensei/\">via the Sensei LMS website</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:\"Thu, 08 Dec 2022 20:44:37 +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:23;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:\"Do The Woo Community: Post-Black Friday with Katie Keith, Lesley Sim and Mark Westguard\";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=73959\";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:85:\"https://dothewoo.io/post-black-friday-with-katie-keith-lesley-sim-and-mark-westguard/\";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:472:\"<p>We chat with three WordPress plugin developers and ask them how Black Friday turned out this year including some great insights and perspectives.</p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io/post-black-friday-with-katie-keith-lesley-sim-and-mark-westguard/\">Post-Black Friday with Katie Keith, Lesley Sim and Mark Westguard</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:\"Thu, 08 Dec 2022 10:18:00 +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: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:24;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:67:\"WPTavern: The Block Editor Is Coming to WordPress’ Support Forums\";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=140172\";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:75:\"https://wptavern.com/the-block-editor-is-coming-to-wordpress-support-forums\";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:2880:\"<p>The block editor was introduced to WordPress in 2018 and has matured into a more user-friendly tool for expression over the past four years. WordPress.org&#8217;s Meta Team is now experimenting with how they can <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/support/2022/12/introducing-the-block-editor-in-the-support-forums/\">bring the block editor into the support forums</a>. That they are even considering this is a testament to how far the block editor has come, as the support forums provide a critical lifeline for WordPress users who are struggling with their websites and wouldn&#8217;t benefit from adopting a buggy editor.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The support forums have a long history in WordPress,&#8221; Automattic-sponsored contributor Alvaro Gómez said. &#8220;So much so that the current forum editor predates TinyMCE. By introducing blocks, the support forum will make use of the modern WordPress editor to improve user experience. Users will be able to easily insert links, share code or embed screenshots. Using Blocks will also enable new possibilities, such as using patterns for common responses to allow for faster answers.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Due to the technical difficulty of how the forums currently work, the block editor would need to be rolled out to all users on all forums, precluding the possibility of rolling it out on a per-user, per-language, or per-forum basis.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a <a href=\"https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6608\">ticket</a> opened six days ago, Meta contributors discussed bringing the block editor to the support forums using the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/blocks-everywhere/\">Blocks Everywhere</a> plugin by Automattic. This plugin switches the default WordPress editor for comments, bbPress, BuddyPress, and admin moderation to use Gutenberg, giving users access to blocks. Instead of bundling Gutenberg, it side-loads the editor from WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Meta and Support teams intend to start with just four blocks available to forum users: paragraph, list, quote, and code.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gómez shared a few GIFs from a test site, demonstrating a user responding on a thread using the block editor:</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>Another item on the roadmap is creating an &#8220;add via URL&#8221; image block that would allow users to embed from various image hosting services.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A live testing site is available at <a href=\"https://test.wordpress.org/support/\">https://test.wordpress.org/support/</a> and anyone who wants to join in the testing can leave a comment on the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/support/2022/12/introducing-the-block-editor-in-the-support-forums/\">announcement post</a>. Bugs can be filed on the meta trac <a href=\"https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6608\">ticket</a> for the improvement to the forums. The Meta and Support teams are looking for feedback before Monday, December 12.</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, 07 Dec 2022 23:40:56 +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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:153:\"Post Status: Annual Survey • State of the Word 2022 • LearnWP Site Updates • Block Editor in Support Forums • Dev Guide to Block Theme Course Pt2\";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=145643\";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:148:\"https://poststatus.com/annual-survey-state-of-the-word-2022-learnwp-site-updates-block-editor-in-support-forums-dev-guide-to-block-theme-course-pt2/\";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:13813:\"<h2 id=\"h-this-week-at-wordpress-org-december-5-2022\">This Week at WordPress.org (December 5, 2022)</h2>\n\n\n<div class=\"has-background has-theme-palette-8-background-color wp-block-post-excerpt\"><p class=\"wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt\">It\'s time once again to share your feedback about all things WordPress in the 2022 survey. Tune in next week to hear Matt Mullenweg during is annual address: State of the Word. When submitting issues in the WordPress forums, you\'ll soon find several blocks to use in the editor. #LearnWP has site updates and a new block theme course for developers. </p></div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<div id=\"kt-info-box_68609b-a8\" class=\"wp-block-kadence-infobox\"><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=\"kt-info-svg-icon kt-info-svg-icon-fe_checkSquare\"></span></div></div></div></div><div class=\"kt-infobox-textcontent\"><h2 class=\"kt-blocks-info-box-title\">2022 Survey, SotW, LearnWP Updates</h2><p class=\"kt-blocks-info-box-text\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4dd.png\" alt=\"📝\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/12/2022-wordpress-survey/\">Share Your Experience: The 2022 WordPress Survey is Open</a><br /><br /><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f399.png\" alt=\"🎙\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/state-of-the-word-2022/\">State of the Word 2022</a><br /><br /><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f469-1f3fb-200d-1f3eb.png\" alt=\"👩🏻‍🏫\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/12/05/learn-wordpress-site-updates-december-2022/\">Learn WordPress Site Updates – December 2022</a><br /><br /><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f9d1-1f3ff-200d-1f4bb.png\" alt=\"🧑🏿‍💻\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/course/a-developers-guide-to-block-themes-part-2/\">A Developers Guide to Block Themes – Part 2</a><br /><br /><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64b-1f3fd-200d-2642-fe0f.png\" alt=\"🙋🏽‍♂️\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/support/2022/12/introducing-the-block-editor-in-the-support-forums/\">Introducing the Block Editor in the Support Forums</a><br />><br /></a><br /><br />><br /></a><br /><br /></p></div></div></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-news\">News<a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/10/wordpress-6-1-release-candidate-3/\"></a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/12/2022-wordpress-survey/\">Share Your Experience: The 2022 WordPress Survey is Open</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/people-of-wordpress-huanyi-chuang/\">People of WordPress: Huanyi Chuang</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-_121b9e-cb\"><div class=\"kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center\"><hr class=\"kt-divider\" /></div></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"is-layout-flex wp-container-41 wp-block-columns\">\n<div class=\"is-layout-flow wp-block-column\">\n<h2 id=\"h-accessibility\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility\">Accessibility</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/2022/12/02/call-for-team-rep-nomination-december-2022/\">Call for Team Rep Nomination – December 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-community\">Community</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/12/06/wordcamp-mentors-december-check-in/\">WordCamp Mentors’ December check-in!</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/12/05/proposed-2023-global-community-sponsorship-program/\">Proposed 2023 Global Community Sponsorship Program</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-core\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core\">Core</a> </h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/05/a-week-in-core-december-5-2022/\">A Week in Core – December 5, 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/02/core-team-reps-for-2023-submit-your-votes/\">Core Team Reps for 2023: Submit Your Votes</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-meetings\">Meetings</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/07/devchat-agenda-december-7-2022/\">Devchat agenda, December 7, 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/06/editor-chat-agenda-december-7-2022/\">Editor Chat Agenda: December 7, 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/06/editor-chat-summary-wednesday-november-30-2022/\">Editor chat summary: Wednesday, November 30 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/30/dev-chat-summary-wednesday-november-30-2022/\">Dev Chat summary: Wednesday, November 30, 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-dev-blog\"><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/\">Dev Blog</a></h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/12/07/leveraging-theme-json-and-per-block-styles-for-more-performant-themes/\">Leveraging theme.json and per-block styles for more performant themes</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-docs\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/docs\">Docs</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/12/05/documentation-team-update-december-5-2022/\">Documentation Team Update – December 5, 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-marketing\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing\">Marketing</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2022/12/07/agenda-global-wordpress-marketing-team-meeting-december-7-2022/\">Agenda: global WordPress marketing team meeting, December 7, 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-mobile\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/mobile\">Mobile</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/12/06/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-android-21-3/\">Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 21.3</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-openverse\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/openverse\">Openverse</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2022/12/07/community-meeting-recap-7-december-2022/\">Community Meeting Recap (7 December 2022)</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-performance\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/performance/\">Performance</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/06/performance-team-meeting-summary-6-december-2022/\">Performance Chat Summary: 6 December 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/11/30/core-performance-team-update-november-30-2022/\">Core Performance Team Update – November 30, 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"is-layout-flow wp-block-column\">\n<h2 id=\"h-polyglots\">Polyglots</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2022/12/06/agenda-weekly-polyglots-chat-dec-07-2022-1300-utc/\">Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – Dec. 07, 2022 (13:00 UTC)</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-support\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/support\">Support</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/support/2022/12/introducing-the-block-editor-in-the-support-forums/\">Introducing the Block Editor in the Support Forums</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-test\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test\">Test</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/12/05/test-team-update-5-december-2022/\">Test Team Update: 5 December 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-themes\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/themes\">Themes</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/12/06/themes-team-update-december-06-2022/\">Themes team update December 06, 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-training\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training\">Training</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/individual-learner-survey/\">How did you learn WordPress?</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/12/06/vote-for-training-team-rep-2023/\">Vote for Training Team Rep 2023</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/12/05/learn-wordpress-site-updates-december-2022/\">Learn WordPress Site Updates – December 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/12/05/meeting-agenda-for-december-6-2022/\">Meeting Agenda for December 6, 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/12/05/training-team-meeting-recap-for-november-29-2022/\">Training Team Meeting Recap for November 29, 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/12/05/november-month-retrospective/\">November Month Retrospective</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-courses\"><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/courses\">Courses</a></h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/course/a-developers-guide-to-block-themes-part-2/\">A Developers Guide to Block Themes – Part 2</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-online-workshops\">Online Workshops</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=creating-a-theme-with-the-create-block-theme-plugin-session-1\">Creating a Theme with the Create Block Theme Plugin Session 1</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=creating-a-theme-with-the-create-block-theme-plugin-session-2\">Creating a Theme with the Create Block Theme Plugin Session 2</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=exploring-category-templates-and-the-query-loop-block-session-2\">Exploring Category Templates and the Query Loop Block Session 2</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=exploring-category-templates-and-the-query-loop-block-session-1\">Exploring Category Templates and the Query Loop Block Session 1</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=lets-code-developing-blocks-without-react-block-supports\">Let’s code: Developing Blocks without React! – Block Supports</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=wordpress-development-live-stream-developing-blocks-without-react-block-supports\">WordPress development live stream: Developing Blocks without React – Block Supports</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-to-test-with-report-a-core-trac-ticket-bangla\">How to Test (with Report) a Core Trac Ticket | Bangla</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-to-own-your-expertise-start-speaking-at-wordpress-events-wpdiversity\">How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events #WPDiversity</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-wptv\">WPTV</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/category/year/2022/\">Latest WordPress TV videos</a></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-related-news\">Related News:</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://phpconference.com/berlin-en/\">International PHP Conference Berlin 2023</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-theme-palette-7-background-color has-background\">Thanks for reading our WP dot .org roundup! Each week we are highlighting the news and discussions coming from the good folks making WordPress possible. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers. <br /><br /><strong>Are you interested in giving back and contributing your time and skills to WordPress.org?</strong> <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png\" alt=\"🙏\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/support/article/contributing-to-wordpress/\">Start Here ›</a><br /><br /><strong>Get our weekly WordPress community news digest</strong> — Post Status\' <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/news/week-in-review/\">Week in Review</a> — covering the WP/Woo news plus significant writing and podcasts. It\'s also available in <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/newsletter\">our newsletter</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f48c.png\" alt=\"💌\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /></p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile has-background\"><a href=\"https://poststatus.com/\"><img src=\"https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/vertical-post-status-logo-250.png\" alt=\"Post Status\" class=\"wp-image-85823 size-full\" /></a><div class=\"wp-block-media-text__content\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left has-normal-font-size\" id=\"h-get-ready-for-remote-work\">You — and <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/#Agency\">your whole team</a> can <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/#choose-membership\">Join Post Status</a> too!</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left has-small-font-size\"><strong>Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire.</strong> Read the <strong>Post Status</strong> <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/newsletter/\">newsletter</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2709.png\" alt=\"✉\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> Listen to <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/podcasts/\">podcasts</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f399.png\" alt=\"🎙\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> Follow <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status/\">@Post_Status</a> <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png\" alt=\"🐦\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> and <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/company/post-status-llc/\">LinkedIn</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4bc.png\" alt=\"💼\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /></p>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n<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, 07 Dec 2022 18:17:32 +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: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:26;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:94:\"WPTavern: #54 – Steve Burge on Where We’re at With Multi-Author Collaboration in 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:48:\"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=140125\";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:105:\"https://wptavern.com/podcast/54-steve-burge-on-where-were-at-with-multi-author-collaboration-in-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:44172:\"Transcript<div>\n<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. 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, multi-author collaboration in WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<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 by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, well, I&#8217;m very keen to hear from you. And hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head over to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox. And use the form there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So on the podcast today we have Steve Burge. Although Steve is originally from England, he now lives in Sarasota, Florida. He leads the team at PublishedPress, which is a plugin company focusing on improving the publishing experience for WordPress users. The topic of today&#8217;s podcast is very much in his wheelhouse.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Several years ago, the block editor was brought into WordPress core. It was a dramatic change from the classic editor. Pages and posts could be created and edited with a growing variety of blocks. Blocks for paragraphs blocks for images, in fact blocks for everything.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This ability to edit content with blocks was just one of four phases of the Gutenberg project. The other three phases being site editing, multi-author collaboration and multi-lingual support.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;ve been following recent developments, then you&#8217;ll know that we&#8217;re currently in the site editing phase. And when that&#8217;s done, it will be time to turn our collective attention to multi-author collaboration.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But what is that? And what does it mean? I think that the best way to think about this would be to imagine Google docs. For years, you&#8217;ve been able to open up a document, click a button and share that document with others. Those with the correct permissions can interact with you in real time. And you can see the amendments they&#8217;re making as and when they&#8217;re making them. It&#8217;s utterly brilliant, and how most people would prefer to work with their content. One document. One source of truth.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Compare that to how WordPress currently works. Only one person can edit a piece of content at the same time. If you want to edit a post or a page at the same time as someone else, you can&#8217;t.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Phase three of the Gutenberg project aims to bring into WordPress the ability for multiple users to interact with content at the same time. Steve talks today about why this is an elegant and necessary update to WordPress. But also why it&#8217;s a difficult feat of engineering to pull off.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress has a history of working with all manner of hosting configurations, and it&#8217;s one of the reasons that it&#8217;s so successful. Will it be possible to run WordPress on more affordable tech stacks given the burden that multi author collaboration will require?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also get into the projects that Steve has found from community members, which try to lay some of the foundations of how this might be implemented, as well as talking about how Steve&#8217;s finding it hard to discover new information concerning this important topic.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more. You can find all the links in the show notes by heading over to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Steve Burge.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Steve Burge. Hello Steve.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:29] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> Hey, Nathan.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Steve and I met not that long ago. It was WordCamp US. We met for the very first time. Because he was at WordCamp US, you can pretty much guarantee that he&#8217;s into WordPress. But as we always do at the beginning of the podcast episode, just to orientate the listeners, Steve, about who you are and what your relationship is with WordPress. You can go back as far as you like, could be last year, could be 10 years ago. Tell us a bit about your WordPress journey, and then we&#8217;ll get into the subject of today&#8217;s podcast.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:57] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> Sure thing. I&#8217;m from England. I live in Florida in the US, and I&#8217;ve been dabbling in open source since about 2003, 2004 or so. And ran a training company for a long time called OS Training, and we were involved in publishing. We published a lot of videos and also a whole series of books on WordPress, Drupal, Magento, php. And about five years ago flipped into developing plugins, and so we went right into the publishing side of WordPress plugins.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we run three different plugin brands now, all focused on publishing. One is PublishPress, one is TaxoPress and one is Meta Slider. And that&#8217;s really kind of what led me to this interest in Gutenberg phase three. We work with a lot of publishers and to have the kind of collaborative editing that should be coming in phase three is really exciting for a lot of them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:55] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Can I just pause the podcast general subject, which is, as you&#8217;ve just described the Gutenberg editor and phase three in particular, collaborative editing. Can I ask, because you ran OS Training, which I&#8217;m sure many people will have heard of, they might have books on their shelf or content on the computer and used it in the past. I certainly did. When you came into WordPress, was it your experience from having a real deep background in publishing that made you interested in publishing inside of WordPress? Because obviously your career now is very much tied up with publishing content, collaborative publishing permissions, and so on.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:06:31] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> Yes, partly. We had to do a lot of co-authoring of books. I wrote initially the first three or four books in our series, and then we started to work with authors. We had to do a lot of co-authoring. We worked with some big publishers like Pearson, and often collaboration involved, sending Word documents back and forth endlessly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so you are working on chapter three. The first draft would be chapter_2.1 .doc. You&#8217;d edit it, send the Word document back, word document back and forth, and collaborative editing in those days would mean you got to like 250 Word documents for chapter two, and the name would be confused and you&#8217;d make an edit and your editor would say, oh, which document are we working on?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think I worked on the wrong document. I imagine now if we were able to do that kind of book publishing, but collaboratively online in something like a Google Docs style environment, my life would&#8217;ve been much, much easier.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:29] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I&#8217;m kind of imagining that literally anybody under the age of 25, is probably completely unfamiliar with a world in which technology wasn&#8217;t synchronous. So I don&#8217;t exactly remember the date it happened, but the first time I ever saw synchronous editing on a screen was, I guess I was sitting in my house and Google came out with a product called Google Wave.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t know if you remember that? Much like a lot of Google properties it&#8217;s now been mothballed and no longer in existence. But essentially for the very first time, you could open a document in a browser and you were able to see other people&#8217;s edits in real time. The cursor would appear and it would&#8217;ve a different color, and you could see that Joseph over here was writing text and Pauline over here, she was writing texts and it was all happening on the screen at the same time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I remember at that point feeling that it was sublimely clever. I genuinely mean that. I&#8217;m not just saying that for the purposes of this podcast. I really did have a moment where breathed in and thought, boy, we&#8217;re not going back from here. This is the way it&#8217;s always going to be done from now on. It&#8217;s completely normal. Just about everybody, I would imagine, like I say, under the age of 25 is probably, this is the only way to do things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can hand documents in online easily, and your tutors or peers or whoever it might be, your boss, can give you realtime feedback. And there&#8217;s one canonical version of the document, so you don&#8217;t have to keep sending it via email and adding .1, .2, .3 to the end of it, and so on. And it just seems that&#8217;s so straightforwardly the way it should be done.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:09:05] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> You end up with a, an undo and a back and forward button and everything is just, there&#8217;s no revisions. There&#8217;s, well, technically there are revisions, I guess, but so much easier to handle. I guess the big difference is all of those are often done on one central platform. Google Drive, Google Wave, back in the day. Just yesterday my kid was doing her homework with a friend and they were doing this collaborative editing online.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was Microsoft, because that&#8217;s what the school gives them. They&#8217;re on FaceTime, happily chatting back and forth while working on the shared document. But all of that was done on a big central shared server, on the Microsoft server or the Google servers. And it does get more complicated when it comes down to doing that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:09:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah so, we&#8217;ve got all of this positivity around collaborative editing, and the fact that more or less, everybody now understands that paradigm, and it basically is the way to edit documents, for most people at least anyway. You may have instances where you just want something to be completely private and you don&#8217;t want it to be in the cloud, and so it is still done in a, an old fashioned document, which is saved away, and you edit it yourself, that&#8217;s fine.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But then you open up a WordPress website and you are confronted with a completely different paradigm. You&#8217;ve got the option to create content of whatever type you like, text and images may be the, the most common use case. But you are utterly constrained in your collaborations. The best that you&#8217;ve got at the moment is, you go to edit a document, if somebody else is editing it, you get a little warning telling you that somebody else is editing and you can either back out or you can take over. In other words, you can kick them out, and they&#8217;re your two choices. And so it must seem to people coming to WordPress, like I say, under the age of 25, let&#8217;s keep going with that paradigm.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It must seem that WordPress is something from like a time machine. What do you mean I can&#8217;t edit it at the same time? Of course I must be, I&#8217;m doing something wrong. But it cannot be done at the moment, but it is in the pipeline. And maybe Steve, you could just lay out the four phases of the Gutenberg project so that we can see where this fits into that jigsaw puzzle.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:19] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> Sure thing. So this dates back to about 2018 or so, when, I think that was when Matt said we&#8217;re not just doing Gutenberg, but Gutenberg is going to be a big four phase product. We&#8217;re going to have one, the actual Gutenberg editor inside the posts. And that one shipped in WordPress 5.0. Then we would tackle full site editing, which I think has just been renamed to the site editor.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:51] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:52] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> And that one shipped at the beginning of this year I think, in 5.9.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:57] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think 5.9 was what&#8217;s in my head.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:59] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> And we are in that stage two, which is customization. And then they&#8217;re going to be two more phases. And one we&#8217;re talking about is the next one up, phase three, called collaboration, which has the Google Doc style editing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then the fourth and final one is going to be multilingual, where inside the core you&#8217;re going to be able to translate every element of WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:12:23] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, so phase three is going to be the main thrust of this podcast. So this is basically what we&#8217;ve just talked about. The ability for multiple people to concurrently edit and leave comments and you visually see on the screen what other people are doing as they&#8217;re doing it. So, I guess the question to begin with is why hasn&#8217;t this been done already? And I don&#8217;t mean that in a cantankerous way. I literally mean to serve that on a plate. Are you able to give an explanation of why this hasn&#8217;t been done already?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:12:57] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> There are limited resources, and Gutenberg itself was a big project, a big changeover. We still see probably equal usage between Gutenberg and classic editor in the support tickets we get. And then there&#8217;s all the other page builders too. And then an even bigger project was the full site editing, which is still ongoing now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the resources have been constrained. It takes a very big team, working very hard, simply to ship what we&#8217;ve been able to ship so far. So that&#8217;s part of it. And also the collaborative editing is just going to be a, quite a difficult challenge I think. Technically, it&#8217;s one thing to run collaborative editing on your Google servers with Google Docs, where you are in control of just about everything.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, if you try and do something similar on a $2 a month hosting company, which WordPress is going to have to do, because almost any WordPress feature you ship has to work on any WordPress site anywhere. That&#8217;s when the challenge comes in. If everyone was hosted on WP Engine or WordPress VIP, we probably would&#8217;ve had this already. But actually rolling it out to 50% of the web, and all the different hosting configurations, it&#8217;s going to be a challenge, a technical challenge.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:17] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So two reasons there. The first one is the amount of time it&#8217;s taken to get through the first, well, the first stage. And then we&#8217;re, as you said, we&#8217;re in the second stage, the full site editing. I&#8217;m going to link in the show notes to an article that you wrote over on Publish Press several years ago, actually it was 2019. In fact it was almost exactly three years ago. It was written in November, 2019.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And at that point you were talking about getting through full site editing, getting through stage one and two, customization, full site editing, and then eventually landing on the collaborative side of things. It was interesting because back then, much more, probably confident in the ability to get through those first two stages because you were pointing to perhaps a date of 2020.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:15:03] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> Oh yeah. Blame me. Those are my guesses.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:15:05] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s right. But it just goes to show, doesn&#8217;t it, especially the full sight editing is taking a lot longer. And there was never a flag in the sand which said, this is going to be the date that we&#8217;re going to begin. It was very much, these are the things that we want to achieve, but there&#8217;s no date in mind. So it took a lot longer.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then you mentioned the fact that yes, it&#8217;s all very well working on Microsoft products or Google products, but they own all of that. They&#8217;ve got the infrastructure and it&#8217;s probably, let&#8217;s be honest, pretty impressive infrastructure. And they own the full tech stack, so they can make sure that everything works, and your Google Doc is going to work seamlessly, no matter what level of computing you have at home. You don&#8217;t need a particularly fast computer. It&#8217;s all handled on their end.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress has a completely different problem. Some people spend a fortune on their hosting because they need it and they&#8217;re happy to do that. Other people spend very little. Sometimes, really, it can be incredibly affordable.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Are you able to, I don&#8217;t know if you are, but are you able to go into the technicalities of why cheap hosting wouldn&#8217;t be suitable for, let&#8217;s say something like Google Docs at the moment? In other words, what&#8217;s actually happening when a page is open that two or more people are trying to edit on. And does the problem scale?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If there&#8217;s five people editing, is it more resource heavy than if there&#8217;s two people editing or 10 people editing, what have you? So are you able to discuss what the problems are from a technical point of view a little bit?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:16:40] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> I&#8217;m not a hardcore developer enough to dig too deep into this without embarrassing myself, but it is very process heavy, and you need some kind of a central server or perhaps a peer-to-peer network that is able to be a central source of truth for what is the latest update and to connect the two together.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve looked at different approaches that people have taken to doing this. One of the most common ways is web sockets. Which are able to update the content on the screen without refreshing the whole page. Which is a key part of this because both people need to see their page refreshing in real time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A few years ago that was impressive to do with Ajax. We&#8217;re doing a much more advanced version of that now with both people seeing live updates on the content without refreshing their page. So you need some way to connect the two or three or four or five people who are doing those updates.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And web sockets is perhaps the most popular way to do it. It&#8217;s basically an API to send messages and responses back and forth. But the limitation there is, some of the low budget hosting companies are not able to do it. And you do need some kind of a central service.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Part of me wonders whether, I don&#8217;t know if they would do this, but if they&#8217;ve thought about perhaps running it through the WordPress.com or WordPress.org infrastructure, in order to make this work for low end hosts. Because they do need some kind of, like Google servers or Microsoft servers, some kind of centralized server would be a massive benefit to this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The alternative, which I&#8217;ve dug into most, is from a company called Tag One in Europe. They&#8217;re like a big, a big agency and they&#8217;ve been developing a script called YJS, which allows you to do collaborative editing through a peer to peer network.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a pretty different solution to web sockets, but it seems to be, and I&#8217;m guessing here, the one that the Gutenberg team have taken on board. There seems to have been a bit of radio silence on the technical side of things. We&#8217;ve seen Matt mention phase three at a couple of State of the Words. He talked about it in Europe a little bit, in Lisbon.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I&#8217;ve been trying to pull the strings on the technical side of things on GitHub, and there&#8217;s not much there at the moment. I think from what I&#8217;ve been told, that there&#8217;s action going on in private. They&#8217;re working on it in the background and perhaps on some private repositories. But the only real thing that&#8217;s emerged, at least, someone feel free to correct me on this, is a script called an Isolated Block Editor, which basically takes Gutenberg as a kind of standalone product that I think could be used in Tumblr, or the Day one app, or Drupal or anywhere else. And it&#8217;s kind of building in collaborative editing into that isolated block editor, which is a version of Gutenberg.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So really the technical hints that I&#8217;ve heard about this, are two or three years old. We did a big interview on the PublishPress blog with the YJS team, where they dig into some of the technical challenges around this. But from everything I&#8217;ve been able to read or talk about with people, it&#8217;s a real technical challenge.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The CK Editor team, WordPress uses TinyMCE. CK Editor is kind of an alternative to TinyMCE. They have a really long and detailed blog post about how they tried to build collaborative editing into their, into their editor editor. It took four plus years, and I think ended up with lots of them tearing their hair out and growing prematurely gray. And there&#8217;s a Twitter thread from a guy who tried to do this with Microsoft Office. He basically says the same thing. Just an enormous technical challenge is particularly in retrospect, to try and take existing software and add collaborative editing to it. But, and this is one of the reasons why I wonder if they&#8217;re thinking about some kind of a central server, for example, WordPress.com.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;re finally starting to see the possibility of collaborative editing coming soon. Automattic have a product called P2, which is I think used for their internal blogs, their internal networking. And just in the last month or so, they have an update on the P two blog. They&#8217;ve been rolling out collaborative editing to some of their P2 users. I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;m on a blacklist or something, but I&#8217;ve been sending several messages to the WordPress.com staff seeing if I can get in on the beta invite list. But no luck so far. So collaborative editing is actually live on WordPress.com for some users at the moment, and I can share the link that you can put in the show notes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But down in their, in the documentation they have about it, they say that it&#8217;s a work in progress, it&#8217;s a beta. It can become unstable under some circumstances. If you are running a VPN or some kind of a proxy, often if you&#8217;re using Safari, it can become unstable.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is kind of a long winded answer to your original question. The technical side is a little bit of a mystery still. I suspect that YJS will play a part. I suspect they may be working on some kind of a central server to make it stable to run on those $2 a month hosting companies. And if you go over to the P2 area on WordPress.com, there&#8217;s a little video of it emerging, and collaborative, editing, we may start to see a lot more of it in the next few months suspect.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:22:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> There was a lot in there, wasn&#8217;t there? And I&#8217;m just going to go through some of the thoughts that were coming into my head as you were saying it. So the first one is obviously people like Google, they&#8217;ve completely cracked this nut. I cannot remember a time at any point where my Google doc froze, for example. Or I was editing it with somebody else, and they seemed to sort of blip out of existence. Suddenly 20 lines got updated when it looked like they weren&#8217;t even editing the document. In other words, they were always typing. I could see them typing. It was as if they were right next to me in many senses. No problems in other words.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:04] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> Is a beautiful experience when it works well, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:06] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> But I&#8217;m guessing that could be the problem, couldn&#8217;t it? You know, if somebody has infrastructure running their WordPress website, and it simply isn&#8217;t up to the task. I don&#8217;t fully understand what that means, but we all know that computers given a certain volume of things to do, tend to grind down and prioritize some things over others, and in some cases just cease to function and collapse. But if you were editing a document, you mentioned a source of truth. You have to know, don&#8217;t you? You really have to be confident that what you are seeing on the screen now, is what the final version is looking like.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can&#8217;t be in a situation where, I&#8217;ve got you Steve over there. You are editing, I&#8217;m editing this document, and it looks to me like you finished because you are no longer contributing. And it turns out you&#8217;d written another couple of hundred words, which never made it into the document because your system collapsed in the background. And I didn&#8217;t know about that, and that would truly be a calamity.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can also imagine collisions in terms of things getting overwritten or me saving a document in some way that then removes the possibility of your a hundred words ever making it in there in the first place. So there&#8217;s all these really big problems and as you say, the very fact that we are all using different qualities of hardware, different computers, different versions of Linux, all sorts of different engines going on in the background, powering our websites.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There has to be some way of figuring out what the source of truth is at this moment. And I really do, kind of understand a little bit more now that that really is genuinely a tricky challenge and one that perhaps hasn&#8217;t been faced by another company. Also, your idea of it being a dot com type thing. In other words, this capability is offloaded to, let&#8217;s say, some sort of Automattic property.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:59] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> I would put a caveat in there that that is entirely my guess. I have no, no evidence to that at all. I&#8217;ve just been thinking through possible solutions to the problem.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> But I find that to be quite an interesting solution. So again, let&#8217;s assume that this collaborative editing is something that everybody aspires to. But we can also agree that if you have incredibly modest hosting, it may be something that your aspirations aren&#8217;t living up to.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, maybe there is a sort of commercial angle for having that capability built on top of affordable hosting, if you know what I mean. In other words, WordPress.com, whichever company it may be, I don&#8217;t know. There&#8217;s some kind of upgrade. You have a WordPress website, but you would like the collaborative editing capability to be added in, simply because you know that your infrastructure can&#8217;t cope with it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, that&#8217;s less than ideal. I think it would be the ideal that any architecture can cope with it. That would be obviously ideal. But it was an interesting thought, and it just sort of prompted me to think, I wonder if even a company as large as Automattic, I wonder if they could saddle the burden of all of that given that there wouldn&#8217;t be any commercial side to paying off that debt, if you know what I mean.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If there&#8217;s 40% of the web, let&#8217;s say 20% of those websites can&#8217;t manage it, and so they&#8217;re doing their collaborative editing on Automattic&#8217;s hardware. Presumably there&#8217;s a bill for that, which would need to be paid.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:33] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> I mean, that&#8217;s part of the problem of being WordPress, right? You&#8217;re trying to solve problems at a scale that no one else has ever solved it. We talked about CK Editor for example, Well, CK Editor has collaborative editing. It took them four years and just about burned out some of the best developers. But there were tiny fraction of the size of WordPress, and what WordPress needs to do. I guess until we, until more of this starts to emerge, perhaps when the full site editing winds down, we&#8217;re not going to know too much.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I think the two options available are either to build a peer to peer network, using something like YJS or to go through the centralized option of WordPress.com .org or an other service.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:27:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I wonder if there&#8217;s other options that could be explored. And forgive me, my technical ignorance here might be screaming loudly at you as I say these words, but I wonder if it might be possible to have a scenario in which you are alerted to the fact that changes have been made, but you have to, I don&#8217;t know, maybe click a button or.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:27:42] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> We have lost a connection. There&#8217;d be some kind of mess. I guess the most common point of failure for collaborative editing will probably be, the connection is lost, and each person goes back to editing their own separate version of the document. You just lose the collaboration aspect, and there could be some kind of message saying you have disconnected from the collaborative editing, you have disconnected from the network.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:28:03] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yes. And of course that throws up all sorts of enormously difficult problems on its own. Because then, let&#8217;s say there&#8217;s four people editing the document, do they then carry on? And then those four people have to combine their efforts after the fact to figure out, okay, well what did you do? Which bit did you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Can we just copy and paste that in here now? In other words, it makes more of a mess than the old asynchronous way of doing things, where I edit it, hand it to you, you edit it, hand it to person three, they edit it, and it finally comes back to me. And at least I know that those three edits have been made. And that&#8217;s in the scenario of collapse that we just described, we&#8217;d be back to that basically. And obviously if we&#8217;re offering the promise of collaborative editing, you have to trust it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another thought occurred to me is, does it need to be as beautiful, let&#8217;s say as Google Docs? And what I mean by that is, I can literally watch you type letter by letter. I&#8217;ll see each letter coming in one at a time. Does it need to refresh quite as often as that? Is a two second delay, a three second delay, a five second delay. I don&#8217;t know if this adds complexity. I don&#8217;t know if it solves any problems or creates others?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:29:13] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> Well, there is a video on the P2 site. Just a little five second video showing how this works. And it is just like Google Docs to be honest. It has the avatars of the people editing in the top right corner. Each person gets assigned the color. So, if there&#8217;s a little Nathan avatar on the top right, you might have red around your avatar, and any changes you make are being highlighted in red. I might have purple. Any changes I make are being highlighted in purple. It is, at least in this video, aiming right for the Google Drive, Google Docs experience.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:29:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s interesting. In your article, I will link to it, and people can go and find it and there&#8217;s a couple of them in fact, and I&#8217;ll make sure to link to both of those. There was raised, and I can&#8217;t remember whether this was raised and then has now been put to bed, or if it was raised and is still a possibility. In order to try and do this, people are coming up with interesting and clever solutions to sidestep maybe some problems that were becoming obvious.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The idea of being able to only edit the block that you are currently editing by yourself. So in other words, let&#8217;s say for example, if we&#8217;ve got a page and it&#8217;s got 50 paragraphs and a couple of images. I could edit one paragraph, but that paragraph would be locked to you. But all the other 49 paragraphs would be open to anybody. And the first person that gets in there, gets to edit it until they are in effect booted out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we&#8217;d have a, an option, very similar to what we have now, on a page basis where I can&#8217;t get into the page if somebody else is editing it. We&#8217;d have that on a block by block basis. And I think in many cases that might satisfy 90%, 95% of the problems. What are the chances that I want to edit an image at the same time as you? What are the chances that I want to edit a paragraph at the same time as you? Maybe there&#8217;s a high chance of collision. I&#8217;m not sure.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:31:05] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> No, no, I think that kind of thing makes sense. And certainly, while we&#8217;re talking, I have the, the demo video playing on my screen in front of me. And that seems to be what they&#8217;re doing. That it is a block by block approach. I may be wrong. They may have something else in the background.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in the video that I&#8217;m watching, one person is editing the header, one person is editing a table, one person is editing a paragraph, and they&#8217;re working on the same document, but on different blocks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:31:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> One of the things that you introduced to me just before we hit the record button, was there&#8217;s a developer called Riad Benguella, and I&#8217;m sorry, Riad if that is in fact not how you say your name, I do apologize, but I&#8217;ll link to a website that you mentioned in a tweet. I&#8217;ll mention the tweet, and I&#8217;ll post the website URL as well. It&#8217;s Gutenberg with collaborative editing built into it. And you and I were editing on it, ala Google Docs. And it all seemed to work. So obviously there are people who are tackling this problem, but I&#8217;m sure the problem that, that we have here is that we don&#8217;t know what the tech stack is behind it that&#8217;s making it possible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;re both looking at asblocks.com, a s b l o c k s .com, and you can go there. I suspect it&#8217;s going to be there for years to come, and share. The first person that logs in can share the link, assign themselves a name, and then presumably that shared link looks the same to you. You have to assign yourself a name and we can both see each other editing and it works as far as I can see perfectly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:32:32] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> Yeah, Riad solved this problem two plus years ago with as blocks, and the demo is still live and still working now. It&#8217;s the, the scale out to every WordPress site that is the big stumbling block I presume.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:32:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, we just simply don&#8217;t know how many people are using this at the same time. And so the collapse of it might not be a problem. Do you have any insight or any kind of spidey sense of when things may start to move in this direction? So obviously we really have to get to the point where full site editing or site editing is more or less complete to the satisfaction of the majority of people, at least anyway. Then we&#8217;ll be working on this thorny problem. Do you have any conception of when the work on this will begin properly?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:33:20] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> I wish I did. To be honest, I&#8217;m a little geeky about this stuff and, our customers want it, and I really wanted it. It would be a wonderful feature for WordPress. So I&#8217;ve probably been following this as closely as anyone that isn&#8217;t actually involved on the technical side. Every time I Google Gutenberg phase three, I seem to come across something I wrote myself, because there&#8217;s not much written about it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s been done a little bit, not entirely under a veil of secrecy, but maybe they don&#8217;t want to distract from the focus on full site editing. But it has been hard to find information. And so I was happy to see something emerge on the P2 blog that this is in progress still. If I had to guess, we&#8217;ll start to see more next year. We&#8217;ve had a couple of mentions of it from Matt, I mentioned at different WordCamps, and Matias, who is one of the lead developers of Gutenberg since the beginning, has a blog post from June this year on WordPress.org talking about phase three, but really only tangentially.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was more about the ending of phase two and full site editing. And so there really has been a lot of radio silence. Quite a lot of the active GitHub repos have gone quiet. I hope next year. But as someone who follows this closely, I&#8217;ve not been able to find that anymore.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:34:39] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Everything that I&#8217;ve heard has stuck rigidly to the four phases of Gutenberg. I haven&#8217;t heard of anybody discounting phase three. So collaborative editing I think is definitely destined to be tackled, and hopefully succeeding in tackling. But you&#8217;re right, it&#8217;s been very, very quiet.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Normally, there&#8217;s a lot of speculation. There might be more proofs of concept or people popping up, giving their insight into it. But as you say, you followed it really, really closely, and it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s almost like a veil of secrecy, as you said. So hopefully that doesn&#8217;t indicate anything negative. It just means that people are concentrating their efforts on other things and trying to get those things tackled.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Steve, I&#8217;ve probably used up more of your time than I intended to. I&#8217;m sorry about that. Just before we go, if people want to talk to you about this whole proposition, collaborative editing, where&#8217;s the best place to reach out?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:35:32] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> steve@publishpress.com. And actually one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this topic with you was I hoped I might be able to shake a bit more information out of the tree. Someone hears this and has information about it, wants to talk about it, happy to do a video podcast or share the information.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I would love to see this in WordPress. I&#8217;m happy to help. I&#8217;m sure they have the reasons for keeping it, for keeping it quiet to the moment. But, this would be a killer feature for WordPress, and if anyone has more information, I&#8217;d love to hear it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:36:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I really think you are right. I think the realization of this in Gutenberg and if we had an implementation which worked basically effectively for everybody, the day it was released into WordPress core. I think it will really, would dramatically change the prospects of what people would wish to do with WordPress. At the moment it&#8217;s largely for websites.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It really genuinely could be a tool for all sorts of internal communications and publishing things that just are for your close network, your job, your industry, whatever it might be. There&#8217;s a, there&#8217;s a whole lot that could happen that at the minute is probably left to the likes of Microsoft Teams and Google Docs and all of that kind of stuff, so.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:36:43] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> Well, it did pop up on P2 initially, which is the kind of WordPress versions of Google Docs, the kind of internal, Automattic, documentation system.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:36:51] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, thank you Steve for chatting to me today. I really appreciate it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:36:55] <strong>Steve Burge:</strong> Thanks, Nathan.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>On the podcast today we have <a href=\"https://steveburge.com/\">Steve Burge</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although Steve is originally from England, he now lives in Sarasota, Florida. He leads the team at <a href=\"https://publishpress.com/\">PublishPress</a>, which is a plugin company focusing on improving the publishing experience for WordPress users. The topic of today&#8217;s podcast is very much in his wheelhouse.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Several years ago, the block editor was brought into WordPress Core. It was a dramatic change from the classic editor. Pages and posts could be created and edited with a growing variety of blocks. Blocks for paragraphs, blocks for images, in fact, blocks for everything.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This ability to edit content with blocks was just one of four phases of the Gutenberg project, the other three phases being, site editing, multi-author collaboration, and multilingual support.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you’ve been following recent developments, then you’ll know that we’re currently in the site editing phase. When that’s done, it will be time to turn our collective attention to multi-author collaboration. But what is that and what does it mean?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think that the best way to think about this would be to imagine Google Docs. For years, you’ve been able to open up a document, click a button and share that document with others. Those with the correct permissions can interact with you in real time, and you can see the amendments they’re making as and when they’re making them. It’s utterly brilliant, and how most people would prefer to work with their content. One document. One source of truth.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Compare that to how WordPress currently works. Only one person can edit a piece of content at the same time. If you want to edit a post or a page at the same time as someone else, you can’t.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Phase three of the Gutenberg project aims to bring into WordPress the ability for multiple users to interact with content at the same time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Steve talks today about why this is an elegant and necessary update to WordPress, but also why it’s a difficult feat of engineering to pull off. WordPress has a history of working with all manner of hosting configurations, and it’s one of the reasons that it’s so successful. Will it be possible to run WordPress on more affordable tech stacks given the burden that multi-author collaboration will require?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also get into the projects that Steve has found from community members which try to lay some of the foundations of how this might be implemented, as well as talking about how Steve’s finding it hard to discover new information concerning this important topic.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Useful links.</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://publishpress.com/blog/google-docs-editing-gutenberg/\">Collaborative Editing is a Really Difficult Challenge in WordPress</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://p2help.wordpress.com/using-p2/the-editor/collaboration/\">P2 Beta launch and video</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://asblocks.com/\">AsBlocks</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://github.com/youknowriad/asblocks\">AsBlocks project on GitHub</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://github.com/Automattic/isolated-block-editor\">Automattic&#8217;s Isolated Block Editor on GitHub</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://yjs.dev/#intro\">YJS website</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://github.com/yjs/yjs\">YJS project on GitHub</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://publishpress.com/blog/yjs/\">Steve&#8217;s podcast with the Tag1 team about YJS</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://publishpress.com/blog/google-docs-editing-gutenberg/\">Steve&#8217;s post about why collaborative editing in Gutenberg is hard</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://ckeditor.com/blog/Lessons-learned-from-creating-a-rich-text-editor-with-real-time-collaboration/\">CKEditor post about lessons learned from creating a rich-text editor with real-time collaboration</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/design/2022/06/13/thinking-through-the-wordpress-admin-experience/\">Matias Ventura&#8217;s post about thinking through the WordPress admin experience</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-1-to-focus-on-refining-full-site-editing-next-phase-collaboration-and-multilingual-features-anticipated-in-2023-2025\">WordPress 6.1 to Focus On Refining Full-Site Editing, Next Phase Collaboration and Multilingual Features Anticipated in 2023-2025</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://ostraining.com/\">OSTraining</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave\">Google Wave</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, 07 Dec 2022 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:27;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:\"Do The Woo Community: Do the Woo is Headed to the State of the Word, NYC, Again\";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=73992\";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:76:\"https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-is-headed-to-the-state-of-the-word-nyc-again/\";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:440:\"<p>I am lucky to be able to attend the event again and looking forward to connections, reflections and optimism around the community.</p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-is-headed-to-the-state-of-the-word-nyc-again/\">Do the Woo is Headed to the State of the Word, NYC, Again</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:\"Wed, 07 Dec 2022 12:00:00 +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: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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:149:\"HeroPress: Blessings and curses of turning your hobby into a career – Välsignelser och förbannelser med att förvandla sin hobby till en karriär\";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:56:\"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=4948\";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:186:\"https://heropress.com/essays/blessings-and-curses-of-turning-your-hobby-into-a-career/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=blessings-and-curses-of-turning-your-hobby-into-a-career\";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:32039:\"<img width=\"1024\" height=\"512\" src=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/120622-min.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt=\"Pull Quote: Balance. That’s what I lost when I turned my hobby into a career.\" />\n<p><a href=\"https://heropress.com/feed/#svenska\">Den här essän finns även på svenska.</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>Back in 2012, I was a media and communications student at Umeå University in northern Sweden. The overall state of the newspaper business had convinced me not to pursue a career in journalism, and I had figured the second best thing would be to work with media relations for a business or organization I’d feel passionate about. That’s about how much thought I put into my choice of education. With each lecture I attended and essay I handed in, I realized that I enjoyed studying media and communications, but I wasn’t overly excited about making it my career.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fortunately, the lectures and essays left me enough time to pursue other things as well. Girls, friends, parties – things you’re keen on when you’ve moved to a city 500 kilometers from home – but also side projects. Money is always tight when you’re a student. I had started to consider different ways of making money from the web tinkering I’d had as a hobby from an early age.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was aware that the business for selling premium WordPress themes was growing rapidly, with themes on websites like ThemeForest making immense amounts of money. Could that be a way to help pay the bills?</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_564506-1f wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">Finding WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I have a very clear memory of the first time I wrote HTML. I was eleven years old, and I was browsing a popular link directory called Annas Länkburkar (”Annas link jars”) on one of the computers at school. The front page consisted of rows of jars, bottles, boxes and tea bags, each labeled with the type of links they contained. Somewhere in the dark blue bottle labeled ”Data”, I found a tutorial for writing simple web pages in HTML. My desktop was soon littered with .html files exploring the basics of coding web pages, all carefully written in Notepad. I learned that the email accounts my parents had at the web portal Spray came with member pages with HTML support, and I quickly planted a flag on my first plot of land on the World Wide Web. If I remember correctly, it had the memorable URL of http://medlem.spray.se followed by a random number sequence.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I kept tinkering with web development over the next few years, learning CSS from a book in the library and trying and failing to wrap my head around JavaScript. I was aware of Content Management Systems, but since I couldn’t afford a host on my weekly allowance, I was limited to what I could accomplish on the free web hosts available at the time. I started to play around with other programming languages as well. I found C++ too complicated and Visual Basic dull, but QBasic struck the right balance for me and I built simple ASCII games with it for a while. As you can tell, I was a very cool kid.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I switched schools when I was 15, and my interest in computers dipped for a while. Instead, I discovered Photoshop. Most of my output consisted of moody illustrations captioned with song lyrics – the main form of expression for 15-year-olds. I was also tricked into working with the school paper, which lit the spark for my interest in journalism and introduced me to InDesign.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I started high school, back in 2006, the blog phenomenon was just starting to take off in Sweden, and I was eager to jump on the bandwagon. I had gotten it in my head that I was going to develop indie games, and rather than actually spend my time developing games, I decided that the sensible thing to do was to create a blog about indie game development. This would mark the start of a lifelong habit of creating websites about my interests instead of practicing them. A Google search for after free blog services took me to WordPress.com. The service was only a little more than a year old at the time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I published my first blog post with WordPress on January 14, 2007. I can tell you the date with certainty because I’m looking at the post right now, but no, I won’t share it here. I have already told you about my moody Photoshop illustrations, and there are limits to how much I will embarrass myself in public. Despite the WordPress.com domain name and bad English, I somehow managed to trick a handful of game developers to be interviewed for the blog. Most notably, Doom and Quake co-creator John Romero. My final question was ”Pizza or hamburger?”. Maybe it’s for the best that I didn&#8217;t end up a journalist.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>My delusions about indie game development soon faded, but I hadn’t lost my interest in blogging. I had grown used to working with WordPress from my WordPress.com blog, so when it came time to register my own domain name and sign up for a proper host, the choice of CMS was an easy one. I dusted off my old HTML and CSS skills to make some small visual tweaks to the theme I was running, and I started to pick up a little bit of PHP as well. I soon realized that tinkering with the code was as much fun as writing blog posts.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>More sites quickly followed. One with news about Nintendo, one with news about Apple, one link directory, one with tutorials about blogging, one about the murder of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, and so on. The last one is the only one of them <a href=\"https://palmemordet.se/\">online</a> today, although it has received a couple of visual updates since then. I still get emails from conspiracy loonies every month or so. Almost all of the sites were built with WordPress, usually with a tweaked free or premium theme. I kept updating them through my high school graduation, and after high school, a part time job at a small IT company led to me getting paid to write code for the first time. I still didn’t think of it as a possible career path. I had my eyes set on college.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_5ca9f6-a1 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">A career built on themes</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Two years later, I was sitting in my student apartment in Umeå, thinking about building premium WordPress themes to help pay the bills. Having nothing to lose and spare time on my hands, I decided to give it a go. My first theme was a simple blog theme called Lasseter, named after former Pixar director John Lasseter, and it was released on Mojo Themes in August 2013 for $49. Realizing I needed some way to market my premium themes, I decided to develop free themes for the WordPress.org theme directory as well. Visitors would come to my site for the free themes, and hopefully decide to pay a couple of bucks for a premium theme instead. That was the plan. Things didn’t work out that way.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I released my first free theme, <a href=\"https://andersnoren.se/teman/lingonberry-wordpress-theme/\">Lingonberry</a>, the same month as Lasseter. The Trac ticket for the theme is still <a href=\"https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/13558\">live</a>, and the list of issues I had to fix before the theme was approved is a mile long. <a href=\"https://heropress.com/essays/challenge-gladly-accepted/\">Carolina Nymark</a> of the WordPress.org Theme Review Team reviewed the theme, and she was very patient with me. I had no idea how little I knew about WordPress theme development before I submitted my first theme to WordPress.org. Seven years later, Carolina and I would be co-leads on the &lt;a href=\"http://&lt;!-- wp:paragraph --&gt; &lt;p&gt;I released my first free theme, &lt;a href=\"https://andersnoren.se/teman/lingonberry-wordpress-theme/\"&gt;Lingonberry&lt;/a&gt;, the same month as Lasseter. The Trac ticket for the theme is still &lt;a href=\"https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/13558\"&gt;live&lt;/a&gt;, and the list of issues I had to fix before the theme was approved is a mile long. Carolina Nymark of the WordPress.org Theme Review Team reviewed the theme, and she was very patient with me. I had no idea how little I knew about WordPress theme development before I submitted my first theme to WordPress.org. Seven years later, Carolina and I would be co-leads on the [Twenty Twenty](&lt;a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/twentytwenty/\"&gt;https://wordpress.org/themes/twentytwenty/&lt;/a&gt;) default theme in WordPress 5.3. I owe her and the other WordPress.org theme reviewers a lot.&lt;/p&gt; <!-- /wp:paragraph -&gt;\"&gt;-->Twenty Twenty</a> default theme in WordPress 5.3. I owe her and the other WordPress.org theme reviewers a lot.</p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/lingonberry-1680x1680-1.jpg\"><img /></a>Lingonberry, my first free WordPress theme.\n\n\n\n<p>There’s something special about seeing people take something you’ve built and do creative things with it, and when Lingonberry went live, it was exciting in a way I have a hard time putting into words. It made me realize I was a lot more eager to see my themes being used than I was making money from them. My next theme, <a href=\"https://andersnoren.se/teman/hemingway-wordpress-theme\">Hemingway</a>, was free as well. As was my next one, and the one after that, and all the themes that followed. After a year or two, I decided to remove Lasseter from sale. It had sold maybe ten copies at that point.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>During that same time, my free themes had been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. I was starting to get requests about making paid adjustments to them, and in some cases, building completely custom themes. When I was a couple of months away from graduating college, I received an offer from Smashing WordPress author <a href=\"https://tdh.se\">Thord D. Hedengren</a> to come to Stockholm for a job interview at Odd Alice, his web agency. After 15 years of building web sites as a hobby, the offer was on the table to turn it into a career. I took it.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_74b792-05 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">The blessing and the curse</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the years that followed, I worked remotely for two years before I moved to Stockholm, went through a breakup, made friends for life and grew both as a person and as a theme developer, experienced a company merger and the implosion of said company, and became a freelancer in November 2019 just months before the pandemic hit. All the while, I kept on releasing free WordPress themes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I also felt lost. Anyone who has been allowed to turn their hobby into a career – and there are a lot of us in the WordPress community – know that it is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because you’re allowed to spend your nine to five working on something that you’re truly passionate about. A curse because working on your passion from nine to five will result in that passion wearing out and, in periods, be extinguished altogether. This is when a hobby comes in handy. It’s a shame you’ve turned your hobby into a job, isn’t it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The pandemic was a turning point for me, as it was for so many others. I had increasingly started to feel like a WordPress website generator with legs, and after months of isolation in my studio apartment in Stockholm, I realized I needed a change. I needed something that could give me a sense of purpose and sense of self that isn’t rendered with pixels on a screen.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_8e86d0-af wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">Hike your own hike</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The seed was planted during a family trip to Scotland in August 2019. Me, my parents and my siblings were exploring the country by train, and our first stop after leaving Edinburgh was a little town in the Scottish Highlands called Fort William. Fort William lies at the foot of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the United Kingdom. It is the end point for the West Highland Way hiking trail to the south and the starting point for the Great Glen Way hiking trail to the north. Early August is peak hiking season, and Fort William was filled with long-distance hikers either finishing their hike or just about to start it. The sight of excited hikers getting ready to head out on the trail stuck with me.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I got back to Sweden, I saw that I had received an email asking me whether I’d like to take part in designing the Twenty Twenty default theme in WordPress 5.3. It’s the sort of offer you would kick yourself for life for turning down, so I swallowed all of my anxieties and said yes. The next couple of months were intense. In addition to a hectic work schedule and contributing to Twenty Twenty in the evenings and weekends, me and my partner were separating, I was buying an apartment, and I was transitioning from full-time employment to freelance work. I would watch hiking videos on YouTube to decompress. I watched a lot of hiking videos that fall.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The next spring, as the pandemic shutdown began, I put on my hiking backpack for the first time and headed out for my first night in the wild. Despite a heavy backpack, aching muscles and chafing in all the wrong places, it was love at first sight. That August, a year after the Scotland trip, I did my first long-distance hike in the Swedish mountains. Nine days on the Dag Hammarskjöld trail from Abisko to Nikkaluokta. Hiking had me properly hooked.</p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/anders-noren-dag-hammarskjoldsleden.jpg\"><img /></a>One of my tent sites on Dag Hammarskjöldsleden, between the Sälka and Singi cabins.\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_b10867-03 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">The missing puzzle piece</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Balance. That’s what I lost when I turned my hobby into a career. When I was a student, I could turn to side projects and theme development for a creative outlet and a change of pace. When I started to work full-time as a theme developer, I still tried to use my themes as that creative outlet, and it only worked to a point. When I finally reached that point, I came very close to burning out on theme development altogether. I started to question my decisions at every fork in the road that had brought me to that chapter in my life. Maybe I should have been a media relations person after all?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>None of us can be all work, all of the time. Finding something that we’re passionate about outside of our day job is key to maintaining balance in our lives. I think that’s especially true for those of us lucky enough to get to turn our hobby into a career. For me, that something turned out to be hiking. Every time I come back from a hike I feel rejuvenated and inspired, with my passion for theme development burning a little bit brighter than when I left. None would have been more surprised than my twelve year old self, with his nose buried in books about C++ and QBasic.</p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<a href=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/grona-bandet-map.jpg\"><img /></a>My planned route on Gröna bandet.</div>\n\n\n<p>Next summer, I’ll head out on my biggest adventure yet: A two month hike of the entire Swedish mountain chain, from Grövelsjön in the south to the point where the borders of Sweden, Norway and Finland meet in the north. About 1 300 kilometers in all. The hike is called Gröna bandet, and unlike most long-distance trails, you have to chart your own path from the starting point to the end. A fitting metaphor for a career in WordPress. All of it will be documented in excruciating detail on my <a href=\"https://www.instagram.com/andersnoren1/\">Instagram</a>, if you’re interested in tagging along.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is an immense privilege to be able to go on adventures like this one, and I likely wouldn’t have had that opportunity without the strange career path the WordPress community has given me. For that, I’m incredibly grateful.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\n<h1 id=\"svenska\">Välsignelser och förbannelser med att förvandla sin hobby till en karriär</h1>\n\n\n\n<p>År 2012 var jag en medie- och kommunikationsstudent på Umeå universitet. Mediebranschens nedåtgående kurva hade övertygat mig om att inte satsa på en karrär som journalist, och jag intalade mig själv att det näst bästa var att jobba som kommunikatör på en spännande arbetsplats. Det var ungefär så mycket tanke jag hade lagt bakom mitt val av utbildning. För varje föreläsning jag gick på och uppgift jag lämnade in insåg jag att jag tyckte om att studera kommunikation, men jag var inte särskilt pepp på att göra en karriär av det.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Som tur är gav föreläsningarna och uppgifterna mig tillräckligt tid över för att ta mig an andra saker. Att ändra på min civilstatus, träffa nya vänner, gå på fester – saker man prioriterar när man flyttar till en stad 500 kilometer bort – men också sidoprojekt. Det är tufft att få ihop hushållsbudgeten som student. Jag började överväga olika sätt att tjäna pengar på det webbfixandde jag hade haft som hobby sedan jag var liten.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jag var medveten om att marknaden för premiumteman för WordPress växte snabbt, och att teman på marknadsplatser som ThemeForest drog in enorma summor. Det kunde kanske vara ett sätt att dryga ut hushållsbudgeten.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_a25f3f-c1 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">Mitt möte med WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Jag har ett väldigt tydligt minne av när jag skrev HTML för första gången. Jag var elva år gammal, och jag utforskade en länksamling som hette Annas Länkburkar i skolans datorsal. I och med att du läser det här på svenska kanske du minns den själv, beroende på när du gick i skolan. Om inte så bestod startsidan på Annas länkburkar av rader med burkar, flaskor, lådor och tepåsar, märkta med den typ av länkar kategorisidorna innehöll. Någonstans i den mörkblåa flaskan märkt ”Data” hittade jag en guide till att skriva enkla webbsidor i HTML. Mitt skrivbord var snart helt belamrat med .html-filer i vilka jag utforskade grunderna i att koda webbsidor. Jag fick veta att e-postkontot som mina föräldrar hade hos webbportalen Spray kom med medlemssidor med HTML-support, och jag planterade snart flaggan i mitt första lilla utrymme på WWW. Om jag minns rätt hade medlemsidan den minnesvärda webbadressen http://medlem.spray.se, följt av en slumpmässig nummersekvens.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jag fortsatte att experimentera med webbutveckling under de närmaste åren. En bok på Sandvikens folkbibliotek introducerade mig till CSS, och jag försökte och misslyckades också med att lära mig JavaScript. Jag var medveten om att det fanns innehållshanteringssystem redan då, men i och med att det inte fanns utrymme för en serveravgift i min veckopeng fick jag nöja med med vad jag kunde göra med .tk-domännamn och gratis webbhotell. Jag började experimentera med andra programmeringsspråk också. C++ var för komplicerat och Visual Basic för tråkigt, men QBasic träffade rätt och jag byggde enkla ASCII-spel i QBasic under en tid. Som du märker var jag en väldigt cool och populär kille.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jag bytte skola när jag var 15 år gammal, och mitt intresse för datorer svalnade under en period. Istället upptäckte jag Photoshop. Mina alster bestod främst av lågmälda illustrationer med utdrag från sångtexter i bildtexten – 15-åringens främsta uttrycksform. Jag blev också lurad att jobba med skoltidningen, vilket väckte mitt intresse för journalistik och introducerade mig till InDesign.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bloggfenomenet var precis på väg att ta fart i Sverige när jag började gymnasiet år 2006, och jag var ivrig att haka på. Jag hade fått för mig att jag skulle utveckla indiespel, och istället för att ägna min tid åt att lära mig spelutveckling bestämde jag mig för att starta en blogg om indie-spelutveckling. Det utgjorde starten för en livslång vana av att bygga webbplatser om mina intressen istället för att utöva dem. Efter en snabb Google-sökning efter olika bloggtjänster hamnade jag på WordPress.com. Tjänsten vara bara drygt ett år gammal då.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jag publicerade mitt första blogginlägg med WordPress den 14 januari 2007. Jag kan säga datumet med säkerhet för att jag tittar på blogginlägget i detta ögonblick, men nej, jag kommer inte att publicera länken till det här. Jag har redan berättat om mina lågmälda Photoshop-illustrationer, och det finns gränser för hur mycket jag är villig att göra mig till åtlöje i ett publikt forum. Trots WordPress.com-domännamnet och min knackiga engelska lyckades jag övertala en handfull spelutvecklare att bli intervjuade för bloggen. Den mest kända var John Romero, designer av Wolfenstein 3D, Doom och Quake. Min sista fråga var ”Pizza eller hamburgare?”. Det är nog lika bra att jag inte blev journalist.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mina dagdrömmar om indie-spelutveckling svalnade snabbt, men jag hade inte förlorat mitt intresse för bloggande. Jag var van vid WordPress efter att använt WordPress.com, så när det blev dags att registrera ett domännamn och bli kund hos ett webbhotell var valet av innehållssystem enkelt. Jag dammade av mina gamla HTML och CSS-kunskaper för att göra mindre justeringar i temat jag använde, och jag började lära mig lite PHP också. Jag insåg snart att det var lika roligt att experimentera med koden som att skriva blogginlägg.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fler sajter följde snabbt. En med nyheter om Nintendo, en med nyheter om Apple, ett länkarkiv, en med guider till hur man bloggar, en om mordet på Olof Palme, och så vidare. Den sista är den enda av dem som fortfarande <a href=\"https://palmemordet.se/\">ligger uppe</a>, men dess utseende har uppdaterats flera gånger sedan jag först la upp den 2010. Jag får fortfarande e-postmeddelanden från konspirationsteoretiker några gånger per år. Nästan alla av webbplatserna var byggda med WordPress, vanligtvis med ett gratis- eller premiumtema med mindre modifikationer. Jag fortsatte uppdatera dem efter att jag gick ut gymnasiet, och något år efter min examen fick jag ett jobb på ett litet IT-företag där jag fick betalt för att skriva kod för första gången. Jag såg det fortfarande inte som en möjlig karriärväg. Mitt sikte var inställt på universitetet.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_8f7792-b0 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">En karriär byggd på teman</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Två år senare satt jag i min studentlägenhet i Umeå och övervägde att dryga ut hushållsbudgeten genom att bygga premiumteman. Jag hade fritid till övers och inget att förlora, så jag bestämde mig för att ge det ett försök. Mitt första tema var ett enkelt bloggtema vid namn Lasseter, döpt efter den tidigare Pixar-regissören John Lasseter, och jag släppte det på marknadsplatsen Mojo Themes i augusti 2013 för 49 dollar. Jag visste att jag behövde marknadsföra mina premiumteman på något sätt, och jag bestämde mig för att utveckla gratisteman för WordPress.orgs temabibliotek också. Besökare skulle komma till min webbplats för gratisteman och förhoppningsvis bestämma sig för att betala en slant för ett premiumtema istället. Det var planen. Det blev inte riktigt så.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jag släppte mitt första gratistema, Lingonberry, samma månad som Lasseter. Trac-ticketen för temat är fortfarande <a href=\"https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/13558\">live</a>, och listan på buggar jag behövde åtgärda innan temat godkändes är en kilometer lång. Carolina Nymark från WordPress.orgs Theme Review Team granskade temat, och hon var väldigt tålmodig. Jag hade inte en aning om hur lite jag visste om temautveckling innan jag skickade in mitt första tema till WordPress.org. Sju år senare var jag och Carolina co-leads för <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/themes/twentytwenty/\">Twenty Twenty</a>-standardtemat i WordPress 5.3. Jag är skyldig henne och de andra temagranskarna på WordPress.org väldigt mycket.</p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/lingonberry-1680x1680-1.jpg\"><img /></a>Lingonberry, mitt första gratis WordPress-tema.\n\n\n\n<p>Det är något speciellt med att se människor ta något som du har skapat och göra något kreativt med det, och när Lingonberry släpptes var det spännande på ett sätt som jag har svårt att sätta ord på. Det fick mig att inse att jag var mycket mer intresserad av att se mina teman bli använda än jag var av att tjäna pengar på dem. Mitt nästa tema, <a href=\"https://andersnoren.se/teman/hemingway-wordpress-theme\">Hemingway</a>, var gratis. Det var temat efter det också, och temat efter, och alla teman som följde. Efter något år bestämde jag mig för att sluta sälja Lasseter. Det hade kanske sålts&nbsp; i tio exemplar vid det laget.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Under samma period hade mina gratisteman laddats ned hundratusentals gånger. Folk började fråga mig om jag kunde göra mindre justeringar av dem mot betalning, och så småningom började jag också få frågor om att bygga nya teman från grunden. När jag hade ett par månader kvar av min utbildning frågade Smashing WordPress-författaren <a href=\"https://tdh.se\">Thord D. Hedengren</a> om jag ville komma ner till Stockholm för en jobbintervju på hans webbyrå: Odd Alice. Efter att ha byggt webbplatser som en hobby i 15 år hade jag nu ett konkret erbjudande om att göra det till min karriär. Jag tog det.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_e569ed-3c wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">Välsignelsen och förbannelsen</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Under åren som följde jobbade jag på distans från Umeå i två år innan jag flyttade till Stockholm, separerade från min flickvän, fick vänner för livet och växte både som person och som temautvecklare, fick uppleva en företagssammanslagning och kollapsen av det företaget, och blev frilansare i november 2019 bara månader innan pandemin började. Under hela den tiden fortsatte jag att släppa gratisteman.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jag kände mig också vilse. Alla som har fått möjlighet att göra en karriär av deras hobby – och det finns många av oss i WordPress-sfären – vet att det är både en välsignelse och en förbannelse. En välsignelse för att du får ägna dina nio till fem åt något som du verkligen är passionerad för. En förbannelse för att om du jobbar på din passion varje dag så kommer det att leda till att din passion falnar och, i perioder, slocknar helt och hållet. Det är då det är bra att ha en hobby. Trist att du har gjort din hobby till ditt födkrok, eller hur?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pandemin var en vändpunkt för mig, precis som den var för många andra. Jag hade mer och mer börjat känna mig som en WordPress-maskin på två ben, och efter månader av isolering i min etta i Stockholm insåg jag att jag behövde en förändring. Jag behövde något som gav mitt liv en mening som inte renderades med pixlar på en skärm.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_170e02-94 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">Vandra din egen vandring</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Fröet såddes i augusti 2019 under en familjesemester i Skottland. Jag, mina föräldrar och mina syskon ägnade två veckor åt att utforska landet med tåg, och vårt första stopp efter Edinburgh var en liten by i de skotska högländerna som heter Fort William. Fort William ligger vid foten av Ben Nevis, Storbritanniens högsta berg, och det är slutpunkten för vandringsleden West Highland Way åt söder och startpunkten för vandringsleden Great Glen Way åt norr. Början av augusti var högsäsong för vandring i området, och Fort William var fyllt av långdistansvandrare som antingen precis hade avslutat sin vandring eller precis skulle påbörja den. Det var något med synen av exalterade vandrare på väg ut i naturen med sina överfulla ryggsäckar som jag inte kunde släppa.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>När jag var tillbaka i Sverige såg jag att jag hade blivit tillfrågad om jag ville vara med och designa Twenty Twenty-standardtemat i WordPress 5.3. Jag visste att jag aldrig skulle förlåta mig själv om jag sa nej, så jag svalde alla mina farhågor och sa ja. Månaderna som följde var intensiva. Utöver en hektisk period på jobbet och arbete med Twenty Twenty på kvällar och helger så separerade jag och min flickvän, jag köpte en lägenhet, och jag började övergången från heltidsanställning till livet som frilansare. Jag tittade på vandringsfilmer på YouTube för att slappna av. Jag tittade på mycket vandringsfilmer den hösten.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nästa vår, när pandemin hade börjat och samhället stängdes ner, tog jag på mig vandringsryggan för första gången och gav mig ut på min första övernattning i naturen. Trots en tung ryggsäck, ömma muskler och skavsår på helt fel ställen var det kärlek vid första ögonkastet. Ett år efter resan till Skottland gjorde jag min första långvandring i de svenska bergen. Nio dagar på Dag Hammarskjöldsleden från Abisko till Nikkaluokta. Jag var fast.</p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/anders-noren-dag-hammarskjoldsleden.jpg\"><img /></a>En av mina tältplatser på Dag Hammarskjöldsleden, mellan Sälka- och Singistugorna.\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"kt-adv-heading_6ae430-01 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading\">Den saknade pusselbiten</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Balans. Det är vad jag förlorade när jag gjorde min hobby till min karriär. När jag var student kunde jag vända mig till sidoprojekt och temautveckling för att få ett kreativt utlopp och en paus från vardagen. När jag började jobba som temautvecklare på heltid försökte jag fortfarande använda mina gratisteman som ett kreativt utlopp, och det fungerade tills det inte fungerade längre. När jag till slut nådde den punkten var jag på gränsen till att bli utbränd och tappa lusten för temautveckling helt och hållet. Jag började ifrågasätta varje vägval jag hade gjort i mitt liv. Jag kanske skulle ha blivit kommunikatör ändå?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ingen av oss kan vara hundra procent jobb, hundra procent av tiden. Vi behöver alla hitta något annat än våra jobb att vara passionerade för om vi ska kunna leva balanserade liv. Jag tror att det är extra sant för oss som var haft turen att få bygga en karriär på våra fritidsintressen. För mig visade sig vandring vara den saknade pusselbiten. Jag känner mig utvilad och inspirerad varje gång jag kommer tillbaka från en vandring, och jag är redo att ta mig an både kundjobb och gratisteman med förnyad passion. Ingen hade blivit mer överraskad än mitt tolvåriga jag, med näsan begravd i böcker om C++ och QBasic.</p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<a href=\"https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/grona-bandet-map.jpg\"><img /></a>Min planerade rutt på Gröna bandet.</div>\n\n\n<p>Nästa sommar ska jag ge mig ut på mitt största äventyr hittills: en två månader lång vandring genom hela den svenska fjällkedjan, från Grövelsjön i söder till Treriksröset i norr. Drygt 130 mil totalt. Vandringen heter Gröna bandet, och till skillnad från de flesta vandringsleder måste man välja sin egen väg från starten till slutet. En passande metafor för en karriär i WordPress. Hela vandringen kommer att dokumenteras i olidlig detalj på min <a href=\"https://www.instagram.com/andersnoren1/\">Instagram</a>, om du är nyfiken.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Det är ett enormt privilegium att kunna ge sig ut på såna äventyr, och jag skulle sannolikt inte ha haft den möjligheten utan den underliga karriärväg som WordPress-communityt har gett mig. För det är jag oändligt tacksam.</p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://heropress.com/essays/blessings-and-curses-of-turning-your-hobby-into-a-career/\">Blessings and curses of turning your hobby into a career &#8211; Välsignelser och förbannelser med att förvandla sin hobby till en karriär</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://heropress.com\">HeroPress</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, 07 Dec 2022 08:00:00 +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:13:\"Anders Norén\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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: Google Rolls Out December 2022 “Helpful Content” Update\";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=140146\";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:74:\"https://wptavern.com/google-rolls-out-december-2022-helpful-content-update\";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:3164:\"<p>Google is in the process of rolling out its <a href=\"https://developers.google.com/search/updates/ranking\">December 2022</a> &#8220;helpful content&#8221; system update, which started on the 5th and is becoming more visible in search results. The company estimates it will take approximately two weeks to fully roll out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The helpful content system generates a signal that is used by Google&#8217;s <a href=\"https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide\">automated ranking systems</a> to provide people with what it deems to be more original and helpful content &#8220;written by people, for people&#8221; in search results. This particular update improves the system&#8217;s classifier and works across content in all languages. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>The system was designed to reward content where Google determines that visitors have had a satisfying experience and, conversely, where visitors do not find what they are looking for, the content will not perform as well. This is distilled into a site-wide signal where Google&#8217;s systems automatically identify &#8220;content that seems to have little value, low-added value or is otherwise not particularly helpful to those doing searches.&#8221; </p>\n\n\n\n<p>If Google finds relatively high amounts of unhelpful content on a site, the rest of the site&#8217;s content is not as likely to perform well in Search. With this application of the system, unhelpful content is like a poison for the rest of the website. Google said removing it could boost the rankings for the rest of the site&#8217;s content. It can take months for Google to reclassify a site&#8217;s content as helpful after unhelpful content has been removed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Google published more information on how the classifier works and what it means for rankings:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>This classifier process is entirely automated, using a machine-learning model. It works globally across all languages. It is not a&nbsp;<a href=\"https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175\">manual action</a>&nbsp;nor a spam action. Instead, it&#8217;s just one of&nbsp;<a href=\"https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/how-search-works/ranking-results/\">many signals Google evaluates</a>&nbsp;to rank content.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This means that some people-first content on sites classified as having unhelpful content could still rank well, if there are other signals identifying that people-first content as helpful and relevant to a query. The signal is also weighted; sites with lots of unhelpful content may notice a stronger effect.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the first major update to helpful content since August 2022. At that time Google encouraged site owners to focus on creating &#8220;people-first content,&#8221; as opposed to search engine-first content. Site owners are encouraged to reference Google&#8217;s guide to &#8220;<a href=\"https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content\">Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content,</a>&#8221; which includes dozens of questions for evaluating whether content will be deemed helpful or not.</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, 07 Dec 2022 04:04:23 +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:30;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:58:\"WPTavern: Jetpack 11.6 Adds Block Pattern Support to Forms\";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=140131\";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:69:\"https://wptavern.com/jetpack-11-6-adds-block-pattern-support-to-forms\";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:2090:\"<p>Jetpack has introduced a major update to its Form block in the latest version <a href=\"https://jetpack.com/blog/jetpack-11-6-update-to-the-form-block-and-more/\">11.6 release</a>. Users can now interact with the various form templates as patterns. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>A new quick start placeholder appears anytime users invoke a new form block. It displays a selection of the most commonly used form types as icons. Clicking on any one of the form templates will instantly add it to the block. From there, users can further customize the form fields and labels. It also displays a link to documentation on customizing forms and a link to view and export form responses.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>Version 11.6 also introduces a patterns explorer, similar to the one found in the block inserter. Here users can see all available patterns fully expanded to better inform their decisions during the form creation process.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>After testing, I found the pattern explorer to be a somewhat clunky way to view available form templates. In the default view they appear one at a time and expand to fit the explorer&#8217;s viewport. They are also difficult to scroll. Clicking on the grid style view, the patterns are easier to see but the design could be improved to better differentiate each pattern, as they all seem to run right into the next with faint borders around each.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although I&#8217;m eager to see Jetpack iterate on the execution of these new ways to build forms, the placeholder and pattern explorer undoubtedly help users get started faster than trying to build a form from scratch in the block editor.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other notable updates in this release include SEO improvements that allow users to have more granular control over how their content is presented (or not presented) to search engines. In the Jetpack SEO panel, users can now exclude that specific post or page from being indexed, while allowing the content to remain publicly accessible. Users can also now set a custom SEO title for posts and pages that will show in the search snippet and browser tab.</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, 07 Dec 2022 02:13:30 +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:31;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:\"Do The Woo Community: A Product Builders Journey with Eran Shor\";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=73747\";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:62:\"https://dothewoo.io/a-product-builders-journey-with-eran-shor/\";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:408:\"<p>Eran has a history with both WooCommerce and WordPress and shares his story on building Zorem and his latest product, TrackShip.</p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io/a-product-builders-journey-with-eran-shor/\">A Product Builders Journey with Eran Shor</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, 06 Dec 2022 10:00:00 +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: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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:73:\"WPTavern: ChatGPT Creates a Working WordPress Plugin – On the First Try\";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=140097\";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/chatgpt-creates-a-working-wordpress-plugin-on-the-first-try\";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:3742:\"<p>ChatGPT <a href=\"https://twitter.com/sama/status/1599668808285028353\">passed 1 million users</a> today and Twitter is brimming with a steady stream of creative questions and applications for the AI-powered chatbot. The language model, <a href=\"https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/\">created by OpenAI</a>, is powered by GPT-3.5, a series of models trained on text and code from before Q4 2021. The model features a dialogue format that gives ChatGPT the ability to &#8220;answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>While some are busy predicting the <a href=\"https://twitter.com/jdjkelly/status/1598021488795586561\">end of search engines</a> and sounding the death knell for human-generated writing, others are fascinated by the potential of AI systems to fundamentally reshape the process of creation. WordPress developer Johnathon Williams brought this close to home when he asked ChatGPT to spin up a WordPress plugin.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ordinarily, plugin creation is a task that requires a certain level of technical proficiency. Williams demonstrated that, with a little bit of expert guidance, ChatGPT can drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to extend WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">ChatGPT wrote a working WordPress plugin for me today on the first try. <br /><br />Custom menu item, custom admin screen, saving a custom options value, validating the field before saving &#8230;<br /><br />Holy hell.</p>&mdash; Johnathon Williams (@johnofhousejohn) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/johnofhousejohn/status/1599858839771176960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 5, 2022</a></blockquote>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>Williams installed the plugin and found that it worked on the first try. Although he didn&#8217;t save the prompt for this first try, he <a href=\"https://gist.github.com/oddjar/54bd63399e2e27b15a25d10b6edd4ec2\">published a gist on GitHub</a> of the generated code.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>On a second attempt of creating a different plugin, he used the following prompt:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Create a custom WordPress plugin called &#8220;Big Daddy Media&#8221; that deletes images older than one year from the media library. OOP. Custom admin screen. one button delete. log the full URL of all deleted media files.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>He published a screen recording of ChatGPT at work creating the plugin:</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Open AI\'s ChatGPT can generate an entire WordPress plugin based on a simple description.<br /><br />Watch it work: <a href=\"https://t.co/LZQbxFq0aP\">pic.twitter.com/LZQbxFq0aP</a></p>&mdash; Johnathon Williams (@johnofhousejohn) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/johnofhousejohn/status/1599932681076473856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 6, 2022</a></blockquote>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>Williams said that although he&#8217;s had mixed results with his prompts, he has gotten the best results from asking ChatGPI to generate entire functions versus specific filters or actions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Theoretically, with additional training on plugin best practices and common architecture, ChatGPT could be used by people of all skill levels to extend WordPress in creative ways.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Very soon, describing the WordPress plugin you need to ChatGPT will generate a new one faster than searching for an existing one in the plugin directory,&#8221; Williams said. &#8220;This won&#8217;t be true for all types of plugins, of course. But for relatively simple plugins performing established tricks &#8230; well *very soon* should probably read &#8216;right now.\'&#8221;</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, 06 Dec 2022 04:14:35 +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:33;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:125:\"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg 14.6, Divi builder’s future,Block and Theme development courses and more – Weekend Edition 237\";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=22812\";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:127:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/gutenberg-14-6-divi-builders-futureblock-and-theme-development-courses-and-more-weekend-edition-237/\";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:29783:\"<p>Howdy, </p>\n\n\n\n<p>It has been a whirlwind year for me, and now 2022 is coming to an end. Two more Weekend Editions, one more Gutenberg Changelog episode and our vacation around the Holidays and New Year&#8217;s will start. I can hardly wait, to be honest. I have a few personal projects, I finally need to get going on them. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this week&#8217;s <a href=\"https://www.therepository.email/?mailpoet_router&endpoint=view_in_browser&action=view&data=WzE3NCwiMjAxZTExZjMzOTNjIiw1NTYsIjFqb2g0ZGtiNnZmbzh3NG9vb3dnNG9zODhnazA0czR3Iiw0NzMsMF0\">The Repository</a> newsletter (150) I read the community profile of Ryan Sullivan who identified <em>Entropy</em> as the one concept that is worth understanding. He shared a link to a blog post by James Clear (<em>Atomic Habits</em>) &#8220;<a href=\"https://jamesclear.com/entropy\">Entropy: Why Life Always Seems to Get More Complicated</a>&#8220;. I found some solace in the fact that chaos seems to be our natural state of things. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a GitHub discussion about Custom-CSS coming to the Block editor, I  also learned about Cumming&#8217;s Law: &#8220;Law that affirms that the best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer&#8221; Wisdom of the crowd. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, WordPress problem-solving is a holistic experience.  It takes the whole person. It&#8217;s not all about bits, bytes, servers, PHP and JavaScript. It&#8217;s about people, too. 🤦‍♀️ 😜</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For a more down to Earth developers, you&#8217;ll find below two posts linked that tell use of the journey of backend or PHP developer to learn working with blocks. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>I<s>f you haven&#8217;t yet, browse through the <strong><a href=\"https://www.wordfest.live/2022/november/schedule/\">schedule of WordFest Live</a> </strong>&#8211; a 24-hour virtual conference and celebration of WordPress around Transformation.  It will take place on <strong>December 16, 2022</strong>, </s>  I was sorry to learn, that <em>WordFest Live was cancelled</em>. (12/4 &#8211; Thank you, DJ for letting me know)</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The day before, <strong>December 15, 2022</strong> Matt Mullenweg will will give his annual keynote address called <strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/state-of-the-word-2022/\"> State of the Word</a></strong>, when he shares reflections on the project’s progress and the future of open source. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-flow\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container\">\n<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost\"><ul><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-word-press-release-information\">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a></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><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#5-s\">Upcoming WordPress events</a><ul><li><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-l\">Learn WordPress Online Meetups</a></li></ul></li></ul></div>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"0-word-press-release-information\">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Gutenberg 14.6 </strong>was release on November 23rd, 2022. <strong>Fabian Kägy</strong> highlighted in his release post <strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/23/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-6-23-november/\">What’s new in Gutenberg 14.6? (23 November)</a></strong> the following features:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/23/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-6-23-november/#add-a-variation-picker-to-the-group-block-placeholder\">Add a Variation Picker to the Group Block Placeholder</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/23/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-6-23-november/#add-list-based-editing-to-navigation-block\">Add List-Based Editing to Navigation Block</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/23/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-6-23-november/#hide-block-toolbar-when-spacing-visualizer-is-shown\">Hide Block Toolbar when Spacing Visualizer is Shown</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/23/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-6-23-november/#transform-paragraph-into-heading\">Transform Paragraph into Heading via Keyboard Shortcut</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/23/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-6-23-november/#update-the-design-of-the-focal-point-handle\">Update the Design of the Focal Point Handle</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/23/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-6-23-november/#fluid-typography-adjust-font-size-min-and-max-rules\">Fluid typography: Adjust font size min and max rules</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/23/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-6-23-november/#define-a-min-height\">Define a Minimum Height</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/23/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-6-23-november/#generate-new-color-palets-automatically\">Generate New Color Pallets Automatically</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> reported on the release as well: <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-14-6-adds-list-view-for-editing-navigation-block-introduces-new-automatic-color-palette-generator\">Gutenberg 14.6 Adds List View for Editing Navigation Block, Introduces New Automatic Color Palette Generator</a>. She wrote: &#8220;One of the most creative features introduced in this release is the new&nbsp;<a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/40988\">“Randomize colors” feature</a>&nbsp;that will automatically generate color palettes on the fly. It utilizes hue rotations based on the&nbsp;<a href=\"https://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~dag/CUBEHELIX/\">Cubehelix color scheme</a>.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>If you are a subscriber to the <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-76-the-new-developer-blogs-public-beta-gutenberg-14-5-and-14-6-and-whats-coming-up-in-6-2/\">Gutenberg Changelog podcast</a>, your favorite podcast app probably made the latest episode available to you. To my absolute delight, <strong>Ryan Welcher</strong>, Twitch streamer and developer advocate joined me again for this show. It was great fun! </p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>Welcher&nbsp;was quoted in the the&nbsp;<a href=\"https://www.therepository.email/?mailpoet_router&endpoint=view_in_browser&action=view&data=WzE3NCwiMjAxZTExZjMzOTNjIiw1NTYsIjFqb2g0ZGtiNnZmbzh3NG9vb3dnNG9zODhnazA0czR3Iiw0NzMsMF0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Repository Newsletter #150</a>&nbsp;&#8220;In the&nbsp;<a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-76-the-new-developer-blogs-public-beta-gutenberg-14-5-and-14-6-and-whats-coming-up-in-6-2/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">latest episode</a>&nbsp;of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast, Ryan Welcher, a Developer Relations Advocate at Automattic, some &#8220;quality of life&#8221; updates in Gutenberg 14.6 that make using it a more pleasant experience: &#8220;It’s nice there&#8217;s this level of refinement happening to these existing tools,&#8221; he says.&#8221; TY to <a href=\"https://twitter.com/raemoreywrites\">Rae Morey</a>, editor of the newsletter. </p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-flow\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container\">\n<p><strong>🎙️ </strong> New episode:  <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-77-gutenberg-14-7-whats-new-for-block-themes-an-upcoming-live-qa-in-january/\">Gutenberg Changelog #77 – Gutenberg 14.7, what’s new for Block Themes, an upcoming Live Q&amp;A in January</a> with special guest, Daisy Olsen and host Birgit Pauli-Haack. </p>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>If you’re all about the words, be it blogging for yourself or as a content author for your clients, WordPress 6.1 has a number of writing and editing improvements you’ll want to take advantage of. <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> published another post in the series of Core editor improvements. In <strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/10/28/core-editor-improvement-advancing-the-writing-experience/\">Advancing the writing experience</a></strong> they wrote: <em>&#8220;The experience of writing your latest post, whether as part of your weekly routine or out of excitement from a recent adventure, just got easier in&nbsp;many&nbsp;different ways. From a new mode that helps you focus on just writing to more keyboard shortcuts for quickly navigating content, there’s something for everyone, no matter how you approach writing your posts.&#8221;</em></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"0-p\">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the last edition, I shared with you the <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/the-future-of-givewp-and-the-block-editor/\">story that GiveWP is revamping their plugin to use Gutenberg as a framework</a> for their Donations plugin and use the interface components, and scripts already built into WordPress to modernize and standardize the plugin page and settings. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last month,  <strong>Nick Roach</strong>&nbsp;CEO Elegant Themes, the company that built the Divi Builder, announced the start of the Divi 5.0 release process in the post <strong><a href=\"https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/general-news/the-future-of-divi\">Let’s Talk About Divi 5.0 And The Future Of Divi</a></strong>.  &#8220;In fact, developers familiar with creating blocks for WordPress will find a lot of similarities in the Divi 5.0 module API. WordPress blocks will be more easily adapted to Divi and WordPress developers will be able to jump head first into building things for our community. We are building this new version of Divi to work in harmony with WordPress.&#8221; he wrote. As time of the writing the post has around 190 comments. I haven&#8217;t started to read yet. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> reported on it on the WPTavern: <a href=\"https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/general-news/the-future-of-divi\"><strong>Divi 5.0 Aims to Bring Greater Compatibility with Gutenberg</strong></a>. She talked to developer, Josh Ronk and quoted him: “On the block theme front, as a part of Divi 5.0, we are also transitioning into a Block-Based theme, and since Divi 5.0 is actually internally built using the same ‘packages’ that Gutenberg itself is composed of, Divi 5.0 has a lot of compatibility built in from the core,”.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In his video, <strong>Jamie Marsland</strong>, PootlePress, posed the question: <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJUCzJYfzNQ\"><strong>Is The Divi WordPress Theme Dying?</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Are you a Divi user? How do you feel about this announcement?  Share in the comments, or email me to <a href=\"mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com\">pauli@gutenbergtimes.com</a></em></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jean-Baptist Audras</strong>, Whodunit Agency and outgoing team rep of the WordPress Core team <strong><a href=\"https://twitter.com/AudrasJb/status/1598350878037221382\">tweeted</a></strong> that his agency released two new plugins that help with creating accessible content. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/lang-attribute/\">&#8220;Lang Attribute for the Block Editor&#8221;</a></strong> provides a way to ensure language changes in the content of a page are properly indicated to assistive technologies, using the <code>lang</code> attribute. See <a href=\"https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/language-of-parts.html\"><em>WCAG Success Criterion 3.1.2 “Language of Parts”</em></a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/abbreviation-button-for-the-block-editor/\">“Abbreviation Button for the Block Editor”</a></strong> helps you to provide definitions for abbreviations, using the &lt;abbr&gt; HTML element. See <em><a href=\"https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/abbreviations.html\">WCAG success criterion 3.1.4 “Abbreviations”</a></em></p>\n\n\n\n<p>Audras also wrote: &#8220;Worth noting that indicating language changes in content is mandatory for WCAG compliance, and there is currently no way to do that in the Block Editor (except by editing the code manually). I think this feature should be implemented natively into Gutenberg&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marko Segota</strong> at Anariel Design wrote about <a href=\"https://www.anarieldesign.com/how-to-create-columns-in-wordpress/\"><strong>How to Create Columns in WordPress Block Editor (Gutenberg)</strong></a>? He covers the topic from adding columns to the editor canvas, and adding blocks to each column. Then Segota goes over all the various design options and how to add borders. Equipped with the full knowledge of available features, you now can channel your creativity to build enticing layouts and page sections. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Share your creation, if you&#8217;d like and send me your screenshots or links. Please don&#8217;t hesitate to also send your questions, and your bug reports, to my email address <a href=\"mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com\">pauli@gutenbergtimes.com</a></em></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>On WPEngine&#8217;s Builders Resouces site, <strong>Nick Diego</strong> wrote a tutorial on <a href=\"https://wpengine.com/builders/designing-with-column-blocks/\"><strong>Designing with Column Blocks in WordPress</strong></a> and explored two block layouts that rely on the Columns block. &#8220;While both are relatively simple, they demonstrate how powerful and versatile this block can be. &#8221; He also included ways to add additional functionality using custom CSS classes.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled\">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> and <strong>Damon Cook</strong> facilitated a conversation in a recent <strong>Hallway Hangout</strong> about <a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2022/12/02/hallway-hangout-future-of-css-in-block-themes/\"><strong>the future of CSS in block&nbsp;themes</strong></a>. In the more casual chat the group discussed some Block Theme development-related features that are under active development. I was sorry, that I missed it and I have this on my watch list once this newsletter is done 🙂 </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking of WordPressTV: the recording of a recent Learn WordPress Builder Basics event was uploaded, too. <a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2022/12/02/builder-basics-building-with-columns-groups-rows-and-stacks/\"><strong>Builder basics: building with columns, groups, rows and&nbsp;stacks</strong></a> with <strong>Nick Diego</strong>, where he &#8220;explored how to design sophisticated layouts using Columns, Group, Row, and Stack blocks. These blocks represent the fundamental building blocks of every WordPress website. You’ll learn the nuances of each block type and how to configure them correctly, with a special focus on new features in WordPress 6.1.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>In his post <strong><a href=\"https://themeshaper.com/2022/11/28/how-to-add-typographic-fonts-to-wordpress-block-themes/\">How to add typographic fonts to WordPress block&nbsp;themes</a>, Matias Benedetto</strong> explains how to use the Create Block Theme plugins to bundle fonts to your theme with just a few clicks.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ganesh Dahal</strong> published a tutorial on <a href=\"https://css-tricks.com/using-the-new-constrained-layout-in-wordpress-block-themes/\"><strong>how to use the new constrained layout In WordPress block&nbsp;themes</strong></a>. &#8220;Now that we have JSON-ified styles for the margins and padding of layout containers, that opens us up to&nbsp;more flexible and robust ways to define spacing in our theme layouts.&#8221; Dahal wrote. </p>\n\n\n\n\n<div class=\"ngl-articles colored ngl-articles-30_70 ngl-articles-frontend\">\n\n	\n	<div class=\"ngl-articles-wrap ngl-articles-webview\">\n	\n						\n			<div class=\"ngl-article-mobile\">\n				<table width=\"100%\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\">\n					<tr>\n						<td valign=\"top\">\n							<div class=\"ngl-article-mob-wrap\">\n							<div class=\"ngl-article-featured\"><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/a-walk-through-of-layout-classes-in-wordpress-6-1/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\"><img src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/keyboard.jpeg?w=652&ssl=1\" /></a></div><div class=\"ngl-article-title\"><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/a-walk-through-of-layout-classes-in-wordpress-6-1/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\"><span>A Walk-Through of Layout Classes in WordPress 6.1</span></a></div><div class=\"ngl-article-excerpt\">WordPress 6.1 introduced several necessary changes to its layout framework. Namely, core has now centralized its layout definitions, created semantic class names, and reduced code duplication on container blocks. Originally,&hellip; <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/a-walk-through-of-layout-classes-in-wordpress-6-1/\" class=\"ngl-article-read-more\" target=\"_self\">Read more.</a></div>							</div>\n						</td>\n					</tr>\n				</table>\n			</div>\n			\n			\n			\n\n		\n		\n		</div>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Isabel Brison </strong>published the Dev Note for the WordPress 6.1 release: <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/10/10/updated-editor-layout-support-in-6-1-after-refactor/\"><strong>Updated editor layout support in 6.1 after refactor</strong></a>. &#8220;A new layout type, “constrained”, was added to the already available Flow and Flex layouts types. In addition, layout refactor efforts bring new layout styles, new block level spacing, more semantic class name for layouts, root padding and a method to disable all layout styles altogether for themes.&#8221; Brison wrote.</p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<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>\n\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://twitter.com/briancoords/\">Brian Coords</a></strong>,  <em>MasterWP</em>,  talked to <strong>Cory Hughart</strong> and <strong>Phil Hoyt</strong> on their podcast <em>In The Loop</em> about all things block editing, open-source theme frameworks, and creating media in the world of WordPress. To listen to the full podcast episode head on over to In The Loop: <strong><a href=\"https://anchor.fm/blackbird-digital/episodes/21-Mastering-Theme-Development-with-Brian-Coords-e1qonaa\">Mastering Theme Development with Brian Coords</a></strong></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<img src=\"https://i0.wp.com/learn.wordpress.org/files/2022/08/Screen-Shot-2022-08-16-at-7.42.45-PM-1024x549.png?resize=652%2C350&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" />\n\n\n\n<p>The second part of the new Block Theme building course  on Learn WordPress has gone live. You can now take both courses back to back. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/course/a-developers-guide-to-block-themes-part-1/\">Developers Guide to Block Themes (Part 1)</a> </strong>covers the fundamental aspects of developing a block theme, like </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>The minimum requirements of a block theme</li>\n\n\n\n<li>The primary elements of a block theme, and how that differs from a classic theme</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Turning a design into a block theme</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Different methods of creating block theme elements in the Site Editor, and then exporting them to theme files</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/course/a-developers-guide-to-block-themes-part-2/\"><strong>Developers Guide to Block Themes (Part 2)</strong></a> dives into more advanced block theme development topics: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Adding custom fonts to your block theme</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Adding custom functionality through block patterns</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Creating Global Styles variations</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Making your block theme translation ready</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Locking down your theme settings and blocks</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>A less code-heavy course to building a WordPress Theme is also in the works, It&#8217;s called <a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/course/develop-your-first-low-code-block-theme/\"><strong>Develop Your First Low-Code Block Theme</strong></a> it&#8217;s in public preview, and not all advanced modules are done, but you get a fabulous introduction into WordPress block theme and how you can create them through the Site Editor. </p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press\">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Core contributor, <strong>Michael Burridge</strong> published <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/11/29/a-php-developers-guide-to-getting-started-with-block-development/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>a PHP developer’s guide to getting started with block development</strong></a> on the shiny new WordPress Developer Blog. &#8220;This post is intended to guide you through the murkiness and emerge blinking into the clear light of day. It has been written by someone who has followed the same path. Before learning about block development I was a PHP developer who started by creating custom themes and went on to develop plugins to implement custom functionality on WordPress/WooCommerce sites.&#8221; Burridge wrote from his experience.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jonathan Bossenger </strong>held part 4 of his workshop series this week:  <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rf0h14cANQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Developing Blocks without React &#8211;  Block Controls</strong></a>.  This series of workshops looks at building a WordPress block, without using React JSX. In the previous part, Bossenger built a WordPress block using plain JavaScript which supports custom styles via a stylesheet, and which uses block attributes and the RichText component to allow the user to edit the block content. In this iteration, he added a block control and an additional attribute to allow the user to edit the block alignment.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Catch up on the earlier workshops of the series <strong>Developing Blocks without React</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2022/11/25/lets-code-developing-blocks-without-react-part-2-take-2/\">Attributes and&nbsp;RichText</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2022/11/18/lets-code-developing-blocks-without-react-all-about-attributes/\">All about Attributes</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2022/11/11/lets-code-developing-blocks-without-react-part-1/\">Block&nbsp;Basics</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n\n<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>\n\n\n\n<p><img alt=\"GitHub all releases\" src=\"https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge\" /></p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>On his Twitch Stream, <strong>Ryan Welcher </strong>worked three weeks in a row on Query Block variations of all types. Here is the list of the shows on Twitch. A deep dive into the world of post lists. </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1655281302\"><strong>Working with Query Loop block variations</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1661574564\"><strong>MOAR Query Loop block variations!</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1667449595\"><strong>Building an Advanced Query Loop block variation plugin</strong></a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>And if you are a bit fuzzy on what the shows are about, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/ntsekouras/\">Nik Tsekouras</a> wrote the Dev Note on this topic for WordPress 6.1.  <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/10/10/extending-the-query-loop-block/\"><strong>Extending the Query Loop block</strong></a>. He starts out with &#8220;Extenders required a way to present bespoke versions of the Query&nbsp;Loop&nbsp;block, with their presets, additional settings and disabled customization options when irrelevant to their use-case. With WordPress 6.1, the Query Loop block offers mighty ways to create such versions, through&nbsp;<a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/reference-guides/block-api/block-variations/\">Block Variations</a>.&#8221; </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tom McFarlin</strong> published part 4 of his series <a href=\"https://tommcfarlin.com/learning-to-build-block-editor-blocks-4/\"><strong>A Backend Engineer Learns to Build Block Editor Blocks</strong></a> in which he walks you through how to handle the process to save content from a block and how to control how it is rendered on the front end. If you are keen on learning block development, McFarlin recommends to start reading part one through three first: </p>\n\n\n\n<ol>\n<li><a href=\"https://tommcfarlin.com/learning-to-build-block-editor-blocks-1/\">Required Tools, Plugin Structure, Dependencies, Block Metadata</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://tommcfarlin.com/learning-to-build-block-editor-blocks-2/\">The Backend, The Frontend, Functionality, Styles, a Working Demo</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://tommcfarlin.com/learning-to-build-block-editor-blocks-3/\">Block Attributes, Editable Content, Components, Editor Styles</a></li>\n</ol>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"5-s\">Upcoming WordPress events</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>December 15, 2022 &#8211;  1 pm ET  / 18:00 UTC <br /><strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/state-of-the-word-2022/\">State of the Word 2022</a></strong> &#8211; Matt Mullenweg&#8217;s annual keynote. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>New Date!&nbsp;<strong>December 16, 2022</strong><br /><strong><a href=\"https://www.wordfest.live/2022/november/\">WordFest Live Returns</a></strong>&nbsp;– the 24-hour Festival of WordPress</p>\n\n\n\n<p>February 17 – 19, 2023<br /><a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2023/\"><strong>WordCamp Asia 2023</strong></a>&nbsp;– the&nbsp;<a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2023/speakers-announcement-round-1/\">first round of speakers was announced</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-light-background-background-color has-background\"><a href=\"https://central.wordcamp.org/schedule/\"><strong>Have a look at the schedule of upcoming WordCamps</strong></a>&nbsp;to find one near you.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"1-l\">Learn WordPress Online Meetups</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>December 5, 2022 &#8211; 2 am ET / 7am UTC </strong><br /><strong><a href=\"https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/289957594/\">Using the Navigation Block</a> </strong>with Ben Evans</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>December 8, 2022 – 3 pm ET / 22:00 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href=\"https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/289521234/\">Builder Basics: Demystifying theme.json and Global Styles</a></strong>&nbsp;with Nick Diego</p>\n\n\n\n<p>December 12, 2022 &#8211; 3 pm ET / 22:00 UTC  <br /><a href=\"https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/289957641/\"><strong>Creating a Call To Action with the Block Editor</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n\n<p>Featured Image: Fantasy CityScape created with the Imajinn AI plugin</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>\n\n\n\n<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>\n\n\n\n<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, 03 Dec 2022 16:02:00 +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: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:34;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:120:\"WPTavern: The WP Community Collective Launches Nonprofit to Fund Individual Contributors and Community-Based Initiatives\";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=140056\";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:131:\"https://wptavern.com/the-wp-community-collective-launches-nonprofit-to-fund-individual-contributors-and-community-based-initiatives\";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:4917:\"<p>The <a href=\"https://www.thewpcommunitycollective.com/\">WP Community Collective</a> (WPCC) officially launched today as a new nonprofit organization dedicated to funding individual WordPress contributors and community-led initiatives. It was founded by Sé Reed, Katie Adams Farrell, and Courtney Robertson.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The organization was created to address some of the challenges of contribution, where larger companies tend to have more resources to sponsor contributors, while individuals and smaller companies may struggle to balance their ability to volunteer with the need to make ends meet.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the primary ways the WPCC aims to support contributors is through Fellowships. This is an agreement where individuals receive financial support for their contributions to WordPress with global pay parity. They will also engage in professional development and are encouraged to participate in regional WordCamps as attendees, speakers, and/or organizers with expenses covered by the fellowship.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The fellowships are an interesting concept, designed to incubate high quality contributors who are connected to the community with a well-rounded set of expectations that are not narrowly limited to the code produced. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>WPCC aims to identify areas where the community is underrepresented or contribution is needed and fund Fellowships in those areas. The first fellowship they plan to fund is for <a href=\"https://opencollective.com/thewpcc/contribute/accessibility-fellowship-46812\">an Accessibility contributor</a>, who will dedicate 5-10 hours a week to work on the Make WordPress Accessibility Team and its existing accessibility initiatives.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The Accessibility Fellowship will be a bit of a test, in terms of fundraising and response from the community,&#8221; WPCC co-founder Sé Reed said. &#8220;Accessibility is an easy place to start because the community already knows it is important and we have contributors who are doing crucial work without any monetary support.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WPCC is using Open Collective as the fiscal sponsor for its 501(c)3 status, enabling donations to be classified as charitable giving, which is in many cases tax-deductible. All transactions that run through the organization are transparent and publicly documented on the organization&#8217;s <a href=\"https://opencollective.com/thewpcc/transactions\">transactions page</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reed said the tipping point for her team to get organized to make this happen was a tweet from Matt Mullenweg shortly after the 2022 WordCamp US, where he responded to people calling for users of assistive technology to be paid for testing Gutenberg.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I\'m not opposed to paying people for labor or people getting paid for their labor. It\'s just not something that <a href=\"https://t.co/0IkxYEeLJd\">https://t.co/0IkxYEeLJd</a> or the WordPress Foundation are set up to do, nor will they be in the future. Individuals have sponsored paid user tests before, just directly.</p>&mdash; Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/photomatt/status/1568789183413776385?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 11, 2022</a></blockquote>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;His statement in that tweet really made two things clear to me,&#8221; Reed said. &#8220;One, that this funding concept would not be in conflict with the work of the WordPress Foundation or the official project, and two, that if we wanted something like this to happen it would have to be done as an independent entity.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The WPCC founders joined in on a recent WPwatercooler podcast episode where they shared their contributor stories and why they started the organization. One of their commonalities was a sincere desire to contribute more but not enough time in the day. With very few sponsored contributor positions available, volunteering is not always possible, resulting in the project being led primarily by sponsored contributors.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>“We hope that the WP Community Collective can help bridge the gap between the passion people feel for WordPress, and the very real and practical limits of volunteer contribution,” Reed said.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WPCC is starting out with a small governance team that consists of the three co-founders but plans to expand the organizational structure to include more community representation, including an Advisory Board with a permanent seat for the Executive Director of WordPress.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>People who want to support the WPCC can join with an <a href=\"https://opencollective.com/thewpcc/contribute/individual-membership-47231\">individual membership</a> for free to stay up to date with the organization&#8217;s activities. Check out the podcast episode below to meet the co-founders and learn more about the initiative.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</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, 03 Dec 2022 03:39:18 +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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:88:\"WPTavern: UK Publishers File £13.6 Billion Lawsuit Against Google Alleging Market Abuse\";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=140040\";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:97:\"https://wptavern.com/uk-publishers-file-13-6-billion-lawsuit-against-google-alleging-market-abuse\";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:3405:\"<p>A group of 130,000 businesses publishing around 1,750,000 websites and applications in the UK have filed a lawsuit against Google and its parent company, Alphabet. The claim is being managed by law firms Humphries Kerstetter and Geradin Partners, who allege that &#8220;Google abused its dominant position in the market for online advertising, earning super-profits for itself at the expense of the tens of thousands of publishers of websites and mobile apps in the UK.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The firms&#8217; economic analysis of Google’s alleged anti-competitive behavior suggests that some companies may have had advertising revenues reduced by 40%. Although Google has been the subject of multiple regulatory investigations in the EU, UK, and USA, resulting in a €220m fine from French competition authorities, this claim aims to compensate publishers and recover losses through a competition class action lawsuit.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A <a href=\"https://www.humphrieskerstetter.com/category/news/\">statement</a> published by Humphries Kerstetter details the focus of their investigations:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>These competition investigations all focus on the same core facts. Google dominates the markets for ad tech services in the UK and across the world controlling up to 90% of the market in certain sectors. This allows Google to dictate terms, control pricing and, in some scenarios, enables it to favour its own platforms in the process by which advertisements are selected to be published.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The allegations of the competition claim are similar to the complaint brought by the US Department of Justice that alleges <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/amp-has-irreparably-damaged-publishers-trust-in-google-led-initiatives\">Google used AMP to impede header bidding and throttle the load time of non-AMP ads</a>. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The marketplace for online advertising is sophisticated, technical and highly automated,&#8221; Claudio Pollack, who is heading the UK publishers&#8217; competition claim, said. &#8220;Advertising is sold in a fraction of a second in a process which is designed to match the product being advertised with the profile of an individual visiting a website. Third party platforms operate on both sides of the marketplace matching supply with demand and – in an ideal world – ensuring the market operates efficiently and effectively. Unfortunately, it is now well established that this market has developed in a way that is primarily serving Google.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A separate multi-billion Euro claim will be running in parallel in the EU, handled by a Dutch law firm in cooperation with Geradin Partners. They are seeking compensation for the alleged damage to small, local publishers who have struggled to stay afloat amid decreased advertising revenue.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>“While the value of the claim we are bringing is substantial, we believe this matter is about much more than money,&#8221; Geradin Partners founding partner Professor Geradin said. &#8220;For years Google has been denying companies in the UK and Europe and beyond, including the local press and the publishers of community focused websites, the chance to earn a proper income by way of advertising. As well as bringing Google to account the parties who have lost out need proper compensation, something a CAT claim can achieve at no cost to those parties.”</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, 02 Dec 2022 22:54:47 +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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:37:\"Post Status: All the Things This Week\";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=145392\";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:48:\"https://poststatus.com/all-the-things-this-week/\";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:4995:\"<h2 id=\"h-state-of-the-word\">State of the Word</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>For the second year, <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/state-of-the-word-2022/\">State of the Word</a> (SOTW) will be a small in-person event at the Tumblr offices in New York City on the afternoon of December 15 (1pm local time). Matt Mullenweg will deliver the annual address to a small in-person crowd, and the event will be live streamed over WordPress’ official social media streams. Meetups and other WordPress groups (businesses, etc.) are encouraged to have watch parties for their groups.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I will be attending in person again this year. If you’ll be there, say hello and let’s get a selfie to post on whatever social media we’re using. I’ll be tweeting using <a href=\"https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SOTW&src=typed_query\">#SOTW</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-wordpress-credentialing\">WordPress Credentialing</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>CertifyWP, a new organization, will soon launch a WordPress credentialing process. The organization, which is in the process of seeking non-profit/501(c)3 status in the US, will be the first of its kind for WordPress credentials.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>“Part of developing a credential for WordPress is establishing a baseline of skills for those entering the WordPress job market, including the US Department of Defense, which requires a credential for entry,” says Talisha Lewallen, CEO of WPConnects, and founder of CertifyWP. “The beauty of a credential like this is that it can benefit any company that is hiring in WordPress. Along with the benefits it will bring for WordPress users and contractors.”</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The next step for establishing such a credential is twofold: having a team begin working on a standardized exam for becoming credentialed, and gathering letters of endorsement from those hiring in WordPress and for WordPress roles within the community. To contribute a letter of endorsement, visit <a href=\"https://certifywp.com/endorse-certifywp/\">https://certifywp.com/endorse-certifywp/</a> where you can view a sample letter and upload your completed endorsement.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Full disclosure, I have joined the board of directors for this endeavor.)</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-annual-wordpress-survey\">Annual WordPress Survey</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>While there’s always a lot of conversation about WordPress and the future of WordPress, if you have an opinion about the open source project, here’s your annual opportunity to weigh in and have your opinion quantified with others. <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/12/2022-wordpress-survey/\">https://wordpress.org/news/2022/12/2022-wordpress-survey/</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>It’s a great opportunity to have your experiences count!</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-post-status-membership-deal\">Post Status Membership Deal</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the spirit of Black Friday/Cyber Monday, Post Status is offering $100 off any <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/#choose-membership\">annual membership</a> through December 31. Why? Because we love you! Membership gets you into our Slack community, too!</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Use discount code <strong>BFCM</strong> for your best Post Status membership deal ever!</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-in-the-spotlight\">In the Spotlight</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Post Status member, <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/member-spotlight-nathan-ingram/\">Nathan Ingram</a>. Nathan is the creator of MonsterContracts, battle-tested contracts for WordPress client work.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2>Podcast Episodes Worth a Listen</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>WP Watercooler: <a href=\"https://wpwatercooler.com/wpwatercooler/ep437-funding-the-dream-with-the-wp-community-collective/\">EP437 &#8211; Funding the Dream with the WP Community Collective</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Kitchen Sink WP: <a class=\"\" href=\"https://kitchensinkwp.com/podcast-e457-the-2022-holiday-gift-guide/\">Podcast E457 – The 2022 Holiday Gift Guide</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Do the Woo: <a class=\"\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io/episode-300-the-hosts-my-heroes/\">Episode 300: The Hosts, My Heroes</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Kadence Beat: <a href=\"https://www.kadencewp.com/blog/episode-20-the-kadence-community-and-influence-with-maestro-stevens/\">Episode 20: The Kadence Community and Influence with Maestro Stevens</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Underrepresented in Tech: <a href=\"https://www.underrepresentedintech.com/how-to-be-inclusive-with-holiday-marketing-messages/\">How to Be Inclusive with Holiday Marketing Messages</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-upcoming-events\">Upcoming Events:</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/state-of-the-word-2022/\">State of the Word</a> December 15, 2022</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Post Status <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/huddles/\">Member Huddles </a>every week</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Calls for Speakers and Sponsors are open at <a href=\"https://www.wpwealthbuilder.com/\">WP Wealthbuilder Summit</a> May 12, 2023</li>\n\n\n\n<li>WordCamps are back. <a href=\"https://central.wordcamp.org/schedule/\">Check the schedule online</a>!</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n<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, 02 Dec 2022 15:53:49 +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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:40:\"WPTavern: Take the 2022 WordPress Survey\";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=140025\";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:51:\"https://wptavern.com/take-the-2022-wordpress-survey\";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:1888:\"<p>The <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/12/2022-wordpress-survey/\">2022 WordPress Survey</a> is now open to anyone using WordPress &#8211; from beginners to professional developers and everyone in between. This annual survey helps project leaders and contributors learn more about how and why the software is being used. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>This year&#8217;s survey is available in the seven most frequently installed languages based on the number of WordPress downloads, including <a href=\"https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/fr-2022\">French</a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/de-2022\">German</a>,&nbsp; <a href=\"https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/it-2022\">Italian</a>, <a href=\"https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/jp-2022\">Japanese</a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/ru-2022\">Russian</a>, and&nbsp;<a href=\"https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/es-2022\">Spanish</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The survey begins with some questions about basic demographics and moves on to a mix of interesting questions that fall more under the topic of market research than previous years. It asks why you use WordPress instead of other tools/platforms, what you think are the most essential three plugins when building sites, and what are the best and most frustrating things about WordPress. The survey also asks whether respondents have used blocks in the new Site Editor and which Site Editor they prefer. It will be interesting to see the data from these questions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The last eight questions are for contributors, and even with those it takes less than five minutes to complete. Although some information from the 2022 survey may be shared in the annual State of the Word address, the survey will be open through the end of 2022.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The analysis from the 2021 survey results will be shared in early 2023 and WordPress will publish the 2022 results sometime next year.</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, 02 Dec 2022 04:28:48 +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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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: Two New WordPress Plugins Improve Block Editor Accessibility and WCAG Compliance\";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=140002\";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/two-new-wordpress-plugins-improve-block-editor-accessibility-and-wcag-compliance\";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:2988:\"<p>WordPress Core Committer Jb Audras, CTO of the France-based <a href=\"https://www.whodunit.fr/\">Whodunit</a> agency, has released two new accessibility plugins in cooperation with Guillaume Turpin, another developer on the Whodunit team. These are small &#8220;micro&#8221; plugins developed to fill gaps in the block editor&#8217;s accessible content creation experience.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first plugin is called <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/lang-attribute/\">Lang Attribute for the Block Editor</a> and is important for content that is written in multiple languages. It allows content creators to indicate language changes using the lang attribute so that those using assistive technologies will get the correct presentation and pronunciation rules for the specified language. This plugin helps WordPress sites meet the requirements of the WCAG Success Criterion 3.1.2 “Language of Parts.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\nvideo source: Jb Audras\n\n\n\n<p>With the plugin installed, content creators can highlight text and then find the language attribute in the block toolbar to edit it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s worth noting that indicating language changes in content is mandatory for WCAG compliance, and there is currently no way to do that in the Block Editor (except by editing the code manually),&#8221; Audras <a href=\"https://twitter.com/AudrasJb/status/1598353367138504704\">said</a> when introducing the plugin on Twitter. &#8220;I think this feature should be implemented natively into Gutenberg.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second micro plugin is called <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/abbreviation-button-for-the-block-editor/\">Abbreviation Button for the Block Editor</a>, which allows content authors to include definitions for abbreviations using the &lt;abbr> HTML element. This enables site visitors to access the expanded form of abbreviations, as outlined by <a href=\"https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/meaning-located.html\">WCAG success criterion 3.1.4 “Abbreviations.&#8221;</a> </p>\n\n\n\n<p>The WCAG identify a few types of visitors who may be helped by the Abbreviations, including those who have difficulty decoding words, those who rely on screen magnifiers, have a limited memory, and those who have difficulty using context to aid understanding.</p>\n\n\n\nvideo source: Jb Audras\n\n\n\n<p>The abbreviation tag can also be found in the block toolbar, so users can highlight any text for which they want to provide the expanded form of the abbreviation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/abbreviation-button-for-the-block-editor/\">Abbreviation Button</a> and the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/lang-attribute/\">Language Attribute</a> plugins are available for free in the WordPress plugins directory. The plugins&#8217; creators hope that some of this functionality can eventually be added to the block editor, but in the meantime users can install the plugins to create more accessible content that meets accessibility guidelines. </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, 02 Dec 2022 03:12:34 +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:39;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:71:\"Akismet: Version 5.0.2 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin is Now Available\";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:31:\"http://blog.akismet.com/?p=2439\";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://blog.akismet.com/2022/12/01/version-5-0-2-of-the-akismet-wordpress-plugin-is-now-available/\";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:753:\"<p>Version 5.0.2 of <a href=\"http://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/\">the Akismet plugin for WordPress</a> is now available. This update contains the following improvements:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Fixed a bug causing incompatibility with themes that hide dropdown menus after a set amount of time.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Moved away from using [api_key].rest.akismet.com subdomains in favor of sending the key in the request body in order to increase the privacy of Akismet API keys.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in <a href=\"http://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/\">the WordPress plugins directory</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:\"Thu, 01 Dec 2022 17:20:06 +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:17:\"Christopher Finke\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:76:\"WordPress.org blog: Share Your Experience: The 2022 WordPress Survey is Open\";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=14062\";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:57:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/12/2022-wordpress-survey/\";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:4507:\"<p>Each year, members of the WordPress community (users, site builders, extenders, and contributors) provide valuable feedback through an annual survey. Key takeaways and trends that emerge from this survey often find their way into the annual <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/state-of-the-word-2022/\">State of the Word</a> address, are shared in the public project blogs, and can influence the direction and strategy for the WordPress project.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Simply put: this survey helps those who build WordPress understand more about how the software is used, and by whom. The survey also helps leaders in the WordPress open source project learn more about our contributors’ experiences.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>To ensure that your WordPress experience is represented in the 2022 survey results, <a href=\"https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/en-2022\">take the 2022 annual survey now.</a></p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/en-2022\">Take the 2022 Survey (English)</a></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>You may also take the survey in <a href=\"https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/fr-2022\">French</a>, <a href=\"https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/de-2022\">German</a>, <a href=\"https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/it-2022\">Italian</a>, <a href=\"https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/jp-2022\">Japanese</a>, <a href=\"https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/ru-2022\">Russian</a>, or <a href=\"https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/es-2022\">Spanish</a>, thanks to the efforts of WordPress polyglot contributors. These are the most frequently installed languages based on the number of WordPress downloads. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>The survey will be open through the end of 2022, and then WordPress plans to publish the results sometime in 2023. This year, the survey questions have been refreshed for more effortless survey flow, completion, and analysis. Some questions have been removed, while a few new ones are now present, reflecting the present and future of WordPress. If you’re looking for the analysis of the 2021 survey results, those will also be shared in early 2023.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2>Spread the word</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Help spread the word about the survey by sharing it with your network, through Slack, or within your social media accounts. The more people who complete the survey and share their experience with WordPress, the more the project as a whole will benefit in the future.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2>Security and privacy</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Data security and privacy are paramount to the WordPress project and community. With this in mind, all data will be anonymized: no email addresses nor IP addresses will be associated with published results. To learn more about WordPress.org’s privacy practices, view the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/\">privacy policy</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2>Thank you</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you to the following WordPress contributors for assisting with the annual survey project, including question creation, strategy, survey build-out, and translation:</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/dansoschin/\">dansoschin</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/_dorsvenabili/\">_dorsvenabili</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/angelasjin/\">angelasjin</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/arkangel/\">arkangel</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb/\">audrasjb</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/atachibana/\">atachibana</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/bjmcsherry/\">bjmcsherry</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/\">chanthaboune</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/eidolonnight/\">eidolonnight</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/fernandot/\">fernandot</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/fierevere/\">fierevere</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/fxbenard/\">fxbenard</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/jdy68/\">jdy68</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/jpantani/\">jpantani</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/laurlittle/\">laurlittle</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/nao/\">nao</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/nielslange/\">nielslange</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/peiraisotta/\">peiraisotta</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/piermario/\">piermario</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/rmartinezduque/\">rmartinezduque</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/santanainniss/\">santanainniss</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:\"Thu, 01 Dec 2022 16:00:19 +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:15:\"Chloe Bringmann\";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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:\"Do The Woo Community: Episode 300: The Hosts, My Heroes\";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=73766\";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:52:\"https://dothewoo.io/episode-300-the-hosts-my-heroes/\";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:355:\"<p>There was no better way to celebrate episode 300 of the podcast than to celebrate our hosts. </p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io/episode-300-the-hosts-my-heroes/\">Episode 300: The Hosts, My Heroes</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:\"Thu, 01 Dec 2022 11:14:00 +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:42;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:99:\"WPTavern: ElasticPress 4.4.0 Adds New Status Report Page and Instant Results Template Customization\";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=139973\";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:110:\"https://wptavern.com/elasticpress-4-4-0-adds-new-status-report-page-and-instant-results-template-customization\";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:2708:\"<p>10up has released <a href=\"https://github.com/10up/ElasticPress/releases/tag/4.4.0\">version 4.4.0</a> of <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/elasticpress/\">ElasticPress</a>, its enhanced search plugin that speeds up searching while reducing the load on WordPress sites. The plugin is based on Elasticsearch and is used by customers of the ElasticPress.io service (a SaaS solution), as well as those who are hosting their own Elasticsearch instance.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This update adds a new &#8220;Status Report&#8221; page in the dashboard with information that can be helpful for troubleshooting ElasticPress and synced content. The UI uses Gutenberg components for the collapsible sections. Version 4.4.0 introduces a new query logger functionality that stores failed queries (up to 5 in the last 24 hours) and displays an admin notice if failed queries are detected. The failed queries are displayed on the new Status Report page.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>Another highlight of this release is the ability to <a href=\"https://github.com/10up/ElasticPress/pull/2959\">customize the template for Instant Results</a>. It gives developers a JavaScript hook for replacing the component used to render search results in Instant Results. The Instant Results feature <a href=\"https://www.elasticpress.io/blog/2022/03/introducing-instant-results-wordpress-fastest-search-ever/\">was introduced in March</a> with limited customization capabilities. It added a new search modal over the page content that inherits the site&#8217;s styles. Developers could adjust the appearance and expose facets, but this new update gives them control over the whole template.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another small but useful update in this release is the ability to <a href=\"https://github.com/10up/ElasticPress/pull/3100\">exclude a specific post from Search</a>. This helps site owners further customize the search experience to deliver only the intended results. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Developers who are using the plugin should take note of the announcement included in this release regarding the migration of the Users feature to the ElasticPress Labs plugin, which houses more experimental features:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Note that starting from the ElasticPress 5.0.0 release the <code>Users</code> feature will be moved to the <a href=\"https://github.com/10up/ElasticPressLabs\">ElasticPress Labs</a> plugin. The <code>Terms</code> and <code>Comments</code> features will remain in ElasticPress but will be available only if enabled via code.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Check out the full list of updates and bug fixes on GitHub in the <a href=\"https://github.com/10up/ElasticPress/releases/tag/4.4.0\">changelog</a> for 4.4.0. </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:\"Thu, 01 Dec 2022 05:22:10 +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:43;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:67:\"WPTavern: WordPress Versions 3.7-4.0 No Longer Get Security Updates\";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=139956\";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:78:\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-versions-3-7-4-0-no-longer-get-security-updates\";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:1338:\"<p>In September, WordPress’ Security Team announced it would be <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-to-drop-security-updates-for-versions-3-7-through-4-0-by-december-2022\">dropping support for versions 3.7 through 4.0</a> by December 1, 2022. Yesterday the final releases for these versions (3.7.41, 3.8.41, 3.9.40, and 4.0.38) were made available to the very small percentage of users who are running ancient versions of WordPress. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>As part of the final releases, the upgrade notification now informs users that they are on a version that is no longer receiving security updates. This affects fewer than 1% of total installs. The vast majority of WordPress sites are running 4.1 or later and will continue receiving security updates. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wherever possible, WordPress users should be running 6.1.1 on PHP 8 or later. (Although PHP 7.4 is the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/about/requirements/\">minimum version</a> required to use WordPress, <a href=\"https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php\">PHP 7.4 reached end of life two days ago</a> and will no longer be receiving security updates. Version 8.0 will reach EOL in 11 months.)</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that the Security Team is no longer obligated to backport security updates to very old versions, it frees up their time to better support newer versions of WordPress.</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, 30 Nov 2022 20:53:48 +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:44;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:54:\"WordPress.org blog: People of WordPress: Huanyi Chuang\";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=13562\";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:69:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/people-of-wordpress-huanyi-chuang/\";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:9814:\"<p><strong>This month we feature Huanyi (Eric) Chuang, a front end developer from Taiwan, who helps connect local groups to WordPress and the worldwide open source community. He is part of the team helping to make the first WordCamp Asia a success in 2023.</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The People of WordPress series shares some of the inspiring stories of how people&#8217;s lives can change for the better through WordPress and its global network of contributors.</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<img width=\"1014\" height=\"627\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/huanyi-featured-img.jpg?resize=1014%2C627&ssl=1\" alt=\"Huanyi pictured sitting inside a rock formation.\" class=\"wp-image-13479\" />\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>Discovering WordPress and the benefit of child themes </strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Huanyi’s first footsteps in WordPress began in 2017 when he worked for a firm that built blogs and developed ad content for clients.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>After building a few sites using the platform, he discovered child themes and through them opened up a world of possibilities for his clients. To this day, he uses child themes to deliver truly custom designs and functionality for clients.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Later in his career, Huanyi moved into digital marketing, integrating sites with massive ad platforms like Google and Facebook. This led him to learn to work with tracking code and JavaScript. He also began his learning journey in HTML, CSS, and PHP, to be able to improve his development skills and customize child themes.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>Meetups bring together software users to learn together</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<img width=\"600\" height=\"800\" src=\"https://i2.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/huanyi-1.jpg?fit=600%2C800&ssl=1\" alt=\"Huanyi and a koala.\" class=\"wp-image-13476\" /><em>Huanyi pictured in Australia during one of his travels meeting a koala bear.</em>\n\n\n\n<p>When Huanyi had a problem with a client&#8217;s site, he looked to WordPress meetups near where he lived in <a href=\"https://www.meetup.com/Taipei-WordPress/\">Taipei</a> to help find the solutions.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p><strong>“When I encountered an issue with the custom archive pages, a local meetup announcement showed up on my WordPress dashboard</strong>.&#8221;</p>\n<cite>Huanyi Chuang</cite></blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>At the meetup, he met more experienced WordPress users and developers there, who answered his questions and helped him learn.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>“When I encountered an issue with the custom archive pages, a local meetup announcement showed up on my WordPress dashboard. That was my original connection with the local community,” Huanyi said.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The WordPress community gave Huanyi a chance to connect with people, feed his curiosity about the software, and join a circle of people he could share this interest.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>At first, he thought meetups were an opportunity to source new clients, and he took his business cards to every event. However, he soon found that these events offered him the opportunity to make friends and share knowledge.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>From then on, Huanyi started focusing more on what he could give to these events and networks, making new friends, and listening to people. This led him to share as a meetup speaker his own commercial website management experience.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>The road to WordCamp</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>It was going to his first meetup and then getting involved with WordCamps that changed Huanyi&#8217;s whole relationship with WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<img width=\"600\" height=\"800\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/huanyi-2.jpg?resize=600%2C800&ssl=1\" alt=\"Huanyi pictured on an outing, stood next to a white car.\" class=\"wp-image-13477\" />\n\n\n\n<p>In 2018, he took the step to help as an organizer, having joined the Taoyuan Meetup in Taiwan. He played several parts across the organizing team, and the welcoming feeling he got in every situation encouraged him to get more involved.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He recalls meeting new friends from different fields and other countries, which gave him a great sense of achievement and strengthened his passion for participating in the community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>When the team started this meetup, numbers were much lower than in the group in the city of Taipei, but they were not disheartened and gradually grew the local WordPress community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They created a pattern of ‘multiple organizers,’ which spread the workload and grew friendships.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p><strong>“Being connected to and from meetups is the most valuable part of the community. Having these friends makes me gather more information. We share information and benefit from others’ information, and thus we gain more trust in each other. With such credibility, we share more deeply and build deeper relations.”</strong> </p>\n<cite>Huanyi Chuang</cite></blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Before the pandemic, the meetup met every month and grew to become the second largest meetup in Taiwan. Huanyi also contributed to the WordPress community as an organizer of WordCamp Taipei 2018 in the speaker team and lead organizer of <a href=\"https://taiwan.wordcamp.org/2021/\">WordCamp Taiwan 2021</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>So why should you join the community?</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Huanyi, you will always have something to take home with you. It might be new information or experiences. It might be plugins or theme ideas. But most of all, it is the chance to meet fascinating people and make new friends.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Huanyi’s message to other contributors:<br />&#8220;Keep participating, and you will find more you can achieve than you expect.” </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>He added that long-term participation will &#8216;let you feel the humanity behind the project&#8217;.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>Localize: the road ahead for WordPress</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<img width=\"900\" height=\"675\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/huanyi-3.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1\" alt=\"Huanyi standing on a sandy beach.\" class=\"wp-image-13478\" />\n\n\n\n<p>Huanyi believes WordPress has the power to break down the barriers between designers, project managers, developers, marketers, writers, and publishers. In Taiwan, he said WordPress is &#8216;a common protocol&#8217; that lets people from all of these disciplines work and communicate together more easily than they ever have before.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is why he works on and encourages others to localize plugins today. He believes localization of the software is the foundation for the extension of the WordPress community as it enables people to ‘Flex their Freedom’ in a language they speak!</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He has helped to organize online events around previous <a href=\"https://wptranslationday.org/\">WordPress Translation Day</a> events.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Huanyi said: “I think it&#8217;s important to localize WordPress because its very concept of ‘open source’ means that people can access it freely. In another way, free from the monopoly of knowledge and speech. To achieve it, it&#8217;s important that people can access it with their own language.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>“Localization is the foundation of the extension of WordPress community because it helps people using different languages to access the project and lowers the hurdle to understand how things work.”</p>\n\n\n\n<h2>Share the stories</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Help share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/category/newsletter/interviews/\">People of WordPress series</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2><strong>Contributors</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you to <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/no249a002/\" class=\"mention\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>no249a002</a> for sharing his adventures in WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you to Abha Thakor (<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/webcommsat/\" class=\"mention\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>webcommsat</a>), Mary Baum (<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/marybaum/\" class=\"mention\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>marybaum</a>), 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>), Surendra Thakor (<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/sthakor/\" class=\"mention\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>sthakor</a>), Adeeb Malik (<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/adeebmalik/\" class=\"mention\"><span class=\"mentions-prefix\">@</span>adeebmalik</a>) for research, interviews, and contributing to this feature article.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <em>People of WordPress</em> 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>\n\n\n\n<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\">\n<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>\n</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:\"Wed, 30 Nov 2022 20:09:00 +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:45;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:150:\"Post Status: Annual Survey • State of the Word 2022 • Meetup Accessibility Overlays • Multi-line Code Comments • WP 3.7 – 4.0 Final Releases\";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=145276\";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:127:\"https://poststatus.com/state-of-the-word-2022-meetup-accessibility-overlays-multi-line-code-comments-wp-3-7-4-0-final-releases/\";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:15646:\"<h2 id=\"h-this-week-at-wordpress-org-november-28-2022\">This Week at WordPress.org (November 28, 2022)</h2>\n\n\n<div class=\"has-background has-theme-palette-8-background-color wp-block-post-excerpt\"><p class=\"wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt\">Should code comments switch to <code><strong>//</strong></code> ? Meetup.com stops using an accessibility overlay. Final releases for WordPress 3.7 &#8211; 4.0 are now available. Tune in soon for State of the Word 2023, happening December 15 via livestream from New York City.   </p></div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<div id=\"kt-info-box_68609b-a8\" class=\"wp-block-kadence-infobox\"><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=\"kt-info-svg-icon kt-info-svg-icon-fas_microphone-alt\"></span></div></div></div></div><div class=\"kt-infobox-textcontent\"><h2 class=\"kt-blocks-info-box-title\">EOL WP 3.7 &#8211; 4.0, Multi-line Code Comments, Meetup Accessibility, SotW</h2><p class=\"kt-blocks-info-box-text\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4dd.png\" alt=\"📝\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/12/2022-wordpress-survey/\">Share Your Experience: The 2022 WordPress Survey is Open</a><br /><br /><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f399.png\" alt=\"🎙\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/state-of-the-word-2022/\">State of the Word 2022</a><br /><br /><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/267f.png\" alt=\"♿\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/11/23/meetup-com-accessibility-overlay-update/\">Meetup.com Accessibility Overlay Update</a><br /><br /><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1faa6.png\" alt=\"🪦\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/30/now-available-wordpress-3-7-4-0-final-releases/\">Now Available: WordPress 3.7-4.0 Final Releases</a><br /><br /><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4ac.png\" alt=\"💬\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/24/proposal-amend-the-inline-documentation-standards-for-multi-line-comments/\">Proposal: Amend the Inline Documentation Standards for multi-line comments</a><br /><br /></p></div></div></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-news\">News<a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/10/wordpress-6-1-release-candidate-3/\"></a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/12/2022-wordpress-survey/\">Share Your Experience: The 2022 WordPress Survey is Open</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/episode-44-minors-majors-and-why-we-have-so-many-releases/\">WP Briefing: Episode 44: Minors, Majors, and Why We Have So Many Releases</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-_121b9e-cb\"><div class=\"kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center\"><hr class=\"kt-divider\" /></div></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"is-layout-flex wp-container-47 wp-block-columns\">\n<div class=\"is-layout-flow wp-block-column\">\n<h2 id=\"h-accessibility\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility\">Accessibility</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/2022/11/30/accessibility-team-meeting-agenda-december-2-2022/\">Accessibility Team Meeting Agenda: December 2, 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-community\">Community</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/11/30/community-team-meeting-agenda-1-dec-2022/\">Community Team Meeting Agenda 1 Dec 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/11/30/vote-for-community-team-rep-2023/\">Vote for Community Team Rep 2023</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/11/28/plan-your-state-of-the-word-watch-party-today/\">Plan Your State of the Word Watch Party Today!</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/11/28/wordpress-community-team-training-5-active-listening/\">WordPress Community Team Training #5: Active Listening</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/11/24/recap-of-the-diverse-speaker-training-group-wpdiversity-amer-emea-on-november-23-2022/\">Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) AMER/EMEA on November 23, 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-core\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core\">Core</a> </h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/23/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-6-23-november/\">What’s new in Gutenberg 14.6? (23 November)</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/29/a-week-in-core-november-28-2022/\">A Week in Core – November 28, 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/30/devchat-agenda-november-30-2022/\">Devchat agenda, November 30, 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/24/dev-chat-summary-wednesday-november-23-2022/\">Dev Chat summary: Wednesday, November 23, 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/28/editor-chat-agenda-november-30-2022/\">Editor Chat Agenda: November 30, 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/23/editor-chat-summary-november-23-2022/\">Editor chat summary: 23 November 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-dev-blog\"><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/\">Dev Blog</a></h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/11/29/a-php-developers-guide-to-getting-started-with-block-development/\">A PHP developer’s guide to getting started with block development</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/11/18/how-to-extend-wordpress-via-the-slotfill-system/\">How to extend WordPress via the SlotFill system</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/11/17/demystifying-home-and-posts-templates-in-wordpress-theme-development/\">Demystifying Home and Posts Templates in WordPress theme development</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/11/17/welcome-to-the-wordpress-developer-blog/\">Welcome to the WordPress Developer Blog</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/11/17/creating-themes-from-a-pattern-first-mindset/\">Creating Themes from a Pattern-first mindset</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-docs\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/docs\">Docs</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2022/11/30/summary-for-docs-team-meeting-november-29-2022/\">Summary for Docs Team Meeting November 29, 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2022/11/28/agenda-for-docs-team-bi-weekly-november-29-2022/\">Agenda for Docs Team Bi-Weekly November 29, 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/11/29/documentation-team-update-november-29-2022/\">Documentation Team Update – November 29, 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-hosting\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/hosting\">Hosting</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2022/11/23/server-environment-for-wordpress-6-1/\">Server Environment for WordPress 6.1</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2022/11/09/nominations-for-hosting-team-reps-2023/\">Nominations for Hosting Team Reps 2023</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-marketing\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing\">Marketing</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2022/11/29/agenda-global-wordpress-marketing-team-meeting-november-30-2022/\">Agenda: global WordPress marketing team meeting, November 30, 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2022/11/29/notes-global-marketing-team-meeting-november-23-2022/\">Notes: Global Marketing Team meeting, November 23, 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"is-layout-flow wp-block-column\">\n<h2 id=\"h-mobile\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/mobile\">Mobile</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/11/29/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-ios-21-3/\">Call for Testing: WordPress for iOS 21.3</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/11/30/mobile-team-update-november-30th-2/\">Mobile Team Update – November 30th</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-performance\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/performance/\">Performance</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/29/performance-team-meeting-summary-29-november-2022/\">Performance Chat Summary: 29 November 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/11/30/core-performance-team-update-november-30-2022/\">Core Performance Team Update – November 30, 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-polyglots\">Polyglots</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2022/11/29/agenda-weekly-polyglots-chat-nov-30-2022-0700-utc/\">Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – Nov. 30, 2022 (07:00 UTC)</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2022/11/08/call-for-polyglots-team-representatives-2/\">Call for Polyglots Team Representatives</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-test\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test\">Test</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/11/13/fse-program-exploration-site-editor-sneak-peek/\">FSE Program Exploration: Site Editor Sneak Peek</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/11/29/test-team-update-28-november-2022/\">Test Team Update: 28 November 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-themes\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/themes\">Themes</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2022/11/16/nominations-call-for-the-themes-team-representatives-2023-edition/\">Nominations Call for the themes team representatives: 2023 Edition</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/11/29/themes-team-update-november-29-2022/\">Themes team update November 29, 2022</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-training\"><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training\">Training</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/individual-learner-survey/\">How did you learn WordPress?</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/11/28/meeting-agenda-for-november-29-2022/\">Meeting Agenda for November 29, 2022</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/11/26/project-thread-training-team-onboarding-paths/\">Project Thread: Training Team Onboarding Paths</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-online-workshops\">Online Workshops</h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=https-www-meetup-com-learn-wordpress-online-workshops-events-290051844\">State of the Word Watch Party (Live Online)</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-to-join-core-release-party\">How to Join Core Release Party</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=lets-code-developing-blocks-without-react-part-3\">Let’s code: Developing Blocks without React! – Part 3</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=wordpress-development-live-stream-developing-blocks-without-react-part-3\">WordPress development live stream: Developing Blocks without React – Part 3</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=what-is-seo-search-engine-optimization\">What is SEO? (Search Engine Optimization)</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=creating-a-call-to-action-with-the-block-editor-apac-time-zone\">Creating a Call To Action with the Block Editor (APAC Time Zone)</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=creating-a-call-to-action-with-the-block-editor\">Creating a Call To Action with the Block Editor</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=image-seo-best-practices-to-make-your-content-discoverable-2\">Image SEO Best Practices to Make Your Content Discoverable</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=navigation-block\">Navigation Block</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-wptv\">WPTV</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/category/year/2022/\">Latest WordPress TV videos</a></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-related-news\">Related News:</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.php.net/archive/2022.php#2022-11-26-1\">PHP 8.0.26 Released!</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.php.net/archive/2022.php#2022-11-24-2\">PHP 8.2.0 RC7 available for testing</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.php.net/archive/2022.php#2022-11-24-1\">PHP 8.1.13 Released!</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v19.2.0/\">Node v19.2.0 (Current)</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://tc39.es/#proposals\">ECMAScript Proposals</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-theme-palette-7-background-color has-background\">Thanks for reading our WP dot .org roundup! Each week we are highlighting the news and discussions coming from the good folks making WordPress possible. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers. <br /><br /><strong>Are you interested in giving back and contributing your time and skills to WordPress.org?</strong> <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png\" alt=\"🙏\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/support/article/contributing-to-wordpress/\">Start Here ›</a><br /><br /><strong>Get our weekly WordPress community news digest</strong> — Post Status\' <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/news/week-in-review/\">Week in Review</a> — covering the WP/Woo news plus significant writing and podcasts. It\'s also available in <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/newsletter\">our newsletter</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f48c.png\" alt=\"💌\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /></p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile has-background\"><a href=\"https://poststatus.com/\"><img src=\"https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/vertical-post-status-logo-250.png\" alt=\"Post Status\" class=\"wp-image-85823 size-full\" /></a><div class=\"wp-block-media-text__content\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left has-normal-font-size\" id=\"h-get-ready-for-remote-work\">You — and <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/#Agency\">your whole team</a> can <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/#choose-membership\">Join Post Status</a> too!</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left has-small-font-size\"><strong>Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire.</strong> Read the <strong>Post Status</strong> <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/newsletter/\">newsletter</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2709.png\" alt=\"✉\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> Listen to <a href=\"https://poststatus.com/podcasts/\">podcasts</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f399.png\" alt=\"🎙\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> Follow <a href=\"https://twitter.com/post_status/\">@Post_Status</a> <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png\" alt=\"🐦\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /> and <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/company/post-status-llc/\">LinkedIn</a>. <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4bc.png\" alt=\"💼\" class=\"wp-smiley\" /></p>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n<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, 30 Nov 2022 19:15:38 +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:46;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:71:\"WPTavern: #53 – Matt Medeiros on the State of the WordPress Landscape\";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=139905\";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:85:\"https://wptavern.com/podcast/53-matt-medeiros-on-the-state-of-the-wordpress-landscape\";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:55662:\"Transcript<div>\n<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. 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, the thoughts on the past present and future of WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<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 by going to wptavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players. 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>\n\n\n\n<p>So on the podcast today, we have Matt Medeiros. Matt is the driving force behind many WordPress initiatives. That could be the creation of plugins, WordPress news, media, as well as podcasts about all manner of WordPress specific subjects. He likes to juggle multiple projects at once.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Currently he&#8217;s the director of podcaster to success at Castos, which is a podcast hosting company with a WordPress plugin. He&#8217;s on the podcast today to give us his take on the past, present and future of WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many millions of people like to work with the WordPress software, they create websites, plugins, and themes, and extend what the CMS can do. Others, such as Matt like to ponder the broader purpose and direction of the software and the community around it. The Matt Report and The WP Minute have enabled us to hear about what the community is doing, what it wants and where its points of friction are. He&#8217;s talked to hundreds of people about what WordPress was, is, and might be. And so he&#8217;s in a unique position to pontificate about what WordPress, beyond the software, is.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We start with mats backstory. How he found WordPress and why he started to use it. We talk about how he&#8217;s dipped in and out of the community over the years. More excited at times, less so at others.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The conversation moves on to some of the trends that Matt has noticed. He identifies how the software and the wider community have altered over time. We talk about how The WP Minute got started, and how he&#8217;s building up a community of like-minded people to consume as well as to create the content that they&#8217;re putting out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Towards the end, we get into the governance of WordPress and the future of the project more generally. There are certainly things that Matt likes, but there are some wrinkles which get aired as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We finish up by talking about podcasts and Matt&#8217;s work with Castos and how they are trying to make it easier to get your voice out there, especially with their WordPress integration.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a lovely chat with a thoughtful and far sighted member of the community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more. You can find all of the links in the show notes by heading over to WP tavern.com forward slash podcast. Where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Matt Medeiros.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Matt Medeiros. Hello, Matt.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:10] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> Nathan, thanks for having me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You are so welcome. If you&#8217;ve been in the WordPress space for, I&#8217;m going to say a decade or more, it&#8217;s very likely that you&#8217;ve heard about Matt Medeiros, but just in case you haven&#8217;t, I&#8217;m going to let Matt do a little bit of an intro to give us his backstory about WordPress, the WordPress space, the projects he&#8217;s been involved in. So, Matt, off you go.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:33] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> Well, my newsletter list says otherwise. So, there&#8217;s still plenty of people who need to know me. So Matt Medeiros. I&#8217;ve been doing WordPress stuff, 10, 15 years. I don&#8217;t know how long it&#8217;s been. Started a podcast called Matt Report back when I started a digital agency. That&#8217;s how I built the digital agency. Ran Matt Report for many, many, many, many years still out there, and now have pivoted this focus on thewpminute.com, which is five minutes of WordPress news every week.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I&#8217;ve been in the WordPress space, agency stuff, plugin stuff, theme stuff, podcasting stuff, YouTube stuff. And now I am the director of podcaster success at castos.com, which is a podcast hosting company, which also has a WordPress plugin. And also the parent company of wordpress.com, Automattic, has invested in Castos a little over a year ago at this point. So it&#8217;s podcasting and WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> We&#8217;ll definitely get into that. I confess I had forgotten that fact. Cast your mind back. Let&#8217;s say it&#8217;s 12 years ago, something like that. What was the thing that made it WordPress as opposed to something else all those years ago? Could have been Drupal, could have been Joomla, could have been Expression Engine. Why WordPress?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:40] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> In fact, it was Drupal, to begin with. That was my first foray into really taking an open source CMS seriously, besides PHP-Nuke, which I had played with, before Drupal. But Drupal came into my professional career as I was head of web services for an ISP, internet service provider.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We used to do things like dial up, ISDN, if you can remember those. T1 lines. And we purchased another ISP that had a web development arm and it was a Drupal shop. And this is around Drupal four and five, around those versions. And the head of design or the head designer at the time, he was like, hey Matt, because we were taking over and other people were leaving and I was going to steer the ship.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He&#8217;s like, I want to get away from Drupal. It is so hard to design on top of. Now you got to remember this is, I don&#8217;t know, 15 years ago, something like that. And he said, there&#8217;s this thing called WordPress. I can really design on top of that. I can do really well with it. I want to try it out. And that was the first theme we bought was the theme called Standard, which was a collaboration way back in the day between John Saddington, Tom McFarlin, and Eric Dye, I believe was his last name.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That was the first theme I ever purchased, in a professional setting. We use that to build themes and do that with our customers. And, and that was the entrance into WordPress. And once I broke off from that company, I just took all that knowledge and started my digital agency with that. And it was domino effect, ever since in the WordPress space.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You&#8217;ve really had a, like a broad, rich, encounter with WordPress though, because for me at least, anyway, it was WordPress websites and then more recently got into podcasting and those are basically the two things that I&#8217;ve done. But, as we&#8217;ll probably find out during the course of the show, you&#8217;ve really dotted around.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the things that I want to raise right at the beginning, and I don&#8217;t know what your thoughts on this are. It&#8217;s a bit of an abstract thought. If we were to rewind the clock, say 20 years ago. Both of us have obviously decided at some point, I think the internet is quite an interesting and fun thing. But I genuinely had no idea, it could have been a flash in the pan. Maybe it would&#8217;ve represented a tiny sliver of what people were doing. Shops, brick and mortar shops would still be thriving. Websites would&#8217;ve been really tangential, hardly anybody might have visited them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was no conception that the phone would become a conduit. That you would carry something around in your back pocket. That computers would be basically portable. None of that was a thought, and yet both of us staked more or less everything on it, which with a bit of hindsight was probably the best decision we ever made.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, you can talk to computers that sit in a tiny box in your kitchen and it will give you coherent answers to everything. Do you feel like you&#8217;re a very privileged person to have stepped into the broader internet and all that that offers?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:28] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> My genesis around getting into this space, if you want to go even deeper into the rabbit hole of who Matt Medeiros is, is my family ran a string of car dealerships for about 45 years in my local, my local area. We weren&#8217;t like this big massive conglomerate auto dealership. We just had two, family owned and operated.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was the technology that was moving, fast paced in that world. Consumer internet being born, websites, you know, this all sounds pretty trivial, but back then it was like, oh wow, we can post a car on the internet and somebody can look at it and email us, or most likely call us back then and buy it? Speaking of the privilege that, like being in that space, having a family that ran this dealership, but because I was the youngest one and I was into it. I was the one that put all the technology together, from General Motors, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They were literally talking to an 17, 18 year old at the time, as the head of the internet department. Because I was the only one who got it, who understood it. My dad did, but you know, I sort of led the charge on that. And, I remember being in college and, you know, when you look at WordPress and open source, one of my, uh, capstone courses was to build something with, I forget what the terms were, but they said build it with multiple packages. And back then I was learning like Linux and Novell and, and Windows NT.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I remember building PHP-Nuke with a bulletin board with, a blog roll. And I was building a car site, and I was like, wouldn&#8217;t it be awesome if somebody could go to this website and book an oil change for their car by filling out this form. And then if you had questions about repairing your car, you could come to this thing called a bulletin board, and have like this little community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What I was doing back then was doing everything that social, that we all take for granted these days with the advancement of technology. And I was like wiring it together with little open source packages. So yeah, roundabout way of getting to, yeah, I feel pretty lucky to fall into that space at an early age.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:10:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I feel that you and I hit a time when you could flip from just having any kind of job into working on the internet, because the barrier to entry in terms of knowledge was so low. You basically had to learn HTML and then along came CSS, it was straightforward.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think the promise now is much more difficult. I can&#8217;t really imagine what it must be like for somebody at the age of 17 or 18. The things that they must need to learn in order to become employable. Speaking of the internet, you mentioned social media and what have you. I wonder what your thoughts are on that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know that we&#8217;re straying away a little bit from WordPress, but it does touch on GPL and it does touch on the broader purpose of the internet. What are your feelings about how the internet has evolved over the last, let&#8217;s say seven, eight years? Things like Facebook, social media, and the associated benefits and harms that go with it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:25] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> I don&#8217;t think humans were ready to be wired up emotionally, to the level that we&#8217;re at these days. Spanning across many, many contexts, right? From your everyday life of sharing pictures of what you&#8217;re eating, what your kids are doing, to more serious things like health, wellness, mental health.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Couple weeks ago suddenly lost my father-in-law and like the grieving factor of online. And you really start to sit back and say like, what, what is this? Like why? Is this value, all of us connected like this? Are we really together in this? Or is it just this digital connection that sort of literally just disappears as the feed refreshes?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it really starts to have you question all of these things. Now there&#8217;s definitely many, many benefits. I mean, friends, that I&#8217;ve made through social, the businesses that I&#8217;ve built, and continue to build. There&#8217;s definitely a plus factor, but there&#8217;s a huge negative and, and things that I don&#8217;t think human beings are really ready for.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I look at it in two different ways. One, I have three very young sons, three boys, under the ages of six. And I&#8217;m just like mentally preparing on how to onboard them to the internet, how I will do that. But I also see things from the broader perspective, is you and I are content creators. We&#8217;re just playing in the WordPress world mostly and softwares and stuff like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I see people who are whatever, they&#8217;re into fashion, they&#8217;re into tech, they&#8217;re into video games, and there&#8217;s a burnout factor. There&#8217;s a, I must continue to create all of this content to please these people who really don&#8217;t care about me, factor. And then there&#8217;s those who really become hits, they do really well. And they&#8217;re not ready for that fame and that spotlight, because they&#8217;re one person with a million YouTube subscribers in their home office.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And they&#8217;re not ready for what that&#8217;s like, to have all of these humans watching them and asking them for things. And it&#8217;s just, it&#8217;s not a mindset that I think we&#8217;re all really ready for, without some education. But we&#8217;re so early that, 50 years from now, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s probably not going to be a thing, because we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re still cresting the analog to the digital. Like you said, the young folks, how are they going to get jobs?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think the, the issue is, is they lose the fundamentals of building technology. When I was learning how to build a website, I was learning how to build a computer. So I knew that there was a CPU and memory and a hard disc, and these things were storing this content and yada, all that fun stuff. Now, with the introduction of whatever, let&#8217;s say, easy web website builders and you just talk to AI and it codes a website for you. There are going to be this swath of people who just don&#8217;t know where all of this stuff lives and how it&#8217;s all connected. So, that was a deep rabbit hole that I just went down, and I hope we tumbled around it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:14] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, really interesting. You mentioned your three children and I think that&#8217;s really fascinating for me. I have children as well, and one of the things that I struggle with. On the one hand, I&#8217;m really a proponent of technology. I love it. There&#8217;s almost nothing about it that I don&#8217;t love.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And yet at the same time, I&#8217;ve noticed that my children have been born into an era in which technology could be literally welded to your hand and, you know, there&#8217;s no escape from it. And so the notifications can come in at all times of day, and night. Stress there on night, so it disrupts things. Like it disrupts the normal cycle of interpersonal relations in a room because, there&#8217;s a bing bong on a phone and suddenly you&#8217;re distracted.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the reason for being in the room with other people is somewhat shattered. And then, you hear about people who leave their phones by their bedsides and the phone goes off in the middle of the night and it disrupts their sleep, and all of these impacts. And whilst I am boldly a proponent of the internet, there are aspects of it which trouble me. And I think your wise point there, right at the end was that we&#8217;re young to this. We&#8217;re 20 years in, maybe a little bit more, but let&#8217;s say roughly 20 years in. And so we don&#8217;t really know where this is going.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s kind of like steering a ship. I&#8217;m imagining somebody in 1492, Christopher Columbus or somebody on a ship, you know, they&#8217;ve set sail. They know they&#8217;ve got a destination, but they don&#8217;t know how long it&#8217;s going to be or when they&#8217;re going to get there. This feels to me like the internet. And I do wonder if some of these things that we may regard as bad habits at the moment will get washed away and replaced, hopefully with more beneficial things. I&#8217;m optimistic about that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:15:52] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> Yeah, I agree.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:15:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Let&#8217;s just turn to the WordPress space, generally speaking. So you&#8217;ve been in it for a long time. Certainly much longer than I have. And you&#8217;ve been somebody that&#8217;s been observing the WordPress space. Not just using the software, but considering it, considering the impact of it, considering the business that can be made around it, and looking at the plugins and the themes and all of that, and having a critical eye on it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a very broad question, but I&#8217;m going to ask it anyway. What have you noticed as the main changes over time? Young people to the community, you&#8217;ve been in the community using WordPress for a couple of years. They won&#8217;t know that there&#8217;s been any changes. The software&#8217;s just the software, but there&#8217;s been a lot. What do you think the main things have been for you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:16:29] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> Yeah, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m going to try to summarize this as quickly as possible that we can break off into different paths that I think are, are relevant. But there was certainly a long span of the same folks doing the same WordCamp talks, I&#8217;m not saying this in a bad way, but there was, I don&#8217;t know, a 10 year cohort of WordPress that I felt, we were all jiving and doing the same thing, showing up to the WordCamps, and everyone knew each other.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The real pivotal milestone, for better or worse, was the introduction of Gutenberg, and the software and how it was introduced and all that stuff. Those pages in the history books have already been written. I think it was at that point where a certain segment of the community was one, they were like, I don&#8217;t want this in WordPress, so I&#8217;m done. There was another segment where, we don&#8217;t know how to code around this, and I don&#8217;t want this coding overhead. And then there was a third, in my view, where a lot of people used it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Excuse might be the wrong word, but it was certainly a time where, man, you&#8217;re 10 or whatever it was, 10 or 12 years into software. That&#8217;s a lifetime of using the same shiny tool. And there&#8217;s just this natural thing, I think, of all of us who are like technologists or like 10, 12 years in, ah, I just got to try something else. And that was a moment, two thirds of these people are leaving because of these reasons. I guess I&#8217;ll leave too, and go find another shiny object.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that&#8217;s where I guess the no code market really stepped in. Not saying because of WordPress, but it was certainly a right time, right place, kind of thing where those tools were getting shinier and better, and it was a great moment for them to somebody else to be like, ah, Webflow, ah, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Coda, Notion, all these things that we&#8217;re just like piecing together like we did with WordPress 10 years ago. Now we can do this again here with these shiny, faster free tools.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that&#8217;s the way that I see it. That change in the community over the milestone of Gutenberg, and up until now there&#8217;s a lot of fresh faces in here, which is great. But there&#8217;s less of this, I don&#8217;t know, warm blanket around all of us these days, that used to be there, for a good 10 year cohort.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the reasons why I started The Matt Report at the time was, one, it&#8217;s because I wasn&#8217;t a developer and I didn&#8217;t know anyone. I didn&#8217;t know how to talk to developers, so I said, well, I&#8217;ll just interview them and, and promote them so that they can get jobs and maybe I&#8217;ll learn more people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But two, when I was at one of my first WordCamps, perfect example, there was, you know, one of the core contributors of WordPress and he would walk by and people like, Oh, I really want to talk to him. I&#8217;m afraid to talk to him. So there was like this celebrity status kind of thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that&#8217;s when it hit me like, oh, people really care about these other people in the community. Let me go and find them and interview them, and prop them up so other people can meet them instead of being, you know, shy or worried to talk about them at a WordCamp. So I think the biggest change, for me anyway, has been the community in the involvement of everyone.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Did I get a sense, I could be wrong. Forgive me if I got this sense and my spidey sense was tingling in the wrong direction. But, I kind of got a feeling about three or four years ago that you, you kinda fell out of love a little bit with WordPress and were seeking paths new. But then you&#8217;ve drifted back in, drift is the wrong word, you&#8217;ve come back in with great aplomb, you know, you&#8217;re back in making all the content and what have you. Is that true? Did you find yourself in that miasma, thinking I don&#8217;t really know whether I belong anymore?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:55] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> Picture us in the, in my therapist office, and you&#8217;re sitting across from me with your pen and notepad. There&#8217;s a lot of things that go into that feeling. You&#8217;re not totally wrong. But, as you know as a content creator, you continue to create all the content. And quite literally, I burned out on the YouTube stuff because it was just a hard slog on the Plugin Tut channel. But then it was, how do I really grow this? How do I grow this podcast and, bring in other, other voices? Because the same thing I just mentioned about this 10 year cohort, all the same people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I could feel those effects on the content that I was doing. That&#8217;s when I started to introduce the no code, maybe the more business aspect, SaaS developers, stuff like that, and bringing that into the fold. It certainly, my love for WordPress, it actually goes much deeper than the software. I think that WordPress itself is, speaking of like jobs and education. This is a tool that can empower individuals, local organizations, states, towns, to put people into a workforce.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And WordPress is, I think, a great learning tool. A great building tool to do all that stuff, aside from the fun web stuff that we can do with it. So you&#8217;re not too far off, but there was sort of a reshaping of how do I introduce new voices? Because I could feel probably just like you, the social media, the engagement of everyone sort of just getting burned out from the same old thing in WordPress, and that was probably me shifting the way I do content at the time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:21:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So shifting more recently, your content creation, it&#8217;s not entirely this, but you&#8217;ve moved to a new moniker. You&#8217;ve got The WP Minute. Just give us a bit of an insight into what the intention was there and how it&#8217;s going.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:21:46] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> We can thank our mutual friend Davinder Singh Kainth for getting me into this, uh, yet another content rabbit hole. But I also thank him very much for pushing me in this direction. I had an idea that I pitched to him one day and I was like, hey, probably just like your spidey sense went off. I&#8217;ve gotten really busy with the Castos day job, three young boys. It&#8217;s like, how the heck can I even do long form content anymore?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I wanted to do short form content and I approached Davinder and I said, hey, what I&#8217;d really like to do is a spoken version of your, of your newsletter. Fast forward, to make a long story short, he just said, how about you just start your own and I&#8217;ll just support you and I said, I don&#8217;t really want to do my own, I just want to, just want to piggyback off of somebody else. And that&#8217;s how we, we got into The WP Minute. So it&#8217;s your favorite five minutes of WordPress news, every Wednesday. But it&#8217;s really grown, to, uh, a small but mighty community. Just introduced Erik Karkovack, who is a top WP Tavern commenter, as the head editor or the editor of The WP Minute.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So he&#8217;s working for me, air quotes, full time as the editor of putting together all the news, curating the news. And then I read the news, every Wednesday, and it&#8217;s just a short five minutes, so you&#8217;re busy, you&#8217;re a busy WordPress professional, you don&#8217;t have the time. We get all the top headlines for you and summarize it for you. And we have a fun community. So if you&#8217;re into the news, I, I certainly recommend The WP Minute.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> How do you decide what stays in and what&#8217;s goes out? I face this problem. I have to decide which podcast episode I&#8217;m going to make, but it&#8217;s much more straightforward because the stuff that I&#8217;m producing content on, probably won&#8217;t matter whether it&#8217;s next week or the week after, it&#8217;s less critical. But for you, you&#8217;ve really got one shot and you&#8217;ve got to presumably try and get all the good bits in in five minutes. That&#8217;s hard, because in the WordPress community, as you know, I can talk about it for at least an hour and a half every week. How do you decide what stays in and what gets cut onto the floor?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:41] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> Yeah, so I look at the WP Minute as probably the best thing that I&#8217;m ever going to create for WordPress, right? So Matt Report, all the plugins, themes, services, consultations I&#8217;ve done, I feel like the WP Minute is the best thing that I&#8217;m going to contribute to this community. As far as I can see, and I look at it as community driven journalism without, self-promotion on this point.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The idea is if you really want to have a hand in the news, you could join the membership and be part of this, and you join the membership to support it, because it costs money. And I try to be as transparent as possible of, there&#8217;s hosting, there&#8217;s podcast hosting, there&#8217;s paying Eric, there&#8217;s paying Raquel, there&#8217;s paying Pat to run this team.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the idea is if you want to get the stories out, you join us for short money to support the whole cause. And what I call the members, they call them producers. So you, the community member, can help produce the show. And as you know, Nathan, you get people knocking on your door to promote their product, promote their thing, and it&#8217;s like, hey, great, put your money where your mouth is and if you want your news to be heard, submit it to, what we call the link squad at The WP Minute. It&#8217;s a member curation. So you have the editorial team, myself, Eric, Pat, Raquel, and then you have the members who contribute the news. We all watch the news.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You know, I got some Slack bots wired up. We get all the hot topics pumped right into the Slack channel so we can all collaborate on it. But then everyone sort of gets to have a vote. So people who put in their links, if their link makes it to the news, then they all get a credit thank you, both in the newsletter and the podcast. Now the idea is it&#8217;s supposed to be a five minute show. So if there&#8217;s a ton of news and somebody has voted for their top 10 slider plugins for October, chances are that one&#8217;s not going to make it. But we&#8217;ve had some times where we&#8217;ll cut a story from make.wordpress.org.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hey, we&#8217;ve got WordPress 6.1 release candidate one is ready. Please test it. Those are things that we always include to raise awareness, but if there&#8217;s acquisition news, community news, Tumblr News, like things that are really big and impactful, those things might drop because those things happen a lot more. So that&#8217;s not the most educated answer of how we select the news, but it is a community effort, and then within the confines of, hey look, this is also short form, so we try to keep it to five to seven minutes every week. People have said to me, why isn&#8217;t it called The WP Minutes?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:07] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You&#8217;ve been doing this like you said, for such a long time, and so you&#8217;ve been inspecting the community and what have you. You&#8217;ve got this media channel now, WP Minute, I know you&#8217;re doing a bunch of other stuff, and we&#8217;ll get onto that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Have you noticed over the last 10, 12, 8, whatever number of years. Have you noticed that the audience has changed? The desire of the content for the audience has changed? Because, when I started listening to WordPress content, really the only stuff I could find was how tos. It was, here I am, I know stuff about code. I&#8217;m going to tell you about code. Whereas now, if you look around, I feel that you can get news on almost everything.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You know, you&#8217;ve got news about accessibility. You&#8217;ve got news about governance. You&#8217;ve got news about the plugins. You&#8217;ve got news about the themes, full site editing. The list could go on and on. And it seems almost like we&#8217;ve really properly got a little ecosystem where you don&#8217;t need to code, you could just be a community member talking about the community. So any thoughts on that?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:27:05] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on that. I talk about this topic a lot, I really just put all my cards out on the table and I could be totally wrong and it wouldn&#8217;t, certainly wouldn&#8217;t be the first time. But I think that the audience size, and again, this goes back to your spidey sense from before. I think that the audience size for the type of content that you and I put out is maximum, if you had the whole globe of human beings in front of you, the whole earth is probably about 8,000 people, out of whatever, 8, 9 billion people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think that&#8217;s our cap for WordPress news, the inside baseball or how, how the community is put together, the ins and outs of the project, right. I think that the cap is 8,000 people. Now, the cap for how to put together a WooCommerce store, vastly different, right? those are the ones that, I mean, that&#8217;s hundreds of thousands, if not, uh, I don&#8217;t know, millions of people, who would want that kind of content? So I think yes, it has changed. I think the one constant is content that is still developer centric, is still the king of WordPress content, because there&#8217;s just far more WordPress developers who care about how to put sites together, than it is about the business side of WordPress and, maybe the community side, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I think that it has certainly shifted, although maybe even has gotten even tighter into the development space with the introduction of Gutenberg, full sight editing and just the general changes of WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, I know that if you told me 10 years ago, could you have made a business out of, whatever I, Matt Report and The WP Minute, I probably would&#8217;ve said no, I&#8217;m just trying to like grow brand awareness, which I was. I think I&#8217;ve successfully turned it, air quote, successfully turned it, into a media business, but it&#8217;s still very, very small. Very appreciative to like the sponsors over the years, and I have done really well compared to the larger podcasting industry, But, the audience I think for the stuff that, at least that I do, not trying to put you in the same bucket as me, is pretty small. It&#8217;s just people going in and out, all the time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:29:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Given that we&#8217;ve both hitched our cart to the WordPress space, what are your thoughts about the future? Because I personally feel at least anyway, that the future is quite bright. I&#8217;m fairly optimistic about the progress around full sight editing and the block editor. I can well understand why people have become dissuaded with the desire to use WordPress into the future, I can understand that. But I feel that there&#8217;s light at the end of that tunnel, albeit, I don&#8217;t know how many days, weeks, months, or years it&#8217;s going to be before the train finally emerges out of the tunnel. But for me, it&#8217;s important because I do podcasting. I do content in the WordPress space. I would like to think that WordPress has a bright and glowing future. Maybe you share that optimism or maybe not.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:30:02] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> Yeah, I feel like I&#8217;m a realist in the fact that Automattic will take over wordpress.org, and it&#8217;ll just be more of a prominent upsell to either Jetpack or wordpress.com. And there is nothing wrong with that in my eyes, okay. So let&#8217;s just set that aside for a moment. I&#8217;ve recently, so hold that thought.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve recently been using Ghost, another open source CMS and, I&#8217;m using their paid version because like the folks who would make that decision to not have to maintain WordPress, get a hosting account, do plugins and themes. I said, hey, for this little side, side, side project that I&#8217;m working on, I&#8217;m just going to pay ghosts 30 bucks a month.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I want to be carefree like everyone else who picks these no code tools. This is what they&#8217;re all saying. This is why they&#8217;re all moving there. And I&#8217;ll tell you, yes, Ghost is good in the lane that Ghost runs in. But just the other day I was like, ah, I need to add a landing page, or I need to edit the footer.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I go to the help docs and it&#8217;s like, install your code editor. Set up a local repo., like run docker containers, and I&#8217;m like, I don&#8217;t want this. Where&#8217;s my full sight editing? Where&#8217;s my Beaver Builder? Where&#8217;s my Elementor? I just want to edit this one thing. Why can&#8217;t I do it? There is a luxury in WordPress that I think a lot of, a user interface luxury. Uh, a no code luxury. Call it what you want, that when I just want to click something and edit, for all the faults that you hear people complain about speed and performance. Man, put this up against the Ghosts, the Webflows, the Wix&#8217;s.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was looking at card.co, the other, I think it&#8217;s card.co. It&#8217;s like a super simplified like page building, five page portfolio site and I wanted to upload multiple photos. This was for again, the passing of my father-in-law and I wanted to put a little memorial site up, and I had hundreds of photos that I wanted to upload and I had to upload one at a time. And I said, no, I just want you drag a bunch of photos like I do in WordPress into a media gallery and display it. And these other tools just, they just don&#8217;t do it as easy as WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, like you, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m an optimist on using WordPress. It&#8217;s the learning curve and the maintenance. But I think that&#8217;s a world we&#8217;re all slowly moving to where, that will all continue to get simplified by Automattic, by web hosts. Full sight editing. Oh boy. I&#8217;m really struggling with that big time. Gutenberg, yes, there are still some things I really struggle with, but there are some other great tools as alternatives that I use. And that&#8217;s the patchwork that I&#8217;m doing now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:32:38] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> The grass is always greener. There&#8217;s always that, I&#8217;m going to try that other CMS and see how it goes. And I&#8217;ve done the same, I&#8217;ve always ended up back with WordPress. It always seems like a, a comfortable pair of shoes. Terrible analogy, but there you go.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:32:52] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> WordPress, a comfortable pair of shoes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:32:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Let&#8217;s get into the awkward business of Automattic and your thoughts around that. And you mentioned a moment ago that you thought that wordpress.org was moving inexorably towards being dominated by Automattic. What makes you say that, and does it trouble you? You went to great pains to say that it didn&#8217;t trouble you, but maybe on some level it does?.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:33:14] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> I think that the biggest factor here is communication, right? It&#8217;s communication from WordPress leadership. It&#8217;s communication from Jetpack and Automattic. These are signs that are quite obvious. So, I forget six months ago or something like that, I interviewed the uh, president or CEO of wordpress.com, talking about their new price points because they had done new price points.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the obvious gorilla in the room to me is, what are we doing with WooCommerce? We collectively as Automattic, like, when are you really going to compete with Shopify? And you know, he is, oh, you can compete with Shopify right now. You can just sign up for a WordPress.com. Yeah, but it&#8217;s nothing, it&#8217;s nothing like going to Shopify to start an e-commerce store. Nothing is guiding you as a merchant, as a store seller, as an entrepreneur.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So these are obvious things that I can see, that everyone can see are the obvious paths to monetization to Automattic. And I think, one, we all step back and say, What would WordPress look like without Automattic? What would that world look like? Who would it be? Would it be Salesforce? Would it be Oracle? Would it be Microsoft? Do you want them in the lead of this software?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think that the best steward for all of this stuff, .org included, is Automattic. The challenge is, communication, direction. And do we all really get a seat at the table, question mark? And I fight for that seat at the table from my point of view, which is the website builder, the entrepreneur, the user, not a developer, certainly not a developer. But from my perspective, these are the things that I fight for. And I fight for WordPress to be open source because I think it is, in a world where we all go closed source, like I said before, this is things that could impact local economies.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a tool that could get somebody who&#8217;s really struggling in life, to get a job in technology because you know how to make a WordPress post. These are the building blocks of the fundamentals of the internet, in my eyes. So, to me it&#8217;s, hey, go Automattic. Tax us, air quotes, tax us. I know this is interesting, me being in New England and you being in England to me, for me to say tax us. But that&#8217;s fine with me. I used to say the same thing when I used to sell themes. Why is this process so difficult? Why don&#8217;t we have the data? Why isn&#8217;t dot org just a marketplace?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am fine getting a 30% tax. If I can sell my goods in a place that&#8217;s trusted, secure, that we&#8217;re true partners with. And it just hasn&#8217;t happened because I feel that all roads lead to, we&#8217;ll monetize WordPress, this is Automattic speaking. We&#8217;ll monetize WordPress through Jetpack, wordpress.org, and then we&#8217;ll eventually upsell, hey, if you don&#8217;t want to host it yourself, come to .com, or Pressable. And I don&#8217;t see anything wrong with that. It&#8217;s just everyone, I think needs to sort of just face the fact and build their business, their plugin business around that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What I don&#8217;t like is overstepping and, and the hidden paths to upsell without anyone saying anything, ala Jetpack. I still think Jetpack is good for the right user. In fact, I used it on that memorial site because it&#8217;s a fantastic tool for quick and easy. But I think it&#8217;s also going to dominate other SEO plug-ins, other contact form plugins, the blue collar digital workforce that I try to advocate for a lot in the content that I put out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:36:35] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What do you think about the governance of the project? So at the moment, we have the model, which is often called the benevolent dictator for life, and it kind of trickles down from there. Would you like there to be forays into altering that model? Are you happy with the fact that there is one person governing for life, or would you like to see little bits of that chipped away, chunks of the project, which are governed by the community more?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:37:00] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> I really appreciate the three conversations that Matt and I have had on my podcast. I think it&#8217;s been three. I don&#8217;t think that there is, when I have a problem with my MacBook, I don&#8217;t call up Tim Cook, and say hey man, come on my podcast, let&#8217;s talk about this Apple ecosystem you&#8217;ve got here, speaking of a 30% tax. It&#8217;s great for us as a community to have a single person that is semi approachable to have conversations with you. To be at WordCamps and have this, literally armed lengths away, to have a conversation with. Having said all of that, yes, I would like change. As I&#8217;ve told Matt, he does an insane amount of stuff.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Automattic, wordpress.org, Tumblr, and Automattic is like 25 different products. One of them my favorite, which is Simple Note App, Jetpack, and all the other stuff that he does in life. How can he do it all? And I think that is a real issue. We look at the last couple of weeks ish, he&#8217;s actually talked more openly about where he wants to go with Tumblr than I feel he has with WordPress dot org, and how can you balance that?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think it&#8217;s a super challenge. I think, he thinks he can do it and he is doing it, but I think there should be some level of change. And Josepha again gracious to have her on the podcast once. How much can she possibly load on her back to do all of the work that she does? So, yes, I mean, I don&#8217;t have the answer for it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s easy. I think a lot of people think that it&#8217;s easier said than done. But there should be something, some kind of governance model change, which I know people have pushed for in the past. I just don&#8217;t see how, how Matt can steer so many ships at once.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:38:46] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Speaking of steering a lot of ships. You&#8217;ve not only got The WP Minute and various other bits and pieces. You&#8217;ve also got a real interest in how podcasts are made, not just because you&#8217;re making podcasts and you go through that whole editing process and interviewing guests, much like we&#8217;re doing right now. But you&#8217;ve also taken a great interest in the technology behind how podcasts work. Actually just occurs to me, many people might not even know that there is a whole industry behind podcasting, but there is, and Castos is one of them. How long have you been now with Castos and what do you do over there?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:39:19] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> Yeah, so two and a half years, something like that. Director of Podcaster success. I try to make podcasters coming in to Castos successful with their podcast, however they might define success, Again, joining Caso because one, I&#8217;m a podcaster, two, they have a fantastic WordPress plugin.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s a commitment to open source, on the WordPress side, there&#8217;s a commitment to open RSS. These are two worlds that collide greatly with me, and I&#8217;m a huge proponent, of course on open source and open distribution. You know, the perfect example is what&#8217;s the difference? Well, the, difference is a Spotify where you have to have the Spotify app to listen to a particular show, and open RSS means you can subscribe and distribute anywhere that accepts RSS.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The world of podcasting, it&#8217;s funny, it continues to grow and there continues to be this excitement around it, but it continues to be more in more corporate interest. There is a tiny, tiny, tiny open source team that&#8217;s sort of leading the charge for, I&#8217;ll dumb it down, but RSS standards.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s called Podcasting 2.0, and you can go to the podcastindex.org, and they run their own index, which is different than Apple, right? So Apple has their index, but you have to, you know, register and do all this stuff with Apple. Podcastindex.org is an open, so think of it as almost like wordpress.org, if you will.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And they&#8217;re really leading the charge of enhancing the RSS feed. Doing things, more things in the RSS feed, like micro payment support, transcripts, chapters, live feed item tags, chat, cross platform chat. So they&#8217;re introducing a lot of this data and information that can help podcasters, and their challenges, similar to WordPress. They have to get other podcast hosts and other podcast apps to support these name spaces so that it&#8217;s for the greater good of the whole podcast economy or, or industry, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, you know, I&#8217;m a huge proponent of that. Again, to talk about like the approach of Matt, Matt Mullenweg to pull it back. I know, well, Matt&#8217;s from Texas, one of the head guys at Podcast Index is from Texas, Adam Curry, and I sent an email to Matt and Adam and I said, hey, you guys should talk to each other. You both know each other, you&#8217;re both into open source, open distribution. You all should have a conversation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And they, and they had a conversation and that Matt tied together the Pocket Cast team to them, and they had some great conversations. So, yeah, open source, open collaboration, it&#8217;s a great thing and I hope to keep waving that flag for podcasting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:41:52] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s really interesting. I wonder if we are on the cusp of something akin to RSS with things like Mastodon, based upon Activity Hub, which is very like RSS. So essentially it&#8217;s an open platform where you can attach your social media stuff. I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve come across this exodus from Twitter over the last couple of weeks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there seemed to be a lot of people who, over the last few weeks have made up their mind that they would like something a bit more open. They would like to be able to get the content and post the content that they wish without the constraints of being logged in to some proprietary system. And in many of the comments that I&#8217;ve seen in people&#8217;s flight from Twitter, they keep talking about podcasts and how podcasting, 20 years ago, I believe it was Dave Winer who came up with the spec for RSS for podcasts, I could be wrong about that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But just how, with the benefit of hindsight, the whole RSS open nature of podcasts, so take Spotify and all those other things out of the equation. The fact that my podcast, your podcast, is available completely for free. You don&#8217;t need any sort of system, particularly, you just need to subscribe to a podcast feed, which is held on the website. Just how breathtakingly clever that was with a bit of hindsight.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:43:03] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> Yeah, yeah. Adam Curry as well helped, lead that charge. And he&#8217;s, he&#8217;s the one that&#8217;s sort of leading up the podcast index stuff, and podcasting 2.0 stuff. Yeah, it is great. A lot of the technology is, it&#8217;s very easy to implement, right? It&#8217;s all part of the RSS feed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, you know, the challenge is, is sharing that data. So, it&#8217;s a, I don&#8217;t know if platform war is the right phrase for it, but you know, if you have your podcast on Spotify, Spotify can give you more analytics. They can do things in app that are for the better of the, of the listener. But don&#8217;t forget that it will be for the better of Spotify first, because they&#8217;re going to be the ones that run the ads and take a larger chunk of the profits or what have you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whereas open RSS, we&#8217;re all fending for ourself, and as the more collaboration and the more people who support the innovations, the better we&#8217;ll all be. But that&#8217;s the challenge. To get everyone on the, on the same page. It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s actually no, a lot of similarities to WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:44:01] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You mentioned a moment ago that you feel that podcasting is still growing? I, I honestly have no insight into that whatsoever, but it does feel much more of a mainstream thing this year than it was last year and the year before that and so on. Is that in fact the case? Is there still a case to be made, is there data to back up that, yeah, podcasts really are still growing, and if your business or your interest, your hobby is something that you want to plunge into a podcast, it&#8217;s probably worth your time and effort.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:44:27] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> You have to kind of look at it, obviously I&#8217;ll call myself an insider to the podcasting space, but there is a lot more money and a lot more interest coming in from what I&#8217;ll call the corporate level. And the corporate level translates into Wondery&#8217;s, Amazon. Amazon owns Wondery, which is probably the premier podcast production company creating fiction, true crime, entertainment podcasts. And that&#8217;s all backed by advertisement. That can be openly distributed, but because Amazon owns it, if you listen to it on Amazon&#8217;s music app, then you get it without the ads. But if you listen to it on Apple Podcasts, you get it with the ads, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So there&#8217;s this big interest in advertising, and celebrities and movies and movie industry and all that stuff. Then there&#8217;s the flip side, there&#8217;s you and me. The guys that make probably a few thousand dollars a year, instead of a few million dollars a year, like the big boys.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you go to podcastindex.org, I&#8217;m looking at it right now. There&#8217;s 4 million podcasts in the index. I think Apple says around two and a half million. But there is a stat right below that, that within the last three days there&#8217;s been 109,000 updates to podcasts. And in the last 90 days, 483,000 have been updated.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So of the 4 million, yes, there&#8217;s a bunch that have probably either just ended, you know, it&#8217;s just a series of content that people have done. Pod faded where they have given up. The true earmark to that is 483,000 in the last 90 days. So people get scared of the 4 million mark. Like, oh my God. How is my podcast going to live within 4 million? But when you look at the data of 500,000 active within the last 90 days, you still have a shot, and yes, the answer is it&#8217;s still growing for the hobbyists, like you and I.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:46:14] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s really amazing. I feel so privileged in a way that I made the decision to get into it a little bit early when things were probably less competitive than they are now. That I&#8217;ve just kept banging on with it week week after week. It&#8217;s, yeah, it&#8217;s pretty amazing. Uh, I realize that we&#8217;ve used up a lot more of your time than I should have done, I apologize. So I&#8217;m just going to round off with one very simple question. You&#8217;ve been in the community many, many years. Let&#8217;s imagine five years, 10 years into the future. Do you reckon you&#8217;ll still be</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:46:40] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> here?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, a hundred percent. I&#8217;ll be using WordPress, as far as I can see, again. One, because I love it as a publishing tool. Two because I believe in it as a tool for somebody to learn and educate themselves and, and find a new opportunity, whether that&#8217;s coding, designing or writing. This is a tool that can impact economies. Three, I love, I just love the idea of, of open source on the web and really believe in that wholeheartedly. So yeah, I see myself sticking around.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:47:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Matt Medeiros, thank you for joining us on the podcast today.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:47:12] <strong>Matt Medeiros:</strong> Thanks, Nathan.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>On the podcast today we have <a href=\"https://craftedbymatt.com/about-matt/\">Matt Medeiros</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Matt is the driving force behind many WordPress initiatives. That could be the creation of plugins, WordPress news media, as well as podcasts about all manner of WordPress specific subjects. He likes to juggle multiple projects at once.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Currently he’s the Director of Podcaster Success at <a href=\"https://castos.com/\">Castos</a>, which is a podcast hosting company with a WordPress plugin.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He’s on the podcast today to give his take on the past, present and future of WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many millions of people like to work with the WordPress software. They create websites, plugins and themes which extend what the CMS can do. Others, such as Matt, like to ponder the broader purpose and direction of the software and the community around it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://mattreport.com/\">The Matt Report</a> and <a href=\"https://thewpminute.com/\">The WP Minute</a> have enabled us to hear about what the community is doing, what it wants and where its points of friction are. He’s talked to hundreds of people about what WordPress was, is, and might be, and so is in a unique position to pontificate about what WordPress, beyond the software, is.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We start with Matt’s backstory. How he found WordPress and why he started to use it. We talk about how he’s dipped in and out of the community over the years; more excited at times, less so at others.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The conversation moves on to some of the trends that Matt has noticed. He identifies how the software and the wider community have altered over time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We talk about how The WP Minute got started and how he’s building up a community of like-minded people to consume as well as to create the content that they’re putting out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Towards the end, we get into the governance of WordPress and the future of the project more generally. There are certainly things that Matt likes, but there are some wrinkles which get aired as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We finish up talking about podcasts and Matt’s work with Castos and how they are trying to make it easier to get your voice out there, especially with their WordPress integration.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It’s a lovely chat with a thoughtful and far sighted member of the community.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Useful links.</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://mattreport.com/\">Matt Report</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://thewpminute.com/\">The WP Minute</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://castos.com/\">Castos</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, 30 Nov 2022 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:47;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:118:\"WPTavern: Gutenberg 14.6 Adds List View for Editing Navigation Block, Introduces New Automatic Color Palette Generator\";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=139909\";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:128:\"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-14-6-adds-list-view-for-editing-navigation-block-introduces-new-automatic-color-palette-generator\";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:4827:\"<p><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/23/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-6-23-november/\">Gutenberg 14.6</a> was released last week with a long list of small but impactful refinements to core blocks and the full-site editing experience. One of the most practical enhancements included in this update is the <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/45546\">new list view for editing the Navigation block</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gutenberg contributor Fabian Kägy published a quick video that helps to visualize the changes: </p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>The list view makes it easy for users to reorder navigation items using a drag-and-drop UI. The Navigation block in the content area instantly previews items that are moved in the block inspector.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>As part of a larger effort to make it easier to edit Navigation Links off the canvas, this release also <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/45751\">adds a new URL field to the Navigation Link inspector</a> controls. Now user can edit the URL from the inspector controls as well as from the main link control.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />image credit: PR <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/45751\">45751</a>\n\n\n\n<p>Version 14.6 also <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/43496\">adds a variation picker to the Group block placeholder</a>. When users insert a new Group block, it will now allow them to select from among different variations to set the layout for the block. This makes it significantly easier for users to get started when using a Group block, instead of having to fiddle around to manually assign the desired layout.</p>\n\n\n\n<img />\n\n\n\n<p>One of the most creative features introduced in this release is the new <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/40988\">“Randomize colors” feature</a> that will automatically generate color palettes on the fly. It utilizes hue rotations based on the <a href=\"https://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~dag/CUBEHELIX/\">Cubehelix color scheme</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Hue rotation consists in rotating the hue wheel — such as the one you<br />might see in a color picker — by a determined amount of degrees, each turn<br />generating a new color,&#8221; Gutenberg contributor Vicente Canales said in the PR for the feature. He also noted that this new feature surfaces &#8220;the need for themes to explicitly support style randomization, as well as the need to incorporate a way to define a color&#8217;s role within a palette as a way of avoiding getting, for example, palettes where background and foreground don&#8217;t contrast, rendering text illegible.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>While randomizing color palettes is a fun feature for users, some theme and plugin developers do not see the need for it to land in core Gutenberg and eventually WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Yes, it&#8217;s fun, but from a theme designer&#8217;s perspective I don&#8217;t see an urgent use since the theme designer can provide numerous style variations,&#8221; block and theme developer Ellen Bauer <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/40988#issuecomment-1316048575\">commented</a> on the PR. &#8220;For the user this provides the same kind of &#8216;fun feel&#8217;, but theme designers would provide an experience that actually works.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;There is so much potential in styles, but not much is published yet. So as a theme builder I feel style export/imports, the option to separate font styles from color styles are much more basic features I would love to have first.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Newsletter Glue co-founder Lesley Sim agreed that it&#8217;s a fun idea but that anyone using a theme will probably rely on the theme&#8217;s style variations.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;And that will probably feel like a randomizer to them already,&#8221; Sim said. &#8220;At least, that&#8217;s how I personally view style variations.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d much rather focus on basic features first too, rather than fun ones. Let plugin and theme developers build the fun.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other notable features in Gutenberg 14.6 include the following:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Block Toolbar is now hidden when Spacing Visualizer is displayed</li>\n\n\n\n<li>New keyboard shortcut for transforming Paragraph block into Heading block</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Focal Point handle updated to be more representative of the broader selection area</li>\n\n\n\n<li>New “Minimum Height” dimension control is now available for the Group and Post Content block</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>This update&#8217;s performance benchmarks for the site editor and post editor are significantly improved for three out of four metrics over the last release. Check out the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/11/23/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-6-23-november/\">release post</a> for a more detailed look at every PR included 14.6. </p>\n\n\n\n<p></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, 30 Nov 2022 03:12:10 +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:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:59:\"Do The Woo Community: Cooking Up Some Code with Kim Coleman\";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=73751\";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:58:\"https://dothewoo.io/cooking-up-some-code-with-kim-coleman/\";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:408:\"<p>Kim talks about looking at code as words, learning PHP, her journey as a WordPress developer, and choosing her lifestyle and her career.</p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://dothewoo.io/cooking-up-some-code-with-kim-coleman/\">Cooking Up Some Code with Kim Coleman</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, 29 Nov 2022 11:25:00 +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:49;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:98:\"WPTavern: Meetup.com Removes Accessibility Overlay In Response to WordPress Community’s Concerns\";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=139886\";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:106:\"https://wptavern.com/meetup-com-removes-accessibility-overlay-in-response-to-wordpress-communitys-concerns\";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:4753:\"<p>Meetup.com has <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/11/23/meetup-com-accessibility-overlay-update/\">removed its accessibility overlay</a>, a recent addition to the company&#8217;s website that <a href=\"https://wptavern.com/meetup-com-raises-concerns-with-new-accessibility-overlay\">raised concerns with the WordPress community</a> and the broader community of accessibility professionals. The overly was powered by <a href=\"https://www.equalweb.com/html5/?_id=8591&did=1116&_gid=202027&trace=equalweb_menu_en_\">EqualWeb</a>, a product which claims to provide automated compliance with accessibility standards but doesn&#8217;t address inaccessibility at the root of the problem.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress Community Team leaders requested a meeting with the company and were able to persuade them to take the overlay down and focus on direct improvements to the Meetup.com platform. WordPress community organizer Angela Jin reported that their director of engineering and other team members were &#8220;very receptive to our feedback.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;EqualWeb’s widget does scan for accessibility issues, and the original plan was for EqualWeb’s team (real people!) to provide progressive fixes to the overlay,&#8221; Jin said. &#8220;Meetup’s hope was to provide, over time, a fully accessible overlay.&#8221; </p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the meeting, WordPress&#8217; Community Team representatives contended that overlays create a poor user experience for people who use assistive technology while also ignoring key WCAG issues. This is why there are growing legal and privacy concerns associated with the overlays, which do not deliver on the promise of providing equal and open access to platforms.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>After reporting on the issue earlier this month, one reader asked if the overlays  actually work to address the issues and, if so, what is motivating the complaint.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;They don’t work,&#8221; WordPress accessibility contributor Joe Dolson said. &#8220;To the degree that they do work, they mostly offer functionality that is already duplicated by the user’s own technology.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dolson examined Meetup.com&#8217;s overlay and highlighted a few of its major shortcomings:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>This particular overlay also commits the cardinal sin of labeling tools by disability, rather than according to what they do. For example, if you turn on the “Visually Impaired” mode, that’s actually a high contrast mode; which is only relevant if your visual impairment benefits from high contrast. This kind of presumptive labeling is ineffective at best (because it makes it difficult to find what tool might actually help you, should you need it), and offensive at worst.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the reality is that overlay tools are a misdirection of resources: if a user needs high contrast, large fonts, or other tools, they need those on <em>all</em> websites, and they need a solution that’s their tool, in their control, with their settings – and the majority of users already have that in their assistive technology.&#8221;</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>As part of revising its accessibility roadmap, Meetup.com is requesting feedback from WordPress community members with experience using its platforms across devices with accessibility features enabled. Those who have 50 minutes in the coming weeks can request to speak with Meetup representatives regarding which features should be prioritized. People can also leave feedback in the comments.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meetup.com&#8217;s decision to remove the overlay was well-received by accessibility advocates who hope to see more changes to the platform&#8217;s source code based on community feedback in the next few weeks. Beyond these changes, some community members are also recommending Meetup.com add people with disabilities to their team to get more first-hand information without having to publicly walk back an implementation like this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Although I applaud Meetup for removing the Overlay, they are going at this backwards,&#8221; WordPress user @bryan202 said in the comments. &#8220;They should have an independent company who employs persons with disabilities to audit their platform and inform them of the issues. If Meetup wants feedback on the specific issues this choice of overlay caused, then they should be willing to pay for that market feedback. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;As a disabled person we are constantly called upon to give feedback for free. We deserve to be respected for our time, efforts and feedback. Meetup needs to expand their technical team to include persons with disabilities so they have an inside look since their current team is missing this essential component.&#8221;</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, 29 Nov 2022 03:18:35 +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:\"\";}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}s:4:\"type\";i:128;s:7:\"headers\";O:42:\"Requests_Utility_CaseInsensitiveDictionary\":1:{s:7:\"\0*\0data\";a:8:{s:6:\"server\";s:5:\"nginx\";s:4:\"date\";s:29:\"Mon, 19 Dec 2022 08:07:26 GMT\";s:12:\"content-type\";s:8:\"text/xml\";s:13:\"last-modified\";s:29:\"Mon, 19 Dec 2022 08:00:35 GMT\";s:4:\"vary\";s:15:\"Accept-Encoding\";s:15:\"x-frame-options\";s:10:\"SAMEORIGIN\";s:16:\"content-encoding\";s:2:\"br\";s:4:\"x-nc\";s:9:\"HIT ord 1\";}}s:5:\"build\";s:14:\"20211221000300\";}','no');
