


<p class="wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><strong>Top Takeaways:</strong></p>



<ul type="video" class="wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio">
<li><strong>Outsourcing Infrastructure. </strong>WordPress hosting companies can benefit from outsourcing their infrastructure to specialized providers such as WP Cloud. This can free up their customer support team from dealing with infrastructure-related issues and enable them to focus on providing better customer service and value-added services.</li>



<li><strong>Increase Customer Satisfaction.</strong> By democratizing publishing and providing a superior WordPress experience, hosting companies can reduce churn and retain customers who may otherwise switch to other platforms if their WordPress experience is subpar.</li>



<li><strong>Set Up for Speed.</strong> While many factors can impact website speed, some of the most important ones include optimizing images, using a content delivery network (CDN), and minimizing the use of plugins. By focusing on these areas, WordPress agencies can help their clients improve their website speed and ultimately provide a better user experience for their visitors.</li>
</ul>



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<div class="wp-block-columns has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background is-layout-flex wp-container-13">
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="🙏" class="wp-smiley" /> Sponsor: <a href="https://poststat.us/a2-hosting">A2 Hosting</a></h3>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wp.cloud/">WP Cloud</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wphostingbenchmarks.com/benchmark/2022-50-wordpress/">WP Hosting Benchmarks $25-50</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wphostingbenchmarks.com/benchmark/2022-500-wordpress/">WP Hosting Benchmarks $201-500</a></li>



<li><a href="https://kinsta.com/">Kinsta</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wpengine.com/">WP Engine</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.siteground.com/">SiteGround</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.bluehost.com/">Bluehost</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/">DigitalOcean</a></li>



<li><a href="https://pressable.com/features/100-percent-uptime-guarantee/">Pressable</a></li>



<li><a href="https://cpanel.net/">cPanel</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.plesk.com/">Plesk</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/">Cloudflare</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul class="eplus-wrapper">
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/Professor">Jess Friedman</a> (Head of <a href="https://wp.cloud/">WP Cloud</a>)</li>



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



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



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



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



<p>Cory Miller: [00:00:00] Everybody welcomed back to post status draft. I&#8217;ve got a longtime friend<br />of mine in the WordPress space. I think we met like 10 years ago, Jesse. Um, but we&#8217;re gonna<br />be talking about WP Cloud today, and this is part of our product people series. Um, I heard<br />about WP Cloud, I know Jesse and I was like, Hey, I wanna know more about WP Cloud.<br />It&#8217;s really compelling from what I&#8217;ve heard. Um, but first and foremost, welcome to the podcast.<br />Jesse. Could you tell us a little bit about your.<br />Jesse Friedman: Yeah. Thanks Corey. And yeah, it probably has been a decade. It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s, uh,<br />it&#8217;s awesome to, to be able to, uh, know people like you and be able to work with people like you<br />for so long.<br />Um, and that&#8217;s one of the great things about the WordPress community, right? Oh, yeah. Uh,<br />yeah. So, uh, I, I, uh, got started in WordPress, geez, back in 2005, I think. Uh, I was, uh,<br />working as a professor at a university and, uh, trying to teach, [00:01:00] uh, students, uh, well<br />actually I was a student at the time and then later I became a professor and started teaching<br />WordPress.<br />Uh, but my professor, Hillary Mason, who&#8217;s actually, used to work at Bitly and is pretty world<br />renowned, uh, data scientist. She, she turned me onto WordPress and, uh, I never looked back.<br />Uh, prior to that I was building like static websites. Um, and, uh, and WordPress, uh, is not just a<br />piece of software, right?<br />It&#8217;s a community of people that, uh, help to kind of raise the level of everyone who works on it.<br />Um, and that, that&#8217;s where I got my career jump off. It was, uh, it was definitely with WordPress<br />for sure. That&#8217;s awesome.<br />Cory Miller: Well, we met when you&#8217;re part of Brute Protect and uh, I was asking in the pre-roll<br />about your art in the background.<br />I&#8217;m a big fan of art. Yeah. I wanna get some from the walls, but tell me, tell me more about the<br />art in the background cuz I was like, Hey, we met when you were part of Brute Protect before it<br />was acquired by automatic. And you kind of pointed to the [00:02:00] lightning in the back. So,<br />yeah, tell me more.<br />Jesse Friedman: Yeah. So actually before we jump in here, this is an not an, uh, chronological<br />order, but I was actually working for a company called Astonish, uh, where I actually got to build<br />a, a, a large web team.<br />I actually still work with one colleague from that company, Jeff Kalinsky. He works at Automatic<br />now. Uh, when we were tasked with building, um, or converting a. source.net based cms, uh,<br />from an old product called Blue Squid, uh, to a new WordPress powered multi-site. And it was<br />gonna house like 4,000 sites.<br />Um, and so we, I found this at like a art show. Uh, bought it, hung it on the wall, and uh, and we<br />spent a year building this new platform. The funny thing about it, this is a really unique story.<br />Didn&#8217;t give us access to the source files. Uh, and they kind of held everything hostage. This third<br />party company that we were host, host, hosting everything with.<br />Um, so we actually had to build a, like a [00:03:00] w get scraper. To scrape our own websites<br />and convert them into WordPress themes. So we didn&#8217;t even like turn them into Ion out, we<br />turned them into full blown WordPress themes on a multisite. And, uh, we were able to move all<br />those sites over very quickly. Um, and so I asked that same artist, I said, Hey, can you paint a, a<br />harpoon now that Blue Squid is dead?<br />It&#8217;s this old product. And so we hung that up on the wall and that, and that was that. I left that<br />company and co-founded Brew Protect. Uh, brew Protect was a cloud powered. Um, Uh, botnet<br />prevention service. So like anyone who&#8217;s trying to brute force into your website, we used, uh,<br />data that we would gather from attack vectors from different various, uh, areas.<br />And it was really the first time that I was able to say like, we&#8217;re building something that leverages<br />information that we gained from multiple hosting partnerships to better the entire WordPress<br />community. Because everything that was happening before then was hosts would gather attack<br />vectors against their own infrastructure, and that was the only thing they could [00:04:00] learn<br />from.<br />But what we did was we grabbed that information from across different hosting companies, uh,<br />across customers who were around the globe, and we were able to really do a better job of</p>



<p>thwarting those attacks. Um, and so that represents cloud data raining down on a, a botnet, uh,<br />going outta business there.<br />And then, uh, yeah, and so then we got, uh, acquired by Automatic back in 2014, and I joined<br />the Jet Pack team. Uh, I&#8217;ve been working on hosting partnerships and. Product development for<br />Jet Pack for almost nine years now. And, uh, then we started, uh, you know, launched WP Cloud<br />last year.<br />Cory Miller: So it has been 10 years.<br />Because I met you all right before the automatic acquisition. Acquisition. Yeah. Yeah. Um, man,<br />well, some nostalgia there. Um, so what&#8217;s, what&#8217;s, uh, really compelling, what you just said too,<br />is Jet. So when I knew you all got required and got got to meet you and Sam [00:05:00]<br />Hotchkis, and then at some point I realized, Sam, and you were on the jet pack team and at Ithe<br />we.<br />Felt like we were competitors to Jet Pack in many ways, um, from backups and security. And I<br />was like, oh no, these, these guys are gonna take jet pack to the next level. And I&#8217;ve definitely<br />seen, I think, what is probably the product of your work over the years where it&#8217;s like, oh no.<br />Okay, Sam, Jesse getting in there, um, with Jet Pack.<br />So, uh, that&#8217;s a, I wanted to mention that cuz I&#8217;ve thought that many times. I think I&#8217;ve expressed<br />that to Sam. Um, but. Anyway, thanks for that background. That&#8217;s, that&#8217;s really compelling. Back<br />to the old static h CML days. Woo. Thanks WordPress. Yeah. So Jesse, let&#8217;s talk about WP<br />Cloud. I know, um, we&#8217;ve talked a couple times about this and I, what, I know I can throw this at<br />you and you&#8217;ll, you just, you just hit it out of the part and, uh, but tell me really succinctly, what<br />do you [00:06:00] think? What is WP Cloud?.<br />Jesse Friedman: WP Cloud is a WordPress focus cloud platform that we built within automatic<br />to power the highest and most trafficked websites in the world. Um, and to provide a very unique<br />solution, uh, that gets very close to, if not a hundred percent up time. Um, and so we&#8217;re doing<br />something that&#8217;s a little bit different than what you see with other cloud platforms.<br />We provide vertical scaling and automated real-time fail. So what we want to do is provide a<br />solution that, again, is 100% WordPress focused, but allows you to stop thinking about hosting<br />altogether. You don&#8217;t have to worry about it anymore. We&#8217;re gonna take care of all the<br />infrastructure, keep it up and running, keep it high performance, and, uh, let hosting companies<br />or others focus on what they do best, um, to provide a, a fantastic experience to customer.<br />Cory Miller: Well, anytime you say something around wordpress.com infrastructure, I always<br />go, holy [00:07:00] cow. Yeah. When you can say, pretty near, I know you&#8217;re being humbled too,<br />but like that, that system is renowned because it&#8217;s incredible. I mean, people that work on, uh,<br />the platform and what it does, but. Now, who&#8217;s it? Who&#8217;s it really for?<br />When you think about WP Cloud, you kind of maybe mentioned this, but I wanna drill down on<br />that. Who do you think it&#8217;s really for?<br />Jesse Friedman: Yeah. All right. So if we look at the actual, uh, hosting, uh, platform itself, it&#8217;s<br />for anyone who wants to have high availability, high performant websites. Uh, but if we look at<br />the brand WP Cloud, what we&#8217;ve done is we&#8217;ve decided to take, um, the entire platform and, and<br />give.<br />A brand that we can then go to hosting companies with and, and provide services to hosting<br />companies. So WP Cloud is not interested in individual customers, uh, small agencies, things<br />like that. What we&#8217;re actually interested in doing is providing services to hosting companies<br />[00:08:00] to help them provide. Better hosting.<br />Um, you can think about WP Cloud as a utility service, like the electrical grid underground, uh,<br />providing services to customers all, all around the globe. But, um, allowing those hosting<br />companies to, uh, maintain their experience, the things that differentiate themselves, all of. But if<br />you&#8217;re, if you&#8217;re listening to this and you&#8217;re thinking, oh, I have one website or 10 websites and I<br />want to host them and I don&#8217;t want to have to worry about, um, downtime or, or speed issues or<br />anything like that, I would suggest going straight to one of WP Cloud&#8217;s partners, pressable, for<br />example.<br />Mm-hmm.<br />Cory Miller: So when we were prepping for this, I said, Hey, so this, this pa uh, this is<br />leveraging the.com platform, and you corrected me. Share a little bit more about that.<br />Jesse Friedman: Yeah, sure. So, uh, so what we did was we took the minds and, and the<br />people behind wordpress.com powering hundreds of millions of sites there.</p>



<p>We took the [00:09:00] same, um, experienced individuals who were helping to power some of<br />the, um, most powerful websites on v i p. Uh, we took the experience that we had from Running<br />Pressable, which is, um, like a, uh, a managed WordPress host that we, uh, use to, um, really.<br />Test and grow our own product base. And so we took all those things and we said, what, how<br />can we build a cloud platform that&#8217;s gonna service all of the needs that we have internally, um,<br />and, and provide the absolute best experience?<br />And so when we did that, we ended up launching, uh, what we called internally, uh, product<br />called Atomic, uh, and that is now powering uh, wordpress.com business and e-commerce<br />plans. Pressable News Pack. And so that was, uh, similar to like how a w s got born. You know,<br />a, uh, Amazon was an e-commerce platform that was dealing with scale issues.<br />They couldn&#8217;t compensate for [00:10:00] the amount of the influx of traffic, so they had to really<br />sit down and think about how they can rebuild their entire platform. Um, and so then that&#8217;s how<br />aw w s was born. It&#8217;s not too dissimilar from what we&#8217;re doing. We have built a platform that is<br />now powering, um, 13 billion page views.<br />Um, and, uh, with sites that are experiencing incredibly fast speed under load. Um, and, and<br />now we&#8217;re saying to ourselves like, well, we know we built something amazing here. We know<br />that it&#8217;s something that we can really give back to the community as a way to raise the bar for<br />cloud hosting across, across the board.<br />Um, and so now that, that is the, that is the effort there is we&#8217;ve powered. Internally what we<br />need to, to make sure that everything runs smoothly. So again, if anybody wants to try out WP<br />Cloud, sign up for a wordpress.com business site, sign up for pressable. Um, you&#8217;ll feel the<br />speed, [00:11:00] uh, the proof is in, in the, uh, experience right there.<br />Um, but then WP Cloud is really now focused on how it can provide services to hosting.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah. I love that I&#8217;ve observed from the industry being in as long as both of us have<br />that, you know, there was this day where you started seeing some of the really big hosting<br />companies start go moving. There WordPress stuff over to the cloud.<br />Yeah, there&#8217;s a lot of bumpy roads along that way, but um, your comparison with aws for<br />instance, cuz I&#8217;ve heard Google Cloud, aws, some of those offerings kind of moving over and<br />that&#8217;s the way it feels like it&#8217;s shifting. I&#8217;m not a technical person, but I&#8217;ve been in the space a<br />long time and I go, it makes sense to have cloud-based hosting, especially for WordPress.<br />And then you get specific WordPress expertise. That knows that application better than anybody<br />I&#8217;d, I&#8217;d, I&#8217;d challenge anybody to say, do you know more about WordPress and automatic teams?<br />Yeah. Um,<br />Jesse Friedman: we definitely leveraged our, our own internal expertise to solve for that. And,<br />and you&#8217;re right. I [00:12:00] mean, you look at hosting companies and they&#8217;re trying to figure<br />out ways to differentiate themselves outside of the infrastructure.<br />A lot of them are moving to Google Cloud or aw. Um, the shared hosting is still, you know,<br />mostly the same kind of solution, um, that everyone is kind of racing to the bottom on pricing on.<br />Mm-hmm. Um, and so, so how are hosts differentiating themselves? Well, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s, you know, it&#8217;s<br />made on top of promises of speed and performance and, and security.<br />But the reality of the situation is the, the infrastructure underneath is actually not. That different.<br />So hosting companies are really focused on trying to differentiate themselves now in the way in<br />which they market themselves. The onboarding experience that provide the partnerships that<br />they can leverage to provide a better experience to customers.<br />The speed at which you can launch your site, the customer service, those are all things that<br />HUS hosting companies really f are, are focused on, and. Frankly, the places where they can,<br />they can really win. One of the conversations I had at cloudfest, uh, which was a conference<br />that we went to, um, [00:13:00] two weeks ago, was about the power of diversity within hosting.<br />Um, and so I think that it&#8217;s really important to recognize that, especially when we&#8217;re talking about<br />WP Cloud, helping to power those hosting companies in terms of like a utility. Um, you look at<br />something like shop. And or, or w and they have these global solutions for every single, um,<br />customer across the world.<br />Um, but you know, we, we know why that&#8217;s not, uh, advantageous and why WordPress is better.<br />But one of the major advantages that WordPress has is that, um, the hosting companies can<br />define the niche that they wanna solve. They can solve problems specific for geographically<br />locations. WordPress has seeded itself into hosting companies around the globe.</p>



<p>So the solutions you get from a hosting company in let&#8217;s say the Netherlands, is completely<br />different than what you might get in Malaysia or Africa. Um, and so that&#8217;s an advantage that that<br />hosting companies have in that diversity. And so, uh, you know, if we can come [00:14:00] in<br />and try to help and provide better services at that infrastructural, Then that frees those hosting<br />companies up to think about ways in which they can differentiate themselves and provide the<br />absolute best experience to those, to those customers.<br />Cory Miller: Take care of wordPress, you got the power of WP Cloud, the.com top experience<br />and do other stuff on top that adds value for your customers. Yeah, exactly. So. I know having<br />been acquired, our company was acquired by hosting company, uh, been on the inside of that<br />and realizing how much, you know, they, they really worry all, all hosting companies about price.<br />Um, yeah. Anytime you, you know, c panel was this big conversation in the industry for a long<br />time because they started cranking at prices and everybody started fleeing because they&#8217;re like,<br />they felt held hostage. But I know every penny accounts in hosting. So Can you talk a little bit<br />about the pricing structure for WP.<br />And I know that this is still early.<br />Jesse Friedman: It is still early, and I [00:15:00] appreciate that and, uh, I probably shy away<br />from getting into the super specifics of pricing right now, but what I can tell you is this, is that the<br />way in which WP Cloud Scales is based on the number of pH p workers, uh, CPUs. Uh, and<br />storage that you want.<br />And so what we want to create are ways in which hosting companies can come in, um, and<br />create bespoke offerings to either power their managed WordPress offering now, or to start by<br />offering the higher tier hosting that they haven&#8217;t been able to offer before. If you look at most of<br />the hosting companies in the world, a lot of them cap out at a hundred bucks, 150 bucks a<br />month.<br />Um, and so then you leave, uh, the super high end. Hosting customers to, to either fend for<br />themselves with their own cloud platform to go to, uh, you know, higher, higher end managed<br />hosting. Um, or something like W P V I P. What we wanna do is be able to provide services that<br />go from that range, from, uh, 25 bucks a month to [00:16:00] $2,000 a month, um, and to be<br />able to provide consistent uptime throughout all of that.<br />So hosting companies will be able to come in and use WP. Um, and, and if they want to go with<br />a lower tier, like two PHP workers, two CPUs, this is getting super technical. That&#8217;s still built for<br />like 400,000 sustained visitors a month, uh, which is gonna compensate for, you know, most.<br />Customers that&#8217;s only gonna cost that hosting company a few bucks a month with WP Cloud.<br />Um, and then, and then it scales up from there. And since we&#8217;re talking about scaling, I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll<br />just say one thing is, is that we offer something that&#8217;s pretty unique in that we don&#8217;t, uh, we don&#8217;t<br />reserve, uh, we, we don&#8217;t have any limitations on visits. So if you take a look at other hosting<br />companies, you&#8217;ll see that they create, uh, they&#8217;ll create really robust, powerful servers.<br />And then they&#8217;ll put traffic limits on it. Mm-hmm. I&#8217;m thinking of a hosting company right now<br />[00:17:00] that has, um, a robust amount of power, uh, allows for up to 40 WordPress websites<br />and only, uh, and stops at like 400,000 visits a month. Mm-hmm. Well, if you only have 10,000<br />visits a month, you don&#8217;t need all that power anyway.<br />Uh, even if you&#8217;re not sharing it across all of those things, that&#8217;s just a waste of power. That&#8217;s a<br />Lamborghini on the, on the back of a flatbed pickup truck. You know what I mean? Like you&#8217;re<br />not taking full advantage of that. WP Cloud is gonna come in and, and basically say, uh, we&#8217;re<br />going to create bespokes solutions that are designed to house the amount of traffic that you&#8217;re,<br />or serve the amount of traffic that you&#8217;re bringing.<br />Uh, but we&#8217;re not gonna limit you on, on the amount of traffic that you have there. Um, so there<br />are no real, uh, traffic limitations with WP Cloud, unlike other hosting companies.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah, it, I don&#8217;t know all the specs, but I know enough to go when they put a traffic<br />thing, there&#8217;s something underneath that they&#8217;re trying to be careful of when they put limits and<br />things.<br />But, um, [00:18:00] so that, that&#8217;s a conversation for another well, unless you.<br />Jesse Friedman: Well, I was just gonna say that it&#8217;s a way for them to mitigate their, their, their<br />risk and their costs. Yeah. Um, but we, we have built a platform that we know can scale to any<br />amount of traffic. So, uh, we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re gonna differentiate ourselves there.</p>



<p>Cory Miller: Yeah. Um, so I think you said fully managed performance security and WordPress.<br />What does that mean?<br />Jesse Friedman: It means that we&#8217;re literally gonna take care of it all for you. So in terms of<br />security, uh, it has built-in backup solutions. So it&#8217;s actually pretty unique in the way in which we<br />do backups. I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;re gonna touch on automated failovers soon.<br />But the way we do our backups is that we do, um, daily file backups and hourly database<br />backups, but we don&#8217;t just store that on the same box. What we do is we put it onto another data<br />center. On another box that actually has power ready so that we can switch to that if we need to.<br />We can talk about that in a second.<br />Um, but we [00:19:00] do, it comes with s ssl, it comes with, uh, TLS encryption. It comes with,<br />uh, WAF DDoS protection. I&#8217;m telling you. Like we harden the heck out of it. Yeah. Um, and then<br />in, in addition to that, we automatically build in a c. No extra cost. It has a CDN built into it. Um,<br />and it, uh, also resizes your images.<br />So you&#8217;re only serving the size of the image that you need high resolution, but you&#8217;re not serving<br />these 10 megabyte images that people upload straight from their phone to their WordPress<br />instance, right? We&#8217;re resizing it and only showing the size that you need for the device that&#8217;s<br />requesting it. Uh, we also do, uh, automated caching built in too.<br />Um, and. It&#8217;s all run by our team internally, so there is really no tweaking or configuring or<br />anything that you have to do. Um, it&#8217;s 100% fully managed outta the box. That also includes the<br />management of things like P H p, uh, database. Um, it manages, uh, WordPress core [00:20:00]<br />files, certain plug-ins. It allows for templating and staging.<br />Um, and again, we handle all of that. It&#8217;s not, these aren&#8217;t things that you&#8217;re gonna have to.<br />Cherry pick based on price or anything. It&#8217;s all 100% inclusive in the product.<br />Cory Miller: So I, you mentioned principle way earlier. I&#8217;m a paying, and I wanna say that really<br />loud and clear. I&#8217;m a paying customer principle.<br />Yeah. So I&#8217;ve seen this, the performance, all these things. And, uh, so that, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s pretty<br />awesome. But I, I wanted to push in on that because I&#8217;m a, this is my comment, not. But when<br />you say managed, you always, I always go, tell me what that really means. Yeah. Yeah. It&#8217;s like,<br />you know, the Tommy Boys, like you can slap a label on the side, but it&#8217;s, you know, what<br />actually happens inside.<br />And I think that&#8217;s one thing that differentiate, differentiates, uh, any automatic brand is it&#8217;s not a<br />label on the outside. Um, yeah. Okay. So tell me what automated realtime fellows.<br />Jesse Friedman: So we touched on this briefly, right? [00:21:00] So if we, if we back up your<br />entire site to another location and we put that back up on a box that has power, um, and you&#8217;re<br />serving traffic to one location, we can automatically detect some kind of, any kind of issue.<br />So even if there was catastrophic failure, uh, you know, a pipe got cut. Uh, the data center<br />actually you. We have tons of redundancies in terms of power and things like that, but like, let&#8217;s<br />just say like a volcano erupted or something like that, you know, something really catastrophic.<br />We can in real time redirect that traffic to another data center that already has your site live on it<br />and already has, uh, the, the power behind it.<br />So we can in real time, switch that traffic and people will not experience any downtime. And that<br />is something that is nearly impossible with other cloud platforms. It is possible, but it&#8217;s incredibly<br />expensive. And because of the scale that we operate at, uh, and the WordPress efficiency that<br />we [00:22:00] have, um, we&#8217;ve been able to, to build that into the platform.<br />Cory Miller: See, when you talked about backups earlier, it&#8217;s something to know about having<br />helped lead our product, uh, for backups. And when you said that one thing, it&#8217;s not on that<br />server. It&#8217;s somewhere else within a vast infrastructure. That&#8217;s really compelling to me because<br />we would tell customers all the time, don&#8217;t just don&#8217;t back up on that server because what&#8217;s,<br />what&#8217;s it gonna do for you when it crashes?<br />Um, so like, I love the secure, the backup feature of that. It&#8217;s not just a. A backup if something<br />happens. And this was way before all this technology existed today, but that&#8217;s how we got the<br />backup is like into our product. Is it crashed? We didn&#8217;t have, we had backups maybe on that<br />server. And literally the hard drive was like capoot.<br />And so that was our mantra. Always remote, offsite, you know, so that you can restore and. In<br />case<br />Jesse Friedman: we&#8217;ve, we&#8217;ve seen this, I, I&#8217;ll [00:23:00] leave hosting companies names out of<br />this, this conversation, but we&#8217;ve all seen hosting companies that have had. Catastrophic failure.</p>



<p>Um, data center fires, for example, things like that.<br />Uh, and if you&#8217;re not backing up, this is getting into like a conversation about Jet Pack two, but<br />like, if you&#8217;re not backing up your, your website offsite, you&#8217;re susceptible to that. Mm-hmm. Um,<br />and that, that can be, um, unbelievably painful. I can&#8217;t tell you how many conversations I had<br />with people who say, well, I&#8217;ll worry about security later, or I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll, you know, I don&#8217;t really care<br />about backups right now.<br />I just wanna get my site. But all the time you&#8217;re investing in that, right? You&#8217;re building your<br />website. Think about the dozens of hours of time that you&#8217;re spending tweaking all those things.<br />And if you lose that, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s not just catastrophic failure for the host, it&#8217;s catastrophic failure for<br />the site owner too.<br />It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s incredibly painful and to, you know, some, some people out there have stronger will than<br />I to start all over from the beginning, but I don&#8217;t, but that&#8217;s, [00:24:00] sometimes I felt that pain<br />you left with doing.<br />Cory Miller: Yeah, I, I felt that. Yeah. Um, we were, we were scraping. We had some clients at<br />the time and scraping data from Google Cash to redo websites, and so I felt that pain.<br />Yeah. So we&#8217;ve talked about, um, the power, performance, security, all these things that are<br />baked into WP Cloud, that powers.com business, eCommerce plans. But how about the,<br />Preserving and growing the hosting experience. What are your thoughts on that? So key, key<br />client for this is our hosting companies, um, to be able to really leverage all of this for, I mean,<br />when you said utility tool, it really rang a bell for me.<br />It&#8217;s like, okay, all of this at a re, very. Reasonable price, and I know they need to talk to you<br />about all those things. But yeah, let&#8217;s, let&#8217;s talk about that hosting experience a little bit. Tell me,<br />tell me your thoughts on that related to WP Club.<br />Jesse Friedman: So every single [00:25:00] host that, and I&#8217;ve worked with a lot of hosting<br />companies, every single host has a unique experience.<br />Uh, the signup flow is typically about the same, but the second that you get into that WordPress<br />instance being launched, Unique onboarding flows. You get unique sets of tools. Um, the<br />different combinations of the way in which they combine, uh, partnerships they have with<br />security or performance companies.<br />Um, And then the platform, the platform is always really unique. Um, a lot of them are built on<br />top of cPanel or Plak. I think something like 70, 80% of all hosts use that technology. Mm-hmm.<br />Um, and sometimes you feel it and sometimes you don&#8217;t. Like, there are certain hosting<br />companies that are just using cPanel.<br />It literally says cPanel and you, and you know what you&#8217;re on. But then there are other hosting<br />companies that have built a completely custom bespoke solution that&#8217;s layered on top of. No<br />matter what it is, um, that, that again is how you&#8217;re differentiating yourself. Um, so if I look at six<br />hosting companies that are using the same [00:26:00] basic boxes to do shared WordPress<br />hosting, they&#8217;re the only difference.<br />There is price, but we&#8217;re all. All hosting companies are racing to the bottom on price, and we&#8217;re,<br />we&#8217;re talking about a difference of a few bucks a month. Um, so then what is it that you get with<br />that hosting that&#8217;s really gonna differentiate &#8217;em? And so most people are either making<br />decisions based on the fact that they have a recommendation from a friend, or they&#8217;re taking a<br />look at, uh, you know, the, the, the bespoke solutions that are coming bundled with that.<br />The great thing about WP Cloud is that it has no platform. It has no user interface. It is 100%<br />API driven. So for any hosting company to use it, it has to work underneath every single thing<br />that they&#8217;ve already built. Um, and so it can work with C Panel, it can work with Plesk, uh, or it<br />can work with whatever bespoke solution you have.<br />Um, but your, um, Unveiling of the use of WP Cloud is up to you as a host and company. You<br />[00:27:00] can go one way and say, Similar to, I think like WP Engine does this with like a w s or<br />Google Cloud. They say like, you know, proudly like we&#8217;re partnered with this company to, to<br />launch this. Um, and the same way that Pressable does this with like WP Cloud or Grid Pain,<br />uh, you know, they say proudly powered by WP Cloud.<br />And that&#8217;s starting to mean something as we start to have more of these conversations and<br />more people understand what WP Cloud really is. But, um, WP Cloud also offers a completely.<br />Uh, an option that allows you to basically use our infrastructure without ever mentioning us. You<br />could even bring your own IP addresses if you wanted to, um, and then take use of the entire</p>



<p>infrastructure underneath it, uh, without having to disclose that it&#8217;s not something that&#8217;s<br />homegrown.<br />Um, so however the host and company wants to work in that, in that area makes sense to us.<br />Uh, what we want to do is just really. Allow them to refocus their efforts away from things like<br />[00:28:00] managing WordPress or handling security or dealing with uptime. The other thing I&#8217;ll<br />talk about too is, um, cost to serve.<br />Cost to serve is something that&#8217;s on the mind of every single hosting company. Uh, when<br />Pressable moved onto WP Cloud, we saw a dramatic decrease in, um, support tickets related to<br />anything infrastructure rate, limiting DDoS, anything like. Um, and the same thing with<br />wordpress.com, uh, wordpress.com business and e-commerce customers.<br />They&#8217;re not, uh, reaching out and asking for support on anything related to the box or how fast<br />their site is performing. What they are asking questions about is more things around how can<br />they be successful. How can you know what plugins should I use for this? Or, or that that&#8217;s your<br />decision as a host and company decide pr provide support in that area or not.<br />But I can tell you that when you relieve your host, your, your happiness engineers, your<br />customer service team, from the burden of having to figure out why a site is down or why it&#8217;s<br />[00:29:00] performing so slowly, it gives them the ability. You know, focus on what keeps those<br />customers there for the long term, reducing churn, which is what every host and company thinks<br />about.<br />Pressable had something like 36,000 tickets last year. Less than half of a percentage of them<br />were even associated with anything, uh, related to to infrastructure. And I even read some of<br />them. And a lot of them were just questions about how, how Pressable goes about handling.<br />Um, so we&#8217;ve basically eliminated support for, for hosting.<br />Cory Miller: That&#8217;s the headline right there for, for WordPress hosting that, that&#8217;s the headline of<br />the interview today. For sure. Well, um, Jesse, we&#8217;ve covered a lot, but I wanna make sure we<br />didn&#8217;t miss anything. Um, I think it&#8217;s an incredibly compelling service. Could help really raise the<br />standard of the hosting industry for WordPress.<br />Um, that&#8217;s exactly. So what, uh, [00:30:00] and, and this is the note I wanted to say about the<br />hosting experiences like that, uh, I think that frees a hosting company to also innovate on that<br />application labor. What things, whether it&#8217;s plugins, themes, services on top that add value for<br />who their customers are and what they&#8217;re trying to get.<br />And I think that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s pretty dang cool. If I were in that seat hosting product, uh, manager, I&#8217;d<br />be like, okay, this is taken care of. It&#8217;s base lever, le level here. Now how can we set ourselves<br />apart by adding value to who our customers are? But is there anything with that, um, we left at,<br />or you wanna mention?<br />Jesse Friedman: Well, I&#8217;ll actually just pick up right there where you, uh, you mentioned about,<br />uh, hosting companies. I think one thing to remember is, is that, Our mission at Automatic more<br />than anything is to provide, um, and democratize publishing. We know that, but it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s also<br />about making sure that WordPress is not only [00:31:00] readily available, but performing at a<br />level that, um, allows you to focus on getting the word out about your business or your political<br />views or whatever it might be.<br />Um, but hosting companies, uh, are experiencing incredible churn right now. Uh, we. This was<br />like the number one topic at that conference I mentioned earlier. Cloud Fest, um, hosting<br />companies are seeing extreme churn, and the problem is, is that when someone churns from a<br />hosting company that is specifically for WordPress, they don&#8217;t churn and go, they don&#8217;t try<br />hosting company a.<br />Say, oh, my WordPress experience wasn&#8217;t so great there. I&#8217;m gonna go try hosting company B<br />and try WordPress there, and then I&#8217;m gonna try hosting company C and try WordPress there.<br />That&#8217;s not really What happens is that they give WordPress a shot on whatever hosting<br />company they&#8217;ve chosen. And if that fails, uh, or that doesn&#8217;t work out for them, a lot of them<br />end up going to something else.<br />And so that one opportunity to provide a [00:32:00] superior WordPress experience is really<br />where we want to help, right? So if we can take care of the, the infrastructure, the hosting, the<br />security, the performance, and make sure that everyone has this like level set, amazing hosting<br />experience in terms of the infrastructure.<br />I wanna touch on the exact, like, I wanna reiterate what you just said, which is that that allows<br />hosting companies to innovate on what they can do to provide better onboarding, reduce time to</p>



<p>live, which is how fast they can launch their site, helping to make sure customers are<br />successful, focus your time on marketing so that customers sites, once they&#8217;re launched, they<br />can actually gain traffic and, and really help them to achieve their business goals.<br />And the other thing that I just wanted to touch on real quick too is, is just, uh, we talked a little bit<br />about scaling, but one of the things I do wanna mention is, is that, um, so these are bare metal<br />boxes that we built up that we own. They&#8217;re, we&#8217;re not outsourcing anything at all. Um, and we<br />have 28 data centers around the globe already that are ours, uh, powering this entire<br />infrastructure.<br />[00:33:00] Um, and then, uh, when someone. Hit with traffic, an extreme amount of traffic. What<br />typically happens with other, um, cloud platforms is that they replicate everything onto a<br />separate box and they try to throw additional boxes at the problem. But the problem is that if<br />you&#8217;re down, because you can&#8217;t service the amount of traffic that you&#8217;re handling, you have to<br />wait for that extra box to spool up, or you&#8217;re paying for it to be laying in weight.<br />Right. What we can do actually is what we do is vertical scaling. So we have the option to throw<br />more PHPs and more CPUs at the problem until we&#8217;ve compensated for the amount of traffic<br />that you have. But this is where things get really unique. We go when we build out hosting<br />plans. As I said before, hosts can build plans between two and say 30 PHP workers and CPUs.<br />That&#8217;s built for sustained traffic of 400,000 visits to 15 million visits. Um, but now let&#8217;s say you<br />have an e-commerce website that got featured on the wire cutter, or you have, uh, a product<br />that you&#8217;ve been [00:34:00] ready to release and you have a huge wait list, uh, and everyone&#8217;s<br />gonna slam your site at the same exact time.<br />WP Cloud has a very unique opportunity that we can burst to 110 PhD P workers in CPUs. And<br />then what we&#8217;re talking about then is, is handling the type of traffic that like the Washington Post<br />gets when they release an article about what&#8217;s happening in our, in our government, or. C n n<br />traffic, you know what I mean?<br />Mm-hmm. Um, and so those, those are the types of things that we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re mainly focused on<br />so that we can provide, you know, v i p level hosting, um, and allow hosting companies to break<br />out of that shared hosting and the cheaper managed hosting, and to really offer something to,<br />you know, to any of those customers that are, that are experiencing incredibly high.<br />Cory Miller: I wanna go back to something you said because I absolutely, it rings true with me,<br />is that if the hosting experience is not good, particularly on the WordPress as an application<br />layer, [00:35:00] um, yeah, we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re not, we&#8217;re doing a disservice to the entire industry<br />because we&#8217;re. Turning a WordPress person into another Com competitor.<br />And you know, I&#8217;ve been in this space a long time and I go, you know, I woke up a year ago and<br />go, wow, there&#8217;s very solid competitors to WordPress now out there. And if we want to, as the<br />business eco ecosystem of WordPress continued to have this incredible thriving grow.<br />Ecosystem and the software. Then we, you know, we used to say like, you need two things.<br />You need a domain name and you need WordPress hosting to Yep. To buy our products. And<br />then again to those agencies out there who we serve, um, at post tennis and are building on<br />that, that love, that inflow and growth that we&#8217;ve all enjoyed with the growth of WordPress, then<br />we need to be serious about this conversation in the hosting experience because, You hit it right<br />on the nail.<br />They&#8217;re not leaving the hosting [00:36:00] company. Just the hosting company. They&#8217;re leaving<br />potentially WordPress. And that&#8217;s the bell I want to keep ringing, is that as an industry, we need<br />to do things like this. This is, this is a key pillar. I think. Um, there&#8217;s other things that we need to<br />be doing as a WordPress business ecosystem to keep this healthy, thriving, growing.<br />And, uh, I&#8217;m glad you mentioned that because it&#8217;s something I&#8217;ve seen, um, too, but that just<br />gives a real world experience of like, if these hosting companies are having churn, it&#8217;s not just<br />them, it&#8217;s all of us. And there, there&#8217;s a brand that we&#8217;ve had with WordPress that has been<br />awesome and I&#8217;m incredibly grateful for the brand and the open source software.<br />So I appreciate you mentioning that .<br />Jesse Friedman: Yeah, of course. Yeah. If you remember the old days of the five minute install,<br />um, I do. That was basically, uh, yeah. And for anyone who&#8217;s listening, who, who may not be<br />familiar with that, cuz it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s been enough years now. Uh, when you used to get a, [00:37:00] a,<br />a new hosting account, it never really came pre-built with WordPress, uh, out of the box, you&#8217;d<br />have to.</p>



<p>Download WordPress from wordpress.org, re-upload it, sftp, build a database. Um, and then the<br />five minute install came out and it was like this brilliant way of like launching a WordPress<br />website super fast. And that was the moment I think that husband companies decided like, wait<br />a minute, we can actually like really create custom WordPress experiences.<br />Because it&#8217;s no longer in charge of the customer to actually launch a WordPress website. It&#8217;s<br />now up to the, the host to actually launch that instance. And that&#8217;s when they started packaging<br />their own plugins, their own themes into it, providing their own unique solutions. And that&#8217;s all<br />well and good. Um, but I think there is a responsibility to those hosts, to the larger ecosystem to<br />make sure that we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re furthering the mission across the board.<br />Um, and so their churn is definitely a reflection of the larger ecosystems. Hundred percent.<br />Cory Miller: I mean, that affects all of our members that post us from product companies,<br />[00:38:00] professionals that do WordPress love, being able to do pre WordPress as their career<br />and the agency serving their clients out. Across the world.<br />So a hundred percent agree. And this, this is something we&#8217;ll have to change the headline a little<br />bit and add to it because it&#8217;s my personal viewpoint that we need to, all of us collectively look at<br />the industry and go, what makes it healthier for everybody? And this is a, this is part of the<br />conversation, so it matters, this conversation today, even if they don&#8217;t choose to go with WP<br />Cloud, that we need to be thinking about this experience for the overall health of, of the industry.<br />Yeah. Absolut. For sure, Jesse, my friend. Um, so if somebody&#8217;s interested and wants to talk<br />more about W Cloud, what do they do?<br />Jesse Friedman: So if you&#8217;re a hosting company and uh, you wanna partner with WP Cloud, go<br />to wp.cloud. Uh, it&#8217;ll load so fast, you think it&#8217;s a local site. Uh, so that&#8217;ll be your first taste of the<br />power of WP Cloud.<br />Uh, funny [00:39:00] enough, that site is actually hosted by Pressable on just a regular account.<br />Nothing special. Um, so, uh, you&#8217;ll see, you&#8217;ll see how that works if you&#8217;re thinking. Moving your<br />own personal sites or your businesses sites, um, and you&#8217;re not a hosting company, but you<br />want to, you want to try out WP Cloud, take a look at our partners.<br />So we have, uh, wordpress.com Pressable, uh, if you&#8217;re a news site, you could try News Pack<br />Grid Pain now offers, um, uh, WP Cloud as well. And, uh, and uh, yeah, we have some other<br />partners coming down the pike too. Uh, that will be, uh, will be.<br />Cory Miller: Let me know when the new<br />partners come in. We wanna share that, um, to, to our members at Postes.<br />But Jesse, thanks. Sure. Uh, for this today. I appreciate your time sharing about what you&#8217;re<br />doing at WP Cloud and Automatic. Um, so thank you and everybody else. Thank you for<br />listening in to another post status draft episode I, the product People series.<br />Jesse Friedman: Yeah. Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.[00:40:00]</p>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 20 Apr 2023 12:39:39 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Cory Miller";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:26;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:83:"Do The Woo Community: From Database Developer to Product Manager with Prashant Rana";s: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=74807";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:58:"https://dothewoo.io/database-developer-to-product-manager/";s: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:423:"<p>Listen in as Prashant from Avalara chats about his journey to WooCommerce and his insights into shop and agency tax compliance.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/database-developer-to-product-manager/">From Database Developer to Product Manager with Prashant Rana</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 20 Apr 2023 09:14:43 +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:27;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:42:"WPTavern: WooCommerce Launches Woo Express";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=143718";s: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:53:"https://wptavern.com/woocommerce-launches-woo-express";s: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:9152:"<p>WooCommerce has launched <a href="https://woocommerce.com/express/">Woo Express</a>, a new managed hosting product that uses WordPress.com&#8217;s infrastructure and relieves store owners of the responsibilities of hosting and maintenance. The company soft-launched Woo Express in early March with a small selection of visitors but has concluded that phase and opened it up to the public.</p>



<p>Woo Express provides a selection of extensions already installed and professionally-designed themes but is built with the same open source platform that allows store owners to install any plugin or theme. Merchants can use WooCommerce Payments or any other payment gateway they choose. The plans also include automated backups, security scanning, and a custom domain and SSL certificate.</p>



<p>At WooSesh in October 2022, the company <a href="https://wptavern.com/hosted-woocommerce-solution-coming-to-wordpress-com-in-2023-following-recent-launches-from-godaddy-and-bluehost">announced it was working on a hosted WooCommerce solution</a> just as GoDaddy had launched an open access preview of <a href="https://www.godaddy.com/hosting/ecommerce-hosting">Managed WooCommerce Stores</a> to US-based customers, and Bluehost launched its <a href="https://www.bluehost.com/wordpress/woocommerce-hosting">WooCommerce offering</a> a month prior.  The drive to provide a more customized, user-friendly onboarding experience beyond simply having WooCommerce pre-installed, is getting more competitive. </p>



<p>Pricing for Woo Express&#8217; hosting plans comes in slightly more expensive than GoDaddy&#8217;s introductory $20.99/mo pricing (renews at $29.99/mo) for the most basic plan, but cheaper than GoDaddy&#8217;s mid-tier and upper-tier plans which start at<strong> </strong>$99.99/mo and $149.99/mo. </p>



<p>Bluehost sits at the budget end of the WooCommerce hosting spectrum with plans starting at $9.95/mo (renews at $24.95/mo) and an upper end plan at $12.95/mo (renews at $39.95) that adds the ability to manage product inventory across Etsy, Amazon, and eBay from a consolidated dashboard via Ecomdash.</p>



<img />Woo Express pricing on 4/19/2023



<p>Comparing plans across managed WooCommerce hosts isn&#8217;t straightforward as they all offer different features for a variety of stores at different pricing tiers. One major differentiator is the extensions bundled with the plan.</p>



<p>Although WooCommerce may be late to the game in offering a managed hosting solution, the makers of the e-commerce software have a clear advantage with their position in the WooCommerce ecosystem and a marketplace of more than 800 products. Woo Express has launched with a compelling set of commercial <a href="https://woocommerce.com/document/woo-express/#section-4">extensions bundled into the hosting plans</a>, including product add-ons, product bundles, gift cards, min/max quantities, back in stock notifications, brands, product recommendations, subscriptions, in-person payments, shipment tracking, and more. Storeowners who were to purchase all of these extensions individually would spend far more than the annual cost of Woo Express hosting. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Woo Express Goes All-In on Block-Based Stores</h3>



<p>WooCommerce is still working through the process of &#8220;blockifying&#8221; all aspects of store templates, and Woo Express is ready to carry the standard with a block theme as the default when customers sign up.</p>



<img />



<p>&#8220;One of our goals for Woo Express is to give new merchants the best of everything WordPress offers — the site editor and the blocks we&#8217;ve built for WooCommerce mean you can create a beautiful site to express your brand without coding knowledge,&#8221; WooCommerce COO Warren Holmes said.</p>



<p>&#8220;Woo Express ships with <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wordpress.com/theme/tsubaki" target="_blank">Tsubaki</a> as the default, a modern, commerce-focused, block-based theme. We&#8217;ve made it easier for new merchants to get started with this theme by creating default content powered by our blocks. That includes the new <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://woocommerce.com/checkout-blocks/" target="_blank">cart and checkout blocks</a>, which provides a more delightful experience for shoppers and better conversions for merchants.&#8221;</p>



<p>A few other commercial themes Automattic designed for Woo Express include <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wordpress.com/theme/amulet" target="_blank">Amulet</a>, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wordpress.com/theme/zaino" target="_blank">Zaino</a>, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wordpress.com/theme/tazza" target="_blank">Tazza</a>, and <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wordpress.com/theme/thriving-artist" target="_blank">Thriving Artist</a>. Store owners are also free to install any theme from the wide world of WooCommerce themes, not just the ones included in the hosting plan.</p>



<p>Woo Express has a 14-day free trial so prospective hosting customers can try out the bundled extensions, themes, and the environment to see if it will fit their needs. The onboarding experience was designed to be friendly for merchants but developers still have access to everything under the hood.</p>



<p>&#8220;With every managed WordPress.com environment, you get access to a native GitHub integration, you can run WP-CLI commands, check server logs, access to DBs directly and set up your workflows through SSH and SFTP, and much more,&#8221; WooCommerce developer advocate Stephanie Pi said in a <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/04/17/a-developers-look-at-woo-express/">post</a> outlining the new product on the company&#8217;s Developer blog.</p>



<p>As WooCommerce has become the most used open source e-commerce software, powering <a href="https://trends.builtwith.com/shop/">23% of the top million online stores</a>, managed hosting products have the potential to drive this growth even further. Users have an expectation that things will just work, but the reality is that much of WooCommerce&#8217;s open source ecosystem has grown up like wildflowers in a field. There are many great solutions out there but they don&#8217;t all work harmoniously together, which can drive people to proprietary, turnkey e-commerce solutions.</p>



<p>On a recent <a href="ttps://dothewoo.io/woo-express-with-beau-lebens/">Do the Woo podcast episode</a>, WooCommerce Head of Engineering Beau Lebens discussed how curated solutions like Woo Express bring some uniformity to the WooCommerce ecosystem. Putting a bunch of disparate solutions together hasn&#8217;t always provided the best experience for merchants, and it introduces complexity that can drive users away.</p>



<p>WooCommerce announced its intention to collaborate with hosting partners in October 2022 with WordPress.com as the first to pilot the new managed hosting solution. At that time Lebens said &#8220;details like different versions and white-labeling are still under consideration&#8221; but WooCommerce is interested in making customization available to suit the specific needs of hosts and their customers.</p>



<p>Holmes said his team is also currently in the process of evaluating an affiliate program to enable developers and the broader community to spread the word about Woo Express. </p>



<p>When asked about the status of other hosting partners offering Woo Express on their own infrastructure, Holmes said WooCommerce is still evaluating the possibilities.</p>



<p>&#8220;Many merchants experience WooCommerce with the help of one of hundreds of amazing independent WordPress / Woo hosts around the world, and we regard that as an indispensable part of Woo’s success and place in the e-commerce landscape,&#8221; Holmes said. &#8220;We’re hard at work on a way to expand our collaboration with hosts in the future through Woo Express. At the moment we don’t have anything specific to announce, but we do currently have multiple teams looking into this.&#8221; </p>



<p>Launching a managed hosting product puts WooCommerce in a unique position to tailor the core software to better serve the needs of store owners and hosting partners that are furthering its adoption, benefiting all who are using WooCommerce and building products for it.</p>



<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re very much using this as a way to drive improvements on the merchant experience in WooCommerce Core,&#8221; Lebens said on the Do the Woo podcast. &#8220;So that will be available to everyone, including all other hosts. </p>



<p>&#8220;But it also means that, as a package, we can start to say, because we do partner with other hosts, we work with them very directly, and we can say, &#8216;Hey, look, this stuff works better.&#8217; If you bundle all of this together, if you offer this with a free trial, if you keep your pricing in this range, whatever it is, the learnings that we have from doing this ourselves, absolutely we intend to share this with hosts and work with other hosts to implement this for the whole ecosystem.&#8221;</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 20 Apr 2023 03:20:38 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:28;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:89:"WPTavern: #72 – Steve Bruner and Timothy Jacobs on Using Gutenberg Outside of WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=143647";s: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:103:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/72-steve-bruner-and-timothy-jacobs-on-using-gutenberg-outside-of-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:56034:"Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case using Gutenberg to build the Engine Awesome SaaS app.</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 forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcasts players.</p>



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



<p>So on the podcast today we have Steve Bruner and Timothy Jacobs.</p>



<p>Steve has been active in the WordPress community for the past 17 years. He&#8217;s a WordPress developer, co organizer of the WordPress NYC meetup, and has organized many word camps in New York City.</p>



<p>Timothy is a WordPress core committer for the REST API, and has been a WordPress developer for over 10 years. At StellarWP he leads development of the iThemes security plugin.</p>



<p>What brings them together is that they&#8217;re both founders of a SaaS app called Engine Awesome, where Steve is the CEO, and Timothy is the CTO.</p>



<p>What has this got to do with WordPress, you might ask? Well, they&#8217;re here today to talk about Gutenberg, but not how you might expect. It&#8217;s Gutenberg outside of WordPress, but Gutenberg, nonetheless. Like all of WordPress, Gutenberg is open source. You are free to download it, modify it and use it in whatever way you like.</p>



<p>When Steve and Timothy began working on their new project and needed a way for their clients to interact with it, they found Gutenberg was the perfect tool for the job.</p>



<p>We talk about what benefits they&#8217;ve gained by using Gutenberg. How it saved them time, and how it&#8217;s fast becoming a stable and mature product which is easy for non-technical users to understand.</p>



<p>We get into the details of which parts of Gutenberg they used, and which parts were not suitable for their app. They&#8217;ve been building their own blocks, which work well in the UI, but which are more suited to the kinds of data that they&#8217;re gathering.</p>



<p>The discussion then moves on to what Engine Awesome actually does. It&#8217;s an app builder in which you can construct your own data containers and theme them so that it displays in any way you like. They tell us about the features, which they have so far, as well as the items which are on their roadmap.</p>



<p>Towards the end we talk about their commitment to continue contributing back to the Gutenberg project, and how they feel that it&#8217;s in everyone&#8217;s interest if the project gets better from any updates that they have made.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re looking to build your own SaaS app, or you&#8217;re just curious about how Gutenberg is being deployed outside of WordPress, this podcast is for you.</p>



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



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Steve Bruner and Timothy Jacobs.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by two gentlemen. I&#8217;m joined by Steve Bruner and Timothy Jacobs. Hello.</p>



<p>[00:04:23] Steve Bruner: Hey Nathan. Nice to meet you.</p>



<p>[00:04:24] Timothy Jacobs: Hey.</p>



<p>[00:04:25] Nathan Wrigley: Steve. Firstly, did I pronounce your surname correctly?</p>



<p>[00:04:29] Steve Bruner: You did absolutely.</p>



<p>[00:04:30] Nathan Wrigley: First try. Yeah, that&#8217;s great. Well, thank you for joining us on the podcast today. We&#8217;re going to be talking about something which we literally haven&#8217;t covered in any way, shape, or form at all. We&#8217;ve talked endlessly about Gutenberg and the Block Editor, and blocks and patterns and all of that. But we&#8217;re kind of staying away from that, despite the fact we&#8217;re going to be talking about Gutenberg. Because we&#8217;re going to be talking about an app which has been built on top of Gutenberg, but really not that connected to WordPress. So buckle up. This will be an interesting episode.</p>



<p>We like to orientate the listeners as to who you are so that when they&#8217;re listening, they know that you are an authority on what you&#8217;re talking about. So can I take you in turn? Can I go Steve, first? Would you mind giving us your little potted history of who you are, what you do for a living, where you live, and what your relationship has been with WordPress?</p>



<p>[00:05:18] Steve Bruner: Sure. So back in my previous life I was in like marketing and sales. I embraced technology back then and using spreadsheets and eventually Microsoft Access, I was able to do more than anyone else on my team, right? I could do 10, 20 times the amount of work, just writing macros in Excel or, do database config in Microsoft Access.</p>



<p>And I loved playing with technology and started playing with HTML, and a friend of mine about 17 years ago, 18 years ago, introduced me to WordPress, said, this is pretty cool, you may want to check it out. And I really loved it. It was easy and it was hackable and it was a lot of fun.</p>



<p>Eventually somebody asked me to build them a website. Somebody else offered to pay me to build them a website. And that just grew over the years until I became a full-time, I guess, solopreneur. I have an agency, but I do hire out contractors on a regular basis. I have relationships with many contractors who I&#8217;ve been using now for over a decade.</p>



<p>I also ended up back then taking over the WordPress meetup in New York City. It was about 400 members, now it&#8217;s 9,000. That really gave me a good introduction to WordPress. It introduced me to a lot of people, and I learned. In the very beginning of a meetup, for those of you who are trying to start one, if you don&#8217;t have somebody who will present, you are the presenter.</p>



<p>So for the first year, year and a half, I presented every month, third Tuesday of the month. Did that for a year and a half until we started getting more presenters in. So that grew and yeah, I&#8217;m a full-time WordPress developer now.</p>



<p>[00:06:56] Nathan Wrigley: Isn&#8217;t it curious how, if you have been using the internet, let&#8217;s say, and building websites for anything like 20, 30 plus years, you kind of more or less fell into this job. I&#8217;ve yet to come across anybody of my age, shall we say, who&#8217;s been doing this for that length of time who sort of decided from the outset, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m going to do.</p>



<p>The story is always the same. I was doing something else and then I discovered HTML and played with CSS and realized, oh, I could actually make a living with this. What fun.</p>



<p>[00:07:23] Steve Bruner: That&#8217;s exactly right. The fact that WordPress is open source. You can run it locally. I learned how to code, and this is not an uncommon story, right? I learned how to code by changing code in WordPress. By commenting things out and changing things, and just seeing how it worked.</p>



<p>[00:07:39] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. A verified tinkerer. It sounds like a man after my own heart. Okay, so let&#8217;s move on to Timothy. Timothy, same question really. Give us your background story and particularly your relationship with WordPress.</p>



<p>[00:07:52] Timothy Jacobs: For sure. I&#8217;m also based in the New York City area, so you can guess how I met Steve at the WordPress New York City Meetup Group, which I also help co-organize. But aside from that I&#8217;ve been working with WordPress now for about ish 10 years or so. My day job is I work over at StellarWP on iThemes security. So I&#8217;m the lead developer over there.</p>



<p>But I also have yeah been involved with the WordPress community for a bit. I&#8217;m right now a WordPress core committer. I help work with the REST API in WordPress Core. And then also try and, you know, work with the Gutenberg team as well on REST API things and bringing the two together and helping everything work.</p>



<p>[00:08:29] Nathan Wrigley: Well thank you. At the outset of this podcast it might be useful if you are listening to this and you&#8217;re anywhere near a computer. Just pause for a moment and go to the URL engineawesome.com. It is exactly as you&#8217;d imagine. There&#8217;s no funky spelling there, engineawesome.com.</p>



<p>Go and have a poke around because I feel that the context that you&#8217;ll get from doing that will put you in a good position to enjoy this podcast episode more. So come back and we&#8217;ll get on with the ride. So first of all, whoever wants to answer the question, what is Engine Awesome? We should probably clear that up straight away.</p>



<p>[00:09:03] Steve Bruner: Great. So yeah, I can answer that. Engine Awesome is a SaaS application, and for those interested it is built using Gutenberg, but Gutenberg using Laravel, not WordPress. But it&#8217;s a SaaS application that allows you to build applications for your business with absolutely no code, just using blocks. You could build your own CRM. You can build an order management system, a donation system, project tracking, to-dos. Anything you want in the config that you need.</p>



<p>[00:09:33] Nathan Wrigley: So the ability to do that in SaaS software, there&#8217;s probably a multitude of apps that we could go to that offer, I guess, something fairly similar. You know a no code tool which allows you to build something custom. But the unique bit which has got you on this podcast today is the fact that you&#8217;ve chosen to do that outside of WordPress, but still using Gutenberg.</p>



<p>And I want to know why. I want to know why was it that you decided to take that on board? I can imagine there&#8217;s a whole bunch of reasons, but they would be guesses. So let&#8217;s delve right into</p>



<p>[00:10:09] Timothy Jacobs: Yeah, so I think one of the big things is that the user experience that the block editor provides, while there&#8217;s always places that it can be improved, is really excellent. There are so many tools out there where the first years of their development are, how do we build a good UI for dragging things onto the screen and making it look like you would expect it to look.</p>



<p>And how do we, you know, have settings that adjust things and make tweaks and have visual changes? And how do I navigate to different areas, and how do I present blocks of content? I think WordPress, the block editor in Gutenberg, isn&#8217;t really the only block based system that&#8217;s out there. Lots of different tools have come to realize the power of the block.</p>



<p>But the block editor in Gutenberg being open source, lets us have tons of customization ability. So it really gave us a great headstart for building out an application user interface, where we could get right down to the meat of it, instead of worrying about all of the bits that go into building a WYSIWYG block editor interface.</p>



<p>[00:11:13] Nathan Wrigley: It&#8217;s almost like the use case for using WordPress to build a website in a way, isn&#8217;t it? Because it does a bunch of the heavy lifting for you. You don&#8217;t have to invent all the user permissions yourself, and write all of that code. You can get yourself off to a flying start by implementing something which is freely available and ready to roll.</p>



<p>[00:11:31] Timothy Jacobs: Exactly. It gives you that same kind of headstart. And it also provides like a great prototype experience. The first prototype that we built out was just by building some custom blocks in a WordPress, Gutenberg system. Not even with a whole Laravel side of things. It&#8217;s just a great place to prototype.</p>



<p>[00:11:48] Nathan Wrigley: So Steve, I don&#8217;t know if you have anything to add to that, but basically why Gutenberg? If you&#8217;ve got a different answer than Timothy&#8217;s, go for it.</p>



<p>[00:11:56] Steve Bruner: Tim&#8217;s the CTO, so his is a little more technical. Mine would be a little more business oriented, I guess. First off, the Gutenberg UI is proven, right. It&#8217;s a proven UI that works well, and millions of people and millions of websites use it every day to build websites. So not having to deal with that, not having to work on a UI and go through the whole trial and error process really was appealing to us.</p>



<p>Gutenberg gave us, we probably would&#8217;ve taken two years, three years to build this out if it wasn&#8217;t for Gutenberg. So having that head start, having a UI that&#8217;s proven, that works. And if you&#8217;re coming from the WordPress world, you&#8217;ll feel natural. You&#8217;ll feel comfortable in Engine Awesome, because it&#8217;s Gutenberg, right? We have some custom blocks and some custom workflows, but at the heart of it is Gutenberg, and you will, you&#8217;ll feel very comfortable using it.</p>



<p>[00:12:48] Nathan Wrigley: So given that Gutenberg itself has been how to describe it? It&#8217;s been tumultuous over the last few years. You know, there&#8217;s been a lot of changes, a lot of rapid iterations. I guess that&#8217;s slowed down a little bit more recently when the whole project seemed to move over to full site editing and all of that. Is that a concern of yours? Have you frozen your version of Gutenberg in time? Or are you keeping up with the very latest and greatest that that project offers?</p>



<p>[00:13:13] Timothy Jacobs: We are keeping very up to date. I think we are one version of Gutenberg behind usually. And that&#8217;s where we like to keep it at. But yeah, just a couple of weeks ago, we added support for fixed positioning. Which was a feature that the main Gutenberg team had just introduced. So we see that the, like, iteration speed of Gutenberg is a benefit.</p>



<p>A big thing is that as Gutenberg is maturing, and now we&#8217;re seeing Gutenberg with the isolated block editor project and coming to the wordpress.org forums. And of course what Automattic is doing with Tumblr, that the core WordPress Gutenberg packages, while they are moving very fast and you do have to keep up with them, they are kind of stable enough that you can build on top of them in this way.</p>



<p>And they have to be so that those projects don&#8217;t just keep breaking. And so WordPress.org doesn&#8217;t just keep breaking. While it is not as stable, let&#8217;s say as WordPress Core pre 5.0, and just building on top of the WordPress Core PHP. I think it&#8217;s stable enough to build on top of, for sure.</p>



<p>[00:14:19] Nathan Wrigley: Did the nature of what you were trying to achieve, and we can dig into exactly what it is that you are solving in a little while, but did the paradigm of blocks fit pretty neatly? In other words can you. atomize your workflow inside of Engine Awesome into a collection of blocks basically? Drag in blocks, reposition blocks, fill in data into blocks, and that&#8217;s essentially what the app is doing.</p>



<p>[00:14:43] Timothy Jacobs: Yeah, I think so. At its core in Engine Awesome, each field, each bit of data that you&#8217;re putting into your, let&#8217;s say CRM or invoice management system, each one of those fields is a block that you create. So starting from that level of, hey, we have a block, which is a field that data can be entered into. And it doesn&#8217;t just look like, let&#8217;s say a plain text field, it looks something a bit more of a rich application user interfaced.</p>



<p>The field and the block being like that common low level bit that we build on top of. Yeah, it does make, I think the block-based paradigm a good fit. There are some struggles with a block-based paradigm, and achieving some more complex layouts where things aren&#8217;t just neatly stacked in rows and stacked in columns, like a grid.</p>



<p>But that is something that&#8217;s getting more and more possible to with Gutenberg every few releases. But I do think that the block-based nature, being able to map over to every block as a field did make it a good match, of philosophically in that sense.</p>



<p>[00:15:45] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, right from the outset. Matt Mullenweg ages ago, I don&#8217;t exactly know when, he had this, what felt like a really almost crystal ball gazing idea that Gutenberg as the editor would become almost synonymous with entering data across the whole internet. It would become something which was used everywhere.</p>



<p>Gutenberg itself would become bigger than WordPress and all of that kind of thing. Do you see this? Do you see people doing what you are doing out there? In other words, does the Gutenberg interface, is it increasingly cropping up in places just like Engine Awesome?</p>



<p>[00:16:20] Timothy Jacobs: I&#8217;m not sure if I&#8217;ve seen many cases. There are some that are out there. There is a Laraberg, as I believe the combination of names and how they landed on that one of combining Laravel plus Gutenberg, more for like a page editor context. The same way that is used in WordPress Core.</p>



<p>As well as I believe there&#8217;s a Drupal integration. And I think a couple of other things. Of course, there&#8217;s the isolated block editor project and what Tumblr is doing. I haven&#8217;t seen a lot of people though that are doing it to the degree that we are doing it, in terms of, hey, we&#8217;re letting you build an application as opposed to letting you design a webpage.</p>



<p>And so I don&#8217;t think we are there yet. But I think the stabilization over the past year has made it more of a possibility for projects who are looking to adopt Gutenberg in that way absolutely can, and I think it&#8217;s something worth looking into.</p>



<p>[00:17:10] Nathan Wrigley: How much of the core Gutenberg blocks do you bring along? And how much of it is bespoke work for your application? I&#8217;m presuming, I mean, you alluded to it earlier. I think you said you&#8217;ve got some of your own custom blocks in there. Do you bring almost everything along for the ride, including, I don&#8217;t know, the Vimeo embed block or whatever it may be? Or do you pull out a certain amount and keep a certain amount only?</p>



<p>[00:17:32] Timothy Jacobs: Yes, this is actually, it&#8217;s a really interesting question in terms of how functionality in Gutenberg these days gets divided. So we don&#8217;t bring in any core WordPress Gutenberg blocks. But what we are able to do is, as we&#8217;ve had the introduction of global styles in the full site editor experience. There&#8217;s been more of a separation of, what are things that are really blocks and what are things that are settings that your blocks can opt in to.</p>



<p>So for instance in Engine Awesome, you can use the margin tools, and the padding tools, and the sizing tools, and the colors, and the text sizes. All of these different systems. And the way that we support that in Engine Awesome is we just say in our block.json, hey, we want this feature. Gutenberg, render me the UI for it. Build me the styles. Save all of it to the block metadata information.</p>



<p>Gutenberg, you handle all of that. And what I&#8217;ll do is I&#8217;ll render the part that you see in the canvas, the actual block UI. But core Gutenberg is able to handle those types of controls. So that&#8217;s where we&#8217;ve really made the delineation, is that we don&#8217;t use the core blocks, but we use all of the features that the core blocks use. And are able to pull them in without having to copy thousands of lines of code. So we for instance, have a text block and a group block, and they&#8217;re a few dozen lines of code that are really just implementing the WordPress core APIs around layout and around rich text.</p>



<p>[00:19:09] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it&#8217;s interesting because I&#8217;m looking at your homepage now and there&#8217;s a video on there showing what is obviously to me, the Gutenberg interface. I guess to your customers maybe they&#8217;ll recognize it as that, maybe not. But it shows the inserter, the panel on the left opening up, and it really does look the same.</p>



<p>And so I made the mistake of thinking they were core blocks because many of them map really similarly. You know, you&#8217;ve got a text field and then you&#8217;ve got a URL and the iconography looks remarkably similarly. You haven&#8217;t really tweaked that in any way. It really, really looks like the interface right down to the colors and everything is exactly the same. Black text, black icons, blue buttons, looks similar. That&#8217;s a curious choice that you decided not to fiddle with the design of it.</p>



<p>[00:19:54] Timothy Jacobs: Yeah, I think the design of the block editor, like Steve was mentioning, is really well proven. And I think there are places where maybe in the future that we do more customization, based off of how our users are going to be using Engine Awesome. And the differences between the block editor in WordPress Core for designing pages and the block editor in Engine Awesome for designing applications.</p>



<p>But I don&#8217;t think we wanted to take an approach of, well, let&#8217;s just redesign it for the sake of redesigning it without knowing hey, here are these specific UX benefits that we want to change and we want to improve.</p>



<p>The other aspect of it, to be honest, is that some of these components are harder to tweak than others. Like the inserter, for instance, is a very complex component. So we don&#8217;t want to just say like, okay, let&#8217;s rip it all apart. That&#8217;s one of the aspects where I think you can get into a little bit of trickiness with the rapid pace of Gutenberg development. Is that if you rip everything and everything and everything down to its very bare bone bits, then it is a lot harder to stay up to date with Gutenberg and to be on the latest versions. It makes each upgrade a little bit more of a chore. Whereas for us upgrading Gutenberg isn&#8217;t very difficult.</p>



<p>[00:21:15] Nathan Wrigley: So I guess if you&#8217;re a listener to this podcast, the chances are that you&#8217;ve played with Gutenberg in the past and you&#8217;ve experienced how it works and this whole process in Engine Awesome will be really familiar to you. But it also raises the question, you know, in WordPress there&#8217;s a whole ton of different blocks out there now. If you, you know, you can go to the internet and download thousands, possibly tens of thousands of different blocks. And, so you are using that block methodology in your application.</p>



<p>It feels like we&#8217;ve sidestep the, the most important question, which is what on earth, what an earth does this SaaS platform actually do? So it might be a good idea to bring Steve back in at this point and ask what is Engine Awesome? What is it doing?</p>



<p>[00:21:56] Steve Bruner: Yeah. So like I mentioned before, I&#8217;ve been running a small business for almost 20 years. Full-time for, you know, close to 10. And I&#8217;ve tried every piece of software out there to help you run your business, right? I&#8217;ve tried every CRM. I&#8217;ve tried every project management tool and to-do list and anything you can imagine, I&#8217;ve tried.</p>



<p>And to be honest with you, I haven&#8217;t loved any of &#8217;em. And anybody I&#8217;ve spoken to has said the same thing. Usually when you try these out of the box solutions, you feel like you&#8217;re overpaying for a product where you&#8217;re only using 50, 60% of the features. And they keep loading it up with more features and they keep raising the price.</p>



<p>With Engine Awesome you get to build exactly what you want. You build the CRM that you want in the way you work. The way your team works. The way your business works. We have had clients that have taken paper forms that they&#8217;ve used in their business and replicated them in Engine Awesome. And their employees just log in and they know how to use it. There&#8217;s nothing strange here anymore. They see the same form they&#8217;ve been using for years, it&#8217;s just a digital version. So training comes down and training costs come down.</p>



<p>Now, there are other no-code platforms out there. We realize that there are others that are doing this. Our goal is to make it simple. To make it really, really simple for you to get your application up, right. Tim and I always talk about getting our clients up and running in minutes, not months. You don&#8217;t have to know anything about databases to use Engine Awesome. You don&#8217;t have to know about key fields and indexing fields. You don&#8217;t have to know how to build relationships. You don&#8217;t have to do any of that stuff. Engine Awesome takes care of it for you very easily. Just drag and drop some blocks, check a box, press save, and you&#8217;re ready to go.</p>



<p>[00:23:55] Nathan Wrigley: I&#8217;m seeing when I&#8217;m on your homepage, I&#8217;m seeing what looked like the two UIs. I&#8217;m seeing the Gutenberg UI, which obviously has a purpose, but I&#8217;m also seeing like another UI where I don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s going on there. Is it, do you have a UI to build the blocks themselves and then they&#8217;re created inside of Gutenberg to drop in whatever data it is that you need to put into that particular block?</p>



<p>[00:24:18] Timothy Jacobs: Yeah, so we have two different base points. They&#8217;re both Gutenberg. But the first step of building your Engine Awesome application is deciding what fields that you want to support. So what data you want to collect. And this is just dragging from the inserter, a URL, or a name, or a color, and bringing them into a separate editor where you see all the list of fields that you&#8217;ve created for this particular, what we call an object type. For WordPress users it would kind of be most analogous to a custom post type.</p>



<p>And so your contact, for instance, might have a name field, a phone, an address, things like that. Those fields that you define when you&#8217;re editing your object type, make up the inserter, make up the block library when you then edit your layouts. So you first define your kind of data that you&#8217;re looking to collect. And then you can define as many different user interfaces that you want to show that data or collect that data. And Steve can give some good examples of how that interface building portion happens.</p>



<p>[00:25:19] Steve Bruner: Yeah, so a lot of our clients come from using spreadsheets, for instance. Just giant spreadsheets. 30 columns, thousands of rows. And it&#8217;s really easy for them to work with Engine Awesome, right. So as Tim mentioned, first they define their object and then they literally are transferring those fields from a spreadsheet to Engine Awesome using the blocks.</p>



<p>Then they go and start creating their layouts. And the layouts are, they could be forms, right? Where you&#8217;re entering data. They could be tables where you are viewing data. They can be queries where you&#8217;re searching for data. And those layouts also are conditional.</p>



<p>They can change based upon data that&#8217;s entered. So, for instance, if you have quote that you provided through an Engine Awesome system, and that quote is in maybe an open status, you will see certain fields that are there. But once that quote gets changed to an approved status, those fields will be locked, right?</p>



<p>You&#8217;re not changing the quote after it&#8217;s been approved. So fields are locked. Nobody on your team can enter data or edit data anymore. And then you can move through a process. And again, I just want to reiterate, that is not a set process in Engine Awesome, that&#8217;s a process that somebody would&#8217;ve built, right? Everything is custom.</p>



<p>So those layouts, change in Engine Awesome. One other UI I guess that we have. We recently brought in the full site editing experience, or I guess the full, Tim can talk more about this, but the full site editing UI as the actual application UI. So when you are building your object and building your layouts, you see the inserter, the settings, Gutenberg like everyone is really familiar with it. But when you&#8217;re using the application, when your team is using the application, when they&#8217;re in the field or in the office, we are using the full site editing experience with the full site editing menu. And Tim, maybe you want to elaborate on that?</p>



<p>[00:27:20] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, please.</p>



<p>[00:27:21] Timothy Jacobs: Yeah, so you can kind of see this, if you go into our post, Engine Awesome has a new look. And you can kind of see that delineation there. Basically the Gutenberg team introduced a really fantastic collection of navigation elements. And so we were able to use those to say, here&#8217;s how you navigate between different views, between different object types, between different sets of data. And use that navigation experience that the core Gutenberg team provided.</p>



<p>[00:27:48] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I will link to that post. But anybody listening, there&#8217;s a blog post. Currently it&#8217;s linked in the footer, but I imagine over time it will disappear from the footer of the main homepage. It&#8217;s called Engine Awesome has a new look and you can see the site editor panel on the left and all of that. Yeah, that&#8217;s a really interesting implementation.</p>



<p>So you build out the structure of the data you want to consume, you then have the option to display that. Presumably there must be a whole piece of making that data interact with other data points.</p>



<p>So, you know, you just mentioned that something is marked as approved. So certain fields get locked up. But presumably there are relationships, child, parent relationships, one-to-one, and so on and so forth, that bind the data together. Otherwise, you&#8217;re looking at a spreadsheet, aren&#8217;t you, really? So there must be something more in here.</p>



<p>[00:28:35] Timothy Jacobs: Exactly. So when you edit your object type, you can set up a relationship between another bit of data, and then when you do that by dragging a block. So you&#8217;ll see in your inserter, for instance, let&#8217;s say that you are editing a contacts object type, and you already have a company&#8217;s object type set up.</p>



<p>The only thing that you need to do is drag a block that says that this contact has one company and then Engine Awesome takes care of the rest. And so then when you&#8217;re building out a layout, let&#8217;s say for a company, you can easily display a list of all of the contacts that are associated with that company or vice versa.</p>



<p>When you&#8217;re editing a contact, you can say, hey, here&#8217;s a snapshot of information about this company. Maybe their address, their website, a photo of them. Just to give that contextual information. So you can set up all of those object types and all of those relationships just by dragging a block into the block editor.</p>



<p>[00:29:29] Nathan Wrigley: Steve, it sounded like you wanted to chip in there.</p>



<p>[00:29:31] Steve Bruner: I was just going to give you a couple of use cases so you can get a good understanding of how people are using Engine Awesome. So recently a non-profit provided us a spreadsheet, a thousand rows, 26 or 30 columns, and they were tracking their donors in it. And it really is not the best way to do that. In five minutes, and I really mean this, I&#8217;m not joking.</p>



<p>Five minutes, maybe six, on a Zoom call with this prospective customer, I built an application for him where he was able to enter donors and then keep a record, a log of donations. See those donations, filter those donations, and get a good understanding of what&#8217;s going on. So it was really really quick and is going to change the way he does his job and his team&#8217;s job, and everyone&#8217;s just going to be, everyone&#8217;s life is going to be easier.</p>



<p>We have a home cleaning service, a residential home cleaning service. Tim has done a great video, you&#8217;ll find it on our YouTube channel about how to build a service business application, and in 30 minutes, and this is a live video that Tim did, and you&#8217;ll go through it. Tim is not going quickly at all.</p>



<p>But in 30 minutes he built an application that tracks this home cleaning services clients. The jobs they do. Their team members and their teams. They go into people&#8217;s homes, they bring up Engine Awesome on their phone. They view their jobs. They mark their job cleaning when they&#8217;re starting to clean, and then they go through this whole process.</p>



<p>And when they&#8217;re done, they mark it done. Eventually they&#8217;re going to be taking credit cards using Engine Awesome. So, we have a Zapier integration where when the job is done, the client will get an email automatically with a payment link. And this is changing her business, right? Right now, she deals with cash or check or Zelle. Sometimes people forget. And it&#8217;s just making her life much easier.</p>



<p>Even something crazy like a marketing company that has displays in Home Depot stores. They are going to be doing a test in a couple of hundred Home Depot stores. And they built a UI in Engine Awesome that tracks stores and products and promotions and using our web hooks and API, they&#8217;re going to be pushing data to those stores, to those displays, and managing it all in Engine Awesome.</p>



<p>So ideas that we never even thought of, people are starting to use Engine Awesome for some really, really creative ideas. You know, at the core of it, Tim and I really are passionate about helping businesses be more productive every day. And I think these use cases give a good, broad example of that.</p>



<p>[00:32:06] Nathan Wrigley: I don&#8217;t know if either of you have ever used a piece of software called Airtable? But Airtable came around, I don&#8217;t know, maybe five or six years ago and it felt like a really, quite an interesting piece of technology at the time, in that you could put data in, it was basically a spreadsheet, but then it could show you that data, back at you in a variety of different ways.</p>



<p>So that leads me to the question, is that possible here? It sounds like the answer&#8217;s yes. So, as an example, let&#8217;s say that I&#8217;m a real estate agent and I&#8217;m updating data about houses on my roster. And I&#8217;ve input all the fields. I&#8217;ve got images. I&#8217;ve got prices and descriptions and maps of floor plans, all of that kind of thing.</p>



<p>Is it possible for me to create bespoke layouts of that data? So rather than it just being an Airtable, which looks like, well, a spreadsheet, you&#8217;ve got other options in there, but basically a spreadsheet. Is it possible for me to, I don&#8217;t know, float images right? Or highlight this particular aspect of the text? Make this a heading and you know, add iconography.</p>



<p>In other words can I make the data engaging to look at? And further to that, can I bind those presentation layers to members of my team? So for example, could the sales director see a different layout of different data and somebody who&#8217;s in marketing, front of shop, might be able to show data to a customer that walks in the store? That kind of thing.</p>



<p>[00:33:23] Steve Bruner: Yeah, so it&#8217;s interesting you brought up Airtable, right? Because Airtable is a no-code solution that, like you said, is mostly a spreadsheet. And I want to get back to that because I think Tim and I, we feel a little differently than the way Airtable and some other no-code solutions do their business.</p>



<p>But to answer your question, yes. You can build really compelling, beautiful layouts using Engine Awesome. Because you&#8217;re using the Gutenberg design tools, right ? So you&#8217;re essentially designing a webpage, but it&#8217;s a, you know, maybe it&#8217;s a form or tables or some type of layout. But yes, you can float things, right? You can float through things left. You can bold, change colors. We have themes. We brought in themes as well. So with one click you can change the color and style of your application.</p>



<p>In terms of different team members using Engine Awesome and seeing different things and seeing different items. This is a really important point, right. Tim and I are actually going through this right now. How we want the user roles and capability system to work i Engine Awesome. Because our goal, and this is the goal we&#8217;ve had since day one. I think this is also what makes us different from a lot of no-code solutions out there, is that we want your entire team using Engine Awesome.</p>



<p>We don&#8217;t charge per user, and I think that&#8217;s a really important point, right? We really are charging per organization or per team. We want everybody, we want your part-timers to use Engine Awesome. You want the CEO to use Engine Awesome. Everybody in between. You shouldn&#8217;t have to pick and choose who needs to use an application. We really believe at our core that when your entire team is on the same page and uses the same application, and can see the same data, your life&#8217;s going to be better. Your business will be better. Everybody will be more productive.</p>



<p>So we&#8217;re working really hard to make sure we have this roles and capabilities system that allows to do exactly what you&#8217;re talking about, and really fine tune it. So that everyone is on the same page.</p>



<p>[00:35:28] Nathan Wrigley: Timothy, anything to add to that?</p>



<p>[00:35:30] Timothy Jacobs: Yeah, I would mention one thing, which is that right now we have things set up so that you can have different levels of permission. So you can have and invite users onto your team that can just read data, for instance, or who can just edit data, but they can&#8217;t make changes to your application. But yeah, the next big thing is figuring out what it looks like and how do you make it intuitive for users to set up an application where they consider different things like permissions and capabilities?</p>



<p>There are some tools that, the kind of permission system is really just visibility. And if you&#8217;re a developer, you can sneak under the hood and they throw warnings all over the documentation that, hey, you know, even though you&#8217;re, you think you&#8217;re hiding this data, you&#8217;re not actually hiding this data. Because it still gets sent to every user&#8217;s browser or something like that.</p>



<p>So thinking through ways to make it very intuitive for users to say, hey, how do we actually set up our permission model, is the thing we&#8217;re exploring.</p>



<p>[00:36:28] Nathan Wrigley: Will it be possible to change the data on, for want of a better word, the front end? In other words, if you&#8217;ve input the data in one UI, but then you&#8217;re looking at the way it&#8217;s presented, the theme, if you like. Is it possible for, and again, user permissions, we&#8217;ll assume that that&#8217;s coming down the pike, but is it possible to have people change the data in the different displays? Or do you have to always return to the, if you like, WordPress post to amend that data?</p>



<p>[00:36:55] Timothy Jacobs: Yeah, so you can edit the data everywhere. This is a trend that we&#8217;ve been seeing with a lot of these different tools. Is that they give you different layouts that can present your data, but at the core of it, they all have a data mode where you&#8217;re basically looking at a spreadsheet or a very, I&#8217;ll say charitably, a plainly designed form that doesn&#8217;t have a sense of hierarchy or related bits of information. And then you can present it in any way that you would want.</p>



<p>For us though, the first thing that we wanted to tackle was to make sure that when you presented and created a beautiful layout, that your users could also edit the data in that layout. So right now we don&#8217;t have, for instance, a separate kind of raw spreadsheet like view into your data. That&#8217;s something that is on our roadmap. But our main actual priority is for users to be entering in data through the rich UIs that you create.</p>



<p>[00:37:48] Nathan Wrigley: I feel that&#8217;s one of the, one of the great advances recently. The ability to change it wherever you are. I think that would be really good. Because it is frustrating if, well, you&#8217;re looking at the data that you want to amend and then you have to, in WordPress parlance, click edit post and then go and find that field and amend that field and then click save and then go back and make sure it looks how it ought to look. That&#8217;s just one of the best things about this whole approach, isn&#8217;t it? Is that you can do it right there on the front end.</p>



<p>Just moving slightly. Obviously you&#8217;re a SaaS app. You&#8217;re consuming all sorts of data. Probably you can imagine where this question&#8217;s going. If you are consuming, I don&#8217;t know, email addresses, images, all sorts of financial information, whatever it may be. How are you storing that? Where is that data being kept? If I&#8217;m in the EU, do you have it in a certain jurisdiction? Is it encrypted? Let&#8217;s just leave it at that.</p>



<p>[00:38:41] Timothy Jacobs: Yeah, that&#8217;s a great question. So right now we don&#8217;t have a separate EU instance for instance. Unintentional rhyming there. But the way that we&#8217;ve set this up is, we are using MongoDB as our database system. And each team that gets created gets their own, essentially database inside of MongoDB to themselves.</p>



<p>So right now that&#8217;s all centrally part of Digital Ocean&#8217;s managed database service and their encryption at rest and so on and so forth. And there are a lot of great security practices. In the future though, what that means is that we&#8217;ll be able to support teams having data that is in a different data center, depending on what their needs are.</p>



<p>And even for potentially more enterprise customers, the need to be able to self-host their own database. Engine Awesome is set up to be able to connect to different database applications. But right now all of that data is stored in Engine Awesome, in Digital Ocean.</p>



<p>[00:39:37] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, thank you. You mentioned enterprise there, but also Steve earlier was talking about examples of local charities and things like that. So is this software basically open to everybody? And on the website, forgive me, it may be that I&#8217;m just not looking all that carefully, but I can&#8217;t see a price. So I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s a function of you haven&#8217;t worked out your pricing yet. Or if it&#8217;s a contact us, and we&#8217;ll talk through what it is that we think you&#8217;re going to need, and we&#8217;ll work out the pricing accordingly. But are you aiming at all the people all the time. Enterprise, just small mom and pop stores. How are you launching and what is the pricing model?</p>



<p>[00:40:14] Steve Bruner: So right now most of our clients are small to medium size businesses. We&#8217;re not writing off enterprise, we just realize that enterprise may need other features that we don&#8217;t have yet. Like single sign-on or maybe a, you know, a dedicated SLA or something of that nature.</p>



<p>So we&#8217;re not there yet. Obviously we&#8217;re happy to talk to enterprise. There is one larger company that expressed an interest in Engine Awesome, and we&#8217;ve been talking to them. But right now, all of our clients have been small to medium sized businesses.</p>



<p>The pricing model we&#8217;re still playing with. Again, we don&#8217;t want to charge per user. So we&#8217;ve been playing with all sorts of ideas. The number of records you use. Or the resources you use. Our goal is to get you and your entire team on Engine Awesome, and we&#8217;re willing to do whatever it takes to get you there.</p>



<p>So, right now we have a manual onboarding process. If you sign up for Engine Awesome, you&#8217;re scheduling a Zoom call with me. So we have a talk. I find out what your needs are, how you plan on using Engine Awesome, your pain points. And we talk it through.</p>



<p>And at that point we start working out where Engine Awesome fits into your plan. For smaller teams, we&#8217;re in the $10 range a month, $15 range a month, $20 a month. But we&#8217;re not really going much higher than that right now.</p>



<p>[00:41:42] Nathan Wrigley: Are you going to be making use? So we&#8217;re in phase three of Gutenberg, which is for want of a better word, concurrent editing. Think Google Docs. Are you going to be making use of that? I mean, I can see that being incredibly useful if it&#8217;s pulled off. But is that something that you are thinking about implementing?</p>



<p>[00:42:00] Timothy Jacobs: I would love to. It&#8217;s something that I&#8217;m seeing, and I&#8217;m really, really excited to see how that evolves. I&#8217;m really curious how the core Gutenberg team is going to approach designing that. I think there&#8217;s a lot of UX patterns that are going to be challenging. And seeing them pull that off is going to be really interest.</p>



<p>And then seeing how that connects to WordPress. Is it going to be like peer to peer? Is it going to go through WordPress, as the PHP backend? What is all that going to look like from a technical perspective I think will also be fascinating. For us, I think one of the benefits of being a SaaS application is that it makes it a little bit easier for us to do that kind of orchestration, because we control what the backend is.</p>



<p>But of course with WordPress, when we&#8217;re building for WordPress, we&#8217;re building for like 45% of the web. So the technical requirements are a lot more of a challenge. Yeah, I&#8217;m keeping a keen eye on that and I&#8217;m really excited to see how that progresses. Because, yeah, I think that&#8217;ll take Gutenberg to high Peaks, and will be something that a lot of different people building on top of the block editor, on top of the Gutenberg project will be able to utilize.</p>



<p>[00:43:07] Nathan Wrigley: That was kind of like a roadmap question, but in disguise. Let&#8217;s just ask it outright. Just outline for us in the near future, we&#8217;re recording this towards the middle of February, so depending on how long it takes this podcast episode to actually make it out into the public, some of these things may have come a along already. But just outline roughly, maybe let&#8217;s go for six months, eight months, something like that. What&#8217;s the plan? What are you hoping to implement?</p>



<p>[00:43:32] Steve Bruner: Well, our customers are always giving us ideas, right? So things do change like you mentioned. Our priority of right now is user roles and capabilities. Once that&#8217;s integrated, and that&#8217;s going to take a little bit because not only do we need to plan it out and how it&#8217;s going to work technically. We also need to make it super simple to implement, so clients can do this and feel comfortable that the right people are seeing the right data. So that is going to take a little bit of time.</p>



<p>E-commerce would probably be our next big focus. Our clients want to start taking payments from their clients, right? The cleaning service is a great example. Right now the plan for her is to email a Stripe payment link to her clients, but we want to make things a little bit easier.</p>



<p>Also that feature would, currently being done through Zapier. Which is an additional charge. So we want to bring that into Engine Awesome, where we can make it seamless and where our clients won&#8217;t have to pay any more for that.</p>



<p>Those are probably the two major features that we want to roll out in the next six months. There are other things we want to do. We want to do, you know, we want to add scheduling. Again, a lot of our clients are service businesses. So scheduling is a big part of that, and they&#8217;re using services like Calendly, and if we can do something better or bring it into Engine Awesome , make it easier for them to use, then we want to be able to do that as well.</p>



<p>[00:44:55] Nathan Wrigley: The introductions at the top of the show made it pretty obvious that you&#8217;ve got a history of giving back to WordPress. So, forgive me if this question sounds ill placed. But given that you are leveraging quite a lot of the Gutenberg project to build out your SaaS app, I&#8217;m just wondering what your posture is in terms of giving back from Engine Awesome. Back to Gutenberg. Again caveat emptor. Sorry, I know that you both do more than enough already, but I just wondered if that was part of the ethics of the business.</p>



<p>[00:45:28] Timothy Jacobs: Yeah, I&#8217;m a big believer in that I think the Gutenberg project gets better the more different use cases that we have. Historically, my contributions to WordPress have been mainly focused on the REST API, and how Gutenberg interacts with the REST API. But I hope to be able to dive in more and more into the core Gutenberg project.</p>



<p>So I think being good stewards of the open source community is a key aspect to building on top of an open source project. Both from, this is the best thing to do from a kind of community standpoint. But I think also everyone should really be thinking about how they contribute back to Gutenberg. So that we have a say in shaping how Gutenberg moves forward.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s a lot of work to do, and we all have different pet features or things that we might want to have changed or improved in Gutenberg. And, really the long and short of it is that there&#8217;s more work to do than there are contributors to do the work. So the more of us that can contribute back to the Gutenberg project and the WordPress Core project, the faster we&#8217;re all able to go.</p>



<p>[00:46:39] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you, Steve. Anything there?</p>



<p>[00:46:42] Steve Bruner: No, Tim said it all. Tim said it best. He&#8217;s been a core contributor for a long time. Our goal from day one, like you mentioned, we&#8217;ve been contributing to the WordPress community in both code and education for a very long time and we want to continue to do that.</p>



<p>[00:46:57] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that&#8217;s a nice answer to hear actually. That&#8217;s very heartening. Thank you. Should anybody have been listening to this podcast, had their interest peaked. They&#8217;re either interested in talking about what you did with Gutenberg from a technological point of view, because maybe they&#8217;re thinking of adopting Gutenberg in their own platform. Or they just want to actually find out what they can do with Engine Awesome themselves.</p>



<p>I don&#8217;t know if you want to answer this question separately or combined, but where is the best place to get in touch? Is it a contact form? An email address? Is it, dare I say it, Twitter.</p>



<p>[00:47:30] Steve Bruner: Right now our website is really the best place to contact us. So engineawesome.com. On the homepage if you are interested in signing up, or just getting on a Zoom call with me to learn more, there&#8217;s a input right there where you can put in your email address and sign up for that.</p>



<p>And we also have a contact form where if you have questions about Gutenberg and how we did this and you want a more heavy developer talk, you want to chat with Tim, then that&#8217;s the place to let us know.</p>



<p>[00:47:59] Timothy Jacobs: Yeah, you can also always find me on the make make dot WordPress Slack. That&#8217;s also a great place to reach out.</p>



<p>[00:48:05] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Thank you Timothy Jacobs and Steve Bruner. Thanks for joining me on the podcast today to talk about Engine Awesome. I really appreciate it.</p>



<p>[00:48:13] Steve Bruner: Thank you, Nathan. I really, I really enjoyed this.</p>



<p>[00:48:15] Timothy Jacobs: Thanks for having us.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/users/sbruner/">Steve Bruner</a> and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/timothyblynjacobs/">Timothy Jacobs</a>.</p>



<p>Steve has been active in the WordPress community for the past 17 years. He&#8217;s a WordPress developer, co-organizer of the <a href="https://www.meetup.com/WordPressNYC/">WordPressNYC Meetup</a>, and has organised many WordCamps in New York City.</p>



<p>Timothy is a WordPress Core Committer for the REST API, and has been a WordPress developer for over ten years. At <a href="https://stellarwp.com/">StellarWP</a>, he leads development of the iThemes Security plugin.</p>



<p>What brings them together is that they’re both founders of a SaaS app called <a href="https://engineawesome.com/">Engine Awesome</a>, where Steve is the CEO and Timothy is the CTO.</p>



<p>What has this got to do with WordPress, you might ask. Well, they’re here today to talk about Gutenberg, but not how you might expect. It’s Gutenberg outside of WordPress, but Gutenberg nonetheless.</p>



<p>Like all of WordPress, Gutenberg is open source. You are free to download it, modify it, and use it in whatever way you like. When Steve and Timothy began working on their new project, and needed a way for their clients to interact with it, they found Gutenberg was the perfect tool for the job.</p>



<p>We talk about what benefits they’ve gained by using Gutenberg. How it’s saved them time, and how it’s fast becoming a stable and mature product, which is easy for non-technical users to understand.</p>



<p>We get into the details of which parts of Gutenberg they used, and which parts were not suitable for their app. They’ve been building their own blocks which work well in the UI, but which are more suited to the kinds of data that they’re gathering.</p>



<p>The discussion then moves onto what Engine Awesome actually does. It’s an app builder in which you can construct your own data containers and theme them so that it displays in any way you like. They tell us about the features which they have so far, as well as the items which are on their roadmap.</p>



<p>Towards the end, we talk about their commitment to continue contributing back to the Gutenberg project, and how they feel that it’s in everyone’s interest if the project gets better from any updates that they have made.</p>



<p>If you’re looking to build your own SaaS app, or you’re just curious about how Gutenberg is being deployed outside of WordPress, this podcast is for you.</p>



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



<p><a href="https://github.com/VanOns/laraberg/">Laraberg</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.drupal.org/project/gutenberg">Gutenberg for Drupal</a></p>



<p><a href="https://engineawesome.com/2023/01/23/engine-awesome-has-a-new-look/">Engine Awesome has a new look!</a> &#8211; blog post</p>



<p><a href="https://airtable.com/">Airtable</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.mongodb.com/">MongoDB</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/products/managed-databases">Digital Ocean&#8217;s managed database service</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, 19 Apr 2023 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:29;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"WPTavern: Atarim to Host 4th Annual Virtual Web Agency Summit April 25-28";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=143723";s: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/atarim-to-host-4th-annual-virtual-web-agency-summit-april-25-28";s: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:3112:"<p>Atarim is hosting its 4th annual <a href="https://atarim.io/summit/">Web Agency Summit</a> from April 25-28. The virtual event is geared towards web agencies and WordPress professionals, with topics focused on web trends, scaling an agency or freelance business, attracting high-paying clients, and building recurring revenue.</p>



<p>Web Agency Summit was born out of the organizers&#8217; frustration with the first WordCamp Asia getting canceled at the beginning of the pandemic.</p>



<p>&#8220;When WordCamp Asia was first canceled, I had a lot of thoughts, of course,&#8221; ScaleMath founder Alex Panagis said. &#8220;Something that we were somewhat really hoping would help us make a big splash in the industry was pulled away from right under us. </p>



<p>&#8220;But, instead of letting this setback get to us – we decided we had to do something. We decided to step up and host what was then the first (and went on to be the biggest) virtual summit in our industry. Sponsors like GoDaddy, WordPress.org, and many more were quite quick to step in, to the point where we were overwhelmed by the support we received and how well-received the entire summit concept was.&#8221;</p>



<p>This year&#8217;s lineup includes representatives from Microsoft, Google, Yoast, Hubspot, XWP, Elementor, and more, including 40+ WordPress experts. Web Agency Summit includes individual speaker sessions, such as &#8220;<em>Headless WordPress &#8211; does this approach make sense?&#8221;</em> and <em>&#8220;The Role of AI in Content &amp; SEO</em>.&#8221;  Attendees will have the opportunity to join sessions on boosting client acquisition on LinkedIn, growing a freelancing business, productizing designs, launching a podcast, managing contractor teams, and more.</p>



<p>This year&#8217;s event will also feature seven expert-led panels: </p>



<ul>
<li><strong>Changing Tides:</strong> How Industry Acquisitions &amp; Investments are Shaping the Future of WordPress, and What It Means For Your Agency</li>



<li><strong>From Connections to Clients:</strong> Building Communities for Web Design Agency Growth</li>



<li><strong>From CMS to Digital Powerhouse:</strong> The Expansive Power of WordPress and How It Can Reshape the Tech Landscape</li>



<li><strong>Building The Future:</strong> Exploring the Power of Next Generation Website &amp; Page Builders</li>



<li><strong>Cracking The Code:</strong> How to Choose the Best Web Hosting for Your Business</li>



<li><strong>Embracing AI in Web Design:</strong> Unlocking Profitability for Agencies &amp; Freelancer</li>



<li><strong>Beyond Viral Videos:</strong> Maximizing YouTube for Agency Growth &amp; What Comes Next</li>
</ul>



<p> Attendees will be able to meet sponsors in a virtual festival village to win prizes, and join breakout rooms to network and make new industry connections.</p>



<p><a href="https://atarim.io/summit/">Registration</a> for the Web Agency Summit is free but seats are limited. Every presentation will be recorded and will be available to watch for free live and for 24 hours following the event.</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, 18 Apr 2023 22:12:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:30;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:88:"Do The Woo Community: A Journey to Improve the WooCommerce Onboarding with Vikas Singhal";s: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=74796";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:68:"https://dothewoo.io/a-journey-to-improve-the-woocommerce-onboarding/";s: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:403:"<p>Vikas joins Jonathan to chat about his WordPress journey and how it led to building InstaWP.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/a-journey-to-improve-the-woocommerce-onboarding/">A Journey to Improve the WooCommerce Onboarding with Vikas Singhal</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 18 Apr 2023 11:28:34 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:31;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:113:"WPTavern: WordPress Contributors Continue Exploring Migration of Public and Private Messages from Slack to Matrix";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=143725";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:124:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-contributors-continue-exploring-migration-of-public-and-private-messages-from-slack-to-matrix";s: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:4979:"<p>In early 2023, WordPress and Matrix contributors proposed a new Meta team subproject to <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-project-to-evaluate-replacing-slack-with-matrix-open-source-chat">explore replacing Slack communication with Matrix</a>, an open source federated chat system. After the team&#8217;s most recent meeting, Automattic-sponsored contributor Alex Kirk <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/04/06/matrix-chat-summary-april-6-2023/">published</a> an update on the status of recent experiments in migration.</p>



<p>After researching more on migrating public messages, Kirk said the team is now evaluating whether the Apache-2.0 licensed <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://github.com/Awesome-Technologies/slack-matrix-migration" target="_blank">Slack Matrix migration tool</a> could work for this project.</p>



<p>&#8220;It operates on Slack export files and requires a fresh Synapse server,&#8221; Kirk said.</p>



<p>&#8220;We haven’t yet been able to confirm whether it actually can import the messages and hope to be able to share more on the next meeting.&#8221;</p>



<p>On the subject of migrating private messages, Kirk said the team is leaning towards ensuring users have the tools to save their own external archives.</p>



<p>&#8220;For migrating private messages in DMs or private groups we’ve concluded that we won’t want to attempt their migration but will look into providing tools for achieving that,&#8221; Kirk said.</p>



<p>&#8220;Here we’ve found that <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/slack-channel-exporter/" target="_blank">browser</a> <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/robsi-slack-channel-expor/henmphndbgifealbmebncbdfgkilagbe" target="_blank">extensions</a> exist which allow you to download your own Slack direct messages inside your browser as a text file. Possibly it’ll be our recommendation to use those tools to export the messages for yourself.&#8221;</p>



<p>Kirk also addressed some accessibility concerns that WordPress Accessibility Team contributor Alex Stine raised during a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/03/27/matrix-chat-summary-march-23-2023/">meeting</a> at the end of March: </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Slack is well supported and accessible to a very wide audience. Something that is not up for argument, a lot of these open-source/decentralized concepts are not accessible to all or most.</p>



<p>The decentralized media world walks a fine line between a great thing and a lot of hypocrisy. On one hand, claiming to give users a voice, on the other hand, knowingly excluding users of assistive tech.</p>



<p>Years of&nbsp;GitHub&nbsp;issues do not lie. Matrix has not been around all that long but there are plenty of other examples that have been around long enough…The Slack accessibility team is best in its class. They are constantly responsive and very engaged with users.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>Kirk linked to an article published by Mozilla accessibility engineer Marco Zehe titled <a href="https://www.marcozehe.de/how-to-use-element-and-matrix-with-a-screen-reader/">How to use Element and Matrix with a screen reader</a>. Mozilla replaced IRC with Matrix in 2020, identifying Matrix as an &#8220;excellent <em>open community collaboration</em> tool, with robust support for accessibility and community safety.&#8221;</p>



<p>Zehe&#8217;s post is essentially a guide to help those using assistive technology find their way around Element and the Matrix Eco system more easily. It also highlights a few things that do not yet work well, including keyboard navigation for the members list and messages.</p>



<p>&#8220;I hope some of these issues are no longer problems,&#8221; Stine said in response to Kirk sharing the article. &#8220;If they still are, this would be no doubt a far worse experience than Slack was in some of its worst times. The fact that users have to switch their screen reader modes just to have basic functionality support is not cool. Here is the way I see it. If modern apps do not follow a similar pattern for your OS to the point where you have to look up docs to figure out how to use it, it is probably too complicated and/or not accessible by my definition.&#8221;</p>



<p>The question of whether it would be beneficial for the WordPress project to <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/01/25/a-meta-subproject-for-evaluating-matrix/">replace Slack communication with Matrix</a> is still yet unanswered, but the initial response to the idea was overwhelmingly positive. More research into the logistics of migration will be a necessary part of the decision.</p>



<p>The Matrix contributors proposing this new exploration will meet again on Wednesday, April 19, for the regularly scheduled bi-weekly meeting and plan to discuss the research on migrating messages from Slack.</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, 18 Apr 2023 03:51:32 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:32;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:129:"Gutenberg Times: All Women-release squad for 6.4 , Grid Layout , Pattern for front-page designs and more – Weekend edition #250";s: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=23854";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:131:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/all-women-release-squad-for-6-4-grid-layout-pattern-for-front-page-designs-and-more-weekend-edition-250/";s: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:18775:"<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>250 newsletter editions. WOW. It feels like a nice round number and worth a celebration. The weekend edition of the Gutenberg Times officially became a newsletter, sent via Mailchimp, on Feb. 3rd, 2018 with 12 subscribers. It has much evolved since then. </p>



<p>It&#8217;s been a stable of my life to connect with you weekly and report on Gutenberg. After all these years (<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/6XqvRGDs5eLQSCyKUBCBGF?si=e4df7a8278b04efa">cue in Paul Simon</a>&#8216;s Still Crazy),  I am still infinitely curious about what people create with the block editor. Thank you for your great support and trust. It&#8217;s been a great privilege.  </p>



<p><a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/"><strong>WordCamp Europe</strong></a> is around the corner, and I would like to meet as may subscribers as possible there. <a href="https://calendly.com/pauli-haack/wordcamp-europe?month=2023-06">My public calendar is open.</a> This method worked very well, and I met an incredible mix of people at WordCamp Asia this way.  Making a deliberate effort and scheduling an appointment, adds certainty to an otherwise chance encounter in the Hallway track. I will be in town before the WordCamp, so the calendar is also open for the 7th of June, if that fits your schedule better, too.</p>



<p>I also hope to see you at the <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/contributor-day/">Contributor Day</a> on 8th of June.  <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/contributor-day/#register">Registration is open</a> for those who already have a WordCamp Europe ticket.  The organizer team of WCEU also announced that <a href="https://wptavern.com/wceu-2023-announces-free-childcare-and-workshop-for-kids">there will be free child care are and a Kids track.</a></p>



<p>As a side note, we signed the lease for our Munich flat and my husband and I will have a new permanent address starting May 1, 2023. </p>



<p>I hope, you have a fabulous weekend! </p>



<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>




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<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



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




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



<p><strong>Gutenberg 15.5</strong> was released last week, and it was a great pleasure for me to discuss it all with <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-81-wordpress-6-2-interactivity-api/">Leonardus Nugraha for the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. </a></p>



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<p><strong>🎙️ </strong> New episode:  <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-82-gutenberg-15-6-and-proposed-schedule-for-wordpress-6-3/">Gutenberg Changelog #82 – Gutenberg 15.6 and proposed schedule for WordPress 6.3</a> with Birgit Pauli-Haack and special guest Nick Diego</p>
</div></div>



<p><strong>Hector Prieto </strong>proposed the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/14/wordpress-6-3-planning-proposal-call-for-volunteers/"><strong>release schedule for WordPress 6.3 and opened the call for volunteers</strong></a> for the release squad. </p>



<p>It comes on the heals of <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy</strong>&#8216;s invitation to the all-women release squad for 6.4. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/07/preparing-for-the-next-women-nonbinary-release-squad/"><strong>Preparing for the Next Women &amp; Nonbinary Release Squad</strong></a>. Raise your hands in the comments if you want to get involved in the WordPress major release process. </p>



<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> reported on the release for the WP Tavern. Read <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-15-5-introduces-experimental-grid-layout-support"><strong>Gutenberg 15.5 Introduces Experimental Grid Layout Support</strong></a>.</p>



<p>With all the releases last week,  you might have missed the current call for testing from the FSE Outreach Program by <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong>: <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/03/29/fse-program-exploration-build-a-block-theme/">FSE Program Exploration: Build a block theme</a>.</strong> She wrote: &#8220;If you’ve never built a block theme, consider this an invitation to give it a try. Tooling has come a long way and the power of what’s being built is that it allows more folks to dive into the future (and present) of WordPress.<strong>&nbsp;</strong>For this experience, you’ll use the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/create-block-theme/"><em>Create Block Theme&nbsp;plugin&nbsp;</em></a>to facilitate the creation and export process, so you can keep what you create!&#8221; To leave your feedback and share your observations, use the comment section of the post. </p>



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<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> published the <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/04/whats-new-for-developers-april-2023/"><strong>What&#8217;s new for Developer April 2023</strong></a> round-up post on the WordPress Developer Blog. With byte-sized news, Tadlock invites you to dive deeper into certain topics, or let you know about new features and updated APIs. The post is for plugin and theme developers alike. It might be worth bookmarking each of the post, so you can quickly skim editions, when looking for a specific feature or update. </p>



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



<p>With this recording on WordPressTV, let <strong>Kathryn Presner</strong> and <strong>Wes Theron</strong> take you on a tour  <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2023/04/12/exploring-some-of-the-new-6-2-wordpress-features/"><strong>exploring some of the new 6.2 WordPress features</strong></a>. The guide for the exploration is the release post of <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/dolphy/">WordPress &#8220;Dolphy&#8221; 6.2</a>. </p>



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<p>In another video on WordPressTV, <strong>Wes Theron</strong> shows you <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2023/04/10/adding-a-sticky-header-or-banner/"><strong>how to add a sticky header or&nbsp;banner</strong></a> with the new 6.2 sticky feature. The new sticky option is available when wrapping a header or banner in a Group block. It ensures the block remains within the viewport and is stuck to the top of the page when the content is scrolled.</p>



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<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> reported on the new WooCommerce release: <a href="https://wptavern.com/woocommerce-7-6-introduces-single-product-details-block-and-add-to-cart-form-block"><strong>WooCommerce 7.6 Introduces Single Product Details Block and “Add to Cart” Form Block</strong></a>. &#8220;Along with the button, the “Add to Cart” form block will automatically display additional options, depending on if the product has a set available quantity or variations.” she wrote. Together with the Single Product Details block, store owners can now assemble their unique Single product template together with the block themes. </p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/raemoreywrites">Rae Morey</a></strong>, editor of The Repository, wrote in the <a href="https://www.therepository.email/?mailpoet_router&endpoint=view_in_browser&action=view&data=WzE5NCwiM2EzYmU1NDdjYmVhIiw1NTYsIjFqb2g0ZGtiNnZmbzh3NG9vb3dnNG9zODhnazA0czR3Iiw1NjIsMF0">latest edition of the newsletter (#165) </a>: &#8220;The team behind <strong>Multicollab</strong>, a tool that enables <strong>Google Docs-style collaboration in WordPress</strong>, are working on a prototype for real-time collaboration. It&#8217;s still in beta, but the team is inviting folks to preview it in action.&#8221; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH63x-hYgk4">The video explains how the feature works in the demo</a>. Once you leave your email address, on <a href="https://www.therepository.email/?mailpoet_router&endpoint=track&action=click&data=WyI1NTYiLCIxam9oNGRrYjZ2Zm84dzRvb293ZzRvczg4Z2swNHM0dyIsIjU2MiIsIjllY2U5MWMzMjJiZCIsZmFsc2Vd">the beta sign-up you are invited to the demo</a>. </p>



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



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/justintadlock">Justin Tadlock</a></strong> unlocks for you how to use <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/04/using-template-patterns-to-build-multiple-homepage-designs/"><strong>template patterns to build multiple homepage designs</strong></a>. Tadlock <a href="https://twitter.com/justintadlock/status/1646575433331212301">tweeted</a>: &#8220;I&#8217;m a block pattern fanatic. So, when Gutenberg 15.5 released with UI integration of &#8220;template type&#8221; patterns, I couldn&#8217;t wait to dive in.&#8221; This tutorial focuses on creating multiple front-page designs that your users can choose from. Specifically, you will learn to build patterns that are tied to the&nbsp;<strong>Front Page</strong>&nbsp;template in WordPress.&#8221;</p>




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




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<p><strong>Brian Gardner</strong> explained <a href="https://wpengine.com/builders/base-wordpress-theme/"><strong>How (and Why) to Build a Base WordPress Theme</strong></a>, in taking you behind-the-scenes of an agency that forked a WordPress theme to create a tailored version that caters to client needs. &#8220;Here’s an example of how building a boilerplate can help an agency thrive.&#8221; Gardner wrote </p>



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<p>The WordPress themes team requests your input on the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/04/04/theme-handbook-overhaul-proposal/"><strong>proposal for a revamp of the Themes Handbook</strong></a>. In his post, Justin Tadlock wrote: &#8220;The problem with handbooks for ever-changing software is that they need a large re-tuning from time to time. The Theme Handbook has reached that point in its lifespan.&#8221; There will also be a dedicated meeting on April 18, 2023 at 13:00 UTC via the&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RP4Y3K">#themereview</a>&nbsp;channel on&nbsp;Slack. Everyone is welcome to join and discuss this proposal in detail.</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>A reminder: The team who put together the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/30/proposal-the-interactivity-api-a-better-developer-experience-in-building-interactive-blocks/"><strong>Proposal for the Interactivity API</strong></a> will hold two <strong>Developer Hours on April 17th</strong>, 2023 one <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/292575913/">at 8 am UTC</a> and one <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/292575942/">at 17:00 UTC</a> to cover as many timezones as possible. </p>



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<p><strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> posted the recording of his Twitch stream session from March 30, 2023: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2SYJhh3PGs"><strong>Reviewing Gutenberg 15.4 Features | Bring Me Your Issues #2</strong></a>. In this session, Ryan took a look at  at some features released in Gutenberg 15.4. He continued working through viewer-submitted issues by continuing with the post-picker block from the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aut0EcsKbxM">first of the &#8220;Bring me Your Issues</a>&#8221; session. </p>



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<p>In his post, <a href="https://humanmade.com/2023/04/06/wordpress-ai-generative-content-and-blocks/"><strong>WordPress AI: Generative Content &amp; Blocks</strong></a>, <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/joe_hoyle">Joe Hoyle</a></strong> shared the initial results from his team&#8217;s the experiments  on integrating generative AI into WordPress. They worked on a &#8220;WordPress CoPilot&#8221; that can &#8220;speak&#8221; Gutenberg/block editor. The video gives you a glimpse into the power of the tools and how they can speed up content creation. &#8220;Going through this project has convinced me that LLMs have much more potential than I was giving them credit for. It feels like there’s still a lot to discover what the models are capable of.&#8221; Hoyle <a href="https://twitter.com/joe_hoyle/status/1643952952690835456">tweeted</a>. Joe Hoyle is co-founder the Chief Technical officer at Human Made</p>



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<p>Inspired by Joy Hoyle&#8217;s post, Sarah Gooding, <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-developers-are-experimenting-with-gutenberg-native-ai-block-and-content-assistants"><strong>WordPress Developers Are Experimenting With Gutenberg-Native AI Block and Content Assistants</strong></a>. She also included Munir Kamal&#8217;s venture into tools powered by AI. </p>



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<p><strong>Fabian Kägy,</strong> lead developer at 10up, was a guest on the <a href="https://syntax.fm/show/598/supper-club-fabian-kaegy-modern-wordpress-blocks-page-builders-headless-custom-fields"><strong>Supper Club episode of the Syntax podcast</strong></a> and co-hosts Wes Bos and Scott Tolinsky discussed with him,  modern WordPress development, local dev experience, changes to the block editor, how version control is handled, and more!</p>



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<p><strong>Munir Kamal</strong> posted a <a href="https://gutenberghub.com/how-to-add-block-styles-in-wordpress-a-step-by-step-guide/"><strong>How to Add Block Styles in WordPress – A Step-by-Step Guide</strong></a>. Why build a new block when you can change the appearance of a core block by adding block styles. With little PHP code and accompanying CSS a new design is applied. No JavaScript required. Kamal also shows you how to find out the name of the block you&#8217;d like to target with the new styles. </p>



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<p><strong>Brian Coords</strong> and <strong>Aurooba Ahmed</strong> discuss on this episode of the <a href="https://viewsource.fm/">ViewSource </a>podcast: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtmY2Ck_6i0"><strong>Getting started with React inside WordPress</strong></a> You learn what React is  and how it works with WordPress. It&#8217;s the start of a series of episodes to build an accordion block for the WordPress block editor.  </p>




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



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




<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">them via email</a> or send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>. </p>



<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size">For questions to be answered on the <a href="http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>



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<p>Featured Image: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/34575850@N05/46876447485">Moveable Type by L. M. Bernhardt </a></p>



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<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>



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



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 15 Apr 2023 05:57:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:33;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:66:"WPTavern: WCEU 2023 Announces Free Childcare and Workshop for Kids";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=143574";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"https://wptavern.com/wceu-2023-announces-free-childcare-and-workshop-for-kids";s: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:1966:"<p>Preparations for WordCamp Europe (WCEU) 2023 in Athens are moving forward as the team <a href="https://twitter.com/WCEurope/status/1644304356236312577">will soon be contacting speakers</a> selected for the event. Organizers have launched a <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/speaker-support-program/">Speaker Support Program</a> aimed at encouraging more diversity on stage by connecting speakers with companies that are willing to financially support them.</p>



<p>WCEU has also opened <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/contributor-day/">registration for Contributor Day</a>, which will take place on June 8, kicking off the event. Those who are unable attend in person can join in the #contributor-day channel on Slack as well as the specific channels for the contributor teams.</p>



<p>Alongside Contributor Day, WCEU has announced it will be hosting an interactive <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/workshop-for-kids/">Workshop for Kids</a> on June 8, to introduce future generations to WordPress. It will cover the basics of WordPress, how to create a website, choose a theme, and publish content. The workshop is open to kids aged 13-16 and all materials will be provided.</p>



<p>WCEU will also have free childcare available during the Contributor Day and the main conference from June 8-10, to make the WordCamp more accessible for parents and guardians. Children aged 16 and younger are eligible to attend but must <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/childcare-registration/">register by May 20</a>, as there is limited availability for childcare.</p>



<p>The <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-volunteers/">call for volunteers</a> is still open with a variety of roles available. Volunteers will receive one or two collectable volunteer t-shirt(s), a free ticket, and an invite to the Social, as well as the experience of contributing back to the WordPress community at one of its largest events.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 14 Apr 2023 22:25:55 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:34;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"WPTavern: BuddyPress to Host Virtual Contributor Day on April 20";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=143652";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:75:"https://wptavern.com/buddypress-to-host-virtual-contributor-day-on-april-20";s: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:2644:"<p>Representatives of the BuddyPress core team will be <a href="https://buddypress.org/2023/04/lets-meet-in-paris-during-the-french-community-contributor-day/">hosting a contributor day</a> alongside the French WordPress Community Contributor Day in Paris on April 20, 2023. This in-person event has filled up its registration and <a href="https://wpfr-net.translate.goog/programme-de-la-journee-de-contribution-organisee-a-paris-le-20-04-2023/?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr&_x_tr_pto=wapp">posted its schedule</a> already, but BuddyPress core developer Mathieu Viet is inviting people to join online to contribute to BuddyPress.</p>



<p>&#8220;As we’re currently working on a very ambitious 12.0 release with the main goal of migrating from our Legacy URL parser to using the WordPress Rewrite API, there are many areas getting your contributions would really help us and make a huge difference,&#8221; Viet said.</p>



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/buddypress-12-0-to-focus-on-merging-bp-rewrites-into-core-moving-legacy-widgets-into-bp-classic-plugin">BuddyPress 12.0</a> is expected to be released May 31, 2023, and merging the BP Rewrites feature plugin into the core plugin will be a major change that impacts the entire BuddyPress ecosystem. The effort to migrate BuddyPress’ custom URI parser to use WordPress’ Rewrite API has been in the works for the past decade. Contributors will also be providing backwards compatibility via a new plugin called <a href="https://github.com/buddypress/bp-classic">BP Classic</a> that will contain BuddyPress’ legacy widgets. The virtual contributor day will organize code contributions towards these efforts.</p>



<p>In addition to code, people can also contribute to documentation regarding how developers can prepare their themes and plugins to be ready for BP Rewrites, and documentation for end users on how the change will benefit their BuddyPress experience. Viet also intends to organize some common troubleshooting tips for the inevitable support forum requests that the major change will generate.</p>



<p>The event will run from <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20230420T0815" target="_blank">08:15 UTC</a> to <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20230420T1530" target="_blank">15:30 UTC</a>. Although virtual attendees may miss out on the hot drinks and pastries, they can be equal participants by joining <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/buddypress">BuddyPress&#8217; Slack channel</a> and jumping in on one of the projects.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 14 Apr 2023 20:09:40 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:35;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"Do The Woo Community: The Evolution of the Friday Show";s: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=74773";s: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:42:"https://dothewoo.io/friday-show-evolution/";s: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:307:"<p>It's time to come on our Friday show as a guest co-host.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/friday-show-evolution/">The Evolution of the Friday Show</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 14 Apr 2023 10:14:06 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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:77:"BuddyPress: Let’s meet in Paris during the french community contributor day";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://buddypress.org/?p=329085";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"https://buddypress.org/2023/04/lets-meet-in-paris-during-the-french-community-contributor-day/";s: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:3548:"<p>The BuddyPress Core Team is very happy to be represented at the Contributor Day the french WordPress community is organizing in Paris on April 20, 2023. Here&#8217;s a link to a <a href="https://wpfr-net.translate.goog/programme-de-la-journee-de-contribution-organisee-a-paris-le-20-04-2023/?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr&_x_tr_pto=wapp" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">translated page of the event schedule</a> (Hours are in Central European Summer time).</p>



<a href="https://buddypress.org/wp-content/uploads/1/2023/04/48766199826_c0187b9999_c.jpg"><img width="800" height="533" src="https://buddypress.org/wp-content/uploads/1/2023/04/48766199826_c0187b9999_c.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-329088" /></a>Mathieu Viet (@imath / me!) explaining BP contribution during <a href="https://paris.wordcamp.org/2019/contributor-day/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WC Paris Contributor day in 2019</a>



<span id="more-329085"></span>



<p><a class="bp-suggestions-mention" href="https://buddypress.org/members/imath/" rel="nofollow">@imath</a> will be there to lead the BuddyPress contributing squad and we&#8217;ll have a lot of work! As we&#8217;re currently working on a very ambitious 12.0 release which main goal is to migrate from our Legacy URL parser to using the WordPress Rewrite API, there are many areas getting your contributions would really help us &amp; make a huge difference! Below are the most important tasks we need to accomplish:</p>



<ul>
<li>Code: the <a href="https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4954">BP Rewrites merge process</a> is still in progress</li>



<li>Code: we need to build a <a href="https://github.com/buddypress/bp-classic" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BP Classic back compatibility plugin</a> to give end users a plan B if some of their plugins are not ready yet when 12.0 will be released.</li>



<li>Documentation: we need to <a href="https://developer.buddypress.org/plugins/">explain</a> third party Plugin/Theme developers what they need to do to make their work progressively &#8220;BP Rewrites&#8221; ready.</li>



<li>Documentation: we need to <a href="https://codex.buddypress.org/">explain</a> end-users how the switch we&#8217;re performing will improve their BuddyPress experience (customizable slugs, plain text link compatibility&#8230;).</li>



<li>Support: we need to have some most common troubleshoot replies ready in order to face the questions or requests for help we&#8217;ll probably receive into our <a href="https://buddypress.org/support/">support forum</a>.</li>
</ul>



<p>If you do not have a chance to attend IRL to this contributor day, no worries: you can virtually join us to get involved into these tasks going into our <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/buddypress" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Slack channel</a> on April 20, 2023 from <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20230420T0815" target="_blank">08:15 UTC</a> to <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20230420T1530" target="_blank">15:30 UTC</a>.</p>



<p><strong>Let&#8217;s contribute to BuddyPress!</strong></p>



<p><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f355.png" alt="🍕" class="wp-smiley" /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f91d.png" alt="🤝" class="wp-smiley" /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2665.png" alt="♥" class="wp-smiley" /></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 14 Apr 2023 05:49:41 +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:12:"Mathieu Viet";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:98:"WPTavern: WooCommerce 7.6 Introduces Single Product Details Block and “Add to Cart” Form Block";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=143628";s: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:103:"https://wptavern.com/woocommerce-7-6-introduces-single-product-details-block-and-add-to-cart-form-block";s: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:2657:"<p><a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/04/13/woocommerce-7-6-released/">WooCommerce 7.6</a> was released today with two new blocks merged from the WooCommerce Blocks plugin. The Single Product Details block and the &#8220;Add to Cart&#8221; Form block are now available to store owners who want to use the Site Editor to design their own Single Product Templates. </p>



<p>Along with the button, the &#8220;Add to Cart&#8221; form block will automatically display additional options, depending on if the product has a set available quantity or variations.</p>



<img />image credit: <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/04/13/woocommerce-7-6-released/">WooCommerce 7.6 release post</a>



<p>In templates where store owners are displaying multiple products, attributes filtering has been improved for the Products block. Inside the editor, there is now a collapsible menu for selecting attributes and filtering the display. It also shows a live preview of the products that will be included in this view.</p>



<p>For those who are designing pages and templates with patterns, WooCommerce 7.6 makes it much easier to get a consistent design with improved, scalable margins for patterns using the Products block.</p>



<p>This release also improves the Mini Cart block&#8217;s performance, with content preloaded, and an appearance that more closely matches the site&#8217;s active theme.</p>



<p>WooCommerce 7.6 includes several important updates for developers, including the following:</p>



<ul>
<li>Clearer, renamed event names in block-based Checkout</li>



<li>Reintroduced cache for orders (after it was reverted due to causing an infinite loop on activation) when custom tables are enabled </li>



<li>Added an encoding selector to the product importer</li>



<li>Add/Remove order coupon actions are now logged in notes</li>



<li>Products widget can now be sorted by menu_order</li>
</ul>



<p>For a more detailed look at the 673 commits in 7.6, check out the full <a href="https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/blob/release/7.6/plugins/woocommerce/readme.txt">changelog</a>, which references each pull request included in the release. </p>



<p>WooCommerce has also released its <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2023/04/13/woocommerce-contributor-day-guide/">Contributor Day Guide</a> today for the upcoming 24-hour virtual event on April 19, 2023. There are instructions for how to get your development environment set up for contributing and how to join the Woo Community Slack. The guide outlines specific topics and tickets that will be addressed, with dedicated Slack channels for each.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 14 Apr 2023 03:16:17 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:38;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"Do The Woo Community: Building a Better WooCommerce Hosting Ecosystem with Beau Lebens";s: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=74755";s: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:49:"https://dothewoo.io/woo-express-with-beau-lebens/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:404:"<p>The new hosting option Woo Express brings a lot to the ecosystem for users, builders and other hosting companies. </p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/woo-express-with-beau-lebens/">Building a Better WooCommerce Hosting Ecosystem with Beau Lebens</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 13 Apr 2023 08:13:01 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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: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:63:"Post Status: Launching a WordPress Product in Public: Session 9";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=148930";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"https://poststatus.com/launching-a-wordpress-product-in-public-session-9/";s: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:50706:"<div class="wp-block-group eplus-wrapper has-theme-palette-2-color has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-text-color has-background is-layout-flow"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><div class="wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt"><a href="https://twitter.com/coreymaass">Corey Maass</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> continue the development of their new WordPress plugin, <a href="https://crop.express/">Crop.Express</a>. In this conversation, they share their experiences and challenges in creating the plugin, including the importance of user feedback and testing. They also talk about their decision to make the plugin open-source, the potential benefits of doing so, and the importance of community involvement in the process. </p></div>


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


<span class="span-reading-time rt-reading-time"><span class="rt-label rt-prefix">Estimated Reading Time:</span> <span class="rt-time"> 26</span> <span class="rt-label rt-postfix">minutes</span></span>
</div></div>







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



<p>In this episode, <a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/coreymaass">Corey Maass</a> share their insights and experience about the challenges of finding the right balance between simplicity and complexity and the importance of testing and documentation. They also share their personal stories of how they got started with WordPress and how their experiences have shaped their approach to plugin development. For anyone interested in developing WordPress plugins, especially if you are looking to improve your development process and create more user-friendly plugins, this episode is a must-listen.</p>



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



<ul>
<li><strong>Building a successful plugin requires a deep understanding of user needs and pain points: </strong>Understanding your users&#8217; needs and pain points to develop a plugin that solves their problems effectively is critical. This requires continuous user testing and feedback to improve functionality and user experience.</li>



<li><strong>Collaboration and communication are crucial for plugin development: </strong>Plugin development is a team effort that requires effective communication, collaboration, and project management. Clear communication channels, regular meetings, and shared project management tools help ensure everyone is on the same page.</li>



<li><strong>Monetization strategies should align with user value: </strong>Considering various monetization strategies for plugins, including premium features, subscriptions, and sponsorships, is helpful. Your chosen strategy should align with the user&#8217;s value proposition and offer a fair exchange of value. Being transparent with users about the plugin&#8217;s monetization strategy and how it impacts their experience is important for successful adoption.</li>
</ul>



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

</div>



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



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



<li><a href="https://wpengine.com/">WPEngine</a></li>



<li><a href="https://pagely.com/">Pagely</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.studiopress.com/">StudioPress</a></li>
</ul>



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



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



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



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



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



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



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Session 9 Corey &amp; Cory Launch a WordPress Product Live</h2>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> [00:00:00] So we&#8217;ll also, um, so re read me as the, the big one?&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Yeah. I think that&#8217;s what we cover today.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Okay. So we&#8217;ll also, uh, okay. All right. Could you hear me?&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Uh, first I can, yeah. Oh, okay. The echo you mean? Yeah. Yeah. The same thing. Mute it. Yeah. Open up YouTube and then close YouTube. But I, I keep the comments open if anybody&#8217;s weighing in.<br /></p>



<p>Yeah,&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> exactly.<br /></p>



<p>All right, Corey, this is session nine and we talked last week and we made the decision that we&#8217;re gonna be one this with a couple change. And call it good for now and move on to another [00:01:00] project, um, let it sit and simmer a little bit. Um, so any thoughts that you had based on last week or anything else?<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Yeah, I, I guess I just, I, I&#8217;m glad that we&#8217;re doing this, like I, and, and if for the, for the, the six people watching, You know, but hi, in historically this will be significant. You know, this is where we, uh, figured out how to make our millions. Right. Um, right. But I, I have had a lot of success not in a, in a project sense in the past of letting things.<br /></p>



<p>Uh, and so I definitely like, cuz we could keep banging away at Crop Express, adding more features. And there&#8217;s still a few things that I wanna add. Like, I definitely wanna put a bow on it. Um, and I definitely think that it&#8217;s something for [00:02:00] us to talk about, promote, you know, we&#8217;ll send copies to, um, blogs.<br /></p>



<p>Like let&#8217;s still have some of those conversations that, um, you talked about. As much because I want to talk to those people. I think it&#8217;d be fun. Um, but I also think that it takes the pressure off of us like, you know, Having this, having this thing and going, okay, what, what&#8217;s happening with it today?<br /></p>



<p>What&#8217;s hap when Sometimes you just honestly need some time to go by. Um, and some people to mess with it and some people do mess with it enough to say, oh man, I wish it did this. And then, and then still ha use it for two more days before they finally do send us an email that&#8217;s like, okay, hey, I&#8217;ve been thinking about this for a couple of days.<br /></p>



<p>Boy, I wish it did this, you know? Just because we&#8217;re thinking a lot about it doesn&#8217;t mean anybody else&#8217;s.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah. And I think there&#8217;s two things when you&#8217;re saying that came to mind is the get something [00:03:00] out, sit on it a bit, let it just kind of cook or just kind of be Yeah. I think it&#8217;s interesting. And then, um, is, is great for this.<br /></p>



<p>And then second is.<br /></p>



<p>I forgot what I was gonna say. Um, but the second is we have the feedback loop, right. Um, within the plugin. So, you know, we, we never know. Um, might be something I think we, we felt like there was something. Better to chase that. We discovered through this, which I look at product as discovery, you know, especially our product, you know, when you got a working product and you&#8217;re just adding things, that&#8217;s way easier.<br /></p>



<p>Um, working product, meaning people are paying money for it in my mind. Um, we already know it&#8217;s functional and works. Um, but yeah, and I think, you know, just to talk about our decision for a second, we saw. More [00:04:00] opportunity on another direction that we discovered something you&#8217;d been working on in parallel.<br /></p>



<p>Um, we&#8217;re not ready to talk about that just yet cause we wanna get some things going, but I think that&#8217;s part of the product trail is, you know, discovery, what&#8217;s over the next mountain. And I don&#8217;t know about you, but I go, I gotta put multiple things in the. To see what actually hits. Oh, yeah. Um, I, I feel like you and I built enough of a case for the other thing that, um, is really interesting.<br /></p>



<p>It seems like there&#8217;s something there. So coming back to the cycle of like, okay, we&#8217;d like this. We think this would be good. Mm-hmm. Other people, you know, would help. Um, anyway, I don&#8217;t wanna get off on that for a second, but I did wanna at least unpack a little bit of our decision. You know, Colin v1 with a couple of these tweaks, um, good.<br /></p>



<p>And all that, and say, it&#8217;s always a safari. Yes. [00:05:00]&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Yeah. And I, you know, I, it&#8217;s an ongoing conversation, I think is the other good metaphor. It&#8217;s, it&#8217;s literal for, in our case, but it&#8217;s also a good metaphor that as you talk, you uncover more things. You go, oh, I didn&#8217;t think about this. And it&#8217;s, um, so I guess the analogy too is, Concepts have to simmer.<br /></p>



<p>Ideas have to simmer, you know, the cadence of you and I chatting once a week, you know, occasionally a little bit more, but, uh, gives us a chance to go, okay, so this happened this week where this new other thing came out this week where this new, um, you know, product caught my eye that isn&#8217;t related, but it sparked an idea, dot, dot, dot.<br /></p>



<p>Like it&#8217;s, you know, trying to, trying to get it all done, you know, hackathon. Is a neat exercise, but I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s the, the true arc of, of most products journeys. So, um, but I definitely, [00:06:00] oh, the one thing that I didn&#8217;t tell you about is I did get my first email from crop.express, the website of somebody asking specifically, I have a client website, they need the image to be exactly these pixel proportions.<br /></p>



<p>So not even an aspect ratio. And uh, I was like, oh, okay. You know, so I think that I, I want to think about again, as we&#8217;re talking about sort of putting a bow on v1 uh, accounting for that situation, and then to me that kind of, again, we&#8217;ve, we&#8217;ve completed a. Product. It solves the problem. It solves the problem everywhere that we think that it matters.<br /></p>



<p>Um, it solves the problem for all of the scenarios that we currently know about. And this is where, like you said, we&#8217;re wait, waiting for feedback. We&#8217;re waiting for people to say, oh, hey, you know, aspect ratio [00:07:00] isn&#8217;t really what I need, but I need is image or is pixel size. Uh, which technically can be done in the, I had added bin and max pixel stuff.<br /></p>



<p>Like I, I think, you know, kind of like your feedback last week, like this settings page is the advanced settings, or it feels, you know, um, it feels like a 200 level class or whatever. Um, And so, you know, looking at simplifying that, but then, uh, yeah, letting it, letting it ride. Um, and, and at that point, like I said, I&#8217;m really excited about getting it at actually installing it onto my client&#8217;s websites and going, all right, Guinea pigs dance.<br /></p>



<p>You now have to use my plugin. But I&#8217;ve, even, this week it came up again where, um, one of my clients was like, you know, trying to, trying to get an image. Onto the site correctly. And I had to walk her through some stuff. It&#8217;s like, don&#8217;t mention the plugin yet. Don&#8217;t mention the [00:08:00] plugin yet, but as soon as I introduce it and walk them through it, you know, so I think it&#8217;ll solve problems for them.<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah, a absolutely. Um, it, this whole conversation, and this relates to crop express now,<br /></p>



<p>uh, made me think of. But also kudos for like a, you, you saw an opportunity there with your client, like, so that&#8217;s like the validation of, you know, is this, is this a valuable thing? Mm-hmm. You&#8217;ve seen this a bunch of times where I wanted to share for anybody that&#8217;s listened later is I always come back to this, so it seems like, like I&#8217;ve majored in the pains.<br /></p>



<p>Um, specifically with utility software in the past. The thing that&#8217;s really always compelling to me is gains. And I know you worked at O Opt Montreal at one point and I go, that was my classic example. We did utility things that [00:09:00] I themes and you know, you look at the gain, you look at like an e-commerce site or something, a marketing software or something like that, and it&#8217;s like that&#8217;s, I haven&#8217;t really camped.<br /></p>



<p>Had a product. I don&#8217;t think that camps out in the gain side. Yeah. Um, but I think we&#8217;ve been doing this work too, is coming back to who is our customer for this. Mm-hmm. Whether it&#8217;s ourselves for sure. And then we&#8217;re developing out the profile for there. Like could this be something that&#8217;s something when we start and talk about the next project publicly, um, so that we can, that&#8217;s something I want to do better is go, okay, let&#8217;s identify.<br /></p>



<p>The person that might have this problem or frustration or issue. This is a whole concept I&#8217;m trying to get to. What&#8217;s the amount of pain? Somebody goes, I&#8217;ll pay for it. What&#8217;s the amount of gain? Somebody goes, I&#8217;ll pay for it. You know? Yep. That&#8217;s [00:10:00] some of my learning as I&#8217;ve gone, is gone. Okay. Like when we created backup buddy.<br /></p>



<p>Um, the de the developer goes, Hey, I think we should, WordPress needs a holistic backup solution. And I was like, I just go, yeah, because a hundred percent theoretical market at that time. Um, so it&#8217;s pretty easy. I think WordPress has got enough things out there. It&#8217;s interesting from a competitive standpoint is where&#8217;s that ideal place?<br /></p>



<p>So, I don&#8217;t know, I wanna throw some of that up to you and see if you had any comments. Cause you always have something really help. Uh, that changes my perspective a little bit, but it&#8217;s like this balance, this is a formula for how products and services, different things get up and then, you know, nailing that customer, they go, oh man, that, that would, you know, when you get that feeling of like, oh, this would help me so much.<br /></p>



<p>That&#8217;s the magic right there. Yeah.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> And. [00:11:00] I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m definitely, I&#8217;ve also had some similar thoughts in that it&#8217;s, it is a, I think, a slightly different way of thinking about product. Right. And the looking for pain is a very popular, um, Hundred level, I guess. Apparently I&#8217;m making college analogies today. Um, but like you look at, um, Amy Hoy, Justin Jackson, uh, Rob Walling, like the, the startup thought leaders, um, who put out a lot of great content and have done for decades.<br /></p>



<p>Arguably, um, the, the thinking for a long time has been okay. You are an aspir. Probably solopreneur. You are a entrepreneur, and I don&#8217;t mean that negatively, but the, like you are an aspiring, uh, you, you have an entrepreneurial spirit without [00:12:00] experience, right? So you, you&#8217;re, you want to start your entrepreneur journey.<br /></p>



<p>Um, and, uh, a very popular formula to start with because honestly, I think. I know it&#8217;s generally more reliable as a beginner, um, is pain. And so there&#8217;s all these ideas about like, okay, you get on a forum for fishermen where all the fishermen are talking and you kind of listen to their conversations and, and when they keep talking about like, boy at dawn I wish I had, you know, a certain kind of light.<br /></p>



<p>And that&#8217;s where you go, ah, That&#8217;s a pain. Now I can go try to solve it. Um, which is very different from, oh, I&#8217;m now, I&#8217;m blanking on the name. Um, but there was, um, a product that came out years ago and it just [00:13:00] popped up on my radar again. Oh, Prezi. P r e z I. Mm-hmm. I think, right?&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Mm-hmm. Yeah. I remember Prezi,&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> that was a hundred percent a solution, looking for a.<br /></p>



<p>It was a really neat, in, in, I mean, we still have the slides paradigm, the, you know, uh, PowerPoint, Google presentation paradigm, rectangle, rectangle, rectangle. And Prezi had this really neat software that they built online, which was very impressive at the time, cuz again, it was probably 10 years ago, but where you had a, it was kind of like a, an interactive mind map.<br /></p>



<p>And so you had a point that had something. Concept off of it. And you&#8217;d zoom around, you&#8217;d sort of fly around this, this presentation and it was extremely novel. But I think every person built one presentation in it and was like, this is neat, but it&#8217;s very clear that I&#8217;m using this software cuz it does one thing.<br /></p>



<p>Um, and they did a really good [00:14:00] job, I think, of marketing and finding a use for this and marketing it, but they. Couldn&#8217;t become the presentation standard that they&#8217;d hoped to because they changed. It was too specific, you know? Um, and that&#8217;s always the fear. It&#8217;s definitely more fun sometimes. Um, and I&#8217;ve definitely built a lot of products that were a concept and it was like, oh, I think I have a different way of approaching.<br /></p>



<p>Uh, you know, project management to-do lists, time tracking the standard paradigms, but like, uh, instead of it being a vertical list, you know, it&#8217;s horizontal or whatever the, whatever, it&#8217;s, um, and I think that it&#8217;s you, it&#8217;s then tough because if you&#8217;re, if you&#8217;re on one end of the spectrum, you can, you can only present gain.<br /></p>



<p>Like Prezi, where it&#8217;s a, where it&#8217;s, I hate to use the word gimmick, [00:15:00] but where it&#8217;s, again, a, a prob a solution looking for a problem that&#8217;s dangerous, that&#8217;s very, very difficult to change a paradigm. Like they did not change the way all presentations are. Look, they couldn&#8217;t. Um, and then on the other end of the spectrum, you know, what we&#8217;ve, what we&#8217;ve talking about is, um, a hundred percent solving for a pain.<br /></p>



<p>It&#8217;s. Fishermen need a flashlight at dawn, build the flashlight. You&#8217;re done. And so what we start talking about is somewhere in the middle. Um, and it&#8217;s, and it, again, I think just a different way of, of thinking, uh, it&#8217;s gonna be more challenging for you, marketing it, more challenging for both of us or anybody to talk about it.<br /></p>



<p>Um, if it isn&#8217;t a problem that people are already trying to solve. And I think what we&#8217;re, you know, I do, I do anticipate landing [00:16:00] somewhere in the middle, like crop Express I think is a good example of, it&#8217;s definitely a pain, but people are solving it by going elsewhere. They&#8217;re going to Photoshop, they&#8217;re going to crop.express, and we&#8217;re kind of bringing it to them.<br /></p>



<p>Um, and so I think that I, I hope to still kind of do some of that stuff. Um, but then also, You know, maybe introduce concepts that, that WordPress doesn&#8217;t currently have, paradigms that, that WordPress doesn&#8217;t currently, uh, have its arms around. And so I&#8217;m kinda excited for all that. It&#8217;s also, I think it being more on that spectrum, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s more creative.<br /></p>



<p>It&#8217;s more fun for us.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah. So yeah, a absolutely. You know, we, it seems like we&#8217;re using that whole thing is build something for yourself. And we&#8217;re using problems we see for ourselves using the new [00:17:00] thing we&#8217;re talking about, using word pr, um, post status and your clients and things. And it makes me think like the game pain conversation on that when we show that we can.<br /></p>



<p>What I wrote down when, when we, just a minute ago was, you know, in the classic consulting bible, I think it&#8217;s Alan Weiss, he talks about the job of a consultant is to improve the client&#8217;s condition. Mm-hmm. In some way. Mm-hmm. And I&#8217;ve been doing a lot of thoughts about consulting cause I&#8217;ve tried it a couple of times and, uh, have failed miserably at it.<br /></p>



<p>But, uh, I&#8217;m still trying. And, but from the. From that consulting thing. If you think about that just for a second, you&#8217;re like, how do I help improve the client&#8217;s condition, or in this case, our potential customer&#8217;s condition? And I think we&#8217;ve done a lot of that work in Crop Express is precisely thinking about the outcome they&#8217;re wanting.[00:18:00]&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p>And, uh, I&#8217;ll save the rest for our, for our next conversation. But, um, so I. Anything you learned, and I know we still need to do the readme, but, um, anything takeaways from what we&#8217;ve done so far? Other takeaways?<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> I, in a, to be honest, I do think that we have, I&#8217;m thinking out loud here, so I, I, I reserve the right to take all of this back. Um, but at least some. The process that we&#8217;re going through, have gone through is the same, uh, falls in the same trap in that I do think that we have, we know there&#8217;s a problem. We, we&#8217;ve had the problem.<br /></p>



<p>We don&#8217;t like how, um, propping and inserting images into WordPress currently [00:19:00] works. Um, we. Got excited and said, okay, there&#8217;s something here. We both felt, you know, felt it in our gut, but then as we got into it, there&#8217;s definitely been, I don&#8217;t, it&#8217;s not like I expect, you know, a million news, a million installs overnight.<br /></p>



<p>Um, but there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s something, I don&#8217;t know what we could have done differently, but they&#8217;re, I haven&#8217;t felt. The spark didn&#8217;t ignite, I guess is what I&#8217;m, kinda what I would say. It&#8217;s like there&#8217;s something here. We&#8217;ve built a nice little utility. I almost, it almost feels like we&#8217;ve kind of, uh, you know, we, we saw a sparkle of something on the ground.<br /></p>



<p>We started digging. There might have been a couple of other glimmers of like, oh, there&#8217;s a, maybe a li a hint of gold. It kept us digging, but I kind of feel like we&#8217;ve reached a point where, You know, we&#8217;ve dug around, we&#8217;ve dug up all the earth around what we thought might have been a vein of gold and said, okay, [00:20:00] yeah, no, I guess there&#8217;s nothing here.<br /></p>



<p>Um, and not that that isn&#8217;t part of the process. Um, I don&#8217;t know what we could have done differently. I, I only question if there was a way to have arrived there sooner. Um, mm-hmm. And again, none of this is to say that I don&#8217;t think that what we&#8217;ve created has value. Um, and we kept sort of going, okay, well let&#8217;s, you know, we keep having really good high level conversations, which again, has led to other ideas.<br /></p>



<p>Um, and so that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s not invaluable. Um, but we were sort of like, take a step forward and see, take a step forward and see. And now that we&#8217;re ready to kind of put a bow on version one, it&#8217;s like, yeah, this might be. You know, which is okay. Um, but it&#8217;s very, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s a, it&#8217;s definitely a little hard to accept.<br /></p>



<p>Do you know what I mean? Like just [00:21:00] the sunk cost fallacy or whatever it is. Like you Yeah. We&#8217;ve put in time and effort and, and so much thinking that we, we, part of me still really wants it to be something more than what it may. You know, and I know, and this, this conversation may be just as in, um, as premature as, uh, as what I&#8217;m alluding to, right.<br /></p>



<p>Of like, early on we were very optimistic that we would find something bigger down the road anyway. So I have a thought&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I, on that thought. I have, I have a thought for when we go to the next conversation. Hmm. Um, how we could maybe approach that even better.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> But I guess I like what I do like is the meta, um, the meta of you and I recording all of these conversations.<br /></p>



<p>Right. And I think, like, I remember one, one of the, a a, a mental image, but a [00:22:00] conversation, a memory that, that often pops into my head is when I still worked at we. Um, yes, the one that&#8217;s in the documentary, you can see my bald spot in, in the back of some of the shots, um, where they talk about, you know, the demise of, of WeWork.<br /></p>



<p>Um, so yeah, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m WeWork famous. Um, but, uh, at the time I sat at the table with, uh, five other entrepreneurs, everybody pursuing different projects and it was great because it was an an instant mastermind and very frequently we. Just say, Hey, could I, you know, buy you lunch and, and pick your brain about such and such?<br /></p>



<p>And I remember a buddy of mine, Joel, coming to a real crossroads in, uh, in product and in business. Um, and again, him saying, Hey, could I just, could we take a walk? I&#8217;m like, you know, vexed about this and [00:23:00] we. Uh, in soho and we walked over to the river and just like standing at the railing and looking at, um, what, what would it have been, um, the Hudson River and looking over to New Jersey and him talking.<br /></p>



<p>And there was this moment of me just feeling very, this is, this is feeling very grown up and very, like, we were having important conversations and, um, You know, and it, it felt great that I hopefully was helping him work through some problems and stuff. But, um, anyway, uh, the value in that experience, that camaraderie and, and then ultimately, like there were other conversations where he helped me just as much as maybe I helped him.<br /></p>



<p>Um, but I&#8217;m hoping that at a high level, even though you and I like session seven, whatever this is, we, we are where we are. It is where it isn&#8217;t, where we expect it to. We are going to continue, but I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m hoping that people watching this are having some of that same, like, [00:24:00] oh, other people have these, these thoughts or go around in these circles or, you know, ramble to themselves just like I do&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> now.<br /></p>



<p>I, I think so many times, uh, I&#8217;m not just, I don&#8217;t wake up born with a gift of know. What the pro products are. Um, I&#8217;ve gotta figure it out.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Ands am working with you, man. I know. I, I was counting on million dollar idea overnight, the magic.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Um, you know, and uh, so I&#8217;ve done a lot of thinking about products for the last 15 years, obviously, and gone.<br /></p>



<p>Okay. You get, so I think we&#8217;re pulling together some components, comparing experiences too, and. Plowing the new head forward. Um, so yeah, I mean, the camaraderie&#8217;s been amazing. I do it just for that. But second is I think we&#8217;re building some experience about what products work, what, what products don&#8217;t. I, I think there&#8217;s a tendency for me is think [00:25:00] people do have magic and just know it, but there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s a lot of things that go into that.<br /></p>



<p>Yeah. And there&#8217;s a lot of. Professionally about this particular topic, but there&#8217;s a reason why comp big companies buy smaller companies because they found the magic and they were pulled in, you know, kind of thing. Um, at least that&#8217;s how I think about it in my humility.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Well, and so I, in the last few years have learned to make things around my house.<br /></p>



<p>I. My carpentry skills are getting better. I&#8217;m not good. But, uh, I have now, you know, built a big roof over my patio. I&#8217;ve built shelves, I&#8217;ve, you know, um, helped my father-in-law fix his roof, stuff like that. Um, and I&#8217;m, I&#8217;ve definitely had the experience where I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m working generally with people who know what they&#8217;re.<br /></p>



<p>But not always. [00:26:00] Uh, I have, I can always jump on YouTube and, and Google things. Um, but I definitely felt the, so a little, a little insight to me like. Years and years ago, I was an artistic genius. Um, in my own mind, absolutely. Like I was, uh, a musician. I still am. I was starting to build product. I still do, but at the time I was convi, utterly convinced that I&#8217;m very smart and I will, I can, I can figure out magic, um, and, uh, an aspect.<br /></p>



<p>Turning middle-aged or whatever it is, is like, I&#8217;m just another human. And yes, I might do some amazing things. Um, but most humans in one sense or another, do some amazing things. Um, but everybody also, everybody has to start from somewhere. And a lot of the times it&#8217;s a group of people. And so, uh, going back to like learning how to repair or I, I got to be, [00:27:00] I was, uh, helped a bunch of people literally build a house in a.<br /></p>



<p>And it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. And the, the, the, in the crew, it was a dad and some son, his sons all work construction, all build houses, so they know how to knock together, literally knock together a house in a day. And I had no idea how to knock together a house in a day. Um, And so they are amazing at what they do now from experience, and they are smart people.<br /></p>



<p>Um, and then that gets shared with the rest of us. There&#8217;s this trickle down, and I&#8217;m not saying I could go build a house in a day, but at least I have some sense of how it is done. And so this summer when I build a shed, I might be able to build a shed with a couple of other people in a couple of days.<br /></p>



<p>You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Um, and so there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s definitely. You know, we, we always talk about the Steve [00:28:00] Jobs or the whoever, um, you know, the artistic geniuses. The, the people who can snap their fingers and, and creativity comes out, and then the rest of us have to work at it, you know? And, and that&#8217;s okay.<br /></p>



<p>And it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s a little bit of luck and it&#8217;s a little bit of timing and it&#8217;s a little bit of the people around you, and it&#8217;s a little bit of the industry you&#8217;re in. And then it&#8217;s the practice that you&#8217;ve done. And you and I have both been thinking about product for, you know, 15 years or whatever it is.<br /></p>



<p>And so I&#8217;m walking around, I&#8217;m in San Francisco this week, so I&#8217;m walking around in San Francisco thinking, The amount of, you know, tech and, and whatnot that&#8217;s here. Um, but what it really comes down to is like, I was driving on the highway last night. Judging harshly, all of the ridiculous billboards, because I&#8217;m like, who is Twilio think they&#8217;re advertising to?<br /></p>



<p>Or who is, um, who else did we see monday.com? And I&#8217;m not necessarily picking on their billboards. They&#8217;re fine. But it&#8217;s like, [00:29:00] okay, th this is, these, these is, this isn&#8217;t, that&#8217;s most of these products I don&#8217;t think. Attributable to one person&#8217;s genius. These are products that were built by teams and companies that were built up over time.<br /></p>



<p>And then there&#8217;s a marketing team, and now I&#8217;m questioning some of the marketing decisions, but I&#8217;m like, who are they marketing to? You know? And how does that differ from like the online billboards ads and such that I&#8217;m seeing when I&#8217;m in New Hampshire versus in. You know, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m essentially in Silicon Valley, you know, so it&#8217;s, uh, humbling, right?<br /></p>



<p>I mean, they&#8217;re exp spending tens of thousands on billboards that I think are not very good. Um, but at the same time, they&#8217;ve arrived there over time, you know? And did it start with conversations like this? Did it, you know, who was the team involved? Who were the people involved? What were their experience?<br /></p>



<p>I think that&#8217;s all fascinating. I wish most [00:30:00] companies. There was just a, a thread on Hacker News. Um, was it Hack News or Reddit? Like what are your favorite postmortems? Um, and it&#8217;s, I, I like the people on that thread were wishing that they were more write-ups of, um, You know, there&#8217;s probably a little bit of morbid curiosity, um, but also like, you know, what are the lessons we can learn, but also a, a lot of it&#8217;s just the stories are fascinating.<br /></p>



<p>There&#8217;s a reason why there&#8217;s 101 podcasts interviewing founders, many of whom haven&#8217;t reached the success that most of us would, would want, themselves included. Um, but the stories are fascinating, you know.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah, it, it, I&#8217;ve, I read the founders at workbook and it was really cool, but, and a lot of it is serendipity.<br /></p>



<p>Yeah. And it&#8217;s like, I was gonna use a band analogy cuz of your music background [00:31:00] and just go like, you know, how does. Um, I know some mu musicians and I&#8217;m like, one pretty dang popular in the nineties, eighties and nineties. Mm-hmm. And, uh, spent some time with him. Really great guy, but I was like, I always wanna go.<br /></p>



<p>How did the, like he&#8217;s played with that, his band for, you know, A long time and they&#8217;ve had success together and it&#8217;s like, how do you, how does that come together? Is always the magic for me. And then how do they make this great music that a lot of the best bands I&#8217;ve heard, you know, they need, like Dave Matthews was the continuum.<br /></p>



<p>You&#8217;re like, man, great voice. But I&#8217;ve also heard like he wouldn&#8217;t be Dave Matthews and Dave Matthews band without all the incredible musicians around him. He happens to get the names stands,<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> the connections he had and stuff like that.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah, that was very much, iThemes , by the way, I got way more credit and I can&#8217;t sing so[00:32:00]&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> well. But um, yeah, and I think that, thank you. I think you&#8217;ve sort of. In some ways summarized what, what I, my rambling was trying to get at is the, it&#8217;s everything is the sum of its parts, right? And so it&#8217;s like, there was a point where I thought that I would snap my fingers, um, and not that I didn&#8217;t work really, really hard, um, but I now understand that it&#8217;s so much more as the building blocks, the sum of the building blocks, um, and the culmination of things.<br /></p>



<p>And like a lot of bands, you know, I love, in fact, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m rereading Elton John&#8217;s book. Um, great read by the way. I&#8217;m not a fan of Elton John. I, when I read it the first time, I went back and literally tried to listen to some of his music and I couldn&#8217;t get through most of it. It&#8217;s just so not to my taste.<br /></p>



<p>Um, I&#8217;m wrong. Don&#8217;t, there? There is no question that I am, I am wrong. Literally, [00:33:00] billions of people love his music and I don&#8217;t, so I am wrong here. But the book is really fun. Um, well written self effacing. Self self deprecating. Um, and, and I&#8217;m a music history nerd. Um, but it&#8217;s the, you know how things came.<br /></p>



<p>Um, you know, and he definitely is magical, musically. Um, but he, he watch the past tense of grind grounded. He, he worked really, really hard for a really long time and with a lot of people, and people came and went and stuff like that, you know, so at some point you and I are. Reach a a point where you&#8217;re gonna fire me and hire somebody better and keep going with the band.<br /></p>



<p>Um, and I will be the pee best. Um, you know, the long lost drummer, original drummer of the Beatles, um, who will die in obscurity. [00:34:00] And I accept,&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> I don&#8217;t think so, cuz you, you, you forget. I don&#8217;t know how to sing and it&#8217;s not gonna be as fun at all without the drums and guitar solo and everything you&#8217;ve done so.<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> But anyway, why don&#8217;t, why don&#8217;t you share your screen if you have the, the read me. I think, I feel like the brainstorming we did last time worked well. Like you were typing, typing, typing, um, while we were both chatting, if that works. Yep. So we&#8217;re here.<br /></p>



<p>Nice. Oh, so there&#8217;s an edit option. That&#8217;s cool. Uh, bottom left, there&#8217;s a button that&#8217;s an edit. Can we make our changes right in it? Cool.<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> You know what, we&#8217;ll wanna go back when we do the, the new brand that we talked about, we&#8217;ll wanna come back and put the links here.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Oh, for sure. [00:35:00] Okay,<br /></p>



<p>so I go to, we&#8217;re press. Slash plugins<br /></p>



<p>and I search for crop<br /></p>



<p>and I&#8217;m seeing what else comes up. And like there&#8217;s a, yeah, image aspect ratio. Custom fields for, um, a ACF crop and image as keywords. Um, I also heard from, I did a, um, a call with um, Matt Cromwell and, um, I hate to say it, but Leslie Pizza, um, cuz I can never remember her last name and I think she actually, like a lot of people call her Leslie Pizza.<br /></p>



<p>Um, But, uh, they were helping me [00:36:00] review one of my other plugins and said that we can actually have up to 12 keywords. Uh, just the first, I think, five show up. So, uh, I was actually misinformed that, or I, under, I had the wrong knowledge that, uh, I thought we could only have a few keywords. So, um, I think on that, on that first screen, Plug in maybe.<br /></p>



<p>Yeah, I saw tags. So, um,<br /></p>



<p>like I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m wondering if, I mean this is, and this is all always speculation, but is, is it better to have image crop or is it better to just have crop? To me, you don&#8217;t crop, you don&#8217;t crop anything that isn&#8217;t an image. So I, it might ju we might, image, crop might be. Cropping is good though.[00:37:00]&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> So I had crop and cropping. Since we can add more tags, that&#8217;s good knowledge,&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> right?<br /></p>



<p>In WordPress, uh, featured images are often called thumbnails.<br /></p>



<p>Um, oh, media library. Now that we have that, it&#8217;s probably, you know, if people are looking for ways that they are manipulating images in the media library, maybe they search for media library.<br /></p>



<p>Um, I can&#8217;t imagine that people are looking for the term aspect. Um,<br /></p>



<p>More likely they&#8217;re looking for, oh, image size, right? Like we had the, the guy message me and say, I need, you know, I need [00:38:00] all images, need to ultimately be 700 by 500 or whatever it was, like image size. Um, so anyway, I feel like that flushes it out a lot more. Okay.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s awesome. I mean, that&#8217;s really good base level things.<br /></p>



<p>We gotta just check the box for. Uh, do I push saver update code? I&#8217;m always the Control s. Control s. Command desk. Command desk, right.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Um, I probably save, I I imagine that Save actually does both. I just remember that Save took a long time. Okay.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Um. Okay. I put cropping here and I put precise. I took out feature damages, but is there anything else you see that we should probably like a list of features maybe[00:39:00]&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> I. So up to 150 characters, um, I&#8217;m still looking at the description first. Um, it seems like, uh, do you have a, something that&#8217;ll tell us how many characters we&#8217;re using there? Go stick it in a fake tweet or something though. So I guess they just give you. A counter,<br /></p>



<p>I think like, so I do, I [00:40:00] think we could just say crop images in WordPress Z or is that a sentence? It&#8217;s awesome. I think that&#8217;s really good. WordPress easily, but I, I guess my point is I, we&#8217;re not using 150 characters. Let&#8217;s, let&#8217;s add more words. Um, and WordPress easier. Dash featured image media library.<br /></p>



<p>You know, it&#8217;s a little bit of, um, keyword.<br /></p>



<p>I mean, we had the block too. Mm-hmm. Prop images and WordPress.[00:41:00]&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p>Uh,<br /></p>



<p>say Guttenberg block,<br /></p>



<p>like, um, image crop or guttenberg block. I just always feel like we need, I, I&#8217;m not convinced that people. Only at like truly think of it, it&#8217;s just the block editor. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.<br /></p>



<p>[00:42:00] Yeah, that&#8217;s.<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Probably have all these memorized, but I was gonna go back into the plugin. So we have mm-hmm. Go ahead.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Um, just the, that we can, um, keyword stuff, the title too. So going back to the plugin tab, crop express,<br /></p>



<p>crop express, four featured images or, um,<br /></p>



<p>I&#8217;m just trying to think of what the key, what the keywords might be like. Hmm. [00:43:00] I don&#8217;t think we need WordPress.<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Yeah, I was trying to say something like car is a,<br /></p>



<p>it keeps it native, I guess. Like you don&#8217;t have to go outside of WordPress. There&#8217;s a better term for that, I&#8217;m sure.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Right, but I guess this, this is more like, this is more search rankings. I literally think repeating Crop Express for featured images for media library for Gutenberg block. Um,<br /></p>



<p>yeah, I think, I think that that&#8217;s, to me, that&#8217;s what, what the purpose would be. It&#8217;s, it doesn&#8217;t hurt, like those are human readable words, but I do think it helps the seo.<br /></p>



<p>Okay. [00:44:00] And I put block, I don&#8217;t know how long this can be, right? Uh, I mean, short pixels is pretty long. Say what?<br /></p>



<p>I am, I&#8217;m comparing other ones in the repo and like short, short pixel image optimizer Dash Optimize Image is Convert WebP and a V I f. Like they&#8217;re, they&#8217;re, the title of theirs is 66 characters, so I feel like we&#8217;re, we&#8217;ve got room to play with.[00:45:00]&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p>Uh, the sentence above, you can take out featured images, so crop express speeds up your content workflow. Uh, giving you uniform images for your blog post. I think you can take out featured because we now have expanded, but I still love this intro. Um, so even the title at the top, make cropping featured images you can take out featured.<br /></p>



<p>So making<br /></p>



<p>that what you meant right here. Yeah, and, and again, that I think that could be similar to the short description. So rather than make cropping images, we could just say crop images easier.<br /></p>



<p>Yep. I think it&#8217;s bad English, [00:46:00] but I think it.<br /></p>



<p>But I think, yeah, we define the problem, we define the high level solution well, and then talk about features, which is the formula you&#8217;re kind of supposed to follow. Mm-hmm.<br /></p>



<p>Nice.<br /></p>



<p>And I would even add another one, uh, below that first one you just said. Say, um, something like, uh, round avatar images or something like that. Like shapes is shapes and down the road we can add [00:47:00] stars and rainbows and unicorns if we want. But you know, I still think that it&#8217;s pretty amazing that you can crop a circle.<br /></p>



<p>Uh, yeah, there you go.<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Love it<br /></p>



<p>and the set sizing defaults give. I don&#8217;t know if guardrails communicate cross cultures, but um, to me it&#8217;s like put those Boeing bumpers on your client, right? From like doing crappy stuff. So giving some, you&#8217;re kind of making it easier on your client by giving them some base. You&#8217;re, you&#8217;re actually taking out the [00:48:00] possibility of error on the client you deliver work for by giving them some.<br /></p>



<p>So keep them for,&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> um, Prevent uploading the wrong,<br /></p>



<p>wrong image, like it&#8217;s really wrong size and shape image, but that&#8217;s really wordy.<br /></p>



<p>Huge images that slow down your site. There you go. Nice.<br /></p>



<p>Yep.<br /></p>



<p>Um, you could also, uh, another, you another new under the, the second item is, um, media library.[00:49:00]&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Just throw things out just to get us going.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Absolutely.<br /></p>



<p>Yeah, we&#8217;ve got, at this point we&#8217;ve got the three integration points, featured images, media library, and Gutenberg block. Um, and then we&#8217;ve got settings.<br /></p>



<p>[00:50:00] Settings.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Got the block you said, I&#8217;m sorry. Feature damage image and then the standalone block? Mm-hmm. Okay.<br /></p>



<p>I&#8217;m just testing that. I don&#8217;t know if it works. [00:51:00] I almost feel like putting this above here and then, you know, new, like the first one is the block. Yep. That&#8217;s cool. It&#8217;s in post copy images by sizes set. Image<br /></p>



<p>three, need it. Let&#8217;s see. I almost feel like this needs to be, I don&#8217;t know. I don&#8217;t want to nitpick it too much. Image sizing.<br /></p>



<p>Okay. Anything I missed?&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> No, I think this is a great next version. Okay.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Save it. Mm-hmm.[00:52:00]&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p>Can you do custom ratios? Mm-hmm.<br /></p>



<p>Where already said that. See, so it&#8217;s really a square circle or&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> you&#8217;re accustom, right? I I feel like, I mean, it&#8217;s circle, circle or anything else. So, um, pick the most pocket aspect ratios or create your own. Crop a circle if you want to kind of thing. Yeah, I mean they&#8217;re, cuz they&#8217;re all,[00:53:00]&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p>yeah, I think that&#8217;s great. You&#8217;re done. Okay.<br /></p>



<p>Now do you just need this? Yeah, so if you&#8217;ve hit update code and it updated, uh, cuz I&#8217;m not seeing our new tags in there, so I don&#8217;t think we&#8217;ve updated. Oh. Update code. There we go. There we go. Yeah. So send that to me and I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll drop it in. Cool.<br /></p>



<p>Done. Great. Um, so I actually need to bounce. Okay. Um, But yeah, you send that to me. Uh, we&#8217;ll plug that in. I&#8217;ll upload it later today. And then, um, again, I I, there&#8217;s a little bit of a long tail, there&#8217;s a couple more the settings that we wanted to add and [00:54:00] stuff like that, but, um, you know, let&#8217;s, again, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m excited to kind of let it, let it simmer for a while.<br /></p>



<p>Yeah.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> Okay. Sounds good to me. I&#8217;m gonna put some notes about the next topic. In chat, um, just so that We&#8217;ll, they&#8217;ll be there and I won&#8217;t lose them.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Yeah, yeah. I&#8217;m sorry. I&#8217;ve, I&#8217;m, yeah, no problem. I&#8217;m getting lost, but, um, yeah, we could also, let&#8217;s, you know, let&#8217;s schedule a call, uh, tomorrow, Friday, too. Okay.<br /></p>



<p>Sounds&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Cory Miller:</strong> good, man. Enjoy San Francisco.&nbsp;<br /></p>



<p><strong>Corey Maass:</strong> Thank you. Thanks man.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><br /></h2>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 13 Apr 2023 02:13:35 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Cory Miller";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:40;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"WPTavern: Yoast SEO 20.5 Drops Support for PHP 5.6, 7.0, and 7.1";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=143580";s: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://wptavern.com/yoast-seo-20-5-drops-support-for-php-5-6-7-0-and-7-1";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2178:"<p><a href="https://yoast.com/yoast-seo-april-11-2023">Yoast SEO 20.5</a> was released this week with several security fixes and an improved Google SERP preview. The preview shows mobile and desktop snippets with Google&#8217;s current styling so users can see exactly how their snippets will look and tweak how they optimize them for Google Search results.</p>



<img />



<p>Another highlight of this release is that Yoast SEO has dropped compatibility with PHP 5.6, 7.0 and 7.1. The plugin now requires PHP 7.2.5 or higher (along with WP 6.0). While this may seem extreme at first glance, approximately 89.9% of WordPress sites are running on PHP 7.2+. WordPress doesn&#8217;t cross-reference these stats with WP version numbers, but it&#8217;s possible sites running on much older versions of WordPress are also on unsupported versions of PHP.</p>



<img />WordPress <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/stats/">PHP Version Stats</a> &#8211; 4/11/2023



<p>Getting WordPress sites to update to the latest versions of PHP is a slow-moving process, but historically Yoast SEO has been a force for change in pushing users to upgrade their PHP versions. In version 4.5, released in 2017, <a href="https://wptavern.com/yoast-seo-4-5-urges-users-to-upgrade-to-php-7">Yoast SEO threw the weight of its estimated 6.5 million user base behind the movement to push hosts to upgrade their customers to PHP 7</a>. That version of the plugin introduced a large, non-dismissible notice urging site administrators to upgrade to PHP 7.</p>



<p>“To move the web forward, we need to take a stand against old, slow, and unsafe software,&#8221; Yoast founder Joost de Valk said at that time. “Because web hosts are not upgrading PHP, we have decided to start pushing this from within plugins.&#8221; He contended that the WordPress ecosystem was losing good developers because the project was moving too slowly and also made the case for security and speed.</p>



<p>Although the latest version 20.5 will be incompatible with approximately 10% of WordPress sites running unsupported versions of PHP, this move forward is necessary for maintaining a healthy and secure ecosystem. </p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 13 Apr 2023 00:54:23 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:70:"WPTavern: WordPress Gears Up for 2nd Women and Nonbinary Release Squad";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=143582";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-gears-up-for-2nd-women-and-nonbinary-release-squad";s: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:3046:"<p>WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy is <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/07/preparing-for-the-next-women-nonbinary-release-squad/">coordinating a second women and nonbinary release squad</a> for the 6.4 release, which is anticipated to land in <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/roadmap/">November 2023</a>. In 2020, <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-5-6-simone-includes-new-twenty-twenty-one-theme-and-improved-editor">WordPress 5.6 &#8220;Simone&#8221;</a> was led by an all-women and non-binary identifying release squad, a first in WordPress&#8217; history, and Haden Chomphosy is proposing the project go for it again.</p>



<p>&#8220;Having a release squad comprised of folx we don’t typically see in technology also has a goal of increasing the number of underrepresented people who have experience maintaining, managing, and shipping software in an open source project,&#8221; Haden Chomphosy said. &#8220;All contributions to the release and release process are welcome.&#8221;</p>



<p>WordPress 6.3, which is targeted for a mid-July release, will give prospective 6.4 squad members the opportunity to shadow more experienced contributors and gain new skills by working with mentors and assisting with the release. She is calling for mentors to join in preparing this new round of leaders. The process is a several-months long commitment that gives contributors a head start on understanding their roles in the squad, though it is not required for participation in the 6.4 release.</p>



<p>Haden Chomphosy emphasized that anyone will be able to contribute to the release but the leaders in the 6.4 squad will be limited to this specific group.</p>



<p>&#8220;I short-hand the release to &#8216;women and nonbinary&#8217; for easy referencing in our day-to-day collaboration, but the release squad will be open to anyone who identifies as a woman, nonbinary, or gender-expansive,&#8221; she said. &#8220;All contributions are welcome as always, regardless of how you identify or what groups you feel part of.&#8221;</p>



<p>WordPress has gained valuable new contributors and leaders from this initiative in the past, including 6.2 Core Tech Co-Leads Tonya Mork.</p>



<p>&#8220;Before joining the 5.6 Release Squad, I had <em>not</em> contributed to the project,&#8221; Mork said. &#8220;I had no idea how the release cycle worked or where to start. Yup, I was a contributing noob. But with mentoring, I was <em>well supported</em> in my onboarding. <em>And you will be too! The experience was and still is incredible!</em>&#8220;</p>



<p>Based on the response to Haden Chomphosy&#8217;s proposal, there should be no shortage of contributors and volunteers available to help with the women and nonbinary 6.4 release squad. She is requesting anyone who wants to be part of the squad or help as a mentor leading up to the release to leave a comment on the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/07/preparing-for-the-next-women-nonbinary-release-squad/">post</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, 12 Apr 2023 21:02:54 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:42;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:101:"Post Status: Women &amp; Nonbinary Release • WP-CLI 2.8.0 • Redesign Update • Build Block Theme";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=148909";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"https://poststatus.com/women-nonbinary-release-wp-cli-2-8-0-redesign-update-build-block-theme/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:17443:"<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-this-week-at-wordpress-org-april-3-2023">This Week at WordPress.org (April 3, 2023)</h2>


<div class="has-background has-theme-palette-8-background-color wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">Sign up soon to mentor and be a part of the upcoming women and nonbinary release squad. Join the Test team in building a block theme. WP-CLI 2.8.0 is coming soon with PHP 8.2 compatibility. Get the latest updates on the WordPress.org redesign.  </p></div>


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



<div class="wp-block-kadence-infobox kt-info-box_94d1bd-77"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap kt-blocks-info-box-media-align-left kt-info-halign-left"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media-container"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media kt-info-media-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-container kt-info-icon-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-inner-container"><span class="kb-svg-icon-wrap kb-svg-icon-fas_paint-brush kt-info-svg-icon"></span></div></div></div></div><div class="kt-infobox-textcontent"><h2 class="kt-blocks-info-box-title">Women and Nonbinary Release Squad, WP-CLI 2.8.0 Release, Redesign Update</h2><p class="kt-blocks-info-box-text"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f9b8-1f3fb-200d-2640-fe0f.png" alt="🦸🏻‍♀️" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/07/preparing-for-the-next-women-nonbinary-release-squad/">Preparing for the Next Women &amp; Nonbinary Release Squad</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f477-1f3fe.png" alt="👷🏾" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/03/29/fse-program-exploration-build-a-block-theme/">FSE Program Exploration: Build a block theme</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f7e6.png" alt="🟦" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/30/proposal-the-interactivity-api-a-better-developer-experience-in-building-interactive-blocks/">Proposal: The Interactivity API – A better developer experience in building interactive blocks</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f469-1f3fb-200d-1f4bb.png" alt="👩🏻‍💻" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/cli/2023/04/05/wp-cli-v2-8-0-release-date/">WP-CLI v2.8.0 release date</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f58c.png" alt="🖌" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/04/10/wordpress-org-redesign-update-2/">WordPress.org Redesign Update</a></p></div></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-_b57166-6e"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-news"><a href="https://wordpress.org/news">News</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/04/episode-53-a-look-at-wordpress-6-2-dolphy/">WP Briefing: Episode 53: A Look at WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy”</a></li>
</ul>



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



<div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-17">
<div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow">
<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-community"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community">Community</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/04/07/its-time-to-plan-your-wp20-anniversary-celebration/">It’s Time to Plan Your WP20 Anniversary Celebration!!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/04/06/personalised-coupon-codes-for-wordcamps/">Personalised Coupon Codes for WordCamps</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/10/a-week-in-core-april-10-2023/">A Week in Core – April 10, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/07/preparing-for-the-next-women-nonbinary-release-squad/">Preparing for the Next Women &amp; Nonbinary Release Squad</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/03/preferred-languages-help-test-the-latest-version/">Preferred Languages: Help test the latest version</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/30/proposal-the-interactivity-api-a-better-developer-experience-in-building-interactive-blocks/">Proposal: The Interactivity API – A better developer experience in building interactive blocks</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-developer-blog"><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/">Developer Blog</a></h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/04/whats-new-for-developers-april-2023/">What’s new for developers? (April 2023)</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-meetings">Meetings</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/12/editor-chat-summary-wednesday-12th-april-2023/">Editor chat summary: Wednesday, 12th April 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/11/dev-chat-agenda-april-12-2023/">Dev Chat agenda, April 12, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-design"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design">Design</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/03/30/why-jazz/">Why Jazz?</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2023/04/11/summary-for-docs-team-meeting-april-4-2023/">Summary for Docs Team meeting, April 4, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/04/10/documentation-team-update-april-10-2023/">Documentation Team Update – April 10, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-hosting"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting">Hosting</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2023/04/11/hosting-team-meeting-agenda-2023-04-12/">Hosting Team meeting agenda 2023-04-12</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-marketing"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing">Marketing</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2023/04/11/notes-global-marketing-team-meeting-4-april-2023/">Notes: Global Marketing Team meeting, 4 April 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/04/10/wordpress-org-redesign-update-2/">WordPress.org Redesign Update</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-mobile"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile">Mobile</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2023/04/11/contribute-to-the-future-of-the-wordpress-app/">Contribute to the Future of the WordPress App</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/04/07/mobile-team-update-april-6th-2/">Mobile Team Update – April 6th</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/04/11/new-repository-for-storing-sensitive-terms/">New repository for storing sensitive terms</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/04/11/community-meeting-recap-2023-04-11/">Community Meeting Recap (2023-04-11)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/04/10/last-week-openverse-2023-04-03-2023-04-10/">A week in Openverse: 2023-04-03 – 2023-04-10</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/11/performance-chat-summary-11-april-2023/">Performance Chat Summary: 11 April 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-plugins"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins">Plugins</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2023/03/21/use-of-code-generators-must-remain-gpl-compatible/">Use of Code Generators Must Remain GPL Compatible</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2023/03/10/advance-notice-of-retirement/">Advance Notice of Retirement</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/04/11/plugin-team-status-april-10-2023/">Plugin Team Status: April 10, 2023</a></li>
</ul>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow">
<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-polyglots"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots">Polyglots</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/04/12/agenda-weekly-polyglots-chat-april-12-2023-1300-utc/">Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – April 12, 2023 (13:00 UTC)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/04/11/polyglots-outreach-effort-retrospective/">Polyglots outreach effort retrospective</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-project">Project</h2>



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



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



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



<ul>
<li> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/2023/03/support-ticket-triage-session-april-5th-2023-at-1600-utc/">Support ticket triage session – April 5th 2023 at 16:00 UTC&nbsp;</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/04/11/test-chat-summary-11-april-2023/">Test Chat Summary: 11 April 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/04/04/hallway-hangout-lets-chat-about-moving-to-the-site-editor/">Hallway Hangout: Let’s chat about Moving to the Site Editor</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/03/29/fse-program-exploration-build-a-block-theme/">FSE Program Exploration: Build a block theme</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/04/10/test-team-update-10-april-2023/">Test Team Update: 10 April 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-theme">Theme</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/04/12/themes-team-meeting-notes-april-11-2023/">Themes Team Meeting Notes – April 11, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/04/04/theme-handbook-overhaul-proposal/">Theme Handbook Overhaul Proposal</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/04/11/themes-team-update-april-11-2023/">Themes team update April 11, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/04/11/training-team-meeting-recap-for-april-4-2023/">Training Team Meeting Recap for April 4, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/04/05/proposal-creating-learning-pathways-for-learn-wordpress/">Proposal: Creating Learning Pathways for Learn WordPress</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/03/29/introduction-to-wordpress-development-syllabus/">Introduction to WordPress Development syllabus</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-lesson-plans"><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plans">Lesson Plans</a></h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plan/ta-pages-vs-posts/">பக்கங்கள் Vs. இடுகைகள்</a></li>
</ul>



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/adding-a-sticky-header-or-banner/">Adding a sticky header or banner</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/extending-wordpress-common-security-vulnerabilities/">Extending WordPress: common security vulnerabilities</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-online-workshops">Online Workshops</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=a-beginners-guide-to-setting-up-a-basic-website-website-design">A Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up a Basic Website: Website Design</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=a-beginners-guide-to-setting-up-a-basic-website-content-planning">A Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up a Basic Website: Content Planning</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=becoming-a-better-developer">Becoming a Better Developer</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=building-a-page-with-only-patterns">Building a page with only patterns</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=lets-code-creating-a-wordpress-multisite-network">Let’s code: creating a WordPress multisite network</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=community-sharing-favorite-themes">Community Sharing: Favorite Themes</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-courses"><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/courses">Courses</a></h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/converting-a-shortcode-to-a-block/">Converting a Shortcode to a Block</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wp-cli">WP-CLI</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/cli/2023/04/05/wp-cli-v2-8-0-release-date/">WP-CLI v2.8.0 release date</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wptv">WPTV</h2>



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



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



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-related-news">Related News:</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-02-14-2">PHP 8.2.4 Released!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-03-16-1">PHP 8.1.17 Released!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://262.ecma-international.org/13.0/">TC39</a></li>



<li><a href="https://github.com/composer/composer/releases/tag/2.5.5">Composer 2.5.5</a></li>
</ul>



<p class="has-theme-palette-7-background-color has-background">Thanks for reading our WP dot .org roundup! Each week we are highlighting the news and discussions coming from the good folks making WordPress possible. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers. <br /><br /><strong>Are you interested in giving back and contributing your time and skills to WordPress.org?</strong> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="🙏" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/contributing-to-wordpress/">Start Here ›</a><br /><br /><strong>Get our weekly WordPress community news digest</strong> — Post Status&#8217; <a href="https://poststatus.com/news/week-in-review/">Week in Review</a> — covering the WP/Woo news plus significant writing and podcasts. It&#8217;s also available in <a href="https://poststatus.com/newsletter">our newsletter</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f48c.png" alt="💌" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



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<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 12 Apr 2023 19:17:43 +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:18:"Courtney Robertson";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:43;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"WPTavern: #71 – Nathan Ingram on How To Manage Contracts With Your WordPress Clients";s: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=143522";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/71-nathan-ingram-on-how-to-manage-contracts-with-your-wordpress-clients";s: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:50678:"Transcription<div>
<p>[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case how to manage your website client contracts.</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 forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



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



<p>So on the podcast today, we have Nathan Ingram. Nathan is the host at iThemes Training, where he teaches WordPress and business development topics via live webinar. Based in Birmingham, Alabama, he has been working with clients to build websites since 1995.</p>



<p>He&#8217;s also the creator of MonsterContracts, which helps WordPress professionals create contracts for their client work.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;ve worked directly with clients, then you&#8217;ll know that things don&#8217;t always go according to plan. Assets might not be delivered on time. The client does not respond to your emails. The expectations of the client begins to creep away from the original proposal.</p>



<p>Whilst there&#8217;s unlikely to be a perfect system to ensure that all projects run according to the plan, you can protect yourself from some of the worst aspects. And for this, you may need a contract.</p>



<p>Nathan is on the podcast today to talk about why he thinks contracts are an essential part of any client facing WordPress work.</p>



<p>We begin by talking about how the contract is designed as a tool to bring clarity to both parties. You, the website builder, can set out the constraints within which you work and the client can understand what they can, and cannot, expect from you. Nathan thinks that setting these expectations before the project begins leads to fewer problems later on.</p>



<p>We talk about the fact that contracts don&#8217;t need to contain overly complex legal language, but they do need to be checked by a qualified legal professional before they&#8217;re deployed.</p>



<p>Nathan also explains how he&#8217;s refined his contract over the years, tweaking the wording and the structure, depending upon the project at hand.</p>



<p>We then get into what you can realistically do should your client breach the contract. Are you able to turn off their website, or withhold work that you&#8217;ve completed? Nathan&#8217;s not really in favour of sending in the lawyers as soon as something goes wrong. Rather trying to resolve any conflict through better communication.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s an interesting conversation, which makes contracts seem less adversarial and more about ensuring that your WordPress website projects run as smoothly as possible.</p>



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



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Nathan Ingram.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast by Nathan Ingram. Hello, Nathan.</p>



<p>[00:04:07] Nathan Ingram: Hey Nathan, how are you?</p>



<p>[00:04:08] Nathan Wrigley: That&#8217;s strange. I&#8217;ve not had that before. Two Nathan&#8217;s on the podcast today. Very different levels of experience in the subject that we&#8217;re going to be talking about. Nathan Ingram is here today and he&#8217;s going to be talking to us about the legal aspects of hiring clients.</p>



<p>You might describe it in one word as contracts, I guess. And there&#8217;s a whole treasure trove of things that we&#8217;re going to unpack there. But before we do that, Nathan, if anybody hasn&#8217;t heard of you before and hasn&#8217;t seen the things that you are doing online, would you just spend a few minutes introducing yourself? You can go back as far as you like but, give us yourself in the WordPress context.</p>



<p>[00:04:44] Nathan Ingram: Yeah, sure. So I&#8217;ve been working with WordPress exclusively since right around 2010. I run a small agency down in Birmingham, Alabama. I&#8217;ve been working with clients since 1995. So I&#8217;ve been around the webspace for quite a while. I also am the host at iThemes Training. So we do live training webinars three days a week through iThemes. And then I also do some business coaching, and I have a product called MonsterContracts.</p>



<p>[00:05:08] Nathan Wrigley: Tell us about the iThemes thing for a minute, because I know you do trainings over there. How did that all come about? Was it like a happy coincidence that you ended up doing that? Were you making content, training content, elsewhere that got you into that position?</p>



<p>[00:05:22] Nathan Ingram: No goodness. So it&#8217;s really an interesting story and we could take a whole , a whole episode on how do people find their way in the WordPress community? So for me, iThemes was actually iThemes training at that time. Early on it was called webdesign.com. They had leased that really awesome domain name.</p>



<p>And it was where I learned WordPress. At that point I was sort of in a, the Macromedia ecosystem, and I had resisted WordPress for quite a while. Decided this is coming and I&#8217;ve got to go with the flow and move into WordPress, because a lot of my clients were looking for WordPress sites. Or sites they could log in and edit themselves. I found iThemes as a theme company, and the training went hand in hand, and that&#8217;s where I learned WordPress. And gradually over time, I started presenting one or two webinars and then gradually rolled into the presenter role.</p>



<p>[00:06:08] Nathan Wrigley: That&#8217;s nice. And so you do that regularly, three times a week. You go live and give trainings about a whole range of different subjects, right?</p>



<p>[00:06:15] Nathan Ingram: Yeah, like just yesterday we did our monthly news roundup on iThemes training. So look at the news in the WordPress world. Particularly from the perspective of people who build and manage websites. That&#8217;s really our audience on iThemes training. What news is important for people who do what I do.</p>



<p>[00:06:29] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so that&#8217;s really excellent. Unfortunately, it&#8217;s not the topic that we&#8217;re going to be talking about today. We&#8217;re talking about one of the areas, I think in web design that really can cause the blue touch paper to be lit, and the firework to go off. This is the whole thing of relationships with clients and the boundaries that you set, and whether you should have contracts, and whether you should be getting involved with lawyers and things like that.</p>



<p>And there are very few parts of the business that I used to run, which would cause me to become upset, irritable, and in some cases quite angry. But relationships with clients could do that. It&#8217;s quite unique, isn&#8217;t it?.</p>



<p>[00:07:15] Nathan Ingram: Oh, it really is, and I&#8217;ll tell you, it is certainly one of the common challenges that people who do WordPress things run into. You go to WordCamps, back when we used to have those things, so we actually just had our WordCamp Birmingham two weeks ago, and it was wonderful to see people in person. But when you get a group of people who work with clients around, you know, a table eating lunch at an event like a WordCamp, inevitably the conversation turns to bad clients and everybody has a story.</p>



<p>[00:07:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it&#8217;s just one of those things. I&#8217;ve got a whole litany of stories. On the whole I think I was able to manage this scenario fairly well, but there was a lot of things probably that I shouldn&#8217;t have done. So I gave way in many cases because I believed that the things that the client was asking for didn&#8217;t really push the boundaries too far, although they certainly stepped over the expectations that I had.</p>



<p>But your premise really, the reason why you&#8217;ve been getting into this and talking about this is because you want to prepare people and educate people to give them a kind of legal framework. And you describe it in terms of boxing in a client if you like. That&#8217;s probably too harsh a word.</p>



<p>You go about it in much more conciliatory language than that. But the point is, you are educating people to get themselves into a position where they&#8217;ve got some piece of paperwork, some contract. Something written down somewhere where you can all go back and say, okay, these are the boundaries, these are the constraints. If we step outside of these, one of us is at fault. So tell us a little bit more about your approach there.</p>



<p>[00:08:47] Nathan Ingram: That&#8217;s a great question. So years ago I put talk together about dealing with problem clients. And the title of the talk was &#8220;dealing with problem clients, building fences around friendly monsters&#8221;. And it&#8217;s a book, actually now I turned that into a book on Amazon. But, it&#8217;s really positioning the client, every client as what I would call a friendly monster.</p>



<p>Meaning they&#8217;re friendly, but they still have teeth. The idea is we need to build fences around the clients that we work with, because we never know what kind of person we&#8217;re dealing with. And the fences that I talk about are the systems and processes in our business.</p>



<p>Four in particular. We need to establish clarity. We need to have good commitments between us and our clients. We need to have communication and documentation. And those four fences can show up in a lot of different ways depending on your particular business and how you work. And there may be additional fences you&#8217;d want to build, but those four at least have to be in place in order to have good ongoing client relationships.</p>



<p>And a lot of those things show up in a contract. But they start as just part of your regular business system, the way you work, the way you deal with clients. Clarity, commitments, communication, documentation. And that&#8217;s where it all has to start. Like you&#8217;ve got to get your house in order before you can really bring in a good document, like a contract to, make your rules clear.</p>



<p>[00:10:10] Nathan Wrigley: I think the clarity piece coming first is really intriguing. Because that was always the misstep that I felt I&#8217;d made. In that I was very often in a position where I felt that I had explained myself clearly, and assuming the clients were being honest when they were explaining their frustration with the way things were going.</p>



<p>I clearly hadn&#8217;t done that. I maybe expressed it in a way which I understood, maybe that was too technical. And later down the road it became obvious that there was a complete disconnect between what I was trying to achieve, and what they, in their head, had got designed. And so yeah, the clarity piece, I think is perfect at the beginning, but also quite difficult to achieve. How do you, how do you advise that? What are some of the strategies that you&#8217;ve got in place around that?</p>



<p>[00:10:57] Nathan Ingram: Yeah, it really is difficult, and one of the first things I think you have to realize is that agreement on the surface does not equal clarity. So, if there&#8217;s no meeting of the minds, like maybe we use technical jargon, or maybe the client doesn&#8217;t tell you everything at the beginning.</p>



<p>I can&#8217;t tell you how many projects I&#8217;ve gotten into where the client, we&#8217;ll get three quarters of the way through the project, and they&#8217;re like, oh, well where do my clients log in? Well, wait, we haven&#8217;t talked about this at all. And in those sorts of situations you ask yourself, well, whose fault is that?</p>



<p>And I would say it&#8217;s probably 50 50. And so one of the great skills that we can develop in in way, but specifically in our way of working with people on the web, is learning the skill of asking great questions. If you learn the skill of asking great questions, and continuing to ask until you reach that point of clarity. That skill can really set you apart from other people that are doing client work.</p>



<p>Asking a question, asking why, and following up with additional questions until you really get down to the root of what the client expects. If you don&#8217;t do that, then oftentimes you can be saying one thing, the client can be saying another, and you&#8217;re both shaking your head up and down, but nobody is really clear on what we&#8217;re saying. Assumptions are made.</p>



<p>[00:12:08] Nathan Wrigley: In the work that you do, do you typically do all of that client exploration work prior to beginning the build? And then in a sense, that process is closed off, and you go away and you take six weeks, whatever it takes to complete your initial first offering and then go back to the client? Or do you, do you encourage a more agile approach where you iterate with the client? I mean, I know that they&#8217;re completely different ways of doing things. Curious as to know what your process is.</p>



<p>[00:12:36] Nathan Ingram: So it really depends on the complexity of the build. We try to get some understanding of that at the very beginning, when we&#8217;re trying to create the scope of work. If it&#8217;s a project we&#8217;ve done before, if it&#8217;s a simple, just a basic identity piece, a brochure site, that&#8217;s fairly simple.</p>



<p>When you get into something that is a lot more complicated, maybe there&#8217;s lots of different content types, or you&#8217;ve got to do some really interesting thing with data. A lot of times what we&#8217;ll end up doing, and I picked this up from my friend Beth Livingston, a change budget. So adding a change budget into the original pricing, that as we go forward and the client gets more ideas where things are uncovered, that we didn&#8217;t realize, there&#8217;s some pre-approved money sitting there, that the client can say, okay, we&#8217;ll allocate some of that change budget to build this thing that we hadn&#8217;t talked about yet.</p>



<p>[00:13:22] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, we&#8217;re in such a curious industry as well, in that there&#8217;s not many things that I purchase that morph over time. You know, if I go into a shop and I buy some clothes, I&#8217;m just getting what I&#8217;m getting. I can see it right off the bat, and there it is, and I can hold it in my hands, and it&#8217;s either what I want or it&#8217;s not what I want.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m not going to purchase that pair of trousers and then turned around a week later and said, actually, you know what? These pockets. I&#8217;ve been wearing these trousers for a couple of weeks now, and the pockets are not deep enough. Can we have an amendment to the pockets please? This curious idea of scope creep that creeps into more or less every project that I was ever involved in.</p>



<p>Are you getting your clients, after your initial discussions then, are you getting them to a point where you draw up some contract which in effect puts the four fences around the friendly monster that you were describing?</p>



<p>[00:14:12] Nathan Ingram: In our world we would call that the scope of work, which is part of the proposal. That comes from the original conversation. Or if it&#8217;s a complicated project, maybe there&#8217;s a discovery phase that happens first to really flesh out, what is the scope of work? What are we trying to accomplish in this project.</p>



<p>And then depending on the complexity of the project, the longer, or the more complex a project is, the greater chance of scope creep. Or honestly, the longer a project takes, because the client delays on content or something else. The longer a project takes also, you tend to have scope creep.</p>



<p>When you talk about scope creep, people&#8217;s eyes roll. They hate scope creep. But I&#8217;ll tell you what, I love scope creep as long as there&#8217;s corresponding price creep, right? If you want more things, that&#8217;s great. It&#8217;s just we can&#8217;t do more for the same price. In your analogy about, we don&#8217;t use the word trousers.</p>



<p>[00:15:00] Nathan Wrigley: Oh yeah, you use pants don&#8217;t you? I apologize.</p>



<p>[00:15:02] Nathan Ingram: Yeah. When you&#8217;re talking about something like that, it&#8217;s a little bit different because, well some people sell websites more as a product rather than a custom service. We&#8217;re more on the custom build side. Everything we do is bespoke. But you know, if you&#8217;re selling websites as a service, that is a good analogy because you&#8217;re in package three and this is what it comes with and this is your pair of pants.</p>



<p>But for us it would be more like, I&#8217;m hiring a contractor to come in and do a remodel on a kitchen .And this is kind of what we talk about at the beginning, but as we go, maybe we had a problem we didn&#8217;t anticipate. Or maybe my wife sees something on television that she wants to add. And so we want to add to it and we change it along the way. That&#8217;s really a closer analogy, I would think, to a custom website.</p>



<p>[00:15:44] Nathan Wrigley: It&#8217;s pretty clear that the audience for this podcast is pretty broad and deep. In other words, there are all sorts of people listening to this doing all sorts of work around the WordPress space. Some of them very new to WordPress and website building at all. Some of them just doing it for their own hobbies. Other people just getting into building websites for the first time.</p>



<p>So let&#8217;s speak to that crowd first. The crowd who really are just embarking on a career. They&#8217;re scoping out whether they wish to build websites for other people and charge for that, and make a business out of that. Let&#8217;s speak to the importance of a contract, because it may be that when you&#8217;re starting out, you&#8217;re just doing this with friends and we know that that can turn south quite quickly.</p>



<p>So, and also, you know, you may be encouraging businesses in your local area to come on board and they&#8217;re going to be expecting something like a contract. Is this an essential component of the makeup of a web designer? Do you truly need a contract? Or is there any realistic situation where it&#8217;s okay to begin work on a website, charging a fee without some legal protection?</p>



<p>[00:16:50] Nathan Ingram: Wow, what a great question. For years I worked without a contract. I just had a proposal with a scope of work and a price, and you pay me, I build the thing and there it goes. Then I started running into problems. Expectations that were never really talked about anywhere. For example, oh wait, this would&#8217;ve been like many years ago.</p>



<p>But at that point it was maybe Internet Explorer 6 was the browser of choice for everyone. And the person would say, wait this is not working on my Internet Explorer 4. Well, we don&#8217;t design for older browsers, we design for newer browsers. And there was great difference in rendering between those two.</p>



<p>These are the sorts of things that you don&#8217;t think about until you have a problem with a client. What I like to say is you don&#8217;t need a contract for good clients. You need a contract for bad clients. But my goodness, it&#8217;s hard to tell them apart at the beginning. So every client gets a contract. And my contract is mostly plain English, and virtually every paragraph in that contract, aside from the necessary legal constructions, everything in that contract is there because I had a problem one time with a client. That now gets added to the contract for the next time.</p>



<p>[00:17:59] Nathan Wrigley: I was very much like you in that I began way back, and it was long before IE6 in fact. I remember writing that into my contracts at one point. We are not supporting IE6. It was exactly the problem you described. I had happily breezed through multiple websites. No problem at all, everything was fine. I had a client who simply was able to push harder than anybody I&#8217;d come across before. In other words everything that I delivered, they would either reject or request it to be entirely different.</p>



<p>So this whole notion to me of scope creep and the client who refused to accept that anything was finished, came along. And it really was at that point that I started to look around and try to protect myself. So, I would imagine that your advice is really, it doesn&#8217;t matter on what level you&#8217;re doing this. You need some kind of legal protection, right?</p>



<p>[00:18:51] Nathan Ingram: So I would even take a step backwards. You need a consistent process that you use for every client, every project, every time. And that process needs to be documented somewhere in something that you and the client agree to. Call it whatever you want. Call it a contract. Call it, as we do, a master services agreement. You could put it in your proposal, but just have some place where everybody&#8217;s agreeing to the process. That&#8217;s that piece of clarity at the beginning where we are clear on how this is going to proceed.</p>



<p>Where we get into trouble is where we, we think, well we just sort of do every project differently and there&#8217;s not really a consistent process. And so the client is able at that point to dictate how the project goes. Will have at some point, you know, some level of control over your world, as long as you&#8217;re building that website. Instead of realizing, okay, this is the best way to build. We&#8217;re going to document this process out, and have the client agree to it in a contract.</p>



<p>[00:19:47] Nathan Wrigley: I guess whenever I&#8217;ve read legal contracts before, whether they&#8217;re for my car insurance or what have you. I&#8217;m always confounded by the language used, within moments of beginning the reading of it. I&#8217;m coming across, not only words which I haven&#8217;t encountered before, but the sentence construction is entirely bizarre.</p>



<p>In other words, it can be read by a lawyer. Sometimes I&#8217;m confused as to whether or not it&#8217;s written deliberately to be hard read or whether or not it&#8217;s the most expedient way of hammering something down perfectly. I can never parse that. Either way, I&#8217;m left confounded.</p>



<p>So given that lawyers very often end up with this language, which is impenetrable. And you mentioned that your contracts are in plain English. Is it possible to nail things down, absolutely watertight with plain English? And do you feel yourself equipped to do that? Or is this really the domain of a lawyer? Do we need to get a lawyer to go through your contract and inspect it to make sure that in every scenario it&#8217;s having your back?</p>



<p>[00:20:59] Nathan Ingram: So, just first of all, I&#8217;ll answer this from my perspective as a person who&#8217;s been working with clients, doing web things for over 25 years. I&#8217;m not an attorney. This is not legal advice or anything like that. But my experience has been sort of a blend of both.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s important to have good, practical experience working with clients and knowing what the problems are. But you also do need the legal language. Because if the worst thing happens and you end up in court with a client, there&#8217;s a reason that attorneys write things the way they do. You know, this is language that has been proven out and so forth.</p>



<p>And so if you take a contract that is exclusively plain English, you can get tied up with defining what the meanings of this word and that word and so forth are, and it turns into a mess. So, if you went out today and you did a search for a web design contract on the web, you would find two types of contracts in general.</p>



<p>You would find some that are just absolutely plain English with no legal constructions whatsoever. And those are okay. They do establish clarity, or give you kind of a template to establish some clarity. But they don&#8217;t have the legal protections. On the other side, it&#8217;s like the total opposite end of the spectrum. Contracts that are a hundred percent legalese, and I don&#8217;t understand what some of these things mean. And this is what you were talking about a bit earlier. And I&#8217;m not sure if that really gives clarity to the client, because nobody really knows what any of this means unless you&#8217;re an attorney.</p>



<p>And so what I found to be the best approach, and this is what I&#8217;ve done, is I began years ago explaining our process. Explaining what we do, what we don&#8217;t do. Explaining some of the issues like browser compatibility, and what happens if you hire a digital marketing person that comes in and they break your website. Are we responsible for that because we&#8217;re managing your website.</p>



<p>All of the bad experiences I&#8217;ve had with clients, I started putting those things down in a document and then I gave that to an attorney and said, okay, make this legal. And so they added all the necessary legal constructions, and patched the holes. Over time this has become my agency contract, and that&#8217;s what I ultimately turned into MonsterContracts.</p>



<p>[00:23:02] Nathan Wrigley: With your contracts, did you find that the nature of the project at hand, in other words, the one that you&#8217;re working on right now. Given that each client website is slightly different and it may have different constraints. It may need, I don&#8217;t know, let&#8217;s imagine, a WooCommerce store or something like that. We really are getting into a completely different variety of website. Or it may be a simple brochure site. Or it may be that there&#8217;s a bespoke plugin, for example, has to be written for that website.</p>



<p>Do you advise taking those contracts that you&#8217;ve had written, or rather inspected by lawyers, do you take them back and get them to look, more of a scan through each time and append to it, the bits and pieces that are needed? Or have you settled on a contract which you think is broadly good enough to fit any situation?</p>



<p>[00:23:50] Nathan Ingram: It&#8217;s a great question. So this exact situation is why I recommend a two document approach. So we have a proposal of services that deals with the scope of work and the price for every individual project. And those are going to be different every time. But then we have a master services agreement, or a contract, that has the rules of the road for every project. These don&#8217;t change. And so we present those documents together.</p>



<p>So the contract that the master services agreement covers the process. All these things that we do and timeframes, and what happens if you don&#8217;t pay and, here&#8217;s how the website management works, and we don&#8217;t guarantee results for SEO.</p>



<p>All these things that need to be in a contract that don&#8217;t change from project to project, are there in the contract. But then the scope of work of we&#8217;re going to build this plugin, or we&#8217;re going to add a store, we&#8217;re going to do whatever. Those are in the proposal, which is the scope of work and the price for that individual project.</p>



<p>[00:24:43] Nathan Wrigley: Right, okay, that&#8217;s an intriguing separation. Yeah, so two different documents. One which is more bespoke and one which is more generic and you can reuse over and over again.</p>



<p>[00:24:53] Nathan Ingram: Exactly.</p>



<p>[00:24:54] Nathan Wrigley: So, given that we&#8217;ve got a contract. Given that it&#8217;s been written by a lawyer, and there may be aspects in there that are impenetrable to us. I guess there&#8217;s always going to be a need to go back to the lawyers. I can imagine the fees of this starting to tick up quite quickly actually. Because if a client comes back to you and you believe they&#8217;re in breach of the contract in some way, but the contract is difficult to read, it&#8217;s in that legal language. That&#8217;s an important thing to do, isn&#8217;t it? You really do have to understand the ins and outs of your contract.</p>



<p>So given any scenario of inverted commas, wrongdoing by the client, you are able to say to them with confidence, look, this is what you signed. This is what this clause in the contract meant. In other words, you have to know what it says in plain English in your head. Otherwise you can&#8217;t really enforce it, because you wouldn&#8217;t be sure what you were able to enforce.</p>



<p>[00:25:47] Nathan Ingram: Right, and this is why if you were to open my agency contract, or if you were to look at MonsterContracts. You would see things like payment terms, and they&#8217;re all in plain English. Again, this is why I said earlier, I want to have my system documented ahead of time.</p>



<p>Like I want to know, internally, this is how we deal with late payments. This is what happens if the client disappears during a project, all these things. We have our policies internally for this. Those are then put into the contract in very plain wording that can be easily pointed to. There have to be legal constructions, but these are, they&#8217;re really at the end of the document and they don&#8217;t pertain, nearly as much to these practical issues that come up with the client.</p>



<p>[00:26:28] Nathan Wrigley: Do you ever, so this is a question more directed at you personally, given that you&#8217;ve got all these contracts and you&#8217;ve thought all of this through. Do you ever let things slip, in other words, you&#8217;re having a conflict internally. Part of you saying, I know that this client is now in breach of what the, not only the spirit, but the letter of the contract said. But I&#8217;ve got a bit of a spidey sense that I can let this one go. It feels like it&#8217;s going to be all right. Because there be monsters down there.</p>



<p>And it&#8217;s so easy. I did that and probably continue to do that quite a bit, because sometimes I feel that if I push the legal button, I really have transformed everything. I&#8217;ve suddenly gone from it being a fairly friendly relationship, albeit fraught at times. To a really adversarial relationship where the lawyers are getting involved and so on. So I&#8217;m just wondering whether or you permit yourself to ignore your contracts in some scenarios.</p>



<p>[00:27:24] Nathan Ingram: Oh, what a great question. So the answer to that question, it revolves around emotional intelligence, right? you have to make a judgment call on, is this a situation that is worth really enforcing the contract or not. And honestly, many times, let&#8217;s just say, here&#8217;s the situation. The client, we&#8217;ve been waiting for three months for the client to supply assets that are needed to build the website, and that happens all the time, right? Clients delay, delay, delay for content, and photography and everything.</p>



<p>So, in the contract, it says if we haven&#8217;t heard from you in 30 days, then your project is suspended. And there&#8217;s some things that happen as a result of that. Now, can we choose to change that? Sure, but oftentimes what will solve that problem is a simple email to the client. Hey, we haven&#8217;t heard from you in the last 30 days. At this point your project is about to go into suspended status. And this is what that means.</p>



<p>We explain in the contract. And just having a clarifying email like that can oftentimes shake up the client and get them refocused on the project. If it doesn&#8217;t, then you have to make a judgment call on, is this a salvageable project or not?</p>



<p>[00:28:34] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I feel like I&#8217;ve encountered many different interpretations of this. On the one hand, there&#8217;s a lot of people out there in the wild who really are proponents of, look, the minute it goes wrong, start lawyering. Just protect yourself. Get the lawyers involved. You cease communication with the client and start to go through the lawyers.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s this idea of, it&#8217;s not working out. I need you to do what you&#8217;ve agreed right now, otherwise it doesn&#8217;t work. We also hear constantly about firing clients and the joy that that can bring.</p>



<p>But on the other hand, I feel that, like you said, you have to judge off your own instincts sometimes whether there is a legitimate reason behind there. And that has happened to me. You know, I&#8217;ve had clients that have not delivered things, and then it turns out there&#8217;s not only a plausible reason, but a reason, which if it were me in their shoes, I would desperately want the web designer to understand my crisis.</p>



<p>Something personal has happened, some event in their life has meant that they literally have been away from the computer for weeks on end. And so it&#8217;s not really their fault. I guess the answer is use your judgment. Invoke the spidey sense, and figure out which is the best way to proceed.</p>



<p>[00:29:42] Nathan Ingram: For sure. I mean, we&#8217;re dealing with people here, right? And so my default dealing with people is generally grace. I&#8217;m very gracious with people. Understanding about issues that come up. On the other hand, it&#8217;s important to have a document that protects you. If you get to the point where you have to fire the client.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s a great conversation. And, and you hear a lot, especially on social media and Facebook groups and places like that. Oh, we got to fire the client. This whole discussion, right? But that&#8217;s complicated. If you want to fire the client, can you even do that? Do you have a contract that specifies what happens if you want to terminate the relationship?</p>



<p>That&#8217;s where having a good document that protects you is critical, because you know at some point, oh, the client didn&#8217;t pay me, so I&#8217;m going to turn their website off. Well, guess what? If you just turn their website off for non payment, and they haven&#8217;t agreed to that stipulation, then you can get sued for that.</p>



<p>Well you didn&#8217;t give me due process and whatever. And you can find yourself in a lot of trouble if you don&#8217;t have a good document that protects you. So my advice is always have a great contract that is weighted towards you as the service provider, and then you can choose to be gracious when you want.</p>



<p>[00:30:44] Nathan Wrigley: So let&#8217;s get into that bit. You were mentioning about switching the website off. So it&#8217;s almost like the sanctions piece. What do you have in your arsenal as a web designer, which you can bring to bear should you need to apply a little bit of pressure to make sure that things are moving? So I&#8217;m describing a scenario now where things have clearly gone south.</p>



<p>We&#8217;re definitely in the territory of miscommunication has been heaped upon miscommunication. We&#8217;re at the point of almost falling out. Communication is breaking down, and so we now need to bring out the big guns, if you like. What have we got? You mentioned turning off the website, that&#8217;s obviously one thing that we could do, given that that was in a contract.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m thinking we could refuse to do any additional work. There&#8217;s obviously the refusal to communicate unless you go through lawyers at this point. What are the kind of things that you would put in your contracts that you would allow yourself to have as an option?</p>



<p>[00:31:40] Nathan Ingram: So it would obviously depend on where we are in the process of the project. But if you&#8217;re in the middle of building the site, the client is texting you at 2:00 AM, or whatever. This is clearly not going to work, and we&#8217;ve tried to communicate and tried to request the client to change their behaviour, and they just simply won&#8217;t do it for whatever reason, and you need to pull the plug on the project. Then, you know at that point, at least my contract says, we as an agency get to evaluate the work that&#8217;s been done and say, okay, 78% has been completed and so you owe this much more.</p>



<p>Or if we&#8217;ve already received full payment, we&#8217;ll refund that much or whatever. You need some process by which you can mitigate or decide who gets what at the end of this. So if you&#8217;re in the middle of the project, and you want to pull the plug, somebody has to figure that out.</p>



<p>If it&#8217;s a client that&#8217;s maybe in a management phase and they&#8217;re just not paying their bill or they&#8217;re asking for too much or whatever, it&#8217;s always a conversation. What&#8217;s going on here? And is there something we don&#8217;t understand about this? But, at some point you have to have an agreement that if you don&#8217;t pay your bill within certain time, then we do suspend the website from view.</p>



<p>[00:32:46] Nathan Wrigley: I guess there is also a point where you have to cease communication through anything other than the lawyers. Because at some point any stream of email going left, right, and center has to be mediated by a professional who&#8217;s removed from all of this.</p>



<p>[00:33:03] Nathan Ingram: Yeah, you really do. And you know, we first tried to do arbitration, just to try to keep things out of court. That&#8217;s just a personal preference. But at some point you have to do that. Now, thankfully I&#8217;ve never even gotten close to anything like that, and I&#8217;ve heard horror stories of where it&#8217;s gotten to that point.</p>



<p>You know, a lot of this is, as you work with clients and you have good client experiences and bad client experiences. You start to develop, like you said earlier, this spidey sense. This radar of early on, like before you even sign a proposal with a client, getting better at filtering out the bad clients at the beginning.</p>



<p>Hopefully over time that becomes part of this, where you don&#8217;t have nearly the issues. Early on I had bad clients. They would take advantage of me. they didn&#8217;t want to pay. They wanted to pay a just a little bit, not really what the work was worth.</p>



<p>They would constantly second guess and question my professional decisions. It was just terrible. I began to realize there are better clients out there and, not let those difficult clients in our world to begin with.</p>



<p>[00:34:02] Nathan Wrigley: It&#8217;s interesting as this podcast has gone on, we&#8217;ve concentrated on the negative aspect of contracts, in the, you know, we&#8217;re protecting ourselves. This horrible thing could happen, so make sure you&#8217;ve got some protection. Oh, and this horrible thing could happen. But really, it&#8217;s the opposite, isn&#8217;t it? The contract is there to give you peace of mind. It&#8217;s to create a sort of positive scenario.</p>



<p>And so hopefully you won&#8217;t find yourself in these positions. If the contract is robust enough, everybody signed it, read it, understood it, then those boundaries are in place so that these disasters don&#8217;t occur. So there&#8217;s a bit of silver lining on this cloud.</p>



<p>[00:34:38] Nathan Ingram: Oh, it absolutely is. There&#8217;s this old story about this mother who&#8217;d warned her children about playing next to the road because they lived next to this busy highway. And oh, don&#8217;t get close to the road because, you know, you could get hit by a car or whatever. And so the kids would not go just a few feet from the house because they were terrified of this road.</p>



<p>And then they realized, well, our kids aren&#8217;t even playing in our yard. So they put up a fence between the yard and the road. And the kids then could play within the boundaries of the fence and weren&#8217;t afraid of the road anymore. And that&#8217;s just a little example of put up a fence, a contract, and it really frees you to work better with clients.</p>



<p>And in my experience, it&#8217;s if a client out of the gate, if the client pushes back against some of the things in our contract, it&#8217;s a huge red flag that we probably don&#8217;t want to work with this client, just right away. Because everything that is in our contract is there for a reason.</p>



<p>I tell the clients that. It&#8217;s a rather long document, but everything is there for a purpose. And if you have questions about it, I&#8217;m happy to answer those, you know, happy to talk through why we do this. But it&#8217;s there for a reason and it really establishes the boundaries of our relationship.</p>



<p>And the remarkable thing about all of this is, people look at a contract, well, I&#8217;m afraid to get my clients to sign this, it&#8217;s really long or whatever. The good clients have no problem signing contracts like this. They welcome it. It&#8217;s a mark of your professionalism that you&#8217;ve thought through your business well enough to have a well crafted document that governs this whole process of us working together.</p>



<p>[00:36:03] Nathan Wrigley: You&#8217;ve obviously given this a great deal of thought in the past. You live in the United States and you mentioned Alabama. Obviously America&#8217;s a tapestry of different states with laws and, honestly I don&#8217;t understand that a little bit. But in the UK we have UK law and then there&#8217;s EU law, and then obviously there&#8217;s law in other jurisdictions.</p>



<p>This, I suppose is something which we might mention right now, towards the end of our recording. You&#8217;ve got to have that in mind as well. It really does matter where you are and where the clients are because I guess you&#8217;ve got to think about the law. Should it go wrong, are you protected correctly given where the client is and where you are?</p>



<p>[00:36:40] Nathan Ingram: Yeah, for sure. There&#8217;s a lot of local laws that govern things that you wouldn&#8217;t think about. And that&#8217;s why it&#8217;s critical to have a local attorney that understands technology and things like intellectual property and these sorts of things, to take a look at whatever document you have.</p>



<p>One of the biggest challenges with MonsterContracts was, okay, I&#8217;ve got this document that I have a hundred percent faith in for my work here, and really even state to state. There are very few things that would have to change from state to state, using in the United States.</p>



<p>But then we started getting some people buying the product internationally. And I began to wonder, wow, how is this going to work? I did have some experience. I had a coaching client, somebody that I was working with in business development who lived there in the UK. I provided her a copy of the contract and she had it vetted through a local attorney there.</p>



<p>There were just very few changes. So, the way that at least my contract works is most of it, and I would just, pulling a number out of the air, say 80% of the document is just plain language about processes and things like that. And the legal language is at the end. So the attorney in the area, whether it&#8217;s internationally or locally in a different state or whatever, they could just substitute the little bits of standard legal language at the end and make it work wherever you are. And we now have people who&#8217;ve bought MonsterContracts all over the world and they&#8217;re having that experience where the attorney can review it with maybe one or two hours of time. It works great for their location.</p>



<p>[00:38:05] Nathan Wrigley: So just give us the quick elevator pitch of MonsterContracts. It sounds like that it&#8217;s a service that you can essentially log in, pay your subs, and then you can extract from it contracts, which hopefully you can then use.</p>



<p>[00:38:19] Nathan Ingram: That&#8217;s basically it. And so again, this is, it&#8217;s based on my contract that over 25 years of working with clients, I&#8217;ve gradually made better until it&#8217;s virtually bulletproof, I think, in my opinion. The MonsterContracts is simply a Word document. You log in, you purchase the document. You take this. You tweak anything that&#8217;s there to match your processes or the, you know, if you don&#8217;t do things in the same order that the contract specifies, change that around. Plain simple wording. And then the recommendation is always take that to your local attorney to allow them to, you know, run through it and make any changes.</p>



<p>And universally the response has been, one or two hours of time and it&#8217;s done. So, for most people they&#8217;re going to have one of the two types. So if they&#8217;re using a contract, they have the type that&#8217;s just plain English and full of holes, or it&#8217;s just a bunch of legalese that no one understands.</p>



<p>MonsterContracts it addresses the specific situations that we encounter as web professionals, and it provides the cover that you need to grow your business. It addresses all the things that we deal with in client work.</p>



<p>[00:39:16] Nathan Wrigley: I think you&#8217;ve got a system whereby you can submit amendments that you&#8217;ve had made. So let&#8217;s say for example, in my case, the UK. I could make amendments and then submit them back to MonsterContracts so that other people can benefit from that as well.</p>



<p>[00:39:32] Nathan Ingram: Yeah, exactly. So we have the ability to do that. That&#8217;s an area of MonsterContracts that I&#8217;m really working on growing this year. We haven&#8217;t had as many members do that as I had hoped originally. And so that&#8217;s one of our goals this year is to expand those revisions. MonsterContracts is a subscription, just to keep access because we do have the contract vetted by an attorney annually.</p>



<p>And, there are usually at least a few changes to the contract every year to just keep up to date with things that are happening in client work. The subscription gives you access to those changes as well as any revisions that people upload. And if you upload a revision that&#8217;s accepted we credit you for that year&#8217;s cost.</p>



<p>[00:40:06] Nathan Wrigley: So a scary subject hopefully somewhat tamed by having contracts. Nathan, thanks for chatting to us today and putting our minds at rest and giving us some advice. If the listeners to this would like to get in touch or figure out where you are or begin a chat with you, what are the best, some of the best places to find you online?</p>



<p>[00:40:26] Nathan Ingram: Yeah, sure. So, monstercontracts.com is, the place to find the MonsterContracts product. There&#8217;s a great contact form there if you want to reach out to me about any contract related questions. My coaching website is nathaningram.com. That is available out there for coaching work or questions around that subject. And I&#8217;m online three days a week with iThemes training, at training.ithemes.com.</p>



<p>[00:40:48] Nathan Wrigley: Nathan Ingram, thank you so much for chatting to us on the podcast today. I really appreciate it.</p>



<p>[00:40:52] Nathan Ingram: Thanks, Nathan. I enjoyed it.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today, we have <a href="https://nathaningram.com/">Nathan Ingram</a>.</p>



<p>Nathan is the host at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress and business development topics via live webinar. Based in Birmingham, Alabama, he has been working with clients to build websites since 1995.</p>



<p>He’s also the creator of MonsterContracts, which helps WordPress professionals create contracts for their client work.</p>



<p>If you’ve worked directly with clients, then you’ll know that things don’t always go according to plan. Assets might not be delivered on time. The client does not respond to your emails. The expectations of the client begins to creep away from the original proposal.</p>



<p>Whilst there’s unlikely to be a perfect system to ensure that all projects run according to the plan, you can protect yourself from some of the worst aspects, and for this, you may need a contract.</p>



<p>Nathan is on the podcast today to talk about why he thinks contracts are an essential part of any client facing WordPress work.</p>



<p>We begin by talking about how the contract is designed as a tool to bring clarity to both parties. You, the website builder, can set out the constraints within which you work, and the client can understand what they can, and cannot, expect from you. Nathan thinks that setting these expectations before the project begins leads to fewer problems later on.</p>



<p>We talk about the fact that contracts don’t need to contain overly complex legal language, but they do need to be checked by a qualified legal professional before they’re deployed.</p>



<p>Nathan also explains how he’s refined his contracts over the years, tweaking the wording and the structure, depending upon the project at hand.</p>



<p>We then get into what you can realistically do should your client breach the contract. Are you able to turn off their website or withhold work that you’ve completed? Nathan’s not really in favour of sending in the lawyers as soon as something goes wrong, rather trying to resolve any conflict through better communication.</p>



<p>It’s an interesting conversation which makes contracts seem less adversarial and more about ensuring that your WordPress website projects run as smoothly as possible.</p>



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



<p><a href="https://training.ithemes.com/">iThemes Training</a></p>



<p><a href="https://monstercontracts.com/">MonsterContracts</a></p>



<p><a href="https://birmingham.wordcamp.org/2023/">WordCamp Birmingham</a></p>



<p>Nathan&#8217;s &#8220;Dealing with problem clients, building fences around friendly monsters&#8221; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrSH7Mq8ZZs">webinar</a>.</p>



<p><a href="http://nathaningram.com">Nathan&#8217;s website</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 12 Apr 2023 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:44;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:87:"Do The Woo Community: When WooCommerce Developers Need to Find an Accessibility Partner";s: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=74744";s: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:59:"https://dothewoo.io/woocommerce-accessibility-partnerships/";s: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:421:"<p>With the need to make sure more sites start with being accessible, learn when you should consider bringing in a partner.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/woocommerce-accessibility-partnerships/">When WooCommerce Developers Need to Find an Accessibility Partner</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 12 Apr 2023 06:03:03 +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: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:93:"WPTavern: Limit Login Attempts Plugin Patches Severe Unauthenticated Stored XSS Vulnerability";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=143554";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:104:"https://wptavern.com/limit-login-attempts-plugin-patches-severe-unauthenticated-stored-xss-vulnerability";s: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:1622:"<p>Wordfence has <a href="https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2023/04/update-now-severe-vulnerability-impacting-600000-sites-patched-in-limit-login-attempts/">published</a> a security advisory about <a href="https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-1912">a severe unauthenticated stored Cross-Site Scripting vulnerability</a> in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/limit-login-attempts">Limit Login Attempts</a> plugin, which is active on more than 600,000 WordPress sites. </p>



<p>The security issue was discovered by Wordfence security researcher Marco Wotschka in January 2023. It was submitted to the WordPress Plugin Security Team, which acknowledged receipt of the report nearly two months later on March 24, 2023.</p>



<p>&#8220;This can be leveraged by unauthenticated attackers to facilitate a site takeover by injecting malicious JavaScript into the database of an affected site that may execute when a site administrator accesses the logging page,&#8221; Wotschka said.</p>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/limit-login-attempts/">Version 1.7.2</a> of the plugin patches the vulnerability. It was released on April 4 with a note in the changelog that simply says &#8220;Security fixes.&#8221; Version 1.7.1 and previous versions remain vulnerable. </p>



<p>In August 2021, the plugin had more than 900,000 active users, and more than 2 million in 2018, but seems to be dying a slow death and is no longer maintained, as it hasn&#8217;t been updated in years.</p>



<p>Wordfence has more details in the advisory on how the plugin might be exploited and advises users update immediately.</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, 12 Apr 2023 03:19:21 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:122:"WPTavern: TeamWP Launches Team Experience Index To Measure Employee Engagement and Satisfaction in the WordPress Ecosystem";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=143527";s: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:133:"https://wptavern.com/teamwp-launches-team-experience-index-to-measure-employee-engagement-and-satisfaction-in-the-wordpress-ecosystem";s: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:1868:"<p>In February 2023, James Giroux <a href="https://teamwp.co/blog/the-benefits-of-investing-in-employee-engagement/">founded TeamWP</a>, a project that aims to advocate for open, people-first workplaces in the WordPress ecosystem. His first initiative was to launch the <a href="https://teamexperienceindex.com/">Team Experience Index</a>, a benchmark employee engagement survey designed specifically for people working in the world of WordPress.</p>



<p>“The distributed nature of WordPress companies means they often lack the resources and knowledge to create truly open, people-first workplaces,” Giroux said. “The Team Experience Index fills this gap by providing insights and benchmarks that help companies identify strengths and areas for improvement, fostering a more open, collaborative, and innovative work culture.”</p>



<p>The comprehensive survey will be aggregated and anonymized. It takes approximately 4-7 minutes to complete and includes questions about employee experience, company culture, leadership, management and teamwork, career progression opportunities, professional development, compensation and recognition, and employees&#8217; individual experiences. </p>



<p>While responses are recorded anonymously, it&#8217;s important to note that the company name is required, along with the employee&#8217;s role and the number of employees. Respondents should be aware that they are collectively giving away a lot of private information and should only share if they believe the insights will have a positive impact on the wider ecosystem.</p>



<p>Giroux plans to share the initial results of the Team Experience Index at WordCamp Europe in Athens in June 2023. Anyone working at a WordPress product or service company, agency, or hosting company is invited to <a href="https://teamexperienceindex.com/">complete the survey</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, 11 Apr 2023 20:55:59 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"Do The Woo Community: Using WooCommerce Subscriptions at Scale with Devin Price";s: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=74726";s: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:55:"https://dothewoo.io/woocommerce-subscriptions-at-scale/";s: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:436:"<p>When a site generates 10k orders each hour, and you have 8 million products going out, most of them on subscription, you need to know how to scale.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/woocommerce-subscriptions-at-scale/">Using WooCommerce Subscriptions at Scale with Devin Price</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 11 Apr 2023 08:10:00 +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: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:102:"WPTavern: WordPress Developers Are Experimenting With Gutenberg-Native AI Block and Content Assistants";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=143492";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:113:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-developers-are-experimenting-with-gutenberg-native-ai-block-and-content-assistants";s: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:5213:"<p>As more WordPress <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/chatgpt/">plugins for AI-generated content and images</a>, chatbots, and assistants, are landing in the official directory, developers are beginning to explore even deeper integration with the block editor. Moving beyond the prototypical content generators that are cobbled together into a plugin, the tools developers are experimenting with today will provide a more deeply integrated experience that works seamlessly with the block editor as a natural extension of its capabilities.</p>



<p>Last week Human Made CTO Joe Hoyle <a href="https://humanmade.com/2023/04/06/wordpress-ai-generative-content-and-blocks/">published</a> an early preview of generative AI natively integrated into the block editor with a video demonstrating prompts working across various blocks.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I’ve been working on a WordPress Gutenberg-native AI copilot. The results were pretty astounding to me once I got GPT to “speak Gutenberg” <a href="https://t.co/adEfkPRHcb">pic.twitter.com/adEfkPRHcb</a></p>&mdash; Joe Hoyle (@joe_hoyle) <a href="https://twitter.com/joe_hoyle/status/1643952243605925889?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 6, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>&#8220;Taking a native-first approach to integrating generative AI into WordPress, we’ve been experimenting with approaches to a &#8216;WordPress Copilot&#8217; that can &#8216;speak&#8217; Gutenberg / block-editor,&#8221; Hoyle said.</p>



<p>&#8220;Copy-pasting paragraphs between ChatGPT and WordPress only goes so far, while having the tools directly embedded in the editor for block layout generation, auto-linking, formatting, translation summarization and more open up a world of possibilities and productivity wins for content creators.&#8221;</p>



<p>Munir Kamal, WordPress developer and founder of Gutenberg Hub, has created a native AI writer with a similar UI to the tool Hoyle previewed, as they both were inspired by the <a href="https://www.notion.so/">Notion app</a>. His preview video demonstrates far more capabilities than the earlier AI content generators for WordPress have implemented.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I've been working on a native AI writer inspired by Notion, designed to seamlessly integrate into <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Gutenberg?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Gutenberg</a>. Unlike clunky admin approached <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AI?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AI</a> plugins this will be your hidden Ai content assistant. Keep an eye out for it at the <a href="https://twitter.com/GutenbergHub?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GutenbergHub</a> shop.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordPress?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordPress</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/chatgpt?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#chatgpt</a> <a href="https://t.co/WmCkJCpF0l">pic.twitter.com/WmCkJCpF0l</a></p>&mdash; Munir Kamal (@m_munirkamal) <a href="https://twitter.com/m_munirkamal/status/1644406162966683661?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 7, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>Kamal has tapped into the GPT API to add more options to the AI writer, including the ability to rewrite, improve the generated text, fix grammar, simplify language, make it shorter, make it longer, and translate. He plans to release it as a commercial plugin in his <a href="https://shop.gutenberghub.com/">Gutenberg Hub shop</a> when it&#8217;s ready.</p>



<img />



<p>&#8220;With the increasing advancements in AI technology, thanks to OpenAI for taking the leap, I believe it will become an even more integral part of blogging,&#8221; Kamal <a href="https://twitter.com/m_munirkamal/status/1644724907694227456">said</a> when asked about AI and the future of blogging. &#8220;It can assist in generating ideas, improving grammar and structure, and even help with SEO optimization.</p>



<p>Hoyle is equally optimistic on the future of AI integrated into WordPress tools. It will be exciting to see if his Gutenberg-native AI copilot can be extended to blocks inside the Site Editor, to offer a text prompt-guided design experience without having to click through the tools.</p>



<p>&#8220;Going through this project has convinced me that LLMs [Large Language Model] have much more potential than I was giving them credit for,&#8221; Hoyle said. &#8220;It feels like there’s still a lot to discover what the models are capable of.</p>



<p>&#8220;As the availability to GPT-4 (and with it larger token limits) increases, we see a clear path of improvement to what we’ve shown today. The data and information that is stored and available to the Content Management System is ideal for model-training and building a corpus of data specific to the user. Generating, improving and suggesting content of all types that is specific to the data set will be another lead forward in the utility of these tools. We see a future where AI will support and enhance the work we all do, and see the necessity to integrate the technology deeply into the tools and solutions we create.&#8221;</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 11 Apr 2023 02:11:41 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:81:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 53: A Look at WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy”";s: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=14818";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/04/episode-53-a-look-at-wordpress-6-2-dolphy/";s: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:9229:"<p>Named after the multi-instrumentalist Eric Allan Dolphy Jr., WordPress 6.2 &#8220;Dolphy&#8221;&#8216;s high notes are riffed on by WordPress&#8217;s Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, in this 53rd episode of the WordPress Briefing.</p>



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



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



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



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



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/dolphy/">WordPress 6.2 &#8220;Dolphy&#8221;</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/03/introducing-the-wordpress-developer-blog/">Introducing the WordPress Developer Blog</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/?p=251">WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wp.me/p2U65r-9Nl">Call for Volunteers: Contributor Working Group</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/?p=11037">Why Jazz</a></li>



<li>Make Slack channels <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C04QZCREJ9W">#kidscamp</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C03JNV77Y57">#sustainability</a> </li>
</ul>



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



<span id="more-14818"></span>



<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00] </p>



<p>Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress Open Source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.</p>



<p>[00:00:28]</p>



<p>The latest version of WordPress has shipped. WordPress 6.2, which was named after Eric Dolphy, was released on March 29th. And as is the way with software, there&#8217;s already a minor release underway to catch a few errant issues that folks like you have reported to us.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s a big release that refines a lot of our design tools, but some of the most important changes are actually to the inserter. If you haven&#8217;t had a chance to get in there and play with it yet, here are the three things that I think you should know. </p>



<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:08] </p>



<p>First, the pattern browser. We&#8217;re all aware of the block inserter by now, and a lot of us probably use the quick options, the keyboard shortcuts, or that kind of inline inserter, that little black box that&#8217;s in the middle of your post.</p>



<p>If you use the main inserter, that&#8217;s a blue square in the top left of the screen. If you use that to add a block, you can still add individual blocks as usual. But there&#8217;s a new way to browse patterns, and in my opinion, it is so much better. It now brings out this drawer that has like thumbnails of patterns that will work with your theme.</p>



<p>And if you, like me, know what you want your site to look like, but could not in a million years figure out how to build it from scratch out of individual blocks, then this is the area for you. It was like shopping, but you don&#8217;t have to go through a checkout process at the end, and you still have what you want. It&#8217;s great.&nbsp;</p>



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



<p>That&#8217;s also available when you&#8217;re working on templates or template parts, so you can make changes everywhere instead of going page by page. The second thing that I think you should know is about the media browser in that same area where you browse your patterns; you can also now browse for media.</p>



<p>It lets you look through the images you&#8217;ve already added to your site, but it also lets you search for openly licensed images from Openverse. And if you choose one of those images from Openverse, it inserts the proper attribution for you. You still have to add your own alt text, but that&#8217;s the fun part anyway, right?</p>



<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:35]&nbsp;</p>



<p>And number three, a Style Book. So this thing is available in the template editing area, specifically, as is appropriate, given what it actually does. So if you&#8217;re in the template area, toward the top right of the screen is like a half moon day mode, night mode looking icon. If you click on that, you can make changes to things inside your blocks.</p>



<p>But if you click on the little eyeball icon that&#8217;s just underneath it, it pulls up a style book where you can also see and edit the styles globally. If that didn&#8217;t make sense to you, don&#8217;t worry. I&#8217;ve got you. I&#8217;m about to tell you a bunch of things you can do in here. You can edit the way headings and lists and tables, quotes, and code looks all across the site. You can edit the way images, galleries, files, and videos look using custom CSS.</p>



<p>Yes. Also, all across the site. And you can edit buttons, separators, and individual blocks. Say it with me &#8212; all across the site. That is not a comprehensive list. There is a ton of stuff. You can see the styles that you have applied across the whole site. You can see them in context, and you can make any changes that you need globally, which means all across the site.</p>



<p>Yeah. Style Books. What will we think of next? </p>



<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:54]&nbsp;</p>



<p>So those are my three things I think you should know about WordPress right now. As a former WordPress builder who was never really super great with the code, this stuff makes me feel powerful. I just love these changes, and I hope you do too.</p>



<p> [00:04:07]</p>



<p>Which brings us now to our small list of big things. First, we just launched the Developer Blog. It&#8217;s over at developer.wordpress.org/news. It has a bunch of content on it that not only is geared specifically toward developers that are using WordPress but especially the folks who are extending WordPress. It gives you kind of an in-depth look at various changes and projects, and implementations and what goes into each one of them.</p>



<p>So it gives you a bit of like this aspirational overview of stuff that you could do with WordPress and then also gives you an inside look at how you would accomplish it yourself. It&#8217;s very cool. I like it a lot. Head on over there, but we&#8217;ll have a link to the show notes below.</p>



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



<p>The second thing is that we have an MVP of our new mentorship program that is underway.</p>



<p>It should be debuting for essentially testing any day now, a link to the posts detailing that work, just in case you want to join that important initiative. But it is an important thing for me. I think that mentorship is a key element of many of our successful contributors&#8217; onboarding journeys, a part of their story of coming to us.</p>



<p>And so, creating a mentorship program that is a bit sustainable and looks toward the health of the overall project, I think, is an excellent plan.&nbsp;</p>



<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:38]&nbsp;</p>



<p>The third thing on our small list of big things is that Matt put out a nice little post about kind of the history of why jazz has this strong background in the WordPress project. It&#8217;s a brief read. I&#8217;ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. But suffice it to say that he&#8217;s saying that jazz has a little bit of learned processes and rules but that the primary expectation is that you&#8217;re able to make of the jazz what you want. Like you get to make your own thing out of it. You get to be extemporaneous. You get to be very measured, whatever it is, that expresses what you are trying to do and what you are trying to say with it.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s why he feels like jazz is such an important part of the DNA of the WordPress project. Like I said, it&#8217;s a short read. I&#8217;ll put a link to it in the show notes.</p>



<p>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:30]&nbsp;</p>



<p>And finally, there are a few working groups that folks can contribute to right now. We don&#8217;t always have working groups. We generally just kind of do stuff inside individual teams. But right now, we&#8217;ve got like the kids camp group, the sustainability group, and of course, that mentorship working group that I mentioned earlier in our list.</p>



<p>So if you&#8217;re wanting a little change of pace, I&#8217;d drop by their areas in the Making WordPress Slack to see if they have anything that&#8217;s up your alley. </p>



<p>And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 10 Apr 2023 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:15:"Chloe Bringmann";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}s:4:"type";i:128;s:7:"headers";O:42:"Requests_Utility_CaseInsensitiveDictionary":1:{s:7:"*data";a:8:{s:6:"server";s:5:"nginx";s:4:"date";s:29:"Sat, 29 Apr 2023 12:55:08 GMT";s:12:"content-type";s:8:"text/xml";s:13:"last-modified";s:29:"Sat, 29 Apr 2023 12:30:31 GMT";s:4:"vary";s:15:"Accept-Encoding";s:15:"x-frame-options";s:10:"SAMEORIGIN";s:16:"content-encoding";s:4:"gzip";s:4:"x-nc";s:9:"HIT ord 1";}}s:5:"build";s:14:"20130911073210";}