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";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:1:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16:"WordPress Planet";s: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:28:"http://planet.wordpress.org/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"language";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2:"en";s: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:47:"WordPress Planet - http://planet.wordpress.org/";s: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:"item";a:50:{i:0;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:112:"WPTavern: Record Bounty Awarded as Critical Privilege Escalation Vulnerability Patched in LiteSpeed Cache Plugin";s: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=159878";s: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:123:"https://wptavern.com/record-bounty-awarded-as-critical-privilege-escalation-vulnerability-patched-in-litespeed-cache-plugin";s: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:4028:"<p>The LiteSpeed Cache Plugin, widely used to enhance the speed and performance of WordPress websites, recently patched a critical <a href="https://patchstack.com/articles/critical-privilege-escalation-in-litespeed-cache-plugin-affecting-5-million-sites/">unauthenticated privilege escalation</a> vulnerability (CVE-2024-28000). With over 5 million active installations, this plugin is a critical tool for many WordPress users.</p>



<p><a href="https://patchstack.com/database/researcher/185b44a7-75e2-4c31-848d-a534cb44e821">John Blackbourn</a>, a member of the Patchstack Alliance community, reported the vulnerability and was <strong>awarded $14,400, marking the highest bounty ever given in WordPress bug bounty history.</strong> </p>



<p>Oliver Sild (Patchstack&#8217;s CEO) told WPTavern, &#8220;LiteSpeed Cache has its <a href="https://patchstack.com/for-plugins/">mVDP program</a> with Patchstack through which the vulnerability was reported to the <a href="https://patchstack.com/bug-bounty/">Patchstack zero-day program</a>. We work directly with both researchers and plugin developers to ensure vulnerabilities get patched properly before public disclosures.&#8221; </p>



<p>Given its severity, researchers have rated it as <strong>“Critical,” with a CVSS score of 9.8</strong>, and strongly advise updating to at least version 6.4 immediately. <a href="https://patchstack.com/articles/critical-privilege-escalation-in-litespeed-cache-plugin-affecting-5-million-sites/">Rafie Muhammad’s post</a> has more details on the technical side of the vulnerability and its patch.</p>



<p>The vulnerability stems from the plugin’s user simulation feature, which relies on a weak security hash using known values. This flaw could allow unauthorized visitors to gain Administrator-level access to a site. Patchstack’s Rafie Muhammad confirmed: “We were able to determine that a brute force attack that iterates all 1 million known possible values for the security hash and passes them in the litespeed_hash cookie — even running at a relatively low 3 requests per second — is able to gain access to the site as any given user ID”.</p>



<p>Wordfence explained that the <a href="https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2024/08/over-5000000-site-owners-affected-by-critical-privilege-escalation-vulnerability-patched-in-litespeed-cache-plugin/">vulnerability</a> is “due to the plugin not properly restricting the role simulation functionality allowing a user to set their current ID to that of an administrator, if they have access to a valid hash which can be found in the debug logs or through brute force. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to spoof their user ID to that of an administrator, and then create a new user account with the administrator role utilizing the /wp-json/wp/v2/users REST API endpoint.” They also cautioned: “We have no doubts that this vulnerability will be actively exploited very soon.”</p>



<p>This vulnerability does not affect Windows-based WordPress instances but poses a risk to those running on other operating systems, such as Linux. “This vulnerability highlights the critical importance of ensuring the strength and unpredictability of values that are used as security hashes or nonces. The rand() and mt_rand() functions in PHP return values that may be “random enough” for many use cases, but they are not unpredictable enough to be used in security-related features.”, Rafie Muhammad added.</p>



<p>Last year, the LiteSpeed Cache plugin patched an <a href="https://wptavern.com/litespeed-cache-5-7-patches-xss-vulnerability">XSS vulnerability</a>.</p>



<p>Incidentally, Wordfence launched the <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordfence-launches-wordpress-superhero-challenge-with-big-rewards">WordPress Superhero Challenge</a> last week as part of its ongoing Bug Bounty Program to report critical or high-severity vulnerabilities in plugins or themes with over 5 million active installs, offering a top bounty prize of $31,200.</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, 22 Aug 2024 17:33:48 +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:7:"Jyolsna";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:1;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:103:"Do The Woo Community: Development, Digital Accessibility and AI with Niels de Blaauw and Marius Vetrici";s: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=85295";s: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://dothewoo.io/development-digital-accessibility-and-ai-with-niels-de-blaauw-and-marius-vetrici/";s: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:44409:"<div class="wp-block-group has-border-color has-light-gray-background-color has-background has-small-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-4 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p class="has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9acf640b7ba38a84a982fc35d618387f">This show is sponsored by&#8230;</p>



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<p class="wp-container-content-2"> <strong><a href="https://godaddy.com">GoDaddy</a></strong>: Build your clients sites using the flexibility of a <strong>Managed WooCommerce Store from GoDaddy</strong>. If you clients are looking to expand their store, you can deliver them a fully-customized WooCommerce site.</p>
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Episode Transcript
<div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p>Niels:<br />I am Niels de Blaauw, and I&#8217;m a WordPress enthusiast with a development background. I work as the Technical Director at a Dutch WordPress agency called Level Level. And with me today is Marius Vetrici.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Hi everyone, and thanks for the intro, Niels.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />So to get started, I&#8217;ve been in web development for over 13 years now and got started with WordPress eight years ago at Level Level. There, we make bespoke WordPress websites for e-commerce, Dutch government, banks, NGOs, and more. We do that with a focus on digital accessibility. Other than that, we have an e-learning platform for accessibility called The Collective and maintain open-source software such as the WooCommerce testing automation library. And Marius, you are the founder of WordPress Riders, right?</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Oh yeah, actually I&#8217;m the founder of WordPress Riders Agency and e-Commerce Tools plugins. We have a child business, which is building and selling WooCommerce-based plugins. In terms of background, we are a software development company. We started with WordPress about nine and a half years ago, currently serving customers in Switzerland and in the US. We help build and maintain large web portals, e-commerce platforms with WooCommerce, but also with Shopify. We also work with LMSs. Besides web development, I have an interest in AI, do more and more research on this, and build AI-based solutions and provide advisory on how to meet with AI. With WordPress, I jumped on the WordPress boat, I think, 15 years ago when I started blogging. And 10 years ago, as a freelancer, I started serving customers, and then slowly that freelancing one-man show converted into an agency.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />So there&#8217;s a lot of different things that you&#8217;ve done to grow into all of these roles, right? Was it natural for you to grow into this?</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Yeah, it was organic indeed. It started as a one-man show; currently, we&#8217;re 22 people. But somehow, I was lucky to build on prior experience. I had another software company for 10 years, building products using .NET technologies, document management, and inventory management. So I kind of leveraged all of that into this conversion from being a freelancer to running the agency.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />One thing we have in common is that we both come from non-WordPress development backgrounds and then moved into working with WordPress. I think having prior work knowledge of WordPress helped me hit the ground running, and with quality documentation, the risk for beginners was quite low. It was easy to get into, even though the documentation has improved quite a bit over the years. So how was that for you? Were there any big hurdles getting into WordPress?</p>



<p>Marius:<br />I don&#8217;t think there were any hurdles because the learning curve for WordPress was so much lower before JavaScript and Gutenberg. It used to be much lower than with other technologies. So I don&#8217;t think there was any hurdle. I was pretty lucky to ride a couple of waves. I had the technical background, and it took me one month to get up to speed with WordPress and actually start serving clients as a freelancer, thanks to my prior 10-plus years of experience in coding. Then, I was lucky to join the early stages of the Codeable freelancer platform, which gave me a steady flow of customers. It also educated me on customer communication and setting expectations. So yeah, that was a very fortunate combination of factors.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Getting into WordPress, at first, I was amazed at how much it did out of the box, mainly around data management. Before WordPress, I must have written the same &#8220;Is this an email address?&#8221; and &#8220;Is this input field actually a valid URL?&#8221; validators hundreds of times. WordPress just makes these repetitive things so easy. It frees up so much time.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Again and again.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Yeah, so you can make WordPress as difficult as you want yourself. A lot of best practices from the rest of the PHP world have been adopted now by WordPress developers like our agency as well. So things like object-oriented programming, static analyzers, dependency injection, design patterns, unit and integration testing, code reviews, dependency management with Composer—all these things are part of our current workflow now. But there are a lot of moving parts, and the community is providing a lot of go-to plugins that might not be up to our standard. So how do you manage this?</p>



<p>Marius:<br />That&#8217;s a very interesting perspective, and thanks for sharing. I was actually talking to scores, dozens of hardcore developers, non-WordPress developers, and I keep hearing them say the same thing again and again: &#8220;Oh, WordPress, it&#8217;s not even object-oriented, no design patterns. This is below my current level.&#8221; I was like, okay, that seems like an opportunity for us. So that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m very happy to meet a like-minded fellow like yourself.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Yeah, it gets messy fast.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />And I actually see a bit of a challenge here. As you mentioned automated testing, from my perspective, I keep seeing this challenge. Again, comparing other technologies with WordPress, with Java Enterprise Edition, or maybe with .NET, all the updates and changes are mostly being managed by somebody, a centralized entity, which is obviously good and bad. But here, when you own a website—I&#8217;m not even talking about building a website at an agency—when you are a client and you have at least 20 plugins, let&#8217;s say at least 20 plugins, each of them having their own version, you are basically responsible for the integration testing of those plugins. You are responsible for making sure that they work. And of course, at the end of the day, you hire an agency to do that for you. But when you have so many moving parts, each of them being built by a third party, each of them releasing new versions randomly, I mean, this is an amount of work that probably not many website owners are really aware of. How do you deal with that?</p>



<p>Niels:<br />So one thing we do is we rely heavily on integration testing within our projects. We test critical parts of a website both through automation and manual testing. We mention to a lot of clients that issues that pop up for one customer or lessons learned from the next project benefit all our clients because we manage more sites like them. So you&#8217;re on both sides of the equation, right? On one hand, you are managing an agency with these issues related to plugins, updating, and compatibility. On the other hand, you&#8217;re building plugins yourself and can only test so much. So how do you balance this?</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Actually, that&#8217;s a very good question. Before we decide to build a feature for our plugins—by the way, the plugins are related to subscriptions; one of them is called &#8220;Buy One or Subscribe,&#8221; and the other one is called &#8220;Self-Service Commerce Subscriptions&#8221;—before deciding to launch a new feature, we always think about the total cost of ownership of that feature, including the future maintenance and updates to that feature. When you look at a feature through that lens, if it requires some integration with third-party plugins, let&#8217;s say with Woo Bundles or Woo Composite Products, we know that&#8217;s going to factor in an exponential amount of work and updates and maintenance because those plugins will randomly change. So to answer your question, we try to build our features as self-contained as possible, with as few dependencies as possible.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />And with the plugins that you mentioned, they&#8217;re mostly plugins built by Woo with the Automattic team behind them. So these are somewhat stable, reliable products, even though they&#8217;re moving fast and changing things. There&#8217;s a bigger picture, and there&#8217;s also, of course, a single-entity builders that create a product and then abandon it after two or three months, which you have to take care of.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />I&#8217;m not even talking about those who abandon it. And that&#8217;s a very good example with Automattic. Even with Automattic, you get certain updates inside the code that just come, they just hit you. It is what it is. I&#8217;m not saying it&#8217;s good or bad; it&#8217;s a fact of life. But someone needs to take care of all of that. And you mentioned before our talk that you rely heavily on automated testing, the shopping carts, and making sure everything actually works. How are you doing that? Maybe you can elaborate on that a bit.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />So we&#8217;re talking about total cost of ownership for our customers. It&#8217;s almost always more expensive to have a failing critical process. People can&#8217;t buy the products on the website because they&#8217;re spending on advertising. These people are reaching the website trying to buy a product, and if things don&#8217;t work, it&#8217;s not only missed revenue, but also they&#8217;re incurring costs to get these customers. So keeping the business-critical processes alive is the number one priority for us. When we&#8217;re talking about having 20-plus plugins that integrate with each other and then having the bespoke layer on top of it, like we do for most of our customers, we really need to make sure that everything keeps working. One of the things we do is we have an open-sourced testing library called WordPress Browser WooCommerce, and it&#8217;s an extension on top of WordPress Browser, which allows WooCommerce developers to write tests in the same way that you would for WordPress core.</p>



<p>So the factories from WordPress core unit tests, like this-&gt;factory-&gt;user-&gt;create or this-&gt;post-&gt;create, we also make the WooCommerce functions available in the same manner. So now suddenly there&#8217;s this-&gt;factory-&gt;order-&gt;create, or product-&gt;create, or coupon-&gt;create, or shipping_zone-&gt;create. All these sometimes difficult-to</p>



<p>-test things, like &#8220;We&#8217;re shipping to 20 different countries, but they all have their own business rules,&#8221; are automatable through this library. We create scenarios for every single feature that we build to keep them tested through integration so that we make sure that every single part of the chain of plugins is working as we expect. So when there&#8217;s an update to a Cost of Goods plugin, we can update it, see if the test fails, and then fix either the way we integrate with it. Another thing that guards us from these unexpected updates—and this is mostly related to changes in the programming interface—is that we&#8217;re heavy users of PHPStan, like the static analyzer, which shows us &#8220;This function is deprecated,&#8221; or &#8220;This function has a different parameter signature after the latest release.&#8221; So there are a lot of safeguards to capture issues early. That’s one of the most important things that we&#8217;re working on. And I think one of the things we mentioned in our pre-talk is that you don&#8217;t, or you have fewer of these issues when comparing Woo to other platforms like Shopify. Do you have any experience with Shopify and the direction it&#8217;s going as opposed to Woo and the direction Woo is going?</p>



<p>Marius:<br />The experience is, as with anything else, it&#8217;s about changing the problems you deal with. When you move from one country to another, you actually change the problems you&#8217;re dealing with. Same with changing platforms.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />I think you&#8217;re not actually solving the issues; you&#8217;re just moving to different issues.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />And sometimes you&#8217;re choosing to solve some unknown issues you weren&#8217;t even aware you were going to have to solve. But getting specific about Shopify, I kept watching the Google Trends, WooCommerce versus Shopify, for quite a while. For the last one or two years, I was writing some articles on that and performing some analysis myself. The difference is like five to one, five times more searches for Shopify than for WooCommerce as reported not by individual keyword searches but by Google Trends. And this eventually translated into almost a change of market share. It depends on the source you&#8217;re looking at, but they&#8217;re both on average around each at 25%. Some would report 20 to 30 WooCommerce versus Shopify, some would say 30 to 20. And in terms of problems, I think Shopify has created an excellent user experience team, great product managers. Basically, they have built an excellent wizard. If you remember the old-time wizards like a step-by-step wizard, they will just ask some questions and then they&#8217;ll point you in the right direction later. WooCommerce picked up as well. They came with their own wizard that pops up and helps you.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />For the first setup experience.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />For the first setup, but yeah, they came in after Shopify, as per my knowledge. But still, I think the Shopify experience is better. So with WooCommerce, those who are in the WooCommerce community, I think we still have some things to learn from the other guys.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />One of the things that impressed me about Shopify is the last two steps in the checkout experience, the way you check out. A lot of forms are pre-filled based on things you might have entered on other platforms. For WooCommerce, you&#8217;re really dependent on the payment gateway you&#8217;re using to fill in stuff automatically. And the Shopify platform makes this a cleaner experience in my eyes for the end user. So I think there&#8217;s a big opportunity for payment gateway providers to look at how Shopify is doing these last two steps from selecting the payment method and paying itself and copy it, just steal it. It&#8217;s better.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />I would guess that they got, I won&#8217;t say they stole it, but they got inspired by Stripe, which was the first in the market that actually built an excellent payment experience. And let&#8217;s face it, that checkout process is the reason to exist for the shop, for our work, for our agencies when we build e-commerce. And that little chain at the end is not perfect.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />We&#8217;re actually talking with a couple of payment providers because we also have an accessibility consultancy business. We have three certified accessibility professionals on our team, and we&#8217;re now talking with several payment providers, payment gateways, to get their checkouts accessible for people with keyboard accessibility issues or people using screen readers. Every year, we do research on the biggest e-commerce platforms in the Netherlands and how accessible they are. For eight out of 15, you are not able to reach the final steps of the checkout with just the keyboard. So there&#8217;s a big opportunity for a lot of WooCommerce shops or WooCommerce shop owners to get a bit of a competitive edge because if you are the one doing accessibility or getting your checkout accessible, you&#8217;re blowing away the competition on other WooCommerce shops or on other platforms.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />And besides the competition, there&#8217;s the legal compliance in most of the countries.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />And especially next year, there&#8217;s the European Accessibility Act coming through, which forces European countries to have legislation for the accessibility of web shops that make more than 2 million in revenue a year or have more than 10 employees. So next year in June, there&#8217;s going to be pressure on everyone to make sure that their web shop is accessible. And I&#8217;m expecting a lot of shops to handle this the same way that they did with the privacy legislation—look the other way for as long as possible until it&#8217;s too late and then start implementing it. Our experience teaches us that the process of getting your organization up to speed with accessibility, making the changes needed, and making sure that it&#8217;s legally compliant is a process of several months. So if it&#8217;s going to be next June that you have to be compliant, you&#8217;d better start now, or you&#8217;re going to be too late.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />I actually have positive examples on this end. One of our customers invented and patented a device, a gear, they&#8217;re manufacturing it for professional tennis players and they&#8217;re selling it all over the world. A few months ago, we had this talk with them, and we got a couple of people on our team certified in accessibility, and we had to implement quite a few changes there just so they are prepared. But they have done it not because of the European Act—they are based in Europe, but outside of the EU—they have done it literally for business reasons.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />That&#8217;s what I always say. The stick is the European Accessibility Act—you have to do it because it&#8217;s the law—but there&#8217;s a huge carrot. I don&#8217;t understand how every marketer is focused on performance. Everyone likes a fast website, right? Faster is better. Google rewards fast websites. This is the mentality. But for accessibility, it&#8217;s exactly the same. An accessible website is a benefit for everyone. If you break your arm, you&#8217;re temporarily disabled, and you have to find another way to use a website that you like to shop on. People who can use accessibility features spend longer on your website. User engagement goes up, and a lot of the changes that you&#8217;re making are not even visible to the end user. They&#8217;re just good UX, good user experience that you&#8217;re building. Not having to press tab 120 times to put something in your cart or having the autocomplete for your address actually make sense. So it&#8217;s a process that benefits everyone, and there&#8217;s a very large segment of people that actually benefit directly from a better accessible experience.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />And I was recently talking to somebody here in Switzerland, and they were so frustrated with a website from a pretty big company here called Manor because they had a really hard time checking out. They said, &#8220;Hey Marius, why won&#8217;t you reach out to them and tell them this and tell them that?&#8221; And that was someone who wouldn&#8217;t normally need accessibility features.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />We work with the biggest retailers in the Netherlands. These are companies making hundreds of millions in revenue every year. We&#8217;re testing, like A/B testing, the accessible variants as opposed to the non-accessible variants to gather data on how much more effective it actually is to have an accessible &#8220;Add to Cart&#8221; button or an accessible search function.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />And on the accessibility and automated testing, we played a lot with some legacy frameworks. Years ago, we started with Codeception, and after writing quite a few thousands of lines of code, we eventually realized that it was a waste of time—it wasn&#8217;t reliable. You would execute the same script two times in the same browser, and you would get different results and errors. So we eventually switched over to Cypress, which is client-side JavaScript, and that worked pretty well for us. So now, for certain clients, we do run batteries of tests as well just to make sure this integration problem doesn&#8217;t fall on their shoulders and that we can give them peace of mind that their checkout still works. You also mentioned in the beginning that you work for some government websites and large e-commerce websites. Maybe you can share a few notable projects?</p>



<p>Niels:<br />So for e-commerce, we&#8217;re doing a large project, which is a web shop in 10 European countries that makes plastic sheets to measure. You can order online different shapes of plastic sheets, and we&#8217;ve integrated the WooCommerce store from these 10 different shops into a back office where they&#8217;re actually on the factory floor, seeing the orders come in live on the table saws and on lasers. We&#8217;ve made an interface where all these orders are combined and then produced from the tablets in the factory. So it&#8217;s really a full-service, full-flow web shop. And for governments, yeah, we&#8217;re working for our local governments in the Netherlands, state government, and the national government on a couple of projects. What&#8217;s interesting is that we&#8217;re learning lessons from e-commerce that we can then apply to the government because needing a new passport is much like the same checkout flow that you would see in the awareness and decision stages, but there&#8217;s no competitor on the other side.</p>



<p>But you still need to guide people through this funnel, and you need to get them to the next step because if they&#8217;re not</p>



<p>entering the next step, the intent is really high. So if they&#8217;re not going from starting the application form to finishing the application form, there&#8217;s obviously something confusing about the form. So there are a lot of lessons that we can take from these different types of projects in our portfolio that we can move to other industries, businesses, and verticals in the same way. There are really high security and privacy rules and expectations for governments, banks, and insurers. We&#8217;re taking the lessons we&#8217;re learning there and applying them back to e-commerce to make sure the processes are done in a way that updates are safe, and we have data reliability—all these types of lessons learned from this vertical that really appreciates the security aspects of WordPress development, and we&#8217;re moving it into the &#8220;move fast, break things&#8221; part of WooCommerce development.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />WordPress development done right.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Agree with you, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That&#8217;s basically it. That should be the tagline of the agency—WordPress development done right. So how is this experience for you? Because obviously, with the very broad spectrum of customers that you have with the WooCommerce plugins, you must have a lot of different experiences between types of customers.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s pretty broad, and it ranges from shops selling dog food, pet food on a subscription, or even toothbrushes on a subscription, and so on, to some very, very high-profile customers such as Panasonic. We actually built their e-commerce platforms for a couple of countries, and that was an extremely challenging project to be built with WooCommerce because they wanted tons of features that you would normally get for a ton of money on other platforms—more expensive platforms like Magento, the Adobe experience, or maybe a platform from SAP. But here they wanted to get all of that on WooCommerce. Basically, all the learnings and the knowledge gathered from more than a thousand projects had to be condensed into the Panasonic website and reviewed for the code of some of the plugins because they actually wanted us to use some plugins in order to &#8220;move fast, break things.&#8221; Now, the Czech Republic and Poland are running on WooCommerce, which is something our team is very proud of.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Can you share something about what your review process looks like for onboarding plugins made by third parties?</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Yeah, sure. We have a list of preferred plugins, which we have reviewed the code for, and we do monitor the code quality of the plugins using PHP CodeSniffer with a WordPress set of rules for security and code formatting and compliance. We also use a couple of tools to check the security of the code besides manually reviewing it, but it&#8217;s always good to use things such as Snyk to go through the code and other tools. Actually, building on this need of our customers—the need being, &#8220;Hey, is this a good or bad plugin?&#8221;—we&#8217;re about to launch WPPluginReview.com, which will be a website that will automatically review the quality of the code using DevOps approaches, like automated approaches, and assign certain color codes just like with fridges—the energy label for the fridge, A, B, C, D, or for buildings. We&#8217;re building this for plugins so that a non-technical person will immediately be able to grasp whether this is a trustworthy or not trustworthy plugin.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />So you&#8217;re making the process of selecting a plugin and comparing different plugins in the same space easier by showing that this has a &#8220;D&#8221; score on your automated tests for plugin quality.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Yeah, and going beyond just comparing features because features are already being compared all over the internet, but comparing the quality of the code for now requires developers&#8217; time to actually go through the code and review it. So yeah, we&#8217;re trying to automate this part.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Yeah, so one thing we&#8217;re also taking into consideration is that we internally have a point system that we give to plugins, and it&#8217;s partially based on the hard factors that you&#8217;re sharing. Does it comply with PHP coding standards for the WordPress standard? Does it have any known security issues—these kinds of things? But also the…</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Number of database queries is also an important factor.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />And if they have filters and actions available to hook into how they&#8217;re doing things, right? Because it&#8217;s easy to do things the wrong way in WooCommerce. So seeing these positive signals on plugins, and we also take into account some soft factors. Are they continually updating WooCommerce plugins? You have this README.txt property called &#8220;compatible with&#8221; or &#8220;tested up to.&#8221; Are these up to date with the current version or maybe the previous? Because if it&#8217;s not, it&#8217;s going to be like a score penalty for us, deducting points from the plugin. Or do they have a clear revenue or monetization component? If they don&#8217;t, it&#8217;s going to be a liability for us because the creator might abandon the project if they don&#8217;t have a financial motive to continue working on the project. So we have these couple of soft factors that we also take into account when grading plugins. From this, it gets to a score where we say, like, 75 points or above, we&#8217;re like, okay, we don&#8217;t have any serious concerns, let&#8217;s do this. And then 75 to 50 points, we go to the customer and advise them: &#8220;These are our concerns. Do you want to push on and bet on this, or do you want to reconsider or compare other products in the space?&#8221; And then below 50, we highly discourage our customers from using these kinds of plugins because it&#8217;s going to be a business risk.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Yeah, that&#8217;s a clever way to do it, to rank the plugins. Changing topics a bit, before we wrap up today—you are on the very technical side of things, and currently, I run the commercial side of the business—I would be curious from your perspective if you were to… two things I have to ask you. If you were to give advice for other agency owners who don&#8217;t have a CTO by their side, when should they consider getting a CTO by their side? At what point, at what size of the agency, when is this a good time? And the second thing is, what would you expect, or ideally, what would a CTO of an agency expect from the CEO to be or to have in order to foster the best possible collaboration that is the goal?</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Yeah, so one of the things that makes my job as a Technical Director easy is that we have a very clear focus on WordPress and WooCommerce. There are all these new technologies constantly popping up around, for example, headless SaaS that do one thing really well. And then a lot of people get hyped up by the availability of these kinds of technologies, jump on board, and then figure out, like you said before, that you&#8217;re not solving issues, you&#8217;re just having different issues. If you have a very clear vision of the core technologies that you use and a very stable base of things that you develop on, then you can have some freedom putting things on top of it. So if you&#8217;re always working with WordPress and WooCommerce, or if you&#8217;re always working with Shopify, then you can move some parts around without endangering your business or having to retrain your whole company. They call it &#8220;building&#8221; if that stable base is missing.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Exactly. It&#8217;s a stable base. It&#8217;s about building and consolidating probably.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Yeah, and also, once you have that stable base, it&#8217;s easier to tell the story to customers, to either employees, about why you are choosing X and not Y, why you&#8217;re choosing a certain technology and not chasing the other, right? Because it becomes easier to make choices for certain technologies. And then on the opposite side, when you don&#8217;t have a clear vision from the get-go about what is the stable base and what are the dynamic, movable parts, then it&#8217;s time to get a CTO because then you need someone to figure out what this stable base is going to be. What is going to be the technology that we can build on now that&#8217;s still going to be available and relevant in five years? What are the trends going to be in developer experience, and how do we make sure that we don&#8217;t fall behind on the developer experience while maintaining the stable base? Right? These are the tasks that, in my eyes, the Technical Director has mostly—keep things predictable but also steadily moving in the right direction regarding developer experience, stability of the platform that you&#8217;re building, and customer experience. And then, as the second part of your question, since you have a mostly technical background too, but you&#8217;re now more in the CEO position, I would say the hardest thing for CEOs and Technical Directors is balancing innovation with business goals. On one hand, you&#8217;re trying to create new things, create a &#8220;wow&#8221; experience for your customers. At the same time, you have to move into a space where things are known, and not everything is new every single time, which costs a lot of time and reduces predictability. I think the most important thing a CEO can do is be very clear on what the expectations are regarding business goals because this also determines how much room there is for innovation. How is your experience, since you have both experiences, in managing and balancing these two parts?</p>



<p>Marius:<br />I came to realize that both are very important—balancing both the short- and medium-term profitability but also the long-term ability to stay in the market. So for now, I&#8217;m just allocating my personal time with a percentage such as 20 to 80—20% for innovation. Actually, this percentage was valid one year ago. I was doing roughly one day per week for innovation and strategizing and market research, and 80% doing the day-to-day stuff. Ever since I moved this year to Switzerland, we actually have a new CEO. It&#8217;s our former CEO. So</p>



<p>I&#8217;m not running the company anymore since March. I shifted this percentage. Now I&#8217;m more onto 95% looking into the markets, experimenting, talking to various business people at various levels from the C-suite down to the one-person entrepreneurs, not even the local entrepreneurs. Also, because I&#8217;m technical, I am experimenting a lot with AI nowadays because there is this wave, and I&#8217;m trying to understand—do we want to ride it? Can we ride it? And I&#8217;m writing myself some prototypes to understand how it works. Why am I doing this? It&#8217;s again, to be able to understand—do we want to be there in one, two, three years? Are we able to? And that gives me the necessary bones for the meat to be put on when we have a conversation with somebody about AI. I don&#8217;t just &#8220;blah blah&#8221; by reading some articles; I actually try the OpenAPI, and I know how it works. I know the limitations firsthand, and that helps a lot in being able to both better understand what customers want and need and what can actually be achieved.</p>



<p>And it also helps with having meaningful conversations with any future person responsible in our company for AI, like a dedicated CTO or Technical Director for AI projects, eventually AI advisory AI projects. So to answer your question, basically it&#8217;s about allocating a percentage of the time for the present. Normally, I would say for somebody who is doing day-to-day operations, I would say it&#8217;s 90% of the time focused on existing clients. But don&#8217;t forget about the future—at least 10% of the time to be spent on just reading newsletters. I know for some people this doesn&#8217;t sound like work. It sounds like wasting time. So it&#8217;s fine to waste 10% of the time just looking around and reading and trying,</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Being ready for opportunities.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />And seeing them—creating the space for you to see the opportunities.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Right. So how are you experiencing the volatile space of AI at the moment?</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Different trends, different forces. I&#8217;m waiting to see the checks and balances that will come into play, including the regulatory compliances. What I see is a lot of buzz, a lot of HUE effect thanks to the popularization of large language models through ChatGPT. At the same time, while they do lower the costs of their tokens and the usage of ChatGPT, it&#8217;s still heavily subsidized. So I&#8217;m waiting to see when the real price kicks in, what&#8217;s going to happen. It&#8217;s interesting to create a new SaaS product and a new plugin just based on ChatGPT, but then you have this huge vendor bargaining power. You just have one single vendor you&#8217;re building your business on, and if they cut your trunk, you&#8217;re in the air, and it&#8217;ll take a while to rewire yourself to Bard or to the Amazon AI and so on.</p>



<p>So these are all of the risks that you need to take into consideration when considering going with AI. But for some processes inside of the company, I am a huge fan of using AI, for example, to sort data, to search through knowledge bases. You can connect ChatGPT to an API, and you can basically start talking, chatting with your HubSpot and get the latest reports. You can talk with your bank statements through ChatGPT nowadays and ask about your spending trends. Or if you&#8217;re a CFO, you can talk to your Xero through the API and get financial forecasts, which opens up some interesting avenues.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s interesting to see AI at the moment as a virtual assistant, like assisting in getting data and insights instead of doing the actual work. If you have a Copilot integration when programming, you&#8217;re seeing a lot of suggestions, but you also always need the oversight of an experienced developer to evaluate what it&#8217;s suggesting to you. Does this contain any security issues, or is this a nightmare for maintainability—these kinds of judgments? You need someone to manage these. But at the same time, I&#8217;ve looked up the syntax for the PHP date function a million times in my life, and now I just tell it I want this format and make it for me. Or when writing tests, I&#8217;m like, all right, I need 5,000 postcodes from these eight different countries. I don&#8217;t have to make up a list of these kinds of repetitive things anymore; I just have to check if it&#8217;s right, instead of generating it myself. It&#8217;s interesting. It&#8217;s also got a long way to go.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />It is, it is. And there&#8217;s a long way to go. There&#8217;s a huge reason for which tools like Copilot and the AI assistant, for example, from Cloud AI, which is good with coding, or the AI assistant from JetBrains that lives inside PHPStorm, which is also very good. The reason for which there&#8217;s a long way to go before—and I&#8217;m not sure that these things will ever be able to replace developers—but they will make developers so much more productive and faster. Here&#8217;s a metaphor; it&#8217;s like a story I can quickly share with you. Years ago, when I was studying probability, one of our professors in mathematics and statistics said, &#8220;Imagine you have a monkey randomly typing on the keyboard. Now, please calculate the probability of the monkey typing in the <em>Three Musketeers</em> novel.&#8221;</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Right.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Okay. What we have now is we have a very smart monkey that&#8217;s typing on your keyboard, but it&#8217;s still typing randomly—kind of randomly with a very well-trained randomness—but it&#8217;s actually guessing what the next character should be based on the previous characters.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />A context-aware monkey.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />It&#8217;s a context-aware monkey. Some call it a very fancy autocomplete that tries to please you—always to please you.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Yeah. So my current experience has been it makes good programmers faster, it makes bad programmers worse.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Yeah, that makes sense.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />That&#8217;s my current experience. There’s a category of programmers that are still very much going through the learning curve and growing from the junior position. Three or four years ago, they would be the ones copying Stack Overflow answers and putting them into production code, and that&#8217;s now shifted from copying from Stack Overflow to auto-completing from Copilot. That&#8217;s the shift, but it&#8217;s still the same problem. I think that&#8217;s the key insight—that you&#8217;re not removing issues, you&#8217;re just changing them.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Yeah, I agree with you on this one. Well, I think it&#8217;s time to wrap up for today, Niels.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Yeah, thank you for the interesting conversation. I&#8217;ve learned a lot.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Same here, Niels, and let&#8217;s keep in touch offline.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Definitely. Yeah.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />It&#8217;s my first time doing this chat, so I would love to be able to keep in touch.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Yeah, we&#8217;ll definitely do that. I&#8217;ll see you at the next WordCamp Europe. Definitely.</p>



<p>Marius:<br />Sounds good. All right, take care.</p>



<p>Niels:<br />Alright, have a good day. Take care.</p>
</div>




<p>In this episode of <strong><em>Woo AgencyChat</em></strong>, guest co-hosts <strong>Niels de Blaauw</strong>, Technical Director at the Dutch WordPress agency Level Level, and <strong>Marius Vetrici</strong>, founder of WordPress Riders Agency share their journeys into WordPress development, the challenges and opportunities in building and maintaining WordPress and WooCommerce sites, the importance of digital accessibility, and the impact of AI on web development. </p>



<p>The conversation also explores the balance between innovation and stability in agency work, the role of automated testing, and the evolving landscape of e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify.</p>



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



<p><strong>Importance of a Stable Technology Base</strong>: Both Niels and Marius emphasize the significance of having a stable core technology base (e.g., WordPress and WooCommerce) while allowing flexibility in other areas. This helps maintain predictability and efficiency in development.</p>



<p><strong>Challenges in WordPress and WooCommerce Development</strong>: Managing a WordPress site with multiple plugins can be complex, requiring rigorous testing and careful integration to ensure everything functions correctly, especially with frequent updates from different third-party developers.</p>



<p><strong>Digital Accessibility as a Competitive Advantage</strong>: Ensuring digital accessibility not only helps with legal compliance but also improves user experience, potentially giving businesses a competitive edge. The upcoming European Accessibility Act will put pressure on web shops to be accessible by June next year.</p>



<p><strong>Balancing Innovation and Business Goals</strong>: Agency leaders need to balance the push for innovation with the need to meet business objectives. Allocating time and resources to both areas is crucial for long-term success.</p>



<p><strong>Automation and Testing</strong>: Automated testing, especially for WooCommerce sites, is critical in ensuring that business-critical processes remain functional despite updates. Using tools like PHPStan and open-source testing libraries can help catch issues early.</p>



<p><strong>The Role of AI in Development</strong>: AI is seen as a tool to enhance productivity, particularly in data handling and code generation. However, it requires oversight from experienced developers to avoid potential issues and ensure quality.</p>



<p><strong>Need for Code Quality in Plugins</strong>: Marius and Niels discuss the importance of evaluating the quality of third-party plugins, considering both technical factors like coding standards and softer factors like update frequency and developer commitment.</p>



<p><strong>Collaboration Between CTOs and CEOs</strong>: For agencies, having a clear vision and communication between technical and business leadership is vital for growing innovation while maintaining business goals.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Links</h3>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariusvetrici/">Marius on LinkedIn</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nielsdeblaauw/">Niels on LinkedIn</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://level-level.com/">Level Level</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://wpriders.com/">WPRiders</a></strong></li>
</ul>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong><a href="https://wppluginreview.com/">WPPluginReview (coming soon as of August 22, 2024)</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://phpstan.org/">PHPStan</a></strong></li>
</ul>";s: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, 22 Aug 2024 09:11:33 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:2;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:70:"WPTavern: Jamie Marsland Joins Automattic as Head of WordPress YouTube";s: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=159788";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"https://wptavern.com/jamie-marsland-joins-automattic-as-head-of-wordpress-youtube";s: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:4339:"<p>Jamie Marsland, a well-known figure in the WordPress community, has officially joined Automattic as the Head of WordPress.org YouTube. Previously, he had collaborated with <a href="https://x.com/wordpressdotcom/status/1767672283609370687">WordPress.com</a> on a series of YouTube videos titled ‘<a href="https://www.pootlepress.com/2024/03/ive-partnered-with-wordpress-com/">build and beyond</a>.’</p>



<p>In the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2024/08/19/ramping-up-wordpress-on-youtube/">official announcement</a>, the Executive Director of WordPress, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, said, “ Jamie’s extensive experience in the WordPress community and his passion for empowering creators through this medium makes him the ideal person to lead our efforts in expanding and enhancing our YouTube presence…  He will oversee the creation of high-quality content, ensuring our channel remains a valuable resource and a source of inspiration for WordPress enthusiasts worldwide while inspiring and empowering other open source content creators to further the movement.”</p>



<p>She highlighted that the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/wordpress">WordPress YouTube channel</a> has become a trusted source of information and inspiration and experienced a 6x increase in monthly views and engagement since 2023.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Pootlepress &amp; WordPress Speed Build Challenge</h2>



<p>Jamie Marsland is no stranger to the WordPress community. He is the founder of <a href="https://www.pootlepress.com/">Pootlepress</a>, a leading WordPress development company known for products such as Gutenberg Pro, WooBuilder Blocks, Storefront Blocks, and WooHoo Bar.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Recently, he took the WordPress world by storm with his <a href="https://www.pootlepress.com/speed-build-challenge/">WordPress Speed Build Challenge</a>, in which participants have 30 minutes to recreate a famous website using WordPress. He successfully roped in celebrities like Ben Ritner (Founder of Kadence Theme), Justin Tadlock (Developer Relations Wrangler at Automattic), Brian Gardner (WordPress advocate at WP Engine), Nick Diego (Developer Relations Advocate at Automattic), Rich Tabor (Product Manager at Automattic), Jonathan Jernigan (Owner and founder at APEX Web Solutions) and Jessica Lyschik (Frontend and WordPress developer at Greyd)</p>



<p>This approach to engaging the WordPress community has been a breath of fresh air, especially for a platform that has historically shied away from heavy marketing. Simon Harper, owner of SRH Design, once remarked: “If WordPress is going to stay relevant or continue to grow, it needs to consider marketing…..WordPress has a PR and Marketing problem.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Marsland’s Speed Challenge and YouTube videos (like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjZ87BIIZxI">Wix&#8217;s Masterplan to conquer WordPress: The Inside Story!</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiPorWuYVbzuVrydFJZflALOc5rpUuwgs">Remaking Famous Websites</a> series) got people talking about WordPress. </p>



<p>Before the official announcement, Marsland had cheekily teased his Twitter followers with a tweet: “I&#8217;ve got 3 BIG bits of WordPress news coming down the track very soon.”</p>



<p>The community&#8217;s response to his selection has been overwhelmingly positive. Matt Mullenweg tweeted, “Our videos are going to be so much better now. :)”  Other community members echoed this sentiment with comments like, “There&#8217;s no one better to bring some much needed focus and energy to WordPress video content.”, “Couldn&#8217;t have chosen a better person!” and “It&#8217;s a great move for the WordPress Community.”</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Future Plans</h2>



<p>Jamie Marsland has <a href="https://x.com/pootlepress/status/1825765521834262833">shared</a> that he will continue to maintain his plugins and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@jamiewp">YouTube channel</a> and will <a href="https://x.com/pootlepress/status/1818964659354968256">restart</a> the WordPress Speed Build Challenge next month. He also hinted at a big name in the WordPress space who would be his co-host for the new &#8216;<a href="https://x.com/pootlepress/status/1825593807485939938">WordPress Unplugged</a>&#8216; live Podcast.</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, 21 Aug 2024 17:46:13 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Jyolsna";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:3;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:90:"WPTavern: #133 – Blake Bertuccelli-Booth on Automated Accessibility Testing 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=159676";s: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:104:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/133-blake-bertuccelli-booth-on-automated-accessibility-testing-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:51631:"Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, how automation can be used to monitor accessibility related tasks for your WordPress website.</p>



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



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



<p>So on the podcast today, we have Blake Bertuccelli-Booth. Blake has been in the world of web design for over a decade, a journey that eventually led him to become an advocate for web accessibility. He&#8217;s the founder of Equalify, a company dedicated to enhancing accessibility across open source platforms, particularly within the WordPress community.</p>



<p>His passion for this cause was kindled through his experiences working with higher education organizations, where he saw firsthand the challenges faced by users reliant on assistive technology.</p>



<p>In this episode, we get into a tool Blake&#8217;s been working on. It&#8217;s specifically designed to crawl websites and identify accessibility issues. This tool has been used to survey over 120,000 pages across wordpress.org properties, and has revealed over 2.1 million accessibility issues, shedding light on the pervasive nature of accessibility.</p>



<p>We talk about the challenges of defining accessibility and why existing guidelines often fall short. Blake emphasizes the moral imperative of web accessibility highlighting the real world impact of individual&#8217;s lives and stressing the importance of education for developers and designers. He argues that accessible design isn&#8217;t just about adhering to regulations, but about alleviating, suffering and enhancing the online experience for everyone.</p>



<p>Our conversation also touches on the increasing prominence of web accessibility and the potential ramifications of upcoming legislation like the European Accessibility Act. Blake discusses his personal struggles with dyslexia, underscoring how properly formatted content can be a source of profound relief and empowerment.</p>



<p>We also highlight the collaborative spirit of the WordPress community in tackling accessibility concerns, and Blake extends an open invitation for all to join in with his efforts. He provides insights into practical steps, such as reviewing automated violations and developing tickets to contribute to this collective mission.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re passionate about web accessibility or eager to learn how your work can make a tangible difference in people&#8217;s lives, this episode is for you.</p>



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



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Blake Bertuccelli-Booth.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast by Blake Bertuccelli-Booth. Hello Blake.</p>



<p>[00:03:58] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> Hello. How you doing?</p>



<p>[00:04:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, really nice to chat to you today. We&#8217;re going to talk about the subject of accessibility, and Blake has got some really interesting data that he&#8217;s going to share with us. So it won&#8217;t be the normal conversation about accessibility, but I&#8217;m imagining that we&#8217;ll stray into those, in air quotes, normal bits and pieces as well.</p>



<p>But before we begin Blake, if you are going to be talking about accessibility, I guess we need to know that you know what you are talking about, that you have authority. So I&#8217;m going to give you an opportunity to give us your bio, and maybe in that bio, just paint a picture of what it is that interests you about accessibility, and what your posture is about it, and what you&#8217;ve done in the past related to it.</p>



<p>[00:04:36] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> Well, I started web designing over a decade ago. It was how I was paying my way through college. Every piece along the way of me designing websites, was me trying to figure out how to communicate a client&#8217;s vision to the user they wanted. And this was all WordPress hacking and developing themes, or plugins that helped communicate a client&#8217;s vision.</p>



<p>And along the way, I was also working with a lot of higher ed organisations, and before I heard accessibility from anyone else, I heard it from folks who worked at higher ed organisations. And they kept telling me, you should really care about this. And it was the thing that, admittedly, I thought about, I looked into a little bit, but I didn&#8217;t really bring to the forefront of my mind. And that started to switch as I started to meet users who relied on screen reading technology.</p>



<p>One particular project that I was working on for a higher ed organisation, brought in users to come and use the websites that we were creating. And these users use what&#8217;s called a screen reader. So if you don&#8217;t have access to a monitor, you can&#8217;t see a monitor because you&#8217;re blind, or you have low vision, you use a screen reader, which basically reads what&#8217;s there.</p>



<p>And when this first user used my website on their screen reader, it was god awful. They couldn&#8217;t find anything, they couldn&#8217;t find any headers or anything like that. And watching this user use the website, it immediately clicked that I have to really understand this. And this was about, I don&#8217;t know, six or seven years ago.</p>



<p>And then from there, I started baking accessibility into a lot of the work that we did. And it just became a piece, while I was doing client work, that I was thinking about constantly, and usually letting the clients tell me, we don&#8217;t want it to be accessible.</p>



<p>And flash forward to about two years ago, when I was able to leave my web development company that I started, and just focus on what I wanted to focus on. And when I was thinking through the skills that I built up and my interests, my personal interests, it all came down to web accessibility. Because this was a place that I could really lend my expertise of being a web developer, designer for many years, and someone who is very passionate about access to information and the community that&#8217;s built out of open source.</p>



<p>So I&#8217;ve built a company called Equalify, about two years ago, and we&#8217;re really heavily focused on building a better web accessibility platform, that really has accessibility at its heart. We&#8217;re very focused on being open source, and we really want to support the open source community like WordPress. So that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m here today, to help the community, and bring it along into an accessible future.</p>



<p>[00:07:25] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It sounds like there was a nice bit of serendipity in terms of the timing, because you&#8217;re interested in a subject which, honestly, five years ago, I think not many people were talking about. It was a pretty edge case thing. But now, fast forward, we&#8217;re in June, late June 2024 that we&#8217;re recording this, and it genuinely is the topic of this year I think. Maybe there&#8217;s a couple of others, you know, there&#8217;s a couple of things that still hang on, like SEO, and what have you, but it&#8217;s right up there.</p>



<p>You go to WordPress events, and there&#8217;s always a talk about accessibility. And so this has now become what you do for a living. And I&#8217;m curious what your position is in terms of whether or not the skillset that you&#8217;ve got is possible for a, let&#8217;s say a freelancer. Let&#8217;s just pick somebody who&#8217;s building websites for a client, and they&#8217;ve got multiple clients to manage, they&#8217;re building a website with WordPress.</p>



<p>Would you say it&#8217;s possible for that individual to learn enough or is it more a case of, go out and find somebody like Equalify, find an organisation, find an expert and hire them out as a third party, if you like, to look at the websites that you are building? Is there too much to know, along with all the other things that you&#8217;ve got to know in the stack of being a freelance website builder, or is it possible?</p>



<p>[00:08:41] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> Web accessibility is one of the most accessible, technical skills that you can grab. So there is a set of guidelines called the WCAG, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines are a little bit technical and difficult to read, but they boil down to basic concepts that you can, that anybody can really figure out.</p>



<p>A lot of it has to do with how you&#8217;re structuring your page. What those HTML things like H1, H2, H3 are for. You&#8217;re not really learning advanced skills, you&#8217;re more learning what the purpose of some of the early HTML pieces were. And you don&#8217;t need to be an expert at web accessibility.</p>



<p>I would say, my role a lot of times is scanning giant, humongous networks because I don&#8217;t think, if I was just hired to be a website accessibility expert, and work on five or six page websites like I did as a designer, I wouldn&#8217;t really have a job because it&#8217;s a pretty simple discipline.</p>



<p>But the larger scope pieces are really where my job comes in, where I&#8217;m scanning hundreds of thousands of pages, and looking at larger trends and finding interesting ways to interpret data, and create a culture of accessibility in large organisations.</p>



<p>[00:09:57] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Kind of fascinating that that job does exist now, and that you can make a career out of that. And I&#8217;m guessing that there&#8217;s many prongs to that. And I&#8217;m thinking in terms of things like the European Accessibility Act, which is coming down the pike fairly soon. And we could get into that, and the dates that all of that is going to be happening, but that&#8217;s a bit of a stick.</p>



<p>You know, there&#8217;s legislation coming around which is going to compel websites, certain websites, and there are caveats around which websites are in, and which websites are out, if you know what I mean.</p>



<p>But also the kind of, the moral argument that everybody seems to be having now, that it&#8217;s just the right thing to do. Before we hit record, we were talking about how your father had been a big advocate for changing the physical landscape of where he lived, for putting in ramps so that people could access doors easily and what have you. And all of that is really easy for me to see. It&#8217;s so straightforward. Look, there&#8217;s somebody in a wheelchair, and they cannot get through that door. That needs fixing.</p>



<p>But on the web, I feel that most of it is disguised from people like me. I am able to use my eyes perfectly well. I wear glasses. My ears function. I have both hands, and my legs work. So basically what I&#8217;m trying to say is, when I go to a website, I&#8217;m using a mouse, I&#8217;m using a keyboard, I can listen to the videos and all of that. I don&#8217;t have any problems, so it&#8217;s disguised, so it does take somebody with that expertise like you to point it out, I feel.</p>



<p>And so even though the WCAG guidelines are there for everybody to read, it&#8217;s very easy to just say, I don&#8217;t know what that is, I can&#8217;t see it, it&#8217;s not a problem for me. But it does feel like the moral argument is becoming louder and louder, people are talking about it more. But also the stick that we mentioned. And I&#8217;m thinking of the European Accessibility Act, I don&#8217;t know if any similar legislation is coming down in the part of the world where you live, North America. But yeah, we seem to be on the precipice of some big change.</p>



<p>[00:11:51] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> Yeah. There&#8217;s two points that I think you&#8217;ve really hit the nail on.</p>



<p>The first is the moral kind of argument around this. When you are witnessing a person who is suffering, whether it&#8217;s because they can&#8217;t navigate Facebook on their screen reader, or because they&#8217;ve just tripped and fallen and broke in their leg, you want to do something to help. And that is a moral impulse that I feel, and it&#8217;s a really cool impulse that I can work with in my profession.</p>



<p>And so what I&#8217;ve discovered, in becoming more and more in tune with accessibility rules and regulation, is that you really shouldn&#8217;t focus on the rules and regulation aspect. You should focus on that moral impulse. And you should try to educate developers and designers on these issues because of how they affect other human beings.</p>



<p>And so I&#8217;m really big into philosophy, and there&#8217;s a classic equation that got me really focused into accessibility. It&#8217;s the idea that, if you saw someone in distress, if a child fell in a pond in front of you and they were, needed help, you would definitely go jump in. But if you could pay $25, $50 to buy a bed net to prevent mosquitoes in Africa, that would be more of a decision to make.</p>



<p>And I see the accessibility equation in that same kind of moral framework, where, though I am not using a screen reader myself, or using eye tracking software myself, and though my friends aren&#8217;t around me. I know that my work is contributing to alleviating other people&#8217;s suffering.</p>



<p>And now that I&#8217;ve become more of an accessibility advocate, and have met folks that have agonized over navigating their bank statements, for instance, or applying for vital needs. I know that every day that I spend on this accessibility problem, I am doing good for others in the world. And I just have not found anything in web design or web development that gets me to that point of doing moral good day in, day out. And that&#8217;s what keeps me working hard.</p>



<p>[00:14:05] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> The word which is popping into my head is meaningful. You&#8217;ve given yourself a meaningful reason to build websites. If profit was the thing that you were after, maybe you would derive some meaning from that, but I think most people, when they examine life, they kinda quickly work out that profit is interesting, but it doesn&#8217;t really provide all that much meaning. Where, it sounds very much like this really does, on some very basic level, very core level in your being, it provides you with that sense of purpose and meaningfulness, which is really nice.</p>



<p>Another intuition that I just had, whilst you were talking was, using the example of the person in the wheelchair who cannot access the restaurant because the door is slightly above, and there&#8217;s no ramp and what have you. The crowd gather round, and in the real world you witness that, and you see it, and everybody&#8217;s taken aback. Hang on, that&#8217;s wrong.</p>



<p>But the internet is very often a fairly solitary thing. You know, you&#8217;d be sitting in a room, perhaps by yourself, you might be, I don&#8217;t know, on a couch, browsing on an iPad, or an iPhone, or something like that. But broadly speaking, you&#8217;re doing it by yourself. And so there&#8217;s never that sense of crowd watching and gathering that kind of moral outrage, that, whoa, hang on, this isn&#8217;t right.</p>



<p>But also, if you can&#8217;t access the web, because the web is the thing that you simply can&#8217;t access because it&#8217;s broken in some way, where do you even go to report this kind of stuff? How do you begin to say to a website owner, hang on, your website isn&#8217;t working because I can&#8217;t find the phone number, with the technology that I have, my screen reader, I can&#8217;t find the phone number on your website to report it?</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s all these strange things which somebody like me in the world, walking around, I can see the wheelchair problem, but I&#8217;m not encountering the accessibility problems because, A, I don&#8217;t experience them myself, B, it&#8217;s probably fairly solitary and, C, it&#8217;s probably really difficult for these people to have a voice because the technology itself is kind of like a gatekeeper.</p>



<p>[00:16:00] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> That&#8217;s a really important note. You know, I haven&#8217;t really thought of it as like, the web is solitary and so that you&#8217;re not seeing the person struggle. And also, people are very polite in this world. My friends who use screen readers are amazingly polite, even though they&#8217;re sometimes called out as trolls.</p>



<p>I have a really good friend who I went to a conference with, and we were staying in the same hotel room, and I happened to be in the bathroom, he didn&#8217;t know I was in there taking a shower. I heard from the other room a string of curses, like it just went on this tangent. And I came out and I said, Kevin, what&#8217;s wrong? And he, his job, he had to use Facebook for a task in his job, and Facebook just wasn&#8217;t accessible to him.</p>



<p>They kept saying things to him, and it started to aggravate him in such a way. And like that aggravation, he&#8217;s never shown before. He is a very sweet person. I, you know, wanted to say like, I want to record you and bring this to the forefront of the internet.</p>



<p>The problem though with that, and this is something that I see a lot, is that, people who do raise the flags online, and they can do it in a very non-judgmental way, are immediately degraded to the place of trolls. So we have this culture online of trolls, and I see it again and again, where there are very justified comments to a website&#8217;s accessibility. And those comments are completely unanswered, in a way that, if someone was in a room expressing these comments to a group of others, they would be completely heard and really taken care of.</p>



<p>And I&#8217;ve heard this from my friends who do rely on assistive technology, they don&#8217;t want to speak up anymore because they&#8217;ve had a few experiences of being completely silenced, because they&#8217;re put in a place of trolls, because they&#8217;re put in a place of a complainer. When they&#8217;re just saying, we can&#8217;t access this website.</p>



<p>[00:17:51] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And you can imagine, in my scenario, if I went into a shop, only to discover that every single item was on shelves 30 feet in the air, and there was no ladders available. Well, carry on, honestly do your shopping. What&#8217;s the problem? Look, everything&#8217;s there, I can see it all. Just get it into the cart and go and check it out.</p>



<p>The outrage would be almost instantaneous. But the majority, and I think we&#8217;re going to talk about this 80, 20 split, and concentrate on the 20. I think that 20% is maybe not in conversation with the majority of people. And you are in a position where you see this more, and so you probably have a sense of that outrage, and a sense of that injustice, whereas, I imagine the people who are building websites typically, perhaps don&#8217;t.</p>



<p>And so there&#8217;s that empathic journey that you&#8217;ve got to go on. You&#8217;ve got to educate yourself, you&#8217;ve got to expose yourself to people who have these things. I don&#8217;t know, maybe that&#8217;s through YouTube videos, or listening to podcasts like this. But you have to go through something where you feel a sense of moral outrage, for want of a better word. Maybe that&#8217;s too strong a term, but you get the idea.</p>



<p>A sense of moral injustice, and that something needs to be done. And if you&#8217;ve never been through that, it may be hard to understand what&#8217;s going on. So maybe we need to talk about what you&#8217;ve just talked about, the whole troll thing and what have you. Anyway, there you go.</p>



<p>[00:19:04] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> It&#8217;s very exciting to see when someone starts to care about accessibility, because it does click in a person&#8217;s mind, like a developer, designer&#8217;s mind, in a way that it goes beyond learning a new technical craft. And it does, to bring it back to morality, it does strike something deep, where like, oh, the way that I use headings will make somebody&#8217;s life better. And of course, I want to make somebody&#8217;s life better. It&#8217;s easy for me to use headings this way, I can use a heading instead of a div, or these type of really easy things.</p>



<p>And then it becomes so ingrained in the work that they do every day, that the work they do gains purpose. And this is something that I find really exciting about talking to lots of different developers and designers. And usually what happens is, it&#8217;s a developer, designer who&#8217;s doing it for many years like myself, and it&#8217;s just, I don&#8217;t want to design another website, I feel like this is pixel pushing.</p>



<p>When I start to talk about accessibility, or when someone who I work with who uses screen readers comes and shows a demo, and they show like how the work that you do can impact the life of someone, and how big the problem is. All of a sudden the work of the designer and developer has amazing meaning.</p>



<p>I have a call to action for any designer, developer that&#8217;s just like, oh, this is just work to me. Look into accessibility. Meet somebody who uses assistive technology, because your work can actually mean something to people in a very, very big way. And it&#8217;s very exciting to see when that happens because, like myself, I&#8217;ve seen others who&#8217;ve gone from, I want to start a farm and never look at a computer again. To, this is really vital, and now every day I wake up and I look at the numbers of websites that I&#8217;ve fixed and issues that I fixed, and I see how that&#8217;s affecting people every single day.</p>



<p>[00:21:02] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I&#8217;m about to say something, and I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;ll hit the target, or if it&#8217;ll land correctly, but I&#8217;m going to try, and that is to say that, life is already difficult enough for people who have accessibility needs. The world is already, I imagine, a little bit harder to manage in certain respects, and obviously there&#8217;s a whole spectrum of that.</p>



<p>And the internet offered this fabulous promise of kind of the world brought into your hand, or onto your desktop, or what have you. And so it kind of feels like a one, two punch really. If you have accessibility needs, that the very thing which promised so much is, well, not taken away from you because it was never there for you, but it&#8217;s not provided for you.</p>



<p>Life is hard enough. Here&#8217;s this fabulous thing, the internet, which could have made life so much easier, and yet it never was that easy for you. So it feels like that&#8217;s a double punch. Does that make sense? Have I overstated that a little bit? Did I go in the wrong direction?</p>



<p>[00:21:58] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> No, I think that, I have dyslexia so I just confuse grammar and words, and I read a page and letters are flying around. And it does feel like a breath of fresh air when I&#8217;m looking at a page that is formatted in a more broad, large, fonted way. I feel like, oh, I can actually understand the concepts here. And it feels like a relaxation almost.</p>



<p>One thing I would say is like, the users that I work with, or my friends who rely on assistive technology. The bigger issue that I focus on, because they would go happily do something else, I&#8217;m thinking of my friend Jay, who&#8217;s this amazing blind fellow who loves oldie tunes he calls them, like old records and old vinyls. Usually, if he comes to a website that&#8217;s not accessible, he just shuts his computer and goes and plays music, and he doesn&#8217;t really go deeper.</p>



<p>The issue that I see though is less of like suffering, and we should help others because they have a life of suffering, and more of a idea that knowledge should be shared. And if we want to really focus on these values that have created the internet, of transparency, of free access to information, all the core open source values, if we really believe in those, then we&#8217;re going to make sure that that 20% of the world, the over 2 billion people, have access to that knowledge.</p>



<p>And with over 94% of the million most popular homepages failing accessibility tests, to me that is failing to give people access to vital knowledge, and that failing to give the potential to unlock new knowledge. And if we&#8217;re not doing that, then I just don&#8217;t understand what we really believe in. Then we don&#8217;t actually believe in these open source principles. That we don&#8217;t actually believe in the principles of a free internet, because we are excluding people. It&#8217;s much more of a moral problem than it is the headache of these people, because there&#8217;s so many other things that folks would rather be doing than navigating an inaccessible website.</p>



<p>[00:24:07] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I prefer your encapsulation of the argument a lot more than mine, and I thank you for sort of stepping in and saving me there. That was a much better way of describing it. Thank you.</p>



<p>So Project Eudiamonia is something that you&#8217;ve been working on. This is an automated web accessibility testing suite, which you&#8217;ve developed over at Equalify. First of all, we should probably get over the, what is the word eudiamonia? Both you and I had a fun chat about this before we hit record, but it&#8217;s called Project Eudiamonia. We&#8217;re going to get into the data and the stats of that in a moment but, what&#8217;s eudiamonia? Because it&#8217;s a real word.</p>



<p>[00:24:38] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> So eudiamonia is a challenge to ask what, well, eudiamonia is. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;ve used it. And the deeper kind of concept that I like behind that is that, it&#8217;s like the end fulfillment of knowledge. It&#8217;s like this ancient Greek concept that says, this is really what you should strive after, and this is why it takes work to get to this end goal of like ultimate knowledge. And it&#8217;s really fulfillment, so it is a little bit selfish. But again, I&#8217;ve used it in this kind of WordPress sense in the WordPress world, because I like to challenge people to ask questions. And I love when people ask me, what is eudiamonia? And so that&#8217;s why it&#8217;s called Project Eudiamonia.</p>



<p>[00:25:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Ideal, and I&#8217;ve fallen right into that trap, so that&#8217;s perfect. Great. So it&#8217;s more about the data I think, the next part of this episode. And the data that you&#8217;ve presented, to me at least anyway, is all to do with the WordPress properties, so specifically .org. And you have set your tool off, maybe we should actually explain what the tool is, and then we can get into the data. So, what is the project and the tooling that you are using to capture the data that we&#8217;ll get into?</p>



<p>[00:25:46] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> So I&#8217;ve developed a open source accessibility platform called Equalify, and Equalify will use different rules that establish accessibility. One of the most popular ones is the Axe core rule set. And what it basically does is it scans websites against these rules. It sees how headings are used on a page, or how color is used, and then decides if a webpage passes or fails at these rules, to establish a baseline of accessibility.</p>



<p>Now, it&#8217;s really important to note that it&#8217;s not necessarily saying, you&#8217;re accessible, or you&#8217;re not accessible. It&#8217;s just saying that your page fails at certain tests around accessibility because you aren&#8217;t really, if you pass all of the tests of the best scan, you&#8217;re going to get around 40% of the issues, maybe 50%. You&#8217;re not going to get all the issues, but it&#8217;ll give you a picture of accessibility.</p>



<p>So what we&#8217;ve done is we&#8217;ve developed a piece of software that will scan a bunch of pages, basically it&#8217;ll crawl through, or look at a site map, and scan all of those pages. And then it will come up with a report on violations, or of rules that we scanned. And so we&#8217;ve created a framework. I like to think of it as like a WordPress for web accessibility, that we can plug in different rule sets, and we can customise our reporting.</p>



<p>And so for WordPress, what we&#8217;ve done is we&#8217;ve started to, keyword is started, because this is very early in our process, but we&#8217;ve started to construct a framework for how we assess accessibility within the WordPress space.</p>



<p>And we&#8217;re starting with just .org properties. So those are like wordpress.org and all the properties around that. We&#8217;ve established around 448 properties that we&#8217;re looking at, 448 URLs that we&#8217;re looking at. And then every week I&#8217;m trying to scan new pages. So I think the last scan we had over 120,000 pages. Then we&#8217;re kind of focusing in.</p>



<p>Right now it&#8217;s a little bit chaotic, where we just have all of this data and it doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean action. But what we&#8217;re doing is we&#8217;re taking this data, finding key patterns, and the things that the WordPress community wants to focus on, and then building out automated reporting of issues. So that when somebody, like right now, WordPress is going through a big redesign, so when somebody wants to assess the general accessibility of the thousands and thousands of pages that show different plugins in the WordPress directory, that they can quickly get a picture of that, and that the key issues can be reported automatically in GitHub.</p>



<p>[00:28:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, so I&#8217;m just going to try and reprise what you just said, and if I make any mistakes just please interrupt me. So your tool is a bit like Google Bot, if you like. It goes around and it crawls, and you provide it with certain rules. Almost like the plugin architecture of WordPress, you plug in what it is that you want it to go out and look for. And at the moment you&#8217;ve trained it on the wordpress.org properties, and you found 448, I think you said, of those, of which there are about 120,000 pages that you&#8217;ve been crawling.</p>



<p>And you&#8217;re saying also that no system is perfect. Even if it passes every single thing that your tool could throw at it, you&#8217;re still only at about 40%. There&#8217;s still going to be 60% of errors that it won&#8217;t catch. Is that simply because of the technical limitations, the kind of things that an automated tool just cannot find at the moment?</p>



<p>[00:29:27] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> There&#8217;s a little bit of technical limitations. The bigger issue is how we define accessibility. So what I spoke about earlier, the web content accessibility guidelines, these like central guidelines. They&#8217;re not perfect and there&#8217;s a lot of gray areas, and leeway to how you define something as being accessible.</p>



<p>That is kind of by design because the web content accessibility guidelines, for better or for worse, are largely made for user evaluations, to build tests for users to go through and evaluate, rather than a robot tool.</p>



<p>There is some work, and I&#8217;m doing a lot of it, around AI and how we can start to assess technology in a little bit more of a, we can start building tests in a more complex way. But it goes back to, when you say accessibility and I say accessibility, how we define what an accessible website is. There&#8217;s not really an agreed statement of, this is what accessibility is. And, if we are going to say the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are what accessibility is, the rules aren&#8217;t good enough to have any technology, let alone any human being, understand every opportunity to break those rules.</p>



<p>[00:30:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Got it. Right, okay, that&#8217;s cleared that up. So even the rules themselves, around accessibility, are still in a state of flux and need to be refined. And I&#8217;m guessing that&#8217;s going to be, well, we have this thing in the UK called the Forth Bridge, and it&#8217;s this bridge which never gets finished being painted. They paint from one end, two years later, they get to the other end and they finish painting it, and by that point, where they started was already starting to blister and rust, so they could go back and begin again. And it&#8217;s the Forth Bridge, never ever gets finished painting. It&#8217;s like that. These guidelines will constantly be updated, new devices will come out, new HTML specs, and things will come out, and upset the apple carts. So it&#8217;s a never ending kind of carousel of things going on.</p>



<p>[00:31:21] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> And I would say that we shouldn&#8217;t expect that any accessibility guidelines, or anything around technology ever came to some kind of golden truth, because that&#8217;s not actually even good in my mind, because you are squashing innovation in this space, and innovation is really central to it.</p>



<p>I&#8217;ve heard so much critique around, well, like we don&#8217;t even know what accessibility is because it&#8217;s changing all the time. But like devices are changing, and the HTML spec that you mentioned is changing, and CSS is changing. Those changes, while it&#8217;s a pain when you&#8217;re a developer and you have to learn something new all the time, it actually is furthering our world because we&#8217;re getting a lot more new technology that&#8217;s doing amazing things.</p>



<p>My critique of the rule set is really that it&#8217;s not changing fast enough. That we should have much quicker changes, and it should be rapid. I think the 2.2 version was introduced not too long ago, or officially adopted not too long ago. And like 3.0 is kind of on the radar. It will be adopted, there&#8217;s not like a firm date set, but that&#8217;s deplorable. We should have new rule sets with at least the regularity that a new WordPress releases. I don&#8217;t understand why we can&#8217;t. That&#8217;s where I put my stake in the ground.</p>



<p>[00:32:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, thank you. So you&#8217;ve decided to go into the .org project and, is there a reason why you did that? Because obviously you&#8217;ve got a business, you could be doing this for clients. What was the theory behind that? I don&#8217;t want to put words into your mouth. Why pick .org and go at it? And we&#8217;ll get into the data in a minute.</p>



<p>[00:32:55] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> I can&#8217;t ignore WordPress, and that is really the biggest reason why I feel like we have to focus on it. Over 40% of the internet is run on WordPress. And when I have dabbled in other CMS worlds, or open source worlds, it doesn&#8217;t feel as impactful to work on those projects as it does with WordPress every single day.</p>



<p>The other kind of main piece is, I really love the people working on accessibility in the WordPress community. I love Joe, I love Alex, I love Amber. They&#8217;re great people, and it&#8217;s really been fun to meet them and hang out with them. When you&#8217;re part of an open source community, I&#8217;ve found you really should like the people who you&#8217;re talking with, and like that ethos.</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s impact the people of the community, and the third and final piece, I think WordPress is a amazingly human centered technology. And when you blog, you&#8217;re having to deal with all sorts of amazing creative forces, and accessibility lends itself so well to that human-centric economy and technology.</p>



<p>And I think that we have not really tapped into that as much as we can. And so there is an amazing potential to activate, not only the contributors to the WordPress Core project, but to every user that uses WordPress. Because they are subscribing to something that says, we value human creativity, we value your kind of weirdness.</p>



<p>[00:34:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, interesting. So the numbers themselves though, we alluded to the fact that you found 448 .org properties, 125,000 pages. Now here&#8217;s the big numbers, I guess. The identified violations, and I&#8217;m just reading these off the show notes and you can add some context to these in a moment, just over 2.1 million, which seems like quite a large number. But then you break that down into something a bit more manageable I think, 1.13, so 1,135 issues, so it looks like many of those issues repeat multiple, hundreds, thousands of times. And that makes it a little bit easier to parse I guess.</p>



<p>But just tell us what this all breaks down to. Is it that wordpress.org has just done a really bad job, hasn&#8217;t kept up with the time? Is it simply that there&#8217;s just so much out there, you know, 125,000 pages, that&#8217;s not easy to fix quickly? What&#8217;s your takeaway from all of that data?</p>



<p>[00:35:26] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> So, of the millions of pages that Equalify has scanned, we&#8217;ve seen around 40 issues per page. And this is not just WordPress, this is like all the pages that we&#8217;ve scanned on the internet that our clients, or that we&#8217;ve done ourselves. And then also the typical kind of web accessibility credo is that you get around 50 issues per page.</p>



<p>And the way these numbers break down is that it&#8217;s pretty average. It&#8217;s not anything beyond the blue. It just looks like these .org properties just haven&#8217;t been super paying attention to the accessibility, but they&#8217;re not doing things that are like actively trying to thwart accessibility, so it&#8217;s not that bad.</p>



<p>So 2,112,224 violations is one of the last scans we did. These big numbers are really good because what these big numbers are saying is they&#8217;re basically capturing all the little HTML nodes, all the pieces of HTML that are failing the test. And then what you could do with these 2 million plus pieces of HTML is you can then see, okay, they&#8217;re patterns. Oh, look, this one plugin is creating this piece of HTML, and that piece kind of comes over, and over, and over again. And that&#8217;s when you can start to do really impactful things with very little work.</p>



<p>I am like most developers, where I want to be really lazy about my work, and I want to do something that is extremely impactful with as little work as possible. And so, like the other day, I think I found like something that 80,000 violations would be solved by fixing just like a small labeling of a navigation element.</p>



<p>And so what I&#8217;m hoping, and what I&#8217;ve seen in other communities is that, when you attribute these big numbers to issues, and then you actually have a really quick way of fixing these big numbers, that it motivates people to do the work, even though it&#8217;s a very small bit of work.</p>



<p>And I&#8217;m testing that within the WordPress community. I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s going to work. I don&#8217;t know if these big numbers are going to actually discourage work. We&#8217;ll see. Right now, it&#8217;s kind of at the point where it&#8217;s all a test. Maybe WordPress contributors like thumbs up emojis instead of numbers of violations they fixed. We&#8217;ll see.</p>



<p>[00:37:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So is the idea then, from the data that you&#8217;ve gathered, to point it out to the community, blog posts, podcasts, things like this, and then hope to establish some sort of feedback loop. Where the people who can therefore change it, and that could be you obviously, as well as a whole bunch of other people, they become interested in this? They come and seek your data, and I&#8217;m guessing that you&#8217;re updating the data on a fairly regular basis. This wasn&#8217;t a crawl that you did back in 2023, and that was it, you&#8217;re constantly going through this. And that you set up what&#8217;s some kind of, like I said, feedback loop, channel of communication, team within WordPress that you can drop into. What&#8217;s the intended goal?</p>



<p>[00:38:19] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> We have, in the Slack and the WordPress, Make WordPress Slack, we have an accessibility testing channel. And what I&#8217;ve started to see is now other teams working within WordPress, specifically on the .org, and now more specifically on the redesign, will ping me when they have something new and they want it to be tested, and I&#8217;ll go in and test it. My goal is to get automated accessibility testing into the culture of WordPress development.</p>



<p>So we&#8217;re starting with .org properties. I think it&#8217;s very realistic to say that we can make .org very accessible. And I was just guarded with my language because I was talking about how accessibility can&#8217;t really be defined, but like we can make it very accessible, a triumph of accessibility.</p>



<p>And so, once we make .org properties a triumph of accessibility, I think then we move, and we figured out how to work within the community. Then we move into the bigger thing, which is Core. And we figure out how Core can make all of the internet accessible, and how we can make Core as well accessible because there&#8217;s a lot of problems in that, but we&#8217;re not touching those yet.</p>



<p>[00:39:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Can people use the Equalify tool that you&#8217;ve been using? Is it possible for people to download this? I can&#8217;t remember what you said at the top of the show, whether it was an open source piece of software, or what have you. If that&#8217;s the case, can people then do that, join the Slack team and what have you, and report back? I&#8217;m going to guess that the answer to my next question is no. Here&#8217;s the question. Are you inundated with volunteers wishing to help you do this, to the point where you are turning people away?</p>



<p>[00:39:49] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> There needs to be more volunteers helping this project out. There are really easy lifts that we need volunteers helping with. So like one of the main things is looking at some of the automated violations that are reported, and just making sure they make sense. That requires some accessibility knowledge, but it&#8217;s nothing that I wouldn&#8217;t help someone with, or the accessibility team of WordPress wouldn&#8217;t help somebody with.</p>



<p>There is another way, if you don&#8217;t know anything about accessibility, that you could help, if you have some kind of technical background, and that&#8217;s looking at tickets that were developed. We&#8217;re developing tickets based off of these violations with some large language model help. And we are not going to actually publish anything that hasn&#8217;t been reviewed by at least one person, probably two people, because every time we look at these tickets, they look very good, but when you start to dig into the HTML, it doesn&#8217;t actually help that much.</p>



<p>So we really need help reviewing these tickets that are created by the large language models. And I think that&#8217;s a great way to also get involved, because you don&#8217;t have to be an accessibility expert. You have to just have common sense, and ask questions when you don&#8217;t know and something seems fishy, and just help with this process. So we really need help with that.</p>



<p>[00:41:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Best place to go? Would that be to direct people towards the accessibility-text Slack channel? Is that the single best place?</p>



<p>[00:41:12] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> Accessibility-testing, or accessibility Slack channel, yes. I&#8217;m active in the accessibility-testing channel. We have a meeting every Wednesday at 15:15 UTC, I&#8217;m always there. But the accessibility Slack channel is also really good. You can jump in there. Joe is there, I&#8217;m there sometimes as well. And so feel free to jump in there.</p>



<p>We&#8217;re also at GitHub. You can look us up at github.com/equalifyeverything. And there you can get into the whole world of Equalify. And you asked earlier about downloading or using the software that we&#8217;re using. Yes, you can start using it right now, with the caveat that you have to be a little bit technical. You have to know how to use node and things like this.</p>



<p>We&#8217;ll eventually get as easy as WordPress&#8217;s one click install, but we&#8217;re not there yet because our focus is scanning and fixing. We don&#8217;t have enough people to help with the one click install. We will get there one day, and it will be just a one click install. Mark my word, please.</p>



<p>That said, Equalify has also donated our entire managed service to WordPress. We have literally said, you have it for free. We&#8217;ll do as many scans as you want, we&#8217;ll do anything you want, it&#8217;s yours. And so what we&#8217;re doing, right now people can ping me and I will happily do any scans they want, and get any reports they want. Pretty soon though, we&#8217;re going to incorporate an API that anybody in the WordPress community, and hopefully we&#8217;ll figure out how to get it so that anybody with a WordPress username can run these scans on their own WordPress related projects.</p>



<p>It will have to be WordPress related projects, so it will have to be one of the properties, or maybe even Core. But that, we&#8217;re giving like what we give to larger organisations for cost, we&#8217;re giving to the entire WordPress community totally for free. And anybody can get in touch with me if they&#8217;re working on a WordPress project and want to be scanned.</p>



<p>[00:43:07] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I guess if in the year 2024, if we&#8217;re offering up WordPress as a credible CMS for all of the things that the year 2024 requires of the internet, then the .org properties being a shining light of that seems a bit of a no brainer. Having those properties in tip top shape seems like a really good idea. So Blake&#8217;s available. He would like your help. He&#8217;s offered his tools up for free. Blake, where would we find you personally? Where&#8217;s the best places to reach you if this podcast episode has made people interested?</p>



<p>[00:43:39] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> I am pretty much everywhere the internet runs. I&#8217;ve been more active on X, formerly known as Twitter, lately, and that&#8217;s B-B-E-R-T-U-C-C. That&#8217;s kind of my unfiltered me, and a good place to get in contact with me. I&#8217;m also elblakeo31 in the WordPress community. Don&#8217;t hold me against that, that name, that was when I was 14 or so, put it together.</p>



<p>And then if anybody wants to email me or get in touch, Blake, B-L-A-K-E. @decubing, D-E-C-U-B-I-N-G.com. They can do that. So X, B-B-E-R-T-U-C-C. WordPress elblakeo31. Or email blake@decubing.com.</p>



<p>[00:44:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Perfect. Thank you very much. Blake, what an interesting project. What a moral project. Let us all hope that in the years to come, 2025, 2026, we are, all of us, reaching a near state of Eudiamonia. Wouldn&#8217;t that be nice? Thank you for joining me today.</p>



<p>[00:44:34] <strong>Blake Bertuccelli-Booth:</strong> I love that. Thank you, Nathan.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://x.com/bbertucc">Blake Bertuccelli-Booth</a>.</p>



<p>Blake has been in the world of web design for over a decade, a journey that eventually led him to become an advocate for web accessibility. He is the founder of Equalify, a company dedicated to enhancing accessibility across open-source platforms, particularly within the WordPress community. His passion for this cause was kindled through his experiences working with higher education organisations, where he saw firsthand the challenges faced by users reliant on assistive technology.</p>



<p>In this episode we get into a tool Blake’s been working on. It’s specifically designed to crawl websites and identify accessibility issues. This tool has been used to survey over 120,000 pages across wordpress.org properties, and has revealed over 2.1 million accessibility issues, shedding light on the pervasive nature of accessibility</p>



<p>We talk about the challenges of defining accessibility and why existing guidelines often fall short. Blake emphasises the moral imperative of web accessibility, highlighting the real-world impact on individuals&#8217; lives and stressing the importance of education for developers and designers. He argues that accessible design isn&#8217;t just about adhering to regulations, but about alleviating suffering and enhancing the online experience for everyone.</p>



<p>Our conversation also touches on the increasing prominence of web accessibility, and the potential ramifications of upcoming legislation like the European Accessibility Act. Blake discusses his personal struggles with dyslexia, underscoring how properly formatted content can be a source of profound relief and empowerment.</p>



<p>We also highlight the collaborative spirit of the WordPress community in tackling accessibility concerns and Blake extends an open invitation for all to join in with his efforts. He provides insights into practical steps, such as reviewing automated violations and developing tickets, to contribute to this collective mission.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re passionate about web accessibility or eager to learn how your work can make a tangible difference in people&#8217;s lives, this episode is for you.</p>



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



<p><a href="https://equalify.app/">Equalify</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/">WCAG, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines</a></p>



<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Accessibility_Act">European Accessibility Act</a></p>



<p><a href="https://github.com/EqualifyEverything">EqualifyEverything</a> on GitHub</p>



<p><a href="https://www.deque.com/axe/">Axe tool</a></p>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/handbook/about/">WordPress Accessibility Team</a></p>



<p><a href="https://x.com/bbertucc">Blake on X</a></p>



<p><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/elblakeo31/">Blake&#8217;s WordPress profile</a></p>



<p><a href="https://decubing.com/">Blake&#8217;s business 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:"Wed, 21 Aug 2024 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:4;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:104:"Do The Woo Community: The Refresh of Learn.WordPress with Kathryn Presner, Nick Diego and Laura Adamonis";s: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=85249";s: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:102:"https://dothewoo.io/the-refresh-of-learn-wordpress-with-kathryn-presner-nick-diego-and-laura-adamonis/";s: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:48409:"Episode Transcript
<div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p>Abha:<br />Hello, and welcome to the WordPress Way at Do the Woo. I&#8217;m Abha Thakor, your host for today&#8217;s show, which is part of our series to support your WordPress learning journey and encourage you more into WooCommerce. I&#8217;m joined today by Laura Adamonis, Nick Diego, and Kathryn Presner. Welcome. Our contributors today are people that you may have met in other places like me. They all contribute to the WordPress training team. If you haven&#8217;t heard about that yet, you&#8217;ll want to join it by the end of the show. We have some new developments to share with you, designed to make learning and using WordPress so much easier. If you&#8217;re a beginner or intermediate WordPress user, or simply would like a refresher on discovering new features, then today&#8217;s panel will be able to help. Today, the panel is representing contributors who&#8217;ve worked on the free, open-source resource learn.wordpress.org, which first went live in 2000 contributors.</p>



<p>This latest piece of work, which includes a completely refreshed website, has come from across the world, including New Zealand, Japan, South Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. This latest project also builds on the cross-team and multidisciplinary working that learn.wordpress.org has been fostering since its original launch. We&#8217;ve now got progressive and user-friendly learning pathways, all tailored to different types of learners and different levels. We&#8217;re going to go, first of all, to Kathryn, who&#8217;s based in Canada, and she&#8217;s going to tell us a little bit more about why these learning pathways are so important and, more importantly, how you can use them. Over to you, Kathryn.</p>



<p>Kathryn:<br />Hey, thank you. I am super excited to share what learning pathways are and how they&#8217;re going to help people with their WordPress journeys. The idea is that we have these learning pathways geared to different types of folks working with WordPress. Right now, we have pathways for users, people who run their own site or run a site for an organization or a company. And we&#8217;ve got other pathways for developers, people who work with the code side of WordPress, and in the future, we&#8217;ll also have pathways for designers and contributors. The idea is that within each of these pathways, you will have specific courses for people at the beginner level, people at an intermediate level, and people at an advanced level. So you can jump in depending on your area of interest and where you are in the WordPress world and take a journey. If you&#8217;re starting from scratch, you could start at the beginner level. If you&#8217;re more intermediate, you can jump into one of those courses and follow step-by-step, walking you through all the key things to learn in that area. So if you want, I can give you an example of one of the specific learning pathways, whatever you like.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />That would be great, Kathryn. Do talk us through that.</p>



<p>Kathryn:<br />Sure. One of the popular pathways so far is beginner WordPress user. This is something that is super useful for anyone who&#8217;s just starting out with WordPress and wants to create their own site. Or, for example, let&#8217;s say you start working at an organization, and part of your duties at that organization is to manage the site that the organization has, and you&#8217;ve never worked with WordPress before. You can dive into this course, and it&#8217;s divided into different sections called modules. You can get started learning about the basics of WordPress, everything from how to install a theme, what is a plugin, familiarizing yourself with the WordPress interface, understanding what to do, the basics of WP admin, using the media library, the basics of site editing, and the basics of content creation. There&#8217;s even a section introducing security, spam, and backups, and SEO. These are things that we don&#8217;t go into in depth in the beginner course, but it gives you a taste of each thing and provides a good basis for getting started. From there, you can move on and dive even deeper into some of those topics.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />It is a really comprehensive guide, and I think for anybody wanting to start off with WordPress, that new beginner pathway really does work. But, of course, like most things on learn.wordpress.org, and in fact the whole WordPress.org project, they are things that we can build on. They are what the community has asked for, but more importantly, they are made by the community for the community. The learning pathways also build on the work with the Individual Learner survey, which was led by Wes and I last year, and we featured that previously on Do the Woo. More importantly, we are very grateful for all the help we had with getting feedback through our Do the Woo audience. The demand has shown that people want goal-oriented learning that could be segmented by roles and skill levels. It also showed the need for that one-stop, trusted source where users can augment, refresh, and have a clear pathway through to other learning or to more in-depth WordPress learning. I&#8217;m going to go to you now, Nick. As a developer relations advocate and also from your other work and contributions to things like the developer blog in WordPress, how do you think the refreshed Learn WordPress site really addresses these needs? How does it provide that one-stop shop which can be trusted?</p>



<p>Nick:<br />Yeah, so I think that previously, or even today, there&#8217;s so much information out on the web on how to learn to use WordPress, whether you&#8217;re a developer or a user, and you search into Google, and you can find all sorts of resources. The redesign and restructuring of Learn WordPress provide a source of learning information that&#8217;s being built by contributors to WordPress that ideally is going to be the most up-to-date, most comprehensive. This is the place that you can send people to learn whether you&#8217;re a user or developer. A lot of my work focuses on improving developer documentation and also, as you mentioned, writing tutorials and guides on the developer blog. What we&#8217;re going to start to see is a much tighter connection between those resources and Learn because they both should go hand in hand. The Learn resources reference the documentation, and the documentation can then reference the courses that developers can follow if they&#8217;d like a more structured learning environment. I&#8217;m really excited to see that close connection as we move forward because we&#8217;re seeing such a great improvement with Learn, and we&#8217;re also seeing a lot of improvement with documentation as well.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />So, are there any losses with this site, Nick? Will people still be able to join online workshops or have a way of learning together with other people?</p>



<p>Nick:<br />Absolutely. I think that there are many different ways that folks learn. One of the contributions that I do quite a bit is a series called Developer Hours, where we have these online learning workshops where people come and learn about a specific topic. But again, those topics in that live environment are going to reference documentation and Learn courses. So, it&#8217;s kind of like this nice big collection of different ways that people can learn, but they all feed off one another and support one another as well.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />And I guess that&#8217;s one of the highlights—not just about where the project is at the moment, but also how, as a community, we&#8217;ve grown to the extent that all that crosswork really can happen, does happen, and we can continue to build on it. That takes me over to Laura. Laura, you&#8217;re one of the current team reps for the training team. Just share what the training team does for people who are not familiar and are listening today.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />So, the training team is the bones of the Learn WordPress learning materials. We are the creators, the teachers, the editors, the reviewers, and the researchers that pull all the information together to provide a lesson or an online workshop so that we can present the material to our beginners, our intermediates, and we&#8217;re looking for some advanced people too. We don&#8217;t have as many in that realm, but it&#8217;s great to have a group that works together to pull these resources for learn.wordpress.org.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />Thanks, Laura. With this current site, because it&#8217;s had lots of work done to it on Learning Pathways, which we&#8217;re going to talk more about in a few moments as well, what are the key wins for the user in terms of search?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, I&#8217;m super excited about that because I&#8217;ve only been using WordPress for two and a half years. I&#8217;m still in the beginner stage, I feel like, and that was one of the things that I&#8217;m excited about—the navigation and search. To be able to go in and search up the word &#8220;style book,&#8221; which is still new to people, I searched that up earlier, and there are four or five different things that popped up lesson-wise that you can do individually or, like Kathryn said, as part of the learning pathway course. So that&#8217;s a definite improvement. There are still some things that we can improve upon for filtering, but I&#8217;m so happy to see that we&#8217;re heading in the right direction for the search.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />And of course, there&#8217;s lots of opportunities for people to help with that, isn&#8217;t there?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Oh, definitely. Yes, please come help us. For any amount of time—an hour a week can make a big difference—whether fixing a bug or finding something that just doesn&#8217;t work. Just testing the site for us and filling out a feedback form is a great help.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />And we&#8217;re going to have some of these links in the show notes as part of your learning journey here on Do the Woo. If you want to get started, we&#8217;ll be able to signpost you to ways to do that. I&#8217;m going to jump back to Nick for a moment. Nick, in terms of the new, refreshed site, is it now easier to pop into a course or module on a mobile device?</p>



<p>Nick:<br />That&#8217;s</p>



<p>a good question. Yeah, so the redesign of the site—part of the work done there was to standardize the underlying architecture to work off of a block theme. So all the improvements that we&#8217;re seeing in WordPress, that are being developed with each new release, this website will now be able to take advantage of those things. Previously, it was not a block theme, so I want to say yes, it is a much better mobile experience, but it will also get better as WordPress improves. Previously, it was not a block theme; it wasn&#8217;t taking advantage of some of those improvements. So, it&#8217;s an architecture that is great, and we all love the redesign and how far we&#8217;ve gotten here, but this is really only the beginning because it&#8217;s a much more solid framework with which to add more functionality, build more things in the future, and optimize various aspects. So, I&#8217;m very excited about where we can go from here, given the architectural improvements that have been done.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />That&#8217;s great, Nick. And do you think that because it&#8217;s a block theme, it&#8217;s a great way for people to actually learn or be introduced to that kind of block, particularly those who want to start a WooCommerce shop and don&#8217;t really know about categories and things like that? Would you signpost this as a way of understanding that better?</p>



<p>Nick:<br />Yeah, I think so. One of the cool things is that if you&#8217;re following one of these learning pathways and learning about the query loop block, the search page and the course page, and the lesson page, they are powered by the query loop block. So you could literally open up the inspector in your browser and actually see that block markup that you&#8217;re learning about in these courses. Now, the query loop block is also used in WooCommerce and things like that. I think that because the theme is built with blocks and you&#8217;re learning about building with blocks, there&#8217;s a nice harmony there. Furthermore, this is an open-source project. The site, the theme that is powering the site, is open-source. So, if you are more developer-oriented, you can go to the GitHub repository and actually see how the site was architected for Learn, which I think is just another great resource to see how people are building block themes for very high-traffic sites—Learn is a very high-traffic site in the WordPress.org infrastructure. So yeah, I&#8217;m very excited about it personally.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />There&#8217;s nothing like deconstructing a site and being able to see how you put it all back together. And of course, with WordPress, you can play, run it on a test site, and even more so, you can join one of the numerous release parties that happen a couple of times a year, where you can test some of the new features, look at what Gutenberg is doing with the items that have been brought into core. So if you haven&#8217;t done that already, do check out some of our release podcasts, where all the links to how you can get involved with testing, how you can see what the new features are like ahead of time, and also input into them are provided. Kathryn, I&#8217;m going to delve a bit deeper now into these learning pathways. I remember when we moved from the individual learning survey to lots of charts on different platforms, looking at how the pathways would and could be created, what they should be called, how different learners approach things. Going back into the feedback, there was a lot to cover. Now I know not all the things have been implemented so far. Is there a plan for what happens next in terms of learning pathways?</p>



<p>Kathryn:<br />Well, the two imminent things that happen next are two more pathways that are going to be added. The next one in the user area is going to be advanced WordPress user. That way, we&#8217;ll have the full beginner, intermediate, and advanced user pathway complete. On the developer side, the next pathway that&#8217;s going to be worked on is intermediate plugin developer because right now, we have beginner WordPress developer, which covers the basics that any developer should know and sort of gives you the building blocks to move on to maybe specialize in theme development or plugin development. We have the intermediate theme developer pathway already created, and it was Cynthia Norman, a community member, who worked on that one. But next up will be the intermediate plugin developer pathway, and there&#8217;s actually a call for contributors for that because it&#8217;s going to be a nice, big, meaty pathway, and it&#8217;s going to take a lot of work to put it together.</p>



<p>So, Jonathan Bossenger from the training team has put out a specific call for folks with a development background to help put that together. And that&#8217;s actually interesting because you don&#8217;t necessarily have to do work on creating actual lessons. If you are interested in video editing, for example, you can step in and help out with editing videos that other people have created. Or maybe you&#8217;re interested in voiceovers and want to record the voiceover for one of these lessons, or maybe you want to review another lesson that someone else created. So, with that pathway that&#8217;s coming up, that&#8217;s a great opportunity for people with lots of different skills to jump in and get involved. Beyond that, in 2025, will be the next pathways in the two areas I mentioned earlier: pathways for designers and pathways for contributors who want to contribute to the project itself. That&#8217;s sort of like a meta path, if you will—not meta in the sense of the WordPress meta team, but meta in the sense of pathways about contributing to the project on any of the teams. So those are things to look out for, and if people are interested in any of those areas, that&#8217;s somewhere they could step in and get involved.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />Thanks, Kathryn. I think, as we&#8217;ve said at the beginning of this show today, that we are only representing some of the very, very many contributors that have been involved even in the beginner&#8217;s cycle of this project. There&#8217;s a huge number of contributors who took part, and not all of them at the same time. One of the great things about training is that you can actually take part at different time zones. I&#8217;m just going to go over to Laura to tell us a little bit more about how people would navigate through getting involved. Where do they start? How would they actually get involved if their time zone is not the same as the meeting, particularly on the learning pathways?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Okay, great. I&#8217;d be happy to point everyone in the right direction. If we go to make.wordpress.org/training, you&#8217;ll find our homepage, where we have our current focus areas. If you open up the welcome box, you&#8217;ll find the basic getting started link. We have done our own lesson on how to get started, and we walk you through setting that up. It is a self-guided onboarding program, and we also have a guided program that&#8217;s run by Kathryn. We try to match people up if they&#8217;d like to go through the guide program with a mentor. You meet with that mentor a couple of times to get one-on-one or maybe a group presentation of where to go and what you&#8217;re interested in. We do use GitHub, and sometimes that can be a little confusing. That was brand new for me, so I was a little scared about that. I didn&#8217;t want to break the site by clicking on the wrong button. So, having people within our team to walk you through is really beneficial on that aspect of it. The other part of your question was how to get involved with the learning pathways. That is really easy by going to learn.wordpress.org. As we said, the site is really clean and user-friendly now. Right at the top, in the second navigation, there&#8217;s Learning Pathways. When you click on that, you have either Develop with WordPress or Start with WordPress. You can also scroll down the page, and there&#8217;s a Get Started section that also has those two links that will start you on those two pathways.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />Thanks, Laura. We can also put some of these links in our show notes, but if you&#8217;re not sure and want us to help you connect with one of these wonderful panelists today, just message us on Do the Woo. Connect with us on one of our social media channels, and we&#8217;ll be glad to signpost you and connect you to the right people. One of the things as a trainer that I&#8217;m particularly pleased to see is that we have not just a journey going in one direction—we have learning pathways that can go in multiple directions. In modern-day training, that reinforcement of learning is a key part of how lessons and learning take place outside WordPress. I&#8217;m going to go to Kathryn on this. In terms of the structure, you&#8217;ve got modules, courses, lessons, but also you&#8217;ve got the pathway at the beginning and the pathway at the end. You can also jump in and do single module refreshers. Could you share a little bit more, with some examples, of the kind of single modules that are likely to be popular or that you&#8217;ve already had feedback on as being very useful?</p>



<p>Kathryn:<br />Sure. I love the fact that everything is very accessible in terms of being able to hop in and out of a section of a course. The sections are modules, as you mentioned. For example, let&#8217;s say you are a WordPress developer, but you&#8217;ve never touched themes before—maybe you&#8217;re a plugin developer, but you&#8217;d like to get a little more understanding of WordPress themes. Well, you could jump right into Beginner WordPress Developer and go to the module on Introduction to Developing WordPress Themes. You don&#8217;t have to take the whole course because all of these sections are previewable. In other words, you don&#8217;t even have to log in. Another cool thing we did was make all these learning pathways available even before you&#8217;ve logged in. You can hop in, preview these lessons within a module like Developing WordPress Themes, or you can take the course and just do that section. In the section on Developing WordPress Themes, you&#8217;ll learn about theme structure, style sheets,</p>



<p>templates, global settings, and the Create Block Theme plugin. That&#8217;s a good grounding in the basics of WordPress themes. You might say, &#8220;Hey, wow, this is really cool. Let me move right on to Intermediate Theme Development,&#8221; and you can skip everything else in the Beginner Developer pathway because you already know that stuff. That&#8217;s one possible example of how someone could hop in and use a chunk of that course.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />Has there been a course or a lesson or an area that has been particularly popular, and that you think people who haven&#8217;t tried WordPress before should start with?</p>



<p>Kathryn:<br />I think the Beginner WordPress User pathway is the most popular one so far. It is one of the first ones that came out, but I think a lot of people have jumped in there. It&#8217;s just a really great area to dive in and get started if you&#8217;re completely new to WordPress because, like I mentioned before, you&#8217;re going to have sections on just a little bit of everything. It&#8217;ll give you a good grounding on how everything works. So I think that&#8217;s one that&#8217;s been very, very popular, and we&#8217;ve gotten a lot of good feedback on it so far.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />I think we&#8217;ll link to that as well and highlight it on our social media too. Thanks, Kathryn. Nick, I&#8217;m going to come over to you. From a beginner dev&#8217;s perspective, we&#8217;re encouraging them with releases to look at documentation, the Field Guide, to keep up with the Developer Hours that you&#8217;ve shared already, and also the developer blog. How do Learn WordPress materials really fit into that, and how can they get a joined-up sense that works for them?</p>



<p>Nick:<br />I think entering the WordPress space as a developer who&#8217;s never been involved with WordPress before can be quite overwhelming. There&#8217;s a lot of content, a lot of resources, a lot of different things that you can pay attention to and focus on—so much so that it can become overwhelming and may lead people to move away from WordPress or something like that. Learn provides this place where you can go, pick a learning pathway, and just follow it. As you follow it, you know you&#8217;re getting a complete overview of what the people who built the learning pathway think you need to know about WordPress development—and they did a great job of that. Once you get through that course, then you can start attending Developer Hours, diving into some more complicated documentation with the context that the course provides. I think that the courses and learning pathways provide that really great first step to then start consuming the other content in the WordPress space so you don&#8217;t get overwhelmed. Some people might just want to dive in and get their hands dirty, but I think that the courses provide a very great entry point for developers, especially those who are new to WordPress.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />Nick, do you think that Learn.WordPress.org can become that one-stop shop for intermediate and advanced developers in the near future, or are we talking about a longer cycle?</p>



<p>Nick:<br />Well, I think that the learning pathways we have so far are great, and I think they cover a lot. I don&#8217;t think, given the amount of content—there&#8217;s so much to know around WordPress—you could probably spend years of your life just learning about building custom blocks, focusing on a very small area of WordPress. So I don&#8217;t expect that Learn WordPress will be able to cover absolutely everything, but I think it can provide people with a really good foundation for WordPress development. From there, they can maybe read a really niche article on the developer blog about a very specific topic related to block development, but it provides you with that foundation to then consume other more complicated pieces of content that you might see elsewhere.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />I think it does, and I think all these things are increasingly working together. I know part of my role in the editorial group for the developer blog is to look at what is out there that matches this, what matches documentation, and what matches online. So increasingly, hopefully, we&#8217;ll be able to cross-promote those things. Nick, I think you have an additional suggestion there.</p>



<p>Nick:<br />Yeah, well, just an anecdote really. I was engaging with a community member who was very new to WordPress. They wanted to solve this problem—they wanted to build this plugin. But when you build a plugin, you need to know how to register a plugin—the first step—and then you need to know how to do the thing you want it to do. Those are two completely different things. If you don&#8217;t know how to build a plugin, you can&#8217;t get the plugin to do what you want it to do. So, being able to direct that user to the Introduction to WordPress Development, they get all the foundation so they know how to do all the basic stuff, and then they can jump to building what they want. Whereas if they&#8217;re trying to jump to all these different documentation articles, it becomes very confusing. This user was quite frustrated with that experience. Learn WordPress provides the solution for them to really get up to speed and then build their skills further.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />And of course, the more people that get involved and help build some of these intermediate and advanced areas for users and developers, the quicker we&#8217;ll get to these solutions too. Thank you, Nick. Laura, in terms of the refreshed site, I know we&#8217;ve touched on a couple of things that you like about it already. What else would you encourage people to go and look at and feel that this is now something that will really help them?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, we touched on the search and the navigation, and the thumbnails. Each of the lessons has a little thumbnail picture, and we&#8217;ve coordinated with the design team to create the thumbnail creation Figma file. That makes it a little bit more cohesive throughout—everything is kind of the same. That was another great way for contributors around the world to contribute—they could create the thumbnails. That was a great thing as a beginner to get used to contributing. We still need help with that. We&#8217;re now going back to all of our older lessons and some of the lessons from other teams that we have that still need help with thumbnails. So, I really like that aspect of it.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />Again, we can put that link in because it&#8217;s really good. I remember doing that as part of a training day contributor event, where we created lots of thumbnails and helped each other—it was actually quite fun.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yes. Yeah, we had a thumbnail of fun.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />It was amazing. I had great fun on that. Contributing can be fun. If you subscribe to this channel regularly, or just hear me talk about WordPress, you&#8217;ll know that contributing can definitely be fun. On that note, I&#8217;m going to head back to Kathryn. For me, and for many people out there, the idea of a project keeping pace with a release is really hard because releases happen quite a few times a year, and there&#8217;s a lot to try and capture. How will this refreshed site help people get more connected to what&#8217;s in a release and learn about those things in a smoother way?</p>



<p>Kathryn:<br />One of the things to keep an eye out for is online workshops. We haven&#8217;t talked about them a lot, but they are the real-time events that happen regularly and cover a topic. There are usually at least one or two online workshops for each new release. For 6.6, there were actually two different people who ran a workshop to go over some of the new features, which was really cool because different people have different perspectives on what are the things to highlight and how to show them. That was really amazing. In terms of maintaining the content over time, as areas of WordPress get updated and change, that&#8217;s going to be a discussion that we are having in the community about an ongoing content maintenance plan. It&#8217;s not one of the glamorous areas of maintaining the site, but it is something that really has to happen because we want people who do a search for something to find an up-to-date video that looks like what they see in their dashboard and reflects the steps that are currently relevant. We don&#8217;t want people getting frustrated by looking at an outdated lesson or screenshots or anything like that, but it isn&#8217;t a simple problem to solve. We have opened a discussion in the community; there&#8217;s a post that talks about how we want to create a plan. Is it going to be a process of going through things on a quarterly basis, on a semi-annual basis? Are we going to tie it to releases? How do we go in and update? Are there going to be priority areas that should be updated first before others? So, that is a whole set of questions that we are going to work on with the community to establish some guidelines. We&#8217;re also going to look at what other sites do. How do other sites maintain older content, and if so, for how long? What is a reasonable and realistic way for us to go about this because we have limited resources in terms of who&#8217;s going to be doing this work? I guess the short answer is: to be discussed, and we&#8217;ll know more once we&#8217;ve had more discussions with the community about how we&#8217;re going to go about this.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />Thanks, Kathryn. Again, we can put a link to this so that people can still take part. I presume it&#8217;s not a closed discussion; it&#8217;s an open discussion, and we want to have as many views as possible. One of the things that I always get feedback on when I do presentations on Learn WordPress to meetups is that this content isn&#8217;t necessarily in my local language. So, with this refreshed website, is there still room for content that&#8217;s not just in English? I&#8217;m going to go to Nick first on that.</p>



<p>Nick:<br />Yeah, I think that one of the things the team is looking at is how we can handle translations on the site. There are courses and lessons currently in other languages. I think that kind of translation and making sites</p>



<p>available in many different languages is kind of a core thing that WordPress is thinking about. I think it&#8217;s Phase 4 of the Gutenberg roadmap—multilingual. I think that obviously, we&#8217;re going to try and find a solution before multilingual because that will take some time, as WordPress releases tend to take some time. But I think it is something that&#8217;s on the team&#8217;s roadmap. I&#8217;m forgetting the name of the plugin—I think it&#8217;s TranslatePress—that is being looked at right now by the developer team to see if we can implement that.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />Laura, if people want to get involved now with actually translating some of the original content that exists, where would they go to get started?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />That&#8217;s what I was talking about earlier—getting started, getting ahold of one of us to say, &#8220;Hey, I&#8217;m interested,&#8221; and we can start showing you the translation onboarding process. We&#8217;ve had a couple of glitches right now, so we&#8217;re kind of in a standstill, but we still want people to translate information, and we&#8217;ll definitely be able to walk you through how to add that within the ecosystem of learn.wordpress.org.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />Thanks, Laura. Watch out for one of our future shows this year, where we&#8217;re going to be looking at multilingual. We have guests coming up who have been working in this area. I&#8217;m going to go back to Nick. For people who think, &#8220;Okay, the site&#8217;s got a refresh, it&#8217;s got a little bit more categorization, a better understanding, but it doesn&#8217;t answer what I need to learn,&#8221; what should they do? How can they influence the next focus for Learn?</p>



<p>Nick:<br />Yeah, absolutely. I think it&#8217;s really important to stress that everything we do on WordPress.org, especially Learn, is driven by contributors and the feedback we get from the community. Laura, being one of the leads for the training team, can speak to this as well, but if you see something that&#8217;s missing, advocate for that. Share it with the training team, share it with folks because if you&#8217;re seeing something that&#8217;s missing, it&#8217;s likely that others are looking for that as well. There&#8217;s only so much time in contributor time to get things done, but the more people advocating for certain topics, the more likely it will be created. Or if you end up learning about that yourself, consider contributing it back. I remember when I started on the training team long, long ago, all the online workshops I did for Learn were on topics I didn&#8217;t know about before I did the learning. I would learn the topic and then present it to the community. That&#8217;s a great way of learning the topic, and we move forward. It&#8217;s a very collaborative, very positive environment on the training team. I really encourage folks to get involved. It&#8217;s how I started contributing to WordPress, and it&#8217;s led me to where I am today, so I can&#8217;t say enough good things about it.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />Laura, if people want to connect with the team reps like yourself in training, how do they do that?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, usually the best way is to join the Slack training team. The Getting Started guide walks you through setting up a WordPress.org account and joining our Make WordPress Slack channel. You can see the different teams you can be involved with. People are involved with multiple teams too. It&#8217;s open to what you&#8217;re interested in. Our team currently has three team reps so that we can have coverage for a lot of different areas. We&#8217;re in multiple time zones, which is really beneficial so that we can focus in on and have presentations. We started doing coffee chats with our contributors. If they have questions for a more experienced contributor, they can ask those questions. We&#8217;re doing onboarding chats within our teams to meet with people face-to-face on Zoom so that they might feel a little more comfortable on camera too, and maybe we can get those people to do presentations. A lot of our contributors also have a connection with their community, with their local meetups. Learn.wordpress.org is a great resource to bring back to your local community. A couple of people have done presentations or are teaching a group of people using the WordPress user pathway, so they&#8217;re kind of testing for us, but they&#8217;re also using it for their community too. We&#8217;re excited to hear that feedback from people using the learning pathways within their communities.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />It is about that feedback. Nothing in WordPress moves forward without feedback. So, if you&#8217;re looking at the site, taking a course, or plunging into a module and taking some of Kathryn&#8217;s suggestions, trying out some of those courses—if you have feedback, there&#8217;s always a link at the end of each module that allows you to give feedback as well. Please do share it. Please remember, this site and its content are produced by contributors just like you—users of WordPress, people who love it. Be part of that. As we come toward our close today, I&#8217;ve got a few quick questions for the panel. Kathryn, I&#8217;m going to come to you first. Now you&#8217;re based in Canada—is it Montreal you&#8217;re in?</p>



<p>Kathryn:<br />Yes, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />A wonderful part of the world. Kathryn, we do a lot of talking about food on this program. I did warn you ahead of time to tell me about your favorite recipe and what it says about the culture and things that are around it. So what do you have for me today?</p>



<p>Kathryn:<br />Well, I&#8217;m a huge baker, so it was very hard to choose, and I don&#8217;t even know if I could pick one thing, but I&#8217;ll tell you one personal favorite and one culturally relevant favorite, if that&#8217;s okay. The first one I want to mention is Never-Fail Chocolate Cake. So, my mom was moving into a new apartment, and she uncovered this recipe book that was created when I was in kindergarten. I was about five years old. In this book that she uncovered, there was one page that was just full of chocolate, and it was really disgusting. The reason it was so disgusting was that it was the one recipe she would make over and over—and she was not a baker, she still isn&#8217;t—but it was this Never-Fail Chocolate Cake. I looked at it and thought, &#8220;Wow, I&#8217;m curious to know what a recipe this old is like and if it&#8217;s any good anymore.&#8221;</p>



<p>So, I made a few adjustments—I changed the shortening to butter, made a few tweaks—and it was actually delicious. It was a very easy recipe. It even inspired me to make a whole blog post about it, which doesn&#8217;t happen often. So, there&#8217;s a whole blog post about Never-Fail Chocolate Cake. Just very quickly, the other recipe is Butter Tart Squares. We have a thing in Canada, a dessert called Butter Tarts. Normally, they are little individual pastries with a pastry crust and then kind of like this gooey filling, similar to a pecan pie filling if you&#8217;ve had that. Sometimes there are nuts, sometimes there are raisins. I don&#8217;t ever have raisins because, to me, that&#8217;s just not a thing. But I discovered this recipe that&#8217;s a little easier than making individual butter tarts, and it&#8217;s Butter Tart Squares. It&#8217;s got layers of pastry crust, a layer of the goo, and a layer of pecans, and it&#8217;s just delicious—and it&#8217;s a very Canadian thing. So, those would be my two that I would share.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />I am so hungry now. I think I need the Never-Fail Chocolate Cake in my life. What I didn&#8217;t tell you, of course, is that whatever you suggested, you might end up making live on one of the shows that we&#8217;re working on—a series of shows. But I think after hearing the Never-Fail Chocolate Cake, that&#8217;s going to be really popular with our audience, who will vote on the best recipes they want to see done live. So, I&#8217;m going to go to Nick, who looks a bit worried.</p>



<p>Nick:<br />Yeah, I&#8217;m a bit worried. I don&#8217;t cook as much as I should, or what I cook is not something that is worth sharing on this show—it&#8217;s quite boring. But one thing I do want to share is that my wife is Italian, and one of the things we cook quite a bit—I always pronounce this wrong, or however you want to pronounce it—is gnocchi, which is like a potato noodle with fresh homemade pasta sauce. Gnocchi is a very traditional dish, and our family&#8217;s been passing down the recipe forever. It&#8217;s very simple to make but very good. So that&#8217;s our go-to home-cooked pasta-type meal.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />Well, I can tell you to ease your concern that you&#8217;ve got a little time to practice how to pronounce it, and we may just have that on the show. Of course, we will be talking all things Woo at the same time, as you would expect. But it is to build on our WP recipe, and we&#8217;ve got some great ideas that we&#8217;re going to be sharing as well. So let me have those recipes. Laura, what have you got for us?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />So my recipes come from—I married into an Italian-Lithuanian family, and we have a lot of really good stuff. Bacon buns are a Lithuanian thing from my father-in-law, and it&#8217;s a yeast dough with ham predominantly, and then a little bit of bacon. Some people like to put onions in it too. So we&#8217;ve always made trays of bacon buns for different holidays. I&#8217;m also a big baker, so my go-to is éclair cake, which is graham crackers and vanilla pudding. When you let it sit overnight, it tastes like an éclair. So that&#8217;s been a family thing on my side of the family. Growing up on the south side of Chicago, our churches would have recipe books—that&#8217;s how the church would raise money. This was a recipe book from my aunt, and everyone&#8217;s made it in our family.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />I love that idea. We&#8217;ve got some plans with how we&#8217;re going to support other contributors</p>



<p>with our recipe stuff too. So yes, I think all three of you passed that test. I now know that Bob will be sitting there in the background on the show thinking about chocolate, bacon, and potatoes. So thank you very much for joining us. Before we go, I&#8217;m just going to ask Nick to share, I think, one of the most important things about the Learn WordPress project. It uses so many different skills and disciplines to make it happen and create the end result—to create the learning, the reflection, the understanding, and the localization. What makes it special, and what skills and disciplines from the people listening to the show would you like to appeal to come and get involved?</p>



<p>Nick:<br />Yeah. Well, thanks for the question. I think you&#8217;re right; it is a very important one. So obviously, if you&#8217;re interested in creating educational material, the training team&#8217;s great for that. But if you&#8217;re a developer, a designer, or a copywriter, contributors from across the spectrum came together to make this possible. There&#8217;s actually an ongoing effort for WordPress.org as a whole to upgrade different areas of the site, with Learn WordPress being one of them. That includes people from the marketing team, marketing folks, people from Meta—the developers that maintain the website—we have designers, and then there&#8217;s me, who just floats across all sorts of different teams. It&#8217;s really a broad spectrum. So no matter what your skill set is, if you&#8217;re passionate about Learn, there&#8217;s a place for you, whether it&#8217;s creating educational content or even just helping with the architecture of the site. There&#8217;s an entire GitHub project board with features that we&#8217;d like to implement, which will require development, and that is something folks can help contribute to, as well as design work. So really, I just want to stress that no matter what your current skill set is, there is a place for you to contribute to both Learn WordPress and the broader WordPress community as a whole.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />And we hope to see you there. And of course, if you do get involved with any of the things we&#8217;ve highlighted in the WordPress Way, then let us know. We won&#8217;t necessarily share your story if you&#8217;d rather we didn&#8217;t, but it does help us feed into the other interviews we do, and we&#8217;d always love to hear from our audience as well. Do look out for our next shows. We&#8217;ve got multilingual, a big reflection on the releases of this year later in November as well, and we&#8217;re going to fly over to a couple of other places as well. If we haven&#8217;t featured your country or your area of WooCommerce, do get in touch. I&#8217;m Nonstop News UK on Twitter. You can get my details from the make.wordpress.org profiles as well. All that remains for me to say is thank you to my wonderful panel today and goodbye from me.</p>
</div>




<p>In this episode of <strong><em>The WordPress Way</em></strong>, host <strong>Abha Thakor</strong> is joined by <strong>Laura Adamonis, Nick Diego, and Kathryn Presner</strong> to discuss the latest updates to the Learn.WordPress.</p>



<p>All three are contributors to the WordPress Training Team, and share insights into the newly refreshed learn.wordpress.org site, including the introduction of progressive and user-friendly learning pathways designed to cater to different types of learners at various skill levels. </p>



<p>They explore how the site offers a comprehensive and trusted resource for WordPress users, developers, and future contributors, with a special focus on making learning more accessible and tailored to individual needs. </p>



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



<p><strong>Refreshed Learn WordPress Platform</strong>: The newly updated learn.wordpress.org site offers tailored learning pathways for different types of WordPress users, including beginners, intermediate users, and developers. These pathways are designed to guide users through specific courses and modules that match their skill level and area of interest.</p>



<p><strong>Community-Driven Development</strong>: The content and structure of Learn WordPress are heavily influenced by feedback from the community. Contributors from around the world, including developers, designers, and educators, collaborate to create and maintain the learning resources available on the platform.</p>



<p><strong>Diverse Learning Options</strong>: The platform offers various ways to learn, including self-paced courses, real-time online workshops, and developer-focused sessions like Developer Hours. This variety ensures that learners can find a method that suits their preferred learning style.</p>



<p><strong>Open Source and Contributor-Friendly</strong>: The Learn WordPress site is built using a block theme, allowing developers to explore its architecture through the open-source repository on GitHub. This provides an opportunity for developers to learn how high-traffic WordPress sites are constructed and maintained.</p>



<p><strong>Future Developments</strong>: Upcoming additions to the platform include new learning pathways for advanced WordPress users and intermediate plugin developers. The team is also working on making the platform more accessible in multiple languages, with ongoing efforts to implement translation features.</p>



<p><strong>Get Involved</strong>: There are numerous ways to contribute to the Learn WordPress project, whether through content creation, video editing, design, or providing feedback. The Training Team is open to new contributors, and anyone interested can join the team via the WordPress Slack channel or by participating in community discussions.</p>



<p><strong>Practical Use of Learn WordPress</strong>: The site is not just for beginners; even seasoned developers can use it to fill gaps in their knowledge or explore new areas like theme or plugin development. The modular structure allows users to jump into specific topics without needing to complete an entire course.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Links</h3>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/zoonini/">Kathryn on WordPress.org</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/lada7042/">Laura on WordPress.org</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ndiego/">Nick on WordPress.org</a></strong></li>
</ul>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">Learn WordPress Site</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/">WordPress Training Team</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news">WordPress Developer Blog</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/chat/">Slack Training Team Channel</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org">Developer Documentation and Resources</a></strong></li>
</ul>";s: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, 21 Aug 2024 08:42:00 +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:5;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"WPTavern: WordCamp Asia Extends Speaker Application Deadline to September 8, 2024";s: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=159722";s: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:91:"https://wptavern.com/wordcamp-asia-extends-speaker-application-deadline-to-september-8-2024";s: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:3192:"<p>The WordCamp Asia organizing team has extended the <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2025/speaker-application-deadline-extended-for-wordcamp-asia-2025/">speaker application deadline</a> to September 8, 2024. This extension aims to give more WordPress enthusiasts the opportunity to apply for the prestigious event.</p>



<p>One of the three flagship WordCamps, <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2025/dates-and-venue-revealed/">WordCamp Asia</a>, will be held at the Philippine International Convention Center in Manila, Philippines, from February 20 to 22, 2025.</p>



<p>Interested speakers can choose from the five session formats the organizing team has planned:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Lightning Talk (10 minutes for talk only. No Q&amp;A)</li>



<li>Panel Discussions/Fireside Chat (60 minutes including Q&amp;A)</li>



<li>Long Talk (Individual) (40 minutes &#8211; 30 minutes for talk + 10 minutes for Q&amp;A)</li>



<li>Joint Talk (Two Speakers) (40 minutes &#8211; 30 minutes for talk + 10 minutes for Q&amp;A)</li>



<li>Workshops (90 minutes to half a day)</li>
</ul>



<p>All presentations must be delivered in English, and speakers can submit up to two proposals. To ensure inclusivity and diversity, the organizers aim to feature approximately 60% local (Asian) speakers and 40% non-male speakers.</p>



<p>Speakers can choose topics ranging from business and marketing, community and people, design, and development to personal WordPress stories. As the organizing team notes, “By speaking at WordCamp, you have the chance to inspire and empower others in the community. Your story might encourage someone to start their own WordPress journey, tackle a difficult project, or contribute to the community in their own way… The WordPress community values diverse perspectives and experiences, and even if you’re not a seasoned professional, your story has value.”</p>



<p>The organizers have also introduced the Underrepresented Speaker Support Initiative to assist potential speakers, particularly from underrepresented groups, by removing financial barriers. Speakers can email&nbsp; <a href="mailto:asia-speakers@wordcamp.org">asia-speakers@wordcamp.org</a> for support.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Potential speakers can also explore the 60-minute <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plan/speaker-training-workshop/">workshop</a> created by the WordPress Diverse Speaker Training group and join the Slack channel #diverse-speaker-support in the main WordPress Slack to connect with other speakers from marginalized and underrepresented groups.</p>



<p>For more information and to apply, visit the official <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2025/call-for-speakers/">WordCamp Asia website</a> or <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2025/contact/">contact the organizers</a>. The WordCamp Asia organizers are also looking for <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2025/call-for-volunteers/">volunteers</a>, <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2025/call-for-sponsors/">sponsors</a>, <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2025/call-for-emcees/">emcees</a>, and<a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2025/call-for-media-partners/"> media partners</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, 20 Aug 2024 19:02:45 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Jyolsna";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:6;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:231:"HeroPress: Emerged in Love with WordPress – My Journey of Contributing to What I Love – WordPress এবং আমার ভালোবাসার যাত্রা: কিভাবে শুরু হলো পথ চলা";s: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=7288";s: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:218:"https://heropress.com/essays/emerged-in-love-with-wordpress-my-journey-of-contributing-to-what-i-love/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=emerged-in-love-with-wordpress-my-journey-of-contributing-to-what-i-love";s: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:51642:"<img width="1024" height="512" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/081624-min.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Pull Quote: Thanks WordPress for bringing all the beautiful things into my life." /><p><a href="https://heropress.com/feed/#bengali">এই নিবন্ধটি বাংলায় পাওয়া যায়</a></p>



<p>The story is about a girl next door from Bangladesh who found the most passionate place to volunteer. The way I received love and value in a community is a story in itself, aside from receiving financial and geographical freedom.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-i-feel-urge-to-contribute-to-the-most-engaging-community-wordpress">Why I Feel Urge to Contribute to the Most Engaging Community- WordPress?</h2>



<p>Let us begin by discussing the reason behind my strong desire to start and continue contributing to WordPress.</p>



<p>I am Mumtahina Faguni, born and living in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Dhaka is our capital city and because of that, there is tons of opportunity for everyone to explore and execute. Fortunately, my volunteerism was first sparked during my school years. Like the phrase ‘Born Leader’ there is a term popular in my community: ‘Born Volunteer’. And I proudly acclaim that I am one.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I was involved in organizing a lot of school events and acts. I adored participating in projects that reflect my values and strengths. Volunteering is like recharging my energy battery; the more I do, the more energy I have. </p>



<p>When I entered university, I was overwhelmed by the introduction of tons of volunteer groups for versatile purposes. There was a volunteer group to help needy people with winter clothes, a group for donating blood, a group for helping to grow underrepresented communities, and so on. A few days later, I found out there were volunteer groups related to my field of study, computer science and engineering. Notable ones were the Mozilla Makers community, Women in Tech, Open Source Network groups, and many more. As time went on, a variety of factors, including differences in operation style, caused me to lose interest easily. I didn’t get the ‘should keep contributing’ vibe from here. And after a few days, I backed out of these and kept being active in other volunteer groups. </p>



<a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image4.jpg"><img width="768" height="1024" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image4-768x1024.jpg" alt="Mumtahina Faguni in a yellow saree " class="wp-image-7292" /></a>



<p>Since I have not mentioned WordPress&#8217; name in my narrative yet, let us move on to our first exchange. Back in my university days, I knew WordPress only as a PHP framework that provided many no-coding functionalities for users. So, I used WordPress only to complete my project. At that time, I wasn’t introduced to the WordPress world, so I didn’t get the chance to explore more.</p>



<p>Years later, in 2019, I heard for the first time that WordCamp was happening in my city, Dhaka. I had no idea it had anything to do with WordPress; I assumed it would be some sort of tech fair. But, attending the first WordCamp changed all my assumptions.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I got introduced to the most buzzing community, the WordPress community. On that day, I discovered a world full of amazing career opportunities, networking, making new friends, and other things, as well as how to start contributing to WordPress. Ever since WordPress has captured my heart, I have been learning a lot about it. </p>



<p>The biggest power of the WordPress community is that it accepts all kinds of diversity and gives a sense of belonging to the community. The community structure is so organized that anyone can start contributing at any time and age they want. Even if you take a break, the community will welcome you again with warmth. There is no discrimination; everybody helps and cheers you on. If you have new, out-of-the-box ideas to implement, you will always get support from the community. These factors inspired me to commit to making a contribution to WordPress.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-wordpress-brings-my-dreams-and-manifestations-to-life">How WordPress Brings My Dreams and Manifestations to Life</h2>



<p>Here, I want to shed light on what I gained from WordPress. Growing up, the most common childhood dreams in my native Bangladesh were to become engineers, doctors, or pilots. I was no exception. I grew up, holding these dreams close to my heart. At a certain point, when I had to choose one option from the above three, I chose to be an engineer. I started dreaming that I would go to a beautiful European country for my higher studies, or be a tech crew of the National Geographic channel, and whatnot.</p>



<p>Back at that time, on a lazy afternoon, while I was thinking about what I dreamed of and what I’m now, I got the answer from my inner self about what I really wanted. I want to travel, explore, and meet new people and cultures.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Being a pilot would give me the power to explore new horizons. Similar benefits I would receive if I worked as a government doctor include the opportunity to visit new areas and cities and help people. If I had to summarize all of my childhood fantasies in one sentence, it would be that I wished to fly and transcend boundaries.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I was always enthralled by the line from the movie Forrest Gump: &#8220;Dear God, make me a bird. So I could fly far, far away.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>However, realizing dreams and making them come true is not a simple process. Processing paperwork and managing finances from my home country takes time. In addition, I needed to find employment quickly. Thus, life took place. And continuing one after another event, my dreams got shadowed. </p>



<p>When I learned about WordCamps, I burst with joy. WordCamp is the kind of event that will allow me to socialize with new people, make friends, and venture beyond my comfort zone. Since that moment, I’ve started manifesting. How can I be a part of a WordCamp? How to attend a WordCamp outside my city; I started wondering about these. And it took me three years to attend WordCamp Kolkata 2022, the event I eventually joined. It was one of the happiest days of my life when I got selected as a volunteer for WordCamo Kolkata 2022. My WordCamp adventure continued after that. Now I have WordCamp Asia 2023, WordCamp Sylhet 2023, and WordCamp Sylhet 2024 in my sack. </p>



<p>Additionally, I will be an organizer at WordCamp Asia 2025, which is coming up soon. When I shared this latest news of my life, I was showered with wishes and love. Also, I heard I got lucky, as I was able to be a part of back-to-back WordCamps. However, I am aware that this is the outcome of my manifestation for the next three and a half years. When someone succeeds in something they love, it is usually the consequence of months or years of perseverance and not letting go of dreams.</p>



<p>Through WordCamps, I made incredibly good friends from all over the world, including Rahul, Sunita, Dominica, Maya, Emma, and Prema. It makes me wonder how I might never have met these incredible people if I hadn&#8217;t begun my WordCamp journey. Regardless of borders, I never would have guessed that there are people with whom I share such similar thought processes. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-finding-my-place-how-i-made-make-wordpress-community-my-home">Finding My Place: How I Made Make WordPress Community My Home</h2>



<p>My journey with WordPress began with my job. Subsequently, I became aware of WordCamps, a fairyland for me. A few times later, I found my way to the Make WordPress community, another magical place. I discovered there were several ways to contribute to WordPress, including designing, developing, using the CLI, writing documentation, solving tickets, etc. However, I was having trouble figuring out where I should or could start. </p>



<p>Beginning translation was the simplest way to contribute, as I discovered when I attended WordCamp Dhaka 2019, my first WordCamp. I went to WordPress.org&#8217;s Polyglot page and began translating. However, I was unable to find any direction or endorsement from the Polyglot team. Are my translations incorrect? Am I adding to the incorrect string? I was unable to locate any information. Eventually, I gave up on it as well.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Years later, in my present office, our owner, Asif Bhai, called all the enthusiastic people in our office and gave a brief on how to take the first step. And that was through joining the Slack channel called Make WordPress. I entered a whole new world after that. That day, I discovered that participating in a weekly Slack channel meeting counts as a contribution as well.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Then I joined my preferred channels and started attending meetings. There, I found various chores where I could get involved. Also, not to mention, I was introduced to amazing people like Courtney, Ben, Ava, Puja, Destiny, See Ree, Yevitt, etc. Still, now I am learning and contributing to places where I think I am well-suited.&nbsp;</p>



<p>After participating in the Make WordPress community for a few days, I became aware of the concept of &#8220;Core Contribution.&#8221; If you contribute to the upcoming WordPress version, it will be counted as a core contribution. Writing documentation, creating long-lasting WordPress banners, resolving tickets, having your created tickets chosen for the upcoming WordPress release, and many other methods will identify your contribution as core.&nbsp;</p>



<p>To get my Core contribution acknowledgment, I got help from my WordPress guardian, Robin Bhai. He guided us on how to test tickets and provide solutions to them. I thus contributed to the most recent WordPress release. It was indeed a different kind of warm feeling to see your name listed among the contributors to WordPress Core.  </p>



<p>Where do I go from here? I have already made contributions to the Polyglots, Training, and Marketing Slack channels. Now I want to expand my horizons and be active in contributing to other channels like documentation, etc. Let us explore the next opportunities and pleasures that lie ahead of us.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-it-s-all-about-love-that-matters-amp-giving-back">It&#8217;s All About Love, That Matters &amp; Giving Back</h2>



<p>What keeps me growing and going in the WordPress community, aside from achieving financial independence through employment in a WordPress-based company, is love. I am really grateful to have received love and acceptance from the WordPress community. Here&#8217;s where I can just be myself.&nbsp;</p>



<p>There are a few small yet noteworthy gestures that deserve recognition. When WordCamp Sylhet 2024 happened, I was the Contributor Dya Table Lead, and my eight-month-old daughter was with me the entire time. Since it was my first time attending an event of any kind with my baby, I was quite anxious about how I would manage. But as soon as I arrived at the Contributor Day location, all of my anxiety vanished.</p>



<p>My lovely leads and organizers, along with my office team, took care of my baby so I could do my job flawlessly. I am not sure how much my words expressed my gratitude to them compared to how I truly felt. This experience gave me confidence that, despite changes in my life, I can still pursue my passions.&nbsp;</p>



<a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image1.jpg"><img width="1024" height="768" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image1-1024x768.jpg" alt="Mumtahina and Aurora speaking to an office room full of people" class="wp-image-7294" /></a>



<p>Here&#8217;s another story that is worth sharing. A few months ago, my partner decided to summit EBC in Nepal. We were both at a loss due to some dependency that needed to be done by the locals. I reached out to one of my WordPress friends for guidance. She did more than just provide me with the ideas I needed—she went above and beyond to complete the task. For an amazing person like her, expressing love in this way is very typical, but I was overwhelmed.</p>



<p>There are countless touching tales just like them. I truly consider the love I have received from the WordPress community to be priceless.</p>



<p>Even though I do not have a lot of power in my community, I still make an effort to assist others. If I could get proper guidance, I might start my journey with WordPress sooner. A portion of girls in our nation find coding to be challenging. Thus, they avoid any fields that are related to coding. However, there are a plethora of ways to contribute to communities, such as WordPress. I therefore co-organized a Women in WordPress meetup in 2022 to raise awareness of my surroundings. Many working women joined, and we gave them lots of advice on how to use WordPress for interests other than work.</p>



<p>In WordCamp Sylhet 2024, my panel discussion topic was to inspire underrepresented communities. Following the session, one of the young contributors became enthusiastic and expressed his desire to encourage non-techies to become more familiar with WordPress. I became so excited that I gave him some ideas on how to raise awareness and include more people. Now he successfully runs his university WordPress meetup community. These little things always give me a lift.</p>



<a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image3.jpg"><img width="1024" height="768" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image3-1024x768.jpg" alt="Organizers of WordCamp Sylhet on stage" class="wp-image-7296" /></a>



<p>In 2023, I had to take a long break from all my volunteering chores due to my pregnancy. Now, I’m the mother of a beautiful baby girl, Aurora. I must admit that I was aware of the difficulties faced by girls who do not participate or contribute in various ways, but I had no idea how difficult it is for mothers.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Especially as a working mother, you have to juggle taking care of the baby, the house, and the office all at once. Furthermore, there are few facilities available to working mothers! Not only do some offices lack baby daycare centers, but they also lack areas for feeding and pumping. Additionally, going to meetups other than after work seems chaotic. Since the idea of a babysitter is uncommon in our nation, if someone wishes to attend a WordCamp, WordPress event, or any other function, she must bring a plus one to help with babysitting. </p>



<p>Fortunately, I have a loving family and a positive work environment. I have also started making little contributions to WordPress once more. But, I am now more driven to work for these kinds of individuals. To allow everyone return after a long absence and participate in the community whenever they so choose.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-my-final-thoughts">My Final Thoughts</h2>



<p>We all have personal motivation to keep doing something or being committed to something. For me and WordPress, that is love. I feel really lucky to have been introduced to such a wonderful, welcoming community. And I am trying my best every time to give back love and assist whenever needed. Thanks, WordPress for bringing all the beautiful things into my life. </p>



<p>My story has just begun, and I know that there are many more stories related to my journey with WordPress that will be created in the future.</p>



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<div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id7288_4c2d2d-45 alignnone kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-1-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top">

<div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7288_79c5f0-fc"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
<h2 id="work-environment" class="kt-adv-heading7288_a95104-1d wp-block-kadence-advancedheading">Mumtahina&#8217;s Work Environment</h2>



<p>We asked Mumtahina for a view into her development life and this is what she sent!</p>


	<div class="hotspots-image-container">
		<img width="2560" height="1920" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/mumta_desk.jpg" alt="Mumtahina Faguni&#8217;s Desk" class="hotspots-image skip-lazy" />
	</div>




<p class="kt-adv-heading7288_8f9e86-0f wp-block-kadence-advancedheading has-theme-palette-9-background-color has-background">HeroPress would like to thank <a href="https://wpdrawattention.com/">Draw Attention</a> for their donation of the plugin to make this interactive image!</p>
</div></div>

</div></div>




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<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="bengali">WordPress এবং আমার ভালোবাসার যাত্রা: কিভাবে শুরু হলো পথ চলা</h1>



<p>বাংলাদেশের একটি মেয়ের গল্প, যে তার জীবনের সবচেয়ে প্রিয় স্বেচ্ছাসেবী সংগঠনে স্থানে স্থান করে নিয়েছে। একটি কমিউনিটিতে যে ভাবে আমি ভালোবাসা এবং মূল্য পেয়েছি, তার একটি গল্প, আর্থিক এবং ভৌগোলিক স্বাধীনতা পাওয়ার সাথে।</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ক-ন-আম-wordpress-এর-সবচ-য-আকর-ষণ-য-কম-উন-ট-ত-অবদ-ন-র-খ-র-ত-গ-দ-অন-ভব-কর">কেন আমি WordPress-এর সবচেয়ে আকর্ষণীয় কমিউনিটিতে অবদান রাখার তাগিদ অনুভব করি?</h2>



<p>আসুন আমি কেন WordPress-এ অবদান রাখতে শুরু করেছি এবং এটি চালিয়ে যাওয়ার শক্তিশালী ইচ্ছার পেছনের কারণ জানি।</p>



<p>আমি মুমতাহিনা ফাগুনী, ঢাকায় জন্মেছি এবং বাস করছি। ঢাকা আমাদের রাজধানী শহর এবং এ কারণে সবার জন্য কাজ করার প্রচুর সুযোগ রয়েছে। ভাগ্যক্রমে, আমার স্বেচ্ছাসেবী কাজের উত্সাহ প্রথম থেকেই স্কুল জীবনে শুরু হয়। ‘জন্মগত নেতা’ শব্দটির মতো, আমাদের কমিউনিটিতে একটি জনপ্রিয় শব্দ রয়েছে &#8211; ‘জন্মগত স্বেচ্ছাসেবী’। এবং আমি গর্বের সাথে বলি যে আমি একজন।</p>



<p>আমি অনেক স্কুল ইভেন্ট এবং কার্যক্রম সংগঠনে জড়িত ছিলাম। আমি এমন প্রকল্পগুলিতে অংশগ্রহণ করতে ভালোবাসি যা আমার মূল্যবোধ এবং শক্তিগুলির প্রতিফলন করে। স্বেচ্ছাসেবা আমার শক্তি ব্যাটারি চার্জ করার মতো; যত বেশি করি, তত বেশি শক্তি পাই।</p>



<p>বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় জীবনে প্রবেশ করার পর, আমি বিভিন্ন ধরনের স্বেচ্ছাসেবী দলের সাথে পরিচিত হয়ে অভিভূত হয়ে পড়ি। দরিদ্রদের শীতকালীন পোশাক সরবরাহ করার জন্য একটি দল ছিল, রক্তদান করার জন্য একটি দল, এবং একটি দল ছিল আন্ডাররিপ্রেজেন্টেড সম্প্রদায়গুলিকে সহায়তা করার জন্য। কয়েকদিন পর, আমি জানতে পারি যে আমার পড়াশোনার সাথে সম্পর্কিত স্বেচ্ছাসেবী দলও রয়েছে, যেমন Mozilla Makers Community, Women in Tech, Open Source Network Groups, ইত্যাদি। সময়ের সাথে সাথে, বিভিন্ন অপারেশন স্টাইলের কারণে আমি সহজেই আগ্রহ হারিয়ে ফেলি। আমি সেখান থেকে ‘অবদান রাখা উচিত’ এই অনুভূতি পাইনি। আর কয়েকদিন পর, আমি সেগুলি থেকে পিছিয়ে পড়ি এবং অন্য স্বেচ্ছাসেবী দলে সক্রিয় থাকি।</p>



<p>এখনও পর্যন্ত আমি WordPress-এর নাম উল্লেখ করিনি, আসুন আমাদের প্রথম পরিচয়টি নিয়ে কথা বলি। আমার বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় জীবনে, আমি WordPress-কে শুধুমাত্র একটি PHP ফ্রেমওয়ার্ক হিসাবে জানতাম যা ব্যবহারকারীদের জন্য অনেক নো-কোডিং কার্যকারিতা সরবরাহ করে। তাই, আমি শুধুমাত্র আমার প্রজেক্ট সম্পূর্ণ করার জন্য WordPress ব্যবহার করতাম। তখন আমি WordPress-এর জগতে পরিচিত ছিলাম না, তাই আমি আরও অন্বেষণ করার সুযোগ পাইনি।</p>



<p>বছর কয়েক পরে, ২০১৯ সালে, আমি প্রথমবার শুনেছিলাম যে আমার শহর, ঢাকায় WordCamp হচ্ছে। আমি জানতাম না এর কিছুই WordPress-এর সাথে সম্পর্কিত ছিল; আমি ভেবেছিলাম এটি একটি টেক ফেয়ার হবে। কিন্তু, প্রথম WordCamp-এ উপস্থিত হয়ে আমার সমস্ত ধারণা বদলে গেল।</p>



<p>আমি WordPress-এর সবচেয়ে প্রতাপশালী কমিউনিটিতের সাথে পরিচিত হলাম। সেদিন, আমি একটি বিশ্ব আবিষ্কার করলাম যেখানে চমৎকার ক্যারিয়ারের সুযোগ, নেটওয়ার্কিং, নতুন বন্ধুত্ব গঠন, এবং আরও অনেক কিছু ছিল, যেমন WordPress-এ কন্ট্রিবিউশন শুরু করার উপায়। তখন থেকেই WordPress আমার হৃদয়কে জয় করে নিয়েছে, এবং আমি এখনও এটি সম্পর্কে অনেক কিছু শিখছি।</p>



<p>WordPress কমিউনিটিতের সবচেয়ে বড় শক্তি হল এটি সকল ধরনের বৈচিত্র্যকে গ্রহণ করে এবং কমিউনিটির সাথে একাত্মতার অনুভূতি দেয়। কমিউনিটিতে কাঠামো এতটাই সংগঠিত যে যে কেউ তাদের পছন্দমতো সময় এবং বয়সে অবদান রাখতে পারে। আপনি যদি বিরতি নেন, সম্প্রদায় আপনাকে আবার উষ্ণ অভ্যর্থনা জানাবে। এখানে কোন বৈষম্য নেই, সবাই সাহায্য করে এবং আপনাকে উৎসাহিত করে। যদি আপনার নতুন, বক্সের বাইরে চিন্তা করার আইডিয়া থাকে, সম্প্রদায় থেকে সবসময় সমর্থন পাবেন। এই সমস্ত কারণগুলো আমাকে WordPress-এ অবদান রাখতে উৎসাহিত করেছে।</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ক-ভ-ব-wordpress-আম-র-স-বপ-ন-এব-আক-ঙ-ক-ষ-গ-ল-ব-স-তব-য-ত-কর-ছ">কীভাবে WordPress আমার স্বপ্ন এবং আকাঙ্ক্ষাগুলি বাস্তবায়িত করেছে</h2>



<p>এখানে আমি WordPress থেকে কী পেয়েছি তা নিয়ে আলোকপাত করতে চাই। বড় হওয়ার সময়, আমার দেশে বাংলাদেশে সবচেয়ে সাধারণ শৈশব স্বপ্ন ছিল ইঞ্জিনিয়ার, ডাক্তার, বা পাইলট হওয়া। আমি এর ব্যতিক্রম ছিলাম না। আমি বড় হলাম, এই স্বপ্নগুলোকে হৃদয়ে ধরে রাখলাম। একটি নির্দিষ্ট সময়ে, যখন আমাকে উপরের তিনটি থেকে একটি বিকল্প বেছে নিতে হয়েছিল, আমি ইঞ্জিনিয়ার হওয়ার সিদ্ধান্ত নিয়েছিলাম। আমি স্বপ্ন দেখা শুরু করলাম যে আমি আমার উচ্চতর শিক্ষার জন্য একটি সুন্দর ইউরোপীয় দেশে যাব, বা National Geographic Channel-এর টেক ক্রু হব, এবং আরও কত কিছু।</p>



<p>তখন, একটি অলস বিকেলে, আমি যা স্বপ্ন দেখেছি এবং আমি এখন কী, তা নিয়ে চিন্তা করছিলাম, তখন আমার ভেতর থেকে একটি উত্তর পেলাম যা আমি সত্যিই চাই। আমি ভ্রমণ করতে চাই, নতুন মানুষ এবং সংস্কৃতির সাথে পরিচিত হতে চাই।</p>



<p>একজন পাইলট হওয়া আমাকে নতুন দিগন্ত অন্বেষণ করার ক্ষমতা দিত। একই সুবিধা আমি পাবো যদি আমি একজন সরকারী ডাক্তার হিসেবে কাজ করি, যেমন নতুন এলাকা এবং শহর পরিদর্শনের সুযোগ এবং মানুষদের সাহায্য করা। আমার সমস্ত শৈশবের কল্পনা এক বাক্যে সংক্ষিপ্ত করলে, এটি হবে আমি উড়তে এবং সীমানা অতিক্রম করতে চেয়েছিলাম।</p>



<p>আমি সবসময় &#8220;Forrest Gump&#8221; সিনেমার একটি লাইন দ্বারা মুগ্ধ ছিলাম: &#8220;Dear God, make me a bird. So I could fly far, far away.&#8221;</p>



<p>তবে, স্বপ্নগুলি বাস্তবায়িত করা এবং সেগুলি বাস্তবে রূপান্তরিত করা সহজ প্রক্রিয়া নয়। আমার নিজ দেশের থেকে কাগজপত্র প্রক্রিয়াকরণ এবং অর্থ পরিচালনা করতে সময় লাগে। এছাড়াও, আমাকে দ্রুত চাকরি খুঁজে বের করতে হয়েছিল। একটির পর একটি ঘটনা চলতে থাকে, আমার স্বপ্নগুলি ধীরে ধীরে অন্ধকারে চলে যায়।</p>



<p>যখন আমি WordCamps সম্পর্কে জানলাম, আমি আনন্দে ভরপুর ছিলাম। WordCamp এমন একটি ইভেন্ট যা আমাকে নতুন মানুষদের সাথে মেশার, বন্ধু বানানোর এবং আমার সান্ত্বনার অঞ্চলের বাইরে যাত্ৰার সুযোগ দেবে। সেই মুহূর্ত থেকে, আমি বাস্তবায়নের চিন্তা শুরু করি। কীভাবে আমি WordCamp-এর অংশ হতে পারি? কীভাবে আমার শহরের বাইরের WordCamp-এ অংশগ্রহণ করতে পারি; আমি এসব ভাবতে শুরু করি। এবং WordCamp-এ যোগ দিতে আমার ৩ বছর সময় লেগেছিল, এটি ছিল WordCamp Kolkata 2022। এটি ছিল আমার জীবনের সবচেয়ে সুখের দিনগুলির মধ্যে একটি, যখন আমি WordCamp Kolkata 2022-এ স্বেচ্ছাসেবক হিসেবে নির্বাচিত হয়েছিলাম। তারপর থেকে আমার WordCamp অ্যাডভেঞ্চার চলতে থাকে। এখন আমার ঝুলিতে আরও আছে WordCamp Asia 2023, WordCamp Sylhet 2023, এবং WordCamp Sylhet 2024।</p>



<p>এছাড়াও, আমি শীঘ্রই আসন্ন WordCamp Asia 2025-এ সংগঠক হিসাবে থাকব। যখন আমি আমার জীবনের এই সংবাদটি শেয়ার করেছিলাম, অনেক শুভেচ্ছা এবং ভালোবাসায় পূর্ণ হয়ে গেলাম। এছাড়াও, আমি শুনেছি যে আমি ভাগ্যবান ছিলাম, কারণ আমি পরপর WordCamp-এর অংশ হতে পেরেছি। তবে, আমি জানি এটি আমার সাড়ে তিন বছরের বাস্তবায়নের ফলাফল। যখন কেউ তাদের ভালোবাসার কিছুতে সফল হয়, এটি সাধারণত কয়েক মাস বা বছরের অধ্যবসায়ের ফল এবং স্বপ্নগুলোকে ছাড়িয়ে না যাওয়ার কারণে ঘটে।</p>



<p>WordCamps-এর মাধ্যমে, আমি বিশ্বজুড়ে অত্যন্ত ভালো বন্ধু পেয়েছি, যেমন Rahul, Sunita, Dominica, Maya, Emma, এবং Prema। এখন আমার মনে হয়, যদি আমি আমার WordCamp যাত্রা শুরু না করতাম, তবে কীভাবে এই মানুষগুলির সাথে পরিচিত হতাম। সীমানা পেরিয়ে, আমি কখনো ভাবিনি যে এমন মানুষদের সাথে দেখা হবে যাদের সাথে আমার চিন্তা এতটাই মিলে যাবে।</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ক-ভ-ব-আম-make-wordpress-কম-উন-ট-ক-ন-জ-র-দ-ব-ত-য-ঘর-ব-ন-ল-ম-nbsp">কিভাবে আমি Make WordPress কমিউনিটিকে নিজের দ্বিতীয় ঘর বানালাম&nbsp;</h2>



<p>আমার WordPress-এর যাত্রা শুরু হয় আমার চাকরির মাধ্যমে। এরপর আমি WordCamps সম্পর্কে জানতে পারি, যা আমার জন্য এক পরীর দেশ ছিল। কিছুদিন পর, আমি Make WordPress কমিউনিটিতে যোগ দিই, যা আরেকটি জাদুকরী স্থান ছিল। আমি জানতে পারি যে WordPress-এ অবদান রাখার জন্য বিভিন্ন উপায় রয়েছে, যেমন ডিজাইন করা, ডেভেলপ করা, CLI ব্যবহার করা, ডকুমেন্টেশন লেখা, টিকিট সমাধান করা ইত্যাদি। তবে, আমি বুঝতে পারছিলাম না যে কোথা থেকে বা কীভাবে শুরু করা উচিত।</p>



<p>সবচেয়ে সহজ উপায় হিসেবে অনুবাদ শুরু করার কথা আমি প্রথম বুঝতে পারি যখন আমি WordCamp Dhaka 2019-এ অংশগ্রহণ করি, যা ছিল আমার প্রথম WordCamp। আমি WordPress.org-এর Polyglot পৃষ্ঠায় গিয়ে অনুবাদ শুরু করি। কিন্তু, আমি Polyglot টিমের কাছ থেকে কোনো নির্দেশনা বা সমর্থন পাইনি। আমার অনুবাদগুলো কি ভুল ছিল? আমি কি ভুল স্ট্রিংয়ে যোগ করছি? আমি কোনো তথ্য খুঁজে পাইনি। অবশেষে, আমি এটাও ছেড়ে দিই।</p>



<p>কয়েক বছর পরে, আমার বর্তমান অফিসে, আমাদের মালিক, আসিফ ভাই, আমাদের অফিসের সমস্ত উৎসাহী মানুষকে ডেকে প্রথম পদক্ষেপটি কীভাবে নিতে হবে সে সম্পর্কে একটি সংক্ষিপ্ত বিবরণ দেন। এবং তা ছিল Make WordPress নামে একটি Slack চ্যানেলে যোগদান করা। এরপর আমি এক সম্পূর্ণ নতুন জগতে প্রবেশ করি। সেদিন, আমি জানতে পারি যে সাপ্তাহিক Slack চ্যানেল মিটিংয়ে অংশগ্রহণ করাও একটি অবদান হিসেবে গণ্য হয়।</p>



<p>এরপর আমি আমার পছন্দের চ্যানেলগুলোতে যোগদান করি এবং মিটিংয়ে অংশগ্রহণ করতে শুরু করি। সেখানে, আমি বিভিন্ন কাজ খুঁজে পাই যেখানে আমি যুক্ত হতে পারি। এছাড়াও, উল্লেখ করা প্রয়োজন, আমি অসাধারণ মানুষদের সাথে পরিচিত হই, যেমন কোর্টনি, বেন, আভা, পূজা, ডেসটিনি, সি রি, ইভিট, ইত্যাদি। এখনও, আমি শিখছি এবং এমন জায়গায় অবদান রাখছি যেখানে আমি নিজেকে উপযুক্ত মনে করি।</p>



<p>Make WordPress কমিউনিটিতে কিছুদিন অংশগ্রহণ করার পরে, আমি &#8220;কোর কন্ট্রিবিউশন&#8221; ধারণাটি সম্পর্কে অবগত হই। আপনি যদি আসন্ন WordPress সংস্করণে অবদান রাখেন, তবে তা কোর কন্ট্রিবিউশন হিসেবে গণ্য হবে। ডকুমেন্টেশন লেখা, দীর্ঘস্থায়ী WordPress ব্যানার তৈরি করা, টিকিট সমাধান করা, আপনার তৈরি করা টিকিটগুলি আসন্ন WordPress রিলিজের জন্য নির্বাচিত হওয়া এবং অন্যান্য অনেক উপায়ে আপনার অবদানকে কোর হিসেবে গণ্য করা হবে।</p>



<p>আমার কোর কন্ট্রিবিউশন স্বীকৃতি পাওয়ার জন্য, আমি আমার WordPress গার্ডিয়ান, রবিন ভাই থেকে সাহায্য পাই। তিনি আমাদের টিকিট পরীক্ষা করার এবং সেগুলোর সমাধান দেওয়ার উপায়গুলি শিখিয়েছিলেন। এভাবে আমি সর্বশেষ WordPress রিলিজে অবদান রাখি। WordPress Core-এর অবদানকারীদের মধ্যে আপনার নামটি দেখতে পাওয়া একটি বিশেষ ধরনের উষ্ণ অনুভূতি।</p>



<p>এখন আমি কোথায় যাব? আমি ইতিমধ্যে Polyglots, Training, এবং Marketing Slack চ্যানেলগুলোতে অবদান রেখেছি। এখন আমি আমার দিগন্ত প্রসারিত করতে চাই এবং ডকুমেন্টেশন ইত্যাদির মতো অন্যান্য চ্যানেলগুলিতে সক্রিয়ভাবে অবদান রাখতে চাই। আসুন আমরা সামনে থাকা পরবর্তী সুযোগগুলি এবং আনন্দগুলি অন্বেষণ করি।</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ভ-ল-ব-স-যত-ন-আর-ফ-র-দ-ওয-র-গল-প">ভালোবাসা, যত্ন, আর ফিরে দেওয়ার গল্প</h2>



<p>আমার WordPress কমিউনিটিতে বেড়ে ওঠা এবং এগিয়ে যাওয়ার প্রেরণা যে ভালোবাসা থেকে আসে, তা ছাড়াও, WordPress-ভিত্তিক কোম্পানিতে কাজ করে আর্থিক স্বাধীনতা অর্জন করাটাও একটি বড় কারণ। আমি WordPress কমিউনিটি থেকে যে ভালোবাসা এবং গ্রহণযোগ্যতা পেয়েছি, তার জন্য আমি সত্যিই কৃতজ্ঞ। এখানে আমি আমার নিজেকে প্রকাশ করতে পারি।</p>



<p>কিছু ছোট কিন্তু উল্লেখযোগ্য ঘটনা রয়েছে, যা অবশ্যই স্বীকৃতি পাওয়ার যোগ্য। যখন WordCamp Sylhet 2024 হলো, তখন আমি Contributor Day-এর টেবিল লিড ছিলাম, এবং আমার আট মাস বয়সী ছেলে সারা সময় আমার সাথে ছিল। যেহেতু এটি আমার প্রথমবারের মতো কোন ইভেন্টে বাচ্চার সাথে অংশগ্রহণ করা, তাই আমি বেশ চিন্তিত ছিলাম কিভাবে আমি এটি পরিচালনা করবো। কিন্তু Contributor Day-এর স্থানে পৌঁছানোর পরপরই, আমার সব চিন্তা মুছে গেল।</p>



<a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image2.jpg"><img width="768" height="1024" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image2-768x1024.jpg" alt="Mumtahina and Aurora in front of the contributor day sign at WordCamp Sylhet." class="wp-image-7298" /></a>



<p>আমার প্রিয় লিড এবং আয়োজকরা, অফিসের টিম সহ, আমার বাচ্চার যত্ন নিয়েছিল যাতে আমি আমার কাজ নিখুঁতভাবে করতে পারি। আমি নিশ্চিত নই আমার কথাগুলি তাদের প্রতি আমার আসল কৃতজ্ঞতার তুলনায় কতটা প্রকাশ করতে পেরেছে। এই অভিজ্ঞতাটি আমাকে আত্মবিশ্বাস দিয়েছে যে, আমার জীবনে পরিবর্তন আসলেও, আমি এখনও আমার আবেগকে অনুসরণ করতে পারি।</p>



<p>আরও একটি গল্প আছে যা শেয়ার করা মূল্যবান। কয়েক মাস আগে, আমার সঙ্গী নেপালে EBC সামিট করার সিদ্ধান্ত নেন। কিছু স্থানীয়দের মাধ্যমে নির্ভরশীল কাজগুলি সম্পন্ন করতে না পারায় আমরা হতবাক ছিলাম। আমি আমার এক WordPress বন্ধুর কাছে পরামর্শের জন্য পৌঁছালাম। তিনি শুধু আমাকে প্রয়োজনীয় ধারণাগুলি দেননি, বরং তার কাজ শেষ করতে আরও বেশি সাহায্য করেছেন। তার মতো অসাধারণ একজন মানুষের জন্য এইভাবে ভালোবাসা প্রকাশ করা স্বাভাবিক হলেও, আমি অভিভূত হয়েছি।</p>



<p>এরকম অসংখ্য স্পর্শকাতর গল্প রয়েছে। আমি সত্যিই WordPress কমিউনিটি থেকে পাওয়া ভালোবাসাকে অমূল্য মনে করি।</p>



<p>যদিও আমার কমিউনিটিতে অনেক ক্ষমতা নেই, তবুও আমি অন্যদের সাহায্য করার চেষ্টা করি। যদি আমি সঠিক দিকনির্দেশনা পেতাম, তাহলে আমি হয়তো WordPress-এর সাথে আমার যাত্রা আরও আগে শুরু করতে পারতাম। আমাদের দেশে অনেক মেয়ে কোডিংকে চ্যালেঞ্জিং মনে করে। তাই তারা কোডিং সম্পর্কিত যেকোন ক্ষেত্র থেকে দূরে থাকে। তবে, WordPress-এর মতো কমিউনিটিতে অবদান রাখার জন্য অনেক উপায় রয়েছে। তাই আমি ২০২২ সালে একটি Women in WordPress মিটআপ সহ-আয়োজন করি যাতে আমার আশেপাশে সচেতনতা বৃদ্ধি করতে পারি। অনেক কর্মজীবী নারী এতে যোগ দেন, এবং আমরা তাদেরকে কাজ ছাড়াও WordPress ব্যবহার করার বিষয়ে অনেক পরামর্শ দিয়েছি।</p>



<p>WordCamp Sylhet 2024-এ, আমার প্যানেল আলোচনার বিষয় ছিল প্রতিনিধিত্বহীন কমিউনিটিকে উৎসাহিত করা। সেশনের পরে, এক তরুণ কন্ট্রিবিউটর উৎসাহী হয়ে ওঠেন এবং non-techies-দের WordPress-এর সাথে পরিচিত করার ইচ্ছা প্রকাশ করেন। আমি এতটাই উত্তেজিত হয়েছিলাম যে আমি তাকে কিছু ধারণা দিলাম কিভাবে সচেতনতা বৃদ্ধি করা যায় এবং আরও মানুষকে অন্তর্ভুক্ত করা যায়। এখন তিনি সফলভাবে তার বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের WordPress মিটআপ কমিউনিটি পরিচালনা করছেন। এই ছোট ছোট বিষয়গুলো সবসময় আমাকে উজ্জীবিত করে।</p>



<a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image5.jpg"><img width="1024" height="681" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image5-1024x681.jpg" alt="A panel on stage at WordCamp Sylhet" class="wp-image-7300" /></a>



<p>২০২৩ সালে, আমি আমার গর্ভধারণের কারণে সব স্বেচ্ছাসেবী কাজ থেকে দীর্ঘ বিরতি নিয়েছিলাম। এখন আমি একটি সুন্দর কন্যা শিশুর মা, যার নাম Aurora। আমি স্বীকার করতেই হবে যে, যারা বিভিন্ন উপায়ে অংশগ্রহণ বা অবদান রাখেন না তাদের সমস্যাগুলি আমি বুঝতে পারতাম, কিন্তু আমি মায়েদের জন্য কেমন কঠিন তা কখনও জানতাম না।</p>



<p>বিশেষ করে একজন কর্মজীবী মা হিসেবে, আপনাকে একসাথে বাচ্চার যত্ন নেওয়া, বাড়ি এবং অফিস পরিচালনা করতে হয়। তাছাড়া, কর্মজীবী মায়েদের জন্য খুব কম সুবিধা রয়েছে! কিছু অফিসে বেবি ডে কেয়ার সেন্টার না থাকার পাশাপাশি, ফিডিং এবং পাম্পিংয়ের জন্যও কোন জায়গা নেই। এছাড়াও, কাজের পরে মিটআপে যাওয়া প্রায়শই বিশৃঙ্খল মনে হয়। যেহেতু আমাদের দেশে বেবিসিটারের ধারণা কম, তাই কেউ যদি WordCamp, WordPress ইভেন্ট বা অন্য কোন ফাংশনে যোগ দিতে চান, তাকে বেবিসিটিংয়ের জন্য একজন সহকারী নিয়ে যেতে হয়।</p>



<p>সৌভাগ্যক্রমে, আমার একটি ভালোবাসাময় পরিবার এবং ইতিবাচক কাজের পরিবেশ রয়েছে। আমি আবার ছোট ছোট অবদান রাখতে শুরু করেছি WordPress-এ। কিন্তু, অনেকেই আছে যারা এই সুবিধাগুলো থেকে বঞ্চিত। আমি এখন এই ধরনের ব্যক্তিদের জন্য কাজ করতে চাই । প্রত্যেককে যেন দীর্ঘ অনুপস্থিতির পরে ফিরে আসাতে পারে এবং যখনই ইচ্ছে তখনি তারা পছন্দের গ্রুপে অংশগ্রহণ করতে পারে৷&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-আম-র-চ-ড-ন-ত-ভ-বন">আমার চূড়ান্ত ভাবনা</h2>



<p>আমি WordPress-এর সাথে যোগদান করার এবং অবদান রাখার সুযোগ পেয়ে নিজেকে ভাগ্যবান মনে করি। এটি আমার জন্য শুধু একটি কাজ নয়, এটি আমার জীবনের একটি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ অংশ হয়ে উঠেছে। WordPress সম্প্রদায় আমাকে একটি পরিবার প্রদান করেছে, যা আমি বিশ্বজুড়ে ছড়িয়ে দিতে চাই। আমি আশা করি যে আমার এই যাত্রা অন্যদেরকে তাদের ভালোবাসার জন্য অবদান রাখতে অনুপ্রাণিত করবে এবং তারা একই সুখ এবং আনন্দ পাবে যা আমি পেয়েছি।</p>



<p>আমার গল্পটি কেবল শুরু হয়েছে, এবং আমি জানি যে আমার WordPress-এর সাথে সম্পর্কিত আরও অনেক গল্প রয়েছে যা ভবিষ্যতে তৈরি হবে।</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://heropress.com/essays/emerged-in-love-with-wordpress-my-journey-of-contributing-to-what-i-love/">Emerged in Love with WordPress &#8211; My Journey of Contributing to What I Love &#8211; WordPress এবং আমার ভালোবাসার যাত্রা: কিভাবে শুরু হলো পথ চলা</a> appeared first on <a 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:"Tue, 20 Aug 2024 17:35:59 +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:16:"Mumtahina Faguni";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:7;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"Matt: Anbernic, Sol, and Daylight";s: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:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=118362";s: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://ma.tt/2024/08/anbernic-sol-and-daylight/";s: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:3309:"<p>I&#8217;m always trying out new things. First, something fun: my friend Jesse gifted me a very cool Gameboy-like device called <a href="https://anbernic.com/products/rg35xx-2024-new">the Anbernic RG35XX</a>, at ~$46. It has almost every game you remember, like if you got all the cartridges at Toys R Us or checked them out at Blockbuster. Having something without Wi-Fi, notifications, etc., is nice to relax. Very fun. I&#8217;m also keeping my eye on <a href="https://modretro.com/">Palmer Luckey&#8217;s new ModRetro</a>.</p>



<p>Second, <a href="https://solreader.com/">I give to you the Sol E-reader</a>, $399, basically glasses with a Kindle built-in, and a remote you hold in your hand for turning pages. The website is slick, even the packaging and design was nice, but the product is not. <em>Do not buy this.</em> It&#8217;s really not pleasant to use. The resolution was so low and the typography so bad it felt like reading on a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-89_series">TI-89 calculator</a>.</p>



<p>Third, I&#8217;ve been really enjoying <a href="https://daylightcomputer.com/">the DC-1 Daylight Computer</a>, $729, which is like if a Kindle mixed with an iPad in the best possible way. This feels like an actually new platform, in that I find myself imagining new ways and places (like outdoors) I&#8217;d want to spend time with it. It runs Android, so you can have any app on it, even code on it. This video gives a good sense of the device and its founder <a href="https://x.com/anjankatta">Anjan Katta</a>:</p>



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	<img class="lyt-bg" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9M6zT0mRvW0/hqdefault.jpg" alt="" />
  <a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=9M6zT0mRvW0" class="lty-playbtn" title="Play Video">
    <span class="lyt-visually-hidden"></span>
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<p>I could see Daylight being fantastic for kids as well; it just feels less &#8220;toxic&#8221; than the hyper-display world in which smartphones have us trapped. Audrey <a href="https://audrey.co/">invested back in 2022</a> and it&#8217;s awesome to see how this turned out, it&#8217;s so rare that hardware makes it to this stage. I&#8217;ve shifted a lot of my nighttime consumption and play over to the Daylight; it&#8217;s so fun to play chess or read an article. It has surpassed the Kindle as my favorite reading device. And it looks good everywhere:</p>




<img width="604" height="805" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2024/08/IMG_7626-Large-768x1024.jpeg?resize=604%2C805&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-123464" />



<img width="604" height="805" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2024/08/IMG_7671-Large-768x1024.jpeg?resize=604%2C805&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-123465" />



<img width="604" height="805" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2024/08/IMG_07423D7B158B-1-768x1024.jpeg?resize=604%2C805&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-123463" />




<p>I used the Daylight a lot on the recent Sydney to Hamilton Island ~1,000 mile transport I did with the <a href="https://rolexsydneyhobart.com/the-yachts/2023/oroton-drumfire/?raceId=176&SeriesId=2">Drumfire crew</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/herman__music/">my friend Herman/John</a>, which was part of my &#8220;learning to sail&#8221; goal for this 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:"Tue, 20 Aug 2024 15:17:44 +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:4:"Matt";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:8;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"WordCamp Central: Bridging Africa’s Digital Gaps: The PayDel Summit 2024 (A WordPress Event)";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=7610169";s: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:113:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2024/08/bridging-africas-digital-gaps-the-paydel-summit-2024-a-wordpress-event/";s: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:5078:"<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The digital landscape of Africa is evolving rapidly, but significant challenges remain, particularly in the realms of online payments and product delivery. Stunning web applications have become the norm, showcasing products and services with visual brilliance. Yet, the journey from browsing to a successful transaction often encounters roadblocks, leaving many websites on the continent struggling to complete the checkout process or ensuring seamless delivery to customers.</h2>



<p>This is where the <strong>Online Payments &amp; Delivery Summit &#8211; Kampala 2024</strong> comes in. Set for <strong>October 18th, 2024</strong> at <strong>The Innovation Village, Ntinda &#8211; Kampala</strong>, this one-day summit is designed for those who are passionate about technology, web development, digital payments, and the broader fintech industry, as well as delivery services in Africa. It promises to be a convergence of professionals eager to delve into the latest trends, policies, and innovations that will shape the future of digital transactions on the continent.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Why Attend?</strong></h3>



<p><strong>1. Hear from Experts<br /></strong>At the PayDel Summit 2024, you&#8217;ll have the chance to learn from industry experts who have navigated the challenges of digital payments and delivery. These seasoned professionals will share their experiences, both the successes and the lessons learned from failure, providing invaluable insights that you can apply to your own projects.</p>



<p><strong>2. Network with Peers<br /></strong>The summit is not just about learning; it&#8217;s also about connecting. You&#8217;ll have the opportunity to meet like-minded professionals, expand your network, and forge relationships that could lead to future collaborations. Whether you&#8217;re a developer, a web designer, an eCommerce manager, or a fintech professional, this event is a prime opportunity to grow your network in the tech community.</p>



<p><strong>3. Collaborate and Innovate</strong><strong><br /></strong>Innovation thrives on collaboration, and at PayDel Summit 2024, you&#8217;ll have the chance to exchange ideas and work together with others to drive the next wave of innovation in Uganda and Africa’s tech scene. Whether it&#8217;s a new approach to online payments or an innovative delivery solution, the summit is a breeding ground for fresh ideas.</p>



<p><strong>4. Showcase Your Innovations</strong><strong><br /></strong>For those with groundbreaking innovations in digital payments and delivery, the summit provides the perfect platform to showcase your work. Whether you’re a startup looking for investors or an established company seeking new customers, your biggest opportunity could be at this event.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Bridging the Digital Divide in Africa</strong></h3>



<p>The PayDel Summit 2024 emerged from a critical need within our WordPress Community to address a key challenge in Africa’s digital ecosystem. Although many web applications across the continent are beautifully designed, the obstacles of processing payments and ensuring seamless product delivery continue to stifle the growth of online businesses. Unlike other parts of the world where integrating services like PayPal, Stripe, DHL, or Aramex is straightforward, the reality in Africa is much more complex. Solutions tailored to the continent exist, but integrating them into our web applications remains a significant hurdle. Our mission is to close this gap by uniting passionate professionals from various sectors of technology and business to explore and implement the latest trends, policies, and innovations.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Empowering Businesses and Innovators</strong></h4>



<p>Our vision for the PayDel Summit 2024 is clear: to empower businesses and organizations across Uganda and Africa by addressing the unique challenges faced in digital payments and delivery. We believe that by providing a platform for experts to share their experiences, facilitating networking opportunities, and showcasing innovative ideas, we can drive innovation and uncover untapped ideas that have the potential to transform the region&#8217;s tech landscape.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Join the Digital Revolution</strong></h4>



<p>Whether you&#8217;re a web developer, eCommerce manager, entrepreneur, industry leader, or simply someone passionate about the future of digital transactions, the PayDel Summit 2024 offers something for everyone. This is your opportunity to gain valuable insights, connect with industry peers, and showcase your innovations to potential customers and investors.</p>



<p>Join us on <strong>October 18th, 2024</strong>, at <strong>The Innovation Village, Ntinda &#8211; Kampala</strong>, and be part of the movement that&#8217;s shaping the future of digital payments and delivery in Africa.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Register here: <a href="https://bit.ly/paydel">https://bit.ly/paydel</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, 20 Aug 2024 15:01:31 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Joan Logose";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:9;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65:"Do The Woo Community: AI Transparency and Trust with James LePage";s: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=85178";s: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:64:"https://dothewoo.io/ai-transparency-and-trust-with-james-lepage/";s: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:58495:"<div class="wp-block-group has-border-color has-light-gray-background-color has-background has-small-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-12 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
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Episode Transcript
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<p>Jonathan:<br />Welcome to another episode of Do the Woo. I&#8217;m your co-host, Jonathan Wold, and with me again today is your other co-host, Tammie Lister. Tammie, how are you?</p>



<p>Tammie:<br />I&#8217;m good, thank you. How are you?</p>



<p>Jonathan:<br />Apparently a lot cooler than you are. How&#8217;s the heat over there?</p>



<p>Tammie:<br />We are having the two days of English summer, which are the two days I wish we had air conditioning.</p>



<p>Jonathan:<br />Well, I hope you can stay cool over there. We have a great guest with us today. James LePage is joining us from a cooler part of the world. James, how are you?</p>



<p>James:<br />I&#8217;m doing well. Thank you for having me.</p>



<p>Jonathan:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s fantastic to have you. James is the founder of WPAI, and we&#8217;re here today to talk about AI, eCommerce, WooCommerce, and the future and all those fun things. But before we get to any of that, James, you&#8217;ve been in this WordPress space for a while now. Tell us about yourself. When did you first come into the ecosystem?</p>



<p>James:<br />Yeah, I basically grew up in the WordPress ecosystem, and I got started as a young teen. I had just worked a kitchen job; I was a dishwasher, and that proved to me that there was no dishwashing in my future. I really wanted to do something other than that. So I tried to figure out what I could do that wouldn&#8217;t involve dishwashing, but would give me my little allowance money to go and have fun around town as a kid. Somehow, I stumbled into web design. I originally got started with page builders and worked for neighbors and my parents&#8217; friends, and eventually, it just grew and grew into something where I was working on more complex sites. Then I started selling to local businesses in my town, and that grew into me learning how to actually code. I learned how to code and really started freelancing as a true freelancer, eventually forming an agency called Isotropic. We grew to eight developers and built some pretty big projects, a lot of WooCommerce projects specifically for B2B. I continued that through college, then got into startups, did a startup called Share Club, and now here I am with WPAI.</p>



<p>So I&#8217;ve really been in WordPress since I got started in anything digital or business-related. My whole career has been in WordPress, and it&#8217;s been really fun to grow up in the industry and have my skills grow alongside me. It&#8217;s also been really fun to insert myself more into the community over the past couple of years as well because when I was running the agency and building the sites, I was definitely on the outside looking in. Now, running WPAI and building products for WordPress creators and users, I&#8217;ve had the opportunity to meet the people behind WordPress and WooCommerce and the communities around WordCamps and things like that. So it&#8217;s been really fun. Long story short, this has been my whole life and probably will continue to be.</p>



<p>Jonathan:<br />You have a journey that I think a lot of listeners can resonate with, where it started based on interest, and you built for others, especially if people started in the freelancer-to-agency space. You&#8217;ve been focused on product for quite some time now. Can you recall anything about that decision to switch from a focus on service to product? What motivated that? What was at the heart of that desire to make products?</p>



<p>James:<br />Well, the long story short is we all love building things, but I know a lot of agency owners and creators who don&#8217;t always love the client management side of it. That was kind of the thing for me. I love building sites, and I love creating projects. I come from a family of architects, and I think my whole family just loves creating. When you put clients into the mix, sometimes you can have the most incredible clients ever, but sometimes you can have really difficult clients to work with. We found that to be the case at Isotropic, where there were some really big projects that were pretty mission-critical to some larger companies, and it was just very difficult and stressful. So I started looking at products and how we could move away from that.</p>



<p>I also had a break in between my agency days and the WPAI days where I was a CTO at another venture-backed startup. So I was able to take a step back and really choose: Do I want to go into product, or do I want to go back into the agency and what we were doing? It was an easy decision for me to say, &#8220;Hey, let&#8217;s go try my hand at product.&#8221; I&#8217;d been using WordPress products for a long time. I&#8217;d been building WordPress companies and sites and things like that for a while, and it kind of just made sense to get into the product ecosystem. Specifically, for me, focusing on artificial intelligence was something I studied in university. So it was a really good mesh of everything. It was something that at the time, in 2022, was really just getting its legs and becoming the super exciting thing that it is today.</p>



<p>It was also something that I knew about, and I knew that by applying it to an industry like WordPress and WooCommerce—one that I really knew—I could really bring a lot of value by combining everything into one company. So it was a really easy choice to get into the product landscape. We launched our first product in late 2022, and it was CodeWP. It was something that a lot of people were very interested in, so there was also buy-in and traction from the community. It was like, &#8220;Oh, this is probably the easiest decision ever.&#8221; People really liked what we were working on; we were doing something that people seemingly wanted, and it wasn&#8217;t something where we&#8217;d have to deal with difficult clients. So it was a really good introduction to what grew into WPAI, and it worked out very well.</p>



<p>Tammie:<br />I&#8217;d love to start talking a little bit about AI specifically. There&#8217;s so much about the myth and concepts. If everyone&#8217;s describing AI, what does AI mean to you?</p>



<p>James:<br />That&#8217;s a very good question, and you&#8217;re completely right that there are so many different thoughts, ideas, and approaches to artificial intelligence. For us, we&#8217;re looking at AI as a way to help people do things that they&#8217;ve always done in WordPress and WooCommerce in a much easier and more efficient way. We&#8217;re leveraging a lot of the technologies that are being applied to many other industries and businesses, and we&#8217;re just using them to create tools that bring value to our industry. So for us, what AI means is a modern way, a new way to go and do business and enable the creators and users of WordPress in a way that couldn&#8217;t be done before. There&#8217;s the technical side of AI, and there&#8217;s a lot to unpack in that area as well. You could talk for days about how it actually works, how you can apply it, the different types of applications, and the various models and underlying structures of these models. But for us, our goal is to apply modern AI—primarily large language models based on Transformers architecture—to make our industry better and bring value to our industry. That&#8217;s always been our approach: sticking in the WordPress industry and doing what needs to be done for WordPress to make everybody&#8217;s lives a bit easier. That&#8217;s our approach and our focus on AI. But I mean, I&#8217;m happy to get into the technicals and all of it, but it might be an eight-hour-long podcast.</p>



<p>Tammie:<br />I guess I&#8217;d like to kind of build on that. I would love to go into technicals, and maybe we&#8217;ll get some opportunities in some later questions as well. But you mentioned ways to help; I&#8217;d love to also think about some of the limitations today. What are the limitations on being able to help, and the limitations on tools? Sometimes it feels like AI can solve everything the way that people speak about it or that it&#8217;s going to do everything. What&#8217;s something you&#8217;d like to debunk that people always get wrong about it?</p>



<p>James:<br />That&#8217;s a good one as well. I think that first off, AI is very hyped, and it&#8217;s rightfully hyped because I think it brings a lot of value to specific areas of industries. But it&#8217;s also not something that is going to replace everything, where you&#8217;re going to click a button and there&#8217;s going to be a brand-new website, or there will be a replacement of all these different jobs and things, at least in my opinion. Who knows what the far-term future is going to bring? But we&#8217;re in the early days of this technology, and where it really shines is in doing things that are repetitive tasks that can&#8217;t necessarily be automated away in a traditional workflow because it needs a little more leeway, a little more room to roam. But it&#8217;s not something that&#8217;s going to just completely replace everything.</p>



<p>In our approach with every one of our products, we&#8217;re creating tools that users—human beings—use to make their lives easier and to cut out the annoying stuff so they can focus on the fun stuff, like designing sites and actually building out the core structures and frameworks behind these WooCommerce websites and things like that, while cutting out the annoying tasks. For me, the reason we started CodeWP was that we had built WooCommerce sites for probably about five years at that point, and there were so many little extensions that you could make to the platform with these code snippets. We had this huge library of code snippets, and every time we wanted to extend a WooCommerce site, we&#8217;d have to go find the snippet, then go to the documentation reference, then spend eight hours on Stack Overflow, then go to three GitHub issues, and try to string together the information we needed to extend this snippet to extend WooCommerce.</p>



<p>That was not something that people really enjoyed doing. At least in our company, we really enjoyed thinking about how we could solve these problems. But</p>



<p>the difficult research and the challenge of stringing it all together were not something we enjoyed. So that was our first approach with AI: how can we cut out these tasks that we never really liked in our agency and make it so that&#8217;s something you don&#8217;t have to focus on anymore? Obviously, someone building a WooCommerce site isn&#8217;t going to use our tool to try to cut out the developer. It doesn&#8217;t work like that. You have to really know what you&#8217;re doing to leverage AI, but it&#8217;s one of those things where it does make our lives easier and allows us to focus on more fun things.</p>



<p>To get back to what people should be aware of regarding AI and what should be debunked here, it&#8217;s not a wonder machine. It&#8217;s not something that will do everything for you, read your mind, or anything like that. I think we&#8217;re very far from that right now. What it&#8217;s used for in practical applications is just to make people&#8217;s lives easier—those who are in the trenches actually doing things and getting things done. For us, the applications are pretty pointed because that&#8217;s where AI can thrive. If you try to tackle massive tasks that require a lot of logic, creativity, and thought, it doesn&#8217;t work that way. But to enable creators, builders, and WordPress users in our approach, you can really bring value without causing issues or stepping on any toes.</p>



<p>Jonathan:<br />You started out with this context of the agency and building WooCommerce stores, so you already had that sort of broad context. You&#8217;ve talked about repetitive tasks as a prime example of where AI can help. Would you expand on that within WooCommerce specifically? When you&#8217;ve had this service background building WooCommerce sites, and you&#8217;ve been in the product space for years now, so you have a broad context. If someone is thinking about AI within the WooCommerce context, is there anything beyond repetitive tasks, or within repetitive tasks? Can you just give us a broader perspective on where you see the opportunities for AI to be applied within WooCommerce?</p>



<p>James:<br />Yeah, so I&#8217;m actually really excited to be on this podcast. This is something that we&#8217;ve been really focused on with our upcoming product, AgentWP. We got started with CodeWP, which is an AI code generator. We looked at how people really wanted to use this tool, and there was a lot of usage towards WooCommerce. A lot of that usage was what we had essentially built it for—extending WooCommerce with code and cutting out the research bit for these really simple implementations, making it easier to build more complex implementations with code. But there were also a lot of requests outside of what CodeWP was intended for, in terms of creating product descriptions, giving statistics, troubleshooting, and all these different things. So a lot of the usage in CodeWP led us to determine that there&#8217;s a really big opportunity here for another product. This product could be one that lives in WordPress, lives in WooCommerce, and really integrates with that individual site, database, file system, frontend, and backend to give really valuable answers to users in a more generic way—something that&#8217;s not always code, but could be, &#8220;Hey, here&#8217;s your error log in English,&#8221; or &#8220;Here&#8217;s a statistic about your WooCommerce store,&#8221; or anything like that.</p>



<p>That research from CodeWP led to this product called AgentWP. That&#8217;s the product that goes into a WordPress site. We love WooCommerce, and we know how powerful it is, but it can also be pretty difficult to navigate sometimes and pretty complex, even as an agency, but definitely as an end user. So we&#8217;ve always, from the beginning of developing this AgentWP product, thought about how we could solve common WooCommerce problems. With this beta that we&#8217;re launching fairly soon, we came to the conclusion that WooCommerce can be extended in a few ways. Right now, the core way is statistics—really understanding your data. WooCommerce themselves have made really awesome improvements to the analytics side of things, in my opinion, transitioning from the scary Reports page to the beautiful React-based analytics page. But still, there&#8217;s so much data to sift through and even understand what it means. I think there&#8217;s a really big opportunity to have a natural language interface with your WooCommerce data and, zooming out, with all of your WordPress data as well, and leverage artificial intelligence to take a user&#8217;s request and turn it into a statistical response. That was a big focus of ours for the beta, to kind of prove out, &#8220;Okay, this product, the idea here is it lives in WordPress, leverages WordPress data, and then it uses or converts the user&#8217;s request into some form of action, response, or message in some form.&#8221; Our core implementation to solve this was with WooCommerce statistics, so users can ask anything about their store, and the agent will go and create a query on demand to get that information and then present it to the user. Then you can continue onwards and ask additional questions like, &#8220;Hey, let&#8217;s dive into this specific product and see if we can get analytics or insights about whether we should even focus on this product based on this data compared to all the other data.&#8221; These are things that you can&#8217;t really do with charts.</p>



<p>That was a really big use case that we wanted to solve for, and we did. It extends out to the remainder of WordPress, but we actually started with WooCommerce because that was something that in the agency landscape, when we were building WooCommerce stores, we always found issues with. And then in terms of building WooCommerce, we always would break it. We would always try to extend it, and we&#8217;d always install a plugin and have to do our plugin check to figure out which one was conflicting. So I think there are a lot of different implementations here, but the core ones for us were statistics and troubleshooting—not in truly the code sense, but just making it easier to find problems in WooCommerce because everybody who&#8217;s built a WooCommerce store knows that you could get very complex with these things. You could legitimately have a use case for 30 plugins sometimes, 20 plugins sometimes. In my opinion, that&#8217;s very different from standard WordPress development, where you try to keep your plugins down, but with WooCommerce, it just bubbles up. So having this interface where you can use natural language to navigate around your WooCommerce site and understand what potential issues could be popping up, that was something we really wanted to focus on. All of the development here was driven by the problems we bumped into while actually building WooCommerce for years and years.</p>



<p>Jonathan:<br />I want to expand on that a bit. So far, what I&#8217;m hearing is that there are two broad categories that you&#8217;re focused on. There&#8217;s the insights, which I think is a great example—being able to query against a large set of inputs and data to get insights for the end user. Then there&#8217;s also the repetitive tasks part. Those insights might lead to tasks to be done. I&#8217;m really curious about what I would describe as the opportunities categories. You alluded to it in terms of identifying potential problems and addressing those ahead of time, where the agent might be able to surface, &#8220;Hey, there&#8217;s an issue over here for you to know about.&#8221; But because WooCommerce is a subset, an ecosystem within WordPress, if someone’s in WooCommerce, there&#8217;s a lot more potential for knowing their intentions. They&#8217;re probably trying to run a business. There&#8217;s likely a commerce intention on the other side of it, whereas with WordPress, it’s a lot more generic. So I can see within the context of this product that you&#8217;re building, AgentWP, that you&#8217;re like, &#8220;Ah, it&#8217;s WooCommerce.&#8221; How do you think about the opportunities that you have—the ability to potentially surface to an end user—since there&#8217;s a lot more that you presumably could know about their intentions and the current state? Do you see that growing into things like conversion optimization or noticing, for instance, that customers are complaining about a particular thing and being able to… It’s broad, but there’s also a lot that you could know about intention and context because it’s in Woo. How do you think about that?</p>



<p>James:<br />Yeah, once you know that you&#8217;re in WooCommerce, there is a lot that you can really do for the user. Right now, the initial solution, the core idea here, was let&#8217;s just give AI safe access to the means and methods developers have always had. They can gather data, and then they can modify a WordPress or WooCommerce site using these APIs, queries, and all these different things. That was the core idea here. With the initial implementation of this agent, we started by saying, &#8220;Okay, let&#8217;s go and approach it from a read-only standpoint, where we can gather data and then use this data to tell users more about a site, store, or product.&#8221; That in itself is really valuable and beneficial, but our real goal here is to do both sides of the coin—do read and write—where you can surface opportunities and then the agent can take action on these opportunities for a user. In my definition, an AI agent is something that leverages its own internal models to do logic and reasoning for a user to fulfill a task autonomously. Obviously, you have to build rails and guidelines to make it safe, and you have to ensure the user actually wants these actions to happen. You also have to know how to identify this. But we want to grow this into that autonomous solution.</p>



<p>When you apply something like that—just the concept, not even thinking about the actual implementations—but the concept of this AI assistant within WooCommerce, specifically with access to this data and the ability to review the data for you, then the ability to give you suggestions and fulfill those suggestions, it becomes something that can be a real power multiplier for the agency building a site and the client running the site. Like you said, you can use the statistics to do synchronous reviews of your analytics, where somebody&#8217;s actually asking for a report or something and gets a report back. But you can also asynchronously review these statistics as well and identify, &#8220;Hey, here are some trends that</p>



<p>you aren&#8217;t even looking for that you should know about,&#8221; and &#8220;Here&#8217;s a product that&#8217;s not performing well.&#8221; By the way, we have this external data source that looks at the SEO for all of your products, and this one’s not really doing as well as all your other products in terms of rankings, keyword density, and all these different things. You can surface these opportunities in the read-only mode, but eventually, you can actually say, &#8220;Hey, can you just watch my products? And when a product starts falling in the Google rankings and when the Google Analytics metrics start dropping—the conversion analytics start dropping—can you take a look at this and see how you would improve it and then send me a message saying, &#8216;I&#8217;d improve it this way,&#8217; or actually just go and improve it? Go and update that description to fulfill those keyword requests or whatever the SEO optimization would be, or rewrite it to be better for conversions or whatever it is. Go and actually do this for me.&#8221;</p>



<p>So that&#8217;s the end goal here, where you have this system that goes through your information autonomously and really understands the purpose of your site and how your site operates in terms of, &#8220;Here are the products that this company sells, and here are the plugins that this company is using to enable subscriptions and memberships,&#8221; and all these different things. Then really use that information to create those on-demand suggestions for the user and eventually notify the user about this. The user doesn&#8217;t even have to think about, &#8220;Oh, what should I even ask this thing to do?&#8221; Eventually, if the user wants—obviously you don&#8217;t want to just have this running around willy-nilly—but if the user wants and creates these rule sets, it can go and do these optimizations, and it can eventually go and do customer support or anything like it. When you give this system access to the data and the ability to take action on that data within WooCommerce and within WordPress in general, I think it becomes a very powerful and value-added system for both the builders and the users. It&#8217;s something that I&#8217;m really excited to be building because that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re working on right now, and it&#8217;s very fun to think about these problems and how you can build for our industry.</p>



<p>Tammie:<br />So we&#8217;ve spoken a little bit about the product and how you interact with it as a user, and we also typically like to ask how you would build here. I&#8217;d like to take a little bit of a tangent on that and say, how would you build integrating artificial intelligence into products? Because we spoke specifically about tasks and taking workflows. So we talked a little bit earlier about resetting that notion of what AI is and what it isn&#8217;t—debunking a little bit. What do you think it can solve today for product makers? How do you start using it, and how do you use it in the products that you make?</p>



<p>James:<br />I&#8217;ll mention a couple of implementations that make sense and how we would go about doing it. The first thing is I don&#8217;t think if you&#8217;re a product builder, you should just go and say, &#8220;Hey, we need AI. Let&#8217;s go figure out how we can add AI to our products and have a sparkly AI button in all our tools.&#8221; I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s the case because AI, like we said in the beginning, doesn&#8217;t do everything, and it only does a few things very well. To do those few things very well, it has to be very mindfully implemented. You have to really think about how you’re going to, number one, gather the information necessary for these models to actually create something that offers the user value, instead of just garbage input, garbage output, or something that somebody sees but never actually uses. There has to be a very mindful implementation of the solution, and then there also has to be a very thoughtful way you actually implement it. So it has to offer the user value, and then you actually have to implement it so it does offer that user value.</p>



<p>In terms of products, I wouldn&#8217;t just completely pivot every product to say, &#8220;Oh, we must have AI now.&#8221; But I do think there are some really low-lift tasks for many plugins that can use AI in the statistics and in the generation capabilities. We actually see this with a lot of WordPress plugins nowadays. I just saw on X yesterday that Monster Insights added a Google Analytics AI chat where you can discuss your analytics. That solves a pain point. That’s something that takes data and makes it accessible to users, and it&#8217;s not this huge AI implementation where now we&#8217;re AI analytics and now we do everything, but we offer this helpful conversational interface to go and fulfill something that has been a pain point for users. GA4—nobody knows how to use this thing. It&#8217;s the most complex interface ever, so let&#8217;s go and simplify it. I think that&#8217;s a good implementation, and I think there are a lot of other products that have these pain points that could be solved with this open-ended conversational interaction with their product, but not actually going and saying, &#8220;We&#8217;re going to go make everything AI, and you&#8217;re going to have to use conversational interactions for everything. There’s not going to be a &#8216;New Product&#8217; button in WooCommerce now; it&#8217;s going to be &#8216;Make Product with AI.'&#8221; That&#8217;s not the right way. But adding these little implementations, leveraging AI, and not going crazy and training your own models and building these data pipelines— which is something that we&#8217;re doing, but you don&#8217;t need to do that—you can use the generative AI capabilities off the shelf and build out these small implementations that solve user pain points that couldn&#8217;t necessarily be solved in another way.</p>



<p>I think another good example, not WooCommerce specific, is WSForm by Mark Westguard. It was one of the first form builders to implement anything AI-related, and it wasn&#8217;t this thing where every single input field and every single thing had this AI wizard and this &#8220;Generate with AI&#8221; button. But there was a very simple flow where, if you want to go and build out a form and you don&#8217;t know exactly what fields you want, but you know your concept—&#8221;I need this form to accept reservations for this specific restaurant&#8221;—you could type it into this natural language input box, and it would just convert that natural language into the underlying JSON structure of the form builder. Just a simple implementation, something that solves these problems, doesn&#8217;t replace the way the actual product works, but just augments it. I think there are many products in WordPress that can mindfully implement things like that, and that&#8217;s the approach I think every company should take with AI.</p>



<p>Just because it exists doesn&#8217;t mean you need it. There are many cases where it&#8217;s actually probably better not to have it, but there are also many cases where there are these small pain points like, &#8220;I need form inspiration,&#8221; or &#8220;I don&#8217;t know exactly what fields I should add,&#8221; or &#8220;I don&#8217;t know how to make sense of these big massive reports,&#8221; where a simple implementation that complements the existing product, instead of taking the product over, can offer people value. In terms of products, that&#8217;s the way to think about AI, especially with existing products. When it&#8217;s a new product, I think it&#8217;s a bit of a different approach, but with existing ones, you have the data, you know what your users want, and you can mindfully say, &#8220;Yeah, we should implement AI,&#8221; or &#8220;We shouldn&#8217;t implement AI.&#8221;</p>



<p>That&#8217;s one thing. The other thing is actually building the AI. With all of the solutions that I&#8217;ve talked about, off-the-shelf frontier large language models are usually all you need to add this feature, and they&#8217;re very easy to implement. But they become very difficult to implement when you try to solve these crazy, wicked use cases that are pushing the boundaries and something that somebody else hasn&#8217;t done before—something that&#8217;s not as simple as input-output. When you start getting very complex, then you have to start thinking about what else goes around the mindful implementation of AI. For us, with this agent product, we are trying to do a lot, and it&#8217;s kind of the complete opposite of what I just said with the mindful implementation of specific cases in AI for existing products. Our approach is to mindfully implement some AI capabilities with statistics and generations, and things like that.</p>



<p>But when you build a system that has a much bigger scope, there are many more edge cases, many more things that can go wrong, and there&#8217;s a lot more complexity in the underlying systems to actually enable these things. For example, navigation on WordPress, fulfilling tasks and actions for users. When you do that type of stuff, then you have to think about, &#8220;Okay, maybe we could technically build this, and maybe it&#8217;s wildly complex, but is this something that can be done safely 100% of the time? Can we catch errors before they&#8217;re introduced to a WordPress site? How do we actually steer the behavior of these models?&#8221; For us, it’s like we have to build out these humongous datasets and these massive databases, and then train the behavior into models and build out pipelines and things like that. So mindfully implementing AI and doing it in a safe, thoughtful, and effective manner, when you get complex, is another thing that you really have to consider. For the products that already exist, I really think thoughtful implementation of small AI features that are pretty simple but solve those pain points is the way to go, and from the tech side, it’s fairly easy. If you want to get crazy complex, you can probably build a really cool product out of it, but there are a lot more things that come with it in terms of being safe, being thoughtful, and doing it so your users are not negatively impacted by that implementation.</p>



<p>Tammie:<br />You&#8217;ve mentioned a couple of times the word &#8220;trust,&#8221; and I&#8217;d like to just dig into that. Sometimes AI can feel unexpected to people, and sometimes things can feel… How do you build trust into AI? Let&#8217;s take an existing product that doesn&#8217;t have AI and you want to start implementing it. You have a good reason to implement it. How do</p>



<p>you look at building trust with that user base? What is your advice?</p>



<p>James:<br />Wild transparency as the company. If you&#8217;re the company, you need the most transparent approach to this possible. You have to explain, &#8220;Here’s what we&#8217;re using your input to actually do, and here’s how we&#8217;re actually doing it, and here’s the additional information we&#8217;re taking from this site or this plugin, and here’s all of that data that&#8217;s going to this specific provider, and here’s our agreement with this specific provider, this data processor, and here’s how they use it. They don&#8217;t store it on their servers; we have this agreement. They&#8217;re not going to use it to train their big models.&#8221; Then when the data comes back, &#8220;Here’s how it&#8217;s used in your WordPress site, and here’s what you can expect from input to output, and there’s going to be no deviations because we&#8217;ve built these safe systems to ensure that this is what happens with this user input and with this data.&#8221;</p>



<p>So I think on the smallest scale and the biggest scale, being really upfront about how data is used, and then how the actual interaction with this AI will be used is really important. Also explaining—because for 99% of these implementations, it&#8217;s using a big AI provider like Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, or any one of these—explaining, &#8220;Here are the actual processors, and we have this enterprise agreement with OpenAI, so they&#8217;re not going to use data to train and they don&#8217;t retain this, and here are all of these policies.&#8221; I actually really like the… I don&#8217;t know if it’s true regulation around this, but the aspect of always being upfront with your data subprocessors, and actually taking that step further and explaining, &#8220;Here’s how the data is gathered, here’s how it&#8217;s used, here are the structures, and here are the pipelines.&#8221;</p>



<p>For us with the agent product, that’s something that when we launch, it&#8217;s going to be very clear: &#8220;Here’s the data that&#8217;s used. Here are the processors that are using this data, here’s what comes back, here’s what’s expected.&#8221; For us, it&#8217;s a bit more open-ended, so there’s a lot of user consent during interactions with our product—actually being asked, &#8220;Hey, we&#8217;re going to take this action. Do you want to take this action? Here’s what this action will do. Here’s how we got to actually creating this action.&#8221; For statistics, &#8220;Here’s the exact query we ran.&#8221; So if you want, you can go and get the data yourself and verify this, and give users the tools and essentially the transparency behind anything in AI. I think that’s the way you build trust. Also, build systems so you don’t make massive mistakes. There’s never an opportunity for a system to… I don’t think any system’s ever going to go haywire and say, &#8220;I don’t like this WooCommerce site; I’m going to completely rewrite it.&#8221; But I think there are cases where the AI can get misaligned, and it can go and take the wrong action, which could be destructive to a site. So building systems to catch some issue before it ever happens, having the user consent so they know what’s happening, know what’s gone into this action and what this action will actually do, and worst case, if a negative action actually happens, having rollbacks, having backups, having easy ways to undo something that was autonomously or synchronously taken by a system, that’s another really important thing. So I think transparency and then actually thinking about real users who are going to use this, so we have to build these systems that don’t just go and do it 95% accurately, but also cover the other 5%, which will come from AI, but make sure we handle it gracefully and properly to create a really good product that people do trust.</p>



<p>&#8220;I know AgentWP&#8221; or &#8220;I know this statistics solution,&#8221; or &#8220;I know this form builder does exactly this with exactly this data, with exactly these processors.&#8221; In the form of some input-output, &#8220;Here’s the source of that output,&#8221; and in the form of actions, &#8220;Here’s the action that’s going to be taken, here’s why it’s going to be taken, here’s what it will result in.&#8221; Worst case, we have robust rollback tools to go and undo something if it wasn’t what you really wanted. That’s the approach, I think, for any AI product. Just be upfront; don’t just add some AI bubble and don’t tell users what data you’re taking or start taking users’ data without their consent. Just be mindful and be an ethical product creator. I think that the trust should naturally come because you deserve that trust because you’re somebody that does it properly.</p>



<p>Jonathan:<br />Yeah, you put in the work for it. James, you&#8217;ve got an interesting background. You started out with the agency, you’ve also been in the venture-backed startup. With WPAI, you&#8217;ve also raised money, and you&#8217;re raising more. What I&#8217;m curious about is that the venture-backed startup was outside of the WordPress space. You came back into WordPress; you gave us some sort of clues already for that, but I&#8217;d love to hear your thoughts on what, for you as an entrepreneur and for other builders listening in the space, what&#8217;s some of the value that you see in the WordPress ecosystem? Because there&#8217;s a lot of risk with starting a business. There’s a lot that goes into it. You and the team have been putting a bunch of work into this. Where does your confidence come from that investing into the WordPress WooCommerce space makes sense? Why do you stay in this ecosystem?</p>



<p>James:<br />Yeah, I grew up in this ecosystem, so I know how big it is, and I know how far-reaching it is. When I speak with other founders, investors, and people in the startup world—and we truly are a startup, I think in the truest sense of the word startup, we’re an early-stage company that’s really pushing the boundaries in our industry with new technology—when I speak with other people in similar positions in different industries, they sometimes know what WordPress is. Sometimes they don’t even know what it is, and when they do know what it is, they don’t realize the extent of the industry. Being able to grow up in WordPress and realize, &#8220;Hey, we’ve done projects that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and have done hundreds of millions of dollars of sales through them,&#8221; you really understand from the ground floor how big the economic impact of WordPress and WooCommerce is. Then when you look at, &#8220;Oh, WordPress powers half the internet, and the nearest competitor is this massive multi-billion dollar public company that has only a few percentage points of the industry,&#8221; it’s really one of those industries that I don’t think many people realize how big it is. I think you kind of have to start from within WordPress to even understand how big it is. Once you understand how big it is, there’s so much opportunity to disrupt WordPress in a positive way and bring these modern technologies and solutions from the startup landscape into WordPress to really offer valuable products to the biggest cohort of internet creators in the entire world.</p>



<p>So for me as a founder, it was always very clear that this is an industry that’s really big. It’s always going to be underserved. It’s always going to be something that I think if you want to build a really disruptive and valuable product, you can, but you have to know the industry to be able to do that. You have to understand the pain points behind what goes into building sites and using WordPress. Just be from it. That’s what brought me back to WordPress because I saw and I had the opportunity to go really do whatever I wanted and build whatever product I wanted and serve whatever industry I wanted. I had the opportunity to say, &#8220;Hey, I think that this AI stuff will be very valuable in the near and long-term future. I can see in my brain exactly how this thing can be implemented on both a small scale but also a really big scale in WordPress, in WooCommerce, in these ecosystems, so I’m going to go and do it.&#8221; That was my approach there, and that’s why I got back into the WordPress industry. But I think it’s just really understated how big this industry is and how much capital moves around in WordPress and is connected to WordPress. When you look at the competition, it’s much more flashy and snazzy, and that’s why everybody goes down that route. But it’s not as big as WordPress, and it’s not as economically impactful as WordPress. There are true needs here, and if you can identify those needs and ideally build a valuable product that serves those needs—in our case, that’s trying to solve a lot of the pain points with AI specifically—I think you can build an unbelievably valuable company in this industry.</p>



<p>Jonathan:<br />James, if someone is looking to come into this space, maybe they see this opportunity, but they don’t have that background, what’s one piece of guidance that you’d give to an entrepreneur? Let’s say they want to build a WooCommerce-centric product. What guidance would you give them?</p>



<p>James:<br />If you’re from the industry or if you’re not from the industry, I think the only way to build any product—and it gets even more important with WooCommerce and WordPress—is to talk to the people who will buy the product. That’s something that a lot of founders don’t do, where they just have a cool idea and go build it and hope for the best. But specifically with WooCommerce, you can find a WooCommerce store, you can find the people who built that store, you can find the people who run that store, and you can just go to them and send them an email and say, &#8220;Hey, give me five minutes of your time, please. I really want to talk about</p>



<p>this potential problem that you very likely have that’s probably costing you a lot of time and a lot of gray hair, and I’m trying to build something to solve it. If I solve it, you’re going to benefit from it, so please talk to me.&#8221; People will speak with you, and they will spill all of their problems. Specifically with WooCommerce, I see because it’s a very scoped ecosystem, you could build anything, but it’s pretty scoped. People all have the same problems, and they all bump into the same problems doing the same things, and that’s where you can build valuable products—you can solve those problems. Those problems are surfaced by speaking with people. That goes for any company, but I think WooCommerce and WordPress specifically—so many people use it. They spend 12 hours a day using these products, building for them, using them as the end users, and they all have the same problems. They’ll all tell you the problems because they want you to solve them. It’s very approachable to go and figure out, &#8220;Okay, these hundred WooCommerce sites exist, and I’m just going to go email their contact email and say, &#8216;I’m building this product, and it might help you. Give me five minutes.'&#8221; A lot of people will, and you’ll also get nos, but that’s part of the process of building a company.</p>



<p>So speak with people who actually want to use your products, and you’ll find these common threads, and you’ll find where you could build valuable tools, and then you go and do it. Then you go right back to them and say, &#8220;Hey, remember that thing that you said cost you $5,000 a month? I just built something, and it will fix that for you, and there’s your value.&#8221; That’s been my approach with any product, and specifically with the AgentWP product. What are specific areas that we can solve with this type of interface, and how can we do it in a way that’s valuable for you? We find these really common pain points that can be solved in this specific way, and then we build for it. Ideally, we’ll be able to launch the core product that solves a lot of these problems and then continue to, one after another, cross off problems from this list and offer the solution for it. But the only way we know these problems is by talking with these people.</p>



<p>Tammie:<br />As we wrap, I want us to move a little bit to the future. We can move as far ahead into the future as you want to, but where do you see all these advances with artificial intelligence going in the future? What are the possibilities you see, or hope for even?</p>



<p>James:<br />Yeah, I hope that AI makes human creativity more valuable. I think we’ve already kind of seen that. I remember back in 2022 when the first AI craze was really popping up. It was something that everybody was horrified that it was going to replace art and replace human thought and all these different things. Obviously, I think there are risks there, but I also think that it’s serving to make the human aspect of creating a lot more important. So I think there will be disruption, and I think that we really have to… You can’t just stick your head into a hole and pretend and hope that it all goes away. I think things will change, but I think ideally, my vision for the future and the products that we’re building are products that enable the meaningful part of that work to be automated away and then really make the human aspect of it—specifically for me, like in agency and building WooCommerce stores—the things I loved were thinking about how we could design things and create these brands and this copy and these various elements of your store to make it convert for the users. So I hope that type of human interaction and the consulting, strategic, and thought parts really shine with AI and aren’t replaced. I think that is something that I’m already seeing a lot of people kind of going like, &#8220;Hey, AI is great, but it’s not a good artist, and it’s not a good copywriter. If you have 20 AI sites that all have the same copy, it all reads the same, it’s all the same mush.&#8221; I do hope and think that AI will surface the need for that human level of creativity and human level of interaction in web design and creation, but in everything, I think in every industry.</p>



<p>So that’s my hope for the future, and I do think that’s something that will be the case. I’m always a glass-half-full person, but I do think that’s something that will be the case. For us in WordPress, we’re trying to build those products that do make it easier for the builders of the sites to build the sites and to focus on the fun things, and to leverage these tools to better support their clients and to have their clients use these tools to get rid of those annoying 2 a.m. &#8220;make the logo bigger&#8221; requests. That’s our approach with everything, and I think in the future, you can’t just expect AI to disappear because I think it is a disruptor and I think it will change a lot of different things. But I also think that it’s a lot brighter future with AI tools and with these platforms to allow you as the creator to really focus on the creation and the architecture of a specific functionality or change, and the copy, branding, and human illustrations. I think that’s something that will be really important in the future. That’s what we’re trying to build towards. That’s what I’m hoping for in the future. That’s what I’m seeing early whispers of online and in digital media. &#8220;Hey, AI is good, but it spits out the same meaningless mush, so let’s not use it for that. Let’s use it to get rid of the annoying stuff and then focus on the fun stuff.&#8221;</p>



<p>Tammie:<br />You touched a little bit on fears, but you also mentioned your glass is half-full. So what are your biggest fears for open source and WordPress through the lens of AI?</p>



<p>James:<br />I think if you really want to take the horrifying view, you can see a future where a lot of creativity is just sapped away and replaced with meaningless mush sites, meaningless nonsense garbage content creation, and AI images that are all uncanny and look the same. I think that could happen if we allow it, but luckily I think the WordPress industry is kind of taking the charge on this with Matt’s focus on, &#8220;Hey, a WordPress site, an individual’s website, could become that individual&#8217;s expression of themselves online.&#8221; Especially in the future, it could become what it was like back in the day when a personal website was a way to express oneself. I think that’s something that it could grow back into. But I do think as an industry, we really have to be thoughtful and considerate of, &#8220;Hey, we don’t want mushy AI sites and mushy content and mushy images, where we can’t understand what’s human and what’s AI creations in the future.&#8221; I think the easy way to fix that is to just say, &#8220;Hey, let’s not do that. Let’s build products that enable us rather than replace us, and let’s go and really create meaningful human-like interactions online to show, &#8216;Here’s why you actually want this. Here’s an AI site, and here’s my site, and my site’s a million times better than this AI site.'&#8221;</p>



<p>That’s my approach, and I know I flipped it again into that glass-half-full approach, but that’s really something I think you have to do. You have to be excited about the future because it’s coming, and if you’re not excited about it and you just try to sit it out and pretend it’s all going to go away, it’s going to run you over, and it’s probably going to create the future that you don’t want. So for me, it’s like, &#8220;Hey, let’s build these products that do the things that we do want them to do and enable the things that we do want to be enabled, rather than let somebody else build a product that replaces me, or let somebody else build a website that is this mushy site when it could have been this human site, and now these clients don’t realize the value of what I could do.&#8221;</p>



<p>So I think you have to be mindful about what could happen, but I already see a lot in the Facebook groups, on Twitter, and in the social ecosystem of WordPress. I think people are really mindful of that, and if we try to build the future we want, it will likely be the future that we want. So I’m glad that’s already happening, and I think that will continue to happen into the future. Obviously, I’ll try to be one of the leaders in the WordPress space to go and build that future that we all want and build the tools that are valuable and helpful to everybody, not replacements or anything like that.</p>



<p>Jonathan:<br />James, I appreciate the care that you and the team have been putting into just thinking through things. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes. I know that’s something I’ve appreciated as I’ve been following along with what you’ve been doing. There’s a lot that goes into it to create those rails, to think about trust and safety, and I appreciate that. I’m looking forward to seeing how the next couple of months and years pan out. It’s great to have you in the ecosystem. You’re going to be at WordCamp US with us all in not too many weeks from now. If someone wants to reach out, how can people best get in contact with you?</p>



<p>James:<br />Yeah, if you want to reach out, I would actually love to meet people in person at WordCamp. I always see people online, and it’s really fun to meet people in person. So</p>



<p>find me on Twitter/X at @JamesWLaPage. You can send me a DM; the DMs are open. At WordCamp US and at any of the other events we go to—because we go to a lot of them now—if you see a tall, skinny dude wearing a WPAI hat, it is likely me, so come and approach me. I absolutely love being approached and just speaking with people and saying hello, so do that as well. But for any questions, ideas, partnerships, whatever, feel free to DM me on X. I’m always receptive there and would love to take the conversation a bit further. That’s what I do. I talk about AI, and I talk about WordPress. So love doing that. Don’t hesitate to DM me or say hello in person. I love seeing people.</p>



<p>Jonathan:<br />Excellent. Thank you, James. Talk to you soon.</p>



<p>Tammie:<br />Thank you.</p>



<p>James:<br />Thank you.</p>
</div>




<p>In this episode of <strong><em>Woo ProductChat</em></strong>, hosts <strong>Jonathan Wold</strong> and T<strong>ammie Lister</strong> are joined by <strong>James LePage, founder of WPAI</strong>, to chat about the intersection of AI, eCommerce, and WooCommerce. </p>



<p>James shares his journey from running a WordPress agency to focusing on AI-driven products, highlighting the challenges and opportunities AI presents in the WooCommerce space. He emphasizes the importance of mindful AI implementation to enhance, rather than replace, human creativity and tasks. </p>



<p>The conversation also touches on the future of AI in WordPress, the need for transparency and trust in AI tools, and the potential for AI to streamline processes while preserving the value of human input in web development and eCommerce.</p>



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



<p><strong>Balancing Service and Product</strong>: James LePage transitioned from running a WordPress agency to developing AI-driven products, motivated by the desire to focus on building tools rather than managing client relationships.</p>



<p><strong>AI’s Role in WooCommerce</strong>: AI can significantly enhance the WooCommerce experience by automating repetitive tasks, providing valuable insights, and improving site performance, but it should be implemented thoughtfully to ensure it complements human creativity and decision-making.</p>



<p><strong>Mindful AI Implementation</strong>: The success of AI in WordPress products depends on careful, transparent implementation that addresses specific pain points without overwhelming or replacing the user’s role. Trust is built through clear communication about how AI processes data and interacts with sites.</p>



<p><strong>Opportunities in WooCommerce</strong>: AI has the potential to identify trends, optimize conversions, and offer proactive solutions within WooCommerce sites, making it a powerful tool for both developers and business owners.</p>



<p><strong>The Future of AI in WordPress</strong>: James envisions a future where AI tools enable creators to focus on meaningful, creative work by automating the less enjoyable tasks. However, there’s a need to avoid a future dominated by generic, AI-generated content that lacks human touch.</p>



<p><strong>Transparency and Trust in AI</strong>: Building user trust in AI tools requires transparency about how data is used and processed, along with safeguards to ensure AI actions are safe and reversible.</p>



<p><strong>The Value of the WordPress Ecosystem</strong>: Despite the risks of starting a business, the vast and economically impactful WordPress ecosystem offers significant opportunities for building valuable products that address real user needs.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Links</h3>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswlepage/">James on LinkedIn</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://x.com/jameswlepage">James on X</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://wpai.co/">WPAI.co</a></strong></li>
</ul>";s: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, 20 Aug 2024 09:06:00 +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:10;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"Gary: Four Thousand, Five Hundred and Forty-Eight Days";s: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:25:"https://pento.net/?p=5579";s: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://pento.net/2024/08/20/four-thousand-five-hundred-and-forty-eight-days/";s: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:2861:"<p>Nearly 15 years ago, I emailed the 20-something-year-old founder of <a href="https://automattic.com/">a little tech startup with a weird name</a>. As I recall, there were maybe 20 or so people doing WordPress-y things there at the time. I started doing a bit of contract work (the hiring process wasn’t as organised back then as it is today!) and, a couple of years after that, signed up full time.</p>



<p>Over 12 years later, that weird little startup has grown into a big company. It does a whole lot more than just WordPress, and it&#8217;s been a spectacular ride to get here. I&#8217;ve seen tiny little experiments and hacks grow up to be hugely popular products; I&#8217;ve worked with some of the smartest and most talented people I’ve ever met; and I even got to help lead WordPress development for a while.</p>



<p>Along the way, I&#8217;ve travelled around the world multiple times, meeting thousands of folks in the WordPress community, in countless cities. We’ve built stuff together that’s been used by hundreds of millions of people and viewed by billions!</p>



<p>Over the years, there are very few parts of Automattic that I hadn’t at least dipped my toes into. I&#8217;m extremely proud of everything I accomplished there, but it also gave me the sense that I’d finally reached the end of what there was for me to work on there.</p>



<p>And so, a few months ago, I decided it was time for me to go exploring for new challenges. I finished up and have since been enjoying some time off, barely touching my computer. I&#8217;ve done a bit of gardening, ticked a lot of things off my to-do list around the house, and I&#8217;ve been truly able to relax for a good while.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What&#8217;s Next?</h2>



<p>Now, though, I&#8217;m refreshed and ready to set off on my next adventure. This is where you come in, dear reader! Perhaps you&#8217;re looking for a tech lead to help scale your startup. Maybe you&#8217;re looking for someone with extensive experience not just with WordPress, but with the entire WordPress ecosystem and community. You could be a larger company looking for a principal engineer to inspire cross-divisional collaboration, or tackle the technical debt that inevitably builds up over the years. </p>



<p>Those aren&#8217;t the only options, of course, but maybe they give you an idea of where I can help. If you have a role you think I&#8217;d be the perfect fit for, let&#8217;s chat about it! You can reach out to me on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-pendergast/">LinkedIn</a>, or email me directly at gary@pento.net.</p>



<p>Finally, if you happen to work at a company that you think I should join, let me know in the comments, or drop me a message. I&#8217;m always interested in learning more about what it&#8217;s like to work for your company!</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, 20 Aug 2024 05:50:54 +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:4:"Gary";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:11;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:57:"WPTavern: Critical Vulnerability Patched in GiveWP Plugin";s: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=159586";s: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:68:"https://wptavern.com/critical-vulnerability-patched-in-givewp-plugin";s: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:1745:"<p>GiveWP, a popular donation plugin for WordPress, has patched an unauthenticated PHP Object Injection to Remote Code Execution vulnerability that could be exploited to execute arbitrary code remotely and delete files. This plugin from the Liquid Web family of products has 100k+ active installs.&nbsp;</p>



<p>villu164 (Villu Orav) reported the vulnerability through the Wordfence Bug Bounty Program and netted a bounty of $4,998.00. The researchers have classified it as a <strong>“Critical” concern, with a CVSS score of 10.0</strong>, and strongly recommend updating to the latest version.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Wordfence shared that the GiveWP plugin is “vulnerable to PHP Object Injection in all versions up to, and including, 3.14.1 via deserialization of untrusted input from the ‘give_title’ parameter. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject a PHP Object. The additional presence of a POP chain allows attackers to execute code remotely, and to delete arbitrary files.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>The vulnerability researcher <a href="https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2024/08/4998-bounty-awarded-and-100000-wordpress-sites-protected-against-unauthenticated-remote-code-execution-vulnerability-patched-in-givewp-wordpress-plugin/">István Márton’s post</a> has more technical details about GiveWP’s vulnerability. Wordfence contacted StellarWP and later WordPress.org Security Team and finally, a patch was released in version 3.14.2 of the GiveWP plugin on August 7, 2024.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Wordfence launched the <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordfence-launches-bug-bounty-program">Bug Bounty Program</a> in November 2023 to reward researchers for finding vulnerabilities and disclosing them privately.&nbsp;</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, 19 Aug 2024 19:34:01 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Jyolsna";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:12;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:17:"Matt: Jeff Jarvis";s: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:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=123390";s: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:34:"https://ma.tt/2024/08/jeff-jarvis/";s: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:1306:"<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>We no longer need companies, institutions, or government to organize us. We now have the tools to organize ourselves. We can find each other and coalesce around political causes or bad companies or talent or business or ideas. We can share and sort our knowledge and behavior. We can communicate and come together in an instant. We also have new ethics and attitudes that spring from this new organization and change society in ways we cannot yet see, with openness, generosity, collaboration, efficiency. We are using the internet’s connective tissue to leap over borders—whether they surround countries or companies or demographics. We are reorganizing society. This is Google’s—and Facebook’s and craigslist’s—new world order.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>— <a href="https://buzzmachine.com/">Jeff Jarvis</a> in the book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/WHAT-WOULD-GOOGLE-Jeff-Jarvis/dp/0061709697">What Would Google Do?</a> Published 2009.</p>



<p>Interesting to revisit as <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-13/doj-considers-seeking-google-goog-breakup-after-major-antitrust-win">they float trial balloons on breaking Google up</a> (terrible idea) or other antitrust enforcement.</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, 19 Aug 2024 14:00:46 +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:4:"Matt";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s: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:62:"WPTavern: Meet WordPress 6.7 Release Squad &amp; Default Theme";s: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=159551";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"https://wptavern.com/meet-wordpress-6-7-release-squad-default-theme";s: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:6390:"<p>Last week, the lineup for the eighteen-member <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/08/14/wordpress-6-7-release-squad-ready/">release squad</a> and the default theme for WordPress 6.7 were revealed. This will be the third and final WordPress release of the year.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress 6.7 Release Squad</h2>



<p>As usual, Matt Mullenweg leads the release, with <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidbaumwald/">David Baumwald</a> serving as the Release Coordinator. The Core Tech Leads are <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/peterwilsoncc/">Peter Wilson</a> (sponsored by 10up) and&nbsp; <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/kirasong/">Kira Schroder</a> (sponsored by GoDaddy). The squad also includes:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Editor Tech Leads: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/noisysocks/">Robert Anderson</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/kevin940726/">Kai Hao</a> (Both from Automattic)</li>



<li>Core Triage Leads: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chaion07/">Ahmed Kabir Chaion</a>, (Zone7) <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/stoyangeorgiev/">Stoyan Georgiev</a> (SiteGround)</li>



<li>Editor Triage Leads: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ndiego/">Nick Diego</a> (Automattic), <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/colorful-tones/">Damon Cook</a> (WP Engine)</li>



<li>Documentation Leads: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/fabiankaegy/">Fabian Kägy</a> (10up), <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/faguni22/">Mumtahina Faguni</a> (WPDeveloper)</li>



<li>Test Lead: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ankit-k-gupta/">Ankit K. Gupta</a> (10up)</li>



<li>Design Lead: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/joen/">Joen Asmussen</a> (Automattic)</li>



<li>Performance Lead: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mukesh27/">Mukesh Panchal</a> (10up)</li>



<li>Default Theme Design Lead: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/beafialho/">Beatriz Fialho</a> (Automattic)</li>



<li>Default Theme Development Leads: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/poena/">Carolina Nymark</a> (Yoast), <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/juanfra/">Juan Aldasoro</a> </li>
</ul>



<p>Automattic is sponsoring five squad members (excluding Matt), with 10up following closely behind with four members.</p>



<p>Automattic-sponsored Core contributor Héctor Prieto shared that the team is experimenting with combining the Marcomms and Release Coordination roles but may revert this change during the process, depending upon the feedback. </p>



<p>He continued: “While announcing the whole release squad is ideal, at the end of the day, it involves a lot of async coordination that delays the announcement. Feedback received indicates this is particularly constraining for the Default Theme Role, for which the leads had to start the work before this announcement to avoid getting caught by the release deadlines.”</p>



<p>To address this, he suggested two solutions: providing weekly updates on the release squad and making an early call for volunteers for the default theme separate from the release squad.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Introducing Twenty Twenty-Five</h2>



<p>The default theme for WordPress 6.7 will be <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/08/15/introducing-twenty-twenty-five/">Twenty Twenty-Five</a>. In the words of the Theme Design Lead Beatriz Fialho, “Twenty Twenty-Five embodies ultimate flexibility and adaptability, showcasing the many ways WordPress enables people to tell their stories with many patterns and styles to choose from. The glimpses of natural beauty and ancestry woven into the theme evoke ideas of impermanence, the passage of time, and continuous evolution.”</p>



<p>When WordPress turned 21 in May, <a href="https://ma.tt/2024/05/wp21/">Matt Mullenweg</a> shared eleven points for building WordPress with the first point being, &#8220;Simple things should be easy and intuitive, and complex things possible.&#8221; The design team is building the default theme based on this principle.</p>



<p>Like its predecessor, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/08/24/introducing-twenty-twenty-four/">Twenty Twenty-Four</a>, Twenty Twenty-Five will also be fully compatible with the Site Editor and will utilize the new design tools, such as the Grid block and Pattern/Section Styles. The theme includes templates for personal blogs, photo blogs and complex blogs. </p>



<p>“The demo content imagery, all from the Public Domain, carries a poetic, universal, and ubiquitous tone that complements the core concept. There was an opportunity to visually lean into a positive tone to bring softness, lightness, and inspiration through its aesthetic.” Beatriz Fialho continued. She also shared the <a href="https://www.figma.com/design/dzGCSntVch4EQdVERTqyVK/Twenty-Twenty-Five?node-id=16-14852">Figma designs</a> for the theme.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Recognizing the theme&#8217;s global audience, the design team prioritized high-quality fonts that support multiple languages and included a set of diverse color palettes as style variations to offer more customization options. The theme also features a broad range of patterns.</p>



<p>Those interested can follow the theme&#8217;s development on the <a href="https://github.com/wordpress/twentytwentyfive">Twenty Twenty-Five GitHub repository</a> or join the weekly <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/contribute/join/">Slack</a> meetings in <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/core-themes/">#core-themes</a>.</p>



<p>The community&#8217;s responses included “It looks so beautiful,” “Absolutely beautiful work,” and “The next best default WordPress theme.” Some wondered why WordPress chooses a new default theme every year instead of improving the existing one. If you, too, are wondering the same, Knut Sparhell elaborated: “The latest default theme has always strived to use, and demonstrate the use of, the latest core features. Earlier themes can not just be updated with everything, as they should continue to work even with older core versions. This could be solved by upgrade requirements for the WP version, but then those left out would not get security and bug fixes, and some minor enhancements. One can look at the yearly new default block theme as an upgrade to the previous.”</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, 19 Aug 2024 05:10:58 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Jyolsna";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:14;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:75:"WPTavern: Wordfence Launches WordPress Superhero Challenge with Big Rewards";s: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=159393";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"https://wptavern.com/wordfence-launches-wordpress-superhero-challenge-with-big-rewards";s: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:3697:"<p>Wordfence has introduced an exciting new initiative, the <a href="https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2024/08/earn-up-to-31200-per-vulnerability-introducing-the-wordpress-bug-bounty-superhero-challenge/">WordPress Superhero Challenge</a>, as part of its ongoing Bug Bounty Program. Running until October 14th, this challenge exclusively targets plugins and themes with over 5 million active installations, a category that demands a high level of expertise due to the extensive testing these products undergo before reaching production.</p>



<p>Chloe Chamberland, the Threat Intelligence Lead at Wordfence, explained, “By running this challenge, we want to supercharge the amount of research going into these extremely popular products, thereby improving the security of hundreds of millions of visitors to sites with these products installed.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Wordfence is tripling the current top bounty amounts, with the top bounty prize being an impressive $31,200. “By funding more vulnerability research than any other organization and releasing vulnerabilities to the community in a timely fashion, we further our mission of securing the Web.”, said Chloe.</p>



<img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcpNyO_wrF8VgqY6bSumu31LKSjNHkIaqLQCNLioqreZIaQtm0sDr8PuOkHTXIkYwG427JYJyKoMz-VDMJ34c8rKgWpIHaeOSVyDlsvVGiPs3lPNvqed6JPTOxazxUlyUIReyRDwJCbfLUPYFmu_8dZbp8?key=hwib0ae8-8CpASIHsEFLEQ" alt="List of some bounty reward possibilities during the Superhero Challenge" /><strong>List of some bounty reward possibilities during the Superhero Challenge</strong>



<p>Besides the bounty prize, researchers who discover and report critical or high-severity vulnerabilities in plugins or themes with 5 million+ active installs will be awarded a special &#8220;WordPress Superhero&#8221; badge, marking their exceptional contribution to WordPress security. The repository has <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/browse/popular/">10 plugins</a> with over five million active installations but no themes.  </p>



<p>The bug bounty program excludes products of some companies, such as Google, Brainstorm Force, Automattic, and Siteground, as they have their own reward programs in place. The <a href="https://www.wordfence.com/threat-intel/bug-bounty-program/">Wordfence website</a> has more details about the program guidelines. </p>



<p>Wordfence launched the <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordfence-launches-bug-bounty-program">Bug Bounty Program</a> in November 2023 to reward researchers for finding vulnerabilities and disclosing them privately. The company rewards the researchers based on active install counts, the criticality of the vulnerability, the ease of exploitation, and the prevalence of the vulnerability type and has spent over $300,000 in bounties since 2023.&nbsp;</p>



<p>WordPress, with its impressive market share of over 43% of the internet, needs researchers to make it secure. Last month, Patchstack, another popular web security name, launched <a href="https://patchstack.com/academy/welcome/">Patchstack Academy</a> and doubled its monthly <a href="https://patchstack.com/articles/biggest-wordpress-bug-bounty-program-upgrade-is-here/">competition bounties</a>. Their Zeroday program now offers researchers bounties ranging from $150 to $14,400, depending on the access level required to exploit the reported vulnerability. Reporting vulnerabilities in plugins/themes with over 5 million installs will net researchers a bounty of $7,200 or $14,400.</p>



<p>With the world facing several security nightmares recently, including the Cloudstrike fiasco, it is great to see security being given more attention in the WordPress community.</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, 16 Aug 2024 09:12:36 +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:7:"Jyolsna";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:15;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65:"WPTavern: Gutenberg 19.0 Introduces Two New Experimental Features";s: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=159341";s: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://wptavern.com/gutenberg-19-0-introduces-two-new-experimental-features";s: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:1982:"<p>Gutenberg 19.0 has <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/08/14/whats-new-in-gutenberg-19-0-14-august/">arrived</a> with two exciting experimental features, along with various feature enhancements and bug fixes. The Gutenberg team is actively seeking user feedback on these experimental additions.</p>



<p>The first experimental feature is the highly anticipated UI prototype for connecting blocks and custom fields. To try it out, you can enable the “UI to create block bindings” experiment by navigating to Gutenberg &gt; Experiments. Automattician Jorge Costa, sponsored by Automattic, has shared a video in the release post that explains this feature in detail.</p>







<p>The second experimental feature in Gutenberg 19.0 is the Quick Edit functionality within the new Pages interface. Built using Data Views, this feature supports bulk editing, allowing users to make quick adjustments to multiple fields without leaving the Pages interface.</p>



<p>Both these features are available under the new <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/64121">experimental blocks flag</a> and can be accessed from Gutenberg &gt; Experiments in the WordPress dashboard.</p>



<p>This release also brings a more intuitive user interface for configuring views such as pages, templates, and patterns. Users can now decide if filters should be displayed by default or hidden, and they can easily add them back with a click.</p>



<p>Other notable features include a zoomed-out view alongside the device preview options, multiple writing flow enhancements, improved zoom transition between devices, and a new “send” icon. Gutenberg 19.0 also fixes a layout issue in the document bar, adds react peer dependency to the <code>@wordpress/primitives</code> package, and increases the minimum required WordPress version to 6.5.</p>



<p>Jorge Costa&#8217;s release post gives the full list of bug fixes, enhancements, and other improvements in this release.</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, 15 Aug 2024 13:19:57 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Jyolsna";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:16;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"Do The Woo Community: Balancing Careers and Agency Evolution with Joe Riviello";s: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=85146";s: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://dothewoo.io/balancing-careers-and-agency-evolution-with-joe-riviello/";s: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:32599:"<div class="wp-block-group has-border-color has-light-gray-background-color has-background has-small-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-17 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p class="has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9acf640b7ba38a84a982fc35d618387f">This show is sponsored by&#8230;</p>



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<p class="wp-container-content-8"> <strong><a href="https://godaddy.com">GoDaddy</a></strong>: Build your clients sites using the flexibility of a <strong>Managed WooCommerce Store from GoDaddy</strong>. If you clients are looking to expand their store, you can deliver them a fully-customized WooCommerce site.</p>
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Episode Transcript
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<p>Here’s the transcript with corrections:</p>



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<p>Robbie:<br />Hello and welcome to Do the Woo. I&#8217;m here today, Robbie Adair, to do an episode of the Woo Agency Chat. I&#8217;ve got Robert here with me, my fellow co-host. Robert, how are things going on your side of the world?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />It&#8217;s August, and it should be so nice and quiet and peaceful, but I think everyone is still running around at a thousand miles an hour. We&#8217;ve got WordCamp US coming up, just in about four weeks. I know plenty of folks are busy with that.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />Oh my goodness, I didn&#8217;t realize how close it is. Yes, I think I&#8217;ve got like four trips before that, but yay, WordCamp US!</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Maybe you can get out to Scranton.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />That&#8217;s right. So yeah, today we have Zen Agency with us, Joe Riviello. See, I told you I was going to mess it up, Joe. I knew it.</p>



<p>Joe:<br />Joe Riviello.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />Yeah, so we were actually chatting with Joe before we started our show today, and we&#8217;ve got an interesting one here for you guys because Joe works on people&#8217;s hearts in the morning and then their websites in the afternoon. I love it. Joe, tell us about Zen Agency and how you got started in this when you were a heart surgeon.</p>



<p>Joe:<br />Yep. So it actually started back in the nineties. I was in cardiovascular perfusion school at Hahnemann University, which is in Philadelphia, and my background is in cardiovascular perfusion. What that means is we operate the heart-lung machine during open heart surgery. I still do that today. I run the agency, and I&#8217;m in surgery in the mornings. By the afternoon, I&#8217;m running my agency. So anyway, the way it all came about, my grandfather, back in the nineties, had open heart surgery, and we were in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Back then, if you needed open heart surgery, you didn&#8217;t get it in Scranton, Pennsylvania; you went to Philadelphia for surgery. So he was in Philadelphia at Hahnemann, and I went to visit him. I was really undecided about what I wanted to do with my life at that time. So I visited him, and I was sitting bedside with him, and this was about 1993-ish.</p>



<p>There was a catalog sitting next to him, and it was a catalog from the school, open to the cardiovascular perfusion technology program at Hahnemann University. So I looked into it and thought, &#8220;Well, this looks really interesting.&#8221; I was kind of techy back then, as techy as you could be because we weren&#8217;t really in a technological revolution yet. But anyway, I got into perfusion school, and during that time, one of my classmates had a Jeep, and he was selling it. This was when Amazon and E-Trade were just starting because we were looking at penny stocks and stuff with those. But anyway, he wanted to sell his Jeep, and I said, &#8220;You know what? Let&#8217;s try to build a website and raffle the Jeep off.&#8221; Well, little did I realize back then that raffling a Jeep off online is essentially gambling, which is illegal.</p>



<p>So we nixed that idea when we found out the legalities of it. But that kind of got me digging into the whole web design thing because we were trying to make a webpage back then. This was towards the late nineties when I was in school. So anyway, I graduated from perfusion school and took my first job in Las Vegas. I drove out to Las Vegas and got hired by a great company back then, and they were building an intranet and were looking for volunteers to help build it. I could not build an intranet; I was more like a static webpage Dreamweaver type of guy back then. So I raised my hand and said, &#8220;Yeah, I can do that.&#8221; So I got involved in that, and I was part of that process. Then that led to some of my friends forming a company because one of my friends was a casino host in Las Vegas, and I started a company called OwnYourOwnCasino.com, and we linked up with another company that was basically an affiliate type of thing.</p>



<p>Anyway, that went nowhere. A few years later, I moved back to Scranton, Pennsylvania. There was an opening at the local hospital here, which I took, and I wanted something more. I wanted to be more of an entrepreneur than an employee, so I was kind of using that as my stepping stone. I got involved with one of my good friends who&#8217;s a real estate developer and owns several businesses in our area. He said, &#8220;You&#8217;re really into this whole tech thing with the web design and everything. Why don&#8217;t you just get that started, and I&#8217;ll give you a couple of my companies to build websites for?&#8221; So I did that, and it was kind of like a hobby back then, and it remained a hobby for several years. Then I opened a cafe, and maybe a year went by after the cafe failed miserably, and I thought, &#8220;I have to do something else. I want to do something else other than just cardiovascular perfusion.&#8221; Not that it&#8217;s not a really gratifying job because it is, but I just had this entrepreneurial spirit from when I was a kid selling produce. I had a produce stand back then, which is a whole other story, but it goes back that far. So I started this company, Zen Agency, and I think back then it was called &#8220;For the Zen of It.&#8221; I&#8217;m not sure what that meant, but that&#8217;s what it was. It was just basically static webpages for local businesses. It wasn&#8217;t really an official company because it was just myself doing the actual work, and I was doing it from my home. After my job, I&#8217;d come home and work on my friend&#8217;s projects, who was the real estate developer.</p>



<p>One thing led to another. I made some money from that. I didn’t need that money because I had the hospital work, so I just rolled it into my first hire, who’s still with us to this day: Samantha Irving. She&#8217;s a great employee, and she pretty much handles all our support. So anyway, I started the company with one employee, along with my wife. I’ve got to mention my wife, Tina. She started the company with me, and we were just working out of our house. Then we moved into an office, got a few more projects under our belt, and that snowballed into more projects. We hired a few more people, and all the while, I&#8217;ve not taken a paycheck because I have my pay coming in from the hospital. So I really wasn&#8217;t concerned about taking a paycheck from Zen. Instead, I found myself putting money into Zen.</p>



<p>Anyway, years later, we’re talking 2000-teens, we have a vibrant company. We were just dabbling into e-commerce. We weren&#8217;t in WooCommerce at first; our first framework was OS Commerce, which was a complete nightmare, and that kind of drove us into the whole WooCommerce realm. But anyway, along the way, I’ve really never taken a paycheck. I’ve always just put the money back into the agency and kept growing it that way. We went from static website design to static website design and marketing. Then we really got into the e-commerce component of it, and now we’re getting into the whole AI component. Now I’m finally taking—not a paycheck, but I&#8217;ll call them bonuses—but I&#8217;m still keeping my job in cardiovascular perfusion at the hospital. I do surgery in the morning, usually at seven o’clock. If I’m on call, you&#8217;re called in, and it could happen anytime. That’s usually one week out of every five weeks. But other than that, it’s usually a morning gig, and I work at Zen in the afternoons. Even after all these years— I think it’s our 15th year in business—I’ve really pulled myself out of the agency because my end goal is to sell the agency. I have a wife and two kids. I love what I’m doing right now, which is seeing things at a higher level and only cherry-picking the projects I want to work on, which really aren’t the whole web development or web design aspect. My forte, I’ll say, is more in the hosting and maintenance area. For some reason, I just gravitated toward that end of it because I love the challenge. We have a team that handles the support, but when I see support, I get CC’d on all the support tickets when I probably shouldn’t because they just inundate my inbox. I’ll pick the ones I want to work on because I actually enjoy working on those, and that’s what I do in the afternoons. I hope that answered your question.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />And then some! Does everyone’s resume look as extensive as yours, or do you occasionally get someone who might have two resumes—two different people?</p>



<p>Joe:<br />Well, first let me just tell you about my staff. The majority of my staff, our leadership, is very experienced. I try to vet everyone who comes through the door, all of our staff, and I try to hire people who have many years of experience. Sometimes that can bite you because they’re not up on the new technology. And I&#8217;m up on the new technology. In fact, I’m up on it at 4:30 or 5 o’clock in the morning, just buying SaaS products that I’m wasting money on just to see what those SaaS products are like and how we can utilize them in the agency, only to find out a few months later that they’re not worth it. It’s like, &#8220;Teens years of experience.&#8221; You just mentioned one: a double resume. About two weeks ago, we hired a gentleman—I won’t say any names—who was really an experienced SEO. He wasn</p>



<p>’t really in the whole e-commerce realm but was an experienced SEO. That’s a portion that we’re really trying to build out in our agency. We see good opportunities there, especially utilizing AI in that space. So anyway, we hired this guy. I vetted him, I hired him, and he started last week. Everything seemed to be going great. I was on vacation last week, so I didn’t really get any face-to-face time with him, but this week I did. I had face-to-face time with him yesterday, along with the rest of my marketing team. We had a group meeting, and his face wasn’t on the Google Meet, though it normally was when I was interviewing him and discussing the role. Anyway, I could tell something was not right; I could just tell. As we were in the meeting, I went into my G Suite, and I looked up his IP address and saw an IP address from the Philippines.</p>



<p>So that raised a red flag. I asked him to show his face, and he wouldn’t show his face. He said he had to restart his computer. So I said, “Well, you know what? Instead of showing your face, just tell me your birthday,” because I knew his birthday from a background check that we ran on him. He couldn’t say his birthday. He just dropped off. So immediately at that moment, I picked up my phone and called this guy, and he answered the phone while he was in the meeting with me. “Hey Joe, how’s it going?” So I knew something was up, and I would not stop, man. I just kept grinding, trying to get it out of him. It turns out he was working a couple of different jobs in the same role, but who knows if it was even him doing the work or not. I know one of his previous employers— it definitely wasn’t him doing the work because I phoned them, and now apparently he no longer has a job there either. So again, I’m not going to mention any names, but that was an interesting day yesterday and part of my morning today.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />Yeah, I’m glad that you shared that story because there are a lot of agency owners out there that hire remote workers. We have to. You need workers, and just like you said, you want people who are experienced and know their craft, and it may mean you have to hire them from somewhere else remotely. This could happen to anyone as an agency owner, so knowing to check…</p>



<p>Joe:<br />Yeah, especially in the WooCommerce space. Companies, especially now, are remote. From 2010 to 2019, we were renting a place, and then we bought our own. When COVID came, we all went remote, as everyone did. But then when COVID went away, we all came back to work. Last December, I said, “You know what? The majority of our staff isn’t even in our area, and some of our staff here is kind of hybrid anyway, so let’s just rent out the Zen building, and everybody&#8217;s remote.” So we all went remote in January. I’m in the office today; I actually came here for the meeting because I have a 7-year-old and a 9-year-old, and they’re not back in school yet, obviously. I didn’t want to have them screaming in the background, so I came to the office. It’s pretty desolate here; it’s not rented out yet, and it’s pretty desolate. But you run into that— you have remote employees, and you really don’t know what you’re getting. You really do have to vet them. I thought I did vet this guy.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Especially in the WordPress space, so much is remote. I mean, Automattic being a remote-first company in general, you look at that. So obviously, folks associated with WooCommerce are more likely to be remote, and let’s even ignore the COVID office killer part of the equation.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />Well, and there were a lot of people during the pandemic that you heard about who did the very exact thing that guy did to you, where they were taking on multiple jobs. There was one person I know who had three full-time jobs. Three full-time jobs! And yeah, there’s no way you&#8217;re doing that. “Oh, well, it’s just balance.” I was like, “No, it’s not just balance. There’s no way you can truly work three full-time jobs.”</p>



<p>Joe:<br />No, I’m the only one who could do that for real. I’m doing it.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />Well, that’s true, that’s true. I guess if we count your fatherhood, you definitely have three full-time jobs going there.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />I remember seeing articles in all the papers about that, in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and they’re still talking about it—where folks are… There’s got to be a fun little word for it… Well, just multi-jobbing, double-dipping, triple-dipping…</p>



<p>Joe:<br />I’ll tell you, it’s got to be a lot easier now with ChatGPT and all the other AI tools out there. I mean, it just makes it super easy for them to do it.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />So now Joe, do you and/or any of your staff attend the WordPress events out there?</p>



<p>Joe:<br />We did a local event; there was one a few years ago. Sean and I—Sean is our solution specialist—went to WooConf in Austin back in 2016, and that was an amazing time. WooCommerce stopped doing those for a bit, and that was the last one we went to. We also went to WordCamp Maryland, but we were only there for one day. We drove out and drove back that day. It’s kind of tough; you have to do a lot online.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />So you were mentioning earlier when we were talking about some of the types of work that Zen does that you have a WooCommerce project that you have put in a case study to Woo about. Tell us about that project.</p>



<p>Joe:<br />The case study is nearing completion, and we just reached out because all the Woo experts are in this… Can we still call ourselves Woo experts? I know we switched over to an Automattic thing just recently. We’re still the Woo experts. So we reached out, and we’re submitting this week—tomorrow, in fact. It’s a very interesting project that we worked on. Have you guys ever heard of Algolia? It’s a search and discovery platform. Oh yeah, the ability to build a site on WooCommerce is excellent for customizing. I mean, you can do anything with it, and you can’t do that with Shopify, not like you can with WooCommerce. So we built a jeweler’s site. This guy approached us at the end of last year. He had a ring builder, so basically you pick your setting, then you pick your stone, and then you go through a whole checkout process.</p>



<p>We built out this site for him to create that with WooCommerce, and it essentially gives you the ability to have a site with a million products on it, and they all get indexed on the Algolia search and discovery platform so that when someone is searching or filtering for those products, it’s not just a second, but it is literally like microseconds. It’s instant. I mean, you can click and filter, and it’s completely instant. But it’s one where it walks you through a process of building a ring and then going into a checkout with the whole Algolia tab panel type of thing. So you’re going through the step process. We scoped it out; we built it out. But I didn’t realize how great of an idea this thing was, and there are competitors in the space doing this, but this thing increased revenues by hundreds of thousands instantly because people really wanted this—people who wanted to build their own engagement ring. So it was a really interesting project for us to work on. This case study should be finished by tomorrow and submitted so that other folks can see this project and what it took to actually build it out.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />So Joe, is this a plugin available on the WordPress plugin directory?</p>



<p>Joe:<br />Soon it will be. It’s not a plug-and-play type of plugin, and that’s the problem with it. I have probably $120,000 to $150,000 invested in this thing, and it’s not a plugin that we could actually just sell to you, and you just add it to your site because it’s more complicated than that. So there will be a free version—you’ll be able to download that plugin and use it—but all the goodies that come with it are premium, and that’s when you need the premium version of the plugin. But then you also need the development because there are customizations that could be done to it. Like I said, you can’t just simply buy that plugin. I wish that you could, but the support would be crazy.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />It sounds like it’s almost like an enterprise plugin, so you’d need enterprise-focused agencies to really take advantage of it.</p>



<p>Joe:<br />You need enterprise. It’s not for a mom-and-pop shop. But also, a mom-and-pop shop’s not going to have a million products on their site. This is for a type of site that’s going to sell engine parts for all different vehicles because it’s based on year, make, and model, and those are nested. So you have year, make, model, engine size, and that’s all a whole nesting taxonomy that goes into your database. It could be quite a mess if you don’t do some custom work on the back end. That’s why it’s more for enterprise, which is good for us because then you kind of dig your hooks into a client. You need this for your</p>



<p>enterprise website, and you need us now for your enterprise website as well, which is always a good thing.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />So Joe, does Zen Agency work with any other agencies out there? Do you find any cross-projects?</p>



<p>Joe:<br />That’s something that’s always been in the back of my mind, especially with the other WooCommerce experts. I’ve thought about that in the past in our Slack channel. As a matter of fact, a few of us have reached out to each other, but nothing has ever really come to fruition there. But I kind of wish it did because each of us has our own strengths. Like ours, we’re a full-service agency, but where’s our strength? It’s more in putting out fires. I hate to say that, but a lot of the work we get is fixing what another agency may have messed up or what a solo entrepreneur messed up.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />So what’s your future plan there, Joe?</p>



<p>Joe:<br />My end goal really is to continue to build Zen for a few more years. That may be through M&amp;A. That’s definitely on the table. I’ve looked at other agencies; there hasn’t been something there that really whet my appetite enough to take that leap. I came really close a couple of times, but that still isn’t where I want it. We’ve been in this business for a long time, and I think some other agencies look at us and see that we’re really fine-tuned. But we’re not fine-tuned yet because it’s ever-changing. I’m trying to build an operating system—my agency’s operating system—so that when a sale comes in from a WooCommerce lead online form, then what happens? I actually had this conversation with our solution specialist and two of our other sales guys. I said, &#8220;Well, then what happens? The form gets answered, and if we get the response, then what happens? Or what if we don’t get a response? If we don’t get a response, they go over here, and that ends with the contract being signed. And if the contract is signed, then if it’s development or marketing—let’s say it’s development—then that part of the operating system flowchart kicks in, and then what happens? Then we have a client meeting, and there’s always stuff that happens in between.&#8221; So at the end of the day, we have this big giant flowchart of the processes of the agency, and I am still working on the operating system. It’s been two years, and it kills me because I know I can get there. I have my whole team working on their components of it, and it’s a lot more difficult being a WooCommerce agency doing this when you’re a full-service agency because a lot of the other WooCommerce agencies, and I think this is one of the things that separates us from a lot of the other WooCommerce or even development agencies, that’s not just what we are.</p>



<p>Do you know what I mean? We’re into hosting, maintenance, WooCommerce development, all forms of marketing. So there are a lot of moving parts that make it a lot more complicated to pull this off. But once I pull this off—the operating system—then I know I can get a high multiple on my agency and sell it because right now it’s not like I’m starving to sell the agency. I’m starving to build it. I really enjoy building it. So I’m probably about five years out. In five years, I’d like to sell it to someone who can just take it, turn the key, and run with it—someone who’s really passionate about it—because our whole team is passionate. We’re totally transparent, unlike that employee that I hired. So when I hand the keys over, I want to make sure they’re able to run it because I didn’t build this to where it is today after all these years for nothing, and I would not want to see it flop in anyone else’s hands.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />Great. I think a lot of agency owners have the same mission as you— to figure out your templates and your processes so that it is something that is a sellable product. Because some agencies, as we know, become—especially when the owners work the agency as well and do the production—they’re so tied. They’re so tied to the person, not the agency, that the clients are. I’m saying that it’s hard to sell an agency. But doing it the way you’re doing it, where you are basically just building and overseeing this agency, you’re not getting yourself personally tied to those clients. And so I think that’s a very smart way of doing an agency if someone can afford to build their agency that way.</p>



<p>Joe:<br />Well, if I can give any bit of advice to anyone— a lot of WooCommerce agencies are joining the platform— my advice to them would be to hustle. I’ve had two jobs for many, many years, and my wife’s not here, but she would attest to this, and my whole staff would too. I’ve worked these two jobs, and there have been many times where I worked until one o&#8217;clock, two o&#8217;clock in the morning—straight through the night—never mind that, straight through the night to have to go to work the next day because you’re putting out a fire, right? A server’s down right before Black Friday. We had a complete mess many years ago with a very big client in the gift basket industry, and that could have sunk our ship if I didn’t really get all hands on deck on it. But to any of the newer agencies that are coming up, my advice would be to try to do it the way I did it because you do it debt-free, right? That’s another thing I pride myself on with this agency.</p>



<p>I started a cafe in Scranton, and I didn’t do my due diligence on it, and I took a loan out for it. The cafe went belly up because the university directly across the street—now, I was selling paninis and espressos and lattes, like Starbucks-type stuff—had I done my due diligence, I would’ve known that less than a year later they were breaking ground directly across the street to build a full food court in the University of Scranton with a Starbucks and everything else. They erected a fence that spanned two blocks, and it blocked all the students from coming over while they were doing this build-out. So I completely lost all of my customers overnight, and that went belly up. I was in a rough spot back then. That was about the mid-2000s, like 2005-ish. Learning from that, I would say try to build something like this without pulling outside capital. I don’t know if that works for everyone, but it worked for me because I built a company that has no debt. Not many companies can do that. Not many companies can say that they did that, and it makes it a lot easier to build because there’s a lot less stress in your life—not like, &#8220;How am I going to pay these bills?&#8221; Right.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />Yeah. I do think that web agencies are one of the types of companies that do… It’s easier to do. It’s not like a restaurant where you have to have a physical space. You have to have certain equipment. Yeah. I mean, you could have a laptop and get an agency up and off the ground. So I think it does mean you can do those without debt if you want to. You can start an agency. So we are getting close to our time here. Robert, did you have any other final questions or comments?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />I’ve got so many. I want to really dive into this magical agency operating system you’re building. I think we’re going to have to save that for another time. I want to see how AI has blown that up or maybe optimized it.</p>



<p>Joe:<br />So we’re just now getting into the AI agent space and really trying to utilize the agents to perform a lot of this work. Especially with agencies, like you guys said, hiring remotely that may not necessarily even be closely remote—they could be far remote. And so when there’s an actual language barrier and stuff, that makes it a lot more difficult to run your agency. But when you employ AI agents and it’s done effectively, it can really streamline your operation to the point where you have lead people running things and the agents being your busy workers doing the actual work.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Very cool stuff.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />Yeah, absolutely.</p>



<p>Joe:<br />That’s part of the operating system. But do invite me back sometime in the future; I’ll show you the operating system. In fact, I’ll even notify you once it’s complete.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />There we go. There we go. You’ll have a book out; you’ll be on a public speaking circuit, and then we’ll have you back on the show. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Joe, for coming and visiting with us today. We loved learning about Zen Agency and your plans for the future. How can people reach you? Let’s let them know.</p>



<p>Joe:<br />They can visit our site, Zen Agency, or they can call our number: (800) 775-9610.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Phone number. Magical.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />Right? I know. I think that’s the first time we’ve had someone give a phone number on here. Interesting. I like it. An 800 number to boot.</p>



<p>Joe:<br />There you go.</p>



<p>Robbie:<br />Cool. All right, well, that’s all we’ve got for today, so thanks for listening to this episode of Do the Woo Agency Chat, and catch the next episode coming up. Thanks.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Thanks, Robbie. Thanks, Joe.</p>



<p>Joe:<br />Awesome. I enjoyed being here. Thank you very much.</p>
</div>




<p>In this episode of Woo <strong><em>AgencyChat</em></strong>, hosts <strong>Robbie Adair</strong> and Robert Jacobi chat with <strong>Joe Riviello, founder of Zen Agency</strong>.</p>



<p>Joe shares his journey from working as a cardiovascular perfusionist to running a successful web design and development agency. He discusses the unique challenges of balancing two demanding careers, the evolution of Zen Agency, and the role of remote work and AI in his business operations. </p>



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



<p><strong>Balancing Careers</strong>: Joe Riviello successfully manages dual careers as a cardiovascular perfusionist and the founder of Zen Agency, demonstrating the possibility of balancing two demanding professions.</p>



<p><strong>Agency Evolution</strong>: Zen Agency evolved from a small side project into a full-service web design and development firm, emphasizing the importance of persistence and gradual growth in building a successful business.</p>



<p><strong>Remote Work Challenges</strong>: With the shift to remote work, especially in the WooCommerce space, Joe highlights the importance of thorough vetting when hiring remote employees to ensure they meet the agency&#8217;s standards.</p>



<p><strong>AI Integration</strong>: Joe is exploring AI agents to streamline operations at Zen Agency, showcasing how AI can be leveraged to enhance efficiency and handle routine tasks in a modern agency setting.</p>



<p><strong>Debt-Free Growth</strong>: Joe advocates for building a business without accruing debt, which has allowed him to grow Zen Agency with less financial stress and greater control over the company’s direction.</p>



<p><strong>Future Plans</strong>: Joe&#8217;s long-term goal is to develop a comprehensive operating system for Zen Agency, which will make it easier to manage and ultimately sell the business, highlighting the importance of planning and systematizing operations for future scalability.</p>



<p><strong>Learning from Failure</strong>: Joe shares a valuable lesson from a failed cafe venture, emphasizing the importance of due diligence and how setbacks can provide critical insights for future success.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Links</h3>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong><a href="https://zen.agency/">Zen Agency</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/zen-agency-online/">Zen on LinkedIn</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/zendesignfirm/">Joe on LinkedIn</a></strong></li>
</ul>";s: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, 15 Aug 2024 09:20:00 +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:17;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"WPTavern: New Proposal to Update WordCamp Budget Guidelines to Attract New Attendees ";s: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=158655";s: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:95:"https://wptavern.com/new-proposal-to-update-wordcamp-budget-guidelines-to-attract-new-attendees";s: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:4503:"<p>Automattic-sponsored Global Community Team Programs Manager Rocio Valdivia has published a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2024/08/07/proposed-change-to-advertising-marketing-expense-guidelines/">proposal</a> to allocate a portion of the WordPress Events/WordCamp budget solely for marketing and advertising. This change aims to attract more newcomers to WordPress events.</p>



<p><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/_dorsvenabili/">Rocio Valdivia</a> explained, “The Community Team’s goal for upcoming events is to warmly welcome more first-time attendees. <strong>We aim for</strong> <strong>over 50% of participants to be newcomers</strong> <strong>while celebrating returning attendees</strong>. To achieve this, event organizers should focus on attracting new participants through well-planned event design, messaging, and marketing strategies.”</p>



<p>The new proposal reads: “A portion of the WordCamp budget may be allocated for marketing and advertising, subject to the approval of a Program Manager during your budget review and funded by the Global Sponsorship grant.” The amount can range from $50 to $400 based on factors like the organizers&#8217; experience, cost of living, and the size of the local community, and it should be utilized to maximize the event’s reach and impact.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Historically WordCamps have only very rarely included advertising expenses in their budgets.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Rocio has also shared some suggestions and advised that “Advertising funds should be used strategically to attract new attendees and raise awareness.” Her suggested strategies include listing events on online calendars, tech forums, newsletters and publications, collaborating with influencers and local businesses, distributing posters, flyers, and banners in strategic locations, running social media Ads and using traditional media to promote the events.&nbsp;</p>



<p>This proposal assumes importance in light of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2024/05/31/current-challenges-of-wordpress-events-shaping-the-future/">latest stats</a> showing that the number of new attendees has declined despite the number of events increasing during the Community Team’s re-engagement project. Automattic-sponsored Community Engagement Specialist <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2024/07/04/first-time-attendees/">Julia Golomb said</a>, “This decline underscores the importance of intentionally attracting and welcoming first-time attendees. They bring fresh perspectives, new energy, and potential for long-term growth of the WordPress community and user base.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>The proposal has sparked several responses and suggestions from the WordPress community. Taco Verdonschot, community manager at Yoast, has suggested creating a subteam of PPC experts in the marketing/PR team to run campaigns and also drew attention to the SEO issues of websites on wordcamp.org. “If we’re ready to spend money on advertising, maybe we can also spend some money/resources on optimizing our sites and site structure for online marketing.”, he said. </p>



<p>Joost de Valk, founder of the Yoast SEO plugin, also echoed Taco’s sentiments:&nbsp; “I don’t need money. Just need permission to install an SEO plugin on those sites.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Interested community members can <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2024/08/07/proposed-change-to-advertising-marketing-expense-guidelines/">share their feedback</a> on the proposal before August 19, 2024.&nbsp;</p>



<p>This proposal comes after the Community Team <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2024/07/23/venue-policy-update/">updated the WordPress Events venue policy</a> last month to permit the use of venues with religious affiliations. The new policy advises avoiding venues that maintain political affiliations, feature religious iconography, host religious worship, or engage in any form of proselytizing to organizers or attendees.</p>



<p>Incidentally, <a href="https://netherlands.wordcamp.org/2024/wordcamp-netherlands-rescheduled/">WordCamp Netherlands was rescheduled</a> from September to November 2024 due to low ticket sales. Hopefully, these changes will boost the success of WordCamps.</p>



<p>(<em>I&#8217;ve survived the Hunger Games <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/1f973.png" alt="?" class="wp-smiley" />. Please bear with me as I stumble around and find my way here.</em>)</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, 14 Aug 2024 18:41:15 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Jyolsna";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:18;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:96:"WPTavern: #132 – Katie Keith &amp; Matt Cromwell on Making a Success of Your WordPress Product";s: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=158562";s: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:104:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/132-katie-keith-matt-cromwell-on-making-a-success-of-your-wordpress-product";s: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:55881:"Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, making a success of your WordPress product in an increasingly competitive landscape.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



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



<p>So on the podcast today we have Katie Keith and Matt Cromwell.</p>



<p>Katie is the founder and CEO at Barn2 plugins, and Matt is co-founder of GiveWP and Senior Director of Customer Experience at StellarWP. They have been running the WP Product Talk podcast together since early 2023, where they interview WordPress product owners to get the inside scoop on running a successful business in the WordPress ecosystem. And they&#8217;ve collated much of what they&#8217;ve learned on the show to create the ultimate blueprint on how to build a successful WordPress product, which they reveal during their WordCamp Europe presentation.</p>



<p>We talk about the world of WordPress product development and marketing. This touches upon topics such as enhancing the WordPress admin interface with additional features that feel like a natural extension, and finding success through organic content and a consistent user focused YouTube strategy.</p>



<p>We also explore important marketing strategies within the WordPress community, emphasizing the value of identifying gaps in the market and leveraging event attendance for growth.</p>



<p>Katie gives her thoughts on the power of explainer videos focused on solving user problems, and how Google and YouTube work hand in hand to surface relevant content.</p>



<p>Matt discusses the challenges of pricing products correctly, setting expectations, and offering strategic discounts without de-valuing their worth, focusing on the importance of listening to customer feedback to prioritize future product development.</p>



<p>They both provide practical advice on creating a user-friendly product that feels like a part of WordPress.</p>



<p>Towards the end of our talk, Katie and Matt get into the value of transparency and the human touch in business. The significance of an up-to-date about us page and their approach to face-to-face customer interactions.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re a WordPress product developer, or just interested in the intricate world of WordPress business, this episode is for you.</p>



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



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Katie Keith and Matt Cromwell.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast by Katie Keith and Matt Cromwell. How are you both doing?</p>



<p>[00:03:43] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> Doing really well.</p>



<p>[00:03:44] <strong>Katie Keith:</strong> Good thanks.</p>



<p>[00:03:45] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> We&#8217;re in Turin, we&#8217;re at WordCamp Europe 2024. We&#8217;re up in the media room, and we&#8217;re going to talk today about the presentation that these fine people did yesterday. But before we get into that, do you just want to introduce yourself? Let&#8217;s take Katie first.</p>



<p>[00:03:57] <strong>Katie Keith:</strong> I&#8217;m Katie Keith, co-founder and CEO at Barn2 Plugins.</p>



<p>[00:04:02] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> And I&#8217;m Matt Cromwell, co-founder of GiveWP and Senior Director of Customer Experience at StellarWP.</p>



<p>[00:04:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, so tell us about your presentation. Normally when I do these conversations, I have a script. I write down the questions because I know what the person has been talking about, but yours, I didn&#8217;t know, so it&#8217;s going to be very much a conversation. First of all, just tell us what the title was and what it was about.</p>



<p>[00:04:24] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> We interviewed 50 plus WordPress product owners, and this is what we learned. And the whole idea was that, we&#8217;ve been talking to a lot of product owners, and there&#8217;s actually a lot of things they say that are very similar in terms of best practices and how to do things. And we talked about this in the presentation, that we wanted to democratise business insights for everyone. Rather than just only talking about it in hallway tracks, we wanted to be able to have a lot more people hear it and join the conversation, and that&#8217;s what the whole purpose of WP Product Talk is.</p>



<p>[00:04:57] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So what is WP Product Talk?</p>



<p>[00:04:59] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> WP Product Talk is a weekly podcast, occasionally weekly podcast. We&#8217;re on a break right now. Where we bring on a guest to speak about their expertise, or something they&#8217;re really passionate about, in terms of building a product business.</p>



<p>And we have co-hosts. We always tell them it&#8217;s a conversation, not an interview. So we have our own insights and experiences that we bring to the fore as well. We have four co-hosts, myself, Katie and Amber Hinds from Equalize Digital, and Zach Katz from Gravity Kit.</p>



<p>[00:05:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> But they&#8217;re all product owners. Everybody that comes on your show is a product owner, and you just get into a conversation, see where that leads you. And you&#8217;ve gained some insights over the last, what, 50 did you say, episodes?</p>



<p>[00:05:40] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> Now it&#8217;s like 65 episodes, but they&#8217;re almost always product owners. Occasionally they are an expert in a specific field, where we ask them to come and talk about their expertise because it&#8217;s hyper relevant to product owners. So everything we talk about is directed at product owners.</p>



<p>[00:05:56] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So you&#8217;ve assembled some of the top tips, some of the advice that you got from these product owners. And you went and stood on stage, and apparently there were some technical gremlins, which can&#8217;t be particularly nice, but that&#8217;s what you did. You stood on stage and distilled your learnings over the last 65 episodes, so we&#8217;re going to get into that. What did you talk about on stage?</p>



<p>[00:06:14] <strong>Katie Keith:</strong> So we went through all of the previous episodes and picked out the best advice from all of them, which we divided into four categories.</p>



<p>The four categories were product development, marketing, customer experience, and business. And in each of those, we chose about three previous guests who have been on the podcast to talk about those topics.</p>



<p>We thought we&#8217;d take a new format, which was Matt&#8217;s idea for the talk, which we haven&#8217;t seen at previous WordCamps, which is where, instead of just hearing from Matt and myself as the speakers, we included audio from the previous podcast episodes. So each section had an audio from somebody like people from Ellipsis who specialise in marketing, or people from particular product companies, and so on. So you got to hear from all of these experts, as well as Matt and myself.</p>



<p>[00:07:07] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> How did it go down? Was it well received, well attended?</p>



<p>[00:07:10] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> We were really happy. It was actually a totally packed house.</p>



<p>[00:07:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Nice.</p>



<p>[00:07:14] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> We were on track three, which we wish we would&#8217;ve been informed that it wasn&#8217;t going to be live streamed. We would&#8217;ve live streamed it from WP Product Talk if we knew that. The people seemed to be really receptive. We got a lot of positive feedback. There were definitely some technical hiccups, but we were able to grace our way through it more or less. I just make fun of myself the whole time, and people feel better.</p>



<p>[00:07:34] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> The technical hiccups weren&#8217;t that the audio didn&#8217;t play, was it?</p>



<p>[00:07:37] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> The audio was just challenging. There was this whole issue of, it didn&#8217;t auto play the audio like it was supposed to. They had to click on it manually. It was a mess. We had to telepathically communicate with IT about what was going on, and it took about five slides ish until we had a good rhythm.</p>



<p>[00:07:55] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So, okay, you&#8217;ve distilled it all down, you&#8217;ve talked to different people, you&#8217;ve put them on slides, and you&#8217;ve shown these people&#8217;s wisdom to the audience. Let&#8217;s hear it. What kernels of wisdom did you draw, and what were the bits that made it into the presentation?</p>



<p>[00:08:07] <strong>Katie Keith:</strong> Well, the first section was about product development, and we focused a lot on how to design an intuitive product, ideally inspired by WordPress itself. Because if you use a lot of themes or plugins, you&#8217;ll see some integrate beautifully with WordPress, and others really look stuck on, and have reinvented the wheel, so it feels like it&#8217;s not WordPress at all.</p>



<p>So we&#8217;ve advised people to make it feel like it&#8217;s part of WordPress, and particularly like the block editor, so that when somebody lands on your product for the first time, it already feels familiar to them. And ideally they can get up and running without even having to read the documentation or anything.</p>



<p>We included a screenshot from GiveWP in that section, where their create a donation form looks like the block editor, so that people can just get started with it, without even having to learn or read the documentation.</p>



<p>[00:09:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So the idea being that if you are, I guess, if you&#8217;re new to WordPress, you can just drop right into whatever that experience is, where you just, I don&#8217;t know, installed a plugin, or something like that. And you&#8217;re not trying to learn, okay, here&#8217;s a new color palette. I don&#8217;t know what that button does. I don&#8217;t know where this goes. Why is it in a different font? Just keep it WordPress, keep it simple, that kind of thing.</p>



<p>[00:09:18] <strong>Katie Keith:</strong> Exactly, yeah. That way people will be much more successful.</p>



<p>We also gave other pieces of advice, such as maybe adding some kind of a onboarding or setup wizard to take people through the key features of the product when they first install it, to make it even easier for them.</p>



<p>[00:09:34] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s kind of interesting because some of the biggest plugins out there don&#8217;t follow that advice, do they? I mean, I&#8217;m sure that you can name a dozen or more plugins where you install it and you are hijacked. So I guess for some people it works. For other people, it doesn&#8217;t. But the advice, if you&#8217;re starting out, at least the advice that you&#8217;ve just given is, go with WordPress, keep it simple, don&#8217;t overcomplicate. You don&#8217;t need to waste your time and effort making a unique UI that doesn&#8217;t need to be there.</p>



<p>[00:09:59] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> I think one way we said it was to enhance, not replace the admin. There&#8217;s definitely ways in which you can do additional things in your settings page, or in any configuration, or in Gutenberg itself that isn&#8217;t exactly what WordPress is all the time, but it should look like a natural extension of it. So enhance, don&#8217;t replace.</p>



<p>And we gave a couple pretty good examples. Kadence does a good job as well. When you&#8217;re in the customizer, they actually have this custom footer area that helps you to customise your footer, ideally. And it looks and feels a lot like an extension of the customizer, even though it&#8217;s not native to the customizer at at all.</p>



<p>[00:10:35] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, so mimicking the WordPress UI as well. Okay, that&#8217;s interesting. Okay, so that&#8217;s a good piece of advice. Where do we go next?</p>



<p>[00:10:41] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> The next category after that was marketing. And in marketing in particular, we covered several different kind of subtopics. We talked about community a bit, we talked about how you optimise which channel you might use. Alex Denning was in there, Kathy Zant was in there as well.</p>



<p>I think some of the biggest things that we talked about were just being able to identify where you&#8217;re winning in marketing, and to double down on that, and to also take your community around your product really seriously.</p>



<p>[00:11:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do either of you have products outside of WordPress? No, shaking head, no. Okay, so given that you&#8217;ve both got products inside a WordPress, how hard is it to market to the WordPress crowd? I get this intuition that the people that use WordPress, and especially people that attend events like this, have a different approach. Their relationship to being marketed toward is very different. I feel that we don&#8217;t like being marketed at as a community. Do you think my intuitions are wrong there?</p>



<p>[00:11:38] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> Yes and no. Me personally, I have observed that, when I go to WordCamps, people have that sentiment. They&#8217;re often highly opinionated about what plugins should or shouldn&#8217;t do in the admin. And most often that&#8217;s because they are building websites for their clients, and they don&#8217;t want to hand over a website to the client that looks like a bunch of spam in the admin area. So I understand where they&#8217;re coming from, but I don&#8217;t believe that the WordPress community represents the 90% of customers out there that are purchasing our products.</p>



<p>[00:12:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I also feel that, if we were to rewind the clock, oh, I don&#8217;t know, let&#8217;s say 10 years or something like that, I feel launching a product in the WordPress space would&#8217;ve been a lot more straightforward. You know, what have we got now? 60,000 plus plugins in the repository. Countless, I have no idea how many commercial plugins there are out there. There&#8217;s probably 10 or 15 different form solutions. If you want to create custom post types, there&#8217;s bunches of those.</p>



<p>Do you think it is harder now to market into the community? You&#8217;ve both got products with a history, you&#8217;ve kind of crossed that bridge already. So you&#8217;ve struggled through that and come through the other side. But if you&#8217;re just beginning your journey with a product in the WordPress space, I&#8217;m imagining it&#8217;s harder now than it ever has been.</p>



<p>[00:12:48] <strong>Katie Keith:</strong> Yeah, when I first started selling products, we found ideas which didn&#8217;t already exist. I could just write one blog post about this topic and it would go straight to the top of Google, because nobody else had ever written about that, there were no products doing that. And as the ecosystem has grown, that has obviously become more difficult.</p>



<p>But I believe there are still gaps in the market where you can do that. You just have to be really, really in there with WordPress, WooCommerce, whatever you&#8217;re specialising in, in order to find those gaps. So I&#8217;m still aware of gaps in WooCommerce in particular, where you could launch a product and nobody else has ever written about it.</p>



<p>An example of a new product I released only a couple of years ago was WooCommerce discontinued products. Nobody had ever written about that because there was no products that allowed you to discontinue your products.</p>



<p>So things like that, they&#8217;re often quite small ideas, but if you&#8217;re just starting out then, if you&#8217;re not like a funded startup, and you&#8217;re bootstrapping, then maybe you want a fairly small plugin, which you can hopefully start getting sales, get some experience.</p>



<p>So I&#8217;d say keep your eyes open, and try to find something that is unique and it is still possible, although I accept it&#8217;s not as easy as it used to be.</p>



<p>[00:14:03] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What do you use as your primary marketing channels, plural? What is there out there? You know, you could use Google ads, you could use Facebook ads, you could use an email list, you could go on podcasts, or start your own podcast. What are you doing that you found has worked?</p>



<p>[00:14:17] <strong>Katie Keith:</strong> The best marketing channel for me has always been organic content on our own website. So that&#8217;s generally quite specific things that people are searching for, about how to achieve certain goals using our plugins.</p>



<p>And our second main marketing channel is YouTube, which we also covered in the marketing section of our presentation yesterday. Because YouTube&#8217;s actually the second largest search engine in the world. We did a quote from Jamie Marsland, who&#8217;s a big YouTube influencer, as well as a WordPress product owner at the moment. In which he said, you need to have a consistent YouTube strategy and stick to it. And I think that&#8217;s really important, because you can&#8217;t just stick the odd video on YouTube and expect to get sales from it. Because YouTube is all about building a following. And also learning how to do it in a way that appeals to people psychologically, with things like effective thumbnails, and titles that make people click. So if you&#8217;re going to do YouTube, do it properly as Jamie suggested, but the rewards can be there.</p>



<p>[00:15:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What do you do? Like explainer videos about the product, or just more general WordPressy content.</p>



<p>[00:15:24] <strong>Katie Keith:</strong> Most of our YouTube content is explainer tutorials about our products, although we are always experimenting with how to build our following more widely. So we do have some videos, for example, we don&#8217;t have any translation plugins at Barn2, but we did a best translations plugin YouTube video recently, which is currently one of our top 10 videos in terms of views.</p>



<p>[00:15:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do the explainer videos actually cause conversions? Because you&#8217;d imagine that if you were looking at an explainer video, you&#8217;ve already bought the product, and you&#8217;re just trying to figure out how something works. But I guess maybe not, maybe you are just exploring, and just seeing what the product can do with the intention of buying it. So if you did go down that road, and just do explainer content, that could still be effective as a marketing tool, which is kind of interesting.</p>



<p>[00:16:07] <strong>Katie Keith:</strong> The best way to do explainer content on YouTube is to put the user&#8217;s problem first, not the product. So, say we have a WooCommerce product table plugin, but the tutorial shouldn&#8217;t be called How to Use the WooCommerce Product Table Plugin. It should be about how to create a searchable one page order form in WooCommerce or something. So if somebody&#8217;s looking, they&#8217;re searching for something about creating a product order form, then they will find this and our product is the solution.</p>



<p>[00:16:39] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s kind of interesting, my use of YouTube always seems to give me the same content. If I watch, I don&#8217;t know, I watch a lot of music videos, so I get lots of music videos. So I would have to use the Google search engine in order to find a YouTube video. But I guess, if you are, I don&#8217;t know, constantly searching for WordPress content, it may surface your YouTube marketing videos as well.</p>



<p>[00:17:01] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> Yeah, for sure. I mean, Google definitely operates that way. It&#8217;s definitely watching you wherever it possibly can, and it will elevate the relevant content. The reason YouTube is the second biggest search engine is specifically because of the way in which it compliments and mimics the Google search engine itself. Even if you&#8217;re searching on Facebook sometimes for something, you&#8217;ll end up finding interesting new recommendations in your YouTube feed because of your traffic in Facebook.</p>



<p>[00:17:29] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What do you think about the state of building a product in the WordPress space now? As I said a minute ago, if you rewind the clock 10 years, I feel it was much more of a build it and they will come kind of thing, because you were quite likely the first person to come up with it.</p>



<p>I know now that that&#8217;s no longer the case. Marketing, it can&#8217;t be a sort of afterthought. If you&#8217;re going to be building a product, if you&#8217;re a developer, you have to have that as a plan from the outset. So it&#8217;s not build it, then think about marketing. It&#8217;s more, build it at the same time as trying to figure out the marketing, because it probably won&#8217;t succeed.</p>



<p>I mean, you might get lucky, right? I mean, there&#8217;s always that, but typically I would imagine now, because we&#8217;ve got this fairly saturated marketplace, you&#8217;ve got to put marketing front and center.</p>



<p>[00:18:10] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> I have mixed responses to that sentiment from my personal experiences. One is that, being the old man in the room, I&#8217;m like, it wasn&#8217;t easy back in my day kids. Yes, I get it, I get the whole idea that it was easier back then. And sure, for sure, but we would not have had success without really strong marketing. We would not have had success without constantly iterating on the product all the time. And none of those things have changed. All of that is still ground zero for how to be a product owner.</p>



<p>But the saturated market is a big aspect for sure. But we are seeing, of course, new opportunities like, at the moment, no one has really nailed exactly how we want to leverage AI and WordPress particularly well. And so there&#8217;s lots of opportunity there. It&#8217;s a little bit of a gold rush. You&#8217;re seeing a whole bunch of products being shipped to .org that all are AI related. Are any of them any good? They&#8217;re fine, I guess. Are any of them knocking it out of the park? Not necessarily, so far. Somebody is yet to really solve that new problem, or offer that new feature in a way that is really compelling.</p>



<p>But I can tell you that, from my observations of .org all the time, people are shipping AI products all the time right now. And so the one who really nails it correctly, and markets it correctly is the one that&#8217;s going to start rising up to the top. So just as much as there&#8217;s a saturation of market, there&#8217;s also these new opening types of features that are coming along the way as well.</p>



<p>I mean, truthfully, even when we shipped GiveWP, everyone said, I would never do a CRM in WordPress, it&#8217;s just not made for a CRM. Which I thought at the time was craziness, but it was a very developery conversation. There&#8217;s several very popular CRMs in WordPress now that are doing really well. Groundhogg is great. Fluent CRM is doing well. These are new emerging markets. So as much as I understand the sentiment, you have to have a little bit closer look at the market to recognise that there&#8217;s emerging markets, and there&#8217;s also new ways to do things, and there&#8217;s always a combination of having really excellent marketing along the side as well.</p>



<p>[00:20:17] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You can answer this question in a whole multitude of ways, but I&#8217;ll just put it out there and you can tell me what you think. Do you see events like this, the attendance of events like this, is that a useful marketing thing? I mean, obviously you can pay, have a sponsor booth, you&#8217;ve kind of nailed your flag to the mast a bit there. You know, you&#8217;re obviously here to sponsor. You said you, Katie I&#8217;m looking at at the moment, Katie said she&#8217;s not got a sponsor booth this time. But, is it a useful thing to attend WordPress meetups, WordCamps? Is that a useful part of the marketing jigsaw puzzle?</p>



<p>[00:20:46] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> I&#8217;ll answer first and just say that, GiveWP was built on the backs of meetups and WordCamps. It was fundamental to our growth. How do we measure that ROI? I don&#8217;t know. There&#8217;s lots of different ways over the years that I tried to, you know, I don&#8217;t like the salesy approach to it, but I can say that, because we were present at WordCamps, and people met us, there were times when six or seven months later after a WordCamp, I would have somebody personally email me and say, hey, I just bought GiveWP yesterday, and I met you at a WordCamp. That&#8217;s anecdotal for the most part, it&#8217;s not like huge data, but I really do assume that it was part of our continual growth, is how we invested in WordCamps.</p>



<p>Things have changed a bit. I mean, COVID changed everything for sure, and events are a bit different nowadays. And, is our target audience attending Workcamp EU? Less so. There are definitely agencies here, and agencies have a huge influence over what products their clients choose for their websites. So that&#8217;s always useful for sure.</p>



<p>But generally speaking, the ROI that Stellar thinks of when we come to events like this, is how we are going to meet new partners, how we&#8217;re going to talk to up and coming developers who we might want to hire, how we can learn more from other companies who are doing similar things to us. It&#8217;s more of an industry event for us more. But the more local, boots on the ground, WordCamps are, I feel have really good ROI for products in particular, because they are a lot more affordable, and they&#8217;re a lot more localised.</p>



<p>[00:22:16] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I hear the same story all the time, that measuring of the ROI from an event like this is nigh on impossible, but there&#8217;s something there. I mean, if there wasn&#8217;t, you wouldn&#8217;t have as many people attending on behalf of their companies, I wouldn&#8217;t have thought.</p>



<p>[00:22:28] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> Absolutely. I had a really great conversation with Omnisend. I won&#8217;t say anything that I believe they wouldn&#8217;t want me to say, but they have been investing in Shopify a lot, and they&#8217;re now also investing in WordPress right now. And they just told me a little bit about the differences between how they approach those two communities.</p>



<p>They said that Shopify is very much sale oriented, and ROI driven, and revenue driven, and numbers driven, and the WordPress community is more of a community, and you have to come in open-minded, and open-handed, and make relationships. They saw that as a real clear, stark difference between the two. But it was clear also that, from what they were telling me, they see it as a valuable investment.</p>



<p>[00:23:07] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What was the next thing on the list that you said in your presentation?</p>



<p>[00:23:11] <strong>Katie Keith:</strong> The third of the four categories we covered was customer experience, and particularly listening to your customers in a way that would directly allow you to make improvements to your product.</p>



<p>And we started that section by talking about the experience of customers before they even buy your product. We focused on InstaWP because, since that was launched, a lot of WordPress product owners have been creating admin demos, where people can test drive the plugin in a pre-setup test site, which expires after a few hours or days, so they can see if they like it before they buy.</p>



<p>So we included a quote from Vikas, the founder of InstaWP, with some tips about how to make the most of that. And we followed that up with our own tips, which included things like planning the demo from the user&#8217;s perspective, thinking what page should the InstaWP demo open on, because it could be a page in the front end, or the back end.</p>



<p>And when I&#8217;ve been doing those projects myself at Barn2 with our own plugins, it&#8217;s actually quite interesting thinking, what is the most intuitive page to land somebody on, if they&#8217;re put on this site for the first time, where you&#8217;ve already set up your product? And generally that&#8217;s a backend page, but it does require a bit of thought.</p>



<p>And we also showed a screenshot of some admin tours in our plugin demos, and The Events Calendar have a nice banner, which explains what to do and sources of support, and so on. So it&#8217;s all about thinking about the user&#8217;s experience, when they use your product in this demo environment.</p>



<p>The final thing we did on that was to give some tips about actually how to close the sale, because if somebody likes the product that they&#8217;re test driving, obviously you want to make it really easy for them to purchase it. So we showed a screenshot of one of our Barn2 demos, which has a banner across the top, which has a link to the support page on our website in case someone&#8217;s a bit stuck, and also a link to buy the plugin if they like it.</p>



<p>And in addition to that, we add everybody to Mailchimp so that they get a particular sequence of emails for that demo, which initially tells them how to use it and get set up. When the demo expires, it emails them again saying, now buy the plugin, with the obvious links.</p>



<p>And then if they don&#8217;t buy it, we continue to send emails, giving them reasons to buy it. For example, that might include screenshots and case studies of other websites already using the plugin. So you get a kind of FOMO, fear of missing out effect that other people are successfully using this product, so you should be too.</p>



<p>[00:25:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Nice. Anything to add?</p>



<p>[00:25:44] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> The customer experience one is one of my favorite ones. We talked a lot also about face-to-face interactions, establishing relationship with our users as much as possible. And the extreme ROI that that brings in terms of valuable product insight, and even competitor insight, why people leave, why people stay, why people refund. All of those things show up when you have a stronger relationship with your customers, and investing in that time in a serious way.</p>



<p>For that one we quoted Amanda Gorman from StellarWP, and she really said, no matter what the size of business, investing in relationships in your customers is always a good idea.</p>



<p>We also quoted Miriam Schwab about how she receives a lot of insight and feedback from her customers through support in particular. I really love the way she said, I like to get away from the feeling, like the feeling that I get 10 tickets a day about this subject, or the feeling that everybody&#8217;s asking about this new feature, and instead really having to go through data, and tagging things correctly.</p>



<p>I really like the way in which she said that tags shouldn&#8217;t just be about like feature request, feature request, whatever, here&#8217;s a bug or whatnot. She said, you can also say, this is a usability issue. And she highlighted how somebody says, I just can&#8217;t figure out where to back up my site, for example. It&#8217;s not that the feature doesn&#8217;t exist, it&#8217;s not that it&#8217;s broken, it&#8217;s just that they can&#8217;t figure out where that&#8217;s at. And that&#8217;s a usability issue. I thought that was a really unique approach to tagging feedback, in a way that would be really actionable for the product team.</p>



<p>[00:27:11] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> How do you both, in your own businesses, how do you decide what to build next? I mean, presumably there must be some intuition on your own part. You must be thinking, okay, this would be a nice feature to add in. But then also, there must be channels, whether it&#8217;s people writing you an email, or support requests, you know, we&#8217;ve got 50 support requests about this exact thing, we must build that. Where do you get your intuitions about what comes next, and is it often driven by, I mean, do you listen to your customers in that sense?</p>



<p>[00:27:36] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> I personally am extremely biased. I really believe that products are always best when they are customer centric. If you&#8217;re not listening to your customers, you&#8217;re missing out on future sales, like bar none, absolutely.</p>



<p>And what was fascinating, as I was putting together all the audio clips for the whole presentation, there were a lot of presentations, regardless of the topic, where they specifically mentioned, you can&#8217;t really do development without listening to your customer, or you can&#8217;t do marketing without listening to your customer, or you can&#8217;t do good business without listening to your customer.</p>



<p>It came up over and over again in a lot of different contexts. We have a system internally at Stellar, we use a couple different feedback boards, one is Canny, another one is featureOS, and we are logging customer feedback every single day, all the time. It&#8217;s a responsibility of the support team, or responsibility of the customer success team.</p>



<p>And then the customers have the ability to vote up certain features and whatnot. And we track what has the most votes, and that is not necessarily to say that the thing that has the most votes is the most urgent feature, but it is something that has a high priority because of the volume of customer feedback.</p>



<p>[00:28:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. Katie, anything to add?</p>



<p>[00:28:44] <strong>Katie Keith:</strong> At Barn2 we use a formula to help us decide what new features to develop, and that&#8217;s based on the amount of demand, like Matt mentioned. And in addition, it has a factor based on the impact that we think it would have on sales, and also the difficulty to implement it. And we have a formula which brings together the score in those three categories to create an overall score.</p>



<p>And so then we kind of sort in descending order, when we are looking at new features to add, and use that to guide us. Of course, some feature requests aren&#8217;t relevant to the scope of the product, so you have to know what the purpose of your product is, and be firm on that sometimes and think. Maybe sometimes customers are asking for a particular feature that doesn&#8217;t fit within the scope, but they can achieve it by using a plugin from another company with your plugin, for example. So in that case, we might do some collaboration with that company to cross promote our products or something like that, instead of adding it as a feature.</p>



<p>[00:29:44] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Most WordPress companies, I think, are following a subscription model now where, you know, you pay one year, and then you pay the next year, and there may be a discount or something like that. But I&#8217;m guessing it&#8217;s harder to get the customer on board than it is to retain them.</p>



<p>So a lot of the effort will go into getting them that first time, and then hopefully, you know, with the discount, or just loyalty, or good support, or whatever it may be, you can keep them, I don&#8217;t know, 3, 4, 5, 6 years, whatever that may be.</p>



<p>[00:30:11] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> Yeah, that was actually our last topic, which we kind of put under the category of business, experimentation with pricing models in particular. Mark Westguard talked about it specifically, that picking the right pricing model for your product is a really important idea. In WordPress, people do tend to go with annual renewals, but there have been others who have tried different things in different ways. There are even monthly payments that some folks have done. There are lifetime subscriptions as well.</p>



<p>And I will say, I&#8217;ve gone on a bit of a journey on that conversation, in the sense that I was always extremely anti that lifetime is never useful or beneficial. But there have been some folks who have said that, under certain circumstances, it makes a lot of sense.</p>



<p>For example, we all know that a customer has a certain lifetime, and a lifetime value. If you can get that entire lifetime value upfront, it actually is an interesting model overall. But I still would say, if that&#8217;s the case, I would love to give them a five year license upfront instead of a lifetime one, because I&#8217;m always thinking of the cost of support over a course of a lifetime, which is a long time.</p>



<p>[00:31:14] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Never is a lifetime, you know, five years or something like that seems to be about the right idea. But then you&#8217;ve got things like Black Friday to throw into the mix with the pricing. And it always seems to me that, I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s the same for you, but do you tend to empty your wallet at Black Friday, and buy all the things at Black Friday? And then I think there&#8217;s quite a bit of waiting until next year comes around, and buy the exact same product again on the Black Friday deal time. Do you have any of that?</p>



<p>[00:31:38] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> People definitely know when to look out for deals, and sales and whatnot. If anybody&#8217;s paying attention to Stellar, you know that July is a really important month at StellarWP. But other than that, business in general doesn&#8217;t work that way. You don&#8217;t only launch things in November, or you don&#8217;t only launch things in July. So the large majority of sales that come into any common business happens outside of those gigantic big sales.</p>



<p>And honestly, sometimes extreme discounting can also bring in a bunch of extreme customer problems, new customer problems. Folks who really only want to buy when you&#8217;re selling it at the bottom barrel price. They also tend to sometimes be the type of customer you don&#8217;t actually want to deal with a lot.</p>



<p>So there is a balance you have to look for to be able to price your products correctly, and to discount them correctly, and set expectations correctly so that you&#8217;re still showing the value of what people are getting, and not devaluing your product.</p>



<p>In the episode with Mark, everyone should listen to that episode, it was a really good episode actually, he talks a bit about that as well, so did James from Ellipsis. He talked quite a bit about pricing as well, which was a really good one that we didn&#8217;t get to get to in the presentation because of technical difficulties.</p>



<p>[00:32:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you discount upon renewal? There&#8217;s quite a few plugins that I, every year I buy it again, and again. And there is something about that, I don&#8217;t know, 30, 40%, which kind of draws me in. I have everything set in a calendar so I know when things are going to renew, and I always go in and see what the offer is going to be, and that sometimes swings me from, I&#8217;m going to discontinue using that right into, okay, I&#8217;ll pay it. Do you do any of that, either of you?</p>



<p>[00:33:13] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> We don&#8217;t discount at renewal, but we will do strategic renewal discounts. So, we&#8217;ll send out early renewal emails if we can get folks to renew their subscription earlier at a discounted rate, that actually can be pretty beneficial to their lifetime value, or to their ability to continue to renew over time.</p>



<p>We also will try to time early renewal discounts around when we know we&#8217;re having a sale, because we do have that issue where, you&#8217;re putting your product on extreme sale, and customers who are like, I&#8217;ve been spending money with you for three years and you&#8217;re not giving me a discount, well, we&#8217;ll give them a discount as a early renewal one, in order to prevent that type of feedback.</p>



<p>And that also helps prevent those who are try to be really savvy and get around the system by canceling their subscription early, or asking for a refund early and then buying again at the new, because that&#8217;s not a great customer experience for them because they&#8217;re getting a new license key, they got to go swipe out their license keys everywhere. We don&#8217;t want people to have to do that. So trying to get them a new, nice, easy path is the way we try to go. We do that by email segmentation for the most part, but if folks reach out early as well over email, we&#8217;ll reach out to them and help them out.</p>



<p>[00:34:25] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> There are some companies, not just in the WordPress space, but out there, who constantly seem to be having a sale, and the whole product always seems to be at 30% off. And I always have the intuition, what&#8217;s the real price? What is the actual real price? And that&#8217;s kind of an interesting thing as well.</p>



<p>The other thing that I just want to ask, do you feel that WordPress is a more expensive place to be than it used to be, say 10 years ago? It feels like we have an ecosystem where, I don&#8217;t know, maybe things floated around the $47 for one year mark, where now it might be more like $197 or $397. I think it&#8217;s a more expensive place to be. I think everybody who&#8217;s got a business in the WordPress space would feel that&#8217;s justified. But, have you got any thoughts on that? Has it become more expensive?</p>



<p>[00:35:05] <strong>Katie Keith:</strong> Yeah, I agree that, generally, it has become more expensive because 10 years ago there was, the predominant business model was set by companies like Envato with Theme Forest, and Code Canyon, and so on. In which they had a very low price for lifetime update. And for a while it was even lifetime support, although they changed that a few years ago.</p>



<p>And that created a expectation more widely throughout the industry, that plugins would just have a low lifetime value. And that has given lifetime pricing a bad name. Like Matt mentioned a minute ago, there can be a good business reason to do lifetime, but people are often really absolutely against that because they remember those days. And I think a lot of people that will have bought products on one of the Envato marketplaces like Theme Forest, will have seen a theme be discontinued, and they&#8217;re stuck with it. And it breaks the whole website after a WordPress update or something, and they have to either change themes, or hire a developer to fix it.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s a really big problem because those were not sustainable business models, and these theme authors, and plugin authors couldn&#8217;t afford to be providing lifetime support for that tiny one off cost. So that&#8217;s why they discontinued those products. And so that&#8217;s very different to the companies that offer Lifetime now for maybe four times the annual cost. So yeah, it&#8217;s got more expensive, but you can trust the companies you&#8217;re buying from more.</p>



<p>[00:36:29] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> I&#8217;d also say that, running a business that develops products for WordPress has gotten more expensive over the years as well, because WordPress itself has actually evolved in ways that, developmentally, it&#8217;s more challenging to develop with WordPress than it was before. Requires a lot more different types of code knowledge than it ever did before. And the industry in general, around really good, experienced PHP developers, MySQL developers, Javascript developers, React developers, of which you need your WordPress developer to be all of those things, has just really become more and more expensive.</p>



<p>Besides the fact that, as a whole, which I&#8217;m really happy about this, even though it sounds like a big problem. In support, when people reach out for a support, a technical support issue, they really are hoping and expecting that you can help them regardless of whether your plugin had to do anything with the problem or not. And I think that&#8217;s actually a good thing, but that means that all your support technicians have to be highly technical, highly capable. You really can&#8217;t get away with like a tier one, entry level triage type of support as well anymore. It really demands a bit more expertise than previously. And those things cost money, and it&#8217;s not sustainable to continue to basically run product on the cheap, and then expect really high end results either.</p>



<p>[00:37:50] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Whenever I come across a brand new product in the WordPress space that I&#8217;ve never heard of before, which is usually several times a week actually, it really is huge the amount of new things out there. I have this journey and my mouse goes, you know, I&#8217;ve landed on the homepage, I then end up on the pricing page almost immediately, I&#8217;ve just quick scroll through the homepage. And then the one that I&#8217;m really interested in is the About Us page. That&#8217;s where I spend most of my time. Because, given the capacity to, I don&#8217;t know, poorly code something, you&#8217;re going to spend some money, it&#8217;s going to go into your website, then there may be a refund or what have you, but there&#8217;s a lot of trust going on there.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s where I want to know who you are. I want to know what your heritage is, what other things that you&#8217;ve got. So if I had had a product, and you had asked me on your podcast, that would&#8217;ve been my one, is get your About Us page straightened out, and make sure that the human side of you comes out. You&#8217;re not just this great big entity. I think the WordPress space is drawn towards individuals, it&#8217;s kind of probably why we turn up to events like this. So anyway, that&#8217;s my little piece of wisdom at the end.</p>



<p>[00:38:52] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> It&#8217;s a really good point. I have a small little blog series I do personally called Shiny New Plugins, where I audit the newest free plugins on .org, and I just highlight ones that look really interesting to me. And I will say that I try to figure out who&#8217;s behind the plugin.</p>



<p>And recently there was one that was launched named PersonalizeWP, and I was like, this looks really interesting. And I checked it out, and it was backed by an agency, and Paul Halfpenny is one of the authors there, and I met him and I was like, this looks really legit. So just the fact that his agency was behind it, and that they&#8217;re really putting time and energy into it, it spoke a lot for the brand.</p>



<p>I also saw one called UiChemy, which is kind of a weird name, but they&#8217;re sponsors are here at WordCamp EU right now. They did a whole Figma to WordPress export plugin, which is really interesting. But the personal touch, the fact that there&#8217;s actual people, and an actual company behind a product makes a big difference.</p>



<p>[00:39:46] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. So the short circuit for that is that you&#8217;ve already been in business for 10 years. That is an immediate win for me because I can see that, oh, you&#8217;ve stuck around, you&#8217;ve got 10 years under your belt. But obviously most companies that are starting haven&#8217;t been around for 10 years, but there are still ways of doing it. Make yourself human, turn up to events, portray yourself in a positive way. And there&#8217;s definitely times when I&#8217;ve been to plugin sites, and the About Us page has been the thing which has made me close the browser and move on.</p>



<p>[00:40:11] <strong>Katie Keith:</strong> Yeah, the about page is more important than it used to be as well for other reasons, because Google&#8217;s doing a lot of updates at the moment, which add the credibility of the site as a big factor for rankings. And that involves, Google needs to know who&#8217;s behind the site as well, and that it&#8217;s credible, and that you are linking to other places linked from.</p>



<p>Maybe if you&#8217;ve got your team on there, then it would be good to have links to your socials, so that they can see that you are real people with a significant following. So whatever you&#8217;ve got that could add credibility, it&#8217;s worth having that on your about page, and also elsewhere.</p>



<p>So for this reason, at Barn2, we&#8217;ve been doing a lot of work on that. They call it EEAT, and I&#8217;ve forgotten what that stands for, but it&#8217;s to do with the trust factors on your website. So we are redesigning our about page to add a lot more of that.</p>



<p>Things like Trustpilot reviews, and testimonials from customers, and also links to media coverage that we&#8217;ve had, so that Google and real people can see that the people running the company are active in the wider media. And even things like this podcast here, for example, might go on our about page, so that people can see our work within the community. And that will impress both search engines and real users.</p>



<p>[00:41:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s kind of interesting, because if I&#8217;m buying clothes, or paperclips, or dog food, or whatever it might be, I couldn&#8217;t care less who makes it. Honestly, the bottom line is, can it get to me tomorrow, and how much does it cost? But I really do care about who&#8217;s building the thing in WordPress, and I would imagine that&#8217;s quite important, so there we go.</p>



<p>I think we&#8217;ve probably used up enough of your time, we&#8217;re on the 45 minute mark. Just before we go, where can we find you? Drop a URL, a Twitter handle, whatever works for you.</p>



<p>[00:41:55] <strong>Katie Keith:</strong> So you can find all the previous episodes of the podcast and subscribe for the future at wpproducttalk.com. To find out more about me individually, you can find me on Twitter at Katie Keith Barn2, or my company website is barn2.com.</p>



<p>[00:42:12] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> Yeah, wppropducttalk.com is a great spot, and we are investing in that website a lot, which is a lot of fun actually. And I&#8217;m on Twitter at Learn with Matt C, and I also blog semi-regularly at mattcromwell.com. And of course, I want everybody to check out all the awesome things we&#8217;re doing at stellarwp.com.</p>



<p>[00:42:31] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Nicely done. Thank you very much. I&#8217;ll put all of the links in the show notes, so if you head over to wptavern.com/podcast, search for the episode with Katie and Matt&#8217;s name in it, and you&#8217;ll be able to find everything there. So Katie Keith, Matt Cromwell, thank you so much for chatting to me today. That was fun.</p>



<p>[00:42:45] <strong>Matt Cromwell:</strong> Thanks.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://x.com/KatieKeithBarn2">Katie Keith</a> &amp; <a href="https://x.com/learnwithmattc">Matt Cromwell</a>.</p>



<p>Katie is the founder and CEO at Barn2 Plugins, and Matt is co-founder of GiveWP and Senior Director of Customer Experience at StellarWP. They have been running the WP Product Talk podcast together since early 2023, where they interview WordPress product owners to get the inside scoop on running a successful business in the WordPress ecosystem, and they’ve collating much of what they’ve learned on the show to create the ultimate blueprint on how to build a successful WordPress product, which they revealed during their WordCamp Europe presentation.</p>



<p>We talk about the world of WordPress product development and marketing. This touches upon topics such as enhancing the WordPress admin interface with additional features that feel like a natural extension, and finding success through organic content and a consistent, user-focused, YouTube strategy.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We also explore important marketing strategies within the WordPress community, emphasising the value of identifying gaps in the market and leveraging event attendance for growth. Katie gives her thoughts on the power of explainer videos focused on solving user problems, and how Google and YouTube work hand-in-hand to surface relevant content.</p>



<p>Matt discusses the challenges of pricing products correctly, setting expectations, and offering strategic discounts without devaluing their worth, focussing on the importance of listening to customer feedback to prioritise future product development. They both provide practical advice on creating a user-friendly product that feels like a part of WordPress.</p>



<p>Towards the end of our talk, Katie and Matt get into the value of transparency and the human touch in business, the significance of an up to date &#8220;About Us&#8221; page, and their approach to face-to-face customer interactions.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you’re a WordPress product developer or just interested in the intricate world of WordPress business, this episode is for you.</p>



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



<p><a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1cWSYOJT9pNXbbaK-XXfXoWi0PE9gh0DuNnNBQ_WBTQI/edit#slide=id.g21e561a403c_0_2480">Slides from the WCEU presentation discusses in the episode</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2024/07/15/we-spoke-with-over-50-different-wordpress-product-owners-heres-what-we-learned/">Katie and Matt&#8217;s presentation WordPress.tv</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wpproducttalk.com/">WP Product Talk podcast</a></p>



<p><a href="https://givewp.com/">GiveWP</a></p>



<p><a href="https://barn2.com/">Barn2</a></p>



<p><a href="https://stellarwp.com/">StellarWP</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/kadence/">Kadence</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/groundhogg/">Groundhogg</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/fluent-crm/">Fluent CRM</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.omnisend.com/">Omnisend</a></p>



<p><a href="https://instawp.com/">InstaWP</a></p>



<p><a href="https://theeventscalendar.com/">The Events Calendar</a></p>



<p><a href="https://canny.io/">Canny</a></p>



<p><a href="https://featureos.app/">featureOS</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.mattcromwell.com/topic/shiny-new-plugins/">Matt&#8217;s Shiny New Plugins blog</a></p>



<p><a href="https://personalizewp.com/">PersonalizeWP</a></p>



<p><a href="https://uichemy.com/">UiChemy</a></p>



<p><a href="https://x.com/KatieKeithBarn2">Katie&#8217;s X</a></p>



<p><a href="https://x.com/learnwithmattc">Matt&#8217;s X</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.mattcromwell.com/">Matt&#8217;s 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:"Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:19;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"Do The Woo Community: Investing Into Proactive Customer Service with Scott Stapely";s: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=85099";s: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://dothewoo.io/investing-into-customer-service-with-scott/";s: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:45652:"<div class="wp-block-group has-border-color has-light-gray-background-color has-background has-small-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-24 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p class="has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9acf640b7ba38a84a982fc35d618387f">This show is sponsored by&#8230;</p>



<div class="wp-block-group is-vertical is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-23 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex">
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<img width="500" height="500" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Omnisend-square.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-78802" />
</div>
</div>
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<div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-container-content-10"><strong><a href="https://your.omnisend.com/onlywoo_dothewoo">Omnisend</a></strong>: Whether it&#8217;s for integration into your Woo product, or building sites for clients, <strong>Omnisend</strong> is the solution for email and SMS marketing with their CRM solution for WooCommerce shops and your own website.</p>
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<img width="525" height="525" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Airwallex.jpg?resize=525%2C525&ssl=1" alt="Airwallex" class="wp-image-80258" />
</div>
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<p class="wp-container-content-12"><strong><a href="https://www.airwallex.com/integrations/woocommerce?utm_source=701Nn000009vJ0mIAE">Airwallex</a></strong>: With <strong>Airwallex</strong> merchants are no longer forced to convert their foreign incoming payments into their home market currencies and they can use the funds to pay suppliers internationally.</p>
</div>
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</div>



Episode Transcript
<div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p>Adam:<br />Hey everyone, this is Adam Weeks from BizChat. Unfortunately, I am not joined by my lovely co-host, Emma Young. She is out of town, busy doing all kinds of stuff, jet-setting around the world. So you are stuck with me as your host. But good news for you. I have a really exciting guest today, Scott Stapley. He is a founder at BigScoots. You may not have heard of them before, but they&#8217;ve been around for quite a while and instead of me just telling you about them, hey Scott, welcome. It&#8217;s good to meet you.</p>



<p>Scott:<br />Good morning. Yeah, good to meet you too, Adam. Thanks so much. Pleasure to be here. Scott Stapley, CEO and co-founder of BigScoots, 15 years now, so it&#8217;s been a minute. Exciting though. Very exciting.</p>



<p>Adam:<br />I&#8217;m sure time flies when you&#8217;re having fun.</p>



<p>Scott:<br />Yeah, you tell me. Yeah, for sure.</p>



<p>Adam:<br />Well, Scott, in all transparency, this is kind of the first time we&#8217;re getting to meet each other, although I have met some of the people you work with and I met at CloudFest US. One of the things that really stood out to me when I was getting to know more about BigScoots and what you guys do was customer service or client service. I think more specifically, we&#8217;re going to get into some of the nuances of that. And so that&#8217;s what this episode is about. We call this the hook. We&#8217;re hooking people in. If people are curious and want to know more about customer service, client service, best in class, what should we do? We&#8217;re going to get into some of the interesting elements of best practices. Is it worth it? Is it worth the investment? When is it not? And I think people are really going to get some solid takeaways from this. But before we get into that and some of those takeaways, just kind of give us a quick introduction. Where are you at on this big planet and yeah, a little bit more about yourself.</p>



<p>Scott:<br />Yeah, thanks again, Adam. Looking forward to digging into all the nitty and gritty. Me, myself, I live a small life these days in Connecticut just outside of New York. In a previous life, I did a lot of traveling, had the opportunity to live overseas for quite a while with my wife, followed her around in her ventures. But BigScoots has been a labor of love for a very long time. It&#8217;s afforded me the opportunity to work remotely and just kind of deal with the odd business trip. So I&#8217;ve had the opportunity to really explore the world. In my younger years, I went to school for cell and molecular biology of all things. It&#8217;s not all too applicable these days, but it was a fun adventure at the time. But it&#8217;s been, you talk about a career path and sort of a journey to get here.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s just been, you talk a little bit about the topic being customer service. We classify it as customer success. We think there&#8217;s a lot that encompasses customer service and it&#8217;s more than just the client specialists, the account manager, or the sales representative, or whoever might typically fall within that usual role. And we&#8217;ve really kind of had the opportunity to spend the better part of those 15 years really kind of focusing in on that. So that&#8217;s been an adventure and my goal for that entire period of time is to build a business and a service around a very high level of customer success. So yeah, that&#8217;s me in a nutshell.</p>



<p>Adam:<br />Very cool. Yeah, that&#8217;s a great intro and I really appreciate getting that background. One of the things I love about the Do the Woo community in WordPress is it&#8217;s just chock-full of interesting people with just backgrounds that you wouldn&#8217;t have expected. Oh, microbiology. Sure, WordPress. Absolutely. Let&#8217;s put those together. We all have interesting paths. So let&#8217;s jump right into customer success. From a high level, how would you define it? What is customer success? What does that look like? Let&#8217;s start from your perspective, what does that look like?</p>



<p>Scott:<br />Yeah, and I think my perspective as a business owner might have a few facets that are perhaps a little bit different depending on the business that you might be looking at it from. For example, we have metrics these days. We have customer churn and revenue retention and these sorts of things. And you can measure client success in a certain type of way, but it&#8217;s not all too palpable. And I find having your finger on the pulse, ear to the ground, finger in the air, whichever one you&#8217;d like, is really the best way to understand the ebbs and flows of your business and make sure that you&#8217;re doing things right. If your goal is to deliver on your customer success goals, and in my case, for example, that means a lot of inbound leads. I&#8217;m spending a lot of my day on chats and sales tickets and just making sure that I understand what the customers are needing and how we can be doing better.</p>



<p>I wrote a small bio on my LinkedIn like 10 years ago about my job being to understand what we do well and what we can do better. And I&#8217;d say that that&#8217;s still 80, 90% of my day. Naturally, the business still needs to be run. So there&#8217;s a huge portion of my day being spent elsewhere these days. But really understanding with boots on the ground in the weeds so to speak. I mean, that&#8217;s the words that I like to use most regularly. What is actually happening? What are those first words coming out of your sales team&#8217;s fingers, I guess. How are people being greeted? Is it done so in a manner that hits your ultimate customer success goals? And it takes a lot. It takes a lot. It takes an army, it takes a team, takes a village to really do that at every corner, especially when you&#8217;re such a high-touch business like a hosting provider where you&#8217;re effectively a problem dump. People effectively only reach out to you when there&#8217;s an issue. So making sure that you have the right frame of mind and all of the information that you could possibly have available to you to address issues, whether it be billing or support related is incredibly important. So building tools, proactive measures, really training our team, finding the right people. There&#8217;s so much that goes into it, but in the weeds is staying in the weeds no matter how busy you get is extremely critical.</p>



<p>Adam:<br />Awesome. What do you feel, why is it worth it to invest in customer service if someone was saying, Hey, we live in an age of AI is a big deal now, or we can just have lots of help articles, these are smart people, they&#8217;ll figure it out. Sell me on investing in customer service.</p>



<p>Scott:<br />Yeah, this could be a whole multi-hour talking in itself, but it&#8217;s ultimately what we chose to differentiate on. So it&#8217;s ultimately the core of our business. Why is our business successful in an otherwise contracting market? There&#8217;s a lot of other hosting providers who are really, really contracting in really significant ways and we&#8217;re not. We&#8217;re fortunate and lucky enough to be going in the opposite direction. And I think the core reason is what you just mentioned is our investment in customer success and our ability to sort of deliver on that. It&#8217;s not something that happened overnight. I mean you have to do it every day. You have to iterate a hundred times a week and you have to spend many, many years trying to perfect the client customer success lifecycle because it&#8217;s just so hard to do consistently every time. But if you do get it right, I mean you&#8217;re correct.</p>



<p>We live in a world of AI and automation and I think that&#8217;s exactly the reason why customer success is so important these days in client service because how many times have you had a random issue with whatever personal instrument or device or technology or whatever, whether it be your phone or your internet or what have you, reach out to the team, you get a bot in off hours, we&#8217;ll get back to you in four days. Here&#8217;s my email you may or may not get responded to. That&#8217;s just in my view, that is incredibly disappointing. If I have a problem, I would very much like somebody to hear me. I would love to be heard. I would love to know that somebody takes ownership over that problem and I would love for that person to actually be there present speaking to me and making sure that they understand the problem fully.</p>



<p>And that&#8217;s what we deliver on is somebody right now you could open up our chat, or this could be four o&#8217;clock in the morning on Christmas Eve and you could speak to somebody, somebody would answer you within 60 seconds, most typically, and they would listen to you, they would hear your problem and they would aim to address it as quickly and as urgently as possible. And there&#8217;s just a freeing experience in my view, when you have that type of customer success or a customer interaction from the customer side. I mean, if you interact with a business and that business, you feel heard and you feel validated and you feel that your problem is actually going to be addressed and done so quickly, that just changes everything as far as how you look at a business. And I think in a world where everything is guide based and AI written and other hosts because they are contracting or maybe pushing margins in certain forms and fashions certainly not all hosts, but it is a difficult world right now, especially in our ecosystem and investing in customer success.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s a very large burden there from the host to take on as far as training and hiring and maintaining tools and informing your support reps and sort of having that level of availability. So if you can deliver on that, in my opinion, and I think we&#8217;ve seen that in our business sort of lifecycle, is that people really, really, really, really grab onto that and effectively never leave because it&#8217;s difficult to find that level of attention elsewhere. And we&#8217;re not perfect, but we do care. We care a lot and people know that, and I think there&#8217;s huge value</p>



<p>in it for any industry hosting or otherwise.</p>



<p>Adam:<br />Interesting. Okay, great. Alright. You sold me. I&#8217;m a small business owner in WooCommerce and WordPress and yep, I believe that I need to do to invest in customer success. Where do I start? How do I get this going? I don&#8217;t have infinite resources. And if you were to take that use case, where do you start and then how do you build that out?</p>



<p>Scott:<br />In our own world, I mean hosting, I don&#8217;t know, is all too different from a WooCommerce platform in the sense that there are still certain metrics and numbers and values that we need to hit internally. We were a bootstrap business. We started from the typical, here&#8217;s $20 and then it turns into a server and then the server turns into two servers and 15 years later we have our own data center footprint, but we very much were a bootstrapped, homegrown, invest the proceeds into growing type of model. And I think the difficulty for us, and I think maybe what you&#8217;re getting at is that there&#8217;s a point in time where it can&#8217;t just necessarily be you as the founder or if it is, you need to figure out is your time best spent here or is it best spent elsewhere? I was very fortunate enough to have an amazing technical founder, so my business partner and I, we had an immediate sort of splitting of responsibilities and I would attribute the great amount of success to that.</p>



<p>I was able to focus on the business and sales and all the things in that respect. And my business partner Justin, he was able to focus on all of the technical needs of our platform effectively. So that really influenced quite a lot. So a little bit of help, to say the least, would be very helpful with respect to just understanding where your priorities lay and being able to focus on these sorts of things. But you do have to invest in it. There&#8217;s no question about it, and there&#8217;s no immediate return either. In our case, we had to really, really, really look long-term. We had a lot of really early conversations around, okay, this&#8217;s race to bottom budget market. If we bring on a hundred customers next week for a dollar, what&#8217;s that going to do to us three years from now? We have to support these folks.</p>



<p>And I think there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s a business planning element to it. There&#8217;s good collaboration amongst your team and there just needs to be a priority focus. Where you invest and how you invest is going to differ depending on your industry and your location and everything else. In our case, it was invest in team as much as possible, create tools and as many monitoring tools as possible so we could influence our team members to be more efficient. So in our case, for example, as a host, we proactively monitor all of our websites. It&#8217;s something unique to BigScoot. So if your website has a problem, whether it be a resource issue, an outage, what have you, we actually know about it and we react to it. So that dramatically reduces the amount of inbound because we&#8217;re reaching out to you and fixing issues before you would otherwise reach back out to us.</p>



<p>That, for example, is a keystone in the way that we&#8217;ve been able to influence our support team and our customer success model because we&#8217;ve just been able to really scale service in a way that services typically unscalable. So I think you need to look at your space. How do you invest in it? I mean, it certainly depends on the particular ecosystem, but having hosted a great number of WooCommerce sites over many years, e-commerce sites and the like, we can certainly identify many folks that have rolled out that sort of platform where they have a product, they have a service offering, whatever it might be, and they pivot more towards the service route of their business and they see growth because of it. And I think they do it in a number of different ways, but this is my story. I&#8217;m sharing how I delivered on it, but I think we&#8217;re in a world where customer success and customer service is just so, so valuable. So whatever you can, I think your dollars are just amplified so much more than iterating on product or offering larger inventory. These things are great and they&#8217;re necessary for business, but the things that really get people coming back in my view is a great experience with a brand or with a business, and that typically starts and ends with customer success, or at least it does in our world.</p>



<p>Adam:<br />So yep. Let&#8217;s say we&#8217;re just getting started and we&#8217;re going to invest in this. It&#8217;s grown beyond you as the founder, so you have a couple of options. I know that there are companies that you can hire that have a call center and you just contract with them and they&#8217;ll take care of you, and that&#8217;s not what you&#8217;ve chosen to do, I don&#8217;t believe. How do you hire for this? How do you staff something like this? Because that first person, that&#8217;s a big investment and you don&#8217;t want to get it wrong. What things have you done that maybe you feel are unique that have made your focus on client success to be successful?</p>



<p>Scott:<br />Yeah. No, it&#8217;s a good question. I mean, everybody&#8217;s business is obviously different. I would say your first hire probably no matter what business you&#8217;re in, although I suppose some don&#8217;t qualify for this, but in most cases, or at least in our case for sure, your first hire relative to your size of business is always going to be your largest expense in almost any business lifecycle. Like the ability to bring on an individual to spend a full-time effort on your business and your business alone and kind of putting yourself in that frame of mind of you&#8217;re taking somebody away potentially from another business or you&#8217;re bringing them into yours and you&#8217;re doing that in a full-time. As a business owner and an entrepreneur, it&#8217;s kind of exciting and scary and you&#8217;re bringing somebody in, you&#8217;re putting all this money forward, you don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s going to work, and there&#8217;s no immediate returns on that person either.</p>



<p>I mean, that person is servicing customers, they&#8217;re handling support tickets, they&#8217;re doing whatever it is you might need them to be doing, but the idea of what is their amplification within your business, it&#8217;s a scary thought. When is the right time? I mean, frankly, as soon as you can afford it, in my opinion. We were in a position where we were in college at the time. I mean, to add on to my story a little bit further, I mean, we used student loans to support ourselves while we built the business, and then we did the whole thing. We really invested in ourselves. So at that time, that&#8217;s when we actually brought on somebody is really early on. So we weren&#8217;t paying ourselves. We were actually paying our employee at the time. We had one employee still with us. By the way. It&#8217;s amazing to have them here with us as long as they have, but if you can afford to bring somebody on to support you, you most definitely should because that is going to really amplify and improve your brand image in many more ways than you think.</p>



<p>They will buy their direct work product, but also through just the random comments, the extra, catch it in an off hour where you may have otherwise been grabbing a sandwich. I mean, it is so easy to see the amplification of a great team once you have them sort of in your fold and you&#8217;re talking to them, you&#8217;re having team meetings, you&#8217;re seeing all the great ideas that they have after they&#8217;ve seen your clients and after they&#8217;ve seen your product. And it is just amazing to see the acceleration that you get once you start building an amazing team around you. And the earlier you can do that, the better. Now in terms of call centers and third party support and these sorts of things, I mean, there&#8217;s certainly a business model where that works. I mean, if we take a look around at most of our billion dollar competitors, I mean, they&#8217;ve created an entire conglomerates around these types of services and they&#8217;re able to drive pricing because of it.</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s a winning scenario there for a lot of end users. However, there is just going to be a lack of ownership and a lack of care and concern that those individuals are going to have because they don&#8217;t live and breathe your product in the same way that an internal team member might. So it&#8217;s always going to cost you 3, 4, 5 times as much to bring somebody internal to you. But in my case, for example, we&#8217;ve had that person for over a decade, and that same person has become an extraordinarily key member of our team, has influenced so many decisions. And I mean, that&#8217;s just one example. I mean, every team member has their own influence in our team, but bringing that person on as early as possible has just allowed us to make more better decisions more often than we otherwise could have by ourselves. Having a call center, you&#8217;re not going to get that same type of experience. So that&#8217;s our position. But certainly there&#8217;s many.</p>



<p>Adam:<br />Yeah, it does go to the thing that the end of the day it&#8217;s about people and investing in people makes all the difference. Finding the right people for your team. When you&#8217;re looking for people who are going to fill that customer, that client success role, are there any specific attributes that you&#8217;re looking for? Is it technical? Is it they seem nice? What is it that you&#8217;re looking for?</p>



<p>Scott:<br />Yeah, a bit of both, but you need a good culture fit. Most certainly. I mean, our team is large enough these days that you&#8217;re always going to find great partnership, great collaboration with other team members around you. The key that we&#8217;ve found really for bringing people on, everybody&#8217;s human at the end of the day, and the more welcoming and the more collaborative and the more approachable you are as a business owner and as a team who&#8217;s onboarding that individual, I find the larger chance of success that that person gets acclimated and just loves their position and really gets on board with the company. And I think</p>



<p>just sort of that human nature of really being welcoming and offering that person the opportunity that you would otherwise want to be offered if given that kind of turn of tables just influences that chance of success.</p>



<p>Much, much, much more. So when we&#8217;re looking for new hires, we really look for somebody who&#8217;s eager and motivated to get into something new, something that they might not have seen before, because that is ultimately the type of service we offer. We offer something different. We offer this really high touch, really handholding, we call it site-specific management where we&#8217;re actually logging into the WordPress platform. We&#8217;re influencing actually plugin changes and updates and stuck PHP processes and all the rest of it. And you really need somebody who&#8217;s motivated and eager to take those extra steps. Somebody reaches out to you with a problem, maybe they can&#8217;t log into their email, something a little bit more basic. Take that opportunity or take that touch point and that opportunity upon you to also, let&#8217;s take a look around. Let&#8217;s make sure their caching is enabled properly. Let&#8217;s make sure there&#8217;s no security concerns or outdated plugin or something that we could otherwise do more for them.</p>



<p>And that person doesn&#8217;t necessarily need any additional technical expertise to be able to do that. But if they are eager and if they are motivated, that&#8217;s where you really start to see that winning combination. When we look for individuals, we certainly need the WordPress technical expertise and Linux system administration as well. Those are sort of the kind of keynotes of what we do here. However, we can train to a senior capacity because we have so much team collaboration, and ultimately it&#8217;s called a deep bench. We don&#8217;t have an influx of replied-to tickets. We don&#8217;t have this scenario where we don&#8217;t have time to spend with new onboards, so we can really spend the time and effort to train from a technical perspective. What we can&#8217;t do is get somebody excited about customer success and customer service in the same way that they might otherwise bring to the table. So that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re looking for. I mean, that&#8217;s kind of a certain respect and non-answer, but we really, it&#8217;s hard to define that too. A resume doesn&#8217;t necessarily do it in interviews. Sometimes it&#8217;s difficult to really perceive, but if you can get the energy out of that individual, I mean that&#8217;s worth everything regardless of their technical position.</p>



<p>Adam:<br />Yeah, thank you. From the client perspective, I&#8217;ve got a problem, something&#8217;s not working, I don&#8217;t understand, and so I&#8217;m going to reach out and I want this problem fixed. I&#8217;m looking for a person, I&#8217;m looking for someone who&#8217;s going to fix it quickly, but I&#8217;m not necessarily looking to make a best friend. I just need this thing fixed. My business is in jeopardy, it&#8217;s late at night. I&#8217;m struggling over it. What are maybe some of the types of things you do? Are there any investments? Are there any tools that you&#8217;re using that maybe unique that can help a customer get their problem solved quicker? And I&#8217;ll even throw out some words like is AI, is there some tool there that might make it faster? You&#8217;re still dealing with a person or what types of things that are you investing in to make that experience? Or is it just no, this person is good and can answer your question. Any special tools or just curious about that.</p>



<p>Scott:<br />Yeah, so not to fire too many people up here, but AI is not smart enough to identify human problems and website issues to the extent that they need to be. I mean, there&#8217;s multiple variables. There&#8217;s a server level, there&#8217;s a site level, there&#8217;s a network level. You need start using edge components. You start using object caching. You start using site, page caching, cache, excluding. There&#8217;s so many elements to this that AI cannot really influence to that extent. What AI can be used for. I mean, just to specifically note on that AI conversation is it can digest data and spit out some great results. So in our case, the way that we&#8217;re leveraging AI, for example, is in a similar capacity to what you had just mentioned. So we have what I would distinguish as just support gold, like a golden bank of support tickets. We have over a million fully answered completed support tickets, and every single one of those has an extensive amount of detail in a lot of cases, very unique attributes to each.</p>



<p>So being able to digest that amount of data and spit out some key results related to a potential issue, all on the admin side, just to influence the atom, creative support efficiency, create tools. Understanding is custom scripts, custom excludes, RegX, whatever the case might be. We&#8217;ve probably seen it before. And AI can help accelerate support responses by just having a database that they can ultimately freely and a very flexible search. That&#8217;s really kind of full stop as far as AI is concerned. On our end, we feel very strongly that everything else needs to come from a human, however, tools can influence them. So AI is a tool the way that we see it. I mentioned proactive monitoring being a keynote. So for example, if you reach out to us, we would&#8217;ve identified we could slow chase the PHP logs. We could do these things in advance of you reaching out to us.</p>



<p>In an ideal world, in most cases, we&#8217;ll reach out to you. So that&#8217;ll fix a step there. But we&#8217;re influencing our admins by providing them meaningful data, meaningful tools, meaningful monitoring to be able to really accelerate and create efficiency around support. So we do a lot, there&#8217;s well over a hundred variations on these tools that we create. Happy to go into detail on all of them, but it&#8217;s really about, yes, it&#8217;s about creating tools, about creating monitoring, and that therefore influences customer success as well. If you have these tools and you have this efficiency, your response time goes down, your response detail goes up, and your ability to really solve problems for customers is that much quicker. I would also add that freeing of time and that efficiency is really a key way in which we&#8217;ve been able to amplify our service. So as an example, if a customer approaches us, I mean, a very common thing with WooCommerce being that WooCommerce is highly dynamic is that it eats up a lot of CPU resources within the hosting environment.</p>



<p>CPU is going to be your bottleneck. CPU is also very expensive. That&#8217;s how everything is effectively classed in the cloud community is you have a certain level of CPU, you&#8217;ll get more memory, you&#8217;ll get outsized storage. You&#8217;ll be paying for these additional resources that you ultimately don&#8217;t need. PHP workers are also kind of couched within that as well. Ultimately, CPU is your core resource. Do you necessarily need to upgrade the CPU every time you have a slow admin page or a 22nd cart checkout? I mean, the answer is most definitely no. There&#8217;s a lot of different ways in which certain plugins interact with the cart. For example, are you caching or excluding the right things on various pages? Are you influencing the way in which PHP processes actually run or get completed? Are you creating the right optimizations in the database when you actually need to?</p>



<p>I mean, all these things are best addressed by a seasoned system admin who has seen where WooCommerce and WordPress and Linux a million times over. It&#8217;s very difficult to acquire that type of high touch in the hosting world for reasons we&#8217;ve already talked about. But being able to reach out to somebody, have those people, have tools that have already informed them of these various issues and have the ability to dive deeper into them without necessarily taking support time away from other people is kind of the recipe to success as it pertains to customer success. So I mean, we originally started talking about customer success and how we&#8217;re able to deliver on it. We&#8217;ve really formed a whole business around it. I mean, creating tools, owning our own infrastructure, building out our own network. I mean, everything comes down to being able to offer better service, whether it be creating efficiency, opening up margins, whatever it is, it&#8217;s all coming back and reinvested into.</p>



<p>Adam:<br />So that is an interesting point that you brought up about and how I typically think of customer client success as we&#8217;ve been talking about, as I have a problem, so let me reach out to this company that I have a contract with because I need something fixed, something&#8217;s broken. And what you&#8217;re all mentioning is that, well, of course, yes, that in addition to we can reach out proactively and maybe solve something before it comes a problem. I imagine that there&#8217;s a couple of potential issues there with like, wait, why are they calling me? Are they just trying to sell me something? How do you think about this idea of proactively kind of being this partner in their business and helping solve problems before they become problems without being salesy?</p>



<p>Scott:<br />Yeah, sometimes it can be tricky. I mean, the hosting piece of it is interesting. So I mentioned to you the most critical issue and your bottleneck most typically in all WooCommerce-related problems comes down to CPU. If you could have an infinite amount of CPU, it almost doesn&#8217;t matter how poorly your theme interacts with various plugins in your checkout and so forth. But infinite CPU is not realistic. Also, as you scale your CPU into more cores to allow more visitors and more threads to interact with that CPU in the PHP, you&#8217;re going to end up with a much slower CPU clock speed as well. So it&#8217;s kind of like an inverse thought process. You upgrade your CPU, but what you&#8217;re actually ending up with is a slower responding site. Maybe the issue of the actual timeouts gets fixed, but it might take a ten-second load time to a 22nd load time, and that&#8217;s not what you&#8217;re looking for.</p>



<p>So how do you address this? We have a baseline. So again, kind of all circling back to customer success, but we build and maintain our own infrastructure. We&#8217;ve been infrastructure providers. We haven&#8217;t talked about this, but we started out as infrastructure providers. We provided and infrastructure management for companies in the Chicago land area who at the time that predates AWS and</p>



<p>Azure and what have you. So we would take what would otherwise be a locally hosted platform like a hospital or what have you, and it we&#8217;d manage that infrastructure and we would do it with this sort of enterprise level of service, saw the writing on the wall, and we pivoted towards WordPress because we love WordPress. We love the idea of building, working around folks who actually own and operate these sites and just working in this ecosystem. It&#8217;s where we want to be.</p>



<p>We knew that from day one, we took that enterprise platform and that sort of enterprise sales and service mentality brought it into WordPress, and that that&#8217;s kind of the starting to our customer success story, but owning our own infrastructure and being that infrastructure provider makes us unique. And that&#8217;s one of the key ways in which we deliver on WooCommerce in particular is because if you own and operate your infrastructure, you don&#8217;t have to deal with, let&#8217;s call it the cloud margin problem, where you&#8217;re getting a three or four X negative return on your CPU resource. So if you&#8217;re an individual, and what I mean by that is that if you scale up your, let&#8217;s call it just an AWS instance for the sake of just conversation, what you&#8217;re going to end up with is you&#8217;re going to end up with a much larger platform with resources that you otherwise don&#8217;t need and perhaps are not optimized to the extent that they otherwise should be.<br />So are your PHP processes optimized? Your database is optimized, so on and so forth. If you build out your own platform and you do so with more CPU resources that are more resource efficient, in addition to optimizing the platform itself like the WordPress environment and WooCommerce, you kind of come at this from a double-edged sword where you optimize the running processes, but you also optimize the actual physical resources themselves. And just having that as a baseline creates a lot of proactive service improvements as well. For example, the salesy or marketing numbers that we use is if you were to reduce your footprint from a cloud-based managed WordPress provider to an infrastructure-based cloud-based, managed WordPress provider, you&#8217;re going to see about three or four times the resources for the same dollar spent. So it&#8217;s just sort of baked into the model to offer more service focused improvements, and that just comes through more resource efficiency.</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s a lot of proactive services that we can do there, and that&#8217;s not really salesy or marketing, it&#8217;s just the nature in which our business operates. We&#8217;ve sort of taken what is otherwise a problem to manage the infrastructure. We&#8217;ve taken that burden on ourselves and we benefit the end user by providing that to them. We don&#8217;t charge them more, we don&#8217;t provide less reliability. We don&#8217;t take any negatives out of that. We just take that on as a challenge. We offer that, and in turn, it improves the service lifecycle for a customer as well. So I think there&#8217;s a number of different avenues that you can do that sort of thing in various different industries and ecosystems. You can own a piece of the problem that is otherwise deferred off to a third party or maybe the end user themselves. You improve it, you validate it, you own it for them, and it nets benefits to everybody. I mean, in your case, you get the service wins. So</p>



<p>Adam:<br />What I kind of distill that down into is be a partner, solve problems like they&#8217;ve, the customer has trusted you with this part of their business and being a good steward of that trust. Is that what I&#8217;m hearing?</p>



<p>Scott:<br />Yeah, certainly. I mean, I love the word partner. It&#8217;s what we use all this time. It&#8217;s what I use. We expect to be a partner rather than just a service provider. I mean, we don&#8217;t want to be the people that you just call once every 24 months because your credit card expires and you need to update your billing or something. We want to be somebody that you&#8217;re leaning on regularly, especially in the context of WooCommerce, because things are always changing. If you fix a problem with WooCommerce, like a lot of these websites, these heavy traffic websites that really have a lot of focus on performance. If you fix a problem, you could be let&#8217;s kind of turning the dials ever so slightly, a PP update, a plugin update. We have to remember that WooCommerce is a community solution. So every single plugin is created by a different developer that doesn&#8217;t necessarily test against other development pipelines and PP updates might, the plugin update might lag behind a PHP update. There could be any number of variety, even reasons why something might fall out of sync again. So just being that partner and just ensuring that you&#8217;re always there to be helpful is absolutely critical. For sure. I mean, customer success is not reasonably attainable or high level of customer success without meaningful partnership and really being invested in your customers.</p>



<p>Adam:<br />That&#8217;s very cool, Scott. Well, I feel like this is a topic that we could just keep talking about for a really long time. We don&#8217;t have a really long time. We&#8217;re wrapping up getting close to being done here. Before we do, if someone, like I said, we could keep talking about this if they wanted to, like Hey, want to get in touch with you at Big Scoots, I&#8217;ve got more questions. Scott, you said something on the Do the Woo podcast that really sparked my interest. How would they get in touch with you?</p>



<p>Scott:<br />Me personally, I&#8217;m just as available as the rest of our team. Bottom right hand corner of our website, talk to a human. Hey, I saw Scott. I&#8217;d love to talk to him. You&#8217;ll find me separate to that, scott@bigscoots.com. Always happy to give out my personal email. I&#8217;ve always been chained to the hip as far as my email and myself goes. So if there&#8217;s anything I can do to help answer any questions regardless of coming over to Big Scoots or not, I mean, I&#8217;m just very happy to be a part of the community help where I can, if I can offer any advice or any help whatsoever, very happy to. But I mean, thank you very much for having me on. Always love talking about this stuff. As you can probably guess, pretty passionate about customer success. I mean, that&#8217;s how we built our whole business. So there&#8217;s a lot of mistakes that we&#8217;ve made over time. I like to think that we&#8217;ve had enough of a timeline to rectify those mistakes and improve on them quite dramatically. So time has been on our side. We&#8217;re excited to be here, excited to be in the community. It was awesome to meet you. I didn&#8217;t meet you, but James mentioned about your conversation that was awesome at CloudFest, so just happy to really engage, be more part of the community as much as we can. So just get in touch, reach out happy. Happy to help if I can.</p>



<p>Adam:<br />Sounds good. And hopefully we&#8217;ll be seeing some more Big Scoots at some of the different WordCamp and CloudFest events that are coming up here soon.</p>



<p>Scott:<br />Yeah, WordCamp US will be there. If anybody else is.</p>



<p>Adam:<br />Portland&#8217;s going to be fun. Yeah, I just got my plane tickets and it&#8217;s going to a good time. Well, thank you everybody for joining us. This has been another episode of BizChat from the Do the Woo. We hope you guys have had a great day and that you learned something. We&#8217;ll see you guys soon.</p>



<p>Scott:<br />Thanks so much.</p>
</div>




<p>In this episode of <strong><em>Woo BizChat</em></strong>, host <strong>Adam Weeks</strong> welcomes <strong>Scott Stapley, CEO and co-founder of BigScoots</strong>. Scott shares his insights on the importance of customer success, defining it as a proactive approach that goes beyond traditional customer service. </p>



<p>He discusses BigScoots&#8217; journey from a bootstrap business to a major player in the hosting industry, emphasizing their unique focus on personalized, high-touch support. The conversation moves into the challenges and rewards of investing in customer success, the role of AI, and the significance of building a dedicated, motivated team. </p>



<p>Scott also highlights the value of being a true partner to clients, solving issues proactively, and maintaining a commitment to exceptional service. </p>



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



<p><strong>Importance of Customer Success</strong>: The importance of customer success is highlighted, emphasizing its role in long-term business growth and client retention. It goes beyond just solving problems; it&#8217;s about creating a proactive and personalized experience.</p>



<p><strong>Proactive Service</strong>: By monitoring and addressing issues before they become problems, companies can enhance customer satisfaction and reduce the need for reactive support.</p>



<p><strong>Team Investment</strong>: Investing in the right team is essential. Hiring people who are motivated and align with the company&#8217;s culture can significantly amplify customer success efforts.</p>



<p><strong>Role of AI</strong>: While AI can help with data analysis and support efficiency, the human touch is irreplaceable for addressing complex issues and providing personalized service.</p>



<p><strong>Infrastructure Ownership</strong>: Owning and managing infrastructure can provide significant advantages in resource efficiency and service reliability, especially for hosting providers.</p>



<p><strong>Partner Approach</strong>: Treating customers as partners rather than just service recipients fosters trust and long-term relationships. Being a proactive and reliable partner can differentiate a business in a competitive market.</p>



<p><strong>Long-Term Investment</strong>: Building a robust customer success framework takes time and consistent effort. The benefits include higher customer loyalty, better retention rates, and positive word-of-mouth.</p>



<p><strong>Adaptability and Iteration</strong>: Continuously iterating on processes and tools based on customer feedback and needs is vital for maintaining high levels of service.</p>



<p><strong>Customer-Centric Model</strong>: A customer-centric approach, focusing on individual needs and tailored solutions, can lead to exceptional service experiences and business growth.</p>



<p><strong>Community Engagement</strong>: Engaging with the community and being accessible to customers can strengthen relationships and enhance the company&#8217;s reputation.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Links</h3>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-stapley-0b519023/"><strong>Scott on LinkedIn</strong></a></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://www.bigscoots.com/">BigScoots.com</a></strong></li>
</ul>";s: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, 14 Aug 2024 09:06:00 +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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s: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:50:"HeroPress: A Journalist’s Journey into 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:56:"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=7269";s: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:146:"https://heropress.com/essays/a-journalists-journey-into-wordpress/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-journalists-journey-into-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:10730:"<img width="1024" height="512" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/081224-min.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Pull Quote: I’ve found a way to blend my love of writing and tech—and I have WordPress to thank for that." /><h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-small-town-girl">Small town girl</h2>



<p>Friends and family who know me well aren’t surprised that I publish The Repository, a weekly email about WordPress.</p>



<p>You see, I grew up in Zeehan, a one-way street of a town on the west coast of Tasmania, the island that’s at the bottom of Australia. The population at the time was around 2,000 and everyone knew everyone.&nbsp;</p>



<p>My Dad worked at the nearby tin mine and my Mum wrangled me and my two younger brothers while working as a bookkeeper and volunteering at the local neighbourhood centre.</p>



<p>Dad loved gadgets. He was always following us around with whatever video camera was new at the time. He bought a CD player when they were first released (John Farnham was high on rotation). He also bought an Amiga 600 (I was obsessed with Golden Axe and Lemmings).</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>It wasn’t long before our computer was replaced with a Windows 95 machine. When Mum wasn’t doing her word processing, I was writing stories. I loved stories and had my heart set on working at a newspaper one day.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>At 14, I started helping out with the weekly community newsletter. Locals would drop off their submissions at shops around town and then I’d design each A5 booklet in Microsoft Publisher, print them off and fold them. Locals could then buy a copy for 20 cents. It was fun for a while but man, folding and stapling several dozen copies was a chore! I received an Australia Day Community Award for my efforts.</p>



<p>Writing and designing the newsletter led to playing with web pages and teaching myself HTML and CSS. Since we didn’t have the internet at home, I saved up my pocket money to buy those magazines you could get with CDs attached.</p>



<p>At 18, I went to university. I clearly recall speaking to a journalism lecturer at an open day about my interest in completing an arts degree with a double major in journalism and computer science. She laughed and asked, “Why would you want to do that?”</p>



<p>I guess my Mum’s stubbornness also rubbed off on me. I graduated with my degree (and double major!) and went on to work as a newspaper reporter for Fairfax and later News Ltd. I loved working as a journalist. As much as I enjoyed reporting rounds and covering politics for a while, it was a joy and a privilege writing other people’s stories when I moved to community news reporting and editing.</p>



<p>But all good things must come to an eye. I eventually left news reporting, disillusioned that I was working harder than ever for a wage that would never buy me a house, and I was filing stories that were half-finished because they had to go up ASAP for social media.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-hello-wordpress">Hello WordPress!</h2>



<p>It was time to explore my other major. I landed a job writing for WPMU DEV, a main-stay of the WordPress business community. It was my first time working professionally with WordPress after many years creating websites for family, friends and community groups.</p>



<p>I learned a lot. I had the writing chops and knew how to use WordPress (I’d come a long way since my hand-coding days!), but it was a baptism of fire learning to become a power user and create top-notch content for our mostly agency and freelancer audience.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>Not long after starting at WPMU DEV, I went to my first WordCamp, WordCamp Melbourne 2013. Walking into the event, I felt way out of my depth, especially as I’m an introvert attending alone. I stayed for a couple of sessions and then left.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>Living in Australia, it’s not easy getting to WordCamps because they’re so far away! Not to be put off by my first experience, I went to WordCamp Europe 2015 in Seville, Spain, and had an incredible time hanging out with colleagues, meeting new people, and melting in the extreme heat.</p>



<p>Suffice to say, WPMU DEV was a fun place to work, but eventually it was time to move on. I was ready to go out on my own and launched Words By Birds, a copy and content studio. I worked mostly with WordPress businesses, producing high-quality content, copywriting and strategies.</p>



<p>One of my favourite clients was MailPoet, headed up at the time by co-founder Kim Gjerstad. We clicked immediately. We’d both worked as journalists and talked a lot about starting some kind of newsletter together that focused on WordPress news. Eventually, we stopped talking and started doing. On November 8, 2019, we sent the first issue of The Repository to 49 subscribers.</p>



<p>Kim handled the business and marketing side of things while I focused on writing. We were a great team, and it’s a collaboration I’m very grateful for, especially in hindsight.</p>



<p>Not too long into The Repository’s history, I took a few weeks off to focus on another important project. My son was born in February 2020, and you can guess what happens next. As the COVID-19 pandemic kicked off, it felt like the world went into hibernation with me. I happily spent my days at home learning to be a mum without the pressure of the outside world. It felt like great timing.</p>



<p>Well, that lasted six weeks. Soon, I was back at it, writing The Repository. I read articles and scrolled social media during the week and spent Fridays writing. With a newborn often attached to me, I had to find creative ways to write. When my son was really little, I could pop him in a wrap and wear him while I typed at my kitchen table. I wrote while he napped. I wrote at night. I even wrote with only one hand when I needed to breastfeed.</p>



<p>Like all good businesses in the WordPress space, MailPoet was acquired. Kim graciously gave me his share in The Repository and left WordPress to work on other things. It was also around this time that my career took a turn and I stopped working full-time in the WordPress space. For the next five years, I headed up communications and marketing for a creative tech company and then worked in local government, leading the design excellence narrative for the city where I now live, Melbourne.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>While my head was in other worlds Monday to Thursday, my heart was in WordPress and The Repository on Fridays. </p>
</blockquote>



<p>It felt like both a privilege and a burden. I mean, who wants to spend their Fridays working to deadline? While I loved, loved, loved digging into the WordPress space every week and writing about it, I also loathed missing out on dinners with friends, long weekends away with my incredibly supportive husband, and – more often than not – working late into the night. Still, I continued to do it because I couldn’t let go (thanks for passing on your stubbornness, Mum).</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-cue-career-crisis">Cue: career crisis</h2>



<p>At the start of 2024, I was at a crossroads. The Repository was taking longer to write because news sources were drying up (I’m looking at you WPTavern) forcing me to spend longer researching stories and often having to write more to fill in the gaps. What used to take a day to write was taking two days to write. Meanwhile, my job outside of WordPress was fine but I wasn’t passionate about it. I was good at it but I didn’t <em>feel</em> good about it.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>WordCamps have a funny way of putting things into perspective. Amid my career crisis, I booked tickets to WordCamp Asia 2024 in Taipei, Taiwan, and I’m so glad I did.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>Walking into the venue, one of the first people I ran into was Adam Warner from GoDaddy, whose sponsorship of The Repository through the pandemic ensured I could keep it running. I met Birgit Pauli-Haack from Automattic for the first time and it felt like catching up with an old friend. I found myself sitting next to fellow Melburnian Lawrence Ladomery from WP BizDev at the marketing table on Contributor Day. I caught up with Lesley Sim from Newsletter Glue, whose perspective on business I greatly admire – she has a great way of cutting through the crap.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It was fun meeting Nathan Wrigley from WP Builds in the media room (and fangirling over each other’s work!). I got a chance to sit down with the very impressive Miriam Schwab from Elementor. I later ran into Human Made’s Ryan McCue, another Aussie, who bailed me up in a cafe for an insightful chat after he saw my Repository-branded tote bag.&nbsp;</p>



<p>At the end of day two, feeling tired and social-ed out, I went to the food hall at Taipei 101 for a quick dinner but ran into Guildenberg’s Jonathan Wold (and Lesley again!) who talked me through my business. Last but not least, on day two, I had the pleasure of having lunch with Bob Dunn of Do the Woo fame.</p>



<p>Yeah, yeah, I’m name-dropping. I met and spoke to a lot of people at WordCamp Asia, but it was these people – who I admire and respect – whose invaluable advice led me to realise I needed to go home and quit my job and get back to working with WordPress. So I did.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-future">The future</h2>



<p>Fast forward to today. I still publish The Repository. In fact, I’m expanding it to publish proper news articles on the website soon. The email newsletter isn’t going anywhere – after five years, I’m very much attached to it and can’t wait to make it shorter and punchier once I can link to longer stories on the website. I have a vision for the next 12 months and I’m excited to see how things pan out.</p>



<p>I’d like to think my younger self would be proud of what I’m doing today. I’ve found a way to blend my love of writing and tech—and I have WordPress, and the generosity of spirit that defines WordPress people, to thank for that.</p>



<p>And to that lecturer who thought I was silly to study journalism <em>and</em> computer science, well, who’s laughing now?</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://heropress.com/essays/a-journalists-journey-into-wordpress/">A Journalist’s Journey into WordPress</a> appeared first on <a 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:"Tue, 13 Aug 2024 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:9:"Rae Morey";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s: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:"Do The Woo Community: Diving into WordPress 6.6 with Insights from Mary Baum and Meher Bala";s: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=85113";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:90:"https://dothewoo.io/diving-into-wordpress-6-6-with-insights-from-mary-baum-and-meher-bala/";s: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:42208:"Episode Transcript
<div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p>Abha:<br />Hello and welcome to the WordPress Way. It&#8217;s Do the Woo time yet again. You&#8217;re here with Abha Thakor and we&#8217;re talking about all things WordPress as you would expect. But more importantly we&#8217;re talking about the new release 6.6 just out and we&#8217;ve got lots of things to share. But also in this episode we thought we would answer some of the questions that you&#8217;ve all been sending in about how to get involved, how to get past the worry about getting involved, and also some of the tips from people who have been engaged in the recent processes. So a little bit more different than our usual release series, but at the end of the year in November, we will be doing a reflection on all the releases of this year and a bit more technical stuff too. So make sure you join us for that. In the studio today, we&#8217;re doing some globetrotting again, we&#8217;ve got Meher Bala joining us direct from India, and we have Mary Baum joining us from the US. Hello ladies.</p>



<p>Mary:<br />Hello ladies. Hey everyone.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />So thank you both for joining. I know you probably had quite a lot of 6.6 in your heads for the last few weeks. Meher, you&#8217;ve been the release coordinator for this major release and the first time as a release coordinator, not just shadowing so much, been a very exciting time. And Mary, you&#8217;ve been leading Marcos and also being involved with some other component stuff, so it&#8217;s really great to have you both with us and we&#8217;re going to have some conversations today also about component maintenance and those who listen regularly to the show, know that we often talk about all the different ways that you can get involved with WordPress because it is our software and our project and that&#8217;s for everybody, wherever you are around the world. So we&#8217;re going to touch on those things a bit more.</p>



<p>Mary:<br />Coming off a release coordinating of six five, I cannot be more proud of Meher who did an absolutely phenomenal job with the release of 6.6, and it was not easy and my heart just sings for the great job you did and for you in general, you are a rising star.</p>



<p>Meher:<br />Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to the show. Going from Marcomms to release coordinator, it&#8217;s different but it&#8217;s new. It&#8217;s something different in a release than doing Marcomms</p>



<p>Abha <br />And I think that&#8217;s one of the things we want to get across today is that you don&#8217;t have to just get involved in a release in the areas of where you are professionally working. It can also be in another area that you want to develop and there are so many jobs in release. It doesn&#8217;t have to be just on the squad. A squad is an amazing place to be, but actually it&#8217;s a whole community that brings the release together and there are so many opportunities and Maher&#8217;s going to share some of the testing ones a bit later in this show as well. So ladies, I&#8217;m going to start with some of my favorite things from the release and as previous docs co-lead and Marcos and having been involved in various other bits of the release this time, it was really interesting to be focusing a bit more on the component side and to see some of the things that people have been talking about and wanting and we haven&#8217;t quite got there as a community to achieve in previous releases, but to be in this, one of the things we&#8217;re going to start with is the site editor experience in WordPress because it really has transformed in recent releases.</p>



<p><br />And I think that&#8217;s one of the things we want to get across today is that you don&#8217;t have to just get involved in a release in the areas of where you are professionally working. It can also be in another area that you want to develop and there are so many jobs in release. It doesn&#8217;t have to be just on the squad. A squad is an amazing place to be, but actually it&#8217;s a whole community that brings the release together and there are so many opportunities and Meher&#8217;s going to share some of the testing ones a bit later in this show as well. So ladies, I&#8217;m going to start with some of my favorite things from the release and as previous Docs Co-Lead and Marcomms and having been involved in various other bits of the release this time, it was really interesting to be focusing a bit more on the component side and to see some of the things that people have been talking about and wanting and we haven&#8217;t quite got there as a community to achieve in previous releases. One of the things we&#8217;re going to start with is the site editor experience in WordPress because it really has transformed in recent releases.</p>



<p>Mary:<br />I just redid Support Inclusion in Tech website over the weekend, mostly the typography and I&#8217;ve still got a couple of things, but I did change the theme to 2024 and we were already on 6.6. I&#8217;m using the grid layout on the homepage, extensive use of the font library from 6.5, smoothed out and refined in 6.6, and we redid the header, we redid everything and everything is so much smoother. I&#8217;ve never redone an entire design in a day.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />It is a lot slicker and a lot quicker now with the new facilities that we have quicker.</p>



<p>Mary:<br />And quicker and quicker, and things take the first time.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />Which is really important that when you get things that work when you first do it.</p>



<p>Mary:<br />Yeah, yeah. Yes. As somebody who has tried to estimate how long something&#8217;s going to take and been off by a factor of five or ten, and then having to do things over.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />Also with the layouts. Mary, you&#8217;ve been talking about negative spacing. Do you want to share a little bit about why that is useful? Because as a term people might think, well what is that?</p>



<p>Mary:<br />Well, as an example is that the way we&#8217;re doing testimonials. Winstina Hughes is the founder of Support Inclusion in Tech, which does pair up WordCamp speakers with funding to get them travel. So when you&#8217;ve been picked to speak then you can submit an application and get matched with a company who can underwrite your travel expenses on the same continent. So no flying over oceans at this moment to make the best use of the resources. But at any rate, we had testimonials on the homepage and we have the person&#8217;s name at one side and then underneath, which makes it a subhead instead of a kicker. Yes, I am a typography addict and to get the little subhead close enough to the headline that they fit together as a unit, we need to make the top margin on the subhead zero and sometimes we need to make the bottom margin on the headline negative just to get them close enough together. In other cases you might want to have two pictures overlapping. You need to have one or the other have margins that are perhaps negative one REM or negative two rems to have them open. Let&#8217;s say you want to do a Venn diagram, particularly a Venn diagram in a pattern, where you will have text inside the parts of the circle that overlap and the parts that don&#8217;t, that change. For that matter,</p>



<p><br />you might have that as a locked pattern that you then or a synced pattern that you then can override by changing that text and just have that ready to go.</p>



<p>Abha:<br />WordPress 6.6 introduces these negative margins and the custom shadows, and it really does help you make those eye popping designs and because you can add them directly in the editor for the blocks that support those margin controls, you&#8217;ve got so much more flexibility. You could do this before with the theme JSON, which allows you to create all these overlapping elements, but to be able to do it in the way we can do it now is so much quicker. As Mary has said, it just keeps getting quicker and quicker. We also have these featured image blocks so that we can use customizable block shadows and all of this just helps us to make these pages look a little bit better, but also gives a little bit more control to our end users. Speaking of end users, if you are wanting to know more about how to do something or if you want to even write documentation for end users because you love a new feature, the documentation team will absolutely welcome you to come and help.</p>



<p><br />And they&#8217;re still working on the documentation for 6.6 as they do at every release and their work is amazing and they have contributors from across the world, so do get in touch if you want to be put into contact with them and we&#8217;ll put the links in the show guide as well. I&#8217;m just going to go over to Meher. Meher, obviously in a release like this when you&#8217;re not just, you&#8217;re incorporating lots of the Gutenberg releases that have happened before and you&#8217;re hoping somethings will land, you keep testing. What is that like being release coordinator?</p>
