


<p>For WooCommerce merchants, we&#8217;ve seen a big trend in collectibles and a broader definition of luxury. If you thought about luxury historically, you might think of handbags, cars, and rings, but not hoodies and sneakers. But clearly, that is part of modern-day luxury. On Verisart, if you&#8217;ve got a collectible with an authority like a living creator or a trusted business, that&#8217;s a good opportunity to improve your current certificate of authenticity with digital certification branded by your store that can be verified by new owners in real time. That&#8217;s the core of our business. We have lots of different types of businesses using our certification—from custom champagne bottles to special golf clubs to digital prints and photography.</p>



<p>A good example is Johnny Depp. He built a community of NFT holders and sold those NFTs through a native Web3 drop. He then wanted to give something back to those NFT holders—allowing them to have a print of their NFT. These NFTs are part of his artwork, his friends, and they look like pop-up images. There&#8217;s a need for orders, and there&#8217;s a lag between placing the order and receiving the purchase. You get out-of-the-box order management and porting. In his case, he spun up a Shopify store and used Verisart to certify his prints. When you think about merchant needs, whether they&#8217;re Web2 or Web3, Verisart helps with certifying products, physical or digital, and minting NFTs. We&#8217;ve come a long way in giving people the tooling to build their own Web3 marketplaces if they want to. Merchants that already have a significant presence through their own website might also be on Amazon. You might have a merchant with its own domain using WooCommerce but also selling on Amazon. It&#8217;s helpful to have your own URL for those digital assets to live alongside physical ones because increasingly, they have a relationship. You buy a physical asset, maybe it grants you a token, which is a form of membership. Now you are closer to that artist&#8217;s world. You might give away that token for free. We support buying a token that allows you access to purchase a print or exclusive product at a reduced cost or ahead of others. There are a lot of ways digital and physical can complement each other. Artists are experimenting with these two mediums and offering experiences together. For example, the show we&#8217;re co-curating at Gazelli Art House in London has artists using Verisart to certify their prints, and the prints are certified as NFTs. We&#8217;re constantly looking for better ways to provide merchants and creators with tools for certifying their objects, whether physical, digital, or mapping the relationship between the two.</p>



<p>Dave:<br />I guess there&#8217;s a double-edged sword of this potentially being a tool artists can use to build and engage with their community, but not all artists. There&#8217;s nuance and unpacking to do around that for individual artists as they try to get that balance right. One thing you hinted at is that you might buy the digital token first, which gives you the right to buy a physical print or redeem it for some sort of experience later on. That fundamentally changes how art can be paid for. Instead of the artist creating art and hoping they can sell it, they can pre-sell it or fund the collection through pre-selling. Is that what the CryptoVenetians did?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Yeah, we work with Bright Moments. We did the finale with them in Venice earlier this year. That&#8217;s exactly what we did. We had a poster only available to the holders of tokens from that last city, which was a thousand tokens minted during Venice, Italy, just after the Biennale this year.</p>



<p>Dave:<br />That was such a good documentary. I can&#8217;t find it online yet, but I watched it at a screening. It was really good fun, very heartwarming. I&#8217;ve got two more questions for you, one a bit of a double-barrel. What&#8217;s the difference between a receipt and a certificate of authenticity? They both have similar attributes, right? A receipt can improve the secondary resale value of something. It has some element of proof of authenticity. I think it&#8217;s stupid we haven&#8217;t created digital infrastructure for receipts. We can spend, but we don&#8217;t get digital receipts back automatically. For example, the best way to know how healthy you&#8217;re eating is to analyze all the receipts you get from takeaways and supermarket shops. What&#8217;s the difference between a receipt and a certificate of authenticity, both in terms of the nature and what that offers in onward value?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />In the case of token-gated prints, we incorporate the order number as part of the certificate of authenticity and the token ID used along with that order number. We have patents at Verisart for handling certification. On one end, you&#8217;ve got an unverified record, where I&#8217;ve said something about an object, but no one knows who I am or if what I&#8217;ve said is true or false. It&#8217;s the lowest amount of waiting. Then we have an issuer certificate, similar to a receipt. The retailer of the object says that this thing is true. When you&#8217;ve got an artwork where the retailer is not the creator, the certificate of authenticity is where the creator has authorized that statement. Finally, we have a certificate of authenticity plus, where there&#8217;s a physical identifier on the work like a QR tag or an NFC tag.</p>



<p>The core part of Verisart is that the certification can change state depending on the consensus, most importantly the creator. The problem in the past has been that the receipt is often the last thing the creator hears about. The collector gets it, but the creator might be told, &#8220;Oh, that receipt didn&#8217;t quite happen until maybe a year later, so we don&#8217;t owe you any money.&#8221; Verisart puts the creator more in control because they know when their certificates are transferred, there is a transaction out there. That&#8217;s helpful from a creator perspective. While there are similarities between receipts and certificates of authenticity, they are fundamentally different. Receipts require the issuer to be present in the future, and the issuer must remain trustworthy. One of the inspirations for Verisart was that issuers of these receipts were actually sending out fake works. The receipt was fine, but what it pointed to was fake. There are still challenges in the Web3 world with how NFTs have been construed. Transactions are correct, but what they point to may be incorrect. Verisart is actively trying to address this by building more trust at the time of transaction and ensuring the creator is present in terms of their authentication of the work.</p>



<p>NFTs as COAs is interesting because even if Verisart goes away, you&#8217;ve got an on-chain record that Verisart verified and can go along with the transaction. It future-proofs your investment when those intermediaries are no longer around. A lot of merchants don&#8217;t make it past 10, 20 years, so who will determine whether that receipt is valid if the merchant can&#8217;t authorize it?</p>



<p>Dave:<br />Yeah, interesting. Last question, around NFT market sentiment. We went through a big boom cycle. NFTs alongside DeFi were one of the two big trends driving a lot of narrative, volumes, and arguably innovation in crypto last cycle. This cycle, while we&#8217;ve seen some things emerge and become clearer, we&#8217;ve also seen the floor prices drop significantly across many blue-chip NFTs, and there&#8217;s a lot of uncertainty in the market. How do you think about that? You&#8217;re using NFTs very specifically and deliberately, rather than the popular conception of a monkey picture, but nevertheless, the broader context for NFTs must be impactful. Do you think in a year&#8217;s time we&#8217;ll be like &#8220;NFTs are so back,&#8221; or will it continue to be murky for a while longer? How do you see this sentiment resolving?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Early internet, we had titles like Director of E-Commerce and Chief Multi-Webmaster. These terms fell by the wayside and became incorporated into tech or marketing. No one thought of online as an option; it became a must. We&#8217;ll get there with tokens and digital assets. The term NFT has been tarnished, and even Web3 has become caught up in that. When people used Facebook, they didn&#8217;t think they were on a Web2 platform; they just had a better online experience. I think we&#8217;ll get there with Web3 as well. Having a token will allow you to move more seamlessly between platforms, making the experience of being in a community or having a loyalty scheme smoother. We&#8217;re at the early stages of building that infrastructure. From an authentication standpoint, it makes sense. Token gating was complicated, but now a token allows you to do things more fluidly. Digital assets are here to stay. The language is still up in the air, whether we&#8217;ll use the term NFT in five years or just digital art or digital assets.</p>



<p>We&#8217;re still big believers. It&#8217;s been a rough ride, and floor prices have dropped, but there&#8217;s a more mature understanding of the market now. Some NFTs are surpassing their auction highs from the height of the market, particularly those artists who have crossed over into the fine art community. Generative art is here to stay, and tokens among merchants are becoming more common. We&#8217;d love your merchants to try our app on the WooCommerce store and get in touch with us directly. We do custom development for merchants but also put as much in our core product as possible. Right now, on WooCommerce, we support minting and certification. We&#8217;ll be adding additional functionality as the app evolves.</p>



<p>Dave:<br />Perfect. Thank you for letting people know where they can get ahold of you. Last question: as someone with insight into the brave new world of luxury consumerism, what&#8217;s the most unexpected luxury thing you&#8217;ve had a certificate of authentication for through Verisart?</p>



<p>Robert:<br />We have two things that were surprising. One is a very high-end watchmaker based in the Middle East. These watches are real works of art, costing more than most works of art, starting at $50,000. That was unusual for me to see such a high</p>



<p>-end product being certified on Verisart. The other is amazing calligraphy designs, carved in wood and highly intricate, also from that part of the world. We also have a Maori arts collective doing art from New Zealand. That&#8217;s the great thing about my job—we&#8217;re always seeing new ways creators and merchants find to certify their creations.</p>



<p>Dave:<br />It must be wonderful to live at that intersection between technology and art. It&#8217;s been wonderful talking to you, Robert. I&#8217;m very grateful for your time and insights.</p>



<p>Robert:<br />Likewise. Thank you for having me on your show.</p>



<p>Dave:<br />Take care.</p>
</div>




<p>In this episode of <strong><em>Emerging Tech, All Things WordPress and WooCommerce</em></strong>, host <strong>Dave Lockie</strong> dives into the intersection of art and technology with <strong>Robert Norton, the CEO and founder of Verisart</strong>. </p>



<p>Norton shares his journey from leading Sedition Art and Saatchi Art to pioneering blockchain certification for the art and collectibles market with Verisart. The discussion explores how blockchain technology enhances trust and authenticity in the art world, the impact of NFTs, and the evolving landscape of digital and physical art. </p>



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



<p><strong>Intersection of Art and Technology</strong>: Robert Norton&#8217;s journey has placed him at the crossroads of art and technology, leading to the creation of platforms like Sedition Art and Verisart.</p>



<p><strong>Blockchain for Art Authentication</strong>: Verisart leverages blockchain technology to enhance trust and authenticity in the art and collectibles market, addressing problems such as forgery and lack of transparency.</p>



<p><strong>Evolution of NFTs</strong>: Norton discusses how digital limited editions have evolved into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and the implications for artists and the art market.</p>



<p><strong>Importance of Provenance</strong>: The concept of provenance, or the history and story of an artwork, is crucial. Verisart binds certificates, provenance, and registries together using distributed ledger technology.</p>



<p><strong>Market Sentiment and Challenges</strong>: Despite the volatility and speculative nature of the NFT market, there is growing understanding and adoption of digital assets.</p>



<p><strong>Merchants and Certification</strong>: Verisart&#8217;s integration with WooCommerce  helps merchants certify both physical and digital products, enhancing trust and value.</p>



<p><strong>Artist Engagement</strong>: NFTs and blockchain technology offer new opportunities for artists to engage directly with their collectors, although it can also bring challenges such as community management and market pressure.</p>



<p><strong>Innovative Use Cases</strong>: From high-end watches to intricate calligraphy, Verisart is being used to certify a wide range of luxury and collectible items, showcasing the versatility of blockchain technology.</p>



<p><strong>Future of Digital Assets</strong>: The conversation hints at a future where digital assets and tokens are seamlessly integrated into everyday transactions, moving beyond the hype of NFTs to practical applications.</p>



<p><strong>Personal Connection to Art</strong>: Norton&#8217;s personal background and passion for art, influenced by his family&#8217;s involvement in the art world, drive his mission to improve the authenticity and trustworthiness of art transactions.</p>



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



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong><a href="https://woocommerce.com/products/verisart/">Verisart for WooCommerce</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://verisart.com/">Verisart.com</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rlnorton/">Robert 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:"Wed, 31 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:36;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:83:"Do The Woo Community: Onboarding for Freelance and Shop Owners with Laura Elizabeth";s: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=84932";s: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:82:"https://dothewoo.io/onboarding-for-freelance-and-shop-owners-with-laura-elizabeth/";s: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:54599:"<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-52 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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<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>
</div>
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<div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-container-content-22"><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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<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" />
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<div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow">
<p class="wp-container-content-24"><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>
</div>
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Episode Transcript
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<p>Katie:<br />Hello and welcome to Biz Chat at Do the Woo. I&#8217;m Katie Keith from Barn2 Plugins, and today we&#8217;re going to be talking about onboarding, whether you are a freelancer wanting to improve the onboarding for new clients or whether you are an e-commerce store owner, needing to onboard customers who buy your products. To help us with this, we&#8217;ve got special guest Laura Elizabeth. Welcome, Laura.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Hi. Thank you so much for having me.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />So can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do to start?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, sure. So as of right now, I have a WordPress plugin called Client Portal, but my background is actually in web design. I worked at an agency for a year or so and then I branched out and did freelancing for about 10 years. Client Portal was made out of the work I was doing with my freelancing clients. So it was sort of like a mix between a project management tool and really having nothing at all. I started that back in 2016. I still take on the occasional freelancing project, but it&#8217;s pretty rare these days.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />And tell us about onboarding. Why do you think it&#8217;s so important and what got you into that as an area particularly?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, I&#8217;ve always loved what onboarding can do for you. I was quite insecure back when I was a freelancer and I felt that having a really good onboarding process really set the stage for how the project was going to go. You can make it really repeatable and reuse it with all your clients. It just helped me because I didn&#8217;t want to go into the full agency route. I wanted to stay just as a solo freelancer. It helped me juggle multiple clients. If I had a really solid onboarding process in place, it helped my clients trust me a little bit more. When you start a project with somebody, really the beginning sets the tone for how everything&#8217;s going to go. So if I had a really solid onboarding process, it just started the project off, and by having a system in place, things started going a lot more smoothly. My clients were happier, I was happier. It just worked out a lot better.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />That makes a lot of sense because when people hire a freelancer or even an agency for their website, they&#8217;ve made the decision based on lots of things like your portfolio, the quality of your website, possibly a recommendation. But ultimately, it&#8217;s not like hiring a doctor where there&#8217;s a specific qualification. You have to prove your credibility in the early stages of the project. And I suppose if you&#8217;re kind of all over the place at the beginning and you&#8217;re not providing clear onboarding, then that might make them doubt the decision they&#8217;ve made to hire you.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />I even find that now. So now I&#8217;m more on the other side of things where I&#8217;m the client and I hire freelancers. It really does make such a difference if I hire someone and I can see they&#8217;ve got some kind of process in place. It doesn&#8217;t need to be elaborate, but if they have things they can give me where they tell me how they work, answer maybe commonly asked questions, or things like that, it just feels like they&#8217;ve done this before. Nobody wants to feel like a guinea pig or a test subject when you&#8217;re doing a client project. If I&#8217;m hiring someone, I want to feel like they do this all the time, they know how to handle the entire project no matter what it is. It could be a website project, it could be consulting, marketing, whatever. I just feel like onboarding throughout the course of the project really helps gain that trust and it just sets the whole project off from the start.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Since we are talking about the freelancer and agency side of onboarding, let&#8217;s focus on that a bit more first, and then later on we can talk about onboarding for e-commerce store owners. So can you walk me through an optimal onboarding experience for a new client project? What should that include?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, so it kind of starts slightly before the onboarding when you are qualifying the client. I like to put quite a lot of effort into qualifying my clients because I&#8217;m sure everyone&#8217;s experienced this: you get on calls with a potential client, you give them a ton of advice, things are going really well, and then you send your proposal and they say, &#8220;Oh wait, I have a budget of $500.&#8221; And it&#8217;s just completely wasted. I feel like everyone has to learn that the hard way. So it starts with qualifying the client, and you can do that with things like intake questionnaires, the discovery call, the proposal. I actually did a lot of paid discovery sessions with my clients. I was doing it before a website redesign project. So, paid discovery is where you do essentially the whole proposal stage as a productized service. So your clients will pay you to do a proposal, which might sound a little crazy because you can imagine what client would want to pay for a proposal. But it&#8217;s kind of a consulting thing. You work with them to figure out everything they need in their business, you deliver them a report where they can take it, implement it themselves, get someone else to do it, or ideally get you to do it.</p>



<p>I found that had a ton of benefits overall, both for me and my clients, but specifically with the onboarding, it really helped because almost every client went through that same process. So it was really easy for me to create reusable assets that I would use with them. I would have a VA who would help me send the right things at the right time. It would be things like a contract, like an NDA or something like that, and then we would send different questionnaires for their business, gathering all the data, send them a getting started guide, what to expect, the payment, everything was a lot more automated. So I always think with onboarding, if you can have some kind of fixed scope project that you do at the start, it makes your job a lot easier. But even if you can&#8217;t do that, what I tend to recommend is there&#8217;s no one size fits all with onboarding. It&#8217;s really a case of laying out your process and figuring out what your client needs, what problems your clients tend to have.</p>



<p>A lot of people have issues with clients maybe micromanaging projects or scope creep or things like that that crop up during the project. Are there ways in your onboarding to help solve those? So could you say something like, it&#8217;s quite likely with big custom projects that the scope is going to change? That&#8217;s absolutely fine and we expect that. Here&#8217;s how that will work. And that&#8217;s just an example of something you could include in your onboarding to help you later down the road. I know for me, scope creep was a particularly difficult one, but I also liked to set them up in a system where they could access everything at one time, and this is kind of where Client Portal came about. I tried onboarding them into different project management tools and I would find that they were really useful for me, particularly if I was working with contractors on their project or if you&#8217;re an agency, project management tools are pretty great. But then when I&#8217;d add my client to it, they didn&#8217;t want to learn a new system, they didn&#8217;t use it, they didn&#8217;t log in. And actually, like I was saying earlier, now I&#8217;m more on the client side. I also hate being added to a project management tool because I don&#8217;t want to change anything or post anything in it because I don&#8217;t want to mess up their already perfect-looking system and I just can&#8217;t be bothered. So you end up resorting back to email.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Yeah, I totally agree. I hate it when I hire someone like, I don&#8217;t know, an SEO agency or something like that and they put me on their project management system. There are so many, it&#8217;s probably one I&#8217;ve never used before. I don&#8217;t care what their internal systems are as the client. Things like notifications become a nightmare. You don&#8217;t know how it works. You&#8217;ll ask for an update and they&#8217;ll say, &#8220;Oh, it was on this card here.&#8221; Well, I didn&#8217;t know that. And also, alternatively, you get a notification for everything. And I feel that generally adding clients to your internal project management tool is not in the client&#8217;s interest. So yeah, it&#8217;s good to have an alternative.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />And you also get that if your team is quite big, your client won&#8217;t really know who they&#8217;re supposed to be talking to. They won&#8217;t know, &#8220;Am I supposed to be replying to this? Are they not?&#8221; It just gets really overwhelming for them. And I&#8217;m similar to you, I hate being added to different project management tools, it&#8217;s just hard. I felt like project management tools weren&#8217;t really working for me. They were working for me internally. I didn&#8217;t want clients to see the kind of things I was talking about with contractors. And I&#8217;ve heard loads of horror stories as well of people who have accidentally posted something that the client can see that they maybe shouldn&#8217;t have posted. Maybe it&#8217;s about the client, I don&#8217;t really know, but there&#8217;s always the risk that&#8217;s going to happen. You&#8217;ll post something that they shouldn&#8217;t see.</p>



<p>So I thought, well, I&#8217;m not going to bother adding clients to my project management tool. But then when you take that away, if you have all these onboarding documents that you&#8217;ve created, so these getting started guides, these questionnaires, the contract invoices, whatever it might be, if you take the project management tool away, you don&#8217;t really have anything. So you tend to send these files through email. You have these really long email threads, but that really didn&#8217;t feel polished and professional enough either. And I also had the problem where clients would come back to me and say, &#8220;Where&#8217;s this file? I can&#8217;t find it. I didn&#8217;t save it, blah, blah, blah.&#8221; And that would be really complicated. So I created a portal where they could sign up on my website, log in, and just have everything there available to them. And it was totally separate from the project management tool. So it would only have the very few things</p>



<p>that a client actually needs to see and would need to access on a regular basis. And that really helped because it was sort of the middle ground between nothing and a project management tool. And I just created that in WordPress with private pages and all that kind of thing. I did eventually turn it into a product. It can be just something, a private area on your website that they can log into. And I found that was super useful for my clients.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Is that more work for the freelancer or agency because they have to populate that with, do they do things like project updates in it or simply the onboarding information?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />You can do either really. I personally prefer to keep it very simple and repeatable. So I would set up a template and it would have all their onboarding documents that were the same for every single client doing that particular project. So it would be an onboarding template or a project template for a paid discovery, for example. And then I would have a separate one if I was doing a website redesign or I would have a separate one, maybe, I don&#8217;t know, copywriting or whatever services you offer, and you just put in the stuff that is common to pretty much every client as a template. So you don&#8217;t have to recreate all that. And then however you store your deliverables, you would just link to what you&#8217;re already using. So I wouldn&#8217;t spend a lot of time uploading things to the portal. The way I thought of it at the time was like a bookmarks bar that was in a branded portal on your website that your clients could log into. So at the time I was doing websites and I would use Envision for my prototype, so I would just link to Envision. So it didn&#8217;t really take an awful lot of time, but it is something that if you do have a VA, which I pretty much recommend almost all freelancers have one if they can because it just makes life a lot easier. It&#8217;s something that they can just go in and add the odd link to it. But I always recommend keeping it as simple as possible, actually having as little in there as possible, but making sure that what&#8217;s in there are the things that your client needs to access time and time again.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />That makes sense. So you&#8217;ve referred to VAs a couple of times. It&#8217;s slightly off topic, but virtual assistants can be really useful. Do you have any tips on where to find one? Because a lot of freelancers can&#8217;t afford to hire somebody freelance, and so what are the different ways you can find somebody to help with those tasks?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />I&#8217;ve hired VAs from a few different places. The best one I had was from a website called Hawkey Handbook. I don&#8217;t actually know if it&#8217;s still around. I haven&#8217;t checked, but I think that&#8217;s what it was called. Gina taught people how to become virtual assistants and then she had a pool of people where you could post a job, and I had a virtual assistant there for years and she was really great. I&#8217;ve also tried hiring just from people I know because they&#8217;re kind of tasks that really anyone can do as long as you&#8217;ve got good processes in place. But yeah, my favorite one was the Hawkey Handbook place where I hired a VA. It can take a little bit of trial and error and hiring a VA is actually a lot of work upfront because if you don&#8217;t have systems and processes and things documented, it takes a long time to get that in place and it can take a long time to train a VA. But once you&#8217;ve found that rhythm and they work with you, they&#8217;re really invaluable, especially when working with clients. Because if you are like me, I was mostly solo but would just work with contractors. It was really hard doing the actual work, which is the bit I loved, and then dealing with new lead inquiries, keeping up to date with current clients, or even following up with leads that didn&#8217;t work out, or doing outreach, all that kind of stuff that you need to do constantly. It just takes that off your plate to have somebody as a middleman managing. For me, it was mostly email and client communication. So yeah, I think VAs are really, really important, but a big investment both time and money upfront.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Definitely. I used to use a company called Remote Staff for a VA for years because as a plugin company, I have a support team and one of my support engineers spends half her time doing VA tasks, which might be finance or marketing or general admin or whatever. So I found that good. They were already trained in our products from doing support. They do VA tasks as well and it gives them more insights into different parts of the business and things. So there&#8217;s lots of ways you can get them without doing a traditional job advert to hire someone if that&#8217;s not in budget.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />And you don&#8217;t even need to hire full-time as well. I only ever had one full-time VA, and I found it was actually a bit much. At the minute, I&#8217;m similar to you. I have a support person who does some VA tasks and I think they only do a couple of hours a day and really that&#8217;s enough to just get through your inbox and do whatever recurring tasks need to be done. I think two hours a day minimum will get you through most client communication things that you might need to do.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Yeah, I find it really helpful to write a list of what I actually do before hiring somebody, because sometimes when you group your tasks, it&#8217;s not what you think. So when I do it, actually I need a finance assistant and a marketing assistant and very little general admin. So I might go for a general VA when that&#8217;s not the skillset I need. So it is useful to actually write down what you do. You may not have an understanding of that.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, that&#8217;s a good point actually. Time track maybe.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Yeah, exactly. All of that.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />So let&#8217;s get back to onboarding. We went on a useful tangent then. We&#8217;ve talked about onboarding for clients who you are providing services for. So let&#8217;s move on and talk a bit about onboarding for e-commerce stores. And it&#8217;s something you may not really think of because let&#8217;s say if someone buys a pair of shoes or something on a website, they probably don&#8217;t need any onboarding, but there are e-commerce products that do need some kind of support and communication from that company after making a purchase. An example might be a membership site where they&#8217;re joining some kind of a club with an ongoing relationship. It might be that they&#8217;ve booked an event and they need information in the run-up to that event and the date of it or any kind of product that needs some kind of special advice or instructions for the customer to use it, which aren&#8217;t shipped with the product, which happens in various industries. So do you have any advice about the email side of things? I know you and I have previously talked on a different podcast about your expertise in email marketing. Do you have any advice about how email might play a part in onboarding for e-commerce store owners?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Funnily enough, I recently bought some shoes and their onboarding was pretty good. They were running trainers or sneakers.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />You needed onboarding for shoes, fine.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s funny because you say they didn&#8217;t need onboarding for shoes, but these were specifically running shoes, so it kind of makes sense if they were just regular shoes, probably not. But it was quite nice because they sent a follow-up sequence of just different things about how to care for running shoes, how often to replace them, and tips on running as well because presumably if you&#8217;re buying running shoes, you&#8217;re probably a runner. And so I thought that was quite helpful. But I think with onboarding for emails, it&#8217;s actually a really difficult thing to get right, because as you know, inboxes are just full right now and everything you buy, there&#8217;s a lot of emails that come after you always get added to the newsletter. It&#8217;s quite overwhelming. So the first thing I would say about that is to make sure you&#8217;re not sending a newsletter at the same time you&#8217;re sending onboarding. But with onboarding emails, I think one thing I really like that I&#8217;ve seen, this is more for SaaS software, are people who send the odd email. I think it&#8217;s maybe once a week I would say getting the timing right is important and it&#8217;s very, very short and it&#8217;s one very small tip that I could read in a few seconds about using whatever software that I&#8217;ve just signed up for.</p>



<p>And I think that&#8217;s really great. That&#8217;s actually something I want to put into my own onboarding because I have, for Client Portal, I have a getting started guide and a few little things like that. I have a new customer survey because it&#8217;s always good to try if you can, to learn about people who have just bought. So it&#8217;s finding that balance between things that you would find useful as the business owner, plus what your customers would find useful. But yeah, I really like these new SaaS companies who are just sending these little tips specifically in software that are probably really obvious to the founder or people who use it regularly. It could be like a keyboard shortcut or just some really basic feature that just makes your life a lot easier. I think that&#8217;s really nice because I don&#8217;t think people are reading emails, they&#8217;re getting so many and I don&#8217;t think they&#8217;re reading them. They&#8217;re as focused when they&#8217;re reading them as they maybe were a few years ago, at least in my experience. So yeah, that&#8217;s something I would try, but I haven&#8217;t tested it, so I don&#8217;t actually know.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />I really like that. Keeping it short, as you say, people do get email overwhelmed, but it is an opportunity still. With our plugins, we&#8217;ve created a unique sequence in MailChimp for each of our plugins, similar to what you said, but probably not as brief. So I will look at that. For example, if someone buys our WooCommerce product options plugin, then we&#8217;ll send an automated email straight away with instructions on how to set it up. After three days, we send a check</p>



<p>-in email, how are you getting on? Here&#8217;s a video, here&#8217;s some extra links to resources in case you&#8217;re stuck, how to contact us, those kinds of things. With running shoes, if you&#8217;re happy with them pretty quickly, you&#8217;re going to keep using them and when they wear out, hopefully buy from the same company. But with WordPress, we have an annual subscription, so we need the customer to renew after one year and two years, which means that to encourage renewals, we want to have an ongoing relationship with the customer, which is largely automated of course. So our emails after the first couple of weeks slow down and there might be one every two or three months, and then they might speed up a bit shortly before each renewal. And like you mentioned, we provide tips. So for WooCommerce product options, an email after four months might talk about lesser-used features. You know, you could set a maximum quantity of how many pizza toppings the customer can buy or something like that, or did you know about this extra way of pricing your product options and things that they might not know to help them get more value out of it? And then we might sneak in a marketing email every now and then recommending a related product, but that shouldn&#8217;t be the main thing of course.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, I do something similar. I actually have found it quite hard to time emails up to renewal time because people could maybe upgrade their license or do different things throughout that process, and I found it quite hard from a technical perspective to set that up. So I tend to have an onboarding sequence that&#8217;s the same for everybody. It&#8217;s fortunate for me because I only have one plugin as opposed to multiple, and it&#8217;s all serving a similar audience. After the onboarding sequence, it just goes into my general monthly, or it&#8217;s not always monthly, newsletter where I&#8217;ll share a new example or a new case study or something like that. But I really want to have something in place that&#8217;s more akin to when it&#8217;s getting close to their renewal date. I just haven&#8217;t found a way to actually implement that yet.</p>



<p>But I do also do a little bit of upselling as well because I created a sister company from Client Portal. One thing I found was people loved the portal, but they were having trouble putting together these getting started guides and these intake questionnaires, they didn&#8217;t know what to put in them. Whereas I did create portal templates, the portal templates didn&#8217;t include content. So I created a sister company that has these templates that have all the exact wording that I would use with my clients. They&#8217;re nicely designed but easily editable, that kind of thing. So after, I think it&#8217;s about six weeks or so, I do a little mini promotion for that and then give customers a discount if they want to buy that. But it is kind of a separate company, it&#8217;s still mine. So I think there&#8217;s room to upsell people. I think it&#8217;s just important to upsell them for something that they genuinely would be interested in rather than just whatever you have. Have you identified another problem that these customers tend to have that you could solve with a different product and upsell them on that? I think that&#8217;s quite a good way, and I&#8217;ve never had any backlash about doing that because, like I say, it&#8217;s something people genuinely want, so they&#8217;re quite happy to receive those emails.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Absolutely. I&#8217;ve got, I think, 19 premium plugins now, and we only upsell closely related ones. So say someone&#8217;s bought a WooCommerce restaurant plugin, a lot of them sell things like pizzas or burgers that need extra toppings, which you can do with our product options plugin. So we&#8217;ll email the restaurant customers not saying, have you heard about WooCommerce product options? It&#8217;s great. We will say, do you want to sell extra toppings and charge for them for your pizzas and burgers and so on, and be really, really specific. And those emails get quite a good conversion rate. In fact, we have an email that we send about a week after purchase, which recommend handpicked products based on what they bought, and that does quite well at getting that second purchase in.</p>



<p>But let&#8217;s talk a bit about tools. So I&#8217;ve mentioned that we use MailChimp to send that, but there are other things as well. Obviously, there are many competitors to MailChimp, and whichever email marketing platform you use, you can integrate with your WooCommerce website. There&#8217;s also a WooCommerce plugin that I really like. It used to be called follow-ups, and then it got merged into a plugin called Automate Woo. It&#8217;s on WooCommerce.com, and you can use that to send different emails to your customers based on what products they bought. So if you have running shoes, for example, then instead of doing it through your email platform, you could do it through your WooCommerce store and have a different product as the trigger for each email. So that&#8217;s quite good. We actually do ours through Recapture because we sell through Easy Digital Downloads rather than WooCommerce and hardly anything integrates with that, which is really frustrating. So we use Recapture for our abandoned cart software and also for our follow-up emails that recommend related products and things. So there&#8217;s lots of tools. What do you use, Laura?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />My tooling has changed a little bit. I use ConvertKit for my emails, and then I did use Easy Digital Downloads, but I&#8217;ve actually just migrated completely over to Freemius, and that&#8217;s really nice because it has all the abandoned cart features built in. It&#8217;s actually got a lot of the email built in as well. So I&#8217;m putting a pause on my ConvertKit onboarding to just test out what they have out of the box because they say they do a lot of testing with the emails and try to time them quite well and do all that kind of stuff. So I&#8217;m just having a look at that at the minute. Talking about personalization. One tool I really like, and I have to say I&#8217;m a bit biased, this is my husband&#8217;s company, but he runs a company called Right Message, and that&#8217;s really nice because what it allows you to do is if you have, say, so I would have for Client Portal, maybe I&#8217;d have agencies or freelancers, we have law firms, accountants, all those different industries,</p>



<p>I can learn about different subscribers in ConvertKit and then change content on my website based on what I know about them. So for example, if I had a landing page and I was talking to an accountant via email, if they clicked through to my website, I could change the wording to speak more to accountants. And that&#8217;s been really fun to play around with just to make the whole experience more personal. One really easy example actually is if someone&#8217;s already on your email list and they go to your website, instead of seeing a popup to join your email list, which is annoying for a customer, but also annoying for you because you can end up with duplicate subscribers, they&#8217;ll see something else, so they might see nothing at all, or you could change it to be a popup for them to leave a review or join your affiliate program or something like that. So you can change what they&#8217;re seeing on your website based on what you know about them and where they are in your funnel, which is pretty nice. But other than that, I keep my tooling pretty simple. It&#8217;s mostly just Freemius, ConvertKit, Right Message, and that&#8217;s about it, I think.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Yeah, makes sense. About two months ago, I think we had Paul Halfpenny from the PersonalizeWP plugin on this show, and we talked about different personalization strategies and there&#8217;s a lot you can do, but we talked mostly about pre-sales, but that is a good point about onboarding as well, so that when customers log in, you can show them different information based on various factors. So there&#8217;s a lot you can do with that, which is quite a kind of modern approach that WordPress is just kind of starting to discover fairly recently, I would say.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s kind of crazy what you can do now. It&#8217;s a bit scary sometimes, but it&#8217;s fun to play around with. I think the thing that you can get caught up on is sometimes you can go a little bit deep on it and do a little bit too much, and the more complexity you add, I&#8217;ve learned this the hard way, eventually something&#8217;s probably going to break or go wrong and it can be really hard to untangle it. So I really try my hardest to keep things as simple as possible, but stuff like that is just really fun to play around with and it does really work as well. So yeah, it&#8217;s good.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Yeah, I&#8217;d suggest focusing on the biggest wins there. So not every possible customer&#8217;s use case needs to have personalized content. Maybe pick out your biggest use cases that you get the most sales from and create targeted content for those that&#8217;s going to have the most impact without being ridiculously complex.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, exactly. And just testing it as well, just making sure it works. It should work. Anything that&#8217;s more personalized should work. But yeah, it&#8217;s always good to test as much as you can,</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Which is kind of hard because you have to replicate the environment it&#8217;s targeted for, don&#8217;t you?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s really hard. I find testing it is a lot easier. The higher volume of everything you have, the easier testing becomes just because you get to see trends. If you don&#8217;t have a ton of traffic or you don&#8217;t have a ton of customers, it can be really hard to know why certain things happen. Is it a seasonal lull, for example? It&#8217;s like July right now, so it&#8217;s historically not a great month for, well, really a lot of people, everyone&#8217;s on holiday. It&#8217;s just so hard to know unless you&#8217;ve got a really big company to easily see those trends. But it&#8217;s still good to try and keep an eye on it if you can, but just not get too focused on the details, not looking every day, looking at trends maybe across months or even years sometimes.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Absolutely. It&#8217;s easy to panic if you have a drop in sales over the short term and you need to wait until it&#8217;s statistically significant, if I can say that.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />It&#8217;s hard because unless you track this data every year, so I&#8217;ve recently started keeping a spreadsheet of, and I&#8217;ve only done it for the last three years, but it is really useful. January is a particularly good month for me. Obviously, November is good, the summer is less good, and it&#8217;s interesting to see, and I know that every year I&#8217;ve probably had the same level of panic during the lower months that if I&#8217;d have just kept an eye on these trends, I might not have needed to panic so much. It just kind of happens.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Definitely. Last month we had Bryce Adams from Metorik on talking about reporting and how to get better data out of your online store because people often are having to create spreadsheets and things like that, whereas you should just have it at the click of a button. It&#8217;s kind of crazy how bad the reporting and things like WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads is straight out of the box, so you do need extra plugins and SaaS and so on to give you what you need or build it yourself.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, exactly. I find it hard with Easy Digital Downloads. I felt like they changed things quite a lot and I was never sure if the numbers were the same, but I do actually find no matter how good the reporting is, I do find something really useful about putting it into a spreadsheet each month because it forces me to really look at it and see where it&#8217;s changed. That might just be a me thing though.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Everyone works with data in different ways and so on. We ended up building our own custom system for Easy Digital Downloads to give us the data we needed because it was just so difficult. And then we found out this week that they changed something a few months ago that had broken all of our data, so we thought we had a massive drop in sales and a massive increase in renewals, but they had just changed internally how they classified sales and renewals. So it was a definition change, and we spent ages trying to work out why this would have happened. So again, never easy.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, that&#8217;s a nightmare.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Another aspect of onboarding, which I think people often forget about is the sequence that happens when the customer places an order and immediately afterwards. Since this is Do the Woo, I&#8217;ll use WooCommerce as an example. With WooCommerce, you have built-in emails and order statuses, and then when you change the order status, it triggers an email. I often find the default ones really unhelpful. I know Woo is actually working on this at the moment and thinking about how to improve the order statuses and the corresponding emails, but I ordered, I think it was a Woo T-shirt actually customized with the logo. So I received the email saying, thank you for your order. Fine. It said when it would ship. Fine. Then I received it, and then about a week later I received an order completed email from them. I&#8217;m like, hang on, I&#8217;ve already got it. I don&#8217;t care that you&#8217;ve marked it as complete on your system. And it wasn&#8217;t about me as the customer. I think that all store owners should think about things like these statuses. Another one is when you order a digital product in WooCommerce, it will set it to processing and send an email, and then you have to manually set it to completed, which sends another email. But of course, a digital product has been served automatically at the time they place the order, and so they don&#8217;t need another email. So you have to use a plugin order status manager to disable the completed email and all that stuff. So I&#8217;d say test it and think about your customer. Would you add anything to that, Laura?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Just that it&#8217;s always a good idea to periodically go through and buy your own product, just do a test purchase or something and just see what happens because things do change a lot. Even like you said, with the Easy Digital Downloads changing something, you never know what&#8217;s going to change. I recently did that and I found that all my images in the emails were coming out really massive. I guess ConvertKit had changed something or something had happened, but you just don&#8217;t know until you&#8217;ve gone through it as the customer. And that&#8217;s where you can really easily find those things where you&#8217;re getting these emails where orders are being set from process to complete and then they&#8217;re getting a notification you can go in and just hopefully turn that off. But yeah, that&#8217;s probably the best way to do it. I would say, maybe every six months, just go in and do a test purchase.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />You&#8217;ll probably be surprised at how many emails your poor customers are receiving because they get one from PayPal if they use PayPal and all the ones from your website. And you might have a per-product email with instructions for that particular product all at the same time. So you need to think how annoying is that for people as well?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, exactly. You get five emails at once that hopefully you can condense into just one email, which would be perfect.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />You mentioned earlier about the subsequent emails and making sure, say, your newsletter doesn&#8217;t go out at the same time as onboarding emails. I think that&#8217;s good advice on an ongoing basis too.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, exactly. There&#8217;s a lot you can optimize, and it can, like I say, get messy. Even simple systems can get messy really quickly depending on different customers if they use a different email address. I know you can&#8217;t account for every edge case, but I went down the rabbit hole years ago of doing some really cool things with email marketing, but I&#8217;ve drastically cut it back now just to make sure that everyone&#8217;s getting a similar experience and that I have a bit more control over what they&#8217;re seeing. So I&#8217;m not sending any emails out by mistake or anything like that.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />It can be a lot of work to keep all your emails up to date. We&#8217;ve got hundreds of automated emails because we have a sequence for each product, and I know they&#8217;re not as up to date as they should be.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />I think a lot of people document, they have a master document of all of their sequences, and I started putting that together for mine as well, just to keep somewhere completely separate, just in a Google Doc or something, to just write down the process. This is similar to the client onboarding as well. It&#8217;s how I got started with it. Just bullet point every single touch point with either the client or the customer in as minute detail as possible, as many different edge cases as possible, and then just try to figure out what the ideal most smooth process would look like, whether that&#8217;s creating email sequences, whether it&#8217;s creating templates or even just templated emails using text expand or something like that just for these commonly repeatable tasks that happen within your process. I think it&#8217;s really useful. Just spending, it can take an hour, maybe if that, and it&#8217;s super, super valuable.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />I have a Google Doc with a list of all our emails and when they&#8217;re sent so that we can see it in one place, but that doesn&#8217;t have the content of the emails, so it&#8217;s still a big job to update them.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />And you have to remember to update when I make an update somewhere, update it elsewhere as well, which can be hard.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Before we finish, let&#8217;s talk about measuring the success of your onboarding. Do you have any advice on how to track the effectiveness of your onboarding efforts and what you might look at to judge what you&#8217;re doing?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />On the WordPress plugin side, I mostly look at refund rates. I think if I do a good job of onboarding, my refund rates go down. I have actually found recently my refund rates have decreased by quite a lot. In part, it&#8217;s due to the fact that we did completely overhaul the product, and it now uses the block editor and it&#8217;s really, really nice. But another thing that I did was I put an awful lot of effort into the getting started video, and I used feedback that we&#8217;ve had from customers, common questions where customers have got stuck, things that seem really obvious to me as the creator of the product that weren&#8217;t clearly obvious to the customers. I&#8217;ve then included it in the video, and I spent a long time making this video as good as it can be and just improving that onboarding process.</p>



<p>And now, I don&#8217;t know, unfortunately, whether the refund rate has reduced because of the new product or the onboarding or a combination of both. But I have noticed anecdotally that we are getting far fewer support requests from people who are just struggling to get started with the product. So I don&#8217;t handle support myself, but I do keep an eye on it. Most days. I try and just see what people are asking, and I get my support person to do a weekly report with any issues, common themes of issues people had, and virtually none since we released it. I think in, I want to say April are how do I get started? And we actually did used to get that quite commonly before then. So that&#8217;s kind of how I measure it. Like I said, it&#8217;s quite a small company, it&#8217;s not a massive company, so I can&#8217;t do a ton with analytics and stuff. But yeah, I just keep an eye on refund rates and then just my general support in that respect. And then for client onboarding, it&#8217;s similar to that, but even more extreme.</p>



<p>You could have hundreds of customers, but maybe a dozen clients or something. So it&#8217;s harder to manage and to really know, but generally you&#8217;re talking to clients, so you&#8217;re getting a feel for, are there any assumptions that they had that were perhaps wrong? If so, maybe you could fix that in your onboarding. Do they say, &#8220;Wow, I&#8217;m really enjoying working with you. This is really great.&#8221; That&#8217;s something that can give you an indication as to whether it&#8217;s done correctly. One other thing I do with clients actually is I tend to send out a</p>



<p>questionnaire when the project&#8217;s only just started, and it&#8217;s similar to the questionnaire that you&#8217;d send at the end to get their feedback, but I do it more towards the beginning and find out how it&#8217;s going so far. Generally, clients are pretty excited, and that gives me a really good indication of how did they find the onboarding experience? Was it good? Was it great? Was there any improvements? That kind of thing&#8217;s helpful. So yeah, I just track it really, I guess anecdotally is the best way to say it.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />I think that works for clients in particular. If they&#8217;re asking questions that you should have told them, if they&#8217;re asking really basic questions about the process, expectations, anything like that, then that&#8217;s a problem with your onboarding, isn&#8217;t it?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, exactly. And there&#8217;s always ways you can fix that, especially if it&#8217;s common things. I think I mentioned earlier scope creep for me was always the biggest one. It always happened, and I hadn&#8217;t set that expectation. I put together a proposal and it was fairly detailed, but something had changed. It may not have been the client&#8217;s fault, it may not have been my fault, but something has changed. Well, who&#8217;s responsible for taking on that extra cost? Is it me? Is it the client? And if you have these conversations in the early stages, it just makes things a lot easier further down the road when you&#8217;re inevitably going to hit these roadblocks that everyone experiences when working with clients.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Yeah, scope creeps a good one because everybody deals with it. I find the best way to handle it is one, to make it clear what was included, as you say, through clear documentation and proposal and all of that. And then when the customer does ask for something that wasn&#8217;t in the scope, I think it&#8217;s nice to be kind of positive. Well, that&#8217;s a great idea. I think that&#8217;s a really big improvement to what we have planned. Let me cost it out for you. You haven&#8217;t said no, that&#8217;s not included, have you as a positive? No.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, that&#8217;s exactly what I would do as well is I would say I would always start with yes. So I talk in a lot of Facebook groups with freelancers and agencies, and it&#8217;s really interesting to see it as a third party where a client, there&#8217;s a bit of scope route going on, a client needs something else, and the freelancer is already assuming that the client is going to be really annoyed if you charge them any more for it. But the client has not indicated that they&#8217;re annoyed. I&#8217;ve worked with people and the scope increased, and I have, in my head, I&#8217;m thinking, of course the price is going to go up. I shouldn&#8217;t need to say that&#8217;s obviously going to happen, but the freelancer could then go into this spiral of this is going to be a massive conflict. And they start with, I did say in the proposal it was going to include this, this and this. This wasn&#8217;t included. I&#8217;m not going to do it. Whereas if you just say, oh, great idea, yeah, it&#8217;ll be an extra blah or Let me cost it out, or whatever you say, but I think that&#8217;s a great thing to do. I think I&#8217;ve never had pushback when I just said it like that, or if I have, it would be not a conflict, but more just like, actually, let&#8217;s just wait on that and maybe do that later, or something like that.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Yeah, the time you get pushback is when you don&#8217;t tell them straight away. So if you send them a higher bill than expected at the end of the project, that can be a disaster. And I&#8217;ve made that mistake and lost a lot of money and had very unhappy customers in the past through when we were doing web design work. So you need to be clear before there are extra costs, but matter of fact about it, they probably assumed you would charge extra anyway.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s actually very similar to how I deal with my three-year-old. I&#8217;ve noticed that if she wants something, and if I say no, if it&#8217;s a, if I say no, the second she asks for it, there tends to be not really much of a meltdown. Whereas if I dance around the subject and I sort of maybe give excuses or reasons and then eventually say no further down the line, that&#8217;s when full on meltdown happens that I think it&#8217;s kind of similar when just dealing with anyone, if it&#8217;s don&#8217;t string people along, get their hopes up or whatever. And then even if you&#8217;re in the right, dump something on them at the last minute, just be really upfront, professional, positive, calm, and just not defensive. And then things just generally, in my experience anyway, seem to just work out a lot better.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for this, Laura. It&#8217;s been great, and I think we&#8217;ve covered a lot of really concrete advice that people can hopefully go away and implement in their own businesses. So where can people find you online?</p>



<p>Laura:<br />I am mostly around on Twitter, so it&#8217;s @LauraLizDunn. If you want to check out Client Portal, the website&#8217;s clientportal.io. That&#8217;s pretty much where I&#8217;m at. Not on LinkedIn yet, but I am probably about to sign up. Apparently that&#8217;s the place to be.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Everyone&#8217;s talking about it, but I just can&#8217;t bear the idea of another social media.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />I know. I do have an account. I just haven&#8217;t logged in since I was in university.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Same. Yeah. Yeah, neglecting account. Well, thank you so much. You&#8217;ve been an amazing guest and thanks to everybody who&#8217;s watching as well or listening.</p>



<p>Laura:<br />Lovely. Thank you so much. Bye.</p>



<p>Katie:<br />Bye.</p>
</div>




<p>In this episode of <strong><em>Woo BizChat</em></strong>, host <strong>Katie Keith</strong>  is joined by special guest <strong>Laura Elizabeth, the founder of Client Portal</strong>, to have a conversation on the crucial topic of onboarding. </p>



<p>Whether you&#8217;re a freelancer seeking to refine your client onboarding process or an e-commerce store owner looking to effectively onboard your customers, this discussion offers valuable insights and practical tips. Laura shares her extensive experience and strategies for creating a smooth, professional onboarding experience that sets the stage for successful projects and satisfied clients. </p>



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



<p><strong>Importance of Onboarding</strong>: Onboarding sets the tone for the entire project, establishing trust and clarity from the start. A well-structured onboarding process can help manage client expectations and reduce issues like scope creep.</p>



<p><strong>Pre-Onboarding Qualification</strong>: It’s important to qualify clients before onboarding to ensure alignment on budget and project scope. Tools like intake questionnaires and discovery calls can save time and prevent misunderstandings.</p>



<p><strong>Using Templates</strong>: Creating reusable templates for onboarding documents such as getting started guides, questionnaires, and contracts can streamline the process and ensure consistency.</p>



<p><strong>Client Portal Benefits</strong>: A client portal can serve as a centralized place for clients to access essential documents and project information, reducing the need for extensive email communication and improving the client experience.</p>



<p><strong>Email Onboarding for Ecommerce</strong>: For ecommerce stores, email sequences can play a significant role in onboarding. Short, valuable tips and personalized content can enhance customer engagement and satisfaction.</p>



<p><strong>Testing and Optimization</strong>: Regularly testing the onboarding process by going through it as a customer can highlight areas for improvement. Keeping the process simple and focused on the client’s needs is essential.</p>



<p><strong>Measuring Success</strong>: Key metrics like refund rates and support request volumes can indicate the effectiveness of the onboarding process. Gathering feedback early in the project can also provide valuable insights for improvement.</p>



<p><strong>Handling Scope Creep</strong>: Addressing scope changes positively and transparently can help manage client expectations and avoid conflicts. Clearly communicating additional costs upfront is crucial.</p>



<p><strong>Personalization</strong>: Personalizing content based on customer data can significantly improve engagement and relevance. This can be applied to both email communication and website content.</p>



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



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong><a href="https://x.com/lauraelizdunn">Laura on X</a></strong></li>



<li><a href="https://client-portal.io/"><strong>Client Portal</strong></a></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://client-portal.io/email-course/">Free Ebook and Course</a></strong></li>



<li><strong><a href="https://fullybookedva.com/virtual-assistant-finder/">Fully Booked VA</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, 30 Jul 2024 09:02:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:37;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:55:"Gravatar: Mastering Decentralized Identity for Business";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"http://blog.gravatar.com/?p=1748";s: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:71:"https://blog.gravatar.com/2024/07/30/decentralized-identity-management/";s: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:21120:"<p>Imagine having complete control over your personal identity information without relying on a centralized authority. Well, that’s absolutely possible with decentralized identity management – an innovative system that allows individuals to own, control, and manage their identity data.</p>



<p>So, how does it work?&nbsp;</p>



<p>Decentralized identity management uses cutting-edge technologies like blockchain to distribute identity data across a network. By doing so, it enhances security and ensures that no single entity has complete control over sensitive information. Users can selectively share specific identity attributes using cryptographic keys and digital wallets, giving them granular control over what personal information is disclosed and to whom.</p>



<p>In this article, we&#8217;ll explore the key benefits, real-world applications, and technological advancements driving this revolutionary approach. And if you&#8217;re wondering how to implement decentralized profile management on your website, we&#8217;ve got you covered with a closer look at <a href="https://gravatar.com/">Gravatar</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Importance of decentralized identity management for businesses</strong></h2>



<p>Businesses face many challenges when managing customer identities. From data breaches to identity theft, the risks are real and can have devastating consequences. Decentralized identity management offers a secure and efficient means of user control, though this involves effective implementation through navigating technical complexities, regulatory uncertainties, and user adoption hurdles.</p>



<p>Let’s look at the full benefits of decentralized identity management!</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Enhanced security and fraud prevention: </strong>By distributing personal identifiers across a network, decentralized systems make it incredibly difficult for hackers to access and steal sensitive information. Even if one node in the network is compromised, the data remains safe, as it&#8217;s not stored in a central location. This added layer of security helps businesses protect their customers&#8217; data and reduces the risk of costly data breaches.</li>



<li><strong>Regulatory compliance: </strong>With strict data protection laws like the <a href="https://gdpr-info.eu/" rel="nofollow">General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)</a> and the <a href="https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa" rel="nofollow">California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)</a> in place, companies must be transparent about how they handle customer data. Decentralized systems make this easier by giving users control over their personal information, such as deciding what data to share and with whom.</li>



<li><strong>Operational efficiency:</strong> In traditional systems, businesses often waste time and resources on repetitive verification processes. With decentralized identity, they are replaced with fixed audit trails and verifiable credentials, which are much more efficient. Companies can quickly and easily verify customer identities without the need for redundant checks, saving time and money in the long run.</li>



<li><strong>Building trust and loyalty with customers: </strong>By giving people control over their personal data, companies show that they value privacy and are committed to protecting sensitive information. This level of transparency and respect can go a long way in fostering long-lasting relationships with users, ultimately leading to increased retention and loyalty. </li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Importance of decentralized identity management for users and customers</strong></h2>



<p>Decentralized identity management is becoming more important as users seek greater control over their personal information. However, there’s much more to it than that.&nbsp;</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Interoperability:</strong> Standardized protocols allow identity data to be used across various services. Users don&#8217;t need multiple accounts or to go through repeated verification checks, which reduces hassle and makes the online experience smoother.</li>



<li><strong>Security against identity theft: </strong>Decentralized identity systems provide strong security features. These systems protect users from identity theft and fraud. By reducing reliance on centralized databases, the risk of data breaches decreases.</li>



<li><strong>Enhanced user experience: </strong>Users can enjoy a more streamlined experience. No need to remember multiple usernames and passwords. Logging into different services becomes quicker and more convenient.</li>



<li><strong>Control over personal data: </strong>Users have the power to manage their own identity information. They can decide how much data to share and with whom. This approach reduces the risk of personal data misuse and enhances privacy.</li>
</ul>



<p>One example is signing up for a new service online. Traditionally, this involves creating a new account, verifying email addresses, and setting up passwords. With decentralized identity management, users can leverage their existing identity credentials to sign up, saving time and effort.</p>



<p>Decentralized identity management is an incredible technical innovation that changes how people interact with digital services. By putting control back into the hands of users, it promises a future where personal data is more secure and user experiences are more enjoyable. And that&#8217;s something worth looking forward to.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Centralized vs. decentralized identity management</strong></h2>



<p>Understanding the differences between centralized and decentralized identity management systems can help businesses and users make informed decisions.&nbsp;</p>



<p></p>



<table class="has-contrast-background-color has-background has-fixed-layout"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Aspect</strong></td><td><strong>Centralized identity management</strong></td><td><strong>Decentralized identity management</strong></td></tr><tr><td><strong>Control</strong></td><td>Controlled by one entity, meaning users rely on this entity to manage their identity data.</td><td>Users have control over their identity information, distributing authority and reducing dependency on a single organization.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Security</strong></td><td>Vulnerable to data breaches because all data is stored in one place. If that central database is compromised, all stored identities are at risk.</td><td>Spreads the data across multiple points, making it harder for hackers to access all information. This reduces the chance of a large-scale data breach.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Scalability</strong></td><td>Easier to scale within a company&#8217;s existing infrastructure since it relies on a singular, controlled environment.</td><td>Scaling decentralized systems involves challenges such as ensuring network size doesn&#8217;t affect performance and maintaining interoperability between different Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs).</td></tr></tbody></table>



<p></p>



<p>For example, if a large company&#8217;s central database is hacked, all user data could be compromised. In contrast, a decentralized system&#8217;s distributed nature means that even if one node is breached, the overall impact is minimized.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Decentralized vs. federated vs. self-sovereign identities</strong></h2>



<p>Navigating the different types of identity systems can be tricky. Let&#8217;s break down the differences between decentralized, federated, and self-sovereign identities.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Decentralized identity</strong></h3>



<p>Users own and control their identity without intermediaries, and their data is not stored in a single central location, reducing the risks of breaches. This system is gaining traction as data privacy and security become more critical in the digital economy.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Federated identity</strong></h3>



<p>Here, multiple organizations allow the same identity credentials to access various services, so the user data is somewhat centralized, but it’s still spread across the entities involved. It’s very similar to using your social media account to log into different apps and websites – convenient but involves sharing your data with multiple entities.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Self-sovereign identity</strong></h3>



<p>This is an extension of decentralized identity, where users have minimal reliance on any secondary parties for their identity management. They decide when and with whom to share data, and no third party holds their information.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Applications of decentralized identity management</strong></h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Online authentication</strong></h3>



<p>Decentralized identity systems enable users to securely authenticate their identities when accessing various online services. Instead of relying on a central authority to manage their identity data, users can prove their identity using cryptographic keys associated with their decentralized identifiers.&nbsp;</p>



<p>This approach enhances security by reducing the risk of data breaches. For example, logging into an online service with a DID means your identity is verified without exposing sensitive information to potential hackers.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Government registries</strong></h3>



<p>Government registries can issue digital versions of traditional IDs, such as passports or driver&#8217;s licenses. Imagine having a digital credential that verifies your age or nationality without needing to disclose your full identity.&nbsp;</p>



<p>This can be particularly useful for online age verification or when proving residency for government services. By using decentralized identity systems, governments can streamline verification processes while improving privacy and security for their citizens.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Educational institutions</strong></h3>



<p>Universities and colleges can act as issuers by providing digital credentials that verify educational achievements. For example, a university could issue a credential that confirms an individual&#8217;s degree. This can be used when applying for jobs or further education, making the verification process more efficient and secure.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Instead of sending physical transcripts or certificates, individuals can share their verified credentials instantly and securely with potential employers or educational institutions.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Financial Institutions</strong></h3>



<p>Similarly, banks and other financial institutions can issue their own credentials that verify financial information, such as creditworthiness or account ownership. These digital credentials can streamline the process and enhance security when applying for loans or conducting high-value transactions.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Just like with universities, instead of providing physical documents to prove account ownership, customers can present a digital credential issued by their bank. This reduces paperwork and speeds up transactions while maintaining high levels of security.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Understanding key technologies in decentralized identity management</strong></h2>



<p>Decentralized identity management relies on several cutting-edge technologies that focus on security, privacy, and user control. Let’s take a look:</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Web 3.0</strong></h3>



<p>The internet is evolving into Web 3.0, with a shift that brings decentralized applications and services to the forefront.&nbsp;</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>User empowerment: </strong>Unlike earlier versions of the internet, where big companies controlled most data, Web 3.0 gives users control over their own digital identity. This enhances privacy and ownership as users decide what information to share and with whom.</li>



<li><strong>Infrastructure support: </strong>Web 3.0 provides the necessary infrastructure for decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials. These tools let users manage their identities securely without needing a central authority.</li>
</ul>



<p>For example, logging into different online services can be done using a single, user-controlled identity, improving security and convenience. Web 3.0 makes this possible, creating a more secure and user-friendly online experience.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Blockchain</strong></h3>



<p>Blockchain technology is fundamental to decentralized identity systems. Here&#8217;s why:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Immutable and distributed nature:</strong> Blockchain is a distributed ledger that records transactions in an immutable and secure way. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, ensuring the integrity of the entire chain.</li>



<li><strong>Security and trust: </strong>Blockchain&#8217;s decentralized nature means there&#8217;s no single point of failure, making it highly secure. Transactions recorded there are transparent and verifiable by all participants, fostering trust.</li>



<li><strong>Platforms: </strong>Blockchain platforms like <a href="https://ethereum.org/en/" rel="nofollow">Ethereum</a> support decentralized applications (dApps) that are essential for identity management. These platforms provide the infrastructure for creating and managing DIDs and verifiable credentials.</li>
</ul>



<p>For instance, Ethereum&#8217;s smart contract functionality lets you create complex identity management systems that operate autonomously and transparently.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Cryptography</strong></h3>



<p>Cryptographic techniques like hashing and public-key cryptography are essential for protecting data. Hashing converts data into a fixed-size string of characters that is unique to the original data. Public-key cryptography, on the other hand, involves a pair of keys – public and private – that enable secure communication.</p>



<p>These cryptographic methods allow one party to prove to another that they know a value without revealing the value itself. This is crucial for secure user authentication without exposing personal information.</p>



<p>For example, when a user logs in to a service using a DID, cryptographic techniques ensure their identity is verified without revealing their underlying data.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)</strong></h3>



<p>DLT is a system where data is stored across multiple locations, making it decentralized and resistant to tampering. Unlike traditional databases, which are centralized and vulnerable to hacking, DLT spreads data across a network of nodes. So, there is no single point of failure, making it extremely hard to alter records without detection.</p>



<p>This technology helps to maintain secure and transparent records of identity verifications and transactions. For example, in a decentralized identity system, when a user verifies their identity, the transaction is recorded on a distributed ledger. This ensures that the verification is tamper-proof and can be independently audited.</p>



<p>DLT&#8217;s transparency and security features make it ideal for managing identities, ensuring that users&#8217; data remains safe and verifiable without relying on a single, centralized authority.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Decentralized identifiers&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p>Decentralized identifiers are globally unique identifiers that are a key component of decentralized identity systems. Unlike traditional identifiers like email addresses or usernames, these are created, owned, and controlled by the user. They are linked to verifiable digital credentials, including information like your name, age, or professional qualifications.</p>



<p>One of the more interesting features of DIDs is their interoperability across different networks and platforms, enabled by distributed ledger technology. This means a DID you use on one website can also be recognized and verified on another, eliminating the need to create separate accounts.</p>



<p>For example, you can use it to log into a social media platform and then use the same DID to access your bank account. DIDs&#8217; interoperability ensures a hassle-free and secure experience across various services while keeping you in control of your data.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Verifiable Credentials (VCs)</strong></h3>



<p>Verifiable credentials are vital in enhancing user privacy and control over personal data. A verifiable credential is a digital certificate that proves a claim about an individual, such as their age or educational qualification, without revealing unnecessary personal information.</p>



<p>VCs have three main components: the claim, the proof, and the issuer. The claim is the actual statement about the user, such as “John has a master&#8217;s degree”. The proof is the cryptographic evidence that supports the claim, ensuring its authenticity and integrity. The issuer is the trusted entity that provides the credential, like a university or government.</p>



<p>This technology is great because it <a href="https://blog.gravatar.com/2024/02/21/securing-cyber-space-role-of-digital-identity-verification/">allows users to prove their identity</a> or qualifications selectively. For example, when applying for a job, a user can present a VC that verifies their degree without sharing their full academic record. This selective disclosure helps protect privacy while ensuring the necessary information is verified. And because these credentials are digital, they can be easily and securely shared online, making processes faster and more efficient.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>How Gravatar paves the way for decentralized identity in profile management&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="403" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/gravatar-homepage-1-1.png?w=660" alt="Gravatar homepage" class="wp-image-1750" />



<p><a href="https://gravatar.com/">Gravatar</a> is a profile management system that lets users create profiles linked to their email addresses instead of their names. This gives users <a href="https://blog.gravatar.com/2024/04/10/personal-branding-tools/">control over their online identities</a>, allowing them to remain anonymous or curate different profiles for various aspects of their lives.</p>



<p>For businesses, integrating Gravatar into their online portals streamlines profile creation by importing profile data directly from Gravatar. The best part? Users remain in full control of their data.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Here&#8217;s how:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Centralized profile hub: </strong>A Gravatar profile acts as the central hub for all profiles on Gravatar-enabled sites. When users update their Gravatar profile, the changes automatically reflect across all linked profiles, saving time and ensuring consistency.</li>
</ul>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="373" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/gravatar-profile-example-1.png?w=660" alt="Example of a Gravatar profile" class="wp-image-1751" />



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Privacy control: </strong>Users have complete control over their privacy settings and can decide how much data businesses can access. This empowers users to share only what they’re comfortable with.</li>
</ul>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="281" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/gravatar-privacy-settings-1-1.png?w=660" alt="Gravatar privacy settings" class="wp-image-1752" />



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Compliance and data security: </strong>By using Gravatar, businesses don’t need to store user data, reducing the burden of data management and compliance with regulations like GDPR. This reduces risk and enhances data security.</li>
</ul>



<p>Imagine a freelancer who uses different profiles for various gigs. With Gravatar, they can manage all these profiles from a single place. Updating their contact information in one spot means it’s updated everywhere, without the need to log into multiple sites or type in the same information over and over again.</p>



<p>Gravatar&#8217;s approach to profile management aligns with the principles of decentralized identity by giving users control and reducing reliance on centralized data storage. It&#8217;s a practical step towards a more secure and user-centric internet.</p>



<p>Curious about how Gravatar can benefit your website? <a href="https://blog.gravatar.com/2024/02/27/gravatar-manifesto-one-profile-everywhere/">Check out our manifesto</a> to learn more about integrating Gravatar for decentralized profile management.</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, 29 Jul 2024 22:26:04 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Ronnie Burt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:38;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"Gravatar: 3 Easy Steps to Transform Your WordPress Profile Picture System";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"http://blog.gravatar.com/?p=1910";s: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://blog.gravatar.com/2024/07/19/wordpress-profile-picture/";s: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:14059:"<p>We have heard from some of you that you would rather not use Gravatar for your profile pictures in WordPress. Our feelings aren&#8217;t hurt, promise, as we know you have your reasons!&nbsp;</p>



<p>In this guide, we&#8217;ll explore different ways to change the profile picture system in <a href="https://wordpress.org/" rel="nofollow">WordPress</a>, catering to various user preferences and needs. Before moving on to other solutions, we’ll start by showing you how to easily change your profile picture using your Gravatar profile – which as you’ll see, is the simplest method and requires no additional plugins or setup on your WordPress site.</p>



<p>However, if you&#8217;re looking for more customization options or want to give your users the ability to upload their own profile pictures directly on your site, we&#8217;ll also cover alternative solutions.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Before we dive in, it’s important to note that in WordPress, different user roles have different permissions related to their profile pictures (namely, whether they can upload their own or not). Let’s break these down quickly:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Administrators can change their own profile picture, as well as the profile pictures of any other user.</li>



<li>Editors can change their own profile picture.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Authors and Contributors cannot change their profile picture by default. However, this capability can be granted to them by an Administrator using a plugin or custom code.</li>



<li>Subscribers cannot change their own profile picture through the WordPress dashboard. The only way for them to have a profile picture is to use Gravatar.</li>
</ul>



<p>Now that that’s covered, let’s discover the best ways to update profile pictures in WordPress!</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>How to change your WordPress profile picture with Gravatar&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="403" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/gravatar-homepage-2-2.png?w=660" alt="Gravatar homepage" class="wp-image-1923" />



<p><a href="https://support.gravatar.com/basic/what-is-gravatar/">Gravatar</a>, short for &#8220;Globally Recognized Avatar,&#8221; is a service provided by <a href="https://automattic.com/">Automattic</a>, the company behind <a href="http://wordpress.com" rel="nofollow">WordPress.com</a>, <a href="https://woocommerce.com/" rel="nofollow">WooCommerce</a>, <a href="https://jetpack.com/" rel="nofollow">Jetpack</a>, and other leading entities in the WordPress space and beyond. It’s a popular tool and free service for managing avatars across multiple sites, and it’s fully integrated into the platform.&nbsp;</p>



<p>By default, WordPress pulls avatars from Gravatar, so if you have a Gravatar account, your avatar will automatically show up on your <a href="https://blog.gravatar.com/2024/05/09/wordpress-profile-page/">WordPress profile</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="291" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/wordpress-default-picture.png?w=660" alt="Profile picture settings in WordPress" class="wp-image-1922" />



<p>If not, you’ll see a generic icon like the Mystery Person, or generated icons like MonsterID, Wavatar, or Identicon, depending on your site’s settings.</p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="123" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/gravatar-profile-image-options-1.png?w=660" alt="Example of the generic icons " class="wp-image-1921" />



<p>To use Gravatar, you need to make sure the email you use on WordPress matches the one used for Gravatar.&nbsp;</p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="128" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/confirm-email-for-website.png?w=660" alt="Email section in the WordPress account settings" class="wp-image-1920" />



<p>If you don’t have a Gravatar account, creating one is straightforward. Here’s how to do it:</p>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://support.gravatar.com/basic/account-signup/"><strong>Sign up for Gravatar</strong></a><strong>:</strong> Visit Gravatar&#8217;s website and sign up with the email address you use for your WordPress account.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>



		
			<div class="jetpack-videopress-player__wrapper"> </div>
			
			
		
		


<ol start="2" class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Upload your image: </strong>In the sidebar menu, click on &#8220;Avatars,&#8221; and choose to upload an image from your computer, URL, or select from previously uploaded images.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>



		
			<div class="jetpack-videopress-player__wrapper"> </div>
			
			
		
		


<p>Once your Gravatar is set up, it will appear as your profile picture on all WordPress sites supporting it. Remember, changes might take some time to reflect due to caching, so don’t worry if it doesn’t update immediately.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>How to enable users to change their WordPress profile pictures in the frontend&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>Besides your own profile picture, you might also want to change the image for your users, which is what we recommend. Giving users the ability to change their profile pictures directly from the front end can greatly enhance the user experience on your WordPress site. There are several ways to achieve this, so let’s dive in!&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Use a WordPress plugin for custom avatars</strong></h3>



<p>Plugins are a powerful tool for managing custom avatars in WordPress. They offer additional features, ease of use, and seamless integration with other WordPress functionalities. Here’s a look at some of the top plugins you can use to let users change their profile pictures from the frontend.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Profile Press</strong></h4>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="332" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/profile-press-download-page.png?w=660" alt="Profile Press download page" class="wp-image-1916" />



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-user-avatar/" rel="nofollow">Profile Press</a> is a paid membership tool allowing admins to create custom user registration and login forms and a user profile section where registered visitors can change their profile pictures.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Key features:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Customization options for user profiles, registration forms, and more.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Allows users to reset their profile pictures, passwords, and other information.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Allows admins to curate a detailed member directory that is searchable and filterable.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



<p>This plugin comes with many features, but it can be a bit more complicated for people who just want the option to change profile pictures. It’s also not free: The pricing starts from $129/year for 1 site, and even if you want the lite version, there’s still a 2% Stripe fee.&nbsp;</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Simple Local Avatars</strong></h4>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="312" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/simple-local-avatars-download-page.png?w=660" alt="Simple Local Avatars download page" class="wp-image-1915" />



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-local-avatars/" rel="nofollow">Simple Local Avatars</a> enables users to upload avatars directly to their profiles through the WordPress Media Library to manage images, making it an excellent choice for those who prefer keeping everything within their site.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Key Features:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Adds an avatar upload field to user profiles who have permission to do so.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Falls back on Gravatar if no custom picture is chosen.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Stored the pictures in an “Upload” folder where the rest of your media is.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Avatar Manager&nbsp;</strong></h4>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="386" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/avatar-manager-download-page.png?w=660" alt="Avatar Manager download page" class="wp-image-1914" />



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/avatar-manager/" rel="nofollow">Avatar Manager</a> is a great solution for managing avatars. Users can choose between Gravatar, a custom-uploaded image, or a default-generated avatar.</p>



<p>Key Features:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Supports Gravatar and custom uploads.</li>



<li>Option to fall back on default avatars if needed.</li>



<li>User-friendly profile interface.</li>
</ul>



<p>Avatar Manager is a free user-driven project and one of the most simple solutions if you want to give your users more control over their profile pictures in WordPress. However, it hasn’t been tested with the last three WordPress updates so make sure it’s fully compatible and working before integrating it into your website.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Choosing the right plugin depends on your site’s specific needs and user preferences. Don’t hesitate to try out a few different options to see which one works best for your community. Each plugin offers unique features that can enhance how users interact with their profiles, making your site more engaging and user-friendly.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Explain to users how to change profile pictures via Gravatar&nbsp;</strong></h3>



<p>Changing profile pictures via Gravatar is the easiest method and doesn&#8217;t require installing anything on your WordPress site. However, not every user may be familiar with Gravatar or understand how it connects to their WordPress profile picture.</p>



<p>To help your users navigate this process, consider providing a brief explanation of what Gravatar is and how it works with WordPress. You can include this information in a visible section on your website, such as the <a href="https://blog.gravatar.com/2024/05/09/wordpress-profile-page/">user profile page</a>, or the welcome email sent to new users upon registration.</p>



<p>Here&#8217;s an example of what you might say:</p>



<p>&#8220;To change your profile picture on our site, you&#8217;ll need to create a Gravatar account. Gravatar, short for &#8216;Globally Recognized Avatar,&#8217; is a service that allows you to maintain a consistent profile picture across multiple websites, including WordPress sites like ours.</p>



<p>To get started, visit <a href="http://gravatar.com">Gravatar.com</a> and sign up using the same email address associated with your account on our site. Once you&#8217;ve created your account, upload a new profile picture or choose from existing ones. Your chosen image will automatically update on our site and any other WordPress sites where you use the same email address.</p>



<p>Please note that changes might take some time to reflect due to caching. If you have any questions or need assistance, don&#8217;t hesitate to reach out to our support team.&#8221;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Enhance user profiles with deeper Gravatar integration</strong></h2>



<p>For admins looking to enhance the user experience, WordPress&#8217;s integration with Gravatar offers more than just profile pictures. With <a href="https://docs.gravatar.com/api/rest-api/">Gravatar&#8217;s REST API</a>, you can create detailed user profiles that display additional information alongside avatars. This API allows you to pull in data such as user bios, social media links, and more, providing a richer profile experience.</p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="411" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/gravatar-profiles-as-a-service-2.png?w=660" alt="Gravatar for developers homepage" class="wp-image-1913" />



<p>Another great feature to consider is <a href="https://support.gravatar.com/profiles/hovercards/">Gravatar Hovercards</a>. These pop-up cards display when someone hovers over a user&#8217;s avatar. Hovercards can show the user&#8217;s bio, social media links, and other Gravatar profile information. This adds an interactive element to your site, giving visitors more context about each user without navigating away from the page.</p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="344" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/hovercards-example.png?w=660" alt="Example of a Gravatar hovercard" class="wp-image-1912" />



<p>To implement Gravatar Hovercards, just add the following code to your website:</p>



<pre class="wp-block-code"><code><a href="https://www.gravatar.com/js/hovercards/hovercards.min.js">https://www.gravatar.com/js/hovercards/hovercards.min.js</a>
&lt;script&gt;
( function() {
  function init() {
    Gravatar.init();
  }
  if( document.readyState !== 'loading') {
    init();
  } else {
    document.addEventListener( 'DOMContentLoaded', init );
  }
} )();
&lt;/script&gt;</code></pre>



<p>Integrating these features is straightforward and can provide a more personalized and engaging experience for your users.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Get started today: Implement an effective profile picture system</strong></h2>



<p>Customization is very important for websites that rely on user communication and engagement. The abovementioned plugins can be a great alternative to the default avatar system. However, keeping Gravatar as an option is beneficial because it allows users to transfer their digital identities easily with just an email, avoiding the need to create a new profile for each WordPress site.</p>



<p>Admins can further enhance the user experience by integrating Gravatar more deeply into their site. This can be done by using Gravatar&#8217;s REST API to provide additional profile information and features beyond avatars.</p>



<p>When making a decision, consider your audience and what would serve them best. For an improved and customized user experience, <a href="https://docs.gravatar.com/">check out Gravatar’s REST API integration</a>.&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, 29 Jul 2024 21:47:49 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Ronnie Burt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:39;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s: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:"Gravatar: Encouraging Discussion: Simple Steps to Enable Comments 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:32:"http://blog.gravatar.com/?p=1881";s: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:66:"https://blog.gravatar.com/2024/07/11/enable-comments-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:20579:"<p>One of the biggest benefits of having a WordPress website is the opportunity to create a loyal community from scratch, particularly by enabling comments on blog posts. When people have the option to interact with your content, they build a deeper connection with you as the author, and they also connect with other like-minded individuals.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Comments are a valuable form of user-generated content that can boost your SEO by keeping your pages fresh and updated. However, managing comments can come with challenges like spam and moderation.</p>



<p>In this article, we&#8217;ll walk you through the steps of enabling and disabling comments, preventing spam, changing user avatars, filtering content, and using tools like <a href="https://gravatar.com/">Gravatar</a> and <a href="https://akismet.com/" rel="nofollow">Akismet</a> to enhance your comment section. By the end, you&#8217;ll have all the knowledge you need to create an engaging community around your WordPress blog.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>How to enable comments in WordPress</strong></h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Enable comments on new posts</strong></h3>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>Go to <em>Settings &gt; Discussion</em>.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="501" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/settings-discussion.png?w=660" alt="Navigating to the discussion settings" class="wp-image-1883" />



<ol start="2" class="wp-block-list">
<li>Enable the option for people to comment on new posts.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="156" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/allow-comments-on-new-posts.png?w=660" alt="Default discussion settings for posts" class="wp-image-1885" />



<ol start="3" class="wp-block-list">
<li>Save your changes.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Enable comments on specific posts</strong></h3>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>Navigate to <em>Posts &gt; All Posts</em> or <em>Pages &gt; All Pages</em>, depending on what you want to edit. We’ll go with a post in this example, but the process is the same for pages.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="347" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/posts-all-posts-gravatar.png?w=660" alt="Navigating to the Posts list table" class="wp-image-1886" />



<ol start="2" class="wp-block-list">
<li>Choose the post or page and click <em>Edit</em>.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="347" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/edit-post-gravatar.png?w=660" alt="Editing an individual post" class="wp-image-1887" />



<ol start="3" class="wp-block-list">
<li>Go to the <em>Discussion</em> panel, which is located in the <em>Post</em> tab of the <a href="https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/" rel="nofollow">Gutenberg</a> block editor, and click on <em>Allow comments</em>.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="359" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/allow-comments-individual-post-gravatar.png?w=660" alt="Allowing comments for a specific post" class="wp-image-1888" />



<ol start="4" class="wp-block-list">
<li>Click <em>Update</em> or <em>Publish</em>, and you’re done!</li>
</ol>



<p>Enabling comments for a particular post or a page can be useful in many cases. For example, if you release a new big feature of your product or service, you can create a post announcing it and enable comments to gather feedback, while the comments for the regular updates stay disabled.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>How to disable comments in WordPress</strong></h2>



<p>While encouraging comment discussions can be great, you also need to make sure that your site has a clean and professional appearance. Sometimes that means disabling comments to prevent spam, inappropriate content, or heated debates on controversial topics. Disabling comments may also be necessary if you have limited moderation resources, want to maintain focus on your content, or have legal concerns. Ultimately, the decision depends on your unique situation and goals for your WordPress site.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Disabling comments globally</strong></h3>



<p>To disable comments for your entire site, go back to <em>Settings &gt; Discussion </em>and then uncheck the box that says “<em>Allow people to post comments on new articles</em>.”</p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="157" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/uncheck-allow-comments-global-1.png?w=660" alt="Disabling comments for all future posts" class="wp-image-1889" />



<p>Remember that this setting will only affect future published posts and pages, not the existing content.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Disabling comments on existing posts and pages</strong></h3>



<p>To do this, you have two options. You can either go back to the individual post settings and uncheck the <em>Allow comments </em>box, or you can do this in bulk for multiple posts.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For the second option, do the following:&nbsp;</p>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>Select all the posts you wish to change the settings for.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="379" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/select-posts-to-edit.png?w=660" alt="Selecting multiple posts for bulk editing" class="wp-image-1890" />



<ol start="2" class="wp-block-list">
<li>Click on the <em>Bulk Actions </em>dropdown menu, select <em>Edit</em>, and then click <em>Apply</em>.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="278" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/bulk-actions-edit.png?w=660" alt="Bulk actions menu in WordPress" class="wp-image-1891" />



<ol start="3" class="wp-block-list">
<li>In the bulk edit window, find the settings for the comments and change them to <em>Do not allow</em>. Save the changes.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="276" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/disallow-comments-in-bulk.png?w=660" alt="Disabling comments from the bulk editing window in WordPress" class="wp-image-1892" />



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Moderating comments with default WordPress settings</strong></h2>



<p>Disabling comments for some posts is okay, but we don’t recommend doing that for your entire blog as it puts a big barrier to communication between you and your audience. Instead, you can learn how to moderate comments through different methods.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Let’s see them!&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Accessing comment moderation settings</strong></h3>



<p>From your WordPress dashboard, go to <em>Settings &gt; Discussion</em> and there you will find more settings related to comment moderation.</p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="247" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/other-comment-settings.png?w=660" alt="Comment settings in WordPress" class="wp-image-1893" />



<p>One of the options, for example, is to make the commenter fill out their name and email, but that isn’t always effective in deterring more dedicated spammers as they will just fill out a fake name and email.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The other option is to limit comments only to registered users, which is great at first glance, but in reality, may discourage new users from engaging with your content. Not everyone wants to register for a site just to post a comment.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The last content moderation feature here is closing comments on posts older than a number provided by you, for example, 14 days. This is also not ideal because it takes time for blog posts to rank, and ideally your content will be discovered by new users long after it’s been published.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Manual approval of comments</strong></h3>



<p>Further down in the settings, you will find the manual approval functionality.</p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="103" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/manual-approval-comments.png?w=660" alt="Settings for manually approving WordPress comments" class="wp-image-1894" />



<p>Here, you can choose to be notified for each comment or to only do that for people who comment for the first time. This is a great way to filter out spam and make sure only relevant comments are posted. However, it can be a bit overwhelming when your blog grows, and all of a sudden you have hundreds of comments to approve every day.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you do have regular readers, their comments will be automatically approved.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Keyword and phrase moderation</strong></h3>



<p>Further down, you’ll find a box where you can include a list of trigger words that will put comments for moderation.&nbsp;</p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="282" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/content-moderation-and-links.png?w=660" alt="Content moderation window in WordPress" class="wp-image-1895" />



<p>Common spam keywords include:&nbsp;</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>CTAs</strong> like “<em>Act now!</em>”, “<em>Apply now!</em>”, “<em>Call now!</em>”, “<em>Don’t hesitate!</em>”, etc.&nbsp;</li>



<li><strong>Almost anything including the word “Free”</strong>, such as <em>“free consultation”</em>, <em>“free offer”</em>, <em>“free trial”</em>, etc.&nbsp;</li>



<li><strong>Anything related to extra income</strong>, such as <em>“additional income”</em>, <em>“be your own boss”</em>, <em>“grow your business”</em>,<em> “double your”</em>, <em>“earn $”</em>, <em>“earn extra cash”</em>, <em>“earn from home”</em>, <em>“expect to earn”</em>, and many more.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



<p>In the field above this box, you can also limit the number of links allowed in the comment, as one of the more common forms of spam includes links that prompt people to sign up for something.&nbsp;</p>



<p>There is also the option to directly delete comments with certain content, and it’s called “<em>Disallowed Comment Keys.</em>”</p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="223" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/disallowed-comment-keys.png?w=660" alt="Disallowed Comment Keys box in WordPress" class="wp-image-1896" />



<p>This setting allows you to include special keywords and phrases that signal spam and uncensored comments. If any of these words appear in the content, whether it’s the actual comment or the user name, email, IP address, and URL, then the comment will be automatically put in the <em>Trash</em>.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Email notifications</strong></h3>



<p>All of these triggers will appear as notifications but you can also enable emails so that you can keep a close look at your blog at any time.&nbsp;</p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="151" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/email-notifications.png?w=660" alt="Email notification settings for comments" class="wp-image-1897" />



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Regular review and maintenance</strong></h3>



<p>Once you have all the settings you want, you also need to regularly check your spam folders for potential legitimate comments. Just because a comment was flagged as spam does not always mean it is genuinely spam.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It’s also recommended that you update your trigger words to include specific instances from your comment section, as well as email addresses, which are confirmed spammers.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Deep dive into avatar settings in WordPress</strong></h2>



<p>The avatar settings in WordPress allow you to customize how users appear on your website. You can go there by navigating to <em>Settings &gt; Discussion</em>.&nbsp;</p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="338" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/avatar-settings.png?w=660" alt="Avatar settings in WordPress" class="wp-image-1898" />



<p>WordPress is connected to <a href="https://gravatar.com/">Gravatar</a>, a digital identity platform by Automattic, that allows users to create a unique profile connected to their email address. By default, WordPress pulls in user avatars from Gravatar, using the profile connected with the same email address. If they don’t have a Gravatar profile, a default picture will appear, which you can change from the same settings.&nbsp;</p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="355" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/default-avatar-settings.png?w=660" alt="Default avatar options" class="wp-image-1899" />



<p>Generally, it’s recommended that you encourage users to create and customize their Gravatar profiles instead of staying anonymous. This will help with consistency on your website but also many other aspects:&nbsp;</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Personalization: </strong>Custom avatars allow users to express their identity and make discussions more engaging.</li>



<li><strong>Recognition: </strong>Unique avatars help users recognize each other, fostering a sense of community.</li>



<li><strong>Professionalism: </strong>For businesses, consistent branding with a logo avatar builds credibility.</li>



<li><strong>Visual appeal: </strong>Avatars make comment sections more visually appealing and inviting for interaction.</li>
</ul>



<p>By encouraging users to create Gravatar profiles, you can drastically reduce the amount of spam you receive as Gravatar users are always connected with legitimate email addresses. Besides that, they are often linked with their social media accounts, which are automatically verified by the platform.&nbsp;</p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="373" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/gravatar-profile-example-1-1.png?w=660" alt="Example of a Gravatar profile" class="wp-image-1901" />



<p></p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="383" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/verified-accounts-gravatar.png?w=660" alt="Linking verified social media accounts to a Gravatar profile" class="wp-image-1903" />



<p>If you want to learn more about how Gravatar profiles work, <a href="https://gravatar.com">check out our documentation</a>!&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Tool to elevate comments sections on WordPress</strong></h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Prevent spam with Akismet Anti-Spam</strong></h3>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="351" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/jetpack-akismet.png?w=660" alt="Akismet Anti-Spam homepage" class="wp-image-1904" />



<p><a href="https://akismet.com/" rel="nofollow">Akismet</a> is a tool by Jetpack created specifically to battle spam on WordPress sites. It comes packed with features that allow you to automate verification processes and create a distraction-free environment for your genuine users to engage and comment on posts and pages.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Its main features include:&nbsp;</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Automatic spam detection: </strong>The plugin automatically detects and filters out spam comments, trackbacks, forum posts, WooCommerce product reviews, and contact form submissions. Everything is sent to the <em>Spam</em> folder.&nbsp;</li>



<li><strong>Real-time monitoring:</strong> This feature captures spam right as it happens. Unwanted comments and submissions are automatically removed so that your site doesn’t include this type of content even for a second.&nbsp;</li>



<li><strong>Spam reporting:</strong> Users can teach Akismet by reporting spam directly from the WordPress dashboard, improving its accuracy and helping it learn your specific triggers. This way, no legitimate traffic is flagged as spam.&nbsp;</li>



<li><strong>Full integration: </strong>The plugin easily integrates with popular contact form plugins like <a href="https://wpforms.com/" rel="nofollow">WP Forms</a>, <a href="https://www.gravityforms.com/" rel="nofollow">Gravity Forms</a>, and more, and it also has a reliable spam protection network.</li>



<li><strong>Compliance with regulations: </strong>With Akismet, you can choose to display a privacy notice so that people are aware of their comments being scanned by a tool. This helps you become fully compliant with regulations like the <a href="https://gdpr-info.eu/" rel="nofollow">General Data Protection Regulation</a> in the European Union.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



<p>Its spam-protection capabilities work both on comments and form submissions so you can receive only relevant and real user interactions.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Leverage Gravatar profile integration for a better community</strong></h3>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="411" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/gravatar-profiles-as-a-service-1-2.png?w=660" alt="Gravatar – Profiles-as-a-service" class="wp-image-1906" />



<p>Beyond WordPress’s default integration with Gravatar for pulling in user avatars, Gravatar’s REST API allows website owners and developers to <a href="https://blog.gravatar.com/2024/06/03/profiles-as-a-service/">import user profile data</a> and build customized profile pages for their WordPress users. This powerful integration enhances the overall experience on comment threads by enabling users to visit commenter profiles and learn more about them.&nbsp;</p>



<p>When integrated, the REST API gives you access to important user information such as:&nbsp;</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Their profile bio</li>



<li>Location&nbsp;</li>



<li>Website URLs</li>



<li>Payment links</li>



<li>Verified social media profiles</li>



<li>Additional images</li>



<li>And much more!</li>
</ul>



<p>With this data, however, WordPress site owners can create dynamic and informative <a href="https://blog.gravatar.com/2024/06/05/user-profile-page-examples/">user profiles</a>, which can significantly improve the sense of community and encourage more meaningful interactions within comment sections.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It’s also great for the overall user experience because it gives your visitors a special place on your site without having to register and fill in the same information from scratch.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Another great feature of Gravatar is the <a href="https://blog.gravatar.com/2023/10/02/new-gravatar-hovercards-faster-open-source-and-everywhere/">Hovercard</a> – a dynamic mini-version of a user’s Gravatar profile that shows up when you hover your mouse over their <a href="https://blog.gravatar.com/2024/07/19/wordpress-profile-picture/">profile picture</a>. </p>



<img tabindex="0" width="660" height="360" src="https://blog.gravatar.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/gravatar-comment-section.png?w=660" alt="Example of a Gravatar hovercard in a comment section of a blog post" class="wp-image-1907" />



<p>This allows other site visitors to quickly access information about another user without leaving the page, giving them valuable context in the specific situation.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Actively using and encouraging users to take advantage of Gravatar has the power to create strong communities that actively engage with each other. It also incentivizes them to create and maintain their digital identities with the platform.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Ready to build an engaging platform? Activate comments in WordPress now&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>With the right tools and techniques, WordPress comment sections can become a hub for engaged communities and a place to foster loyal relationships with users and other visitors. And if you’re apprehensive because of potential spam, remember that the payoff from having a community is definitely worth it.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It improves your reputation and takes your website to a whole different level – from a passive content platform to a place where people can communicate with like-minded individuals, share ideas, and learn new things.&nbsp;</p>



<p>With Gravatar profiles and the REST API, this communication hub can become even more engaging, so don’t wait! <a href="https://docs.gravatar.com/">Integrate your website with Gravatar today</a> and make your comment sections come alive!&nbsp;</p>



<p></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 29 Jul 2024 21:41:58 +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:11:"Ronnie Burt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:40;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"Do The Woo Community: A Journey to WordPress and Contributing with Birgit Olzem";s: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=84922";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"https://dothewoo.io/a-journey-to-wordpress-and-contributing-with-birgit-olzem/";s: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:33431:"Episode Transcript
<div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p>BobWP:<br />Hey, BobWP, yes, it&#8217;s me. You&#8217;re probably wondering what I&#8217;m doing here on The WordPress Way, DEIB. We decided to do something a little bit different this month. That doesn&#8217;t mean that you are going to be missing our wonderful host that is usually here, Birgit, but we thought this time let&#8217;s learn about Birgit. I mean, I&#8217;ve had a few hosts on different shows, and we&#8217;ve learned more about their journey, and it&#8217;s always fun, and I&#8217;ll probably even learn things I don&#8217;t know. So I am looking forward to it. So yeah, Birgit is here. Hello, Birgit, how you doing?</p>



<p>Birgit:<br />Hello, Bob. I&#8217;m doing fine, thanks, and thanks for sharing the idea or turning tables. It&#8217;s interesting.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />It&#8217;s fun. It&#8217;s always fun. I did that in the very early years when we had three co-hosts. I did a kind of highlight. I called it Unplugged. Each one of them unplugged, and we just went through their own story and learned a little bit more about them. So I&#8217;m excited for it. And I think the best way to start is everybody&#8217;s always curious, especially some people because you&#8217;ve heard it so many times, but I don&#8217;t even know if I have heard how you got into WordPress or what drove you to WordPress. So why don&#8217;t you tell us a little bit about that?</p>



<p>Birgit:<br />Well, that is kind of funny, but also interesting for those who don&#8217;t know me yet, especially or didn&#8217;t see, I am a white woman almost 50 years now, and I&#8217;m a mom of five almost grown-up children, and I also have already two grandchildren. My ex-husband back in the day was a truck driver, so I was over the weekdays alone with all our children. And when my children went to bed, I had a lot of time to spend, and I was always a curious person. I learned about computers back in school, and I went to a business school and learned about Word, Excel, bookkeeping, all the stuff. And when we got our first personal computer, I was always in. And then when we got the internet, I was sucked in. I opened a new reel to my perception. So I need to preface this a little bit because it&#8217;s kind of funny.</p>



<p>Imagine a woman breastfeeding one of the children, sitting next to a computer in a chat room, and talking about stuff, and someone shared a link to a personal website. I was so stoked about that. I was so curious. Oh, I want to build websites myself. How does it function? I&#8217;m always a person who wants to look behind the curtains and how things work. And then I went down this rabbit hole, learning about HTML, how to build websites with iframes and tables. So crazy. And no, none of those websites are live anymore, so I can&#8217;t share them with the world today. But yeah, pivoting from HTML, and then you have to change everything. When you want to change, you have to change the navigation on every page when you build it in classic HTML and so on. And I was tired of that. So how can I get dynamic data too? So I learned about PHP and some frameworks and how to do that, and somehow I stumbled upon Typeform and B2/cafelog back in the day, and I was like, interesting. You can publish something and put it in the world without worrying about changing any hardcoded links to something. So I played with that, and then I learned that B2/cafelog would be discontinued, and it was forked by someone and called it WordPress. And I was one of the persons who installed WordPress on their web servers from this first release. I played around, but I wasn&#8217;t really serious about it yet back in the day. But in 2005, I was asked to build a website for someone. I didn&#8217;t use WordPress for building websites, just playing and fiddling around with my personal projects.</p>



<p>But it meant I started to get self-employed as a side hustle to be more legal and serious about it. And since then, oh wow, always as a side hustle, I learned more about website building, and I didn&#8217;t have the chance to go to some form of professional training. Everything I know today I taught myself scrolling through the internet. Selfhtml.de was one of my plates. I learned a lot about just asking questions and checking other blog posts. And then when YouTube started to be a thing, I learned about that. I also experimented with Joomla, Drupal, Typo3, which is more popular in Germany, and so on. I also managed one time I was working with a primary direct marketing with call center and address data management and so on. I went to my boss one day and told him, our website sucks, it doesn&#8217;t look very good. And he told me, okay, come up with a new concept. I did it in one week, and then I founded the web design department in that company. Wow. I pivoted from a mom with five children learning HTML and designing websites in the afternoon and when the kids are asleep or something to running a web design department in a small business company, we had around 150 employees back in the day. So building websites and also later building apps and using WordPress as a data management backend. When REST API became a thing, I&#8217;m more of a generalist because I have multiple interests. Maybe my divergent traits come into play on that. But on the other hand, it&#8217;s ongoing consistency in my life building websites and fiddling around with new stuff and maybe sometimes running after the new shiny objects. So I&#8217;m kind of weak for these shiny objects, but on the other hand, it&#8217;s always sparking new ideas and so on.</p>



<p>And that is how I came to WordPress. And then I was building websites. And then I found a theme framework called the Extreme theme, which was utilizing back in the day the YAML CSS framework. It&#8217;s like today, the Bootstrap or Tailwind CSS framework. But YAML was the other part, and it&#8217;s kind of a page builder theme back in the day. I was really interested and founded by a German workforce engineer. He unfortunately passed away too early back in the years, but I was part of the forum members. We grew friendship over that. And someday he talked about, oh, I&#8217;m going to a WordCamp in Berlin, and you need to come. And I was, Ooh, I am a girl in a rural area in western Germany, and I have five children. I don&#8217;t go to a big city like Berlin. But somehow I managed to go to the WordCamp.</p>



<p>I met with the people I adored back in the day, people who ran blogs like Frank Bültge, co-founder of Inpsyde. I learned that those people are normal people like you and me. But somehow back in the day, I put people on a pedestal because I looked up to them. But on the other hand, it was really good. This stoked me with the WordPress community. It was my first encounter, and this was 2010, and I was infected by the WordPress event virus. I needed to go to WordCamp. Then I learned about, oh, you can contribute to WordPress, to the project, and you can help with that. And so we grew, and then 2011 was my next WordCamp in Cologne, which is more nearby in my hometown. But also 2011, a big pivot year in my personal life because I finally separated from my then-husband living in a toxic marriage.</p>



<p>I lost a good friend of mine to cancer in the same year. Two years earlier, my mom died. So there was so much going on in my life, but WordPress and building websites were always a consistent pillar in my life. Then I met Robert Windisch, you know him, the man with the hat, the other hat. Robert was also one of the founding partners of a site back in the day called Inpsyde. In 2009, I specialized in training WordPress instead of just building websites, and I ran individual training for small business owners and small companies and so on. I joined forces with them in 2012, first as a self-employed contract trainer, and later they took the leap and employed me on a part-time job. One of the first tasks when I&#8217;m not training, I should have maintained the translations for WordPress in German.</p>



<p>For those who don&#8217;t know how that works, I need to go into that because it&#8217;s really important. The agency site was founded because of some people who joined forces and translating WordPress back in the day was translating in the code. Can you imagine translating and changing the original code? It&#8217;s a no-go today. So for everyone who doesn&#8217;t know, don&#8217;t work and edit core software. They started a community forum, and over that, they grew and got asked for contracts and so on. They built a company. That is a long time ago, but over the years, they always maintained the German translation for WordPress in two variants. One is the informal, it&#8217;s the default version, but also the formal translation for formal speech. In Germany, we have two different forms of that. So it means you need to maintain two language sets.</p>



<p>Back in the day, we also needed to alter some files of the core software before we could release a German language pack and the German compiled version. When I started translating WordPress as an employee of Inpsyde or outside, I learned how to compile WordPress. Imagine, a tired Birgit. The kids are asleep, and I&#8217;m sitting there waiting in the IRC chat room for the WordPress core to get the announcement that a new version was released because then I needed to go to compile the translation files. I prepared and tested beforehand with the original file, and then go to the backend of WordPress.org and compile a package and then push the button for release. So imagine this kind</p>



<p>of sweating, dripping experience in the middle of the night because the majority of the developers were sitting in the US, based more in San Francisco.</p>



<p>So the time zone shift to Germany was something. So it&#8217;s gotten easier over the years, but this experience and my natural curiosity, which comes with my larger divergent trait, was always leading the path where I am currently now. So contributing to WordPress and building communities, fostering relationships. So in 2013, when Remkus de Vries and Zé Fontainhas founded the WordCamp Europe, this was my first international WordCamp. So in 2013, 11 years ago, that opened another gate. In 2013, I was privileged with the travel assistance program, or I learned about the travel assistance program for the community summit, and I traveled to WordCamp San Francisco and Community Summit in 2014. This was my first touchdown on US soil. That&#8217;s crazy. It&#8217;s so crazy. Given the fact that I, as a mom of five children, divorced back in 2014, I was just joining a new partnership after three years of being a single parent and leaving my children.</p>



<p>The majority were already older now, but my youngest was eight and a half years old, my youngest, back in 2014. Also, being a person with mobility issues, it is kind of challenging to travel internationally. But this is a backstory of how I got involved with WordPress and how I started contributing to WordPress and fell in love with the community. I really fell because I care a lot about the people. And that brings me to today, why I am so advocating for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Because I come from a position where I had to think about how I can feed my children the next day. So low income because of different circumstances, having a part-time job over all the years, not filling the fridge and dealing with a toxic marriage and so on, getting no child support and all the stuff. I know how it feels to be not that privileged.</p>



<p>Even if I&#8217;m living in a privileged country, I live in Germany, I&#8217;m in a pretty safe space. We have a decent healthcare system. But still, given all that, I see a lot of injustice, and where I see injustice, I am going to fight for that. I try to be the voice for those who can&#8217;t raise their voices, even if it&#8217;s someone who&#8217;s introverted or doesn&#8217;t know where to speak or who to speak with to change things. A good friend of mine phrased it. I&#8217;m some kind of an overarching glue to all within the community because as someone who&#8217;s a generalist and not a specialist in a certain area, I know a lot, but on the surface, only in certain areas, I&#8217;m more likely to dive deep. But yeah, so that is helping to connect. I&#8217;m more the person who connects others, and that is why I&#8217;m advocating so much.</p>



<p>And I&#8217;m also not shy to speak out when I see there&#8217;s injustice. But I also try to consider and not to dive into some kind of drama. Even if I see drama unfold on social media like Twitter or X now or whatever it&#8217;s called today, I try to find all voices within this drama and see, okay, what is this side? What is this side? Where do we have some kind of overlap? And then I try to be constructive with my feedback. So I don&#8217;t want to fuel the fire, but not shutting down the fire but giving it direction in a productive way. And that is why I&#8217;m always asking to have some kind of an overview above the organization of the WordPress open source ecosystem, how we can make sure that everyone is treated equally, that everyone gets the same chance even if they don&#8217;t have the same starting point.</p>



<p>So especially WordPress as an open-source system. And when you see I am with WordPress since its first release, I saw a lot of progress, but still, we have so many areas where you don&#8217;t have to know how to code and that is not that obvious. But on the other hand, it&#8217;s also not so attractive for some companies to put money on those areas of the WordPress ecosystem where there&#8217;s also a lot of work to do. And since I&#8217;m thinking about this accessibility team, which makes sure that the software project and everything issues like needing to raise assistive technology, but also for someone with neurodivergence is the UX and so on. The next part is documentation. How many contributors do we have which are sponsored to document our fast-pacing software development, but also community and making sure that areas like the DEIB within WordPress so that the DEIB principles can be applied in the daily work of the majority of people who are volunteers so they don&#8217;t get some formal training on how to behave, even if it might be common sense in certain areas of the world to treat people nicely and kindly.</p>



<p>We have a worldwide project which also has a lot of different cultures and histories and sees the diversity not only in the color of the skin, diversity also the diverse range of age, the diverse range of knowledge where people are coming from. So when I compare myself with a core developer who got some formal training at MIT, for instance, so I can&#8217;t compare myself, it&#8217;s because I&#8217;m self-educated, but on the other hand, I have traits and knowledge in other areas where we can combine those and create a better experience for everyone. So yeah, it&#8217;s a long story to share.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />A lot to unpack there. Yeah, and one of the interesting things, you went through a lot of different phases, you touched on a lot of different things there. No wonder we connected so well. You and I have so many similarities, just not in the timeline, but in attitude and how we feel about things. I think you started with the first release, and I started like you, just dabbling in 2006. The interesting thing with me was I&#8217;d already been doing marketing, running a marketing company for 17 years prior to WordPress. In the, I believe it was, I don&#8217;t know if it was the mid or late eighties, I took a year of computer programming. I thought I needed to learn this. So I spent a year learning Cobol, Assembly Language, FORTRAN, and Basic, and it was absolutely a nightmare to me. I mean, I was fascinated by computers.</p>



<p>I loved doing what I could do, but getting inside of them, opposite of you, was fearful. It was like, whoa. But having done that got me very comfortable with computers too, which I don&#8217;t regret spending that year because it just felt like I got it more than some people. And unlike you, I went in kicking and screaming into any kind of building sites, doing HTML, just horrible flash sites for a couple of clients. I knew I had to get into it owning a marketing and design business. I&#8217;d been doing print design for so many years, but when I found WordPress in 2006 and started playing with it, it was mostly around the blogging part that fascinated me. I was already into content. My wife was already doing stuff on Typepad, and she had an award-winning blog way back in the days. I discovered WordPress as a rescue for me.</p>



<p>It was like, wow, I can build a site using one of these themes. I got a theme from iThemes, one of their early themes, shortly after they started, and I built our own little brochure site. I thought, wow, this thing actually looks professional now and I can make changes. So I was forced into it, not so much ever really wanting to dive in. I was curious about the code, but not so curious as wanting to do it yet. I&#8217;ll leave that to the other people that want to do that and are good at it. But just all the things. My first WordCamp was in 2010, San Francisco. A lot of similarities. It&#8217;s amazing. Just how you got into contributing. I did kind of the different side of things. It wasn&#8217;t like official contributions, but it was educating, consulting, writing, being more of a teacher and trainer in WordPress all those years. So we both went on similar paths. We&#8217;ve been privileged, but in the sense that we went through some very rough times in our business and stuff, and some really tense times, and you have more empathy. I feel like I have it because I am always thinking of the other person and how they feel versus just what I&#8217;m thinking.</p>



<p>Birgit:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s really interesting and you mentioned something about this empathy part, but also caring a lot about other people. And when I had some rough times, I mentioned I went from a toxic marriage to being a single parent and fighting for the rights of my children, et cetera. I&#8217;m very vocal about my history and sometimes I was so hard struggling with my mental health and also all the stuff going on in my life. But as I mentioned, WordPress and the community are always some of the stable pillars in my life, and I&#8217;ve spoken about that already. I shared it in some talks at a WordCamp. WordPress literally saved my life at some point in my life where maybe I said a trigger warning. I had moments in my life where I was questioning if it&#8217;s worthwhile to stay alive and then I just vented it out and spoke to someone and I reached out to someone and they immediately jumped in and supported me.</p>



<p>That is a moment in my life where I always tear up when I&#8217;m sharing that, even in the darkest moments, when you have the courage to reach out to someone, even if it&#8217;s a stranger on the internet, you may have built a relationship over the internet. But so many people in this community jumped in supporting me. The recent example was collecting funds so that I could afford to travel to WordCamp Europe and to Sweden this year. The WordPress community has my back all the time when I reach out and am vocal about and share my vulnerability. So to be vulnerable is not a bad thing. As long as we turn our</p>



<p>vulnerability into something we can grow and build upon, and create more empathy for someone else who may have a similar struggle. I learned about that my crowdfunding campaign this year to go to WordCamp Europe inspired someone to take action in another similar direction and also see their initiatives like the WP Community Collective.</p>



<p>They got inspired by the crowdfunding campaign to fund contributors to travel to WordCamps. We have great initiatives that support speakers to travel to WordCamps, but someone who is contributing to WordPress and doesn&#8217;t have, maybe due to several facts, the ability to afford to travel, but to be accepted as the speaker at a WordCamp. That is something I learned about, even if I shared my vulnerability, not to earn empathy, but just to share, Hey, I feel this way now. So if someone has something to spare, I&#8217;m really appreciative of this. But thinking about looking back on that, how much this might have positively affected someone else. So in retrospect, everything I touched in my life had somehow affected someone else&#8217;s life. That is how I always also try to be alert to everything I do, how someone else&#8217;s life may be influenced by that. I&#8217;m not forcing that, but I try to consider every decision I make, does this affect someone else negatively? That is what you say about empathy.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah, exactly. Let&#8217;s step back and put ourselves in this person&#8217;s shoe or from this person&#8217;s view or whatever, because a lot of times what&#8217;s being said or what&#8217;s being told, we&#8217;ve all been there. And that&#8217;s the thing a lot of people lose is the ability to go back and say, oh, I remember when I was in that spot. Like you said, traveling between costs of just traveling, especially if you&#8217;re traveling internationally, you&#8217;re taking a day or two on each end just to get there. And then you&#8217;ve got the actual event and you&#8217;re away for a week. So not only are you spending money for a lot of these people, they&#8217;re not making money during that time. They don&#8217;t have the luxury of being given the time off for something. They have to close down shop and do that thing, even though that may be productive and helpful to their business.</p>



<p>Birgit:<br />Exactly. And thinking of traveling, especially for someone with mobility issues, I need to plan ahead every move because walking distances is still kind of challenging. Even if I now have two hip replacements,<br />Mechanically, I can walk, but my body isn&#8217;t used yet to this kind of movement. So it takes a while to get on board. Again, as someone with neurodivergent traits, I like to know where I&#8217;m going and what kind of obstacles I may face and how to get from A to B in the most effective way so it doesn&#8217;t drain my energy too much so I can be alert when I&#8217;m there. But it&#8217;s still also overwhelming meeting new people and a lot of people at events like WordCamp Europe, WordCamp US, or WordCamp Asia. These are the flagship events with 2,000 or 3,000 attendees. And also traveling abroad internationally, it&#8217;s always challenging to the body, even if someone is healthy and fit.<br />It&#8217;s draining.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s brutal, is what it is. Yeah.</p>



<p>Birgit:<br />So thinking of someone who has more mobility issues or someone who has more weight on their bones than someone else, finding a good safe spot to sit. I experienced entering some chairs with very unfortunate positions of armrests and so on, which my butt didn&#8217;t fit in really well.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s kind of difficult to sit down, but on the other hand, I can&#8217;t assume that everyone can acknowledge that beforehand, but I can share my experience. For instance, I tend to speak to WordCamp organizers, especially WordCamp Europe and WordCamp US, to make sure that there are enough seating positions also in the hallways so that people who might need to take a rest, especially for someone we are barely out of the pandemic, and the pandemic showed up that someone who was infected with this viral infection can suffer from syndromes like chronic fatigue. You don&#8217;t see that when someone is challenged with chronic fatigue syndrome. So you have to take a rest because you are going out of breath when you are walking 20 meters or 30 meters, so you may need to take a rest. So to make sure that the WordCamp event or the WordPress event venue accommodates the situation, not only do we need accessible restrooms, and hopefully the cleaning staff doesn&#8217;t put any cleaning supplies within the accessible restrooms so that someone with a wheelchair can&#8217;t navigate.</p>



<p>That is also an example when you see something where you see, okay, this might affect someone else. Going back to the empathy part, if you see something, maybe the instance I experienced at WordCamp Europe on the first conference day and I went to the restroom as someone with mobility issues, I prefer accessible restrooms because they&#8217;re more convenient to use, even if I don&#8217;t have a wheelchair. But not having a wheelchair is not an excuse not to use accessible restrooms for everyone who wants to judge why someone is using an accessible restroom. Even if they can walk, there may have other reasons to use an accessible restroom, just to note. But I imagine I witnessed that the cleaning staff had their cart with all the cleaning supplies and if someone with a wheelchair would have accessed the room, they wouldn&#8217;t have had any chance to navigate through that because the washing thing was blocked. I reported that immediately to the organizing team, and they went to the venue facility manager and it was solved the next day because it was the end of the event. But yeah.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah, I was just thinking those wet floor signs that they put out too could be a real issue because they have to try to put it somewhere where you can see it, but that could be right in the way too.</p>



<p>Birgit:<br />Yeah, exactly. And that is something when you see, and that is why I urge everyone to first use common sense, then ask yourself, does this affect someone else negatively? I can&#8217;t expect that everyone knows everything, but if you have someone in your family or friend surroundings who may have faced some issues, try to be advocating for their convenience if possible. We can&#8217;t please everyone to be fair, so we can do as much as possible even if we can&#8217;t accommodate everything and include everyone and everything. But to be in a balance and make it, because there&#8217;s a saying, talking about also WordPress websites, having accessible WordPress websites, it&#8217;s not only benefiting those who need it but benefits everyone. Accessibility benefits everyone. And that is also true for venue traveling, et cetera.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah. Yeah. Well, this has been great because this has not only been learning about everything you do or have done and then how you got into your passion around what you&#8217;re doing on this show but also a conversation about it. So it was just a very nice rounded chat we had. And we can see why you do this once a month on here at Do the Woo. So this is very cool and I appreciate being able to turn the table and I think everybody likes to learn a little bit more about our hosts. And I&#8217;m just going to throw this out. It&#8217;s a little bit of an opportunity. I haven&#8217;t had a chance to talk about it regarding our news site. So for those of you that listen to various shows, we do have a way now we have our sponsors, which I adore, and they make this whole thing possible.</p>



<p>But there is another way of giving back to this show and that is supporting each specific show. And what that means is you can go in and you can give a one-time gift or you can subscribe for a couple of different amounts, but that money actually will go to the host of the show. It doesn&#8217;t go into running the show or anything. And as Birgit mentioned, she&#8217;s been lucky to have the support of the community. And that&#8217;s what this is going to be. It will either help the hosts themselves with their contributions, the time they spend on that, their travel. And for some of our hosts, maybe they don&#8217;t feel they need that because of their position and where they are at this time in their life. And they&#8217;ll say, Hey, let&#8217;s give it to one of these related WordPress organizations that do help speakers and contributor travel.</p>



<p>So if you&#8217;ve been listening to a show and you&#8217;re really getting into it and you want to give something back to that show&#8217;s host, we&#8217;ll pull that together, figure out what to do with it, and you&#8217;re actually supporting them because they&#8217;re driving all the shows and they&#8217;re doing all the front face work and stuff. I&#8217;m just running behind the scenes doing all the other stuff, except occasionally I come in and have the opportunity to do great interviews and chats with my friends like this. So I appreciate it. And yeah, this has been absolutely wonderful. Anything you want to say before we sign off?</p>



<p>Birgit:<br />Yeah, on the first end, I really want to thank you again, Bob first for creating this kind of great show and place to learn, but also offering the spot for people like me to talk about topics we care about a lot, but also giving someone else a voice where they can share also their story and learnings so that everyone can benefit from that. I am also very appreciative of all the work you are doing in the backend, which is not seen by everyone. So a special shout out again to you, but for the listeners, I want to say if you want to go and make a difference, there are several ways you can join the WordPress community and you don&#8217;t need to know how to code. There are certain areas where you can contribute your time and knowledge. And if you have any questions, please reach out to me. I&#8217;m Coach Birgit on all the socials on the Make WordPress Slack. Also, you can reach out to Bob if you have any questions. We are really happy to guide you in the right direction where you can contribute your passion to the project.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Well, thank you and thank everyone for listening. If you&#8217;re not subscribed, you can subscribe to the</p>



<p>old channel, or you can just subscribe to your favorite show. And we are trying to push more people back to commenting. This is my own little mission. I would love for you to come in on the post and comment and share your thoughts on anything we talked about. Of course, Birgit is always looking for wonderful guests that want to come in and talk around the issue of DEIB. So please consider that as well. And my final thank you to Birgit for being a wonderful guest.</p>



<p>Birgit:<br />Thank you for being a wonderful host.</p>
</div>




<p>In this special episode of <strong><em>The WordPress Way, DEIB</em></strong>, <strong>BobWP</strong> turns the tables and has a chat with our regular host, <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/host/birgit-olzem/">Birgit Olzem</a></strong>. You will learn about Birgit&#8217;s fascinating journey with WordPress, from her early days of learning HTML while caring for her children to becoming a pivotal contributor and advocate for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging within the WordPress community. </p>



<p>Birgit shares her personal story of overcoming challenges, building a career in web design, and finding strength and support in the WordPress community. This episode is a heartfelt exploration of her passion, resilience, and dedication to fostering a more inclusive and empathetic tech space. </p>



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



<p><strong>Birgit&#8217;s Journey to WordPress:</strong> Birgit&#8217;s journey began with her curiosity about computers and web design, leading her to discover WordPress and become an early adopter.</p>



<p><strong>Community Support:</strong> The WordPress community has been a consistent pillar of support for Birgit, providing assistance during her challenging times and helping her attend events through crowdfunding.</p>



<p><strong>Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB):</strong> Birgit is a strong advocate for DEIB within the WordPress community, driven by her own experiences of overcoming adversity and recognizing the importance of equitable opportunities for all.</p>



<p><strong>Contributing to WordPress:</strong> Birgit&#8217;s contributions to WordPress include translating the software into German, founding a web design department, and providing training to small business owners. She emphasizes that contributing doesn&#8217;t always require coding skills.</p>



<p><strong>Empathy and Advocacy:</strong> Birgit&#8217;s personal struggles have instilled a deep sense of empathy, driving her to fight against injustice and advocate for those who may not have a voice.</p>



<p><strong>Challenges of Traveling with Mobility Issues:</strong> Birgit highlights the difficulties faced by individuals with mobility issues when traveling to events and emphasizes the need for accessible accommodations.</p>



<p><strong>Impact of Vulnerability:</strong> Sharing her vulnerabilities has not only brought Birgit personal support but also inspired others in the community to take action and support each other.</p>



<p><strong>Role of the WordPress Community:</strong> The WordPress community is depicted as a supportive and inclusive space where individuals can find help, build relationships, and contribute to a larger mission.</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, 29 Jul 2024 08:09:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:41;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"Matt: Happy Birthday, Charleen";s: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=117889";s: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:46:"https://ma.tt/2024/07/happy-birthday-charleen/";s: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:4859:"<p>I&#8217;ve had many blessings in my life, but the very first was the family I was born into. Today, I&#8217;d like to tell you about my only sibling, favorite sister, and best beloved, <a href="https://charleen.mullenweg.com/">Charleen Mullenweg</a>.</p>



<p>With a gap of nine and a half years between us, we could have easily been distant from each other, but it was almost like I had a third parent, one who was just the coolest person I could imagine in the universe. My sister paved the way for me, giving my parents lots of experience and training, so they were pretty chill by the time I came along. As a very young kid, I didn&#8217;t always understand what was going on. For example, one time, I remember getting jealous of all the gifts she was getting&#8230; gifts given after a really intense surgery for severe scoliosis (twisted spine) that required her to wear a brace for many years. She was always gracious and understanding towards the little kid following her around everywhere and trying to be like her.</p>



<p>However, Charleen never wavered in being my biggest supporter, despite how annoying I must have been as an eager kid a decade her junior. All of my early aesthetic and musical tastes were derivative of her early discovery of cool bands like The Police, U2, Counting Crows, and Concrete Blonde. Despite being labeled with her initials, I&#8217;d &#8220;borrow&#8221; all her CDs and tapes. We&#8217;d make each other mixes and share books.</p>



<p>I&#8217;ve never doubted that no matter what I did, Charleen would always back me up, as she said &#8220;I&#8217;m behind you 1000%.&#8221; I missed her dearly when she moved to Austin in the 90s, far before everyone else figured out how cool Austin was, but that just meant countless road trips to visit and crash on her couch. The distance didn&#8217;t keep her from being there for every holiday and major event, including when I started to have jazz performances or host technology events in town. Whatever my interest was, she was there and supportive. As WordCamps started to become a thing, <a href="https://ma.tt/2009/05/wordcamp-sf-2009-2/mcm_0647-2/">she was there</a>. I always knew however much I messed up or people were mad at me (there were lots!) I could look out and see my sister&#8217;s face, there to comfort me.</p>



<p>Her influence on me didn&#8217;t stop with music and art. Charleen&#8217;s early research into genealogy, which included deep dives into libraries and making rubbings of gravestones, couldn&#8217;t be more perfect for my first foray into relational databases. We learned together how to set up the structures in MySQL and phpMyAdmin to represent all of the genealogical information in tables, which complemented the PHP I was learning to <a href="https://mullenweg.com/">create Mullenweg.com</a>, still up today. Before I built any other content management systems the first content I was managing was Charleen&#8217;s and my Uncle Colin&#8217;s research.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re a sibling and want to be as awesome as Charleen, start with this: Unflappable, unwavering support, and honesty. My entrepreneurial path was not straight up and to the right: It included many twists and turns, close calls, borrowing money, huge mistakes, but I always knew Charleen was a phone call away. Her sharp intellect was able to slice through whatever I was struggling with, able to back and support me however I needed in that situation. You can jump further when you feel like you have a safety net, and my family has always been that for me. There have been times when it felt like the entire internet was calling for my head, nobody liked me, I couldn&#8217;t do anything right, but Charleen was always there.</p>



<p>They say there&#8217;s family you choose and family that you&#8217;re born with. Well, if there&#8217;s any sliver of truth to the idea from a movie like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_(2020_film)">Pixar&#8217;s Soul</a> that you have some choice in the matter of where you end up being born, I&#8217;m delighted that I chose to be born as a little brother to Charleen. Because we saw so many other examples of familial relationships torn asunder, we never wanted that to happen to us, so we&#8217;ve always maintained that ability to just let things go that don&#8217;t really matter as much as your lifelong bond.</p>



<p>Charleen, thank you for a lifetime of love and support, from my first breaths to our latest adventures. You inspire me to be a better human. I can&#8217;t imagine being as successful at anything I&#8217;ve done in life without you there behind me. I&#8217;ll do my best to follow your example of always being behind you 1000%. You&#8217;re the best sister I ever could have wished for. At this half-century mark, let us count our blessings and plan many more shenanigans. </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:"Sun, 28 Jul 2024 05:15:02 +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:42;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:70:"WPTavern: #129 – Eneko Garrido on How WordPress Transformed His Life";s: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=157542";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/129-eneko-garrido-on-how-wordpress-transformed-his-life";s: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:32904:"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 a visit to a WordCamp profoundly changed a life.</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. 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 Eneko Garrido. Eneko is a full stack developer who has made</p>



<p>significant contributions to the WordPress community since attending his first WordCamp in 2019. Eneko&#8217;s journey with WordPress began when he attended WordCamp Bilbao during a challenging time in his life, marked by anxiety and depression. This pivotal experience, not only transformed his career, but also enriched his personal life. Leading him to become a passionate contributor and advocate for the WordPress community.</p>



<p>We start off by discussing Eneko&#8217;s initial encounter with WordCamp Bilbao, where he felt a profound sense of belonging, and support from the vibrant WordPress community. Despite his initial hesitations, Eneko was drawn to the inclusive and welcoming environment, which motivated him to participate more actively in future WordCamps.</p>



<p>Eneko goes on to share how his role as a polyglot contributor for the Basque locale has been a consistent source of joy and purpose. His commitment to translating WordPress into Basque has not only helped the community, but also deepened his connection to his cultural heritage.</p>



<p>We get into the impact that word process had on Eneko&#8217;s life, from opening new career opportunities to fostering lasting friendships. Eneko credits the WordPress community with providing him with a supportive network that has helped him navigate various challenges, including his autism diagnosis in 2021.</p>



<p>Towards the end of the podcast we discuss Eneko&#8217;s preparations for delivering a talk at WordCamp Europe, a testament to his growth and confidence since this first WordCamp experience. Despite the daunting prospect of speaking to a large audience, Eneko remains resolute and grateful for the supportive community that has been instrumental in his journey.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re interested in hearing a heartfelt story about the life-changing potential of the WordPress community, this episode is for you.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;d like to find 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 Eneko Garrido.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast by Eneko Garrido. How are you doing?</p>



<p>[00:03:38] <strong>Eneko Garrido:</strong> I&#8217;m fine. I&#8217;m here in Torino today, and we are enjoying WordCamp Europe together.</p>



<p>[00:03:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Have you been to any WordCamps before?</p>



<p>[00:03:46] <strong>Eneko Garrido:</strong> Yes. WordCamps, yes, but this is my first WordCamp Europe. My first WordCamp was in 2019, that was WordCamp Bilbao. And since then, I tried to go to any WordCamp that I could. Today I&#8217;m here thanks to Yoast, because Yoast fund me with the diversity fund.</p>



<p>[00:04:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, nice. I did not know that, but that&#8217;s really nice to know.</p>



<p>The WordPress community in Spain, by all accounts, is really strong at the moment. I know that a lot of countries have gone into a state of decline, really. Certainly in the UK, a lot of the events that were happening, 2019 was the last time they happened, and then Covid came and it didn&#8217;t really come back. But my understanding is that in Spain, it&#8217;s still a very vibrant community.</p>



<p>Now, you mentioned WordCamp in Bilbao. That&#8217;s going to be the main thing that we&#8217;re going to talk about today, because you&#8217;re doing an intriguing talk at WordCamp Europe. But before we get into that, will you just tell us a little bit about you. Stay away from the WordCamp Bilbao thing, but just tell us what you do on a daily basis. What&#8217;s your relationship with WordPress?</p>



<p>[00:04:46] <strong>Eneko Garrido:</strong> Okay, so I am a full stack developer. I have been working for the Renfe Group as a full stack developer. The Renfe Group is the Spanish railway company, the Spanish state owned railway company. Nowadays, I am not working because I left that job, and I live in Bilbao. So I am currently searching for new opportunities.</p>



<p>[00:05:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Well, thank you for telling us all about that. So first of all, I&#8217;m just going to read off my piece of paper in front of me, about what the subject is going to be. And just to let you know, dear listener, I often go through the WordCamp presentation titles, and I find ones that I think are going to be of interest to the listeners to this podcast, and I picked Eneko&#8217;s one, and let&#8217;s see how this conversation goes.</p>



<p>Normally I write down a whole ton of questions, and I know more or less what I&#8217;m going to ask. But in this case, it&#8217;s going to be more of a conversation. We&#8217;ll see where it goes. And it goes like this. So the podcast discussion subject, how the WordPress community changed my life: how joining the community after having a bad lifetime changed the way to see the world. And it sounds like, at some point in the past, you were having a difficult time. And then you discovered that there was a thing called WordCamp Bilbao, you attended, and in your own words, the community changed your life. So let&#8217;s go back, rewind the clock, tell us the story.</p>



<p>[00:06:09] <strong>Eneko Garrido:</strong> So in 2019 I was finishing my compulsory studies in Spain. I was 16 year old little person that was simply trying to finish the studies, and because of some sort of depression, anxiety, I had to leave the college. I repeated that course okay. Then I was at home, and I seen on the WordPress dashboard of my own website that I run, that one event was near me, that was WordCamp Bilbao.</p>



<p>At that moment, I was living in Pamplona, the city that I have born on. I seen WordCamp Bilbao, and I thought, what is this? I asked my parents, and they looked me like, where are you going? They said to me, do whatever you want. As you are not going classes and you are all day in bed, you can take the bus, go to the grandfather&#8217;s house that is in Bilbao, it&#8217;s the place that I am currently living, and go to that WordCamp.</p>



<p>The first day of that WordCamp was a little bit strange, because was in a maritime museum. I didn&#8217;t went there in my life. There was three tracks. One that was announced as basic. The other one was as advanced, and the other one was, I don&#8217;t know what was announced like. It was a little bit strange because I was there alone, didn&#8217;t know anything and anyone.</p>



<p>The day passed with some few things that I remember. The person that was here seated, Fernando Tellado, he wasn&#8217;t going to that specific WordCamp, and that was a little strange thing, because Fernando Tellado has normally goes to every WordCamp in Spain, and I didn&#8217;t know who was Fernando Tellado. And I remember the moment that someone went to the stage and said, now we are going to call Fernando Tellado by phone, because Fernando Tellado is not here. We are going to call him, and talk with him in a moment. And was like, but who is Fernando Tellado? And later on I discovered who was Fernando Tellado, and then I understand everything.</p>



<p>I remember the moment when I connected really with the community. Was a moment on the contributor day. On the contributor day, I didn&#8217;t know neither what it was. In Bilbao 2019, the contributor day was on the Sunday, okay? So the talks were on Saturday, and the contributor today on Sunday. Because in Spain, normally we do like that. Here in Torino has been the other way. Going to the contributor day, didn&#8217;t know what that was, with my computer on the backpack.</p>



<p>I&#8217;ve seen that was like some tables, with some topics like community, core, polyglots, design, all sort of things like that. And I choose the polyglots table. That was my first contributor day table. And then on the contributor day table, I met Luis Rull, that is also from the Spanish community. He&#8217;s a local manager of Spanish from Spain. He taught me to translate WordPress. And since then, every month I contribute to the WordPress translations.</p>



<p>I remember that he took a photo, and published it on Twitter, and said, here is Eneko Garrido, 16 year old person that is a few months older than WordPress, and he&#8217;s here contributing to WordPress. And I remember that he mentioned to Matt. And that moment, I was like, who is Matt? So that was my first WordCamp experience. Until the contributor day, I didn&#8217;t network with anyone really.</p>



<p>So that is one thing that I said, all the WordCamps, it must be compulsory to go to contributor day, especially for the new people on the community, on the new people that is the first WordPress event. They have to be on the contributor day, because it&#8217;s the day where people is talking, is doing networking. It&#8217;s not like in that hour I have to be on that room, because here talks, I don&#8217;t know. Francisco Torres, who is a very plugin guy, who&#8217;s going to talk about the plugins team. I don&#8217;t know, I think that the contributor day should be mandatory for the first time persons on WordPress event.</p>



<p>[00:10:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s kind of interesting. So the event that we are at now is three days long. The main event is two days long, and then there&#8217;s contributor day at the beginning. And exactly as you said, it&#8217;s the one day where more or less everybody&#8217;s in the same room at the same time, and they&#8217;re free to divert their attention, if you walk over and have a conversation with them.</p>



<p>Whereas, on the other two days, a lot of people are in conversations in the hallway, but also a lot of people are in presentations, and everybody&#8217;s got to be quiet, and you&#8217;re listening to the speaker and all that. So I completely get what you mean. The contributor day is a really important thing if you want to socialise.</p>



<p>Can I just go back, and you may not wish to reveal any of what I&#8217;m about to ask, and if you don&#8217;t, that&#8217;s fine, and we&#8217;ll exclude it from the podcast. But I&#8217;m just curious as to what was going on in your life at that time? Because I want to get to a point where we see the contrast between then and now. Because it feels like that is the story, the contrast of what you were like as that 16 year old, spending time in the house. It sounds from what you were saying that you didn&#8217;t get up, and didn&#8217;t have a lot of motivation, or interest and what have you. Are you willing to tell us what was going on? You don&#8217;t have to give us everything. You don&#8217;t have to give us anything, but if you are willing, then please feel free.</p>



<p>[00:11:49] <strong>Eneko Garrido:</strong> At that time, I was, as I said, finishing the studies. Through all my life, practically, I have suffered from bullying at the school. So going to school was, every day was, making harder for me. At that time I was having anxiety issues, some anxiety attacks in class. I had to quit from classes in the middle of the explanations of the teacher. And that was also because of my autism. I am autistic, and until 2021 I didn&#8217;t get an official diagnosis. That was the time that I went to the adult psychiatrist, because the young people psychiatrist of the public Spanish system, if you don&#8217;t say that you&#8217;re autistic when you born, they don&#8217;t say until you are 18 years old.</p>



<p>So at 2021 my psychiatrist said that, and from that time I started knowing me more, and understanding more things about me, like my ironies that I don&#8217;t catch. The ironies that people don&#8217;t catch about me. My really fear to socialise, fear and difficulty also to socialise. And until then I didn&#8217;t understand that much about me. That was probably why I was passing a bad time, and I decided to go to a WordCamp that I saw on my webpage.</p>



<p>[00:13:16] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Let&#8217;s just unpack that a little bit. So you&#8217;re obviously inside WordPress, you must have a website or something at this point, because you can see the dashboard. It may be that if you&#8217;re listening to this, you may have disabled this feature, but there&#8217;s a feature in the dashboard by default of WordPress, which is events. And it will geolocate, and it will tell you if there&#8217;s things coming up nearby.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s text on a screen. How on earth did you summon up the, let&#8217;s use the word courage, to see the text on the screen and think, yeah, that sounds like it could be, I don&#8217;t know, fun or whatever? Because, from everything that you said, my imagination goes to, you&#8217;ll see that, think, okay, there&#8217;s a WordCamp in Bilbao, I&#8217;m not going to that. What pushed you over the edge, because that sounds like an incredibly big jump?</p>



<p>[00:14:03] <strong>Eneko Garrido:</strong> The thing that pushed me to the edge really was the, not the word, the camp. So the part camp of the word WordCamp was what pushed me to the edge, because sounds like something more interesting than meet up. When I listen meet up, I say, okay, so meet up. People join together, and people that know each other join together to talk about something, okay. But when you listen the WordCamp, you think about the school camps. The camps that your parents send you on in summer. And I said, oh, that WordPress camp, oh, that must be very interesting. I could learn about it.</p>



<p>I clicked on WordCamp Bilbao, on the link, and that sent me to the WordCamp Bilbao page. And I saw, oh, there is a program with two days of things. I don&#8217;t know who is going to talk about, I don&#8217;t know, SEO, or security, or performance, but it seems very interesting this. That pushed me, and I said, okay, 20 Euros, perfect. The best 20 Euros I have spent on my life really.</p>



<p>[00:15:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Really remarkable. Also I&#8217;ve never heard it, you know, the WordCamp being such a profound change there. It associated in your head with, I don&#8217;t know, fun, or having something a little bit different. So you took yourself there, you got in the room, it was the contributor day, and I&#8217;m guessing from everything that you described about your relationship with being sociable, and I think you said you find that difficult to do.</p>



<p>How did you overcome that? Because I can also imagine you arriving at the venue and getting to the stairs and thinking, I&#8217;m just going to go home. So in you go. Was it a welcoming environment? Did you immediately connect with people, or was it a much more slow process? Where at the end of it you thought, well, that wasn&#8217;t too bad, or was it, well, that was fabulous, or somewhere in between?</p>



<p>[00:16:00] <strong>Eneko Garrido:</strong> The first thing that I think of when I arrived to WordCamp Bilbao was the doors opening, because I arrived like five minutes before the opening, so I was like the first after the volunteers and organisers. I&#8217;ve seen ,the sponsors stands and I was like, woah, this is serious. This is a conference. Woah, there are hosting companies here. I have a contract with that people.</p>



<p>Was like, I don&#8217;t know, they give me a bag, they give me a T-shirt, they give me some stickers. I saw also the WordPress logo with the pride flag on a pin. And that was like, woah, what is this? This is very cool. And the people was always with a smile, even when there were bad moments on the event, I don&#8217;t know, because something broke, or something like that, or people running because they arrived late for, I don&#8217;t know, always with a smile.</p>



<p>And that was one thing that caught me the attention because I thought I was, I&#8217;m not going to start a conversation with anyone. I feel like I could have done that, and that people that was on a small groups, if I started and go to any group, the group will open and take me into that group. And that was one thing that WordCamp Bilbao showed me about, you have to try to be more open.</p>



<p>Also it is one thing that WordPress is showing me, that I have to be more open and more, I don&#8217;t know how to say it, more helpful with each other, yeah. If someone comes here for talking with me, it&#8217;s like, oh yeah, probably I interest him or she to talk with me about, I don&#8217;t know, WordPress, my life or, I don&#8217;t know, anything, or his life. Here at WordCamp Turin I have met, I don&#8217;t know how many people, but nowadays we have NFC tags that gives you the contact details of the people, and that is awesome because if I don&#8217;t feel like I want to interact with anyone, I say, I don&#8217;t have social energy, but here you have my contact, here you have my Instagram account, my X account. X account, that sounds very bad, my Twitter account please. I don&#8217;t know, it&#8217;s like, we could talk tomorrow, or I don&#8217;t know, who knows? In the next WordCamp we could meet up.</p>



<p>[00:18:21] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think one of the nice things about these events, that you learn over time is that, quite a few people that you meet at one event, will actually be at the next event. And there&#8217;s also a different philosophy. So if you go to an event, let&#8217;s say, oh, I don&#8217;t know, a networking event that&#8217;s got nothing to do with WordPress, that&#8217;s in a for-profit industry, everybody&#8217;s there for the reason of selling you something, or promoting something, and the whole setup feels different. Whereas at these WordCamps, most people who are wearing the T-shirts saying that they&#8217;re organising the event, are volunteers, they&#8217;re giving up their time for free. And it&#8217;s for the greater good of this project.</p>



<p>I often talk about this, but I still can&#8217;t work it out. I don&#8217;t know what it is about this community, but it seems to attract a whole bunch of nice people. And I think that&#8217;s one of the things, when I first attended a WordCamp, I immediately got that feeling. Just, wow, like you said, there&#8217;s smiling faces and, you know, if you wander near them, they open up, and what have you. And I just got the feeling, like a much more friendly feeling, and it stuck with me. So my first event was a WordCamp in London, and it left me with the impression, I want to do that again.</p>



<p>Did you have that? I imagine it wasn&#8217;t perfect. There are probably things where you thought, oh, that was a bit, you know, I wish that would&#8217;ve gone better, or maybe you didn&#8217;t attend everything that you wished to, whatever it may be. But at the end of that, did you come away thinking, right, this is my clan, this is my group, I&#8217;m going to go to more of those?</p>



<p>[00:19:51] <strong>Eneko Garrido:</strong> Yeah, I feel that. After WordCamp Bilbao, I feel like, yeah, I want more of this. The next day of the contributor day, I signed up for WordCamp Irun 2019, that was next month if I don&#8217;t remember. And I was like, woah, WordCamp Irun 2019, that also was a very special WordCamp because was a WordCamp where they invented, I think, a new format for the WordCamps, that was called WordPress on the Street.</p>



<p>So that was, one day, the Friday. They put it on, place to talk on the street, on the very big street of Irun. And there was people talking there about WordPress, and there was people on the bars that were in that place looking and saying, I don&#8217;t know what is WordPress, but I am enjoying of this. And there was people of the community that I didn&#8217;t know at that time. But I remember that Joan Boluda, who is very known on this WordPress world, was talking on the street for free.</p>



<p>One guy that sells courses online was talking about, I don&#8217;t remember what, on the street. It is a format that hasn&#8217;t been done again on Irun, and I think that could be done again, because that attracted a lot of people of Irun.</p>



<p>[00:21:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I&#8217;ve never heard of that, and I think that&#8217;s such a neat idea. If you get the location just right, and I guess you&#8217;ve got to have it near the venue, or what have you, and there are people passing by. Yeah, that&#8217;s really fascinating. I genuinely haven&#8217;t heard of that before.</p>



<p>What are the bits that you found yourself being drawn towards in the community? You obviously showed up at that event, and you didn&#8217;t know which bits, well, you probably didn&#8217;t even know what tables there were going to be. After that, where have you found yourself being drawn to? Is there a bit of the community that you enjoy more, I don&#8217;t know, security, core, or whatever?</p>



<p>[00:21:49] <strong>Eneko Garrido:</strong> I always have enjoyed polyglots team. I am also currently a GT of the Basque locale. So I submit and I approve the changes on the Basque locale translations. Since then, every WordCamp, I have been on the Polyglots table. In Bilbao, I manage myself in Bilbao, this year, I managed myself the Polyglot&#8217;s table. And we recruited new translators for Basque. Because Basque is a locale that is a little bit, not very translated. Needs a very big push.</p>



<p>But the thing is that, not too much people know Basque. In Spain, if you don&#8217;t do that in Bilbao, in the Basque country, you will never get someone that will translate to Basque. And I&#8217;ve been on the Core table for my first time, and that was a very good experience because I sent a pull request for Gutenberg, for making the interactivity API from JavaScript to TypeScript, for making the types, and type checking, and all sort of things to prepare it for the 6.6 release.</p>



<p>[00:23:02] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So you said that, since Bilbao, you&#8217;ve been to more or less all the local WordCamps. You haven&#8217;t missed anything. I guess what I&#8217;m trying to tease out of this episode, and we&#8217;re getting to that point now is, has it changed your life? Do you feel that, because it&#8217;s so difficult to imagine, when we say WordPress, it&#8217;s software. You download it from the internet, and you put it on a server, and you have a website of some kind. But it isn&#8217;t that, it&#8217;s much more than that. It&#8217;s this community, it&#8217;s a philosophy, it&#8217;s events.</p>



<p>How profound has it been? If you were to trace it back to that moment at Bilbao, can you honestly say that it is WordPress, and all that means, that has transformed things. And, has it made your life better? Have you got new friendships, and a better quality of life because of those friendships and so on?</p>



<p>[00:23:50] <strong>Eneko Garrido:</strong> Yeah. If I hadn&#8217;t go to WordCamp Bilbao, I wouldn&#8217;t be here probably. And also, probably, I wouldn&#8217;t have work at the place that I was working until a few months. And I wouldn&#8217;t met a lot of people that is very good people. All people in the Spanish communities is very good people. I love them so much.</p>



<p>[00:24:14] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So you&#8217;ve made real friendships. Because you can make a lot of acquaintances in the WordPress space. People that you know, you know their face. You can say hi to them, but you might not, I don&#8217;t know, go out for a meal with them or something like that, and really class them as friends. But you&#8217;ve managed to make those relationships real friendships.</p>



<p>[00:24:29] <strong>Eneko Garrido:</strong> Yeah, I made very strong relationships. For instance, with Paco Marchante, who is from the plugins team, with his girlfriend Paula Carmona. We have a group, and we talk every day. They are like my reference in friends, and I have made a very strong friendship relationship with them.</p>



<p>[00:24:51] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You mentioned some of the things that you have to deal with. Do you find that the way that you can communicate with your friends in WordPress, because often a lot of it&#8217;ll be, I don&#8217;t know, Slack channels or something like that, does that work better for you? So it&#8217;s not like you&#8217;re always going to be, I don&#8217;t know, meeting up in a bar, or going to a live event. A lot of it will take place on text-based things, where you can do that in the comfort of your own home. Does that aspect of it make it easier for you?</p>



<p>[00:25:18] <strong>Eneko Garrido:</strong> Yeah, a lot. A lot because it&#8217;s like, today I don&#8217;t want to socialise, so I don&#8217;t look my phone, and everything perfect. Instead, if we meet on a bar, it&#8217;s like, no guys, I won&#8217;t be going today, sorry. And it&#8217;s like more for that. I don&#8217;t meet up at the bar for that.</p>



<p>With WordPress, the Slack channels are like my newsletter for all days. I try to maintain myself reading every day the Making WordPress Core Slack channel, because it&#8217;s like newsletter of WordPress, using new PRs, using new features, new bugs. Someone says one day, today is hunting day, so we are going to meet up here to review, I don&#8217;t know, review issues. Sometimes it&#8217;s like, I don&#8217;t going to text because I am a little bit shy, but I am going to read you, and I am going to follow you, and probably someday I will say something.</p>



<p>[00:26:16] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. I mean, it really does feel like, the way that people communicate in the WordPress community, I mean, obviously there are events like this, where you can meet up people face-to-face and what have you. But it does lend itself really well to, you can do it whilst you&#8217;re in the comfort of your own home, you can be sitting eating breakfast and having these conversations. You can have your laptop, watching the telly at the same time. You can really make the environment that you&#8217;re in really comfortable, and exactly what you want, and be socialising at the same time.</p>



<p>Now, everything that you&#8217;ve said, we&#8217;re at the biggest WordCamp there is. It&#8217;s about 3000 people. It&#8217;s really big. And you&#8217;ve laid out this story, and yet you&#8217;re going to be given a presentation here. And first of all, how are you feeling about that? Are you feeling okay about that? Let&#8217;s just leave it like that.</p>



<p>[00:26:58] <strong>Eneko Garrido:</strong> When I arrived the first day here, that was on the contributor day, and I saw the track one, that is the place where I am going to talk, that was like, oh, yeah, it was that big. Here fit probably 2000 people, and was like, woah. And on contributor day, when I was on the photography team as a volunteer, I went up on the stage to do some photos, to do the family photo. And I&#8217;ve seen all people there, I was like, oh, I want to go now to a local store, buy some Apple Vision Pro glasses, or something like that, that is very new. And they announce like, you won&#8217;t see anything from outside, put some images from the Alps or something like that, and start doing my slides. Because that is like, woah, I don&#8217;t know how I am going to feel tomorrow to do this.</p>



<p>[00:27:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I hope it goes well. I mean, I really do. From everything that you&#8217;ve told me, it seems like you&#8217;ve come on a really profoundly life-changing journey. Honestly, it is very, very rare that I talk to somebody, and I talk to a lot of people, whose actual life has been kind of turned upside down in a good way by the software, and the community around the software.</p>



<p>More often than not we&#8217;re talking about plugins, or themes, or code, or what have you. It&#8217;s deeply affecting me this story, I think it&#8217;s really amazing. And it sounds like it&#8217;s allowing you to do a lot of things that you wish to do. The community supporting you, helping you, and I hope that it goes well tomorrow. I&#8217;m sure that it&#8217;ll be fine because you know that, despite the fact that there might be large numbers of people in the audience, all of those people are, it sounds a bit corny, but all of those people are nice people, and they&#8217;re wishing you the best. So I really hope it goes well tomorrow. And I&#8217;d just like to say thank you for sharing your story. That was really interesting.</p>



<p>[00:28:51] <strong>Eneko Garrido:</strong> Thank you for you for this opportunity for me talking here, because this was like, oh, someone wants for me to talk on a podcast. I received an Slack message, and I was like, woah, what is this? I am dreaming or something like that. This only happens to the big talkers, to the biggest speakers of WordCamps. Thank you for you, for this opportunity to be here today.</p>



<p>[00:29:16] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You are very, very, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Really appreciate it.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today we have Eneko Garrido.</p>



<p>Eneko is a full-stack developer who has made significant contributions to the WordPress community since attending his first WordCamp in 2019. Eneko&#8217;s journey with WordPress began when he attended WordCamp Bilbao during a challenging time in his life, marked by anxiety and depression. This pivotal experience not only transformed his career but also enriched his personal life, leading him to become a passionate contributor and advocate for the WordPress community.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We start off by discussing Eneko&#8217;s initial encounter with WordCamp Bilbao, where he felt a profound sense of belonging and support from the vibrant WordPress community. Despite his initial hesitations, Eneko was drawn to the inclusive and welcoming environment, which motivated him to participate more actively in future WordCamps.</p>



<p>Eneko goes on to share how his role as a polyglot contributor for the Basque locale has been a consistent source of joy and purpose. His commitment to translating WordPress into Basque has not only helped the community, but also deepened his connection to his cultural heritage.</p>



<p>We get into the impact that WordPress has had on Eneko&#8217;s life, from opening new career opportunities, to fostering lasting friendships. Eneko credits the WordPress community with providing him with a supportive network that has helped him navigate various challenges, including his autism diagnosis in 2021.</p>



<p>Towards the end of the podcast, we discuss Eneko&#8217;s preparations for delivering a talk at WordCamp Europe, a testament to his growth and confidence since his first WordCamp experience. Despite the daunting prospect of speaking to a large audience, Eneko remains resolute and grateful for the supportive community that has been instrumental in his journey.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re interested in hearing a heartfelt story about the life-changing potential of the WordPress community, this episode is for you.</p>



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



<p>Eneko&#8217;s presentation at WordCamp Europe 2024: <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2024/session/how-the-wordpress-community-changed-my-life/">How the WordPress community changed my life</a></p>



<p><a href="https://yoast.com/yoast-diversity-fund/">Yoast diversity fund</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.renfe.com/es/en/renfe-group/renfe-group">Renfe Group</a></p>



<p><a href="https://bilbao.wordcamp.org/2024/">WordCamp Bilbao</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/podcast/128-fernando-tellado-on-ai-tools-and-rehumanising-the-web">Fernando Tellado&#8217;s Jukebox podcast epsiode about AI Tools and Rehumanising the Web</a></p>



<p><a href="https://irun.wordcamp.org/2022/">WordCamp Irun</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, 24 Jul 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:43;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:96:"Do The Woo Community: The Buyer’s View, Scaling Enterprise with Karim Marucchi and Tom Willmot";s: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=84784";s: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://dothewoo.io/the-buyers-view-scaling-enterprise-with-karim-marucchi-and-tom-willmot/";s: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:34401:"<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-58 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
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Episode Transcript
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<p>Karim:<br />Well, hello, welcome to Scaling Enterprise WordPress and Open Source Software. This is the Buyer’s View. As you might remember from our last episode, we are going to be doing two podcasts a month: one that is closer to the buyer’s view and helps the enterprise see how to engage and work with WordPress and open source software, and the other side will be more of a community-focused WordPress project podcast around how the project and WordPress can focus on the enterprise in certain areas. My name is Karim from the Scale Consortium. I&#8217;m also CEO of Crowd Favorite. With me is Tom Willmot. Tom?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Hello. Great to be here. Excited to be kicking this off, what I hope becomes a regular thing for us. I&#8217;m also a founding member of the Scale Consortium and the CEO and co-founder of Human Made. Yeah, excited to get into this.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />Me too. Me too. So let&#8217;s jump right in. We at the Scale Consortium figured that it was time to have a group that unified and had a singular voice around helping the enterprise navigate open source software and WordPress specifically and its options. Tom, how do you see how we do that?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Yeah, I mean, good to probably just step back and talk about that a little bit. The challenge we have in the enterprise WordPress space, and I think the challenge buyers face is compared to the single vendor options that are out there where they can talk to the buyer with a unified message and simplified positioning. The strength of the WordPress ecosystem is it&#8217;s really broad and deep and that brings lots of benefits. There&#8217;s lots of choice and flexibility, but it does mean that as a buyer you can look at all of that and it can be a bit overwhelming. It can be a bit confusing. Where do you go? At Scale Consortium, we come together and we work together across vendors within the space to give that clear view.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />Well, one of the things I hear most is if an enterprise wants to approach WordPress, where do they go? Do they go to a host?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Right? Who&#8217;s the vendor? Maybe they turn up to a host, maybe they find an agency. But yeah, it&#8217;s not so simple.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />And then on the community side, folks argue that if you go to one vendor or one host, you&#8217;re going to get their flavor of WordPress. One of the things that I&#8217;m hoping that we&#8217;re going to dive into is that really you can customize WordPress to do almost anything, but the point here is that there are no flavors of WordPress. There are flavors of Linux that are forks. This is all the same WordPress, right? It&#8217;s just the special sauce that any one team might bring to it or the special sauce that any one host or any other one product might bring to it. But WordPress is not the same type of complex ecosystem that operating systems were for the last 40 years. So let&#8217;s dive right into the introduction to why WordPress. Its current market share is 43% of the internet. So it has very strong strengths, right?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Yes. Even amongst the kind of enterprise tier, it&#8217;s pretty dominant depending on how you&#8217;re talking about measuring it. It’s certainly true that the vast majority of enterprises, the vast majority of businesses, have got WordPress somewhere, even if they&#8217;re not using it as their primary CMS, they&#8217;re using WordPress somewhere in their organization. And actually there&#8217;s plenty that are using it as their primary, but I think that&#8217;s secondary. The CMS kind of narrative is the WordPress history is quite relevant, I suppose, to how WordPress started to break into business and how that&#8217;s evolved over time.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />But if it’s a generalist platform and it’s being used as that secondary system, is it just vanilla is the problem we run into all the time? We have a hard time explaining to folks that what ends up happening is this isn’t just a generalist system that can’t help you with your specific need because the WordPress project is so general, you can actually bring it and customize it for your specific needs without having to use the technical term fork, without having to fork the code, without having to move away from it. You can adapt it to your needs. It’s so adaptable, which is what I think some of the successes out there are, right?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Sure, yeah, a hundred percent. That means that the barrier to entry actually is quite low. It’s quite easy to get going with WordPress and then you can customize it and it’ll flex with you and scale with you. There’s WordPress out of the box. Of course, if you’re an enterprise user of WordPress, you do need some stuff on top of that, right? You have specific common needs across enterprise or workflows or governance or digital asset management or whatnot. And so there’s this layer of stuff that exists in the ecosystem that does make WordPress meet the needs of enterprise. And then of course you get the vertical-specific needs too, whether that’s higher education, financial institutions, or publishing.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />But I want to jump into this question of the first choice versus second choice, because I remember the way I approached WordPress when we first came into the space was automatically assuming it was going to be a first choice. One of our larger projects that we started now 14 years ago, it was the first choice. So I came to the WordPress larger enterprise community thinking, oh, let&#8217;s do that. And then I was shocked to find out that more than one of the managed hosts, their marketing was all targeted towards WordPress as a secondary enterprise. They had one of those monolithic enterprise systems as their .com, and then the host was saying, we&#8217;re never going to get that .com, so we&#8217;re actually going to market as put your .com out there with this monolithic system and then after that, or proprietary system. And then after that, all these smaller sites that you don&#8217;t want to invest so much time in those ones can actually be on WordPress. And that shocked me. I mean, how did you find that back then?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Yeah, I mean, I think to some degree that reflects how WordPress usually comes to be used by an organization, which is usually bottom up. It&#8217;s usually people in the organization who are on the front lines using these tools and they want to use WordPress. Maybe they&#8217;re familiar with it, maybe they&#8217;ve used it somewhere else, and then they&#8217;ll fight internally to get WordPress. And so maybe it comes into one specific team or one department rather than those large rollouts, which are usually top down run by IT or something. I think what we&#8217;ve seen over the last decade, it started out like that actually.</p>



<p>Now there are plenty of organizations where that the WordPress gets its foot in the door and then it works its way through the organization and unseats the primary CMS. And so I think that’s great. WordPress is definitely validated as a great primary option. And if anything, I think that’s the biggest gap now to close because we are, how do we make the jump from people inside organizations fighting the fight to get WordPress? How do we make that jump to the top down the IT rollouts or digital strategy rollouts?</p>



<p>Karim:<br />And that’s interesting because I’ve always tried to address it specifically as how do we head to head compare ourselves to these monolithic proprietary systems and how do we show that we can feature for feature or more importantly business need by business need actually come up to that level? Because people still think of WordPress as this, oh, it’s just a CMS. Oh, it’s just to push pages and articles not necessarily can help me integrate data from many different sources or so forth or so on. So it’s interesting to see that there’s part of the market that is still thinking of it this way as second choice.</p>



<p>And then there’s the other part of the market that’s saying, how do we actually show that we can do this? And more and more case studies are coming up that way. You’ve worked on a giant major European bank as WordPress being the first open source. We’ve worked on one of the largest media companies with WordPress being the first choice, the .com, so to speak, of all their major sites. So it works that way. But how do we get that message out? And I guess that falls down to the enterprise needs. What do you think about that? What are the enterprise needs?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />I think that’s the opportunity here, right? Because actually the enterprise needs, I think particularly these days, the trends that we’re seeing in the industry actually I think pair very well with WordPress around total cost of ownership, the need for a lot of flexibility that just increases and increases. We’ve seen this kind of trend of all-in-one DXP, which feels like it’s peaked and now, and actually we want to own more of our stack and be able to swap pieces out, and we need it to integrate with the long tail of things that we are using across the enterprise. And so actually that really starts to, WordPress actually been a particularly good fit for a lot of those needs. And again, it’s like we’ve got to form clear messaging around that so that enterprises are aware and they&#8217;re being told that they can discover that for themselves. It doesn’t need to come up through this backdoor, secondary route.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />So the general WordPress project as an open source project needs to stay communicating that we can be all things to all people. And because most of the internet are smaller sites in the enterprise space, we&#8217;re a very small subset of clients by volume. What ends up happening is it’s a very small voice. So then it becomes up to the Scale Consortium podcasts like this one, the agencies, and products that want to work with the enterprise to try and communicate that. What we need to do is try to bring together some</p>



<p>sort of unified messaging because those needs aren’t being met. If a particular host or product or an agency is saying, oh, well let me show you how I do it in this one exact example, they get pigeonholed right away. Most people are very surprised to find out that WordPress can be used as the central hub of an ERP system. There are large medium enterprises, not necessarily the Fortune 100, but right below that, that are using WordPress to manage content on what could be classified as an ERP system, not just a CMS or a marketing solution. You’d say, why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you use one of those other applications? And I feel that the bottom line of the need of the enterprise is not what is the name of the package, what is the technology? What programming language am I going to use? What’s going to solve the business need? And in this particular case, going back to quoting Matt Mullenweg from WordCamp San Francisco, 2010 or 2012, it takes five minutes to learn how to publish a page. Bottom line.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />That time to publish and the flexibility of that, again, it is something actually we can often take for granted. I think within the community, we often have this experience when we are demoing to clients and actually it&#8217;s the stuff that we forget is actually quite groundbreaking already. The fact that you can log in and edit a page and publish it, have it live within five, 10 minutes, and those things are not actually true across the rest of the competitors.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />Exactly, exactly.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Yeah. This kind of central hub piece, I wonder if that&#8217;s something we certainly see a lot. I imagine it’s similar in the work you are doing where actually customers are building DXPs, they do end up with a DXP, but they&#8217;ve put it together themselves with WordPress at the center and all of these other pieces. And so it&#8217;s true that the world has the needs of enterprise that have evolved beyond just CMS. Absolutely. There&#8217;s a bunch of other pieces now, but WordPress doesn&#8217;t need to be all those things. What WordPress needs to do is integrate really well with them.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />That&#8217;s the key. That’s the key, right? Because both of us have done presentations on how you&#8217;ve built a DXP centered on WordPress and it&#8217;s an amazing product, and we&#8217;ve done this composable direction, which we&#8217;re going to talk about a little bit later, but this composable direction. But the key is integrating. The key is for all these folks, all the folks who might be listening who have been around the block a few times, old school, 1990s, system integration of middleware. If you think of it in those terms, WordPress is a great connector.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Yeah. That&#8217;s usually where we find clients end up in actually. They&#8217;ve got WordPress as that central hub.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />So how do you address when you end up going to an enterprise client and you have the technical team of the enterprise, the client goes, but it’s WordPress, it’s a blog. How do you address that?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Yeah, I think that is something that&#8217;s improved quite a lot, certainly over the last five years. I think the number one thing is just that the WordPress, there are so many examples now of WordPress being used really for the very biggest stuff on the internet across almost all verticals. And so you can usually rely on just a lot of direct evidence. Actually, that’s not the case. So usually it&#8217;s a mix of lots of case studies, lots of references, and lots of demos that you can show and demonstrate. And perhaps five or 10 years ago, you perhaps were on the cutting edge if you were trying to use work with the scale. Actually that’s just completely normal now. And the concern is just out of date. And so you can just show all of the evidence. And actually there are many more examples. There are many more high scale WordPress sites than most of these other platforms actually.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />No, exactly. Exactly. So I think we&#8217;ve reached the part where it&#8217;s time for a small break and when we come back, Tom, I think you&#8217;re going to head us off with talking about the evolution of content management and how we got here. See everybody in a minute. Thank you.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Okay, welcome back. So Karim, we touched a little bit in that previous section on the evolution of the enterprise CMS and the evolution of content management and how WordPress fits into them. And so I think that’d be good to just dive in on a bit and expand on. One of the things I often reflect on is that the narratives out in the industry, the buzzwords, the framing, the structure of how we think about enterprise CMS has actually historically mostly been set by the competitors to WordPress. So I think this is an opportunity, right, for WordPress to start actually putting its vision for enterprise CMS forward and more that maybe you can do as a bit of an explainer on that.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />Well, yeah, because if you look at the history, content management systems started out what we used to call OnPrem, right, on premises. And then with the evolution of SaaS and the evolution of not just software as a service, but just thinking of things being not within your own system but putting together lots of other systems. You ended up with just this expectation that it was out there in somebody else&#8217;s system. But there’s a lot of Fortune customers and there’s a lot of mid-market enterprise companies that say, we need our data internally.</p>



<p>And one thing that’s vastly overlooked is that if you&#8217;re using open source and specifically WordPress as this hub that we were talking about, that lets you literally own your data and actually keep solid control over what&#8217;s being shared outside. It&#8217;s not about points of failure necessarily, although it can be. It&#8217;s not about having things across 12 or 15 different SaaS’s out there and different companies having access to your data. You solve all of those things if you are centralizing saying that your source of truth is your content management system. And that is an evolutionary piece that&#8217;s been lost in the last 10 years of the MarTech stack explosion of SaaS products, I feel.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Yeah, I couldn&#8217;t agree more. A common occurrence for us, which I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ll run into too, it will be working with a new client who are wanting to move to WordPress and a driver of that move is that they have bought into a legacy CMS or a CMS that is now legacy in which the company behind it actually are no longer around or they&#8217;re no longer supporting it. Maybe they&#8217;ve built a new product and the cost to move to that new product is the same as the cost to move to WordPress. Actually, that’s a pretty dominant frame for the industry. A lot of enterprises make the decisions over a five to 10-year cycle because actually that&#8217;s the cycle. That&#8217;s the lifetime of a lot of these platforms that in five to 10 years they&#8217;re going to be legacy and you&#8217;re going to want to move to something new. A lot of the education we are doing as part of a WordPress installation is that&#8217;s actually not true in open source. We&#8217;ve got a much longer time horizon ahead and you&#8217;re not going to need to move off in five years because WordPress is still going to be around and innovating.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />I&#8217;m actually going to challenge that, Tom. I&#8217;m going to say I don&#8217;t see clients that are spending in a total of five years on a platform before saying they want to move.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Like you&#8217;re seeing it come down.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />I&#8217;m seeing it come down because of their marketing so hard against each other. Sure. If you look at the market leaders in the DXP area, they&#8217;re marketing so hard against each other that they&#8217;re innovative and the others aren’t.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />It&#8217;s true.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />They&#8217;re marketing so hard against each other about how they&#8217;re better that CMOs and CIOs are saying, well, maybe it&#8217;s worth the cost of migration and they&#8217;re bouncing. Or if it is a longer-term thing, it&#8217;s because they created a bespoke dead end of their own that the cost of owning it is so high that they&#8217;re like, okay, now what do we do? And coming back to your point, doing something with a platform like WordPress that doesn&#8217;t have major migrations,</p>



<p>Tom:<br />No, sure.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />It’s not free. You actually need to maintain it, right? Which is another misconception.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />I mean it’s actually a big difference even between WordPress and Drupal, which are the two open source platforms, but Drupal actually does have this cadence of major backwards compatibility breaking releases, which we see from the WordPress side whereas a user of Drupal seven, you&#8217;ve got to make the decision, okay, I&#8217;m going to spend a bunch of money moving to Drupal 10, or actually maybe I&#8217;ll move to something else.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />And another nod to Matt and the way he&#8217;s thought of the WordPress project, Matt Mullenweg, in the sense that he has been really steadfast about not breaking backwards compatibility sometimes even to the point where you and I are frustrated in thinking how can we move the platform forward? But it&#8217;s really helped us in that long-term future. So as I&#8217;ve seen the SaaS companies market harder and clients have more and more choices and flip even more, the more I&#8217;ve seen the total cost of ownership come down for staying on something like WordPress, the more I&#8217;ve seen the cost of migration be not just money, but also the time aspect and the retraining of your employee base. So it&#8217;s been very hard to understand exactly how to relate this back to customers because they&#8217;ve only seen the last 10 years of marketing that again, these marketing budgets on these major platforms are huge and all these individual companies that are trying to help enterprises with WordPress are going, we can&#8217;t match that marketing of that major platform. That brings me to the one word that I</p>



<p>think has started to take over from just digital experience or digital transformation. There&#8217;s a lot around the word composable these days, and I know a lot of people assume that means, oh, I&#8217;m just going to compose three or four SaaS platforms, I&#8217;m going to compose my own system. We&#8217;ve come to realize that when they do that, they end up with a mess of the poor marketing staff that has 18 tabs open in a browser and to get one workflow done for marketing tasks, they&#8217;ve got quite literally six to seven different interfaces with six to seven different products that are trying to swap information back into each other, sometimes in real-time, sometimes not. Is there a way that this general tool of WordPress helps? We feel it does. How does your team deal with that with the vertical of the enterprise? How does your team try to address how can we not have customers do this?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Yeah, I think we went through this phase with the kind of all-in-ones, whereas kind of this bundling phase and the dream there that was being sold was if everything&#8217;s all in one place, you&#8217;re not going to have to worry about it. You&#8217;ll get everything you ever need here. And usually that doesn&#8217;t work out right, because actually they&#8217;re too limiting and the stuff you need to do, they can&#8217;t innovate fast enough to keep up with the pace of change in the ecosystem. As then we&#8217;ve kind of swung the other way, okay, now it&#8217;s completely composable all of your tools just talk to each other. You can swap any of them out at any time. But again, that brings a bunch of challenges, right? Actually it ends up with a pretty brittle system. How do you do governance across 20, 30 different SaaS tools that you lose track of what you are being billed for? The person who set that SaaS tool up is left now and you can no longer log in. A bunch of challenges there.</p>



<p>I feel like you go through those cycles and you come back to meet a little bit in the middle where actually this hybrid CMS that sits at the center that absolutely can plug in to the stuff you want to use externally but is still providing a significant portion of your functionality and acts as that hub. The compromise between composability and all-in-one, I think the fully composable platforms inevitably will need to trend in that direction where actually there ends up being some hub or the management platform that ends up needing to be developed to just manage all those different SaaS tools becomes that hub over time probably. And same thing, we&#8217;re seeing the all-in-one DXPs trying to become as composable as possible as quickly as possible because realizing the limitations of all-in-one, and again, I think it’s that trend just plays really nicely for WordPress.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />But can an all-in-one solution be the best tool for every job?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />No, I think that’s the fundamental failure. Ultimately, they’re attractive to begin with and I think we’ve just seen that play out in the market where the pitch is very attractive and very compelling, and then the reality doesn’t deliver on that for a variety of reasons. And I think we just, we&#8217;ve seen that play out in the market. We&#8217;re past the peak of that. There are now plenty of organizations who&#8217;ve bought into that and either they&#8217;ve been paying for a bunch of tools they haven’t really got the value from, or they need to do stuff more quickly than the platform that they’re bought into is innovating and they&#8217;re starting to look around and want to use other stuff. And the bunch of those end up moving to something like WordPress. That’s part of the inflow we see into the WordPress market.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />Absolutely. Exactly. Well, so I feel like episode zero, our first episode with Brad gave us the concept of what the entire show&#8217;s about, and today we&#8217;ve laid out what the differences are between the two different shows and introduced the concepts of what we&#8217;re going to talk about. And with that, we agree completely as you were saying in talking to our friend Remkus from this community. I&#8217;m sure that the upcoming episodes where we&#8217;re going to talk about procurement, we&#8217;re going to have to talk about how to approach customers, we&#8217;re going to talk about how to service those customers. We&#8217;re going to talk about what the solutions are for the enterprise.</p>



<p>It’s going to be a little bit more of showing how we have a little bit of a different take on these things. But just from this conversation, I can see conversations around, like I said, speaking with a procurement specialist, speaking quite literally with somebody from some of these other monolithic platforms about what they feel they do best and having these conversations, talking about how to integrate well with SaaS and what that looks like, customized workflows. These are some of the topics that I feel like are coming down the pipeline in our next episodes that are really going to start asking and answering questions on how can we do better as a WordPress community in communicating this and give some information out to enterprise buyers on how they can approach any of the vendors who work with WordPress.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />It’s a nerdy thing to say, but I think it&#8217;s a pretty exciting time in the enterprise CMS space, right? There is actually a lot happening. There are some trends peaking. There are some new trends coming. There&#8217;s a lot of players in the space scrambling to figure out what that is. The analysts have all got their takes. Are we agile CMS? Are we composable? Is it composable content? There&#8217;s so many of these things. As a buyer, it’s pretty confusing. And a lot of these platforms at the moment you’re kind of like, okay, I&#8217;m going math, I&#8217;m all in on this, or I&#8217;m going with an all-in-one. And you&#8217;re kind of all in on that. So they&#8217;re pretty consequential decisions as well, I think, as a buyer. And so I think there’s a ton of scope for us to get into all of that debate, all of that. What&#8217;s the WordPress answer to a lot of these things? Again, that&#8217;s not really discussed much.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />I’d like to invite literally an analyst from one of the companies to come on and ask them why, besides the fact that it&#8217;s pay for play, why can&#8217;t we get any attention?</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Yeah, I think that would be great.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />As an open source.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Yeah, I would love to do an episode on analysts and their place. I think there&#8217;s tons to say there. Yeah, well exciting stuff. Okay, good first episode and more to come.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />Absolutely. So Tom, tell us about Scaling Enterprise WordPress and Open Source.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />We are the buyer’s view, but we&#8217;ll be in the same feed as the sister cast that we&#8217;re going to be doing with Brad Williams, which is, as Karim said, the Enterprise WordPress community-focused version. And so we&#8217;ll be in the same feed. So you can listen to both of those. I think both are going to be interesting to everyone inside enterprise WordPress. If you’re a buyer, maybe you’re more interested in this buyer&#8217;s view one, add us to your favorite podcast subscription. Come along on this journey. And I think most of all, we are just starting out and so we really want to hear from people. What are you seeing out in the space? What are the questions people have got? What would they hope to get from a show like this? I think we&#8217;ll lead a lot on that as well as we go. Do people have questions that we can answer? Are there topics people would like us to cover? Are there people that it would be great to get on? Let us know and we&#8217;ll endeavor to do so.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />So go over to Do the Woo and check on our feeds and whichever podcast platform you&#8217;re using, and also feel free to go to scalecms.org and get in touch with us and ask us to do a particular topic or dive into something. We&#8217;d be happy to talk to you. We are really looking forward to bringing back some informative and useful information to help enterprises really understand how to better engage with WordPress and open source.</p>



<p>Tom:<br />Alright, a good place to finish. Thanks very much, Karim.</p>



<p>Karim:<br />Thank you Tom, it’s been awesome. Talk to you soon.</p>
</div>




<p>In this episode of <em><strong>Scaling Enterprise WordPress and Open Source Software</strong>,</em> hosts <strong>Karim Marucchi</strong> and <strong>Tom Willmot</strong> kick off <strong><em>The Buyer&#8217;s View.</em></strong> They discuss the challenges and benefits of using WordPress and open source software in the enterprise space and highlight the flexibility and adaptability of WordPress, which can be customized to meet specific needs without having to fork the code. </p>



<p>The talk move into the evolution of content management and how WordPress can serve as a central hub in a digital experience platform (DXP), integrating with other tools and systems. </p>



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



<p><strong>Dual Podcast Approach</strong>: Do the Woo in partnership with the Scale Consortium is producing two podcasts a month: one focusing on the buyer&#8217;s perspective and the other on the community-focused WordPress project.</p>



<p><strong>Unifying Enterprise and Open Source</strong>: The Scale Consortium aims to provide a unified voice to help enterprises navigate open source software and WordPress, offering guidance on engagement and options.</p>



<p><strong>Enterprise Challenges</strong>: Enterprises face challenges with WordPress due to its broad and deep ecosystem, which can be overwhelming and confusing compared to single vendor options.</p>



<p><strong>Customization and Flexibility</strong>: WordPress can be highly customized without forking the code, making it adaptable for specific enterprise needs and serving as a versatile tool for various applications.</p>



<p><strong>Primary vs. Secondary CMS</strong>: There is a perception issue where WordPress is often seen as a secondary choice, but there are many examples of it being used as the primary CMS in major enterprises.</p>



<p><strong>Enterprise Needs Alignment</strong>: WordPress aligns well with current enterprise trends such as total cost of ownership, flexibility, and the need for integration with various tools and systems.</p>



<p><strong>Composability Trend</strong>: The concept of composability is becoming more prevalent, and WordPress serves well as a central hub for integrating various SaaS platforms and tools.</p>



<p><strong>Integration Capabilities</strong>: WordPress excels as a connector in a composable ecosystem, allowing for seamless integration with other systems and tools.</p>



<p><strong>Backward Compatibility</strong>: WordPress has a strong focus on backward compatibility, reducing the need for major migrations and ensuring long-term stability for enterprises.</p>



<p><strong>Marketing Challenges</strong>: The marketing budgets of major platforms overshadow the smaller voices advocating for WordPress, making it challenging to communicate its advantages effectively.</p>



<p><strong>Analyst Engagement</strong>: There is a desire to engage analysts and better understand why open source platforms like WordPress struggle to get the same level of attention as proprietary systems.</p>



<p><strong>Future Episodes</strong>: Future podcast episodes will cover topics such as procurement, customer approaches, service strategies, integration with SaaS, and customized workflows.</p>



<p><strong>Audience Engagement</strong>: The podcast invites listeners to provide feedback, ask questions, and suggest topics to ensure the content is relevant and valuable for enterprise buyers and 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:"Wed, 24 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:44;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:55:"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 6.6.1 Maintenance Release";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17567";s: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:71:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/wordpress-6-6-1-maintenance-release/";s: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:5729:"<p><strong>WordPress 6.6.1 is now available!</strong></p>



<p>This minor release features <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&id=!61692&milestone=6.6.1&group=status&col=id&col=summary&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&col=component&col=version&col=keywords&order=priority">7 bug fixes in Core</a> and <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/61692#comment:4 ">9 bug fixes for the Block Editor</a>. You can review a summary of the maintenance updates in this release by reading the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/18/wordpress-6-6-1-rc1-is-now-available/">Release Candidate announcement</a>.</p>



<p>WordPress 6.6.1 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-7/">version 6.7</a> planned for November 2024.</p>



<p>If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.</p>



<p>You can <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.6.1.zip">download WordPress 6.6.1 from WordPress.org</a>, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”.</p>



<p>For more information on this release, please <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/wordpress-version/version-6-6-1">visit the HelpHub site</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Thank you to these WordPress contributors</h2>



<p>This release was led by <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/hellofromTonya">Tonya Mork</a> and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ellatrix/">Ella</a>.</p>



<p>WordPress 6.6.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.</p>



<p class="is-style-wporg-props-long"><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorbin">Aaron Jorbin</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/aaronrobertshaw">Aaron Robertshaw</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/wildworks">Aki Hamano</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/amitraj2203">Amit Raj</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/atachibana/">Akira Tachibana</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/afercia">Andrea Fercia</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/andrewserong">Andrew Serong</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/annezazu">annezazu</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ambrosiawt">Art Smith</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bgardner">Brian Gardner</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/poena">Carolina Nymark</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/cbirdsong">cbirdsong</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/butterflymedia">Ciprian</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/clarktbt">Clark</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/courane01">Courtney Robertson</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/talldanwp">Daniel Richards</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidbaumwald">David Baumwald</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dmsnell">Dennis Snell</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dd32">Dion Hulse</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ellatrix">Ella</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/annubis">Eric-Oliver Mächler</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/fabiankaegy">Fabian Kägy</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mamaduka">George Mamadashvili</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jsnajdr">Jarda Snajdr</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb">Jb Audras</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/joedolson">Joe Dolson</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/joen">Joen A.</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jonsurrell">Jon Surrell</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/laurelfulford/">laurelfulford</a><a>, </a><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mciampini">Marco Ciampini</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/santosguillamot">Mario Santos</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/markhowellsmead">Mark Howells-Mead</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mukesh27%20">Mukesh Panchal</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/neotrope">neotrope</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/swissspidy">Pascal Birchler</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/pbiron">Paul Biron</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ramonopoly">ramonopoly</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/raquelandefeld">Raquel</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/youknowriad">Riad Benguella</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/richtabor">Rich Tabor</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/noisysocks">Robert Anderson</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/SergeyBiryukov">Sergey Biryukov</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/coffee2code/">Scott Reilly</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sourav08">Sourav Pahwa</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sabernhardt">Stephen Bernhardt</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sunil25393">SunilPrajapati</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/hellofromTonya">Tonya Mork</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/up1512001">up1512001</a>
</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How to contribute</h2>



<p class="is-style-default">To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/6">pick a ticket</a>, and join the conversation in the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBWTW">#core</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C07BTF54N68">#6-7-release-leads</a> channels. Need help? Check out the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/">Core Contributor Handbook</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, 23 Jul 2024 15:53:25 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10:"Tonya Mork";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:45;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"Do The Woo Community: Unpacking Blogging, a BlogStorm with Ronald Gijsel and 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:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=84738";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"https://dothewoo.io/unpacking-blogging-a-blogstorm-with-ronald-gijsel-and-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:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:44652:"Episode Transcript
<div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
<p>BobWP:<br />So here&#8217;s the deal. The other day I was thinking about the three Cs: community, commenting, and coding. Okay, I lied. I wasn&#8217;t thinking about coding at all. Coding, I don&#8217;t think about it much. It&#8217;s never in my face. I know it&#8217;s there. I know people do great stuff with it. I hear people talk about it. So the only reason I put that in there is it just sounded better. I really wanted to talk about community, commenting, and blogging, but it just didn&#8217;t sound as good. But that is what has been on my mind lately. Well, actually I lied again because that wasn&#8217;t on my mind lately. It&#8217;s always on my mind. That&#8217;s all I think about is this stuff. So I got to quit lying about things and just get to the point here that it&#8217;s really something I am thinking about.</p>



<p>Like I said, a lot, those three things. And as a result, I got into some conversations. I had a conversation actually with Bryce from Metorik. I don&#8217;t know if any of you know him, but he was on the podcast lately. We were talking about community, the builder community where they can connect and talk. We threw a few ideas around. Then it moved into another whole thing because of some stuff going on. And of course, I had to have a conversation with Ronald, one of our hosts here, Ronald Gijsel, and we always have great conversations and we started talking about this stuff and we thought, why don&#8217;t we just take it live and talk about it? So, I twisted Ronald&#8217;s arm and he&#8217;s popping back in to actually, he called it, what did you call this? Do you remember what you called this?</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Different ideas. I think my latest is almost like unpacking blogging with Bob or was there another reference to that? It&#8217;ll come to me. But yeah, I&#8217;m really excited actually just to discuss it live and ask you a few questions, what the goals are and bring it back to me and be very lengthy. And maybe at the end of this call, or this recording, we will come up with a final solution, a way you&#8217;ll have to give it direction and go for it.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah. Yeah. I was actually looking back, you called it a BlogStorm.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />BlogStorm. Yeah. We were doing a brainstorm about everything around blogging. It&#8217;s a BlogStorm. Yeah.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />So we&#8217;re just going to go for it here. And I hope Ronald said we&#8217;ll put some ideas together, thoughts, just what&#8217;s on our mind. I&#8217;ll set the stage. There was a point where I took the blog off because some part of my brain said, oh, I wanted to focus on audio and have everybody focus on the audio when they get there. And of course, I started to look at the site and thought it felt, I think I wrote this somewhere, it felt naked. It was like, where&#8217;s a blog? This is conversational. This is community. This is what it&#8217;s all about. So in turn, we&#8217;re working on bringing back the blog to Do the Woo, and that&#8217;s where this came because I had another idea. I had an idea about a newsletter and all this stuff kind of meshed together and Ronald deals with my crazy thinking and my train of thoughts and stuff. I brought up this newsletter idea and only because I keep hacking away at that thing. I&#8217;ve done that for so many years and never really progressed. What are your thoughts? I mean, you gave me some feedback. We won&#8217;t go into a lot of the details there, but just give me a thought.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Yeah. The thought that came to mind is newsletters are great, but newsletters or anything, email notification of something that&#8217;s bigger. And so if you write a newsletter with long form, I dunno what is long form these days, but something that gives you everything in the newsletter, you don&#8217;t need to do anything other than read the newsletter. That&#8217;s great if you&#8217;re in the moment and in the moment of reading a particular topic, but also on a device that makes it pleasant to read it. And once it&#8217;s buried in your inbox, it&#8217;s kind of gone, difficult to get back and that moment when you send out hundreds of thousands of newsletters, what you see in the status within the first couple of minutes, you see a really high spike of the opening rate and then it sort of diminishes pretty quickly after that, even within the same 24 hours. Even if you have an intelligent system that sends the emails at the best time or thinks it&#8217;s the best time with the highest opening rate, I do always wonder what the engagement rate is. So in other words, you send a newsletter, you think I have a huge post, but how engaged are people who read your newsletter? If it&#8217;s a call to action to click through to something, that&#8217;s really easy, but maybe it&#8217;s like, oh, it&#8217;s an email from Bob. Okay, great. It&#8217;s quite long. I&#8217;m doing something else. I&#8217;m switching between 15 different tabs and different windows and other things are happening at the same time. Are you really absorbing the content and engaging it? It&#8217;s really difficult to do that. And so it&#8217;s great to have a notification, but maybe that notification should be, hey, there&#8217;s much more content in the blog and here&#8217;s your weekly reminder to explore and here are the things that have been happening, have been fed by our presenters and guests. And guess what? If you&#8217;re interested in coding, here&#8217;s a category, everything around coding, or here&#8217;s a category, everything around community and thought. And that got me thinking like, hey, how much content? We&#8217;re coming up to 500 podcasts now?</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah, yeah. This will probably be, I&#8217;m not exactly sure the number, but we&#8217;re at around 500 in the 530 somethings.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Oh, so we passed that. Yeah. Amazing. So apart from me, all the other super interesting guests, some of them I&#8217;ve interviewed as well in the past, they all have really interesting things to say that it would be great to have quotes, snippets, or even get them to write something on your blog. Anyway, that got me really quite excited about the opportunity and bringing back blogging, which is the core of WordPress.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah. And that&#8217;s what I mean. Like I said, I have Ronald there to smack me alongside the head. Every once in a while I get these little ideas and I&#8217;m doing them for maybe one specific reason or I&#8217;m thinking, how can I make this part better? And then I realize I have things inside there that are already bubbling on the site. One of the things you brought up, I&#8217;m going to flip back here, is you had brought up what Matt Mullenweg said and on his, I think he said it on his blog post about WordPress turning 21. And then I said it again in his talk at WordCamp Europe just a couple of months ago, and let&#8217;s say I pulled up the blog post and he gave 11 things that he&#8217;s just been thinking about. He says people should be thinking about one of them was blogging, commenting, and ping backs need to be fun. Static websites are fine, but dynamic ones are better. Almost every site would be improved by having a blog or a great blog. So when I looked at that, it was like I thought, man, back what, 2010 or so when I was blogging, that was kind of the heyday of blogging and everybody was commenting and it keeps nagging at me, this thing he said, and it&#8217;s not just what he said then, it was reaffirmation is what it was to me, what&#8217;s been on my mind when we started the new site, when we did the redesign to do the Woo. When we launched that in March and then officially at WordCamp Europe, we decided to open up comments again. And of course, that&#8217;s always a challenge. And I think there&#8217;s this thing inside of me that just, I won&#8217;t give up on it. Comments are there, there&#8217;s got to be something happening. So I&#8217;ve been publishing ping backs and stuff and some different things and it is true. It&#8217;s like there&#8217;s so many ideas and thoughts going through my head.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Yeah, I think you touched on something really important and that referencing to Matt, but it just occurred to me that WordPress is 21 years old and WordPress, not everybody started 21 years ago, but for 15 years we&#8217;ve had a number of new publishing platforms, mostly social media come, I mean they&#8217;re still here, they didn&#8217;t go away, but your audience might have moved to different platforms over time and definitely many, many, many more. And when you think of the next 15 years, are any of them still going to be there and relevant? But your blog will always be there. So you build up your diary, your journaling in a way over all those years and that&#8217;s owning that content as an asset is huge. So even if you don&#8217;t blog for the sake of SEO, it&#8217;s still within your own control that you can reuse on purpose and people can search for it and find different things. And I think that&#8217;s something that really, the longer we do this stuff, the more valuable it is that you really own that.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah, exactly. And for me, I think one of my challenges lately was my site BobWP.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />That was huge by the way, wasn&#8217;t it?</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah. And we were talking about that because I had my initial thoughts were kind of going back and forth between the two. So I would repurpose some of the content on Do the Woo over at BobWP.com, and as much as I thought that was a good strategy, it didn&#8217;t really play out as I thought. And of course, Ronald, when we talked, he hinted maybe that content should be under Do the Woo.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Can you describe a little bit of your first thought of the content strategy when you were doing BobWP</p>



<p>? What were you publishing and how was engagement? I know some of it was testing plugins and so on, and probably old versions that are totally irrelevant. That&#8217;s why you don&#8217;t feel it&#8217;s feasible anymore. But yeah, maybe you could share a little bit of it.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />So the whole thing with BobWP, what it&#8217;s always been, it&#8217;s always been a piece of something. And back in the day I would do tutorials and stuff, and that&#8217;s why a lot of this content no longer exists because it was really mostly about stuff that was at the time. And that stuff became outdated very quickly unless I went in and updated it, which I did. And when I actually separated the podcast that was originally started on BobWP, it was for that reason because I knew that I wanted to focus on Do the Woo. I wanted to build a brand more around that or build the buzz or get people directed to that. And so my strategy was always, I always had BobWP there and I did a little bit of blogging here and there, and then I came to the point where, like I said, I started thinking, well, should I start cross-promoting the two? Because a BobWP brand is known out there, which seemed like a good idea. My thought was that yeah, I could do a lot of back and forth because some people will go to BobWP and then I can send them over to Do the Woo, give them a snippet of that. Actually, it didn&#8217;t work as I strategically planned because there wasn&#8217;t as much traffic going to BobWP anymore because I let it mellow out, which was on purpose because I wanted my focus on Do the Woo. So that was how I kept looking at this and kept looking at this and I&#8217;ve actually made a decision going through all this. I&#8217;m at a point in life people can kind of say you&#8217;re at a certain age or you&#8217;re at a point in life where, okay, what&#8217;s going to be the next thing? Well, mine is really Do the Woo. It&#8217;s my focus. So I thought this is where I need to be all the time on Do the Woo because it&#8217;s always going to be, even the experiences I can share doing my own thing over however many years can always fit somewhere there. And as a result, I just recently made the decision to take down BobWP as a site and use my Gravatar profile, BobWP, basically as my website now for BobWP.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Your business card.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />And that was a long process and a lot of people have done that and I feel like that&#8217;s going to be the best thing I can now focus directly on Do the Woo. I moved some of the content back over from BobWP over on Do the Woo because it fits there and stuff. I just done some of the old posts and stuff. So that was that whole thinking through process. And in the middle of that we talked about it and stuff and we had, oh, I&#8217;m drawing a blank, Ronnie from Gravita and listening to him even occurred to me, this is such a great thing because it&#8217;s just I can send people where they want to go.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s like a massive signpost that&#8217;s attached to on top of your head, isn&#8217;t it? Are you business? You have a pleasure, are you sending money or are you just curious who I am? And then there you go. Just go wherever you need to go. Yeah, just one thing.<br />Nice. Do you question for you then is do you feel that BobWP might have served a different audience to where you are now with Woo? I know you&#8217;ve moved some of the content, so there&#8217;s a little bit of an overlap, but I wonder if there&#8217;s even a strategy where you say, Hey, there&#8217;s some probably personal stuff that might not always be suitable for the Woo audience and even if I write this one blog post per year, it doesn&#8217;t matter. It&#8217;s just there. So I have a space that can run it that can publish and that&#8217;s okay. And for everything else there is Do the Woo.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah, I thought about that and I want the BobWP brand now to be the gateway to Do the Woo. So that&#8217;s why I kept thinking when I looked at the site, it&#8217;s like I had people, you can go to do the Woo, you can see where I do this and all this stuff, but I felt like it was its own little piece there and honestly I started to realize that I was trying to force myself, it felt like the right move something in my gut and that&#8217;s kind of how I&#8217;ve always done things and maybe sometimes I regretted or something, but for now I just feel like because I basically have some content somewhere still on my WordPress dot com blog and I can always revive that sometime.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Yeah, it probably makes a great archive that even 10 years looks like I did that is a photo of me and whatever and then it&#8217;s still there. I think that becomes really a nice way your own tool of bringing back something that might be relevant even later, even if the minute on something. I also have another question then. When you think about the content for Do the Woo, how do you think about that? So do you want to write for your audience or how do you want them to engage and bring them in and get them to engage with to Do the Woo brand?</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />That is the fun part to think about, but the challenge I think for me, the site where I&#8217;ve moved my whole mindset is that blog becomes an arm of what Do the Woo stands for. And that is having hosts that have already shown interest come in and write guest posts and they can or having even a guest come in and do it. But as you and I talked about before and I think you alluded to a little bit is how that conversation can be carried from a audio podcast or somebody that talks about something in a podcast and says, I&#8217;m doing this five months later they do it. Do they want to come in and write a little bit about it</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Or what came out of it? What&#8217;s the outcome of that initial podcast?</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />It can tie in really easy and make this circle back and forth between the content and how to get people there and engaged. Aside from thinking of creating a forum or some membership or all the crazy stuff that&#8217;s available to us that I don&#8217;t even want to touch on It is it&#8217;s all through that commenting and how to get people, how to drive them there. And that&#8217;s through social, it&#8217;s different ways. There&#8217;s different things that I&#8217;ve discovered are Jetpack now that we&#8217;ve used that we&#8217;re using that for a lot of our stuff that there are things I want to test with that and try to drive people back to leaving comments and having conversation. There&#8217;s some stuff I even talked with somebody from Jetpack at WordCamp Europe and we can do a couple ideas back and forth and we&#8217;re continue that conversation. So I&#8217;m thinking of some different things. I&#8217;ve had a few other people suggest things or actually ask for things that this might be an interesting way to leave a comment and how that can without giving any of a way, I don&#8217;t want to say I&#8217;m going to do it and then I don&#8217;t do it, but getting people to go between the podcasts and the blog and keeping that conversation flowing in some way and somehow interjecting the comments in all of that. And it&#8217;s not going to be an easy task</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Different ways, isn&#8217;t it? Because you have on one hand you really want to engage with the podcast, you want to listen to every word that&#8217;s being said, but there are times when you might also just want read the LDR of that podcast and I&#8217;d like to say, okay, that podcast probably is not for me, but I&#8217;m glad I&#8217;ve read the headline into it. Are you going to commit yourself to a soccer match for 90 minutes or almost two hours, which is probably a lot of kicking balls back and forth. Or you&#8217;re going to say, no, give me the five minute highlight, that&#8217;s enough and if the match absolutely fantastic with quality soccer football, I&#8217;m going to go in and watch the full thing. Or if it&#8217;s a team or a category that you support, I&#8217;m definitely want to listen them know what the whole thing.<br />So I think the block is also a little bit of a bridge between the full commitment or just a really short version of that or if you have been intrigued by the podcast, a blog could be a way to express your gratitude, your follow up question, sharing it with somebody else because from there you have to learn the links to the podcast. I mean there&#8217;s so many different ideas to really use the podcast as the center of it all that again, Gravatar, it&#8217;s signposting to everything and everything around that particular topic and maybe write about references of other speakers or podcast made in the past, which you may not have discussed in the podcast itself. So I get really excited about this though.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />You&#8217;re right because when I go through any transcript and it&#8217;s kind of what I was doing with BobWP a little bit is it&#8217;s like one question is a post in itself. Somebody has given you a direct answer to one specific problem or one specific challenge, but within those transcripts there is tons of information that can be pulled out and be very in themselves are little nuggets I call &#8217;em gathered throughout that are standalone because they really tell you something right there, maybe even something you can take action on or something. And by itself sometimes you miss those things because like you said, you&#8217;re listening to this long podcast for 45 minutes and that little piece comes in there and then it&#8217;s gone</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />And you want to maybe reference that to somebody else. It&#8217;s like, oh, was that 23 minutes or 28 minutes and then it&#8217;s kind of lost. You&#8217;re going to listen to the whole thing, maybe busy, but if the highlights are set of reference, quote that into a blog post. Yeah, that&#8217;s a good way to share that though. I was going to ask probably two questions. I know one of the biggest reservations to start</p>



<p>a blog is your time commitment and I think in our discussion I&#8217;ve touched a little bit on that&#8217;s like don&#8217;t commit yourself to a weekly or a daily something just whenever it&#8217;s right, whenever you feel like it. And quite often a newsletter when you say, Hey, I have a weekly newsletter. That&#8217;s pretty tough to always fill a newsletter with something inside for every single week to the point that people actually might even be turned off by it because it&#8217;s the same stuff you read five times over everywhere you in the WordPress ecosystem. So on one hand you have the time commitment, which is really tough, especially if you have busy schedule and you have five recordings in one day. How can you commit yourself to writing these blog posts? Maybe there are hack tools and then the second part is publishing, and I know you alluded to that earlier. How do you get people then to read it and how do you get to publish it? I&#8217;m glad that you mentioned Jetpack. They have some publishing tools across many different networks.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />And I think that is the challenge because nothing absolutely drives me more nuts than going to read a post and at the end of the post they say, we would love for you to leave a comment over on X and they give you a link about this post and I&#8217;m like, now you&#8217;re making me go back over there. But everybody tends to do that because that&#8217;s where they feel all the conversations. But also it&#8217;s a huge mess of stuff that just goes by quickly. I mean you need to do it, but the commitment I think some people spend on social is way beyond. I mean even though they feel there&#8217;s a lot of engagement, they&#8217;re looking at their views, this is viewed by 10,000 people, this is great. Well how did that all play out? What did you really get out of those 10,000 views? What engagement was there?</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />When you publish something to Twitter to X to Facebook and Instagram, it would be nice to have a link to those particular posts but also a little counter of what the engagement is on those or whether like 15 comments or 200 comments, it could be quite intriguing to actually go and discover that or even have some of that be reposted into the comments section of the blog to sort of bridge that data. I dunno how easy that is, but that really good truth for thought, what you just shared</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />And somebody just shared recently a person that is using the Fediverse pulling in content and stuff, but on their site they&#8217;re pulling in all basically their feed of everything they say out there and it&#8217;s all living on their site as a one page is a long feed. I know that next time anybody&#8217;s at a WordCamp and you want to have a nice lengthy conversation about all of this kind of social stuff, I&#8217;m find Robert Windish from side, he&#8217;s thinking, how can we make WordPress a social platform and that means your blog and stuff like that. And he has a lot of really, I mean he will talk your ear off about it, but he has a lot of interesting ideas and he&#8217;s kind of on the mission himself and that kind of brings it in, how do you tie this all together? How do you still make your site the place where people will go to? And I think we&#8217;ve gotten out of that habit, the</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Data liberation project, probably not excelling as far as we want. It&#8217;s not always about moving side to a different platform, but it&#8217;s also pulling in information from other platform into your own side, whether it&#8217;s private or in case of WooCommerce, it could be moving data from shipping platforms or accounting platforms but also public comments, relevant comment from social media into your own play. And I think again, what I said earlier that if everything you did or published is on WordPress that you can totally control with your own tools and what it looks like, how amazing is that? How many issues would would&#8217;ve prevent it? I think people will start to realize that as things mature, WordPress is always there and will always be there, even selling a hundred year plan. So I&#8217;m pretty confident that that&#8217;s going to be the case</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />And I think is there&#8217;s, even though some people really dedicate themselves to maybe a certain platform or feel that even though they still have a site that more and more people are starting to think just can&#8217;t go on or continue this way, there&#8217;s a bit of frustration I think on some people&#8217;s level and a bit, I mean I&#8217;ve even cut down my time on social just because I feel like I&#8217;m just, yeah, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s too much anymore. I still depend on RSS, that&#8217;s how I keep up on everything is my R SS feed and that I go in and check all the time. That&#8217;s the easiest way for me to do it and still the best way</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Controlling what comes into your inbox, what you read, what newsletter you subscribed, which block do you want to get into your feed. It&#8217;s super important that you take control over your own life. I noticed that with my own certain social media profile, how destructive it can be and we dunno quite what the result is going to be in 10, 20 years time and how their attention is going to be. But these are all challenges that we start to see the tip of the iceberg. I just want to go back because we brush over that creating the content, like writing the content and I know AI tools are big and they&#8217;ve been around for quite a few years and blogging you could almost just do it with a couple of prompts. What are your thoughts on that using AI tools in the broadest way?</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />For me personally, I don&#8217;t use it to create any original content. I&#8217;ve sometimes asked for a few ideas and even then it, it&#8217;s very rarely where I use it the most is repurposing content and that means existing content and I have exactly that through the transcripts. So when I mean my transcripts to give you an idea of my workflow with the transcripts, which makes sense, that leads into other content is when I get a transcript, I have it done through rev.com through their AI and I go through and I correct some of the names brands and then I take that same transcript and I run it through chat GPT and I tell it to just find any spelling errors or small grammatical errors. Sometimes you have to be careful with the prompt or it&#8217;ll actually start eliminating parts of the transcript. So I try to keep it to just really small things, which that usually fixes quite well and from that I&#8217;ll ask it to give me one or two paragraph intro to it and it&#8217;s never written exactly like I want, so I use it as a basis to just do something and then I&#8217;ll ask it for some key takeaways, which is where I think it is a lot better at and that&#8217;s the best use of it is on existing content, not on creating original content.<br />And then I would go through and make sure it reads and take out the word delve, which AI seems to love so much. Everybody delves into everything and it just drives me. But that&#8217;s where personally and I think where it works best, I&#8217;m at an advantage because I basically have original content through the audio. I just need to have that transcribed and then work with that content. But original stuff still for me personally has to come from my brain.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />You could teach the LMS to be more like Bob and if you keep teaching it with your prompts probably can get much better in weeks and months to come, but that does take time. It needs to learn that as well. But that&#8217;s really interesting. I mean even just a few years back I recall you would send off your recording to be transcribed by somebody and it would be quite an expensive server and compare that now with these A alarms it&#8217;s an amazing value and so much faster and almost instant.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Oh yeah, and it&#8217;s something, yeah, for years and years I paid Rev to do human transcripts and that budget became higher and higher as I did more content obviously and more podcasts.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Right. Then a little bit unpacking the part of publishing to where your audiences are, where your tribe is at, but I know in your case you have so many new audiences and communities across the globe speaking different languages. Do you track that? Do you analyze that or you don&#8217;t even go that fast right here it is. There are a few ways to find it.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah, I&#8217;ve tried to do it and there&#8217;s never a rhyme or reason for whatever happens with any content. I mean a certain spike in listen and sometimes you try to track it and you think was there somebody that just happened to share? It&#8217;s out there somewhere that you don&#8217;t know about and there&#8217;s no way you can track it because suddenly it&#8217;s just out of the blue you&#8217;ll have five, six times as many listens one day as you did for the last five days or something and you can go and look at that topic and often the topic doesn&#8217;t make sense either what made this happen or was it shared internally somewhere? How do you</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Feel about others writing on your blog or for you, is that something, I know you talked about a little bit, but what are your thoughts around that? How far do you want to extend it? You want to keep it only within co-host or anybody that&#8217;s been on the podcast and even to the point where it&#8217;s almost could monetize the way because of anybody that publish on your platform with the audience that this build up there is some value to that.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah, one of the wonderful things I have is I have a group of co-hosts. If I have an idea and this is how the newsletter thing is exactly what I did with that and I can bounce an idea off and when I bounce the idea of bringing a blog back right away, several of them were like, oh, I&#8217;d love to guess both. Which it&#8217;s not easy to get people to guess posts because it&#8217;s tough enough for them to write content for themselves. So for sure the hosts to me a no-br</p>



<p>ainer, especially if they want to follow up or write about one of the shows they&#8217;ve recently done. The guests almost are a second no-brainer because the opportunity to give them to follow up on something or to add to the conversation say, wow, after the conversation I thought about this one piece or I thought maybe they want to elaborate on one thing they were asked, they answered it one minute, but they have a lot more to say. So those kinds of things, I think it&#8217;s ideal. The podcast is run by the community. I mean I do all the grunt work, but I host you. I bring in guest hosts and all these guests and I want the blog to be that too as far as open guest spots, but I&#8217;m going to be very selective. I don&#8217;t want tutorials, I don&#8217;t want them writing about their product. It&#8217;s not</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />The audience that you&#8217;ve built up. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And get the feedback as well in the bottom of the blog have some sort of rating tool that&#8217;s used for how would you rate this content? And so they kind of use that as a way of working where depending on the number of readers and the feedback that you get is better provide the content that readers are interested in. The other thing I saw that crossed my mind working with user levels within WordPress publisher and editor admin, whether certain speakers who might want to follow up on things or even add a supportive blog post, whether they have some sort of levels that they can add and own that piece of content.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah, I guess I could say get in the groove of how I do this with the post and I still want it to be that community oriented piece and I want them to feel like they have a bit of control over that. So it&#8217;s an interesting thing to think about because I think that&#8217;s an important part.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s that community that you build up and it&#8217;s also back to the comments and empowering some writers to control and manage the comments and the conversation and that&#8217;s like bringing that back. It then becomes not quite a forum, but it is that engagement not just between the author and a few comments and that probably brings in more folks to then want to comment because they can get the audience with the speaker, with the writer and leave some nice words or ask for the question, what did you mean we did quote or does also apply to X, Y and Z. The other cool thing I found with the Jetpack tool, creating the social media images, so when you publish that something did you see that you add your featured image and a bit of text and within the post itself it generates a social media image that&#8217;s formatted for the different platform. Again, it&#8217;s one of those little hacks that just make so much easier to create a content, publish it and not be dragged down like, oh, I need to do this, I need to do that. And then weeks past you still haven&#8217;t published it because having that threshold as lowest as possible direct from public I think is key to just keep going. It doesn&#8217;t matter if it&#8217;s not perfect, even if it&#8217;s a light mistake, update it. Yours.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Exactly. And</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Just going back on the newsletters, because we have to bring that back in because that was the original idea is like I&#8217;m going to start with a newsletter and now we, instead of really focusing on blog, blog block and all the advantages, there&#8217;s still a place for newsletters. Where do you see that sort of fall into place?</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />When I visualize in my head for a newsletter and ideally what I like is I want to keep as much of this content on the site and drive people and have it as a teaser. And of course as it has been, or I guess you don&#8217;t call it newsletter, but when people get notified of a post, I mean just knowing this is a content and you can go back through and listen to what you want to read, what you want, but also is how to have that content go out automatically but also be able to add a little custom content to it to make sure that people, this is how you can more easily comment or by doing this and make it a little bit more visible. Add little snippets of something in there that</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Quotes from the community like, oh, Ron said this on X and that followed up in a comment here and that&#8217;ve got some great conversation going, get engaged in this if you care about this stuff or here&#8217;s a quote, I got the community talking and it was relevant here and there. And yeah, it also a good way to introduce other platforms within the own ecosystem. If you have a guest speaker from a Woo ecosystem or from a third party developer, it&#8217;s nice to be able to reference that in a newsletter I get.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />And I think there&#8217;s a lot of potential, but I don&#8217;t want to make the newsletter, like you said, this is kind of more of a prompt the newsletter. And what I really want to do is when I get this all in place and things moving along, my next endeavor is to get Matt Mullenweg on. I&#8217;d love to just talk with him about blogging, comment and ping backs</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />And did you now who is also fantastic, I know if that he should bring in a guest Tim Ferris and I know he and Matt have shared so many ideas around blogging, like long form short form. Also Seth Godin and I&#8217;ve written to some podcasts around how easy it is to share something or not at all really the thought process behind blogging and I think Matt is pretty good at that. He can share something very short, one paragraph and it&#8217;s out there or some really long bits of tech, but it&#8217;s the short ones that I&#8217;m going to take way more time to think that through. Very easy to talk and write paragraphs and paragraphs. At some point people will disengage and you kind of lost them, but keeping it super short and to the point that&#8217;s real.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />And I think that&#8217;s kind of what I&#8217;m thinking about too is a lot of this and I think the site is ripe for that because there&#8217;s a lot of content we can share that is short and to the point rather than just going on and on and giving 11 tips of whatever. I mean those have its place.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Yeah. Here&#8217;s another thing, you&#8217;re building up international communities and having the content of tribe or even the blog post, but having it with Google now, it&#8217;s so easy to have your full page translated as well. It&#8217;s almost instant. Well, it is instant. Which is a great way to repurpose content.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />It is.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />And both ways, if you have somebody writing in a lanugage that it also accessible to English speakers or to German speaker and yeah, that&#8217;s probably something that&#8217;s not talked about a lot, but super easy.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />That would be really interesting, like to open that up. We&#8217;ve done that to some effect with the one podcast where we have the community come in and talk about their own WordPress community and their locale and in their native language, and so they&#8217;re actually talking to their community. That&#8217;s another whole piece of it. And I think it is, you&#8217;re right, I know there&#8217;s podcasts in the space that does the podcast in several different languages. They actually have somebody do it in four or five languages. A little bit of the news, WordPress news, and I think there&#8217;s something there to be looked at for sure because we&#8217;re a huge community.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />I haven&#8217;t checked the figures, but I would sort of maybe 60, 75% of Woo users don&#8217;t live in a country where English is the first language. So maybe two thirds who don&#8217;t have English foreign language, they speak English, but to truly engage with them anyway, I guess we&#8217;ve come to the conclusion that blogging is pretty cool. I think there is blogging for anybody for yourself, whether it&#8217;s a personal diary that you have public and then you have your personal one that you keep private, whether it&#8217;s for yourself or for your business, for your ecommerce site. I think blogging for the sake of SEO definitely has value, but I don&#8217;t think that should be the prime goal to block call because then you end up in not very pretty or very well organized content to hit certain keywords and I think that puts people off. But write it for your, like you do with social media, keep it short to the point with a link to your product, to your podcast, wherever you want people to go to or the call to action. I think that probably has a good reason to consider it again.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Yeah, for sure. And definitely I think we&#8217;ve touched on enough different thing given our thoughts. Some of the direction Do the Woo might go. So if there is not a perfect post to come in and comment, anybody listening to this, this is a post because we&#8217;ve talked about a lot of things and I&#8217;m sure everybody that&#8217;s listened to it has actually thought, well, yeah, that makes sense, or nope, this is the way I would do it or this is how it works for me.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />And maybe that&#8217;s the comment, call out what are the forms of blog posts or good examples of other forms of blog posts like rich content, whether it snippet the codes or a gallery photos or sound snippets or maybe a poll to get voting. That all can all be part of a blog pro. It doesn&#8217;t always have to be just paragraph or words.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Right, exactly. So we&#8217;re going to encourage everybody listening now to come and leave a comment.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />I&#8217;m inspired now. I&#8217;m going to revisit my own site. I haven&#8217;t touched since I started working at quite a few years now. It&#8217;s all very well preaching about it, but maybe we should all get back to blogging. I think it&#8217;s a good way.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Well this has been great and yeah, everybody hope you enjoyed it and let us know your thoughts. You&#8217;ll go into the post, leave a comment.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />It&#8217;s been a great Blogstorm, Bob</p>



<p>. Yeah,</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ll be right alongside there, at least in spirit one way or another.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Yeah, I need to write one of the first posts or co-write to see what.</p>



<p>BobWP:<br />Alright, Ronald, thanks everyone for listening and yeah, let us know what you think about all this stuff we were talking about. Alright, thank you all.</p>



<p>Ronald:<br />Thanks Bob.</p>
</div>




<p>In this episode of <strong><em>The WordPress Way</em></strong>, hosts <strong>BobWP</strong> and <strong>Ronald Gijsel</strong> kick up a blogstorm. What&#8217;s that?</p>



<p>Soon here on this site you will see the blog as it returns and becomes a integral part of this builder and business community. BobWP and Ronald started brainstorming what the main goal of this blog would be offline, but it quickly ended when Ronald suggested we take it public. </p>



<p>So that&#8217;s it. A live and fun blogstorm.</p>



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



<p><strong>Return to Blogging</strong>: BobWP is considering bringing back the blog on Do the Woo after realizing the site felt incomplete without it.</p>



<p><strong>Engagement through Newsletters</strong>: In our case, newsletters should serve as prompts to drive people to the blog for more content, rather than being long-form content themselves.</p>



<p><strong>Content Strategy for Do the Woo</strong>: The blog will act as an extension of the podcast, with hosts and guests contributing posts that complement the podcast episodes.</p>



<p><strong>Community-Driven Content</strong>: The podcast and blog will be community-oriented, encouraging interaction and engagement through comments and guest contributions.</p>



<p>I<strong>mportance of Comments</strong>: BobWP believes in the value of comments and is exploring ways to drive more engagement and conversation through blog comments.</p>



<p><strong>Balancing Social Media and Blog Content</strong>: There&#8217;s a need to balance content between social media platforms and the blog, ensuring the blog remains the central hub of activity.</p>



<p><strong>Leveraging Transcripts for Content</strong>: Transcripts from podcast episodes can be repurposed into blog posts, highlighting key takeaways and providing additional value to the audience.</p>



<p><strong>Using AI for Content Repurposing</strong>: AI tools can assist in repurposing existing content, such as cleaning up transcripts and generating summaries, but not for creating original content.</p>



<p><strong>Embracing Multi-language Content</strong>: Considering the international nature of the audience, there&#8217;s potential to explore multi-language content to reach a broader audience.</p>



<p><strong>Personal Brand and Focus</strong>: BobWP is consolidating his efforts under the Do the Woo brand, using his Gravatar profile as the primary personal identifier.</p>



<p><strong>Encouraging Guest Contributions</strong>: There’s a strong interest in having guest posts from hosts and podcast guests to further enrich the blog’s content.</p>



<p><strong>Value of Owning Content</strong>: Emphasizes the long-term value of owning content through a blog, as opposed to relying solely on transient social media platforms.</p>



<p><strong>Utilizing Tools like Jetpack</strong>: Jetpack&#8217;s tools, such as social media image generation and cross-platform publishing, can simplify the process of maintaining and promoting the blog.</p>



<p><strong>Driving Engagement through Follow-ups</strong>: Engaging the community by following up on podcast topics with blog posts, encouraging discussion, and fostering a deeper connection with the audience.</p>



<p><strong>Building a Central Content Hub</strong>: The blog should serve as the central hub for all content, with social media and newsletters acting as feeders to drive traffic back to the site.</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, 23 Jul 2024 09:05:43 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 84: A WordPress 6.6 Sneak Peek";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=17539";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/episode-84-a-wordpress-6-6-sneak-peek/";s: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:26873:"<p>Join WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, as she offers an exclusive preview of the recently released WordPress 6.6, accompanied by special guest Meher Bala, the release&#8217;s coordinator. Don’t miss this opportunity for an insider’s look!</p>



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



<p>Host:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/">Josepha Haden Chomphosy</a><br />Guest:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/">Meher Bala</a><br />Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/adamatdayone/">Adam Daly</a><br />Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/javiarce/">Javier Arce</a><br />Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bjmcsherry/">Brett McSherry</a><br />Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod</p>



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



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/download/releases/6-6/">WordPress 6.6 Download</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/">Make WordPress &#8211; Core</a>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBWTW">WordPress Core Slack</a></li>
</ul>
</li>



<li><strong>Small List of Big Things</strong>
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2024/07/04/first-time-attendees/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">First-Time Attendees: A Key Metric of Success for WordPress Events</a>&nbsp;</li>



<li>The&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2023/04/25/monthly-online-docs-team-contributor-day-starts-april-2023/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Docs team holds an online Contributor Day</a>&nbsp;every fourth Tuesday.</li>



<li>Reminder:&nbsp;<a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/online-workshops/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Online workshops</a>&nbsp;are live sessions where you can learn alongside other WordPress enthusiasts.</li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/media-corps/2024/07/03/recap-of-the-media-corps-briefing-on-wordpress-6-6/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Recap of the Media Corps Briefing on WordPress 6.6</a>&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
</li>



<li>Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to&nbsp;<a href="mailto:wpbriefing@WordPress.org">WPBriefing@WordPress.org</a>.</li>
</ul>



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



<span id="more-17539"></span>



<p>[00:00:00]&nbsp;<strong>Josepha:</strong>&nbsp;Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of some of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project and the community around it, as well as get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!&nbsp;</p>



<p>[00:00:28] (Intro Music)&nbsp;</p>



<p><span>[00:00:40]&nbsp;<strong>Josepha:</strong>&nbsp;</span>Last week, we released WordPress 6.6, and I had a chance to chat with a long-time contributor and member of the Release Squad about it.&nbsp;Today, I have with me Meher, and she was, well I guess I will let her tell us what she did with the release, but at the time of this recording, yesterday we had the WordPress 6.6 release, codenamed &#8216;Dorsey,&#8217; and so Meher, welcome to the WordPress Briefing.</p>



<p>[00:01:05] <strong>Meher:</strong> Hi, thank you for inviting me. It&#8217;s nice to be here.</p>



<p><span>[00:01:09]&nbsp;<strong>Josepha:</strong>&nbsp;Why don&#8217;t you tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do in the WordPress project, how long you&#8217;ve been contributing, and then the role that you played in our big, big mid-year release?</span></p>



<p>[00:01:19] <strong>Meher:</strong> So my name is Meher. I&#8217;m a front-end developer. I&#8217;m also a CEO of KDC. I&#8217;m also a codable expert in WordPress. I started with contributing into the marketing field. Then, slowly, for 5.6, I got to be on the release squad, learned about training, about how the release goes, process happens. From that time onwards, I&#8217;ve been part of marketing or, basically, I&#8217;ve been part of the marketing team for all the releases. For 6.6, I picked to do the Release Coordinator, something different, something new, wanting to know what goes into it.&nbsp;</p>



<p>[00:02:03] <strong>Josepha:</strong> That is a big leap from like hanging out in marketing to going to be the Release Coordinator. Before we get into the release itself, just what made you think to yourself, I would like to do that? I would like to stand up and wrangle all of these contributors across the world. Make sure we get a release out?</p>



<p>[00:02:20] <strong>Meher:</strong> I wanted to try something new. Like even in WordCamp, each role is different. So, even in the release, I wanted to try each different things. And like 5.6, I was in documentation. Then, I was in marketing. So then I got used to marketing, so I stick with my, no, I stuck with marketing. </p>



<p>[00:02:39] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah.</p>



<p>[00:02:40] <strong>Meher:</strong> So this time, I want to try something different, and I want to see, you know, how easy was it to be a Release Coordinator because it&#8217;s a Release Coordinator, see, you know, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s a like a big thing coordinating so many people so many different teams going on, working together, and so yeah, it was fun.</p>



<p>[00:02:58] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Great. I&#8217;m glad that you found it fun. I always worry when people make big shifts. I&#8217;m like, did we put enough documentation to make it clear? Are they going to find it easy to get started or not? And I think you did a really great job with it. So congratulations, since that happened just yesterday, less than 24 hours ago.</p>



<p>[00:03:16] <strong>Meher:</strong> Yes, less than 24 hours.</p>



<p>[00:03:21] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah, yeah. So, from your position as the Release Coordinator, what are the biggest, like, one or two features that you really were excited to see get in this release?</p>



<p>[00:03:32] <strong>Meher:</strong> Oh, one of the biggest features was the style override patterns.</p>



<p>[00:03:37] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Oh, yeah.</p>



<p>[00:03:38] <strong>Meher:</strong> Which I found very useful because a lot of people are using patterns. So, you know, patterns override; if you wanna change something on a specific page, it&#8217;s really useful then just to, you know, recreate a second pattern and then to match up and all. And second, which I liked as a user, was the publish box on the post becoming very clear, very, you know, cluster-free, very minimalistic, and just so comfortable that a normal user will actually understand what is there instead of going to each dropdown and figuring out what needs to be done. So, for me, I think as a developer and user, these two are the fun features, which I like, which 6.5 had, so. There are many other features as well. These are the two great features.</p>



<p>[00:04:28] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah. I mean, I don&#8217;t think that anyone can argue about the importance of making things a little easier to see, a little easier to use. It&#8217;s been a little bit since WordPress was like fall into it easy to use. I feel like we have been the easiest of the robust CMS systems for like a long time. I know I said CMS systems. That&#8217;s like saying pin number. I know that the S in CMS is systems, but anyway, that notwithstanding, we&#8217;ve been the easiest of the complex solutions for a long time, and I think it&#8217;s always great when we, when we take a moment to be like, what could we make a bit easier to just like, no instructions required you get in there and you can tell like, what any individual thing will do without necessarily, like you said, having to go into drop downs and reading a bunch of stuff a little guesswork is okay. And also, it&#8217;s clear that none of it is dangerous. And so I think that&#8217;s, I think that&#8217;s a a good change myself. So, I agree with your assessment.</p>



<p>[00:05:27] <strong>Josepha:</strong> So the style override patterns, that&#8217;s part of the suite of design tools that we&#8217;re pulling together, right?&nbsp;</p>



<p>[00:05:33] <strong>Meher:</strong> Yes.</p>



<p>[00:05:34] <strong>Josepha:</strong> in your experience, you said you&#8217;re the CEO of your company, like in your experience, does that feel like something that&#8217;s super useful for agencies or particularly useful for freelancers, or should it generally be useful for everyone?</p>



<p>[00:05:47] <strong>Meher:</strong> It will be useful from a small business point to a freelancer as well because we always try, like, in each page, we always, you know, there is some bits repeated, you know, so, patterns makes it easier, and syndicate pattern makes it more easier so that you can just duplicate and have one place to change. And, like, you have ten pages, you have one pattern across ten pages. The 11th page, you want the same pattern, but little change in that. It&#8217;s easier. It&#8217;s good because you can just change on that page, one particular thing and still go in the parent and change other things to reflect in that. So it will be very helpful for freelancers, small agencies. I do see big agencies take advantage of it. So overall, it should help everyone.</p>



<p>[00:06:35] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Good. Good. I, for one, isn&#8217;t it great when we can get a feature out that mostly is going to help everyone. But I have been especially interested in the features that we&#8217;re trying to get out that help that kind of like small to medium agency area. I feel like we have a lot of folks in the WordPress community who do exactly what you&#8217;re talking about. You&#8217;re getting something together. You have a mostly what you need across your site. You have one style that&#8217;s out there, but there&#8217;s this one area that you want to have a little bit more personality or a little less personality, depending on what your client is looking for, like this one is applying for jobs, and it needs to be a little less exciting or whatever it is.</p>



<p>[00:07:13] <strong>Josepha:</strong> I think that&#8217;s great that we have that option. So you don&#8217;t have to try to, I don&#8217;t know, hack your way through that. I know that we&#8217;re not a super get-in-there-and hack-on-it sort of group anymore these days, but I love that we still have that feeling of we&#8217;re gonna, we&#8217;re going to make this a safe hacking space for you. Just get in there and make it work. So that&#8217;s excellent. Excellent. So for you, then, personally, cause you wear a lot of hats, you&#8217;ve your front-end developer; you&#8217;re running your company, you&#8217;re working, you&#8217;re a codable expert. You&#8217;ve got all these things. So from your perspective, what is the thing that got into this release that was a surprising, like a diamond in the rough for you, like a surprising good feature when you just thought it was like an important feature at some point? Was there one that seemed like it was a good idea but became a great idea by the time it was out?</p>



<p>[00:08:00] <strong>Meher:</strong> Oh, I would say style variations because I did not expect the final style variation to be what it is. A theme developer can create the theme, can add styles, can add fonts, can give different design elements to the theme as a normal user when they when someone wants to just pull up a website, but they&#8217;re not good in design, or they don&#8217;t know which font to use. They choose which font, but then it doesn&#8217;t work. So if the theme provides an easy option just to shift the different styles they&#8217;re using and combining with the fonts. It is a much bigger opportunity for everyone because a normal user can just, they have a black and white site. I want to shift to a colorful site. Just go and see what the theme art has given you and shift it. So I think that I was surprised and I like the outcome. I&#8217;m sure my blogger friends also will like it because then they don&#8217;t have to depend on a designer to you know, give them color schemes and stuff.</p>



<p>[00:09:01] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yes. Yeah. So unrelated. It&#8217;s only, it&#8217;s kind of related. I shouldn&#8217;t say it&#8217;s unrelated. It&#8217;s all about WordPress. And now it&#8217;s about color palettes. So, I have a new design on my blog. And unfortunately I am the sort of person that does need a designer to tell me what I meant by the thing I thought. <span>And so, like, I had this idea of the sort of color palette that I wanted and was searching for color palettes inside themes, which I was not succeeding at.</span> And eventually I had a designer who was happy to help you figure this out and get something out there. And they got me something that&#8217;s absolutely perfect. It&#8217;s got an excellent color palette and they redid some images for me. So it looks nice and hip and feels kind of modern. I think it&#8217;s great. But the one thing that I consistently felt confident to mess with while I was in there, because I think they did some custom work in there too, is all of the stuff that&#8217;s included in style variations. Like, I&#8217;m not touching colors because I can&#8217;t put colors together to save my life. But I was pleasantly surprised also by that particular feature. It gives you a feeling of I can change the face of this through the fonts or whatever it is. And I think that&#8217;s a nice, a nice thing.</p>



<p>[00:10:06] <strong>Meher:</strong> And it&#8217;s a, it&#8217;s a perfect combination. Color and font. Because a lot of people don&#8217;t know today&#8217;s time which font is good. Or which font is needed for an industry.&nbsp;</p>



<p>[00:10:16] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Exactly. Fortunately, I&#8217;m a site manager of one. And so I just had to ask myself if I liked the font and moved on from there. So, oh. So, like I said, as we&#8217;re recording this, we are less than 24 hours past the release. How was your experience with this release? Was it enjoyable? Did it like expand your horizons? Were there surprises in how a release is run?</p>



<p>[00:10:43] <strong>Meher:</strong> There was no surprises because I&#8217;ve already been a part of a release. So I.</p>



<p>[00:10:47] <strong>Josepha:</strong> That&#8217;s&nbsp;fair.&nbsp;</p>



<p>[00:10:49] <strong>Meher:</strong> You know, it&#8217;s depends on what happens on the day.&nbsp;But yes, behind the scenes, following up, just checking in to make sure, are we on time, do we need more time, or what needs, you know, how much more time is required. It was fairly good, I was only clearly concerned about on the day of the release, because there&#8217;s a lot of things to cover.</p>



<p>[00:11:09] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yes.&nbsp;</p>



<p>[00:11:10] <strong>Meher:</strong> Usually, the party of the beta and the RCs finish in less than hour or so. But the final has a lot more detailed steps and many people to ping, to get, you know, them on the day of the release.</p>



<p>[00:11:24] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah, for folks who have never watched a release happen. So, I think a lot of the folks who listen to this podcast, they find it in the dashboard, they don&#8217;t necessarily contribute to WordPress. But, like, if you&#8217;ve never watched a WordPress release, we have these release parties for every beta that goes out, every release candidate that goes out, and then the general release. And I always find them so fascinating because, we have hundreds of contributors over the course of an individual release. And then we have probably 50, 60 people who show up at, for some of you all, in the middle of the night and are just being directed, like their attention is just being directed here and there.</p>



<p>[00:12:06] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And I love watching it because I, I&#8217;m always in the release channel. I&#8217;m in the core channel. All of these are in Slack. And then I&#8217;m also in the admin channel where you have to do the flipping of switches and packaging things. And it&#8217;s really interesting to see, almost like a scan of a brain where things are lighting up for various things. <span>Like, you do the pre-testing in the release channel, and then you do the general testing in the core channel.</span> And then we&#8217;ve got like a person who&#8217;s flipping switches in the back, in the admin area to make sure that it all gets together. And it&#8217;s just really interesting to see how it all works. And yeah, it&#8217;s a really fun thing.</p>



<p>Dear listener, if you have never, if you&#8217;ve never done this, you have another opportunity. And I think the next release is early in November or something. And even if you&#8217;re there as like a spectator, not necessarily ready to take part in the release, sometimes it&#8217;s kind of nice to see how much effort and how many people are showing up to work on any individual release.</p>



<p><span>[00:13:01]&nbsp;<strong>Josepha:</strong>&nbsp;This was your first time to lead the release parties, though, right?</span></p>



<p>[00:13:06] <strong>Meher:</strong> Yes. My first time releasing a release party. Also, to the spectators who have never been a part of release, you can just come and say hi. Like, yesterday, on the day of the release, there was one participant who joined for the first time, and she did contribute.&nbsp;And she was amazed by how smooth it went through. And for me, the best part of any release is seeing the green tick when people start testing. So, you know, everything is smooth sailing.</p>



<p>[00:13:34] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yes.</p>



<p>[00:13:34] <strong>Meher:</strong> And we&#8217;ll reach the destination.</p>



<p>[00:13:36] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yes. It&#8217;s, it is a real testament to how well and how closely all of these folks can work together, which if you stop and think about the fact that everybody&#8217;s like all over the world, it&#8217;s all across the globe that this is happening. It is why WordPress works, right? All of these people, all of you coming together to do this on behalf of this software. How cool that you had somebody who joined for the first time and then they were able to contribute immediately.</p>



<p>[00:14:02] <strong>Meher:</strong> Yes.</p>



<p>[00:14:03] <strong>Josepha:</strong> I love that.&nbsp;</p>



<p>[00:14:04] <strong>Meher:</strong> Also, there are a lot of folks who&#8217;ve done it. So they&#8217;re always ready to help out. You know, if you&#8217;re stuck somewhere, as a first-time release lead, there were certain questions I had. There are a lot of people to guide you to the right direction or to say, this needs to go here, or you need to tell the audience this. A lot of support you get from the squad itself, plus the people who are not on the squad and who&#8217;ve done this.</p>



<p>[00:14:29] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Absolutely. I remember the first release that I led I was the coordinator of it and I believe it was 5.0. I believe it was the one that we put Gutenberg in core with, and it was the most terrifying thing I&#8217;d ever done. Not because I hadn&#8217;t been watching these releases happening for years, but because it&#8217;s different participating and watching and then being the person who is like you said, like making sure that things are still going on time that you understand when you need to say, like, there&#8217;s no way that this works for users right now. We have to take it out and all those things. And then, yeah, the day of, the first time that you have to run one of those global meetings, be like, &#8216;everyone, we don&#8217;t have time for this. Move on&#8217;. That&#8217;s always a really hard first time. Well, cool. That&#8217;s so exciting. So I have a last question for you, and that is, you&#8217;ve kind of let us into it, for first-time contributors to a release, especially anyone who&#8217;s thinking about joining the release squad for the first time, do you have any advice, anything that you wish you had been told when you were coming into this?</p>



<p>[00:15:32] <strong>Meher:</strong> Come with an open mind and come with a thought that there are people to help you. Ask in any channel. There will be someone or the other who will answer you immediately or a little later, depending on the time zone, and will guide you to the right person or right documentation where you can read up because there is a lot of documentation, good documentation on releases, how it handles and what team is needed, what they are supposed to do. So, you, you have a friendly bunch of people. Just ask.</p>



<p>[00:16:03] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Excellent. I love it. I love that advice. That was really good advice. Don&#8217;t be scared. Everybody has answers, and they want to give them to you. I agree. That is a real strong truth for the WordPress project. Last thoughts: anything you want to share with the WordPress community with our community of listeners here?</p>



<p>[00:16:20] <strong>Meher:</strong> Looking forward for new people joining the next release and seeing 6.7 new features, which I&#8217;m excited about, collaborative phase three coming into picture and excited about it.</p>



<p>[00:16:32] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah. So you can come join us, make.WordPress.org/core, or you can join us in the Slack instance. You can go to chat.WordPress.org and get signed up for that. We coordinate all of this in the core channel, and we hope to see every new contributor that&#8217;s been on the fence. We hope you show up. There&#8217;s a new meeting every two weeks just for y&#8217;all. Meher, this has been an excellent conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today.</p>



<p>[00:16:56] <strong>Meher:</strong> Thank you for having me. It was fun.</p>



<p>[00:16:58] (Music interlude)&nbsp;</p>



<p>[00:17:05] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Hopefully, you&#8217;ve had a chance to download the release and try it out on your own sites. As always, if you run into any bugs, let us know so that we can get them in the next point release.</p>



<p>And that brings us now to our small list of big things. I have a moderate-sized small list. The first one is that WordPress is a reminder, actually. It&#8217;s a lot of reminders this week if I get right down to it, but this first one is a reminder that one of our big-picture goals for 2024 was getting new users into our event series. Our goal, of course, is to warmly welcome more first-time attendees and new users, and future WordPressers at all of our events, and that&#8217;s something that you can help get done. So, for all of our event organizers, or if you have not organized an event yet and would like to, just so that you can meet the fellow WordPressers in your area or, get to grow your own network a little bit. We&#8217;ve got a few best practices that can help you to make sure that you have a good experience for first time attendees. For one, you should always consider some thoughtful event design. Craft your events with some first-time attendees in mind. You have to consider their needs and interests and potential barriers to participation. Second, it helps to have some targeted messaging. Ensure that you have promotional materials that highlight the benefits of attending, but also what new knowledge, skills, or professional connections folks will gain when they come. It&#8217;s also good to share success stories of past first-time attendees. And then just kind of a final note for that on outreach strategies. You should experiment with a range of marketing channels to reach professional new attendees. You can partner with local schools, professional organizations, and online communities who can help to spread the word.</p>



<p>[00:18:52] <strong>Josepha:</strong> The second thing on our small list of big things is a reminder that the Docs Team holds an online Contributor Day every fourth Tuesday. They&#8217;ve been doing this for about a year now. And I think that it&#8217;s one of the most engaging and fun new contributor experiences we have, which I realize might sound odd for documentation, but it&#8217;s a great team. It&#8217;s got a great number of team reps in it. And they&#8217;re looking for you. They&#8217;re looking out for you to come and join for your first time on a Contributor Day. The next one is actually tomorrow, July 23rd. I&#8217;ll have a link for that in the show notes.</p>



<p>[00:19:29] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And the third thing on our list is a reminder about online workshops. These are live sessions where you can learn alongside other WordPress enthusiasts, and they&#8217;re, you know, safe spaces where you can come as you are, develop new ideas, explore issues that you&#8217;re having, ask questions, network over shared interests, exchange theories, collaborate, and honestly, thrive on a bit of problem-solving together. New workshops are happening all the time. You can check out the schedule to join in on a live session and even watch some of the previous sessions to see if it&#8217;s for you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>[00:20:03] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And the final thing on our list is that there is a recap up of the first Media Corps Briefing that was held on June 27th, and it provided media partners with an overview of the Source of Truth and updates that were planned for WordPress 6.6, that was released last week. Obviously, we just talked to Meher about it. But that particular session featured guest Anne McCarthy, who explained and demoed some of the upcoming features and answered a bunch of questions from the participants. The briefing was recorded and published on the WordPress YouTube channel. Apart from the recording, you can also find a summary, the full transcript, and other relevant links from the link in the show notes.&nbsp;</p>



<p><span>[00:20:42]&nbsp;<strong>Josepha:</strong>&nbsp;And that, my friends, is your small list of big things.</span> Don&#8217;t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You&#8217;ll get a friendly reminder whenever there&#8217;s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard today, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I am your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. And I&#8217;m taking a little break from the podcast in August, and so I will see you again, my friends, in September.&nbsp;</p>



<p>[00:21:15] (Music outro)&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, 22 Jul 2024 12:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Brett McSherry";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:89:"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #104 – Block Themes, Gutenberg 18.8, WordPress 6.6";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?post_type=podcast&p=29449";s: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:87:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-104-block-themes-gutenberg-18-8/";s: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:62481:"<p>In this episode, Carolina Nymark and Birgit Pauli-Haack discuss Block Themes, Gutenberg 18.8, WordPress 6.6 and more.</p>



<p><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-104-block-themes-gutenberg-18-8/#shownotes">Show Notes</a> / <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-104-block-themes-gutenberg-18-8/#transcript">Transcript</a></p>



<p></p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-reed/">Sandy Reed</a></li>



<li>Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://markuraine.com/">Mark Uraine</a></li>



<li>Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://icodeforapurpose.com">Birgit Pauli-Haack</a></li>
</ul>



<p class="has-larger-font-size" id="shownotes"><strong>Show Notes</strong></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Special Guest: Carolina Nymark</h2>



<p><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/poena/">WordPress Profile @poena</a></p>



<p><a href="https://x.com/carolinapoena">On X (former Twitter)  @carolinapoena </a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/">FullsiteEditing.com</a></h2>



<p>Updated pages: </p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/lessons/global-styles/">Global Styles &amp; theme.json</a></li>



<li><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/lessons/theme-json-color-options/">Theme.json color options</a></li>



<li><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/lessons/theme-json-font-size/">Theme.json typography: Font size</a></li>



<li><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/lessons/theme-json-typography-font-styles/">Theme.json typography: Line height, font weight and more</a></li>



<li><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/lessons/how-to-add-box-shadows-with-theme-json/">How to add shadows with theme.json</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress 6.6</h2>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/18/wordpress-6-6-1-rc1-is-now-available/">WordPress&nbsp;6.6.1&nbsp;RC1 is now available</a></p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/24/section-styles/">Section Styles</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/06/21/styling-sections-nested-elements-and-more-with-block-style-variations-in-wordpress-6-6/">Styling sections, nested elements, and more with Block Style Variations in WordPress 6.6</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/19/theme-json-version-3/">Theme.json version 3</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2024/06/21/theme-json-version-3-frequently-asked-questions/">Theme.json version 3 frequently asked questions</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/06/18/an-introduction-to-overrides-in-synced-patterns/">An introduction to overrides in Synced Patterns</a>&nbsp;</li>



<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/62566#top">Synced Patterns iteration for WordPress 6.7 (Draft)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/18/grid-layout-type/">Grid layout type</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/01/recap-hallway-hangout-exploring-grid-layouts/">Recap Hallway Hangout: Exploring Grid Layouts</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/301860423/">Developer Hours: Do you really need a custom block?</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/07/04/15-ways-to-curate-the-wordpress-editing-experience/">15 ways to curate the WordPress editing experience</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/how-to-guides/curating-the-editor-experience/">Docs: Curating the Editor Experience</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg 18.8</h2>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/17/whats-new-in-gutenberg-18-8-17-july/">What’s new in Gutenberg 18.8 (17 July)</a>&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What&#8217;s discussed or in the works</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/63335">[Experiment] Add freeform image cropper component</a></li>



<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/55238">Media Library updates&nbsp;</a></li>



<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/56837#top">Add color and other style options to the Audio Block</a></li>
</ul>



<p class="has-large-font-size">Stay in Touch</p>



<div class="wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow">
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Did you like this episode? <a href="https://lovethepodcast.com/gutenbergchangelog"><strong>Please write us a review </strong></a></li>



<li>Ping us on X (formerly known as Twitter) or send DMs with questions. <a href="https://twitter.com/gutenbergtimes">@gutenbergtimes </a>and <a href="https://twitter.com/bph">@bph</a>.</li>



<li><em>If you have questions or suggestions, or news you want us to include, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. </em></li>



<li><em>Please write us a review on iTunes! <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/itunes/">(Click here to learn how)</a></em></li>
</ul>
</div></div>



<p class="has-large-font-size" id="transcript"><strong>Transcript</strong></p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Hello, and welcome to our 104th episode of the Gutenberg ChangeLog podcast. In today&#8217;s episode, we&#8217;ll talk about block themes, Gutenberg 18.8, WordPress 6.6, and so much more. I&#8217;m your host, Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times and full-time core contributor for the WordPress Core, Open Source Project sponsored by Automattic Five For The Future Program.</p>



<p>Today I&#8217;m delighted to have with me on the show Carolina Nymark, core contributor, sponsored by Yoast. She writes on fullsiteediting.com and she regularly updates and adds features to the Gutenberg plugin and block themes, and she&#8217;s from Sweden. Thank you so much for being on the show. How are you today, Carolina?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Hi, I&#8217;m well, thank you. June was a very hot month, but July has actually been a little bit cooler. We have had some rain here just outside Stockholm, so it&#8217;s been nice.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So yeah, the rain&#8230; In Germany it&#8217;s still very hot or it&#8217;s up and down. It was cooler earlier this month, but it&#8217;s now really, really hot. And I&#8217;m glad, I&#8217;m going out to the lake or maybe I&#8217;m going to go jump into the lake that&#8217;s a little bit southeast of Munich over the weekend. So hopefully the weather holds to actually have that.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> That sounds amazing.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, well, we&#8217;ll see. We are also working on the house of my parents, to fix some of the things, and I don&#8217;t know how much time we&#8217;re going to have. Yeah. So yeah, let&#8217;s just get into the show.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Announcements &#8211; WordPress 6.6</h3>



<p>The long-awaited release of WordPress 6.6 happened earlier this week and it&#8217;s named Dorsey after the legendary American big band leader, Tommy Dorsey, with the smooth sounds.</p>



<p>The release post actually sports a Spotify link with a playlist of his great songs. It took about 630 contributors from 51 countries, and this release also welcomed over 150 first-time contributors. That&#8217;s a huge number every time we have a release with the new contributors. So I&#8217;m really happy that we can onboard so many new contributors and get them on the release.</p>



<p>Well, since the roadmap came out on 6.6 in March, we talked about the upcoming releases quite a bit. So for you Carolina, the next question I ask almost everybody who was on the show, what are the most exciting updates in WordPress 6.6 for you?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark: </em>Well, I hope this isn&#8217;t too repetitive, but there are several things. The updated block style variations or section styles is a great addition. It helps users quickly select a pattern or a part of a page and just really changes the style of it. It helps WordPress developers to work faster as well.</p>



<p>I&#8217;ve heard some rumors that this is only a feature for block themes, and that is not true. You can use these section styles even in classic themes, as long as you&#8217;re using the block editor. Because you do not need to use JSON or a theme JSON file to register these. You can register them with PHP.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> That&#8217;s true. Yeah. The block styles have been in Gutenberg for a long time, but the section styles are just coming in that you have a group of blocks that the styles apply to for the container blocks, like the group blocks, the columns block, and what was the other one? Was it media text?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Cover perhaps. I&#8217;ve mainly been testing it out.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Oh, with the cover. Yeah. Yeah, you&#8217;re right. You&#8217;re testing them out? You were going to say?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> I was going to move on to my next favorite feature.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Oh, okay. So let me just say that we have in the show notes two things for you, dear listeners. And that&#8217;s going to be the dev notes about sections styles. And also the latest developer blog post about styling sections, nested elements, and more about the block style variations in WordPress 6.6. So what else is exciting for you?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark: </em>We have the update where we&#8217;re using theme version three, which solves problems with the font size and spacing presets. And the presets are the default values that WordPress adds. So before we can upgrade to version three, of course the developers need to learn about the changes. And they need to decide if they actually want to upgrade or not.</p>



<p>And this is going to depend on, well, which WordPress version do you need to support you. If you&#8217;re supporting WordPress 6.6 and forwards, then you can definitely switch to version three. But if you still need to support, I don&#8217;t know, 6.0, 6.3 and so on, then you have to consider this more carefully.</p>



<p>So of course there&#8217;s been many discussions about this with theme developers, especially in WordCamp Europe. And so for example, their discussions about, so if I switch to version three, I&#8217;m also going to have to update the spacing that I&#8217;m using inside the templates. And again, we come back to, okay, so if I update the template, how do I make sure that the end user knows that there is a theme update, that to actually receive this update to the template they might have to go and reset the template on their installation. It&#8217;s just tricky. It&#8217;s an important decision to make if you&#8217;re supporting many different WordPress versions.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. That has always been a bigger problem for theme developers when they update their templates and the user has modified the templates through the Global Styles, that the updates are not overwriting those. Because the user has the latest priority or the highest priority. So a theme update wouldn&#8217;t necessarily come through and make this available for all the sites. Yeah, that&#8217;s true.</p>



<p>This doesn&#8217;t go away with the theme JSON version though, version 3, but it makes it probably a little easier. But what will make it easier is another feature we&#8217;re going to talk about, but I just wanted to point out as a side note that Carolina Nymark has updated pages on the fullsiteediting.com site to include all the new developments and updates, and I think there are five pages that were updated.</p>



<p>There was one on Global Styles and theme JSON. Theme JSON color options and typography options for fun, size, line height, font rate and more, and then how to add shadows with the theme JSON. So the great site, fullsiteediting.com that focuses so much on block theme, teaches you even more on the new developments. So thanks, Carolina, for putting all the work in. Yeah, so what&#8217;s next? So we had the style sections, we have the theme JSON changes, and then&#8230;</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> We also have the overrides for synced patterns. This helps you to keep the overall form, shape, the sign of parts of the content that they have inserted, but still change part of the content. For example, if you have this group block with the specific image and the heading that highlights your feature and the button, then maybe you want to use different images and you can go in and only change that image.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, that&#8217;s a great tool.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> And go update. So it&#8217;s not super easy to explain, but yes, it&#8217;s very helpful for site creators. From a theme developer perspective, there&#8217;s not much one can do with the overrides for synced patterns, since themes cannot register synced patterns, only regular standard patterns.</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s no attribute that I as a theme developer can add, for example, to my patent PHP file to make it synced on theme activation. That doesn&#8217;t exist. But hopefully we can continue working on that and find ways to make that happen.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, so let me unpack that for a little bit. So if a user wants to create a synced pattern and use one of the theme patterns as a blueprint for that, they need to use the duplicate feature in the panel manager.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Yes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And then switch on the synced part and preferably also rename it so they don&#8217;t see it twice in the list of patterns.But then if the pattern gets updated through the theme, they could see it, but their duplicate version won&#8217;t update. So they need to take care of that.</p>



<p>But I like the synced pattern for site builders, because it releases quite a few headaches that you had before. That you couldn&#8217;t update the patterns and styles through the Global Styles, now you can. And now you can also have your users or your other editors use the same and just change your mind about the background.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> It helps if you have editors and you only want them to be able to edit specific things, then the synced patterns with overrides definitely helps with that. That&#8217;s one of their biggest purposes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. Also for myself, if I had a pattern that I can change the content of it more and more or more often, and reuse it for a book review or for just a call for action. And I always have the same design, but the call to action is a different one. It also helps me as a site owner quite a bit to streamline my processes.</p>



<p>But you&#8217;re right, so developer block has an introduction to the overrides in synced patterns. That will be interesting to learn about, if you want to read, if you want to learn about it. And then also link an iteration tracking issue for synced pattern in WordPress 6.7. It&#8217;s still named a draft, but it has, when you look at it, it lists all the issues that theme developers had with the synced patterns and that they want to get fixed or enabled or feature requests. And one of them is actually make synced patterns available for theme developers.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s also great discussions from quite a few theme developers in the community that have been vocal about that, and the responses from the developers like Riad bringing it all together in an overall model for synced patterns. So I&#8217;m really looking forward to how that works going to progress. I&#8217;m not sure if it&#8217;s going to be coming to WordPress 6.7, because we only would know by the end of September, but there&#8217;s two months or two and a half months to go to actually work on that. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> I&#8217;m just thinking that two and a half months, it&#8217;s a very short time. The release squad for the 6.7 release, the post where you can sign up or actually apply to be part of the release squad has been up. I guess we&#8217;ll know more later next week.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, I think so. I&#8217;m going to put it in the show notes, what you&#8217;re just saying, the post with a proposal for the release and raise your hand if you want to be part of it. And there&#8217;s also a section, on the core block was another post that was, what would you like to see in the theme Twenty Twenty Five?</p>



<p>Because every year the last release of the year also comes with a new default theme. And I&#8217;m looking forward to what&#8217;s going to be next in there, and how many of the features that we are talking about right now are coming into the default theme.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Yes, absolutely. So there actually is a GitHub repository already open for Twenty Twenty Five, where you can submit issues with what we&#8217;d like to see. For example, maybe you want to see an example of how we see negative margins. Or maybe you want to see the new grid variation, which is now&#8230; So the grid has been available in WordPress, but it hasn&#8217;t had the same kind of UI interface and options that we see in 6.6.</p>



<p>So in 6.6 we have the grid as a group variation. I&#8217;m looking forward to learning more about how to actually use these settings. I&#8217;m not familiar with them yet. Actually I do find it a little bit confusing. So I have to really set dedicated time to learning this. So we have the grid and we are able to, for example, set how many columns we want in the grid. We can adapt how our content inside the grid will flow into a different row, for example.</p>



<p>But then you have to go and select there the block that is inside the grid and decide, do I want this particular block to be two columns wide? Or do I want it to be two rows, for example? So once I feel comfortable with that and know how it works, then I think we&#8217;re going to be able to create some really interesting layouts.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, you do. And there was a hallway hangout and you provided that link to it also with Isabel Bryson who actually worked quite a bit on that feature. And she showed off how she&#8217;s going to use it or how she worked on it and what you can do with it. I really liked the way that you could say, okay, any column that is in the grid needs to be&#8230; Or any cell that needs to have a minimum width of 300, and then it automatically flows with the screen size.</p>



<p>So if it&#8217;s a mobile screen, then you get them all stacked, and if it&#8217;s a tablet, you get two columns, or maybe&#8230; Nah, three is probably not wide enough. And then when you&#8217;re on the big screen you get as much as the layout of your website allows, and stack them, have three or four in a row.</p>



<p>So that&#8217;s really good. And it&#8217;s a responsive way to make your layouts without having to think about responsiveness. So I think that&#8217;s a great feature for users because it&#8217;s a new concept anyway, and our users that haven&#8217;t been able to create layouts or do some editing on their theme or of their headers and that, there is another jump there to make to get the concepts right. Because I think we have some anecdotal evidence that for some people it was hard to figure out are we editing a template or am I editing this particular page?</p>



<p>And we are then surprised when they thought they&#8217;re editing a page that it changed for the whole site. So yeah, there are now a few guardrails in the site editor. I&#8217;m not sure if there are enough, but I&#8217;m also thinking that it gets better and better the more people are using it and the more people get confused and talk about it to find the right way to do this.</p>



<p>And a grid layout, you don&#8217;t have to think about that much. That&#8217;s a concept that people can really adhere to or find, maybe not that hard to&#8230; I saw quite a few of those layouts where you have a stacked group block inside a grid cell and those are really cool. Or have a row inside a grid cell. And those behave really well also in the responsiveness.</p>



<p>So I&#8217;m excited about the grid layout. I&#8217;m really waiting for a masonry grid layout that goes with the flow in every direction. I&#8217;m not sure if that&#8217;s yet available. I have the feeling they&#8217;re not, but there are some experiments that you can&#8230; If you use the Gutenberg plugin there&#8217;s an experiment page and you can switch on interactive grid layouts and do even more experiments, explorations with that feature for 6.7. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Yeah. I definitely have to go and check that out. One thing that I would like to see, I&#8217;m not saying it&#8217;s possible, I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s possible, but when you have a query loop and you have the post-template block inside of it, you have the option to select between lists and the grid. And I would like that grid option that you select in the toolbar of the post-template block to have the same type of options. So that I would be able to have&#8230; Maybe I want the second post in my query to be two rows tall, for example. I&#8217;m not sure if it&#8217;s possible.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Not yet. I had the same question.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Have all the signs for the post. Well the thing is, it&#8217;s a loop, so of course it loops through every post. I&#8217;m not sure&#8230; We&#8217;ll get to that later when we talk about the plugin, I think. Because in the query loop, of course you can&#8217;t add it. If you add a block to your post-template it&#8217;s going to be the same block, same text for whatever these posts. I&#8217;m not sure if it would be possible to have one post to be taller or wider than everyone else. Unless of course you want to go and do custom CSS, which is absolutely possible. But from the editor, I&#8217;m not sure, but I would really like that.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. In the editor it&#8217;s not possible yet. I did, well many, many years ago, a layout for a news outlet that had I think six columns and the main post was three columns wide and then one was two column, one column and underneath there were six different posts that are kind of in the header section. And that&#8217;s not available yet, that you can&#8230;</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> No, exactly. So if you wanted, for example, one full word sticky post you&#8217;d have to use, today you&#8217;d use custom CSS to achieve that. Or maybe you&#8217;d even have two query loops, which of course at some point it&#8217;s going to be a performance issue if you have to do it twice. But you can&#8217;t do that with the options on the block now.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. Maybe we can&#8230; One can say that the sticky post is always, I don&#8217;t know, two columns or three columns. But yeah, it&#8217;s all&#8230; Because all of a sudden everybody has a different need and then I cannot imagine the interface, how many dials. And so you could offer the user, though they have every use case in there. But yeah, we&#8217;ll see what&#8217;s going to be possible later on.</p>



<p>And I&#8217;m thinking that that&#8217;s also a great place for plugins to extend the core blocks to use the grid block in certain ways and try that out to say, okay, what is possible and push the limits a little bit on that.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Yeah. I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s going to be responses now saying, oh, but this has existed in my plugin for three years. Awesome.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Oh, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Sadly I have not seen it. I do not have time, there&#8217;s many page building plugins or block collections, unfortunately.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. All right. So as I said, so I think, is there anything else from WordPress 6.6 that stands out for you apart from those theme-related features?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: I&#8217;m a theme nerd. Everything is theme-related. We have the background. So the background image settings where you can now add the background image to various blocks and to the site wide Global Styles from the site editor for block themes.</p>



<p>I have mixed feelings about this because I&#8217;m glad it is more now&#8230; It has a higher&#8230; How to say? It matches the customized settings better where you could add the background image. But I&#8217;m a little concerned that we are going to end up with these group blocks where people are adding text on top of the image and the text is not going to be readable, it&#8217;s not going to be accessible.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark: </em>We&#8217;ll see.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> I think all the design tools bring hives to some designers because they don&#8217;t think that a lot of WordPress users are good designers, so they shouldn&#8217;t have access to those tools. And I&#8217;m reminded that there was a big movement in the internet, it&#8217;s called GeoCities or MySpace, where you had all those tools already at your fingertips. And there were quite some funky signs out there. But that&#8217;s kind of the creativity that is bred when you give people tools.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> That&#8217;s when we used the tables, HMO tables to other layouts and we had the dancing baby in the diaper and more.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Chip animations, yeah. Using spacer. But we found that spacer images are coming back with the spacer block, right?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark: </em>Mm-hmm. Yeah, that&#8217;s interesting. So again, we are going to talk about this, about improving the block supports. So in the Gutenberg 18.8, we&#8217;re adding shadow supports for groups.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yes.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: I don&#8217;t know if I should bring this now.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> It&#8217;s your PR, right? Well let&#8217;s talk about it when we go through the Changelog and we&#8217;ll be there in about 2 minutes.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Yeah. In relation to the space block, so we are now not only adding the shadow, we&#8217;re working now for the next release. To add color options and spacing options to more blocks to make it more consistent. Because we have text-based blocks. It doesn&#8217;t even have text color. One of these ideas is of course, are we going to have a background on the space block or not? That discussion might be interesting.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Indeed, indeed. Because there are also some great separator blocks and spacer blocks. It&#8217;s kind of both. Yeah, right, it&#8217;s a spacer or a separator that has some design to it. And the other CSS you can do some really funky things with waves and going from triangles and that kind of thing. And different kinds of patterns, how the background shines into the next block.</p>



<p>And I like those. I&#8217;m thinking maybe putting a plugin together with, there was a site that has a lot of separators CSS already displayed, and you can probably fairly easy, add them to a plugin so people can have an additional&#8230; So it&#8217;s a web dev separator generator, that&#8217;s called.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Yeah. Okay, interesting.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I&#8217;m going to look at that. It&#8217;s from the W Web Dev, GitHub group. So I&#8217;ll share the link in the show notes and&#8230;</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Yeah, a plugin would be a good idea for that. Because it can of course be used in any theme. The problem with doing this kind of thing, like a pattern, if you wanted to do the pattern and submit it to the pattern directory, is that you can&#8217;t use custom CSS.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Or add it to a theme, but then it&#8217;s not going from theme to theme. Yeah. Then it&#8217;s not&#8230;</p>



<p>Carolina Nymark: No, exactly.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> It kind of goes away.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Omitted.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, right. I know that we can talk about quite a few things and we will, but today, just right now this minute, I wanted to do a side note. Because with all the features that come to developers and for no-code site builders in WordPress 6.5 and 6.6, you might not need to create a custom block to extend core functionality, that much anymore, because you could use block bindings or you could use other tools. That is not that.</p>



<p>So on July 23rd, JuanMa Garrido and Nick Diego will hold developer hours again, and with the title Do You Really Need a Custom Block? And they will explore with you, their listeners if you want to join them, how to add new functionality to core blocks by content only editing and the allowed blocks attribute and patterns.</p>



<p>So a lot of people review their custom blocks if they couldn&#8217;t replace them with patterns because they don&#8217;t have to maintain so much code or integrate block bindings and block variations. Well block variations, you need a little bit more development there. When effective block blocking and naming as well as of course our latest, most favorite feature synced pattern overrides.</p>



<p>So July 23rd, a 1500 UTC, that will take place. It&#8217;s a live stream on Zoom and that&#8217;s 9:00 AM eastern in the US, 1500 UTC, 9:00 AM Eastern on July 23rd. And also for the same topic, there is also a developer blog post out that lists 15 ways to curate the WordPress editing experience from disabling specific blocks. So panel directory or unregistered formatting for the rich text block to disabling certain sidebar panels.</p>



<p>And I know switching on and off for features is really important for clients and content creators, that it&#8217;s a major concern for agencies and publishers. And we talked about it earlier as well. And this post is a great snippet collection. It also points it to the right places in the documentation and there are always ways to disable custom colors and core presets in the theme JSON.</p>



<p>And I&#8217;m sure the Full Site Editing Global Styles and theme JSON has some notes about that too. So that&#8217;s kind of about the overall WordPress experience. Do you want to comment on any of that?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> I&#8217;ll try to attend. It&#8217;s sounds really like an interesting call. Yeah, I enjoyed the post about the 15 ways to security experience as well.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s Released &#8211; Gutenberg 18.8</h3>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> All right, so we&#8217;ve come to what everybody&#8217;s waiting for, is what&#8217;s Gutenberg 18.8? So 211 PRs merged into the plugin release. 57 of those were enhancements, 77 were bug fixes and 35 of those bug fixes were actually back ported to core and made it into WordPress 6.6 and were included in the release candidate three.</p>



<p>But that&#8217;s all snow from yesterday, as we say in Germany, badly translated of course. But it&#8217;s in 6.6. Sixty contributors worked on this release, 10 of them, again, first-time contributors, so congratulations to all. So what&#8217;s in there is a good mixture between experimental stuff, updates on UI as well as some developer stuff and of course bug fixes.</p>



<p>But the one new feature that comes in as an experiment is the data form. We know about data views. That&#8217;s how all the list views in WP admin could look. When you look at the site editor, you see how pages could look and patterns and all that, organized in new views and grid layouts and all that. But what it does not have yet is a data form component. And this is now implemented as a first prototype in the iteration process to duplicate page actions.</p>



<p>So there is a modal that opens up and you get a form, you have to fill that in and hit a submit button, and that is the prototype that comes in. But take a look at it, if you&#8217;re a plugin developer, you probably can already see how that works for your plugin maybe, or how that can go into the WordPress 6.7. I think it&#8217;s still an experiment though. It hasn&#8217;t been released as an official or maybe not.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> I&#8217;m not sure actually.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> No, no, it&#8217;s actually in the plugin. It&#8217;s not an experiment, any duplicate&#8230; So it&#8217;s in the duplicate action that you can see. So when would you duplicate it? You would duplicate a pattern, you would duplicate a page, you would duplicate a template. Yeah, so all these duplicate actions will use that component.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Yeah, it&#8217;ll help with the consistency and also of course make it easier to reuse these forms.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. And also have a standard way of doing forms and you don&#8217;t have to make decisions as a plugin developer on, how do I do this? Use the form. But it&#8217;s not there yet. But what is an experiment is having&#8230; So we have pages, we have patterns, we have templates, we have styles, template parts, which are our patterns, what we don&#8217;t have in the new admin section are posts.</p>



<p>You still have to get out and go into the WP admin to add that and you still would have to do this. But there is a PR in this release where it at least has the framework around to putting a post list into the data we use as well. This is an experiment that needs to be enabled through the experiments page of the plugin. The next thing is yes, you know all about it. Carolina, is that support for shadows for the group block. Yay. We were waiting for it. Thank you.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> I received so many comments in praise for this and I&#8217;m like, okay, thank you. But sorry, this change it&#8217;s&#8230; So when you create a block support, you create these setting and the UI for it and you do that once. Because it&#8217;s the support blocks opt into it, compared to a block attribute, which normally is unique and only developed for that single block. So when you enable support on new blocks or in your plugin, you change maybe three lines of code and then you&#8217;re done.</p>



<p>This is usually how it works. And this is how it worked for the group block shadow. It was a very simple change. We needed to do some manual testing to see about how to consider the overlap and the shadow was very long. Do we need to do something about that? And we ended up not doing anything, except labeling it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, and with the&#8230; Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Yeah. There are some other blocks where it&#8217;s not as simple. We are discovering bugs recently, early this week, not in this plugin release, but maybe the next one or the next after that. We found that there were still some remaining styles from the list block that affected other blocks that used the list element. So that was fixed, so that&#8217;s good.</p>



<p>So we discovered this one when we added background color and realized, wait a minute, the background color, it&#8217;s a little bit off here. So that&#8217;s how we discovered it. So sometimes it&#8217;s very easy to do this, but I also have a pull request for adding the border to the site logo, which has been going on since Twenty Twenty Three. And that is way more complex because we have to work with a link. Without a link we have to work with a resizer, have to work with a cropping tool and so on. So that one is not merged yet. But I&#8217;m hoping to get reviews of it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. It&#8217;s interesting to look behind the scenes, how complicated they can be. And when you think that something that is newer, because the group block is relatively new in comparison to other blocks, they fit into the architecture better because it&#8217;s a more formal architecture, that wasn&#8217;t the case earlier on. And so yeah. But thank you so much. And also looking at that. Sometimes it&#8217;s easy and sometimes it&#8217;s hard. And we do it because it&#8217;s hard, right?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> It&#8217;s interesting that way. It&#8217;s definitely challenging.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And talking about some quality of life around blocks, not quality of life, but a QA around blocks. There was also an effort from quite a few developers amongst them, Maggie Cabrera, to add example snippets, two blocks, especially the query block, the post list, the excerpt block, log in log out block. So when you hover over them in the inserter that you see on the right-hand side, what kind of block is that? Some of the core blocks don&#8217;t have that and this was an oversight that has now been rectified.</p>



<p>And so this is just going to make it a little bit more smoother and make it a little bit more consistent. The next one is&#8230; I wanted to put out is from the inserter, that the PR says, remove the dialogue behavior and that is the behavior, that when you click on things something opens up. And when you&#8217;re done, click in there. And you&#8217;re done with it, it closes automatically.</p>



<p>And the inserter and sometimes it&#8217;s a little bit of a harder&#8230; Was harder to use, because you had to click every time you wanted to add a block and open it up again. And now with that changed behavior you can now have it open and add multiple blocks at the same time to canvas. So this is definitely a quality of life for streamlining the workflow for creating content.</p>



<p>The next one is what you already mentioned, block background UI controls and have the controls move to a popover, so there&#8217;s background images. The blocks have gotten quite a few refinements in 18.8. Do you want to talk about that?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> It&#8217;s a bit changed in the UI.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. It&#8217;s definitely also streamlined and consistent through the&#8230; Global Styles, you can add background to blocks through the Global Styles as well as through the blocks, properties or settings. So they also streamlined those processes. The next one I found interesting was&#8230; That&#8217;s about the group block and they had a name, they renamed the fill feature to grow and that indicated&#8230; Can you explain what that indicates?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> I read the pull request, so it&#8217;s partially to make the name a better match with the CSS functionalities behind the scenes. But it&#8217;s also about not mixing the fill in this context with the background color fill or the background image. So that&#8217;s the reason why they changed this.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Oh, yeah. So it&#8217;s easier for people to translate and not have overlap ideas about things. But it also, I think the fill only has the connotation that it&#8217;s a fixed width, to be filled. And with grow it also indicates that it grows with the blocks that come in. So when you put a bigger one in there and that grow part, that&#8217;s what those CSS is actually for. The property is called grow as well. Yeah, flex-grow. It&#8217;s for the flex CSS there. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark: </em>Yes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> All right. Yeah. And then of course that&#8217;s a great thing, is we get color support for the list item. Now we can have stripes in our list. In each list item could have a different color and that is really cool. Talking about designs, can you also grade gradients around it?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> I haven&#8217;t tried it. I would definitely look. I&#8217;m looking forward to hopefully seeing some kind of border support. Because I would like to sometimes have my list items like underlined. That&#8217;s one thing.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> So the underlying feature is not available for lists in the inline?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark: </em>Well, I don&#8217;t necessarily want to underline text, as in it being your name.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Oh, you want the same. Yeah, you want the same link of it? Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Like the whole list item. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. So I haven&#8217;t tried it yet, but I&#8217;m going to try out the list block color support with some funky designs maybe over the weekend. It&#8217;s really cool. Then the next one is, that&#8217;s a small change, but it definitely clears up a lot of questions that came in through user support or that the justification formatting is also coming to the block toolbar in addition to that is in the sidebar because most people didn&#8217;t find it in the sidebar when they were looking for it and thought it wasn&#8217;t possible to justify a certain block or a certain series of blocks. So now it&#8217;s also available in the toolbar. That&#8217;s restricted to a few blocks I would think.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Yes. It&#8217;s largely inconsistent what&#8217;s in the toolbar and what&#8217;s in the sidebar for different blocks.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, that&#8217;s true.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> True. Let&#8217;s say if the pull request probably mentions if it&#8217;s&#8230;</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> It&#8217;s definitely available for the flex box in the group log.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> I only see the post content that the group mentioned, but I don&#8217;t think that&#8230; I think that was just an example.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, it&#8217;s for the group block. I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s going to come to columns as well. Yeah, we need to test this. Dear listeners, we haven&#8217;t tested this little thing yet, sorry. But if you test it, send in what you think of it and how you use it.</p>



<p>But I like that these things are going to be consistently updated anyway and somebody notices it and says, okay, I&#8217;m going to fix it.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And then the next item is a change in the block API. That&#8217;s more for developers. It&#8217;s very technical, but it allows a custom block developer to add a file name to the variations fields of the custom block that they&#8217;re building. So you can create a block and then you also assign variations to it. And then if you don&#8217;t want it all in the same file, you can add a file name to the variations field and then it pulls it from there. Very nifty.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Yeah. And especially now if we&#8217;re saying that the number of variations that the block has&#8230; Like the grid block, that it keeps growing. It&#8217;s definitely absolutely useful for block developers because the grid block now has four.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, just kind of thinking, but that was style variations one, not block variations. So we have a proliferation of the word variations and styles and blocks and you can mix it anywhere we want.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Yeah, block style variation, block variations. It&#8217;s very similar. Also in the interface, they&#8217;re also very closely positioned in the interface. As long as you have opened the styles panel, you can have the variation just below the block name or then the description and then you have the style variation inside the panel. Also at the very top.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. They all look the same. So if you&#8217;re a visual person, like I am. I always know where something stood in a book, I knew the page number and then where on the book. I could find it very easily. But if it&#8217;s just all the same, yeah, it&#8217;s kind of I need to&#8230; Maybe, can we have a background if something is color coded. Or can we have a shape or something like that?</p>



<p>But it&#8217;s just a name.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> So this is not part of Gutenberg, now I&#8217;m skipping again. So of course immediately after a major list, contributors are monitoring the support forms, and of course the Gutenberg tickets and the track tickets. One of the tickets that stood out a little bit, and I&#8217;m not going to talk about the underlying, is actually the page and post, the summary, or what used to be a summary panel. And this user was supporting that. They weren&#8217;t able to find the comment settings.</p>



<p>Because when you look at the top of the panel now it&#8217;s links, so they&#8217;re not in separate panel anymore. And this person who just saw this for the first time probably, it wasn&#8217;t easy for them to find it. And that&#8217;s one of the changes in 6.6 that we actually haven&#8217;t discussed. Not in this call at least. People will get used to it. I don&#8217;t know if anything&#8217;s going to be moved back. I don&#8217;t think so.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Well, there was between&#8230; I&#8217;m not sure if it was from one version to the next, but I know that there was a discussion about where should the revisions panels be? Should it be under the three point options kind of thing, or where should the sticky post thing be? And of course when you know, okay, that worked, that&#8217;s there now. And I can remember that.</p>



<p>But for the first time, the shock, oh, did it go? Yeah, where did it go? You just want to get your work done and all of a sudden these hurdles come in with a new version.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> And the featured image also moved to the very top. It&#8217;s a little bit different.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, I like that actually, because I&#8217;m always going to fear that I forget the featured image. A lot of designs are actually very visual and you have that in your post loop in the list of the block posts and there&#8217;s a featured image and you want to make sure that that&#8217;s in there. But yeah, it&#8217;s a change.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark: </em>That&#8217;s a good point. A good reminder to have it there.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> But what I also like with the new workflow setting is that the number of words is right there. How many are in the post. That you only had to do three clicks to actually get to that? So in the outline tab of the list view, so you had to open up the list view, click to the outline, and then see how many words are in the post. Now you just go to the&#8230;</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark: </em>So I hope that you&#8217;re all keeping your blog post at least 3000 words now, right? For SEO purposes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. And 15 blog posts make a book, right? 3000 words. Does that come from a search engine kind of quality content, needs to be 3000 words?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> It&#8217;s a lot.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, that&#8217;s a lot.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Only your most important content.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. Well, our writers on the developer blog, they&#8217;re always kind of bumping up on that number quite a bit. But that&#8217;s because we have some great code examples and explanations there and it&#8217;s always about our real world kind of example. And it takes that long to explain.</p>



<p>All right, what else do we have in 18.8? We have a lot of changes in the component sections, but that&#8217;s so highly technical, about the custom select control version two. There&#8217;s a version two, dear developers. Those will be probably&#8230; If they come to a WordPress version they will be in a dev note, complete together, so you get them.</p>



<p>Because they&#8217;re all smaller fixes that are in a bigger context. But now with the PRs it&#8217;s harder to describe what&#8217;s the bigger picture about it. So I would wait until they get into the WordPress major version where you try them out. For the block library, we have two things that we wanted to talk about. One is the aspect ratio control for image blocks in grids. That was something that was missing.</p>



<p>Also in the hallway hangout, you saw it, that Isabel tried to get the picture into the grid and then it wouldn&#8217;t fill up the whole thing. And so now you can control the aspect ratio of those image blocks. It&#8217;s really cool. And then the other one is when I see reduced specificity, I first have a hard time pronouncing that word.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Same. I also have difficulty even trying to spell it if I take it out. Yeah, reduce specificity of the social link icon color. I believe this is a bug fix. I guess the colors were either impacting something else or were impacted by it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. And it wasn&#8217;t possible to control them. So now themes can control it. But yeah, CSS specificity was definitely a topic on the WordPress release in 6.6. And there were a few rumblings around, because for some features, theme developers fixed something that core didn&#8217;t do or needed to override. And now with 6.6, core fixed what they were doing, but then it affected what theme developers were doing.</p>



<p>So they had to reduce certain things or revert some of the changes. But it also maybe was a little bit pushed too far with the underlined issue, the link underlined issue. And overall it was ripping off the bandaid to make section style possible, to reduce the specificity on certain CSS and have&#8230; It only affected a few theme developers that were very heavy on CSS, on style CSS still. So how did you find that change in 6.6 with your themes or you? Or in the discussion with the theme developers?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> So I spent so many hours testing these changes early on, but not through the latest release candidates. So I obviously missed many, many things. I couldn&#8217;t keep up.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Nobody&#8217;s going to fault you.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark: </em>With some of the changes. I have not had time to test my websites with 6.6 or my themes. I&#8217;m just going to wait a little and not just automated upgrade. I haven&#8217;t had time.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> That&#8217;s of course a good way to say, let other people find the faults. And I know that the core team is starting to work on a point release to come out somehow next week for 6.6.1 and you probably want to wait for that to update all the sites. So the release candidate is coming out I think tomorrow or today?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> I think it&#8217;s today.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> It&#8217;s today. We are recording this on July 18th. So sorry.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> That&#8217;s correct.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Just wanted to say what today is because it&#8217;s different for our listeners than it is for us.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> So today on Thursday the 18th, there are 10 fixes in this release.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Okay. All right. And in two weeks we&#8217;re going to talk about it. So synced patterns got some updates as well. The one PR ensures to disable override buttons is active for image blocks with captions or links. Because you could override the image URL and the alt text, but you couldn&#8217;t change the captions or the link that the image went to. And that is now changed.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> The part of the bug was that if you already had the original image, had a caption, and the caption setting was only visible and you replaced the image, the caption did not update and you were not able to edit it. This sort of solves that in one way, but more work is needed.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. And that actually went into 6.6. And then the other bug fix for pattern overrides was to fix the aspect ratio with the image overrides. So it wouldn&#8217;t adhere to the aspect. When you uploaded a new image, it wouldn&#8217;t necessarily adhere to the aspect ratio that was in the original before. So that is fixed too, and made it into 6.6. Yeah, was backboard to core, yes. All right. And then we had this disabled post, meta editing and blocks, that&#8217;s one of the inside query loops to finish my sentence.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Yes. So this has to do with the synced patterns, the rights and the block bindings and it prevents bugs. Again, like with the query loop is&#8230; Again, it&#8217;s the loops. So everything you add to the inside, it&#8217;s going to be repeated and that&#8217;s why it should not be editable that way.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, there was a feature there that if you needed to change post-meta for a certain block, you could do it in the query block, but that is now stopped. It&#8217;s disabled now. So there&#8217;s no confusion in overriding some. I think there were race conditions on the database for that. So that&#8217;s a good thing that it&#8217;s not on the query loop. If you want to change the metadata for a post, go to the post, do it there.</p>



<p>Then there&#8217;s one fix there that&#8217;s just for those who use the image block for plugins. And that is that the media ID and the block HML are supported for the block bindings. But that&#8217;s just&#8230; It&#8217;s really a technical update and a bug fix for 6.6. But it had quite a few discussions there and how that&#8217;s going to be fixed. But it is fixed now.</p>



<p>And then there are quite a few experiments and we talked about that, that grid layouts or interactive grids is one experiment in the Gutenberg plugin. And there are two features, allow inserting blocks directly into the empty grid cells, wire drag and drop, and then also use the manual placement attribute to set manual grid mode and allow responsive behavior in both modes.</p>



<p>So in the grid layouts in 6.6, when you switch on the manual feature in the sidebar, it takes away&#8230; And you say, okay, I wanted three columns width in manual, then even your mobile version has three columns because that&#8217;s what you said in a manual grid. And now with them they allow&#8230; this is an experiment to allow certain manual grid attributes and make sure that it&#8217;s still a responsive behavior. So it&#8217;s kind of&#8230; Not quite sure if that is the right UI or the right approach.</p>



<p>So go there and experiment with it to see if that satisfies. Because of course it&#8217;s surprising that if you put some manual in there, I want four columns and all of a sudden you see it in mobile and it is not responsive, that that disconnect is really hard to decipher.</p>



<p>And Nick Diego, who was the author of the 15 Ways to Curate The Editor Experience, found a gap in the documentation and he added how the rich text formatting or switching off rich text formatting features is done for the editor curation documentation. So that&#8217;s good. And then another documentation enhancement is that the interactivity API documentation now includes a few more examples and the reference for more examples in there. So if you are trying to get your head around the interactivity, API that might be even better.</p>



<p>Just an announcement is CSS hacks, Internet Explorer 11 have been removed from the block editor from the Gutenberg plugin. And I don&#8217;t know how many, I think when we removed the Internet Explorer 11 support in general in WordPress, there was quite a big number of code line changes or removals. I don&#8217;t think this would amount to it. It&#8217;s probably most of the time an if than else hack. But it&#8217;s removed and it&#8217;s a clearer way to look at the CSS. All right, anything else you want to comment on for that?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Fixing documentation is always awesome.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. And sometimes there&#8217;s quite a few things that need to be fixed. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Oh, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> All right, so this concludes, dear listeners, our review of the Gutenberg Changelog for the Gutenberg 18.8 release.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s in Active Development or Discussed</h3>



<p>So we are on the section now, what&#8217;s an active development and discussed. And I want to point out three things to you.</p>



<p>One is a very smaller one and that is adding color and other style options to the audio block. That is a PR or an issue right now that&#8217;s discussed on how to manage that and what is the minimum viable product on that. Do we need a featured image? Do we not use a featured image on that? But chime in on that so the developer who will take that on has your input if you to it. Of course that&#8217;s a different story, but it&#8217;s definitely good to form opinions and to make them available.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> And over time already, I guess I get a little bit excited talking about WordPress. So the audio element which is used in a block is almost impossible to style without either basically completely covering it with another element using CSS or with JavaScript. And it&#8217;s impossible to do it with just CSS. To add color options for everything around the actual audio element. Yeah, that&#8217;s an interesting approach to it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. It&#8217;s definitely something. And it&#8217;s also a&#8230; There&#8217;s another element out there like the video elements or some of the embeds that also could use some additional style options. And I think working on the audio block gives everybody a feel how that can be approached and what would be needed there. So it&#8217;s also the iteration process.</p>



<p>I also wanted to share with the audience a link to an experiment on free form image cropping. The image cropper is quite difficult to get your head around. And the block editor as well as in the classic editor, there is no&#8230; Both are abysmally&#8230; So there is a PR that a developer is working on. And definitely it&#8217;s still in draft so it hasn&#8217;t been even merged or full review, but it&#8217;s definitely something you want to look at and maybe you can try it out.</p>



<p>And then the biggest link that I wanted to share with you dear listener, is the updates for the media library. So the next step for the admin redesign is of course the posts, but that&#8217;s a small thing because the most things for the post everybody knows already. But the biggest one is how to rethink the media library with a new data admin. And Ramon Dodd started the process with a tracking issue and there is quite some discussion there. What else would be needed to change things or to bring over how it&#8217;s working now.</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s quite a discussion there that&#8217;s first interesting to see what everybody else is thinking, but also to chime in and figure out what is the first version going to look like when it comes to that media library in the new data admins.</p>



<p>And with that, we are at the end of the show. Thank you so much Carolina, for being on the show and letting us all know about block themes and what&#8217;s in 6.6 and what&#8217;s coming and talking about the Gutenberg&#8217;s 18.8 plugin. Is there anything that you want to announce from Yoast or for what you are working on that you didn&#8217;t get to talk about? You get about two minutes or three now.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: No, it&#8217;s okay. I work on Gutenberg when I find issues that are easy enough for me to work on. But that usually means that this looks easy and then four hours later you&#8217;re completely down a rabbit hole. I&#8217;m still trying to help out with the bundle teams triage, the bundle team task force and continue to find the problems, reporting new issues, and then we solve it together. So it&#8217;s working, mixing.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Thank you so much for the great work on all of it, on what&#8217;s in WordPress and listeners, as always, the show notes will be published on Gutenbergtimes.com/podcast. This is number 104. And if you have questions and suggestions or news you want us to include, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. That&#8217;s <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>.</p>



<p>And if people want to connect with Carolina Nymark, it could be definitely on WP Slack. Your name is Poena, right?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Yes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>And on Twitter, it&#8217;s Carolina Poena.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Yes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> If you want to follow her on what she shares on the social media. And thank you so much for being here, Carolina, it&#8217;s always a great pleasure to have you.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Thank you for inviting me.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yes. And I will do so again in a few months. So I hope to see you soon. I don&#8217;t know on any of the WordCamps, I don&#8217;t know, you&#8217;re going to go to Rome to the Core days? Or what&#8217;s your next WordCamp?</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Undecided.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Undecided. Yes.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Maybe Rome or maybe not until the next WordCamp.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, I&#8217;m undecided too, so I&#8217;m kind of&#8230; We&#8217;ll see. Yeah. And if not, we see each other on the interwebs.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark:</em> Oh, yes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>And take care. Bye-Bye.</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:"Sun, 21 Jul 2024 09:44:13 +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:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:48;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:20:"Matt: Jim Simons RIP";s: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=114897";s: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:37:"https://ma.tt/2024/07/jim-simons-rip/";s: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:4304:"<p>As I wrote the other day, <a href="https://ma.tt/2024/06/cowen-life-lessons/">don’t constrain your mentors by their availability</a>. Today, I’d like to highlight someone I consider a mentor, who I’ve never met, and now that he’s passed away, I never will, Jim Simons. </p>



<p>I’m mildly obsessed with the culture and results of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies">Renaissance Technologies</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Street_Capital">Jane Street</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_Trading">Jump Trading</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Sigma">Two Sigma</a> because I’d like to create the tech and infrastructure version of that at <a href="https://automattic.com/">Automattic</a>. Jim Simons reminds me of my Dad, who also never quit smoking and was super-smart. Finally, I love finding obscure YouTube videos with few views but full of great stuff.</p>



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

	<img class="lyt-bg" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SVdTF4_QrTM/hqdefault.jpg" alt="" />
  <a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=SVdTF4_QrTM" class="lty-playbtn" title="Play Video">
    <span class="lyt-visually-hidden"></span>
  </a>

</div>



<p>In December, 2010, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVdTF4_QrTM">Jim Simons gave a lecture at MIT called Mathmetics, Common Sense, and Good Luck: My Life and Careers</a>. The entire thing, including the introductions, is worth watching, but I’ll call out&nbsp;</p>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>Do something new. (This ties well with <a href="https://kottke.org/24/03/dont-be-the-best-be-the-only">Kevin Kelly’s &#8220;Don’t be the best. Be the only&#8221;</a>.)</li>



<li>Collaborate with the best people you possibly can.</li>



<li>Be guided by beauty.</li>



<li>Don’t give up.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Hope for some good luck.</li>
</ol>



<p>I want to pull out point three, and transcribe directly what he said because it’s quite profound:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>Pretty much everything I’ve done has had an aesthetic component, at least to me. Now you might think, well, building a company that’s trading bonds, what’s so aesthetic about that? But it is. What’s aesthetic about it is doing it right. Doing it right. Getting the right kind of people and approaching the problem and doing it right and if you feel like you feel like you’re the first one to do it right and I think we were, that’s a terrific feeling and it’s a beautiful thing to do something right. It’s also a beautiful thing to solve a math problem create some mathematics that people hadn’t thought of before, so “Be guided by beauty” is not such a bad principle.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>If there’s something I’d add, it’s that there is an art to imitation, copying the masters to further your own work. In jazz, we’d transcribe solos from great musicians, note for note, and try to recreate them perfectly, not because that was what we were going to do when we got on stage, but because that understanding and foundation gave us the mastery to take that work and build on top of it. I think this is also true in open source, which often starts by recreating something that exists in the proprietary world but then goes far beyond.</p>



<p>While Renaissance has its Medallion Fund, Automattic has its A12 stock program, which only employees can access. Both programs share the same idea, and if we’re lucky, A12 will create a ton of wealth over time—I love that a third of RenTech&#8217;s employees are registered as having assets of over 5M.</p>



<p>He also lists these points as creating alignment for a great organization:</p>



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>Great people.</li>



<li>Great infrastructure.</li>



<li>Open environment.</li>



<li>Try to get everyone compensated based on the overall performance.</li>
</ol>



<p>That last point is the hardest. <a href="https://www.danpink.com/books/drive/">Dan Pink&#8217;s book Drive</a> has a great overview of how it&#8217;s very difficult to align extrinsic incentive models. This post is a birthday <a href="https://ma.tt/2024/01/birthday-gift/">gift</a> to <a href="https://tim.blog/">Tim</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:"Sat, 20 Jul 2024 23:55:20 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:49;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:135:"Gutenberg Times: WordPress 6.6 and 6.6.1,  drop shadow for Group block, alternatives to custom blocks and more —  Weekend Edition 300";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=29356";s: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:71:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-6-and-6-6-1-weekend-edition-300/";s: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:18029:"<p>Hi there, </p>


<div width="100%" class="wp-block-newsletterglue-showhide ng-block"><div class="wp-block-image">
<img width="652" height="913" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/GutenbergTimes-Wappuu-2024-edited-731x1024.png?resize=652%2C913&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29416" /></div></div>


<p>The wonderful designer, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAABe3aMBPiET2CcJowGP3RVNLLZ4BuT2Rfk">Eleonora Anzini</a>, gifted the Gutenberg Times with a Wapuu, the unofficial mascot of WordPress. Anzini has been a strong supporter for <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2024/organisers/#design-team">WordCamp Europe 2024</a> as well as the upcoming Core Days 2024 in Rome, Italy. You can find out <a href="https://www.eleonoraanzini.com/">more about Anzini at her website</a>. Isn&#8217;t the Wapuu cute with its headphones?   Big Thank you to Eleonora Anzini. </p>



<p>What do you think? If you like it and email me your mailing address, I&#8217;ll find a way to get you a Gutenberg Times Podcast Wapuu sticker. </p>



<p>Have a great weekend! </p>



<p>Yours, ?<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>



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



<ol><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-6-and-6-6-1-weekend-edition-300/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-6-and-6-6-1-weekend-edition-300/#gutenberg-18-8">Gutenberg 18.8</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-6-and-6-6-1-weekend-edition-300/#what-others-write-and-say-about-wordpress-6-6">What others write and say about WordPress 6.6 </a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-6-and-6-6-1-weekend-edition-300/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-6-and-6-6-1-weekend-edition-300/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </a></li></ol>
</div></div>



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



<p>Within a few days of the WordPress 6.6, the team of core contributors, started working on 6.6.1 release to fix fast some bugs around CSS specificity. The release post for the RC1 has all the info. The release is led by Tonya Mork and Ella van Durpe. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/18/wordpress-6-6-1-rc1-is-now-available/"><strong>WordPress&nbsp;6.6.1&nbsp;RC1 is now available</strong></a>. It fixes a few CSS specificity bugs, that plagued Divi Sites, and other Theme builders. </p>



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



<p>You can check out WordPress 6.6 without downloaded the version via the <a href="https://wordpress.org/download/releases/6-6/"><strong>WordPress 6.6 release landing page.</strong></a> </p>



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



<p>WordPress 6.6 was actually the <strong>50th major WordPress release.</strong> <strong>Matt Mullenweg </strong><a href="https://ma.tt/2024/07/6-6/">wrote on his blog</a>: &#8220;50 releases… wow. No matter what happens in the world, we’re just going to keep cranking. Three times a year. Relentlessly. A little better each time. Don’t believe me, just watch.&#8221; </p>



<a href="https://wordpress.org/download/releases/6-6/"><img src="blob:https://gutenbergtimes.com/7d13ecca-ec3e-4f95-aea2-dc42bad9021c" alt="" /></a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="gutenberg-18-8">Gutenberg 18.8</h2>



<p>211 PRs merged, 57 Enhancements, 77 Bug Fixes, 35 of them were backported to Core, and made it into WordPress 6.6 and included in the RC 3.&nbsp;60 contributors worked on this release, 10 of them were first time contributors. Congratulations to all! </p>



<p>Release lead, <strong>Andrew Serong</strong>, highlighted in his release post <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/17/whats-new-in-gutenberg-18-8-17-july/"><strong>What’s new in Gutenberg 18.8 (17 July)</strong></a>: </p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/17/whats-new-in-gutenberg-18-8-17-july/#group-block-shadow-support">Group block shadow support</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/17/whats-new-in-gutenberg-18-8-17-july/#background-image-support-for-blocks-in-global-styles">Background image support for blocks in global styles</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/17/whats-new-in-gutenberg-18-8-17-july/#toolbar-justification-controls-for-group-and-content-blocks">Toolbar justification controls for Group and Content blocks</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/17/whats-new-in-gutenberg-18-8-17-july/#color-support-for-individual-list-item-blocks">Color support for individual list item blocks</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/17/whats-new-in-gutenberg-18-8-17-july/#block-inserter-no-longer-behaves-like-a-dialog-box">Block inserter no longer behaves like a dialog box</a></li>
</ul>



<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/17/whats-new-in-gutenberg-18-8-17-july/"><img width="652" height="376" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/gb-18-8-group-shadow.png?resize=652%2C376&ssl=1" alt="Sreenshot of the new drop shadow tools in WordPress 6.6" class="wp-image-29407" /></a>



<p><strong>Carolina Nymark</strong> and I chatted quite a bit about other updates in the Gutenberg 18.8 version. Also, what we find exciting about WordPress 6.6 and what&#8217;s in the works for WordPress 6.7 in November. The episode will arrive at your favorite podcast app over the weekend. </p>



<img width="652" height="186" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Screenshot-2024-07-19-at-12.07.05.png?resize=652%2C186&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29410" />



<p class="has-accent-color has-light-background-background-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-elements-d93781e1cc752a3c931d2fecfcf49569">?️ Latest episode: <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-104-block-themes-gutenberg-18-8/">Gutenberg Changelog #104 – Block Themes, Gutenberg 18.8, WordPress 6.6</a> with special guest Carolina Nymark</p>



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



<p>In his 60th <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2024/07/15/design-share-60-jul-1-jul-12/">Design Share #60 (Jul 1 – Jul 12)</a>,</strong> <strong>Joen Asmussen</strong>, summarized about the work of the WordPress Design team. </p>



<p>It mostly was around the Data Views to adjust display to changing and expanding needs. </p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Improving&nbsp;Filter&nbsp;UX</li>



<li>Consolidate bulk actions </li>



<li>Drag to resize for display panels</li>
</ul>



<p>With many layers of design being modified in themes, global styles, block styles and plugins, there is a need to make sure users can identify where versions styling comes from. The work on visualizing style inheritance is ongoing. </p>



<p>The design team also work on handling the increasing complexities around the Placeholder component used in blocks and block variations. Speaking of core blocks: a collaboration to advance the Audio block has been sketched out, to give content creator more design options for the various parts.  It&#8217;s ready for a developer to implement the designs. Lastly, the design team also work on the WordPress logo page in context of the redesign of wordpress.org. </p>



<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2024/07/15/design-share-60-jul-1-jul-12/"><img src="blob:https://gutenbergtimes.com/02067ca2-c13d-4246-bf20-aaf5403b6062" alt="" /></a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="what-others-write-and-say-about-wordpress-6-6">What others write and say about WordPress 6.6 </h2>



<p><strong>Pascal Claro</strong> at WP Roads covers the WordPress 6.6 release in his video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CPBr8CWyAU"><strong>WordPress 6.6 New Features</strong></a> and offers great demos of Grid layouts, synch patterns, DataViews and the 10 other features. If you are a visual learner, you&#8217;d appreciate the detailed and fast-paced screen shares . They give you a meaninful insights in the how and why you would use any of the features. I am a fan of the little grid layout section creating a bento-box layout. </p>


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<p>In this video, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU4ikiAzZ-Y"><strong>WordPress 6.6 negative margins</strong></a>, <strong>Elliot Richmond</strong> shows you how to create stunning, responsive layouts using the Group Block, Columns, and Cover Block to add depth and visual interest in adjusting margins. &#8220;The designer in you will love this subtle but powerful addition to WordPress 6.6&#8221;</p>



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<p><strong>Courtney Robertson</strong>, training team member and sponsored contributor by GoDaddy published <a href="https://www.godaddy.com/resources/news/whats-new-in-wordpress-6-6-key-features-and-updates"><strong>What’s new in WordPress 6.6: Key features and updates</strong></a>. Robertson divided up the information into sections for End users, Theme developer, plugin developers and Site admins and enterprise users. So you as a reader can drill down directly to the passage most relevant to you. </p>



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<p><strong>Keith Devon</strong> and <strong>Mark Wilkinson</strong> talk through the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIB3VyMIW9U"><strong>WordPress 6.6 release</strong></a> in their podcast episode 95.</p>



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<p>My friend, <strong>Varun Dubey</strong>, Contributor to Buddy Press, gives you a detailed look at <a href="https://vapvarun.com/whats-coming-in-wordpress-6-6-a-detailed-look/"><strong>What’s Coming in WordPress 6.6: A Detailed Look</strong></a>. &#8220;Whether you are a developer, site administrator, or regular user, these updates will make managing and customizing your WordPress site more accessible and efficient.&#8221; he wrote. </p>



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<p>In his video, <strong>Matt Medeiros</strong> asked <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yYNJ3l51yI"><strong>WordPress 6.6 is here! Now what?!</strong></a> and takes a deep dive into Synced pattern overrides and Grid layouts. I learned that WordPress 6.6 is also the first WordPress release with credits for three dudes named Matt.</p>


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<p>If you rather read and quick updates, <a href="https://yoast.com/about-us/team/camille-cunningham/">Camille Cunningham</a> at Yoast published <a href="https://yoast.com/wordpress-6-6/"><strong>WordPress 6.6: The 6 highlights in this release!</strong></a> and gives you a nice overview of those highlights. </p>



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



<p><strong>Fränk Klein</strong> ruminated in his latest blog post the question: <a href="https://wpdevelopment.courses/articles/do-block-themes-still-need-style-css/"><strong>Do block themes still need style.css?</strong></a> While the existence of the style.css is still needed with the metadata of a theme for WordPress, it can be empty for block themes. As Klein wrote: &#8220;<code>style.css</code>, on the other hand, represents the&nbsp;<strong>best practices of the days past</strong>. Let’s look at these and why they are no longer adequate&#8221; Details in <a href="https://wpdevelopment.courses/articles/do-block-themes-still-need-style-css/">his post</a>.</p>



<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2024&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: <strong><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">2020</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2021/">2021</a></strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2022/">2022</a></strong></strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2023">2023</a></strong></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </h2>



<p><strong>Alex Lende</strong> published <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/07/19/json-schema-in-wordpress/"><strong>JSON Schema in WordPress</strong></a> &#8211; a tutorial on what JSON is how you can set up your development environment to take advantage of the standard and how you use the various JSON properties in modern WordPress development. </p>



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<p>Save the date for July 23 at 15:00 UTC <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/301860423/"><strong>Developer Hours: Do you really need a custom block? Let’s explore alternatives</strong></a>. Explore with JuanMa Garrido and Nick Diego, alternatives to building custom block, and still be able to extend core blocks and curate the editing experience for your content creators. </p>



<a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/301860423/"><img width="600" height="338" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/600_521958647-1.webp?resize=600%2C338&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29430" /></a>



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<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. </p>



<p>Now also available via <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json">WordPress Playground</a>. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">Email me </a>with your experience</p>



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



<p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? </em><br /><em>Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">them via email</a> or</em><br /><em> send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>.</p>



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<p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size">For questions to be answered on the <a href="http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, <br />send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>



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<p>Featured Image: <em>Geometric wooden block sculpture</em> by Johnious Tumusiime, found at WordPress.org/photos. </p>



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